by Bruce Wagner
“Depends on how you feel. We could do him for fraud. Intentional misrepresentation. Intentional infliction of emotional distress. Go after his savings—pension, whatever. You need to think about that. But I’ll be pursuing Friday Night Frights: the entity that provides the venue, the superstructure so to speak, that makes it possible for folks to wake up in the morning with the bright idea that evoking public spectacle by putting their friends through emotional and physical hell is somehow a wonderful gift to the world. FNF and their parent company are at the top of our food chain. Oh, believe me, they’ll make us an offer we can’t refuse. They do not want to go to court—though we may very well want to take them there! The tabloids settle every day, and the amounts are impressive. Most of the time you don’t hear about it because of provisions for confidentiality that are built in to the settlements. They’re kept under seal, and for good reason. People would be amazed at the kind of numbers we’re talking about. We are absolutely playing in that ballpark, Mr Herlihy, because we are beyond libel. We’re in a whole different universe! We’re talking personal injury, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Hell, if they ever broadcast that—and I wouldn’t put anything past these folks—add ‘false light invasion of privacy’ to the brew—then shake n bake!”
They took a breather as the food arrived.
Remar spoke of other things. He’d just paid $3,000 for the right to drive through a gated community off Mulholland, “which reduced my commute by 40 minutes.” He said how wonderful Barry Manilow’s show in Vegas was (“I’m a sucker for Barry, always have been”); how he and his partner were thinking of buying a house in San Miguel de Allende; his pro bono work with a Venice literary foundation where established authors mentored kids from the inner city.
He stabbed a forkful of bloodily spice-soaked eggs and looked up.
“Chess—I want to ask you something that may seem a little off-the-wall. Were you a bedwetter?”
“No.”
“OK, great. Because you peed your pants, didn’t you?” Plaintiff nodded. “Do you remember when that happened? Exactly? Because it’s going to be important to establish this involuntary response—perfectly normal under the circumstances—but we will need to establish that it happened at the exact moment you felt your life was over. Note I am not saying the moment you felt your life was threatened, I’m saying, over. There’s a difference. That is going to be part of my strategy, and I think it’s going to serve us very well. So if you don’t recall right now that’s fine. And by the way, I would have done more than just pee! I’ve seen the tape. I’d have definitely made myself ‘a sandwich.’ So just think about the moment you thought that happened, Chester, see if it comes back, and if you can’t recall, think about when you imagine that it happened. And I’ll do the rest.” He put the now cooling eggs in his mouth, savoring the taste. “And another thing: I don’t want you speaking with anyone from that show.”
“They actually called again.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They wanted to pick up the tapes they sent over.”
“You didn’t give them back any material?”
“No.”
“Good. Great. You played that perfectly. I can see that we’re going to excel. As a team. All right, Mr Herlihy, I’d like to have those—today. Will you be home?” Chess nodded. “I’ll send an intern from the office.”
“What about my friend? Maurie?”
“Maurie Levin.”
He uttered the name as if a dossier had already been compiled, and it made Chess slightly uneasy. He didn’t want to be a rat. For all his raving, he really only wanted restitution, not revenge.
“He’s been calling but I don’t feel like talking.”
“Nor should you. I wouldn’t recommend it, Mr Herlihy, but if you happen to have a conversation—keep it light—do not say you’ve spoken with an attorney. You’re going to doctors every day for your pain, that’s all anyone has to know.”
“What about his girlfriend? I mean, she was kind of in on it. But I don’t want her involved.”
Remar smiled as he slurped his latte.
“She’s been over a few times—just to visit. She feels bad about what happened.”
“That’s OK. But the same thing applies—keep it light. In case she’s doing a Mata Hari number!”
Chess didn’t exactly get the reference, but strenuously shook his head.
“She’s not.”
“I’m sure she’s very nice, Chester, but you never know. People get weird. He may have a bigger influence on her than you think. No talk of an attorney or pending actions—simply put, it’s none of their business. And it is business.” He patted his mouth with a pink napkin. “So: am I officially hired?”
“Yeah! Absolutely.”
“Terrific. I’ll send some papers for you to sign when the intern picks up the tape. Very standard.” He smiled. “And make sure it’s my intern, and not someone from FNF!”
They shook hands, but this time Remar used a gentler touch.
XXVIII.
Marjorie
SHE woke up and the world was different.
She felt young—her body felt young. This would be, had already been, a year of great change.
They still delivered the Wall Street Journal and she hadn’t the heart to end the subscription because it was Ham’s favorite. She usually threw it out but today, Marj opened the paper to a full page ad for financial planning and investments.
Maybe your next retirement party won’t be your last.
Maybe all a gold watch tells you is the time.
Maybe bingo doesn’t appeal to you.
Maybe today is the day you wake up and say…
Hello future.
Yes.
She was a rich woman now.
As if to signal the auspiciousness of this time, her daughter stopped by. In a tenderly fractured moment, she thought that perhaps Mr Weyerhauser had contacted Joanie to ask her if she “knew.” Then Marj realized that of course he hadn’t, and of course she didn’t, it was probably a federal law not to inform loved ones until a specific time; and just an apt coincidence, felicitous, that Joanie was there, now, looking so beautiful, standing before her after so many weeks. It took everything she had not to tell her youngest of the astonishing sea change. (The old woman was planning to share the wealth, as any mother would.) She’d wait until Mr Weyerhauser gave the “all clear.”
Her head was in a whirl. She thought of going out on a limb and inviting Joan to the Taj Mahal in Agra, traveling like royalty on the Deccan Queen like Judy Davis and Dame Peggy. Her daughter was stubborn and finicky yet why wouldn’t she assent? The windfall might alter her view, not in the sense of greed, but in the spirit of sheer life’s-too-short celebration. Besides, for an architect, seeing that tomb was a busman’s holiday. Before she could work up the courage to ask, Joan got paged from her office and had to leave. She’d only been there half-an-hour but told her mother she would phone in the evening to make dinner plans. Marj decided to extend the invitation then, at an Indian restaurant: perfect.
The last few days it was hard to sleep, even with her trusty Halcion. Around midnight, she made herself chocolate pudding and a festive Baileys Irish Cream, then watched the hotel DVD a 3rd time. After the viewing, she still wasn’t tired, and pored over a historical book from which she used to read to the kids—captivated by the familiar tale of the Taj. (Her beloved hotel’s namesake.) The Mughal emperor built it as a monument to his wife who died in childbirth. It took 22 years to put up; each day, elephants laden with marble and precious stones formed 10-mile processions. When all was done, the emperor plucked out his architect’s eyes—or cut off his hands, depending on the version you were reading—so as never to be able to replicate such a thing of beauty. As if it were possible! Thank the Lord her Joanie wasn’t prey to such barbarities! There was some anecdotal confusion over the fate of the Taj Mahal hotel’s designer as well. Her father’s account had him jumping into the sea when h
e saw his dream built backward; others said he shot himself through the heart.
The most interesting detail about the monument in Agra was something she’d read long ago but forgotten: the emperor Shah Jahan intended to build a 2nd mausoleum, for himself, just across the river, made of black marble instead of white. (The memorials were to be linked by a black-and-white bridge.) What amazed Marj most was that this unbuilt crypt was often referred to as a “shadow” monument. Wasn’t that glorious? It must be divine providence, for shadow was the very word Lucas Weyerhauser (it gave her pleasure to say his name aloud, like an abracadabra to all countries she would one day visit) had invoked to describe the source of her newly minted Mega Millions.
The shadow drawings of Blind Sisters.
MR Weyerhauser was precise in his instructions.
She would go to Wells Fargo and obtain a money order for $11,492, made out to the State of New York. This would be a “marker” to secure her winnings, demonstrating to the State Attorney that she had been officially contacted and was in full agreement with the magnanimous terms of her godsend. (With Lucas’s help, she had already completed several pages of the calligraphic onionskin contract.) Before he left, he gave her an ornately beautiful cashier’s check, of a kind she had never seen: modern yet somehow reminiscent of 19th century currency. Like something out of the Wild West! It was embossed, covered over with all kinds of gold and delicately woven ink scrollings. Lucas said it was done that way to avoid counterfeiting, and the paper these sort of checks were written on alone cost in the proximity of a hundred dollars.
The draft was in the amount of $1,863,279.47. He said, with a gleam in his eye, that leaving it “wasn’t really kosher, but I know you won’t go out and splurge.” There were taxes to be paid before the monies could be collected, and though his bosses in New York were real sticklers about it, he often left these checks with his “sisters” anyway, because it was fun. (The 1st payment of what would be a total of 4 over the next 6 months.) It had become his “signature” to put them in the hands of the winners, prematurely; he had the feeling his bosses knew, but looked the other way because he was good at what he did and had been doing it a long while. Lucas understood how “damned exciting” the whole thing was and “if it were me, I’d want someone to do the same.”
She went to Wells and got the money order (he told her not to “gossip” about what it was for, especially if the teller was “chatty”). Lucas said he’d come back sometime in the next few days. He wasn’t too specific about when—there were other winners to contact; one lived as far away as Ojai, and the federal rule was that he had to greet the winners himself. She dialed the number on his business card and got a recording: “You have reached the State of New York Blind Sister Beneficiary Hotline.” She quickly hung up, thinking that perhaps she’d violated some sort of protocol. It made her feel silly, yet glad everything was on the up-and-up. She almost broke out the Baileys again.
Marj left a get well note in Cora’s mailbox. She knew Cora and Pahrump were at the hospital, and wrote on the card how bad she felt, and that she hoped—was certain—Pahrump would soon be better. (She didn’t want to mention leukemia. She didn’t even know how to spell it.) Enclosed was a check for 25-hundred-dollars that she requested be given to any place that helped dogs and other animals who were “having a rough go.” Cora was well-off and she purposefully left the Payee space blank, rather than filling in her name, in the chance the neighbor might take offense and think she was offering money for Pahrump’s care, which certainly wasn’t the case.
Then she strolled to Riki’s.
She’d uncharacteristically forgotten to get a receipt for her balance while at Wells, so she went to an ATM a block away from the liquor store. Paying the cash machine fee was a luxury Marj could afford: her savings, CDs, and money market were in excess of $925,000. That was her worth—excluding Hamilton’s monthly pension and Social Security checks, excluding the value of her house (about a million), excluding the recent, salutary generosity of the magisterial State of New York.
They were open for business. Flowerpots and blackened, stuttering, or gutted half-broken votive candles still lined the sidewalk. The handwritten notices had increased in number. There was no one in the shop but Riki’s son. Marj smiled, albeit painfully, and he said hello, a little painfully too. She was worried about what to say—she’d made a few dry runs in her mind but no words had come—and the old woman began to involuntarily tremble. He was a kind, good boy and, seeing her distress, approached. Marj hadn’t planned to be the party who needed comforting but so be it. They looked in each other’s eyes and she told him how sorry she was. It was that simple, and thankfully the right words had come, without effort. God had given them to her. He asked if she wanted something to drink. An elegant, haggard-looking woman in a sari emerged from behind the curtain of the back room. She must be Riki’s wife; the poor boy’s mother! Marj smiled, steadier this time, walking toward her. The widow wasn’t as welcoming as her son but not unfriendly. A different generation, and a creature far more shattered by the loss. Mrs Riki’s head bobbled back and forth in greeting, just as her husband’s used to. They took each other’s hands, eyes starting to brim. Marj reached for her pocketbook and took out the envelope with the 2nd money order she’d gotten from the bank. She pressed it into the silently protesting widow’s hands. With the fortitude of a good witch in a fairy-tale, Marj made it clear she’d brook no refusal and perhaps because of her age, or simple aggrieved and grievous exhaustion, or because Marj was physically frailer than Mrs Riki, the widow acquiesced. Now there were freefalling tears all around. As the old woman left the store, she thanked the widow and son out loud. Later, she wondered if that was an odd thing to do—not the pressing of the money into her hands, but the thanking of them—then she thought, no, that was absolutely the right thing, God had given her words again, to thank them, to thank the spirit of the husband and father for the kindnesses he had showered onto the entire neighborhood in this small corner of the world, a corner so far from the one they knew. The State of New York would soon be thanking them as well, she was grateful to have played her part, and Marj wondered if the widow had been formally told. She’d forgotten what Mr Weyerhauser—Lucas—had said about that, but the notification of vendors and merchants was probably a duty left to someone other than the young man.
He couldn’t, afterall, be expected to do everything.
XXIX.
Joan
LEW asked her to meet him where he lived. He actually said, “I really had a nice time with you” (she remembered a sweet jock once saying that), and he wanted to go hiking. Anilingus at the Bel-Air; now hit the hiking trail. Uh-huh. OK. Muy bueno. Muy bueno Sierra Club sandwich. He suggested they go to the Lost Coast; she thought that meant somewhere in Sri Lanka but no, it was apparently near his home up north. A rugged place without roads, the last of its kind. She’d never heard of it but that was appropriate. She was lost, with a capital L.
She packed flacons of Halla Mountain green tea and Chanel face creams, her favorite (and only) Yohji dress-up dress, blue jeans, Patagonian fleece and silk long johns, and went to Van Nuys where his jet was waiting. The thing was empty and looked like it sat 60 people. She’d deviously asked Barbet to come along, knowing he wouldn’t, and of course no invitation from Lew had been extended. (Her lame way of being inclusive. Or maybe more like having the pimp on watch outside the motel.) Joan was sure he’d already intuited that she and Lew had slept together—a ballsy roll of the dice. The irony was that in her eyes she had merely been careless; God’s way of giving her a shove off-bounds during the El Zorro/Fountainhead game. She never thought, deep down, that the fuck had bestowed any kind of competitive edge; if anything, she’d blown it. What was she doing, then? It’s a longshot but I want to be spoiled. Thanks for the Memories but just I want to be mobbed-up and married to a moneykiller. Does that make me a bad person? Barbet and Pradeep spoiled her but they weren’t proper pirates—they were little boys. Shit: any gi
rl’d want to know what it felt like to storm the (bill) gates of billionaire heaven.
His company employed 15,000 people. He lived on a thousand acres in Mendocino. He was in the middle of a Promethean house-proud rebuild. The temporary contemporary was a cloud of colossal tents where he camped like a Bedouin king. The nomadic compound was designed by the same architects who put up similar ones for a resort in Rajasthan; each module 30 feet tall, full plumbing and heat-radiant tiles with the same floral inlay of pirtre dure that adorned the cenotaph of the Taj Mahal. (Other billowy canvasses had been modelled after Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 19th century Schloss Charlottenhof.) A retinue of servants reminded her, in their thin ties and closescrubbed style, of everything she’d read about Howard Hughes’s Mormon entourage. Freiberg owned 2 mountains: Motherfuck: Joan wanted to know what it would be like to own mountains and streams and the fauna and flora without and within. To own the very molecules…. Lew said he was changing his design ethos. (His word.) He was learning. He was eager. He was childlike, charming, autocratic, guileless. He was without mercy. He was openfaced and closehearted and mysterious. He was volatile and babyish and hedonistic, petulant and homely, but some days unspeakably, mystically handsome. She could be one of his aesthetic teachers. (His phrase.) Just like Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. Ha. He kept saying how he wanted to buy houses in LA—he never bought just one of anything—with Joan as guide and muse. That’s what he said. He’d already looked at Gary Cooper’s classic A Quincy Jones; a complex in Holmby Hills with a Turrell skyspace; a cozy villa in Palos Verdes with Mudejar-style ceilings, based on computer software that mimicked the Alhambra palace’s geometries (recent tenant: Julio Iglesias); and a 2,000 acre working ranch high, or as high as you could be, in the Malibu Hills, with an underground Turrell (oy vey) Olympic-size swimming pool. He had this big “churchy thing”—that ethereal side. He wanted to make a copy of E Faye Jones’s Thorncrown Chapel in the Ozarks. And he was absolutely obsessed with Louis Trotter’s Bel-Air folly and final resting place—LA COLONNE. (He knew Louis’s son Dodd.)
