Sex and Violence in Hollywood (49 page)

Until they saw Adam. The noise level dropped gradually as heads turned and eyes lifted toward him. The room did not fall silent, but all the chattering voices lowered except one. A boisterous female voice: “—guy said, ‘Well, if I put it in any deeper, your mother will, too!’” She blatted loud laughter at her own joke, then prattled on, oblivious to the shift of attention in the room. Adam recognized her as an actress, but could not recall her name. There was something else about her that danced on the periphery of his memory, but he was too humiliated at the moment to give it any thought. His face burned under the scrutiny of so many eyes. Alyssa squeezed his hand. He had forgotten for a moment that she was there and felt relieved.

Then the moment crumbled. Eyes turned away. Voices rose again. People talked and laughed, utensils clattered, and ice chimed in glasses.

Adam felt better once the four of them were seated at their squiggle. Horowitz sat across from him, Alyssa beside him. Most of the tables around them were occupied by celebrities of one kind or another.

No, make that other celebrities, Adam thought. I’m a fez-wearing, secret-handshaking member of the lodge now.

Wolfgang Puck came to the table to say hello to Horowitz. They were old friends. She introduced Adam and Alyssa. Puck shook Adam’s hand firmly and smiled. “You’re in good hands, my friend,” he said. “You see, I am always very good to Rona when she comes to my restaurants, so when people find out I really can’t cook, she will defend me.”

They all laughed, even Adam. But it was only a sound he made, nothing more.

After they ordered, Johnny Cochran came to the table. More laughing and smiling and handshaking, then he chatted with Horowitz for a bit. Adam listened to their conversation for a few seconds to see if Cochran would rhyme. He did not.

The loud actress Adam had noticed earlier was seated at the next table over, facing him, still being shrill. He watched her over Horowitz’s shoulder. A spiky-haired brunette in her mid-twenties. He had seen her before, a relatively new actress who had gotten a lot of attention for her “fierce beauty and whiskey voice,” according to Premiere magazine. And for her frequent nude scenes in second- and third-rate movies. It was also said around town that she gave spectacular head and rim jobs. Recently, while channel-surfing, Adam had caught her undressing in a women’s-prison/martial-arts movie. But something else was familiar about her. He could not pinpoint it.

Jack Nicholson came to the table during their meal and greeted everyone.

Alyssa raved about the food, but Adam could taste nothing. He gave some of his barbecued salmon to Alyssa so it would appear he had eaten more than he had.

Someone at the loud actress’s table dropped a glass and it clattered against a plate. She guffawed and clapped her hands several times.

Adam wondered if she was drunk, messed up on drugs, or just having a good time with her friends. She had been in rehab last winter, he recalled. After going crazy and doing some damage on a set, where she punched her director in the face and broke a production assistant’s finger. But that was not what he was trying to remember about her.

Adam finished eating well before the others, with more than half his meal still on his plate. Tension had crept into his guts, squeezed soft tissues and caused them to cramp. He removed the napkin from his lap, tilted his head forward to dab his mouth. Put the napkin on the table beside his plate. Lifted his head and locked eyes with Melonie Sands, the loud actress whose name he could not remember earlier, that was it, Melonie Sands. It was her name’s significance that had eluded him until that moment.

She was smiling, so Adam returned it, but reluctantly.

Melonie was one of the women Adam had been hearing about who claimed to have been his dad’s lover at one time or another. Wasn’t she? There had been so many. He leaned toward Horowitz. “That woman at the table behind you,” he said, “Melonie Sands. Isn’t she the woman who claims she heard me—”

Horowitz nodded. “Ignore her. And eat your salmon.” She pointed at his food with her fork. “I expect you to eat all of that, by the way, so return the napkin to your lap, please.”

Adam wanted to snap at her, but thought better of it. She had told him to be extremely conscious of everything about himself, from the expression on his face to the position of his feet. “You know that private little time of the day when you are sitting on your toilet moving your bowels and breaking wind and picking your nose, when you know that no one in the whole world can see you?” Horowitz had asked him a few weeks ago. “That is when they are watching you the closest, and do not forget it.”

Horowitz gave him a wink to remind him she was on his side. To tell him to have fun, relax. It made him smile and relax a little.

Melonie Sands continued to stare at Adam, but her smile was gone.

“Do you know her?” Alyssa asked.

“No, I don’t.” Adam put the napkin back on his lap and took another bite of salmon.

“Want some of my Cantonese duck?”

Adam shook his head.

Alyssa watched the actress for a moment. “I saw her in some made-for-cable titty movie.”

Adam nodded.

“What’s wrong with that chick, anyway?” Alyssa asked.

All of Melonie’s facial features seemed to have pulled in toward the center of her face. The “beauty” part of her “fierce beauty” was gone, leaving only a fierce, glaring face. And she was glaring directly into Adam’s eyes.

One of the women at Melonie’s table yelped like a kicked Chihuahua when Melonie stood clumsily and knocked her own chair over backward. She hurried around her table toward Adam, shouting, “You should be in prison, you son of a bitch! You daddy-killing son of a bitch!”

There were a couple muted screams. A woman from Melonie’s table shouted, “What the fuck’re you doing, Mel?”

Adam glanced around him, saw Horowitz’s two security men converging on Melonie. But she did not bother to go around Adam’s table to get to him, as the security men anticipated. Instead, she pushed Horowitz aside with her left hand while raising her right. It held a knife with a glimmering silver blade. Adam kicked frantically at the floor to slide his chair backward as Horowitz’s chair tipped over sideways with her in it. Melonie leaped onto and across the table. Dishes clattered, a couple more women screamed. Melonie swung the knife down hard as she slammed into Adam and knocked him backward.

Adam saw a flash of the blade’s gleam, felt the knife hit his chest as he toppled over. On the way down, the back of his head hit the back of the chair behind him and he lost consciousness. He did not even have time to wonder if he would ever wake up again.

FORTY-THREE

Over his fussy,
important-sounding opening theme music and footage of Adam getting out of the limousine in front of Chinois the night before, Larry King said, “Tonight—accused of murdering his father Michael Julian, writer of such Hollywood blockbusters as Explosion and Catastrophe, as well as his stepmother and stepsister and three crewmen on the Julian yacht Money Shot, Adam Julian makes his first public appearance since being arraigned—and an attempt is made on his life by a woman who claims to be his dead father’s former lover! We’ll have a major discussion about this bizarre turn of events in the crime story that has riveted the globe. Joining us for this weekend edition of Larry King Live, attorney for Adam Julian, and a long-time friend of this show, Rona Horowitz. Deputy District Attorney of Los Angeles, Raymond Lazar. Also joining us, celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, whose Santa Monica restaurant, Chinois, was the site of last night’s incident. And bringing us the inside scoop from Hollywood, columnist Janet Charlton. Joining us later in the hour, the lovely actress Morgan Fairchild, who plays Rona this week in a USA Network movie based on one of Rona’s previous cases.”

“What, no psychic?” Adam snapped. Sprawled on the sofa in his hotel suite, he stared at the television, remote aimed and ready to fire. “No juggling act? Couldn’t get Dame Edna Everidge to comment on the case, huh, Larry?”

Adam’s chest was badly bruised by the butterknife with which Melonie Sands had tried to stab him, but the skin was not broken. His head, on the other hand, still hurt. He had sustained a mild concussion from hitting his head on the chair and had required a couple stitches to sew up the ugly gash.

Two police officers had responded to the call from Chinois. Melonie Sands had resisted arrest with such fury, it had been necessary for the officers to use pepper spray. She had screamed obscenities at Adam all the way out of the restaurant.

Max walked into the room leisurely, looked around. “Who you talking to?”

“Larry King.”

“I see. Upset with Larry, are you?” Max went to the bar, got a can of diet Barq’s root beer from the refrigerator. He kept the refrigerator stocked with them, his soft drink of choice.

Adam said, “I’m disgruntled with everybody. Everything.”

“Zat so?” Max popped open the can and took a seat. “Lemme get this straight. You’re staying in a luxury hotel suite, you gotcherself a real perty girlfriend, and you got an attorney’s gonna save your ass from God’s own woodshed. And you’re unhappy with everything?”

Normally, Adam enjoyed Max’s company. His lazy drawl could not conceal his quick mind. But now, he made Adam angrier than he already felt.

“You talk like she’s doing this for free, or something,” Adam said.

“‘Course she’s not. But you get what you pay for.”

“I don’t even know what she’s doing! I haven’t seen her since the press conference.”

“How’d that go, by the way?”

“Oh, it was...fine, I guess. It was my first press conference, I’ve got nothing to compare it to. Scary as hell, that’s for sure. All those people focusing their undivided attention on me. And their cameras. I didn’t even speak, but they acted like Rona wasn’t there, like I was just standing up there all by myself. She kept telling them I wasn’t going to answer any questions, and they kept shouting questions at me. Like I said, it was the only time I’ve seen Rona all day. I didn’t exchange more than two words with her. Everybody keeps talking like I should be so grateful. But for what? What is she actually doing for me?”

“Ain’t you been watchin’ television, son? She’s doin’ it right now.” Max gestured toward the television, where Horowitz was explaining what had happened the night before.

“—then knocked my client over in his chair and stabbed him in the chest with a table knife. He received a concussion from hitting his head on a chair when she knocked him down. It was a frightening experience, Larry, not one I’d care to go through again. But I’m happy to say Adam was not seriously injured. He required stitches and is resting quietly now.”

Larry King started to speak, but he was interrupted by Deputy District Attorney Raymond Lazar, a man in his forties with a streak of white in his thick black hair. “Larry, wait a second, let me say this. What happened last night was unfortunate, no doubt about that. But Ms. Horowitz has been on television all day talking about this as if it has something to do with this case, and it does not. What happened last night has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that Adam Julian has been charged with the murders of six people, including his own family.”

Adam rolled his eyes. It irked him to hear Gwen and Rain referred to as his “family.”

“I have not said it does. Ray,” Horowitz said. “But I think it points out a problem that gets far too little attention these days—he fact that the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is in grave danger of extinction. This is a symptom of—”

Adam turned to Max. “A table knife?”

“You want her to go on television and say some girl knocked you over with a butter knife? Table knife sounds better, don’tcha think? Notice she didn’t mention you weren’t exactly stabbed, either. I’m sure it hurt like hell, but it didn’t go in. The way she mentioned the stitches, I liked that. Sounds like the stitches were for the stabbing, not your head.”

“But the details have been reported, right?” Adam asked. “I mean, everybody knows by now that I wasn’t really—”

“Everybody knows what Rona wants ’em to know, and nothin’ else. By the time she’s done, nobody’ll remember you been charged with murder. They’ll be too busy feelin’ sorry for you ‘cause you’ve had such a bad summer. And now, everybody in the country wants to chat with you on their computers.” He waved a beefy hand in the direction of the television.

“—reaction has been tremendous, and nearly all of it has been positive,” Horowitz was saying. “People are being very supportive, and I think it’s just what Adam needs right now. He has lost everything, Larry. He lost his entire family, and thanks to Officers Stanley Pembroke and Warren Buchwald of the Marina del Rey Police Department, he lost his best friend in the whole world. He’s finding some new friends online now, and I think that will help the healing process.”

“What is she talking about?” Adam asked. “I’ve only been online once since the press conference, but the chat room was so full, I couldn’t get in.”

“Like I said, everybody knows what Rona wants ’em to know, and nothin’ more. Don’t worry. She knows what she’s doing.”

Adam tipped his head back and sighed. “I just want to have a life again. And get out of this fucking room.”

“You got out last night. Look what happened.”