by Paul Heald
“What did you have for an appetizer?”
“Excuse me?”
“What did you have for an appetizer?”
“Um, we had those little fishes . . . fresh anchovies . . . marinated in olive oil and garlic. Some fried calamari too. They tasted good with the wine.” He looked up at the detective. “I definitely had wine.”
McCaffrey pulled the pill bottle out of his pocket and handed it to him. “Does this look familiar?” The suspect took the bottle in his right hand and studied it.
“Yeah. I’ve been having back problems. My doctor prescribed this to me yesterday.”
“Did you take any this evening?”
“A couple right before the party.”
“It’s not smart to mix painkillers and alcohol, Mr. Johansson.” McCaffrey took back the pill bottle and tapped it lightly against the table. “Do you remember what came after the appetizers, Mr. Johansson?” The suspect concentrated on his answer, eyes flicking side to side as if he were trying to capture some fleeting image. “Do you remember the main course?”
“No . . . yes . . . lobster and steak. But I didn’t eat it. I felt sick and went back to my office. I had to go to the bathroom . . .”
“Did you get sick in the bathroom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there anyone else in the room?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Do you remember what happened in your office?”
He sighed and leaned over the table. “No. Could you just tell me what happened?”
“Well, Mr. Johansson,” he held the suspect’s eyes and watched his reaction closely, “you were found passed out on the sofa with a bloody fraternity paddle in your hand and a dead woman on the floor next to you.”
“My God.” Johansson bent over as if someone had hit him in the stomach with a two-by-four.
“Not much of her face left, I’m afraid.”
He raised his head slightly and whispered. “Who was it?”
“The security guards seem quite certain that her name was Jade Delilah.” He watched as Johansson’s head sunk below his waist. He slipped all the way to the floor, crouching on his hands and knees before emitting a visceral groan and spitting a clot of yellow bile on the detective’s shoes. For a few moments, he panted like a dog, then he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of jacket and retched again. When he stopped shuddering, he spoke in a raspy voice, eyes still fixed on the floor.
“I need to talk to a lawyer.”
VII.
THE HISTORIAN
Stanley and Angela pushed the musty bed in the Van Nuys motel room as far as they could into the corner. To their mutual disgust, the sliding foot board popped a dead cockroach up out of the carpet. Stanley got a tissue, scooped it up, and plopped it into the toilet. “That was gross,” he heard as he flushed the critter down.
Angela surveyed the pale square of carpet revealed by the moving bed, closely inspecting it for more vermin. “I wonder how long it was there.” Although the hotel chain had a solid reputation, judging by its tired furniture and mummified bug carcasses, the franchise in the San Fernando Valley was clearly below the national par.
“Who knows? Just be glad we’re not staying here.” Despite the events of the previous night, he was hopeful that the interviewees would still show for their scheduled slots. The police had detained the entire banquet group for several hours while they took brief statements and recorded everyone’s identity. Angela had been without her purse, so Stanley had vouched for her and promised to bring her to the local police station with proper identification within forty-eight hours. Back at the hotel, they had watched the news, but had learned little more than Jade Delilah was dead and a “person of interest” was in custody.
Stanley created an interview area in one corner of room, a small table with water and soft drinks next to the chair where his subjects would sit. He would face them, alongside a digital video recorder on a black tripod. Angela could monitor the audio from her perch on the bed.
“What time is it?” She asked.
“Almost ten. Layla should be here any minute.”
“If she’s coming.” He sensed that the death of Jade Delilah might cause a huge stir in the porn world, but how that would affect his project was far from clear. If the women failed to show, his whole career might be a casualty of Jade’s murder. He avoided thinking about the prospect of a baby on the way and a termination letter from the university in his mailbox. “Let’s do a quick sound check.”
“Four score and seven years ago . . . one, two, three . . . testing, testing . . . I love a parade . . .” While the professor babbled, his wife set the levels on the audio monitor and then made sure one more time that the chair occupied the center of the camera’s visual field.
“That should do it.” She sat back on the bed and looked in the folder that held the interview schedule. “First up, Ms. Layla DiBona.” She sighed and put down the papers. “My god, why not just call yourself Loose-Legs McHarlot?”
“Come on,” he chided, “she seemed very nice last night. You said that she was very articulate.” Until the scream from the back of the banquet hall, he had enjoyed himself immensely. He would have sworn that his wife had been having fun too, but at the hotel afterward she had intimated that the crime was a karmic comment on both the evening and his research project.
“Okay, fine. I just hope she’s wearing a shirt this time.” She grabbed a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and sat back down on the bed. “Wasn’t there some other profession you could have chosen to study?” She asked. “What’s wrong with realtors? Most of us are women.”
“Entirely too sexy,” he replied with grin. “You couldn’t trust me alone in the room with them.”
“Ha, ha.”
“Actually, I considered it a couple of months ago, but most agents are really independent contractors. Most realtors aren’t technically employees of anybody, so the cross-profession comparisons wouldn’t have been parallel.”
She sighed in response. “Okay, but can I just say that I’m not looking forward to this.”
He was about to peer out window when he heard a sharp rap on the door. “Right on time.”
He opened the door and let in a somber woman who extended her hand and reintroduced herself as Janet Stephens, known to the video world as Layla Dibona. She was casually dressed in a pair of lightweight khaki trousers and a modest knit blouse. A pair of Ray Bans were pushed deeply into her thick, blond hair. She wore little makeup and no jewelry, except for two small diamond studs in her ears. Only the lines around her eyes and the slight wrinkles on her neck gave away that she was in her late thirties.
“I’m so glad you could come!” He said with genuine enthusiasm. “Especially after last night.” She nodded noncommittally and sat down in the chair obviously reserved for the interviewee. “Did you know Jade well?”
“Pretty well,” she replied after a moment’s hesitation. “We never did a scene together, but it’s a pretty small community and she’s been busy the last few years.”
“Do you know who the police have in custody?”
“No,” she shook her head, “all I’m hearing is wild rumors.”
Stanley waited for more explanation, but she did not seem interested in hashing over the night’s events. “Why don’t we get started?” He gestured to Angela. “I’m not sure I mentioned last night that my wife is my audio-visual expert.”
“Hi.” The women said simultaneously.
He explained the confidentiality agreement and consent form that permitted the interview to be used only for anonymous research purposes. She perused it briefly and then signed. “I hope you’ll be able to give us a full two hours,” he said. “I don’t know what Don told you to expect today.”
“Two hours!” She waved her hands frantically. “But I’ve got to be back to the set of Granny Love 4 by eleven!”
Stanley opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Angela’s eyes flicked between the actress and h
er husband. They were both suddenly aware of the whizzing of traffic outside the motel window.
“That was a joke!” The starlet broke the awkward silence with an exasperated cry. “Don calls me the porn historian, but I’m not that old for chrissakes!” She laughed, and the couple joined in nervously. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay here as long as you like.” She sat down and smoothed the top of her pants. “It’s about time someone took a serious look at this industry.”
Stanley picked up his yellow legal pad, nodded at his wife and began:
INTERVIEWER: Could you tell us your age and place of birth?
SUBJECT: I’m thirty-eight years old and was born in Marina Del Rey, California.
INTERVIEWER: How long have you been making adult films?
SUBJECT: Since about 1991. Yeah, almost seventeen years now. Christ, that’s a long time.
INTERVIEWER: Unusually long?
SUBJECT: Oh yeah. The average career is about eighteen months, maybe two years, max. But I’ve always been lucky; I was one of the first contract girls.
INTERVIEWER: Meaning?
SUBJECT: Okay. These days girls like Jade Delilah, Genna Lynne, me, for example, do one year contracts with a studio. We make a set number of films per year for a regular salary. Plus, we get some percentage of sales if we’re on the DVD cover. That was totally unheard of in the old days.
INTERVIEWER: When would that be, the ‘old days’?
SUBJECT: The seventies. That’s when porn really took off in a big way. Sure, there were always stag films. You know, the kind of crap your father would watch at an Elk’s Lodge bachelor party. No plot or anything, just some choppy scenes of naked bodies banging away. But after Deep Throat in 1972, you had what might be called porn’s ‘golden age.’ Deep Throat was shot for peanuts, but it made over a hundred million dollars. Then, you had a series of bigger budget movies like Behind the Green Door, The Devil in Mrs. Jones and The Opening of Misty Beethoven. Hard to imagine now, but they showed this stuff in regular theaters in suburban malls, just like any other movie.
INTERVIEWER: [laughs] My father once admitted after a few beers that he and my mom went to see an x-rated version of Cinderella. Apparently the wicked stepsisters were pretty damn wicked.
SUBJECT: There was a lot of curiosity, but it died down pretty fast, and after a bit of a lull people got VCRs and the industry switched to much lower budget video productions. The seventies were the golden age because the movies were shot on film, just like Hollywood productions. Some of them are really quite beautiful. Video just can’t give you the same quality.
INTERVIEWER: It sounds like Eden Studio is trying to start a new golden age.
SUBJECT: That’s the goal. If Eden can get a movie on mainstream screens, it’ll have the money to starting shooting on film. I don’t know what will happen to Babes now that Jade is dead.
INTERVIEWER: But right now video productions are still the name of the game? Why’s that?
SUBJECT: It’s so much cheaper. You can make a video for, say, twenty thousand, forty thousand tops, and then distribute it directly to stores or online. For a successful one, the profit margins are pretty huge.
INTERVIEWER: What about porn on cable television?
SUBJECT: Cable TV started getting seriously into porn toward the end of the eighties, but because of obscenity laws, channels couldn’t show everything, you know, an erect penis, pop shots, or any sort of penetration. Then, a couple of years ago, the Playboy Channel finally started showing movies with blow jobs and vaginal sex, but only after eleven at night in certain markets, and still no cum shots or anal. Even so, it opened things up. So, you have cable creating this huge market for movies where people are actually screwing on camera, but you couldn’t have close ups of where the action’s at. This forced production companies to change their focus.
INTERVIEWER: In what ways? Don’t you just do the same thing but tell the cameraman to shoot from a different angle?
SUBJECT: It’s not that simple. First, you need better actors. If the camera can’t be focused constantly on people’s crotches, it’s going to be on their faces a lot more. There’s more dialogue, so that puts pressure on the director to make a movie with some semblance of a plot or maybe a bit of humor. And some cable channels, say, Playboy, like to think of themselves as being “classy,” so they’re going to be interested in showing more professional-looking stuff. And the women have to be better looking. With all the extra face time, these girls can’t look like goats anymore.
Some of the best movies I’ve made have been aimed at the softer core cable market. In a regular porn film, you have to contort your body into some pretty uncomfortable positions for the camera to catch what’s going on. Plain old missionary just doesn’t show much, so you’re doing a reverse cowgirl hanging from a forklift with a camera about a foot away from your pussy. Not very sexy.
INTERVIEWER: So, for you personally, sex is better on cable?
SUBJECT: Yeah, less gymnastic sex is definitely better sex, but you still gotta to be suspicious of women saying they have orgasms while filming.
INTERVIEWER: What about the internet? I’m kind of surprised that it hasn’t wiped out the adult film industry. You can see almost anything you want for free online.
SUBJECT: Speaking from experience? [laughs] Think about it. You can read almost anything you like on the internet for free, but the book industry’s still alive and kicking. Same with the news. There’s all sorts of news online, but people still get the LA Times. The internet just expands the size of the overall market. Adult films are definitely not dead.
INTERVIEWER: So the internet is overrated?
SUBJECT: I didn’t say that. The internet has had a huge impact. I mean Pamela Anderson’s and Paris Hilton’s x-rated home videos paved the way for the mainstreaming of pornography. It’s very telling they weren’t ostracized. Far from it! Without Pamela and Tommy Lee, we sure wouldn’t be seeing Jade Delilah on MTV. For some reason, exposing yourself on the internet is somehow more acceptable than starring in traditional porn. Maybe it’s because more people have been exposed to it through the internet. You don’t have to walk into the dirty book store anymore to buy Hustler, or show your face at the video store to get an adult movie. You can surf the web in total privacy with complete anonymity. More than anything else, that’s what’s mainstreaming porn.
INTERVIEWER: Would you say that Toys in Babeland is the culmination of the evolution of the industry that you’ve been observing?
SUBJECT: Eden would certainly like it to be! They’ve shown, at least, that you can treat talent fairly and with respect. People who work there like the place. You should talk to girls from other studios, though. You’d get a distorted impression from just focusing on Eden. There’s still plenty of sleazebags out there. God knows, I’ve worked for enough of them.
INTERVIEWER: Do you ever feel exploited?
SUBJECT: Of course. You’re in an industry where men who never show their asses are making the real money. And you know, sometimes you don’t feel like getting up at seven in the morning and having sex with two guys you’ve never met before. But I felt exploited when I was a secretary too. My boss treated me and everyone else like crap, and we barely got paid a living wage. All work is exploitation as far as I can tell. At least at this point, people like Jade and me have a little bit of control . . .
INTERVIEWER: How did you get into the business?
SUBJECT: Like everyone else! [laughs] I answered an advertisement to be a “figure model” at Olde World Modeling Agency in Los Angeles. I was a bit of a rebellious kid and got kicked out of the house when I was eighteen. I worked as a receptionist for a while and in a department store, but all I could afford was a tiny apartment in a crappy neighborhood that I had to share with two other people. I knew figure modeling meant nude modeling, but I’ve never been ashamed of my body and didn’t see the harm in making some easy money.
INTERVIEWER: A lot of women would react to that prospect with, uh, some trepidation.
SUBJECT: And that’s why they don’t do it! More power to ‘em, but when I pictured myself doing it, well, it just didn’t bother me. If I’d still been at home and worried about my parents, I might not have done it. But that’s the last thing I was thinking about back then.
INTERVIEWER: What do you parents think now?
SUBJECT: We’re very close. They usually don’t bring up my career, but if I do, they’re comfortable with it. It took a long time though.
INTERVIEWER: Did you start doing movies right away?
SUBJECT: No, that came later. I did nothing but photos for a couple of years but all my new friends were in the industry. There’s a lot of overlap between the magazine trade and the video trade. Anyway, my boyfriend at the time suggested that I try doing adult films.
INTERVIEWER: That seems kind of odd. Why would he want you to have sex on camera with other men?
SUBJECT: You know, I think he was the one who really wanted to be the star. Maybe he thought he could ease his way into the business? Maybe he was screwing vicariously through me? All I know is that once I did a couple of movies he started calling me a whore and very soon he was an ex-boyfriend.
INTERVIEWER: Why did you stay in it then?
SUBJECT: Why not? The money was good. I liked the people I was working with. They were the only family I had at that point. I had already taken the plunge. Why not continue? It was just a job.
* * *
Three hours later, the young couple locked up the room behind them and walked down a flight of sticky metal stairs to the parking lot where their rental car sat baking in the sunshine. Layla had been an enthusiastic respondent, happy to fill in some of the gaps left open by the sparse academic literature on pornography. Stanley doubted her level of introspection was typical, but she was a valuable first informant.
“Well, would she have jumped my bones if you weren’t in the room?” He asked with a grin as he opened all four doors of the car to let the heat out. His wife looked at him across the roof of the vehicle.
“She was pretty professional,” the Angela admitted grudgingly. “I can’t see how she does what she does, but at least she didn’t act sleazy.” She put her hand on the seat to check its temperature and then sat down. He joined her and turned the air conditioning on full blast as they headed to lunch at a Mexican restaurant they had spotted on the ride to the motel that morning. “I guess you would have been okay by yourself,” she conceded.