Revision of Justice (13 page)

“Is that what drives you, Christine—the fear of ending up ordinary?”

“If things don’t work out, I’ll always have myself, Mr. Justice. I’ll go back to the islands, spend time with my family, eat fish, walk in the warm rain. Find a good wave to ride, a good woman to love.”

“Sounds like a fantasy.”

“To you, maybe.”

“And Cantwell?”

“Gordon’s like a lot of people you see here. Afraid that if he doesn’t realize his dream, he has nothing, he is nothing.”

“You seem to see things rather clearly.”

“I’m an outsider. It’s a necessity.”

We crossed the lawn, retracing our steps around the side of the house. Kapono gave me directions to the baseball field where Cantwell was playing. As I slid behind the wheel of the Mustang, I asked her a loaded question.

“Ever attend any of his games?”

This time her smile was sly.

“Not unless they let me play. Which they won’t. Not yet.”

“May I put that in the article?”

Her smile widened to a grin.

“Just write that Christine Kapono intends to play with the big boys.”

She held up her right arm, pushed up the sleeve of her T-shirt, and flexed an impressive bicep.

“And that she can swing a bat with the best of them.”

“I don’t know you. Go away!”

Constance Fairbridge peered out from behind tattered curtains, over the tops of old bottles displayed along a window ledge heavy with dust.

“It’s Benjamin Justice, Mrs. Fairbridge.”

“How do you know my name?”

“You told us, the night of the accident. It’s also on your mailbox.”

“Accident?”

“The other night, in the road.”

“They should never have paved the road.”

“I know, Mrs. Fairbridge. It’s a shame what they did.”

“Fire and brimstone!”

“The flaming torch,” I said, remembering a bit of Genesis. “The flaming sword.”

She opened the door, eyes wide.

“You know?”

I nodded. Her eyes narrowed fearsomely.

“Too many roads. So many houses! So much sin!”

“It’s awful, what’s happened.”

Her eyes flew skyward, then all around.

“Dust into dust!”

“How are you feeling, Mrs. Fairbridge?”

“Behold, I am old.”

“It’s a pretty name, Constance Fairbridge.”

She held her head up proudly.

“Constance Fairbridge, star of the silent screen.”

“You were an actress, Mrs. Fairbridge?”

Her eyes became fierce again.

“Who are you? Leave me alone!”

I put up my hand to stop the door as she tried to close it.

“I’m Benjamin Justice, Mrs. Fairbridge. Just making sure you’re all right.”

She seemed to be peering past or through me.

“The end of all flesh.”

Her eyes came quickly back, striking at me like knitting needles.

“Go! For I will blot out man!”

She shut the door, fast and hard. I stared at it a moment, then decided there was nothing to do but go.

I spotted the Grolsch bottle as I started down the steps.

It rested among a pile of others in her shopping cart near the bottom step, where she had left it Saturday night, and where I had missed the bottle in the darkness. Now, the distinctive green glass caught my eye like a precious emerald wedged in granite.

I found a clean tissue in my pants pocket, rummaged through the cart, lifted the Grolsch bottle out carefully.

The door creaked open behind me.

“My bottles!”

Constance Fairbridge came at me with an ax handle half-raised. I held the bottle up to the fading light.

“I was just admiring it, Mrs. Fairbridge. What a pretty bottle it is.”

When she’d found it, she must have fastened the cap; I could see an inch of residue captured at the bottom.

“What do you want with my bottle?”

“You found this Saturday night?”

“Saturday night?”

“The night of the accident. With the car.”

“I think so. Yes. Go away!”

She raised the ax handle.

“May I buy this bottle from you, Mrs. Fairbridge?”

“Take it if you must. Just go!”

She worked her gums nervously behind her wrinkled lips.

“Do you recall where you found the bottle?”

She turned her nose up the canyon.

“In the ravine, not even half a mile. I have my secret trails. I’m old, but I get up and down the canyon just the same.”

“You collect bottles along the trails?”

“Where no one else goes. Down where the bottles go when they throw them from the road.” Her eyes narrowed again. “You want to know where, but I won’t tell you!”

“You’ve told me quite a lot, Mrs. Fairbridge.”

“Take the bottle, then! Take it and go away!”

She motioned toward the Mustang with her ax handle. I wrapped the bottle in the tissue and placed it on the passenger seat, then started backing out.

“Wrath and retribution!”

I could still hear her raspy voice as I pulled onto Ridgecrest Drive.

“God destroyed the cities of the valley!”

*

I passed through the sandstone portals of the Hollywoodland Gates onto the final mile of Beachwood Drive, which ran in a straight line down to Franklin Avenue.

Halfway there, a red sports car suddenly filled my rearview mirror. Forming a steeple above the windshield was the sharp nose of a surfboard. I eased the Mustang to the curb as the red Mazda came up fast on my left.

Christine Kapono sped by, no wave or horn, so I figured her mind was somewhere else, somewhere that kept her foot hard on the gas pedal. I decided to find out where that was.

I followed at a safe distance, cutting along the whorish section of Franklin Avenue, with its depressingly drab apartments and hot-pillow joints, all the way west to La Brea. Then it was down to Santa Monica Boulevard, which carried us along AIDS Alley, where the male prostitutes wandered the sidewalks and hugged the shadows of the buildings, until I was into the bustling bar section of West Hollywood.

A few blocks past La Cienega, Kapono swung left and pulled into a metered space next to the one-story building that housed Eleanor’s Secret.

I drove past before she was out of her car, continued to the end of the block, turned around, and came slowly back.

Women sauntered into the coffee bar in small groups, or as couples, holding hands. The patio tables out front were full, a few men, mostly women.

With a clear vantage point from the side street, I watched Kapono slip into a seat at a window table near the back. Across from her was a woman whose head was in her hands, her fingers thrust like hairpins through her frosted blond coiffure. Kapono reached across and took the woman’s hands as she looked up.

Roberta Brickman’s face was a portrait of anguish and exhaustion. Kapono found a tissue, wiped away Brickman’s tears, then gently stroked her face.

Funny, I thought, how Kapono has just been treated badly by a boorish man, forcing her to change jobs—yet she’s comforting her new boss instead of the other way around. All in a coffeehouse in the middle of Boy’s Town, named in honor of America’s most famous lesbian First Lady.

It was then that Kapono glanced out to the street and caught me spying.

Her righteous look said it all: I was a reporter—a male reporter at that—whom she’d foolishly trusted.

The damage was done. The least I could do, I figured, was to give them back their privacy, such as it was.

I punched the accelerator, made a couple of turns, and headed west again, to Gordon Cantwell’s softball game.

The field where the Tinseltown Tyros played softball was located in a Little League park in Westwood, not far from UCLA, in the shadow of the 405 Freeway.

Fittingly, a building that housed a major film and TV production company loomed monolithically across the street. Its name was emblazoned in outsized letters across an upper story, a constant reminder to the ballplayers of their true goal in mixing it up on the field of play.

I spotted Gordon Cantwell as I slipped into a third-row seat, next to a bespectacled black guy in a Spike’s Joint baseball cap, who alternated his attention between the script in his lap and the action on the diamond.

Cantwell was planted deep in center field, using an orange sleeve to mop away the perspiration that ran down from beneath his reddish toupee. On his other hand was the big glove I’d seen him with Saturday night, which he’d carried with the unabashed pride of a little kid.

Now, he pounded it nervously with his fist, rocking from one foot to the other, waiting for the next pitch.

I scanned the rest of the outfield, then the infield. As my eyes reached third base, I spotted another familiar face, a surprising one.

Dylan Winchester stood just off the base pad, leaning toward home, dressed in the uniform of the opposing team. His long auburn hair flowed from beneath a blue-and-gray cap and his powerful legs filled his pinstriped baseball pants to the stretching point. As the pitcher readied the ball, Winchester’s green eyes moved keenly from the pitcher’s mound to home plate and back again, like those of a hungry cat waiting for the right moment to pounce.

In center field, Cantwell alternately pounded his glove and adjusted the orange brim of his cap.

The pitcher whipped his arm into a circular motion, then let the ball fly. I heard the thunk of the padded ball against the graphite bat, followed by screams of encouragement from the dugout and the stands.

As the ball lofted, Cantwell backed up a few steps and raised his eyes to the sky above the field lights. Winchester tagged up at third as Cantwell gloved the ball, then took off for home. Cantwell took two strides with his throwing arm cocked, showing good form, and launched the ball toward home plate.

Winchester powered toward the rubber plate like a runaway locomotive. The ball took one bounce in the infield before disappearing into the catcher’s outstretched glove, which he swung toward Winchester as he lowered his shoulder for the collision.

Winchester hit him ferociously, but the catcher held his ground. I winced, watching the bone-jarring impact.

The umpire jerked his thumb and hollered, “Out!”

Winchester was in the umpire’s face instantly, fists clenched at his sides, cursing, showering spittle through his beard. Then he went after the catcher, who was still shaking off the pain. One of Winchester’s teammates came off the bench and grabbed him from behind, pulling him away; another pushed a can of Foster’s Lager into his hand. More players crowded around, positioning themselves between Winchester and the targets of his fury. Then it was over and the players drifted toward coolers for the seventh-inning stretch, as if they’d seen it all before.

I found Winchester sitting alone on a dugout bench, muttering expletives between chugs of lager.

“Hello, Dylan.”

“What’s up, mate?”

He said it amiably, but also as if I were a total stranger, an odd, hybrid greeting that seemed peculiar to successful Hollywood types.

“I’ve been leaving messages for you.”

“A lot of people leave messages for me. I only look at scripts through my agent.”

“From what I hear, you don’t have an agent at the moment.”

“You’ve got a pair of ears, then, don’t you?”

“I’m a reporter. Ears are useful.”

“Oh. One of them.”

His eyes showed contempt as he tipped the can.

“We’ve met, you know.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Saturday night. In the downstairs hallway of Gordon Cantwell’s house. You were asking about Raymond Farr.”

In his eyes, the contempt was replaced by wariness. Wariness on a bully always looks closer to fear, perhaps because bullies don’t like to feel the power and control they need so badly slipping away.

“Had me a bit too much to drink Saturday night,” Winchester said, trying hard to sound cocky but failing badly. “Don’t remember a whole hell of a lot, to be honest.”

“Do you remember saying that you wanted to kill Raymond Farr?”

He stood up fast, nose to nose with me. It was a foolish thing to do, but he didn’t seem capable of diplomacy.

“Who the fuck do you work for?”

“My name’s Benjamin Justice. I’m working freelance.”

“Freelance.”

The contempt had returned—maybe relief—followed by another chug of lager.

“I was with a young woman named Alexandra Templeton. A staffer on the
Los Angeles Sun
. We’re working on a freelance piece for
Angel City
.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“I have a few questions about Saturday night.”

“Like I said, I had a bit too much to drink.”

“You were just shooting your mouth off.”

“That’s right, mate. The way blokes do. No more to it than that.”

“Why were you so angry at Reza JaFari?”

“’Fraid I don’t know the fellow.”

“Raymond Farr, Reza JaFari. Same man. I think you know that by now.”

“You think you know a lot, don’t you?”

“Not nearly enough, I’m afraid.”

He glared at me a moment. Then he set his can of Foster’s on the end of the bench, picked up a bat, and began taking practice swings.

“Just what is it you think you need to know?”

“For starters, why you wanted to find JaFari so badly.”

“That’s between me and him.”

“Not anymore.”

He pinned me with his eyes again, carving the air between us with dangerous arcs.

“Why did you drive off so fast that night, Dylan? Without a word of good-bye to anybody?”

“Is that what happened? Don’t remember. Should never have been behind the wheel of a car.”

“Should I repeat my question?”

He stopped swinging the bat and looked at me as if he couldn’t decide whether to answer me or kill me.

“I heard they’d found him. It sounded bad, especially after I’d shot off my mouth earlier. I figured the cops would be up there. I didn’t need my name dragged into it.”

“Wrong answer, Dylan. I saw you drive away from the party roughly half an hour before JaFari’s body was found.”

Two ballplayers passed, popping beers. They exchanged greetings with Winchester, then moved on.

“I think it’s time for you to shove off, mate.”

“When can we sit down and talk more privately? Say, with a tape recorder running.”

“I’d just as soon not be in your bloody story, if it’s all the same.”

“I’m afraid you’re in the story, Dylan, whether you like it or not.”

He took a vicious swing. The bat sliced the air inches from my face.

“I got nothing more to say, to you or anybody else.”

The swings came faster now, narrowing the tenuous gap.

“Maybe you and JaFari still had a love problem. Maybe the affair didn’t really end ten years ago.”

He rested the bat on his shoulder, poised for the next swing, while his furious eyes rested on mine.

“You don’t write one word about that, or anything else about my private life.”

“You may direct movies, Winchester. But you don’t control me or the press.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, mate. You know that?”

“Is that a threat, Dylan? The kind I heard you make against Reza JaFari on Saturday night?”

His neck muscles tightened into thick cords and his body shook with suppressed rage. He suddenly readjusted his stance and took a lethal swing, dipping his shoulder away from me and sending the big can of Foster’s flying.

Then he heaved the bat aside and took off in the direction of the stadium exit, his hands clenched into fists so tight they were almost tiny.

I cupped my hands to my mouth and called after him.

“I’ll be in touch, Dylan—let’s do lunch!”