Spider Season (34 page)

“I swear, I never thought Jason was responsible for Silvio’s death.”

“All this doesn’t exactly square with the neat and tidy image you and your wife have so carefully cultivated, does it?”

Wu stared dully at me, or perhaps beyond me to something only he could see, within himself. Then he turned away to wander among his hand-stretched canvases with their perfect geometric images, which revealed far more about him than I’d previously realized. Maybe that was their genius, I thought, the way they exposed so much while working so masterfully to conceal it.

I tossed the box cutter onto the table and made my exit, pleased that Wu had corroborated much of what I’d suspected, but still unsatisfied. He’d only disclosed what Holt had told him years ago—that Silvio Galiano had fallen accidentally to his death and that Wu and Holt had needed to allay any suspicions. It was cowardly and conniving—nothing new for Holt—and probably untrue. But what I’d heard from Wu didn’t necessarily add up to murder, or the final confirmation of it.

And if Holt had killed Galiano, did that also suggest he’d killed Fred, even inadvertently? Probably. But with so much hanging in the balance, including Maurice’s vulnerable emotional state, probably wasn’t good enough.

THIRTY-THREE

I was awakened at dawn by a phone call from Jan Long in New York. She’d never called on the weekend, and never contacted me so early in the day, so I knew it must be important.

“Sorry to rouse you from a deep sleep, Benjamin.”

“Not so deep, actually.”

“Cathryn Conroy have you tossing and turning?”

“Conroy and a few others.”

“You’ve made some new acquaintances recently, I gather.”

“Crawling out of the proverbial woodwork, I’m afraid.”

“Books can do that, when they’re provocative. So you’re not the first. Take some pride in it, Benjamin.”

“If it’s all the same, I’d rather have a good night’s sleep.”

I yawned; she laughed.

“I might be able to help in that department,” she said. “I have some interesting news regarding Conroy.”

Since our last conversation, Jan said, she’d consulted with two of her other authors, both well-respected journalists with hundreds of articles and a slew of books between them. It seems they’d been jointly working up a lawsuit that would accuse Conroy of plagiarizing their work. In their meticulous research, they’d turned up flagrant examples in which Conroy had copied lines or passages from more than a dozen published texts by as many different writers, almost word for word. Most of the victimized writers had agreed to join the lawsuit or at least support it and to issue public statements when the time was right.

“Speculation has circulated for years about the originality of some of her work,” Jan said. “Especially recently, when her drinking has become excessive and she’s had increasing trouble meeting deadlines.”

“What’s the timing on all this?”

“A sympathetic source at
Eye
tells me that Conroy filed the first draft of her profile eight days ago. She’s doing some cutting and making other revisions now. It’s due back to her editor on Monday.
Eye
plans to publish it in two weeks. Unfortunately, the plaintiffs and their lawyer won’t be ready to file a lawsuit until next month.”

“By then it would be too late,” I said.

“Any ideas?”

“Have you got enough to break a story now?”

“More than enough.”

“Well organized and documented?”

“Very. Several of the aggrieved authors are prepared to issue statements immediately.”

I suggested she have a trusted third party leak the story to DishtheDirt.com, keeping it as distant from me as possible, and to do it quickly.

“I’ll do what I can,” Jan said. “No guarantees, though. I’m entering uncharted waters here.”

Her tone was somber. Neither of us took any joy in seeing another capable journalist crash and burn. Like most editors, Jan lived to help build literary careers and publish the best writing she could find. We both realized what Conroy was about to face, if the plagiarism scandal broke with the impact we hoped it would. In the past, a number of noted writers had survived plagiarism accusations, but their transgressions had generally been incidental, often explained away as sloppy transcription or note taking during the research process, or short passages inadvertently pasted into rough drafts but never rewritten during hurried work accelerated by the speed of computer technology. But Conroy’s offenses appeared to be frequent, deliberate, and of considerably greater magnitude. It was surprising that she’d gotten away with it as long as she had.

“I’d ask you what it is that Conroy has on you,” Jan said, “but I have a feeling I’m better off not knowing.”

“Maybe I’ll reveal it in a future memoir,” I said, only half-kidding, “to be published posthumously.”

She wished me luck with my appearance on
Jerry Rivers Live,
which was only three days away, and we bid each other good-bye.

*   *   *

Maurice and I met down at the house at 2:00
P.M.
, planning to drive out to Malibu together for Templeton’s wedding.

“The big day has finally arrived,” he said. His smile seemed forced. “At long last, our Alexandra is about to become a bride.”

He’d opted for gender blur in a shimmering white caftan and tasteful sandals, with lots of exotic jewelry and colorful scarves and white hair flowing to his shoulders, an old man who’d always lived his life as if it was really his, decent to a fault yet unconcerned about the judgments of others. I was considerably more traditional in a blue blazer and necktie that made me feel like a performing monkey.

“You look awfully tense, Benjamin. Feeling okay?”

“I’ve got a few things on my mind.”

“I can commiserate.”

He seemed distracted and disengaged, but I attributed it to his mourning process and didn’t probe. We climbed into the Metro and I drove off with the top down, Maurice’s hair trailing in the warm air.

I took Sunset all the way, past the grandiose mansions of Beverly Hills and the pompous gates of Bel-Air, and across the 405 Freeway into the flats of Brentwood. A mile or two later, Sunset suddenly twisted right and descended into a series of canyons dense with oak, eucalyptus, and sycamore. I hadn’t been out this way in a couple of years and when I glimpsed the street sign for Rockingham Avenue it gave me a jolt. North Rockingham was where the grisly murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman had gone down, putting O. J. Simpson on the front page and forever changing our naïve perception of celebrity charm. I was suddenly reminded how thin the line is between normalcy and insanity, between control and deadly rage. That got me to thinking about Jason Holt, of the kind of sociopath who can lurk behind the camera-ready smile. From Holt my mind jumped to Fred, and how he’d died, and then to how Maurice was suffering for it, and I felt my blood begin to boil. At some point the image of my father, lying bloody and lifeless on the kitchen floor of my childhood home, worked its way into the mix, and I couldn’t separate my rage from my shame. By the time I reached Will Rogers State Historic Park, it was all mixed in with the perplexing problems I had with Templeton and Conroy and my brain felt like it was about to explode.

I passed through respectable Pacific Palisades until I glimpsed a shimmer of silvery blue in the distance, just before Sunset swung hard to the right and descended steeply toward Pacific Coast Highway. Then the ocean was right in front of us, vast and sparkling. I could see triangles of white sails riding across the whitecaps, and gulls and pelicans gliding on outstretched wings. As we joined the northward traffic, I glimpsed surfers cutting up the waves with their short, pointy boards. They looked almost like birds, riding on cascading water instead of currents of air, wonderfully free.

When I’d first come to Southern California, at twenty-five, I’d promised myself that I’d learn to surf, or at least give it a try. Now, suddenly, I was fifty. And I knew it would never happen, like so many other things I’d planned to do but never would.

“Lovely day for a wedding,” Maurice said, and we rode the rest of the way in silence.

*   *   *

Templeton’s embossed invitation provided an address on Malibu Mesa Drive, along with instructions to park at a designated lot near Pacific Coast Highway, from which shuttle buses would ferry guests up the hill to the house.

I pulled into the lot with ten minutes to spare, and a young valet took the old Metro, looking at it like he’d never seen one before. Maurice and I climbed aboard a shuttle bus with several others and it whisked us up the hill and through an ornate gate to an enormous house that looked like an ancient Roman villa. It belonged to one of Lawrence Kase’s brothers, a producer who’d gotten rich making bad movies, but might just as easily have served as a museum. Because of the hour, we were escorted quickly through the antique-filled house and out to a large courtyard, where a long reflecting pool stretched toward the edge of a bluff and the ocean beyond. Huge bouquets of fresh flowers were all around the pool, along with small tables and folding chairs under colorful umbrellas. Among the Roman columns supporting the second-story terraces were replicas of classical Greek and Roman sculptures.

“If I didn’t know better,” Maurice said, “I’d swear we were attending a gay soiree thrown by some closeted Hollywood CEO.”

On either side of the house was a wide lawn, manicured like a fine putting green. Chairs were set up on the north lawn for the ceremony. On the south lawn, a huge tent had been erected for the reception and a portable parquet floor laid out for dancing. There appeared to be several hundred in attendance, and almost all the chairs on the north side were filled, but we found two empty ones near the back. Looking around, I spotted Cathryn Conroy across the aisle several rows ahead. Seeing her set my teeth on edge, so I tried to concentrate on the nice view of the mountains, even though a few of the hilltops were charred black from the recent wildfires.

I glanced at my watch a couple of times before a small orchestra finally struck up the wedding march. Lawrence Kase appeared behind us, accompanied by his best man. Kase looked properly dignified, if a bit full of himself, in a gray, pin-striped morning suit, the tails trailing pompously at the end of the cutaway jacket, with a large white carnation in the lapel. Then Templeton emerged on the arm of her father, a man not much older than Kase and equally handsome, but without the silly tails. Templeton had never looked more lovely. Her elegant gown was silk, the color of creamy coffee, and draped to midcalf. Her long hair was upswept and pulled together with a small bunch of pale green cymbidiums. More of the delicate orchids were weaved into the braided hair cascading down her back. She carried a small bouquet of the same flowers, and wore a string of pearls around her slender neck. Otherwise, she was unadorned—no flashy jewelry—letting her flawless, dark-skinned beauty speak for itself.

As if on cue, a pleasant breeze swept across the property from the ocean and gently ruffled the soft folds of her gown. For a moment, I was truly happy for her, until the Conroy matter popped into my head, with all its attendant questions, and I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about Templeton just then.

Up front, two ministers waited for the bride and groom—a Baptist for Templeton, a rabbi for Kase. Templeton’s parents, both African American and stuffy liberals, had always been opposed to her marrying outside her race. Apparently, they’d worked things out, because her father was beaming as he escorted her down the aisle. Then again, Alexandra was in her late thirties, her biological clock ticking fast. So maybe he was just thankful she’d finally gotten hitched and that his first grandchild was in the oven.

The bifurcated rituals, both Jewish and Baptist, were mercifully brief. I’m sure it was a touching ceremony. I heard a good deal of sniffling among the guests, Maurice included. Thankfully, the whole thing was over fairly quickly.

As the bride and groom made their exit and the chairs gradually emptied around us, Maurice stayed put. Despite his momentary tears, he was unusually quiet, and I didn’t try to hurry him.

Finally, without looking over, he said, “I’m truly happy for Alexandra and Mr. Kase. But I can’t help feeling just a little bitter. Fred and I were together nearly sixty years. No two people have ever been more devoted or supportive of each other. Yet voters will decide if our union is worthy and valid. And they may very well rule against us, as if what we had together didn’t matter. As if we ourselves didn’t matter.”

He looked over, his eyes finally coming to life after weeks of sadness.

“That’s just not right, Benjamin, and it makes me so damn angry.”

*   *   *

Outside the tent, Maurice excused himself to find a bathroom and I went wandering. I ran into Conroy at the edge of the bluff as she removed a flute of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. She downed it in one gulp and looked around for more.

“They’re not serving hard liquor,” she muttered under her breath. “If I’d known, I would have brought a flask.”

Given what I’d recently learned about her serial plagiarism, I now saw Conroy and her tough-gal act in a different light. At that moment, as she fortified herself with alcohol, I actually felt sorry for her. I’d been there, after all.

“Your story should be out soon,” I said. “I’m waiting with bated breath.”

“Which piece would that be? I’m juggling several assignments.”

“That’s right,” I said. “You stay so busy, don’t you?”

“Oh, you must be referring to the profile I’m writing on you.” She waved at a nearby waiter, who approached with his tray. She exchanged her empty flute for a full one. “I’ve got it down to length and turned in the final draft. You won’t have long to wait, Justice.”

“You have to know it’s going to end any chance I have of ever writing for money again.”

“It seems to me that’s the least of your worries.”

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Cathryn. Like a lot of hard-nosed reporters, you’ve taken all that anger and insecurity of yours and channeled it well.”