My Lucky Star (42 page)

“You!” he said sourly to me. “What do you want?” Then he saw Gilbert and his brow crinkled in concern.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Bajour,” said Gilbert, speaking in his lowest register. His intent, I supposed, was to convey masculine
authority but it just made him sound like Bea Arthur. “Officer Hank Grimes, LAPD here. If you don’t mind I have a few questions
for you.”

“It’s not a good time,” said Rex as dismissively as an empress. “I have a show to tape.”

“I’m afraid I must insist,” said Gilbert. “We won’t take much of your time.”

Rex frowned and said we’d better not, as one did not keep Joanne Worley waiting.

“I think you should know, Mr. Bajour, that —”

“Wait!” said Rex, casting a wary sidelong glance. Following it, we saw that a potato-faced Russian crone, complete with babushka,
had emerged from the next unit and was watering her window box with unpersuasive nonchalance.

“Old bitch probably saw you from her window,” muttered Rex. “Now the whole building will hear about this!” He pivoted with
an annoyed flounce and disappeared into his apartment.

We followed him into the small, fusty flat, an experience unpleasantly akin to entering the very mind of its tenant. It was
airless and cluttered with heavy drapes that kept out all natural light. The furniture was upholstered in threadbare gold
velvet and every surface was cluttered with newspapers, kitschy mementos, and dirty dishes. Scores of framed photos featuring
Rex and the formerly acclaimed blanketed the cracked, water-damaged walls, which, if they could talk, would have screamed,
“Fame is fleeting! Save every penny!”

We seated ourselves on the sofa, prompting the plump ginger cat who’d been lolling there to rise, offended, and stalk off
to find something it hadn’t peed on yet.

“I think you should know,” said Gilbert, “that my brother the district attorney is thinking of fling charges against you.”

“Charges?!” yelped Rex. “What are you talking about? What sort of charges?”

Gilbert turned solemnly to me. “Is this the man you observed at Les Étoiles performing a sex act with the youth in question?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Are you positive? Take your time, Mr. Cavanaugh. This is a serious matter.”

“No, it’s him all right.”

“What youth?” said Rex, now thoroughly rattled. “I didn’t have sex with anyone at that spa! I had a shiatsu and a seaweed
wrap!”

“You can claim what you like, Mr. Bajour. We have our witness.”

“Okay, I fooled around with my masseur! But he was no kid! He was twenty-five if he was a day!”

Gilbert assured him he had irrefutable proof that the young man was even now three weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday.

“Well, he didn’t look it!” said Rex. “I didn’t ask to see his birth certificate!”

“And that,” said Gilbert gravely, “is where you made your mistake. I’d like to turn now to the contents of your broadcast
last night.”

“You saw my show?” he asked, and it says much about Rex that even in these circumstances he sounded pleased.

“Of course. We on the force seldom miss it. You displayed a small recorder and played a voice you purported to be that of
Stephen Donato. I’ll take that recorder now.”

“What?!”
shrieked Rex. “That’s private property! Very valuable property!”

“It’s key evidence in a criminal investigation. Produce it please.”

“Don’t you need a warrant or a subpoena or something?” asked Rex, drawing a patronizing smile from Gilbert.

“You obviously watch a lot of television, which is forever getting these points of procedure all wrong. You should know that
I have my brother’s full authority to arrest and book you should you fail to cooperate. If you’d rather sort this out at the
county jail —”

“No! I’m not going back there! I’ll get it!”

He skittered away and returned shortly with the recorder in his outstretched palm.

“Have you made any copies from this?” asked Gilbert, pocketing the device. Rex assured him he had not.

“I must advise you, Mr. Bajour, to make no further public statements on this matter. Your reckless remarks are hampering our
investigation by alerting the suspects, rendering them flight risks.” Rex, now perspiring heavily, vowed not to say another
word about it.

“I should warn you that my brother has only hesitated to charge you because he enjoys your program and would hate to put an
end to your piquant conversations with the beloved stars of yesteryear. Your continued cooperation will factor heavily in
his ultimate decision. Good day, Mr. Bajour.”

W
E GIGGLED ALL THE WAY
back to Los Feliz, giddy with triumph. Monty greeted us as conquering heroes, heaping praise on our boldness and cunning.
Curious to see how much audio Rex had captured, we rewound to the beginning and pressed play. We heard a slight hissing sound
followed by Rex’s high, petulant voice.

“Note on Brad Pitt—if he doesn’t return my calls by next week start show with ‘I just saw Brad Pitt’s new movie. That’s Pitt
as in PITIFUL!’ ” he added with a loud cackle. This was followed by several memos in a similar vein and a reminder to thank
Ruta Lee for the fudge. Finally we heard a series of low moans followed by Stephen saying, “Oh, man. That’s great. Yeah, just
like that.”

Rex had remembered his recorder toward the end of the first leg of Stephen’s sexual triathlon. At least he hadn’t captured
the verbal foreplay that preceded it with poor horny Stephen’s repeated petitions for cock. But he had captured the whole
Oscar scene as well as the arrivals of Gina, Diana, and Claire. The recording ended just after the ladies’ departure, when
Lily had returned home, forcing an abrupt end to the screening.

“Bravo, you young Lochinvars!” said Monty, clapping our shoulders. “But we must not ignore the sobering lesson this episode
has taught us. We’ve been far too lax in the security department. Henceforth I’ll share my prize with no one.”

“And you’ll hide it
really
well?”

“It will, I assure you, be harder to lay hands on than the queen’s pussy. Now where may I take you boys for our victory dinner?”

Gilbert suggested Vici since the crowd was starry, the food improving, and Billy could always be relied upon for a free round.
I phoned him and arranged a table, not letting on, of course, that I had just canceled his favorite show.

I
T WAS, UP TO A POINT
, a jolly little evening. Gilbert, still elated by his triumph, repeatedly rehashed the routing of Rex, convulsing Monty with
comic embellishments I was too happy to contradict. Monty in turn regaled us with stories of the gay Hollywood demimonde of
his youth, and with each drink his roster of purported conquests grew more dubiously impressive. The wine was superb and my
salmon with fried leeks beyond reproach. As we perused dessert menus in search of the one sweet our figure-conscious trio
could agree to share, an emotion crept over me so unfamiliar of late that it took me a moment to identify it as hope.

Was it possible, I wondered, that the worst was really behind us? It was certainly starting to look that way. The police were
proving no match for so wily an adversary as Moira. The Stephen rumors seemed more of a joke every day and the one pustule
who could prove them had been cowed into silence. True, Monty’s unyielding insistence that Stephen produce
Amelia
still posed troubling challenges, as the screenplay, in its present form, screamed “blackmail” to anyone who read it. But
the script, though ailing, was surely not inoperable, and once the town’s leading surgeons had worked their magic, it might
emerge as spry and refreshed as Lily herself after one of her periodic resurfacings. Perhaps when that happy day arrived I’d
blow some
Amelia
dollars on a vacation. It seemed the least I deserved for having braved so many tempests with such pluck and fortitude.

As I sat pondering the relative merits of Paris and St. Barts, I felt a hand land heavily on my shoulder. Gazing up, I saw
the mottled face of a Grimes brother peering down at me, though which I couldn’t say as the abrupt widening of my eyes had
caused a lens to slip.

“Well,” observed Rusty, “you boys look like you’re having fun.”

“We
were,
” sniffed Gilbert, who shares my knee-jerk impudence toward swaggering lawmen.

Blinking to right my lens, I examined Rusty’s face and did not like what I saw. I’d hoped that if I ever encountered him again
he’d be wearing the sour, thwarted look of a lawman whose leads are not panning out and whose case has reduced him to a diet
of bourbon and Maalox. But Rusty wasn’t scowling. His lips bloomed with the self-satisfied smile of a man about to cry, “Checkmate!”
or, in Rusty’s case, “King me!”

“Hi. Rusty Grimes,” he said, nodding to Gilbert and Monty.

“We gathered,” said Monty.

Rusty pulled up a chair.

“Champagne, huh? You guys must be celebrating something. Good day?”

“Yes,” replied Monty, “and in the interest of keeping it that way —”

“I won’t be long. I just stopped in ’cause I’m celebrating myself. I thought a twelve-year-old Macallan might go down pretty
nice.”

“Well, don’t keep him waiting,” said Gilbert.

Rusty just chuckled, another ominous sign.

“I can see you’re a sassy one. Kind of like this guy I met today.” He turned to Monty. “Friend of yours. Rex Bajour?”

“Oh?” said Monty.

“Don’t know him from Adam but he phones, all eager to see me. Says it’s about what he told my brother today at his place.
Now I know for a fact my brother didn’t see him today ’cause he’s in Palm Springs trying to track down one of Moira’s ‘masseurs.’
But this Rex, he says he didn’t tell my brother everything. He’ll tell me though if I promise not to press charges. I figure
what the heck and tell him to come on in.”

He paused here to savor our discomfort, then leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, clearly having a ball.

“Rex shows up and he’s this weird little guy who seems to think I’m some kinda fan of his. Keeps going on about Moira’s spa
and some black kid and how old he looked for his age. ’Course, by now it’s obvious he knows something and that he has—or had—some
kind of proof someone scared him into giving up. So I ask him to describe his talk with my ‘brother.’ And what do you know—my
‘brother’ didn’t visit Rex alone.” He turned his flinty smile on me. “He brought you.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I protested once the coughing ft had subsided. “I was nowhere near your brother today!”

“It wasn’t my brother. Just some guy who said he was. And you were with him.”

“Really, my good man,” tutted Monty. “A little rigor, please. If, as you say, Rex was gulled by a Grimes impersonator mightn’t
his accomplice merely have claimed to be Philip?”

Grimes pointed out that Rex actually
knew
me and would not have been fooled by a substitute.

“Nonsense. You forget this is Hollywood, a town awash in actors and skilled makeup artists. No criminal mastermind would have
the slightest trouble recruiting a skilled Cavanaugh impersonator.”

Rusty, not troubling to dignify this theory with a response, said he’d told Rex he had two brothers on the force. Could he
describe the one who’d questioned him? Turning now to Gilbert, he said Rex had described a slim, blond, blue-eyed man of about
thirty.

“Thirty!” said Gilbert indignantly, not much helping matters.

Rex had then described the confiscated sound track and the DVD from which he’d recorded it, not skimping on a single X-rated
detail. Rex said it had been screened for him by Monty, who was using it to compel Stephen to produce
Amelia Flies Again!

“So let’s see,” concluded Rusty, counting off the charges on his fingers, “we’ve got extortion, conspiracy, obstruction of
justice, and impersonating an officer....Do you fuckers have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”

“Now really,” said Monty with a condescending laugh. “I ask you, sir—when a ludicrous gnome like Rex Bajour romps into your
office spinning tales of megastars cavorting with gilded statuettes does no part of you pause to question the veracity of
your witness or his fantastic account? Would any jury the foreman of which was neither Dopey, Sneezy, nor Doc find him a credible
witness? No, to answer your question, we do not consider ourselves in any peril whatsoever. Not if Rex is all you’ve got.”

“He’s not all I’ve got.”

“You refer, I presume, to your other witness, Kenny the freelance proctologist?”

“Him too. But also the tape.”

“Tape?”

“Rex made a copy.”

It’s not easy to maintain an air of bland insouciance when you’ve just received a tomahawk to the forehead, but Monty kept
his cool, refusing to give Grimes the satisfaction of a gasp.

“You don’t say?”

“I do.” Rusty turned to Gilbert. “When he told you he had no copies he was lying. He felt real bad about that so he came clean.
I gave it a listen and it’s Stevie all right. Not to mention his wife and mom. You’re on there too, cupcake,” he said, patting
my cheek. “We’ll see what a jury thinks when they hear, ‘Oh, yeah, Oscar, fuck me. Fuck me harder.’ ”

“Dessert?” asked our blushing waitress.

“Not now,” said Monty. “Our friend’s reminiscing.”

Not even that could wipe the smirk off Grimes’s face.

“Toodle-oo, boys,” he said, jauntily rising. “We’ll be talkin’ again real soon. Oh, and Monty—I’m sorry if your place is a
little messed up when you get home tonight. I got a warrant and my guys are searching it right now, looking for that DVD.
So feel free to dawdle over dessert.”

His cell phone rang. He answered it and as he strutted away toward the bar his voice boomed with jubilant malice.

“Stevie, my man! Thanks for gettin’ back to me. You sittin’ down, sweetie?”

G
ILBERT AND
I
SLEPT
together that night though we did not, as you might suppose, seek comfort or oblivion in sex. It was now impossible for us
to contemplate let alone commit a sexual act without imagining what it would be like performing the same act in prison with
the three-hundred-pound skinheads to whom we’d find ourselves affianced.