Revision of Justice (16 page)

I drove away from Danny Romero’s place, looking with longing toward his lighted window but equally drawn by the freedom of escape.

Somewhere in between was an expanding sense of loneliness, that unmistakable craving for closeness with another human being that too many of us feed with fast-food sex as cold at the center as it is steamy on the surface. It’s not the occasional thrill of anonymous sex that kills the soul, any more than a Big Mac now and then guarantees a heart attack; it’s the addiction to it, as the callings of the heart grow fainter beneath the rising cries for the next quick sexual fix.

The opportunities were all around me, but I had no taste at the moment for hustlers, cruise bars, or pay-at-the-door sex clubs. I ended up back in Boy’s Town, eating dinner alone at Boy Meets Grill and washing it down with more wine than was good for me.

Five minutes after paying the check, I was standing outside Lawrence Teal’s apartment, convincing myself I was there to talk to him about Reza JaFari.

He opened the door wearing only shorts. A day’s worth of golden fuzz looked good on his pretty face, and his rosebud nipples pouted at me with pride, demanding attention.

“Hello, Lawrence.”

“Hello.”

His voice was as cold and hard as concrete in winter.

“I wanted to run a few questions by you, if it’s all right.”

“I think you should have called first.”

“You want me to go?”

He looked me over with eyes that were as hungry as mine, then stepped aside to let me pass.

The living room held only two pieces of furniture—identical, stiff-backed chairs, arranged to face each other from opposite sides of the hardwood floor. A single item of decoration leaned unframed against a bare white wall: a matted, life-size, black-and-white photograph of Teal stretched balletically at center stage, his sinewy body naked from the waist up and clad in dancer’s tights from the waist down, shot in the kind of moody, diffused light usually reserved for divas and prima donnas.

Behind me, I heard the door being shut, the dead bolt being turned, the chain lock being latched. The blinds were already drawn. I felt imprisoned with Teal, trapped by our mutual raw need, and with the feeling came a deeper stab of sexual desire.

He came around to face me, standing close enough for me to see a few tendrils of fine hair curling around each soft nipple.

“Wine?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“I only have red.”

“Red will do.”

I followed him to the kitchen, where he poured me a glass, and one for himself.

On the countertop between us lay the day’s mail, including an opened envelope bearing the return name and address of Lydia Lowe, the syndicated columnist. Lowe was well known inside the journalism trade as a closeted lesbian who had made a lucrative career writing about the personal lives of others while carefully concealing her own. She worked out of New York City, relying for much of her material on a string of West Coast confidants who kept their ears to the rumor mill. Her spies included the usual coterie of nervous butterflies who depended for self-importance on digging dish and trading gossip. A pair of tickets to a Broadway show poked at an angle from the ripped envelope.

“You’re chummy with Lydia Lowe?”

Teal’s eyes followed mine to the envelope.

“Never met the old dyke. Went to school with one of her assistants. I feed him tidbits once in a while. Sometimes they make it into the column.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“A trip to New York now and then. Theater passes. A bottle of good brandy at Christmas.”

He handed me a glass that looked stolen from a bar, filled with Chianti that smelled and tasted like cheap but decent Italian. Then he came around the corner, passing close enough for me to smell his pricey cologne.

“Is that why you dropped by, Justice? To chat about Lydia Lowe?”

“I’m more interested in Dylan Winchester and Reza JaFari.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“You told me they were lovers once. Almost ten years ago.”

“Frankly, Justice, I’m tired of the subject.”

“Do you think JaFari might have been blackmailing Winchester about their affair?”

“You’re determined to pin JaFari’s death on Dylan, aren’t you?”

He brushed past me into the living room, where he sat straight up in one of the hard-backed chairs. I turned the other chair around and straddled it, resting my arms on the wooden back.

“Is it possible that JaFari was using his leverage to make some kind of movie deal? Blackmailing Winchester into helping him get a film project going?”

“In this town? Anything’s possible.”

Teal’s voice was distant and clipped now, giving nothing away but his own self-absorption.

“You’re not helping me much, Teal.”

“I’m just an actor, Justice. We’re not smart like you writers.”

“You’re extremely smart and you know it. Maybe it’s the subject of Dylan Winchester that makes you suddenly turn dumb.”

Teal sipped from his glass, keeping his eyes on me, saying nothing.

“Shall I try another name, Lawrence?”

“If you want.”

“Roberta Brickman.”

“What about her?”

“How good an agent is she?”

“If she’s at ITA, she must be good.”

“Is she a lesbian?”

“Not that I’m aware of. But you never know.”

“How close is she to Christine Kapono?”

“I have no idea.”

“Anne-Judith Kemmerman?”

“Never met her.”

“But you know who she is.”

“I know that she was married to a big shot in the film business.”

“That’s it?”

He shrugged.

“You were a lot more talkative the other night, Teal.”

“I’m not used to surprise visits like this.”

“You like to give the stage directions.”

“That depends on who I’m with—or what mood I’m in.”

“What mood are you in now?”

His blond eyebrows arched with insinuation.

“Why don’t you find out, tough guy?”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Do you need it in writing?”

I set my glass on the floor, walked across the room, and stood in front of him. The heat between us was palpable.

I lifted his chin, feeling the soft bristle of his beard. Then I unbuckled, unbuttoned, and unzipped.

When I pulled down my briefs, my cock sprang up and smacked him in the face. He turned his head away as if he didn’t want it. I grabbed him by the ears and pulled him on like an old boot. He sucked me eagerly until I was seconds away from ejaculating. On the HIV risk scale, we’d ventured into the middle zone, sort of like cigarette smokers who keep their habits to half a pack a day, hoping they’ll beat the odds.

I drew away from Teal’s pliant mouth.

“You have condoms?”

“Of course.”

“Get one.”

He got up and went obediently into the bedroom. I stripped and followed. He was waiting for me on the edge of the bed, his shorts off, his long, narrow feet planted firmly on the bare wood floor. A condom and tube of K-Y lay beside him.

He inspected me up and down, all six hairy feet of me, and when his eyes came to rest on mine, they reflected equal measures of hatred and desire.

I shoved him back on the bed and tossed the condom onto his flat belly. He knew what that meant.

He unwrapped it and rolled it carefully down the entire shaft of my cock. He lathered me up and down with the lubricant, handed me the tube, fell back, and raised his legs.

His ass clenched predictably when I inserted my finger into his rectum, but the jelly was in and his expectant eyes told me he was ready. I hooked one of his legs atop each of my shoulders, mounted him, and pinned his wrists above his head.

I entered him slowly but all in one movement, pushing past his tightening sphincter, forcing him to accept me or take the pain. He opened up and I went all the way in until our bodies joined and our faces were so close we felt each other’s rapid breath.

He kept his eyes open, fixed on mine with undisguised contempt. But as I drew slowly out to begin a quickening series of strokes, he clamped his eyes shut and didn’t open them again for a long time. Finally, he let out a low moan that came from deep in his throat, the choked sound of a man who has given in to the brutal power of pleasure, and I knew that whatever we felt about each other no longer mattered.

I pumped in rhythm to his thrusts and cries until I felt an overpowering sensation building somewhere deep between my ass and belly, then rolling up volcanically through my balls and cock. Then I was exploding with a wail and a groan and Teal was reaching to find his own cock and pull on it until it erupted with gobs of white semen that fell like pearls across his smooth chest.

As I slowly withdrew, he didn’t give me the pleasure of hearing him cry out one last time, not even the usual small gasp as I pulled free. He remained still and silent, his eyes taken over again by what he really felt for me, and I for him.

“You do that well, Justice.”

“It’s nice when the critics approve.”

I cleaned up in the bathroom, soaping off at the sink, wondering what Teal could possibly do with all the pretty jars and bottles lined up like good little soldiers on a shelf beneath the mirror. When I went back out, he was standing naked in the living room, toweling off as he stared at the moody portrait of himself dancing.

I dressed as if he wasn’t there, thinking of a note in Templeton’s research file bearing a quote made famous by a late, straight, drug-addled producer named Don Simpson, of
Top Gun
fame:
I don’t make love, I fuck
.

I had little respect for heterosexual men who used women that way, which meant I didn’t have an awful lot of respect for myself. I was smart enough to know it, too weak to change.

I zipped up and started toward the door.

“Justice.”

I waited.

“A few minutes ago, you asked me about Anne-Judith Kem-merman.”

“You didn’t have much to tell me.”

“I saw her having dinner with Raymond Farr.”

“When?”

“Six, maybe eight weeks ago. At Jimmy’s in Beverly Hills. I was parking cars for a special party. They were at a window table around the side, very private.”

“What was the mood?”

“She seemed to be pleading with him, close to tears. Anne-Judith Kemmerman doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who would beg.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know her.”

“I’ve parked cars at a lot of Hollywood social functions. She’s at most of them. I’ve seen enough of her to know she’s not on the soft and weepy side.”

“But not that night at Jimmy’s.”

“Like I said, she was close to falling apart.”

“You think she and JaFari were lovers?”

“Raymond went both ways. Jimmy’s is a classy place—expensive. Not the kind of place Ray would be picking up the check.”

“I appreciate the information, Teal.”

The corners of his mouth raised with the contempt I’d seen minutes earlier in his eyes.

“I appreciate the way you use your dick.”

He turned his back, having deftly made a whore of me.

I walked over, reached around, and found his cock. It was soft again, but not small, like a giant curled up for a quick nap. I spit in my hand, then fondled him until it awoke and stretched; within seconds, it was standing tall, the swollen shaft filling my hand.

“Shall I go now, Lawrence?”

“Prick.”

His teeth were clenched; the word barely made its way out.

He kept his eyes fixed on the giant black-and-white image of himself while I worked his cock, tightening my fingers on the circumcised ridge until I felt his whole body go tense and shudder while he pumped out strings of semen. When there was nothing left, his body trembled one last time and went slack with relief.

I dropped his drooping dick the way a butcher tosses aside an inferior piece of meat.

“Next time I’ll be sure to call first.”

I left him there admiring his own frozen beauty while his semen widened into puddles on the polished floor, feeling sick in my soul for having needed him more than my self-respect, but also wildly alive.

Roberta Brickman was sitting at a distant corner table when I arrived at Hugo’s the next morning for a breakfast interview.

It was exactly half past eight, our appointed time. She was wearing a tailored gray business suit with burnished gold buttons, and was bent over an open script, holding a coffee. She looked tense and unhappy, much the way she had at the party Saturday night.

That she had agreed to meet with me at all was remarkable. Templeton had applied the pressure, convincing Brickman that a “no comment” from Reza JaFari’s one-time boss might appear awkward in an article revolving around the young screenwriter’s death.

Templeton had requested Hugo’s as the setting, based on her background research for the
Angel City
piece. The corner restaurant, which shared the same neighborhood as the new West Hollywood city hall, had long been a prime networking spot for youthful agents, rising producers, ambitious script readers, and hardworking development executives—“Dgirls,” in sexist Hollywood jargon, since most of the lower-paying development jobs were traditionally held by young women.

According to Templeton’s notes, some customers went there for Hugo’s two most popular dishes—Pasta alla Mamma and pumpkin pancakes—but most came to trade information on new scripts and writers that could later be cashed in for valuable career chips. Hugo’s support system was especially important to the bright, determined women who had become more visible in the industry in recent years but were still fighting for their place in the entrenched male hierarchy.

Dozens of them were here this morning, sitting in groups of two and three, leaning close, abuzz with conversation. Roberta Brickman looked up from her script as I approached and glanced at her watch as I sat down.

“Maybe you should order, Mr. Justice. I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Good morning, Roberta.”

She attempted a smile.

“Forgive my shortness. Good morning.”

Her frosted blond hair was swept back and pinned in a tight swirl that looked as forcefully drawn together as the painful lines of her otherwise pretty face.

I nodded toward the screenplay.

“An original about to be put on the auction block?”

“A rewrite, actually.” She closed the script and slipped it into a handsome attaché case sitting on the chair beside her. “To be more precise, a revision of a previous rewrite by another writer of an adaptation by yet another writer of a novel written by someone else entirely.”

She managed a poker face, but I detected a trace of humor in her voice, which made me feel there might be some hope for her after all.

“I’d think so many cooks would spoil the proverbial broth.”

“A major studio film is a huge enterprise, Mr. Justice. The stakes are very high. Tens of millions of dollars are on the line, as well as individual careers. At the same time, it’s a collaborative process involving dozens of creative and technical people. A lot can go wrong, and frequently does. That’s why so much effort goes into getting the script as right as possible to begin with.”

She sipped her coffee, then spoke precisely and forcefully, as if winding up a lecture.

“You can make a bad movie out of a good script, Mr. Justice. But you’ll never make a good movie out of a bad script.”

A waitress arrived while I was putting Brickman’s words down on paper. She ordered the vegetable omelette with fresh OJ. I opted for ham and eggs.

“And coffee, please. The sooner the better.”

I turned to a fresh page in my notebook and began the questions.

“At the party, you mentioned that JaFari had worked for you until recently. But I’m still unclear about your role as his agent.”

Brickman responded in a careful monotone.

“From time to time, I gave him advice about his screenwriting aspirations. Strictly on an informal basis.”

“You hadn’t actually tried to sell anything of his?”

“To my knowledge, Raymond had never written anything. At least nothing of which I was aware.”

“How did he come to be your assistant?”

“He started in the mailroom, as most of us have. I believe he got the job through Dylan Winchester. Apparently, they were…friends.”

The waitress set a cup in front of me and filled it with steaming coffee. I sipped and forged ahead.

“JaFari made the leap from the mailroom to working as your personal assistant?”

“I needed someone on short notice. He seemed bright enough and he was rather ambitious, which you have to be when the hours are long and the pay is low.”

“Why did he leave?”

“That’s a personal matter, Mr. Justice.” She quickly corrected herself. “That is, a
personnel
matter.”

She glanced at her watch again. “I have a meeting at ten. Perhaps we should stick to questions of the most pertinence to your article.”

“You’re a busy woman.”

“I’m a busy person, Mr. Justice. Most agents are. If they’re not, their clients should probably look elsewhere for representation.”

“Dylan Winchester also left ITA recently. Was his departure connected to JaFari’s?”

“I wouldn’t know. Winchester wasn’t my client.”

“You must have heard some scuttlebutt.”

“I don’t see what Winchester’s leaving ITA has to do with the article you’re writing with Miss Templeton.”

“You’re probably right. I seem to be getting off the track.”

The waitress served our breakfasts, warmed my coffee, and left us again. Brickman cut her meatless omelette neatly into sections and ate one without salting it.

“Next question, Mr. Justice?”

“Tell me what you can about Reza JaFari. His personality, his life.”

“Of course, I didn’t know him well.”

She reached for her glass of pulpy, fresh-squeezed orange juice.

“I was aware of him when he worked in the mailroom. I’d see him in the hallways. We chatted a few times, as people who work in the same building tend to do. Then the position in my office was posted, and he put in for it.”

“There must have been a lot of competition.”

“It’s considered a good entry level job, a place to learn the business.”

“What did you do before you became an agent, Roberta?”

She smiled pleasantly.

“I was another agent’s assistant.”

“So you knew what the job demanded.”

“Of course.”

“And Reza apparently met your qualifications.”

“Obviously, since I hired him.”

“You interviewed him personally?”

“Briefly, yes. I knew him as Raymond Farr, of course.”

“Looked at his résumé?”

“Naturally.”

“What was it about Reza that so impressed you?”

She hesitated, sipping her juice. She used up a few more seconds by raising her napkin to dab needlessly at her mouth.

“He’d been to film school, as I recall. Done some clerical work, which helps. He knew our computer system. And he could spell, which has become a rare quality among young people.”

“I don’t think he was that much younger than you, was he?”

“I got started in the business early.”

“And rose fast.”

“I work very hard, Mr. Justice. Generally, I begin my day with an eight o’clock breakfast meeting and end it with an appointment for drinks, dinner, or a screening. Weekends are spent catching up on my reading. Seventy-hour work weeks are not uncommon. Frequently they’re closer to eighty.”

“That doesn’t leave much time for a personal life.”

“In this business, one’s professional life is one’s personal life.”

“Doesn’t sound like much fun.”

She propped her elbows on the table and formed an arch with her fingers that held up a prim smile.

“I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job, Mr. Justice. But your questions seem to be wandering again.”

“I’ll get back to Reza JaFari, then.” I glanced at a list of questions I’d put in prioritized order the night before. “Did you see any hope that he might one day be a successful screenwriter?”

“Let’s just say he had a lot of work ahead of him before that might happen.”

“Could you be more specific? What steps did you recommend?”

“Screenwriting is a very special medium, Mr. Justice, quite unlike narrative prose writing. Reza had almost no grasp of the techniques, no sense of the craft. And his ideas were rather mundane, often sophomoric. One thing I did for him was to put him in touch with Leonardo Petrocelli. I believe you met him the other night at the party.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Leonardo had contacted me looking for representation. I checked his credits. He’d done some wonderful work in the sixties and seventies. Unfortunately—”

“He’s old.”

“He’s been out of the loop for quite a few years.”

“Euphemistically speaking.”

“I don’t want to see this in print, Mr. Justice.”

I laid my pen aside.

“This is a business of energy and new ideas. It’s driven by the youth market, because young people buy most of the movie tickets. Leonardo was a fine screenwriter in his prime. But he’s of another time, another era.”

“His sensibility is old-fashioned?”

“It may sound unfair, but there’s a certain vernacular and tone to writing that either appeals or doesn’t appeal to a new generation of moviegoers. Leonardo, as skilled a storyteller as he is, as worthy as his ideas are, works with material that is not readily salable in today’s marketplace. At least not in my opinion.”

“Couldn’t you have sent his work out and tested some other opinions?”

“I have only so much time in the day to pitch and sell and try to make deals. I use that precious time where I think it has the best chance of success.”

“Yet you worked with Reza JaFari.”

Her eyes flared with irritation.

“On an informal basis, Mr. Justice, as I’ve tried to make clear. I suggested he and Leonardo meet and consider working together. I felt that Reza’s youth and sense of the marketplace might enlighten Leo. And that Reza, in turn, might benefit from Leo’s maturity and sense of craftsmanship.”

“What came of it?”

“Unfortunately, Leo fell ill shortly after they met. Reza left the firm not long after that, and I’ve had no contact with him since.”

“You went looking for him the other night at the party.”

“I went to do some networking and have a drink. I heard Raymond was there and didn’t want to seem unsociable. So I asked around about him.”

“At the party, you said you had some old business to clear up.”

“Did I?”

“But you never found him?”

“No.”

“His death must have been very upsetting.”

“Of course.”

“You handled it awfully well, though.”

“Did I? I really don’t remember. That whole evening is something of a blur.

“Christine Kapono must have been a comfort.”

Tension hardened Brickman’s face.

“Christine is a good friend who’s been there when I needed her.”

“Have you needed her more than usual recently?”

Her voice sparked, along with her eyes.

“These questions are altogether improper.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Roberta.”

“I’m not upset. I’m just not interested in talking about myself, that’s all. I see no purpose in it.”

“Any last thoughts on RezaJaFari, then—since the two of you worked so closely together?”

“He was my assistant. It was a purely professional relationship, and it didn’t last long.”

I glanced back through my notebook until I found one of the quotes I’d written down.

“‘In this business, one’s professional life is one’s personal life.’ I believe those are your exact words, Roberta.”

She raised her hand, signaling for the check.

“I really must go, Mr. Justice. If you need to round out your picture of JaFari, perhaps you should talk to someone who knew him better than I.”

She handed her credit card to the waitress, and stood.

“Good luck with your article. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

She grabbed her attaché case and walked briskly to the front counter on stylish maroon pumps, waiting impatiently while the waitress processed her card. Then she disappeared out the front doors, fumbling with her pocketbook, dropping it, picking it up, hurrying on.

I checked my watch. It was five minutes past nine. The offices of ITA were no more than ten minutes away, on the eastern fringe of Beverly Hills. That left Brickman roughly forty-five minutes before her next meeting.

She wasn’t rushing to make the appointment; I was certain of that.

Roberta Brickman was in a hurry to get away from my troubling questions about Reza JaFari.