Sex and Violence in Hollywood

by Ray Garton

  He got up and went to the window. Saw Carter and Brett playing around in the pool. Carter was actually playing, splashing around with Brett like a little kid. It made Adam smile. Alyssa sat at the white table beneath the blue umbrella, reading a paperback and looking creamy in a black bikini. The sky was a chalky blue, clearer than it had been in weeks, although a thin yellowish layer of smog remained. The sun shone harshly, and Adam could feel the heat of the day through the window’s screen.

  He put on a pair of black swimming trunks and went downstairs. Down the hall to the French doors that opened on the patio. He ran by Alyssa and jumped into the pool, folding himself midair into a cannonball. His unexpected splash made Brett scream.

  “It’s alive!” Carter shouted in a Colin Clive voice. “It’s alive, it’s alive!”

  Alyssa jumped in and embraced Adam from behind, kissed his neck. “Good morning,” she said.

  He turned around and kissed her on the mouth. “Hi. Thanks for letting me sleep. I needed it.”

  She nodded toward the table and said, “There’s food if you’re hungry.”

  He saw a platter of doughnuts and muffins on the table beside a bowl of fresh fruit, a coffee service.

  Alyssa swam away as Carter approached.

  “Did you check the news?” Carter whispered.

  “I’ll do it later.”

  A gray beach ball bearing the wrapped face of a mummy floated by. Carter picked it up, bounced it off Adam’s forehead.

  Adam plucked the ball from the air. “Anybody for a game of Marco Polo?”

  “What’re we, a bunch of nine-year-olds?” Carter said. “Grow up, Adam. Act your age. Marco Polo. Jeez.” He shook his head. “Let’s go under and pants the girls.”

  Adam stayed in the pool until his stomach churned from hunger. He went to the table and poured coffee, plucked a glazed doughnut from the platter with a paper napkin and took a bite. Alyssa joined him as he sat at the table and picked up her book. It was a paperback copy of one of Lillian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who...mysteries.

  “I thought only old ladies with blue hair read these,” he said, putting the book down again.

  “I’m much older than you think.” She leaned toward him and lowered her voice. “Remind me next time I suck your cock and I’ll take my teeth out.” She took a seat and bit into an apple loudly.

  “Music!” Carter shouted as he got out of the pool. “We need music! Any requests?”

  “You’d ignore them, anyway,” Adam said.

  Carter went into the poolhouse. Thirty seconds later, R.E.M. played from the speakers mounted under the eaves. A couple minutes passed, but Carter did not come back out of the poolhouse.

  Floating on her back in the pool, Brett shouted to be heard over the music. “What’re you doing in there?”

  “Coming!” Carter called from inside. He burst through the open door of the poolhouse holding a stubby rifle.

  Adam recognized it immediately. A Super Soaker Battle Droid Rifle, black plastic painted to look like stressed metal. Adam started to duck, but was too slow. A powerful blast of water hit him square in the face and knocked him over backward in the chair.

  “My book!” Alyssa shrieked. She snatched the paperback from the table and put it protectively behind her back. She was standing when a stream of water hit her in the side of the head. Laughing, she quickly hunkered down behind the chair.

  Carter ran along the side of the poolhouse as Brett climbed out of the pool. He fired again and the water hit Brett directly between her breasts. She fell back into the pool with a yelp. Carter disappeared around the corner and his villainous laugh faded to the other side of the poolhouse.

  “He’s snapped!” Brett shouted as she climbed out. “See? I was right, there is something wrong with him.”

  “What’s with your friend?” Alyssa asked with a laugh.

  Adam said, “Brett, I think. I’ve never seen him so happy.”

  Brett joined them by the table, looked around. “Where’d he go?”

  “He’s probably going to get on the roof of the poolhouse and shoot at us from up there,” Carter said. “He’s got more guns upstairs. Come on.”

  They hurried into the house and passed Devin on the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” Devin cried, spinning around. “You’re all wet! You’re dripping!”

  “We’ll only be a second, I promise!” Adam led the laughing girls into Carter’s bedroom and went to the closet. Got down on his knees, fished through a mess of stuff in a corner. “Here!” He handed Alyssa a green and yellow Super Soaker, Brett a pink one, but could not find a third. He stood, left the closet. “Fill those up in the bathroom. There might be another one across the hall.”

  He went into the room that had become his and opened the closet. It was not a walk-in, just deep enough to hold a rack of hanging clothes. The shelf above looked ready to give way beneath the weight of board games and fat hardcover books and cardboard boxes filled with outgrown toys and old report cards.

  And one silver-and-red Super Soaker. The barrel jutted from a stack of yearbooks and magazines. Adam grabbed it and pulled. “Oh, shit,” he muttered as everything on the shelf slid forward and rained on top of him. He stepped back a moment too late to avoid one of the large hardcover books. Its spine hammered him once on the top of his head before falling to the floor. He tripped on a cardboard box the size of a toaster and fell backward onto the floor. The Super Soaker flew from his hand and landed on the bed.

  Adam grumbled as he stood, surveyed the mess. Mrs. Sanchez would handle it.

  He took the watergun off the bed, stopped at the window. Looked out to see what Carter was up to, see if he had noticed they were gone yet.

  Just as Adam had predicted. Carter was crossing the slanted shingle roof of the poolhouse. As he neared the edge that overlooked the pool, he dropped to his hands and knees so he would not be seen. Crept toward the edge, wearing a large, eye-crinkling grin. He shook with laughter as he carefully peered over the edge.

  Adam turned away from the window to go fill the silver-and-red Super Soaker. Did a double take when he saw movement down by the pool. Had Alyssa and Brett gone back down already?

  Carter saw the movement, too. Pulled back quickly to remain unseen.

  Adam frowned as his eyes adjusted to what he was seeing. Two men, both in dark blue. Uniforms. Small objects attached to their belts. Cops. They took long, quick strides. Behind them. Detective Wyndham. And Devin behind him.

  Adam saw what was about to happen as clearly as if it were happening already, and he dropped the watergun.

  On the poolhouse roof, Carter moved forward suddenly. Swung his right arm over the edge of the roof. Aimed the short rifle downward and shouted, “Die, alien scum, diiieee!”

  The uniformed officers had their guns drawn before Carter finished his battle cry. They raised their guns in a burst of shouting. Both guns fired and Adam cried out simultaneously. The stream of water from Carter’s Super Soaker hit the sidewalk with a splat that was swallowed by gunfire. At least one bullet found its target.

  From the bedroom window, Adam saw a faint pink vapor rise for an instant just above the back of Carter’s head. A gush of dark red ran from his face to the wet concrete. Carter collapsed heavily and the Super Soaker slipped from his hand, landed on the concrete in a clatter of broken plastic.

  Adam screamed as Carter slid forward over the roof, dropped limply through the air head-first. Even through the sound of his own scream, Adam heard Carter’s neck break at the bottom of the nine-foot fall.

  One of the uniformed officers cried, “Oh, Jesus!” as Wyndham shouted, “God dammit!”

  Adam was there in a blur. He would never be able to recall going from the bedroom to the patio. One moment, he was pushing himself away from the bedroom window. The next, his arms were being held behind him on the patio as he screamed incoherently and struggled against strong hands to get to Carter. Devin knelt beside Carter, wailing.

  “Adam, Adam
,” Wyndham said sternly behind him. He sounded like an impatient adult speaking to a temperamental child. “There’s nothing you can do. Come on inside.”

  Handcuffs snapped into place on Adam’s wrists. He stopped struggling, allowed himself to be dragged backward into the hall.

  Wyndham shouted angrily through the French doors at the officers, “Get an ambulance over here, for God’s sake!” He turned Adam around, gripped his elbow. Led him down the hall toward the front of the house. “Adam Julian, you have the right to remain silent.”

  The detective spoke clearly, succinctly. But it was gibberish to Adam, who sobbed as he staggered beside Wyndham.

  “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

  His head thundered, eyes throbbed.

  “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”

  Adam heard none of it. All he could hear was his own voice amplified to an impossible level inside his head: I killed my best friend! I killed my best friend!

  PART 3

  HOLLYWOOD

  “You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the novel of a fruit fly, and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.”

  —Fred Allen

  “Movies are like high school with money—everyone’s absolved of responsibility, actors in particular, and you run around behaving like you’re four.”

  —Anthony LaPaglia

  “Nobody’s interested in sweetness and light.”

  —Hedda Hopper

  “Half the people In Hollywood are dying to be discovered. The other half are afraid they will be.”

  —Lionel Barrymore

  “I wish you didn’t have to be famous to be successful.”

  —Milla Jovovich

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  "Tell me, Mr. Julian. Did you kill Michael and Gwen Julian and Gwen’s daughter, Rain Cardell?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hire someone to kill them?”

  “No.”

  “Were you aware of any conspiracy to kill them?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then. Prove it.”

  Adam lifted his head. Met the gaze of the small woman who stood before him. Even though he was seated in a large, plush, leather-upholstered chair—it seemed to swallow him when he sat in it—Rona Horowitz was still no taller than he.

  She leaned back against the edge of her sprawling desk, folded her arms across her chest. In her early forties, full black hair pulled back, a few stray strands of it dangling loose. She wore a charcoal-and-red suit, black stockings on her stubby legs. That word accurately described her whole body: stubby.

  “I thought I was innocent until proven guilty,” Adam said.

  “Maybe on Judging Amy or The Practice. Not in the here and now.” She went behind her desk. A raised platform on the floor increased her height by several inches. She sat and opened a decoratively carved wooden box, removed a long slender beige cigarette, put it between her wine-colored lips. Took a long fireplace match from a tall lavendar glass cylinder and struck it against a sparkling gray quartz paperweight. Lit her cigarette and puffed. Shook the match out, dropped it into a wastecan beneath the desk.

  It was a well lit, cheerful office on the thirty-eighth floor of a Century City high-rise. Mocha-colored carpet, blonde wood and clear glass. It felt like midafternoon in there, not after midnight on the night of the day Adam’s life had ended. That was how he thought of it. A complete end to his life, but one that had left him unmercifully alive.

  Horowitz opened a folder on her desk. “As of this afternoon, Mr. Julian, about half the people in Los Angeles think you are guilty of murder. Forty-two percent of those think you hired someone, and twenty-six percent think you did it yourself. Seventy-nine percent of those who think you’re guilty think your motivation was money, whether you did it yourself or not. Eighteen percent think you did it for kicks. And based on your pictures on television, it seems a small percentage of all subjects surveyed believe you were a regular cast member on Home Improvement.” She smiled at him.

  “A survey?” Adam asked. “You took...a poll? About me?”

  “That is correct. And if I represent you, I will be taking a lot more. If that bothers you, Mr. Julian, this is a good time to say so.” Her voice, deep and whiskey-rich, was level and controlled. Everything about her seemed controlled.

  “I don’t understand. What do polls have to do with representing me in court?”

  “You are correct, you do not understand. If I represent you, Mr. Julian, it will be in and out of the courtroom. I will speak to the press for you. I will appear on television in your stead. I will be your mouth, your eyes, your ears. I will be you by proxy.”

  “And what would I be doing in the meantime?”

  “Whatever I tell you to do.”

  Adam tried to lean forward in the chair, but the seat was so deep, any movement looked awkward. He ground his teeth as he clutched the edges of the fat armrests and pulled himself out. Perched stiffly on the very edge of the chair.

  “Are you uncomfortable?” Horowitz asked.

  “You know damned well I’m uncomfortable.” He was quiet, but there was anger in his voice. “That’s what this chair is for, right? Get people off balance? Make them clumsy while you sit there on your highchair at that aircraft carrier of a desk looking like you were in that suit when it was pressed.”

  Horowitz smiled, nodded. “Am I to take that to mean I do not meet with your approval?”

  “Am I to take it that to mean you expect me to just hand over control of my whole life to a total stranger?”

  She stood, arms straight at her sides. Elegant fingernails touched the glass desktop with soft clicks. “I need to explain some things to you. The first is that whether or not you like me is irrelevant. If we had a few years to get to know each other, I am sure we would discover things in common, things we might admire about one another. But we would have to do it under guard, because you will be going to prison soon without proper representation. Our time is short. So we will have to do things my way or not at all. Do you understand, Mr. Julian?”

  “Stop calling me that,” Adam said. “Jesus. My dad is...I mean, was Mr. Julian.”

  Horowitz stepped over to a sideboard that ran along a row of floor-to-ceiling windows behind her desk. Threads of smoke trailed after the beige cigarette between the first two fingers of her left hand. She picked up a small yellow watering pail with her right, the old-fashioned kind with a spout that dribbled water at the end. Potted plants grew everywhere. They hung from the ceiling, took up shelf-space, stood on the end tables that flanked the sofas. She slowly watered the plants lined up on the sideboard as she spoke.

  “I know your life has changed suddenly because of the deaths of your family and your friend,” she said. “But you seem to have no comprehension of exactly how much your life is going to change from now on. It will change, and change again, and then continue to change. Sometimes on an hourly basis. This thing is not even twenty-four hours old, and yet, only a small, negligible percentage of people surveyed thought you were an actor on Home Improvement. Do you see the significance of that, Adam? It means that only very stupid people do not know who you are. You are already a celebrity. The public simply has not decided what it wants to do with you.”

  She ran out of water with two more plants left. Walked back along the sideboard, replaced the pail. Made her way slowly around the desk. “You do not like to be called Mr. Julian? How will you feel about being called a murderer by David Letterman? Or Conan O’Brien? They will not be that blunt, of course. They will just make funny jokes about you cruising for chicks with O.J. and being in the same support group as Kyle and Eric Menendez. Soon, the very mention of your name will sound like a setup for a punch line. And everyone will laugh because it’s just a joke, right? But how will you feel about it?” She hopped up onto the edge of the desk and crossed her ankles. A quick, girlish movement that droppe
d years from her age for a split-second.

  Adam said, “I wouldn’t like it, but I could—”

  “Wouldn’t like it? You speak as if what I am saying is speculation. These are not ifs, Adam, these are whens. And I can think of at least one who. Who will play you on Saturday Night Live? Week after week? In long, embarrassing sketches that go nowhere? Have you thought about that yet?”

  “What’s that got to do with—”

  “These are rhetorical questions, Adam. Please stop interrupting me. Do you know that any day now, you will start getting bags of mail? Great big bags of it. It will come from people who hate you and want to see you fry, many of whom will volunteer to pull the switch. From people who want to save your soul and ensure you of eternal life. And there will be many, many declarations of love and proposals of marriage.” She took a deep drag on the cigarette. Smoke came out her mouth and nose as she continued. “Women who are convinced of your innocence. Women who are convinced of your guilt and want to marry you, because of it, not in spite of it, because they happen to be freaks. There will be a lot of freaks, Adam. You will be very popular among their people, an icon in their culture. Next, you will start getting e-mails from them. Then phone calls. Before you know it, they will be showing up at your door. Some of them will be uncommonly beautiful women. Most of them will not. Some will want you to carve your initials into their genitals with a rusty blade. And some, Adam, will be very dangerous and they will want to hurt you.”

  When she paused a moment, Adam sighed impatiently. “Are you a defense attorney or a bodyguard?”

  “Oh, but we have not even gotten to the trial yet,” Horowitz said. “All of this will happen during the months before the trial. You will be the only topic discussed on Rivera Live for that entire year, unless the president is assassinated, in which case it becomes a horse race. Your face will be on the cover of every magazine, newspaper, and tabloid in the country. One night, you will go to bed knowing they are defending your innocence. The next morning, you will learn over breakfast that the tabloids are claiming you had a sick sexual relationship with your stepmother and everybody wants you to get the death penalty.”