Death in Eden

by Paul Heald

“Was that Max?” Angela asked anxiously. If only her husband would just sleep on his decision and talk to his colleague the next day, then he would see reason. She looked up at him hopefully.

  “No, that was Layla.”

  “Layla?” For a moment she was at a complete loss to recall the name. She tried to remember if Max’s secretary was a Layla, but then a nasty thought crossed her mind. “Wait, not the porn star we interviewed?”

  “Yeah. She’s got some ideas about the case that she wants to talk about. She claims Don is innocent.” He was afraid to look up and see his wife’s reaction. His fear was justified. Angela’s eyes were like darting yellow jackets.

  “So, you’re going to talk with her tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “In LA?”

  “Yeah, where else?”

  “Where else?” she screamed and picked up her suit case. “How about fucking Neverland with Peter Pan and Wendy, because that’s what you’re acting like!” With that, she yanked open the door and left. He sat for a while without moving, waiting for her to return. After a moment, he looked at his watch, and it dawned on him that she had just enough time to catch the red-eye flight back to Chicago.

  XVI.

  MACMILLAN AND BABE

  Stanley slept fitfully and awoke before dawn. He called home, but Angela had either not yet arrived or was choosing not to answer, and he didn’t know what to tell her anyway. The decision to stay in Los Angeles came from his gut, from the sort of impulse that he usually ignored. He didn’t want to go back home and interview waitresses or real estate agents or receptionists. He no longer wanted to play it safe and sell his flaccid soul to the concrete monolith of BFU. When he spoke with Angela, he would try to make her understand, but he didn’t yet have the words to explain his decision to stay.

  He stepped into the shower and let the hot stream of water pound at the tension in his shoulders. Angela had left, and he wasn’t sure how worried he should be. The good news was that she was just retreating home. She wasn’t threatening to divorce him or move away. The bad news was that he had never seen her so angry. Crazy as it seemed, after ten years of marriage, this was their first major blow out. With no kids, nice in-laws, and adequate money, what had there been to fight about? Affairs? Nope. Addiction and alcoholism? Nah. Who lost the remote? That was more like it. But now they had gone off the rails into new territory. She had chided him for being too objective, but now that he was following his heart, she longed for the return of Caspar Milquetoast. What the hell did she want anyway?

  He toweled off and saw there was plenty of time to have breakfast and still make the eight o’clock interview. Before he left, he took out his laptop and emailed Max. Nothing could be gained by deliberately antagonizing the department head or the administration, so he explained that he had gotten the message from Angela and promised not do anything to bring the university into disrepute. No interviews with the media, for sure. And he would not seek reimbursement for any of the expenses that he incurred. He was continuing with his research and hoped to be done with the book in a timely fashion. He clicked “send.” If it took Max a couple of days to track him down, so much the better.

  When he got to the interview room in the Van Nuys hotel, he saw that Angela had downloaded the previous afternoon’s interviews. It was still early, so he played the first interview with Nikki Ferrari on his laptop while he waited. He sat on the edge of the bed as an attractive, light-skinned African American woman answered Angela’s questions about the now infamous party and Jade Delilah’s death. She had been there as the guest of a friend and had never worked for Eden Studio or with the victim. She knew Don only by reputation and had no opinion of the incident except to complain how she had been inconvenienced by the police.

  He heard a knock on the door, missing the question that provoked Nikki into a tirade about “booty-ass shakin’ MTV whores.” He hit pause and opened the door to a voluptuous blond wearing a tight black sweater and short leather skirt. She had high cheekbones and lush ripe lips, but her eyes were red-rimmed and bleary.

  “Hello, I’m Professor Hopkins. You must be Linda Simi?” He shook her hand and gestured to the empty chair in front of the tripod. “Please come on in and sit down. Thanks for coming so early in the morning! Would you like some coffee?”

  “No thanks, I’m still pretty wired.” She crossed her legs and showed a pulse-quickening amount of thigh. He wondered whether her energy came from cocaine, crystal meth, or just youthful adrenaline. “We had a late shoot last night and then went out clubbing after. I came straight here from Sunset Strip.”

  “Then extra thanks! You must be exhausted.”

  “Nah, and I gotta work later this morning anyway.” She looked around the room with a distracted air. “What do you want to know?”

  Stanley began with the usual questions about the night of the murder, but learned nothing new from Linda who grew quickly bored. The only time she showed any animation was when he asked her about Chimera’s attempt to lure Jade from Eden.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she replied, “but I do know that Milton Barkley doesn’t like Don. I made a couple of movies with him and thought they were pretty good, so I asked him about maybe getting some kind of contract deal. You know, like the girls at Eden. Well, he lost his shit and started screaming about Don. He was pissed.”

  “Do you still work over there?”

  “Yeah, you can’t afford to be too picky.” She suddenly grabbed her breasts. “I thought new tits would take me to the next level, but the doc didn’t do that great a job. When I’m on my hands and knees, you can see these stretchy sort of lines on the sides.” She balanced one against the other, frowned and asked, “Do you want to see?”

  “No, no.” He shook his head vigorously. “That’s alright. I’ll take your word for it.”

  He decided to pursue the topic and plowed ahead with questions about the role of plastic surgery in the porn industry. After an enlightening discussion of optimal breast and lip size, the interview ended, leaving him fifteen minutes to collect himself before Tia Rosa arrived for the second and final session of the morning. He wrote up his notes and decided to truncate the upcoming interview so that he could catch Chance Geary at his bike shop before lunch. As it happened the interview petered out naturally due to the Latina’s limited English skills. He managed to get rudimentary information about her work experience in porn, but she was a newcomer to the business, had no sense of the players, and thus could shed no new light on the murder.

  Once he had ushered Tia out of the hotel room, Stanley grabbed a note pad and hopped in his car. Las Llaves, where Geary had his bike shop, was only a couple of miles away, but he had no idea how long it would take to get there. His stomach rumbled as he drove past a dozen fast food places and he promised himself a roast beef sandwich once he was done talking to the victim’s agent and boyfriend.

  Geary’s business shared a battered storefront with a pawn shop and a liquor store in the middle of a neighborhood dominated by signs in Spanish. He parked the car and decided to watch the shop for a few minutes, half expecting to see massive, tattooed bikers leaving with suspicious cellophane envelopes stuck in their boots, but no one appeared in the ten minutes he sat watching. All he learned was that he would never have the patience or the bladder for a real stake out. When he finally entered the shop, he saw no customers, just a wiry white mechanic in overalls with a long greasy ponytail bending over a Yamaha.

  “Mr. Geary?”

  The mechanic looked backward toward him. He was thin, bordering on emaciated, with a peculiar gaze that reminded Stanley of Charles Manson. How had such a creature managed to bed one of the most desirable women in the world?

  “Yeah?” The nasal voice was wary and unfriendly.

  “I’m Stanley Hopkins.” He took a step toward the crouching figure with an extended hand. “We spoke on the phone yesterday. Thank you for agreeing to talk with me.”

  “Yeah?” He stood up and wiped off hi
s hands with a filthy rag. “You threatened me with a subpoena.” He muttered and tossed the rag to the ground, but instead of walking over to shake Stanley’s hand, Geary got on the Yamaha and started it with a kick. He revved the engine a couple of times and then turned the bike off. For the rest of the interview he sat firmly in the leather seat, cocky and belligerent. “What do you want?”

  Given the hostility in the biker’s voice, Stanley decided to start with something relatively safe and asked him why the director of Eden Studio would kill one of his biggest stars. He reminded the biker that the act was financial suicide, but Geary was not impressed with the contradiction.

  “Because she wouldn’t sleep with him. He got fucked up and when she said no, he went crazy and killed her.” He rubbed a blemish off the leather seat of the motorcycle. “Happens all the time.”

  “But his business?”

  “Fuck his business. Junkies will do anything. They’ll kill their own mothers if you ask ‘em.” Don was not a junkie, but Stanley guessed that arguing with the rat-faced mechanic about the fine points of analogic reasoning was an unproductive idea.

  He asked whether Don’s attentions toward Jade had provoked any jealous feelings, but his only response was a hostile glare. Stanley was now glad of the bike underneath Geary. If the suspect decided to rush him, it would take him a moment to get off, giving the professor a head start on his flight out the door. “Come on. You can’t have liked the guy.” Geary wouldn’t bite. Frustrated, the professor jumped to the most important question. “Where were you the night of the party?”

  “I’ll tell you what I told the cops.” He patted the Yamaha’s gas tank. “I was right here working.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “Maybe a couple of people.”

  “Could I have their names?”

  All he offered was a smug smile. “Ask the cops.” He reached down with his left hand and made an adjustment to the engine, then he fired it up again and revved it for a minute. When the engine died down, he looked up with disappointment to see that his visitor was still there. “One last question, dick head. I’m a busy man.”

  So, this is how high school bullies end up, Stanley speculated, stuck in a grimy routine of beating their girlfriends, selling drugs, and straddling a shiny artificial penis. “So Chance,” it felt good to let his contempt show and abandon years of professional constraint. “Did it make you feel like a tough guy to hit Jade? Because looking at the size of you, it must have been a pretty even fight.” He balanced on his heels, ready to turn and flee if things got ugly.

  For a moment, Geary looked like he was about to jump off the bike, but he settled for strangling its handlebars in a knuckle-whitening grip. A bitter blast of a laugh blew past his lips, “The bitch loved it. She wanted it rough, dude. She wouldn’t have even looked at a pussy like you.” He pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and rapped it hard against his knuckles. “Now, get the fuck out of my shop.”

  Stanley obliged without looking back, resolving to check the video logs to make sure that Geary had not managed to slip into the party. Thankfully, the law required McCaffrey to be forthcoming with the names of Geary’s alibi witnesses. There must have been some way for the little psychopath to get into that office. What a huge favor he’d be doing society if he put a weasel like Geary away for life. Sounds like a legitimate goal for a sociologist, he decided as he drove away.

  Stanley arrived back at the hotel ten minutes before the third and final interview of the day, a post-lunch meeting with Athena Portia. Afterwards, he had a three o’clock appointment to talk to Herb Matteson at Janus. Athena knocked on the door fifteen minutes late and at first seemed in a hurry to get through the interview, but she quickly warmed to the young professor.

  “Can I see Don Johansson as a killer?” She repeated one of his first questions, seeming to give it serious thought. “You know, I can sorta see it.” Athena was an athletic-looking brunette with a head full of dark curls and compelling brown eyes who had a career as a personal trainer ahead of her when she stopped making movies. The other starlets had found it difficult to imagine the director murdering his top actress. Stanley put down his pen and listened.

  “Don and I were lovers for a while, maybe three or four years ago, when I was just doing modeling, and I saw him lose his shit a couple of times.”

  “Did he ever hit you?”

  “No,” she admitted, “but he’d break stuff and punch the wall. It was pretty scary, but he never hit me.”

  “Was he like that often?”

  “A couple of times.” She paused for a moment and studied him. She had a kind face that added an intriguing edge to her sex appeal. “I once saw him throw a laptop through a window when it wasn’t working right.” She dropped her eyes and studied the floor. “If he ever got really mad at somebody . . .” She looked up and shook her head. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but Jade was not exactly the easiest person to get along with.”

  He paused for a moment and digested the new information. He got himself a bottle of water and asked whether she wanted one. “Ms. Portia, do you mind if I ask why you and Don broke up?”

  “He didn’t want me in the business. When I started making movies, things fell apart pretty quickly. It was too bad. I really liked him. He was one of the good guys . . .”

  Stanley mulled over the interview as he drove to Janus Studios. Until his conversation with Athena Portia, he had successfully pushed to the back of his mind the fact that the most likely suspect in the case was his former fraternity brother. He intended to ask Herb Matteson too whether his former partner had anger issues. Unfortunately, a mixture of drugs, alcohol, and passion remained the best explanation of how Don could have killed his favorite star.

  Stanley arrived on time at the converted bowling alley that housed Janus Studios and was led by Matteson’s flirty secretary back to his office. The producer sat behind his desk with his feet propped up. He invited Stanley in with a wave but did not stand up to shake his hand. They made small talk for a few minutes until Stanley asked whether Donald Johansson had a violent side.

  “Yeah, he’d definitely go off on occasion. He couldn’t abide a fool, so he’d sometimes shout at people, slam things to the ground, that kinda thing. Mostly, though, he was hard on himself. He fucked up an edit really bad once, wasted about five hours of work and got so pissed off that he pushed a monitor over. That was about a thousand dollars right down the toilet.” He smiled. “That pissed me off.”

  “Can you see him taking his rage out on someone else?” He watched the producer’s reaction to the question closely. “Like Jade?”

  “Nah.” He thought about the question a moment longer. “Not if he were straight.”

  “Did you talk to him the night of the party? How did he seem to you?”

  “He seemed fine to me, but I just saw him at the door. I didn’t talk with him at all afterward. I was little jealous, to tell you the truth.” Stanley found it hard to imagine the relaxed figure before him had once been at odds with Don over the level of sadism in their movies. If Matteson could hide that side of himself so easily, what else might the affable director be hiding?

  “Could others have been jealous enough to want to sabotage Eden? Brian Mulkahey told me yesterday that Chimera felt threatened by Don.” He was surprised to see the director struggle with the question before cautiously explaining what he knew about the rival studio.

  “I’m only telling you this because you’re Don’s friend,” he said confidentially, twisting a large turquoise ring on his left hand. “Barkley tried to get me interested in some scheme to freeze Don out of the nationwide video distribution chain. He said he wanted to convince our distribution people to market only movies made by Chimera, us, and maybe Boudoir. I don’t know how he thought he could pull this off, but I told him to forget about it.”

  Stanley leaned forward in his chair and asked for more details about the process of off-line video distribution. He had assumed
that studios sent their product directly to sex shops and video stores around the country.

  “There’s always a middleman,” Matteson explained. “We take a lot of orders from individuals right off the website, but we have to rely on a distributor to get our goods to local outlets.” He ignored an incoming phone call and waited for the ringing to stop before he continued. Stanley studied the awards covering the walls. He looked at the dates and saw that all of them had been earned when Don was still there. “They make a huge profit, more than we do, in fact.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, part of it is because they bear the risk of obscenity prosecutions. Do you know how Miller v. California works?”

  Stanley flashed back to his First Amendment course the second year of law school. Miller had established the infamous “community standards” test whereby an image might be legal in one jurisdiction and illegal in another depending on the standards of the people who lived there. Matteson explained how Miller worked in practice.

  “If you sell a video depicting a blow job in some Mormon hellhole in Utah, then you’re going to jail because you’ll have exceeded the tolerance level of that local community. In New York City, you can sell almost anything short of kiddie porn.” He explained how the distributors navigated these treacherous waters and decided what sort of material could be sold in which places. “When they make a mistake, they’re the ones who pay for it. To make a long story short, the distributors take a big slice of the pie to bear the risk.”

  “I see.” The legal decision had essentially organized an entire market. “So Barkley was going to convince the distributor not to deal with Don’s product?”

  “That’s what he claimed,” he answered with a shrug of his narrow shoulders.

  “And you were too loyal to go along with the idea?”

  “Too loyal and too scared.” The director paused and frowned, taking a moment before continuing. “This is the part you can’t repeat. You’ve probably read something about mob connections in the porn business? Well, most of the rumors are pure bullshit, at least as far as production goes. I’ve never seen any kind of mafia influence on any set in the valley. We do what we want when we make movies.” He made an emphatic motion with his hand. “But I suspect the mob still has its fingers in distribution, left over from when all porn was illegal and they were in charge of the black market. Suffice it to say, I keep away from these guys as much as possible. They scare the shit out of me, and I just let ‘em make their money. Live and let live, you know.”