Sex and Violence in Hollywood (50 page)

“Not just out of this room, out of this city. I’d like to take Alyssa and go away.”

“Won’t matter where you go now. You ain’t gonna get away from this.”

“Maybe when it’s over. If...well, you know.”

“If you get off, you mean? Oh, I think chances of that’re real good.”

“That’s not a lot of comfort when I’m stuck in this fucking room day and night,” Adam grumbled. “I can’t make phone calls, I’m not allowed to—”

“Well, maybe you shoulda thoughta that before you killed your family,” Max said loudly.

“Goddamnit, they weren’t my family!” Adam shouted. “I wasn’t even related to them, just my dad, and he—” Adam was about to tell Max that his dad had not been much of a dad, that he was no more “family” than Gwen and Rain. He froze for a moment, realized what he had said, how it must have sounded. What Max must be thinking.

Max watched him carefully, interested. Head back, eyebrows raised. Waiting for Adam to finish.

Adam closed his mouth. “It just bugs me...when people refer to Gwen and Rain as my family. Because they weren’t.” He leaned forward on the sofa. “And I didn’t kill them. You know I didn’t kill them. Right, Max?”

Max leaned back and smiled, raised his can of root beer as if proposing a toast. “Hey. I just work here.” He sipped his drink, but did not take his eyes off Adam.

FORTY-FOUR

As a boy,
Adam had spent a Christmas with his dad’s parents in Washington. It had been snowy and bitterly cold, and there was always a crackling fire in the fireplace. He had made snowmen with Grandpa and baked cookies with Grandma, wrapped presents with his mom. Discovered the enveloping sense of security and belonging created by walking in from the gnawing cold to a warm house that smelled of pies and woodsmoke. He had wanted to go back every year, but his dad had stopped speaking to his family after that visit, and Adam never returned. The holiday never had been the same for him after that Christmas of snowball fights and roasted marshmallows. He considered it his only true Christmas, and every one since—all spent in Los Angeles—a pathetic imitation.

With the trial looming, Christmas seemed like a half-forgotten childhood fairytale. Without Carter, it felt more like a festering wound than an approaching holiday. Christmas songs scraped his nerves raw. The thought of shopping for gifts constricted his lungs, made him feel light-headed. Other than Alyssa, he no longer had anyone for whom to buy Christmas gifts. He dreaded shopping for her, cringed at the thought of stores and crowds and all those depressing, tawdry decorations. Wondered if she would understand if he said he wanted to ignore the holiday. Except for her, Adam wanted to pretend everything in his life did not exist.

He found himself lashing out at people, even Alyssa. Not just being sarcastic, but hurtful as well, without meaning to be. He caught himself each time and apologized, and each time, he was surprised by how angry he felt, how suddenly the anger had welled up in him. Dr. Locket adjusted Adam’s medication more frequently. Dr. Remini extended their sessions. Everyone was understanding and forgiving of his outbursts, even Horowitz. It irritated him, made him feel pampered.

Mrs. Yu now worked for the family of an Oscar-winning composer of movie scores in Bel Air. The Julian house had gone on the market in mid-October. Adam had gone back for the last time—Lamont had managed to avoid the attention of reporters by driving him there in the middle of the night—to decide what would go into storage and what would go with him once he found an apartment. Mrs. Yu dropped by the hotel a couple times each week to see him, usually with food—a batch of his favorite cookies, a Tupperware bowl of her lasagna. She reassured Adam repeatedly that he should not feel guilty about having to let her go. Worse than the guilt, though, was the loss.

Putting the house up for sale seemed to close the door on everything his life had been up to that point. In some ways, that was good. But it made him feel suspended in midair, high above the clouds. At any moment, he could begin his fall, and with clouds in the way, he would not even know where he was headed. Just down. Fast.

His insecurity made him feel dependent on Alyssa, and he did not like that, resisted it. He did not like the idea of putting that much pressure on her. Alyssa was his girlfriend, not his mother.

Lamont sneaked her into the hotel a couple times a week, always in the late, secret hours of the night. Horowitz had said if the press ever suspected, it would have to stop. “If the press learns your girlfriend is sneaking into your hotel room to have sex with you, it will not be enough for them. Before the day was out, they would have you conducting orgies in here with Charlie Sheen and a harem of high-priced hookers. Reporters are really quite easy to handle once you understand them completely. You may not think so, Adam, but they have been very good to you. Even if you were proven guilty of murder, it would not matter to them at the moment because they genuinely like you, which is exactly what I wanted. But let them smell sex on you and all bets are off. It drives them into a frenzy. Like sharks and blood. Once you are in your own apartment, things will be different.”

“Hey, excuse me,” Adam replied angrily, “but I don’t like your suggestion that sex is the only reason I ever want to see Alyssa, because it’s not.”

“If all you did in here was crochet afghans and exchange recipes,” Horowitz said, “it would not matter. A tabloid would report it, the press would run with it, the story would be everywhere, and all those soccer moms who think you are such a good boy would change their minds about you in a second.”

“Soccer moms?”

“Yes. They are your biggest supporters according to the polls. Mothers who see in you something of their own children. If you were running for president and the election were held right now, there is a good chance you would be the next leader of the free world.”

Shortly before putting Adam’s house on the market, Horowitz had her staff looking for an apartment in a secure building near her office, in Beverly Hills or Century City. It would help keep the press at a distance and provide him with some peace in a place of his own.

“Wait a second,” Adam had said. “What if you find a place and I don’t like it?”

“When this is all over, you can live wherever you like. For now, you need a place close by and closed to outsiders. You are not in a position to be picky, Adam. And you should know by now that my taste is impeccable. No need to give it another thought. I will let you know when we have something.”

Horowitz was right—the press did, indeed, like Adam. They liked Adam and Alyssa even more, and often referred to them by their Internet nicknames. Nick and Nora. In her press conference after the discovery of Nick and Nora, Horowitz told them Adam had, against her instructions, sneaked a computer into the hotel so he would be able to contact Alyssa. The idea of young lovers separated by tragic circumstances staying in touch on the Internet under assumed names when Adam was not even supposed to have a computer was irresistible. The Lifetime network contacted Horowitz about acquiring the rights to make a television movie of the Nick and Nora story. She told them they would have to wait until after the trial.

“How much were they offering?” Adam had asked.

“Our conversation did not get that far. We are not entertaining offers. The public is on your side for now, Adam. If you start selling your story, the press will report how much money you make on each deal, and the public will turn on you like a pack of cornered dingoes.”

For a while, the fact that Adam was accused of murder was all but forgotten as reporters played up the online love story. As a result, Adam and Alyssa became so popular online, they had no time to chat with one another. The website Horowitz had set up for them—carefully disguised as just another online chat site called Chatterfactory.com—racked up a million and a half hits on the first day.

Adam and Alyssa were surprised by the variety of people who showed up to chat with them. From teenagers and investment bankers to senior citizens and unemployed college drop- outs. A group of housewives who usually met every day in another chat room made Chatterfactory.com their online hangout. Texas_Babe, PsychoMom, Couponcutter, CheetosLuvr, and Peanut were there every time Adam logged on.

“You’re way too cute for people to be accusing you of murder, sweetie,” PsychoMom said one afternoon.

Peanut said, “You remind me of a boy I dated in high school.”

“How long ago was THAT?” Texas_Babe asked.

Adam typed, “LOL! You’re making me blush.”

“Hands off—HE’S MINE!” Alyssa shouted.

“Show a little sympathy, Nora,” Couponcutter said. “We’re old, married, and have children—let us have a little fun!”

Many people who came to the chat room assumed the women knew Nick and Nora personally because they were so familiar with them in conversation. None of the housewives said anything that might discourage such thinking. People knew that if they missed Nick and Nora, then Texas_Babe, PsychoMom, Couponcutter, CheetosLuvr, or Peanut would be able to get a message to them. They became famous by association, even if only there at Chatterfactory.com, and they squeezed every drop of attention they could from it.

Adam was caught off guard by the support he received from people who came to the chat room. He had expected foul-tempered troublemakers to log on for the sole purpose of calling him a murderer. Instead, they told him how sorry they were about the awful things that had happened to him. Many of them told stories of how they had lost their own families, and assured Adam they knew what kind of pain he was experiencing. Some jokingly offered to kill Assistant District Attorney Raymond Lazar, while others promised to remember Adam in their prayers. There were troublemakers, but they were attacked so viciously by the others in the chat room, who were always quick to defend Nick and Nora, it was rarely necessary to kick them out. They usually left on their own.

Horowitz had been right about the mail. One day at her office, she took him into a small conference room where two women and a man were sorting through piles of mail on a large oval table. Different perfume scents clashed in the air, mixed to create a sickly sweet, vaguely nauseating odor. Fat mailbags leaned against the walls. Two green plastic garbage bags were filling up, and more waited in a yellow box on the sideboard.

Stunned, Adam gawked at all the envelopes, jaw slack. “This is all...for me?”

“Some of it is for you and your girlfriend,” Horowitz said, “but the bulk of it is addressed to you alone. Many of the letters have been scented with perfume, which accounts for the room’s sickening odor.”

Adam slowly shook his head. “What could all those people possibly have to say to me?”

“You are getting more letters of support than I anticipated,” she said with a quick, proud smile. “But there is a great deal of hate mail as well. We take the threats very seriously. All packages addressed to you go straight to the police for the bomb squad to open. So far, there have been no explosives, but we will continue to take the precaution. However, there have been a number of sex toys and worn panties. And one dead rat.”

Adam gasped. “A dead rat?”

“There was no note, but it was the consensus of the room that someone was expressing strong disapproval of you.”

Mouth still open, Adam’s eyes moved slowly over the piles of unopened mail, bags of discarded letters. He shook his head again. “You’re throwing it away?”

“Yes. It has been my experience, Adam, that this kind of mail can be very upsetting to someone in your position, not to mention distracting. It is my policy to have my staff handle it and save my clients the bother. Of course, if you feel strongly about it and would like to take some of the mail with you to read—”

“Oh, no. It kind of gives me the creeps, to tell you the truth.”

Horowitz nodded. “It should. They write as if they know you, when of course, they do not. All they want is to know you read their words, good or bad. That they had some kind of contact with you. Like the diseased woman in the Bible who sneaked up on Jesus just to touch the hem of his robe to be healed.”

Adam turned to her with a wincing frown. “You’re comparing me to Jesus?”

“Of course not. But the same principle applies. They just want to touch the hem of your fame, and hope some of it will rub off on them.”

* * *

Adam’s story was not the only one making news.

A fuss was made over a large plaque bearing the Ten Commandments that had been put on the wall at a public high school in Iowa. The new principal had decided to hang the plaque just inside the main building so it was the first thing anyone would see upon entering. When the principal was told he could not hang the Ten Commandments in a public school, he refused to remove the plaque. Within a week, he had appeared via satellite on Good Morning America, Today, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and Larry King Live. The school board acted quickly. The plaque was removed and the principal was fired. On the following Sunday, an uncle of one of the students was caught trying to set the school on fire. He claimed the school had defied the will of God and should no longer stand. The arson attempt landed him in a mental institution.

A man dying of cancer in Austin, Texas, filed a lawsuit against his doctor, who had estimated, upon diagnosis, that the man had only four to six months to live. That had been nearly a year ago, and the man, furious that he had not yet died, was suing his doctor for malpractice.