Reckless Disregard

by Robert Rotstein

  We walk up to Kreiss’s address, a wrought iron fence that encloses a small, grimy concrete slab that passes for a patio. The gate is locked, so I press the intercom button. There’s a loud buzz that makes Brenda flinch. I open the gate, and we walk across a patio that’s bare of greenery except for an overgrown juniper hedge and a pathetic overwatered ficus. When we get to the actual entrance to Kreiss’s office, there’s another galvanized security gate, and we have to be buzzed in a second time.

  A heavy-set fiftyish brunette sits behind the reception desk, her gray roots so uniform that they appear to have been dyed in under the brown rather than the other way around. She’s looking down at the desk.

  “Parker Stern and Brenda Sica to see—”

  “He’s waiting for you,” she says, pinching her brows together and lifting her eyes into a glower.

  I open the office door to find Kreiss standing behind a massive walnut desk, which has only a pen in a holder and an ink blotter on it. An obsolete PC and monitor sit on the credenza behind him. There isn’t a single piece of paper on the desk. The walls are covered with black-and-white publicity-grade photos of Kreiss with people I surmise are his “celebrity” clients, mostly one-hit-wonder pop singers and small-time character actors, the names of whom only someone with a show business past will recognize. He motions for us to sit down and then sits behind his desk.

  He has a wiry build for a man in his sixties. His face is so scored with wrinkles that it looks as if it once served as a restaurant chopping block. He’s wearing a blue blazer with gold buttons, a solid red tie that isn’t quite long enough, and khaki slacks. His gray hair is cropped short, and his moustache is neatly trimmed. He could be a mall security official.

  As soon as Brenda and I introduce ourselves, he says in a cop-like monotone, “It appears that your client has some major obstacles to overcome.”

  “Not if you can help me prove that William Bishop is involved in Felicity McGrath’s disappearance,” I say.

  “What makes you think I have information that relates to your case?”

  It’s a fair question. His name doesn’t appear in the police report that Philip Paulsen located, or in the citywide newspapers of the era—the Times and the Herald Examiner—or in any of the tabloid articles that obsessively characterized Felicity McGrath’s disappearance as a modern-day Black Dahlia crime. I hand him a printout.

  “It’s a story from the Venice Beach Breeze dated July 27, 1987,” I say. “Four days after McGrath’s disappearance. Written by a reporter for the Breeze named Dalila Hernandez. The article identifies Detective Sergeant Bud Kreiss, LAPD Venice substation, as the chief investigator. Quotes you as saying that you had a lead on a person of interest. We’d like to know who that person was.”

  He tosses the piece of paper back at me. “The Venice Beach Breeze was a throwaway rag devoted to the legalization of cannabis sativa and to following the career of that chainsaw juggler who performed on the boardwalk. There’s no such person of interest.”

  “Why were you taken off the case, then?”

  “That’s not accurate, sir.”

  “Sure you were. We’ve done our research, Mr. Kreiss.”

  “I was based in the Pacific Area station and Ted Gorecki, my superior in Downtown Central, decided to take over the investigation. So I watched over the case for a few days at the beginning and then went on to other things. Nothing more sinister than that.”

  “Please take a look at this, sir,” Brenda says, and hands him another printout from the Venice Beach Breeze. This time, his eyes deaden, and I’d bet my SAG residuals that if his skin weren’t a weather-beaten bronze, I’d see the color leave his cheeks. This article reported that six weeks into the McGrath investigation, Kreiss was busted back down to patrolman, working the graveyard shift.

  “So you were taken off the case,” I say.

  There’s a loud creak from the outer office, and the receptionist appears at the office door. “Your eleven o’clock will be arriving shortly, Bud.”

  “Isla, stop.”

  “Please,” she says.

  “Isla’s my wife and business partner,” Kreiss says. “Also the Protector of the Stars’s protector.” He swivels his chair to the side and says to her, “Everything’s OK.”

  She nods without conviction and leaves the room. Kreiss gets up and shuts the door.

  “You were demoted because of the McGrath investigation,” I say. “Why?”

  “They said . . .” He clears his throat. He appears to be a man who rarely speaks haltingly, but now he has to force the words out. “The brass claimed I engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Dalila Hernandez. It was a damn lie. She and I were just friends.” He gazes at me—past me, really—for a long time.

  “What happened to Felicity?” I ask. “Because I think you truly believe that William Bishop kidnapped her.” How odd my profession—I literally want to hear that Bishop, by all accounts a devoted family man, a renowned philanthropist, someone with no criminal record, has committed a heinous crime.

  He leans forward, rests his chin in his hands, and waits for a long time. It’s all I can do not to repeat the question, but I know I’ll lose him if I do. Eventually, he sits up and inhales deeply.

  “There’s this wino who crashed on Venice Beach during the summer,” he says. “Luther Frederickson. Boardwalk Freddy, they called him. A polite panhandler who’d always say god bless you even if you didn’t give him a handout, even when the patrolmen were rousting him for loitering. He’d been an accountant in the late sixties who’d gotten into LSD. He quit his cushy desk job, deserted his wife and two kids, and moved up to Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. By nineteen eighty-five, he was a Thunderbird lush living on the streets. The night McGrath disappeared, Freddy was sleeping one off in the alcove of the Pacific Avenue Hotel—it was a flophouse back then, trendy now. He told me he saw McGrath leaving the Windward Bar with two men, one tall and one short.”

  “So did ten other people,” I say.

  “What isn’t in the police report is that Boardwalk Freddy saw a yellow Volkswagen Rabbit pull up,” he says. “The two men put her in the VW, which sped away north toward the Santa Monica Pier. According to Freddy, thirty seconds later the two guys were picked up by a blue Mercedes Benz. The driver stepped out of the car and went into the backseat. The shorter man got behind the wheel. The tall guy got into the passenger seat. They drove away south down Pacific Avenue, the opposite direction from the VW.” He speaks as if he were testifying at trial, the experienced police witness dispassionately recounting facts to a jury.

  “They found her blood at the pier,” Brenda says, visibly shuddering.

  “Her blood type,” Kreiss says. “AB positive. Doesn’t mean it was hers.”

  “Yeah, but only three percent of the population has it,” Brenda says.

  Kreiss hesitates and then seems to gather courage again. “According to Boardwalk Freddy, the man in the Mercedes was William Bishop.”

  Brenda turns and taps me on the shoulder excitedly, but if she thinks I’m going to jump out of my chair in glee, she’s mistaken.

  Kreiss understands. “Mr. Stern’s next question is why would I give any credence to the word of a drunk and an addict like Freddy.”

  “Especially a drunk sitting in an alcove in the dark of night who supposedly glimpses a man from fifty yards away and identifies him as Bishop,” I say. “Who, by the way, wasn’t nearly as famous in 1987 as he is now.”

  “That’s what my superiors thought,” Kreiss says. “But I already told you that Freddy was an accountant before he tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. A cost accountant for the movie industry. He knew very well who Bishop was.”

  “It’s still pretty thin,” I say.

  “Maybe. But why did my superior order me not to follow up? And when I went over his head, why did they back him up and send me out on the streets? Maybe a witness like Freddy was reliable, maybe not. But a good cop follows up on all leads. My bosses di
dn’t.”

  “And after that you just let it go?” Brenda says. “Just like that, you ignored what you knew and maybe let a killer go free?” It’s a harsh indictment, all the more caustic because it comes from timid Brenda Sica.

  He looks up at the ceiling, embarrassed.

  “What happened to Luther Frederickson?” I ask.

  “A week after Felicity disappeared, some regulars on the beach reported him missing. They found his Samsonite suitcase in an alley off Rose Avenue. He’d never have abandoned that suitcase. It contained everything he owned.”

  “Who else knows about Boardwalk Freddy?” I ask.

  “Isla knows, of course. And my superior Gorecki and whoever was in the department back then who covered it up.”

  “Names?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Only Gorecki. I don’t think the Chief would. . . . I hoped the demotion would be temporary, an object lesson, but when it became clear I’d never be a detective again, I quit the department.”

  “Do you truly believe that William Bishop kidnapped Felicity McGrath?” I ask. “That he was behind the disappearance of Luther Frederickson?”

  He reaches back and massages his neck. “I found Boardwalk Freddy very credible. So, I’d have to say yes, Bishop was involved somehow. He should have been the prime suspect based on the eyewitness identification. But . . .” He gestures to the pictures on the wall. “I’ve made my living representing actors and singers, mostly. Protecting them against stalkers, deranged fans, vengeful ex-spouses. C- and D-List celebrities, sure, but they’re targets of the crazies, too. Bishop controls Hollywood. If he wanted to put me out of business, he could have. One word from him, and no one walks through this door. I don’t understand why he let me survive.”

  “Maybe it was a reward for your not talking,” Brenda says.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” he says. “But there’s something else—I could never think of a motive.”

  “Cheating on his wife?” Brenda says. “Felicity was going to expose their affair?”

  He shrugs. “Bishop has the reputation of being a faithful husband. Remarkable in Hollywood if it’s true. I never had evidence otherwise.”

  “Will you testify to what you know?” I ask.

  He’s silent.

  “It’s time to reveal the truth, Mr. Kreiss,” Brenda says softly.

  He glances at the office door as if checking on whether his wife is eavesdropping. “OK, yeah. It’s past time. If you subpoena me and get me under oath, I’ll tell the truth.”

  We thank Kreiss and leave his office. As we pass the front desk, I nod at Isla, whose eyes emit high-voltage anger.

  Once outside, I swing the patio gate open. The corroded hinges squeal, and the sagging gate scrapes on the concrete, the dissonant sounds mimicking the proverbial fingernails on slate. But that’s not what sends the arpeggio of needle pricks up my spine.

  Banquo, Courtney, and the other Poniard cosplayers are gathered on the sidewalk, standing like some sort of church choir. Banquo bows and says, “We stand ready, willing, and able to serve the cause, Mr. Stern, Esquire. Please just let us know how we can help.”

  Philip Paulsen’s third possible witness is Nathan Ettinger, a professor in the Film and Theater Arts Department at Topanga College, a liberal arts college tucked in the hills above Malibu. Ettinger’s scholarly book on 1980s cinema reveals some new details about Felicity McGrath. She was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1959 and came to Hollywood in 1975 as a fifteen-year-old runaway, fleeing an alcoholic, impoverished mother and the mother’s abusive boyfriends. She apparently used a fake ID to land some small roles in failed sitcoms and marginal direct-to-video movie productions. Though she never appeared in true pornography, her early roles were so sexual that when her true age was discovered after The Fragile Palace made her famous, authorities investigated the makers of her early films for putting an underage actress in sexual situations. He concludes with, “At the time of McGrath’s disappearance, it was rumored that she’d been having an affair with an unidentified Hollywood studio executive.”

  William Bishop, of course, was a studio executive. He’s been married to the same woman for decades, a fact he’s long used as a PR talking point. Was Felicity going to ruin Bishop by exposing an affair?

  I navigate to the end of the book, the About the Author section. Before becoming an educator, Ettinger was a film producer. Most of his credits are on movies I’ve never heard of. One credit catches my attention, though—“Nate” Ettinger was an associate producer on a movie called Climbing Panda Hill. As a nine-year-old, I starred in that movie, and if memory served, Ettinger was the same Nate who’d slept with my mother, a fact that might appear fortuitous except that, for males with production credits on my movies, sleeping with my mother was the rule rather than the exception.

  Brenda can’t seem to schedule a meeting with Ettinger, so one afternoon, about a week after our interview with Bud Kreiss, I tell her to grab her purse and come with me. The moment we get into the car, I crack my window a bit, discreetly I hope, because without air circulation Brenda’s perfume will have my car smelling like a turn-of-the-last-century bordello. As we drive west to the coast, we’re separated by that off-kilter silence that happens when two strangers who work together find themselves alone in close quarters. In an attempt to regain some equilibrium, I ask, “Are you from LA?”

  “I’m kind of from nowhere. And everywhere. How would you say it, like a Navy brat? But not.”

  She doesn’t want to talk about her past, and who am I to argue with that? As far as most people know, my life started when I was eighteen years old.

  We take the 10 Freeway to PCH and drive up the coast to chaparral-covered Topanga Canyon, which lies in the hills above the Malibu coast. The Canyon has long served as the epicenter of LA’s hippie, Bohemian, and New Age cultures. And six-year-old Topanga College, where Nate Ettinger taught cinema, gladly embraces that culture, lining the halls with photographs of former Topanga residents like Woody Guthrie, Humphrey Bogart, Carole Lombard, Shirley Temple, Will Geer, Jim Morrison, Neil Young, and Etta James. Brenda checked out the course catalog. Along with the usual liberal arts courses, the college curriculum includes classes on the Philosophy and Ethics of Veganism, and Religions of the New Age.

  Ettinger’s office is in the Humanities Building, a sparkling octagonal structure with three cantilevered stories, glass exterior walls, and a spacious common area on each floor. The college has some wealthy benefactors interested in promoting alternative higher education, whatever that means.

  We go up to the second floor. We learned from his website that he holds office hours between two and four every Tuesday and Thursday. I just hope he’s not with a student.

  We find him at his desk, reading what looks like a movie script. His office is large compared to most university offices I’ve seen and boasts a view of the northern hills, lush because they’re so close to the ocean. I knock on the open door.

  “May I help . . . ?” He sits back in his chair and removes his reading glasses.

  “I’m Parker Stern and this is Brenda Sica,” I say. “We’re representing someone named Poniard in—”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Stern.” He looks around, as if searching for an escape route.

  “Apologies for dropping in unannounced, but it’s very important that we speak with you,” I say. “And we did try to make an appointment.”

  “You did. I’ve been . . . please come in.” He has keen blue eyes, a long nose, salt-and-pepper hair, and a gray goatee. He is, indeed, the kind of man whom my mother would’ve fallen for. Whatever his Hollywood past, he’s certainly embraced the stereotype of an academic. He’s dressed in a herringbone tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, a white turtleneck, prewashed blue jeans, and brown Docksiders.

  We sit. The bookcase behind his chair is filled with tomes on film production, screenwriting, and critical theory. Two of the shelves are overstuffed with movie scripts. “Let’s cut to the chase,” he s
ays. “I have to prepare for a class I’m teaching in a half hour. You’re here because of what I wrote in my book, about Felicity McGrath having an affair with a movie producer.”

  “I think your exact words are studio executive.”

  “Let me be candid. I’m certainly not going to tell you that it’s William Bishop. I don’t want to be the next person he sues for defamation.”

  “But it is Bishop?” Brenda says in a hopeful voice.

  Ettinger gives her a sidelong glance and speaks to me. “Felicity McGrath reputedly had affairs with many men in Hollywood. As I say, I don’t want to—”

  “I could subpoena you,” I say. “Maybe that’ll work for you. There’s something called the litigation privilege. It gives you absolute immunity from a defamation lawsuit no matter what you say.”

  “It’s not only being sued by Bishop that concerns me.” He tries so hard to maintain eye contact that his head quivers slightly.

  Part of me is disgusted by Ettinger’s fear, but I understand. Bud Kreiss, a former cop and someone who made a living facing physical danger, kept his information secret for decades.

  “I assume you learned about Felicity’s affair from your time in the movie business,” I say.

  “I was a producer,” he says. “I started from the bottom, as a grip, a gaffer, a script reader, a camera operator and worked my way up until I got sick of the phoniness. And yes, Felicity’s affairs were well known. But no one had the guts to name names. In nineteen eighty-one, eighty-two, Bishop’s corporate raiders took over the studio where I had a housekeeping deal and killed everything that had any artistry to it, including a movie I had in development. In writing my book, I let my disgust for his hypocrisy get the better of me. In hindsight it was bad judgment on my part to mention the affair at all. And I’m not going to expand on what I wrote one iota.”