Belinda (55 page)

[2]

BLAIR was surrounded by reporters in the lobby of the Stanford Court when I got there. Everybody was scribbling. The old fashioned flashbulbs were really going off.

I was blinded for a second. Then I saw G.G. getting up out of the chair beside Blair. G.G. was all shiny in a white silk turtleneck and brown velvet blazer, but even at six foot four he didn't outshine Blair.

Belinda had not exaggerated when she described this man. He was maybe five feet two and had a very leathery tanned face with a big nose and huge horn-rimmed glasses and only a crown left of gray hair. He was dressed in a perfectly fitted suit covered all in silver sequins. Even his tie had sequins. And the raincoat hanging ?vet his shoulders was lined in white mink. He was puffing on a George Burns-style cigar and socking down whiskey on the rocks as he told everyone in a harsh, booming voice that he couldn't verify that Belinda had had an affair with Marty, of course he couldn't, what did they think he was, a Peeping Tom, but they damn well ought to ask why Bonnie shot her husband and nobody called the LAPD when Belinda ran away.

I was stunned. So it had come to that-and so quickly. Oh, Belinda, I thought, I did try to keep it clean.

"Jeremy!" Cynthia Lawrence of the Chronicle was suddenly standing in front of me. "Did Belinda ever tell you there was something between her and Moreschi?"

"One hundred Gs!" Blair roared at me, as I tried to get around Cynthia, "for the wedding picture of you both in Midnight Mink."

Laughter and titters from the reporters, both the old friends and the strangers.

"Sure, if Belinda's willing," I said. "Married in Midnight Mink, why not? But why not two hundred Gs, if it's going to be two of us instead of one."

Another volley of laughter.

"When two people marry," Blair yelled, aiming the cigar right at me, "you're supposed to become one!"

Through the laughter the reporters were shouting out questions. "Then you do intend to marry Belinda?"

"Is Bonnie on drugs!" Cynthia asked.

"We don't know that!" G.G. said impatiently. I could see he was finding this as unpleasant as I found it. In fact, he looked almost angry.

"The hell we don't!" Blair said, climbing to his feet and pulling the raincoat around him. He tapped his ashes onto the rug. "Just go down there, have a drink in the Polo Lounge, and listen to the gossip. She's so out of it she couldn't talk and chew a stick a gum at the same time, she'd strangle."

"Will you marry Belinda!"

"But it's just gossip!" G.G. said.

"Yes, I want to marry Belinda," I answered. "I should have asked her before."

I still couldn't see straight from the flash. More questions. I couldn't follow.

"Let's get out of here," G.G. whispered in my ear. "Belinda wouldn't want all this to happen. Blair's out of his mind."

"Jeremy, are you happy with the response to the paintings?"

"Jeremy, were you at the preview?"

Blair seized me by the arm. Amazingly strong little man.

"Was it a long affair between Marty and Belinda?"

"They were like glue in Hollywood," Blair said. "I told you. Ask Marty about that."

"G.G., was it Bonnie and Marty that ruined your business?"

"Nobody ruined my business, I told you. I decided to leave New York."

"That's a fucking lie," Blair said. "They spread their rumors all over town."

"G.G., will you sue?"

"I don't sue people. Blair please-"

"Tell them what happened, damn it!" Blair roared. He had G.G. on one side and me on the other and he was shoving us across the lobby. I almost laughed it was so ridiculous. The reporters were following like bugs around a porch bulb.

"The rumors about the salon started when they came looking for her," G.G. explained with obvious difficulty. "But by the time I sold the business we had things well in hand. I did get quite a price for the business, you know-"

"They ran you out of New York!" Blair said.

"And what were the rumors?"

"Did you know she was living with Jeremy Walker?"

"I knew they were friends and he was good to her and he was painting her pictures. Yes, I knew."

"Jeremy," Cynthia almost tripped me. "Did Belinda ever tell you Marty had been carrying on with her?"

"Look," I said, "the important thing is the exhibit opens tomorrow. That is exactly what Belinda and I both want, and I hope, wherever she is, she will hear about it. Her movie Final Score was stopped, but no one will stop me from showing the paintings I did of her."

We had reached the elevators. G.G. pushed me inside after Blair. Then G.G. blocked the reporters as the doors closed.

"Ah ha!" Blair roared. He stuck the cigar between his teeth and rubbed his hands together.

"You're saying too much!" G.G. said. "You're going overboard. You really are." Even as upset as he was, he kept his soft tone, and his face showed worry as much as anger.

"Yeah, that's what my aunt Margaret told me when I bought out her little œor com? n? snd rsn my ,qrsr sd w~?h Bor~n~k r/grit smack lh the middle of Vogue. Don't look pale, Walker. I'm going to crucify that Hollywood wop, that Gruesome Statistic, that Awful Fact." Reporters were waiting when the doors opened.

"You guys get out of here," Blair said, leading us past them, "or I call the front desk." He was puffing cigar smoke ahead of us like a little locomotive.

"Jeremy, is it true the family knew she was with you? That Bonnie came here herself?."

What? Had I heard that right? I turned, tried to focus on the reporter. That part of the story I'd told to no one, no one-except those closest to us, G.G. and Alex and Susan. But they would never have told.

The reporter was a young man in a windbreaker and jeans, nondescript, steno pad, ballpoint, portable tape recorder clipped to his belt. He was scrutinizing me, must have seen the blood rushing to my face.

"Is it true," he asked, "that you met with Bonnie at the Hyatt Regency right here in San Francisco?"

"Look, leave us alone, please," G.G. said politely. Blair was watching me intently.

"That true?" Blair asked.

"Listen to this!" the reporter said, as he stood between me and the door to the room. He was flipping through the steno pad. I noticed the little tape recorder was running. The red light was on.

We were ringed in by inquisitive faces, but I couldn't see them. Nothing registered.

"I have a statement right here from a limousine driver who says he drove Bonnie and Belinda to the vicinity of your house on September 10, that, after Belinda got out of the car, Bonnie waited three hours in front of your Seventeenth Street house before you came out, and then he picked you up at-"

"No comment!" I said. "Blair, have you got the key to this damned door?"

"Then she knew you were living with Belinda!"

"Bonnie knew where Belinda was!"

"Why the hell no comment!" Blair shouted. "Answer his questions, tell him. Did Bonnie know the whole time?"

"Did Bonnie know about the paintings?"

"Open the door, Blair," G.G. said. He grabbed the key out of Blair's hand and unlocked the door.

I went inside behind Blair. G.G. shut the door. He looked as exhausted as I felt. But Blair sprang into life immediately.

He tossed off the mink-lined raincoat, stomped his foot, and rubbed his hands together again, the cigar between his teeth.

"Ah ha, perfect! And you didn't tell me she came here. Who's side are you on, Rembrandt?"

"You keep this up, Blair," G.G. said, "and they'll sue you. They'll ruin you, the way you keep telling people that they ruined me!"

"They did ruin you, what the fuck are you talking about?"

"No, they didn't!" G.G. was clearly exasperated. The blood was dancing in his cheeks. But still he wouldn't raise his voice. "I'm here because I want to be. New York was over for me, Blair, I left because it was over. The worse part is, Belinda doesn't know that. She may think it's all her fault. But they'll go after you with their big guns if you don't stop."

"So let them try. My money's in Swiss francs. They'll never get a cent of it. I can sell furs from Luxembourg just as easy as from the Big Apple. I'm seventy-two. I got cancer. I'm a widower. What can they do to me?"

"You know you can't live anywhere but New York," G.G. said patiently, "and the cancer's been in remission for ten years. Slow down, Blair, for God's sakes."

"Look, G.G., the thing's out of control," I said. "If they nailed down that limousine driver-"

"You said it," Blair said at once. He picked up the phone, punched in a single digit, and demanded in a loud voice that the hall outside his room be cleared immediately.

Then he shot past me into the bathroom, looked in the shower, came back out. "Look under the bed, you strapping nitwit?' he said to G.G.

"There is no one under the bed," G.G. said. "You're dramatizing everything as usual."

"Am I?" Blair went down on all fours and lifted the spread. "OK, nobody!" he said. He stood up. "Now you tell me about this meeting with Bonnie. What did she know?"

"Blair, I don't want to fight their dirt with more dirt," I said. "I have said everything that needs to be said."

"What a character! Didn't anybody ever tell you all great painters are pricks? Look at Caravaggio, a real bastard! And what about Gauguin, a prick, I tell you, a first-class prick."

"Blair, you're talking so loud, they'll hear you in the hallway," G.G. said.

"I hope so!" he screamed at the door. "OK. Forget about Bonnie for the moment. What did you do with the letter Belinda wrote you, the whole story?" Blair demanded.

"It's in a bank vault in New Orleans. The key is in another vault."

"And the photographs you took?" Blair asked.

"Burned all of them. My lawyer kind of insisted on that." Excruciating, burning all those prints. And yet I had known all along the moment would come. If the police got the photographs, the press would get them, and everything would change with the photographs. The paintings were something else.

Blair considered. "You're sure you vaporized every one of them."

"Yes, what didn't burn went down the garbage disposer. Not even the FBI could get their hands on that."

G.G. gave a sad little laugh and shook his head. He'd helped me with the burning and grinding, and he'd hated it, too.

"Oh, don't be too cocky, sonny boy!" Blair shouted at him. "Didn't anybody ever tell you transporting a minor over the state lines for illegal purposes is a federal crime?"

"You are a madman, Blair," G.G. said calmly.

"No, I'm not. Listen, Rembrandt, I'm on your side. But you were wise to torch that stuff. Ever hear of Bonnie's brother, Daryl? He'll be on your tail in no time. And United Theatricals is already getting calls from the Moral Majority-"

"You know that for sure?" I asked.

"Marty himself told me!" he answered. "In between gypsy curses and gangster threats. All through the Bible Belt they're calling the affiliate stations. What's this bullshit, they're asking, about Bonnie letting her daughter run away from home? You go home and make sure there's nothing to connect you with her but art and that romantic slop you wrote in the exhibit catalog."

"I've already done all that. But I think G.G. is right. You're not being very personally careful."

"Oh, you're a sweetheart, you really are." He started pacing, hands in his pockets, the cigar between his teeth again. Then he whipped it out of his mouth. "But let me tell you something, I love that little girl. No, don't look at me like that, and don't say what's on the tip of your tongue. You think I hate Bonnie 'cause she snubbed me. You damned right, but hating her is like hating bad weather. I love that little girl. I watched her grow up. I held her when she was a baby. She's sweet and kind like her daddy, and she always was. None of that other bullshit ever touched her. And I'll tell you something else. There were times in my life when every single connection I had was bullshit, crap I'm talking, business, lies, major filth! And you know what I'd do? I'd get on the phone and call her. Yeah, Belinda. She was just a kid, but she was a person, a real person. At parties on Saint Esprit we would go off together, her and me, we'd ride her goddamn motorcycle. And we'd just talk to each other, her and me. She got screwed by those bums. And it was damned near inevitable. Somebody should have looked out for her!"

Blair took a long drag off his cigar, spewing all the smoke into the room, and then he sank down into a little chair by the window and put the heel of his silver tennis shoe up on the velvet seat in front of him. He was lost in his thoughts for a second.

I didn't say anything. The sadness came over me again, the sadness I'd felt so strongly back in the kitchen at the house and in the little cottage in Carmel. I missed her so much. I was so afraid for her. The exhibit was a triumph, that was the word the most cautious of men had used, a triumph, and where was she to share it with me? What the hell did all of this mean till she came home?

Blair was watching me through the cloud of smoke from his cigar.

"Now you gonna tell me what happened when Bonnie came up here?" he demanded. "You gonna give me all the dirt or not?"

There was a loud knock on the door suddenly. Then another knock and another, as if more than one person was out there.

"No, Jeremy," G.G. said, looking straight at me, "don't do it."

I looked into his eyes and I saw Belinda again. And I saw this overgrown sweet kid who meant just what he said.

The knocking got louder. Blair ignored it. He continued to stare at me.

"Blair, don't you see?" I asked. "We're past all that. I don't have to tell anybody anything else. And neither do you."

"G.G., open that fucking door, damn it!" Blair said.

The reporters, crowded into the corridor, were holding up the morning papers. They had the new editions of The World This Week in their hands, the early morning Los Angeles Times, and the New York tabloid News Bulletin.

"Have you see these stories?" Do you have any comment?"

NURSE TELLS ALL.

BONNIE, DAUGHTER, AND HUSBAND IN LOVE TRIANGLE.

KIDDIE PORN PAINTINGS OF BONNIE'S DAUGHTER.