Exposure

by Alan Russell

  He still couldn’t make sense of why two men had tried to kill him. There was no shortage of people who would like to see him dead, but they were the same people who would want all paparazzi dead. The two men were obviously under orders, working for the spook who called himself Adam Smith—if indeed that was what Smith was. Graham’s job should have made him a professional unbeliever, and yet he had never questioned Smith’s bona fides. Smith had poleaxed him by knowing things about him, the kind of intelligence Graham had thought only a governmental agency might be privy to. Graham’s fear of being exposed had done his thinking for him.

  Now that he was legally sober—or close enough—maybe he should go to the police. But there was always the possibility that Smith—whoever or whatever he was—had the kind of juice that could get him jammed up. Besides, without Graham’s admitting to what had happened in Paris, there were huge gaps in his own story. He couldn’t very well explain the jobs he had done for Smith without some compelling reason. Even if he came up with some plausible story, the police investigation might tie him up for days, and he couldn’t afford that, at least not now. He was potentially sitting on his biggest story in years.

  It seemed like weeks had passed since Graham caught Lanie trying to commit suicide, but it was less than eighteen hours ago. Before doing anything else, he needed to see how his pictures from the night before had turned out.

  From a pay phone at a service station, Graham called for a cab. He paced around, going over the plan in his head. It was fifteen minutes before the taxi arrived. Graham walked up to the driver’s window, leaned over, and said, “Go ahead and start the meter. I just need to make a quick call.”

  He dialed 9-1-1. When asked about the nature of his emergency, Graham said, “Yes, I live at the Los Arboles Apartments on Rivera Street. That’s 1100 Rivera. Anyway, I’m in 4B. The unit next to mine is 4A, and I just heard gunshots.”

  “What’s your name, sir?” the dispatcher asked.

  “I’m Jason.”

  “Your last name, Jason?”

  “Look, I really don’t want to get involved.”

  “It’s just for our records.”

  “Did you hear that shot?” Graham asked. “Someone’s screaming!”

  He hung up the phone and walked over to his cab. The dispatcher would have to put it out as a hot call. Graham expected that in a very short time LAPD would be knocking at apartment 4A. His apartment.

  The taxi driver was a young black man. Graham looked for his name on the license: Rashid Jackson. While the cabbie waited for instructions, Graham fished out his wallet. He knew Hollywood sorts who regularly handed their waiter a hundred-dollar bill even before their order was taken. Said or unsaid, the message was, “Take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.” From what Graham had observed, the pre-tip was an effective means of getting the best of service. Ben Franklin tended to get a server’s attention. And what was even more important in Hollywood, it made a statement to the other diners.

  “Rashid,” Graham said, “I’m going to be doing some apartment hunting in this area. That means you’re going to have to do some sitting and waiting. I hope this will make your waiting worthwhile.”

  Graham passed over a U. S. Grant. It wasn’t as good as a Ben Franklin, but at least it got Rashid to nod.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  For form’s sake, Graham had Rashid drive him to an apartment complex a few blocks away from where he lived. He nosed around for a few minutes, wasting time while doing his prospective tenant imitation, and then directed Rashid over to Los Arboles. Two patrol cars were parked on the street.

  “Not a good first impression,” Graham said, getting out.

  He walked over to his unit, and heard Mrs. Kerr long before he saw her. Mrs. Kerr and her dog, Rex, lived next to him in 4B. Mr. Kerr had died a decade earlier. He had, Graham often thought, taken the easy way out.

  One officer was talking with Mrs. Kerr, or at least trying to talk, while the second officer was scouting the area. “I wasn’t the one who called this time,” said Mrs. Kerr, “but I’ve called other times, believe you me. I didn’t hear any gunshots, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t shooting going on. It’s getting so I don’t even want to leave my apartment.”

  “Do you know your neighbor in 4A?” the officer asked.

  “Him?” she said. “I should say not. He’s an animal hater. I caught him trying to abuse Rex.” Mrs. Kerr patted the small dog protectively.

  What she didn’t tell the officer was that Rex liked using Graham’s front doorstep as his personal fire hydrant. Mrs. Kerr had caught Graham trying to dissuade the dog from his habit through tennis ball therapy. The balls had missed the dog, but Mrs. Kerr had never forgiven him.

  “Do you know where he works,” the cop asked, “or what he does?”

  “I’m a photographer,” Graham said. “My name is Graham Wells.”

  He announced himself not so much to the cop doing the interview, but to the second cop, who had picked up the FedEx package that Graham had mailed to himself. Graham held out his hand, and the officer passed over the package. They were rejoined by the other officer, who seemed only too happy to take his leave of Mrs. Kerr.

  “What’s going on?” Graham asked.

  Mrs. Kerr’s cop, a well-built Hispanic man, seemed to be the designated speaker for the day. “We had a call about shots being fired inside your apartment,” he said. “Do you know if anyone is inside?”

  Graham shook his head. “It should be vacant.” He scratched his whiskered chin. “I’ve been away on assignment since yesterday afternoon, though.”

  “Do you mind if we look inside?”

  “Not at all.” In fact, if the offer hadn’t been made, Graham would have insisted on it. He reached for his keys, found them missing, then remembered they had been abandoned with the van. He walked over to a planter whose flowers were perpetually brown and neglected, reached under it, and pulled out his spare set of door keys. The cop took them from him.

  “Better let us open the door.”

  Graham stepped aside. While the Hispanic cop opened the door, the other covered him with his drawn gun. Eye signals passed between the officers, then both made their way inside. Graham was left waiting outside with Mrs. Kerr, whose curiosity outweighed her long-standing indignation of him. Graham’s apartment was all of seven hundred and fifty square feet, and it didn’t take long for the officers to go through it. They came out shaking their heads.

  “It’s empty,” said the speaker. “We’re going to look around the complex, though.”

  That suited Graham just fine. The longer the cops were around, the better. He still felt as if he were wearing a bull’s-eye on his back. He stepped inside and dead-bolted the door behind him. Years of last-minute assignments had made Graham an efficient packer, allowing him to hurriedly throw together a bag. Instead of listening to his messages, he pulled out the message machine and tossed it into his suitcase. He shaved in less than a minute, long enough for him to take in his bumps, bruises, and bags under his eyes.

  Mrs. Kerr was the only person around to see him off. She looked at him, and his bag, suspiciously. Graham half expected her to start screaming for the cops. Rex was hiding behind her legs. The dog would probably make a beeline—make that peeline—for his doormat as soon as he was out of sight.

  Graham took the stairs down to the parking garage, clicked his keyless remote, and dashed over to his Ford Edge. This time no one materialized from behind a pillar. Once on the street he pulled up alongside the parked cab and lowered his passenger window.

  “Change of plans,” he told Rashid. He made the cabbie happy by adding, “Keep the change.”

  Having the memory card in hand gave Graham a rush. It was rare to finally catch up with the carrot that kept you going. He drove around the block, checking his rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t being followed, and
then headed over to a nearby pharmacy. He didn’t need to have the pictures professionally printed. For now he just wanted to see what he had.

  There was no one else at the self-serve photo lab. Graham staked out a spot at a digital photo kiosk and inserted his memory card. He was hoping for the best but kept rethinking the shoot, second-guessing himself on everything he had done. Lanie would probably just be a blur, indistinguishable from anybody.

  When Graham had been a kid, he used to play around in a photographic dark room that reeked of chemicals. The memory of those smells came back to him when Graham was actually doing a shoot on an embalming. He had been covering the death of a big-name actor and had done a butter-up job on the mortician. One thing led to another, and the mortician had invited him to photograph the embalming. Because this violated all sorts of professional ethics, the mortician arranged it to look as if Graham was taking the pictures unbeknownst to him. The mortician had preened like a peacock while he went about with his embalming. He was proud as could be of his work.

  Now Graham only had to look into a monitor. His heart began racing at what he saw. It was Christmas, New Year’s, and Independence Day all wrapped into one. The shots were better than he could have hoped. Lanie Byrne’s dance with death was there for all to see.

  He scanned through his shots. There was no doubt about it. You could read the lettering on the Courvoisier bottle. Even her pill bottle was clearly visible. There were a few good shots of Lanie’s lips opening, swallowing death. And in all of them were Lanie’s celebrated eyes, but these eyes were glassy and full of despair, not the eyes the world knew. Betty Grable’s gams had been insured for a million dollars. Lanie’s eyes were worth about a hundred times that. But not in these shots. All he’d captured was the dying of the light.

  Graham’s ebullience vanished. He tried to jolly himself up, then got mad that it wasn’t working. What the hell was wrong with him? He was holding his future. The main reason he had become a paparazzo was because there was no money to be made in legitimate photography. He’d worked the wars. He’d been on staff for newspapers and magazines, and he’d done stringer work. The wages had been pitiful, the assignments often mundane. He had thought of himself as only a short step up from a department store photographer. “Squeak toy work” was how he described it. Squeak the toy and get the shot. But looking at the photos of Lanie made that work somehow seem noble. He thought of his mother that he had barely known.

  “Shit!” he said.

  But then he went about selecting the pictures he wanted printed.

  Graham put off calling his film agency and telling them what he had, even though he wasn’t sure why. These were the kinds of photos that were auctioned. In a few hours they would have bids from around the world. Lanie had that kind of juice. She had worldwide appeal. Graham knew he was sitting on gold, but he told himself it was just one vein of gold. With a little digging, he tried to convince himself, a whole pot full could be uncovered.

  He stopped at an electronics store and paid cash for a new prepaid cell phone. This might put them off his track if they were monitoring the numbers of calls he was making. Graham was able to track down Estelle Steinberg’s number and phoned her. Around town she was known as “Estelle from hell.” An assistant who identified herself as Carrie Farnham took down his name and number.

  “What’s this concerning, Mr. Wells?” Carrie asked.

  “Tell her that I’m Lanie’s little helper from last night,” Graham said. “Tell her that I’d like to see Lanie this afternoon to see how she’s doing.”

  Graham knew that in the best of circumstances, Estelle was stingy with Lanie’s time. People in the business said it was easier getting an audience with the queen than five minutes with Lanie. But he was holding certain cards that would be hard for her to ignore.

  He continued to make other calls while driving around. Between conversations, he thumbed through the photos. Every time he looked at the pictures, he came away feeling bothered, but he couldn’t stop staring at them. Nothing he heard made him feel better.

  Graham called Estelle a second time. He got a different assistant, a man named Donald, but the same promise. He made more calls while waiting to hear from her. Graham didn’t know exactly what he was searching for, but he kept poking and talking. Like any good celebrity photographer, he knew that if you only looked for dirt, you often missed the bigger picture. In this instance, Graham knew his story went well beyond an actress trying to kill herself, even if he didn’t know where it went.

  Estelle had done a good job protecting her hen, had managed to keep Lanie’s suicide attempt off the radar screen. There wasn’t even a hum out there. Estelle had put out the word that Lanie had the flu. Her cover story was easy to believe, helped by Lanie’s reputation as a workaholic, an actor’s actor that gave her all. Besides, the flu was going around, like always.

  The afternoon was ticking away when Graham made his third call to Estelle. Carrie was being her buffer again, and Graham gave up any pretense of diplomacy. “Tell Estelle I expect her to call me within five minutes. If I don’t hear from her, I’ll be on the horn to some people describing what Lanie had for dinner last night. We’re talking about her Last Supper diet.”

  Three minutes later Graham’s phone rang. Estelle didn’t waste time: “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m the guy who saved you from having to dress in black today, and having to put in the longest day of your life. My name is Graham Wells. I drove Lanie to Dr. Burke’s last night.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I need to see Lanie. Now.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I’m sure Lanie would prefer seeing me to the alternative.”

  “Her flu—”

  “Cut the flu crap. She OD’d and had her stomach pumped. I was there. I’m sure she doesn’t feel like doing cartwheels, but we talked last night when she was much worse. A little conversation won’t inconvenience her too much.”

  “Why do you want to see her?”

  “That’s between me and Lanie.”

  “You try and blackmail her, and before we’re through with you our lawyers will be cutting you a new asshole.”

  “I’m happy with the one I have, thanks.”

  “Don’t try and jerk me off, scumbag. What were you doing at the Grove last night?”

  “I was saving the life of Miss L.”

  “You were trespassing. What are you, a stalker?”

  “No. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time.”

  “That sounds like bullshit to me. If your story doesn’t check out, I can have you brought up on charges.”

  “I didn’t know that saving a life was a felony offense.”

  “Do the words ‘trespassing,’ ‘unlawful entry,’ and ‘reckless endangerment’ mean anything to you? If I get wind of you trying anything, I’ll have you arrested and thrown behind bars. Step out of line and you’ll be playing French maid to a gorilla named Bubba.”

  “Thanks anyway, but I think I’ll pass on your matchmaking. You can expect me at the Grove within an hour.”

  Estelle delayed committing to anything. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Wells?”

  “I’m in public relations.”

  “That’s the kind of answer a hooker gives.”

  “I guess you’d know.”

  The long silence that followed didn’t fool Graham. Estelle ached to tell him to go to hell and hang up on him, but she couldn’t. She had to protect Lanie from his making good on his threat.

  “I’ll clear your name with the guard at the gate,” Estelle from hell said. She didn’t say good-bye, but he got the point that their conversation was over when she slammed the phone down.

  It was half a minute before Graham’s hearing returned to his left ear.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Graham made his ret
urn to the Grove in the late afternoon. The view from Vista de la Ballena was much different the second time. It was pretty enough, he thought, that you could even make a case for the prices people paid for Malibu real estate. The still potent November sun was about to disappear on the horizon and cast a red glow on the Pacific.

  Lanie’s staff was back on duty. An armed guard stood up and greeted Graham at the gate. He cleared him for admittance, opened the gate, then directed him to where he should park. As Graham drove slowly along the winding flagstone driveway, he had the feeling that he was on a set. The grounds were too manicured, too perfect. There were streaming fountains, ponds that abounded with koi, and between stately trees were beds of blooming flowers.

  As large as the house was, its boxlike structure somehow blended into the hillside. The whitewashed villa would have looked at home along the coast in the Mediterranean. Trellised bougainvillea followed the house around, offering a palette of pinks, reds, oranges, and purples.

  Graham parked his Edge under the canopy of a huge coast live oak. He awkwardly held a bouquet of flowers that didn’t appear nearly as colorful as those outside the house. He hadn’t wanted to come empty-handed, but it was hard to know what to bring to a woman who had tried to commit suicide. When he was still ten steps away from the front door, it was opened by a greeter, LA’s answer to a butler. The man was young, wearing nice clothes, but not formal wear.

  “This way, Mr. Wells.”

  Graham was led in the opposite direction of Lanie’s wing of the house. Everywhere there were objets d’art that looked as if they belonged in a museum. He passed by two floral arrangements of a size usually only displayed in five-star hotels. With every step, the bouquet he was holding was feeling smaller and more insignificant. Eventually he was deposited in a sunroom. As he took his leave, the greeter told him, “Company will be joining you very shortly.”