Tell No Lie, We Watched Her Die

by Richard Sanders

  A brass-grilled door took us into the house, into a wide sunlit hallway. We went past a library-study, a couple of guest bedrooms, all built again on the non-mountain side.

  The guard dropped me off in the drawing room—which, really, was less suited for drawing than for constructing 600-seat Airbuses. A quick glance: thick roof beams of foxtail pine, a large white granite (of course) fireplace, a Steinway grand piano, various settings of couches and chairs decorated with geometric dream-catcher mandalas, artsy groupings of beaded Paiute baskets, a long red oak Mission table and chairs at one end, a pair of arches leading to the rest of the house. Probably take five minutes to walk to the end of the room and back.

  Lobbyist—I’ve gotta get into this line of work.

  There were two people in the room, standing by the Mission table. One was a grave, Armani-suited woman with a pair of rimless glasses, a green leather attaché case and a head of hair that looked like black cotton candy.

  She introduced herself. “Esther Lazarev. Mr. Walsh’s attorney.”

  The other was Mr. Walsh himself. Six-foot-four, conventionally handsome, big downshock of Bobby Kennedy hair covering his forehead, rocking on the balls of his feet like he was putting the universe on notice that he was standing in its center. His was wearing a white linen suit with a turquoise T-shirt. He’d watched too much Don Johnson growing up.

  At least the T-shirt picked up his eyes, which were big and blue and filled with some liquidy brightness. And with nothing else. There was absolutely no expression in his eyes, just this cool, smooth vacuum of a look.

  A perfect politician’s face.

  >>>>>>

  To give him equal time, here’s Robby’s mini-bio:

  •One thing you can say about him, he can play basketball. He distinguishes himself in school as a point guard with exceptional ball handling skills. Unfortunately, his list of accomplishments ends there. A piss-poor student of epic proportions, Robby just manages to bumble through high school, college and a third-rate law school. He graduates with zero prospects. But he does something smart.

  •He marries Leah Hagler. Which is to say, he becomes Ken Hagler’s son-in-law. Hagler, a state senator who was first elected around the time Moses was pulled out of the bulrushes, has become one of Nevada’s most powerful pols. With Hagler’s backing, Robby gets elected to the state legislature.

  •Accusations of fraud are raised before, during and after the election. The charges run the gamut from vote buying and exploitation of voter confusion to ballot stuffing, missing ballots and intentional distribution of misinformation.

  •Frequently absent, rarely casting a vote and demonstrating almost no understanding of issues, Robby is as inept in Carson City as he was in school. But he endears himself with one quality—he’s a truly gifted fundraiser. People might not respect his record but they sure do like him and they shell out the cash to prove it. Robby amply pads the war chests of fellow politicians, especially his own.

  •On the strength of his campaign spending and Ken Hagler’s influence, Robby is elected to Congress and then as governor of Nevada.

  •Almost overnight, the level of bribery and kickbacks in Carson City increases threefold, according to law enforcement sources. Questions come up about construction contracts and leasing deals. Blogs and op-ed pages go ballistic when Robby’s wife, Leah, is appointed to a job in the Department of Natural Resources, even though she failed a state hiring exam.

  •The State Attorney General launches an investigation into Robby’s alleged corruption. Robby publicly defies the AG to prove a goddamn thing. His approval rating drops to 27%.

  •By the time Robby is linked with Amanda Eston, the Justice Department has joined the party. They’re looking into the charges of payoffs and shakedowns from a federal racketeering viewpoint. His alleged ties to organized crime are of particular interest. Rumors surface that the investigation is going wider than Robby’s pay-for-play schemes. He could also be involved in conspiracies to commit murder.

  •Robby is convicted on a variety of RICO charges, including conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and solicitations of bribery. More rumors: Ken Hagler engineered the conviction to punish Robby for cheating on his daughter with Amanda Eston. In any case, Robby does his three years, then reinvents himself as a lobbyist. He now represents land development firms, credit unions and gaming organizations. He’s still dependent, it’s said, on the good graces of his father-in-law.

  >>>>>>

  Yeah, Robby was one cool blank, and I had no doubt he could maintain that expression, or lack of one, for hours, days, months, years. But about a minute into this conversation, when he said he assumed I’d talked to L.C. Martin and all I said was yes, those empty eyes got filled fast and he worked himself into full fledged hissy fit. Fascinating transformation: It started with his mouth, a pissy pursing of the lips, a muscular contraction that seemed to slowly stir the rest of his body, seemed to work it up and set his eyes on fire, until, moments later, he was snarling like a tiger with a dart in its ass.

  “What right, what goddamn right does he have to fuck with my life?” Robby said. “What right does some washed up actor have to keep fucking with my life all these years like this?”

  His lawyer, Esther Lazarev, tugged nervously on her Armani sleeve. “Robby…”

  “You know why he keeps doing this, you know why. Out of jealousy. Out of petty fucking jealousy.”

  Esther looked at me. “You said on the phone this was off-the-record?”

  “I said it could be.”

  “It is.”

  “I don’t care,” said Robby. “He’s been saying this shit about me for years, and for years nobody’s believed him. And with good right. Cause these things, these things he says, they have no subtlety to them, they have no fucking nuance.”

  “Robby,” said Esther, “let me talk.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then decided she wasn’t there.

  “For years, but I’m still here. I’m still kicking it. You see me? You see me standing here? I’m still alive. I’m still fucking unobliterated.”

  Esther released a profound but considered sigh.

  Robby stopped, let his bile level out a bit.

  “So you talked to him,” he said to me. “He told you all about his theories.”

  “I thought it was worth some inquiry.”

  “And do you understand them? Do you understand the, the fucking mechanics of them? The weird algebra of how all this could possibly have happened?”

  “I’m not sure. Why I’m talking to you.”

  “Well I’ll tell you. They make no sense because I’m innocent. Was innocent, am innocent, remain innocent. I remain very, VERY innocent!”

  “Robby!” said Esther. “Will you shut up and let me talk?”

  He stalked away from us, feelings hurt.

  Esther faced me. “Let me tell you how I see conditions here. The accusations Mr. Martin has continuously made against my client have no basis in fact, and in point of fact border on the…”

  I watched Robby while she talked, watched him wander over to a telescope that was tripoded in front of a window. He stared at a garden outside the glass—cactus, white granite boulders, sagebrush with white, yellow and pink flowers, tiny yellow and orange-tinged fiddleneck blooms, pink rose-like desert peach flowers.

  “…he’s kept himself aboveboard,” Esther was saying, “and he’s worked very hard at it all this time.”

  Robby swiveled around. “Some might dispute how hard I’ve worked, I know that. But I have. I’ve worked hard despite what happened to me, despite assholes like L.C. fucking Martin. I worked hard, and this is what I got for it.” He stretched his arms to take in—I don’t know—the room, the house, the nation. “This is what I earned.”

  I settled for the house. “Some place you’ve got. What I like about it is that it’s not ostentatious in any way, shape or form.”

  “And I’m not letting some has-been shithead actor take it away f
rom me.” He came back to the Mission table. “Some guy who, let’s face it, is lost in some years-ago time warp, who in his eyes still thinks he’s going for an Academy Award.”

  “Robby,” said Esther.

  “Of course, if you believe what he’s saying—and maybe you do, how do I know—but if you happen to believe what he’s saying about me, then at least accord me the respect of acknowledging that there’s another point of fucking view here.”

  “I didn’t say I believed him,” I said. “I don’t even know if he’s believable.”

  Esther jumped all over that. “I’m glad you brought that up.” She began pulling paperwork out of her green leather attaché. “We wanted to talk to you about believability. Believability specifically as regards to the video. If L.C. Martin is planning in any way to identify my client as the other participant in the video, we’re going to dispute him. We’re going to fiercely dispute him. Robby had nothing to do with the video.”

  Robby was staring at the papers on the table. He seemed to be pausing, trying to take a reading of some inner gauge. Then he turned and walked away again.

  “How can people look at that thing,” he muttered. “It’s a horrible thing to watch.”

  Esther consulted her notes. “We’ve done our due diligence. We’ve gone over the entire one minute and 18 seconds of the video. We’ve examined it frame by frame.”

  Robby sauntered over to the grand piano. A vase of sagebrush flowers, yellow with pink centers, sat on the lid, along with a pair of shears. He picked up the shears and began trimming the stems of the flowers.

  “Permit me to point a few things out to you,” said Esther. “First, the lighting in the bedroom is quite poor. It’s so dim that any conclusions drawn would immediately invoke reasonable doubt. In addition, the male’s face is never seen. There’s no full facial exposure, there aren’t even flashes of his profile. And finally, his voice is never heard. Not a peep. No one can possibly identify the male as my client. It’s not him.”

  “It’s not me,” Robby yelled from the piano.

  “All this shows,” I said, “is that identity is inconclusive. It doesn’t mean it isn’t him.”

  “That brings us to the question of distinguishing marks,” said Esther. “I’m referring to the wine-colored pigmentation. The genital birthmark. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “We’re prepared to offer testimony that my client bears no such growth on any part of his body. We’re prepared to offer sworn testimony from his wife and from himself. He has no such birthmark.”

  “Can you prove it hasn’t been removed in the past five years?”

  Esther got stung. “That’s offensive. That’s truly disgusting. I really think you’ve crossed a boundary.”

  “I’m just asking a question.”

  “Same fucking thing,” yelled Robby. He put the shears down and came back to the table. “It’s not me. I wasn’t there. And if you publish anything that says to the contrary, you’ll have the best and biggest fucking lawsuit in the recorded fucking history of the world on your head!”

  “No need to shout.”

  “I’m making a point.”

  “It’s a legitimate means of emphasis,” said Esther.

  “I’m not publishing anything at this point,” I said. “I’m just trying to find the original video.”

  This ushered in a few seconds of silence. We suddenly seemed to have an awkward moment among us.

  Esther began stuffing papers back in her case. “How’s that going for you?”

  “Not bad.”

  Robby shifted on his feet. “Do you know where it is?”

  I looked at him. “Not yet, no.”

  “You can tell us,” said Esther. “It’s off-the-record.”

  “I’m still running it down.”

  I was lying, of course, and they both seemed to sense it.

  Robby stood still. He looked like he was searching for something inside himself.

  “I personally hope it never comes out,” he said. “I think that would be best, you know, for everybody’s sake.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean it’s just a piece of voyeuristic trash. It’s a dishonor to her memory. It disgraces who she was.”

  “Don’t say anything else,” said Esther.

  “Let’s go right at it,” I said. “Were you involved with her?”

  “Don’t answer that!”

  “Off-the-record.”

  “I think she was a wonderful actress,” said Robby, “and a wonderful and generous person. That’s my only comment.”

  “So maybe you were, maybe you weren’t involved.”

  “I said what I said.”

  “How about Ken Hagler? Was he involved in anything about her?”

  “Robby.”

  Robby laughed. “My father-in-law? This has nothing to do with me and my father-in-law. This has nothing to do with me and Amanda. Has everything to do with me and your friend L.C. Martin.”

  “I don’t think I’d call him a friend.”

  “Good. Cause me, I wouldn’t wanna be anywhere around that fuck-faced amoeba right now. I mean what does he feel when he talks about me? Does he feel some kind of glee in it?”

  “I have no idea what he feels.”

  “Well fuck him. I don’t care. I really don’t care. I mean if he was dying right in front of me, if he was choking on his own vomit, I wouldn’t do a thing to help him.”

  “Robby, no more.”

  “No, check that. I would do something. I’d puke in his mouth and help him finish the task. I’d puke in his mouth and stand there laughing while he died.”

  The lobbyist, methinks, doth protest too much.

  >>>>>>

  Driving back to Reno, I remembered a client we once had at the agency, back in my investigation days. She’d hired us to catch her husband cheating on her. Which we did. Many, many times. Finally she just gave up. Women, she said, will be the death of him.

  Turns out she was right, but not in the way she intended.

  One day, as he was crossing the street, he saw a gorgeous woman standing off to the right.

  He never saw the car coming the other way until it hit him.

  >>>>>>

  HOW DO YOU DRESS FOR SUICIDE?

  I needed a break. I needed a time out from all this hollow-eyed, bone-scraping confrontation. Things were getting a little too intense. I called Tasha Eston. She’d said to let her know if I found anything out. We talked about Norridge Morris—yes, her sister’s stalker was now the design muse behind Crazy Face. We talked about Robby Walsh, the dry-air insanity of that scene. She asked what I was doing now, did I have time to grab a bite? Great. Pick her up at her apartment and we’d get some dinner.

  Tasha lived in West Hollywood, in a yellow-walled apartment that combined the living room and kitchen into one big space, with a landscaped balcony offering up a soul-singing view of the Hollywood Hills.

  She was on her cell when she let me in. “You can’t say it’s made from peat moss…” she was saying. “Cause it associates with bogs and swamps. Fertilizer. Compost… No, say it’s made from sphagnum—it’s much better. Or just moss…”

  One wall of the living room was stacked with samples of the organic products she repped. Shampoo, conditioner, styling creams, texturizing gels, moisturizers, cleansers, body treatments, lipstick, eye shadow, bronzers. A basket of folded laundry sat on the kitchen table. The apartment smelled like nutmeg and lemon, and so did she.

  “I don’t want to get caught on the sorry end of a trend, that’s all…”

  Another living room wall was cubed up with photos, mostly of Amanda. Studio portraits. Casual shots. Amanda riding a roller coaster with Tasha, sparring with L.C., things like that. Then there were other photos, older ones. Adults in stiff poses, with empty, shadowed smiles. Family photos? A gallery of the dead?

  Yes—when she got off the phone she pointed out who was who. Her mother. He
r father. The uncle who’d shot himself with her father’s .38. The cousin who’d killed her sleeping son and then herself. Aunt Renee with the son who’d jumped off the tallest building in Richmond. Grim etc., etc.

  “The family thing,” I said, “she couldn’t escape it.”

  “No.”

  “But you could?”

  “Took work.”

  That’s how we end ended up at the kitchen table, laundry basket moved to the counter. Tasha made fresh ground, fresh brewed organic coffee.

  It was the night for her, she said, always during the night. The nightmares started when she was a kid, got worse as she got older. Nightmares all night long—the faces of her mother, father and the others. The images of her father’s blood-soaked sheet, the noose her mother had made out of a bedsheet.