Revision of Justice (31 page)

I wasn’t surprised to find my knapsack missing from behind the planter on Lawrence Teal’s front porch.

I rang the bell. When Teal failed to answer, I pounded on the door, then kicked it a few times, hard enough to rouse the dead. When that didn’t work, I left a note:

Teal—

Call me ASAP if you value our special friendship,

Justice

My next stop was the well-stocked Beverly Hills Public Library, where I spent some time looking for information on the Tokona tribe of Oklahoma and the New Mexican mountain village of Milagro.

When I’d learned what I needed to know, I walked three blocks from the city’s Art Deco civic center to the pretentious, post-modernist building that housed International Talent Associates. It was located on a leafy section of Maple Drive, rising five stories, with an exterior comprised of contrasting stone banding, dramatic gabled ends, enlarged and overscaled windows, and a courtyard fountain filled with coins and secret wishes that probably had more to do with wealth and power than art.

I entered a lobby bigger than any house I’d ever lived in. It featured a glass-roofed atrium and a David Hockney mural that covered much of the atrium’s four-story limestone wall. A security guard in a business suit sat behind a chest-high circular station at center stage. By the way he looked me over, I figured my battered face wasn’t too reassuring, and my chances of getting past him close to nil.

I told him I was there to see Roberta Brickman. He asked if I had an appointment. I told him I didn’t.

“Your name, sir?”

“Benjamin Justice.”

He was reaching for the phone when a rumbly voice next to me said, “It’s all right, Henry. I’ll take him up.”

I looked over to see a portly, middle-aged man in leather sandals, faded jeans, a Greek peasant shirt, and enough Indian jewelry around his neck and wrists to open a Grand Canyon curio shop. His head was shaved as smooth as a Fabergé egg, while a heavy, reddish-blond Fu Manchu mustache flowed into an equally thick goatee. Perched on his nose were rectangular, rose-colored granny glasses.

“Very well, Mr. Novitz.”

I followed Novitz to a bank of elevators and sneaked a glance at the directory while he punched the up button. Roberta Brickman was listed with a fourth-floor office.

The doors opened and we stepped in. He hit five and I hit four. The doors closed but the machinery was so smooth and silent it felt as if we were standing still.

“You could fucking die waiting to talk to an agent,” Novitz said. “They take two weeks just to get back to their mothers.”

I assumed I was talking to the famous Jake Novitz, whose name had come up during my discussions with Templeton and Harry about the big-bucks screenwriting trade.

“You must be a writer,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“Those clothes.” He laughed as he said it. “And the fresh notebook. Pitch meeting?”

I nodded. The doors opened.

“Don’t let ’em kill your spirit,” Novitz said. “You gotta write nine crappy ones for ’em so you can make one good one. Never forget that they’re just a bunch of salesmen who happen to drive nice cars.”

He laughed again as the doors closed between us.

I found Roberta Brickman’s office near the end of a corridor that seemed to run a city block.

Inside the outer office, facing me from a marble-topped desk, was Christine Kapono.

She was dressed in sharp-looking business clothes and had accented her boyish face with small gold earrings and a touch of lip gloss, creating a conservative but attractive package.

Now all she needed was a smile.

“Hello, Christine.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Mr. Novitz brought me up.”

Her short laugh came with a hint of derision.

“
Jake
Novitz? I don’t think so.”

“I need a few minutes with Roberta.”

“She’s in a meeting.”

“I can wait.”

“It’s a long meeting.”

I stepped past Kapono’s desk toward the door behind her. She was up just as fast, putting herself between me and the door, looking about as movable as an Otero sculpture. I remembered what she’d done with her knee to Gordon Cantwell’s private parts, and decided not to push my luck.

Just then, the door opened. Roberta Brickman stood behind Kapono with a script open in her hand, writing on the title page with quick, resolute strokes.

“Another revision of a revision of a revision?”

When Brickman looked up, I saw a most unhappy face.

“I’ll call security,” Kapono said.

“Please.”

Kapono moved away from us to her desk. My eyes went back to her boss.

“Danny Romero was arrested last night on suspicion of murdering Reza JaFari.”

“Yes, I saw Lydia Lowe’s column.”

“You must be very relieved.”

“Why do you say that, Mr. Justice?”

“You and JaFari were quite close at one time. Now they have a prime suspect in his murder.”

“He worked for me briefly, that’s all. I already told you that.”

“It was a lie then and it’s a lie now.” I hadn’t seen too many women wound tighter than Roberta Brickman, but my words managed to twist her coils one more revolution.

“You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

“Do I have to spell it out, Roberta?”

I took her silence as a yes.

“You were a workaholic, a slave to your job, lonely. Back and forth between your townhouse and your office, with appointments in between. Not much else going on. Reza was good-looking, available, more than willing. You slept with him. He infected you with HIV.”

I heard Kapono hang up the phone. The two women glanced at each other, looking fully united in their mutual loathing of me. It didn’t slow me down.

“You’re being treated at the AHF clinic at Cedars-Sinai. Probably because it guarantees total confidentiality.”

Brickman’s face paled; she began to hyperventilate. Kapono stepped to her side, regarding me with more fury than a man ever wants to see in a woman’s eyes.

“Why don’t we talk inside, Roberta? Privately.”

Brickman nodded stiffly.

“I’ll stay with you,” Kapono said.

“No. I’ll be all right. Hold my calls. And call off security.”

Brickman stepped back and I went in. She closed the door behind us and showed me to a black leather couch, taking a chair that faced it at an angle. Between us was a low table of solid gray marble that held an arrangement of pale lavender cymbidia, along with a copy of the
Sun
folded open to Lydia Lowe’s syndicated column.

“You’re very good at finding things out, aren’t you, Mr. Justice?”

“Better than some, I suppose.”

“Is it so necessary to hurt me like this?”

“I don’t like being lied to, Roberta.”

“I owe you nothing. Not even the truth.”

I stood up.

“Fine. I’ll work with what I have, then.”

I waited, watching her eyes flicker uneasily.

“Sit down. I’ll talk to you.”

I sat. She looked away toward a Jackson Pollock print with a design of controlled chaos that seemed well suited to her situation.

“You realize what happens to my career if this town learns I have HIV.”

“At one time, maybe. I’m not so sure about now. From what I hear, there are quite a few HIV-positive executives who are quite public about it, and continue to work successfully.”

“I’m not the noble type, Mr. Justice.”

“Maybe you’re just not ready yet.”

“Shouldn’t that be my decision?”

“Under ideal circumstances, yes.”

She got up and paced.

“Why am I so important to your story?”

“You had reason to wish Reza JaFari dead. As much reason as Danny Romero—more, the way I see it. And you deliberately misled me. Reporters take that as a sign of possible guilt.”

“Even those who lost their respectability years ago because of their own lies?”

“Even those.”

She stopped pacing, went to a big window, and looked out at the vast green expanse of the Los Angeles Country Club. Out on the course, wealthy golfers skitted between holes in little carts or swung their iron sticks as if everything in the world was just fine.

“Does every personal detail have to be included in your article?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“No reason. Other than I’ve got you in a bad position, and there’s no way you can win.”

“Is that what reporting is, Mr. Justice? Winning? Beating your subjects at a game of secrecy and disclosure?”

“Sometimes.”

Several miles to the northeast, smoke from the fire Templeton and Harry had rushed to cover could be seen billowing up in the hills between central Hollywood and the Los Feliz district on the city’s east side.

When Brickman spoke again, her voice was less guarded, less harsh.

“Perhaps there’s something to be gained from being more open with you.”

“You’d be surprised how liberating the truth can be.”

She took a moment to compose herself. Then she faced me.

“You’re right, I was lonely. The more lonely I got, the harder I worked. The harder I worked, the less time I had for myself. Despite some obvious rewards, it was a miserable way to live.”

“And then Raymond Farr appeared, applying to be your assistant.”

“He was an attractive man in many ways. There were other candidates who were better qualified, but he wasn’t so lacking that hiring him looked all that bad. I encouraged his writing aspirations, agreed to help him if I could. He seemed grateful, almost childlike.”

Her expression suddenly grew cold, almost grim.

“He had that ability to project what others wanted to see in him. I realize now how skilled he was at it.”

“I’ve heard that about him.”

“He moved from the mailroom to my office about six months ago. We started sleeping together a few weeks after that.”

“You assumed he was straight.”

“Why not? He’d come on to me from the first moment I met him, and he was very good in bed. He told me he was HIV-negative but I insisted we use condoms just the same. Then, one night—”

She began pacing again, growing agitated.

“This is very embarrassing, talking this way.”

“There’s not much I haven’t heard, Roberta. Or done myself, for that matter.”

“One night, Raymond was rather rough with me. We hadn’t lubricated properly. The condom broke.”

She laughed bitterly.

“I remember saying to myself afterward, ‘Thank God he’s HIV-negative.’ A week or two later, I got sick. Diarrhea, low-grade fever, a minor rash. Flulike symptoms, which I later learned flare up briefly after exposure to HIV. My doctor found nothing to explain it in the normal blood work. She asked me some rather personal questions. I mentioned the incident with the broken condom. She suggested I get tested.

“I thought it was ridiculous, since I felt fine after a few days. But I got tested anonymously, just in case, at one of the nonprofit clinics. The results came back negative. Of course, I was overjoyed.”

“Then you took a follow-up test.”

She stopped in the middle of the room, hugging her arms with her hands, her eyes working the ceiling.

“Three months later. The second test came back positive. It had taken that long for the virus to show up in my system. Seroconversion, I think they call it.”

“You must have been devastated.”

She was shaking.

“I knew it had to be Raymond. I hadn’t been with anyone else in more than a year.”

She came back to the chair and sat facing me, trying to steady herself.

“Yes, Mr. Justice, I’ve thought of killing him. Many, many times.” Her smile wasn’t pretty. “Apparently, someone else took care of it for me.”

“Someone who cares a great deal about you, Roberta? Someone who was already angry at the way certain men use and abuse women?”

“If you’re suggesting that Christine—”

“She’s very fond of you. And she was up at Cantwell’s house that evening, preparing for the party. She had all the opportunity in the world.”

“If it weren’t for Christine, Mr. Justice, I don’t know what I would have done. She got me to APLA for counseling. Helped me find a support group for HIV-positive women. Held my hand and let me cry on her shoulder when all I could think about was how I was going to kill myself. She’s still there for me when I have bad moments.”

“Some people who are infected are living ten, fifteen years, even longer without getting sick. With the new therapies, a few patients who tested positive have actually reverted to negative.”