Digging James Dean

by Robert Eversz

  Cassie heard the doubt in my voice and turned to better read the shifting lines of my face. She needed to believe something. At thirteen we are aware how our parents fail us but still we need to believe in their essential benevolence, that no matter how hard they beat us they beat us from love, that their criticisms no matter how sharply worded are meant to improve more than wound us, that their many and inscrutable punishments are meant to goad us to success and not to drive us to failure and misery.

  “Your mother was not perfect,” I said. “In many ways, she was a terrible mother. But she loved you. Her failures had nothing to do with that.”

  “Mom was a fuck-up,” she said. “Fuck-ups run in the family. Are you a fuck-up, too?”

  “I’m a recovering fuck-up,” I said.

  I heard the pounding of feet in the hallway before Frank’s face jutted through the doorway. I turned toward him, already shaking my head. Now was not the time. Go away.

  “You have to turn on your TV.” He lurched toward the remote control and pointed it at the set. A diamond of light burst into the center of the screen and a face surfaced from the black, a young man’s face, blond hair worn unfashionably long in back. A face I recognized from the day my camera had been smashed on a Santa Monica sidewalk.

  “Fuck, that’s Eric,” Cassie said. “They busted him?”

  A walking hairdo with a microphone stared into the camera in front of Santa Monica City Hall and announced that at one PM that afternoon Eric Noet had walked into the 2nd Street station of the Santa Monica Police Department and confessed to the murder of Lucille Ryan. Frank simultaneously worked motel and mobile phones while the report played. The on-scene reporter, who had mastered the difficult skill of staring seriously into the camera without wrinkling her brow, called the victim a stunning young starlet and her murder, at the hands of her estranged boyfriend, a crime of passion.

  I shouted in protest.

  “His lawyer all but copped him to voluntary manslaughter,” Frank reported. He held the motel phone cupped against his chest. “Rumor is they hope to plea-bargain him down from first-degree murder.”

  The screen flashed to a live feed of Eric’s lawyer, his face as familiar as the celebrities he frequently represented. Two young lives ruined, he said. A tragedy for everyone. No one regrets what happened more than my client.

  “We told you they were hooking up together,” Jason said. He sat next to Cassie on the bed, their hands an inch from touching.

  I’d been in and out of the so-called criminal justice system often enough to know the drill. The defense would contend Luce had died as a result of a lovers’ quarrel. The knife is a common murder weapon among wronged lovers, the phallic thrust of steel serving as a coup de grâce for the relationship. Because of my criminal record the prosecution wouldn’t be eager to let me testify and the state wouldn’t want the case go to trial. Eric would cop to losing his head in a moment of passion and plea-bargain down to a few years in prison. I still believed that Sven had ordered her death, motivated by the fear that she would talk, but I couldn’t prove it and probably never would. I lifted my camera bag onto the bed and rifled through the compartments, checking equipment and film stocks. “How do you think he got the lawyer?” I asked.

  “That guy, he loves cases like this.” Frank held the motel phone close to his ear while he waited for follow-up information. “A high-profile case, a Hollywood murder, lead story on the five o’clock news, it makes sense that he’d want to get involved.”

  “So you think Eric just called him up, said he wanted to confess, please represent me? You think that’s what happened?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  I shouldered the camera bag, considered taking the motel key, decided to leave it behind. If they caught me, the key would lead them back to the motel. The Rott jumped from the floor, alerted by the signal of shouldering the bag that we were about to go. “I’m thinking we don’t have any visuals for the story you’re going to write.”

  “So we’ll stage something,” he said.

  “A front-page story needs a front-page photo.”

  “I’m on a call,” he said. “Wait up, I’ll go with.”

  I walked out in the middle of his sentence.

  “You’re not going out there alone,” he called.

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’m taking the dog.”

  I jogged down the stairs and cranked open the passenger door for the Rott. Cassie vaulted down the stairs as I circled the trunk, Jason two steps behind. Anywhere she went, he’d follow.

  “Take us with you,” she said.

  “I have to do my job and I do my job best alone,” I said, and slid behind the wheel. “But I’ll come back for you, I promise. And when I do, we’ll work out together what we’re going to do, you and Jason and I.” When I shut the door and started the engine she rapped a silver skull ring on the window. I powered it down.

  “If you’re looking for Sven you won’t find him,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Nobody finds Sven,” Jason said.

  “I’ve already heard that from somebody else,” I said. “But if nobody can find him, how did you find him?”

  Cassie shook her head once. “I didn’t find him. He found me.”

  “Me too,” Jason said.

  “How did he find you?” I asked.

  “He sent Eric to Arizona to get me,” Cassie said.

  “He sent for all of us,” Jason said. “He found us all.”

  Frank pounded down the stairs, cell phone pressed to his ear. I put the Cadillac in gear and spun out of the lot.

  Thirty-Nine

  IRETRACED in the skittering beam of my headlights the route we had taken that afternoon, the boughs of oak trees looming over the road like the limbs of giant ghosts. The layout of curves and straights came back to me as I wheeled through the hills, girlhood memory refreshed by that afternoon’s drive, and I anticipated sighting the red scrawl of graffiti marking the road to the base moments before the headlights picked it out of the darkness. The Rott stood on the passenger seat beside me, paws shifting for balance when the Caddy heaved onto the dirt road. Dogs are not keen-sighted animals, and I doubted he recognized the terrain until I edged the car off the side and let him out to smell it.

  The Rott threaded us through the oaks in darkness, picking out our previous path by scent. I followed in the light of a curved blade of moon, tuning my ears to the soft fall of the dog’s paws and the snuffling of his muzzle held low to the ground. I wasn’t sure what I’d find at the base or if I did find something what I’d do with it, but I knew that before long the perimeter fence would be mended and fortified by someone more daunting than four scrawny teenagers armed with iron bars. Sven had counted on secrecy to defend the base and our appearance breached that secrecy. If the shrine existed he would either defend or move it.

  The Rott nosed up to the tree I’d climbed before and glanced back at me as though afraid I’d pull the same stunt twice and abandon him to the ground. I knelt and hugged his head, to reassure him, yes, but also to gather courage from his stout heart and physical strength. I put a forefinger to my lips to command his silence and caught the attentive look in his eye that meant he understood. The crowbar twisted in the belt loop of my jeans when I stood. I straightened it and struck off across the clearing between the oaks and the fence at the perimeter of the base.

  The taut sheet of chain-link slackened near the cut, the break in the cross pattern visible even at distance in the dark. I squeezed through the gap, then pulled back the flap of chain-link to allow the Rott to slip through. The ground leveled inside the perimeter, the wild grasses trimmed to ankle height. Three cylindrical-roofed outbuildings, once used for administration, lay twenty yards ahead, arching side by side into the ground like half-buried cans. No light showed in the four-pane windows nor anywhere else on the base. I listened carefully for sounds and watched the Rott, whose weight shifted to his forepaws as his ears pricked forward. His hearin
g was far keener than mine and if I watched closely his behavior would reveal what he heard. He turned his head to me, waiting for my next move, the same as saying he heard nothing that threatened us.

  I stepped to the first building, careful to plant my feet softly at each shift of weight, the stubble of weeds cracking beneath my boots. By the lack of light and noise I guessed the two remaining boys had fled. I reached for the doorknob, bright stainless steel shadowing at the approach of my hand. I gave it a turn. Locked. I veered toward the window to the side of the door. The reflection of my face in the glass appeared brighter than anything behind it.

  The knob on the door of the second building turned freely. I thought back to my encounter that afternoon. I hadn’t seen which building Cassie had emerged from, and later, when the other kids had charged out to confront me, my back had been turned. But I had to assume, perhaps wrongly, that the center building had served as living quarters for the crew. I nudged my shoulder against the wood. Nothing blocked the door. I twisted my shoulders away from the building and brought my fist to my chest, the signal I’d taught the Rott to watch my back. He whirled away from the door, his attention focused on the ground stretching toward the front gate. Even though he imperfectly obeyed them, the Rott liked getting commands and he always responded with a sense of excitement to the ones that did not order him to sit or stay. I pushed the door fully open and stared inside.

  The moonlight from the open doorway spilled a dozen feet into the room and pooled against a darkness so deep it seemed solid. To my left a row of cots, white top sheets lipped over green blankets, extended three cots into that darkness, the fourth cot no more than an outline in shadow. I kicked at an empty bag of potato chips to the side of the door. Beneath the first cot a can of cola rested on its side. I reached into my bag for a flashlight and spotted the beam to the far corners of the room. Twelve cots lined to my left, all freshly made, and beyond them, the beam picked out the white porcelain of kitchen facilities and a half-open door revealing a toilet, lid raised, all looking to my eye like a photo ready to be taken. I hung the Nikon around my neck, stepped forward, and scanned the flashlight beam to the right over a long, wooden table, the door swinging gently shut behind me.

  I heard the spark of electricity firing the overheads before the first flash of light sharded into my eyes. I jerked the crook of my elbow toward my face and pivoted, the fingers of my opposite hand groping for the crowbar at my belt. In the near corner of the room a sunglassed man in a black, cassocklike suit sat within reach of a wall switch. The man’s hands rested palms down on his thighs, his skin glowing bloodlessly white against the black thread of his suit. Midway between the two hands a 9mm Beretta automatic protruded like a deadly phallus.

  “Welcome to the shrine, dear sister,” he said.

  The lenses of his sunglasses curved like teardrops, thick bottoms tapering to sharp points past the far corners of his eyes, their sleek black surface a stark contrast to the ghostly white and deeply lined brow above the rims. He wore his black hair slicked back, the hair-line cutting straight across the top of his brow as though stitched. His face looked like a trick of makeup and stage light, so pale and white—except for a bright and sumptuous bloom of red at his lips—that he looked more vampire than living, bleeding man. We regarded each other in silence, his glance cloaked and mine naked. I thought again about the sunglasses and about the light inside the room, what he could see and what he couldn’t. Outside, the Rott barked twice, then twice again, unsure of the danger.

  “Yes, I’m a good shot,” he said, answering the question I had just silently asked myself. “I’ll certainly shoot you before you get to me. But I really don’t want to do that. Violence is the first resort of inferior minds.”

  “Like Eric?”

  “Like Eric’s exactly,” he said.

  I can’t explain how I knew that behind his sunglasses his glance shifted to my camera, not rationally, just that I felt a subtle warming of my arm where it rested against the lens. I moved my hand from the crowbar and laid it across the top of the camera, in position to lift the viewfinder to my eye.

  “I wish to make a proposal to you.” The Beretta jumped into the palm of his hand as though commanded and he pointed the gun at my chest. “I won’t shoot if you won’t.” He smiled like a magician disarming the audience with a joke. “Remove the camera from your neck by the strap and set it on the floor with your bag. Maybe it would be a good idea to leave your crowbar behind, too.”

  I eased the camera strap from my neck, set my satchel on the floor, lowered the camera into the bag, and propped the crowbar against the side. He still held the gun, I noticed. “You’re free to shoot me anytime you want,” I said.

  “My dear girl, I don’t want to shoot you.” He laid the pistol on his lap again. “I want to enlighten you.”

  “Like you wanted to enlighten Luce? Or maybe like you wanted to enlighten my sister.”

  “Oh dear, I can see we’re going to have to talk about Eric.” He steepled his fingers beneath his chin and sighed. “Eric lacks emotional control. He’s a good disciple. The younger ones respect and obey him. I thought for the longest time that he had transcended his emotionality, that he had learned to calm and channel the darkness in his soul.” The corner of his lip lifted, a sad and ironic expression that failed to become a smile. “I was mistaken. He never should have fallen in love with Luce. By the time I knew about his feelings for her, the damage to his self-control had already been done, although I didn’t see it then.” His lips tightened to a straight red line. “I didn’t believe he would hurt her. I knew that she wanted to break with him, but I never imagined that he’d revert back to the crude and violent boy he’d been when I harvested him. I thought my training had taken deeper root than that. It’s my fault. He was my first. I waited too long. He was too old when I took him. I never imagined he’d hurt her.”

  “The night she was murdered, that was you in the limo outside Bar Bar,” I guessed.

  The question stilled him for several seconds, and I imagined he wondered what I’d seen, what I knew about the encounter. “No,” he said, his voice heavy and sad. “That wasn’t me. I won’t tell you who occupied that limousine with her—I prize confidentiality above all else—but you don’t strike me as being unintelligent. You can imagine the type of person who would have instant access to such a car, the type of person who might be attracted to Luce and to whom Luce would want to attach herself.” Something glistened beneath the right lens of his sunglasses, cutting a straight line down his cheek.

  The man was crying.

  “Luce was my star. Lucid, luminous, Luciferian, Luce.” The words fell gently but heavily from his lips, like velvet-wrapped stones. “I didn’t have the opportunity to name all my children, but I named her and the name proved prescient. Even at birth she glowed. She was going to be a wonderful actress, a major star. The famous and powerful were already falling in love with her. She was my brightest hope, the brightest of all my children.”

  “And my sister?” Tears can be faked. Actors fake emotions for a living and their fakes are more vivid and convincing than the real emotions of most of us. “Was her death also a so-called crime of passion?”

  Sven dipped into an inside pocket for a white handkerchief and brushed his cheek with the folded corner. “Sharon was always a schemer and a cheat, though I have to admit a very sexy one in her youth.” He returned the handkerchief to his pocket and straightened his jacket. “She always had a little more daring than brains, which helped her to excel at the small cons but blinded her to the big ones.”

  His glasses shielded the direction of his glance but still I felt the heat of it on my cheeks and brow, as though he stared at those points with particular intensity to gauge my reaction to the admission he’d just made.

  “You knew her,” I said, sounding stupid to my own ears.

  “Intimately, but only for a short time.” He rose from the chair, his balance and grace almost magisterial, and tucked the pisto
l beneath his belt. He had me then and he knew it. He didn’t need the pistol anymore. “What was she doing at the cemetery that night, do you think?”

  “Looking for a daughter who’d joined your cult, or whatever you want to call a gang of ignorant kids who dig up graves for you.”

  He nodded slowly, as though thinking deeply and carefully about the accusation. “Then why was she carrying a camera?” The question hung taut in the air between us, unanswered because I refused to answer, and he knew by my refusal that we both suspected the same answer. My sister was angling for advantage up to the moment of her death. “Was it blackmail, do you suppose?” He spoke slowly, his voice deeply pensive, as though he wasn’t taunting me, as though he sincerely wished to know. “I thought at first the two of you were working together, that you’d sent her to the cemetery that night. You were already hunting me, I knew that from Eric. I figured it had to be blackmail.” His smile was warm, paternal, persuasive. His smile forgave. “I’ve been just as suspicious of you as you are of me. But now that I’ve met you, I don’t think so. Either Sharon figured it out on her own or she ripped you off. She wasn’t smart enough to put it together herself but she was just amoral enough to abuse the trust of her family. She ripped you off, didn’t she?”

  “Stonewell wasn’t the one objected to having his photo taken,” I said. He didn’t have the right to hear his suspicions confirmed. “It was you who objected. You didn’t want your photograph taken.”

  “I’m photo-sensitive,” he said, pale skin glowing like paper in the dark corner of the room. “Please understand that you terrify me with that camera of yours just as much as my gun scares you. The picture-in-the-paper style of celebrity is for my disciples. I want none of it.”