A Playdate With Death (2 page)

Instead of the collection of almost familiar Hollywood faces in brightly colored Lycra, straining under Cybex machines
and hefting free weights, I found an empty gym. There were no trainers shouting encouragement, no beautifully sculpted and perfectly made-up starlets grunting and groaning. The machines glinted forlornly in the sun shining through the windows, and the place echoed with a silence made all the eerier because I’d never before walked in without being subject to a blaring retro-disco beat.

It took me a few minutes to track down the denizens of my snazzy workout studio. They were huddled around the juice bar behind the locker rooms. The trainers, deltoids shining with carefully applied moisturizer and abdominal six-packs peeking from skintight tops cropped at the midriff, wept noisily. The clientele, a bit more concerned with the exigencies of eye makeup and foundation, dabbed their eyes with Kleenex. The owner of the gym, an oversized Vietnamese bodybuilder named Laurence, opened his arms to me and pressed me to his sweaty chest.

“Oh darling. You poor darling. You don’t even know, do you? You just came here to see him, and you don’t even
know,
” he wailed.

“Laurence, calm down. Tell me what’s happened,” I said as I attempted to extricate myself from his damp embrace. His nipple ring was poking me in the cheek.

“It’s
Bobby.
He’s
dead.
They found him this morning in his
car.
He
shot
himself.”

I gasped, and now leaned against Laurence despite myself. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Betsy just called. He didn’t come home last night, so she called the cops. They found his car parked on the PCH, just
north of Santa Monica. Bobby was inside. Dead. He shot himself in the head.”

I led Laurence over to a stool and sat him down. Then I asked him, “How’s Betsy?”

“She’s a mess, of course. Oh my God, I can’t stand this, I can’t
stand
this,” Laurence wailed, burying his face in his hands.

“Oh for God’s sake, Laurence. Quit crying. This is not
your
opera, girlfriend.” I turned to Jamal Watson, one of the other trainers. He was dressed, as usual, in a vibrant shade of pink. His dark-brown leg muscles strained at his micromini shorts, and his top stopped a good six inches above his bellybutton. He looked back at me and said somewhat abashedly, “I mean, really, Bobby was my friend, too. Laurence here is acting like he’s the only one who’s devastated. We all are.”

I turned back to the weeping gym owner. “Laurence, honey. You’re upset. You should close up shop for the day.” The other trainers and clients began to protest. They were sad, very sad, but not quite sad enough to sacrifice a morning’s worth of crunches and leg lifts.

“No. No.” Laurence heaved himself off his stool with a sigh. “The show must go on. Back to work, all of you. Back to work. That’s what Bobby would have wanted.” He waved everyone onto the gym floor and turned back to me. “Shall I give you a referral? Luzette’s got some free slots, I think.”

“No, no, that’s okay. Maybe later. Can you give me Betsy’s address? I want to see if she needs some help or if she could use a shoulder to cry on.”

I could have used one myself. I’d been working out with Bobby Katz only for about six months, but in that short period of time, we’d gotten strangely close. Or maybe it wasn’t so strange, considering the fact that we spent three hours a week together, most of that time filled with intimate conversations about our lives, loves, and the shape of my thighs. As a teenager, Bobby had made the thirty-mile leap from Thousand Oaks in the Valley to Hollywood, convinced that his sparkling azure eyes, flaxen hair, and laser-whitened teeth would garner him instant fame. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that there were at least 7,200 other kids who looked just like him auditioning for all the same parts. He’d had some success. He’d gotten a couple of fast-food commercials and even a role in an Andrew Dice Clay movie. Unfortunately, his part in that work of cinematic genius was so small it could only be appreciated using the frame-by-frame viewing feature of a VCR.

He’d become a personal trainer as a way to supplement his acting income; it had soon become his career. And if I’m anything to go by, Bobby was good at what he did. I’d gained over sixty pounds with my second pregnancy, and despite the fact that Isaac was now well over two years old, before I met Bobby, I hadn’t managed to lose more than half of it. He’d put me on a kooky diet that involved eating a lot of egg-white omelets and set me on a workout program that was having remarkable results. I could actually see my feet if I looked down. And craned my neck. And leaned a bit forward. Anyway, it was working for me. But that’s not why I kept coming back. Before Bobby, I’d quit every exercise
regime I’d ever begun, despite the fact that they all showed at least some results. I kept seeing Bobby because I liked him. He was a sweet, gentle man with a ready hug and an arsenal of delightfully dishy Hollywood gossip. He remembered everything I told him and seemed genuinely to care about what I’d done over the weekend or how Isaac’s potty training was progressing. He was interested and attentive without being remotely on the make. He gave me utterly platonic and absolutely focused male attention.

A few months before that horrible morning, Bobby had asked for my advice as a criminal defense lawyer. He was a recovered drug user and an active member of Narcotics Anonymous, where he’d met his fiancée Betsy, and he’d asked me for help on her behalf. She’d fallen off the wagon and tried to make a buy from an undercover cop. The good news was that she never actually got the drugs. The bad news was that she found herself in county jail. I was thrilled at the opportunity to help Bobby after all he’d done for me, and I’d gotten them in touch with a good friend of mine from the federal public defender’s office who had recently hung out her own shingle. Last I’d heard, Betsy’s case had been referred to the diversion program. If she remained clean for a year and kept up with NA, it would disappear from her record.

Betsy and Bobby’s place was in Hollywood, not too far from my own duplex in Hancock Park. I gave a little shudder as I climbed the rickety outdoor staircase up to their apartment. The building was made of crumbling stucco held together with rotted metal braces. The doors of each unit
were dented metal, spray painted puce. The floor tile in the hallway was cracked, and large chunks were missing. Given the Los Angeles real estate market, they probably paid at least fifteen hundred a month to live in this dump.

Betsy opened the door and fell into my arms, a somewhat awkward endeavor since she was at least six inches taller than I. I led her inside and found myself face-to-face with two police officers. The cops took up much more space than it seemed they should have. The instruments hooked on to their black leather belts—the guns, billy clubs, radios, and other accoutrements of the LAPD—seemed to blow them up all out of human proportion. They were planted on the electric green carpet like a couple of bulls in a too-small pasture. I squeezed by one of the pneumatically enlarged officers and lowered Betsy onto the light beige leather couch, where she folded in on herself like a crumpled tissue.

I turned back to the men. “I’m Juliet Applebaum. I’m a friend of Betsy and Bobby’s.”

One of the officers, a man in his late twenties with a buzz cut so short and so new that his ears and neck looked raw, nodded curtly. “We’re here to escort Betsy on down to the station so she can give a statement.”

I turned to the weeping girl. “Betsy, honey? Do you want to go with the officers?”

She shook her head, buried her face in her hands, and slumped over on the couch.

“I don’t think Betsy’s quite ready for that,” I said in a firm voice.

The officer shook his head and, ignoring me, leaned over
Betsy’s prone form. “It’ll just take a few minutes. The detectives are waiting for you.” He managed to sound both menacing and polite at the same time.

Betsy just cried harder and jerked her arm away from the officer’s extended hand. I sat down next to her and slipped an arm around her shoulders.

“Officer, why don’t you let the detectives know that Betsy’s just too distraught right now.” The cop started to shake his head, but I interrupted him. “Am I to understand that you are placing her under arrest?” I asked. I felt Betsy quiver under my arm, and I gave her back a reassuring pat.

“No, no, nothing like that,” the other officer spoke up. He looked a bit older than the one trying to get Betsy up off the couch. “We just need her to give a statement to the detectives.”

“Unless you’re planning on arresting her, Betsy’s going to stay home for now. You can let the detectives know that they can contact her here. And if there’s nothing further, I think Betsy would like to be left alone.”

The police officers looked at each other for a moment, and then the older one shrugged his shoulders. They walked out the door, leaving behind a room that suddenly seemed to quadruple in size.

I patted Betsy on the back for a while, and then got up to make some tea. Bobby had introduced me to the wonders of green tea, and I could think of no time when I’d needed a restorative cup of Silver Needle Jasmine more than at this moment. I opened the fridge in the little galley kitchen off the living room and sorted through the jars of protein powder
and murky green bottles of wheat grass juice until I found a little black canister of tea. I dug up a teapot and ran the faucet until it was hot. I poured some water over the leaves and let them steep for a moment. By the time I came back out to the living room holding two small cups of tea, Betsy had gathered herself together and was wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.

“Thanks,” she said. “You still know how to be a lawyer.”

“What? Making tea?”

“No, no.” She smiled through her tears. “Getting rid of the cops.”

“Don’t mention it. Pissing off cops is my specialty. Are Bobby’s parents on their way?”

Betsy shook her head.

“Do they know?”

She nodded and said, “The police called them this morning and told them. I tried to call, too, but they aren’t answering the phone. I just keep getting the machine.”

That surprised me. “You mean you haven’t talked to them at all?”

“I haven’t talked to them in months. Ever since . . . ever since that whole thing happened. When they found out about it, they tried to get Bobby to break up with me. They told him that I was a bad influence and that I’d drag him down. Which I guess I did.” The last was said in a sort of moan, and more tears dripped down her cheeks.

I wrapped my arm around her and handed her a tissue and the cup of tea. “Drink,” I said. “It’ll make you feel better.” She took a few sips and then blew her nose loudly.

“You weren’t a bad influence on Bobby,” I said, although I have to admit that at the time of her arrest, I’d taken the same line as Bobby’s parents, albeit a bit more delicately. I’d just suggested to Bobby that since he had worked so hard to kick his addiction, he might want to put a little distance between himself and Betsy, just until she got her act together. Bobby had thanked me for my advice and gently informed me that he loved Betsy and planned to stand by her. I’d been chastened and never mentioned my reservations again. I had still had them, though. Bobby was the poster child for twelve-step programs. He’d stopped using methamphetamine five years before and hadn’t missed a weekly meeting since. Before he’d gotten sober, his addiction was so bad that it was costing him hundreds of dollars a week, just to stay awake. He’d turned his athlete’s body into a husk of its former self. The damage he’d caused to his heart from years of drug abuse was permanent. Despite the great shape he’d managed to return himself to, he still had an enlarged heart and a severe arrhythmia. Bobby had once told me that methamphetamine was so toxic to him nowadays that even holding the stuff and having it absorb through his fingers could trigger a heart attack. The risks to him of falling off the wagon were astronomical. I’d been terribly worried that Betsy’s weakness would be contagious. But, in the end, he’d proven me wrong. He’d gotten her back on the program and never fallen off himself. So I had believed, until that morning.

“Betsy, why were the police here? Did they tell you why they need you to make a statement?”

“No. They just said I have to.”

“But it’s a suicide, right? Bobby killed himself?”

“I don’t know. I mean, that’s what they told me this morning. They said they found him in the car with a gun in his hand, and that he’d shot himself in the head.”

“Was it his gun?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, he doesn’t have a gun. At least I don’t think he does.”

“And just now, when the cops were here, did they tell you they were considering other things? Like maybe that someone had killed him?”

She sniffed loudly and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “They didn’t tell me anything.”

“Betsy, do you think Bobby killed himself?” I asked flat out.

She shook her head and wailed, “I don’t know. None of this makes any sense. I mean, why would he kill himself?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But then, I don’t know him as well as you do. Had anything happened between you two? Had you guys been getting along?” The truth was, I didn’t expect Betsy to confide in me. I didn’t know her that well, and for all I knew, Bobby had told her that, like his parents, I’d encouraged him to break up with her.

“Things were great. Great,” she said firmly, rubbing the tears away from her eyes. “We’d set a date for the wedding; we’d even picked a rabbi.”

“A rabbi? But you’re not Jewish, are you?”

“Bobby’s parents really wanted us to have a rabbi. Their
guy said that he’d do it, if we went to premarital counseling and if Bobby did all the tests and stuff.”

“Tests?”

“Yeah, you know. Genetic testing for Tay-Sachs. The rabbi says he makes all Jews who he marries get Tay-Sachs testing. Just in case.”

Tay-Sachs disease is a birth defect that is carried by something like one in thirty Jews of European descent. If two carriers have children together, they have a one in four chance of giving birth to a baby who will die of Tay-Sachs. Tay-Sachs is always fatal; generally, children die by age five after being desperately ill for most of their lives. Nowadays, there’s a simple blood test to determine if you are a carrier. Most Jewish couples automatically gets tested, but Peter and I hadn’t bothered, since Peter wasn’t Jewish. Both of us would have had to be carriers for there to be any danger, so we’d never even considered it.