West of Paradise (41 page)

*   *   *

Sarah Nash had lit no candles, not even black ones. Instead, she sat all night at her computer, ready to cast her own personal dark spell. For the perfect wedding gift, the coup de grace. She had almost everything she needed now to ruin him. On the pages she was ready to print out was the punch line she intended to release to the press, the tale of Paulo's tail. Rewritten in her own inimitable, venomous style was the heading: “Penis into Venus.” She would staple it to the Xerox of the letter from the urologist/plastic surgeon from Johns Hopkins. She had not yet even hinted at this perfect piece of evidence to her agent Lori. Sarah had given her only enough ammunition to enable her to make the deal.

“It's set,” Lori had said, in their last conversation. “Two million with the paperback.”

“That may not be enough,” Sarah had said.

“It's high in this market. And of course everything's contingent on your having what you said was proof of what happened to Paulo. We're all dying to hear, especially me. Tell, tell. Did Jessup kill him?”

“I'll fax it to you the morning of the wedding,” Sarah said. “Just before I meet with the press. I have a breakfast date with a reporter from the L.A.
Times
and the entertainment editor of CNN.”

“Entertainment?”

“Some people find the odious entertaining. ‘Foul deeds will rise,' taking the people who do them to the top, especially in Hollywood.”

“Put that in the book.”

“I already have.”

“If he's such a villain, aren't you afraid? If he did away with Paulo, what's to stop him from doing something to you?”

“He wouldn't dare,” Sarah said. “If anything happened to me, everyone would know who was responsible.”

“Then write away, baby.”

She had, and was. She looked at the clock. It was seven-thirty. An hour and a half till the breakfast revelation. So caught was she in her rage that she saw none of her surroundings, except for the keyboard on her computer and the searing words on the screen. Just across from where she sat were sliding glass doors that led to her patio, flush with purple morning glories opening to the day. In the center was the pool, dark blue in the early remaining shadows cast by the huge leaves of the giant philodendron as it stretched up, entangling itself with the palms.

Driven by time and the acid juice of her vendetta, Sarah experienced nothing but her sense of urgency. If only her hands had the speed of her brain. Well, maybe she could accelerate the creative process.

She went to the closet to get her freebasing paraphernalia.

*   *   *

“Good morning,” Norman said, carrying a breakfast tray, setting it on the bed.

“You think of everything,” Carina said, stretching.

“Yes, I do.” He went to the glassene curtains softening the ocean view and pulled the string to open them. “I even ordered the perfect day.”

“It's cloudy.”

“The better to photograph you by.” He sat by Carina on the bed. “By the end of this morning, all our cares will have vanished.”

“I didn't know we had any cares.”

“Well, just one. Sarah Nash. For the ultimate wedding gift, I'm giving you her head on a tray.”

“You aren't serious.”

“A friend of Perry Zemmis's is taking care of it. Tonight Sarah Nash sleeps with the fishes. Or Jimmy Hoffa.”

“Are you crazy?” Carina said. “If anything happens to her, they'll know it was you.”

“Not if they never find her.”

“You must cancel. You'll bring a curse on our marriage.”

“This isn't Brazil.”

“Call him
now,
” she said, and picked up the phone. “Call him this minute and call it off, or I'll call off the wedding.”

“The world is coming. It's the event of the decade.”

“Except the bride won't be there.”

“Paulo—”

“Now,” Carina said, holding the phone out to him. “Do it!”

Reluctantly, he took the phone.

*   *   *

Arthur Finster had ordered a new tuxedo. That he wasn't invited to the wedding was beside the point. There would undoubtedly be security, but he'd already found a place up the road from the Bel-Air, on Tortuoso Way, where he could park unobserved by the attendants. From there he could skip through the camellia garden that bordered the hotel grounds to the north, make his way under the bridge, and come out slam, bang, right at the edge of the whole affair. As unruffled as the swans.

Many had been the places he didn't really belong. He found a poignancy to that thought, a kind of middle-of-the-road seventies folk song, John Denverish, as the tailor fitted him for the last time. The wedding wasn't until five, eight and a half hours away. There was plenty of time for the last-minute touches that might be needed, although it seemed a perfect fit, especially for one who had never fit in.

For all his intrusiveness, Arthur had not yet been quite this intrusive. But today he was taking on the giants. Today he was David vs. Goliath & Co. All of them, or certainly most of them, were due to be present at the wedding—most importantly, Fletcher McCallum.

“You look like a million dollars,” said his tailor, putting pins in the sleeve of the one arm that was shorter than the other.

“Fifty million, to be exact,” said Arthur, checking himself out in the full-length mirror, naming the sum that had been in the subpoena, the class action libel suit the celebrities had brought against him. Represented by Fletcher McCallum, whom he intended to serve with a subpoena for a lawsuit of twice that sum. It would be quite a scene as he crashed the wedding, serving as his own process server. The mystery bag would be over the shoulder of his customized tuxedo. Fortunately, the bag was black, so he wouldn't look
too
schleppy. He owed that doff of the hat to O.J., anyway. Whatever else he might be guilty of, he at least showed good taste.

It was Arthur's plan to make his way to wherever McCallum sat and kneel behind or beside and whisper an urgent suggestion that they meet in the men's room. Once there, and without further ado, he would tell McCallum what he had on Harnoun, an associate in his own firm. He would tell him that the goods had been provided by Harnoun's own son, Richie, along with testimony that the bag was the one his father had come home with the night of the murder and dumped in the closet. And then Arthur would say aloud what he had already rehearsed to himself countless times: “Why, in the wrong hands, Fletcher, this bag could bring down an entire firm.”

“You going to take the tuxedo in that bag?” the tailor asked.

“No, thanks. I'll just eat it here.” He laughed aloud at the antique joke. “Humor was never my strong suit.”

“Or your tuxedo,” the tailor said.

Arthur froze him with an icy stare. “Just fix the sleeve,” he said.

*   *   *

Victor Lippton drove Lila to the airport himself. His wife had asked him where he was going that was so important, when it was a weekend and they should both be relaxing before the wedding. “I have to take somebody to the airport,” he'd told her, as he dressed.

“Who?” Chen asked. Her hairdresser had come to the house, and was washing her hair in the special basin she'd had installed, like the one in beauty parlors.

“Nobody you know,” he said.

“Why don't you just send your limo?”

“I want to make personally sure she gets on the plane.”

“She?” Chen said, as her hairdresser shampooed. “Are you seeing another woman?”

“I'd have to be crazy,” he said, and kissed her lightly, while the hairdresser momentarily suspended his activities.

*   *   *

There was a wheelchair waiting for Lila at curbside, and two special attendants. Victor was having her flown to New York on the company jet.

“You're certainly going to a lot of trouble,” Lila said, as the car pulled into the loading zone and he signaled the attendant.

“It's the least I can do,” he said. “You're a most unusual woman.”

“A lot of wives are unusual. It just takes a smart man to notice. And, of course, he has to see beyond the end of his member.”

“I'll bear that in mind,” Victor said.

*   *   *

Well, two million dollars. That should allow for some needle-pointed pillows. Everywhere she'd gone in her life at the height of her success, Sarah had noted the subtle little comforts of the very rich. Fine clocks on mantelpieces, fine wines on tables, Matisse and Renoirs on silk fabric walls. The countless extras you could live without, but why should you have to? The first thing she intended to do the minute she signed the contract and got her first payment was track down her old “secretary.” She wanted to find the thin little guy who'd always done the shit work for her, run errands, rounded up boys from the beach, gotten the coke, kept the bulb bottom clean, and lit it.

Even as she went to light it now, she was angry at the indignity she was subjected to, forced to do all this by herself, aristocrat that she had become, a regular literary blueblood. After all, she had pulled herself out of this swamp by her own intellectual bootstraps. She'd only hurt people who had hurt her, and that had been almost everybody.

Two million, plus whatever she'd get from foreign sales. No movie, of course. But there was always merchandising. Maybe she could do a little Paulo/Carina doll, with genitals that tucked in.

Thinking about all that, she lit the torch and aimed it at the pipe, leaning in eagerly for a pull at the smoke that wasn't even there yet. Her hand was shaking in her eagerness and impatience. She hadn't slept all night, and her focus was off. The tip of the flame caught the spike at the front of her Mohawk, and with the aggregation of glue, it ignited. Before she could fully register what was happening, her head was on fire.

Screaming, she looked for something to put out the blaze. But the pain was so severe she could hardly see. She ran towards the sliding doors to the pool. They were latched. In agony, she crashed through them. As the glass shards pierced arms, legs, face, and throat, she fell, sizzling, into the water. Her blood fanned out dark red on the surface of the pool.

*   *   *

The music for the wedding started long before the first guests arrived. The small combo that played behind the gazebo, though they would switch into classical with flute, viola, violin, and cello for the actual ceremony, were now noodling some light, spontaneous jazz. The musicians had themselves elected to begin early, since chances were there would be moguls from the music business, and it was still the land of You Never Knew.

For the cocktail hour after the couple was joined, the combo would move underneath the porte cochere by the reception on the lawn, where they would be joined by another member of their group for incidental music. Then, when the party moved inside for the dinner, they'd be joined by four more members, giving it a big band sound. Norman had told them to keep it low volume, since most of the guests liked to talk.

The threat of rain had definitely passed. The sky was slightly overcast, but the clouds were wispy, the dark ones having moved out to sea.

“Thank God,” said the caterer, looking up at the sky as she stood by the table at the entrance to the garden, setting out calligraphied name cards.

“You really think there is one?” asked one of the bartenders, who was also an actor, and had been admonished under no circumstances to give any of those present his card.

“Well, just look at the sky,” said the caterer. “How can you doubt?”

*   *   *

Victor Lippton, crossing over the covered bridge leading to the entrance, overheard the above exchange. His wife was already inside, having come early to be with the women and get into her gown. And (deep exhale) Lila Darshowitz was in the air.

So he really did have to go along with the thought that there was a God, after all. He'd never given much credence to religion, although he'd followed its tenets, observed what he had to so as to please his family. But looking down now on the mirrored surface of the pond, seeing how serene it all was, how beautiful the setting, how relieved his heart was now that the little pull was gone from his soul, along with the duplicity, Victor did have to acknowledge that in all probability a Divine Intelligence was at work, no matter how bizarre its messengers. Lila Darshowitz. God worked in mysterious ways.

*   *   *

The O.J. tour bus started just down the street from Mezzaluna, where Nicole had eaten her last meal and Ron had waited his last table. People were still coming, although in reduced droves, many of them wearing the hats and T-shirts they'd bought in Disneyland, their previous stop. Lunch was a separate item from the tour itself, which drove past the now out-of-business restaurant, went down to Bundy and the actual murder scene. The chicken-wire fence that had been put up by police to keep the huge numbers of gawkers in line had been taken down, and those selling strawberries and oranges on neighboring corners had moved their hawking elsewhere with the thinning of the crowds. But there were still enough who came to see and relive or redie that evening to have the company run a profit.

From Bundy, the bus went to Rockingham to circle O.J.'s mansion, the very house in which the former football player, television pitchman, B-movie actor and one-shot Oxford lecturer had held a fundraiser, attended by two of the jurors who had freed him, including the one who had said that domestic violence had nothing to do with murder. The route the bus took was via Bristol Court, where a woman lived who had known O.J. and once thought him incapable of murder, but changed her mind and joined the group who wanted him out of Brentwood, and was trying to ban the bus in the neighborhood.

The bus tour had run into a little trouble with the lessening of heat around and interest in the story. Those who went on the tour were no longer content to stand outside Nicole's condo for considerable periods of time, just taking pictures and exchanging opinions about the logistics of how who got killed, in what order, why there were no screams, what would happen if dogs could talk. Nor did they linger anymore outside Rockingham, hoping for a glimpse of O.J., since everyone in the country, and, indeed, around the world, had had more than enough glimpses of O.J.