Guilt

by Jonathan Kellerman

  I said, “Maybe it goes beyond that. Weathers bills himself as a Hollywood insider so maybe he also placed Wedd. At the same client who employed Qeesha and Adriana. Someone powerful enough to shelter income in the Caymans and to scare Weathers straight to legal counsel.”

  “CAPD,” he said.

  “Let’s try to find out who they are.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Maybe not.”

  I pulled out my cell, punched my #1 preset.

  Robin said, “Hi, hon, what’s up?”

  “Got a spare minute for some research?”

  “About what?”

  “Ever hear of CAPD?”

  “Nope.”

  “Who would you call if you needed info on a big-time showbiztype?”

  “What’s this about, Alex?”

  I told her.

  She said, “Interesting. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Most of Robin’s guitars and mandolins are commissioned by professional musicians and collectors who play seriously. A few end up stashed in the vaults of rich men seeking trophies—lucky-sperm recipients, real estate tycoons, Aspergian algorithmers, movie stars.

  Plus the lampreys who get rich off movie stars. I rarely think of my girl as a Hollywood type but she’s the one who gets invited to all the parties we seldom attend.

  Six minutes later, that paid off. “Got what you need.”

  “That was quick.”

  “I looped in Brent Dorf.”

  Dorf was a luminary at a major talent agency. I’d met him last year when he picked up a replica of an eighteenth-century parlor guitar that would end up hanging on a wall. When he found out what I did for a living, he reminisced about being a psych major at Yale, regretted that he hadn’t pursued it because his “primary passion” was helping people. My experience is people who talk about being passionate seldom are.

  Brent had impressed me as the perfect political type—a mile wide and an inch deep, programmed to banter on cue. His jokes were clever, his attention span brief. Whatever charm he managed to project was diluted by the flat eyes and sanguinary grin of a monitor lizard. At least he paid his bills on time.

  I said, “Dorf knew about CAPD?”

  “Boy did he, honey. Unfortunately, Big Guy’s life is going to get really complicated.”

  She explained why.

  I told Milo.

  He said, “Oh.”

  Then he swore.

  CHAPTER

  33

  Prema-Rani Moon was Hollywood royalty. As is the case with real royalty, that meant a mixed bag of privilege and decadence.

  Grandpa Ricardo (né Luna) had been nominated for an Oscar but didn’t win the statuette. Grandma Greta’s success rate was one for three. Uncle Maximilian’s average over a forty-year career was the best: a perfect two out of two.

  Daddy Richard Jr.’s star had glittered, then sputtered, with seven forgettable pictures followed by a descent into the gummy haze of heroin addiction. Rick Moon’s final attempt at rehab was a stint at a Calcutta ashram run by a guru later proved to be a rapist. Flirtation with fringe Eastern philosophy led Moon to endow his only child with a hybrid Indian name: Prema, a Sanskrit word for “love,” and Rani, “queen” in Hindi.

  By the time the little girl was five, all traces of religion in her father’s muddled consciousness had been banished and he was living in Montmartre with the little girl’s mother, a second-tier Chanel model turned semi-famous by her marriage to the handsome, tormented American film scion.

  A coke-induced heart attack claimed Rick’s life at age thirty-eight. Lulu Moon claimed she’d tried to revive her husband. If so, the powder she’d crammed up her nose hampered the process. Fourteen months later, she was buried next to Rick at Père Lachaise cemetery after slashing her wrists while her daughter slept in an adjoining bedroom.

  Prema, as she was now known, discovered the body. Never schooled, she couldn’t read the barely literate suicide note that belied Lulu’s claims of attending the Sorbonne.

  Shipped back to Bel Air, the child was raised by her grandparents, which translated to a stream of boarding schools where she failed to fit in. The child-rearing ethos on Bellagio Road was less-than-benign neglect. Ricardo and Greta, still working occasionally in character roles, were gorgeous alcoholics and compulsive plastic surgery patients who had no interest in children—in anyone other than themselves. By the time Prema was fourteen her grandparents were pickled in Polish vodka and resembled wax figures molded by addled sculptors. Two years later, Ricardo and Greta were dead and Prema was an adolescent heiress whose considerable assets were managed by a private bank in Geneva.

  With no other option, Maximilian Moon, now knighted and living in London, took on the task of serving as his niece’s guardian. That translated to a two-room suite on the third floor of Sir Max’s Belgravia mansion, Prema enduring her uncle’s abysmal piano playing and getting to know the coterie of young lithe men he labeled his “paramours.”

  When Prema was sixteen, a poobah at a major modeling agency noticed the tall, slender blond girl with the scalpel-hewn cheekbones, the ripe-peach lips, and the huge indigo eyes standing in a corner at one of Max’s parties with an unlit joint in her hand. The offer of a contract was immediate.

  Prema yawned her way down the runway as a Gaultier clothes-hanger, rented herself a garret off Rue Saint-Germain, never bothered to visit her parents’ graves. The combination of passive income and modeling fees allowed her to regularly score chunks of hashish the size of soap bars from Tunisian dealers near the flea market, a treat she shared with her fellow ectomorph beauties.

  Her apathy during Fashion Week made her all the more attractive. Elle and Marie Claire vied to feature her as the next jeune fille sensation. Prema turned them down and abruptly abandoned modeling because she found it “stupid and dull.” Back in London, she occasionally ran with a crowd of similarly bored kids but preferred solitary time for smoking weed.

  One day, Uncle Max paused long enough in his butchery of Rachmaninoff to suggest his now gorgeous niece attend university. When Prema laughed that off, he offered her a stint as a fairy in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which he was slated to play Oberon.

  Prema agreed.

  She loved being someone else.

  The rest is fan-mag history.

  Donald Lee Rumples was born in Oklahoma City where his father worked as a pipe fitter and his mother stayed home raising five kids. Preternaturally handsome but lacking the coordination for athletics enjoyed by his brothers and the attention span for scholarship displayed by his sisters, he dropped out of high school at seventeen, worked as a janitor, then a gutter at a meatpacking plant, gave that all up and hitchhiked to L.A. where he swept up a 7-Eleven on Western Avenue in Hollywood.

  That career lasted four months, at which time he wangled a day job as a golf caddie supplemented by a nighttime gig sweeping up a pizza joint in Brentwood. It was there that the wife of a TV producer took a shine to the black-haired, black-eyed kid tidying up the pepperoni and offered him a position as a houseboy at her manse in Holmby Hills.

  A year of not-so-clandestine bedding of the somewhat large lady of the very large house led to Donald’s being spotted while serving hors d’oeuvres at his host’s Christmas party. The spotter was a casting agent and the offer was a walk-on part in a low-budget horror flick.

  Once on the set, Rumples caught the eye of a female assistant director. The following day he’d moved into her Venice apartment. Weeks after that, he traded up to the Encino compound of her boss, the male director. Months later he was the toy of a studio executive with a spread in Bel Air who got him an agent. That led to a speaking part in a dog food commercial. The spot sold a lot of kibble and Donald scored a speaking part in an action film and a legal name change. His face and physique were adored by the camera and if he had enough time he could memorize a few lines.

  The action flick was marketed to teenage boys but women love
d it and marketing surveys revealed the reason: “strong but sensitive” black-haired, black-eyed Ranger Hemos, played by Donny Rader. A curious slurred delivery that would have been judged clumsy in a homely man was labeled sexy by legions of female admirers.

  One of those admirers was Prema Moon, now thirty-four and an established star. She summoned the younger man with the strangely appealing mumble to her compound off Coldwater Canyon. Donny had just begun living with his last costar, a sweet-tempered B-list actress with the IQ of adobe. Prema couldn’t have cared less about prior commitments. In what People termed “a disarming burst of candor” she described the courtship as “the boy was fresh meat. I swooped down like a raptor.”

  Donny moved to the estate. Bigger and better roles came his way. Two years into their relationship, he and Prema were each pulling twenty million a picture and lending new meaning to the term “power couple.” Paparazzi got rich peddling candid shots of the duo. Donny and Prema took it to the next level, costarring in three pictures. Two stylish comedies tanked but the dystopian sci-fi epic Wizardine grossed north of two billion internationally.

  At age thirty-seven, Prema Moon announced her desire for a quieter life, adopted an orphan from Africa and two from Asia, became the spokesperson for a slew of human rights organizations, caused diplomats to squirm as their shorts rode up when she addressed the U.N. in her trademark sultry voice.

  At forty, she added a baby girl to her “tribe.”

  Donny Rader, ten years his wife’s junior, dropped out of the limelight.

  The couple’s net worth was rumored at three hundred million. Everyone figured they’d resurface. A hack at The Hollywood Reporter termed them “far greater than the sum of their parts,” and dubbed them Premadonny.

  The sobriquet stuck. How could it not?

  Milo said, “CAPD, Creative Aura of Prema and Donny. Sounds like something you’d doodle while zoning out in class.”

  I said, “Along with goofy drawings of rocket ships. Robin’s source says it used to be one of their holding companies but it got dissolved, something to do with changes in the tax code.”

  “Lord Donny, Lady Prema, top of the Industry food chain. Jack’s probably mainlining blood pressure meds.”

  “Working for them could be why Wedd doesn’t use his apartment much. Their compound is ten acres, probably includes staff housing.”

  His phone played “Hungarian Rhapsody.” Kelly LeMasters said, “I feel for you. Having to deal with that bitch.”

  “Maria was her usual charming self.”

  “Maria,” she said, “is one of those automatons who delude themselves they’re capable of independent thought.”

  “She stonewalled you, huh?”

  “She sure tried,” said LeMasters. “I told her I’d run a follow-up story hell or high water and would harass you to the point of stalking and she waffled just like you said. The way we left it is she’ll call you to work out the ‘proper data feed’ and get back to me.”

  “Good work, kid.”

  “Now we’re buddies?”

  “Common enemy and all that, Kelly.”

  Click.

  He said, “Ten acres. Didn’t know you were interested in movie stars.”

  “A couple of years ago a man representing them called for an appointment for a ‘family member’ but claimed he didn’t know who. I asked him who’d referred them to me. He had no idea about that, either, was just following instructions, asked if I could make a house call. I said okay if payment would be portal-to-portal. He said money was no object, gave me the address. I was intrigued so I did some research, including Google Maps. The next day, a call came into my service canceling. When I phoned to ask why, I couldn’t get through. I tried again, same result.”

  “They hire another shrink?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Lucky me,” he said. “If you’d actually seen them or their kids, you’d have to recuse yourself. No actual contract or contact, no confidentiality, right?”

  “Right, but if someone that powerful wanted to sue me, they’d do it anyway.”

  “You’re staying out of it?”

  “Hell, no.”

  CHAPTER

  34

  We’d watched the marble-clad building for nine minutes when Maria Thomas called.

  “Just had an obnoxious conversation with a Times reporter who brags she’s been dogging you.”

  Milo said, “Kelly LeMasters, Olympic gold medalist in the Pestathlon.”

  “She getting in the way of the job?”

  “If it goes any further, she will,” he said. “At this point she’s just an annoyance.”

  “Well,” said Thomas, “she’s threatening to hound you to the ground unless you feed her exclusive info and if you don’t give her anything, she’ll dig for alternative sources and go public. And we both know she’ll find alternatives, all those loose-lipped idiots floating around the department.”

  “That’s my problem, Maria?”

  “Now it is.”

  Milo groaned. Turned to me and gave a thumbs-up and grinned like a drunk.

  “Way I see it,” Thomas continued, “you can neutralize her by being selective.”

  “Easy for you to say, Maria. You’re not the one getting dogged.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that’s the way it’s going to be. You’re instructed to meet with her A-sap and offer her judicious info.”

  “Define judicious.”

  “At this point,” said Thomas, “Moron Maxine’s real estate deal’s totally screwed so feel free to play with the Cheviot Hills angle. Give her anything that doesn’t compromise the investigation.”

  “I’ve been shutting her out completely,” he said. “Now I do a total about-face.”

  “Flexibility,” said Thomas. “It’s a sign of psychological strength, ask Delaware.”

  “I see him, I might just do that.”

  “Whatever. Now go meet with the bitch and stay in control. Any progress on the case?”

  “Not much.”

  “Then it’s no big deal. Feed her a steaming mound of bullshit, press-types are born with taste buds for it.”

  Click.

  I said, “Didn’t know Machiavelli was Irish.”

  He laughed. “When you’re in love, laddie, everyone is Irish.” His head swiveled toward Beverly Drive. A car had pulled up in front of Gold Standard’s building.

  Iron-gray Mercedes sedan. A curly-haired, middle-aged man in a navy suit got out and remote-locked the car. Bypassing the mailbox outfit, he opened the door to the second floor, stepped in and up.

  Milo said, “Maybe he’s someone needs gift counseling but I’m smelling the musty aroma of lawyer.”

  He swung another U, got behind the Mercedes, copied the tags. Continuing south into L.A., he crossed Pico, turned left on Cashio Street, parked, ran the numbers.

  Floyd Banfer, home address on South Camden Drive in B.H.

  A 411 call obtained Banfer’s professional listing: attorney-at-law, office on Roxbury Drive just north of Wilshire in B.H.

  “Keeping it local,” said Milo. “Should I go back in there and confront them or give myself time to plan? I’m leaning toward wait and see.”

  “Sounds like you know what to do.”

  “Spoken like a master therapist.”

  We headed back to the station. He continued past the staff lot, stopped where I’d parked the Seville, kept the engine running.

  I said, “Playdate’s over?”

  “I’d better get the meeting with LeMasters out of the way. I’d bring you along but she’ll probably make a big deal about the cop-shrink thing and I figure you don’t want the exposure.”

  “More important, it’ll be good for Kelly to feel she’s getting your undivided attention.”

  “That, too.”

  “Anything I can do in the meantime?”

  “Clean up your room and stop sassing your mother. What can you do … okay, here’s something: Figure out a way I can get into Pre
madonny-Land to look for Mr. Wedd.”

  “Maybe you won’t need to,” I said. “If he’s holed up there, eventually he’ll leave.”

  “Start surveillance on the place?” Out came his pad. “You remember the address?”

  “No, but it’s easy to find. Coldwater north, about a mile past Mulholland on the west side of the road there’s an unmarked private road that leads up to a gate.”

  “Your research included driving up there?”

  “I’m an empiricist.”

  “Some rep called you, huh? Wouldn’t it be something if it was Wedd?”

  “It would,” I said.

  “You’ve already thought about that.”

  I wished him well, got out of the car.

  He said, “Hooray for Hollywood.” Roared away.

  CHAPTER

  35

  My research on Premadonny had involved more than I’d let on to Milo.

  After the call from the stars’ rep, I’d picked among millions of Web citations. Bios composed early in their careers aired bins of dirty laundry. Everything subsequent was P.R. pap programmed as carefully as a laugh track.

  Clips from their films left no question about their physical perfection. A Renaissance artist would’ve submitted to indignity, if not outright torture, in order to paint them.

  Prema Moon came across as a competent, occasionally impressive performer who could amplify or lower her sexuality as if equipped with an erotic rheostat. The only mention she made of her children was on a press release announcing her “hiatus from film work in order to concentrate on being a full-time mom.” Donny Rader lent his support to that move, calling his wife “the ultimate earth mother, protective as a mama lion.”

  Rader’s acting was surprisingly one-note. His default mannerisms were the slow, theatrical lowering of hooded eyes and the tendency to slur his words.