Revision of Justice (24 page)

“Where you met Fernando.”

“He was an extra. Rode a horse like the wind. I’d seen a lot of beautiful kids in my life, all over the world, but I’d never dreamed there was a kid who looked like that. He was a virgin the first time I had him. Never been with a lady or a bloke. But it was pretty obvious right off which way his dick was pointed.

“So I’m down there directing this bloody movie, looking at rushes at night, doing script changes, fucking this gorgeous kid until dawn. It was nuts, but I was a young tyro, a bloody Aussie wunderkind. I could do anything, you know?”

“Except handle Ray Farr?”

“He showed up one night, at this little hotel down near Oaxaca where the cast and crew was staying. Caught me in bed with Fernando. Went totally fucking berserk. Smashed things, put his fist through a plate-glass door.”

“He was left-handed?”

“How’d you know?”

“The scars on his left wrist and hand.”

“Tore himself up something awful. Blood pouring out of him. Looked like one of the FX guys had rigged him up for a blood effect. We stuck his hand and arm in a bag of flour to slow the bleeding until we could find a doctor to close him up. But he’d lost a lot of blood. Hospital couldn’t help him. Farr had a rare blood type—we learned later he was part Jewish.”

“JaFari was Jewish?”

Winchester laughed.

“He didn’t even know it. His father never let on—raised him thinkin’ he was pure Muslim. It was a real shock to him at first.”

“So he was stuck down in southern Mexico, where he couldn’t get the right blood—”

“Everybody volunteered—cast, crew, Mexican extras. Nobody matched. Then they typed Bernie Kemmerman. Bullseye! Bernie gave several pints, way more than was safe. Kept passing out but he’d come around and tell ’em to draw another pint. Then he reached into his own pocket and hired a military plane. His blood kept Ray alive long enough to get him flown back to the States, where they patched him up.”

“Kemmerman saved JaFari’s life.”

“That he did, mate. He also kept the whole thing quiet—with the studio, the press, my agency. Saved my fucking career is what he did.”

“You must have felt you owed Bernard Kemmerman a lot.”

Winchester drained the can.

“I loved the bloke. A lot of people did. He was the only decent man I ever met in this whole fucking business.”

“And a few months ago, when he needed a new kidney to stay alive, he remembered that Reza JaFari was the same blood type. He came to you, hoping you’d put him in touch with JaFari.”

“I’d gotten Farr a job with ITA, thinkin’ he might make something of it. So I knew where to find him. Bernie was pretty sick by then, so most of Farr’s dealings were with Anne-Judith—Bernie’s wife.”

“JaFari agreed to be the donor?”

Winchester nodded.

“I don’t know exactly what happened after that, ’cept Ray started stalling, while Bernie got sicker and sicker. But that wasn’t the worst of it.”

“The worst of it was, JaFari was infected with HIV.”

“Infected, but never told ’em. They found out late in the game. Somebody tipped ’em with a phone call. By then it was too late. Bernie died waiting for the kidney that bastard JaFari had promised him, knowing Bernie couldn’t use it because of the HIV.”

Winchester’s voice was heavy with disgust.

“Bernie saved Ray’s life ten years ago and then Ray let him die. Don’t think I don’t blame myself, neither.”

“Is that what derailed your career these last few months?”

“Like I said, a lot of people liked and respected Bernie. Word got out—about me and about Ray, about Ray’s HIV. The whole thing blew up in my face.”

“The agency fired JaFari and dumped you at the same time. Then the studio took
Thunder’s Fortune
away from you.”

“All because of that lyin’ little bastard JaFari.”

“Maybe he learned how to lie from the people he looked up to most. His father. You.”

He slid down in his chair, showing me his troubled profile.

“Go fuck yourself, Justice.”

“You had plenty of reasons to want JaFari dead.”

He crushed the beer can slowly with his meaty hands. Then he gazed at me with eyes gone dull from alcohol.

“I got me a temper, Justice. I won’t deny that. But I don’t go around killin’ blokes.”

He heaved the crushed can over the railing, his face sullen.

“Not even the ones who deserve it.”

Danny and I never got to enjoy our idyll at the Springs.

By Saturday evening, he was so racked with pain, just getting in and out of the car was an ordeal. So I drove him straight home that night, and left him in the care of Maurice.

I spent most of Sunday with my answering machine on, reading
The Little Prince
—Jacques’s favorite book—to Danny while he lay in a nembutal haze in the small bed at the end of the hallway. It felt like a lost, precious day, a bridge in time I didn’t want to cross.

I slept alone upstairs Sunday night, ignoring the blinking message machine, and was back down to the house at daybreak, frightened irrationally that Danny might not be alive.

He was already awake—on his feet, actually, and feeling better—and insisted on showering and dressing for the hospital without my help.

By then, Maurice had coffee ready. I took a cup back upstairs and drank it while I cleared the weekend’s phone messages. The first was from Gordon Cantwell.

Justice. Gordon Cantwell here. I’m willing to overlook our misunderstanding at the ballpark the other day if you are. I wouldn’t want to see it get in the way of an accurate and thorough article on an industry of which I’m such an integral part. Along those lines, you may wish to catch the front page of Monday’s
Daily Variety
—the story about Tom Cruise’s new project over at Paramount. Take a look, then give me a call. You’ve got the number.

Cantwell’s message was delivered in a manner that tried, but failed, not to sound supremely self-satisfied.

The next message was from Alexandra Templeton. For the most part it was conciliatory, though served with some leftover chill from our verbal tiff on Friday evening.

Hi, it’s me. Gordon Cantwell called, trying to maneuver me into meeting him for another interview. I told him you were more or less in charge now, that he should talk to you, take it or leave it. He mentioned some kind of major studio deal he feels we should highlight in the article. My guess is you’ll be hearing from him. I’ll be at the office or out on assignment. Hope you got your interview with Dylan Winchester, and that Danny’s feeling better. Kisses.

One more message followed.

This is Lieutenant DeWinter, Homicide Division, Los Angeles Police Department, calling for Benjamin Justice. Mr. Justice, I do hope you know the whereabouts of your friend, Daniel Romero, because he seems to no longer be around. No more games, Justice. Call me ASAP, before a huge load of shit hits the fan.

He repeated his phone number twice and punctuated his warning by replacing the receiver rather indelicately.

While Danny put together a small bag for the hospital, I hiked up the hill to the newsstand at Book Soup for a copy of
Variety
. I also grabbed the
Hollywood Reporter
in case the story was carried in both trade papers. It was, but the
Reporter
placed it on an inside page

The
Variety
piece was right where Cantwell had said it would be—front page, center—below a grinning photo of Hollywood’s reigning box-office star that must have pleased his orthodontist. The three-tier headline summed things up.

C
RUISE
G
RABS
R
IGHTS
T
O
C
ANTWELL
S
CRIPT FOR
$1.5 M
ILLION

The article noted that Cantwell was to be paid the money up front, with built-in bonuses that could bring the total to $3 million. Cantwell was to serve as coproducer, earning another $250,000, and had a pay-or-play deal to perform rewrite and polishing chores on the script that added another $225,000. His agent and lawyer were included as executive producers for undisclosed fees that presumably ran into the six figures.

Cantwell was also entitled to a cut of the net profits, although the Hollywood studio system was notorious for rigging the books in such a way that even the most successful films somehow never showed much profit. That was one reason—other than simple greed—that writers’ agents tried to get as much cash up front as possible.

All in all, Cantwell had done very well for himself. Though neither Cruise nor his people were quoted in the story, they apparently had thought very highly of the script.

Its title was
Nothing to Lose
. The storyline was summed up this way:

Cantwell described the project as a psychological suspense thriller about a cancer-stricken prison convict who escapes on a cross-country run, hoping to see his newborn son one time before he dies, with a violent, vengeful warden in pursuit.

Although originally intended for a more mature actor, Cantwell said
Nothing to Lose
will be retailored for Cruise, giving him an estranged young wife and a baby he has never seen, rather than an estranged adult son and grandchild, as first written.

Cantwell called the script his “masterpiece,” a screenplay that “encompasses strong character, suspenseful plotting and a moving emotional subplot,” and brings together everything he has learned about the art and craft of screenwriting.

Then, this quote:

“After years away from screenwriting to teach the craft to students worldwide, this script marks a new phase in my life. From now on, I will devote my time to writing and producing stories for the screen that I hope will live up to the principles embodied in
The Cantwell Method
, and that will find their place in the annals of movie immortality.”

The article jumped to an inside page that offered a brief summary of Cantwell’s background, as well as those of his attorney and agent.

I was about to set the slick tabloid aside when another headline caught my eye.

L
UNCHEON
T
O
B
ENEFIT
O
RGAN
D
ONOR
R
ESEARCH
C
HAIRED
B
Y
K
EMMERMAN

The social item that followed described a charity luncheon to be held that afternoon at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Anne-Judith Kemmerman was the chairperson, an appropriate choice given the recent death of her husband from kidney disease.

I called Cantwell from the apartment, finally catching him at home. I congratulated him on his movie deal, stroked his ego a bit, and asked when we could get together. He suggested we meet for dinner that night at a West Hollywood restaurant called Morton’s. I asked him to bring along a copy of his now-famous screenplay. He said he would.

Danny and I shared a solemn, awkward breakfast, and another quiet hour sitting on the front porch swing, watching the neighborhood wake up. Then it was time to take him to the clinic, where he would be processed in before his transfer to the big hospital next door.

Maurice hugged him and promised to come visit. Fred told him not to worry about Maggie, he’d feed her properly and take her on regular walks.

Danny knelt, scratched her ears, and told her to be a good dog while he was gone. He hugged her longer than seemed necessary, which didn’t settle me any.

The five-minute trip to the clinic felt like hours. I rode up with Danny in the elevator to the seventh floor, where they put him in a wheelchair and handed him a file to carry in his lap. There were people scurrying and fussing over him, taking care of details, which took some of the edge off my apprehension. Then I was back in the elevator with him, my hand on his shoulder, as we descended to the third floor for his transport to the hospital facility next door.

The doors opened and an attendant pushed Danny out.

He gave me a brave smile, and the thumbs-up sign.

Then I watched him being wheeled away down a dim conidor and out sliding glass doors to the annex bridge, where a blast of sunlight consumed him.

The Beverly Hills Hotel sat on twelve lushly landscaped acres along palm-fringed Sunset Boulevard.

The Pink Palace—as it was fondly known—looked swell for a resort built in 1912, which can happen after a two-year renovation that comes with a $140 million price tag. Even in Beverly Hills, that’s an expensive facelift.

I arrived in the early afternoon, striding into a sanctuary that felt largely unchanged by time. Marilyn Monroe had once sipped milk shakes here. Marlene Dietrich had been banished from the Polo Lounge for wearing pants. Elizabeth Taylor had cavorted with various husbands in a bungalow that now went for $2,000 a night, while the Presidential Suite inside the main building topped the rate chart at $3,000. Business had reportedly fallen off some since the hotel’s reopening in 1995—something about the owner, the Sultan of Brunei, and his outspoken views on the Palestinian conflict—but the Pink Palace was still regarded by many as one of the prestige watering holes for the showbiz set, regardless of bloody territorial issues half a world away.

The valets out front were handling a string of mostly black or white vehicles, of which Rolls and Mercedes were the dominant brands, a limousine or two among them. John Travolta stepped from a vintage white Bentley, buttoning a jacket over his ample stomach, looking as content as you’d expect from a man with a revived career, a good Scientology scorecard, an attractive family, and millions in the bank.

I’d parked the battered Mustang on the street and come up the curvaceous drive on foot, for reasons having less to do with shame than with the need to pass myself off as respectable. I’d even borrowed a tie from Fred, one that was so old it was back in fashion, and tucked my long expired
Los Angeles Times
I.D. card in my pocket just in case.

I got into step behind Travolta, nodding and smiling as I strolled, until I was in a lobby done in glowing shades of apricot, with curvy ceilings and enormous crystal chandeliers festooned with delicate rosebud lights.

Travolta made straight for the Polo Lounge, leaving me on my own.

Lots of well-dressed ladies were gliding into the Crystal Ballroom on the west side of the lobby, which seemed like a good bet. I followed them in, past a placard telling me I’d found the organ donor fund-raiser, stopping just short of the registration table.

Sizable round tables filled the apricot-tinted ballroom, which featured a swirling Art Nouveau ceiling and balconies with elaborate black-and-gold railings. Waiters scurried about, filling water glasses and laying salad plates in front of well-dressed women who all seemed to have the same ghastly, anorexic look.

Anne-Judith Kemmerman was one of the few exceptions; she was radiant and voluptuous in the old Sophia Loren style, though her stacked hair was closer in spirit to Dolly Parton. She stood at the center of the dais, speaking into a microphone about the need to raise money for organ donor research, while stressing that “every dollar counts.” It seemed like a silly thing to say to a roomful of women attired in dresses and jewelry collectively worth millions, but I doubted it troubled even a single well-coiffed head in the lavish room.

Several more ladies came through the door behind me, talking in hushed whispers. As they crowded the registration table, I took the opportunity to slip by unquestioned.

I had no game plan, other than to somehow corner Mrs. Kemmerman and make her squirm. DeWinter had made it clear that Danny’s grace period was quickly running out, and I had decided Mrs. Kemmerman was going to talk to me whether she liked it or not.

Her eyes found me as I weaved my way through waiters and tables, heading toward a small open area just below the podium. When I was roughly halfway across the room, her speech became slow and halting, and finally stopped altogether.

As she grew quiet, so did the room.

Her eyes were on me, mine were on hers, and I assumed every other eye in the place was on the two of us, which was the way I wanted it.

“I just have a few questions, Mrs. Kemmerman.”

“How did you get in here?”

“It must have been my trustworthy face.”

Her eyes flitted from table to table.

“Will someone please call security? This man is not supposed to be here. He’s quite dangerous.”

No one in the room made a definitive move. The real Anne-Judith Kemmerman suddenly emerged.

“Somebody get off their goddamned ass and find security!”

Two or three women ran scurrying for various exits, as fast as their three-inch heels and corsetlike dresses would allow.

“All I want is a little information, Mrs. Kemmerman.”

“You’re in serious trouble, mister. I’ll have you by your goddamned balls!”

“Shall we discuss the sordid details of the Reza JaFari case, Mrs. Kemmerman? Right here, in front of all these nice people? Or shall we do it more privately?”

“You fucking bastard.”

I heard a commotion and assumed security personnel were in the room, coming for me.

“Either you talk to me, Mrs. Kemmerman, or I take what I know about you and your husband’s death straight to the tabloid TV shows.”

Her face lost some of its color. I felt strong hands grab my arms. Mrs. Kemmerman gulped some ice water, then set her glass down, looking seriously troubled.

“It’s all right. I’ll handle this.”

“Are you certain, Mrs. Kemmerman?”

It was a man’s voice, just off my left ear.

“Yes. Let him go. I’ll speak to him privately.”

“If you’re sure, Mrs. Kemmerman.”

“I’m sure.”

I felt the hands relax and bodies step away.

Mrs. Kemmerman came down off the dais, brushing quickly past me. If her eyes had been fingernails, my face would have been raked and bleeding.

I followed her through the roomful of stunned faces, then the lobby, and onto a patio shaded by an enormous pepper tree almost as famous for its longevity as the old hotel itself.

I had to work hard to keep up with her. She turned down a walkway under spreading banana leaves, striding past gardens of azaleas, camellias, roses, and magnolias bursting into thousands of pink and white blooms.

She didn’t say a word until we were inside a bungalow with the door locked. Even then, she waited until I spoke first.

“I have a pretty good idea what went down between your husband and Reza JaFari, Mrs. Kemmerman. But I’d like a few more details.”

She found a cigarette and lit it with trembling fingers.

“You’ve humiliated me in front of some of the most important club women in this city. Barbara Davis was out there, for Christ sake!”

“Tell me what I need to know. Then you can hurry back and salvage some of your precious social standing.”

“You’re lower than a leech, Justice.”

“That’s what people keep telling me.”

She sucked in a lungful of nicotine, which seemed to calm her.

“Help me out on this, Mrs. Kemmerman, and your involvement may never have to get into print. Stonewall me for one more second, however, and I promise you that half the world will learn the truth.”

“And what exactly is that, Justice?”

She faced me, gambling against what she hoped was my bluff, her burning cigarette held aloft like a battle flag.

“Bernard Kemmerman offered Reza JaFari a studio production deal in exchange for a healthy kidney.”

Her eyes smoldered hotter than the end of her cigarette.

“Goddamn you.”

“He used his position of wealth, power, and privilege to buy his way right past that donor waiting list you’re championing with such well-publicized nobility.”

She turned away from me, forcing me to talk to her back.

“Forget all the fine movies he made, Mrs. Kemmerman. All his good deeds. The goodwill he engendered during his career. In the end, your husband will be remembered for an act that epitomizes Hollywood’s corrupt elitism.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Her words came sharply, but the ones that followed were delivered more gently. “
He
wasn’t like that.”

“I’m here to listen, Mrs. Kemmerman.”

She paced the room, sucking down more nicotine.

“The deal wasn’t entirely bogus. JaFari pitched Bernard a very good concept.”

“Go on.”

“A few days later, maybe a week, JaFari came back with a script. Bernard said it was quite good. A bit old-fashioned, but very strong. With some minor revisions, he felt sure he could get it packaged and green-lighted at the studio.”

“In exchange for one of his kidneys.”

“You have to understand, we were desperate at that point.”

“Your husband was critically ill.”

“Yes.” Her voice trembled. “We sent JaFari to our personal physician for a complete physical, including blood work. We were told he was healthy, that everything was fine. Bernard went ahead with plans to have the studio purchase JaFari’s script and get him an office on the lot. Then the surgeon who was to perform the operation informed us that JaFari needed to be tested for HIV before we could proceed. We’d assumed it had been done with the standard blood work.”

“But under California law, an HIV test can’t be done without the express permission of the person to be tested.”

“We didn’t know that. So we went back to JaFari to ask that he be tested. He began to stall, demanding that his production deal be finalized, that the check be delivered. I met with him personally, begged him to be tested.”

“That was your dinner meeting at Jimmy’s.”

She nodded.

“Days went by, then weeks. Finally, we couldn’t even reach him—all we got was his answering machine. Then we got an anonymous phone call warning us that he was HIV-positive.”

“Must have been shattering.”

“I didn’t want to believe it. But Bernie did. He said it explained a lot of things. We tried desperately to find another donor with the same blood type, but it was too late.”

She crushed the cigarette out in an ashtray the way she must have wished she could obliterate the past.

“Bernie died a week later.”

She turned her back to me again and her shoulders began to shake, as if she might be crying. I remembered that she had once been an actress.

“JaFari helped to kill the man who had once saved his life,” she said. “What accounts for someone like that?”

“A town where integrity is an afterthought, if it’s even thought of at all?”

She spun on me, tears spilling.

“Bernie had integrity. Ask anyone who knew him.”

“You’re crying now, Mrs. Kemmerman. But otherwise, you seem to be bearing up awfully well. Or maybe it’s just that a new Ferrari and a gym-bunny boyfriend are good grief therapy.”

She took two strides and was in my face.

“Listen, mister. Bernie may have been my senior by twenty-odd years. But he was the great love of my life. I tended to him for years, long after he was well enough to take care of certain husbandly duties, if I make myself clear. But I loved him to the end and waited until he was gone before I sought satisfaction elsewhere.

“Yeah, I bought a new car. Yeah, I found a young stud who could put something hard between my legs after years of going without. Maybe that’s how I deal with my grief. So who are you to judge, Mr. Pulitzer Prize Winner?”

“You must have hated Reza JaFari for what he did.”

“More than words can ever express.”

“Your mascara’s running, Mrs. Kemmerman.”

She pulled herself up straight, then disappeared into the bathroom, where she blew her nose and attended to her face.

I stood at the window and watched an actor famous for his suntan standing on the lawn. He took a couple of practice swings with an imaginary golf club and lifted his sharp profile to study the flight of the nonexistent ball. By the pleased look on his face, the invisible ball had landed somewhere south of Sunset Bonlevard. I tried but couldn’t remember his name.

Mrs. Kemmerman came back in and poured a short bourbon without offering me one.

“I don’t suppose I could make it worth your while not to print the story.”

“Buy me off?”

“I’m not without resources.”

“I realize it may sound naive, Mrs. Kemmerman, especially in this setting, but I’m more interested in getting to the truth than getting rich.”

“We all act out of our own self-interest, Justice. Why is the truth so important to you?”

“An hour ago, I helped check a young man into Cedars-Sinai. He’s seriously ill. He’s also very close to becoming a prime suspect in Reza JaFari’s death.”

“This young man apparently means a lot to you.”

“I don’t think he did it.”

“There’s enough evidence to convict him?”

“Maybe only to arrest him and hold him for a while. But that would be hell enough. He’s got AIDS.”

“You think I might have arranged JaFari’s murder, don’t you?”

“It’s a possibility.”

She wandered to the window and looked out, while I stood beside her. The dreamy golfer took another swing.