The Cutting Room (16 page)

“Trust me,” I said. “I’m not.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I’m only looking for a boy, a kid. He’s—he’s tall and thin. And he does, well, he does—imitations.”

The girl chewed on her cheeks, doubtfully. “Imitations.”

“Of, you know, movie stars.”

She was about to be even more skeptical. But then she must have realized what—and whom—I meant.

“Ohhhh,” she said.

She lifted a finger, the nail of which I noticed was painted with a tiny snake. “Wait here a second. Then come down to the beach.”

I hesitated, not knowing to what I was agreeing. As a little joke, as a mild flirtation, she placed the quarters back into my palm, as payment.

Disarmed, I told her, “Sure.”

It was a clear evening, beautiful and dry, in the usual L.A. way. Crazed amusement park noise came from the pier; below it, the ocean spat upon the sand, ran away, then spat again. Whites and Latinos mixed, uneasily: young people made out and smoked pot; others tossed a fluorescent Frisbee that did not glow bright enough for catching; still others threw empty cigarette packs into the surf, as far as they would go. Boredom was in the air; so was anger.

Then I saw the girl again.

Her face still covered, she was beckoning me toward the edge of the surf, where she stood with a companion. It was a heavyset young person in sweatshirt and hood, and the roundness of her hips told me that this, too, was a girl.

I got up close but could see her face no better. With their hoods pulled tight, the two looked like twenty-year-old monks in an obscure and female sect.

Imitating them, I removed my shoes and rolled up my cuffs, clamdigger-style.

“So, you’re the cop?” the big girl said.

“No.” I looked at the thinner one. “I told you that—”

“Just kidding,” her friend assured me. “You work for Stu.”

“No,” I said. “Not that, either.”

“Oh. So maybe you’re a friend of Ben Williams? And maybe you want some of what Ben Williams liked?”

With her tongue lolling out, she pantomimed male self-abuse. Then the two girls laughed in a way that made me nervous.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I mean, I
know
what you mean, of course, but not, you know, how you mean it. I’m just looking for—”

“Little Bobby?”

I had a name now; that was something.

“Yes. And I’m looking for a movie.”

“Oh. So you want all of us again? For more of that big Ben Williams fun?”

“Look, whatever Ben does—did—with Stu’s employees, I don’t—”

“Ben. On a first-name basis.”

“Look, that doesn’t mean—”

As we spoke, I realized that we were walking farther out, into the water. My pants—rolled up to my knees—were being brushed gently by the waves.

I had lost track of my first friend, the skinny girl, behind me. Then I realized her location: at the end of the knife pointed into my back.

“Just don’t move, lech.”

I had been mistaken for a cop, and then a drug dealer’s flunky; now I was a seeker of sex with gang members. This latest investigation wasn’t going well.

As the small girl held me in place, the big one came forward and stuck her hand into my pants. She removed my wallet and cracked it open like a clam.

“There’s not much,” I told her. “I’m sorry.”

I had, in fact, left most of Rosie’s money hidden in a pillowcase at the hotel.

“Two hundred.” The girl shrugged. “Not
too
shabby.”

She kept the bills, then dropped the wallet down into the wet. I was about to reach to retrieve it, but the knifepoint pushed in deeper.

“Well, now we can tell you where Little Bobby is,” the first girl said.

“Right,” her friend agreed, “we can do that.”

I smiled, with nervous gratitude. “Great.”

“He’s right there.”

“Yeah. He’s right there. Can’t you see him?”

With trepidation, I looked where the girls were pointing. It wasn’t back to the beach or up to the pier; it was under the water.

In a second, that’s where I was, too.

The small girl pushed me; the big girl held my head. Salt and seaweed filled my nose and mouth, and my arms flapped out like a dying bird’s.

Inside the ocean, my eyes burned as I forced them open. I saw the fuzzy forms of the big girl’s legs, fish floating by, and what looked like a lost pair of plaid shorts. A million pounds sat on my chest, getting heavier.

The beachside love scene in
From Here to Eternity
flashed through my mind: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in a clinch. Had it been censored or something? I no longer knew.

Faintly, from miles away, I heard the girls curse and laugh as I slapped and kicked at them. Then I heard somebody scream, and the scream grew louder.

It wasn’t me, how could it have been? I was swallowing an ocean. The scream slowly removed the girls’ hands from my neck and waist, allowed me up, and let me live.

I flew to the surface, water spraying all ways, giving out a massive moan of relief in the air. The girls were already beating their way back to the shore. They were chatting with each other, laughing a little, dragging their fingers in the water. Beyond them, I saw their motivation: police cars, sirens screaming, were approaching the arcade.

The cops weren’t coming for them; there were other crimes being committed there tonight. But my friends must have felt it might not look so good if they were drowning me.

I figured they had hurt me because they could, because Stu Drayton and Ben Williams and other people were out of reach. While I wished they hadn’t, I understood why they had.

My chest still heaving, I watched them go. Then I pulled over my floating wallet, which bobbed beside me. Unlike the girls from the gang, I would now have to approach the powerful more directly.

When I got home, TV was running footage of the arrest of Ben Williams’s drug dealer, Stu Drayton.

“What’s in it for me?” Jeanine asked, only kind of kidding.

“The pleasure of helping find
Ambersons
,” I answered. “Forget helping me.”

Silent, flickering TV images played in front of me. I sat on the hotel bed, calling New York, this time on my dime.

A few minutes before, Stu Drayton had been paraded in handcuffs before a waiting mob of reporters and cameramen. He had been accused of drug trafficking and indirectly implicated in the death of Ben Williams, at least by the TV anchors. And all on Dick Burke’s tip.

Stu was a boyishly handsome man, about forty, with tousled dirty-blond hair. He wore the preppy uniform of a sweater over a short-sleeved shirt, the shirt collar turned up. Studious glasses sat on his face, making him seem even more of an overage student.

Stu’s official job description was “art gallery owner” and “cultural speculator.” By the end of the day, Stu was out on bail, which had been set at a million dollars. I thought of the junkie Lorelei Reed, still sitting in a cell in New York, for a crime she didn’t commit.

Jeanine had made the mistake of answering the phone, and there I had been.

“Look, I hope you’re not holding that call from Spain against me,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Good.” All was forgiven, obviously, even if nothing was understood. “Now, do you still have Abner’s contact list?”

“Of course.”

“I need some way to find Stu Drayton.”

“What for? To congratulate him?”

I smiled. “It’s got to do with that little gang guy who drove us up into the hills. He worked for Stu.”

“
He’s
got
The Magnificent Ambersons
?” Jeanine was aghast.

“Maybe. Maybe he does.”

I explained the whole story, as much as I knew of it: the boy’s stealing the film; Stu’s gift of apology; Ben’s untimely demise. Embarrassed, my hair still wet, I left out the part about my trip to the pier.

“ . . . and then there’s some other stuff that’s not important right now . . .”

When I finished, there was a pause.

“I guess it makes as much sense as anything else,” Jeanine said at last.

“I’m glad you think so.”

“Well, would you like Stu’s beeper number?”

“And have the cops think I’m one of his ‘clients’? No thanks.”

“That might be a problem, mightn’t it? How about the private number of one of his galleries in Santa Monica?”

“Thanks.”

After I wrote it down, there was more silence before Jeanine said, “When are you coming back to New York?”

“When I have the movie. Or when my money runs out, whichever comes first.”

“I could wire you some. I’m working again. Taking tickets at the Film Forum, but there
is
a salary.”

“That’s okay. Rosie took care of me.”

“Be careful. Your chart says there’s danger ahead.”

“I will.”

Neither Jeanine nor I spoke then. There was so much to tell Erendira: that Ben had not intended to show her the wrong film, that I knew who had the right one now. But, at that moment, she seemed a million miles away. Who knew if I would ever see her again? Soccer players had strong wills. There was someone closer, whose very breath was near my ear.

“I promise,” I said, “when I get it, you can watch it with me.”

There was another break before Jeanine answered, “That’s a deal.”

There was just voice mail on the number in Santa Monica. I left a message, pretending to be an art patron, looking for information about my “print” of
The Magnificent Ambersons
. I hoped that any cop listening in was not a movie fan.

Several hours later, I received a call back. It was a very pleasant woman’s voice.

“Please come to an opening tomorrow night. At the Shutter Gallery in Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Six to eight. There will be refreshments.”

Anyone who thought Stu Drayton would lie low while out on bail didn’t know Stu Drayton. I didn’t know Stu Drayton, but I was about to get a crash course.

Bergamot Station looked like a huge parking lot full of art galleries, or maybe a small army base. It played host to the latest in painting and photography, and openings often spilled out the door onto the pavement. That was the scene when I showed up—by cab, of course—the next night.

Trying to look suitably louche, I sauntered into the show, wearing the black jacket I’d borrowed from Annie Chin and never had a chance to return. Luckily, in L.A., what looked funereal one day looked hip the next.

Shutter Gallery specialized, not surprisingly, in photos. Tonight it was the work of Gavin de Klock, a Britisher who took artful exposures in hospital operating rooms. Women in short black dresses and men in faux-Beatnik beards and turtlenecks mingled, heedless of the gaping wounds, severed arms, and bleeding eyeballs that were all around them.

I had signed the book, as instructed. A beautiful young receptionist, her face dazzlingly pierced, read my signature. Then she nodded at a male model/waiter carrying a tray of cheese hors d’oeuvres. He, in turn, nodded at Stu Drayton.

Stu had entered the gallery from the back, from what must have been his private office. He was wearing the same preppy costume he was wearing when arrested. I guessed he always wore this, no matter the tawdriness or trendiness of the occasion.

There was a smattering of applause when he appeared, and the ovation grew as more people became aware of him. Finally, the whole room cheering, Stu made his way to the front of the room.

Anyone who thought Stu Drayton would lie low while out on bail didn’t know Stu Drayton.

“You guys,” he said softly, like a junior executive at his surprise birthday party. “You guys.”

Then, silence falling, Stu spoke to the crowd, standing before a beautiful photo of open-heart surgery.

“I know many of you thought I might not make it here tonight,” he said, and there was shocked laughter. “That I might be a little . . . detained.” More laughs, more relief. “But I can assure you, wild horses wouldn’t have kept me away. Correction—make that L.A. policemen!”

Now the whole room was rocking with hilarity and applause. Stu embraced a tall, bald, slightly rounded fellow beside him, whom I assumed was Gavin de Klock, tonight’s featured artist. Glancing at the guests, I saw members of the media, some wielding videocameras. But I wondered who, disguised in hipster wear, were the undercover cops that Stu was so brazenly defying.

Stu paid long, tedious tribute to the work of de Klock—his “vulnerability,” his “exquisite tensions,” and how the show was “humanity at its most helpless, photography at its most controlled.” Then he quieted more applause with raised hands.

“I’d like to close with one thought,” he said. “No matter how others distort what I do, I will never stop doing it. In my life and my work, I will stay dedicated to helping the purest and most beautiful of artists. And their work I shall hang on the walls of my mind. Thank you for this, and thank you for coming!”

Deafening cheers then for Stu’s L.A. earnestness. It was so loud that passersby gazed in from outside, drawn by the crazy sound.

Stu made his way back through the well-wishers, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, even winking audaciously in a camera. Then, as he approached, I saw him look at me. His smile faded, and the blue eyes behind his glasses grew very cold, as if icing over.

Passing by, shaking another’s hand, he whispered in my ear, “Press ‘Enter’ on the computer in my office.”

Then the drug dealer and aesthete, who helped artists get shows and get high, was lost in the love of the crowd.

Stu must have thought there were bugs everywhere.

Maybe he was right. When I closed the door to his office, I had the acute sense of being observed. I felt that my very breathing was being remarked upon downtown, in the D.A.’s office.

In the sparsely decorated room, rife with Asian influences, a bonsai tree stood on a small glass table, and a computer was the only object on a mahogany desk. The screaming figure from Munch’s
Geshrei
was its postmodern screen saver. A printer sat, unobtrusively, in a corner. The dim sounds of the gallery party were the only background noise.