“Does adult film mean what I think it means?”
Scott shrugs. “I guess.”
“I mean, like, in-your-face, close-up, scorchingly lit photography, women with legs spread, guys with dicks out, tits, ass, group fuck—”
Scott interrupts me, sounding muffled. “I guess.”
“Well, this isn’t exactly . . . Maybe you’d know.”
“How in hell would I know?”
“Listen to this: ‘Marcus Broussard, cutting-edge director-producer of the voyeur-film movement, late 1990s, organizer of the group Casualty. His company, Directionless, based in Tenerife, made six films combining reality with anime, art, painting, Picasso, Chagall, Stella, Arbus, comic-huckster Tradu. Wild, intense, way, way out. Unzip. Adult Industry Revu.’ ”
“Son of a bitch.” Scott waits a minute, then asks, “Surreal sex movies. So where does that get us?”
“And here’s for the good, boring Marcus: ‘Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Central California Land Bank, founder of that bank, founder of the Stockton Credit Association, the Stockton Loan Group, Central California Title,’ and more and more and blah, blah. ‘Mr. Broussard is active in many volunteer organizations . . .’ and it lists a whole bunch with names like Jobs Ahoy and Growth into Management. The only faintly interesting one is the Cross-Cultural Museum; he was a trustee of that. Oh, and ‘Trustee of Egypt Regained, a museum devoted to Ancient Egypt.’
“Which Marcus would you rather be stuck in an elevator with?”
Scott is silent, and I wait, staring down at the page. “Do you think Marcus Broussard was a double personality?” he says.
“Yeah, I sure do.”
“He was a writer, too,” Scott says after a minute. “He talked about the writing as if it were a joke on all of us. Like he was especially planning to write up the story of the dig.”
Scott sounds thoughtful. “I sure would like to get my hands on that, but I’m not sure he ever really did it. More, just threatened to.”
Below this there’s a fragment of what looks like Google information. Or maybe a biographical line from a catalog. “DANIELLE BERTOLUSCI has given lecture courses at Oxford, University of London, and Yale. She is the author of nine articles on the historic placement of British Museum Egyptian texts and is a consutant to the Luxor Museum.”
Danielle. Rita had a thing about her, and she gets put in the S for Scott (or for Stud?) file. I don’t say anything about that to Scott, sitting on the floor facing me.
I wish I could print out both MIN files. I look over at Scott, busy shuffling paper, and decide I can’t.
“Some messy research notes. Nothing to get her shot, for sure. And you?”
“Nope. Not unless you’re suspicious of perfume cones.”
“Jesus.” He flips the edges of his red-bound pile of paper. “So here’s Rita. Oh, Christ.” He lowers his head. “Some people you don’t think will ever get it; they should just go on and on being peculiar; know what I mean?”
When I don’t answer, he picks up, “That daffy quality. We weren’t ever in love. Not exactly. But we were okay. I liked that irrepressible . . .”
“Uh-huh.”
After a minute, he says, “Let’s go out to dinner. Some place ordinary. No printed menu or Middle Eastern theme.”
“Not a Best Western.”
He asks me if I’ve ever been to Penitentia; it’s inland and dusty and there’s a Mexican restaurant.
“Bring your dad along if you need to,” he says.
But Daddy wants to stay here. He likes the new TV program where the four young men help you redecorate your house.
“It’s interesting. Strange.”
“Like I told you, a wild man. Am I right?”
“I didn’t know him.”
“Oh, sure. I forget. Just because you and I . . .” Some shared ordeals make you feel you’ve had a lot of other stuff together.
“I guess Marcus was a strange cat.”
“Tell me.”
He consults the menu. “Stuffed chile with mole.” He fires this in the direction of the waitress, who is departing, before he turns, looking surprised. “Unless you don’t like spicy?”
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Oh, hell. Sorry.”
“I love spicy. Tell me about Marcus.”
“You saw. He did everything and tried everything.”
“But he was a banker.”
“Sure he was a banker. And a stockbroker. And a whole lot of different kinds of speculator. It was a game. Life was a play.”
“And he was successful?”
“Way successful. Totally off the wall, like a bundle of exploding firecrackers. He made the rest of us look pale beige.”
Our baskets of chips and salsa arrive. Scott is finally telling me about the crowd at Thebes and I want to keep him there. “You weren’t a beige crowd.”
“Not likely.” He realizes where I’m pulling the conversation and stops himself. “But listen—”
“Tell me about his stock deals.”
“Oh, God, the stocks. They were stuff you wouldn’t ever dream of. A company that made a stair-climbing toy. Another one that processed avocado pits.”
“And they always paid off.”
“Every single time. The stair-climber got sold to the army. The avocado oil—Jesus, it was awful—I think Heinz took that. We got so we bought anything he said. He was making all of us rich.”
Scott looks wary again, he’s been listening to himself; so I pile in quickly, “What besides finance?”
Our food arrives. It’s wonderfully spicy, steamy, and greasy. With that weird chocolate tang of real mole. I tell Scott thank you for ordering it and try to steer the conversation back. “But you think he could be the filmmaker, too.”
He shrugs. “He could be anything. Now, let’s talk about . . .” Maybe he can’t think of a neutral topic fast enough. “Boy, I sure would like to see one of those movies.”
“I bet we can find one.” Susie is an old-film buff. She gets them from a special Berkeley video store and she tends to favor Buster Keaton. But she’d be thrilled by this assignment.
“He did sculpture, too,” Scott says, looking reflective. “Mostly, he took Japanese model figures—”
“Japanese model figures?” I can’t picture it.
“Yeah, you know, like Godzilla and Dragon Man . . . and he pasted stuff on them. Crucifixes and halos.”
I say, “Oh,” which seems about to cover it.
“And he was a dynamite welder. That kind of sculpture, too.”
I’m silent here, which is good, because Scott is caught in retrospection. “Danny—that is—Rita—couldn’t make up her mind. Was he a genius or was he nuts?”
“Danielle couldn’t decide,” I say, pouncing.
“How’d she get into this story?”
“You just said.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Instead of getting into a yes, you did and no, I didn’t, I say, “This was in Thebes, at the camp in Thebes, and Danielle and Rita were both there. Did Danielle look like Rita?”
He’s been wanting to deny more and change the subject more, but this stops him so cold he has to protest, “Oh, my God, no.”
“So Rita was your girlfriend and then Danielle was your girlfriend?”
“Hey, cut it out.”
After a minute he picks up, hesitantly, “You don’t understand ...”
“Oh, but I do. That was one active scene.”
“Okay, okay. I guess you never—”
“Sure I never.” I think about the Habitat camp on a weekend night. “So Danielle didn’t look like Rita.”
“Danielle looked like . . .” He clamps down on this idea. “Yeah, that was one wild scene, but Marcus was the one. I mean he was the center. He had all the ideas and every sort of other idea. And the resources. He spoke three different kinds of Arabic. He got us the digging site, which was terrific. He got us drugs.”
“D
rugs.” I had forgotten about that.
“Everything. Pot. Meth. Heroin. Hash. Hash was his special deal.”
We’re silent for a minute. I guess Scott is remembering, and I’m feeling sad. All that liveliness and talent, splashed around so recklessly.
This is a stopper, but after he says it, I can’t get him to talk anymore about Thebes. He wants to discuss my dad’s health and my relationship with my old boyfriend—what’s his name, Rob?—and why Cherie is now Rob’s girlfriend and why the sheriff is pursuing my father. He’s concerned about me. What am I going to do with my life?
And he talks about the Hartdale Grant. “Maybe it’s a crock of shit, but I sure wanted it. I’d have given anything. If they said, ‘You lose everything in your whole life except your brain and the Hartdale,’ I’d’ve agreed straight off, ‘Okay, right.’ I’d’ve donated my left nut. That Hartdale is a lot of money, but that wasn’t the point. It’s a symbol. It’s your life all in one, everything you’ve been working for.”
I pick up on the tenses in this lecture and ask, “And not so much now?”
“Now I’m not really sure of anything.”
Scott is mostly silent on the way home. He stares at the dark road with its many curves. An owl flies right across our windshield.
But inside the museum residence, as we’re waiting for the elevator, he shifts again. “Carla, you’ve been a big help. Really.”
When I don’t respond, he picks up, “Christ. This whole thing hit me hard.”
And after a minute, “Can I kiss you?”
I put my face up. If he had asked in the middle of talking about his Yale appointment, I would have told him sorry. But this is a Scott that I partly understand. I feel sorry for him.
The kiss lasts for the elevator ride. It’s a good kiss, better than I’m prepared for. Too good, one of those that you sense all the way down in your gut. This man packs a lot of animal energy.
We part as the elevator doors open. I don’t have any trouble breaking away, though maybe he hangs on to my shoulder a minute too long. I depart toward my room, shoring myself up with the idea that I have a secret. In my pocket there is a copy of one of Rita’s notes to Marcus:
Hey, Marcus, you wily Roman, thanks for the info; I’ll be watching. And watching. You’re the best in the world with the inside awful secret. Loveyoualways.
There are people that are probably good with that stuff. I don’t want to think of Cherie, but I do.
Chapter 12
And Cherie is very much with me and on the spot.
First of all, I get a veritable information storm of e-mails, each written in Cherie’s patented text-message shorthand, and needing translation. The first one dates an hour after the shooting:
O drlings drlings jst hd I fel 4 u o migwd how r u luv luv Cher.
R u any btr ds it gt btr wn ur usd 2 it o drlngs I tk of u.
cdnt gt a bt of slp lst nit tkg of u luv u bth so mch.
I get a headache and can hardly think (tk) and know that I have lost the ability to spell (spl) after dealing with ten (count’em, 10) of these effusions, with more popping up every few minutes and my assiduous computer ringing a bell for each one. Cherie, of course, really wants to text-message but I’ve lied to her about the text-messaging capacity of my phone. So, of course, she calls.
“Hello? Darling? Oh, my God, my God.”
We do that for a while, with Cherie wanting to know how is her darling Crocodile, and how is her darling Carla, and have I any idea who could have shot Rita, did I see anything, does that feeble-minded asshole of a sheriff have any idea at all?
“And Rob and I are both feeling so guilty, we were set to go down to the bar that night; we go most nights for just a spot of dancing, but then we got involved and got too lazy . . .”
My stomach does a neat flip here. I understand this rhetoric and enjoy a mental picture of Cherie and Rob locked in a long languorous embrace. Hasn’t Cherie said about Rob, “He seems kind of stiff at first, but when you get used to him . . .” Oh, hell and damn. I summon a counterimage of me and Scott in the elevator.
“So, darling,” says Cherie, “when should we come over; we are dying to see you; of course, Rob is on duty today and also tonight and I actually do have some cases that are nipping at my heels, but if you need me, I’ll be there in a flash.”
I assure Cherie that we can live without her, and she assures me that if we need her, she’s there, spot on, right away, and she hates to be just thinking about me from a few miles away and Rob is so worried.
“He cares so much,” she says. “For your dad. And for you. He really cares about you, Carla.”
I restrain myself and insist that we are fine.
“And that little sweet Rita,” Cherie picks up, “that poor child, I keep thinking about her . . .”
Amazingly, she trails off for a minute and something makes me want to try for a reality-injection. “Rita wasn’t exactly sweet, Cherie. She was an interesting woman. Educated. Good in her field. But not sweet.”
“Oh, girlfriend, I know that. Sweet doesn’t really mean that. It’s just the Southern in me coming out. Just something to say.”
As usual, Cherie proves herself smarter than she lets on. Smarter than I think she is. I’ll bet that surprise quality is attractive to Rob.
“But listen, sugar-bell, about Rita. Somebody shot her? In the back? And killed her? Have you any idea who?”
“None.”
“That little girl didn’t look like she had an enemy in the world.”
“Yes, she did.”
“Oh, God, there I go again. Sure, she looked like she had enemies. She was off-the-wall crazy part of the time. She said your dad was a murderer.”
“He didn’t kill her.”
“Oh, I know that.” She’s silent for a minute, and then says to me in her professional voice, “In my experience, people don’t get really, permanently mad about something somebody does when they’re in the down cycle of bipolar. The average person can recognize that. And know it’s not the true person.
“That’s in my experience,” she adds dismissively.
We actually have two seconds of telephone silence before I remember to jump in with my question. “Cherie, tell me. In the crypt the other day. What was Rita doing?”
There is a pause. Cherie says, “Hmm.” She waits. “Now that is a question, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Cherie, it surely is.” I let some irritation creep into my voice.
“Well, now darlin’, of course I don’t rightly know.”
I wait.
“She looked like she was just interested in that beautiful carving.”
“No, she didn’t. She looked as if she were looking for something. Getting her nose up to it, feeling it with her fingertips. We both thought so. And we kept Egon busy so he wouldn’t notice.”
“Is that what we were doin’? Oh, my God, naughty us.”
“Cherie, cut it out.”
There is another pause. I hear Cherie exhale. “Well, darlin’, since you are so observant, I guess I’ll tell you. There is a history for that crypt there. It’s the setting for a movie.”
I say, “Oh.”
“Not such a bad movie, really. Sort of porn and sort of weird artsy. If you know what I mean.”
“I have an idea.”
“I didn’t say a word about that to Egon. He’s such an unctuous bastard. I don’t know—did he produce the movie? Does he maybe not know a thing about it?”
I’m quiet, thinking about Cherie’s news. Yes, I can imagine both these possibilities. Egon Rothskellar, porn producer. Or Egon, complacent oblivious dupe.
The whole thing, of course, says Marcus Broussard.
“What happened in this movie?”
“The usual. Gasping, groping, penises, vaginas, whips, vampires.”
“Oh,” I say. “Vampires.”
“Well, natch. This is in a tomb. Real well photographed and weirdly lit and gorgeous costumes with holes in them. What I don’
t know is if the crypt ever gets opened. The movie was underground, not to float a pun; my friend only had half of the video.”
I brood about this for a while. Very interesting news, which explains why Cherie wanted to see the crypt.
“Was Rita in the movie?”
“Maybe. Masks, costumes, you couldn’t be sure.”
“And so what was she doing the other day while we were there?”
“Sweetheart, I don’t know. Messing around. But I figure it’s real important.”
I figure that, too. Someone had better try to find out.
This part of our conversation ends in an uncomfortable suspension. I wait for Cherie to say, “Let’s work on this together,” but she doesn’t.
She sounds relieved to have a new topic. “Oh, absolutely, you can count on it. I’ll be there. I scared that little slimeball sheriff up proper; he won’t dare proceed without me.
“I’ll bring Robbie with me,” she threatens. “Now, Carla, you sure you’re okay? And your dad? He’s fine? I think about the two of you all the time . . . Hey, I got a new bottle of grappa that a client gave me, made in some little village of Tuscany; I’ll bring it along, just the right thing for those tense moments. See you, don’t forget now.”
Cherie, you can count on it; I won’t forget.
Talking to Cherie upsets me. I hate to admit it, but it does.
I go out into the garden for a change of venue, and right away Egon is after me. He pursues me down several garden lanes and finally catches up with me, triumphantly gloomy. “I have brought you a cheese-filled doughnut.”
He has two of them, two cheese-filled doughnuts, one for him and one for me.
“Yes,” he says. “A beautiful morning. Sad. Ironic.
“I say ironic,” he expands, balancing a mouthful of runny cheese, “because of the dichotomy between the beauty of the scene and the tragedies around us. Possibly you feel it.”
I accept my doughnut and mumble, “Two murders.”
Erased From Memory Page 10