‘But I have been up to some mischief on your behalf,’ Belinsky announced. ‘We’ll soon see to what result.’
The prosecutor scooted out his chair and stood. His hair was carefully combed back in a style popular in the year of his father’s birth and his face framed a pair of square black glasses of the type favoured by the plastic-pocket protector set. I had the uncomfortable feeling that he scrubbed his nails every night after work but never got them clean enough to satisfy him. Everything about him – from the way he dressed to how he stood and read his notes – screamed out a second-rate law school and the determination to make up for it by aggressive effort. He set aside his notes when the judge called upon him and announced in the curt tones of a man whose foot is being stepped on, ‘After careful review of the charges, the State declines to prosecute.’
Belinsky wrapped his arm around my shoulder and squeezed. I was too shocked to respond. ‘Mr Prosecutor here doesn’t have much of a bark this morning. When a big dog barks, the little dog listens. And Mr Prosecutor is a little dog.’
The judge announced that she had recorded the State’s decision but clearly a gun had been found in my car and even though the State decided not to prosecute it was a violation of the terms of my parole. The gun had been in my car and extenuating circumstances or not I had been driving that car. The issue then, was one of parole violation. What, she asked, did the parole officer assigned to my case recommend?
‘Your parole officer,’ Belinsky confided, ‘looks like the kind of little dog that just might bite a big dog on his hind parts.’
My parole officer stood and while she consulted her notes on the table smoothed a crease from her navy blue skirt and straightened the red, white and blue scarf around her neck. She made these adjustments not in a nervous flutter but with the hard, precise control of a very angry person. She didn’t look at me at all. ‘Your honour, though the parolee’s explanation of how the gun came to be in her car was largely corroborated by the registered owner of that gun, their stories are not completely consistent.’
‘That the gun was mistakenly jarred loose in an automobile accident, is that correct?’ The judge moved her finger along a line in the documents before her.
‘Yes your honour. For example, the owner of the gun, Mr Richard Grimes, reported –’
‘Stop right there, please.’ The judge held up a single forefinger and turned a page. ‘A private detective, it reads here. Licensed to carry a firearm. Is that correct?’
‘It is correct.’ Even from my distance I could see her grit teeth. It galled her to be interrupted.
After too long a silence the judge peered over the top of her glasses. ‘Please continue.’
My parole officer downed a half-glass of water and cleared her throat. ‘Happy to continue, your honour. Mr Grimes stated that the vehicle that Ms Baker was driving struck, and I quote his testimony, “something on the right, a parked car, I think”. Ms Baker contends that her vehicle struck a hit-and-run pick-up truck in an intersection.’
‘Yes, but he doesn’t remember exactly, does he? Due to a concussion and other injuries?’
‘I’m merely documenting the discrepancies for the court, I’m not drawing conclusions.’
‘We have a very full load today, so perhaps you should draw some. Do you have any reason to suspect either the licensed owner of the gun or Ms –’ the judge dipped into her notes and came up ‘– Baker have not told the truth?’
‘One or both have not accurately recalled events, your honour. I’ll leave the question of truth up to the court.’
The judge turned a look of utmost patience on my parole officer. ‘This is your case, officer. I respect your determination to set the facts straight before the court. It seems like a tempest in a teapot to me but you are best positioned to determine whether the parolee is making a sincere effort to rehabilitate herself and abide by the terms of her parole. What dispensation do you recommend?’
Belinsky reached out to grab my hand and squeezed it. His eyes were closed and his lips moved silently in what could have been prayer. That worried me some. I wanted my parole officer to look at me just once before she pronounced sentence but I didn’t warrant even that.
‘Tempest in a teapot or not, I don’t believe any possession of a handgun by a parolee, however accidental, is ever fully justified. After careful and serious consideration, I reluctantly recommend continuing her on parole.’
‘Parole is continued,’ the judge announced, no consideration to it at all, just bang decided. Like many citizens hauled before the court, I was so mystified by the Byzantine workings of the law I had little idea what happened even after events were concluded.
‘Why are they letting me go?’
‘Because the big dog barked,’ Belinsky said. ‘Oh, I put a little bug in big dog’s ear that made him itch and bark like mad.’
‘Supervisor Danavitch?’
‘You are a quick study, friend. I did give him a call to confide what Mr Adams possessed and what would happen if you were reincarcerated. He expressed a sincere desire to work with you in keeping the material on that disk private.’
‘I can’t promise that.’
He took my elbow and whispered straight into my brain. ‘Don’t ever forget that felons have no rights. The system can always find a pretext to send you back to prison. Make a deal with Danavitch’s people. If you don’t recover the negatives and put them out of circulation with the disk, not even Charles H. Belinsky will be able to save you.’
‘Frank has the disk, not me.’
‘Then I strongly advise you to work out a deal with him.’
I glanced over my shoulder in the hope of catching sight of Frank in the seating gallery but my parole officer blocked the view.
‘The system just cut you a huge break,’ she said, as though that might be one of her great regrets in life. ‘Use it wisely.’
‘You’re the one who cut me the break. Maybe I should say thanks.’
Something in what I said cracked the metal in her eyes and before the crack welded over I saw something – regret, pity, I couldn’t tell what. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘The next day or two be careful.’
Before I could ask why she clipped down the centre aisle and out the door. Douglas had vanished at the verdict. His presence in court didn’t make much sense to me and though I couldn’t articulate exactly why I dreaded what I didn’t know.
Once in the system you don’t just walk out, even when that system spits you up. They drove me back to jail in the same van or one just like it. I signed the release forms, waited for those forms to be processed, collected my bag and car keys, asked directions to the police impound yard and was buzzed through one set of bars after another until a door swung open to a concrete walk and a white-hot sky.
The post-industrial streets between the Twin Towers and the impound yard were too inhuman to be walked like a warm-blooded creature. I skittered like a cockroach in the shadow of one burned and boarded hulk of brick after another, past Fords and Chevys stripped of tyres and axle-propped on empty cans of paint, dried ragweed lots festooned with shreds of cardboard box, newspaper, torn shirt-cloth and the inevitable lone rusted shopping cart; I trailed my eyes past squirts of graffiti and gang tags and not once, nowhere did I see another biological creature, not so much as a stray dog until the wheeled aluminium siding that served as the gate to the impound yard squealed open to the burst capillaries and sour-smelling jowls of the attendant. He took my release form and hundred dollars cash and led me through a line-up of cars serving time with their owners.
Not until I saw the Cadillac did I feel free. I wanted to slide behind the wheel, start the engine and drive until I ran out of car or road. A check of the glove box revealed that Harker had been kind or neglectful enough to leave the pepper spray behind. I reached under the dash to the left of the steering column and knew by the emptiness at my fingertips and in my chest that Gabe’s original disk was gone. If the system had cut me a break by r
eleasing me I’d use it, but not wisely, not by the system’s values.
42
Harry Bendel practised law or a facsimile of it in a squat grey building on that section of Sunset Boulevard where Hollywood dreams faded to one-hour hotel rooms and a quick fix. The building had no doorman or security guard, just a letter-board directory and a set of carpeted stairs worn to the backing. Harry couldn’t practise law in a doorman building. A doorman would throw out half his clientele.
In a voice no louder than rustling paper the secretary whispered my name into the phone and told me to please have a seat. The secretary didn’t have much to do except block the door to Harry’s office and stare at the clock. He excelled at both tasks. I thumbed with some interest through one of the sports magazines on the reception room coffee-table until I noticed the date on the cover had come and gone a year ago. The secretary was not tested by the arrival or departure of any clients and I didn’t have to share the couch with anybody. A long and pointed hour later he received his orders and buzzed me through the door.
From behind his desk Harry offered a hand with the sentiment of his delight at seeing me safe and well. He’d been following the investigation of Gabe’s murder in the newspaper and when he’d read that another photographer had been killed he’d worried about my safety. I put the Nikon to my eye and ran off three frames of his face cut into strips by the light of the venetian blinds to the side of his desk. The friendly patter ceased. I circled right and shot two frames of his wary, sidelong glance.
‘I don’t recall giving you permission to photograph me.’
I stepped forward and cut off his forehead, chin and ear to frame an extreme close-up, eyebrows to lips. His expression changed then from wariness to alarm and I shot the transition in four quick frames.
‘I’ll take the negatives Gabe left with you,’ I said, ‘and any prints you might have made.’
He turned to the venetian blinds, twisted the plastic rod to trim down the light and looked back over his shoulder. This moment had not been inevitable. Had I not intervened he might have pulled it off. While I waited in the lobby he had prepared strategies to counter what he expected I would demand. Instead of a direct reply he looked at me as though trying to figure what he could get away with. Would I believe a denial of possession? Should he offer to split the money? If he denied at first and then relented would he lose the credibility he needed to make a deal?
‘No,’ I said.
‘No? No to what?’
‘No to whatever it is you’re thinking.’
‘What am I thinking?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Gabe gave you the negatives and I want them back.’
‘Do you know how much they’re worth?’
‘One point two five million but it’s all fool’s gold. Nobody lives to collect.’
The breath gusted out of him in a thin stream that ruffled the leaves of the fern on his desk. ‘Do you mean one million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? How did you arrive at that figure?’
‘Somebody sent a proof sheet to Damian Burke and called with a one million dollar price tag. You later delivered a set of prints and a cut-out newsprint note to Stone, Fell and Hughes demanding a quarter million. Different blackmail techniques, different blackmailers. If you can’t do the sums in your head, pull out a calculator.’
He took those numbers to his desk and sat down with them, looked at them, said them one more time, then rolled his head back and laughed. I braced the camera against my lap to rewind the film. Photographs crowded the wall behind and to the side of his desk: family portraits, a golfing foursome on a tropical eighteenth green and a half-dozen bleached Kodachrome portraits featuring a massive towhead armoured in football pads and a crimson jersey lettered USC. Colour photographs blue as they age. These looked from the late 1960s. After the glamour of his college days, life must have seemed a little disappointing to Harry. ‘The best way to get a print is from the negative. You have the negatives. You’re blackmailing Finley.’
‘And who do you think is blackmailing the movie star?’
‘Nobody now. The person who tried was knifed to death and stuffed in the trunk of his car.’
Harry thought like a lawyer and glanced slyly across his jowls. ‘Have you talked to the police about this? Have you made an agreement with them? Are you right now wearing a wire?’
‘No, no and no.’ I lifted the film canister from the camera back and dropped it into my right jacket pocket.
‘What makes you suspect I have the negatives?’
I took a fresh box of Kodak, stripped off the cardboard and threaded the film on to the sprockets. Gabe gave Harry the negatives for the same reasons he went to him for a green card. He wanted to go outside the circle of people he knew and could betray him. He chose Harry because he had nothing to do with the tabloid business. And until Gabe died it had been a wise choice. Harry hadn’t even bothered to check the negatives until then. After my visit he looked at what Gabe had given him, maybe even with the idea of handing it over to me. When he spotted Danavitch he saw the rainbow. As a lawyer, he knew the town’s politics. He’d reason that Danavitch had more to lose than Burke and go after him. But I wasn’t going to get into a game of proof with a lawyer. Obfuscation was a standard course they took in law school. We both knew he had them. No explanation needed. ‘Why the real-estate company? Why not go to Danavitch directly?’
A gust of air shot through his nose to let me know what he thought of that idea. ‘A simple rule in litigation is to look for the deep pockets. Danavitch himself doesn’t have that much money.’
‘But his financial backers do. You went after them, reasoning they’d keep their mouths shut and pay.’
‘Might still work, too. What if I tell you to get lost?’
‘Count the bodies, Harry. I’ll make one phone call, word will get around and you’ll be warming a slab in the morgue within twenty-four hours.’
He groaned as though he couldn’t believe I was that big a bitch. ‘I’ll split it with you. We take both the movie star and the real-estate company.’
‘No.’ I shut the camera back and rolled through the first couple of frames. ‘No doubt in my mind, they’d kill us.’
‘By the same reasoning if I give you the negatives you’ll be killed.’
‘The negatives go from me to publication. When the photos hit the papers the killer won’t have any reason to come after you or me.’
‘How much will you collect? For the photos?’
‘Not a cent.’
His right forefinger wagged disbelief. ‘It’s your business and I’m no expert but the tabloids would be willing to pay a considerable amount for something like this, or so I’ve heard.’
‘They will,’ I admitted.
‘Then who are you trying to fool?’
‘Nobody. Seventy per cent is already taken so I can’t give you more than thirty.’ I figured to buy Piña a nice headstone with her share, maybe in the form of a cash gift to her family. If she had any. ‘Selling photographs isn’t a science so I can’t promise any hard numbers but thirty thousand seems about right.’
‘Thirty grand won’t even buy a car in this town.’ Harry picked up the phone, touched one of the extension buttons and told the secretary to lock up for the day.
‘Going somewhere?’ I asked.
‘The negatives are in my home office.’ He reached beneath the fern to collect the keys from his desktop. ‘Maybe thirty grand won’t buy a car but it beats a knife in the gut.’
Judging by the black E-Class Mercedes that rolled out of the parking garage Harry hadn’t exaggerated about what thirty grand would or wouldn’t buy in Los Angeles. Nothing short of a half-century would have paid the sticker on that car. Through windshield wiper streaks of yard grime I tracked the Mercedes as it slowed and wheeled into the brick drive of Harry’s colonial-style home, his arrival greeted by the motorized yip of the garage door. The big E-Class joined a convertible Mercedes roadster already in the garage. Before t
he garage door shut he pointed vigorously toward the side of the house. I eased into the drive, located the oil spot the Caddy had left the last time I’d been there and threw the transmission into park low enough to leave a new one.
As I pushed through the side gate I dipped into my right jacket pocket for the canister of pepper spray and came up instead with the canister of film I’d just shot. That brought the first smile to my face in days. What did I expect to do with that, throw it at him? I dropped the film into my left jacket pocket and reached into the right again to pull out the spray. Other than try to blackmail somebody for a quarter of a million dollars Harry hadn’t done anything to make me distrust him. The directions read point and shoot. I gripped it with my finger resting atop the nozzle and slid my hand back into my pocket.
Harry didn’t make me wait more than a minute. He emerged out the sliding glass door at the rear of his house with a nervous backward glance and hurried step. The thumb and forefinger of his right hand pinched the corner of a letter-sized envelope and his left hand dangled free at his side. I didn’t see a weapon but he was big enough not to need one. I kept my hand on the canister of pepper spray in my jacket pocket and stepped up to meet him half-way. He tapped the envelope against his side. The script at the line of address read Burns in a hand other than Gabe’s.
‘How soon before I’ll see any money for this?’
‘My agent will contact you. The cheques will have to be cut and then clear the bank, so a couple of weeks at least.’
He shook the envelope with short, crisp strokes of his wrist and sucked in his breath. ‘You sure you don’t want to –’
‘No. You play games with killers, they’ll kill you.’
He slapped the envelope into my palm. ‘Why do I feel like crying?’
I slipped it into my left pocket just as the sliding glass door behind Harry jerked open. A thin blonde in crisply pressed tennis shorts and blouse stepped on to the patio and at the end of her lightly tanned arm she held a chrome-plated pearl-handled automatic. Judging by the size of the bore pointed at my chest I guessed .32 calibre. She shook the gun like a finger and said as though I needed more warning, ‘I’m a member of the Beverly Hills Gun Club so don’t think I don’t know how to use this.’
Killing Paparazzi Page 24