Beware Beware (8 page)

Jamie gave me a limp smile, his lips barely holding their shape.

“Come in,” I said. “Want coffee?”

They declined, and I led them into Chaz's office where they sat across from me, separated by Chaz's messy desk.

I asked Daphne about her flight, and she talked freely, like she did over the phone. Jamie was silent and visibly nervous. White tabs peeled away from raw red around his cuticles, and he started biting at them before we even got started.

“So,” I said to him after a few minutes. “You're in some trouble, huh?”

He nodded. “You've got to help me. I didn't do anything.”

“Sure, man. I believe you, okay? That's the default. I believe you.”

“Thanks.”

Daphne put a hand on his knee, and he squeezed it like he was getting a tetanus shot.

I tapped a pen on Chaz's desk and uncapped it to take notes. “What do they have on you?”

“I was there, and they know it wasn't a suicide.”

“They know that, huh? How?”

He ran his free hand through his hair, twice, in quick succession. “There was no way he could've done it. He was on too many drugs.”

“Weren't you on the same drugs?”

He shook his head. “There was Rohypnol in his system. A lot of it.”

“You mean the date-rape drug?”

“Yeah, the roofie. But that's not its only use. It just has that bad association.”

“Educate me.”

He looked sideways at Daphne, who rolled her eyes gently. “It's a downer. You know, like a sedative. Have you ever tried coke?”

“No.”

Something like disappointment swirled around his eyes. I felt strangely inadequate, a vestigial twang from early adulthood, when drug abuse seemed edgy and cool.

“Well there's a reason people get addicted, but there are some bad side effects, too.” He gnawed on his lip. “Like you get real jumpy, and sometimes it comes with a bad crash that just makes you want to, I don't know, stab yourself in the chest.”

“Sounds delightful.”

“Yeah, well, there are things you can do about it. For example, Rohypnol shaves some of that down, and it feels good on its own, too, or just with alcohol. Actually, some people will take it with booze to get drunk faster. Especially around here. You know, less calories.”

“Can't be good for you.”

“No, and apparently Joe, he took some stupid amount. Enough to make sure he was knocked out cold.”

I rested my chin on the heel of my hand, piano-played my cheekbone. “So their theory is that someone—probably you—used Rohypnol to knock him out, then slashed his wrists open.”

“Yeah.”

“Does anything strike you as particularly idiotic in that theory?”

His eyes widened at me, clueless and hopeful. He looked like a teenager. “That I didn't do it?”

“No, not that. It makes sense that they'd suspect you. Look. I'm no expert, but isn't it pretty easy to overdose on cocaine? Especially if you're mixing it with Rohypnol and who knows what else?”

“Yeah, it happens.”

“And premature celebrity drug deaths are … well, they happen. More often than murders.”

“Yeah.”

Daphne leaned forward in her chair, perked up to catch every word.

“So, if you killed him,” I said, savoring the conclusion, “why on earth would you give him just enough drugs to knock him out, then slash his wrists instead of giving him a little bit more?”

He clapped his hands and stood up, the most energetic I'd seen him since we'd met. “You're right! I'd have to be a grade-A idiot.”

“The thing is, a lot of killers
are
idiots. So there's that.” I watched him deflate and sit back down on the sofa. “Do you know if they have anything else on you? Fingerprints on the weapon, anything like that?”

“I don't know. They haven't told me.”

Daphne chimed in. “I'll bet they don't. I mean they haven't arrested you yet.”

“Okay Jamie. I'm going to ask you some questions, and you have to be as honest with me as you can if I'm going to help you.”

“Sure,” he said, the small shreds of relief falling out of him like feathers from a slashed pillow.

“How would you describe your relationship with Joe?”

“He was my friend. Sort of. As much of a friend as an ultra-famous man twenty years older could be. He treated me like a sidekick. We'd smoke cigars together and he'd point out girls to me, make dirty comments about them and kind of nudge me like,
you know what I'm talking about
.”

“Sounds like a wonderful man.”

“He was an asshole,” Daphne said.

Jamie shot Daphne a look of hurt that made her bite her lip. “I know what he sounds like. But I'm trying to tell you something about him. He didn't like how old he was. It was weird, you know? Like he had kids and everything, he was forty-eight, I think, so edging up on fifty, but I guess because he was this heartthrob for so long he had trouble accepting that he wasn't a young man anymore. He had pictures of himself in his house, from when he was younger. I've seen him staring. And he didn't have that many good friends. You'd think he would've had more, but he didn't. And I think he wanted to be friends with me because I was the age he wished he still was, and he could act my age around me and I wouldn't really care.”

“So he was immature.”

“Yeah.”

“Not the paternal type.”

“No, not to me. He didn't even seem to want to mentor me, really. Just wanted to hang out.”

“Did you like that?”

“You have to understand this, Song.” He turned those eyes up at me, sad as a dog's. “I loved the man. He was a great friend.”

I nodded. I wanted to pat him on the shoulder. “How did you meet him?”

“Well I've been writing and producing for a few years, since college, basically. Freelance, you know? But I built up my resume a bit doing shorts, that kind of thing. I went to Cannes one year.” He smiled and his eyes grew dreamy, thinking of starlets and beach weather in the south of France. “And then one day I heard Joe Tilley was interviewing writers. Daphne knows his personal assistant, and she told me to apply. So I did.”

I turned to her. “Who's his personal assistant? Not Alex?”

“No,” she said. “We used to waitress together, back in the day.”

“So, Jamie. Listen. Where did Joe get his drugs?”

He looked nauseous, and Daphne shook her head at him.

“Okay, hey—I'm not here to get you in trouble for dealing. You just have to be honest with me. Were you Joe's drug dealer?”

He lifted his chin and his Adam's apple quivered as he swallowed, then nodded.

“How did that happen?”

“I kind of stumbled into it,” he said. “I was getting stuff for myself, and then Joe liked what I was getting, so I would buy for him, too, and then a few other people gave me money to buy, so eventually I was buying in large-ish quantities. My dealer started asking if I was reselling, so I kind of told him I was in with this Hollywood crowd.”

“Did you mention Tilley by name?”

His eyes fluttered, and he looked sheepish. “Yeah,” he said. “I might have mentioned that I worked for him.”

“So, what happened? They cut you in?'

“Yeah. My dealer put me in touch with his supplier, who talked to his boss, et cetera, et cetera. They figured out I could move top-grade shit to people who didn't mind spending money. So I became this low-level dealer, I guess.”

“Who's your dealer, Jamie? What's his name?”

“Well he's not my dealer anymore, but a guy named Drew. He's on the same level as me, though, now.”

“Your supplier, then. Who lives in that house in Encino?”

He blinked hard and gave me a dazed smile. “You followed me all the way out there, huh?”

I nodded. “It was my job.”

“No one lives there, I don't think. It doesn't look lived-in, anyway.”

“What is it, then?”

“Like an office, sort of. People meet there, leave shit there, do pick-ups and drop-offs. The only person I ever talked to there was my supplier. He's a guy called Tin Tin.”

“Like the cartoon character?”

“I don't know his real name.”

“Any other names I can follow up on? Nicknames, even?”

He started to shake his head, with a look of deep thought on his face. “The guy who wanted to bring me in, they call him Young King. I've never met him, though.”

“Jamie—did Daphne tell you that you were being followed?” I paused and added, “By someone else, I mean. Latino guy in a white Audi.”

“Yeah,” he said, lowering his voice. “She mentioned that.”

“Do you have any idea who he might be?”

“I wish I knew. I don't like it at all.”

“Does anyone in that whole drug ring have any reason to be unhappy with you?”

“Not that I know of, no.”

“Any reason to be unhappy with Tilley?”

“Oh,” he said, turning pale. “I don't think so. As far as I know, Joe never met any of them. He had me for that. But do you think—I mean, I don't know many people who could murder a guy.”

“But no reason to think any of these people would want to kill him.” I sighed. “So okay, you got Tilley drugs for the party Thursday night. Did you invite the crowd?”

“No,” he said. “I invited some of my friends, but I didn't know half the people there.”

“How many people were there anyway?”

“I don't know. A hundred? I have no idea.”

I shook my head. Not exactly a locked-room mystery. “Did Tilley have any enemies that you know of?”

He shrugged. “Probably. There were a lot of people who didn't like him. But I don't know of anyone who really
hated
him, you know? Who would want him dead so bad that they'd kill him?”

“Someone obviously did. We know he was murdered. Given that, do you have any educated guesses?”

He peeled at a white tag of skin on his lip. “See, that doesn't feel right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Speculating about people I know, wondering if they might be murderers.”

“I get where you're coming from,” I said. “But look, plenty of people are speculating. Plenty of people think it was you.”

He nodded and yanked the strip of skin from his lip. A drop of blood welled up in its place.

“Was there anyone at the party who might have wanted to hurt Tilley?” I continued.

He looked at the floor, and for a while I wondered if he'd even heard me. When he finally spoke it was in a guilty mumble. “His son was there,” he said.

“His son?”

“Theodore. From his first marriage.”

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-three? Twenty-four? Joe had him young. Married his high school sweetheart.”

“How romantic,” I said. “What was this kid doing at his dad's drug party? Was he invited?”

“Of course not. He found out about it. God knows how.”

“Wait. Let's back up for a minute. What kind of weirdo kid tries to crash his dad's parties?”

“They don't have what you'd call a normal father-son relationship.”

“Sure. Explain.”

“Well, for one thing, I don't think Theodore's really lived with Joe since he was six or seven, when his parents got divorced.”

I nodded. I was five when my dad died of liver cancer, and I knew a thing or two about father pangs.

“For another,” he continued, “Joe has been very famous for most of Theodore's life. So think of what that might have been like. He knew his dad was absent, and he guessed, kind of correctly, that he had almost no interest in him. He also knew what his dad was up to, thanks to the hard work of the paparazzi.”

“Did he not see him at all?”

“A few times a year. Pretty bad, considering. Theodore grew up in Calabasas and went to USC. I mean Joe traveled a lot, but still.”

“Theodore grew up resentful?”

“You could say that. It's not like I've talked to him about it.”

“Did Joe talk about his son?”

“Sometimes. When he was wasted, he'd talk about how guilty he felt.”

“He has other kids, too, doesn't he?”

“Yeah, two daughters with his second wife. They're much younger, though.”

“Do they have problems with him?”

“They're six and nine. I'm sure they'll have crazy issues in a few years, but my guess is that'll be because their dad was murdered, not because he abandoned them.”

“How long did his second marriage last?”

“Eight years? A decent while, in Hollywood time.”

“So for eight years, he lived with his new family with a neglected son twenty miles away.”

“Yup.”

“Do you know him?”

“Sort of. Not well. We've met a few times.”

“Including the night Tilley died.”

He nodded and pulled at his lip.

“What?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“You look like you have something else to say.”

He hesitated. “To be honest, I don't like the guy. I feel a little bad for him that his dad treated him like shit, but he sure never handled his lot with any grace. And Joe might not have been at his soccer games or whatever but he gave him everything anyone could possibly want, stuff and money-wise.”

“And?”

“He picked fights with Joe. It got ugly sometimes.”

“And that night?”

He shrugged. “I didn't see anything, but I know they talked, and they almost never talk without getting into something. That kid is pretty dramatic.”

“They argued, then? And hours later, Joe was murdered?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Did you tell this to the police?”

“No,” he said. “I don't like him, but I also wouldn't feel great accusing him of murdering his own dad.”