Revision of Justice (2 page)

Suddenly, she pulled on the handle of the cart, slowing it to a standstill, and showing surprising strength for someone so old and thin. She bent to pick up a dusty bottle from beside the road, inspected it, and added it to the others, before glancing back at the house and hurrying on.

“Flames across the canyon!”

She was a small woman, but her voice was strong, and beneath the tumbling white hair, her eyes were fierce.

She pointed a bony finger at the two of us as she passed.

“Smoke and fire! For the betrayal of Genesis!”

Then she descended around a curve, rattling her load of bottles, until she was out of sight.

We turned and followed the others up the hill, no more troubled by the old woman than we were by the hundreds of other crazy street people who roamed the city, speaking their personal vision of reality in a language that sounded like madness to the rest of us.

As we climbed, my attention gradually focused on the house at the top of the rise, where the voice of a torch singer crooning “Haunted Heart” floated above the crowd’s chatter.

“Sounds like a party,” Templeton said, and found my hand with hers, offering comfort.

I didn’t say anything. I was preparing myself for the first party I’d been to in at least a decade without Jacques at my side.

The house was on the right, separated from the road by a short wooden bridge and a wide expanse of healthy, leaf-littered lawn. The bridge spanned a drainage ditch cleverly designed with stonework to resemble a medieval moat. Templeton and I made our way across, taking it all in.

“Welcome to Fantasyland,” she said.

We found ourselves looking up at a two-story stucco in the shape of a European castle, probably built in the movieland heyday of the twenties or thirties, decorated with dramatic archways, pointy turrets, and arched windows of leaded colored glass. Soft light bathed the walls, at least those we could see. Behind the house, pitch-black slopes ran down into the canyon.

My first thought was that it was garish, ostentatious, and silly. My second thought was that Jacques would have loved it.

“Beauty before the beast,” I said.

Templeton crossed the bridge ahead of me, to a serpentine flagstone walkway that traversed the well-watered lawn.

It was then that we heard the scream.

It was ragged and shrill and probably came from a woman, though it might have escaped from a nervous man skating on the thin ice of hysteria.

It also carried the unmistakable sound of desperation, the kind that, given the setting, sounded like too much alcohol and dwindling career prospects.

Raucous laughter immediately followed.

“They must be discussing box-office grosses,” Templeton said, as we ascended the final steps. “Or maybe superstar salaries.”

“What could possibly be more important?”

“Are you sure you’re up to this, Benjamin?”

Through the rounded doorway of Gordon Cantwell’s quaint house, I could see bodies massed in chatty little groups or drifting alone, looking awkwardly unconnected, desperate for a place to land. I clutched my bottle a little tighter.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

We stepped inside to a burst of machine-gun laughter that riddled my guts with dread.

“You must be Alexandra Templeton. I’ve been expecting you.”

The voice was on the deep side, direct and self-assured, and came from a diminutive young woman whom I first mistook for a pretty teenage boy.

“I’m Christine Kapono, Gordon Cantwell’s assistant. Call me Chris.”

She extended her hand, looking up into Templeton’s face with almond-shaped eyes as bright as they were dark.

“And you can call me Alex,” Templeton said. “Shorter and simpler.”

“The name you use on your byline at the
Sun
.”

“Right.”

“Alex, then.”

Christine Kapono wore her black hair cropped into an efficient ducktail; her skin was as smooth and brown as a hazelnut, suggesting island blood. She was trim but sturdily built—strong shoulders, wide hips, small breasts—and looked quite at home in her Gap T-shirt, snug jeans, and leather sandals. Bony protrusions showed atop the arches of her small feet, “surfer’s knobs” caused by years of kneeling and paddling on a surfboard, if my guess was right.

“You must have been watching for us,” Templeton said.

“You weren’t hard to spot. Gordon’s publicist described you as tall, black, and beautiful.” Kapono’s eyes lingered on Templeton as they shook hands. “He was right.”

Templeton, accustomed to admiring looks from both women and men, glanced my way.

“This is my friend Benjamin Justice.”

“Welcome to the party.” Kapono’s grip was formal and firm, her eyes less interested. “Are you a screenwriter?”

“I’m not much of anything these days.”

“Sounds like an aspiring screenwriter to me.”

That generated a small laugh all around. Kapono glanced at the diver’s watch on her wrist.

“Gordon’s running a little late. Celebrity softball game for charity. He should be along any minute.”

“I didn’t know Gordon Cantwell qualified as a celebrity,” Templeton said.

“Only in his own mind.” Kapono followed the remark with a smile, but the edge in her voice had been unmistakable. “He’s filling in for someone who couldn’t make it. Center field, his favorite position. They called him day before yesterday. Needless to say, he was thrilled to be asked.”

“I take it he likes the spotlight.”

“You’ll meet him soon enough, Mr. Justice. I’ll let you judge for yourself.” She indicated my bottle. “You’d probably like to open that.”

“More than you can imagine.”

She led us through a maze of men and women toward the kitchen, turning it into a guided tour along the way.

“The bedrooms are upstairs. Gordon uses the downstairs primarily for business and entertaining.”

The lower level of the house was a collection of high-ceilinged rooms separated by arched entries, decorated with framed movie posters going back six decades and furnishings salvaged from the sets of famous movies and later sold at memorabilia auctions. A stone stairway with an ornate wrought-iron railing, worthy of a descending Norma Desmond, led to the second floor. Near the foot of the stairs was a gaping fireplace that reminded me of the one in
Citizen Kane
. Above the mantelpiece hung a framed one-sheet from
Gone With the Wind
, in mint condition, without so much as a fold or crease within its borders.

Off the dining room, we could see a crowded patio lighted by candles and tiki torches. A few partygoers spilled out onto the lawn, but not far, because of the darkness extending to the edge of the canyon.

“The pièce de résistance,” Kapono said.

Across the brush-covered divide, on the upper slopes of Mount Lee, the white letters of the Hollywood Sign rose five stories high. From the flats not quite two miles below, the sign had looked modest and unprepossessing. Now, from a hundred yards straight across the canyon, even without lights, the huge letters looked monstrous, dwarfing the surrounding houses, riveting the eye.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“It looks positively indestructible,” Templeton said. “Wood?”

“Sheet metal.”

“On a steel frame,” I added, “set in concrete. Four hundred and fifty feet across. At one time, it was illuminated at night by five thousand high-powered bulbs, until the local residents complained.”

Templeton threw me a curious look.

“How do you know all that?”

“I wrote a short feature on it once, when I was at the
Times
. Don’t look so surprised, Templeton. I had my share of frivolous assignments when I was starting out.”

As we moved on, I felt more and more imprisoned by bodies, and suffocated by the buzz of conversation that filled the rooms. The chief topics seemed to be the Sundance Film Festival, the odd career of a director named Quentin Tarantino, and how much a writer named Jake Novitz had been paid for his latest script.

I was older by a good decade than most of those around me, who ranged in appearance from clean-cut to scruffy, from carefully businesslike to self-consciously bohemian. For all the varied styles on display, however, I sensed that the group was bound almost religiously by a singleminded social zeal. More than anything, I was struck by the restlessness of the eyes, most of which seemed to be searching the room.

As we neared the kitchen, the babble and laughter rose in my ears like discordant music, and the crush of bodies began to feel claustrophobic. Kapono’s husky voice cut through the din.

“You can usually spot the agents. They tend to be better dressed and more confident looking. Just as intense, but without that sense of anxiety and neediness. At least the successful ones.”

We slipped past a small group that included the young woman with the knapsack we’d seen marching resolutely up the hill. She was handing fresh-looking, vinyl-covered scripts to two thirtyish men who resembled Armani models from the neck down but ambitious young salesmen from the neck up.

“It’s very castable,” I heard the young woman say eagerly. “I think you’ll see plenty of foreign potential in the action scenes. I’m sure that pre-sell could cover half the budget.”

We reached a breathing space in the big kitchen, which was mercifully free of bodies, except for a brown-skinned housekeeper who busied herself opening bags of chips. Kapono took the bottle of wine from my hands, found a corkscrew, and put it to work.

“The party looks like quite a success,” Templeton said.

“Give it more time. By eleven, it’ll be wall-to-wall people, every one of them with at least three new ideas for next year’s box-office blockbuster, and ready to pitch to anyone who will listen.”

I glanced around at the faces.

“It’s certainly a young crowd.”

“And white,” Templeton added.

Kapono’s eyes flickered knowingly.

“Welcome to Hollywood.”

I heard the pop of the cork as it came out and felt a surge of desire for the alcohol. Kapono poured the wine into a clear plastic cup, looking up and waiting for me to tell her to stop. I didn’t.

When it was full, she handed it over.

“Most of the people are here to make some kind of connection,” she explained. “Screenwriters looking to hook up with an agent or a development person, development people hoping to find a hot new script before someone else does. It’s a very social business, moviemaking. Connections and relationships count for a lot.”

“And why are you here?” Templeton asked.

“Why do I work as Gordon’s assistant?”

Templeton nodded. Kapono fixed her with clear, confident eyes.

“My goal is to meet enough people and acquire enough knowledge to work myself into a position of influence.”

“Influence or power?” I asked.

“I suppose they’re one and the same, aren’t they?”

“And what is it that you hope to influence?”

“What kind of movies get made. What kind of images we put on the screen for the world to see. How we reflect and shape the consciousness of the next generation. From a woman’s point of view.”

“An Asian woman’s point of view?” Templeton asked.

“Possibly.” Kapono cocked her head thoughtfully. “And a lesbian’s viewpoint as well, when it’s appropriate.”

Kapono’s frankness surprised me, especially in front of a journalist gathering material for a story. Either times had changed more than I realized, or Kapono had lots of backbone. Maybe both.

“You sound very serious about it.”

“Dead serious, Mr. Justice.”

She offered Templeton some wine, but Templeton requested mineral water instead. Kapono found two bottles of Evian, handed one to Templeton and kept the other for herself, then glanced out toward the party.

“Why don’t I introduce you around?”

I followed them out, but quickly excused myself to find a rest room. Kapono pointed toward the stairway.

“There’s one at the top of the stairs, or below, at the end of the hall.”

“We’ll be mingling,” Templeton said. “Don’t hide too long.”

I took the shortest route into the downstairs hallway, leaving the press of humanity behind. On either side hung more framed posters:
Tootsie
,
The Graduate
,
To Kill a Mockingbird
,
The Wild Bunch
,
On the Waterftont
,
North by Northwest
, one or two others.

Halfway down, I heard voices.

They came from a half-open doorway near the end of the hall. One was male and deep, distinguished by an accent that had the map of Australia printed all over it. The other, a California monotone delivered with precise diction, came from a woman who sounded as tight as an angry fist.

Male: “I’m telling you, I didn’t know! I swear!”

Female: “Where is he?”

Male: “Believe me, I’d like to find the little bugger myself!”

Female: “He’s evil, Dylan—you have no idea.”

Male: “I know enough to want to kill the bastard!”

Female: “That makes two of us, believe me.”

Through the partly open door, I saw a bearded man in dark clothes with an oversized can of Foster’s Lager in one hand and a cigar shaped like a torpedo in the other. He faced a slim, elegant woman in a white summer dress and gold jewelry, with a helmet of frosted blond hair that looked lacquered down to the last strand.

She caught me looking at her, then said quickly to the man, “If you see him, tell him he
must
call me!”

The door opened wider and she stepped past me without a word, disappearing quickly down the hall. The Australian tipped the can of Foster’s to his mouth, draining half of it, then puffed angrily on his tapered cigar.

He glared through the open door, then moved toward me.

“You seen Ray Farr by any chance?”

The Aussie was of moderate height, two or three inches below my six feet, but closer in years to my thirty-nine, maybe older. His shoulders were hunched and powerful, and he sported a long mane of well-conditioned auburn hair that matched his luxuriant beard. Furious green eyes fastened on me from a chiseled, sunburned face.

“I asked you a simple question, mate.”

He poked my shoulder in a way I didn’t like.

“I don’t know anyone named Ray Farr.”

“Everybody knows Ray Farr!”

The sound was more mocking now than belligerent, and inside the bushy beard his mouth curled into a grin. I relaxed a little.

“I assume Farr is the same man the lady wants to talk to.”

“The lady used to be his agent.”

“He’s a screenwriter, then?”

“Ha! That’s a joke. He’s a scam artist and a bastard is what he is.”

He tipped the can again. I watched the muscles of his throat work as the beer went down. After that, he toppled a bit toward me on the toes of his snakeskin boots.

I put a hand on his arm to steady him. Beneath his black silk shirt, I felt a bicep as thick and hard as the rounded end of a forty-pound barbell. The shirt was creamy soft and looked expensively Italian, the kind worn by a man who thought a lot of himself and was accustomed to getting his way.

“Maybe you should slow down,” I said, holding him steady and indicating the big can of lager.

“Maybe you should fuck off, mate.”

I wasn’t in the mood for trouble, so I turned away toward the bathroom, leaving him to wobble on his own.

He grabbed my arm, stopping me and steadying himself again. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder, close enough to my face that I felt the heat of the cigar’s orange ash. He switched the cigar to his other hand, showing it to me.

“Montecristo Number Two, lovely smoke. Six inches long to the centimeter, fifty-two-ring gauge. Cuban, of course. Torpedo’s the common name, but the rollers call ’em a
piráimide
. You a cigar man?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I smoke ’em for the rich flavor, the spice. Some blokes smoke ’em because they like to play the big shot.”

“Are you a big shot?”