Revision of Justice (35 page)

After that, I punched in Claude DeWinter’s number at the LAPD. His partner told me DeWinter was in the john. I left a message asking DeWinter to meet me at the Beachwood Canyon fire command post, and to step on it.

I slipped my notes into a file folder marked
JaFari-Petrocelli
, grabbed my old
L.A. Times
press card, woke Danny, and told him I’d be back as soon as I could.

Dry northerly winds were blowing with a fury as I reached the street.

Then I was in the Mustang, driving fast, toward fire and brimstone.

The police had barricaded all the routes between Hollywood Boulevard and the hills, from Vine Street to Western Avenue.

I approached each checkpoint through choking gray smoke, flashing my outdated press pass and talking like I knew what I was doing. Each time, the cop on duty had more important things to do and waved me through.

I found Harry at the Beachwood Canyon command post near Franklin Avenue and Beachwood Drive. He was standing in front of the Scientology Celebrity Center with a finger in one ear to block out the wail of sirens and a cellular phone at the other, dictating a story to a rewrite man at the
Sun
.

To the north, in the hills, the fire crackled and groaned and roared like an angry giant impatient for its next meal. The tallest flames danced a hundred feet in the air, shifting with the wind but generally moving northward. Judging by the smoke, they appeared to have spread as far east as Griffith Park, where the world’s largest urban parkland—more than four thousand acres—lay waiting to be devoured.

Harry closed down the antenna on the phone as I approached.

“Where’s Templeton?”

He pointed behind me.

Templeton ran toward us, clutching her notebook and tape recorder. Strands of stray hair fell across her face, which was smudged with soot, like her clothes; her eyes were red from the smoke, and maybe from lack of sleep.

“They just arrested a suspect on arson charges.”

“Name,” Harry said, getting back on his phone.

“Constance Fairbridge.”

I was staring at Templeton, but her attention was on Harry.

“Spell it,” he said.

She did.

“Age?”

“I’m not sure.”

“We’ve got a new lead,” Harry said into the phone.

“Eighty-nine.”

Harry cocked his head at me in surprise.

“How do you know?”

“She’s Gordon Cantwell’s grandmother. Silent screen actress.”

“Ben suggested the firefighters check on her,” Templeton said. “They found her filling bottles with gasoline from an old pump on her property, using rags for fuses. She told them she’d placed the bottles all up and down the canyon.”

“She confessed?”

Templeton nodded.

“I’m putting your name in the story, Ben. At least as a source.”

“No, Harry. Give it all to Templeton.”

“Damn you, Ben—”

He held his hand over the phone.

“You’ve got a chance to scoop the
Times
, Harry. Move!”

He started talking to the desk again, while I pulled my notes on Constance Fairbridge from the file. I read the most pertinent facts to him while he relayed them downtown.

When I was finished, Harry said to Templeton, “Tell me about the confession.”

Templeton glanced at her own notes.

“Fairbridge told the arson investigators she’d set the first fire late Tuesday night. Said it was God’s will, that he had spoken to her. According to the investigators, she was semicoherent, reciting from the Book of Genesis—”

“Slow down,” Harry said.

He talked into the phone for half a minute, then asked Templeton for more.

“Fairbridge said something about having to destroy the sin of the world, all the cities, so the world could return to its natural state.”

“Anything else?”

Templeton ran a finger over her reporter’s shorthand.

“Just the animals would come back, she said. No people. No sin. No murder.”

“No murder?”

Harry looked from Templeton to me.

“I’m way ahead of you, Harry.”

I gave him the rest of the story, slowly, all the way back to 1955, while he fed the details to rewrite so the desk could remake the front page.

We heard a different siren, the
wa-wa
of a police car, and saw Constance Fairbridge being driven off in the backseat of a black-and-white. Her eyes were closed and her withered old hands, secured with plastic cuffs, were clasped together in front of her in prayer.

Print photographers and TV camera crews chased the car, pushing and shoving for a better picture, until the black-and-white had worked its way past the cluster of emergency vehicles and picked up speed.

Harry was about to close up his phone again.

“Call Katie Nakamura at the library,” Templeton said. “I asked her to find the photo file on Constance Fairbridge a couple of days ago. She’s got it on her desk.”

Harry got back on his phone. I handed Templeton my file marked
JaFari-Petrocelli
.

“There are two sets of identical notes in here. They lay out the two murders, JaFari and Petrocelli, step by step, the way I see it. Give one set to Claude DeWinter when he shows up. Tell him to get up to Cantwell’s as fast as he can.”

Harry had his hand over the phone again.

“Anything else before they move the story?”

“I want a short piece on the front page clearing Danny Romero. Boxed, with the mug shot that’s been all over the TV news. Reminding readers that Lydia Lowe instigated the whole thing. After you go to press with it, I want it on the wire.”

Harry nodded and got back on the phone. I started for the Mustang. Templeton reached for my arm but missed.

“Where are you going?”

“Up to Cantwell’s.”

“Stay here, Ben! Wait for DeWinter!”

“No time.”

“They won’t let you through!”

“Wanna bet?”

I was in the Mustang, fueled by a heavy dose of adrenaline.

Smoke and sirens and voices swirled around me as I pulled out, keeping the pump primed.

It was slow going at first, maddening as I weaved my way through dozens of ambulances and fire vehicles toward Beachwood Drive. When I got there, wooden barricades blocked my way.

A young policewoman who couldn’t have been too long out of the academy put up her hand to stop me.

“My baby girl and my wife are up there,” I said. “They’ve got no way to get down.”

“We’re evacuating the area, sir. I’m sure they’re all right.”

“You can’t see the house from the road. No mailbox. It’s very private.”

She looked up the hills toward the flames.

“How far up do you live?”

“Not far. A mile or so. Just inside the gates.”

The fire was well beyond that, and moving away from us.

“All right. But just up and back. Don’t try to save anything but your family.”

She pulled the barricade aside and I shot through.

The houses and apartments along the lower stretch of Beachwood Drive were untouched by the flames, all the way to the Hollywoodland Gates and a half mile beyond.

I was forced to slow as I climbed higher, driving through smoke as heavy as a coastal fog. I crept along Beachwood until I found the narrow side street I wanted. After making my turn, I followed the twisting road up into the hills with one hand on the wheel and the other on the horn, honking at every turn to alert any vehicles that might be coming down.

The landscape remained free of fire all the way to Constance Fairbridge’s property.

Just beyond her mailbox—perhaps a quarter mile—I began to see destruction. I passed the smoking frames of burned homes, the charred skeletons of trees, animals lying beside the road, their eyes starkly open while smoke rose from their smoldering fur.

All along the route, firefighters worked with hoses, axes, and shovels around the houses and on the hillsides, while helicopters buzzed overhead, making water drops. Everyone was moving quickly amid the din of screaming sirens and urgent voices, yet there was an odd calm and order at the center of the pandemonium, like a battlefield under a strong commander.

When I turned onto Ridgecrest Drive, I entered the heart of the inferno. Brush and trees blazed on both sides of the road, and several houses were fully engulfed. Firefighters made their stands at the homes that could still be saved, hacking down trees, cutting away brush, pouring streams of water siphoned from swimming pools onto the rooftops.

Now and then a firefighter yelled or waved at me to stop. Each time I ignored the warning and kept going. Embers settled on the Mustang’s ragged top and started to burn through. I lowered the top as I drove, folding it up like an accordion, smothering the hot spots.

Now the heat seared my exposed flesh. The hair on my arms and hands curled and crinkled like fine electric filament before disintegrating into ash carried off by the crackling wind.

Then I was suddenly out of the flames, into a section of the canyon the fire hadn’t yet reached.

Moments later, I pulled to the curb and leaped from the Mustang.

Then I was dashing across the footbridge and up the stone walkway that led me to Gordon Cantwell’s castle of make-believe.

When I pushed, the front door opened soundlessly.

From the foyer, I surveyed all the downstairs rooms that were visible. Cantwell was nowhere in sight.

The crackle and pop of fire drew my attention to the north side of the living room. Inside the big fireplace, the gas jet spewed a pale yellow flame, and a messy stack of files and documents burned bright orange on the grate.

I shut off the jet, grabbed a poker, and stuck it among the smoldering papers; most were blackened and curling into ash. I snatched to safety what I could, including the WGA medical file that had disappeared from Leonardo Petrocelli’s office the afternoon he was murdered and some personal documents that had Reza JaFari’s name all over them.

I looked around again, but there was still no sign of Cantwell.

Several pieces of luggage sat at the bottom of the stairs. On top of the largest was Cantwell’s passport and a plane ticket to Bali. I hid them behind the framed
Gone With the Wind
poster above the mantelpiece, where I hoped he wouldn’t find them, if it came to that.

Then I made my way quietly through the house, eyes and ears alert for human movement.

I took the stairs two at a time on quiet feet, then moved cautiously down the hallway to the right. The door was open to the room at the end, and I stepped in. It appeared to be the master bedroom, with views across the burning canyon to the Hollywood Sign, which the flames had yet to reach.

Clothes were strewn about, drawers and closet doors left open. No Cantwell.

At the other end of the hallway, I found the door shut but not locked. It opened to a small, six-sided, tower-shaped bedroom, with arched windows cut into the three outer walls, which looked out across the canyon like the larger bedroom windows down the hall.

Stuffed toys snuggled together in a pile on the bed—Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Dumbo, Sylvester, Bambi, Tweety Bird, Goofy. In a corner were a child’s baseball bat, glove and ball.

Several framed photos—actors’ glossy eight-by-tens—hung on a windowless wall, bearing such autographs as James Dean, Marlon Brando, Pier Angeli, Nick Adams, Natalie Wood, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, Rock Hudson, Sterling Hayden, Peter Lorre.

Above the bed was another glamour photo, this one blown up to portrait size. I recognized it instantly from an old one I’d seen at the Margaret Herrick Library—the photogenic face of Gloria Cantwell.

She was posed to offer the camera her choicest features, yet I saw little in the face beyond beauty and vanity, and perhaps an abject neediness the cold mask couldn’t quite conceal.

Then I saw Gordon Cantwell himself.

He was visible through the window nearest the bed, crossing from the patio to the back lawn, dressed in a white linen summer suit. He stopped with his back to the house as he looked out at Mount Lee and the big letters: H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D.

Beyond him, down the canyon and over the distant hills, flames approached like an enemy army, as relentless as the wind that drove them.

I made my way back down the stairs and through the house, until I was standing a few feet behind him.

Sprinklers were on all around the borders of the yard, wetting down the surrounding slopes, including the dense hedge of thorny cacti that ringed the rear of the property.

Across the way, as the wind shifted, the flames turned and charged the slopes of Mount Lee, moving toward the sign.

Cantwell looked on calmly, as if he were observing an action scene on a movie backlot that was well underway and beyond his control.

“Going somewhere, Gordon?”

He didn’t turn right away; half a minute passed before he spoke. We watched the flames reach the foot of the sign, scorching the concrete base and sheet metal letters, where the white paint began to crack and peel.

“When I was a boy, I used to sit at the window of my room at night. I’d stare out at the sign, hour after hour, letting my imagination take me away.”

Cantwell glanced up at the second story of the house, where a circular turret with small arched windows stood at the northeast corner, the child’s bedroom I’d been in only minutes before. From here, it reminded me of a room where a fairy tale princess might be kept prisoner, plotting her escape.

“I’d think about how famous I was going to become, all the grand movies I would make, the wonderful life I’d have.”

“All the respect and love you’d get. The love you never got from your father or mother.”

He didn’t reply to that, just looked across at the huge icon of his lifelong dreams, barely visible now through the thick drifts of smoke rising from the flaming ravine below.

“They put it up in 1923,you know. The original sign had thirteen letters, not nine. It spelled Hollywoodland.”

“They say thirteen is bad luck.”

“Perhaps. But I always thought that Hollywoodland was a prettier name. They removed the last four letters fifty-two years ago, when I was just a toddler. Had it been up to me, I would have left the sign just as it was.”

“Hollywoodland was the name of a real estate company, Gordon. The sign was a billboard, advertising a housing development. You must know that.”

I saw color come into his neck and ears.

“James Dean and I used to play catch out on the front lawn.”

“Until your mother caught you at it and shut you away in your lonely tower.”

His voice took on a more insistent cadence and tone, as if he were determined to wear me down.

“My father was a producer, you know.”

“A few B pictures was all. Between girlfriends.”

He turned to face me, his face red, his jaw set.

“The house was always full of people, music, laughter.”

“People who enjoyed your mother’s booze, sometimes her body, while you listened jealously from the top of the stairs.”

His breathing was audible now, but he had no more words.

“The fantasy’s over, Gordon. It’s time to deal with reality.”

“Fantasy, reality. Who’s to say which is which, Justice—or where the line is drawn?”

His face grew cruel, hateful—deadly.

“You, Justice? I don’t think so.”

Beyond and above him, a helicopter dropped in low, loosing a cascade of water over the sign, dampening the flames at its base and clearing away much of the smoke.

“I came to pitch you a story idea, Gordon.”

Cantwell’s face changed again, even more quickly than before. This time he seemed pleased.

“A story idea? For me?”

“A murder mystery with a Hollywood background.”

“Do you have something in writing? I could read it on the plane.”

“You’re planning a trip?”

“I’m off on a lecture tour. One last whirlwind of seminars to share the Cantwell Method with the world before I go into pre-production on my film with Tom.”

“Taking all your money with you?”

“I’m afraid the money hasn’t come through.” He laughed lightly. “Everything moves so slowly in this town—especially the money.”

The talk of money seemed to jar him back to the truth of things.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Justice. I really must be on my way.”

I stepped into his path.

“My pitch will only take a couple of minutes. I think you’ll find the story interesting.”

He glanced at his watch.

“I suppose I could hear a bit of it. If you don’t stretch it out. I should warn you, stories about Hollywood rarely make good films. Very few measure up to
Sunset Boulevard
.”

I couldn’t tell if he was playing along or really believed in what we were doing. In all probability, I thought, neither could he. He seemed to be in and out of reality now, not unlike his grandmother.

“My story is about a man who wants to write and produce movies, Gordon. More than anything. The problem is, as hard as he tries, he’s never more than mediocre as a writer, if that. So he ends up teaching. He’s bright, analytical, adept at borrowing the concepts of others, gifted at self-promotion—he makes a success of it. But as he gets older, into middle age, he realizes his dream is passing him by, that he’s pretty much over the hill by Hollywood standards.

“Then one of his students shows him a script that’s better than anything he himself has ever written—a script so good in every respect he’s certain he can sell it, get it made. He convinces his student not to show the screenplay to anyone, not even to speak of it. Or so he thinks. Then he murders his student and registers the script as his own, under a different title—never realizing that the student has already shown it to someone else, trying to cut a deal that didn’t work out.

“Never realizing, with his ridiculously inflated view of himself, that his student was just as ambitious and conniving and deceitful as he.”

“You’re taking much too long to get to the point, Justice. The best pitch is one that sums up the story in a single line.”

“Dying criminal makes a daring escape from prison, trying to reach his young son before his time runs out. Something like that, Gordon?”

He seemed faintly amused.

“Yes, exactly. A strong concept, suggesting narrative thrust and a clear goal. One that’s easily visualized by the marketing people, yet with plenty of room to explore theme and character.”

“There’s a subplot I haven’t told you about.”

“Perhaps you should try me again when you’ve worked it out more clearly.”

He started past.

I placed a hand squarely on his chest.

“Just a minute longer.”

He glanced at my hand, then at his watch.

“Very well. But only another minute.”

“With his student out of the way, the teacher sells the script to major players for serious money. Being the egomaniac that he is, he can’t resist bragging to the world about it. Unfortunately for our larcenous teacher, another screenwriter sees the story in the trade papers—an older writer who has more talent and skill in his little finger than either the teacher or student between them ever dreamed of having.

“He recognizes the storyline as his own, right down to specific plot points and scenes. Being a gentleman, he calls the teacher and, without accusing, inquires about the coincidence. Of course, the teacher realizes he has to kill again.”

Cantwell regarded me with eyes that seemed very much in the present. Cool, calculating eyes.

“And how does he do that?”

“He agrees to meet the older writer at his home to talk things over. Asks the writer to tell no one about their conversation, in the interest of discretion. He poisons the older man’s coffee with cyanide, the same poison he used to kill his student. Hoping the old man’s poor health will act as a camouflage, the way the student’s HIV infection had earlier fooled the coroner.”

“It’s clever, if a bit far-fetched,” Cantwell said. “But where’s the proof?”

“Some of the evidence is in the screenplay itself. The film script in question has all the depth and craft and maturity the murderer’s own scripts lack. And most of its plot points are on the wrong pages—violating all the hard-and-fast rules the teacher has laid down in his book on how to write the perfect screenplay.”

“Interesting. Though I’m not sure it will translate well visually.”

“That’s what rewrites are for, aren’t they, Gordon?”

He smiled, but without any warmth.

“And how did this man, this teacher, murder the young writer?”

“I think you know how.”

He began to fidget for the first time. His eyes darted from me to the house, then to his watch and back to me again.

“I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Justice. With a murder mystery, you have to let the audience know how the primary murder was accomplished. Or else you’ve cheated them. If you can’t tell them exactly how it was carried out, you haven’t got a story.”

“What if an old woman finds the Grolsch bottle used in the murder of the first victim. An old woman, by coincidence the murderer’s grandmother, who lives down the road and wanders the canyons at night collecting discarded bottles.”

“That’s an interesting twist.”

“Unfortunate for the villain, though.”

“How far is this bottle from the murder site?”

“At least a hundred yards, probably farther.”

“Quite a distance.”

“Not if the murderer is blessed with an exceptional throwing arm, the kind that can nail a runner at home plate from center field.”

Cantwell was looking less and less happy with my story.

“Finished, Justice?”

“Not quite. Suppose this particular bottle ends up in the hands of the police, who have it tested for cyanide. Let’s say a snoopy reporter collects all the trash from the party where the first murder occurred and goes through it looking for clues. What if he finds exactly four empty Grolsch bottles, along with a receipt for a six-pack of same.

“A fifth bottle was found near the first victim’s body—no doubt planted by the killer to explain any traces of beer the coroner might find in the victim’s system. The sixth bottle is in the hands of the police, laced with cyanide. All six bottles accounted for.”