John Belushi Is Dead (20 page)

“Wait, there it is.”

Through the treetops behind the cottages was the jutting outline of a gothic-looking house. There was no entranceway and the number was not visible to the street. I couldn't see a way in: no driveway, no gate, not even a walking track. It was as if the house had its back to us. “Damn it,” I said. “Everything in this town is hidden behind high fences. It sucks.”

“Would you rather they have an open house for you? Make you some sandwiches?”

“I just think the public has a right to visit these places. These are historic landmarks. They shouldn't be hidden.”

“How would you feel if you were murdered and some jerk with a camera came sniffing around wanting to be photographed next to your bloodstains?”

“I wouldn't care. The public has a right to know.”

“The
public
? Gimme a break. Vampires more like.”

I slumped back in my seat, annoyed. Beside me something suddenly moved. An old man in overalls stood beside the car, a rake in his wrinkled hand. He was wearing a sun hat and his face looked a thousand years old. He gave me a look of suspicion I hadn't seen since the rednecks in
Deliverance
.

“Oh, hi,” I said to him. “You scared me.”

“My apologies,” he replied with a gravely voice, and I was relieved by his friendly tone. “Are you looking for the Bern house?”

“Yes,” I said, sitting up. “Yes we are. Is that all we can see of it?”

“I'm afraid so,” he said. “Many people come 'round here looking for it, and always go away disappointed. I grew up on this street. I was a little boy when that movie producer died.”

“No shit,” Jake said.

“I don't remember much,” the man said, leaning on his rake. “Just a lot of cars, commotion, people. It was just one of those things. I was really young. Like I said, I don't remember much.”

It was the first time I'd actually spoken to someone at one of these murder spots, the first time I'd had a conversation with someone who was there when the event actually took place. I was
excited but I also felt guilty. Once an angry woman had thrown tomatoes at Benji's car as we sat outside her house taking photos. Later on I looked at pictures of the case on the Internet and found out that the woman who'd thrown tomatoes at us was the mother of the person who'd died there. Even then I hadn't felt bad. If she didn't like it, she could move, I thought. Her son belonged to the world now, whether she liked it or not.

“When they see how narrow the road is, that usually puts them off,” the old man continued. “I figure, if you're that interested in what happened up here, where's the harm? It's all history.”

“Did you ever see Jean Harlow?” I asked.

“If I did I was too young to remember. Sorry.”

“Thanks for that, man,” Jake said, putting the car in gear. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

“What gives, Jake?” I said as quietly as I could so the old man wouldn't hear. “I've got more questions.”

“No more questions,” he said, and we started to roll down the hill, the man waving at us as we went off. We turned back onto Benedict Canyon and headed up the hill toward the San Fernando Valley.

“Jake, I wanted to ask that guy more questions. He was there when it happened!”

“Hilda, enough of this death crap. Look out the window. It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the smog is, well, not as smoggy as usual. Let's do something fun. I think I know a place you'll like.”

I
N THE
V
ALLEY, OFF
a main highway and behind the Sepulveda Dam, was a beautifully landscaped Japanese garden, complete with artificial brooks, overhanging blossom trees, and waterfalls. It took
me completely by surprise: I'd never heard of it, and if someone had told me such a breathtaking sanctuary existed in the middle of dirty, gray Van Nuys, I wouldn't have believed it. Jake made a dollar donation for us both and we wandered inside. The garden was quiet and serene. An ibis drank from the lake. The traffic from the freeway was only a hum, a distant buzzing in my ear. “This is amazing,” I said. “Who would think you could find this in the middle of Los Angeles?”

“I like to come here to get some peace and quiet,” Jake said. “To think about things. Recenter. I get my best ideas out here. Some days I meditate, go searching deep within for creative answers, let my subconscious dive for ideas.”

“Oh, give me a break,” I said. “You sound like a self-help manual.”

“Why are you laughing? I take my job very seriously. Writing is a quest for truth.”

“Sure it is,” I said, still poking fun, but from the look on his face I could see he was hurt. “I just couldn't picture you meditating, that's all. It doesn't seem like you.”

“Well, I guess there are still a lot of things you don't know about me. Transcendental Meditation is amazing. David Lynch does it.”

An elderly couple walked along the path toward us, arm in arm, smiling as they passed. Jake and I walked side by side, a whole world between us. But I had the feeling that chasm was slowly starting to fill. We arrived at a hard steel bench overlooking the lake and Jake sat down. The footpath beneath our feet broke into smaller sections of rock, straight lines giving way to a pattern of circles that covered the ground.

“Are you sure you don't want to sit over there, out of the sun?” I
pointed toward an arbor at the end of a log bridge. The bench was small, and we would have to sit close together.

Jake shook his head. “Sit here,” he said, patting the space next to him. “Trust me. I won't bite.”

I sat. Jake pointed to the ground, to the broken pieces of rock.

“This is called the Directional Stone,” he said. “The way the path is broken up is a metaphor for life. It shows that your destiny is not predetermined. You don't have to do everything that is expected of you. There are other paths to take.”

I carved the outline of the path with my foot, tracing the edge. “Is that what you did?” I asked. “Chose another path?”

“Not really,” he said quietly, in an unexpected moment of self-reflection. “I mean, do I look any different from anyone else in this town, Hilda? I sold out like all the rest.”

I didn't say anything, not because I felt sorry for Jake but because I'd heard it all before. Everyone in Los Angeles worked their asses off to get rich, then spent the rest of their lives complaining about it. Most held off the self-loathing by giving some of their wealth to charity or doing something “artistic,” like taking up pottery classes. Most just couldn't handle the responsibility that came with the big studio job or the home-based clothing line. I guess they thought that once they got to the top, all the hard work would be over, when really most of the work was maintaining what you already had. “Money is just a beast,” I heard Dad say to Mom when the bills piled high and we barely had enough for a bag of lentils. “Once you've got it, you have to keep feeding it, and if you don't it will devour you.” Jake was just another tiger eating his own tail.

“My mom used to bring me here when I was a kid,” he said.
“Well, she'd wander off and ‘recenter' herself and leave me to feed the fish.”

“It's really nice, Jake. Peaceful. There aren't many places where you can find peace in this town.”

We watched the ibis make its way across the rock pool, long legs extending carefully on the wet stones.

“If only—” I started to say, then stopped.

“What? What is it?”

I traced my finger along the edge of the bench. “I just wanted to ask that man more questions about growing up on that street, seeing the things he did. He's a piece of living history.”

“I've got to admit, as freaky as your interests are, they make for some kick-ass stories. How's this for an idea? Young boy witnesses murder, comes back to the place where it happened as a caretaker when he's an adult, and sets out to solve the crime.”

“Everything's just a script idea to you, isn't it?”

“What do you mean, alienated girl who befriends old man and discovers meaning in life through her obsession with death?”

“That's great. I don't think I've ever had my entire existence distilled into a movie pitch before.”

“Be thankful. I just saved you tons of money on psychotherapy.”

“You're very strange, Jake. I'm not sure how to take you sometimes.”

“Most chicks feel that way at first. You'll come around.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Jake put his sunglasses on top of his head and leaned in a little closer. “Sounds ominous.”

“I'm just curious—why are you so involved with Hank's life?”

“Why are you?”

“I'm trying to help him.”

“And I'm not?”

“Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't strike me as the philanthropic type.”

“You're very quick to judge, Hilda. Can't a guy have a beer with his neighbor every now and then?”

“I guess, but tidying the place for him? Buying him groceries? There's not a lot of guys your age who'd do that. Well, any age, period.”

“Maybe you should take a look in the mirror before you start asking questions. Maybe you're asking the wrong person.”

“How very Buddhist of you.”

He didn't say anything. When the silence became too much I slapped the bench.

“So what now?” I asked. “Disneyland? Shall we put our hands in the cement at Grauman's? All this peace and quiet is freaking me out.”

“Actually, I should probably head off,” Jake said, looking at his watch. “I've got a lot of work to catch up on.”

“That's okay. I have stuff to do, too,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. I realized I was beginning to enjoy Jake's company. It was strange to be around someone with drive and ambition, someone who thought about more than the best way to chisel a piece of marble off Johnny Ramone's cenotaph.

Jake gave me a thin smile. “I'm halfway through a rewrite.”

“Of course,” I said, standing. “Hollywood calls. Don't let me keep you from it.”

W
E DEPARTED THE
J
APANESE
Garden, leaving the birds and the fish to their beautiful sanctuary. Jake dropped me off in front of my house. Some of the kids on bikes stopped to stare at his dirty, run-down convertible, ugly and dangerous in a suburb filled with station wagons.

“You have a nice house,” Jake said as I got out of the car. “Very cozy-looking. Homey.”

“More like suffocating.”

Jake threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, the angst of youth. “No one understands! No one!'”

“What about all your ‘writerly' angst, huh? ‘The words, the words, they do not come!' You have to sit and chant by a lake just to get ideas.”

“Speaking of which, the muse is calling. Gotta fly.”

He put the car in gear and was just about to pull away when I ran back to him.

“Jake!” I called. The car screeched to a halt and he leaned out.

“What?”

I hesitated, not sure exactly what it was I wanted to say. “My parents were hippies, too,” I said.

“Sorry?”

I stammered, “You were saying your parents were hippies. Mine were, too.”

He smiled, and this time there was no hint of a smirk. There was warmth in it. “I guess we have more in common than we first thought,” he said.

“I guess so.”

“I'd like to hear more about them,” he said. “That is, if you're up to talking about it. Maybe you should come over after one of your visits with Hank.”

“I didn't think you'd feel comfortable letting me into your place with all my ‘death vibes.'”

He grinned. “I'm not that superstitious.”

“You'd be surprised. A lot of people are. I saw an interview with the LA County Coroner on A&E. He said most people were too scared to even shake his hand, in case they suddenly keeled over, like death was contagious or something.”

“Believe me, I'm sure if you walked into my apartment the plants wouldn't die and blood wouldn't start pouring from the toilet.”

“Who knows? Maybe someone famous died in your apartment once, too. In Los Angeles you have a one-in-three chance of moving into a place where a celebrity used to live.”

“You sure do have a lot of useless information in your head.”

“I guess so,” I said. I was quite happy for it to be that way;
useless trivia meant there wasn't enough room for other thoughts. Darker thoughts. “Well, I'll see ya.”

I started to walk away, hoping he might call out to me, but I heard the engine roar as he sped off. I felt a strange sensation in my stomach, like milk curdling. Now that Jake was gone I felt the dark clouds of my thoughts forming again, as if on cue. When I was with him everything felt lighter. As I walked across the lawn I struggled to keep the demons from pulling me back down. I imagined them clawing their way through the crisp summer grass, tearing away at the soil and the weeds and tugging at my ankle. When I was with Jake the demons disappeared, and death seemed to recede just a little. I wanted it to stay that way.

As I walked toward the balcony I heard Lynette's rickety patio chair swinging behind the eucalyptus tree. The air was still and for a moment I wondered if Lynette had come home early and curled up on the patio with her latest casebook or one of those crappy police procedural novels she loved. But her car wasn't in the driveway. As I came closer, the squealing of the chair stopped, and I took the steps one at a time, peering slowly around the corner.

“Benji.”

“Hello, Hilda.”

He looked a mess. His cargoes were covered in mud and he stank of sweat. I could see it dripping down his temples.

“What have you been doing?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer. “You look like shit.”