Sex and Violence in Hollywood (45 page)

Horowitz’s prediction about the four late-night television talk show hosts pulling Adam out like a rubber chicken whenever they wanted a laugh had not quite come true. Not yet. So far, Adam’s name had been mentioned only twice, most memorably by Craig Kilborne, who admired Adam’s “cool and collected” Armani suit, “which appears to be the only clothing Adam Julian owns.” One night, he held a mock telethon to raise money to buy Adam Julian some new threads. Nothing the talk show hosts had said made Adam feel as if he were under attack. The frequency of the jokes dropped significantly in the second month. But Horowitz had promised him that would change.

“Maybe it won’t,” he had said.

“In that case,” Horowitz had replied, “you would be a rare exception to the rule, and so far, nothing about your case is exceptional.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that yours is a relatively straightforward case with no surprises.” She cocked her head and lifted a brow. “Unless there is something you have not told me.”

Adam’s television appearances were not nearly as frequent as Horowitz’s. She had appeared at least once on all the morning happy-talk shows, five times on Larry King Live, and Adam had lost track of how many appearances she had made on Rivera Live. He had been surprised to see her on The View, the morning talk show hosted by Barbara Walters and her giggling sleepover of female cohosts. Horowitz did not strike Adam as the coffee klatch type.

One evening, Horowitz had come to Adam’s room to go over some of the details of their story. They talked as she shuffled through a stack of folders and papers on the table. Horowitz often seemed capable of doing two separate things at the same time, like carrying on a conversation while reading through folders. But her multitasking had little endurance. As usual, she became preoccupied with something before her on the table, all talk forgotten for the moment.

Adam had stared at the television from his chair and channel-surfed as he waited for Horowitz to come back. Stopped on Larry King Live, where she had been a guest two nights before.

“What’s Larry King like?” Adam asked, not expecting a reply.

He did not get one.

“Did he hit on you? I’ve heard he hits on most of the women who come on his show. A lot of people think he’s a sleaze, but I really think the poor old dork honestly forgets he’s married. Did he fart a lot?” He flipped over to CNBC, where Geraldo Rivera was talking to Gloria Allred. “How about Geraldo? Does he primp a lot? I’ve always imagined him as a primper.”

A moment later, Horowitz lifted her head and said, “Pardon me, were you saying something?”

“What about Barbara Walters and her band of merry hens?” He laughed. “I bet you couldn’t get off that show fast enough.”

Horowitz frowned. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“The View. I was just wondering what they were like. You know, those talk show women. Are they like Stepford hosts? Do they giggle and yip like that all the time?”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure. Does Barbara Walters smell like mothballs?” He chuckled. “Do bronzed, oiled-up musclemen carry her everywhere on a canopied litter?”

Horowitz bowed her head as her shoulders bounced, and Adam realized she was laughing silently. When she spoke, there was no sign of it. “I do not know any of them. We hardly speak off camera. Sometimes they invite me to parties. Sometimes I go, sometimes I do not.”

“What about Larry King? What shade of gray is he in real life, anyway?”

“I am speaking of all of the talk show hosts. I did not know the ones who came before them, and I will not know those who come after. You probably know more about them than I. They are simply people whose jobs allow me to go on television to further my client’s cause.”

“Okay, if you say so,” Adam had said. He had continued channel surfing then. “But I bet Barbara Walters smells like mothballs.”

Furthering Adam’s cause was something Rona Horowitz did with amazing skill. He marveled at the transformation she underwent before the television cameras. In person, she was abrupt, rather chilly, not exactly uptight, but not someone to bring words like “relaxed” and “laid back” to mind. When she spoke in person, her words were clipped neatly around the edges and arranged perfectly, and even the most casual remark sounded like a prepared speech. She was angular, intense, sometimes distracted, always acutely alert. Television softened her, rounded her gently and made her quite pretty. Her voice was smooth and low, soothing, reassuring. She came across as a pleasant, intelligent, independent, confident woman, compassionate and fair, and devoted without reservation to her cause, which was Adam. When he watched Horowitz on television, he sometimes forgot he was the person she was talking about.

On Larry King Live, she said, “Adam first lost his mother in a swimming accident, then his father, stepmother, and stepsister in that awful explosion. And just days later, after all that pain, all that death, he watched helplessly as two uniformed officers of the Marina del Rey Police Department, Officer Stanley Pembroke and Officer Warren Buchwald, came through Adam’s friend’s house like stormtroopers and put two bullets through the brain of Carter Brandis, Adam’s best friend since childhood, who was armed with nothing more than a squirt gun. On top of all that, he is accused of murdering his family. I don’t know about you, Larry, but I’m not sure I could hold up under all that. But he is a strong young man, willing to cooperate fully and for as long as it takes, because he is innocent of these charges and because he believes in our judicial system.”

To Geraldo Rivera, she said, “I have no doubt that Adam Julian’s name will be cleared in court. You’re an attorney, Geraldo, and I’m sure you share my great respect for juries. Well, once the facts are laid out, I don’t think there’s a jury in the world that would convict him.”

On The View, she said, “Adam is just a boy who has lost his father...and has no mother to comfort him.” It drew a simultaneous “awww” from the five cohosts and brought Meredith Vieira to the verge of tears.

Whenever she appeared on a show that took calls from viewers, Horowitz planted callers. Adam had recognized Lamont’s voice on TalkBack Live: “If your client is innocent, then who really killed Michael Julian and his family?”

“That is a very good question, sir, and you aren’t the only person asking it, I assure you. My client would also like to know what happened to his family, whether it was murder or a freak accident, and I think he has a right to know. Until Officers Stanley Pembroke and Warren Buchwald came storming into his house to shoot Carter Brandis to death, Adam had been told by Officer Miguel Ruiz of the Marina del Rey Police Department that the explosion was an accident. But if the worst an officer of the Marina del Rey Police Department does to you is lie, I suppose you should consider yourself quite lucky.”

Adam shared the headlines with what comedian Lewis Black of The Daily Show called “Uncle Waldo’s All-You-Can-Eat Summer Camp for Wayward Boys and Guns-N-Drugs Emporium”. The raid on the desert compound was a blockbuster story by itself. It contained enough lurid sex, drugs, and guns for a dozen network miniseries and made-for-television movies. But its link to Adam, and the existence of Waldo Cunningham’s client list, which authorities refused to discuss with the press, sent the media into a frenzy.

Reporters spoke of it as if it were an actual slip of paper with names listed on it, locked away in a secret safe. It became the Holy Grail of the tabloid papers, and it seemed an unspoken conclusion that, sooner or later, someone with access to that safe would cave under a wad of money offered by some fat, oily, sweaty-palmed tabloid reporter, and those names would fly with the leaves on the wind.

In the meantime, speculation was rampant. Betting pools sprang up on the Internet, where suddenly Michael Jackson pedophilia jokes were resurrected to a new life and were becoming so elaborate as to take on plots, themes, and characters. Names of celebrities, politicians, and religious leaders were tossed around as possible clients of Cunningham’s in serious tones as well as in jest. Some were whispered, others laughed at out loud.

Six of the underage boys found in the compound had been reunited with their parents on Good Morning America, Today, Oprah, TalkBack Live, and The Rosie O’Donnell Show. One of them fled his parents outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza after their appearance on Today, disappeared in the crowd, and had not been seen since. Another sneaked out of his parents’ Chicago hotel suite late at night as they slept after appearing on Oprah that day. He, too, remained missing.

Two unofficial biographies of Michael Julian were in the works, one by a former lover, another by some pseudonymous hack who wrote half a dozen movie novelizations and breathless celebrity bios a year. A third, written by Michael’s first agent, already had been turned down by all the major houses. “Too bitter,” explained an anonymous publishing source to a reporter at the New York Post column “Page Six.”

The National Enquirer and other tabloids like Star magazine, the Globe, the New York Post, and even closet tabloids like the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Time interviewed a string of women who claimed to have been Michael’s lovers, one of whom said she had made love with him the day before his death, and another who claimed she once had heard Adam threaten Michael’s life.

One tabloid even brought up the death of Adam’s mother and implied, with all the subtlety of stampeding rhinos in Neiman-Marcus on Christmas Eve, that it might not have been an accident. The story had cut through Adam’s numb haze and punched him in the chest. The idea of his suspicions being proven correct—being validated, as Lamont might say—in front of the whole world almost, almost made Adam happy. But he lacked the emotional muscle to be happy.

Adam had lost weight since his arrest. “You look like someone the Donner Party threw back,” Lamont said one morning. “Start eating better or Rona will put a funnel in your mouth and force-feed you.”

Horowitz had begun to frighten him by the second week. She was irritating at first, sometimes infuriating, but he had expected that to pass. He’d expected her to become more of a real person who might have to break wind once in a while, or who got the occasional zit or cold sore. But that did not happen. Her facade had been impenetrable so far.

Several times, Adam had found it necessary to sit himself down and have a stern talk with himself, to tell himself that Horowitz could not read his mind or see into the future, that she was not some kind of malevolent all-knowing goddess from the pages of a dusty book of mythology.

Like God, Horowitz moved in mysterious ways. Much of the time, Adam had no idea what she was talking about, but she always ended up making sense. She was capable of making the most mind-bogglingly insightful observations, and often appeared to possess an intellect equal to that of Sherlock Holmes. But within the same minute, she could exhibit stunning absent-mindedness. When she looked at him, Adam felt she could see through him, into him, see his heart beating. Until her blue eyes narrowed a bit and twinkled with a smile that did not involve her mouth. Whenever she did that—and it was usually when he needed it most—she put Adam at ease, an immediate reaction which lasted much longer than the smile itself.

Dr. Locket, a trim dignified man in his fifties with the shiniest shoes Adam had ever seen, took blood and urine samples every few weeks. Sometimes he adjusted Adam’s dosage, or replaced one medication with another. The pills kept Adam stable, but it was a false stability. Enough for him to maintain control of his hostility, but not enough for him to feel confident about that control.

His therapist. Dr. Remini, who looked like a dressed-up Betty Crocker, met with him three times a week for a sample of his neuroses. More than anything else, they talked about movies, so it was not unenjoyable. She was a lover of old movies and they shared several favorites. But it seemed to Adam they should be talking about more important things. When he said as much. Dr. Remini said, “Everything you say is important, Adam. You should always remember that.”

“I mean, shouldn’t we be talking about me, or something?” he had asked.

“We’re always talking about you.”

* * *

Adam stepped out of the bedroom fully dressed about twenty-five minutes later, and Horowitz offered her unsolicited critique of his economy with time. The suite’s living room was rich with the smell of bacon, eggs, and coffee, and the news was on television. He heard his name mentioned and stepped in front of the set, but the picture winked out. He turned around to see Horowitz putting the remote on the coffee table, striking in a black and white suit with a ’40s flavor, and a sparkling diamond-and-onyx salamander brooch on the left lapel.

“Help yourself,” she said, and went to the table, sat down to her breakfast, which she had already started.

Lamont was already at the table. His suit coat was on the back of the chair and the sleeves of his canary-yellow shirt were rolled almost to his elbows. He ate as he read a newspaper from a stack of papers on the floor beside his chair.

The comforting breakfast smells were marred by the ugly stink of Horowitz’s cigarette, which smouldered in an ashtray beside her plate. “I knocked,” she said, looking over some papers scattered around her breakfast. “But you did not—” She lifted her head suddenly, looked around. “Where is my fork?”

“Did you take it into the bathroom with you?” Lamont asked.

Horowitz went to the bathroom and returned with her fork. Sat down again. “But you did not answer.”