Dead Ex, page 31
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. “Thank God. I thought you came here to tell me that she’s . . .”
“What?”
“You know. Dead.” I sat on a stone chaise and told myself not to do anything ill-advised, like crying. “I don’t know where she’s gone. I’m so worried.”
“You should be. There’s going to be a warrant for her arrest.”
“What? For Elliot’s death?”
“No. Zetrakis. Don’t ask how I know, just see if you can get her to come in quietly and avoid a media circus. Have her lawyer come with her.”
I looked at him, drained. I couldn’t begin to explain that there was no money for a lawyer and that Joey wasn’t just gone for the evening but gone. All I could do was stare at the man in front of me, remembering that one week earlier we’d shared Christmas dinner. Pizza. In his bed, because we liked the dress code there.
“Is that what brought you all the way out to Pasadena?” I said. “You could’ve told me this over the phone.”
“You didn’t answer your phone, as usual. Or Joey’s. Theo said you were here.”
D E A D E X 2 8 5
“But I’ve been answering Joey’s phone all—oh.” Her cell, I realized.
Not her land line. I’d forgotten about that one, and the answering machine along with it.
I jumped up and ran into the kitchen and hit the machine’s replay button. Simon followed. We listened to the first message, from Joey’s mom. Worried. This was followed by a belligerent message from Camille, a terse one from Rick Slepicka on his way to Telluride, and then one from Simon, for me. After that was a second one for me, from Max, changing my call from six-thirty to six a.m. for the following day, in order to keep on track with the SoapDirt schedule. And, finally, the message from Ike Born. No message from Joey; that was the only thing I cared about.
“SoapDirt? At least I’ll know where you are tomorrow.” Simon crossed his arms. “Shall I check in with them when I need to find you?
They seem well-informed.”
“You’re as well-informed as anyone. I’m camping here until Joey
shows.”
“Great. So you’ll be the focus of the media circus. Did I tell you I saw a photo of you in a newspaper at a checkout stand? Not your best, by the way.”
“Well, sorry to disappoint you. I’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
I walked past him, through the sliding doors, to the outside again. He followed and slid the doors shut behind us. The sky was cement-colored.
I shivered.
“What’s wrong, Wollie?”
“It’ll take too long to get into it. I’m sure you have to get back to . . .
whomever. Work.” I hated the note in my voice.
“I’ve gotta tell you,” he said, running a hand through his hair, “I find this attitude of yours tiresome. I’ve been honest about who I am and what I do. You don’t like it, I can understand that, but don’t treat me like I’ve betrayed you in some way.”
There was truth in what he said, which made it the last thing I
wanted to hear. “Can I just ask, how friendly are you expected to get with Lucrezia Borgia?”
“Let’s not get into this.”
“You won’t answer that,” I said, “because you don’t talk about work.
As a matter of principle. You’ll have sex with her, though, right? If you have to. For God and country. You’ll hate it, but you’ll do it. And I’m
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supposed to disappear, yet be available. And understanding. And now you’re even asking me to play cop, turn in my best friend, tell her to roll over, give herself up to the system that wants to hang her, even though she’s innocent. That’s your job, Simon. But it’s not mine.”
He stared at me, breathing deeply, his face dark. “Let’s leave me and my value system out of this, shall we, and stick to the matter at hand before I tell you where to take your low opinion of me and what to do with it. I’ll tell you one thing. You don’t know what you’re doing. You may have guts but you’ve got no training, experience, or even intelligence, at the moment. With the best intentions in the world, you are going to screw it up for your friend.”
I was so mad now I was starting to cry, which made me exponentially madder. “Joey would rather I screw it up in good faith than stand back and sell her down the river to a bunch of men who think they know what’s good for her. She’d rather die.”
“And she may.” Simon walked toward the back gate, delivering a
parting shot over his shoulder. “I’ve heard the gods watch out for drunks and fools. I hope it’s true.”
F i f t y - o n e
M ay I come with you?” Apollo said when my alarm went off at
four a.m. “I have never seen a television studio.”
It took me a moment to orient myself. The three of us were camped out in the living room, due to having opened a window in the guest bedroom that we were then unable to close, so that that room now doubled as a walk-in freezer.
I left the light off, looking out into the backyard, lit by the moon.
“The thing is, Apollo, this is my first time doing the show and I’m not sure about bringing visitors.”
“I am small, so no one will notice me.”
“I wouldn’t go,” P.B. said, yawning. “Too many power lines. Signals going in and out. Broadcasting. Wires. You won’t like it.”
“I will,” Apollo said. “I will meet some of the actors from your soap opera.”
“No point. They’re never as interesting as their characters.”
I thought about the dream I’d had, laying coins—or poker chips?—
on the closed eyelids of a man who morphed into Joey. “Tell me something, P.B.,” I said. “Was there ever a transsexual character on At the End of the Day?”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “No. Gays, lesbians, angels,
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vampires, neo-Nazis, aliens, priests, nuns, and conjoined twins. No transsexuals. How come?”
“Just curious.” I liked that, that the one thing David hadn’t exploited for the show was his brother. “David used bits and pieces of his life in the storyline. Do you think there are clues in there about how he died?”
“His character, Zeke Fabian? His death was caused by the aftereffects of his exorcism, which had happened years before. But this was back in the 1980s.”
“That’s when he was just an actor. I’m talking about now, as a writer-producer.”
“There’s death all over the show,” P.B. said. “But it won’t tell you who did it.”
“Why not?”
“Because he didn’t care about ‘who.’ He cared about plot and theme.
Characters to him were foot soldiers, carrying out the orders of the writer. He sacrificed people all the time. There are no stars on At the End of the Day, not like on other soaps.”
“You know this about David, just by watching his show?” I asked.
“You can tell. He was an egomaniac. That’s what made it fun to
watch. Once his scripts run out, you’ll see. It won’t be anything special anymore.”
I couldn’t see anything special in it now, but I was apparently in the minority. What my brother said fascinated me, though. “P.B., where do you think Joey’s gone?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“She’s gone underground,” he said. “Seeing if she wants to stay there.
She’s been doing it for a while now. Maybe you should leave her alone, Wollie.”
“I can’t.” I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about, but I knew that much. “I can’t.”
• • •
I dropped my brother in Glendale at Uncle Theo’s and took Apollo along with me to Burbank. At worst, he could stay in the car reading comic books.
D E A D E X 2 8 9
I was a wreck. I’d spent half the night awake, awaiting a knock on the door and Detective Ike Born with an arrest warrant. That wasn’t the only thing that drove back sleep—it was my fight with Simon. I could not, like Daryl Ann, describe it as two highly passionate people under pressure. I might describe it as two people calling it off.
And I didn’t have guts—where had Simon come up with that?—
because even now, with all my other concerns, there was still room for stage fright. The prospect of doing SoapDirt, of saying the wrong thing on TV, nearly paralyzed me.
Apollo was another story. It was still dark when we pulled up to the guard gate, but his excitement was palpable. “Wow. The technology in this booth,” he exclaimed, craning his neck for a better look.
A small screen showed an image of my Integra, its license plate in sharp focus. My face was there too, clearly enough to show how tired I looked.
Something occurred to me. I waited for the guard to check the
trunk and wave us through, then read his name tag and said, “Hello, Leroy. Tell me, do you guys keep the footage of all the cars going in and out?”
Leroy frowned, like it was a security breach to discuss operations.
“Hey!” Apollo said. “That’s a great PTZ. Does it have built-in IR il-luminators?”
Leroy smiled, revising his assessment of us from threats to tourists.
“Just keeping our stars safe,” he said. “We record hundreds of thousands of cars going in and out, all stored on a little microchip. You folks enjoy your day.”
We drove up to Sound Stage D and I told Apollo to keep his eyes
open for a license plate that said sudstud.
“Since SoapDirt is produced and staffed by the same people who do At the End of the Day, ” I said, “sudstud could belong to one of them.
Also, nearly every phone call Joey made recently was to people on the lot, which suggests that the killer works here.”
“That’s fantastic!” Apollo said, with what I considered an unnecessary degree of enthusiasm.
We were met at the door by C.G., taking the early stage manager
shift. “Max is sleeping in,” she said. “The big explosion’s tonight, and
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he’ll be here till all hours overseeing that.” She told Apollo that he was welcome to sit in the SoapDirt audience.
“What audience?” I said.
“The studio audience,” C.G. said, oblivious to the blood draining out of my face. “Not a big one, because of the holiday. A hundred or so.
Meanwhile, Apollo, I’ll give you a tour while Wollie tries on clothes.
This way.” She led us outside to a clump of trailers, pointing a flashlight to one with my name on it, written on masking tape.
My trailer was homier, if not roomier, than anywhere I’d lived recently. While I checked out the beige-and-blue main room, bedroom, kitchenette, dining area, and bathroom, Apollo inspected the television, tape deck, CD and DVD players, and telephones. Everything was new.
Plaids matched. All was clean, with the happy scent of vanilla air freshener. A gift basket “To our guest star!” sat on the table. C.G. turned on the heat, and I bumped it up to eighty degrees and immediately felt it kick on.
“C.G.,” I said. “I want to spend my life here.”
She smiled without looking up from the clipboard she was scribbling on. “By the time you’re done today, you’ll feel like you have. Leave your stuff here and I’ll take you to Tricia’s trailer. She wants to okay your wardrobe. Ready?”
She unclipped a radio from her belt. “Give Tricia a heads-up, please,”
she said, talking into a small burst of static. “We’re walking.”
Tricia’s trailer was fifty yards away, the one closest to the sound stage.
If mine was cozy, hers was Buckingham Palace. I guessed by the look on Apollo’s face that here, at last, was the real America. We entered to the beat of techno music and the smell of coffee. The furnishings were those of a high-end yacht. One woman was steaming milk with a cappuccino machine. Another was doing Tricia’s makeup while a third, Gloria, put soup can–sized curlers in her hair. Tricia herself, swathed in a pink velvet dressing gown and fuzzy slippers, lounged in what looked like a dentist chair, eyes closed.
“Is that you, Max?” she asked without looking. “Listen, I want a new cappuccino machine. This might have been state-of-the-art eighteen months ago, but I was reading in Los Angeles Magazine about a titanium one that goes for six grand. Get in touch with them and tell them I’ll mention it on the air if they’ll send me a free one.”
D E A D E X 2 9 1
“It’s C.G., not Max,” C.G. said, writing. “If they say no, want me to order one?”
“Not if I have to pay retail. Can the show buy it?”
“No. We’re over budget. I have Wollie here.”
“Who?”
C.G. looked at me and smiled encouragingly. “Wollie. Your dating correspondent. You wanted to approve her ‘look.’ ”
“Tell her to wait.”
“Okay, Wollie,” C.G. said, “I’ll take you back to your trailer, and—”
“No,” Tricia said. “Wait here. God. I can’t have her running back and forth and wasting everyone’s time.”
C.G. looked at me, her face blank, but then allowed herself an infin-itesimal eyebrow raise, conveying sympathy. I took a seat on a plush swivel armchair and picked up an entertainment magazine, dated a week ahead. There was already a feature story on David, with extensive photos and a sidebar on Joey captioned “The Millionairess Heiress”; it included a tiny photo of the Gustav Klimt painting. I squinted to get a better look, but all I could really see of the painting was a half-naked woman with red hair in a sensual pose. It might have been Joey.
Tricia kept up a steady stream of chatter with her hair and makeup artists, about the likeliest candidates for Daytime Emmys. She informed her assistant that the cappuccino was cold, and that a new one would be required. “And could you keep the racket down while you’re doing it?”
she asked, as if there were a volume control on the milk steamer. Perhaps on the six-thousand-dollar version, there would be.
I wondered what had become of the Tricia whose frog mural I had
painted, whose house I’d visited, the charming, affectionate, laughing woman. Party Tricia. Perhaps she was not a morning person. Perhaps she was at her best . . . drinking glögg.
Jen Kim came into the trailer and walked past without seeing me.
“How long?” she asked, standing over the dentist chair.
“Seven minutes,” said the makeup woman.
“Thirty for me,” Gloria said. “I have to blow her out.”
“I wouldn’t dream of rushing you,” Jen said. “But we have tons of work to get done and we leave at three for the Elliot Horowitz funeral.”
I stood. “What?”
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Jen turned to me. “Oh, hello. Is that your wardrobe?”
“No,” Tricia said. “I need to be in on her wardrobe.”
“You don’t have time to be in on her wardrobe,” Jen said.
“I can look at the rack while I’m getting blown out,” Tricia said.
“What did you just say about the Elliot Horowitz funeral?” I asked.
“It’s at Mount Sinai,” Jen said. “Geographically convenient, and Tricia, you’ll be camera-ready, so we’ll shoot some segments there afterward. Twilight. Very dramatic.”
“Who arranged this funeral?” I asked.
“Did you know Elliot?” Tricia said, addressing me for the first time.
“I knew him very well,” I said, with more vehemence than I’d in-
tended. Everyone froze, then turned to me. It may have sounded like I was having sex with him.
“Well, it’s a private service,” Jen said. “Family and close friends, his sister said. Which would include all of us, but . . . okay, this is very awkward. Were you invited?”
“Was his wife invited?” I asked.
“What’s the story with Joey?” Tricia asked. “Has she been arrested yet?”
“Oh, is Joey going to be arrested?” Jen asked.
“No!” I said. All eyes turned to me again. “Given the fact that she’s innocent.”
“As if that matters. Ow.” Tricia swatted at Gloria, who was removing her curlers. “Angel Ramirez says that Joey is Suspect Numero Uno, not just in David’s death but Elliot’s too.”
“Elliot!” Jen said. “Elliot was murdered? Why would Joey kill Elliot?”
“Joey didn’t kill Elliot,” I said. “And unless Angel Ramirez is moonlighting in a toxicology lab, she can’t know if he was murdered or not.
And Joey did not kill David.”
Tricia turned her head and gave me a look I couldn’t interpret. “I don’t see how you’re in a position to say that, unless you were with her when David was shot.”
“Whether or not she killed him,” Jen said, “she could still go down for it.”
“They have no other suspects,” Tricia said, with the assurance of the totally uninformed.
D E A D E X 2 9 3
“Yes, they do,” I said, goaded beyond endurance. “A car was seen driving onto David’s property right before his death and—”
“That’s absurd.” Tricia sat up so fast she gave Gloria a form of whip-lash. “How could you know that?”
“Whose car?” Jen asked.
“Is this something Joey told you?” Tricia demanded.
“What kind of car?” Jen said.
I looked back and forth at them, as if I were at a tennis match. “I don’t know, but Joey got a license number.”
“Oh, come on,” Tricia said dismissively. “Nobody notices license numbers. She’s making it up.”
Jen opened Tricia’s refrigerator. “Joey won’t be at the funeral. Elliot’s sister mentioned it rather pointedly. How are these grapes? They’re not sour?”
“I haven’t tried them,” Tricia said. “I have the appetite of a bird.”
“How does Elliot’s sister know she won’t be there?” I said. “Does she know where Joey is?”
Jen shrugged. “Wherever she is, it won’t be at Mount Sinai today.
That alone is news. You lose media points, not attending your spouse’s funeral.” She stuck a grape in her mouth and made a face. “If the color is too good, never trust them.”
