Belinda (59 page)

But burning just as brightly in the public imagination was the image of "Belinda, Teen Temptress," was the image of Belinda, victim, murdered by me.

The SFPD had given the press, as well as Marty Moreschi, everything it needed to put Belinda in an early grave dug by the "weirdo artist" in San Francisco.

IS BELINDA DEAD OR ALIVE? The late edition of the San Francisco Examiner had asked. The S.F. Police had indicated there was a "secret collection of hideous and horrible paintings" in my attic, works full of "insects and rodents and clearly the creation of a disturbed mind." The house was described as a "madman's playground." And aside from the photographs of The Artist Grieves for Belinda and Artist and Model, there were pictures of the items police had taken with them-the Holy Communion "paraphernalia" and the leather boots and whip.

On the Wednesday morning news, Marty broke down as he greeted reporters outside the offices of the LAPD, where he had been interrogated about Belinda:

"Bonnie is afraid she may never see her daughter alive again."

As for his sudden leave of absence from his two-million-a-year job as vice president in charge of television production at the studio, it had nothing to do with the cancellation of "Champagne Flight," which had in fact been announced the night before. On the contrary, he had asked for time off to devote himself completely to Bonnie.

"In the beginning we only wanted to find Belinda," he continued, "now we are afraid of what we will find out." Then he turned his back to the cameras and wept.

The press continued, however, to vilify all of us. Bonnie had abandoned her child. Marty was the suspected cause of it. The superstar of "Champagne Flight" had become the evil Queen from Snow White. No matter how often they tried to throw the spotlight on me, it always came back to them for another bow.

And though Dan kept insisting that the warrants for Belinda made it hard for the grand jury to indict me, I could see by the morning papers on Wednesday that something insidious was happening.

The two concepts of Belinda-criminal on the run and murder victim-were not at odds with each other. On the contrary, they were merging with each other, and the whole was gaining new strength.

Belinda was a bad girl who got killed for it. Belinda was a little sex queen who got exactly what she deserved.

Even a long dignified feature in the national edition of The New York Times took this approach. Child actress Belinda Blanchard, only daughter of superstar Bonnie and famous hairdresser G.G., may have earned her first real star billing in an erotic role that climaxed in her death. The LA Times made the same connection: Had the sensuous babymouthed beauty of Final Score seduced death as easily as she had seduced the audience at Cannes?

I was horrified as I watched the process. Dan was clearly more worried than he would admit. Even G.G. seemed crushed. But Alex was neither surprised nor upset.

He was keeping up his loyalty campaign valiantly, calling press people all over the nation to volunteer statements about our friendship, and he was pleased to be making his own news stories: aLEX CLEMENTINE STANDS BY OLD FRIEND in the LA papers, and CLEMENTINE DEFENDS WALKER in the Chronicle here.

But when he came for dinner Wednesday night-when he brought the dinner, in fact, of pasta and veal and other goodies-we finally sat down to talking, and he told me calmly that he was not surprised by the "bad girl gets it" angle at all.

He reminded me tactfully and gently of that discussion we'd had outside the Stanford Court so many months ago, in which he'd warned me that people were no more tolerant of scandal now than they had ever been.

"Got to be the right dirt in the right measure," he said again. "And I don't care how many teen sex flicks they crank out every day down there in Tinseltown, you're forty-five and you fucked a teenager and you won't say you're sorry, and your goddamn paintings are selling, that's what's making them mad. They've got to believe somebody's sorry, somebody's going to pay, so they just love the idea that she's dead."

"The hell with them," I said. "And I want to tell you something else, Clementine, all the votes aren't in yet."

"Jeremy, listen, you've got to take this more calmly is what I'm saying. This link between sex and death, well, hell, it's as American as apple pie. For years every movie they ever made about gay sex-or any kind of weird sex for that matter-always ended with suicide or somebody getting killed. Look at Lolita. Humbert Humbert shoots Quilty, then he and Lolita both end up dead. America makes you pay that way when you break the rules. It's a formula. The cop shows do it all the time."

"You wait, Alex," I interrupted. "When everything is said and done, we'll see who was right about sex and scandal and money and death!"

"Death, please stop talking about death," G.G. said. "She's all right and she'll get through."

"Yes," Dan agreed, "but how?"

Alex nodded. "Look what's going on out there," he said. "Those plainclothes fellas are questioning every teenage girl that passes the house. They're stopping them, demanding their identification. I saw them doing it when I came in. Can't you push those fellas back a bit? And I'll tell you something else I heard. United Theatricals said it's been getting crank calls from girls saying they're Belinda. My agent told me that this morning. Now how the hell would the secretaries down there know the real Belinda if she called?"

"What about Susan Jeremiah?" G.G. asked. "Anybody heard from her? Maybe Belinda can get through to her!"

Dan shook his head. "She's renting some house on Benedict Canyon Drive in LA, but the guy who answered the phone there this afternoon said she's still en route from Rome. She was supposed to land in New York this morning, then go on later to Chicago before she headed home."

"How about trying the number again?" I asked.

"Just did. Got the answering machine. The guy's out for dinner. I'll try him again later on."

Well, Susan was busy, and who could blame her?

Final Score had opened at noon at the Westwood in Los Angeles to sellout crowds. Posters of a bikini-clad Belinda on horseback were suddenly on sale all over Sunset Boulevard.

I wasn't even finished eating when my LA agent got through on the private line to tell that, if and when Belinda showed, she had a career waiting without even lifting her hand.

"You're kidding, Clair, you had the operator cut in on the line to tell me this!" I was furious.

"You bet, and it took me a fucking thirty minutes to persuade the phone company to do it. I had to convince the supervisor it was life or death. Does everybody in the continental U.S. have your number? Now listen, about Belinda, you tell her for me I'm getting calls two a minute on her. Have you seen that movie? Look, all I'm saying is, Jer, you find her, you marry her, and you give her my message, OK? I'll represent her, I can cut a million-dollar deal with her in two seconds with Century International Pictures. That is, if-well, if-"

"If what!"

"If she doesn't end up in jail!"

"Gotta go, Clair."

"Jeremy, don't be hasty. Ever hear of the concept of public pressure? 'Free Belinda and Jeremy, the San Francisco Two!" and all that."

"Put it on a bumper sticker, Clair. We might need it. You gotta point."

"Hey, you know your publishers are just sick, don't you? The bookstores are shipping back your books! Let me make a deal for that exhibit catalog, Jeremy, that's one of the hottest irons in the fire you've got."

"Goodbye, Clair. I love you. You're the most optimistic person I've spoken to all day." I hung up.

I was dying to tell Alex about all of that, that maybe both of us had been right in that old argument about sex, death, and money. But that would have been premature. Later, Clementine, I kept thinking. Because I know she's OK, and she's coming, I know she is, she's OK. And let them send back my books!

Meantime "Entertainment Tonight" was already on the air, announcing the permanent cancellation of "Champagne Flight." Marty Moreschi was again being questioned by the LAPD regarding his relationship with the missing teenager, Belinda Blanchard.

As for Jeremy Walker, the New York Museum of Modern Art had just announced it would make an offer to purchase Belinda in Brass Bed, a ten-by-twelve canvas divided into six panels. The board of directors of the museum would make no statement on the scandal surrounding the work.

As for "Saturday Morning Charlotte," the network was still denying rumors that it would cancel, though the program had lost its major sponsor, Crackerpot Cereal. "Millions of kids watch Charlotte," said the network spokesman, "who have never heard of Jeremy Walker." Charlotte now had a life independent of her creator, and they could not disappoint the millions who expect to see her every Saturday morning at the regular time of nine o'clock.

Rainbow Productions was also going ahead with its development of Jeremy Walker's Angelica, though children all through the Bible Belt were burning their copies of the Angelica books. Rainbow fully expected the storm to blow over. But there was some talk now of doing Angelica with live actors rather than as a cartoon film. "We think we might have a very eerie story here," said the vice president of Rainbow, "a sort of Secret Garden type of story about an adolescent girl living in an old house. We have bought a story and theme here as well as drawings, you realize."

And speaking of live actors, "Entertainment Tonight" was on the spot outside the Westwood to garner reactions to Final Score. The film was rated excellent by just about everybody. And Belinda?

"Charming."

"Just beautiful."

"You can kind of see what all the fuss is about."

"Soon audiences in the Big Apple will have their opportunity to view the controversial film," said a rather attractive female commentator. "Final Score opens tomorrow at New York's Cinema X."

"Good for Susan. Good for Belinda," I said.

Around eight thirty David Alexander arrived. He had been with the DA all afternoon.

"Look, they have nothing on you essentially," he assured me. "They found not one shred of evidence in this house that proved either sexual contact or foul play. Some blood on a sheet turned out to be menses. So she lived here. This they already knew. But the public pressure is mounting. The pressure from Daryl Blanchard is mounting.

"This is the deal they are offering as of now. If you will plead guilty to several lesser charges-unlawful sexual intercourse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor-they agree to send you to Chino for sixty days for psychological testing and then the public will be satisfied. We have a little room to negotiate on these charges, but frankly there is no guarantee as what the eventual sentence may be."

"I don't like it," Dan said. "Those psychologists are crazy! You draw a picture of her with a black crayon, they'll say the black crayon means death. They don't know anything about what they're doing. We may never be able to get you out."

"This is the alternative," David Alexander explained coldly. "They will convene the grand jury and ask for an indictment on charges of murder, and the grand jury will subpoena Belinda's letter. And when you refuse to turn this over, you will be arrested for contempt of court."

"I'd destroy the letter before I gave it over to anyone."

"Don't even think of that. The letter is crucial. If your little girl is never found alive-"

"Don't say it."

"Besides," Dan said, "you can't destroy the letter. The letter's in a vault in New Orleans, right? You can't leave California. You try and they'll bust you on the contributing thing, and they'll use the testimony of that cop you tied to when you brought Belinda home from Page Street that night."

"That is unfortunately true," Alexander said. "And then they'll pile on charges. They've got a sworn statement from your housekeeper in New Orleans that Belinda did sleep in your bed. And a former waiter at the Cafe Flore insists he saw you giving her wine to drink, though she was underage. Then there's the kiddie-porn law in connection with the sale of the catalog in local bookstores, the catalog, you follow me, not the paintings. Well! The list is endless. But the fact remains, and I can not emphasize this sufficiently, without Belinda to testify against you or without her body to conclusively prove murder, they have nothing major that will stick!"

"When do you have to give them an answer?" I asked.

"By noon tomorrow. They want you in custody by six P.M. But the pressure is mounting. They're getting national media attention. They have to act."

"Stall them," Dan said. "They won't make a move to arrest Jeremy without warning-"

"No. Our communication lines are good. Unless, of course, something changes dramatically."

"What the hell could change dramatically?" I asked.

"Well, they could find her body, of course."

I stared at him for a moment. "She is not dead," I said.

AT eleven a delivery man from Western Union was there again, this time with a dozen or more telegrams. I went through them hastily. There was one from Susan that had come from New York.

"TRYING LIKE CRAZY TO REACH YOU, WALKER. IMPORTANT NEWS. OPERATORS WON'T CUT IN. CALL THIS NUMBER IN LA. HEADED FOR FRISCO TOMORROW NIGHT. BE CAREFUL. SUSAN."

I went to the phone. It must have rung ten times before a sleepy Texas voice answered in Los Angeles.

"Yeah, man, she called from Kennedy a couple of hours ago. Says she's got good news for you, and it's getting better and better. And she also told me to tell you she tried every trick in the book to get through to you up there."

"But what news, what else did she say?"

"Be careful, man, she says your wire is undoubtedly tapped."

"I'll call from the phone booth in five minutes-"

"Not necessary. All I know is what I just said. She's going on to Chicago to set up Final Score. Then she'll be headed back here. She really tried to get through to you, man, and so did I."

"Listen, you give her these names and numbers," I said. "Blair Sackwell, Stanford Court Hotel, San Francisco, and G.G.-that's Belinda's father, George Gallagher-at the Clift. She can get through to them and they can bring the message to me."