Sex and Violence in Hollywood (17 page)

“Well, they’re wrong,” he said, then shouted, “Evil is afraid of you. Evil hides from you. You make Evil shit its pants.” Adam’s chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. “I’m going to the police.”

Rain and Carter both cried, “What?”

“I think I should go back to the nearest police station. Was that liquor store in Compton?”

Rain pulled her feet away from him and slapped his arm hard. “Are you fuckin’ crazy, whatta you think’s gonna happen if you do that?”

“If they trace that robbery back to me, I’m doomed,” Adam said. Fear made his voice catch at times. “It won’t matter what I say, they won’t listen, and because of my dad it’ll be big news, another Hollywood scandal. This way, if I tell the police the truth now, maybe we can prevent all that and it won’t get out.”

“Won’t get out?” Carter asked, his voice’s pitch shooting so high, he sounded like a frightened Bryant Gumbel. “Did you get shot in the head? You know better than that, listen to yourself! You go to the cops or get caught later, either way you’re going to jail, and either way it’s going to get out.”

“He’s right,” Rain said. “Except for that part about getting caught later, that’s bullshit. You got away with it. So quit the fuckin’ dramatics, Hollywood Boy. You didn’t get caught. You’re free and clear, so no more shit about goin’ to the—”

“How am I free and clear? I was in the store, there were cameras and—”

“Ever been arrested?” she asked.

“What?”

“Have you ever been arrested?”

“Of course not.”

“Then you don’t have a record, you don’t have a mug shot for some witness to identify.”

“Were there witnesses?” Adam asked.

“I didn’t see any,” Carter said. “But I wasn’t looking for them.”

Rain continued impatiently. “Look, Adam, they don’t know shit about you, can’t you get that through your fuckin’ head? You’re clean, and you got outta there alive, that means you got away with it. And even if you did have a fuckin’ record, it wouldn’t matter, because it’s just a pissy little liquor-store shooting. You think they give a shit about those? Investigating liquor-store shootings in Compton’s like investigating every single fucking car alarm that goes off in Westwood. They don’t give a fuck about you, they don’t know you from...well, shit, from Adam. But they will if you go to them and start confessin’ your fuckin’ sins. They’ll arrest your ass, then you will have a record. And a mugshot. You’ll be seriously fucked and—”

“No, it doesn’t feel right,” Adam said. He shook his head spastically. “Not telling them just doesn’t feel right.”

Carter leaned forward between the seats. “C’mon, man, you know she’s right. They got the only guy who did any shooting. And he’s probably got a rap sheet longer than Milton Berle’s dick! You don’t exist as far as they’re concerned, you’re not in the system.”

“Let’s just find a place where we can have some coffee and a fuckin’ doughnut, or somethin’,” Rain said.

Carter put a hand on Adam’s right shoulder and squeezed. “Going to the cops is the wrong thing to do, Adam, you know that. Right?”

“I...I don’t know, Carter.”

“Let’s just go chill out at Denny’s for a while, okay?”

FIFTEEN

Denny’s on Sunset Boulevard
was busy at all hours, and was no different that night. Innocuous music played from invisible speakers. Muted voices, clattering plates, and the cry of an infant moved through the music.

Adam and Rain sat across from Carter in a window booth, with Adam next to the window. Jaw resting on the knuckles of his interlocked hands, he stared through the glass at the nighttime activity on the Strip. Winos and junkies, some talking to themselves, arguing with memories. Prostitutes of both sexes, some indeterminate, being browsed by anonymous shoppers driving slowly by.

Adam had a cup of coffee in front of him. Carter and Rain were splitting a grilled cheese sandwich and onion rings. Three untouched glasses of ice water perspired on the table. Carter absently thumbed through L.A. Express, a pulpy sex weekly he’d picked up from a vending box outside.

Adam spoke in an unsteady whisper. “If he hadn’t stopped to throw me that gun, he probably wouldn’t have gotten shot.” He turned to Rain, angry. “I can’t believe you knew about it and didn’t say anything. I can’t believe you just let me walk into that.”

“You wouldn’t have gone if you knew, and then Monty wouldn’t have helped us.”

“Exactly how did you think that goon was going to help us? You’d trust him? He was insane, Rain, I’m telling you, stable people don’t go around holding up liquor stores to win friends and influence people. They don’t carry a gun in every pocket or throw parties like the one he threw tonight! That’s a great bunch of friends you got there, Rain, it was like a David Lynch movie.”

“They’re not my fuckin’ friends, okay?” she said. “I didn’t know any of those people. Monty was my only real friend there,” she said quietly, bowed her head. “If he’s dead...I’m gonna miss him.”

“Want to go back to his party?” Adam said. “Maybe you can find another one. There had to be a dozen granite-skulled social retards there with a loaded gun in each pocket. I’m not sure, but I think that party was a meeting of their union!”

Rain turned away from him. Picked up an onion ring, moved it toward her mouth, then threw it back down. Put her face in her hands and said something.

“What?” Adam asked, turning to her.

She glanced at him, hissed, “I said, that’s a shitty thing to say.” Her frightened, angry eyes shed real tears. Rain could not have startled Adam more had she slapped his face. The anger and hatred he had felt toward her retreated for the moment.

Carter saw the tears on Rain’s face, the way Adam was looking at her, and scooted out of the booth. “I’m gonna go see what’s new on the walls,” he said, then walked away.

Adam lifted his coffee to his lips. His hand still trembled.

“I’m sorry, Rain,” he said. “I, um...he was your friend, and I shouldn’t have said that, but...I mean, considering what I went through tonight, do you think you could cut me a little bit of a break?”

Sniffling, Rain dabbed her eyes with a paper napkin. “Do you think he’s dead?” she whispered.

“I...I don’t know, it was...well, that close to a sawed-off shotgun...there was a lot of blood. It was there all of a sudden, everywhere it seemed, the second that shotgun went off.” He noticed a drying spatter of blood on the back of his hand. Quickly dipped a paper napkin in his ice water and scrubbed it away. “I’m sorry, Rain, but I’d be surprised if he was alive.” He reached under the table and used the napkin on his life-speckled shoes.

Rain picked up what remained of her half of the sandwich, held it between thumb and middle finger and carefully chose a place to bite. Chewed slowly. “I knew Monty was crazy,” she said. “But he was a nice guy, whether you or anybody else fuckin’ believes it or not. He was like a fuckin’ kid. I was eleven when I first met him and I think that’s why we got along so well right off, “cause we were both kids, even though he was older than me. He stole Hostess Fruit Pies and Seventeen magazine for me. That first summer, he drove me out to the desert and taught me to shoot an AK-47.”

Adam decided to keep to himself any remarks that came to mind. He heard genuine grief in her voice—or what sounded like it—and did not want to belittle that. Monty was a dangerous low-life cretin, but Adam could not comment on the friendship Rain had had with him. Maybe Monty had changed her life in some way. That it was a change for the better was dubious, but this was the first time he had seen her express any real emotion other than anger. He must have meant something to her.

“He was always there for me, no matter where we went, where we lived,” she said. “And he helped me out again tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“The gun.”

“The one he threw at me?”

She nodded.

“That helps you?”

“It helps us.”

Adam waited for her to continue. When she did not, he said, “Look, I don’t feel like playing the Pyramid, okay? Say what’s on your mind and quit—” He was about to say, quit wasting my time! She didn’t need to hear that now. “Just don’t be so mysterious, okay?”

“What’s the fuckin’ mystery?” Rain asked. “It’s an untraceable gun.”

“How do you know it’s untraceable?”

“Okay, maybe it’s traceable. But not to us.”

“Do you know anything about it?”

Rain shrugged. “It’s a fuckin’ amazing gun, a Colt .45 automatic handcannon. Other than that, I don’t know dick. Maybe it wasn’t even his. Maybe a friend loaned it to him for the night. And maybe his friend had borrowed it from another friend, without asking. And maybe that guy picked it up in a house he broke into and robbed, and maybe it’s registered to the guy who owns the house. The cops show up at his fuckin’ door, not ours. The house guy doesn’t know us, we don’t know him, the cops come back a couple times and talk to the house guy, then go have some doughnuts, ’cause they know they got nothin’.”

Adam sipped his coffee, then turned and watched Rain slowly eat a glistening, broken onion ring. She tilted her head back just a bit, lowered the onion ring into her mouth. Pulled it in with her tongue.

“Why would the cops be looking for the gun?” Adam asked. “I mean...we have the gun. Right? We do have the gun, don’t we? Did I miss something?”

Rain nodded. “It’s in the car, under the seat.”

“Okay, so why would the cops be looking for it when they’ve got no reason to know it exists? It wasn’t even fired.”

“They wouldn’t be looking for it now, you fuckin’ sportscaster,” Rain said. She whispered, soft as rose petals. “Y’know, if it turned up later. Like, in a murder, or something.”

She smiled, stroked his leg. Her touch startled him, made him jump. Turning from Rain, he sipped his coffee again. Stared into the cup.

There it was again. Killing his dad and Gwen. The more he thought about it, the easier it seemed it would be to kill his dad. Memories kept coming back, things he hadn’t thought about in years. Some little things, others bigger. Like the time Michael introduced him to Harrison Ford at a party at the house.

“This is my son, Adam,” Michael had said, putting a hand on top of Adam’s head. “He’s a big fan of yours. Probably because you’re everything he’s not. I swear to God, he isn’t a doer. I don’t know what the hell’s gonna become of him. I’ll probably be supporting him the rest of my life.”

Adam had been eight years old at the time. Harrison Ford had looked almost as big as he did on the theater screen. He’d looked down at Adam and smiled, said, “Hey, how’s it going, big guy?” Then he had walked away.

“Okay, happy now?” Michael said. “Go to bed. Go! Upstairs, before the guests start to leave because of you.”

Adam couldn’t remember if he’d done anything to deserve that last remark. Probably not. It was the kind of thing his dad would say with no provocation, for no reason. He had run upstairs to his room and cried himself to sleep.

Other memories, some similar, others worse, came back in trickles and bursts. They made it easier to seriously consider murdering Michael Julian.

One question kept trying to occur to him: What would Mom think? He never allowed the question to fully take form, told himself he would be doing it for her. To avenge her death. Her murder.

“You don’t seem too fuckin’ impressed,” Rain said. “I thought I was being pretty resourceful.”

Adam nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, that...that’s very resourceful. I just don’t feel very enthusiastic right now, okay?”

“I don’t like it when you talk that way, Big Brother,” Rain said.

“Like what?”

“Real loose like that, like you could be talkin’ about anything. Makes me nervous. You should be committed, Adam.”

He chuckled. “That’s funny. I’ve been thinking the same thing about you.”

“You asshole. Is everything a fuckin’ joke to you? Aren’t you ever serious?”

“I’m always serious, Rain. Only the jokes are funny. Sometimes.”

“I mean you should be committed to what we’re gonna do, Big Brother, because I don’t wanna spend all fuckin’ summer talkin’ about it. That gun’s exactly what we need, and we’re gonna use it. Soon.” She smiled, shook her head. “You oughtta be grateful. In our original plan, you end up in prison for murder.” She laughed.

“What? Whose original plan?”

Carter returned to the table and slid back into his seat.

Adam decided to pursue the remark later. “I still haven’t said I’d do it.”

She laughed a pretty, girlish laugh. “Sometimes your jokes are pretty fuckin’ funny, you know that, Big Brother?”

“What’re you guys talking about?” Carter asked.

“Oh, just stupid shit,” Rain said casually, taking another bite of her half of the sandwich.

Adam told him what they were talking about with a silent look.

Carter said, “Y’know, I was thinking just now—” He stopped uncertainly.

“Thinking what?” Adam asked.

“Well, um...” Laughter burst out of him and he muffled it with a hand over his mouth. Shook his head, nodded, shook it again. Leaned toward them and said quietly, but with great passion and delight, “Tonight was the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life! I mean, it was like a really scary amusement park ride!”