‘Is Damian Burke that way? Does he have this thing in his gut?’
Piña had a youthful way of nodding, bobbing forward from the shoulders. ‘Burke is totally evil but he’s an actor, y’know? He controls it. You’re sure he’s got somethin’ nasty deep in his gut but you can’t prove it. It’s like he plays with it, lets you see it for a second an’ then pulls it back until you swear it wasn’t ever there. You can’t help yourself, you watch him because he’s like, fascinating.’
‘Tell me about the night Gabe took the photographs.’
‘Which night?’
I couldn’t tell if she was playing dumb or something else. ‘I know you were there. Performing with another girl for Burke and a county supervisor, Pete Danavitch.’
‘You mean the night with the dog.’
‘Was there more than one night?’
A rhythmic tapping sounded from the front door as though someone attempted to knock out the tune to Yellow Submarine. A rod shot down Piña’s back and she glanced to the bathroom door and then to the balcony.
I said, ‘It’s a friend.’
‘Look, I don’t want to be seen here, I don’t want anybody to even know I’m talking to you, understand? It can be dangerous for me.’
‘I called him after you left. He has nothing to do with you.’
Sure it was a small lie but it relaxed her. She slipped around the couch and into the bathroom. I got up, went to the door and opened it to Frank’s smiling face.
‘Evening, beautiful, if you got the booze, I got the news.’
I suspected one of Frank’s problems in life was a case of bad timing. ‘Sorry, I got a visitor.’
‘But you just…’ He leaned forward, out of the hall light, to get a clear look at my face. ‘You have red lipstick all over your mouth.’
Piña’s colour. I hadn’t thought to check. ‘Things have been interesting.’
Frank backed away like I’d just shot him in the gut. Maybe I had. He said, ‘I’ll bet.’
Before he turned to stride down the hall his lips tightened like he couldn’t decide whether to scream or cry. That look told me what he’d wanted out of our relationship. I was less than a week a widow and the last thing I needed was mooning from the guy I was supposed to be working with. When he reached the head of the stairs I called out, ‘Don’t get too far ahead of the plot here, Frank.’
He gave me a little wave with the back of his hand, I couldn’t figure if he was signalling he was OK or going down for the third time. Nothing worse than falling for a person and then seeing them with somebody else, all that rage and sadness but nowhere to put it except back inside. His fault; he never should have fallen for me.
‘New boyfriend?’ Piña smirked, I don’t know what at, the idea of boyfriends or my having one so soon after being widowed.
‘Just a wanna be.’ I hated myself for saying that.
‘If it gets out I talked to you, I lose my job.’
‘That may not be a bad thing.’ I poured myself a shot of Jack to chase the champagne. Even good champagne was too sweet to drink by itself. I needed the bitter taste of fire.
‘I’ll keep my job, thanks. I’m not going to sling frappucinos in some coffee house.’
‘It’s an honourable job,’ I pointed out. ‘Half the actresses in Hollywood have waited tables. Can you name me a single hooker who went on to have a real career?’
It took her a moment, then she came up with, ‘Sylvester Stallone.’
‘He acted in one porno film. Not the same thing.’
‘I thought you were cool,’ she sulked. ‘But I belong in this town more than you do, you’re just a moralist.’
I laughed at that one. ‘You’re right, I’m not one to give out career advice. You can’t screw up a life any better than I’ve screwed up mine.’ She’d do what she wanted no matter where it led. People usually do. ‘That night at Damian Burke’s, was it set up through Madame Alex?’
‘Everything is always set up through Madame Alex.’
‘Who set it up, Burke or Danavitch?’
‘Burke. He’s a steady customer. He prob’ly knows every girl on the roster.’
‘Did she know Danavitch was going to be there?’
Piña’s shoulders lifted to her neck. ‘I didn’t even know who he was until you just said. But Alex, she knows stuff. She keeps a computer database, her lil’ black book she calls it, contains the preferences of everybody she sends girls to. Sometimes I think she knows everything.’
If Piña didn’t know Danavitch was going to be there, Gabe didn’t either. He had to be gunning for Burke. ‘You told Gabe about the party that night, said Burke had ordered something extra special?’
Piña stared at the champagne glass, her ripe lower lip pinched between two sharp white teeth. Her green eyes turned inward with the calculation of what she desired subtracted by what she feared. ‘If this gets out…’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Money, why else? Gabe told me he might get as much as a hundred grand an’ offered me twenty per cent. I trusted him.’
Sentiment and honour made me stupid. Always will. ‘If the photographs ever get published, I’ll do my best to honour Gabe’s deal.’
‘You have ’em? The photographs?’ Beneath the casual tone glimmered an excitement I didn’t think healthy.
‘Just heard about them.’ In a way, that wasn’t even a lie. I didn’t have the photographs themselves, just digital copies. ‘Where did Gabe shoot from? Did you set that up?’
‘The estate next to Burke’s. The owner went back to Saudi Arabia or someplace an’ the house is up for sale. Gabe knew the real estate agent.’
I hopped over the back of the chair to grab a pencil and pad and sat next to Piña on the couch. She snuggled closer, refilled champagne for both of us and yawned. ‘Champagne makes me sleepy.’
‘Burke played host and Danavitch the guest of honour.’ Her warmth comforted and disturbed me. ‘Who else was there?’
‘Lezly, she’s my partner. Sometimes I’ll pair up with another girl, but most of the time, Lezly is the blonde in the show. Black hair an’ blonde hair together, y’know, ebony an’ ivory, it turns guys on.’
I wrote the name down. ‘Who else besides Lezly?’
‘The blow-job girls, Tiffany an’ Darlene. An’ then the other act. Kathy an’ Rex.’
‘Rex?’
‘Yeah. The dog.’
‘You think he’d talk?’
‘Better’n Kathy. That girl’s got the IQ of a chew-toy.’
‘Nobody else?’
‘Earl. He was ‘round but I don’t think he watched the show. Earl is ‘round all the time, acts as Burke’s bodyguard an’ general houseboy.’
The bruiser sitting on the rim of the fountain in Gabe’s photographs. ‘This Earl, what’s he like?’
‘Angry.’ Piña nudged my arm with her chin until I draped it around her, then nestled between my breast and shoulder. ‘Hey, did you ever hear of the concept of degrees of separation?’
‘What’s that, some new kinda term people use before they get divorced?’
She giggled, slow and drowsy. ‘No. It’s like, how closely connected you are to somebody famous. Like, for example, I know somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody else who’d slept with George Washington. So me an’ old George, we’re five degrees of separation away from having sex together. Get it?’
‘So one way or another we’ve both slept with everybody who ever existed in the world, is this what you’re saying?’
‘No.’ She giggled and didn’t stop, I could barely make out what she said between sleepy gusts of laughter. ‘What I’m saying is, you’re only one degree of separation away from sleeping with two Academy Award winners.’
‘That’s something to tell the grandchildren.’
The breath from her yawn spread warm and liquid-like across my breast. ‘You’re funny.’
‘Why is Earl so angry?
W
hen she didn’t answer I thought she was preparing some in-depth critique of Earl’s psyche, but when I broke out of my own reverie I heard rhythmic breathing and a soft snore. I guessed that meant we weren’t going to have sex. The last of the champagne was in my glass. I downed it, lifted beneath Piña’s knees and shoulders and carried her to bed. I wasn’t used to sleeping in the same bed with somebody, had only done it twice in the past five years and both times with Gabe, but I was too tired to be strange about it and spun off to dreamland while taking off my shoes.
‘Hey, you asleep?… I said, hey, Nina, are you asleep?’
The voice came at me like a light at the top of a deep, black well.
‘I wanna tell you something. Can you hear me?’
I swam toward a diffuse glow of daylight. To surface from such depths of sleep hurt like a dreamer’s case of the bends. Through an eyelash gauze I saw Piña’s face over mine. My tongue struggled to find the right vowel. I thought I heard myself say, ‘Yes.’
‘Were you serious about giving me twenty per cent?’
I floated close enough to consciousness to nod.
‘Then you should know it was two nights. Not one. That second night Burke was with somebody new. ’Bout thirty-five, went by the nickname Vinny. Lezly an’ me, we didn’t get five seconds into our show before Burke threw us out. Gabe was next door taking pictures, least he was s’posed to be, but I don’t know for sure because I didn’t talk to him again. That was the night before his body was found in the lake.’
Piña was out the door before I could struggle upright. I bounced off a door frame, stumbled into the hall, heard heels clattering on stairs three floors down. Harsh desert sunlight blared through a window at the head of the stairway. I groped my way into the bathroom and ran cold water over my face, going over what she said again and again to make sure I knew what it meant. Gabe’s body wasn’t discovered the night he was killed; the gases of decomposition took twenty four hours to float him to the surface. Gabe had been murdered the night he had returned to photograph Burke.
29
The young actor slashed through the Marmont’s pool like a blade, lithe chest and concave belly flashing at each turn, his legs lean and big kneed and his arms no more muscled than a young girl’s. The morning sun sparkled at the tip of each ripple and wave and as he swam his slender feet kicked up a wake of diamonds. That high above Hollywood the traffic on Sunset faded to a distant rustle and the splash of his beautiful young body drifted into the trees like music. At the near end of the pool he swung his elbows on to the ledge to rest, water streaming from his troubled post-adolescent brow and over lips so pink and full the only proper thing to do was kiss them. I recognized his face from the magazines. That season he’d made his fame as one of the networks’ premiere teen heart-throbs. In person I could see why; he was some boy, like a fruit at the peak of sweetness. In another year or two the image-makers would deem him not slim but skinny, a professional trainer would be hired and his beautiful boy’s body would be gone forever.
‘Hey, that coffee you got there?’
I had my sunglasses on – had to because of the hangover – and didn’t think he’d noticed me staring at him. I said, ‘It is.’
‘Would you bring me a cup?’
That amused me enough to pour one from the room service thermos and bring it to him. Up close, his eyes were the kind of hazel you keep staring at to see if they’re green or brown. He took the coffee and watched me over the rim while he drank.
‘Mornings, what a bitch, eh?’
The sunlight glinting from his grin just about blinded me.
‘Bitch, bastard, depends on which sex gives you the most trouble.’
‘That would definitely be a bitch in my case.’
It was hard to be offended. He was too charming. He could have said anything or nothing and charmed.
I said, ‘Both sexes give me trouble.’
‘Lucky you. You staying here at the hotel?’
‘Did last night, maybe again tonight.’
He drained the coffee, asked, ‘Want to go up to my room and fuck?’
The white deck shoes of a pool attendant clipped at the edge of my vision and in the eucalyptus branches overhead a mockingbird squawked.
‘Well, no, but thanks for asking.’
‘If you change your mind you know how to find me.’ He handed me the cup and kicked back into the pool with a splash that shot a single bullet of chlorinated water into my sunglasses. I retreated to the shade beneath the sun umbrella and wondered why the physically perfect men even as boys are most always jerks.
Midway into my reading the calendar section of the LA Times my parole officer pushed through the gate beyond the diving board and stiffly glanced about the patio. Her hand rested on her purse like the butt of an Uzi. I held two fingers out in the sunlight to show her where I sat. By the time she strode over to the table I’d folded the Times, poured her a cup of coffee and kicked out a chair. Like me she wore dark sunglasses, although hers concealed vigilance rather than a hangover.
She took the chair and swung it around to face me but her concentration drifted to the young actor doing laps in the pool. ‘A place like this must cost a small fortune.’
On the navy blue thigh of her pantsuit she tapped the hotel’s promotional brochure, a cream-coloured price list inserted between the folds. It wasn’t hard to read what she was thinking.
‘You want to see my pay stubs, make sure I’m not dealing coke on the side?’
She snapped open her purse, shoved aside what I imagined to be hand-grenades, brass-knuckles and land mines to whip out a sheet of paper that looked like a form. ‘The results of your A and T test.’
The form had numbers written on it that meant nothing to me.
‘It’s negative. You’re clean. But you have other problems.’
‘You mean problems other than a husband who got himself murdered? You mean different problems than that, like maybe, I can’t go back to my apartment because it was broken into by the same guy who killed my husband and the cops think I’m next in line for a grass blanket? That problem? Or are you still hung up about the green card thing?’
‘I checked the records. Mr Burns never visited or wrote you at California Institute for Women. Not once.’
When both players are wearing sunglasses a stare-down contest can go on for ever with no clear winner. ‘You want to take me in now? Because if the past week is what so-called freedom is like I could do with a little more time in stir.’
‘You think I’m a bitch.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘In this job, I have to be a bitch.’ Her lips were too thin and rigid to move much without snapping but a twitch along her cheek showed she was trying to smile or sneer, I couldn’t figure which. ‘I saw that television programme you were on, when you found’ – she rolled a different word around her tongue – ‘your husband’s body. If you were an actress you’d be making a million bucks a picture. I’m sorry. That was cynical, even for me. You weren’t acting. You looked like somebody ripped your heart out of your chest. I could see he meant more to you than a few thousand bucks for a green card. I don’t think there’s a parole officer or judge in the world who would want to ticket you back to prison after seeing that.’
‘You believe me?’
‘I believe you.’
‘Nobody in law enforcement has ever said something like that to me before.’
‘Maybe you didn’t deserve it.’
I raised eyebrows and shoulders to say I couldn’t be the one to judge that. ‘Then I’m clear?’
Her head wagged back and forth. Even when she was being soft the woman was hard. ‘I’m in contact with the investigative officers in charge of your husband’s case. Detective Harker tells me you have some ideas yourself about the way the investigation should be handled. He’s afraid you might do something really stupid, like talk to potential suspects, look for evidence, in general screw up his investigation. You wouldn’t do some
thing that stupid would you?’
At the near end of the pool the young actor vaulted from the water and stretched his hairless chest toward the morning sun, drops glistening on his skin like rubies. His swimming suit wasn’t large or baggy and didn’t conceal that a certain part of him wasn’t as thin as his arms and not at all boyish. My parole officer’s right forefinger arrowed between her eyebrows and slid the bridge of her sunglasses an inch toward the tip of her nose. Some things don’t need shading, not a bit. She whispered, ‘Wait a minute, isn’t that –’
‘Looks like him at a distance,’ I said, ‘but if you get up close, it isn’t him at all.’
30
Once upon a time I’d been a straight citizen; I had a regular job, went to the hairdresser every month, never back-talked nobody except boyfriends no matter how much I was provoked. I knew how to look and act like a lower-middle-class good girl who said yes to everything except sex and even then didn’t say no, just not now, who never wanted to be bad except in bed and then only with the right man, who never made trouble except when she drank a little too much at parties and who could always be counted on to do what was asked of her with pliant efficiency and without question. At JC Penny’s and Target Drugs I purchased a big-hair wig, lavender miniskirt, white silk blouse, pantyhose and white heels high enough to give me vertigo. I laid the outfit on the bed heels to hair like a scary Halloween costume. Then I took a bubble bath. Nothing like a bubble bath to make a woman feel more like a girl.
Soaked and scented, I wedged tissue paper between my toes and painted my toenails a colour the bottle said was misty pomegranate, then did my fingernails to match. As the polish dried I replaced the multiple hoops in my right ear and the dagger stud in my left with a single pair of silver hearts my mom had given me on my sixteenth birthday. An eye-lash curler, eye-liner and mascara transformed my stark blue eyes into a pair of peacocks. It took a couple of tries to pin my hair back and settle the wig securely on my head. It felt so heavy I was half-afraid the thing would break my neck in a high wind. The wig was made from somebody else’s hair blended with miracle synthetic and curled like a blonde waterfall down to my shoulders. In the product literature the manufacturer called this particular style the Dolly. In my skirt, blouse, earrings and wig I looked like one.
Killing Paparazzi Page 16