Sex and Violence in Hollywood (47 page)

Suddenly in a jubilant mood, Adam didn’t even consider a sarcastic remark. He nodded and said, “Okay. I will.”

“You have lost weight,” she said. “I am putting you on a diet and a rigid exercise program. We want you to look sympathetic, not just pathetic. The hotel has a wonderful gym. You will never go there alone, but it will get you out of the room a few times a week.” She gathered up the papers on the table, handed them to Adam. “Copies of your chat with Alyssa.”

“Copies?” He took the papers, frowned as he looked them over. “From where?”

“Our college newspaper editor in Oregon logged all your chats as soon as he suspected your identities,” Lamont said. “The Times printed segments of it.”

Adam’s face screwed up into a mask of confusion. “They printed it? In the newspaper? B-but...why? It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not I killed anybody. Why would anyone want to read that? It’s just chat.”

Horowitz smiled. “It’s perfect,” she said.

FORTY-ONE

Max walked Adam
down to the gym shortly after one that afternoon. Each wore sweats, Adam’s blue and white, Max’s green and blue. “I’m not just doin’ this to be friendly, y’know,” Max said on the way. “The Queen Mum has decided we gotta buff you up a little. Gave me a list of the machines you’re s’posed to work on.” Adam could not decide if Max had a faded southern accent or simply spoke lazily. “If I can’t get you to do it, she’s gonna bring in one of them personal trainers. You know the typa guy I’m talkin’ about? Perfect hair? Every move he makes is a pose and all he talks about is his body? This muscle, that muscle, how much he can press. Drive you crazier’n a shithouse rat in no time. So if I were you, I wouldn’t give me any trouble.”

The gym was empty, the equipment looked abandoned. They slowly made their way from one machine to the next. Max loosened Adam up with small talk before getting serious.

“How well did you know Gwen?” he asked.

Adam’s guard went up. “What do you mean?”

“Know anything about her past?” Max asked.

“Only what I’ve told you. She was married before, her husband died in a housefire recently.”

“Ever heard of a woman named Rhonda Chasen?”

Adam thought the name over, shook his head. “No. Should I have?”

Max sat up and turned on the bench toward Adam. “How about Jennifer Gordon? Ruth Schaffer? Elizabeth Ryan?”

Frowning, Adam sat up and turned on the bench to face Max. Adam’s muscles burned, but he did not mind. It meant he was still capable of feeling something without coming to pieces. “They’ve got something to do with Gwen?” he asked.

“They were Gwen. Or Gwen was them. Whichever.”

“What? That...that’s insane. Why would she need four—”

“I was just lookin’ for information on Gwen Cardell, nothin’ else. But these couple names kept poppin’ up. Then a couple more. Confused the hell outta me at first. Took me a couple days of pokin’ around, but then I tripped right into it, and it was a hell of a fall. Seems your stepmama was at least four wanted women, not counting who she was when she died. She was wanted in four states under four aliases. Still is, a-course, ’cause they don’t know she’s gone. Far as I can tell—I gotta dig a little deeper—she had bank accounts under those aliases, including Swiss bank accounts and one in the Cayman Islands.”

“What’s she wanted for?”

“Oh, lessee. Extortion, conspiracy to extort, murder, conspiracy to murder, armed robbery, grand theft aut—”

“Murder?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s like a Whitman’s Sampler of criminal charges.”

“Who did she murder?”

Max’s droopy face hardened a bit. “Nobody. She’s only been accused of murder. You understand the difference?”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” Adam said with a nod. “When I mentioned that to Rona, she said it was a myth.”

“Seems that way sometimes. But just ‘cause it seems like a myth on television and in the newspapers and even in the courts don’t mean it’s gotta be a myth in our heads. That’s where it all starts, in our heads.”

“Who was she accused of murdering?”

“Wanna take a guess?”

Adam shook his head once. He hoped his face did not reveal the fact that he had a pretty good idea what Max was going to say.

“Husbands,” Max said. “Wealthy ones. Four of ’em. That I know of so far.”

Adam’s eyes wandered away from Max. For a moment, he was hunkering in Rain’s closet again, listening to her conversation with Gwen. He had told Horowitz nothing about it, of course. He’d considered, briefly, telling her absolutely everything about his relationships with Gwen and Rain, about Rain’s threats, and what they had said while he was in the closet. But it was all so much like a bad novel, he was certain she would never buy it. Besides, the story did not hold together well if he left out the fact that he, Adam, was considering killing his dad at the time, too. That he had decided to commit murder. He had sworn to himself he would not confess to the crime, and making that admission would be tantamount to a confession. Instead, he had told Horowitz and her staff everything but those particular details.

Now he knew for sure that Rain had been telling the truth about her mother’s habitual widowhood.

“Dad was going to be the fifth,” Adam muttered, not meaning to.

“Sure looks that way, don’t it?” Max smacked Adam’s shoulder with a big hand. “Less go back to the room,” he said. “We gotta talk.”

Rain told the truth about Gwen, Adam thought, going back to the room with Max. Then she probably told the truth about everything else, too. Every rotten ugly thing. Like being dumped in an unfamiliar city at night by her mother when she was ten.

Neither spoke going up in the elevator, and they were in the room nearly a full minute before Max finally broke the silence between them.

“Is there somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me, son?” He sat on the sofa, put his feet on the coffee table, crossed at the ankles.

Adam stood in the middle of the room, a young buck frozen by the glaring headlights of an oncoming Peterbilt. “Whuh-what do you mean?”

Max shrugged. “Just askin’. Seems she had a little routine she followed with each husband. She’d marry a man who not only had a lot of money, but a teenage son, too. I’m thinkin’ she’d seduce the son, convince him the old man’s beatin’ her, or somethin’ like that, and talk the boy into killin’ his daddy for her. Looks like she might’ve knocked off one of the sons when she was through with him, too. But that’s all speculation.”

Don’t show anything, keep your face exactly as it is, Adam thought. He felt heavy all of a sudden and lowered himself into a chair. “Do the police know this?”

“Not yet. They’re not lookin’ for nothin’ on your stepmom. She’s a victim. They’re lookin’ for anything they can find on you.”

“Will they find it?”

“Dunno. Maybe. If so, it’ll be a big mess unless we pull the reins on it first.”

“What happens then?”

“Once the D.A. gets his paws on this? Well, he ain’t gonna do you no favors, I can tell ya that. They’ll use it against you, a-course. Say she seduced you, talked you into it, you did it for her. But something went wrong. You killed them all when it was only supposed to be your daddy. Or maybe you liked her idea so much, you decided to kill ’em all and keep Daddy’s fortune to y’self. Somethin’ like that.”

Adam became aware that his mouth was hanging open and he closed it. “And what would we do?”

“If that happened?” Max looked up at the ceiling for a moment, lower lip tucked thoughtfully beneath his mustache. “Well, first of all, Rona’d butcher you like the fatted calf and we’d have ourselves a helluva barbeque.” He smiled.

Adam sank back into the chair.

“You think I’m kiddin’?” Max asked.

“No.”

“That’s some pretty heavy news. She’d be mighty upset she found out you’d been keeping it from her. So, uh...y’say you knew about Gwen’s past?”

“I said that? I didn’t say that. Did I? No, I didn’t. I mean, no, I didn’t know anything about Gwen’s past,” Adam lied, avoiding eye contact. He had not known all those details, so it was not a complete lie. He met Max’s eyes and asked, “What about Rain?”

Max shrugged. “Dund exist, far as I can tell. No Social Security number, no records of any kind. She’s stayed outside the system.”

Adam knew that was not possible. Rain might have pulled a train for some cops to dismiss an offense once, but surely she could not have done that with all of her offenses. There had to be some record—an arrest for vandalism, theft, giving Santa a blow job in the middle of a shopping mall, something.

“Well, you didn’t know. That’s what I needed to find out.” Max stood. “We didn’t have this conversation. Comprende?”

“You haven’t told Rona yet?” Adam stood, too, feeling a little fear for the man.

“Just put it all together m’self. Figgered I’d run it by you first. See if you knew anything about Gwen’s resume. If you did, we was gonna have to figger out the safest way to break it to her.” In the doorway, he turned to Adam. “Like I said before, anything comes to you, you got my number.”

Adam nodded and said, “See ya.”

* * *

That evening, Adam took a shower before dressing for dinner. His conversation with Max dominated his thoughts. He wondered if there was some way he could use Gwen’s past and what he knew about Rain to save himself. Could the revelation that Gwen had been a serial husband-killer, used properly, get the case dismissed and Adam’s charges dropped? He had no idea. Everything he knew about law he had learned from Steven Bochco, David E. Kelley, and Night Court reruns.

But his worries had not dampened the excitement of going out that night. He was so anxious, he’d chewed his fingernails most of the afternoon, something he had not done in years. While he was excited about getting out of the hotel, he had not forgotten Horowitz’s warnings. He knew second- and third-hand what animals reporters could be, but had not experienced it himself. Maybe Horowitz was wrong. It could happen. Maybe they would turn out to be more like a bunch of Camp Fire Girls than a Rwandan death squad.

Adam was drying his back in the steamy bathroom when someone knocked on his door. He slipped on the hotel robe and went into the living room. No one ever knocked. Everyone walked in and out of the room like it was an airport terminal. “Who is it?” he asked.

A small, timid voice spoke on the other side of the door. He went to the door, put his eye to the peep-hole and gasped.

It was Alyssa.

FORTY-TWO

They barely made it to the bed.
While Alyssa took off her shoes, jeans, and shirt, Adam closed and locked the bedroom door, then wedged a heavy chair beneath the knob.

Afterward, coming down, they lay on their sides, fondled one another.

“What are you doing here?” Adam asked with a grin. “How did you find my room?”

“Some guy named Lamont called me this morning, said he worked for your attorney. He said you needed my help and a car would pick me up at four.”

“And you fell for it? My God, it could have been anybody!”

“Oh, please. Like I’m gonna ask him for some identification over the phone, or something? You’re too paranoid. It didn’t feel hinky to me. So here I am.”

“I’m glad.”

“Yes, you were.” She smiled. “Feels like you’re already getting glad again.”

Adam pinched her nipple and waggled her breast. Alyssa broke into giggles and tried to pull away, but he held her close. Kissed her, mid-giggle.

“All those reporters outside are here for you?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“Are they always there?”

“I don’t pay any attention to them. I don’t even watch them on TV anymore.”

“If you never come out of the hotel, and they know that, then why do they stay?”

“In case I do come out, I guess.”

“And you’re going to reward them with an appearance tonight, huh?”

“How did you know?”

She rolled onto her back, stretched her arms and legs. “Lamont. That’s why I’m here. I’m going out to dinner with you tonight.”

“A date!”

“Yeah!”

“In front of the whole world.”

“Uh-huh. It’ll be like I’m dating Ricky Martin, or something.”

“Except I’ll have sex with you,” Adam said with a chuckle.

She rolled on top of him, lay there with her nose touching his. “How bad can it be? Sounds like it might even be fun.”

“What, being stalked by the press? Rona talks about them like they’re the coming Apocalypse. Tonight will be my baptism by fire. Did Lamont tell you about our following on the Internet?”

“I saw it on the news when I got up this morning.” She smiled. “I was so, I was like...I’m famous, but nobody knows it’s me! And I can’t tell anybody!”

“How long can you stay?”

“I don’t know.”