Sex and Violence in Hollywood (59 page)

“How long were they there?”

“I don’t know. They were in the house talking with Diz for a while. Then they went outside. I don’t know when they left.”

“Did you know why he came to see your son?”

“Yeah, Diz told me.” He smirked at Adam. “He wanted Diz to blow up his dad’s yacht.”

“Your son told you that?”

“Yep. Said that Adam kid, there—” He nodded toward Adam. “—wanted him to rig his dad’s yacht so it’d blow up.”

“Why would Adam Julian ask your son to do that?”

“Because that’s what my son does,” Cunningham said in a tone that suggested Lazar was an idiot for asking.

“Your son sells explosives?”

“No, he uses them to blow things up.”

Lazar nodded. “So Adam Julian paid him to do this?”

“Yeah, he paid him. I don’t know anybody does that kinda thing for free.”

“The explosives found in a building on your property—they belonged to your son?”

“Yeah, mostly. He worked at home, just like me. Kept the explosives in a shed with special air conditioning outside. I used to do that kinda work, but retired for computer work. Less stress. Better for my pump.”

“What kind of explosives did he keep there?”

“Oh, different kinds. A lotta C-4.”

“A lot of C-4,” Lazar said, looking significantly at the jury.

Lazar introduced the security camera videotape of Adam and Carter at Cunningham’s house. The courtroom was silent as the tape played.

Adam thought he looked fifteen or twenty pounds heavier. He remembered his dad saying that video could put as much as twenty pounds on the most devoted anorexic. He looked like a different person. The video had been recorded before Horowitz had started dressing him. Instead of an expensive Armani suit, he wore shorts and a T-shirt. Not so long ago, that was standard dress for him. Now he thought he looked like a bum.

Horowitz approached the lectern. “Mr. Cunningham, did you talk to Adam Julian while he was at your house?” she asked.

“Yeah, a little bit.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Hell, dunno. Hollywood. The bidness.”

“What business would that be?”

“The movie bidness. He said his dad was a screenwriter.”

“Did Adam Julian tell you he wanted to kill his father?”

“No, he didn’t tell me. He told—”

“While he was in your presence, did he do or say anything that led you to believe he wanted to kill his father?”

Cunningham thought about it, shook his head. “No.”

“So this information came from your son only, is that right?”

“Yep. He told me.”

“Why did he tell you?”

“Huh?”

“Was there a reason for him to tell you? Were the two of you having a conversation about blowing up yachts and killing people?”

Cunningham chuckled through a sneer. “That’s funny. No, we weren’t having a conversation about blowing up yachts and killing people.”

“Then what were you talking about?”

“What difference does it make?”

“The fact that you are on the witness stand means that I ask the questions, Mr. Cunningham. What were you talking about?”

“I dunno. I don’t remember.”

“You mean he just brought this up out of the blue?”

“Maybe. I guess so.”

“You and your son must be close, then. Are you close?”

“We get along okay.”

“Really? Then why do you suppose he would plant explosives all over your house and try to kill you?”

“Objection,” Lazar said, standing. “Nathaniel Cunningham’s other activities are not relevant to this case.”

Horowitz argued, “If so much weight is going to be put on what Nathaniel Cunningham said to his father, I think they are relevant.”

“Overruled,” Judge Lester said. “Answer the question, Mr. Cunningham.”

“Hell, I dunno why he did that. Who knows why kids do the things they do?”

“Kids? Nathaniel is twenty-nine years old.”

“Yeah, well, he’s still a kid to me.”

“You are telling us that your son just dropped this information into a conversation? For no reason at all? Is that what you are saying, Mr. Cunningham?”

“Yep.”

“That doesn’t strike you as odd?”

“Nope.”

“You passed this information on to the FBI after you were arrested, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“And they made a deal with you in exchange for that information, correct?”

“Yeah, we managed to work somethin’ out. Took a while, though. Probably wouldn’t’ve gotten anything if that dead screenwriter hadn’t been on every TV set in the country.”

“What was the deal you made?”

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

“I am afraid you do, Mr. Cunningham.”

“What’s it got to do with this case?” he asked. “I ain’t the one on trial.”

“But you will be soon, Mr. Cunningham,” Judge Lester said. “And you might even end up in my court. Answer the question.”

He sighed, rolled his head in a put-out way. “What was the question again?”

Quiet laughter rose in the courtroom like dust clouds, disappeared as quickly.

“What was the deal you made with the FBI and the police, Mr. Cunningham?” Horowitz asked again.

“I tell them what I knew about the screenwriter, they’d drop the sex offender charges.”

“Sex offender charges?”

“Yeah.”

“What were those charges, exactly?”

“Hey, I got no law degree. You’ll have to ask my attorney.”

“They were child molestation charges. Correct, Mr. Cunningham?”

“They weren’t children, I can tell you that.”

“Yes or no, they were child molestation charges.”

After a moment, he muttered, “Sex with a minor charges.”

“And your attorney managed to get these charges dropped? The child molestation charges?”

“Yeah. That’s his job. And it’s sex with a minor, dammit! There’s a difference.”

“Is there? I thought you had no law degree. Holding out on us?” Another puff of laughter from the spectators. “In that case, should you move to another town, you would not be obligated by law to inform anyone of your history as a child mol—pardon me, your history of having sex with minors. Correct?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, irritated.

“Is there a chance, Mr. Cunningham, that the deal made by your attorney to have those charges dropped might color your testimony here today?”

He pulled his head back and his face screwed into a befuddled frown. “Huh?”

“You are a career criminal. You sell drugs, guns, you make child pornography, and you have sex with children, also known as minors. Considering the fact that some of your charges were dropped in exchange for the information you offered, why should anyone believe that information?”

Cunningham shrugged and smiled. “I don’t care if you believe it.”

At the prosecution table, Lazar held his pursed lips between thumb and index finger. His head dipped forward and moved back and forth almost imperceptibly.

Horowitz gathered her notes. “Your Honor, I will not dignify this child molester with any further questions.”

Lazar shouted his objection before Horowitz finished her sentence. As Judge Lester sustained the objection, Cunningham shouted, “Hey, I’m not a child molester! I’m a child pornographer!”

“You know better than that, Ms. Horowitz,” Judge Lester growled. She turned to the jury. “You will disregard the defense counsel’s inappropriate parting shot and—”

As the judge spoke, Cunningham stood, put his hands on the front edge of the witness stand and leaned forward. “And you call that fucking hack a screenwriter?” he shouted at Horowitz, then turned to Adam. “You know how many scripts I’ve written? Huh? Over two hundred! Not two hundred, over two hundred! All produced!”

Judge Lester pounded her gavel in an apparent attempt to bludgeon the bench to death. To be heard over him, she shouted, “Mr. Cunningham, you will stop this—”

Two bailiffs rushed to the witness stand, clutched Cunningham’s arms and pulled him stumblingly toward the door.

“I write movies for adults about teenage boys havin’ sex!” Cunningham shouted. “That Hollywood bastard writes gory movies with people shootin’ and slashin’ each other and their fuckin’ heads’re explodin’, and he writes ’em for kids! He’s a screenwriter, and what’m I? A fuckin’ child molester! I’m the devil here? I ask you!” His voice faded behind the closed door.

The last bang of Judge Lester’s gavel lingered a moment.

The silence in the courtroom crackled with tension.

Judge Lester turned her stern owl-like eyes up to one of the small remote-controlled television cameras mounted on the wall. “That oughtta boost the ratings,” she said with contempt.

FIFTY-ONE

During the trial,
Adam lived for the weekend as he never had before, not even when he was in school. It was a welcome but all too short break from the endless hours spent in the courtroom. Although it gave him some free time, it was difficult to do much with it. In front of his apartment building, reporters continued to wait should he make an appearance. Sneaking out of the building became more and more difficult. They had grown wise to his tricks and were learning fast. Adam and Alyssa had tried to go to a movie one weekend afternoon. Somehow, the reporters had arrived at the theater ahead of them. Adam had told Leo to keep driving.

On Saturdays, they listened to reruns of The Don and Mike Show on the radio. With the trial taking up all of Adam’s weekday afternoons, he had to settle for the weekend “Best of” shows. He found it at once funny and depressing that Don and Mike were the only ones who did not buy the image Horowitz had created for Adam.

“I saw that ball-busting midget lawyer bitch talking to the frog the other night, Larry King,” Don said. “She keeps telling us this guy, this killer, what’s his name?”

“Adam Julian: daddy-killer,” Mike said in a Jack Webb monotone.

“Yeah, damned right. She keeps telling us he’s such a fine boy, he’s so traumatized by all of this, he’s innocent. Gimme a break! I mean, Jesus Christ, isn’t it obvious this kid’s a friggin’ killer? Are we the only ones who see this? Is everybody in the Goddamned world brain-dead?”

Mike broke into a dead-on impersonation of Horowitz: “He’s such a fine boy, he’s a good boy, he’s a kind boy, he’s a—”

Don shouted, “He’s a killer boy, you effing C-word!”

“You know, those lawyers,” Mike said, “you can’t trust ’em as far as you can throw ’em. But the midget lawyers—”

“Oh, they’re the worst, ’cause you can never look the little bastards in the eyes! And speaking of throwing, I could throw her pretty far, you know. I’d like to throw her off a cliff. You hear that, you effing dwarf shyster? Eat me raw with a flavor straw!”

As he laughed with Alyssa, Adam thought, They’re right! It’s a comedy show, but they’re the only ones who don’t believe the story, and they’re right!

The sixth Friday of the trial, Horowitz invited Adam and Alyssa to dinner. Leo picked them up at Adam’s building and took them to Annie’s, a small Chinese restaurant in a Sherman Oaks strip mall. Max’s Escalade was in the parking lot. He and Horowitz already had a table.

“What’s the occasion?” Adam said as he and Alyssa joined them.

“No particular occasion,” Horowitz said. “We had a good week. I thought you might like to have dinner in a place not filled with celebrities and photographers.”

“No celebrities?”

“Not a single one. So keep it under your hat. If they start showing up, the prices will skyrocket. Did Leo lose the reporters?”

“Like a pro,” Adam said.

Horowitz ordered for all of them.

“If you think the week went well,” Alyssa said, “then it must have been great.”

Horowitz said, “I only meant that we had five good days in a row. It means nothing, really, just a pleasant rarity. Anything can happen, though.”

“Do you say things like that just to make me a nervous wreck?” Adam said.

“No, I say it because it is the truth. A trial is like making a movie. You have no idea how it will turn out until it’s all finished.”

“How much longer, do you think?” Adam asked.

“Ah, the big question,” Max said with a chuckle.

“Another month, maybe six weeks,” Horowitz said. “How are you holding up, Adam? I have been too busy to chat lately. Are you sleeping well?”

“Counting the hours I sleep in court?”

“Very funny.” Her voice was chiding, but her eyes smiled.

“Yeah, I’m sleeping fine. I prefer it to being awake these days. I’m developing calluses on my butt from sitting in the courtroom.”

She turned to Alyssa. “I suspect I will be calling my first witness early next week. Are you ready to take the stand when your turn comes?”