Tell No Lie, We Watched Her Die

by Richard Sanders

  Two bullets tore into the Audi’s roof. Another popped off my hood.

  I ran for it. No way to get back to my car. I hit the sidewalk, the pavement bulging and rippling, as gunshots ricocheted off the walls. The sound of a pair of pounding feet were hard behind me.

  A building with a fire-gutted front stood 20 feet away. An alley opened right next to it. I jerked into the turn. In the middle of the alley a kid was spray painting red graffiti on an open metal door.

  The Storm Trooper guy reached the alley nine seconds later. Halfway up, just as he passed the door, I swung it open and yelled hey. When he whirled around I sprayed a good gush of red paint in his eyes. Blinded, he went to raise his gun. I kicked him in the stomach and chopped him in the back of the neck. The gun fell to the ground. So did he.

  The kid crept out of the doorway. I gave him back the paint and the euros I’d promised, picked up the gun and went back to the street. The Audi was gone.

  I jogged to my car and took off, stopping a couple minutes later to toss the gun in one of the canals. Thinking: What the hell was this? Some kind of bizarre random coincidence? Or something connected like conjoined twins to my visit with Arnoud Shuyler?

  >>>>>>

  THREE CALLS

  By the time I got back to New York, I was casting a heavy vote for the connection theory. Louisa showed me the reports from European sites: Arnoud was dead. He’d been shot inside his home, discovered a few hours after I’d left him. The Amsterdam-Amstelland police said the incident bore all the marks of an attempted robbery, although they hadn’t yet determined if anything was missing.

  So much darkness in the world these days. Darkness all around.

  And so much for the Amanda Eston video. This was one piss-shot effort.

  Three hours after I’d landed, though, I got a call from a Gisela Westerveldt. She was an officer with van de Politie Amsterdam-Amstelland, investigating Arnoud’s death. The appointment calendar they’d found on his computer showed he was scheduled to meet with me on the afternoon he was killed. Had the meeting taken place, and if so, why?

  I told her the truth—I was bidding on the infamous Amanda Eston video. How about other visitors? Did I see anyone in or near the house before or after I’d left? No, but I told her about the Audi and the BMW. Why didn’t I report it?

  Sorry about that, but considering Arnoud’s background, I thought going to the police might kill the deal, so to speak. Gisela wasn’t thrilled, but she lightened up a bit when I gave her full descriptions of the fish faced guy with the skull cap and the gaunt Storm Trooper gunman.

  What about phone calls? she said. According to Arnoud’s records, I’d made three calls to him. Correct—the first was my initial contact with him, the second to tell him I’d be flying in to see him, the third from the hotel.

  Each time I’d called, said Gisela, Arnoud had made a flurry of calls to three other people. Maybe I could help with that.

  Do you know a Heiko Krueger?

  No.”

  Farig al-Esayi?

  “No.”

  Grady Alexander?

  I hesitated a second. Arnoud’s words: an American collector.

  “No.”

  We talked a few more minutes. Did Arnoud seem anxious? Uneasy? Overly defensive? No, no and no.

  The minute the call ended I started digging for Grady Alexander. I couldn’t find a thing, at least not on a Grady Alexander who wasn’t deceased. I asked one of our reporters, Kumiko Davis, a search genius, for help. Even she had trouble—there was no listing for him anywhere, no phone number, no nothing. All she could come up with was a single database-buried reference. Two years ago, Grady Alexander had purchased a parcel of land in LA.

  California, here I come.

  >>>>>>>>>>>>

  CHAPTER 2

  THIS AMNESIA FOG

  PURPLE BLUES

  Real Story had a Smithsonian’s worth of bio files on Amanda Eston. I spent my flight time going through them, trying to get a better picture of her life.

  •She grows up in small-town Virginia, in a family where stability is as rare as money. Her father leaves her mother when Amanda is 3. She and her 1-year-old sister are cared for by a shuttle bus of relatives, sometimes including her mother.

  •Two years later, her father commits suicide.

  •Amanda develops an interest in performing, taking every free community-center class she can find in acting, singing and dancing.

  •When Amanda is 9, her mother is committed to a mental institution. The girl and her sister, Tasha, are raised thereafter by their Aunt Renee, their mother’s sister.

  •Amanda lands her first professional job, playing a sick child in a commercial for St. Joseph’s Aspirin for children. She also finds vocal work in several cartoon specials.

  •A day before Amanda’s 12th birthday, her mother kills herself in a halfway house.

  •At 14, Amanda wins a full scholarship to the Virginia School of the Performing Arts. She becomes a brilliant but troubled student, repeatedly disciplined for drinking, drug use, body piercing and sexual activity. In her junior year she’s hospitalized for a drug overdose and expelled from the school. “She was very bright and very talented,” one of her teachers says later, “but she couldn’t stay away from the dark side.”

  •At 17, she goes to LA and, lying about her age, gets a job as a Hooters waitress. After working four months, she auditions for the lead in a new Disney Channel comedy, Bunny Hops. She wins the role of Bunny Beresford, a normal middle school student growing up in a likeably crazy family. Bunny Hops eventually draws 2.5 million viewers each episode, turning into the Disney Channel’s highest rated program. Amanda Eston becomes a household tween name.

  •After a thee-year run and a blistering disagreement with Disney, Amanda walks away from Bunny Hops. She joins the cast of a new teen drama, The Fit, about backstabbing students competing in a high school for fashion and design. Reviews are terrible, but the show becomes a widely watched guilty pleasure. Teen girls en masse begin to dress and act like Amanda. Many use makeup to imitate her mole and her fleshy lips. Requests for plastic mouth surgery among teens rises eight percent. In an interview, Amanda says she uses Blistex lip balm to maintain that pouty look. Blistex sales jump 12 percent.

  •Meeting a part-time grip in a local bar, Amanda sets off on her first public romance. The on-off affair lasts half a year, until the grip returns to his wife. Paparazzi footage shows Amanda looking dazed and out of it as she stumbles in and out of clubs.

  •She launches her own clothing and jewelry line for teens, Amandawear. At a press conference announcing the launch, Amanda is pale and nearly incoherent and close to passing out. Later that week she checks herself into Cedars-Sinai for what her publicist calls exhaustion and a touch of the flu.

  •During the holiday season months later, Amanda volunteers at soup kitchens and clothing give-aways. Her new publicist admits the hospitalization was the result of a nervous breakdown. “She realizes that helping people, giving back to the community, is a way to get back to health.” Amandawear grosses $5 million during the holidays alone.

  •An Amanda Eston story runs on the cover of Real Story, the first of many. She wins an Emmy during the second season of The Fit, and at the end of the season makes her first film, The Fit Movie. It pulls in $40 million on its opening weekend.

  •She quickly follows up with I’m Still Waiting, a loose remake of the 1962 Sandra Dee comedy, If A Man Answers. The film stays in the No. 1 slot for four weeks. Amanda refuses to sign for another season of The Fit and takes on a series of older, more challenging movie roles. Most reviewers go into swan-dive swoons. ”You’d go to see some actresses,” writes one, “to watch them read the phone book. You’d go to see Amanda Eston just to watch her thumb through the phone book.” She appears on the cover of Elle and is included in Vanity Fair’s Annual Hollywood Issue. Six months later she gets her own Vanity Fair cover. By then, she’s been on five Real Story covers.

  •Production
of her fourth movie, Faking The Waves, is delayed when the director insists she gets drug and alcohol treatment. “I don’t want to do what they’ve done with other young actors,” he says, “which is give them money to kill themselves.” Her treatment doesn’t quite take. Amanda begins dating one of her Faking The Waves costars and reportedly tries to kill herself with an overdose when filming ends. Rumors of breakdowns and blackouts surface in high volume. She’s seen with a new guy every month. She gets engaged but breaks it off two months later, reportedly after suffering a miscarriage.

  •In one well-publicized incident, she delays the production of her sixth film, Call And Response, when she fails to show up on the set for two weeks. As an excuse, she cites just about every emotional malady listed in the DSM. She buys the cast and crew lavish gifts when she comes back to work and makes a large charitable contribution in the producers’ names.

  •Her younger sister, Tasha, a marketing student, moves to LA to look out for her. Doesn’t work. Amanda is arrested on three DUI’s in the space of a month. Urged by her new publicist, she issues an apology to her fans. There’s no need. Her fanbase understands and forgives her. They see a fragility and loneliness in her, and an almost naïve sense of wonder about the world. Combine that with her reputation for generosity, they treat her like the second incarnation of the Virgin Mary. Her new perfume, With Love From Amanda, sets a fragrance-market retail record in the first three months.

  •She wins a Golden Globe for Call And Response. A day later, she’s rushed to the hospital for what her publicist says is a bad reaction to medication. Months later, in an interview arranged by her new publicist, Amanda admits it was an overdose. “I really thought that was it, I was on the way out,” she says, “My problem is connecting, connecting with another human being. I just can’t do it. I just can’t seem to connect with another person.”

  •She’s cast in Days Of Reckoning, playing a woman who, trying to reconcile with her father, imagines what he was like in the various stages of his life. Her father is played by an actor her own age, L.C. Martin. They become involved on the first day of filming. “I wasn’t even thinking about it,” L.C. says, “and I don’t think she was either. Our bodies were doing the talking.”

  •The couple gets married on the set, on the day the film wraps. Real Story gets the exclusive. “It’s really important to have someone who can remind you who you are,” she told us. “I can run myself insane, but he always brings me back. He always lets me know who I really am.”

  •Her Aunt Renee, who raised her and her sister, dies in Virginia. When Amanda finds out the family doesn’t have enough money to bury her, she flies the body and her relatives to LA for the funeral. Renee is interred in a pink marble crypt in a cemetery near Amanda’s home.

  •After 11 months of marriage, Amanda and L.C. file for divorce. The usual suspect, irreconcilable differences, is cited as the cause.

  •At a charity event for the homeless, Amanda passes out. She’s admitted to a rehab. “She’s come to understand,” says her new publicist, “that her ongoing recovery from addiction requires special treatment.”

  •After three days in rehab, Amanda checks out and disappears. She issues a statement saying that she needs “an extended vacation” and that she’s canceling plans for her next movie, Purple Blues. Her sister goes on TV and through tears and sobs pleads with Amanda to get help for her “serious emotional problems.”

  •Back in LA, Amanda reportedly starts seeing Nevada governor Robby Walsh, a politician best known for his fundraising ability. The rumors are denied on both sides, though Amanda teasingly tells a reporter she’s “passionately interested in politics.”

  •She holds a press conference to announce that Purple Blues is back on track. She appears happy and relaxed in what will turn out to be her last public appearance.

  •Three nights later, her bodyguard makes a routine call to her house to see if she’s all right. There’s no answer. Rushing to the house, the bodyguard finds her nude on the bed, face down, with no pulse. The police are called. An overdose of pralicin is ruled as the COD, although no bottles of pralicin or bags containing traces of the drug are found in the house. Police speculate that the drug was bought on the street and immediately ingested.

  And then she was buried. I remember her funeral, remember covering the story, remember the hysteria it brought out. One of our more scabrous competitors offered the paps $1 million for a shot of her in her casket. The funeral, as a result, was guarded like a military base. Only 35 guests were invited and they were all subject to searches. Cell phones and pocketbooks had to be surrendered. Undercover security kept watch for the appearance of cameras and recording devices.

  Still, it was said to be a beautiful ceremony. The arrangements had been made by L.C. Martin, who said he’d kept in touch with Amanda even after their divorce. L.C. delivered the eulogy, after which a dozen doves were released in the air. Amanda Eston was also interred in a pink marble crypt, on the plot next to her Aunt Renee. Back home again.

  >>>>>>

  SPARK THE QUARKS

  I checked into the Chateau Marmont, then drove out to the Real Story bureau in Brentwood, on Wilshire, and picked up the Fedex package I’d sent to myself. Inside was my Glock 9. I wasn’t going to try to find the possible collector without it. After that little dust-up in Amsterdam, after the deal Arnoud Shuyler made with mortality, I felt a need for preventative measures.

  Grady Alexander had bought a parcel of land in Topanga Canyon, in the mountains near Malibu. The sun started splitting into endless shafts of light and shadow as I drove up the all-tree terrain. It took about 40 minutes to find the road listed on the title—a reclusive dirt path with as many twists and turns as an elephant’s colonoscopy.

  Finally I came to a simple, low-walled structure built with plain pine panels, sliding doors and screens, and a thatched roof, surrounded by trees and vines and underbrush years past clearing.

  It was like coming across a Shinto temple in the woods.

  My knock was answered by a young, long-haired ascetic with a moustache and goatee, wearing a Yukata-style kimono. He walked with a lopsided gait—one of his legs was shorter than the other.

  He looked at me like I was loaded down with Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets.

  “My name’s Quinn McShane. From Real Story.”

  Didn’t do much for his mood. If his suspicion could kill plantlife, his property would look like the moon.

  “I was dealing with Arnoud Shuyler,” I went on. “I was dealing with him, sorry to say, just before he died.”

  “I know. I know who you are.” He put his hands inside his kimono pockets. “How did you find me? Nobody’s supposed to know who I am.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  As Grady thought about this, I noticed something about him. Maybe he wasn’t exactly stoned, but he was definitely stony.

  “My thought was, maybe I can deal directly with you,” I said. “Now that the middleman’s been eliminated.”

  No response.

  “Of course, I don’t know if the video’s still around. I don’t know if it was stolen from Arnoud’s house.”

  “Arnie never had the original. All he had were clips. I still have it.” Quick add: “But not here.”

  “He told you what we were offering?”

  Grady nodded. “Twelve.”

  Oops. Neither confirm nor deny.

  “It’s a lot of money,” I said. “I’m sure you don’t want to pass that up.”

  “I don’t want to do anything. Not now. Not after what happened to Arnie. I don’t need that level of weirdness.”

  A ringtone went off. He reached in the kimono for his cell. The music was a sinuous, desert-stark, guitar-trance sound, Middle-Eastern blues. I recognized it: the Libyan group, Tinariwen.

  Grady gimped away from the door, taking the call inside. I followed him.

  Except for a 54-inch screen on one wall showing lava-lamp images, the furniture was Japanese basic. Small bloc
ky tables. Short wooden benches. The window screens and the trees outside threw shifts of light and shade on the floor.

  “I’ve got some RD-17 coming in,” Grady was saying. “It’s robust, full bodied… Yeah, from Perkasa, from the Indonesian guy… It’s a little heavier than that, lots of undertones.”

  Still looking around, I saw a counter loaded with Ziploc bags. Each baggie was labeled and filled with pills. There had to be thousands of capsules sitting there.

  “I still have plenty of TT-44… It’s very nice, very clean and cool. More topping to it, more essence… No, no, just the opposite. Really sparks the quarks in your head. Good for creativity. You want to work on that screenplay, I’d go with the TT… Okay, let me know. I can do you either way.”