by Ray Garton
The FBI refused to name names, but gossip columnists and comedians speculated about the celebrities who might have been purchasing Waldo Cunningham’s wares. The story throbbed on television and the Internet and in newspapers and magazines for months. But not much came of it, just as Adam had expected.
He did not know which celebrities and politicians had done business with Waldo Cunningham, but because they were celebrities and politicians, he had expected none of them to be identified publicly or dealt with by the authorities in any significant way. Within the entertainment industry, wagons were being circled, Adam was sure. Deals were being struck by attorneys. Careers were being saved. The politicians would do whatever politicians did under such circumstances, which probably was not too different from what was done in the entertainment industry. When necessary, Hollywood could have very tight lips. Something as serious as the desert raid could make everyone fall silent, whether they knew anything about it or not. If there were any arrests, Adam was certain they would not involve familiar names. He was surprised when his prediction proved to be inaccurate.
The Palm Springs home of a heavy metal musician whose career had peaked in the early eighties was raided by FBI agents based on information found in Waldo Cunningham’s records. The musician was arrested for possession of marijuana, heroin, and child pornography.
Agents tried to arrest an actor who had shown great promise in the late seventies, but whose addiction to drugs and alcohol had led him to beat all his wives and burn all his bridges early in his career. He had made a string of awful low-budget straight-to-video action pictures, but even those had dried up by the mid-nineties, and the actor had been forced to sell his Brentwood home and move to the Valley. The news of Waldo Cunningham’s arrest apparently had been more than he could take. Agents found the actor hanging in his shower. They found marijuana, cocaine, and pornographic literature and videotapes purchased from Cunningham.
Two days after resigning unexpectedly, a California congressman’s home was raided and he was arrested. Among the illegal pornography taken from his house were videotapes of the congressman himself having sex with some of Waldo Cunningham’s boys. One of the tapes disappeared and resurfaced on the internet days later.
There were a few others. Another third-rate actor, a screenwriter, a nationally syndicated radio talk show host based in Los Angeles, where he was despised by the celebrities he mocked and ridiculed on his afternoon program. Even a minor executive at a small movie studio. Names that were just barely recognizable. No one too big or important. But they kept reporters and tongues busy.
After attacking Adam in Chinois, Melonie Sands became more famous than she ever had been as an actress. She was fined, sentenced to community service, and required to go into rehabilitation for her substance abuse. When not picking up garbage beside freeways in an orange jumpsuit, she did the talk show circuit. From show to show, she apologized to Adam and the world for her behavior. It had been brought on by alcohol and drugs, which she claimed she was addicted to because she had never dealt with her molestation as a child at the hands of her father. Beyond that, she was unable to talk about Adam or how she knew him because she was going to be a witness for the prosecution in his trial. In recounting her tribulations on Oprah, Melonie Sands made the overweight host cry, and they shared a long hug.
“If they are putting her on the stand,” Horowitz said as she and Adam watched Melonie on CNN, “then things are even better for us than I thought.”
FORTY-FIVE
During the first week in December, Adam moved into a furnished two-bedroom apartment on the twenty-third floor of a high-rise on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood. The first thing he unpacked was the flat-screen television. Once they had it on the wall and hooked up to the DVD player and sound system, they flopped on the sofa and he turned it on with the remote.
Boxes and suitcases still cluttered the living room, waiting to be unpacked.
“What do you think?” Alyssa asked.
“Of what?” Adam thumbed his way from channel to channel.
“Your new apartment, bright boy.”
“It’s okay, I guess. It smells funny.”
“Smells like it was painted recently.”
“Great. The fumes’ll probably kill me in my sleep.”
Frowning, Alyssa sat up straight beside him. “Are you all right?”
Adam turned to her. “Yeah. Why?”
“I don’t know. You seem...different.”
He turned back to the television. “Yeah, that’s what people tell me.”
“Is it the apartment? I like it.” She smiled.
He shrugged, shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, it’s fine.”
She took a breath to say more, but slumped silently beside him instead.
Adam turned, watched as two small, vertical creases appeared between Alyssa’s eyebrows. He put an arm around her and said, “Sorry for being so weird. I just feel like I’m...floating. Believe it or not, I was getting pretty used to the hotel room. Now I’ve got to get used to this apartment. I keep thinking when this is all over, I can go home and relax. But I don’t have a home anymore.”
She nodded her head against his shoulder. “You’re not being weird. Anybody would feel that way. Your whole life has changed.”
“What happens when I get used to this place? Am I going to have to move again?”
“No, I think you’ll be here awhile. At least till the trial’s over. For now, this is home.”
Adam sighed. “It doesn’t feel like home. Sure as hell doesn’t smell like home.”
Alyssa pulled up the short black skirt she wore, swung a leg over Adam. Straddled his lap and sat facing him, grinning. “Then we’ll make it feel like home. Our home.”
“Oh, I don’t think Rona will approve of you living here.” Adam slipped his arms around her narrow waist. “I would. But I don’t know about Rona.”
“Then I won’t move in until after the trial. It’ll just feel like I live here.”
“What if I...well, I mean, what if the jury...what if they convict me?”
She touched her nose to his and whispered, “Do you really, honestly believe that any jury in the world would go up against your attorney? If I was on that jury and didn’t know you, I’d be afraid to find you guilty. Just because of her. She’s a pit bull.”
“Guess I’m just not as confident as you.”
“Let’s not even think about the trial. Let’s just think about today, okay? Let’s make this apartment our home, even if I can’t live here. We’ll start by getting a Christmas tree and some decorations.” She grinned. “And one of those logs that burns green and blue flames.”
Adam’s upper lip curled back slightly, as if he suddenly felt sick. “Christmas,” he said with disgust. “Sorry, Alyssa, but I really don’t feel like Christmas this year. It’s not even here yet and I’m already sick of it.”
“Well, I’m not going to let you sit here and worry and turn into an old man. You don’t have to go shopping if you don’t want to. I’ll take care of everything. We’ll turn this apartment into a Macy’s display window. And we’ll listen to Christmas music and roast marshmallows and Chet’s nuts and—”
Adam was surprised by his own laughter. “You really want to roast marshmallows?”
“We can do it naked if you want.” She reached down and unbuttoned his jeans, opened the zipper. Adam laughed and wriggled on the sofa as she tugged his jeans and underwear down, freed his hardening penis. Pulled the crotch of her panties aside and rubbed him between her lips. She slid him inside her suddenly and they both gasped. As she moved her hips, slowly at first, she began to sing “The Christmas Song” in a breathy voice, smiling.
Adam sat up, pushed her down on the sofa and got on top of her. He tried to sing “Here comes Santa Claus!” but only made it through the first few words. Their gasping breaths became synchronized with their pounding movements.
Christmas was forgotten.
* * *
On Wednesday night in the third week of December, Alyssa and Brett came to Adam’s apartment to watch the annual broadcast of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. All the unpacked boxes had been removed from the living room. Adam had put them in his bedroom, where he unpacked things as he needed them.
The living room was dimly lit by a torchiere lamp in one corner, and a twinkling Christmas tree in another. The entire apartment smelled of the forest. Alyssa had brought a Yule log with her and it burned with green- and blue-tinted flames in the fireplace.
Adam and Alyssa were cozy on the sofa, Brett stretched out in the recliner, as they watched the Christmas show. They were half-heartedly singing “Fame and Fortune” along with Rudolph and Herbie, the elf who wanted to be a dentist, when keys chittered in the locks on the door. Adam turned to the entryway, eyes wide.
“Who is it?” he called. He unraveled himself from Alyssa and stood.
The door opened. Horowitz’s heels clacked on the entryway’s marble-tile floor, fell silent on the living room carpet. She carried her black leather briefcase. Max and Lamont came in behind her and Lament closed the door.
“I am sorry to cut your evening short, ladies,” Horowitz said, “but you will have to go now.” She sounded no more stern than usual, but anger burned in her face and eyes, lips trembled ever so slightly when she pressed them together. She boiled just beneath her smooth, unblemished skin.
Alyssa and Brett quickly got to their feet.
“Hey, wait a second,” Adam said angry. “They just got here, we’re watching—”
Horowitz snatched the remote control from the arm of the sofa and fired it at the television. “Not anymore,” she said, handing the remote to Lamont. She put the briefcase on the coffee table, released the latches with a sharp clack, but did not open it. Instead, she turned to Alyssa and Brett, who stood next to Adam. “Have a good evening, ladies.”
Alyssa gave Adam a quick kiss on the lips. “Call me.”
Furious, Adam muttered, “Goddamnit,” as he followed them to the door. “I’ll call you when we’re done and you can come back over, okay?”
Alyssa turned to him and smiled, kissed him again. “Okay. And don’t be mad. It’s probably important.”
Adam closed and locked the door, spun around and went back to the living room. On the coffee table, the lid of the briefcase stood open. Across the room, Horowitz opened the glass doors of the cabinet that held the VCR, DVD player, and sound system. Slipped a cassette into the VCR, nodded once at Lamont.
“Goddamnit, can’t you at least call first?” He was close to shouting. “I mean, what’s so important that you have to barge in here like a—”
The flat-screen filled with the black-and-white overhead view of a liquor store. A man in a ski mask aimed a large handgun at the Korean cashier behind the counter. The camera was behind and above the front counter. Behind the robber, back to the glass doors, holding another large handgun between both hands, stood Adam Julian.
* * *
Adam thought he had seen Horowitz’s anger before—he could still hear her shouting over her desk at him during their first meeting—but he was wrong. What he had seen in her before had been nothing more than annoyance, irritation, impatience. Real anger—what he saw in her then as she stood before the frozen image of Monty lying dead on the floor of the liquor store as Adam backed out the door—fired from her eyes in white-hot beams like the tank-melting death ray from Gort, the alien robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Adam could feel its heat on his skin, expected to smell the harsh odor of his own hair being singed.
“Think before you speak, Adam,” Horowitz said quietly, a slight tremor in her voice. “You have used up all of my patience. Lie to me now and you will have to find another attorney.”
Max went to Adam’s side, put an arm across his shoulders with a long sigh. Led him to the recliner and whispered, “Son, this’d be a good time to sit down, make yourself comfortable, and take us through all the parts of your story you left out the first twenty or thirty dozen times you told it.” He pushed down firmly on Adam’s shoulders, pressed him into the chair.
Horowitz stepped over to Max’s side and they stood before him, waiting.
Adam did not know what to say, where to start. He had to be very careful if he were going to avoid revealing the final truth: that he was guilty as charged. With the stiff wariness of someone walking through a minefield, he told his story.
He started by telling them of his two sexual experiences with Gwen. Head bowed as he spoke, staring at the carpet, he told them how Rain had raped him at gunpoint, then threatened to blackmail him by crying statutory rape to the police. He did not bow his head in guilt, but to allow himself to go into explicit detail, which he was too embarrassed to do while looking at Horowitz and Max. He told them everything, right up to the day he huddled in Rain’s closet and listened to her and Gwen. He spent the most time on the nightmarish liquor store robbery. When he was finished, he slumped in the chair with a sigh, exhausted.
Horowitz and Max stared at him for a long time. Her arms folded across her breasts, his bushy eyebrows knotted together over his glasses and thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. They turned to one another questioningly. Max’s lower lip curled out from beneath his mustache as he looked at Adam again. As Horowitz walked around the chair, anger crackled around her body like static electricity.
“How did you find it?” Adam asked.
“We didn’t,” Max said. “The D.A.’s office did.”
“How did they find it?”
“They found it because we did not find it first,” Horowitz said. She stood in front of Adam again. Fished a beige cigarette and a lighter from the pocket of her lavender suit jacket. “And we did not find it because you did not tell us about it.” She stabbed the cigarette into her mouth, lit up, and blew smoke from her lungs as if she were blowing out a cakeful of candles. Walked around the chair again, a shark circling its prey.
Adam said, “I...I really wish you wouldn’t smoke those things in here. I mean, they really stink.”
Max put a hand on the recliner’s armrest and leaned close to Adam. Whispered, “I’d only speak when I was spoken to if I was you, son. For tonight, anyways. You don’t wanna push your luck tonight, trust me.”
Horowitz stopped in front of the fireplace, tapped her cigarette over the colorful flames. With her back to Adam, she said, “There are no words to adequately describe how angry I am right now.” Turned and glared at him. “Do you know why?”
“Because...I didn’t tell you everything.”
“Everything? You told me hardly anything. You left out the entire second act. What kind of writer are you, Adam? Your father would be ashamed of you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you. I was afraid.”
“You were afraid to tell me?”
Adam nodded.
“Well, now you can be very afraid. Because even if you are not arrested for this, if that tape gets out before I have a chance to prepare for it—” She spun around, waved an arm and let it slap to her side. “For all I know, it could be on the Internet already. That tape could crush everything I have done so far.” Turned to him again. “You have a pristine image right now, Adam, that could be ruined by this tape.”
“Why don’t you just tell the truth?” Adam asked. He glanced at Max for a reaction, to see if he had made a mistake by speaking.
“The truth about what?” Horowitz asked.
“About me. That I didn’t tell you everything until now because I was afraid. I figured if I didn’t tell you, it would never come up.”
Horowitz’s nose wrinkled and her eyes squinted, upper lip peeled back over her teeth, as if she had just licked something foul. “How could you be so stupid as to think that, Adam? You had to know there were security cameras in there. You looked directly at one of them before your partner shot it. Now your face is everywhere and you think—”
“He was not my partner!” Adam shouted, standing. “I didn’t even know the crazy son of a bitch. I didn’t know what was happening until he pulled the gun! Why don’t you just tell that to the reporters. I mean, I was forced into it! I wouldn’t even have been out with Rain if I wasn’t afraid she’d turn me in. Besides, we already know the truth about Gwen. It’s pretty obvious Rain was supposed to be—”
“We do?” The question lifted Horowitz’s left eyebrow.
We didn’t have this conversation, Max had said after telling Adam what he had learned about Gwen.
“Oh, shit,” Adam muttered, turning to Max. His spacious forehead was cut with deep lines as he glared at Adam.
Horowitz turned to her investigator. “Max?”
Max nodded his head slowly. “Yeah, I asked him a few questions about it before I came to you. I shouldn’t have, I know. But I wanted to make sure I had something solid before I brought it to you. There were some questions only Adam could answer.”
“We will discuss it later,” she said, then turned back to Adam. “You were saying?”
Adam blinked. “What? Oh. Um...what was I saying?”
“That you think something is obvious. What is obvious?”
“Oh, yeah. I think it’s obvious Rain was supposed to be working with her mom. Rain was supposed to seduce me, then talk me into killing my dad. Gwen tells me Dad’s beating her, shows up with a black eye, which is supposed to make it easier for me to go along with it. But Rain wanted me to help her kill both of them. Gwen didn’t know it, but Rain was going to kill her, too.”