Sex and Violence in Hollywood (41 page)

Horowitz tore off a corner of the dressing packet with her teeth, plucked it off her tongue with finger- and thumb-tips. Squeezed the dressing onto her salad. “By the way, I was not serious earlier, when I insisted you prove your innocence.”

“I thought proving my innocence was your job.”

“No, it is the prosecution’s job to prove. It is my job to shed doubt on the prosecution’s case. I need prove nothing. But that is in the future. We should not get ahead of ourselves.” She crumbled two saltine crackers in their cellophane packet, then opened it and scattered the crumbs over her salad. “The tragic gunplay involved in your arrest will buy you a lot. But it will not save your neck. I will need more than that to save your neck.”

Adam said, “You don’t believe I’m innocent.” It was not a question.

Horowitz closed her eyes a moment, sighed. “We need to make something very clear. I told you the law was made up of opinions? Well, for the duration of this process, the only opinions that matter are everyone else’s. Ours are insignificant right now and we need to set them aside. It does not matter whether or not you like me, and it does not matter whether or not I believe you are innocent. For the purposes of our meeting here, I do not care if you have killed more people than Stalin. I am interested only in finding something about your case that will allow me to use the existing system to keep you off death row and out of prison. If I find that something and become your attorney, I will be paid handsomely. My exposure will go through the roof. I will be able to increase my legal and public-speaking fees, and my book advances will experience a sudden weight gain. Consider that the next time you wonder what I think.”

She took a bite of salad. Lettuce crunched between her teeth. “You are familiar with my work, yes?” she asked.

“I’ve seen you on television,” he said. “I haven’t exactly followed your career. I hardly ever watch Court TV.” He bit into half of the thick sandwich and hunger exploded in his stomach. The roast beef was tender and delicious.

“You know I successfully defended Stephen Allen Grange.”

Adam remembered the name. One of the early school shootings. Grange, a junior at a Wisconsin high school, had opened fire in the cafeteria at lunchtime with a 9mm automatic pistol, killing twelve and injuring at least twice that many. He had been held back a year and was nearly eighteen, so it was decided to try him as an adult. Luckily for Grange, his mother’s brother was one of the biggest, richest, most powerful producers in Hollywood. Uncle Bigshot had hired Rona Horowitz to defend his nephew. Adam remembered none of the details, except that Grange was found guilty but insane and put into a mental facility, where most likely he would spend the rest of his life. It was considered quite a victory for the defense, because Grange had avoided execution.

Adam had always assumed it was concern for his sister and nephew that had motivated the producer to pay for the boy’s defense, that he had hired Horowitz to keep his nephew off death row. After listening to Horowitz, he was not so sure. He remembered only one brief mention of the producer’s connection to the killer and the fact that he was paying the boy’s legal fees. It had been in an article in Premiere...or had it been Entertainment Weekly? Other than that, the producer had been left out of all the trial’s press coverage, which had been extensive, and no significant public association ever developed between him and the young mass murderer. Maybe his motives in hiring Horowitz had been self-serving after all.

Adam recalled some of her other clients—a rap singer charged with murder, a studio executive accused of drug dealing, a fading television star whose girlfriend’s suicide looked suspicious—but Grange had brought Horowitz the most attention. Adam imagined her fees and advances had tripled after that case. He wondered how much they would go up if she succeeded with him.

He did not respond until he had chewed up a couple bites of his sandwich. “Yes, I remember that. Why? Are you trying to impress me? I thought our opinions don’t count.”

“They do not, and I am not trying to impress you. Just trying to make a point. Grange was easy. He was not caught on videotape.”

Adam stopped chewing. “Videotape?” he asked around a mouthful of roast beef. “What videotape?”

She held up a small, cautioning hand. “Don’t panic. Chew your food. Just listen.”

A tall, slender, dark-haired man in his mid-twenties entered the room carrying a wooden tray. It held a brown pitcher of coffee, two mugs and spoons, packets of sugar, artificial sweetener, a small pitcher of cream. He placed the tray on the coffee table and stood. He wore a long-sleeve powder-blue shirt, a black-and-red tie, black pants. The shadow of oncoming whiskers darkened the lower half of his narrow, pale face. “Can I get you anything else?” he asked. He had a deep, rich voice, but spoke softly.

“That will be all for now, Lamont,” she said.

Lamont? Adam thought. Some parents are just plain evil.

As Lamont headed out of the office, Horowitz said, “There will be press. Shave, and carry a clean razor with you at all times, just in case. Until further notice.” When he was out of earshot, she shook her head with pity. “His facial hair grows faster than the federal deficit.”

She poured coffee into one robin’s-egg-blue mug, poised the pitcher over the other and looked at Adam. He nodded, she poured. Stirred some cream into her coffee, sipped it. “Now, listen. Two days after your father’s yacht exploded, the FBI raided a compound in the desert.”

Adam ducked his head to bite into the sandwich again. It was not hard to separate himself from what she was saying. He had already separated himself from everything. His feelings of guilt had shifted since Carter’s death. Diz’s house in the desert and Adam’s reason for going there now seemed distant and insignificant.

“This compound was the location of a great deal of ongoing criminal activity,” Horowitz continued. She put the folder on the coffee table and opened it, flipped a few pages aside. “Eighteen underage boys were found on the premises, all of whom were there to be sold as prostitutes, and/or photographed and/or videotaped while engaging in sexual acts with adults and/or other minors. Agents discovered large amounts of drugs, guns, ammunition, and explosives. The weapons and explosives ranged from the most common and inexpensive to the most sophisticated and destructive. It was quite an operation, run by a man and woman. Waldo Cunningham and Cecelia Noofer, although they have several identities. Working individually and together, they have criminal records that go back decades. They have been arrested before, and they will be arrested again. People like Waldo Cunningham and Cecelia Noofer are a penny a gross. The only thing to be accomplished by arresting them is to slow them down, maybe stop their activities for a little while. Normally, not a terribly significant collar. Except this time, child pornography was involved.”

After only four bites of her salad, she slid it aside. Produced another beige cigarette, this one from her pocket, and lit it with a tiny onyx lighter. Pulled an ashtray toward her over the tabletop. The smoke from her cigarette smelled like burning tires. “Child pornography is currently a very hot crime,” she continued. “The Internet has heightened awareness of it. It gets ratings, it sells papers, and politicians love to denounce it. It gets votes. The federal agents assigned to the case quickly established from business records taken from the desert compound that Mr. Cunningham and Miss Noofer had been doing business with some very famous people.”

Adam remembered Mr. C.’s warning: I go down, everybody goes down.

“There was no discretion used in keeping the books,” Horowitz said. “They were filled with the names of politicians, a couple televangelists, and many from the film, television, and music industries.” She inhaled a mouthful of smoke, blew it out.

“Do you expect me to be surprised?” Adam asked.

“There is more. Apparently, Mr. Cunningham did not like the looks of his situation after being arrested. His attorney informed the feds that Mr. Cunningham had important information regarding a recent prominent death that was not an accident.”

Adam thought he already knew everything she was going to tell him, but that caught him by surprise. Suddenly, the roast beef sandwich was not so delicious.

Horowitz held the cigarette over the ashtray, tapped it a couple times with her index finger. “Mr. Cunningham offered to share that information with the authorities in exchange for some serious leniency. Urgent meetings ensued. Some kind of deal was struck, but the specifics have not been released. They are irrelevant, anyway. The important thing is that Mr. Cunningham identified you and your friend Carter. He said you had hired his son Nathaniel, a/k/a Diz, to blow up your father’s yacht.”

How had Mr. Cunningham found out? Surely Diz would not have told him. Or would he? Perhaps they sat down each evening and discussed the day’s business. That seemed unlikely after what Diz had said about his dad. But how else would Mr. Cunningham have found out?

Adam felt a tremor in his legs. How was he going to lie his way through everything? With Carter around, he might be able to do it. Carter had been like a battery, Adam had drawn energy from him, strength. Without him, Adam felt lost.

“Mr. Cunningham had put a copy of the security camera tape on which you and Carter appear into a safe in case he needed it later,” Horowitz said. “He gave it to the feds once everyone had agreed on a deal. The tape shows you and Carter Brandis at the desert complex just two days before your father’s yacht blew up.”

He put the sandwich down, wiped his hands on a napkin, checked to see if they were shaking. Covering his closed mouth with a hand, he belched quietly. Sipped his black coffee. All the while, his mind ran frantically through the story he and Carter had agreed upon.

Horowitz leveled her gaze at him during a weighty pause. “I have not seen the tape, but it does exist. Your presence at the compound is not in question. Whether or not I represent you, Adam, depends on what you were doing there.”

Adam frowned, drank some more coffee. He was thinking of his story, and at the same time trying to understand Horowitz’s statement. “Why does it matter that much?” he asked.

“I do not take on a client unless I am reasonably confident about my chances of winning in court,” she replied. “This case looks very good. Your numbers in the polls are impressive. Except for this. Something like this, Adam, could tip the scale sharply. So I need to know before we go any further.”

Adam leaned forward, forearms on his denim thighs. “We went to see Carter’s friend Billy that day. Billy Rivers.”

“Carter’s friend? Not yours?”

“I’d met him before, but I didn’t really know him. Carter talked about him a lot.” Every time he spoke his friend’s name, something deep inside him twisted and hurt. “They made prosthetics, masks. You know, movie gore stuff. Carter knew Billy pretty well, really admired his work.” Adam stared at the sandwich on the coffee table. It looked ugly, sickening. “Billy got some of the materials he used from this guy named Diz.”

“Exactly what kind of materials?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know anything about that stuff. Whatever it was, Billy had to get some more and needed a ride, so we gave him one. I gave him one.”

“That was a long ride,” Horowitz said.

“A lot longer than I expected. It pissed me off, too. I didn’t say anything, though, because Carter liked Billy so much. I didn’t want to make trouble. But he’s such a Goddamned idiot. Billy, I mean. We got out there and I couldn’t believe it. Neither could Carter. We thought we were going to this guy’s house, but it was like some kind of...installation.”

“You had no idea what went on there?”

“We didn’t even know there was that much of a there there. I didn’t want to go inside, but Carter said if we didn’t, Billy might forget we were waiting for him. So we went inside.”

Adam told her about his encounters with Mr. and Mrs. C., about Diz. He told her everything but his true reason for going there.

“It sounds as if you like Diz,” Horowitz said.

“Yeah, he seemed like a pretty good guy. I felt bad about his...well, his whole life. I mean, I couldn’t believe what was going on there, or that those people were his parents. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I saw security cameras everywhere. It was bad enough just being there, but to be on those tapes...you know, tapes Mr. C. could look at anytime he wanted...that was creepy.”

Every word was true. Even there, perched on the lower lip of Rona Horowitz’s man- eating sofa, he shuddered at the thought of the place.

“How long were you there?” Horowitz asked.

“I don’t know. Probably not very long, but it felt like forever.”

“Less than an hour? Less than half an hour?”

He nodded. “Less than half an hour. Probably twenty minutes, no more.” Adam knew they were there longer, over an hour. But once Diz had taken them outside, they were out of range of the cameras, so there was no proof they had stayed longer than twenty minutes.

“Mr. Cunningham and his home video are why you were arrested this morning,” she said. “The Marina del Rey police were brought in, and they found Mr. Cunningham’s story convincing enough to charge you with murder and arrest you. And that, I am sorry to say, did not go as well as they had hoped, I’m sure. Have you heard from Diz since the day you met him?”

“No.”

“Not even by phone? E-mail, perhaps?”