Spider Season (13 page)

“I’m sorry, Jason. I simply don’t remember you. Why don’t we leave it at that, shall we?”

But my softer tone seemed only to spur his hope.

“I went to all your wrestling matches,” he said, growing excited. “Afterward, I’d wait outside the locker room until you came out, just to tell you how much I admired you.” Again, chameleon-like, he changed his tone, growing bitter. “But you’d walk right past me as if you didn’t notice me. I’d hear you and your jock buddies laughing. I knew you were laughing at me, but I didn’t care. I loved you, anyway, even though you were unbelievably cruel.”

“You can’t love someone you don’t know, Jason.”

“What would you know about love? Your boy toy, Jacques, the disco queen who got the disease he deserved? You call that love?”

No one had ever spoken that way to me about Jacques, not to my face. I smacked Holt hard across the cheek with my open palm, nearly knocking him down. For a moment, it occurred to me that he might go for the machete, even use it. Instead, he placed a hand over his reddening face, narrowed his eyes, and squeezed out his words slowly.

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you, Benjamin?”

His hand lingered on his face, as if he savored the sting I’d delivered, happy just to have me touch him. The fingers of his other hand strayed self-adoringly to one of his pouting nipples, in a fondling gesture that repulsed me. He turned his head slightly, lifting his chin, as if to show me his good side.

“Even now,” he went on, “you still can’t admit that you were enchanted with me, and probably still are.”

I shuddered volubly.

“Can you really afford to be so picky, Benjamin? Not many quality men like me care to hook up with HIV positives.”

“I’m going now, Jason. I’m warning you, the hate mail needs to stop.”

I turned, crossed the barren lawn, and retraced my steps along the overgrown path, ducking to avoid cobwebs. I could hear Holt’s footsteps behind me and instinctively glanced back, thinking of the machete.

“Be careful,” he said. “The webs are everywhere. There are spiders all over this property. I’ve always been fascinated by them, you know. In college, they were my special field of study.”

I didn’t answer him, just kept walking to the street. Holt followed, chatting amiably as I climbed into the Mustang.

“I suppose you could call me if you’d like,” he said. “I’ve kept the same number all these years, only the area code now is three-two-three. Or perhaps I’ll call you. We could do lunch. My treat.”

I drove away without another word, realizing he’d never asked for my phone number. Probably because he already knew it, like so much else about me.

FOURTEEN

I returned to find Fred sitting alone on the back patio, watching the doves. Maurice was out shopping for groceries, so I pulled up a chair to keep Fred company for a while.

He was shirtless in the July heat, dressed in a pair of old sweatpants that were baggy on him now. I was reminded how much his once beefy arms and chest had shrunk and sagged, how flaccid the muscles had become, how the physical man he’d been was disappearing before our eyes day by day.

Fred rarely talked much, but that afternoon he was thoughtful and reflective. He spoke of all the doves he and Maurice had watched come into the world and then leave the nest over the years. He wondered if the birds we’d seen returning to the same nesting spot year after year were descended from the original pair decades ago, if that was how their instinct worked, the ritual and location imprinted into their DNA.

“I’d like to think they’re all related,” he said, scratching the white stubble on his jowl. “We’ve enjoyed having them, Maurice and me. Some people don’t like ’em, I guess. They can make a mess. Hell, that’s what hoses are for.”

“You and Maurice never kept birds yourself, though.”

He looked at me with something like reproach. “Cage a bird? Clip its wings?” He shook his head with disgust. “Never did understand how anyone could do that. Birds were meant to fly, not be kept captive in a damn cage for someone’s amusement.”

He was seized by a coughing fit that left him worn-out and in pain. I went into the house and came back with a glass of water.

“Getting old sucks,” he said, and took a few sips.

I sat down again and we watched the doves in silence. Up on the wire, the father flapped his wings while the two chicks, now half-grown, perched awkwardly on the edge of the nest, mimicking his movements. Fred finally dozed off, wheezing audibly. He was still napping when Maurice returned and quietly took my place.

As I climbed the stairs, rising closer to the power line, the father dove flew off until I was inside and the screen door was closed behind me. Then he settled back on the wire and resumed the lesson, preparing the two chicks for the moment when they’d attempt their first flight.

*   *   *

Maurice had made a new file for me, slugged the folder with Jason Holt’s name, and left it upstairs next to my computer. Inside the folder was the letter Holt had sent me eighteen years ago, along with the postcards I’d received in recent weeks. I scribbled a few notes from my conversation with Holt that included the names Silvio Galiano and Victoria Faith, added the notes to the folder, and switched on my PC.

I started with Galiano, using his name as my keyword in a Google search. A few dozen links turned up, mostly to Web sites and texts dealing with Hollywood history, which reaffirmed what Maurice had already told me, that Galiano had been a top interior designer in his day, numbering among his clients some of Hollywood’s most famous stars. Here and there, photos accompanied the texts, showing a slender, dapper, dark-haired man who grew thicker and grayer as he moved into his later years, without losing his debonair demeanor. I also found a number of news stories and obituaries mentioning his death from a fall at his Hollywood Hills home on April 14, 1997, when he was seventy-nine years old. Holt was mentioned in one piece as Galiano’s “companion,” in another as his “partner of eight years.” According to the news reports, Holt had returned home to find Galiano’s body on a rocky embankment sixty feet below the east-facing wall of the house, just off the patio. That would have been the low wall I’d peered over earlier that day, with its smoggy view across the L.A. basin. The accounts mentioned Galiano’s age and frail health, implying that he’d apparently fallen while he was alone and unsteady on his feet.

My next search keyed on Holt’s aunt, Victoria Faith. According to an entry in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, she was not quite the famous actress Holt had made her out to be, though she’d started out with promise. She’d been a starlet in the late thirties and early forties who’d had a few prominent roles in B movies before fading into near obscurity, like thousands of other talented actors who fail to capture the public’s fancy or land the key role that turns out to be the break they need. By the fifties she was taking small parts in television, something she continued to do with less frequency. Her career had something of a rebirth in the seventies, when she landed the prominent role on a daytime soap that Holt had mentioned, which probably accounted for her Wikipedia entry. In the late nineties, pushing eighty, she’d retired to the nonprofit Motion Picture & Television Country House in Woodland Hills. There was no mention of a husband or children, so I assumed she’d never married.

Finally, I turned to Jason Holt himself. He’d mentioned his work in movies, so I logged on to iActor, the online casting service of the Screen Actors Guild, where the union’s members were able to upload their head shots, résumés, and video and audio clips to create individual profiles. My search turned up a few other actors with the last name of Holt but none with the first name of Jason. Nor was he listed anywhere in the Internet movie database, IMDb.com. So I abandoned the computer and used the phone, calling SAG directly and asking for Holt’s credits. After a quick check, the woman on the line informed me that Jason Holt was no longer a SAG member. When I pressed for a lead on Holt’s agent, she became terse and a bit sharp, repeating what she’d just told me, and offering no further information.

I hung up, returned to the computer, Googled Holt’s name, and came up with numerous links. Quite a few were keyed to the obits on Silvio Galiano that I’d already seen, so I ignored those. But one link in particular drew my attention. Holt’s name was included in a partial excerpt from an article attributed to a blog known as DishtheDirt.com, something to do with a scam in which several people had fraudulently gained membership in SAG. I double-clicked on the link and it opened directly to an online investigative piece about the scam. According to the article, which seemed well sourced, a number of men and women had qualified for SAG membership by making brief appearances in movies produced or directed by relatives or friends—scenes that were never used. This allowed the imposters to claim film credits, maintain their SAG standing, and continue to enjoy the generous benefits that came with union membership. The most prominent of the poseurs was a venerable trade paper social columnist, but Holt’s name was also mentioned, which explained why SAG had expelled him. He apparently wasn’t the successful actor he pretended to be. Given his grossly inflated view of himself, I wasn’t all that surprised.

Impressed by the reporting in the article, I hit the link for the home page to learn more about DishtheDirt.com. To my disappointment, it opened to a flashy page overloaded with advertising pop-ups and various headlines promising all kinds of sordid and sensational stories, most of them connected to Hollywood celebrities. As I scrolled down through the graphics, I found a few noncelebrity pieces in the mix, all of them featuring heavy doses of sex, drugs, or violence.

I was about to sign off when I came to a video frame slugged “Shocking Video of the Day” that stopped me cold. I saw my own image on the screen—a freeze-frame from the video a passerby had shot of my altercation with Lance, presumably the same one that had been sent to Detective Haukness. Underneath the image was a brief text.

Benjamin Justice, a disgraced journalist with a new book (
Deep Background
) out about the scandal that ruined him, kicks the crap out of a skinhead in West Hollywood. Exclusive footage from a DishtheDirt.com member, captured with a cell phone. Double-click on the controller button to see this real-life bloodbath from start to finish!

I double-clicked and the video started running. It was on the grainy side, but the identity of the two combatants was unmistakable. I watched Lance reach up to touch my face, then my reaction as I slipped a single leg, held him airborne for a moment, and threw him to the ground. I was like a wild animal, ferocious, out of control. Watching myself like that was like watching another person, a person I didn’t want to be. If this was the same video Haukness had mentioned, and it apparently was, I understood why the Sheriff’s Department was considering assault charges against me.

I glanced at the posting date: The video had gone up on the blog the previous hour, during the time it had taken me to drive home from Holt’s place, which explained why I’d heard nothing about it. I knew how the Internet worked: When the video’s time was up on the home page, it would remain in the Web site’s archives, virtually forever, uploaded, downloaded, and replayed by other media and countless Internet visitors, replicated like metastasizing cancer cells.

I was watching it a second time when the phone rang. It was Judith Zeitler, reminding me that I had two bookstore readings over the weekend and a final interview with Cathryn Conroy after that. Judith asked me what I was doing and I told her. Within seconds she was connected to DishtheDirt.com on her laptop, shrieking ecstatically as she viewed the video.

“Benjamin, this is awesome! Why didn’t you tell me about this when it first happened? I could have gotten you on the evening news! You captured a dangerous criminal single-handed!”

“If this is news, Judith, then we’re all in trouble.”

“If it bleeds, it leads. Do you know how many hits DishtheDirt.com gets each day?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, neither do I. But it’s a lot, I can tell you that. By the time the rest of the cybermafia picks this up, millions of people are going to see it. Do you know what this could do for your book sales?”

“I doubt that many people who log on to these sites are interested in reading a memoir by a repentant journalist.”

“Who cares if they read it, as long as they buy it?”

“Judith, you’re making me seriously depressed.”

“If I’m going to get you a major publicity break, Benjamin, you’re going to have to work with me.” In the background, I could hear her hitting keys. “I’m e-mailing the producer at
Jerry Rivers Live
as we speak. Jerry loves to build an interview around video, especially if it’s violent.”

“If it’s all the same, Judith, I’d rather not—”

“What’s the story on the skinhead you beat up? I see tattoos. This is good. He’s probably a gang member, right?”

“Actually, he’s an ex-Marine. An Iraq war veteran.”

“That’s even better! Soldiers are so in right now. Do you think you can get him for the show?”

“Frankly, if I never see him again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Maybe we can find him through the police department.”

“I’m going to hang up now, Judith, before I become physically ill.”

“Call me when you get hold of him, will you? Tell him he’ll get a free trip to New York out of it, and two nights in a nice hotel. Or else we can put him on the phone, and do a live video feed from here.”

“Good-bye, Judith.”

I hung up and logged off, unable to watch the video again. Maybe it would account for a few sales, I thought. But at what cost to my privacy and peace of mind?

I was beginning to question whether getting my memoir published was worth the trouble. What’s that old saying? Let sleeping dogs lie. With the publication of
Deep Background,
it seemed, I’d stirred up a whole pack of snarling dogs, and I wondered what it would take to get the hellhounds off my heels.

FIFTEEN

As the days passed, one of the baby doves worked up enough courage to perch on the edge of the nest, while its sibling huddled behind, barely visible. The two adult birds were nowhere in sight, which was all part of the plan. Fred, Maurice, and I watched from the patio as we so often had in past years, Maurice serving as the cheerleader.