by Lankford, Terrill Lee; Raphael, Lev; Parker, T. Jefferson
The whole thing was so depressing I just crawled back into bed and went to sleep. I was out for the night.
2
I slept restlessly. I finally decided to get up early and catch the sunrise. I sat out on my deck and watched the water turn colors in the growing light. I deeply inhaled the fresh sea air and steeled myself for a trip into town. I took a very long, hot shower and felt my muscles relax for the first time in days. I still looked like a bruised eggplant. There would be no getting around that.
I drove over to the studio. Neither Lou nor our secretary, Iris, were in their offices. I went into my darkroom and sifted through prints and negatives, packing the ones I wanted into a large box. If I was going to go away, anywhere, I wanted my best work placed somewhere for safekeeping.
Whitney, my camera assistant, passed the doorway, saw me, came back, and stuck his head into the room.
"What's the haps, boss?" Whitney asked.
"I'm splitting for a while."
Whitney entered the darkroom. He was dressed in torn jeans and a fatigue shirt. He had an earring in the shape of a silver skull in his left earlobe. He wore his hair in long dreadlocks. He was a white guy, but he wanted desperately to be black. I continued working without looking at Whitney as he spoke.
"Yo, I mean what's happening with your face? Someone do a rain dance on it?" he asked.
"Something like that."
"Let's go get the fucker!"
"Forget it."
"Were you strapped?"
"You know I don't do that."
"Maybe you should. City's gettin' crazier."
"Not my style."
"Gotta tell you somethin', boss. Black an' blue ain't in this year either."
I finally looked up at Whitney. He had a point.
"You know what happened, right?" I asked.
"I read the paper. They say you killed Kandy King, but I think it's bullshit."
"Why's that?"
"Well, boss, I figure you for a lot of things, but that kind of action don't rock with the pattern, know what I mean? Sure, you could have done it, but you're too smart to let it go down the way it went."
"Thanks," I said. "I think."
"Ever see that babe's flicks?"
"No."
"I have. She had a hot box. Fuckin' shame someone did that to her. You gonna find the asshole?"
"I'm going to try."
"Figured. Let me know if you want a little firepower to go with the hound dogs."
"I will."
Whitney gave a nod and disappeared around the corner. I went back to work, but a lot of what he said stayed with me. My paranoia allowed even Whitney to enter the list of possible suspects, although he was as unlikely a candidate as one could imagine. Just another straw to be grabbed at out of desperation. The guy offers me help and I want to pin a murder on him. I was in a place in my head that I never knew existed. And I wanted away from it.
3
After finishing in the darkroom, I went into my office and started working the phones. I knew I only had so much time and I wanted to get to the bottom of the story while I still had my freedom. I wanted to find out everything I could about Candice Bishop, and to do that it was becoming painfully obvious that I would have to go back in time a little, back to a time when I walked in the world Candice had been working the last few years.
The pornography business is a small, tightly contained organism. It's a huge business, yielding over four billion dollars a year, but, aside from the fringe elements and amateurs, the community itself is comparatively microscopic. Everybody knows everybody else. For the most part, they all get along. They certainly get along a lot better than most of the people I've met in the more "legitimate" photo mediums. The media boys like to present porn manufacturers and distributors as sleaze mongers and back alley weasels. On average, nothing could be further from the truth. Most of them are family oriented. They are usually honest businessmen and women who treat their employees with respect and pay their bills on time. If they owe you money, you will get paid. I have not always found this to be the case in the legit world. I've been dead- beated by some of the richest men in show business. The bigger they are, the more they think they have the right to fuck you over.
Paul Cutshaw had been a friend of mine way back in the days when I was a shooter. He ran a company called Royal Publishing, printing high-quality adult magazines and creating jackets for other distributors' Super 8 films. He was a midrange success in the business. He had never been greedy about it. He just wanted enough money to keep food on the table for his family. Of course, the table was located in Beverly Hills.
I got Paul's current home number from Information. A housekeeper answered the phone when I called and informed me that Mr. Cutshaw was at his office in the Valley. She gave me the number. Unlike me, Paul Cutshaw was far from paranoid. He paid his taxes on time and never cheated on his wife. He was an upstanding member of the community and had nothing to fear from anyone. His life was an open book, even if more than a few pages of that book had naked people fornicating on them.
I dialed the number in the Valley and spoke with his secretary. Mr. Cutshaw was at lunch, but he had been gone quite a while and should be back any moment. I informed the young lady that I needed to see him today. I told her I was an old friend from many years ago and I was going to drive out and try to catch him when he got back. She asked me who she should say was coming.
"Tell him Nick Bracken is on his way," I said.
4
I took the Hollywood Freeway into the San Fernando Valley once again. Most people associate the porn industry with Los Angeles or New York, but the fact is 90 percent of the brain power behind the business is located in the San Fernando Valley. All the big guys bought warehouse land out there in the sixties and seventies when purchases like that were dirt cheap. They were dug in, entrenched in the war against the moral majority and the Internal Revenue Service. The feds had nailed a couple of the big fish in recent years. Unable to get pornography or pandering charges past the First Amendment, the government had fallen back on the IRS to produce results. Ever dependable, the taxmen succeeded in proving a number of big operators had not been reporting major income from the peeps—booths that customers would drop quarters into to watch short loops, the kind of stuff I used to shoot. They estimated millions had gone unreported, all in the form of quarters. It had been enough of a rap to put some of the biggest names in the business behind bars, including the infamous Rupert Herman who had eluded all forms of legal harassment for more than twenty-five years.
I had known Rupert well, back when I was a shooter. He was a great guy, one of the nicer men I'd ever done business with. He was always a gentleman. They didn't make guys like that anymore. The feds didn't give a damn. They dropped old Rupert into a minimum-security prison with all the other white-collar trash and he couldn't handle the confinement. One day he just up and walked away. It took them six months to catch him, but once they did he was screwed. He was currently serving out an extended sentence in Soledad, one of the worst maximum-security joints in California.
I cruised through an industrial area in North Hollywood. I recognized many of the buildings as establishments that I used to work for over a decade ago. They were all still there: World News, Concord Publishing, Paragon Entertainment, and the most famous of them all, Rupert Herman's Doc Jackson, makers of everything from the Butterfly Tickler to the Black 18-Inch Double Dong.
Paul Cutshaw's Royal Publishing was situated among these corporate giants. His company was small by comparison, but he still managed to fill two converted warehouses with magazines, offices, and employees.
I parked and studied the exterior of the buildings. When I knew Paul he had only one warehouse. Somewhere along the way he had expanded and purchased the sister building. A glass-enclosed walkway connected the two structures. They were gray brick, totally unassuming. They could have been packaging dried flowers in there for all anyone could tell. There were no guards, no watchdogs
. No signs warning off trespassers. It was just a simple little business that dealt in fuck books.
I entered the main warehouse and walked along giant shelves stacked high with pallets of magazine cartons. Warehouse men worked through the building, but none of them paid me any heed.
Paul Cutshaw saw me through the glass window of his office and immediately came out and approached me, his hand outstretched, a big smile on his face. We met in the middle of the warehouse and shook hands warmly. Cutshaw looked like he hadn't aged a day in the last twelve years. He was a tall guy, a little on the geeky side. He had bright blue eyes and an expansive smile that made you want to like him and, more importantly, trust him. He was a great salesman because he believed every word he ever said. They were usually all true.
"Nick Bracken . . . son of a bitch . . . I never thought I'd see you again. What the hell happened to you?"
"I got out of the business a long time ago."
"No, I mean your face. What happened to your face?"
"Car accident."
"Not been your week, has it?"
"That's for sure."
We turned and walked toward Paul's office.
"Nasty business about you and Candy," he said.
"It's a frame job."
"What happened?" He seemed to be accepting the possibility that I was innocent, but I couldn't read him for sure. He seemed to be reserving judgment until the facts were in. He would have made a good juror.
"I spent the night with the girl," I said. "The next day they found her dead body and the murder weapon in my Dumpster. Someone set me up."
"Sounds like you're in deep shit."
"What did you know about this woman?"
"Only what I read in the magazines."
Paul reached into a box on a skid and pulled out a random magazine. He waved it in the air in front of me. It was a high quality piece of slick color porn entitled Sluts in Uniform.
"Sluts in Uniform . . . Candy's in it."
He handed me the magazine and I flipped through it quickly. It was her all right. She was doing the same things in this magazine that she had done with me in the privacy of my home, only she was doing them with a wide variety of men and women, the lights were on, and people were taking pictures of the show.
We continued to walk down the aisle. Paul reached into sample boxes on each skid that we passed and handed me magazines. They all featured Candice Bishop, usually under the pseudonym Kandy Kane. Paul read off the titles as he handed them to me.
"Aerobic Orgasms, Thrill Fuckers, Love Suckers, Blacks and Blondes, Pulp Friction, Backdoor Women, Load Warriors, Shaved Fun, Climax #2, Wet Blondes, you name it, Candy was in it. She could have been as big as Seka. She was one of the busiest models in the business until about six months ago. We couldn't print 'em as fast as she was shooting them. We'll be coming out with fresh layouts of her for another couple of years."
"What happened six months ago? Why did she drop out?"
"She didn't drop out. She was forced out. Drugs caught up with her. What else? She had a coke problem for a long time, but when she finally got popular she went totally out of control. Nobody could work with her. She did a whole Marilyn Monroe trip, showing up hours late, when she showed up at all, blitzed out of her mind, throwing tantrums, extorting extra cash in the middle of shoots. None of my guys would use her. She ended up scabbing with a few of the fringe shooters for a little while, then she dropped out of sight about five or six months ago. I don't know what happened to her after that. Until a few days ago, of course."
I let the comment pass. I was sure there was no accusation intended. Not from a guy like Paul Cutshaw. He may not have known what happened to Candice when she left the porn business, but I knew. She had ended up titty-dancing at The Eight Ball for dollar bills until they couldn't take any more of her shenanigans either, but there was no point in sharing that information with Paul.
"Who were the last guys to work with her?" I asked.
"Funny, I just got a call this morning from Nate Boritzer offering me a still package that he's touting as 'Candy's Last Session.' He said the shots are only a month old, but I'd bet they're older. I had heard she was doing a lot of S-and-M stuff with him after she dropped out of the mainstream, but the market was so saturated with her image he couldn't move the chromes. I got the feeling he was just trying to peddle leftovers, but it'll be worth a look. Candy's going to be hot again for the next few months."
"Yeah."
We entered Paul's office. It was large and plush. Leather furniture, warm colors, family photos everywhere. There was no sign of porn in this inner sanctum.
"Drink?" Paul offered.
"No thanks," I said. I'd had enough to drink for a while.
"Have a seat."
I sat down on a soft burgundy sofa. Paul sat behind a large oak desk. He reminded me of Lou a little. The business was what he liked. He barely noticed what he was selling. He was just a big, goofy guy, happy to be alive and making money. A family man, working to put his kids through college.
"What's the story on this Nate guy?" I asked.
"Real lowlife. I tried to put him to work when he first hit town a few years ago . . . didn't work out. Booze, dope, messing with the models, he broke all the rules. A first-class burnout. I let him go after three months. He went freelance. His stuff's okay, sometimes. I buy something occasionally."
"Where can I find him?"
"He's got an old warehouse down in Venice. My secretary can give you the address. But I don't know what you're going to find out from him."
"I don't either. But I've got to start somewhere."
"He's a real head case," Paul said. "You'll be lucky if he even talks to you."
I looked around the room at all the family photos. Forty years of history stared back at me. Paul had well documented his life. He loved his family and he loved his friends and they were all up there on the wall to see.
"You still with Gloria?" I asked, wanting to get off the subject of the murder.
"Nineteen years next month. Johnny turned sixteen two weeks ago, Sarah will be twelve in March. But you never met Sarah, did you?"
"No."
"They're great kids. They're the greatest. What about you? Ever settle down and get married?"
"Not yet."
"No kids?"
"'Fraid not."
"What are you waiting for?"
"I don't think I'm cut out for the domestic life."
"That's what it's all about, you know, Nick? All this other stuff, the buildings, the businesses, movies, TV, sports, they're just distractions from the important things. Civilization has confused us as to what our real purpose is. Family, Nick. You gotta have family. They get you through the rough times."
"I just haven't met the right person yet."
"It'll happen for you. She's out there."
I changed the subject again. I was even more uncomfortable talking about family than I was talking about pornography and murder. I noticed a picture of Paul with one of his ex-partners from long ago.
"Whatever happened to Elliot Silver?" I asked.
"He died in '89. Colon cancer."
"That's too bad."
"Yeah. I miss him, but it seemed like some kind of perverse justice the way he went."
"How's that?"
"Everybody always used to tell me what an asshole Elliot was."
We both laughed. It was a short, nervous jolt of laughter that reminded me of the old days. Elliot had been a bit of an asshole. Paul was the class of the act, but Elliot did what had to be done. Deep down he was an okay guy. I could tell that Paul's affection for the man was sincere, despite his words. Paul's eyes showed a little more moisture when he stopped laughing than he would care to acknowledge. I decided not to continue about Elliot.
"Do you ever see David Rink anymore?" I asked.
Paul's expression darkened.
"No. I don't see David anymore. He's my main competition now, but I never see him. We had a falling out."
"David's still in the business?"
"David is the business nowadays. He's into it all, loops, features, videos, mags, he's even got a chain of stores going."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Maybe you should look him up. Candy did some work for him too."
"David knew Candice Bishop?"
"Everybody knew Candy."
PART X
"Look who's back from the dead."
—David Rink
1
I got Nate Boritzer s address from Paul's secretary and went down to meet the man. I wasn't ready to see David Rink again. Not yet. Maybe not ever. That was an encounter I was hoping to avoid altogether. We had unfinished business that I had no interest in finishing. I wanted to exhaust as many possibilities as I could before I opened those old wounds.
Nate Boritzer was living in a small warehouse near the beach on the Venice boardwalk, just south of Santa Monica. The Santa Ana winds and the smoke from the fires had driven everyone in the city to the ocean. I had to pay ten bucks just for a parking space.
It didn't take long to find Nate Boritzer's building. He was in the heart of it all. He had quite a blatant location for a semi-pro pornographer. He probably went crazy looking at all that hot flesh strutting itself on the beach in front of his building. Then again, maybe he managed to do some recruiting from his perch by the ocean. I walked around the warehouse to see what I could see. I found a few filth-caked windows at ground level that hadn't been boarded up or painted over. I rubbed the dirt off one and looked inside.
The place was as different from the warehouses I had just left as it could possibly be. It was ramshackle and almost completely empty. Cobwebs were everywhere. Multicolored paint remnants of various shoots splattered the floors. A man I assumed to be Nate Boritzer was asleep on a cot in the middle of the main room. He looked unwashed, unkempt, and unloved. Sunlight filtered through a skylight above and a few broken windows around the circumference of the building. A half-empty bottle of Bacardi 151 and about eighty cigarette butts were on the floor around the cot. There was no other furniture visible in the entire room. Nate's breathing was heavy, punctuated by an occasional grinding snore.