City of Angles, page 16
It was perverse.
When they told her she was being arrested, they had offered her the obligatory phone call. That had been the most painful moment as it brought home that it was real, even as it made her aware of how alone she was. She had no lawyer, and nearly all her friends were in the Church. Were she wrong about it, then the right thing was to call Clarkson. But, hard as it was to accept, she was convinced that she was not paranoid. For some reason the Church was against her. She had seen the minivans outside her house, at Sara’s, and at the Church headquarters.
In fact, the Church was involved. There was no one else she could think of with the resources or a cause to follow her. That included Todd Gelber’s streaming service. Eagan was not much more than a twenty-minute drive to the 3M company headquarters in Saint Paul, and she had grown up alongside the children of its workers. She knew from them that big companies were not composed of the evil plotters depicted in B-movies, and that they weren’t involved in Selva’s murder.
This knowledge placed her in a further predicament. If she couldn’t phone Clarkson for help, whom could she trust and might she want to call? Her mother was in Minnesota and would be bound to gloat, to enjoy the fact of her fall. Her agent was delinquent in returning messages that involved contracts and work; surely he would take his time getting back to a woman accused of killing one of the most successful actors in the world. Her beautiful co-worker at the dispensary was sweet but much too dim to rely upon. Gelber was powerful and kind, but he was busy with his streaming service and cautious. In any event, she hardly knew him. And Sara thought she was the killer, as would her other actress friends. That left only the Israeli brothers, Eilan and Binyamin, and Billy.
That was all.
The Israelis knew defense lawyers, but they were dubious characters. Who knew what legal troubles they were in themselves? Her habit of relying upon her gut had played a part in creating the situation she was in, and she was coming to be suspicious of the impulse. But instinct told her one thing. This was to dial Billy, and his was the number that she picked out on her phone.
In the back of her mind there was the thought that he would bail her out. Yet as the phone rang she realized that this was too much to ask. Likely he did not even have the money. What was comforting was the sound of his voice. It was gentle and warm, even when she told him that she had been arrested, that she was being held by the police, and she was to be charged with murder.
Chapter 27
The name of Vincenza’s new home was the Lynwood. Or, at least, that is what the inhabitants of Los Angeles County’s main jail for women call it.
Vincenza knew from the other inmates that it was located in one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, and, thick though its walls are, at night she heard the racket from the nearby freeway. But she had not seen this herself as she had been transported to it in a truck without windows. Manacled and pedacled, she was let out within. Then she was taken through a series of wide hallways broken up by two-inch-thick metal doors. These led to the space in which she was processed.
That took place in a giant, empty hall. There, alongside half a dozen other women, she was stripped naked and forced to undergo a body cavity search. A woman holding a flashlight approached her and made her display her anus and vagina. Deputies of both sexes watched as the woman checked to see that she was not transporting drugs. Then she was led with the other prisoners to the showers. Once she was dried off, she was put into her regulation jumpsuit—electric blue and made of something nearly as coarse as burlap. Printed in block letters on the uniform were the words, “Los Angeles Century Regional Detention Facility.” Then they were provided with shoes of the wrong size. Walking in them was like stepping about in clown shoes.
From the showers, they were next brought into a holding cell where they crouched or tried to sleep. Cold, crowded, and full of weird odors, it was composed of bare concrete. Hours passed. Then they were conveyed to the North Tower, a huge atrium that looked like the remains of a decayed spaceship. Nearly all its surfaces were bare metal: gray steel or scratched-up chrome. Incongruously, in delicate script, inspirational words had been spray-painted in foot-high lettering onto its I-beams: “Integrity,” “Gratitude,” “Beauty.” Beneath these, tables with bolted chairs dotted the floor, and around them women played checkers or talked in screeching voices. Alongside them were other inmates charged with lesser crimes, who lay on cots, trying with varying degrees of success to sleep.
Above and around the floor, rising up in tiers, were layers of “pods.” These were the cells in which the greater number of the prisoners spent the bulk of their time. Inside each was a toilet, a rusty sink without a mirror, a small TV set, and a pair of bunk beds attached to the walls. Because so many of the toilets did not flush, there was a stench of human waste.
The guards, who communicated with one another by old fashioned walkie-talkies strapped to their belts, kept them waiting there for twenty minutes. Then, finally, they received their directions, and Vincenza was separated from the other women. Three guards—two men and one woman—accompanied her. This attention was somehow taken as a sign that she was uppity, and inmates glowered at her as she was led past them.
Her own cell, she discovered, was separate and quieter. As a function of her newfound celebrity, she had been set outside “gen pop”: the general population. Rather, she was housed in a tiny room near the commissary, and through its slim vertical window she could observe tattooed women filing past on their way to buy packs of chewing gum and candy. Her mattress was without a pillow. Instead, there was a thin, worn blanket and a torn, faded sheet.
The jail, she quickly learned, was a place of invariable routine. At intervals the guards came by with clipboards listing the names of the inmates on their ward. They were required to cross each off as present. In the early morning, there was a walk to the cafeteria for breakfast, which was usually sugary, processed cereal and milk, no matter that the large number of incarcerated Black and Asian women were lactose intolerant and threw the cartons out. Then, just after noon, they were marched back to receive their cardboard trays and sporks along with more predictably bland meals. Frequently this was instant mashed potatoes with overboiled string beans and tasteless strips of chicken. Most of it had a gelatinous appearance, whether it was cranberry sauce, poultry, or pudding.
No time was provided for the prison yard. This was something that the women sometimes saw, but which they were not permitted to visit. To make matters worse, the clatter was unending. Easily a third of the women were disturbed, and more than a few were unmedicated and prone to wailing or chattering with nonexistent acquaintances. There were also loud arguments among the cellmates, and cackling insults directed towards the guards.
Those expected to remain in the facility for longer stays were obligated to take classes. These were meant to prepare them for jobs working as kitchen aides, seamstresses, or beauticians. There was instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, nutrition, and simple use of computers. The prison doctors and nurses used the absence of cellmates to check on the many pregnant women in the jail while psychiatrists went to see the deranged.
Sexual predation took various forms. One involved a male guard on the ward. In the middle of the night, he would let a woman down the hall out, bringing her to the cell of her lover. The price for their lovemaking was that he watched.
Few of the women were hardened criminals. Many were incarcerated for drug possession, drunken driving, or even driving without a license or insurance. Yet there were a few manifestly predatory butch toughs. Shot callers, they were accustomed to having their way with attractive young flesh. On trips to the cafeteria Vincenza came to realize that she had not even escaped #MeToo in prison! As grotesque as any producers she had met, these shot callers were eyeing her when she ate and when she showered. She was grateful—more appreciative than she could have imagined—that the guards were keeping a special watch on her. She had no doubt that in the paired cells women were molested at night, forced to masturbate or to orally please their companions.
The nights at the Lynwood were long, and it wasn’t merely the sounds that kept her up or the sense that something within her was being swallowed up. Some of the inmates hated her, and she was more tired from lack of sleep than she had ever been in her life. If she went to bed at nine, she was up by eleven. If she fell asleep at one, she was wide awake at three.
Little things made her angry. This included the slogans on the walls—“Hope,” “Determination,” “Family.” Those put her into a particular rage, and though she had received books through the mail and enjoyed reading, she sometimes found herself staring vacantly at the pages. It was as though the letters could become momentarily unintelligible, like hieroglyphics. It took her some time to identify a portion of the problem, that she was suffering through a double withdrawal: nicotine and pot. Wouldn’t that make anyone crabby and restless?
The tiredness reached its peak at the hours when visitors arrived. For most this was their children, and it was heartbreaking. The images etched themselves in Vincenza’s mind: a little Hispanic girl with tiny fingers pressing her hand on the plexiglass divider, unwilling to be led away; a skinny Black boy with pale green eyes and clunky plastic glasses tearing up at the sight of his mother’s face.
Her own trips to the visiting room were mostly for conferences with her would-be attorneys. This was because two of her assumptions had proved false. There was no bail. The “people”—meaning the prosecutors—had asked for remand, refusal of her release based on the claim that she was a flight risk, and without hesitation the judge had agreed. At the same time, her difficulty was not in paying for counsel but in selecting one. Every lawyer in Los Angeles, it seemed, wanted to be chosen and was eager to take her case on pro bono. There were flashy defense lawyers with pinkie rings and wide ties, law professors from USC, radical public defenders with goatees and turtleneck sweaters, “activists” with political aspirations, and those aiming to be TV talk show hosts. There were, in fact, more requests than time for those she could meet with.
There were also bags and bags of mail, much of it scurrilous. If Selva had not managed to make it at the box office with teenage girls when he was alive, he now had legions of them as admirers, and nearly all wanted horrible things to happen to her. There were men, too—presumably missing teeth—who wrote to express their love for Vincenza. Often accompanying these expressions of undying affection were dick pics.
While she was a local story, she was much more. As the rejected mistress who had killed Tom Selva in what was presumed to have been a jealous rage, she was someone of note. For however long the case played out, she was as worthy of attention as J. Lo or Beyoncé.
This did not mean that the press’s treatment of her was favorable. Although it violated the basic provisions of the law for prosecutors to leak pertinent details in the hope of prejudicing the public and the prospective pool of jurors, they had done nothing but this for a week. In this way, the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register each had “broken” aspects of the story, offering readers and viewers some latest detail that seemed to demonstrate her guilt.
They were not alone. The New York Times had flown a prized reporter out, choosing not to rely upon a stringer. There were likewise writers from The New Yorker, Time, The Star, OK, Entertainment Weekly, In Touch, Hello!, Paris Match, Life & Style, People, and each of the networks. Even Vanity Fair and Vogue had assigned correspondents. The local TV channels were assessing the case through “team” coverage, and although she could not see it, Vincenza had heard that there were never fewer than half a dozen news trucks camped out in front of the jail. Yes, she was at last famous, or, to put it more accurately, notorious.
Prepared and articulate, Clarkson was among her visitors. He was altogether too slick. Like a bad tap dancer, he grinned incessantly. As a child Vincenza had been fascinated by beauty pageants, and she had learned from them to distinguish between the contestants’ smiles. There was one kind in which they flashed their molars. That was the fake sort. Then there were the unaffected ones. His were the first kind, and when she had asked him why anonymous sources within the Church were suggesting that she was an apostate, he said that he had no idea how that might have occurred. Then he had informed her that they could handle her legal needs, and, in fact, he was a lawyer himself.
Billy, on the other hand, was different. Yet it was not his gentleness nor his sincerity that meant the most to her. It was a question that he asked, one that gave her hope.
Chapter 28
The two days that followed the announcements of Selva’s death and Vincenza’s arrest were the most hectic that Clarkson had known since the days before his bar exam. While nearly the whole leadership of the Church had been thrown into the funeral preparations, it was nonetheless a colossal undertaking.
In its brief history, the Church had managed to establish a number of conventions for memorial services. These rites offered them an outline. This included the reverent words to be spoken, and the alcohol-free libations to be served. After this, Armstrong would point to a spot in the sky, the location of the planet where they would latterly trek, and there would be the lighting of the fire.
What was unfamiliar was planning a service for a celebrity so young at the height of his fame. The last time they had arranged a send-off so magnificent was a quarter century earlier when the Church’s founder had passed on. Necessarily, they had scanned old file cabinets for information on how that had been performed.
The unknowns included basic matters related to presentation. How were they to get that much lumber for the pyre, how was it to be assembled, and where was it to be set? How many rose petals were required and where were they to be strewn? Where was the teleprompter from which Armstrong would read his eulogy to be placed, who would compose the speech, and what would it say? Where should Selva’s mother and where should his wife and infant son be? How were they to lay out two thousand folding chairs and what should they do in the event of rain, always a possibility in February in Los Angeles? Where was a good location for the reporters and the cameras, one that did not obstruct the views of the mourners? What transportation should there be for the eulogists? What advice should be given to the cosmetologist who would work on Selva’s corpse, and should it be set out within or alongside the kindling? Should mourners be allowed to pay their respects by approaching the body? Many of Selva’s friends wished to offer eulogies. Which should be permitted to do so and how much time should each be allotted?
In addition to these, there were hundreds of other questions which they had not immediately anticipated. Was it reasonable to give prominent seating for Selva’s pets? What sort of accelerant for a fire so large was safe and what should they do if there were a downpour? How many fire marshals needed to be present? The president had sent his condolences. Should these be read by his wife or by Armstrong?
Vincenza was among their biggest concerns. As far as the law was concerned, the Church had a blanket protection. Nothing in Vincenza’s files could be subpoenaed or read in court, and no Church counselor could be compelled to testify. While this was a shield, it was not a sword. They could not lawfully use the files to portray her as a disturbed woman attacking the Church. The best they could do was to leak pages to friends at the gossip magazines in order to convince the public that she was an unhinged antagonist.
Some of their plans had been complicated by the Supreme Pilot’s inspirations. At one point he had summoned them to the top floor to suggest that they ought to move the event to a larger venue than the one for which it had been planned, the Church’s outdoor assembly space in Encino. Could the Staples Center, the Hollywood Bowl, or the Los Angeles Coliseum be rented out on short notice? Each notion had to be investigated.
Finally, though, it was the afternoon of the service. A playing space for the musicians—an orchestra pit—had been set below the raised podium upon which the guests of honor sat. Behind them was the pyre and the corpse, and on the stage were the tens of thousands of pink, white, and red rose petals. Selva’s wife had asked that he be mounted upon his favorite Harley-Davidson, and they had worked to prop him up in a heroic posture on this metal steed. That had required use of ligatures and a tightly bound corset underneath his blue suit. They had watched, then, as the early arriving guests formed into a line to see him and pay their respects. Made up as heavily as Selva was, he looked a bit like a trans member of the Hells Angels.
Still, the sky had cleared, and, as the dais had been laid out facing southeast, the sunlight was coming in from a favorable angle from the southwest. Armstrong was to speak last. Tom Hutchins was first. Well aware of his fondness for pot, Clarkson had taken time out to meet with him and to emphasize the need for sobriety. They had also reviewed his speech beforehand and set it in the teleprompter.
None of this mattered.
His pupils were the size of walnuts. Initially he tried to read from the monitor, but it gradually became apparent that he was nearsighted and without his glasses and unable to concentrate. He therefore began ad-libbing, chattering about the filming of the movie and how he and Selva had been imbibing Wild Turkey in between scenes. One moment he would speak haltingly. Then he would spit out his words, saying that he envied Selva for his wife’s beauty and all the other “fine trim” he had enjoyed in his short life. With that expression, the sound engineer cut off the mic, and they escorted Hutchins unwillingly back to his seat. They were fortunate when he shoved a security officer that the guard managed to avoid tumbling over the edge of the stage down the eight feet into the orchestra pit.
