Eats to Die For! (29 page)

Right then, I'm told, is when I passed out.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Remember those 1970s and 80s youth comedy films, like
Animal House
, that would always end with a segment under the credits telling you what would happen to the characters in the future?

Well here goes.

The story of what was in the beef at Burger Heaven became the biggest media circus since the O.J. trial, and Luisa Sandoval was smack in the middle of it. Hardly a day went by when she wasn't on television or in the newspapers talking about her involvement in it, and she has just signed a contract to write a book about the case, which has already been optioned to the movies.

We still see each other every now and then. A few weeks ago I picked her up to go to a movie, but before driving to the theatre I put a blindfold on her that I'd gotten at a magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard, one that allowed for complete vision, even though it didn't look like it.

She didn't know it was a trick, particularly since I managed to pull off a couple of near-misses with parked cars. We never made it to the movie, and instead pulled into the first motel we saw.

And for the record, I can now reveal that her hotly sought-after notes were on a flash drive sealed in a Baggie and hidden inside the ballcock of the toilet tank in her apartment—the same toilet in which I had flushed the bug found in her apartment.

So close, and yet so far.

When the police raided Windsor Studios it actually resulted in a standoff with Temple security, which the police won.

Among those arrested, I'm happy to say, were Dan, Arturo, and Marta. Inside, the authorities found enough of the secret lab intact to discover that the stuff that was being added to the Burger Heaven patties was indeed a new form of methamphetamine that was slightly more benign than the standard drug. That hardly mattered to the FDA, however, and every Burger Heaven restaurant was closed immediately, never to reopen.

I didn't feel all that bad for the employees who lost their jobs, because most of them weren't being paid anyway. Maybe this was what they needed to get right again.

What I do miss is the taste of those Twin Halos, even knowing that they were tainted.

Hannah, whose last name turned out to be Skaal, turned state's evidence and testified before a grand jury about what she knew regarding the Temple and its drug operation. She is also now working full time for Palmer Hanley as his assistant, chauffeur, and general protector.

Investigation into the fire at the Ali Baba Motel revealed that the dump's storeroom held several dozen party-sized packets of cocaine, with a combined street value of about three-million.

Antranig Bedekian had disappeared into the night, along with his wife, and remains at large. The motel itself is an abandoned, slightly charred wreck, into which several homeless people have moved.

Unfortunately, my good friends at the LAPD (who know of my involvement in the “mysterious” fire but have been instructed by the DA's office not to pursue it further) have dubbed the place the Beauchamp Arms. On the street, moving out of a cardboard box and into a room at the Ali Baba is known as “spending a day at the Beauchamp.”

At least they're pronouncing it right.

If there is a true victim to this story, it is Zareh Zarian.

His involvement with the Temple had begun when his cousin encouraged him to attend a meeting after a bad relationship break-up. Zarian subsequently joined the Temple and grew to trust his Theotologic masters to the point where during one of his sessions, he revealed a past incident that involved underaged girls, which nobody had known before.

From that moment on, Zarian was the Temple's property, and forced to do their bidding under the fear of having his secret their revealed to the authorities. Their bidding primarily consisted of his using his position as a newspaper editor to do everything he could to keep damaging stories about the Temple out of the press, which included Zarian's complicity in framing his own theatre critic, Jonathan Greene (who has since been exonerated and released from prison) by planting child porn on his computer.

Upon being contacted by Regina Fontaine, Zarian had assigned Luisa Sandoval to the story with the intent of killing whatever she discovered, which resulted in the killing of Regina Fontaine.

Here's the tragedy: unable to face both the public repudiation of his journalistic integrity and the revelation of his past peccadilloes, not to mention his complicity in the death of Regina and Avery Klemmer, Zareh Zarian hung himself with an electrical cord.

Louie Sandoval wept upon hearing the news.

Detective Hector Mendoza I'm happy to say is currently sitting in jail, awaiting trial on eighteen counts of murder. Not only was he a problem eradicator for the Temple, he did some freelance jobs as well. Remember that big music company exec who turned up dead last year? That was Hector's doing. A sign of the amount of trouble he's in can be gauged by the fact that no celebrity lawyer, the sort who would have defended Osama bin Laden for the publicity alone, has offered to touch his case.

While I'm of the opinion that Hector should get everything he deserves, and then some, Dane Colfax remains a bit shaken by the revelations about his former partner. From my standpoint his loyalty, while admirable, is a bit misplaced.

Incredibly, despite everything, the Temple of Theotologics is still in business, fighting back against the arrests, lawsuits, indictments, loss of tax-exempt status, and waves of bad publicity with a media blitz of their own.

It's hard to turn on a television for five minutes without seeing the rugged, smiling face of Vince Cranna telling everyone that it's all a misunderstanding, and that the Temple, while not perfect, is “adjusting” itself. It would be nice to report that the Temple will eventually be brought down like the walls of Jericho, but I know better.

You're sounding a little cynical, kid
, Bogie was telling me.

Yeah, well, maybe that's because, my contribution to bringing down the Temple of Theotologics earned me nothing that I could put in the bank. I was even out a laptop and a cell phone, though on the asset side I now had a dopey disguise kit with a beard that looked like a Davy Crockett hat stapled to my chin.

My real reward was having my bruised nose fully recover, having the DA's office clear me of any involvement with anything untoward, and seeing at least a few of the good guys win.

Chief among the good guys is Palmer Hanley, who is having the time of his very long life. He's been interviewed by everyone from Jimmy Fallon to some nine-year-old on a PBS edutainment show, and he's signed with ICM and is acting again. He's become the star he always hoped he would be, and he's loving every minute of it.

The legal team for the Temple is doing its best to paint him as a senile, lying, ungrateful old goat, but their arguments are facing nonstop objections in the court of public opinion. Whenever Hanley does exhibit a senior moment on camera (and interestingly, today's digital cameras like him far more than yesterday's film cameras), it becomes beloved and goes viral.

I was thinking about Palmer Hanley this very morning, when to my surprise, the door of my office opened up and he rolled in in his motorized wheelchair, which he doesn't really need, but loves anyway.

Hannah Skaal followed him in.

“Hey, Dave Beauchamp,” Hanley said, reaching out his gnarled hand for me to shake.

“How are you, sir? Hi, Hannah.”

“Hey,” she said, smiling.

“I couldn't be better, Dave,” the old man said, “really, I couldn't. Say, you think you could do something for me?”

“If there's ever anything I can do for you, you know that I will.”

“Are you familiar with the Hollywood Celebrity Show?”

I was. I called it the Hollywood Has-Been Show, but I wasn't about to refer to it as such to Hanley. It was a bi-yearly event in which the movie and TV stars from your childhood, no matter how old you are, collected together in a hotel ballroom to meet and greet fans and sign photos for twenty-five dollars a pop. I had gone to one years ago, and

despite the obvious attraction for a film buff I had come away depressed at seeing so many people who had been so large a part of my childhood virtually begging me to buy their signature so they could make the mortgage.

“Sure, I know about it,” I told him.

“Well, they want me to do the next one coming up, and that's fine with me, but I'd like you to come with me.”

“Well, I'm flattered, Palmer, but why?”

“'Cause Miranda Shawlee is also going to be there. Do you know Miranda?”

I knew she'd been a Universal starlet in the late 1940s and went on to a career in low-budget films and television through the 1970s. I didn't think she had done anything since.

“I've never met Miranda, but, yeah, I know who she is,” I answered.

“Never met her, huh. Well, you're lucky. I worked with her once and I said if the two of us ever got together again, someone was gonna die.”

Oh, how I wish he had not been so prophetic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Mallory is the author of the “Dave Beauchamp” and “Amelia Watson” mystery series and the horror novel
The Mural
, as well nine nonfiction books, 125 short stories, and some 600 magazine articles. A recognized film historian and occasional TV actor, he lives in the Los Angeles area.