The Burning Plain (28 page)

“I don’t know where Richie is,” he said, “and I don’t really care. I moved out of the apartment three weeks ago.”

“Three weeks? He didn’t mention that.”

“He didn’t notice,” Joel said bitterly. “You’re like all his other friends. You don’t know what he’s really like. Richie’s a failure. He was a nobody when we came to LA. I’m the one who got him his contacts, and then he turns around and treats me like shit. I only put up with it because I knew it was just a matter of time before he sabotaged himself. He’s fucked up everything he’s ever tried to do. He has to. He thrives on the drama. I put up with it for twenty years, but I’m through with him. And his goddamned friends.”

He slammed the phone down.

Richie liked to say “In Hollywood, you’re only as good as your Rolodex,” and he bragged about his, but when I called around to some of the people in the Industry he’d claimed as friends, it became clear they all knew about the Asuras piece and Richie had become a non-person as a result of it. I wrangled their numbers from various sources and they were not happy to hear from me, most of the conversations beginning, “Who gave you my number?” A few of them hung up on me when I explained I was trying to find out if anyone had heard from Richie. Others stayed on the line long enough to say, “No, don’t call again.” Only a couple expressed their own concern about him, one of them a female producer who reluctantly took my call, but warmed to me when I told her it was about Richie.

“I talked to him the day after he was fired,” she said. “It was ugly.”

“I know, I talked to him, too.”

“He took it very hard,” she said. “I was afraid he might do something to himself.”

I panicked. “You don’t think he has, do you?”

She laughed. “Oh, no. If Richie was going to do away with himself, he wouldn’t leave a note, he’d rent a billboard on Sunset.”

“You think he actually just picked up and left the country.”

“It would be a good career move for him. There’s nothing for him here. You don’t take on the head of a major studio unless you can bring him down. It was foolish of Richie to think he could.”

“Why?”

“Richie ran a little fashion magazine, for God’s sake. He’s never had any weight around town. People kept him around because he was outrageous and funny, but no one took him seriously.”

“He thought he was doing a public service by keeping Reverend Longstreet out of Hollywood.”

“I know, I know. He explained it all to me in tedious detail. That really shows how little Richie understands about the Industry. Hollywood has a way of humbling people like Longstreet,” she said, the name curdling in her throat. “As far back as Joe Kennedy and Howard Hughes, you have these magnates who want to make pictures their way, and who end up having their heads served to them on a platter. Look at the Japanese. They paid billions to get into the game and now they’re unloading their studios at fire sale prices. Poor Richie. He thinks it’s about making movies when it’s only about making money.”

“So Longstreet would have met his match in Hollywood.”

She let out a throaty peal of laughter. “Remember Savonarola? The Florentine priest in the middle ages who persuaded all the wicked Florentines to change their ways and burn their dirty books and flashy jewels in a great bonfire? It was very exciting for a while, but then they got bored, and ended up burning him at the stake. Longstreet’s nothing but a modern-day Savonarola. He’ll ride into town on his white charger and everyone will cheer about the return of family values until his first picture bombs. Then we’ll all line up to light the first match.”

“Richie didn’t know this?”

“Richie’s outrageous, but he’s not corrupt. Not like the rest of us. He has an odd kind of innocence, you know?”

“Yes, I know. I think it’s what keeps him alive. I mean, that and his rage.”

“Don’t worry about Richie, Mr. Rios,” she said. “He loves Hollywood.

He’ll be back. If you hear from him, give him my love and tell him to call me. And remind him that vice always overwhelms virtue and money trumps them both. Goodbye.”

Ten days after Travis’s death, I was summoned to Parnassus Studio for a final meeting with Donati. When I stepped into his office, I was met with a blast of bone-chilling air and then I saw Asuras, in his patriarchal wools and tweeds, at the head of the glossy conference table in a corner of Donati’s office. Donati sat at his right hand. Asuras greeted me with a magisterial nod.

“I’m surprised to see you,” I said, taking a seat at the end of the table.

“I’m responsible for everything that involves the studio,” he said.

“The studio’s involvement was always minimal,” I said.

“Thanks to you,” Donati said.

I shrugged. “I didn’t go out of my way to keep the studio out of the case.”

“You also didn’t go out of your way to drag us in,” Asuras said. “Most lawyers in this town would’ve tried to squeeze some personal publicity out of the case. The studio angle would’ve guaranteed headlines.”

“It wouldn’t have helped Bob to feed him to the press.”

“We’ve been approached by a number of people representing the victims’ families about whether we were interested in the movie rights to their stories,” Donati said.

I said nothing.

“You’re not interested in selling your story?” he persisted.

“Of course not,” I said. “This case involved three gruesome deaths, four, including Bob’s. I’m not interested in making money off of that.”

“A principled lawyer,” Asuras said. “Did you notice whether pigs were flying when you came in?”

“No, but it is a cold day in hell,” I replied. “In this office anyway.”

“We just want this thing to be over,” Donati said.

“As far as I’m concerned, it is.”

“Good,” Asuras said, and then, after a couple of uncomfortable moments, asked, “There’s no doubt in your mind that Bob Travis was the murderer?”

“That’s what the evidence indicates.”

Asuras smiled. It was a smile of great, fatherly charm. “You’re not convinced? Something nags at you?”

“Serial killers usually start out as the kind of kids who pull wings off flies and torture the family cat,” I said. “Travis didn’t seem the type.”

“Not evil?” Asuras asked.

“I don’t believe in evil,” I said.

Asuras arched a satanic eyebrow. “You don’t believe in evil? In your business?”

“I don’t believe in evil as a theological concept,” I explained. “As some kind of innate depravity.”

“You think it’s all the result of bad parenting?” Asuras said derisively.

“No,” I said, annoyed to be patronized by him. “I think it’s in your karma.”

“What do you mean?”

“Auden says it best,” I said. “Auden, the poet?”

“I know who Auden is,” he said, scowling.

“Then you probably know the lines I’m referring to, from his poem ‘September 1, 1939,’” I continued, mocking him.

“‘Those to whom evil are done/Do evil in return,’” he quoted stentoriously. “Those lines?”

Abashed, I said, “Yes, those lines.”

“Auden’s not talking about karma,” he said. “He’s talking bad parenting. Karma is the accretion of all your acts in all your lives, the residue, if you will. Sometimes the residue is evil, pure and simple.”

“I bow to your greater knowledge of evil.”

Donati broke in impatiently, “An eyewitness saw him leaving the alley. The police found bloodstained shoes in his closet. That proves he was the killer.”

“I know,” I said. “I know what the evidence is.”

“I can’t quote poetry,” Donati persisted, “but I know my Sherlock Holmes and he said if the facts compel an obvious conclusion, then the conclusion must be correct, however improbable.”

“And the murders have stopped,” Asuras said. “Isn’t that the best evidence that Bob was the murderer?”

“Yes,” I said. “The murders have stopped.”

Donati said, “Well, thank you for coming by, Henry.” He slid an envelope across the table. “Your fee.”

I glanced in the envelope. The amount was outrageous. “You’re sure you’re not trying to buy my silence?”

“You earned it,” Asuras said. “And if there’s anything else I can do for you, just let me know through Nick.”

“There is, actually,” I said.

The two of them looked at each other as if the other shoe had dropped.

“What is it?” Asuras asked, warily.

“You have a lawsuit pending against
L.A. Mode
,” I said.

He frowned. “That’s right. You’re a friend of Richie’s.”

“Whom you’ve named as a defendant,” I said. “I’ll return your fee if you’ll dismiss him from the case.”

“Why should I?”

“You got the magazine pulled before it was distributed,” I said, “so your damages are minimal and I’m sure the magazine will settle. There’s no point in keeping Richie in the suit except to run up his legal bills.”

“And teach him a lesson,” Asuras said.

“He was fired from his job. No reputable magazine will ever hire him. His friends have dumped him. I think he learned his lesson.”

Asuras studied me, then said, “Tell Richie I’ll dismiss the suit against him in exchange for a handwritten letter of apology.”

“Thank you.”

“And keep your fee,” he said, as if the hundred-thousand-dollar check was no more to him than a tip.

That night I dreamed I was standing on a promontory covered with grass greener than any earthly grass, overlooking an ocean upon which the light fell like sheets of glass. I turned away from the sea and saw, about fifty yards distant, an elaborate Victorian mansion with turrets and towers and gingerbread woodwork like something spun from sugar. It was framed by a sky of such profound blue I had to shield my eyes against it. A young man stepped out onto the verandah, looked in my direction and began walking toward me. My heart stopped. It was Josh. He was dressed in the clothes in which he’d been cremated but he was whole again. His flesh was supple, his hair shone and his eyes were clear, free of pain or fear. Wordlessly, he threw his arms around me and I held him so tightly I could feel his heart beating against mine. He smelled of honey and incense and ash and his body radiated a delicious warmth, a womb-warmth. He kissed me.

“My God, Josh,” I whispered. “You’re alive.”

“No,” he said gently. “I’ve come back, but just for a minute.” He slipped out of my embrace.

“What do you mean, Josh? What is this place?”

“Come with me,” he said, taking my hand. We walked to the edge of the promontory. He looked across the brilliant sea and said, “This is sort of a jumping-off point.”

“Jumping off to where?”

He spread his arm above the ocean. “There. Henry, it’s my time. That’s why I came back, to say goodbye.”

“I don’t understand.”

He stroked my hair. “It’s hard to explain. After you die, there’s a place, a place of judgment. Kind of. It’s a place you’ve always carried around inside. It’s what you imagine happens after you die. If you imagine heaven, that’s what you get. If you imagine hell, you get hell.” He clasped my hand tighter. “But the point is, they don’t exist except in your imagination, and when you realize that, you’re free to go.”

“Go where, Josh?”

He released my hand and stared out at the sea of light. The look on his face was ecstatic. He whispered, “There are no words …” He seemed to burn from within, with a light of such intensity he became translucent, a rainbow aureole forming around his head. Without changing shape, he seemed to grow larger and larger, until clouds drifted across his eyes. His face shone like the sun and his legs were like pillars of fire. I could no longer look at him and cowered, afraid I would be consumed by his light.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Look at me.”

I looked and it was as if I saw through him, past the awesome light, to something indescribable. Later, I remembered it as a rose as vast as the universe, charged with intelligence, serenely folding and unfolding shimmering petals of fire.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, oh …”

And then it was over. The inhumanely radiant light faded, he shrank to his normal size and I could hold him in my eyes again.

He kissed me again with a mouth that tasted of apple.

“Goodbye, Henry,” he said. “I loved you so much. More than either of us knew.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

“Look into yourself,” he replied, slowly seeping into the gloam of dreams. “We’re the same person.”

“Josh …”

I woke to darkness, tears running down my face.

B
OB TRAVIS WAS
cremated and his ashes returned to his family in Maryland. I knew this because I arranged it, in consultation with Donati and Bob’s father, whom I spoke to several times on the phone. Mr. Travis—“Hey, call me Ron”—was a mail carrier, a gruff man whose response to his son’s death was bafflement and shame; the same response, I suspected, he had had to Bob’s life. He clung to the notion that Bob had been corrupted in Hollywood by “the gays.” Out of respect for his loss, I kept my mouth shut about myself. To me, this was a variation of the all-too-familiar story of the son who left home to find himself only to be returned to his family years later in a coffin or an urn as a stranger. The twist in the story was that Bob hadn’t died of AIDS. When I told his father how he had died, he said, “Oh, Jesus. Don’t say anything to his mom.” Fortunately, the West Hollywood murders had remained a regional story, which allowed me to emphasize, without contradiction, that Bob had only been a suspect at the time of his death. Fortunately, too, Ron Travis never asked me point-blank if his son was guilty, because I wasn’t sure my euphemisms were equal to the question.

It was now August, and the city was basically uninhabitable. The downtown skyline simply disappeared for days at a time into the smog, only to reappear at night, brilliantly lit up against the red sky. The heat turned wet and I never left home without a spare shirt in my briefcase. At night I sat on the terrace in my boxer shorts reading the
Inferno
and swatting at mosquitos. I thought a lot about the dream I had had of Josh and the places of judgment we carry within ourselves and I wondered what mine looked like, my heaven, my hell. Of course, I realized they were not places at all, but feelings. A center of joy, a center of despair both so consuming only mystics or psychopaths could set up permanent residence there. The rest of us brushed up against them only occasionally, most often through a death. Josh had died in pain and confusion, resentful at how little time he’d had, and I suppose I kept those feelings alive for him and created my own little hell. The dream invited me to release myself from those feelings but one did not simply walk away from the great darkness; you had to walk through it, and I felt I was not yet through. Perhaps that’s why I so eagerly followed Dante to Cocytus, the ninth circle of his Hell where a three-faced Satan stood in a lake frozen into ice by the beating of his own gigantic, leathery wings: