“I don’t see what’s so mysterious, what you need to know. Gail left, I’m sad. You can understand that, right?”
“You’re not telling me the truth. I know there’s something else. You’re jumpy. As for Gail, I know as well as you do that you’re relieved she’s gone.”
I said nothing. He put his head in his hands.
“Please, Bobby. Let me go.”
The door opened and Nolan Tyler appeared, breathless, looking worried.
“What’s he doing here?” I asked Bobby.
He ignored my question, turned towards Nolan. “So?”
Nolan came in, closed the door behind him. He flashed a half-smile, showing stained teeth. “Oh, we got a few bites, all right.”
Bobby looked at him, attentive. “Go on, we’re listening.”
“I was just at your place, Roman.”
I jumped up. “My house?”
“I saw your guest through a window.”
I swallowed. I could hear my heart beating in my chest.
“So who is it?” Bobby asked.
“Ken Lafayette. The FBI is looking for him. He’s a suspect in a bombing that killed a woman and injured another on Washington Street, two months ago.”
“Bomb?” I protested. “No way! They’re looking for him for public nuisance, something to do with a GI coffee house.”
“Is that what he told you?” Nolan asked, surprised.
“Yes.”
“Well, he lied to you. The guy’s wanted for murder.”
I felt the floor opening up underneath me. I said, panicking, “I never heard his name associated with that story. They said it was the Weathermen.…”
“You’re wrong. The police don’t think it was the Weathermen. They say they’ve got proof against your friend.…”
My friend!
“How come I never heard about this? I work in newspaper, right, just like you! I should know this, shouldn’t I?”
“The police asked us to keep it close to the vest. So he doesn’t escape.”
“But he knows he’s wanted already!”
“Let’s say he suspects it. He’s no idiot.”
Bobby fell into a chair, his face drawn. “You told me you weren’t seeing that piece of shit anymore!”
“I wasn’t seeing him anymore! He came to my place one night, and he.…”
I fell silent.
“And he what?”
My blood was pounding, as if it was about to burst. “He threatened me.…”
“Threatened you with what?”
“He said he’d squeal on me. For having driven a GI to Canada.”
“That true?” Nolan asked, his brow furrowed.
“Yes.”
“You did that?” Bobby said.
“Yes! Okay? Yes, I did, three years ago, when I was in Berkeley.”
“That’s it?” Nolan asked.
This interrogation was beginning to make me angry. “Yes! That’s it!”
Nolan rubbed his hand across his wrinkled face. “We need to send the cops to your house, Roman.”
“No, you can’t do that.…”
“We don’t have a choice,” Bobby added.
“They’ll link me to him, and I’ll be an accessory to murder. They’ll accuse me of.…”
“No,” Nolan said. “It won’t happen. I’ll take care of it.”
“Please.…”
“If we do nothing, you’ll risk far more. You’ll be an accomplice. Listen to me: we’ll tell the police that as soon as you learned about what Lafayette was actually wanted for, you called them. I’ll take care of the rest. I promise, you’ve got nothing to fear.”
“He’s crazy. He’ll try to get revenge … accuse me of all sorts of things.”
“His word is worth nothing,” Nolan cut in. He’s a murderer, a manipulator.” He opened the door, motioned for me to walk. “Come on. Let’s go call the cops.”
V
LEN
1
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Carr?”
People often asked me this question now, and always with a knowing look. As if they knew I was an impostor. After all, wasn’t not believing in God in this country akin to anti-Americanism?
The first person to ask me was Christie Brenan, a journalist with the Los Angeles Times. She appeared on my doorstep on Appian Way, in a perfectly fitting jacket and skirt, impeccable hair, high heels. A photographer accompanied her, a bald guy about my age, his face far more lined than mine. I invited Ms. Brenan to sit in one of the comfortable armchairs in the corner of my office where I held meetings. She squirmed in her narrow skirt as she looked over the questions she’d prepared and transcribed into a spiral notebook. Like a handful of other journalists chosen by It’s All Comedy!, she had received the first two episodes of season two of In Gad We Trust “under embargo,” and I couldn’t help thinking, Did she like them? Hate them? I discreetly looked for something in her eyes that might say yes, she had liked the episodes, but she wasn’t smiling, and her serious, fixed expression resembled a mask. Ms. Brenan was above it all. Ms. Brenan had power and she enjoyed it, you could tell by the way she ordered the photographer around, a guy far older than she, and suddenly I felt vulnerable, at the mercy of this arrogant journalist, the sort of ambitious young woman who wouldn’t hesitate to betray a colleague to make it. She ignored me, her nose in her notes, leaving me completely helpless with the photographer and his sustained clicking, coming nearer and nearer with his device, making me more self-conscious — what image was I projecting? Determination? Vulnerability? My hands were moist, my mouth dry. In Gad wasn’t just a television show, it had become an issue in certain circles, a subject debated with passion and animosity in local newspapers, on radio stations, and on television, leading to thousands of complaints. Meanwhile, at the head of It’s All Comedy!, there’d been the whole fiasco that forced Josh Ovitz to intervene in the production, that line of dialogue I’d been forced to change — though Trevor had tied the scene together well in the end. Matt, the director, had pushed the right buttons, and I was willing to admit that the scene was better without the mention of God, but there was no way I was going to make any more concessions. The ratings were excellent, a handful of episodes in season one had attracted almost three million viewers, a more than respectable figure for a cable channel.
I was prepared to face Christie Brenan’s questions about Chastity and her abortions, and the other controversial aspects of the series. Despite what Josh might think of me, I would think twice before I spoke. “That’s all I ask,” he had told me on the phone the night before. “We don’t need a new controversy.” Annoyed by what I interpreted as a lack of trust, I answered dryly, “It’s all comedy, Josh. Not politics.” There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Josh was involved in Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign, and I was certain his newfound hesitations were in part due to his political activities, though he wouldn’t admit it.
Before pressing “Record,” Ms. Brenan complimented me on the house and the décor, and I wondered if she was sincere or it was some sort of manoeuvre to get my guard down. “You should tell Ann,” I said, trying to look relaxed. “She found the house and decorated the whole place.”
She smiled vaguely, as if she didn’t believe me, or didn’t care. I immediately regretted not having pushed for Ann to be present. Had we been two, the whole thing wouldn’t have been as stressful. But over the phone, Ms. Brenan had been inflexible, “It’s your name that appears in the credits, isn’t it?” I argued, explaining that without Ann there’d be no interview because without her there’d have been no In Gad We Trust. She sighed loudly, and I gave up. And anyway, Ann didn’t like to be the centre of attention.
I answered the questions calmly. On abortion: a woman’s inalienable right, Roe v. Wade had closed that debate, there was no reason to open it up
again.
“The sheer number of abortions she undergoes — isn’t that a kind of provocation?”
“It’s a caricature, and caricature exaggerates features. You could also see it from another angle — you sometimes hear that some women see abortion as a method of contraception. Perhaps Chastity, Gad Paradise’s daughter, is a foil to denounce that idea as well.”
“Chastity pays her doctor with money taken from the faithful, the followers of the church. There’s a character, pious old Mrs. Wilcox, who is completely unaware that her money is going to Chastity’s abortions. That’s a bit shocking, isn’t it?”
“The televangelist Jim Bakker personally appropriated millions of dollars from his followers. He even bought Jessica Hahn’s silence with their money, the woman who had accused him of rape. I’m not inventing anything.”
Ms. Brenan was taking notes. I told her how In Gad was a satire of those merchants of faith who had fallen into disgrace, of their financial and sexual scandals, all the while questioning the gullibility of people who financed their empires, those poor followers like Mrs. Wilcox.
Her lips twisted in a half-smile, “One could accuse you of making money on the back of Christians as well. By mocking them, I mean.”
“I’m not mocking Christians. I’m mocking con men who use religion to take advantage of naive people.”
“Sure. But there’s something in these ‘naive people,’ in your words, these Christians, that seems to bother you more than most. You’re not defending them. It’s obvious, your body language speaks for you. You’re a liberal, and liberals generally don’t have a very good opinion of Christians. An obvious intolerance, even.”
I laughed. “Intolerance? Which side is more intolerant, do you think?”
That led me to tell her about the context of the summer of 1988, when the idea for In Gad first came to me. Ms. Brenan was too young to remember. Los Angeles was besieged by thousands of angry Christians; they were arriving by the busload from all over California and the United States to protest against The Last Temptation of Christ, the Martin Scorsese movie, which no one had seen but about which everyone had an opinion. You could see them on every street corner, in supermarkets, Bible in hand, getting petitions signed. All summer, demonstrations on Lankershim Boulevard. Page after page of newspaper copy dedicated to the culture wars; it was, indeed, a war. Calls for boycotts against Universal and the mothership MCA. Executives at Universal were receiving death threats, their home addresses published in the Christian media, including Lew Wasserman’s address, the big boss, whom Josh knew well. Dead pigs were found on their front porches, packages with voodoo dolls in their mailboxes. Thousands upon thousands of protest letters, and thousands upon thousands of calls, causing outages on MCA’s phone system. I had just met Ann in the summer of 1988; we took long walks everywhere together, often meeting people protesting under a hot sun, signs in hand, their messages in large block letters: NO TO THE SCORCESE MOVIE — REMOVE ALL SEX SCENES — WASSERMAN, DON’T TOUCH MY JESUS! And of course: THEY KILLED JESUS ONCE. WASN’T IT ENOUGH? An allusion to “Hollywood Jews.” Sometimes the signs were accompanied by caricatures of Hitler and the gas chambers. Ann was disgusted, and so was I. It was just a movie, for God’s sake! While this was happening, there was a long Writers’ Guild strike, the longest in the Guild’s history, five months on the picket lines, thousands of people out of work, Hollywood and the big TV networks all paralyzed, an endless stream of stories reporting bankruptcy and personal tragedy. I’d seen friends lose their houses, others their wives, some both. I often met couples who both worked in the industry, and some of them hadn’t been able to withstand the pressures of suddenly finding themselves without income. The strike hadn’t affected me that deeply, I had my job at the Kyser Gallery, a house I fully owned in the Fairfax District, a bank account and judiciously placed investments that made me free from financial worry. I hadn’t been directly touched by the events, but morally affected, yes, by the impression that we were returning to the Middle Ages. I couldn’t accept that people — I was about to use the term “with retrograde values” in front of Christie Brenan, but checked myself — who campaigned against the rights of women and gays could impose their backward vision of the world on everyone else. Dick, who knew quite a few people at Universal, told me that they were all devastated over there, and were even thinking of not distributing the movie at all. Some distributors and theatre owners decided not to take the risk, fearing acts of vandalism. There was an astounding sense of violence in the air. Ann and I were just getting to know each other, but that summer’s events brought us together. We shared the same beliefs, the same indignation. Ann was finishing her studies, a doctorate in Film and Television Studies at the University of Southern California, and the attempts to censor Scorsese and Universal Studios disgusted her.
“Do you know the last time there was any sort of comparable upheaval surrounding a movie?” Ann asked me one night as we were having supper in a small Italian place in Venice Beach. “1915. Birth of a Nation. A silent film. Ever heard of it?”
It was the first time I’d heard the title. She spoke passionately about this foul, racist movie on the Civil War and its consequences. Blacks were depicted as animals and rapists, to be lynched without hesitation. A Confederate point of view that would make you sick, an apology for the Ku Klux Klan. A horrible movie, banned in numerous cities, that had raised the ire of blacks and caused riots. “And you know what?” Ann said. “The movie is, cinematographically, a masterpiece. It’s avant-garde, innovative, and it inspired a number of filmmakers. Problematic, right?” I was impressed by her knowledge and the way she had of expressing it. She continued, her eyes burning, “Can the quality of a movie excuse its racist content? Of course not. But should it be censored? I don’t believe so. Art doesn’t need to be acceptable. Films are a product of their time. Consensus isn’t proof of quality, or truth.”
I gave Ms. Brenan Ann’s perspective, which I shared a hundred percent. The story of Birth of a Nation captivated the journalist. Then I told her about the Nikos Kazantzakis novel that had inspired Martin Scorsese, “I read the book in 1963. It was placed on the Index by the Vatican, but everyone was reading it in New York. For Kazantzakis, Jesus was a man, with his weaknesses, his cowardly moments, his dreams, and fantasies, a man whose divine mission terrorized him. It was a revelation for me. I had just arrived from a small town in Quebec, in the Gaspé region, where the Catholic Church decided whether it would rain or not. What a surprise to realize that there were places where it didn’t have a complete hold! In New York, nobody cared about the Vatican’s orders. It was hard to believe at first. A place of total freedom. For a whole generation, The Last Temptation of Christ was the cool book to read. And now, thirty-five years later, fundamentalists were ready to set fire to movie theatres, to injure people — which actually happened in France — just to prevent Hollywood from making a movie. That reality cries out for an explanation.”
Ms. Brenan offered a wide smile. I wasn’t sure how to interpret it. She said haughtily, “A score to settle with your Catholic education?”
“Of course. But first and foremost a question of free speech. I’m besotted with freedom and will fight for it, always.”
The recorder stopped loudly. Christie Brenan took the tape out, and flipped it to the B side. We’d been speaking for an hour already. As she consulted her notes, I thought of Ann and our long conversations in the summer of 1988. By God, I loved her; I was charmed by the brilliant young woman who, one night, as we left that Italian restaurant on Washington Boulevard we enjoyed so much, told me with the passion that alcohol feeds so well, “Write, and I’ll help you.” And that night, in my house on Gardner Street, after having made love in a warm wine-soaked fog, we wrote the first two scenes of In Gad We Trust, which would much later be filmed exactly the way we’d written them. The only part of the production that was shot in New York went like this:
Episode 1 /
scene 1: Exterior, Brooklyn Street — Day
(We are watching the “conversion” of Gad Paradise, forty-one, a man who has spent twenty-five years in the service of the Brooklyn Mafia. A man on his last legs, walking the streets of his neighbourhood, his back bent, limping slightly, his face covered in bruises. People he meets wave at him as if there’s nothing wrong — he’s known in the neighbourhood — but he doesn’t wave back, absorbed in his thoughts.)
GAD PARADISE
(Voice-over. The narration is illustrated by familiar neighbourhood scenes.)
As a boy, I had two possibilities — the Catholic Church or the Mafia. My mother, like all good Italian mothers, would have cried tears of joy to see her son wear the cloth like his cousin Paolo. You should see how respected he is in the family, in the neighbourhood. Always Paolo, Paolo this, Paolo that. As if he was a saint. Well, I had the spirit of a businessman. That’s what Dad said, born Pardes, it means “paradise” in Hebrew. Dad is Jewish, but doesn’t practise. The hassle of religion isn’t for him, he always left that to my mother. At eleven, I had learned how to extort money from the neighbourhood store-owners to help Big Joe get that much richer. Dad held Big Joe in the highest esteem — the only one in the entire neighbourhood to drive a beautiful white Cadillac. At his place, there was furniture covered in gold leaf, the kind you’d find in the Pope’s apartments in the Vatican. Even my mother thought Big Joe was a respectable man, always ready to offer financial help when the church needed it. Big Joe gave me my chance. For him, I started doing dirty work, then the dirtiest work. But Big Joe isn’t Joe Bonanno — he never was able to get his business going outside the neighbourhood, and now, we’ve got Puerto Ricans aching for a slice of the pie. So Big Joe sends me to bring them a message.…
(Close up on his face: broken nose, black eyes. He takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes at a forehead still covered in blood. This time, he’s not going back to Big Joe to give him the news; this time he’s going to church, determined to end it all. Before going in, he makes the sign of the cross.)
Métis Beach Page 29