Digging James Dean

by Robert Eversz

  Her parking barrier raised first. The Tercel peeled to the right, the visitors’ parking ramp routed me to the left, and I lost her. I followed the signs to a parking space near the elevators, jumped out of the car, and jogged up the stairs into the lobby, swarming at that hour with skirts and suits hurrying to report to work. Two security guards, red patches on the breast pockets of their blue blazers, staffed a desk at the street entrance. I walked over to study the building directory, angling my shoulders to keep the elevators from the parking garage in view.

  Luce emerged from the nearest parking elevator a minute later, long, multiple strands of beads and pendants swaying beneath her black shawl as she bounced toward the bank of elevators that would take her to the offices above the ground floor. She looked like a happy young hipster in her long hair and granny glasses, smiling at the people she passed. It was difficult for me to imagine that she’d be involved in anything more sinister than a puff of marijuana before bedtime. I sidled through the crowd of workers waiting for the next elevator. The arrival bell dinged and the doors to the elevator to Luce’s right slid open, disgorging a courier nearly trampled in the boarding crush. I squeezed in behind a suit and punched the button to the penultimate floor. The crowd inside the car dwindled with each stop. I wedged myself into the back corner, afraid not that the girl would recognize me but that she might later pick my face or figure out of the crowd as I followed her. She stepped out of the elevator onto the sixteenth floor and turned to the left. I rode the car to the next stop and took a U-turn back to the sixteenth floor. The hallway to the left ended abruptly in a door marked THEATRICAL ARTISTS GROUP. I decided against sticking my head through the door and playing lost; if Luce worked as a receptionist she might still be in the lobby.

  I thought it through as I rode the elevator down to the parking garage. Luce had used a parking card and slotted her Tercel with the monthlies. That meant she worked in the building. If her schedule was the same as most office workers she wouldn’t leave the building until lunch. I drove to the LAPD’s Hollywood station and gave my name to the uniformed officer staffing the front desk. Dougan wanted to see me, I said, and stepped outside with the Rott to wait. The sun hovered low enough in the sky to cast a crisp, colorful light ideal for photography. I played around with the camera while I waited, taking images of the Walk of Fame–style stars embedded in the sidewalk until Dougan lumbered down the steps.

  “Put your dog in your car and come inside the station,” he said. “We’ll talk.”

  I heeled the Rott to my side, said, “I’m on assignment this morning and this is the only chance I’ll get to walk my dog. Be a sport and come along.”

  His face did not conceal frustration well, his brows furrowing above cheeks flushing such a violent red I worried about his blood pressure. “Somebody just burned you out of your apartment.” He pointed a lecturing finger at my chest. “I’d think someone in your position would have a better understanding of her priorities.”

  “I understand my priorities just fine, thanks.” The moment I stepped into the station he’d control me and I didn’t have the time to be locked in one of his interrogation rooms. “I need to earn enough money to rent another place to live. I can’t afford to turn down assignments.” I knelt to leash the Rott.

  “You want to walk your dog, okay,” Dougan said. “I like dogs. I’ll even walk the dog with you. But if I hear something I don’t like or if I don’t think you’re cooperating fully we’re going back to the station. No arguments.”

  I didn’t want to impede an investigation into the murder of my sister. I tried to tell the truth while we walked but I couldn’t tell the whole truth because it would mean spending the rest of the day in an interrogation room and perhaps the night in jail. I told Dougan that a street kid had offered to sell me information about the celebrity grave robberies. He stopped at the corner, beside a bright blue wall sign advertising Big Dog Bail Bonds, and prepared to jot a note into his binder. “This street kid, what’s her name?”

  “Theresa.”

  “I need a last name.”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “All I got. She’s involved through her boyfriend. I suppose you want his name, too.”

  His moustache began to quiver like a wild and angry animal.

  “A runaway from Indiana named Sean Casey,” I said.

  “Where can I find him?”

  “New York City, last I heard.”

  Out of state and out of his jurisdiction. Dougan got through the first consonant of a curse before biting off the word.

  “The girl wasn’t happy either. That’s why she offered to sell.”

  “Sell what?”

  The Rott pulled on his leash, eager to cross to a fire hydrant across the street. “Her story to the tabs,” I said, letting the Rott take the lead. “But she wouldn’t give any names or addresses so we got into an argument and she did a runner. I followed her to a warehouse in North Hollywood.” I described the journey the black van had taken to Wonder View Drive and the six teens I’d seen trekking over the hills toward Forest Lawn cemetery.

  “And you didn’t call us?”

  “Of course I called. From a phone box. Check 911.”

  “And nobody responded?”

  “Things got busy and I had to hang up without leaving my name.”

  “An anonymous call? From a phone box?” This time he didn’t censor the curse.

  “Kids go into those hills all the time to drink, smoke, and screw around.” The Rott lunged forward again, pulling me in his wake. “I needed to confirm where they were going, what they intended to do.”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” Dougan said, hustling to keep up. “You wanted the, what do you call it, the exposé. You wanted to photograph the break-in.”

  “Of course I did. That’s what I do for a living and as far as I know it’s not against the law, not yet. The minute something actually illegal happened I would have called you and 911 and every other law I could reach on autodial. You know why?”

  “To keep your can out of jail,” he said.

  “Because of the lights.”

  “What lights?”

  “The lights of the police cars swooping in for the bust. They make the most dramatic image. That would have been a front-page shot, but it never happened.”

  “Pull up your dog,” he ordered, his face flushed red. He was having problems keeping up and the first few beads of sweat had popped from his forehead.

  “I got a look at the driver of the van, recognized his face.” I heeled the Rott and gave him a pat. I knew Dougan was about to yank me back to an interrogation room. I had to give him something to work with. “He works for Chad Stonewell. One of his bodyguards.”

  “Chad Stonewell the movie star? How do you know?”

  “I’m a paparazza, remember? I’ve seen them together.”

  He wrote down the name, said, “The van license plate?”

  “Never got it.”

  “Then you know what I can do with this?” He touched the tip of his right forefinger to his thumb, making a circle. “If you’d called us that night instead of placing an anonymous call to 911 we could have pulled them over, picked up the kids as runaways and sweated them. Somebody would have talked and we’d have made a case. What happens instead? You get firebombed out of your apartment and I got a big goose egg, zero, nothing to work on except your highly questionable word and the address of a warehouse that’s probably empty now. You know what your problem is?”

  “I’m not lovable enough?”

  He didn’t laugh.

  “You’re coming dangerously close to interfering with a police investigation and that’s a violation of your parole. Do you want to go back to prison?”

  I shrugged, said, “Beats getting killed, I guess.”

  He wagged his head as though disgusted with me. “I talked to your parole officer about you.”

  I couldn’t help it. I rolled my eyes.
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br />   “Funny, she has the same reaction to you. Said in all of her years working for the Department of Paroles she’s never had anyone give her as much work as you have. You’re stubborn, borderline violent, and a pain in the ass to deal with. She also said that despite being basically honest and hardworking you have a genuine talent for trouble.”

  “A person’s got to be good at something,” I said.

  “Let’s hope you’re good at staying out of jail,” he said. “And at staying alive, too.”

  Twenty-Six

  THE GIRL with the beads and pendants came swinging out the front entrance of the concrete and glass high-rise at thirty minutes past noon, flanked by two women barely out of their teens, both dressed in the tight-fitting spaghetti-strap tops and miniskirts popular among those in the workforce more interested in getting boys than getting promoted. I watched from behind the wheel of the Cadillac, parked at a meter down the street from the entrance. The Rott snoozed on the seat beside me, his head in my lap. The three crossed with the light at the next corner, swaying with chatter and laughter as they walked toward a strip of boutique fast-food restaurants next to Museum Square. I elbowed open the door, gently lifted the Rott’s head from my lap, and slipped out of the car. The Rott gave me a look that suggested no more than passing curiosity about where I was going and went back to sleep.

  Across the street, Luce and her friends filed through the door of a skinless chicken franchise. I walked past the winking chicken on the sign, peered through the front window. The choice was fine with me. The Rott liked chicken, too. The three approached the service counter and placed their order. I gave them time to collect their drinks, find a table for four, and sit. The two girls flanked Luce like bookends until they reached the table. I figured they worked together as receptionists or entry-level clerical. They looked excited and full of hope, the type of young women men love to exploit at work, in bed, or anywhere they can.

  I ordered a half chicken for the Rott and chicken salad for me and moved to the drinks dispenser for a large cup of iced tea. When the cup filled I capped it and wandered toward the girls’ table, turned my head sharply as though surprised, and called out, “Luce?”

  She glanced up, green eyes treading water, not knowing who I was or what I wanted. Her face was too round for the camera to consider her classically beautiful and one eye looked slightly higher than the other, but an eccentric charm animated her features and emotions played across her face like images on a screen. She was one of a thousand young actresses all vying for the same few roles but I didn’t have any trouble imagining her as the one who makes it. I stepped toward the table and pitched my voice to the high tones of giddy excitement. “I can’t believe it’s you!” I said. “We were just talking about you!”

  One of the advantages of L.A.’s casual dress code is that nobody knows how important anybody is just by looking. The slob in a baseball cap, satin windbreaker, and ratty sneakers could be a television director, at least until he jumps into anything less than a BMW. I knew her name, sounded excited to see her. I could have been a production executive coming fresh from a casting meeting where her rightness for a role had been discussed. I could even have been the most important person on earth to an actor: a casting director. So she did what every other aspiring actress in L.A. would do. She smiled, a bit uncertainly, and waited for more information.

  I slid onto the chair on the opposite side of the table. “I just saw Theresa yesterday and you remember that role she’d been cast in? The one where she plays a terrorized girl driven out into the desert and murdered?”

  Even though I was nodding as though absolutely nothing was wrong, no reason to panic, the smile dropped from her lips and a look of sudden absence washed over her eyes, as though she wished to be anywhere but there, talking to me.

  I gave a little wave of the back of my hand, said, “They hired another writer at the last minute and rewrote her part while they were shooting, if you can believe that.”

  “They did?” Her voice came out like a squeak and her hand went to her throat, just above a small pendant strung around her neck. The pendant, shaped like a cage around a grayish-white fragment, hung above multiple strands of swaying beads.

  “The rewrite changed everything.” I said it like a friend sharing good news with another friend. “Instead of taking a bullet in the back of the head, like in the first draft? She gets rescued while they’re walking her out to get killed. That’s the way they filmed it, too. She wanted you to know about it.” I spun my fists in circles, pantomiming a fast run. “She’s talking to everybody, you know, cranking out the publicity. Careers are so short these days you have to make the most of every break. But I don’t have to tell that to a pro like you.”

  The girl next to Luce, her eyes sweetly crossed above a lipsticked smile, said, “That’s so cool! You’ll be next, Luce. Wait and see. I’m psychic about these things.”

  A number blared over the public address speakers and the girl next to me jumped to her feet, saying, “That’s ours.”

  Luce dropped the hand from her throat, watched her friend trot off to collect their order, said, “In the first draft they were going to kill her?”

  “Sure, anybody with any production experience knew that.”

  “Nobody told me.” She tried to put the force of conviction behind her statement but her voice cracked and failed her.

  I pulled a business card from my pocket, wrote the number of my cell phone on the back, pushed it across the table. “Remember what happened to Theresa if you ever get cast in a similar role.”

  She hid the card beneath her palm as though afraid someone might see her with it. Her head cocked to the side and she looked at me as though she wanted to ask something, then decided against it. “I’m glad it worked out for her.”

  “I like your necklace,” I said. “Can I take a closer look?”

  Her face stiffened and she covered the pendant with the palm of her hand. “It’s kind of private.” She smiled to hide her panic.

  “But you’re so proud of it,” the cross-eyed girl said, trying to be helpful. Legs fluttered beneath the table and the girl flinched, her ankle kicked.

  “It looks like bone.” I reached for the silver strand on which it hung. “Is it bone?”

  “No, it’s just nothing, really.”

  The other girl slid two plastic trays laden with salad on the table, said, “It’s a penis bone.”

  The cross-eyed girl laughed, leaning across the table with her hand on her chest, and the other girl laughed even louder, still at the age when all jokes about sex are funny. Luce’s face pinked like a second-degree sunburn.

  “Go ahead, Luce, show her,” the other girl said.

  “Whose penis?” I asked.

  The girls laughed again, voices bright and cheerful, keenly enjoying Luce’s embarrassment but not understanding the true reason for it.

  “A dolphin.” Luce pulled her hand away from her chest as though defiant of contradiction.

  A camera was not part of my act and I regretted leaving it in the car. The fragment of bone was no more than a half inch in length and jagged on both ends, as though recently splintered from a larger segment. The public address speaker blared the number to my order.

  The cross-eyed girl leaned across the table, her voice a just-us-girls whisper. “Dolphins are really sexual creatures. Luce is hoping it helps her get lucky.”

  I suspected Luce hoped to get lucky in a completely different way than the one suggested by the cross-eyed girl. Behind the wheel of the Cadillac I listened to cell-phone messages while I tore the roast chicken into bite-sized strips, fending off the Rott with my elbow. Girls like Luce don’t need to get lucky. They’re born lucky. Luce didn’t need charms to enhance her sexual attractiveness. But in a city populated by attractive young women all wanting the same thing, she might want a charm to help her get it first and then hold it. The message from my parole officer was brutal and short: call soon or bear the consequences.

 
I piled the chicken strips onto the take-out container, using it like a bowl, and set it on the seat. The next message was from Frank. He’d tracked down the owner of the warehouse in North Hollywood, a real estate speculator with an office in Beverly Hills, and wanted to know if I was available for a little guerrilla journalism. The Rott inhaled the chicken and looked at me, disappointed there wasn’t more. I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. I’d scared Luce but I didn’t expect her to run that afternoon. She might fear exposure and arrest but she wouldn’t act, not until after work. I even hoped that she’d call me and I’d be able to broker a deal. She seemed genuinely shocked to hear that her coconspirators had wanted to kill Theresa. The aspiring in Hollywood will often submit to any degradation and commit any act, criminal or not, that might further their ambitions. Her complicity in my sister’s murder wouldn’t have surprised me but she projected so much innocence and hope that I began to doubt she even knew anyone had been murdered that night.

  Just inside the border of Beverly Hills I spotted Frank edging into traffic to wave me to a free parking spot behind his Honda Civic. A true friend, he fed coins into the parking meter while I collected my camera gear from the rear seat. I slung the bag over my shoulder, shut the trunk, and called above the buzz of traffic, “Hey, Frank, do dolphins have penis bones?”

  He banked the meter up to two hours, said, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to test my encyclopedic knowledge of sex trivia like this.”