A Death In Beverly Hills (13 page)

Forty five minutes later Sheldon Morris arrived with a digital mini-cassette. Furley asked him to hand it to Travis who in turn gave it to Katz.

"I think that's all we've got, Tom," Furley said with a thin, forced smile. "We appreciate your help."

"You'll call me about Sarah?"

"You bet. You'll be the first call we make." Everyone shook hands and a confused Sheldon Morris walked Travis out the door.

"What did you tell those guys?" Morris demanded once they reached the sidewalk.

"We just discussed the case, my theories on who might have killed Marian."

"Jesus!" Morris said, appalled.

"What?"

"Fuck, Tom, you're suspect number one. Those guys are going to take everything you say and twist it into a rope to hang you with."

"But I didn't do it."

"That's what OJ said."

"Yeah, but he did do it."

Morris grabbed Tom's shoulder and spun him around. "Tom, right this minute those guys are measuring you for an orange jumpsuit. What did you tell them?"

"Nothing."

"Why did they want that insurance tape?"

"They want to compare it to the tape they shot after Marian went missing to see if maybe she was grabbed from the house."

"Dear God!"

"What?"

"They want to see if anything's changed or missing so that they can say that you killed Marian at the house and then took her body to the RV Park in your dune buggy." Morris enunciated each word as if he were talking to a kid in the slow class.

"That's crazy. A body wouldn't fit in the buggy."

Morris took a deep breath and tried again. "You could have put the body in the Hummer, then, once you got to the park, stuck it in the back of the buggy when no one was looking and driven out in the middle of nowhere, buried it, then come back without it." He stared hard at Travis to see if he was getting through. "Did they ask you for permission to examine the Hummer and the buggy?"

"Just now? No." Morris started to relax when Travis continued, "They checked them out the day after Marian disappeared." Morris's face fell. "What? I didn't do it. I've got nothing to hide."

"Oh, shit! Have you at least talked to a lawyer?"

"Sure, I called Waxman, first thing."

"Sam Waxman is a contracts attorney. He doesn't know shit about criminal law. What did he tell you?"

"He said to get a criminal lawyer and not to talk to the cops."

"So, of course, you went out and talked to the cops."

"What am I speaking Esperanto or something? My wife and step-daughter were missing. I didn't do it. Of course I talked to the cops. If I had refused to talk with the cops, I'd have looked guilty. The tabloids would have had a field day with that. Remember the Ramseys?"

"Yes, and I remember that the Ramseys were never arrested or charged with anything."

"But everybody thought they did it! A guy in my position, I'd be finished in this town if people thought I had killed my pregnant wife. Have you seen any movies with OJ in them lately?"

"Who did Waxman say to get?"

"What?"

"What was the name of the lawyer Waxman told you to hire?"

"Ahh, Marks, Marker, Markham! Gary Markham, I think."

Morris pulled out his cell. "Information, I'd like the number of an attorney by the name of Gary or G. Markham . . . . Gregory Markham, criminal law? Yes, that's it. Yes, please dial it for me." Morris gave Travis a frustrated glance and looked away.

* * *

"I've got one . . . two . . . three . . . four lamps in the family room," Furley said, peering at the grainy image.

"I've got one . . . two . . . three." Katz tapped his finger against the screen as he counted.

"Far left coffee table?" Furley called out.

"Check."

"Far right table between the blue chair and the patio doors?"

"No, a flower vase on the table."

"I've got a red and gold vase in the center of the mantle."

"Nope, some kind of glass sculpture. I'll get the techs to print an 11 by 14 of each of these frames." Katz walked over to Furley's TV and tapped the image of the missing lamp on the screen. "There's our murder weapon," he said with a wolfish grin.

Twenty-One

Steve checked the indexes but could find no record of any contacts between the police and any of the crew on Travis's screamer movie. From the transcript of Travis's last interview, Steve had to admit that it didn't seem like much of a lead, but maybe Travis had said more about his dune buggy trip than he remembered. Maybe there was some link between one of the carpenters or grips and Bobby Berdue or Riley Fontaine or someone else who might have had a motive to get rid of Marian.
Who am I kidding?
Steve asked himself, wishing he had something to punch or break. He was grasping at straws, but his eyes were going blurry from reading reports that the cops and Markham's clerks and Ben McGarry had all read before him, and in which all of them had found nothing. If he didn't start turning over some new rocks soon Travis was cooked. Wearily, he picked up the phone.

The producer, Glenn Malvo, was in Romania scouting locations for some kind of Nazi movie. His assistant/receptionist/bootlick assured Steve that Romania was the new Canada, especially when you needed a thousand extras in German uniforms.
TheBoneyard's
director, Alan Page, was in town but would be in meetings for 'several days.' Steve figured he'd have to tackle the guy outside whatever restaurant was hot this week, maybe dress up like the valet and kidnap him when he came to pick up his Ferrari. The movie's writer, Jack Statler, was not only in town but agreed to meet Steve at eight the following morning at the north end of the Promenade that ran for miles between the PCH and the sea.

Statler was about five ten and thin, all angles, with receding brown Brillo-Pad hair. "Just find the guy who looks like a younger, less handsome Art Garfunkle," Statler told Steve on the phone and barked a laugh. This morning Statler was dressed in Nike sneakers with lights in the back that blinked with every step and an electric blue running suit sporting white stripes down the shirt and pants. He took one look at Janson's ragged Reboks, jeans and black tee and burst out laughing.

"You've got to be kidding," he said. "You actually run in public in that?" Steve didn't know how to reply so he just shrugged. "Man, you're really not in the business, are you?"

"I used to be a cop."

"Okay, that explains the blue collar chic."

"Why blue collar? Maybe I was a rich cop. Maybe my father was the president of Union Oil and I became a cop because I wanted to help people."

"And maybe my dad ran a pig ranch." Jack's face split in a sarcastic grin. "You can't get any more blue collar than cops. It's the last major profession that has no graduate school, no special degree, no licensing, no supervised training. Get out of high school, join the army, join the cops, or get a job in construction, the blue collar trilogy." Statler smirked. "Now, my people," he said, grinning, "figure that if you're not a doctor, dentist, or lawyer, maybe you won't disgrace your family too much if you become a writer or a teacher, but college only. If it's high school they stick you at the kids table at Thanksgiving and tell all the relatives that when you were in grade school some anti-Semite hit you in the head with a rock and you've never been the same since." Ho, Ho. Statler thought he was hilarious.

"So--"

"I get it. The name fooled you. Statler. Used to be Steinman but in this town it helps if a writer isn't too much of a Jew, just sort of . . . Jew-ish." Statler laughed again, a miscast Jay Leno.

"Look, I--"

"See, if you're a lawyer or a doctor and the sign on the door says 'Jacob Steinman' you're in. But as a writer, that's a little too much. All those decent people in the Red States see Jacob Steinman on the movie credits and it makes them nervous. They start worrying about what leftist, Zionist, commie bullshit that Jew-writer has slipped into their oh-so-moral, family values movie. But, Jack Statler, now that's a normal American name that doesn't upset them at all. Of course, you've got to let people in the community know. If Jacob Steinman starts walking around town as Jack Statler, buying Christmas presents, ordering ham on rye and pretending that '
Baruch atah adonoy
' is Klingonese," Statler shrugged, "the closest he'll get to the movies is the bargain matinee. So," Statler said, giving Steve a friendly wave, "you want to get some exercise?" Without waiting, he jogged off at a mild trot. A few seconds later Steve caught up and, side by side, they headed down the asphalt path.

"You want to talk to me about Tom Travis?" Statler asked, looking straight ahead.

"How well do you know him?"

"Well enough to dislike him and feel sorry for him both at the same time."

"Why's that?" Steve asked though he more or less knew the answer already.

"At first, you think that if he weren't in this business with sycophants kissing his ass twelve times a day that he would be an okay guy. But he wouldn't." Steve didn't reply, just dodged around a woman pushing a stroller and kept on going. "The thing is, Tom Travis is basically an insecure narcissist who wants everybody to like him and who secretly believes that he's not good enough to deserve their respect. If he was a ditch digger, it wouldn't change anything. He'd still be the jerk at the corner bar telling everybody about the guys he's punched out, the women he's screwed, stuff that if it was true would be bragging and if it was a lie would be pitiful, except then he'd have a shittier wardrobe. A guy like that just can't win, unless he's a celebrity, in which case everybody kisses his ass, and in this town he fits right in."

"Maybe your mother was right. You should have been a shrink."

"I'm a better writer pretending to be a shrink than I would be a shrink pretending to be a writer." Steve spent a second or two trying to figure that out, then gave up.

"Was Travis buddies with anybody on the movie? Grips, stuntmen, carpenters. . . ?"

"He wanted to be." Statler led Steve off the path to let two muscular guys in wheelchairs go by. "Let me re-phrase that, a writer's prerogative. He wanted people to
think
he was buddies with them, the 'common touch' and all that. He wanted the
reputation
of being a regular Joe who preferred having a few cold ones with the guys, playing poker and swapping stories about monster trucks and monster jugs, but that wasn't really him."

"What was?" Steve asked but Jack had already taken off. Steve caught up and repeated the question.

"The paintings he doesn't sell, the ones he keeps, they're the give away. Ever seen any of them?"

"No."

"The stuff in the galleries, battleships, tanks, dive bombers, football games, all the macho action shit, that's just cover, like a queer with a centerfold on his arm. But the ones he keeps for himself, one look and they'll tell you all you need to know."

"Such as?"

"The guy's got a soul, like Spike."

Steve couldn't keep up with Statler's mental bobs and weaves.

"Not a
Buffy
fan, huh? Okay, Spike is this mean, heartless, vicious vampire who inadvertently has his soul returned to him. He doesn't want it, doesn't want a conscience, doesn't want his humanity, but he's stuck with it anyway. In a lot of ways Tom Travis would be a lot happier as a conscienceless, thoroughgoing prick, but he's stuck with this damn inconvenient soul." Jack glanced at Janson and saw only confusion.

"Look," he said pulling to a halt next to the wooden railing that separated the trail from the cliff and the boiling sea below, "his art goes directly from his soul to his fingers, bypassing his puny, insecure little brain, the express run, no stops. When he turns it lose, not the macho shit he draws with tanks and machine guns, but the stuff that just comes out on its own, it has energy and emotion and heart. He did an oil of a day laborer and his hotel maid wife at some ratty car lot in San Pedro, shoulders hunched, trying to scrape up enough bucks to buy some shitty ride that would get them to their next shitty job just this side of bankruptcy. Man it was terrific! I mean great! I begged him to sell it to me."

"But he wouldn't."

Statler laughed. "No fucking way. He didn't want anyone to know that he would paint something like that. Bad for his macho self image. But that painting, man, that was done by a guy with real talent and real heart, a guy with a soul. It was Spike all over." Statler retied his shoe and nodded and both men took off.

Steve tried again to get back on track. "Back to Tom's friends, there was nobody on the crew he was really buddies with?"

Five seconds passed and Steve wondered if Jack had heard him. "Maybe a stuntman? I think somebody mentioned that Travis used to be buddies with a stuntman, but I got the feeling that was two or three years ago. It was one of those comments that if you know the back story makes sense and if you don't, nobody's going to take the trouble to explain it you."

"And you didn't?"

Statler shook his head. "It was just a couple of words, the look on Glenn's face, the tone of his voice. You got the idea that whatever they had been, bosom friends, drinking buddies, whatever, it was all over now."

"You don't know the guy's name." Statler gave his head a quick shake. "Do you remember the names of any of the guys on the crew who Tom might have talked with?"

"Sorry." Another head shake. "Glen's office would have all the names and addresses, Impact Productions."

"Glenn Malvo's in Romania."

"Oh, yeah,
No Man's Land
. I heard that was his next project. Couldn't you subpoena them or something?"

"I guess we'll have to," Steve held up his hand and reluctantly, Statler slowed then stopped. Steve pressed the button on a stone-wrapped fountain while Statler took a couple of mouthfuls from a Calistoga bottle Velcroed to his waist. "Is there anybody you can think of who might have had a motive to hurt Tom Travis or his wife?"

"Specific names? No."

"How about stories you heard about Travis that might give somebody a motive?"

Statler considered the question as if he had been asked to define the meaning of life. "You hear a lot of stores, most of them bullshit."

"Let me figure out which is which."

"You ever hear of Santana Sinn?"

"Sounds like a porn star."

"Bingo!" Jack said, pointing at Steve's chest. "Porn star at eighteen, wannabe legit actress at twenty. She made the rounds a few years ago, around the same time Travis married what's-her-name--"

"Marian."

"Sorry. Marian. Breathtaking, heartbreaking, Santana I mean, until you got a look in her eyes. Soulless black holes. A vacuum. A vast wasteland of need and want."

"Turned you down, huh?"

"Like a leper trying to crash Trump's wedding. No matter what my parents think, writers are the bottom of the ladder in this town. They'll give the keys to the city to some has-been relic comic off a thirteen week canceled sitcom before they'll give a free bus pass to Pulitzer-winning writer."

"Like you."

"Hope springs eternal."

"But Travis. . . ."

"Is a star, maybe on the down side of the B List these days, but a star nevertheless. To hear him tell it, he banged Santana left, right, up, down and diagonally. Claimed she was the greatest fuck since Eve's little sister. The thing is," Statler gave Jack a sideways glance, "I heard a few months ago that she was trying to get the Guild to cover her medical bills. AIDS. It's only a rumor, but, hey, rumors in this town are like blood to a vampire."

"So, if she has AIDS . . . ."

"Did she have it then? Did Tom give it to her? Did she give it to him? And if he's got it, did he give it to his wife? A man like Tom Travis tomcats around with a porn star, gives his wife, and maybe their unborn baby, AIDS, that sounds like a motive to get rid of both of them before some lab tech sells their blood tests to the tabloids."

"You're suggesting that Tom Travis killed his wife and unborn child to avoid some bad publicity? You think he's that big a monster?"

"People have been killed for less. But, hey, I'm just 'supposing.' I'm a writer. Conspiracy and betrayal, suspicion and violence, that's the stuff that puts food on my table. I see evil everywhere. But, it's just a rumor, after all. Maybe Santana doesn't have AIDS. And if she does, maybe Travis didn't get it. And if he did, that doesn't mean he gave it to Marian, or if he did, it doesn't necessarily mean that he would do something that . . . extreme. Come on," Jack, smiled again, "we gonna run or what?"

"Do you know anything else that might give somebody a motive to hurt Tom or Marian?"

"Sorry, that was the only film I worked with him on. For anything more, you're going to need to talk to Glenn Malvo. From what I hear, he and Travis go way back." Statler gave Steve a small laugh. "Hell, maybe you can get him to tell you the story about the stuntman Travis used to be buddies with." Statler looked down the winding asphalt path alive now with dots of color, women in red Spandex, speed walkers in lime and sapphire and lemon-gold, kids on rollerblades, old people tottering on polished aluminum canes. "Last chance."

Steve shook his head. "Thanks for the info."

"Sure, call me when this is all over. Who knows, there may be movie in it."