Digging James Dean

by Robert Eversz

  I waited for him to open it. He didn’t.

  “First we gotta come to a mutual agreement. You can take a picture of my beautiful mug if you want.” His smile was lurid and singularly unattractive, perfect for Scandal Times. “And you can take a picture of what’s in the box, but for legal reasons you can’t identify it as mine and you can’t take a picture of me and it together in the same shot, do you dig me?” He pried off the top of the box. A silver and glass locket rested inside, the glass framing an off-white fragment about the size of a finger bone.

  “What is it? Or should I ask, who is it?”

  “Montgomery Clift.” He said the name with awe, as though enough of the actor still resided in the fragment to command respect and reverence. “I was eight years old when The Search came out. You see it?”

  “A little before my time.”

  “Clift played a soldier who befriends a concentration-camp survivor, a little boy. A Czech Jew.” He stroked the glass case above the bone fragment. “The film meant a lot to me then. This is the only thing of his I have.” He lifted the reliquary out of the box and held it in the palm of his hand as though he cradled a sacred egg. “I’m meaning to give it back to his family. Still, five grand is five grand, so I thought I’d keep it a while.”

  “You’re supposed to wear it around your neck, that the idea?”

  “That’s what the guy sold it to me said.” He lifted the locket by its chain and then separated the strands to form a neck-sized gap. “Said it was supposed to have mystical, sacred powers, only it didn’t work so well for him because he hadn’t been cast in anything since the day he bought it. Said he wasn’t supposed to sell it to outsiders, risked the wrath of the Church of Divine Thespians by selling it to me.”

  “The church of what?” I said, thinking I’d heard wrong.

  “Divine Thespians. You never heard of it?”

  “Does it sound like something I should have heard of?”

  “I agree, the group is a little out of the ordinary, but with you working for the tabloids, I thought if anybody would know, outside the circle of cognoscenti, that is, it would be you.” He guided the locket to a soft landing on the cotton padding inside the box.

  “You’re right, I have heard of them, though nothing more than the name.” The macro would get me close enough to make out the bone behind the glass. I switched lenses. My sister had mentioned the group the day she came to my apartment. “This church, where’s it located?”

  “No idea,” he said. “No idea if they’ve even got a building. If they do, it’s not public information. They don’t maintain a Web site. You find them mentioned here and there on the Internet, but nothing specific. Just rumors. I didn’t even hear about them until a few months ago. Another crackpot group, right? Only about a thousand of those in L.A. But the name attracted my attention and then I noticed that my high-end business started to drop off.”

  “What you got here that’s high-end?”

  I didn’t mean to be offensive. I was just ignorant.

  “I take it you’re not a collector.”

  “Just parking tickets,” I said. The macro lens magnified the locket enough to see the bone behind the glass for what it was. I tipped the box toward the light and propped it up with a wedge of paper.

  “I can see how it might strike an outsider as a little odd that someone would pay a couple grand for something that most would consider secondhand junk, but that’s the nature of my business,” he said. “Stuff that the stars actually owned or wore, clothing, accessories, personal things, that’s high-end in my business.”

  “Kind of like second-class relics,” I said. “You know, things the saints touched.”

  “Never thought of it that way.” He dropped his head to counter level to better appreciate the way I was setting up the shot. “That makes bones first-class, right?”

  “That’s what Cherubin told me.”

  “Hate not to carry first-class merchandise, no matter what it is. Maybe I should reconsider my decision. The hard-core fans, they still come in or buy stuff on the Web site, but a big part of my business comes from actors who want a little something special from a performer who inspired them. You know, a hat Barbra Streisand wore in Funny Girl, a script signed by Marlon Brando, that kind of thing.”

  I kept my eye to the camera, clicked the shutter, asked, “Chad Stonewell ever come in?”

  “The stars themselves, never. They send their personal assistants. Young women mostly, snappy dressers, kind of harried-looking, don’t know anything about collecting but know exactly what they want.” He watched me intensely while he talked and, being more than a little myopic, edged so close to the work that I nearly got his nose in the shot. “Sometimes they drop a hint who they’re shopping for, you know, let me know only the best will do. Then about a year ago the number of personal assistants I see in the store started to decline and I heard my first rumor that people were finding something else to collect.”

  I swiveled the camera to frame an extreme close-up of his face, from the top of his glasses to the bottom of his lips. “You mean they were collecting celebrity relics, like this locket.”

  He stared at me dead on. I clicked the shutter. Perfect.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “If you’re an actor and you got some coin in your pocket, why would you settle for a second-class relic if you can buy first-class? Why settle for James Dean’s toothbrush when you can have his teeth?”

  Thirty-Two

  FRANK ATTACKED his midday breakfast omelet with a combination of anger and appetite, as though intent on killing each bite before swallowing it. “I can’t believe you gave up the film,” he said for the third time. We ate at a sidewalk table outside a hipster café called Kings Road. Just beyond the curb, noon traffic whooshed down Beverly Boulevard, heading toward the mammoth Beverly Center mall and beyond. Across the chest of Frank’s sweatshirt graffitilike letters scrawled THEY CAN TAKE MY SMOKES WHEN THEY PRY THEM FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS. His usual pack of Winstons lay at the corner of the table, not more than six inches from his left hand, the reason we ate outside. “You never give up the film,” he ranted. “Never. Never. Never. It’s one of the cardinal rules of tabloid journalism.”

  “I didn’t give it up,” I said. “The police confiscated it.”

  “Of course they confiscated it!” Fluffy bits of egg flew from his mouth with the protest. “That’s not the point. You should have known they were going to confiscate it and ditched the film somewhere I could find it later.”

  “Do you want me to go to jail?”

  “Who said anything about jail? Of course I don’t want you to go to jail. I want the film and because you gave it to the cops like it was some kind of goodwill gesture I don’t have it.”

  “Goodwill gesture? I’m a convicted felon on parole. They would have thrown me in jail.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Withholding evidence in a murder investigation.”

  He stared at me, a forkful of egg lifted halfway toward his gaping mouth. “Withholding evidence? We would have given them prints after we developed the roll.” The fork finished its journey and returned to the plate for more.

  “And said what? Look what fell off the back of a truck? They would have thrown me in jail, absolutely no doubt about it.”

  “What do you think we have lawyers for?” he asked. “Their sweet personalities?”

  “You mean you would have hired a lawyer to get me out of jail?”

  He nodded, chewing away. “You get arrested on company business, yes, that’s right, Scandal Times pays the ticket.”

  “If the lawyers can’t get the film released, why should I think they’d have better luck with me?”

  “All this doubting, all this lack of trust.” Frank shook his head and sighed as though his faith in human nature had been wounded. “Not to mention that you’ve seriously fucked up the Stonewell story.”

  “Me? How?”

  He raised an eyebrow.


  “You mean the bodyguard? So maybe I was wrong about that. But it doesn’t mean Stonewell isn’t involved. His brother owns the warehouse in North Hollywood, remember?”

  Frank glanced toward the street, where a sun-yellow H2 Hummer pulled into a parking space painted blue for handicapped parking. “This is about to get interesting,” Frank said. “What would you say to Stonewell if you saw him again?”

  “I’d ask him who he was meeting the day I tried to take his photograph,” I said. “You were right when you said Stonewell should have been grateful for the publicity. But he wasn’t, and the reason he wasn’t, he either didn’t want to be seen with the guy he was lunching with or the guy himself didn’t want his picture in the tabs. You get what I’m saying.”

  “Sure, you’re saying we don’t have a story.” He stared over my shoulder. “But it looks like we’re going to have one hell of a photo op.”

  I turned in my chair and when I saw what he was looking at I reached for my bag, wishing I carried a gun instead of a camera. Chad Stonewell had stepped from behind the wheel of the Hummer and circled the back bumper to meet a walking tree stump on the curb. I stripped the lens cap from the Nikon and focused first on Frank because I wanted to document the guilty look on his face.

  “I got a call about an hour ago from his personal assistant but I never dreamed he’d actually show up.” Frank mopped the last remnants of egg, potato, and jam with the butt end of a piece of toast and stood to shovel it into his mouth. He stared down at me as though waiting. “I’m only the intermediary. He’s actually here to meet you.”

  “Thanks for warning me, or should I say, setting me up.” I offered him the camera. “Maybe you should take this so we don’t lose any photographs when he throws me across Beverly Boulevard.” Frank didn’t move to take the camera. I swiveled the lens toward the Hummer. The tree stump carried a plastic bag as he walked toward our table. I panned up from the bag and recognized the face from the DMV photograph Dougan had showed me the day before. I closed my eyes and studied memory like a series of snapshots, the black-suited chauffeur striding around the hood of the big Mercedes on the day I’d tried to photograph Stonewell, the restaurant door swinging open, and the first face popping out to scope the scene, a face I now recognized as the one I’d just seen through the lens. I dipped the viewfinder to frame his shoes. Adidas. The other guy, the one standing near the street corner, had smashed my camera and later killed Luce. I’d assumed—wrongly—that he worked for Stonewell.

  “Should I say cheese or do you prefer sex?” Stonewall called, his adorably dimpled chin cleaving the air like a star trailed by his retinue. I checked the number of exposures remaining on the roll of film and strode toward the Hummer. Stonewall slowed and opened his arms as though he wanted to hug me. I skirted him on the sidewalk and framed the Hummer, its obscene blaze of yellow steel dwarfing the blue wheelchair sign that reserved the space for the handicapped.

  “What, not even a hello or a fuck you?” Stonewell said. “Are you a photographer for Scandal Times or Car and Driver?”

  I lowered the camera, gave him a look. “Last time I checked, stupidity was not an officially recognized handicap in the state of California.”

  Stonewell dropped his arms, a hug out of the question for the moment. “I got a sticker, see for yourself,” he said.

  “Tell that to the next heart patient looking for a parking spot.”

  “What are you busting my balls for?” His arms came up again, this time in the classic palms-up gesture of innocent victim. Almost all actors can play charm. It’s difficult to stay angry at an actor because the moment they laser their charm in your direction you just melt. But Stonewell wasn’t playing his charm just to me; he included Frank, the craning necks in the café window, and the cars cruising past on the street. He said, “I came here to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  He grinned sheepishly and his eyes rolled once to the sky. “I really fucked up with the camera that day. I never should have allowed that guy to smash it. I should have stood up for you. I’ve regretted it ever since.” He crooked a finger at his bodyguard. “Here, I’ve brought you something to kiss and make up.”

  The bodyguard held out the plastic bag as though reluctant to give it to me, said, “I should make you eat this.”

  “Right,” I said. “And if you tried I’d kick you so hard in the balls you’d be flossing your teeth with pubic hairs.”

  Frank slid around me, snared the bag, and put his arm around Stonewell’s shoulder. “How’s the Bruiser from Brewster, Texas, my favorite action star? Hey, Nina, take a picture of us together, would you?”

  Stonewell looped his arm around Frank and beamed. “I’m glad someone around here doesn’t think I’m poison.”

  “Just at the box office,” Frank said.

  Stonewell’s smile drooped, the crack reminding him too sharply of the financial failures of his past films, but then he laughed, deciding to be a good sport. He wrapped Frank’s head like a walnut in the crook of his elbow and pulled it toward his chest, faking a punch and then knuckling the top of his head, a boy thing I remembered was called a noogie. Whatever I thought of Stonewell I had to admire his pipes; most weight lifters look like cuts of beef but his biceps looked sculpted from marble. The photo was too good to pass up, staged or not. I snapped the shutter and called, “Who were you meeting the day you broke my camera?”

  Stonewell straightened his arm to release Frank, who grinned, seemingly as happy as a schoolboy. “Hey, big guy,” Stonewell said, “this photographer of yours is a real terrier, isn’t she? Does she ever let go?”

  “Once she’s locked her teeth onto you she’ll never let go,” Frank said. “You could cut off her head and she’d only bite down harder. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because you beat her up and burned her out but she’s still got her teeth in your butt and it’s starting to hurt. Am I right?”

  Stonewell’s forearms crossed and flashed apart as though waving off the question. “Wait a minute, I haven’t beaten anybody up since the last time I was in production, and that was strictly for camera. I haven’t even seen her, not once, not since she tried to ambush me outside that restaurant.”

  “Ambush you?” I said.

  “You should have kissed her feet for taking your photo,” Frank said. “But instead you smashed her camera. Why?”

  “I already apologized for that.”

  “Sure, but you never bothered to explain.”

  “Who were you meeting?” I asked again.

  “My agent,” he said.

  “My ass,” I answered.

  Stonewell crooked his neck to the side as though looking at the part of my anatomy I’d just mentioned. “Not bad,” he said, and smiled. “You work out, don’t you?”

  I’m sure his charm worked for some people.

  “Who’s the guy you ordered to break my camera?”

  “Never saw him before,” he said, still smiling. “I assumed he was a bystander. Never even got his name.”

  “I saw him kill a girl named Lucille Ryan, did you know that?”

  “What’s that? Killed who?”

  “A young actress,” I said. “He knifed her to death on the pier. Same guy you ordered to smash my camera.”

  “An actress? I didn’t know her.” A tremor ran though his voice as though the news shook his confidence. “I mean, I heard someone had been killed, it’s all over the news, but the cops, they never told me anything.” He glanced at his bodyguard. “Did they tell you anything?”

  “Not a thing.” The bodyguard pointed his chin at me. “I knew it had something to do with her, that’s all.”

  “What do you know about the trade in celebrity bones?” I asked, setting the camera to rapid-fire. “Are you a member of the Church of Divine Thespians?” I watched the light reflect from his eyes as they glazed over. The deer-in-headlights look. He knew. “Luce was tangled up in the cult. That’s why this isn’t going away. That’s why you need to be wat
ching your ass more than mine.”

  Stonewell looked to his right, out to the street, and then his gaze swept past the lens to fix against the impassive stare of his bodyguard. I don’t think he understood until then how deep the river of blood he swam in, or how fast.

  “Is your brother part of the cult?” Frank asked, notebook in hand.

  “My brother?” Stonewell asked, shocked again. “My brother is in real estate.”

  “He owns a warehouse frequented by known cult members,” Frank said. “Bet he wants to be an actor just like his brother.”

  Stonewell stepped back and nodded to his bodyguard, who moved in front of Frank and held his hands up like a fence. “That’s all Mr. Stonewell has time for,” he said in a rehearsed voice. “Thanks for your interest.”

  “Who did you meet that day?” I called. I moved toward the curb to dodge the bodyguard but he slid over to block me. “Who’s the guy in the black suit?”

  Stonewell gave a cheery wave and dove behind the wheel of the Hummer. His bodyguard gave me a different kind of wave, one with his middle finger poked like a stake on his fist, and strutted toward the passenger side of the vehicle.

  “I think he likes you,” Frank said.

  I dipped my head toward the bodyguard, said, “You mean him?”

  “No, he hates your guts. I mean Stonewell.”

  “He did say I have a nice butt.”

  “And he gave you this, too.” Frank lifted a boxed Nikon from the plastic sack. I glanced at the model description. A top-of-the-line digital SLR camera. The sticker on that model ran three grand, and that didn’t include the lens.