Justice at Risk (3 page)

“Things, as they say, could be worse.”

“And what about you, Oree? Happy with the way life has gone?”

His steady gaze shifted, almost imperceptibly.

“All in all, no serious complaints. Though I’m not saying there aren’t things I’d change if I could.”

“We met more than two hours ago, and I have yet to hear about even one of those things. I know almost nothing about you.”

He glanced at his watch, then pushed back his chair, and stood.

“Another time, maybe. Like Templeton, I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

As I rose, I told him that Templeton had taken care of the check, something he already knew. We thanked the hostess, and stepped outside, where we stood listening to an outrageous jazz recording coming from a small café two doors away. I cocked an ear, as the musician performed a devilish dance up and down the scales with his saxophone.

“That’s quite an ax.”

“James Carter, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’ve got a sharper ear than I do, Oree.”

“It’s a passion of mine.”

Another half minute passed, each second ticking pointedly away. The fine jazz continued, but I sensed that neither of us was listening to it quite so keenly now. Finally, I took a deep breath, gathering my courage.

“Maybe we can catch a concert some night. Make an evening of it.”

“Sounds like a possibility.”

The night sky had clouded over again, and a cold wind gusted along the street, suggesting another storm. Joffrien turned up the collar of his jacket and hugged himself, looking vulnerable for the first time.

“I should have brought a topcoat. I need to be more careful.”

I put a hand on his arm, rubbing it warm.

“It’s really not that late. Do you have to be on your way?”

He smiled apologetically.

“Everything in its time, Ben. If it’s meant to be.”

“Fair enough.”

We’d exchanged phone numbers inside, and there didn’t seem to be a lot more to say. Joffrien prepared his departure.

“I’ll call Cecile first thing in the morning. Give her your number. I’m sure she’ll be in touch.”

“Where did you say you knew her from?”

“I didn’t, actually.” He was stepping away, on the verge of turning. “Let’s talk soon.”

Then I was watching him move away in long, loose strides, toward the corner, and around it. A section of newspaper scuttled by me in the gutter, rattling dryly against the curb before being caught in a puddle, where it struggled but finally settled helplessly into the oily rainwater.

From an adjoining neighborhood, I heard the wail of a police siren, reaching across the streets and boundaries, searing the cold night with auditory heat, like a cry of pain from a distant stranger.

The next afternoon, I drove to Studio City and a scheduled appointment with Cecile Chang.

I took the narrow, four-lane road that winds from West Hollywood through leafy Laurel Canyon, passing crumbling cabins and faded ranch houses once owned by legendary movie stars, following the flow of traffic up to the crest at Mulholland Drive, then down into the flatlands of the triangular San Fernando Valley.

Chang’s offices were housed in a smallish, older, two-story building on Ventura Boulevard that looked drab and a bit forlorn compared to the flashy new business towers rising up a block or two down the street. The rear of the old building butted up against a wide alley that separated it from CBS Studio Center, which had been the home of Republic Studios in the thirties and forties, when the company was grinding out hundreds of B Westerns with the likes of John Wayne, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers riding the purple sage of the vast back lot. Some of the original soundstages remained, along with a cluster of quaint bungalows, but most of the back lot had long ago been sold off and subdivided for freeway ramps and middle-class suburban homes. I found a parking space on a shady side street, and hiked back to the business district on the boulevard, where parking was scarce and costly.

The storm of the night before had passed, leaving in its wake a blustery breeze, high clouds, and a postnuclear glare that had me slipping on my dark glasses as I emerged from the protection of oak and eucalyptus trees. The temperature in the Valley is invariably ten degrees warmer than in the rest of the city, and by the time I reached Chang’s building, my body was weeping with sweat. A sign out front announced the name of her company: New Image Productions. I pulled open one of the glass double doors and stepped into a modest but pleasant, plant-filled lobby, decorated with framed posters advertising several of Chang’s film and television projects, along with a number of commendations and awards, including an Oscar nomination for best feature-length documentary. There was a mustiness about the place that suggested an old building ventilated by windows that actually opened, letting in real air. It felt quaint and hospitable, and oddly refreshing.

A receptionist looked up from behind a moon-shaped counter as I entered. He was a perky young man with lavender spiked hair, an assortment of piercings, fluttery hands, and a lively lisp that hissed like a greenhouse misting hose each time an
s
got involved. He put down a copy of
Details
, took my name, picked up the phone, announced my arrival, and hung up, all in a matter of seconds.

“Cecile’s upstairs,” he said, hissing madly while he extended his hand to examine his sequined nails, “shooting some footage for a fund-raising video. She’ll be down soonish. Plant your tush and stay awhile.”

I found a seat, picked up a copy of
Video Review
, and began idly leafing through it. The receptionist glanced over without turning his shoulders, like a diva showing off her good side, and asked me if I cared for a glass of water while I waited. I told him that would be nice.

“I’m afraid it’s tap,” he said, as he returned with ice cubes and water in a frosty glass. “Our current budget doesn’t allow for the bottled kind. No Evian served here!”

“Tap will do just fine.”

He responded by tap-dancing his way blithely back to his desk, stopping midway to perform a full spin and a nifty soft-shoe routine in his retro platforms, which couldn’t have been easy.

“My name’s Harold, by the way.”

“Ben.”

“Ooh. Big Ben, maybe?”

“Just Ben, thanks.”

“I have a special nickname myself.”

“Ah.”

“Maybe I’ll share it with you sometime. If we become friends.”

“I can hardly wait.”

I turned back to the magazine.

“Aren’t you going to at least guess?”

“Harry?”

“You’re getting warm.” He wagged a finger at me. “No more guessing. I’ll surprise you when we achieve the proper level of intimacy, which hopefully will be sooner than later. In the meantime, it’s just plain old Harold.”

I smiled, and turned some pages. When Harold was seated again, he sneaked a glance in my direction, got caught, smiled coyly, then busied himself with the day’s mail while humming “We Shall Survive.”

Several minutes later, a woman in a hand-driven wheelchair appeared in the hallway to my left, coming my way. She was middle-aged, with bifocals, a pleasant, weary smile, and no legs; her plaid skirt was pulled down and tucked up under her knees at the stumps.

“Mr. Justice?”

“That would be me.”

I stood.

“I’m Denise, Cecile’s assistant. She can see you now.”

Harold waved bye-bye with his extremely flexible wrist while Denise performed a deft one-eighty in the chair. I followed her back down the hall, around a corner, and all the way to the end of the next corridor. Along the way, I glimpsed small, cluttered offices filled with people at work, most of them under thirty, many in front of video viewing screens. Denise stopped her chair outside an open door.

“Go right in. She’s expecting you.”

Before I was through the door, Cecile Chang was standing behind her desk across the room, then coming around it. Behind her was a window that faced west across a small parking lot in which every space was taken. Her office was roughly twice the size of the others I’d glimpsed; nearly every inch was stacked with videocassettes, scripts, or file drawers, but all of it appeared to be necessary and well organized. On her desk was a PC, surrounded by neat stacks of documents and other papers, and on the credenza behind it, a framed photograph of an Italian-looking woman with short-cropped hair and a cocky grin. An entire wall to my right was devoted to a chart heavily marked in different colors of erasable ink, which accounted for the peculiar chemical odor that permeated the room. Stenciled at the top in bold letters was the title “
AIDS 2000
.” Underneath the chart was a long couch that looked sturdy but well used.

“Mr. Justice. Welcome.”

Cecile Chang appeared to be Chinese or Korean, as her name suggested, and on the tall side for an Asian woman, in the range of five-six to five-seven, not counting her three-inch classic pumps. She was wispishly slim, with shapely legs and an exquisite face, her dark hair pulled back and done up in an elaborate bun. Her face was carefully made up, including lips blushed in subtle pink and around her dark eyes lines of mascara so fine and understated they might easily have been missed. A delicate bracelet of gold-encrusted jade stones graced one of her slim wrists, matching a pair of oval stone earrings clipped to her delicate lobes. Her business suit was soft gray and well cut, almost elegant, buttoned all the way to her neck, where a dark green silk scarf was loosely knotted. She seemed overdressed for both the work and the weather, but fashion statements were something I’d never pretended to understand.

We shook hands in the middle of the room; hers was soft and slightly moist. She asked me to take a seat facing her across the desk. I put my notebook in one chair, and settled into the other. When she was seated, she folded her pale, fine-boned hands in front of her and spoke with her pointed chin slightly lifted.

“Oree speaks highly of you, Mr. Justice.”

“You’re aware that he barely knows me.”

“I trust his judgment as if it were my own.”

“The two of you must be close, then.”

“We go back quite a few years.”

“To childhood?”

“Not that far. We met in the late eighties, as graduate students at New York University. He was pursuing his doctorate in anthropology. I was finishing my master’s in film. We became very good friends.”

“It was kind of him to call you on my behalf.”

“You’re available for work?”

“Between assignments, you might say.”

“As you must know, Mr. Justice, writing fact-based television scripts is quite different from writing for print. Among other things, one must learn to write for the ear rather than the eye, for the viewer and listener rather than the reader. It’s essential to let the pictures do much of the work while keeping the words to a minimum, all the while paying careful attention to structure, such as scene beats and multiple act breaks. Timing is also important, right down to the split second in many cases.”

“Sounds challenging.”

“It can be quite frustrating for a prose writer such as yourself, who’s accustomed to churning out reams of copy, with only the occasional photo along the way for visual support.”

“Maybe I’m the wrong man for the job.”

“Not at all, Mr. Justice. I look for the enterprising writer with an interesting background, a different viewpoint—someone who can bring something unique and personal to the work. I’m willing to work with writers new to the medium such as yourself, providing the editorial guidance and production support they need.”

“That’s very generous.”

She smiled.

“There is a downside, of course.”

I smiled with equanimity.

“There always is.”

“The pay isn’t that high, and the workload is intense. This isn’t network television and union scale we’re talking about. If you decide to sign on, your contract would call for a fee of twelve thousand dollars, paid out in six installments as you complete various drafts and versions of the show, from the script outline to the final off-line edit before your segment goes to on-line.”

“I’m afraid those terms mean nothing to me.”

She stood, smiling more warmly.

“You won’t be expected to learn everything at once.” She came around the desk, picked up a pointer, and moved over to the big wall chart. “The six steps in our writing and producing process generally require four months, which includes some downtime here and there, while we review what the writer has done. I should warn you up front that either one of us can terminate the agreement after any one of the six stages, if we sense things aren’t working out. It’s a safeguard we feel is necessary with untested talent. At the same time, it offers you a way out if you’re unhappy for some reason, or if a better opportunity arises.”

“Sounds fair enough.”

I rose and stood beside her as she pointed up at the chart.

“Each of these columns represents one of the nine episodes in the series New Image is producing for the Public Broadcasting System. It’s an ambitious project—probing key issues and examining the scope and impact of AIDS as we enter the new millennium.”

“A subject an awful lot of people have grown tired of.”

“Exactly why I’m producing it, Mr. Justice.”

The tip of her pointer ran across the nine working titles:
AIDS at Home (U.S.)
,
Does the Public Still Care?
,
New Treatments/New Hope
,
The Funding Dilemma
,
Has Prevention Worked?
,
The Bareback Sex Issue
,
The Commercialization of AIDS
,
Fund-Raising Successes and Scandals
,
The Grim Global Picture
. Listed at the top of each column, under the show’s working title, were the names of the writer and segment producer. In a few cases, she explained, the writer and producer were the same. The six squares of each column represented the six stages of script development; all but one of the shows were assigned and apparently well under way, with most of the squares checked off.

Her pointer landed on the sixth column.

“I assigned the bareback sex show several weeks ago to Tommy Callahan, an experienced videotape editor who’s wanted to move into writing and production. He presented an intelligent proposal on the issue, seemed insightful about it. You’re familiar with the term ‘riding bareback’?”

“If you’re referring to bareback sex, you’re talking about people who refuse to use condoms while fucking, despite the risks.”

“Our episode examines that, as well as the phenomenon of gay men in general who continue to engage in unsafe sexual activity.”

“Statistically, heterosexuals are being infected at a faster rate these days. Especially teenagers. If I’m not mistaken, that’s been the case for some time.”

She pointed to the first column, then to the fifth.

“We’re dealing with that in two other segments, in some detail. Our bareback sex segment gets to the heart of an especially troubling issue within the community where the epidemic has so far had the most devastating impact. It’s one of our more sensitive and controversial episodes, and we’ve fallen behind schedule on it. That’s where I hope you’ll be able to help out.”

“This Callahan—how far along is he?”

She told me that Callahan had taped most of his interviews and gathered together many of the visuals he needed, or assigned camera crews to shoot more footage. But he’d broken down at the writing stage, falling behind schedule.

“After the first draft, it became clear that Tommy’s not a skilled enough writer and lacks the journalistic instincts to handle such an assignment. I’d like you to take over the writing of the script, get it into shape, get us back on schedule. He’ll continue as the segment producer, working closely with you.”

“How does Callahan feel about that?”