Sex and Violence in Hollywood (52 page)

“Think before you speak, Adam,” Horowitz said quietly, a slight tremor in her voice. “You have used up all of my patience. Lie to me now and you will have to find another attorney.”

Max went to Adam’s side, put an arm across his shoulders with a long sigh. Led him to the recliner and whispered, “Son, this’d be a good time to sit down, make yourself comfortable, and take us through all the parts of your story you left out the first twenty or thirty dozen times you told it.” He pushed down firmly on Adam’s shoulders, pressed him into the chair.

Horowitz stepped over to Max’s side and they stood before him, waiting.

Adam did not know what to say, where to start. He had to be very careful if he were going to avoid revealing the final truth: that he was guilty as charged. With the stiff wariness of someone walking through a minefield, he told his story.

He started by telling them of his two sexual experiences with Gwen. Head bowed as he spoke, staring at the carpet, he told them how Rain had raped him at gunpoint, then threatened to blackmail him by crying statutory rape to the police. He did not bow his head in guilt, but to allow himself to go into explicit detail, which he was too embarrassed to do while looking at Horowitz and Max. He told them everything, right up to the day he huddled in Rain’s closet and listened to her and Gwen. He spent the most time on the nightmarish liquor store robbery. When he was finished, he slumped in the chair with a sigh, exhausted.

Horowitz and Max stared at him for a long time. Her arms folded across her breasts, his bushy eyebrows knotted together over his glasses and thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. They turned to one another questioningly. Max’s lower lip curled out from beneath his mustache as he looked at Adam again. As Horowitz walked around the chair, anger crackled around her body like static electricity.

“How did you find it?” Adam asked.

“We didn’t,” Max said. “The D.A.’s office did.”

“How did they find it?”

“They found it because we did not find it first,” Horowitz said. She stood in front of Adam again. Fished a beige cigarette and a lighter from the pocket of her lavender suit jacket. “And we did not find it because you did not tell us about it.” She stabbed the cigarette into her mouth, lit up, and blew smoke from her lungs as if she were blowing out a cakeful of candles. Walked around the chair again, a shark circling its prey.

Adam said, “I...I really wish you wouldn’t smoke those things in here. I mean, they really stink.”

Max put a hand on the recliner’s armrest and leaned close to Adam. Whispered, “I’d only speak when I was spoken to if I was you, son. For tonight, anyways. You don’t wanna push your luck tonight, trust me.”

Horowitz stopped in front of the fireplace, tapped her cigarette over the colorful flames. With her back to Adam, she said, “There are no words to adequately describe how angry I am right now.” Turned and glared at him. “Do you know why?”

“Because...I didn’t tell you everything.”

“Everything? You told me hardly anything. You left out the entire second act. What kind of writer are you, Adam? Your father would be ashamed of you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you. I was afraid.”

“You were afraid to tell me?”

Adam nodded.

“Well, now you can be very afraid. Because even if you are not arrested for this, if that tape gets out before I have a chance to prepare for it—” She spun around, waved an arm and let it slap to her side. “For all I know, it could be on the Internet already. That tape could crush everything I have done so far.” Turned to him again. “You have a pristine image right now, Adam, that could be ruined by this tape.”

“Why don’t you just tell the truth?” Adam asked. He glanced at Max for a reaction, to see if he had made a mistake by speaking.

“The truth about what?” Horowitz asked.

“About me. That I didn’t tell you everything until now because I was afraid. I figured if I didn’t tell you, it would never come up.”

Horowitz’s nose wrinkled and her eyes squinted, upper lip peeled back over her teeth, as if she had just licked something foul. “How could you be so stupid as to think that, Adam? You had to know there were security cameras in there. You looked directly at one of them before your partner shot it. Now your face is everywhere and you think—”

“He was not my partner!” Adam shouted, standing. “I didn’t even know the crazy son of a bitch. I didn’t know what was happening until he pulled the gun! Why don’t you just tell that to the reporters. I mean, I was forced into it! I wouldn’t even have been out with Rain if I wasn’t afraid she’d turn me in. Besides, we already know the truth about Gwen. It’s pretty obvious Rain was supposed to be—”

“We do?” The question lifted Horowitz’s left eyebrow.

We didn’t have this conversation, Max had said after telling Adam what he had learned about Gwen.

“Oh, shit,” Adam muttered, turning to Max. His spacious forehead was cut with deep lines as he glared at Adam.

Horowitz turned to her investigator. “Max?”

Max nodded his head slowly. “Yeah, I asked him a few questions about it before I came to you. I shouldn’t have, I know. But I wanted to make sure I had something solid before I brought it to you. There were some questions only Adam could answer.”

“We will discuss it later,” she said, then turned back to Adam. “You were saying?”

Adam blinked. “What? Oh. Um...what was I saying?”

“That you think something is obvious. What is obvious?”

“Oh, yeah. I think it’s obvious Rain was supposed to be working with her mom. Rain was supposed to seduce me, then talk me into killing my dad. Gwen tells me Dad’s beating her, shows up with a black eye, which is supposed to make it easier for me to go along with it. But Rain wanted me to help her kill both of them. Gwen didn’t know it, but Rain was going to kill her, too.”

Horowitz and Max stared at Adam. Looked at each other. Then at Adam again.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said, “didn’t that make any sense?”

“Yes, it made sense. If the judge will allow it.”

“Allow it? But that’s what happened. How can he not allow it?”

“She can do almost anything she likes. She is the judge.”

“What do you know about her?” Adam asked.

Horowitz said, “Judge Vera Lester is an odd duck. She has reached the age at which each trial could be her last. A registered Republican, but politically moderate. Some judges typically lean in favor of the prosecution, some in favor of the defense. But Lester is unpredictable. A wild card.”

“And that means...what?”

“It means we cannot rely on her to behave in any specific way during this trial.” She turned to Max and Adam was surprised to see a smirk on her face. “But I think we might be able to exploit one of her weaknesses.”

“What weakness?” Adam asked.

Horowitz said, “Lamont, would you please go into the kitchen and make some coffee.”

“Coffee?” Adam asked. “Why do you need coffee?”

“We will all need coffee.” She took off her jacket, hung it on the coat hook in the entryway. “The many hours we have spent going over our story have been hours wasted, Adam. Now we have a whole new story, and not much time left. We will be sleeping less and drinking more coffee in the coming weeks. And it would be extremely unwise of you to voice any complaints about it.”

Adam asked hesitantly, “You’re, uh...still going to represent me?”

Horowitz tossed her cigarette, smoked down to the filter, into the fireplace. Turned to Adam and burned his retinas with a long, silent stare. “Right now, I am so angry with you, Adam, I would love nothing more than to walk away from this case in spite of all the time and energy I have invested in it. But that would be unprofessional and could harm my reputation beyond repair. So I will see this case through, and I will win this trial for you. But when it is all over, Adam, I will do something to you that might be even worse than what the prosecution has in mind.”

His eyes widened slightly. “What’s that?”

“I will give you back your life.”

FORTY-SIX

Adam and Alyssa
spent Christmas Eve having sex on every piece of furniture in the living room to the songs of Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Christmas Novelty CD of All Time. At two in the morning, they exchanged gifts, then spent a long time simply kissing on the floor in front of the Christmas tree.

Alyssa’s parents were visiting relatives up north in Humboldt County. “By tomorrow,” Alyssa had said, “they’ll be so stoned, they’ll probably think it’s Easter. They won’t know if Jesus is coming or going.”

Shortly before noon on Christmas morning, they were awakened by a call from the doorman, who helped Mrs. Yu carry two cardboard boxes to Adam’s door. The boxes were warm and smelled of childhood and loss. In the kitchen, Adam and Alyssa helped Mrs. Yu remove from the boxes a twelve-pound roast turkey covered with warm aluminum foil, along with all the traditional trimmings. Their afternoon breakfast consisted of tender turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, candied yams, dressing with diced almonds and apples, and Mrs. Yu joined them. She explained that her employers were out of the country until February, and she had no one to cook for but Adam.

Horowitz dropped by that afternoon and offered to take them all out for an early Christmas dinner at Patina. But when she smelled the aromas coming from the kitchen, she needed no convincing to eat there instead. She brought Adam a gift, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on DVD. “Because you never got to finish watching it on television,” she said.

Adam was surprised by how much Horowitz’s gift touched him. “That was very thoughtful, Rona. I have something for you, too.”

Surprise moved across Horowitz’s normally calm, neutral face. She gave him a disarming smile. “You do?”

He led her over to the Christmas tree, took a small, festively wrapped cube-shaped gift from beneath it. But he hesitated before handing it to her.

“What’s wrong?” Horowitz asked.

“Well, it’s not, um...it’s not as thoughtful as your gift. I mean, it’s not exactly...well, actually, it’s kind of a—”

She snatched the gift from his hand and tore off the foil wrap, opened the small cardboard box. Removed a white coffee mug from the box and frowned slightly as she looked it over. On one side of the mug was a shot of actor Alec Baldwin from the 1993 thriller. Malice, sitting at a conference table. He was speaking and looked rigid with controlled rage. On the other side of the mug were the lines Baldwin was delivering:

“You ask if I have a God complex?
 
I am God.”

Adam took a deep breath. “It’s...kind of a smartass gift.”

She surprised him by smiling again. “But a charming smartass gift. Thank you, Adam. I will drink from it proudly.”

A few minutes after Horowitz began to eat. Max called on her cellphone and she told him to come over for a bite if he was hungry. He joined them half an hour later. Adam loaded a CD cartridge with Christmas jazz. Brett arrived shortly after Max, having spent the minimum required amount of time with her visiting relatives. Horowitz’s cellphone chirped again when Lamont called to check in. She invited him to come over, too, and to bring his boyfriend. They arrived fifteen minutes later with wine and a batch of Christmas sugar cookies Lamont had made. He introduced his boyfriend, a shy, blonde-haired young man named Ken.

As dusk dimmed the light of late afternoon outside, the Christmas music blended nicely with the comfortable chatter and relaxed laughter. Adam had to remind himself that these were the people who had created so much tension in his life—his attorney, her assistant and investigator. Adam’s jailers and inquisitors since July. But they were all at ease with one another. Even Adam.

The doorbell rang and Adam was surprised to find Mr. Brandis and Devin in the hall. He stared at them a moment, suddenly ready to choke on his emotions. He had not seen them since the funeral. They looked older now. Both hugged him and came close to tears, but kept smiling. Devin brought a tin of homemade fudge and divinity, and Adam put the candy on the coffee table.

There was plenty of food and wine to go around. Mr. Brandis and Devin were the first to leave, but the others trickled out after them.

“Normally, I dine out with friends at Christmas,” Horowitz said to Adam on her way out. “But this has been a delight. Thank you for asking me to stay.”

“Um, actually, I...I didn’t ask you to stay.”

“But you would have had I given you a chance,” she said with a quick smile. She was a little sleepy-eyed from the wine. “Whatever bad things you might have done in your life, Adam, and no matter how hard you try to convince people otherwise, you really are a nice young man. I do not expect that to be the case by the end of this trial, so I am glad I had the chance to enjoy some of it today.”

By nine o’clock, everyone but Alyssa was gone. A holiday that Adam had hoped to avoid had been a pleasure after all. It held none of the magic or excitement of childhood, but it was not the miserable experience he had anticipated. Under the circumstances, Adam thought that was good enough.

* * *