The Burning Plain (19 page)

“What kind of questions did he ask you?”

“The same ones you asked,” he said, “about the cab, and my financial situation but it wasn’t like he was asking questions because he was interested in my answers. It was like he already knew the answers and was testing me.”

“He was trying to catch him in a lie,” Donati said.

“You were there?”

“I sat in on Bob’s interviews,” he said. “The tone he took with Bob was different than with anyone else. Total contempt. I finally intervened.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him that some of his questions seemed inappropriate,” Donati said. “The guy was asking Bob about his sex life.”

“What did Gaitan say?”

“He said he would decide what questions were appropriate and told me to get lost, basically,” Donati replied. “So I threw him off the lot.”

I smiled. “You did what?”

“I reminded him that I was the studio’s lawyer, that he was at the studio as a courtesy and then I told him he’d worn out his welcome. I asked him to leave.”

“And did he?”

Now Donati smiled. “Oh, yes. He left. And later that day I had my boss call the sheriff and complain.”

“Your boss is …”

“Duke Asuras,” he said. “The head of the studio.”

I nodded, turned my attention to Travis. “Gaitan wants to question you again?”

“Tomorrow. He called me and said if I didn’t show up, he’d arrest me.”

“I assume that’s bullshit,” Donati said to me. “I don’t remember much criminal law, but if the police have probable cause to arrest, they don’t usually invite you to come and discuss it with them, do they?”

“No, they don’t,” I said. “I’d like to talk to Bob alone for a few minutes.”

He glanced at his watch, nodded. “Sure, I have a meeting with my boss so you can stay here and talk. If I’m not back when you’re done, I wonder if you’d wait for me, Henry.”

“All right.”

Travis’s anxiety level soared after Donati left the room.

“You seem very anxious, Bob.”

“I’m terrified,” he blurted out.

“I can see that,” I said. He’d gone white beneath his salon tan, and sweat stained the armpits of his expensive shirt.

“Nick told me about you,” he said. “He said you were a suspect for a while. He told me you’re gay, too.”

“That’s all true,” I replied.

“Then you know about Gaitan. I moved here to get away from people like him. People that stare at you like you’re something they stepped in. He made me so nervous I would have confessed just to get away from him.”

He would’ve made a bad interview, I thought, dripping in his own sweat, alternatingly eager to please and frightened.

“I know better than you what kind of cop Gaitan is,” I said. “He’s a thug, but he’s not stupid, and the fact is that you are a legitimate suspect based on what you’ve told me today, even without knowing what the evidence is he claimed to find in the car.”

“I didn’t …”

“Two of the three victims were last seen getting into an off-duty cab,” I said. “Someone has obviously identified the cab as the same one you were driving around the time the murders were committed last month. Plus, Bob, you live in the neighborhood where the bodies were found. Based on that alone, I’d suspect you, too.”

“Other people could’ve taken the car,” he said.

“Someone obviously did. Who else could it have been?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but it wasn’t me.”

“Tell me about yourself,” I said.

“What?” he looked confused, suspicious.

“Let’s just talk.”

In the next hour I learned that Bob Travis was thirty-four but admitted to thirty-one and lived beyond his means in a two-bedroom apartment furnished with antiques and a closet full of designer clothes. He hit the bars on weekends, used drugs recreationally, mostly pot and occasionally Ecstasy, had never had a steady boyfriend and had gone into therapy to discover why. Travis was quietly but deeply dissatisfied with his life, and sometimes wondered if being gay was not the cause of his unhappiness, but felt guilty about this because he thought he was supposed to be proud of being out. He gave money to AIDS and gay organizations when he could and had volunteered at Project Angel Food, delivering meals to people with AIDS, but quit because it got too depressing. He enjoyed his work, but worried about advancing, got along better with his women coworkers than the men, but didn’t see any of them socially. His small circle of friends was all other gay men, and while his family back in Maryland was “okay” with his homosexuality, he rarely saw or spoke to them. What he wanted most in life was a nice house, a stable career and a boyfriend.

By the time I’d finished questioning him, I had concluded that if he was the killer, he was an incredibly brilliant actor or completely psychotic to be able to fake such ordinariness. He didn’t appear to be either.

As if he’d read my mind, he asked, “Did I pass?”

“The studio wants to hire me to represent you. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” he said, gratefully.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll call Gaitan and set up a meeting. In the meantime, you are not to talk to anyone about this case, especially the police. Here’s my card. Refer any questions to me.”

“What about Nick?”

“Nick represents the studio,” I said. “I represent you.”

Travis frowned. “But the studio’s paying you.”

“That doesn’t mean I work for them,” I said, “but of course I’ll keep Nick informed so long as there’s no conflict of interest.”

“I really need to get back to work,” Travis said apologetically.

“Go,” I said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

I gathered my things and prepared to leave, then remembered that Donati had asked me to wait for him. At that moment, his secretary came in and said, “Mr. Rios? Mr. Donati asked me to bring you to Mr. Asuras’s office. They’d like to have a word with you.”

A
SURAS’S SUITE OCCUPIED
the top floor of the administration building. After a five-minute wait in an austere anteroom that featured as its sole decoration a gigantic bronze temple gong, his male secretary led me in to the inner sanctum. The room was arctic, so cold I shivered. It was also very large, and decorated in a style that was supposed to evoke the paneled library of an English country house, but the books which filled the bookshelves seemed chosen for size and color rather than content, and instead of hunting prints there was a series of odd, brilliantly colored framed wall hangings filled with floating Buddhas and fanged Asian monster gods. New Agey music seeped quietly into the cold air and I detected the smell of sandalwood. At the far end of the room was a massive and unoccupied desk. Off in a corner a hard round pillow lay on the floor in front of a kind of altar that held candles, a small Buddha, bells, a framed photograph of the Dalai Lama, a vase of flowers. Through a bank of tinted windows I saw shirtless construction workers swigging sodas from a roach coach. On the other side of the room, Duke Asuras and Nick Donati were seated in front of a blazing fire in an ornate fireplace, having tea. Asuras was as physically imposing as I remembered him, while the diminutive Donati seemed like—I thought of his greyhounds—the big man’s lapdog.

“Over here, Henry,” Nick said.

I walked across the room, conscious of Asuras’s assessing gaze. He wore a brown tweed jacket over a brown leather vest buttoned to his neck, a banded-collar shirt, gray wool pants, highly polished boots. Not exactly summer in LA wear. Above the fireplace was the largest of the wall hangings. It depicted a circle in the maw of a black demon. The circle was divided into six segments, showing animals, humans, wraiths, demons, gods and warriors. In the center a smaller circle showed a rooster devouring a snake that was devouring a pig. I recognized it from visits with Josh to the New Age book store the Bodhi Tree as the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Each of the six segments represented a realm into which a soul could be reincarnated. The three animals in the center represented ignorance, desire and malice. The black demon was Yama, the god of death. Josh, who went to the Bodhi Tree in search of spiritual sustenance, often stared at their poster of the Wheel and speculated into which realm he might be reincarnated. The goal, however, was not to come back at all.

“Sit down, Mr. Rios,” Asuras said. “Have some tea.”

I sank into a red leather armchair with brass studs. “No, thank you.”

“Something else?” he asked solicitously. “Coffee? It’s early, but if you’d like a drink.”

“Nothing,” I said. “This is quite a place. Are you a Buddhist or just a collector?”

“Both,” he said. “You know about Buddhism?”

“It’s the religion du jour, isn’t it?”

Asuras frowned, formidably. “I’m sincere about my practice.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest you weren’t.”

“The hour I sit at my altar meditating is crucial,” he said. “The liberating thing about Buddhism is that it teaches there is no right and wrong, just cause and effect.”

“Karma?” I asked.

“And cause and effect,” he continued, ignoring me, “are themselves illusions.”

“So what does that leave?” I asked.

He grinned. “Perfect freedom of action. And once you understand that,” he droned on, “you can go out into the world as a warrior. Free to risk everything, to lose everything, because nothing matters but the act.”

Nick Donati discreetly stifled a yawn. I imagined such theological ruminations must become tiresome after a couple of thousand times, and it seemed from their obvious ease around each other that they’d had a long and intimate association.

“That’s very interesting,” I said, politely. “Nick’s secretary said you wanted a word with me.”

Asuras put his cup down. “Is the man guilty?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Was I unclear?” he asked. “I want to know if we have a murderer on the lot.”

I turned to Donati. “Do you want to explain attorney-client privilege, or should I?”

“No one needs to explain anything to me,” Asuras said. “I have a law degree from Yale University. Let me explain something to you. The studio’s paying your fee and that makes you a studio employee.”

Donati broke in. “Henry, you have to understand. This isn’t just a legal situation, its a public-relations problem. As soon as the press gets wind of this story, they’ll be camped out at the studio gates.”

“Presumably you have people who know how to give non-answers to the press,” I said.

“It would help if they knew which non-answers to give,” Donati said.

“You took the same oath I did, Nick, to uphold the laws and represent your clients to the best of your ability. That precludes telling their secrets to third parties.”

“Mr. Rios,” Asuras said, in a soft rumble. His voice, I noticed, was even lower than Donati’s. Together they were like a duet in testosterone. “I run a billion-dollar-a-year business. Thousands of people depend on the studio for their livelihoods. I need to know when something is going to have an adverse effect on them.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “An hour ago Donati was telling me he thought Bob was being framed, and now you’re asking me if he did it.”

“I do think he’s being framed,” Donati said. “All we want is your professional assessment.”

“After all,” Asuras said offhandedly, “the man is a homosexual.”

“And that means he’s more likely to have done it?” I asked.

“It means he’s feminine,” Asuras said. “Ergo, weak.”

“By that reasoning,” I replied, “it’s virtually certain he’s innocent, since women don’t go in for serial killing. It’s mostly a male sport.”

“So you don’t think he did it,” Asuras said. “You would know, being a homosexual yourself. What homosexuals are capable of, I mean.”

I got up. “What this homosexual is capable of is walking out of this ridiculous and offensive meeting. The studio can keep its fucking money. I’ll work something out with my client.”

On my way out, I kicked the gong.

Donati caught me just as the elevator door slid open. “Henry,” he said. “Wait.” He got into the elevator with me and pushed the button to the mezzanine. “Duke asked me to apologize.”

“Was he too busy meditating to come himself?”

Nick glanced at his watch. “Can you squeeze in a tour? I want to show you the lot.”

“I’ll take a rain check.”

We were outside on the steps of the administration building. He put on a pair of sunglasses and said, “It’ll help explain what happened up there. Come on. Not many people get my personal tour.”

Grudgingly, I followed him down a narrow street toward the hulking buildings at the back of the lot. I noticed a couple of two-story wood-framed buildings with covered porches behind a row of tamarisk trees. Casually dressed people popped in and out of them. Those who recognized Donati were respectful rather than friendly.

“Those buildings look familiar,” I said.

“They’re where the studio used to quarantine the writers,” he said. He stopped, pointed to a louvered door. “William Faulkner’s office. Two doors down was Scott Fitzgerald. There was a movie about a screenwriter in the forties a couple of years back. It was filmed here, that’s probably why you recognize the buildings.”

“They filmed here? Aren’t those working offices?”

He smiled. “They’ve filmed in my office. In Duke’s. There’s a parking lot over there,” he said, pointing toward the water tower, “that was flooded and used as the Red Sea in a TV movie about Moses. Parnassus is the smallest studio in town, every inch does double duty, at least.”

We were on a narrow street. A woman in dark glasses steered a black compact BMW carefully between trucks and trailers, while a young man whizzed by on a ten-speed and a sweatshirted technician shouldered a coil of heavy electrical cable. A suit came by in a golf cart. I asked Donati about a row of unlocked bikes.

“They’re the quickest way to get around the lot,” he explained. “Execs go by golf carts. You can see there’s not much room for cars.”

“What are all the trailers?”

“The little ones are makeup, the bigger ones for the actors. You wouldn’t believe the negotiations over the size of a star’s trailer,” he said. “Or what we have to put inside of it.”

The noise of saws and hammers blasted from the open door of one of the massive buildings that Donati identified as a soundstage. From the outside it was shaped like a barn or airplane hangar with a rounded roof. Inside, a construction crew was building the interior of a three-story Victorian mansion for a movie about vampires in San Francisco. The set didn’t begin to fill the vast space. We stood and watched for a few minutes, then resumed the tour. Against the studio’s back wall was a row of Quonset huts that housed graphics, carpentry, fiberglass fabrication and other shops.