“And what it said on the photo, no S?”
“Not Stewart.”
Frank responded with derisive laughter and lit his cigarette.
“He was trying to tell me he was innocent,” I said. “That he wasn’t part of the group involved in this. It shouldn’t be hard to find out who the K and E refer to. Wait a minute, didn’t you tell me that Jagger had a film production company?”
“Right, the one with funny spelling.” He swore with the force of sudden realization and fumbled for the notepad in his front T-shirt pocket.
“Illusterious Productions, wasn’t it?” I said.
Frank fought the smoke in his eyes while he watched traffic and tried to find the entry he’d made in his notebook. The Corvette headed steadily west, toward the wealthier neighborhoods nestled in the hills or sloping toward the ocean, but instead of turning north toward Beverly Hills it swung south toward Long Beach and Orange County. Frank swore again and tossed the notebook onto my lap, turned to the page of notes he’d made about Jason Starbal’s family. “You’re right,” he said.
I read what he’d written after Jagger’s name: Illusterious Productions.
“I don’t see any other names here,” I said. “Where’s his partners?”
“It’s a pun on Luster, get it?” Frank stabbed his finger at the page. “Luster is right in the middle of the name of his damn production company. Read it aloud.”
“Illusterious,” I said, rhyming with mysterious.
“No. I’d pronounce it different.” Frank grabbed the notebook and peered at the entry. “I’d pronounce it, Ill-Luster-Us.”
When the Corvette slid right at the off ramp to Los Angeles International Airport, Ozzy’s final destination opened to any number of possibilities. Frank sped around a couple of slow-moving cars in the fast lane, careful to hang close enough to the Corvette to avoid losing the tail at a traffic light. We speculated that he might be leaving the country. It made sense. He needed to show up at the funeral because he would have drawn attention to himself by missing it, but now that he’d deflected suspicion he could take a long, unearned vacation in Mexico, away from worries about the law. We didn’t change our minds after the Corvette bypassed the remote lot and entered the terminal itself. Judging by the sticker price on his car, he wouldn’t have problems paying the daily rate for short-term parking.
“Time to run and gun,” Frank said.
I pulled the film camera from my bag and sped through my pre-shoot routine, guestimating the shooting conditions, loading extra rolls of film into my jacket pockets, and deciding if the lens on the camera was still the best lens for the job. Run and gun meant guerilla-style journalism, Frank shooting shock questions at the subject while I backpedaled ahead, photographing his alarmed, amused, or violently annoyed reactions. I’d need the greater light sensitivity of film in the low-light conditions we’d encounter in the parking structure and decided to swap telephotos to the faster 28–70–millimeter lens.
The Corvette collected a ticket at the parking control arm and rolled up the ramp to the first parking level, hunting, as almost all Angelenos do, for that one elusive parking space nearest his eventual destination, spending three minutes looking for a spot that might save him a sixty-second walk. Frank hovered one lane over, watching from a distance, and when the Corvette braked by an empty space at last, he sped toward several free slots near the back and squeezed on the brakes. I was already reaching for the door when the Honda lurched and my head snapped back to the sound of crushing metal and splintering glass. Frank cursed and the Rott yelped as the car shot forward, out of control, toward the rear fender of a pickup truck to the right. The moment we struck the fender the world turned white and something smacked me full in the face, knocking me back against the seat. When I opened my eyes, too stunned to move, I realized someone had rear-ended us at speed. The passenger-side air bag had deployed when we hit the pickup truck, the air bag now dribbling from its compartment like a spent condom. The collision knocked the Cubs baseball cap from Frank’s head and his hair spiked straight up in protest. I asked if he was okay. He nodded without really being conscious of what had just happened. The Rott barked in the backseat, traumatized, but fine. I felt my neck to make sure the tendons were still attached and elbowed open the door.
Behind the wheel of the blue Toyota Camry that struck us, the driver clutched his hand against his jaw in a way that suggested he might be hurt. I took a step forward, shaking off the effects of the crash easily enough, and saw the cell phone in the driver’s hand. Had he been conversing with someone, not watching where he was going, when we collided? Or was he just now calling to report the accident? He spotted me walking toward him. His hand flashed and the cell phone vanished. A moment later the driver’s door winged open and he emerged, a large white man in a gray suit. I’d seen him before, one of the two bouncers huddling with Spectrum at the funeral.
“You folks okay?” he called out in mock concern, then glanced back to where I’d last seen the Corvette.
I pretended not to recognize him and pointed toward the Honda, shouting like I was completely freaked out, “My friend! He’s not breathing! The air bag! I think he’s having a heart attack!”
He hurried forward, reaching into the outside flap pocket of his suit coat for his phone, ready to dial in a medical emergency. He’d been sent to stop, not kill us, and a serious injury could have legal ramifications he’d rather avoid. When he moved toward the Honda I slipped behind the pickup truck we’d hit, then sprinted toward the exit leading to the terminal, the same exit I supposed the driver of the Corvette had taken. I heard a shout behind me but it was too late, I was already gone, out from the shadows of the parking structure and into the bright sunlight, the Tom Bradley International Terminal straight ahead across four lanes of busy airport traffic. The guy in the Corvette was already across the roadway, wheeling a hard-shell suitcase from Louis Vuitton behind him. I shouted, “Hey, Ozzy, wait up!”
He turned when he heard the name. I waved like an old friend and raised my camera. He shook his head, panicked, and bolted toward the terminal entrance. I eyed the flow of traffic. I didn’t have time to wait for the light to green. I leapt toward a gap between cars, jerked back, and fell on my butt. The bouncer from the funeral loomed over me, his gray suit blotting out the sun. He’d taken me down so effortlessly I stared up at him in astonished admiration.
“You’ll be happy to know your friend is gonna be okay.” He extended a hand to help me to my feet. “Sorry if I was a little rough, but he’s asking for you.”
30
WHEN I RUSHED from bed the next morning to vomit in the bathroom sink, I realized I needed to face a little reality rather than turn my back to it and took the Rott for a walk to the drugstore around the corner, where I bought a package of five test strips. I followed the instructions on the box, the Rott watching from the bathroom doorway, his expression alternating between concern and amusement as I peed into a cup, dipped the test strip into the urine, and laid it onto the comparison chart. I’ve spent a good part of my adult life waiting, either in a prison cell or in a car, serving time or staking out one celebrity or another. I’m good at waiting. The three-minute gap between application and result was the longest three minutes of my life, and when the second line emerged within the strip’s results zone, signaling a positive, I felt awed and overwhelmed, my life consumed by natural forces seemingly beyond my control.
The Rott sensed my emotional change and barked once before nudging against my leg, looking for a reassuring pat. I sat on the floor and gave him a good rub. I’ll fight for a woman’s right to choose as hard as anyone else, but I was thirty years old and wanted to be both strong and mature enough to take responsibility for the gifts and hardships dealt to me. I hadn’t particularly wanted a child and felt more dread at the consequences than joy over the possibilities, but I figured that would change once I came to accept the inevitability of pregnancy and birth. My relationship with Sean was probably finished. I
knew that would be just one of the costs of my pregnancy. I wasn’t even sure I’d tell him the baby was his. If he wanted to figure out the cause-and-effect relationship of my pregnancy, he could do it without a pointed finger. I’d spent almost a year with the Rott, proving myself capable of caring for another creature. How much more difficult could it be taking care of a baby? I laughed at myself for thinking that. The Rott was easy. A baby wouldn’t be. But I knew I could do it alone. The baby might miss out on having a father, but she’d have lots of uncles and a big dog with even fewer teeth than she had.
I needed to clear my head. Walks on the edge of a great wilderness are one of the great benefits of life near the ocean. I leashed the Rott, shouldered my camera bag, and jogged down the steps toward the street, so consumed by my thoughts that I didn’t spot the white Tercel parked at the curb just beyond the base of the stairs until the rear passenger door squeaked open. Red flashed too high in the cabin to make visual sense until I realized it was the ex-con’s polo shirt, exposed as he leaned over the front seat to open the back door. I jerked on the Rott’s leash and pulled up as the ex-con shouted a single command of attack. A streak of brown raced from the rear passenger compartment, too compact to alarm me until I saw the muscular shoulders, blunt snout, and bone-shielded eyes of a pit bull mix.
The Rott turned instantly to meet the attack, the power of his lunge ripping the leash from my hand. The two dogs hit head to head, the pit bull’s jaws snapping to the side, deflected by the force of the collision. The Rott whirled to catch the pit bull at the base of the neck, using his superior height and size to advantage. In less than a second Baby became an animal beyond my control, acting from a primitive instinct to attack and survive, completely unconscious of his unsuitability for fighting another dog. Without teeth, his jaw couldn’t hold and the pit bull rose up, twisted, and snapped, its teeth digging into the flesh above the Rott’s shoulder, near the throat. The Rott bucked, shocked by the pain, but the other dog clenched down, hind legs kicking to raise and straighten its stout body.
I shouted and tried to beat the animal off, my kicks like hitting a concrete block with a stick. The Rott stood his ground, bravely enduring the pain, but the pit bull vised his neck in jaws strong enough to snap wood. I backed away and sprinted up the steps to my apartment, fingers trembling to identify the door key amid the jumble of metal, counting each second in the Rott’s blood. I screamed in anguish as the key bounced away from the lock on my first try, the adrenaline so charging my nerves it deflected my aim. I jammed the key into the lock on the second try and opened the door just wide enough to reach for the baseball bat inside the jamb. On the pavement below, the pit bull had taken the Rott down to one foreleg, securing its grip closer to the killing zone of the throat. I charged midway down the stairs and leapt.
As a breed, pit bulls suffer a physical weakness that doesn’t hinder their deadly effectiveness as head-to-head fighters, one immediately apparent from a glance at their muscular, sloping profile—all jaws, neck, shoulders, and chest—the narrow join between torso and hips safe from attack by another dog but susceptible to a blow of great force. I landed at the base of the stairs and braked. The pit bull mix didn’t bother to glance at me, its teeth sunk deep into the Rott’s shoulder and neck. I cocked the bat and swung, the blow crashing down upon the animal’s hips. Pit bulls have the highest resistance to pain of all breeds, and though the animal shuddered and yelped, its jaws didn’t release their grip until a second blow, a few inches higher, brought wood into contact with bone and shattered its spine.
As I cocked the bat again, I tracked the shouts and charging footsteps of the ex-con as he skirted the hood of his car, and when he curved toward me I whirled and swung. He jerked back and flung his arms to deflect the swing, but the barrel of the bat skipped off his forearm and struck a glancing blow to his forehead. His feet shot out from beneath him and he fell back hard, stunned but still conscious. He rolled once and scrambled to get his feet onto the pavement. I didn’t see that as an option. I swung the bat again, toward his ribs this time, and caught him hard enough to flip him onto his back. He screamed more in anger than from pain. Blood streamed down the Rott’s neck and pooled at his paws. I didn’t have time to negotiate. I golfed the head toward the ex-con’s ankle, the crack of bat on bone solid as a struck fastball. The ex-con screamed again, this time not in anger, not at all.
I dashed to open the passenger door to the Cadillac, parked in its slot opposite the stairs. The Rott stumbled toward me, the fur at the wound in his throat flapped open, his eyes sheening like glass. He swayed at the door’s threshold, unable to make the jump alone. I stepped over his back and gently wrapped my arms around his chest to boost him onto the passenger seat. It wasn’t until I gently nudged the door shut that I looked up and spotted a burly man in a ponytail standing across the street, next to a BMW sedan, a video camera pressed against the right lens of his oversized sunglasses—Ray Spectrum, videotaping the entire incident. I bolted toward my camera bag, left on the pavement near where the Rott had been attacked, and threw myself behind the wheel.
I pushed the Cadillac close to flight speed down Lincoln Boulevard, swerving around traffic without regard for law or safety, pressing a towel against the wound in the Rott’s neck to stanch the flow of blood. The anger I felt while striking the ex-con with the bat had flashed through me so quickly it didn’t stick, and in thinking about Spectrum my anger directed itself too much at myself. Shortly after the Rott had first trotted to my side, a refugee from a brushfire in Malibu, he’d attacked someone who wanted to kill me and took a bullet as the reward for his heroics. He was a juvenile, less than three years old, but it had taken him months to fully recover, and he still limped a bit when he rose in the morning. How could I possibly allow myself to raise a child if the work I did routinely endangered my dog? What trick would Spectrum have pulled had I carried an infant in my arms rather than led a dog on a leash? I couldn’t raise a child in peace and security if I couldn’t safeguard my dog.
Maybe I was a fool, too willing to annoy people with the means to hurt me and those I loved, but I could drive, I’d say that for myself. I talked to the Rott while I ran yellows and dodged oncoming traffic, telling him he was a good dog, everything was going to be fine, and slalomed up to the veterinary hospital’s emergency entrance in less than five minutes. The vet responding to the bell took a quick glance at the Rott and ran back to grab a gurney. I crouched by his head, noted that his eyes had blanked completely, his breath rapid but shallow, the leather seat beneath him a slick pool of blood. I lowered the seat back and when the vet returned, we lifted him onto the gurney’s metal surface. He’d gone into shock, she told me, and pushed him through the entrance at running speed.
After the receptionist directed me to the bathroom to wash the dog’s blood from my hands, she gave me a clipboard form and a glass of water with instructions to fill out the first and drink the second. The form gave me something to do, the effort of pushing the tip of a pen across paper focusing my thoughts on something other than the Rott’s trauma, one of the calming effects of bureaucracy. What right did I have to think I could have a baby and raise it safe from harm? Aside from the extraordinary events of the past few days, a little rough-and-tumble is part of the paparazza’s normal life. Could I risk backpedaling from a star’s advancing entourage, seeking the elusive celebrity photograph, when slowed by six months of pregnancy? I doubted it. I’d have to beg for red-carpet jobs, the star-sanctioned photo ops at celebrity events like film premieres and awards shows. I didn’t know who would hire me for that. Red-carpet and gotcha photography are not the same trade, as different as a domesticated dog and a wild wolf. I signed my name to the form and wrote a check to cover estimated costs, explaining to the receptionist that I didn’t carry credit cards.
Spectrum had set me up like a true pro. He’d staked me out, done his research. He knew I was on parole. He knew how I felt about my dog and knew my reputation for angry outbursts. He’d hired the e
xcon first to watch and then to provoke me, sure that he’d found my weakness, certain that I’d respond to an attack on my dog as though it was an attack on my own life. He knew the law made an important distinction that I did not. Assault with a deadly weapon was still assault, provoked or not. Spectrum had video-recorded me assaulting a man with a baseball bat, a felony serious enough to warrant immediate revocation of my parole, even if the State declined to prosecute, or if they did prosecute, failed to convict. Sure, I’d been provoked by a life-threatening attack on my dog, and yes, I had genuine cause to fear for my safety when the other dog’s owner charged toward me; these might explain the use of a baseball bat to strike the attacking dog and then the first swing at its owner, but not the second blow to his ribs, and certainly not the third shot that shattered his ankle. Given a good lawyer—and I had a good one—I might win if the case ever went to trial, but even though a sympathetic jury might decide in my favor, the parole system would not. Assault with a deadly weapon was a clear violation of the parole agreement, provoked or justified or not. Arrest and return to prison were inevitable, the only question remaining the amount of time before my parole officer came calling with a pair of handcuffs.
I should have been angry, and I waited for my old friend and confidant, rage, to consume and thrust me toward one irresponsible act or another, but where before I’d burned with a liberating intensity, I now felt hollow and ashen. I burst into tears as I paced the hospital waiting room, just broke down and cried like a normal person whose dog lay near death and who now, pregnant for the first time in her life, faced two more years in prison. Rage always moved me to action. These feelings were different. They paralyzed me. For the first time in a long while I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless.
Zero to the Bone Page 26