Empire of Lies (37 page)

Out in front of the theater, off to one side between the theater and the crowd, the five big klieg lights swiveled on a couple of flatbed trailers, sending their beams into the night. Next to the trailers, there was an area all aglow with spectacular silver radiance. I couldn't see it over the massed people, but I guessed that that was
where the red carpet was, where the movie stars and dignitaries were arriving in their limousines and sweeping their glorious way past the cameras and microphones of the gawkers and reporters to join those already on the spiral stairs inside.

I approached the edges of the crowd. Jammed and throbbing with humanity as it was, the scene was more-or-less orderly. The police had closed the street to all traffic except the limousines coming from the west, and were allowing pedestrians to enter only from the east. As a result, the onlookers swarmed steadily in from Broadway while police calmly directed the limos swinging in off Eighth Avenue. I caught glimpses of the big cars approaching one after another, vanishing behind the throng to where, judging by the shouts and camera flashes, the celebrities disembarked. It was all very well organized. The sabotaged theater was filling up quickly.

I wedged my way into the crowd and started pushing toward the front. "Excuse me. Excuse me," I grunted again and again. There were so many people. Thousands inside, thousands more out here. They were packed together so densely, they formed a nearly solid mass. I had to shoulder and elbow and shove my way through—"Excuse me. Excuse me."—nauseated by the smothering flesh all around me, squeezing past body after body toward the barricades.

At last, clammy with sweat, I broke through to the front of the crowd and emerged into the magnificent silver light around the red carpet. It was a wonderful light, like none I'd ever seen. It turned the world the color of the moon. Emanating from a series of standing lamps arrayed around the edges of the mob, it poured down on the carpet and splashed up over the New Coliseum's pristine white facade. The black limos pulling up into the glow seemed to take on a startling added dimension. You know those books for kids, those pop-up books where 3-D objects leap up off the page
at you? That's how the cars seemed suddenly to leap out of reality as they entered the light. One was arriving even as I reached the barricade. I staggered, blinking, out of the darkness of the multitude, and there it was. A doorman in a blinding livery of scarlet and gold opened the back door. Out, then, into that extra fullness of existence stepped a man I recognized from movie posters, one of the popular comedians of the last few years, and with him, his starlet wife.

There followed several swift, disorienting moments of machinelike efficiency, a human clockwork engineered to allow the glamorous couple an assigned interval of the crowd's admiration before they were ushered toward a fifteen-second interview under the theater awning, and finally swept inside as the next limousine pulled up behind them. Through all this they were accompanied by a chittering, insectile swarm of paparazzi nibbling at the edges of their silver space and by graceful television cameras that swooped around them, dancing attendance in the outer shadows. It was a strange thing to see. It had a strange effect on me. I found myself frozen there, staring, fascinated, my desperation almost forgotten, as if I'd suddenly been rendered nothing more here than an observer, as if I were at home, in fact, watching the whole thing on TV. The passage of the arriving stars from limo to interviewer to theater became everything, a sequence distinct from its surroundings. The chaos around me, the terror inside me, seemed to become dim and peripheral. The police working to keep the crowd at bay, the sound equipment on its trucks, the klieg lights, the photographers, and the chaotic depths of the mob itself, became a blurred frame to the central progression, a border of living irrelevance to the fullness of the comedian's celebrated life. All the force of reality seemed to me to be not with myself but with the couple on the red carpet, with the white teeth in the comic's tanned face, the sparkling sequins on his wife's black dress. The
truth of their being, the being of their being, the dimness of my own somehow-lesser presence on the border of the great glow, seemed to grow more intense with every precisely organized second until the sheer force of their actuality climaxed as they stepped up to the interviewer at the theater entrance and I recognized her—her blonde curls, her avid eyes, her bee-stung lips—it was Sally Sterling—and the shock of her familiar appearance rendered the scene on the red carpet so entirely
there
somehow that I felt, in contrast, I had all but vanished.

It was, as I say, strange; disorienting: the quickness of it, and the brightness of it and my own unimportance on the edges of it practically paralyzed me at first, paralyzed my mind. I just stood there—just stood there, staring. And even when I started to think again, I couldn't think clearly, I couldn't think of anything to do. How could I get closer to the theater? How could I get inside? How could I warn the people—so many people—that they were all about to die?

There were uniformed police patrolling the barricades at every point. There were many more plainclothes security people standing guard watchfully within the protected circle. I thought of grabbing one of them, screaming at him, warning them all of the danger. But they would've arrested me on the spot. I knew they would have. They would have called headquarters and found out who I was: a murder suspect trying to distract an investigation with unfounded terrorist scares. They would have carted me away and it all would've gone on without me. I could already see it in my mind's eye—the chaos—the rubble—the death.

So I stood there—that's all—stood there and stared, watching the scene with a swiftly growing sense of panic and helplessness and confusion. Another limousine pulled up and—great God—there was the secretary of state, tall and sleek in a shiny tuxedo. He stepped smoothly from the car. Took his moment in the moony
glow, smiling, waving. And I stood there, watching him, fairly panting in my powerlessness, and thinking,
Him, too. They will kill him, too.
And looking at the crowds, the thousands all around, and thinking:
They will kill everyone for their unforgiving god.

The thought brought me back to myself, back to my senses. As the secretary of state was swept along to his moment before Sally's microphone, I began to take stock. My eyes started moving, searching the scene here and there, looking for anything, any weakness in the defenses, any possible point of entry.

I found one.

The theater stretched over much of the block. On this side of it, near the corner, there was a kind of narrow courtyard, formed by the theater's wall and the rear of a massive hotel on Times Square. A short way into the courtyard, I could make out a door—a stage door or maybe an entrance for technicians—I couldn't tell which from where I was. The entrance to the courtyard was roped off. There were two patrolmen guarding the rope. Two more patrolmen stood on the other side of the courtyard, facing away toward the next street over. I thought: If I could create a diversion, if I could draw the attention of these two cops at the rope, maybe I could rush past them, down the courtyard to the door. Of course the door might be locked. And the two cops at the far end might spot me. And if I did get in, there'd be sure to be more cops inside. But it was the only thing I could think of, the only chance I had.

I began to try to think of ways to create the diversion I needed. Nothing came to me. My thoughts spun like tires in the mud. If I started shouting—"Fire!"—"Bomb!"—the cops would come right for me. I'd be the first one they carried off. Even if I managed to start a panic, I'd be trampled in the rush.

I stood there—stood there—the time passing, my heart beating, my thoughts going round and round.

Then—what happened next—well, it was simply unbelievable.

No one ever reported it—not in context, anyway—not as a relevant part of the events of that night. The TV news never mentioned it. Neither did any of the major papers. I think it was just as Patrick Piersall said, just as he had told me in the Ale House. What happened next didn't fit the story. It was too ridiculous, too undignified, completely out of keeping with the general tone of the terror and tragedy that followed.

But it's the truth. So I tell it here.

The theater was now nearly full, the show about ready to begin. There were only two more limousines yet to arrive. These—the most important limousines of all—had been saved for last.

As I stood there—racking my brains, helpless, fearful, expecting the explosion at every minute—the first of the cars pulled into the heightened silver reality at the head of the red carpet in front of me. The gold-and-scarlet doorman plucked open the back door. Out into the light stepped Juliette Lovesey.

She leapt instantly into vital relief, radiating presence and charisma. Even I—even at that desperate moment—started and stared at her, struck to have her appear in person right there in front of me like that. She was much smaller than she looked on screen, just a little slip of a thing, really, but as perfectly proportioned as a doll. The swell of her breasts, the line of her short white dress, the liquid curves of her tan legs all had the added charm of a thing in miniature. So, too, the aching fragility and vulnerability of her face, framed in the cascades of shining brown hair, were all the more powerful when you could see for yourself what a tiny and delicate creature in fact she was.

As she stepped gracefully out of the car onto the carpet, there was a collective surging sigh from the crowd. It was an amazing
sound, deep, heartfelt, passionate beyond anything I could describe: a collective moan of admiration and affection and sympathy. They loved her. You could feel it in the very air: They loved her as if she were their own.

I understood the phenomenon at once. They had all seen the interview. That interview Juliette had done with Sally last night. The announcement she had made: that she was carrying Todd Bingham's baby, that she was going to keep the child even though Bingham had left her for Angelica Eden. Everyone here had seen it, just as I had. In the moment that one tear had fallen from Juliette's lashes onto her cheek, she had changed in the public mind. She had gone from being a spoiled, wealthy, irresponsible narcissist to a wronged woman, ill used and left behind. She had become, that is to say, something the women in the crowd could understand, could identify with, something the men could sympathize with and yearn to protect. She had become a sparkling version of themselves. And with that, she had won them over. They loved her. Loved her.

Juliette felt this. I could see she did. She seemed to grow in stature where she stood, transported into a golden awareness of her own nobility. She responded to the people with a shy, sweet wave, a gesture both patient and courageous. Then she walked with modestly mincing steps down the carpeted path to where Sally waited to receive her.

There followed a quick coda to their TV interview. Sally wore the same girlfriend expression of tender concern. "How are you feeling, Juliette?" she asked. The words were freighted with meaning.

Juliette smiled brightly, bravely. "I'm doing great, Sally. It's great to be here and I'm really looking forward to enjoying this great ... great moment in the history of movies."

The volcanic roar erupted from the heart of the crowd. They
cheered. They whooped and applauded. They loved her: her courage; her dignity. She was perfect. She waved to them again. Sally reached out and gave the actress's hand a gentle, encouraging squeeze: Never surrender. Then an usher guided Juliette to the theater doors—and she was gone, the crowd still applauding.

I stood watching after her, frantic, wanting to cry out, wanting to warn her, warn everyone, trying to think, think, think of what I could do to stop the coming massacre.

Then the last limousine drew into the glow around the red carpet.

It was Angelica, of course—Angelica Eden with her new lover, Todd Bingham. I read later in one of the celebrity blogs that the two of them had been watching Juliette's arrival on a TV in the car. They had seen what had happened, the outpouring of love and support from the audience. According to the blog—and I guess they'd interviewed the limo's driver—Angelica let out a snarling blue streak of curses. "That bitch! That fucking bitch! That fucking shit-faced bitch!" Because, of course, if the crowd loved Juliette, if they sympathized with her as the wronged woman, they were going to hate Angelica as the vixen who'd stolen her man, who'd left her child fatherless and caused that crystal tear to go spilling down her cheek on TV last night. There was no telling how many charity appearances Angelica would have to make, how many African orphans she'd have to adopt to win back the sympathy of the moviegoing audience. According to the blog, Angelica started hissing at Todd as if she were a snake. She said she would
obliterate
Juliette from the people's minds. She would
eradicate
the news coverage of her triumphant arrival.

"What are you doing? What are you doing?" Todd is said to have squealed at her.

"If nothing else," Angelica Eden announced to him, "I'm not gonna let that fucking bitch upstage me!"

The car pulled to a stop before the carpet. The liveried doorman opened the door. Todd fairly leapt out into the silver incandescence—eager, maybe, to get away from his lover's tantrum. Like Juliette, he was also smaller in real life than he looked on television, even more delicate and insubstantial, though his blond, handsome head was large, almost weirdly oversized, which apparently made it look good on film. He smoothed down the front of his jacket with one hand, waved to the crowd with the other.

Then Angelica began to emerge from within the limousine—and the scene around me became a riot, descending almost instantly into a kind of mass madness.

The door handle in his hand, the doorman was standing off to one side to allow Angelica to exit. The car was wide open to the dozens of crouching paparazzi who lapped like surf just below its threshold. Angelica was wearing a very short dress, a dress as black as Juliette's dress was white. She had to turn her lower body forward to slide over the seat toward the door as the photographers snapped their pictures and the TV cameras moved in behind them to take video over their heads. Then Angelica had to step down from the car onto the carpet in front of them and then rise up off the limousine's low seat. As hard as she may have tried, it would've been very difficult for her to keep her knees together throughout the entire process. In any case, she didn't manage it.