Bobby thumbs through the book quickly, hoping to find names of women he knows, never thinking—although in retrospect, God knows why not—that among the dozens of women’s names would be his own wife’s, along with the date, September 18, 2002, and this notation: Screamer. Oral. B+.
Stunned and angry, Bobby’s not sure who he’s madder at—Vee, for screwing this guy practically under his nose, or Ramon, for being enough of a prick to actually give her a fucking grade (literally). Vee winds up winning by default, seeing as how Ramon’s already dead, which doesn’t change the fact that Bobby’d still like to give this dead asshole a swift kick in the head. And suddenly, out of God knows where, an image of Marv Paulson taking a crap on Ramon’s chest makes Bobby laugh out loud. The only difference between him and Marv, Bobby realizes (aside from about half a billion dollars and eighty pounds), is that if Marv knew his wife had been banging Ramon, he probably would’ve wanted to watch.
Bobby returns his attention to the armoire where all the sex videos are neatly stacked and labeled with initials, and he scans the collection, looking for the one of his wife blowing this dead prick. Removing that tape from the collection, Bobby adds it to his little care package, which now consists of the sex-and-murder tape, Ramon’s little black book, and the tape of his wife and Ramon fucking. Grabbing them up, Bobby takes one last look around, then lets himself out of the room the way he came in.
Moving swiftly back along the narrow pathway that parallels the side of the house, with the dog starting to bark again on the other side of the fence, Bobby exits to the street through the little gate, his heart pounding again, like it’s going to explode out of his chest.
Scanning the street, satisfied he hasn’t been seen, Bobby hurries up the street, gets into his Boxster, hangs a U-turn, and hauls ass back to his own house.
CHAPTER 10
Safely home, Bobby goes into the kitchen, pops the cork out of a bottle of wine, and pours a glassful, which he proceeds to chug down like you’d chug a bottle of beer at a frat party. A second glass likewise chugged finally gets his nerves under control and, third full glass in hand, Bobby goes into his little office to fire up the TV and VCR.
Sitting on his desk is Ramon’s little black book, along with the two videocassettes—the one with the murder on it and the other with his wife on it. Sick as he knows it’ll make him to see it, he figures he better get it over with. He slips the tape into the VCR, hits PLAY, and there on the small screen is his wife, Vee, flat on her back, her legs wrapped around Ramon’s torso, hanging on for dear life, the whole time screaming, “Fuck me, oh yeah fuck me,” in Ramon’s ear, then rolling him over and sliding down between his legs to give him a hummer for dessert.
Bobby bolts from behind his desk, barely making it into the little guest bathroom off the entryway, where he pukes his guts out into the toilet for the second time tonight. It’s the story of Bobby’s life these days that the only thing he can do twice in one night anymore is puke.
Cleaning his mouth off with a towel, he breathes deeply, trying to get his emotions under control before going back into his office, where, blessedly, the tape of Ramon and his wife has run out.
Popping the tape out of the machine, Bobby slides in the one of Linda Paulson banging Ramon, giving as good as she gets, nothing romantic here, just balls-to-the-wall hot sex, artlessly, lovelessly performed by two people who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about seeing to each other’s emotional needs.
Bobby wonders what compels a guy to secretly tape himself having sex with all these women. Does he watch afterward and get off on it all over again? Or is it more about getting off on the sick power of knowing these women are on Candid-fucking-Camera?
When it comes to men, Bobby thinks, Linda Paulson’s got her taste in her kidneys. But then, après sex as it were, there it is—the argument that escalates from push to shove to Linda caving in Ramon’s skull with his own award trophy. Watching it again in the safety of his own little office gives Bobby a feeling of deep satisfaction, knowing that at least this prick won’t ever fuck another guy’s wife again.
As the wave of jealous rage engulfing him finally begins to recede, Bobby thinks, Christ, what have I done? And his writer’s voice answers immediately: For openers, you’ve seen a murder committed by someone you know, which makes you a material witness. You’ve also entered the victim’s home and stolen evidence, which not only makes you a thief but could get you indicted for breaking and entering, obstruction of justice, and being an accessory after the fact to murder.
Realistically, Bobby assures himself, none of this will happen unless he was seen entering or leaving Ramon’s house, which he’s positive he wasn’t, or unless he loses his cool, which he’s equally positive won’t happen. But shit happens. Everybody knows that. Bobby’s written a hundred scripts about a hundred arrogant assholes who never thought they’d get caught, and they were.
Call the cops now, he tells himself. Tell them what you saw, tell them what you did, give them the tape, you’re a hero, a Good Samaritan who witnessed a crime and phoned it in. No charges, lots of good ink, you’ll dine out on it for years.
But then he reminds himself of the starlet who tells Mike Ovitz she wants to blow him and Ovitz saying, Okay, but what’s in it for me?
And the answer is, Nothing, numb nuts. There’s nothing in it at all except a lifetime of regret that you didn’t grab the brass ring when you could have, because you chickened out.
And then, finally, there’s this: in a weird way, Bobby feels as if what he saw tonight is the exact break he’s been waiting for, better even than Ed McMahon showing up at his door with a check for ten million bucks and telling him he’s won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.
Thusly inspired, Bobby stashes the tapes and the black book in the back of his desk drawer and boots up his computer. He’s got a screenplay to write and, goddamnit, he’s gonna write it.
Clicking into his Final Draft program, he settles in front of the computer and types onto the blank screen:
FADE IN.
CHAPTER 11
The next morning, somewhere around ten o’clock, an actress friend of Ramon’s comes by his house, probably thinking she’s going to get laid, and instead finds more of Ramon stiff than she’d bargained for and calls the cops.
Detective Dennis Farentino catches the case. A homicide veteran, Dennis is very cool—someone you can’t help being drawn to, unless you’re a shitbird, in which case he’s your worst nightmare. Dennis will tell you he never started a fight in his life, but by the same token he never backed down from one, either. What he won’t tell you, unless you ask, is that he never lost a fight, which is pretty amazing when you figure that, by his own estimate, he’s had maybe a couple of hundred.
Dennis was a superior high school athlete but a lousy student, so after graduation he went into the military, did six years, then came out and joined up again, this time with the LAPD. He was a natural cop: smart, coolheaded, brave, with an uncomplicated respect for authority. Within four years, he made detective, first with Narcotics, then Robbery Homicide.
Women, on the other hand, were a different story. Dennis never had a clue. Not that it stopped him, or them, from getting together. It was the staying together that caused him problems. I’m no shrink, so I won’t bother to give you my twenty-five-cent analysis of why Dennis fucked up two marriages. I suspect it has to do with the fact that Dennis is threatened by the smart women and has no patience with the stupid ones, which narrows the field considerably.
I guess smart women give Dennis problems because he can’t compete with them verbally in an argument. He holds his own when the argument is in his head (usually after the fact), but when it’s actually happening, his anger tongue-ties him, and in the heat of battle, rather than get abusive (he never hit a woman in his life), he just shuts down emotionally. Relationship-wise, that’s what they call non-productive.
Notwithstanding, because he’s a handsome guy, in a quiet, understated way, and bec
ause a lot of women are attracted to the withholding type of guy, Dennis makes out like a bandit. Women always think they can get him to open up, which he certainly takes advantage of, but then when it comes to the heavy lifting real relationships require, they discover, to their dismay, that Dennis fatigues easily.
To his credit, I guess, in spite of the two busted marriages and a whole bunch of romances that went nowhere, you won’t find a woman Dennis has ever spent time with (including the ex-wives) who doesn’t have nice things to say about him.
Dennis has been divorced three or four years, there’s no woman currently in his life in a serious way, and he probably drinks more than is good for him. He works his ass off staying fit, on the theory that if you’re going to abuse yourself, you gotta be in shape for it. And he is. Dennis doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’s afraid to get physical.
So the way it is with Dennis these days is, he’s got a small number of women friends he’ll occasionally sleep with when they’re between relationships, plus whatever comes his way in the natural course of things, as long as he doesn’t have to work too hard for it.
Fourteen years on the job, Dennis has always kept his nose clean, at least professionally speaking. He’s the kind of guy people always underestimate, which, according to him, is a good thing. He calls it his Columbo act. He wants everyone to think they’re smarter than he is, because arrogance will fuck you up, every single time. (I happen to think that’s true of our business, too.)
If asked, Dennis will describe himself as someone who’s okay knowing he’ll never be more than what he is—a cop who’s seen too many stiffs and fucked too many women (I didn’t know you could fuck too many women, but I’m not as cool as Dennis is, plus I’m married, which I take pretty seriously, most of the time at least).
Anyway, it isn’t long before Ramon’s house is a cordoned-off crime scene, swarming with uniformed cops, detectives, crime-scene investigators, and—as always—hovering around and above the perimeter, the media, already sensing this could be a good one. A fairly well known Latino actor found naked and bludgeoned to death in his bedroom isn’t exactly your garden-variety homicide.
To the untrained eye, a crime scene is a pretty chaotic environment. But everybody present has a specific job—photographing the scene, dusting for prints, collecting evidence. You’re looking for cigarette butts, chewed gum, used tissues, hair, any kind of DNA material you can compare against a suspect’s, when and if you make an arrest.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the Alma award is the likely murder weapon, so it’s bagged and tagged, along with the used condom fished out of the toilet that didn’t go all the way down when it was flushed. You don’t see the good-looking babe on CSI doing that, I’ll bet.
Dennis also tells his partner, a beefy older guy named Lonnie Rosen, to dump the phone for the numbers of whoever Ramon called or called him. Download his cell phone, too.
Then, out by the pool, Dennis questions the girl who found Ramon’s body. She’s young, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, she’s already got her starter set of implants, plus the requisite nose job, and she tells Dennis she’s a student of Ramon’s and that her name is Lisa Ratner.
Dennis wants to tell her that as long as she’s changed every other damn part of herself, she may as well get rid of the Rat in her last name, but instead he asks, “What kind of student?”
“An acting student,” Lisa says, in a tone implying Dennis must be some kind of an idiot.
“I guess I should’ve figured, someone as pretty as you,” Dennis says. “Where does he teach?”
“At the West Side Theater Arts School, on Pico Boulevard.”
“How long have you and Ramon been romantically involved?” Dennis asks.
“We’re not,” she says, offended.
It always amazes Dennis that people lie to him about stuff like that. “So then you came over to his house because …”
“I came over because he invited me to, so we could talk about a scene I did in class the other night.”
“Oh yeah? What was the scene?”
“It was from After the Fall.”
“Arthur Miller,” Dennis says. “I always liked that play. I’d’ve liked to see what you did with it.”
“Thank you,” Lisa says.
“Okay, so you came over and what—rang the doorbell?”
“Yes.” And now her eyes start to puddle up.
“And when there was no answer,” Dennis prompts, “you went around the side of the house and let yourself into the bedroom through the sliding glass door?”
“It was open,” Lisa says, and bursts into tears. “I’m, like, I can’t believe it. It was horrible. I’ve never seen a dead person before.”
Dennis puts a comforting arm around her and tells her he knows how awful it must’ve been and that it’s okay if she doesn’t want to stick around. He can always find her later if he needs to ask anything else.
By now, Lonnie’s discovered the fuck tapes in the armoire and sends a uniformed officer to fetch Dennis.
Inside the bedroom, Lonnie says, “Take a look at this,” and hits the PLAY button on the VCR. Suddenly, there’s Ramon, lying on the bed, hands behind his head, cool as you like, watching his dick get sucked by a woman with big, hard breasts, her ass smiling at the camera while her head bobs up and down. “This douche bag must have over two hundred tapes of this stuff,” Lonnie says.
“Was that in the machine or did you just put it in?”
Lonnie says the machine was empty, but between Ramon being bare-ass naked and the half-flushed condom they recovered in the toilet, you’ve got to assume that whoever he was banging killed him and took the tape.
“Well,” says Dennis, thumbing through the drawers full of tapes, “there’s a couple hundred suspects right here, plus you gotta assume a jealous husband or boyfriend’s in the picture somewhere.”
Lonnie says, “It’s a dirty job, partner, but we’re gonna have to look at all of ’em.”
Dennis hasn’t seen Lonnie this animated in a long time. Big, overweight, in his late forties, and twenty-three years into an excessive affection for gin martinis, Lonnie’s the kind of guy who makes lunch dates at eleven-thirty in the morning just so he can get that first martini in him on an empty stomach. After eighteen years in Robbery Homicide, he’s witnessed enough crime scenes that he sleeps every night of his life with his gun under his pillow, which thrills Mrs. Rosen no end. (“That’s the only goddamn gun in this bedroom that works,” she says to Lonnie about once a month.)
Around noon, Ramon’s maid, Esperanza, shows up and immediately goes hysterical when she finds out Mr. Ramon es muerte. Dennis calls over a uniformed cop named Suarez to act as a translator. “Ask Esperanza was she here yesterday,” and when Suarez translates the question, she bursts into fresh tears, and Dennis can’t understand a word of what she’s saying. Finally, Suarez tells him that Esperanza is afraid Dennis thinks she killed Ramon, and Dennis says to the cop, “Ask her was she here last night?”
More excited Spanish, then Suarez tells Dennis she was home with her family last night.
“Okay, tell her she’s not a suspect. I just want to know if she has any idea who might’ve come over last night. Did he have a steady girlfriend? Can she give us any names of women he’d been seeing recently?”
More tears, lots of talk, lots of head shaking, and Dennis gets the drift that Esperanza is a dead-end street, information-wise, though she does confirm a portrait of Ramon pretty much in sync with the murder scene itself, telling Dennis, through Suarez, that Ramon had different women to the house all the time. She knows this because she had to change the sheets every day, for obvious reasons, and she was always cleaning up Ramon’s disgusting litter, which she’s too embarrassed to get specific about but which Dennis takes to mean everything from stray items of women’s underwear to used condoms. Esperanza tells Suarez she never saw any of these women, since her hours are noon to five every day, and in fact hardly ever saw Ra
mon, either, since he was usually at work.
Off the canvass of the neighbors, Ramon is variously described as sexy, friendly, charming, and in one case an asshole—this from a guy who lives across the street, who accuses Ramon of having made a pass at his wife, telling Dennis he’s not surprised someone popped him.
“Should I be looking at you for murder?” Dennis asks this guy, with a straight face, and the guy is immediately defensive, telling Dennis he was at the Dodger game last night—he’s got the stubs to prove it.
There’s a general consensus among the neighbors that women came and went at all hours, but as far as last night is concerned, no one can volunteer having seen anyone who may have been visiting Ramon between the hours of nine and eleven P.M., roughly the time of death as determined by the M.E.
CHAPTER 12
Later that afternoon, Dennis goes over to the West Side Theater Arts School on Pico Boulevard, where Ramon taught, and meets the owner of the place, an old queen named Lars, who is stunned at the news of Ramon’s murder. He keeps patting his heart and saying, “This can’t be happening. I just do not believe this.”
But of course, his disbelief notwithstanding, Ramon is a murder victim, Lars is a drama queen, and Dennis is a ruggedly handsome and extremely sexy cop. So, pale blue eyes glistening with tears, Lars volunteers that Ramon was one of his most sought after teachers, and not just by the females. He was a favorite with men, too.
“Was Ramon bisexual?” Dennis asks.
“Oh, would that he was,” Lars says. “But that wasn’t his movie. What I meant was, he had a macho thing about him that men responded to, and he knew how to communicate from his gut.”
Lars tells Dennis that Ramon’s classes, Tuesday and Thursday nights from eight to ten, were always full, and there was always a list of actors wanting to get in.
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