An Accidental Affair (38 page)

Halfway back to Downey, as I stared through bullet-cracked glass, the nausea kicked in.

Not until then did I feel the stinging in my ear. I touched my pain and my hand came back red.

I’d almost died. I’d almost been shot in the head.

By the time I made it to the 605 Freeway, I figured out what the last Bergs had said.

He’d said, “Because we’re family, you sonofabitch. Nobody fucks with the Bergs.”

The news report on KTLA said that the police arrived at the scene on Skirball and the registration on the .45 led them back to Bobby Holland’s home. The front door was closed, but it wasn’t locked. I had left it unlocked when I had left. They called out and moved from room to room, saw no one, then paused at his office, stood on top of the rug that covered Bobby Holland’s blood. What was all around the room grabbed their attention, made them look up and not down. For a moment, as radios squawked, they took in the outstanding shrine and the magnificence of Regina Baptiste. A moment later, they snapped out of their own fantasies and headed outside. His stunning
eighteen-year-old Hungarian lover was still drugged out and unconscious by the pool of death, a package of cocaine at her side, powder on her nose, and her slender hands between her shapely legs. She looked tempting when the police showed up with their guns drawn. When they touched her shoulder, she jerked awake. First she smiled at the boys in blue, despite their guns being drawn, smiled until she saw Bobby Holland’s naked body facedown in the pool. She stared for a long moment, called Bobby Holland’s name over and over, allowed what was going on to register, and then she shook her head and screamed. She screamed that she had told him not to go swimming a few minutes ago, said that they were just talking, that she was lonely and he was going to swim then come to have sex with her, that they were going to do the six nine and she was going put on the strap-on and make love to him the way he liked so much, that she was waiting on him to finish his swim and feel asleep. She said that it must have been the Benadryl, and even though she had done some blow, she couldn’t stay awake, and that after Bobby Holland had handed her the blow, she had been excited and hadn’t paid attention, cried that maybe she could’ve saved him but she hadn’t wanted to get her Choo shoes and beautiful hair wet. Then tears became anger and she snapped that Bobby Holland had fucking drowned himself and fucked up her life and she would have to go back to being a waitress at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles on Gower and Sunset and move back into a crowded and smelly one-bedroom apartment with five other people on Hollywood and Franklin. Piroska Anastazia Dorika Vass Torma wished that she had never left Johnny Bergs for Bobby Holland. They asked her if she was familiar with Johnny Bergs. She did her best to calm down, repeated what she had screamed, that Johnny was her ex-boyfriend. They had been boyfriend and girlfriend for almost two weeks and it had been very nice while it lasted.

“Did Johnny Bergs want you back? Was there a fight over you between them?”

“Johnny call and call and call. Look at me. I am beautiful. All men want me back.”

“Was Bergs fighting with Holland?”

“Every one fights with Bobby. Every one is jealous of him.”

“So Bergs and Holland were at odds over you.”

“Bobby tells me not to cry and tells me how beautiful I am. That I am more beautiful than Regina Baptiste. And he tells me he can put me in movies and make me a star, a better star than her. I go home with him. I leave Johnny Bergs and say nothing and go with Bobby Holland. Bobby brings me here and eat my poosy and make love and treats me like I am the better special woman in the world. We do some drugs and he laugh and have fun while I wear strap-on for him and make love to him like a dog. He laugh and tell me that he e-mail the video of Johnny Bergs and Regina Baptiste having sex to the world. He hated her. I didn’t like her. She is rude. Very rude. He make her famous and she leave him for a writer. I would not leave Bobby, ever. He Tweet that the sun in his life had gone down two years ago, but now it had risen again, new and improved. He was talking about me. But now that fucker is dead. He is fucking dead. He die right in front of me. Why would he do that to me? Fucking idiot die in front of me.”

“Try and focus. You saw Bobby Holland swimming tonight?”

“He talk to me while he swim. He ask me to swim with him. I tell him no.”

“You went back inside?”

“No. I watch him. We talk while he swim. He tell me that he buy me new iPhone and iPad tomorrow. Now he dead. How will I get my new iPhone and iPad now?”

“I need you to focus. You and Mister Holland were here alone?”

“Yes. He tell me to wait out here while he swim.”

“So, confirming, it was just you and Mr. Holland here this evening?”

She nodded. “Mister Police Officer, I have a very serious question to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“Will I be in the big newspaper and on all the television talk shows now?”

When she stood up, she dropped her package of blow. She bent at the waist and accidentally-on-purpose gave law enforcement a view of her derriere, a view that made them all pause, and she quickly picked up her blow, her final gift from Bobby Holland, stuck her fingernail inside, then sniffed and felt the rush before she dropped the package back in her pocket.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“I am so sad right now. So very sad.”

“Did you just snort cocaine in front of us?”

“Would you like some, handsome police officer?”

Tears in her eyes, she extended the package to the officers. The officers looked at each other. This was Los Angeles. This was planet Hollywood. They had seen stranger. When she was handcuffed and led through the house, as they all stepped where I had stepped, touched things that I had touched, when the front door opened on a sea of news reporters, on bloggers who were outside streaming live on the Internet, she kicked and yelled that she wished that she had never left Hungary for Hollywood. She yelled that everyone did cocaine and they were picking on her for no reason. All she wanted to do was be in the movies like Julia Roberts. That was all she wanted to do, come to Hollywood and be the next
Pretty Woman
of the world.

Around the time Driver was pulling out of The Apartments, miles away in the valley, Bobby Holland’s ex-wife’s BMW X6 turned and sped down his cul-de-sac, angered because Bobby Holland hadn’t returned her phone calls. He’d been busy. But I doubt if she cared.
The ex-wife was frantic, her luggage crammed inside with her children and the three dogs. She had managed to get custody of the dogs as well. She had to make it to LAX in time to catch her flight to Norway. After a decade of being absent from the cinema, she was finally working again, back to being an actress. She had been cast in a film in Europe. She still had a chance to work. She had also been cast in London for a twelve-week run of Shakespeare’s
Much Ado About Nothing.
Bobby Holland had refused to grant permission for their kids to leave the country for three months, and he managed to obtain temporary custody of his kids. That custody would lower his child-support payments and give him leverage in a custody battle. Those notes were in the files that were inside Bobby Holland’s desk, files that would vanish and find their way to the media. His angered ex-wife slowed down when she saw all the police and the news vans out front. At first she thought that Bobby Holland was filming at his home. At first. Then she looked up in the sky and saw the news chopper overhead. There was an ambulance out front too. She cursed and shook her head as tears ran down her face. What mattered to her the most was her film and that it was Bobby Holland’s court-ordered days to watch the kids and somehow Bobby Holland had, once again and for the last time, managed to fuck up her life.

As she and her children opened their car doors, before she could yell for them to stay inside the car, she heard a woman screaming, then saw her fighting with the police. They stood back and watched a half-naked woman being forced inside the backseat of a police car.

As six members of the Bergs family and Bobby Holland were being put in drawers inside the morgue, as they were being placed in deep freeze, I stepped out of a nice hot shower. After I had washed away the scent of fear and anger and stench of murder, I looked at my trembling hand, the hand that had pulled the trigger and saved my life, and waited for it to calm down, waited for the tremors to subside. I closed the lid, sat down on the toilet, and practiced breathing in a steam-filled room. I left the water running in the sink, used that to create sound, and massaged my temples for a while before I picked up the iPhone that I had been given by Alice Ayres. I didn’t play the video that she had shown me, but I played the one where I had drowned Bobby Holland. The sound was on mute, but I remembered all that was said. I grimaced and watched it like I was watching
Faces of Death
. I wasn’t happy about what I had done, but I told myself that what I had done was necessary. I convinced myself that there was no other solution. Protecting Regina Baptiste was my job. I was about to delete the video. Keeping it was too dangerous. But I heard Regina let out a painful groan and stopped.

I called out, “Are you okay?”

“Come here when you get done.”

Then I turned the water off and brushed my teeth before I went to the bedroom, the bedroom that belonged to Varg Veum, the bedroom that now had Regina Baptiste sitting on the edge of the Italian
bed. It was a bed that she had sat on many times, a bed that we had made love on a thousand times, but here, in this apartment, sitting on that bed, in this dreary lighting, she looked out of place. This run-down apartment complex, this wasn’t her world. But the way she looked, the way this place had fit what I felt inside, it seemed to fit her now as well. Her cellular was at her side, still ringing, now ringing nonstop, as she wallowed in endless tears, her head lowered, as if invisible strings were pulling her down. With effort, she raised her face.

I asked, “What else happened?”

Her lips trembled as she smiled at me. But it wasn’t really a smile. Her look was unsettling. Her muddled expression was new to me. But so was everything that had happened today. She shifted and held that expression, our emotions disjointed, but she looked as if I should know. Something else had happened since I had showered. Something serious.

She sighed and shook her head. “You always drop your clothes where you are.”

“And you never tear the toilet paper along the perforated edges.”

“Clothes on the floor. I hate that. My mother raised me that way. In that way, I’m like her. I need things orderly. I’m anal like that. And you know that I am anal like that, James.”

I nodded. She was about to tell me something else. It was in her eyes.

She said, “I was going to empty your pockets before I hung your pants back up.”

Again I nodded.

She whispered, “I always empty your pockets. Your shirt pockets. Jacket pockets. And pants pockets. My mother does that for my dad. And I do the same thing. Like my mom.”

“You have a habit of doing that.”

“You have a habit of leaving things in your pockets. You always leave money in your pockets. I have found so much money in your pockets. And valuable things that you should put away.”

A moment passed before I managed to ask, “What did I leave in my pockets?”

She opened her right hand. Bobby Holland’s watch rested in her palm, the Montblanc Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph Automatic, the version that came in 18k red gold.

She said, “I bought a watch like this for Bobby Holland. Three years ago.”

I took a deep breath, but didn’t say anything.

She said, “I spent one hundred and thirty thousand dollars on a watch for him. He wanted this watch so badly. And I bought it for him. One hundred and thirty thousand dollars.”

I swallowed and rubbed the back of my neck before I released another sigh.

Her voice splintered, “It’s engraved. From me to him. This is his watch. This is the watch I bought. The leather band is wet. It’s soaking wet. And now it smells like chlorine.”

We held eye contact. Her tears came faster. Occam’s razor once again.

She whispered, “Jesus. This watch could be a needle in your arm, James.”