A Death In Beverly Hills, page 21
Getting inside? Steve gave a sour chuckle. He wasn't getting inside tonight. No, not with Cynthia tonight.
"Did I say something funny?"
"No," he mumbled, blinking against the glow of the dome light. "Sorry." For an instant some perverse part of his nature dredged up the phrase 'Let's do this again real soon' but the moment passed. Knees weak, he made it to the sidewalk and leaned through the open door. "Thanks, Cynthia. I had a good time. Sorry I couldn't hold my liquor. Out of practice, I guess."
"So. . . ." she began, then seemed to think better of it. "Yeah, I had a good time too. Give me a call when you feel better."
"You bet," Steve said and slammed the door. When Hell freezes over, he muttered as he watched Cynthia's taillights disappear into the night.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Glenn Malvo's company, Impact Productions, leased a small suite of offices around the corner from the Paramount lot. Janson settled into a worn flower-print couch under a framed poster for a direct-to-cable suspense drama called Night Lies.The office wasn't the cradle of dreams and romance that star-struck tourists might have imagined. On the opposite wall hung a lurid poster for Tom Travis's last movie, The Boneyard. Steve leafed through a copy of The Hollywood Reporterwhile a very handsome young man alternately screened calls through a wireless headset and made coffee.
Every two or three minutes he shot a quick glance in Steve's direction as if worried that if not carefully supervised Janson might make off with the coffee table or the potted ficus tree. About fifteen minutes later, the receptionist received a silent order and told Steve that Mr. Malvo would see him now.
Malvo's office was a clone of the waiting room, only more so. Cheap furniture, movie posters, framed invitations to the Academy Awards, a couple of lumps of glass in futuristic shapes etched with flowery prose, "The Signus Award for Excellence in . . . ." something or other. Malvo was on the phone. He gave Steve a quick glance and the flick of his hand then spun around to contemplate the second-story view of the traffic on Vine.
"Yeah, I understand, Jerry, but . . . . Uhhuh . . . ." Malvo turned back to Steve and shrugged, as if to say, 'What are you gonna do?' About five-nine, dressed in black slacks and an open collar white silk shirt textured with subtle beige embroidery, Malvo frowned and tapped a pair of heavy black-framed glasses against the arm of his chair. "Okay, Jerry, you do that and get back to me. Right." The phone clattered into the receiver.
"Hi, Glenn Malvo. You're here about Tom Travis?"
"Steve Janson. I'm helping Greg Markham."
"Have a seat. Chad get you coffee? You need anything?"
"I'm fine, thanks." Steve settled into a chocolate-colored chair that wasn't as comfortable as it looked.
"Greg's a terrific attorney, a real heavy hitter. Did a hell of a job on the Candace Lang thing." Malvo gave Steve a long look. "So . . . ?"
"Yeah. I'm trying to pin down anything on someone who might want to hurt Tom Travis or his wife."
"Let me guess -- you asked Tom for a list of suspects and he couldn't think of a single person who disliked him." Malvo gave Steve a quick, cold smile. "You've never been in the business, right?"
"I used to be a prosecutor, before that, a cop."
"Sounds like half a movie right there. Anyway, look, a hundred million people in this country want to be in the movies. Maybe a five or ten thousand people alive today ever had a speaking part. Maybe five hundred of them had a part where anyone might remember their name. Maybe a couple hundred of them are working featured players today and less then half of them are Stars. Tom Travis is a Star. Okay, he's not number six or eight any more, but he's still a Star."
"I don't--"
"Making it to the top in this business changes you. Nobody tells you you're full of crap. Nobody tells you your breath stinks. Nobody tells you you're wrong, about anything. Nobody hates a Star, except, maybe, another Star. . . .True story, they're shooting a movie and one of the grips notices his watch is missing. The next day, the star is wearing the guy's watch! The grip says something, politely, and the star smiles, apologizes for the mistake, and returns the watch. The next day the grip is fired and the Assistant Director tells the crew that if the star borrows' anything don't say a word to him, just turn in a voucher and the production company will reimburse them. By the end of the movie, the star had 'borrowed' enough stuff to fill the trunk of his Rolls and nobody opened their mouth. I promise you that if you asked the if he had any enemies he would have sworn to you on a stack of bibles that everybody loved him. And he would have believed it. You get my drift?"
"Starting to sense a reality gap here."
"Now you got it." Malvo pointed his finger like the barrel of a gun.
"Okay, what can you tell me about Tom Travis that he won't tell me himself?"
"How much time do you have?" Another quick grin. "Just kidding. I don't have all day. . . . Okay, where do you want to start?"
Where did he want to start? "How about women. Tom had something of a reputation as a ladies' man. Maybe one of them or their boyfriends or husbands . . . ." Malvo's expression grew sour. "What?"
"I did a courtroom movie couple of years back, Deadly Verdict, lots of 'objection- sustained' crap. We had a legal consultant work on the script. What's that wife-beating objection -- assumes facts not in evidence?" Steve cocked his head questioningly. Malvo sighed and tried again. "Tom wanted to be a ladies' man. He wished he was a ladies' man. He pretended he was a ladies' man, but the truth is, well, you know the old story, the mind is willing but the flesh is weak."
"You're saying he . . . ."
"Not enough lead in the pencil, if you get my drift. That was all pre-Viagra, of course. Tom's probably buying the stuff by the case now. The fact is, nobody who knew the real story was very worried about Tom being in the bedroom with their squeeze. From what I heard, mostly he just liked to watch."
"Watch?"
"Got off on it. He and his buddy would go cruising. Tom would pick up the girls, no problem there. Back in the day he had to beat them off with a stick, excuse the reference. They'd end up in a suite at the Beverly and Tom would ah . . . help out and when he'd gotten his girl warmed up, his buddy would take over and close the deal. Then the girls would switch and Mr. Reliable would go to work on number two. At the end Tom would get one of the girls to give him a BJ and then he'd order champagne and whatever and everybody went home happy." Malvo flashed another of his quick grins.
Suddenly an image of Bobby Berdue popped into Steve's head. Bobby said that Tom had wanted some kind of prescription drug that wouldn't show up on his medical records. Viagra? Cialis? 'I bought some speed to keep me going.' Yeah, right, Tom!
"Son of a bitch!"
"A light just go on?"
"You could say that." So if Tom couldn't keep his soldier at attention . . . . Oh, Shit!"
"What?"
"Did Tom ever get anybody pregnant?"
Malvo shrugged. "Not as far as I know. A lot of the guys get a vasectomy, avoids a lot of nasty accusations. Who wants to have Marlon Brando's problems, right?"
"Maybe Tom didn't need one. Maybe a shortage of lead in his pencil wasn't his only problem."
Another shrug. "That I couldn't tell you." Malvo took a quick look at his watch.
"How about managers, agents, co-stars, business partners, anybody who might have been pissed enough with Tom to want to hurt him or his wife?"
Malvo's head gave a quick shake. "Tom's actually a pretty sweet guy. Sensitive, deep down. Truth is, I could never picture him wrapping a wire around his wife's neck and pulling until her eyes popped, not for real. Maybe if she had been shot from fifty feet away or something, maybe, but up close and personal? I don't think so. Don't get me wrong. Tom can make it look good for the camera. But in real life," Malvo held up his hands, then took another longer look at his watch.
"Last thing. You said Tom would get together with other guys to pick up women. Can you give me a few names?"
"Hmmm, that goes back a few years, PV, Pre-Viagra." Malvo smiled and stared off into space. "Actually . . . . it was more like, I think, just one guy. For that kind of a job you need a real stud. It's one thing if Tom can't get the private to salute, but if both of 'em crap out, well, you can imagine how that could end up as a terminal hit on a guy's ego and Stars don't have the toughest egos in the world, more egg than ego if you ask me."
"So, Tom found the right guy and stuck with him?"
"Another stuntman, like Tom, except this guy was never gonna be a Star, except in the bedroom. He might have done some porno. I figure he had been bragging a little about his stamina while he was waiting to do a gag and Tom heard him and checked out his film. He must have figured the guy would make him look good, do the job," Malvo pounded his fist twice into his palm with a meaty smack-smack. "The guy likes the babes. Tom gets off on the action. Everybody's happy."
"You remember his name?"
Another vacant stare. "Shit, I can see him in my head, about five ten, wiry, long face, matted, curly kind of hair, blue eyes, his nose was too big to be a star, sort of funny looking. Couldn't read a line to save his life. Tom tried to get him a small part in a couple of westerns. Had a delivery like a mackerel. Jeeze, what was his name? Bailey? Bobby? Billy? Barry! Barry McGee."
"Did Tom and Barry stay friends after Tom got married?"
"Well . . . ." Malvo twisted uneasily in his seat.
"What?"
"I don't know. They were tight then they weren't. I asked Tom if he wanted anybody special on the stunt team for The Boneyard, keep the star happy, right, and he said 'no.' I said 'fine, okay' and started to leave and Tom stops me and says, real quiet, 'I'd rather not work with McGee this time around.'"
"Did he say why?"
"He didn't say and I didn't ask. If a star wants to tell you something, he will. You don't ask, not unless you don't want to work with him again. You get too nosey and the tabloids print something, he's likely to think it came from you. Who needs that?" A final long look at his watch. "Steve I've got . . . ."
"Yeah, me too. Thanks for all your help. Can I give you a call if anything else comes up?"
"Sure, you've got my number." They shook hands and Steve turned toward the door. "Hey, say 'Hi' to Tom for me, will you." Malvo called. "Tell him . . . . tell him when this shit is all over, I've got a script with his name on it. Tell him I believe in him and, uh, that we'll do great things together. You tell him that for me, okay?"
"You bet." Steve gave Malvo a little wave and headed for his car and wondered if Google could get him an address for Barry McGee.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Steve finally got McGee's phone number from the Screen Actors' Guild and left a message implying that he was doing a project with Glenn Malvo and needed somebody to supervise the stunts. McGee called back an hour later with the suggestion that Steve meet him at a riding club out in the Valley.
It was a little after one when Steve arrived at The Norcross Academy which straddled a small valley at the edge of Topanga State Park. Steve slipped the Mercedes into a lot full of ML430s, Honda Pilots and Soccer Mom minivans. Apparently the employees were required to park their dented Silverados and five year old Mustangs someplace out of sight of the paying customers. A mother in black jeans and a tightly fitted blue cotton shirt herded a bunch of twelve-year-old girls in formal riding costumes up to the barn. Three were white, one Asian, all wearing black small-billed hats, white shirts, black vests and black pants. Each clutched a dark brown riding crop. A handsome young man in blue jeans and a cowboy hat greeted the woman and checked the girls off one by one against a list on a plastic clipboard.
"Help you?" the kid asked Steve with a smile. Perfect teeth, Steve noted, white as a fifties refrigerator.
"I'm supposed to see Barry McGee. Is he around?"
The smile slipped three notches and the kid waved toward the barn. "He's in the back corral." He gave Steve's wingtips a quick glance as if to say 'Watch your step.' Behind Steve appeared three fifteen year old girls in designer jeans and orange-sequined t-shirts. Cowboy Bob's smile cranked back up to its full wattage.
The barn was about fifty yards long with large sliding doors at both ends. Inside it was dark and cool and thick with the scent of horses and old hay. Beyond the far end Steve spotted a staging area with troughs and hitching rails and beyond that an emerald-colored field fitted with hay-bail jumps all circled by a white board fence. To Steve's far right was a dusty, steel-pipe corral populated with four horses and a single sweat-stained ranch hand whose skin was the color of faded leather. As Janson drew closer he noticed the man's cap of wiry hair and long face centered with a nose like a splayed lump of clay.
"Barry McGee?" Steve called when he reached the pipe fence.
"Yeah. Janson?" McGee squinted, pulled off his sweat-stained cowboy hat and wiped a sleeve across his brow.
When they shook hands Steve noticed the rough cuts in McGee's palm. Barry gave Steve a quick once over and replaced his hat.
"You're in the production end, I guess. What're you, some kind of CPA who wants to
make movies?"
"Actually, I'm helping Greg Markham with Tom Travis's defense. Glenn Malvo said you and Tom were friends."
"He did, did he?" McGee mused, squinting into the sun and wandering over to one of the horses. "Why'd that come from Malvo instead of Tom? You sure you're really working for him?"
"You can call Greg Markham. He'll vouch for me."
"Okay. What did Tom tell you?"
"He's a little reluctant to talk about the old days. He thinks it's a waste of my time but I like to be thorough."
"I guess you got your job to do and I've got mine." McGee lifted the mare's hoof and checked her shoe.
"I just need a few minutes of your time," Steve shouted.
"They pay me to work, not talk," McGee called over his shoulder and bent to check out another shoe.
"You can't take a break?"
McGee patted the horse's neck and gave Steve a calculating glance. "If you was to rent one of these ponies here, I could take you on a little ride and we could talk all you want."
Steve looked at his sixty dollar gray slacks and his black leather shoes and tried to imagine himself wandering the lower reaches of Topanga Canyon on the back of a horse.
"Up to you," McGee said easily, moving on to the next animal.
A light breeze rippled the wild grasses and in the distance a hawk sailed over the canyon.
"Yeah, okay," Steve said a moment later when the hawk had receded to a pinpoint and slipped from view. "Pick out an easy one. I haven't been on one of these things since Boy Scouts."
"Sure, old Buttermilk here's as gentle as a bunny rabbit. Come on in the barn and we'll get you fixed up."
Ten minutes later, having waived all claims for bodily injury, handed over his VISA card and strapped on a borrowed pair of weathered chaps, Steve mounted old Buttermilk and surveyed the world from a point about ten feet above the ground. McGee led them at a relaxed saunter down the dirt road that paralleled the steeplechase oval before wending up one of the finger canyons at the back of the property. As they passed the jumps a few young girls turned to watch, some covering their amusement, others grinning openly.
"Don't mind them fillies none," McGee said in an accentuated twang. "They're just a bunch of stuck-up rich kids havin' some fun with daddy's money."
The trail doglegged to the left and soon the green oval disappeared.
"So, how's old Tom holdin' up?" McGee asked, slowing his horse, a chestnut stallion named Sultan, so that they could ride side-by-side.
"He's hanging in there. It's no fun being locked up."
McGee smothered a grin and made a click-click sound with his tongue to increase Sultan's pace.
"I know you and Tom were friends," Steve continued. "I was wondering if you knew anybody who had a grudge against him, anyone who might want to hurt him or Marian."
"I don't know the wife, Marian. Only met her once for about five seconds."
"When was that?"
McGee tugged lightly on Sultan's reins and the big stallion veered off the trail and up the course of a dried-out stream. Used to being led, Buttermilk followed without instructions from Steve.
"Right after Christmas, just before she went missing," Barry called over his shoulder, then ducked beneath the branches of a massive black oak. The streambed widened into an inch deep leaf-strewn pool and Steve lightly pressed in his heels. Buttermilk agreeably speeded up until they were again riding side-by-side.
"What was the occasion?"
"Truth was, I needed a job. I hadn't seen Tom in over a year but I figured there was no harm in asking. I gave him call and asked him if he could help me out. He could've blown me off but he told me to come over to the house and we could have a drink for old time's sake. Anyway, she was goin' out while I was comin' in. I said, you know, 'Hello-Goodbye' and that was it. Seemed a nice enough lady for all I could tell."
The stream cut to the left and narrowed, its path clogged with rocks. Barry make another knickk-knickk sound between his tongue and teeth and Sultan clambered up the bank and out into a field of wild oats. Steve gritted his teeth and did the same. Buttermilk looked back, a wild look in her eye, and bounded up after them with Steve hanging on for dear life. They shot past McGee in a trot and Steve was afraid Buttermilk was going to break into a gallop and run halfway to Calabasas, but she apparently didn't want to leave Sultan and slowed to a stop all on her own. Smiling, McGee and Sultan sauntered up alongside.
"You're a real buckaroo, ain't you?"
"Tell that to Buttermilk. . . . So, did Tom help you out?"
Barry gave his head a shake. "Said he wasn't no box-office champ no more, that he was looking for work himself, that he might have to start making those cable movies for HBO if he didn't get a break soon. Gave me a hell of a good glass of scotch, though," McGee added, smiling.
"So, is there anybody who had a grudge against Tom?"
