by Joe Keenan
“Sorry. I disagree.” She said this while initialing some papers, having already acquired the mogul’s knack of compounding an insult by multitasking while delivering it. “I read it and frankly I thought it lacked pathos.”
“Pathos!” roared Gilbert. “You wouldn’t know pathos if pathos threw a bar mitzvah in your vagina!”
“So we disagree,” yawned Moira. “And I’m the producer.”
“Fine then! We’ll just go to the LA Times and tell them what kind of hotel you were running!”
“Ooh! I’m so scared!” exclaimed Moira, waving her hands with annoying vigor like Mandy Patinkin performing a minstrel song. Then she relaxed and leaned back in her chair.
“Fine. Go to the papers. They won’t print what they can’t prove. I’ll deny it and let them know my accusers are two writers I fired off a project when I found out their spec was stolen. I’ll make sure the whole town knows what you idiots did. Trust me, you’ll never make the word ‘madam’ stick to me but ‘plagiarist’ will dog you to your graves. So,” she said brightly, “anything else, kids? Or was that your best shot?”
Sadly it was, Gilbert being the impetuous sort of warrior who rushes into battle with scant regard for the contents of his quiver. Moira rose, signaling that we were dismissed. But just as I stood, bitterly regretting that we had no means to wipe the triumphant smirk off her face, a lovely thing happened. Her phone buzzed, she answered it, and, whatever she heard, her smile vanished so abruptly she might have been a doorman on December twenty-sixth.
“Just send him in,” she said testily, then told us to beat it. Gilbert and I exchanged a pointed glance and defiantly resumed our seats. We’d surmised from her sudden dyspepsia that her surprise visitor was none other than Monty and this was not a skirmish we intended to miss. I only prayed the old scamp had brought along his squirting boutonniere.
Alas, Moira’s visitor was not Monty but a man whose arrival curdled my own smile as swiftly as it had Moira’s.
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice, Miss Finch,” said District Attorney Rusty Grimes.
He glanced my way and I waved a limp hand in greeting.
“Hello, again.”
“Have we met?”
“Yes. At the bar at Vici. Phil Cavanaugh.”
He squinted in confusion.
“I was with Stephen Donato?”
He squinted again and I realized we had not in fact met because he was not in fact Rusty Grimes. The resemblance, however, was uncanny.
“Sorry. I thought you were the DA.”
“S’okay. I get that a lot. I’m his brother, Hank Grimes.”
I soon discovered that in addition to sharing Rusty’s unfortunately bulbous features, he also had his brother’s off-putting cockiness and snide machismo.
“Now that I think of it, I remember runnin’ into Rusty that night. He told me he’d stopped by to see his kid and had a run-in with Stevie and a little friend of his.”
He gave the word “friend” about four extra “n”s and, lest his innuendo be missed, added an extra “s” or two to “his.”
“Gosh, Hank,” I said, “I’m kinda missing your inference here. Perhaps if you put on a dress and sang ‘Over the Rainbow.’ ”
There it was again, that fatal impulse of mine to twit the constabulary. It had not been wise at Vici with Rusty and was even less wise here in the midst of what, unless I missed my guess, was an actual criminal investigation. Foolish, yes, but what can I say? Show me a surly soldier and right away I’m Eve Arden.
“They were just going,” said Moira.
“Wait, you say your name’s Cavanaugh?” he asked, pulling a notebook from his pocket and checking a page. “Stick around, pal. I got some questions for you too.”
He asked Gilbert his name, then consulted his list again.
“Bingo. Trifecta,” he said and, seating himself, commenced his interrogation.
His performance, in less dire circumstances, would have struck me as an amusingly clichéd rendition of the old-school tough cop. The body language was insolently relaxed as though he owned the joint and the voice suggested extensive elocution lessons from Mickey Spillane. Every gesture and inflection was calculated to convey that he was The Law, that we had run afoul of it, and that when the state finally slapped numbers on our chests the brewskis would be on him.
“Just correct me, Miss Finch,” he said, his tone sarcastically deferential, “if I’m wrong on any of my facts here. You are the owner and former full-time proprietor of Les Étoiles, a spa and resort hotel in Bel-Air?”
“Yes.”
“You recently formed this production company in partnership with Stephen Donato?”
“Yes,” she repeated, her tone flatter this time to convey impatience.
“Prior to forming this company you had no previous producing experience?”
Moira’s lengthy response touched on the many projects she and Albert had been developing before his untimely death, but boiled down to no.
“You met Mr. Donato through these gentlemen here some eight weeks ago?”
“That’s correct.”
“One of them, Mr. Selwyn I believe, is your ex-husband?”
“Correct,” came Gilbert’s arch reply.
“Gee,” said Hank, cocking an eye at Gilbert’s yellow Miyake T, “I wonder what broke that little romance up. Wouldn’t you say, Miss Finch, that eight weeks is an awfully short time to know someone before starting a business together?”
“Not if you click, which Stephen and I did immediately. He found me very creative.”
“Makes two of us. Let’s cut to the chase, okay? We have a suspect in custody, we’ll call him Kenneth. Good-looking kid, midtwenties. Male prostitute. Last week a john of his dropped dead while Kenny was with him. Heart attack. Drugs were involved and we’re pretty sure Kenny supplied ’em. We hauled him in after he went on a shopping spree with the old guy’s MasterCard. Not a bright boy, Kenny. His lawyers said if we went easy on him he could deliver a big fish. That fish was you.”
No one does bewildered innocence better than Moira. She regarded him with the guileless stare of a little match girl accused of arson.
“What on earth did he say I’ve done? I’ve never broken the law in my life!”
“Not to hear Kenny tell it. He says he worked at your spa for three months as a ‘massage therapist.’ He says that during that time he had sex over fifty times with sixteen different men, most of them prominent in the entertainment field. He says he did so with your full knowledge and that both he and the spa were well paid for his services. He says there were seven other hustlers working there as well and that three of them claimed to have had sex with Stephen Donato. He also believes but can’t prove that the sex was filmed.”
To quote a recent screenplay of ours, Moira was “shocked— shocked!” at these accusations, which she declared utterly groundless and libelous to boot.
Hank grinned. “Maybe so. But they go a long way toward explaining how you got yourself such a sweet deal with Stephen—which means you can throw in extortion too.”
“First pandering, now extortion!” huffed Moira. “What are you going to charge me with next? Arms traffcking?!”
“No one’s charged you with anything, Miss Finch. Yet. We’re just asking questions.”
Moira, speaking with glacial disdain, said that if this Kenny had ever in fact worked at her spa he was clearly someone she’d fired for drug use who was now paying her back by concocting this spiteful fiction.
“If I may be frank, Mr. Grimes, it both wounds and disgusts me that you’ve fallen for such a tale. I can’t believe you’d take the word of a self-admitted thief, dope-dealer, and prostitute over that of a hardworking Christian businesswoman and grieving widow! Please leave my office this instant!”
But Grimes wasn’t done. He had several questions for Gilbert and me, most of which hinted disconcertingly at collusion in Moira’s enterprise. Why had we brought Stephen to Les Étoiles? Had we been
compensated in any way? Could we describe our visits there? Had we observed any activities consistent with Kenny’s accusations? We perjured ourselves as vigorously as Moira had, for we knew beyond question that if she went down she’d find a way to take us with her.
“I mean, c’mon!” I said with a desperate chuckle. “If a guy wants to have illicit gay sex, does he really invite his wife and mom to tag along?”
Hank leered knowingly. “Maybe that’s the part he gets off on. Makes it dirtier.”
Moira, refusing to brook such vile aspersions against her partner, strode angrily to the door. Before hurling it open, she crossed her arms sternly and said, “Don’t think I don’t know what this is about. Your brother’s had a personal vendetta against Stephen for years. He’s also running for governor this fall and could use another sensational case to whip up his homophobic supporters. You tell him for me that Stephen and I will not be scapegoated! And if he leaks one word of these malicious lies to the press I will sue him into the ground for libel!”
Hank just laughed, tickled by her pique. “I’ll be in touch, Miss Finch,” he said as he ambled past her.
“And by the way,” he added, his words a disquieting echo of Lily’s, “it’s not libel if you prove it.”
Twenty-one
IONCE READ AN ARTICLE ABOUT the unanimity with which depressed San Franciscans agree that, if you’re going to off yourself, the Golden Gate Bridge is absolutely the only place to do so, all lesser bridges being poor substitutes, resort to which risks exposing oneself to comment at the memorial. One fellow who miraculously survived his plunge said that the instant he’d leaped he realized there was no problem in his life he could not solve save the one he’d just created for himself by stepping off the Golden Gate Bridge. As we pulled out of the Pinnacle lot I felt a pang of empathy for that poor jumper, for I too could now see how laughably trivial were the concerns that had consumed me only an hour ago.
You’ve been fired off a movie? Big deal! It was a crappy story anyway! Stop whining! Write a new one!
Your closeted megastar boyfriend has dumped you? Boo hoo! Is he the only closeted megastar in town? Hardly! Get out there! Become a Scientologist! Meet people!
The DA wants to nail you on charges ranging from pandering and extortion to conspiracy and obstruction of justice? Okay — that’s a problem! That, my friend, is the difference between inconvenience and actual Peril. And the peril, it grieves me to report, only deepened once Hank left Moira’s office.
The moment she slammed the door she stridently informed us what revenge she’d exact if we were so foolhardy as to cooperate with the police. She’d say we were full-blown accomplices who’d lured Stephen to Les Étoiles with full knowledge of her intentions. She also told us that, were we to check our most recent bank statements, we’d find that ten thousand dollars had been deposited into our accounts the day after we’d delivered Stephen to her.
“That was you!” I said, recalling the delightful discrepancy, which I’d assumed, in my general flightiness with all matters financial, to be some sort of script payment.
She would also claim that the price we’d demanded for luring Stephen to the spa included sexual favors from her staff and that she had film of Gilbert to prove it (this, of course, being the sole reason she’d arranged for his massage to end happily). This last calumny seemed especially foul, and my head swam at the thought of National Enquirer headlines screaming, “Madam Moira: ‘Stevie’s “Pals” Betrayed Him for Sex Freebies!’ ”
As we drove through the Pinnacle gates, I wanted desperately to go straight to Claire and seek her counsel, but I was due at Lily’s and felt too guilty over yesterday’s heinousness to keep her waiting. I arrived in Los Feliz at noon, returning everything I’d taken from Lily, who greeted me with shaming effusiveness.
“Glen, my angel! How good to see you! Mwah! How clever you were to take this all away when you saw that man in the bushes! But do leave a note next time! I was beside myself and the fear gave me a splitting headache! Didn’t I warn you there were those who’d try to stop us? You didn’t believe me, but now you know!”
It wasn’t easy to concentrate on Lily’s ramblings that day, what with dark visions of prison life flitting like bats through my tortured imagination. I was also bursting to pull Monty aside and ask what havoc he planned to wreak with his new arsenal. I didn’t get him alone till six-thirty, when Lily withdrew to dress for her weekly night out with the girls. I decided to come clean about everything, starting with my real name and my history with Stephen and Diana.
“Good lord,” he said, flabbergasted, “you were in cahoots with them before we even met?”
I apologized abjectly for my duplicity, laying great emphasis on how desperate we were not to lose our first screenwriting gig.
“And, of course,” I confessed, “there was Stephen.”
“Gave you the look, did he?”
“Huh?”
“The look,” he repeated. “That languid, smoldering, surrender-your-genitals stare. I know it well, having watched him devise and perfect it in this very house the summer he turned sixteen.”
“Yes, he did. But still, I can imagine what you must think of me.”
“Don’t be silly! If anything it makes me fonder of you.”
“Huh?” I said, flummoxed.
“Before this,” he explained, “I’d assumed you’d turned on us after you’d already known us for weeks. I understood and forgave. Were Stephen not kin I’d betray any number of old ladies for him, but I can tell you, it stung. But now I find you’d signed on to do us dirty before we’d even met, back when you assumed us to be the baby-munching grave robbers my loved ones no doubt painted us as. It was only after you’d pledged your fealty to them that you came to see what splendid creatures we really are.”
“Exactly!” I said, grateful for this magnanimously proffered loophole. “And once I did, I felt awful. But what could I do? I’d given my word! It seemed dishonorable to renege.”
“And you wanted to screw Stephen.”
“Well, that too, of course.”
“And you did,” he laughed, slapping my knee. “And with cameras, yet, which was good news for me. So there, you see, Glen— Philip?—what are we to call you?—all’s well that ends well!”
I said that all had not yet ended and the odds of it doing so well were growing remoter by the hour. I breathlessly described our run-in with Hank, a tale which, to my surprise, did not alarm Monty in the least.
“Mere saber rattling. If they had any proof they’d file charges. Besides, Moira’s far too clever to get herself caught. She thinks things through, that girl. She anticipates contingencies. Well, look who I’m telling—she stapled your lips well in advance of need. Buck up, dear. Have faith as I do in her evil genius.”
I asked what he planned to do with the DVD.
“Fear not,” he said cryptically. “All will be revealed shortly. And I promise you a front-row seat for the proceedings.”
“Proceedings?” I said, not liking the word one bit. But then the doorbell rang and Monty sprang limberly to his feet.
“That will be Rex. We’re painting the town pink if you care to join us.”
I said I doubted Rex would relish my company as the last time I’d seen him he’d been using a strapping black youth as a pacifier. I contemplated a swift retreat through the French doors but then Rex’s belly entered the room followed shortly by Rex.
“Well, look who’s here,” he said with a dainty sneer. “It’s the voyeur! ”
I rose with the serene smile of a boy who has his exit line.
“ Former voyeur, Rex. You’ve cured me.”
MY MOOD AS I departed Lily and Monty’s was at least a shade less funereal than it had been on arrival. Though I could not share Monty’s hey-diddle-diddle outlook on the Grimes menace, I did feel that doom was, perhaps, not quite so inevitable as I’d feared. Hell, even the jumper had survived.
But the lightening of my mood was mainly the resu
lt of having finally laid Glen to rest. The ongoing deception had weighed increasingly on my conscience and as I drove west I felt that proud glow that only steals over me when the better angels of my nature have scored one of their rare victories.
THAT NIGHT GILBERT AND I dined at Orso with Claire, who strongly urged us to lawyer up and tell all in exchange for immunity.
“For God’s sake,” she whispered, “save yourselves while you can! Trust me, it’s all going to come out. Too many people know about it. The first ones to cooperate will get immunity and everyone else will be thrown to the wolves!”
“But we haven’t done anything wrong!” protested Gilbert.
“That’s not what Moira will say. Just play ball. Tell them the truth—she was blackmailing you over the screenplay.”
“ What?” I said, choking on my carpaccio.
“You want us to ruin our careers?!”
“And what sort of careers do you think you’ll have in prison?!
Wake up! This isn’t The Producers! They don’t do musicals in there!”
I said that while I valued her advice, she was, I feared, underestimating the harm that could be inflicted on us by an enraged and vindictive Moira, whom I frankly feared more than the police. I also pointed out that the Grimes brothers had formed robust dislikes for me, and their bona fides in any negotiation could not be assumed. Besides, there was no guarantee anyone else would come forward. The clients had much to hide and the working boys, fearing for their safety, had largely dispersed to other cities. By talking we might be creating a case that could have been avoided had we just kept our mouths shut. Gilbert declared my logic impeccable, which, needless to say, troubled me deeply.
Truth to tell, my main reason for rejecting Claire’s advice was one I left unspoken so as to spare myself the howls of ridicule it would have prompted from both my companions. That reason was Stephen.
Granted things hadn’t ended well between us and his behavior toward me had fallen short of the highest standards of chivalry. But did I really want to be the cause of his downfall? To deliberately drag him into the mire of scandal and global mockery? I recalled our first meeting with the bully Grimes, how bravely we’d stood shoulder to shoulder and crossed swords with the foe. How could I now deliver him to that gay-baiting plug-ugly? No, I could bear to be Stephen’s love-struck pawn, his ill-used ex-squeeze, but I would not be his Judas.
