by Paul Heald
“I hate to disappoint,” she replied when he finally popped the question, “but the truth is pretty boring. Like I said in the interview, I fell into this by chance when I was young and my family situation wasn’t very good. I stayed in it out of inertia: plenty of pats on the back and plenty of money.”
He turned off the freeway and headed down the boulevard in the direction of Eden Studio. The power of inertia in job markets could not be underestimated, but her longevity was striking and set her apart from her peers in a way that suggested something beyond inertia. He understood Don’s way of thinking about the business. The porn director had a theory, why shouldn’t the porn star? She couldn’t be as facile as she pretended.
When he asked about her philosophy, Janet let go an irritated chuff of air and looked out the window as she spoke. She looked annoyed with herself for answering. “Look,” she finally explained, “Don’s right when he talks about the level of shame in society, but he’s too much of an idealist. He’s never going to change a thing about this country. You need to stay on the level of the poor ashamed slobs that I meet at conventions and DVD signings. They’re all over the place. They watch my movies, get themselves off, and they feel good.”
She shrugged her shoulders and continued to look straight ahead. “Pleasing the audience is what this business is all about, just like regular movies. I do it well and I am appreciated for it.” He wished he could study her more closely instead of fighting the traffic on the boulevard. “All these slobs are pathetic, and the industry is pretty pathetic too.” She gave a harsh little laugh. “But when you get right down to it, we’re all pathetic, right?”
He pondered his own career path, considered his present situation, and then nodded his head.
XXII.
CAST FROM EDEN
As Stanley and Janet drove within a couple of blocks of their destination, a siren screamed and a large fire truck roared past. In the distance, a plume of dirty smoke obscured the immediate horizon, and they were only able to drive another hundred yards before the line of cars in front of them came to a complete halt. Stanley turned on the radio and surfed through the bandwidth but heard no news of a fire snarling traffic in the San Fernando Valley.
“You don’t think it’s the studio, do you?” Janet reached down and slipped on her shoes.
He rolled down his window and tried to see around a delivery truck. Up ahead, a dozen emergency vehicles and police cars blocked the street in both directions. Behind them, rush hour traffic had backed up as far as he could see. He motioned to his partner and they slipped between the disgruntled drivers and walked toward the conflagration until there was no doubt that the main office of Eden Studio was engulfed in flames.
Two firefighters manned a hasty barricade at the edge of the parking lot keeping a crowd of gawkers at bay, but Stanley and Janet pressed close enough to see that Don’s office was a total loss. The fire had blackened the lobby and angry orange flames spewed from the director’s office window. As he surveyed the scene, Stanley recognized a reporter from his debacle at the court house and shielded his face, but the newsman was too busy talking to the nearest fire fighter to notice him. The professor whispered to Janet to stay where she was, and he slid along the barricade to catch the conversation. The reporter was asking whether the fire was a case of arson.
“Probably,” the white-haired official shouted over the din. “This one started up way too fast to be something electrical, and I always get suspicious when there’s no one in a building. Apparently, it’s recently abandoned, and that’s always a tip-off for arson.” After listening to the rest of the conversation, Stanley worked his way back to his partner and pointed them away from the barricade with a tip of his head. As they walked back to the car, he told her what he had heard.
“That’s crazy! It’s a good thing we went through Don’s office when we did.” She paused for a moment. “Wait. Did you have anything valuable in there?”
“The surveillance DVD’s and the police reports, but I can get duplicates from McCaffrey. I’ve got to talk with him tomorrow about getting Geary’s and Walker’s alibis anyway. Thank god I’ve got my notes and my laptop in the car.” He checked in the back seat to make sure his file folders were still there along with his phone.
“Someday I’ll remember to carry this thing with me,” he mumbled as he checked his missed calls. He saw one from his wife and vowed to call her later that evening.
“I wonder who set the fire?” Janet asked as the cars around them slowly pulled U-turns and drove away down the boulevard away from the fire. “Do you think it’s a coincidence?”
“If it is, it’s a helluva big one.”
For the next two hours, they fought through a malicious traffic jam back to the parking deck of the county jail, collecting their thoughts along the way and organizing a plan of attack for the rest of the week. The fire, they concluded, was not much of a set back. Nothing irreplaceable had been lost and any clues uncovered by the police investigating the arson would probably lead away from Don, unless he had hired someone to burn it down to collect insurance money. By the time they got back to her car, Stanley was starting to feel a bit more like Sam Spade again. The trip to UCLA had been productive, as had Janet’s visit to Oxnard. He was uncovering important clues that had eluded LAPD’s finest.
He followed Janet’s directions to the location of her Mini Cooper and pulled past it on the mid-level of the courthouse parking deck. She gathered up her purse and cast a quick glance in the small mirror on the visor above her head.
“Would you like to come back to my place and have a drink before dinner?” She spoke in an offhand manner as she flicked back a stray hair from her forehead. He suppressed a lascivious image conjured by his subconscious, but knocked it back like a whack-a-mole. Sex. How could he maintain a professional façade all day long and have it disintegrate with a simple invitation? Janet’s suggestion was surely innocent, but his face turned red anyway. After having seen her alter ego in action on the hotel’s pay-per-view, there was simply no way to keep certain images at bay. He looked up and wondered if she could read his thoughts.
“Thanks, but I need to get back to the hotel and call Angela.” He managed to sketch a wave before pulling too away a bit too sharply and heading back to the hotel.
As he entered the darkened room, he noticed a red button flashing on the telephone. He debated calling home before checking the message, but he pushed the button first and heard Max Kurland’s voice telling him to call as soon as he got in. Any conversation with Max would interest Angela, so he dialed his colleague’s number first.
Max thanked him for calling back and took a moment to gather himself. “Stanley, I’ve got bad news. The administration had a complete heart attack when they saw your press conference this morning—”
“—it wasn’t a press conference, goddamn it!” His voice filled with anger. “And what the hell do these people do all day? Watch fucking CNN?”
“No, they don’t watch television all day,” Max explained. “But they do get recordings from a news clip service of anything that mentions BFU, and your connection with the university is prominently featured in all of them. As far as the world is concerned, BFU is paying for you to hang out with a beautiful porn star and get an infamous killer out of jail. Trust me, this perception is at odds with the image that the university would like to project. In fact, the President has already been contacted by several major donors and at least two state senators.”
“She’s not going to cave in is she?” He expected his friend’s liberal leanings to be gravely offended by any decisions made in response to political influence.
“No, the president decided to suspend you before she heard from any of these people,” he said. “I cannot even begin to describe how pissed she is! You are suspended without pay for an indefinite period of time, and I’ve been told to tell you not to bother applying for tenure.” The assistant professor heard his department head take a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry
, Stan. I feel partly responsible, but I did warn you to come home last week. If you had done that, this never would have happened.”
Stanley’s first impulse was to sue the university. Surely, it lacked the power to dismiss him for helping out a friend, but his tenure situation had been precarious even before he came to California. Even if he finished the book, a positive vote by his colleagues was not assured. Given the publicity surrounding Jade’s murder and his defense of her boss, he doubted the final chapter of his book would ever be considered serious scholarship. Suing the university would tip no one’s vote his way. “Shit, Max,” he finally sighed. “What should I do?”
“Okay, here’s the deal.” His colleague answered more quickly and definitively than he expected. “I calmed the President down a little and then suggested a compromise. She’s not wild about this, but if you leave California right away, she’ll announce the suspension and then quietly lift it at the end of the summer so you can teach the fall and spring semesters. You have to agree, however, not to put yourself up for tenure. She wouldn’t budge on that, but you can use the year to look for a position at another school. That’ll be a lot easier to do if you’re still employed.” His voice softened for the first time during the conversation. “I’m sorry, man, but that was the best I could do.”
“Thanks, Max.”
“So, I’ll see you in the office tomorrow?”
“Let me think about it.”
“Are you kidding?” The department head did nothing to hide his exasperation. “What’s there to think about? If you come back, finish the book, and go on the job market, you’ll find a job somewhere. If you get dismissed, you’re history.”
He weighed Max’s words against his commitment to help his jailed friend and was suddenly too tired to carry his end of the conversation. “I just need some time to process this.” An auditorium full of two hundred bored undergraduates flashed through his mind and he hung up without a further word.
Stanley got up from his seat on the bed and began pacing the length of the narrow room, wondering what he would say to Angela. How do you explain to your wife that you’ve just been fired? How do you explain that you’re tempted to stay in Los Angeles despite the consequences? His brain told him he should cave in and go back home, but he had to admit that after just a couple days of investigating the murder of Jade Delilah, the thought of crawling back into his academic shell seemed unbearable. As an undergraduate, he had slid effortlessly into sociology and then slipped into law school and graduate school. He had landed at BFU without ever thinking too hard about whether he wanted to write articles and teach for a living. His other colleagues had amassed enough publications by their third or fourth year to make tenure a certainty. He had cut it close, hoping to finish a project that would put him just over the top, at just the final moment. With a sigh, he sat down on the edge of the bed and teetered.
* * *
Angela lay in bed unable to fall asleep. The image of her handsome husband with his arm around a beautiful porn star was the only thing she could see when she shut her eyes. All it took was a couple of unanswered phone calls to stoke the fires of jealousy red hot. It was not a new emotion. She hated when women flirted with her husband (as much as she liked Nanci, she would never leave her alone with him), but this was the first time she truly feared something might happen. A variety of disturbing scenes flashed through her mind until the phone’s jangle jolted her upright and her husband’s voice sounded a conciliatory note over the line, “Hey, I hope I’m not waking you up.”
“I’m in bed but I’m not asleep.” Her anxiety quickly returned. “I tried to call you earlier, but you weren’t answering the phone, just like the other night.”
“Yeah, I saw. I keep leaving the damn thing in the car.” Was he telling the truth? His tone was pretty casual. “How are you doing?”
“Not too good.” Her voice caught and she fought back a sob. “I saw you on the news tonight.”
“Did you talk to anyone at the university?”
“Huh?” She shook her head. “No, what are you talking about? I haven’t spoken to anyone. I’ve just been sitting here wondering why my husband is on news traipsing all over Los Angeles with some whore.” The last word felt good to say out loud.
“Honey, you remember meeting Janet.” He scrambled for a reasonable explanation. “She was our first interview, and she sat with us the night of the party. You know she’s not a whore! She’s just an old friend of Don’s who’s helping the investigation.” He was trying to make the ridiculous situation sound like a mundane research project. “It would have been stupid to turn down her help. More importantly, she’s taken your place in the hotel room—”
“—what?!”
“—to finish the interviews, in order to finish the book, darling!” The tears began flowing in earnest now. “I understand what a shock it must have been to see us on television, but it wasn’t a real press conference. I was talking with a detective at the County Jail and got totally blindsided by reporters as we were leaving.” She took a deep breath and blew her nose. “You need to trust me. There is nothing going on between us. I love you more than ever, sweetheart. I need you more than ever too.”
After a few more minutes of reassurances, she finally stopped crying and decided that life would be simpler if she chose to believe him. “I know nothing’s going on,” she sniffed, “but do you know how embarrassing it is to see your husband on television being asked if he’s screwing a porn star? I can’t even go out of the house tomorrow.”
“I know,” he sympathized. “It must be horrible. I wouldn’t want to see you on television with Brad Pitt.”
“Johnny Depp.”
“Whatever.” He paused and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck start to tingle. “Sweetheart? I got a call from Max Kurland today. Apparently everyone at the university was watching the news too.”
“Oh, my God.”
He took a deep breath. “The president went ballistic, and she suspended me indefinitely without pay. Apparently, I can forget about getting tenure too.”
She felt both tears and anger surging together. “I told you to come home with me! If you only had the common sense God gave a squirrel, you would have bolted from Los Angeles the first time Max called.” She blew her nose savagely. “So we’re fucked . . . we’re totally fucked.”
“Maybe not totally.” She heard a monumental sigh rumble all the way from the west coast. “Max did work out kind of a deal with the President. He says she’ll reinstate me for the fall and spring semesters, if I agree to come home right away and promise to not to go up for tenure.”
She understood immediately what this meant. “So, you’d have a year to finish the book and look for another job.” She tried not to get overly excited by the lifeline they had been thrown. “That’s better than nothing! You’ll be able to find something. It might even be good to move some place new and put all this stuff behind us. I just want this all to be over . . .” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and tossed it onto her nightstand. “When should I pick you up at the airport?”
He took a moment to respond. “Late afternoon, probably. I’ll call you tomorrow with the flight number and the time.” She tried to put herself in his shoes, to imagine what he must be thinking, but it was too hard. It was like getting a call from Pinocchio from a phone booth on Pleasure Island.
“Good night, honey,” he said quietly. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
One quick call and he was booked on a morning flight back to Illinois. He would be home in time for a late dinner. He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his temples, already preparing a speech of explanation to Don. He was still rehearsing, flat on his back in his shirt and pants, when the alarm rang the next morning.
XXIII.
JAILHOUSE ROCKED
When Stanley arrived at the Los Angeles County Jail, the night shift was ready to go home. He was as tired and unshaven as they were, and in sympathetic weariness th
ey showed him directly to his client. The disheveled professor was led down a dimly lit hallway to a sour smelling interview room. He slumped into a chair and rubbed his bloodshot eyes, still without any idea how to break the news that he was giving up and going home.
When Don arrived moments later, he sat down and folded his cuffed hands in the lap of his loose-fitting jumpsuit. “What’s up?”
The disgraced professor stumbled through the story of the ‘news conference’ and his conversations with Max and Angela. His explanation unraveled in a series of non-sequiturs and apologetic rambling. Eye contact was impossible, and the erstwhile investigator spent much of the time staring at the concrete floor. To his surprise, when he finally looked up, his friend was nodding his head with a smile that looked both sincere and stoic.
“You need to go back to your wife, Stan.” There was more understanding in his friend’s voice than he deserved. “It’s the right thing to do.”
But it’s not the right thing to do, Stanley thought, it’s the coward’s way out. It’s the path of least resistance once again.
“This isn’t an ordinary crisis in your career or in your marriage,” the prisoner continued. “You’re in almost as much trouble as me, but at least your situation is fixable.” He reached out his hands and touched his friend on the knee. “I’ve had a lot to think about since we talked yesterday. After you left, the detective came by hinting that they might not charge me with a capital crime.”
“Well, that’s good news, at least.” Stanley admitted.
“The catch is that I have to plead guilty to second degree murder.”
A wave of outrage surged through the sociologist, but when he was done railing at McCaffrey, the LAPD, and the whole American criminal justice system, he did not see his anger mirrored on the face of the accused.
“Think about it.” Johansson shrugged his shoulders. “My career is over and my business is bankrupt. And unlike you, I don’t have a pretty wife to go home to. Jade is dead. I’d be out in about ten years or so. I’m no Solzhenitsyn, but it wouldn’t have to be an unproductive period in my life.”