Eyes Wide Open

by Andrew Gross

  “No, not yet,” I said. “But tell me about Russell Houvnanian.”

  He paused, the delay clearly letting me know I had taken him by surprise. “Why do you want to know about that?” he asked me.

  I didn’t want to fully divulge why. Right now I didn’t have anything—only this vague, decades-old connection that probably wasn’t a connection at all. Plus, I knew how Charlie’s mind operated and didn’t want him to get all worked up over things that might lead nowhere.

  “You lived there for a while,” I said. “Didn’t I always hear you knew him?”

  Charlie’s past was always so vague, so clouded by his many retellings, not to mention the drugs, that it was hard to know what was actually the truth and what wasn’t.

  “I was only there for a couple of months.” His tone was halting, as if he were still trying to figure out where I was headed. “I was long gone before anything took place. You know how stuff like that always gets built up. Dad always liked to tell it that way. Like when he was trying to bang some chick and needed to wow her with one of his stories.”

  I kept on him. “But you were there.” Years before, he had told me about the Rasputin-like effect Houvnanian had on his followers. The cultlike mix of religion, music, sex, and drugs. “You met the guy, right?”

  “Yeah, I met him,” Charlie said. He didn’t follow up for a moment, but when he did, it almost knocked the phone out of my hand.

  “You met him too, Jay.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I drove right over and we sat on the lawn chairs in back. My brother recounted an episode that for years was buried in the most remote corner of my mind because I had never given it the slightest significance.

  I was around fourteen, visiting my father in L.A. He had moved out there after selling his first business and had bought a sprawling ranch home high in the Hollywood Hills.

  He wasn’t working at that time and his girlfriend then was a waitress at the Playboy Club. She and a couple of her equally mind-boggling friends were hanging out in the pool, which I remember had most of my attention. A buddy of my dad’s was there as well, a goateed so-called real estate entrepreneur named Phil Stella, who I later found out was an ex-con and whose main role then was pretty much as a supplier of hot chicks whom he referred to as his “wards,” but who I eventually realized were actually working for him.

  That afternoon, Charlie and a couple of his friends dropped in. One was a blond surfer type in a Hawaiian shirt, whom Charlie introduced as a record producer or something, and the other a thin, dark-featured guy in an embroidered blue caftan with long black hair and these intense, deep-set eyes.

  All I remembered was the three of them animatedly trying to pitch my dad—who clearly wanted nothing to do with it—on the idea of anteing up several thousand dollars to help Charlie produce a record.

  After the thousands he had spent on hospitals and lawyers bailing Charlie out of jails, Lenny wasn’t biting.

  “You remember what he did?” Charlie asked me, as if the scene had happened yesterday and was still vivid in his mind.

  “You mean the guy you were with?” I asked, to get him to clarify.

  “No. Dad,” Charlie said with an edge. “You remember the rest of the story?”

  What I did remember was my dad and Phil looking at each other amusedly and Phil shrugging. “I don’t know, I’m a little intrigued. Why don’t you go out to my Jag in the driveway?” Phil said. “There’s an envelope in the glove compartment with a bunch of cash in it. Bring it in.”

  Charlie and his Hawaiian-shirt pal got all excited, their legs spinning like in the cartoons as they dashed out to the driveway. A minute later they returned, empty-handed and humiliated, faces flush with anger. Phil was cackling like a bully who’d just tripped a naïve freshman in front of a group of girls. My father told Charlie and his loser friends to get the hell out. “What are you, fucking crazy?” he exclaimed. The surfer dude was seething. Charlie, veins popping, jabbed his finger at my dad—“You’ve fucking shat on me for the last time!”

  The longhair in the blue caftan just stood up with this cryptic half smile. He told Charlie to let it go, that they’d find the money somewhere else. That it wasn’t right to treat your father with disrespect. He thanked Lenny for his time, casting a thin smile toward Phil, who sat there shaking his head as if they were the biggest rubes on the planet. The guy in the caftan said he was very sorry to bother them all. Then they all left. Afterward, my father and Phil just sat there laughing.

  “That was Russell Houvnanian?” I said to Charlie in shock. I looked at him and conjured the scene I’d buried in my mind for more than thirty years. I don’t think I even saw Charlie again for years after that. It was one of a thousand such moments. I’d never had another reason to bring it to mind.

  “Yes.” Charlie nodded dully. “That was him.”

  “And when did all the bad stuff happen?”

  “The bad stuff . . . ?” Charlie said with a smile. “The bad stuff always happened, Jay. But if it’s the Riorden murders you mean—six months, maybe a year later.

  “Anyway,” Charlie said, “it’s all a little foggy to me too. It’s been thirty-five years, not to mention a couple of hundred hits of LSD . . .” He looked at me. “Why is all this so important now?”

  I told him the murdered detective, Zorn, was one of the original detectives on the Houvnanian case.

  “Oh.” I heard Charlie draw a breath and was expecting him to come back with, So what does this have to do with Evan and me?

  Instead he said, “Listen, Jay, you’ve done what you can, maybe you oughta just head back home tomorrow . . .”

  I already planned to pick up with Sherwood again in the morning. Maybe Zorn knew about Charlie’s past and wanted to contact him through Evan. Not that I had any idea why.

  “Charlie, there’s a possibility this is somehow tied into Evan.”

  His eyes lit softly and he grinned, his ground-down teeth showing through his beard. “Now you’re sounding a little crazy, Jay. Really, you’ve done all that you can, guy. Just go on home . . .”

  “I will. Maybe in another day. But there could be something here, Charlie.”

  He was about to say something else, then simply nodded, his eyes kind of runny and sullen and his energy trailing off.

  I said I’d talk to him tomorrow. His urgency to find the truth about his son suddenly seemed to have dimmed. I thought it could be just another swing of his mood—the finality of what had taken place sinking in.

  I went back and called room service and ordered an onion soup and a burger. I thought maybe I should call Kathy, but this Houvnanian thing was suddenly gnawing at me.

  I was intrigued. I was pretty much just a kid back then, and I didn’t know much more about him than I’d read.

  I took out my computer and went online.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Google came back with thousands of hits on the man and the horrifying events that happened on September 7, 1973. It was dizzying. I opened a link from Wikipedia.

  Russell Houvnanian was thirty-four when his name became synonymous across the globe with senseless, gruesome murder.

  He had been a drifter, the son of a Tennessee minister. He was kicked out of the army for psychological issues, then drifted across the country doing odd jobs, spent time in prison in Oregon for car theft and sexual battery. He moved down the coast to Northern California and took up on this commune at what became known as the Riorden Ranch, a wooded, undeveloped tract of sixty acres not far from Big Sur, which was owned by Sandy Riorden, the ex-wife of Santa Barbara real estate developer Paul Riorden.

  The attached photo was the familiar one of Houvnanian being led away from the courthouse by a California marshal, leering and wild-eyed. He didn’t look radically different from the image I had carried in my mind. Houvnanian was mysterious and charismatic, and he had a mesmerizing effect on rootless youths, the article read, “who flocked to Big Sur back then, attracted by drugs, music,
free love, and a sense of connection, contained in his chimerical vision of evangelical prophecy and influenced by hallucinogenic drugs and rock music.” He soon attracted a following. Paralleling himself with Jesus, he called his commune Gethsemane.

  In Houvnanian’s brain, heaven was a false paradise and had been invaded by the devil, and the earthly battle to retake it was being played out in California. The true gospel was conveyed through rock bands like the Byrds, the Doors, and the Beatles. The name he gave his brand of prophecy and social revolution—End of Days—described the battle between the forces of Truth, represented by the spiritual young, his flock, who sought out love and beauty, and the temporal agents of corruption and the devil: wealthy property owners and their local proxies, the police, who were trying to push his followers out of their “heavenly garden.”

  Houvnanian ultimately attracted a following of about sixty on the ranch, mostly runaway teens, musical wannabes, religious dreamers, all attracted to the environment he’d created of open sex, rock music, and LSD.

  Eventually, this celebration of beauty and music gave way to a cult of fear and paranoia. In August 1973, he convinced his followers that a series of brushfires near the ranch were the work of Satan’s agents trying to force them out. Some of his threats of reprisal and a few minor acts of vandalism had attracted the attention of the local police, and the Riorden clan tried to force Sandy Riorden, herself a sometime follower, to shut down the commune.

  On the night of September 7, 1973, Houvnanian and four “family” members broke into Paul Riorden’s Santa Barbara mountain estate, interrupting a dinner party, and ritualistically murdered him and five of his guests. They tied them up and forced them to watch as each was ultimately stabbed repeatedly or shot, the last victim, according to the police, being Cici Riorden, Paul’s new, young wife, and left cryptic symbols carved into their victims’ bodies.

  Conjuring the image of the gaunt, chillingly reserved cohort Charlie had brought up to my father’s house that day sent a tremor down my spine.

  That had been him!

  The bloody murders, I went on to read, convinced Houvnanian’s followers that the final chapter of the conflict between good and evil had now begun. After sleeping in their van, they went to the home of George and Sally Forniciari, another wealthy Santa Barbara couple who had rebuffed Houvnanian in an earlier attempt to purchase the ranch, and murdered them in a similar fashion.

  That night they had driven back to Big Sur and rounded up his clan to leave for Arizona when police surrounded the ranch, led by tips from Riorden’s sister, and arrested Houvnanian and several of his clan.

  In all, Houvnanian and four of his followers, Telford Richards, Sarah Strasser, Nolan Pierce, and Carla Jean Blue, were convicted of nine counts of premeditated murder and sentenced to consecutive life sentences in California prisons.

  Three others were convicted of aiding and abetting their actions and were currently serving thirty-five-year terms. One, John Redding, hung himself in his cell in 1978. Another, Alexandra Feuer, was released for medical reasons in 1998 and died shortly after from pancreatic cancer.

  The third, Susan Jane Pollack, the daughter of a Wall Street executive, was set to be released in May 2010.

  My eyes opened wide. That was four months ago.

  Anticipation wound through me as I went back to Google and searched the links, finding the headline I was looking for:

  SUSAN POLLACK, HOUVNANIAN ACCOMPLICE, RELEASED FROM PRISON.

  It was from the San Francisco Examiner and was dated February 10 of this year.

  I found a photo of a mousy-looking middle-aged woman being escorted from the California Women’s Institution in Frontera by her lawyer. Susan Pollack didn’t look like a threat to anyone these days. She looked more like a librarian or accountant, her hair cut unflatteringly short, her smile wan and resigned. She looked exhausted and her words sounded repentant. In a brief statement, she said she regretted the role she played in the horrible events of thirty-five years ago, that she renounced her past associations and was looking forward to her new chapter in life.

  “I was a lost and highly impressionable young girl,” Pollack said, “and, though I take all responsibility for my actions, I was easily manipulated and was under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. For more than thirty years I’ve regretted the unbearable pain I’ve caused. I fully renounce my past. I just want to live quietly and alone and go on to the next stage of my life.”

  The article did not say where she was planning on living.

  I closed my laptop and tried to think if there was any possibility, other than the remotest of coincidences, that Evan’s death could be linked to this killer. To Russell Houvnanian.

  Charlie’s friend.

  Could it somehow have been tied to Susan Pollack’s release from prison? Could Zorn have been trying to contact Evan? Maybe for information about her? Or to possibly warn him?

  Or warn Charlie?

  I heard my wife’s persistent complaint, how I always managed to get drawn in. This time I couldn’t even disagree with her.

  My brain throbbed with the memory of how I’d once been in the same room with this gruesome murderer. Houvnanian.

  I went over to the bed and closed my eyes—a fourteen-year-old’s distant recollection rushing back at me through the haze of time.

  The blond dude in the Hawaiian shirt going on about how great Charlie was. He and Charlie, rushing out to Phil’s Jag. The anger and humiliation on their faces when they returned. My father and Phil laughing at them. The curses, the pointed fingers, accusations. Russell Houvnanian’s dark, laser-like eyes and, with what I now knew, that restrained yet foreboding grin. Thank you for your time . . .

  I was being drawn in.

  And I wasn’t even trying to stop it.

  So many mysteries wound into my past: Charlie. My father. Evan. It was almost as if Charlie knew it and was trying to keep me away.

  But I wasn’t going away.

  I wrapped my arms around my chest against the chill. In a minute I was asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I think I found something,” I said.

  Sherwood’s look suggested I was becoming a nuisance fast. “You think you found something; what . . . ?” he replied with an edge of irritation.

  I took out the papers I had folded in my jacket. “I think I found the connection between Evan and Walter Zorn.”

  I’d called him as soon as I had awakened the next morning. Grudgingly, he agreed to give me a couple of minutes. It came with the promise that if what I had didn’t go anywhere this would be the last time I’d bother him. Along with the looser commitment that if that happened, I’d be on a plane back to New York that afternoon.

  He slumped back into his squeaky chair with a glance at his watch, then back at me, impatiently. “Your meeting, doc . . .”

  I pushed the papers across his desk. “Yesterday I heard on the news that Zorn had worked a couple of high-profile cases back when he was on the force in Santa Barbara. One was the Veronica Verklin murder—”

  “Don’t tell me your nephew Evan was a fan of sixties porn?” Sherwood clucked, rocking.

  I let that pass. “The other was Russell Houvnanian.”

  I let that name settle until he gave me an almost indecipherable nod, his noncommittal gray eyes seeming to say, Go on.

  “My brother Charlie lived on the Riorden Ranch for a while.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Your brother was a follower of Russell Houvnanian?”

  “Not a follower. He only lived there for a while. It was the sixties . . . The early seventies, to be exact. He was rootless. A lot of people found their way there. He claims he was only there for the music and the drugs. Why, you think he prepped for his current status in life with a career at IBM?”

  This time, Sherwood shot me a grin, the tiniest encouragement to go forward.

  “He said he just hung out there for a couple of months. Long before anything bad happened. Charlie was a mu
sician back then and Houvnanian was trying to raise money for a record.”

  “And the kicker to this is what, doc?” The detective leaned back in his chair. “Knock me out.”

  “The kicker is you were trying to find a connection between Evan and Zorn. I found one. I thought you might . . .”

  “I might what, doc?” He rose back up, locking his meaty fingers together and dropping them on the desk. “Russell Houvnanian was attempting to arrange financing for your brother’s career and you thought I’d go, Oh, we should check this out! You following me at all on just how this is sounding? Anyway, we’re talking what here, thirty some-odd years ago?”

  “Thirty-seven,” I said. I heard exactly how it sounded.

  “And so you’re saying exactly what?” Sherwood said. “Zorn and your brother shared this six-degrees-of-separation thing, and now, half a lifetime later, the guy tries to contact his son?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m saying,” I said, my tone rising. “Other than it’s a connection. Something.”

  “And this connection . . .” He picked up the articles I had slid over to him. “It’s to prove exactly what—that your nephew didn’t kill himself after all? That he—let me get this straight—had some other motivation to climb on up there? To go off his medications. After he’d threatened to kill himself. And excuse me if I appear completely pigheaded here, but . . . isn’t everyone who had an association with Houvnanian, uh . . . in jail? Like for the rest of their natural fucking lives?”

  “No,” I said. “They’re not.”

  “They’re not?”

  I pointed to the Examiner’s article on Susan Pollack I had printed and pushed it across to him. He took out his reading glasses and scanned it, looking back up at me when he was done.

  “You’re saying what now? That this follower of his, this Susan Pollack, has something to do with your nephew’s death? You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to deal in facts. Not fantasies. It was a suicide! The kid jumped off a cliff.”