West of Paradise (23 page)

She thought now about how she had felt only a few days before, perilously close to a panic in her longing to be conspicuous. Already she was starting to feel sentimental about being obscure. All her life she had been in places where people seemed concerned only with what she was: honest, bright, straightforward, anxious to learn, impatient to create, longing for affection, perhaps, but not so intensely that it superceded her wish to
be
herself. Herself, before becoming a part of someone else, identity in tandem. Herself as the not yet fully defined person she hoped to become, but filled with qualities those around her seemed to honor and respect, like honor and respect. Like aspiration. What she was had been all that mattered.

But here everything was
who.
Who you knew. Who had invited you. Who represented you. She wished she could say, it's
me.
I represent myself. I represent the vanished American dream: ambition and talent and yearning in a healthy young package, with a fresh face, and some leftover romanticism from my purported forebear.

“Would it be okay if I came over there?” the lawyer was saying.

“I'm sure it would be fine,” Kate said. “She'd probably be glad to see someone who cared about Larry.”

“I didn't say I cared about him,” Anita said. There was a sudden hard edge to her voice, making it not so much unfeminine as unavailable, except for the job, except by the clock. “I said I was his lawyer.”

*   *   *

The suit Anita Streng wore was well cut, severe, navy blue and right to the point, making her the match for any male lawyer. There were legs coming out from under the skirt, but they seemed there solely to carry her where she intended to go.

“He had a lady lawyer?” Lila said, her eyes not so much squinting as appraising.

Kate could study her watching and understand now what Lila was watching for. Had this been one of Larry's numbers? Kate was starting to sense the glands of the older woman, or whatever part of the body it was that generated suspicion, jealousy, all the emotions Lila claimed not to have registered.

Anita Streng made a slight moue of distaste. “We don't call—”

“A woman lawyer, excuse me,” said Lila. “I suppose I should be glad he had such confidence in us.” She included herself easily in the blue-suited package.

Or maybe that was spiteful. Sardonic. Maybe, Kate thought, it was a prick in the uppity balloon that appeared to be pulling at the young woman's nose. She was strangely pretty, her face deliberately drab, it seemed to Kate, a kind of combative lack of makeup, as if she were shoving her intelligence in the observer's face, daring them to make her bright blue eyes and thick beige-yellow hair more important than her brains were. In spite of good bone structure and impressive features, she had succeeded in neutralizing herself. She had turned beige. Her skin was the same color as her cupid bow lips. But you would not notice them unless you were studying them, so disappeared were they into her sandy pallor.

“How old are you?” Lila asked.

“Twenty-seven.”

Lila sighed. “And you have your own firm?”

“I am one of the attorneys in Fletcher McCallum's office.”

“I don't know who that is,” Lila said.

“He's an entertainment lawyer. He represented Mr. Drayco.”

“And most of the important actors and directors in town,” noted Kate.

“Fresh out of law school, right?”

“I've passed the bar,” said Anita. “And I
did
go to Yale. Where Clinton went. And Mr. Drayco.”

“Excuse me?” said Lila.

“Yale. Where he got his Phi Beta Kappa key.”

“Is that in New Haven?” asked Lila.

“It is,” said Anita, setting her briefcase on the console.

“Yeah, I remember when he went to New Haven,” said Lila. “He got involved in some musical, trying out out of town. He found that key thing in a pawn shop.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Anita.

“You don't have to apologize to me because he fooled you,” Lila said, grinning. “‘Every man is a hero to his fool of an attorney'; that was his favorite saying.”

“I believe the saying is ‘No man is a hero to his valet,' or ‘Only a fool has himself for a lawyer,'” Anita said coolly.

“Well it's good you can straighten me out,” said Lila.

The young woman opened the briefcase. “Do you have a VCR?” she asked.

“We can get one from the desk,” said Lila. “It's ten extra dollars a day.”

“I suspect you'll be able to afford it,” said Anita, and pulled out a sealed envelope. “His instructions were to give this to you and that I be present while it was played.”

*   *   *

“Do you want me to leave?” Kate asked, once the VCR was installed and the tape was about to go on. As curious as she was about its contents, she would not have minded Lila's excusing her, letting her off the hook. Already she was feeling somewhat relieved, the burden of Lila Darshowitz shifting in her mind onto this blue-suited, gently officious young woman, paid to carry the load.

“Can she stay?” Lila asked Anita.

“It's up to you.”

“Stay,” Lila said.

There was a sadness in the way she said “Stay,” it seemed to Kate, as though everything else had deserted her. Her youth, her lover, seasons, perhaps, that she had wished she could cling to, spring that had changed too quickly to summer, summer that blazed into fall. “Stay,” she might have whispered out her window to the turning leaves on the trees. But they'd fallen all the same, plunging her into winter.

“Then we'll proceed,” Anita said, and turned the tape on.

*   *   *

The lighting was a little harsh. But on the screen there was a surprising softness about Larry Drayco, an unexpected sweetness. His hair was very light, cut short, so the eyes in the still-babyish face, round cheeks, tanned skin, looked large and very clear. His voice as he spoke was gentle, little more than a whisper, not as in the famous, uncontrollable rages he was noted for.

“I suppose you're wondering why I called you here today,” he said, and then laughed. “No, I guess not.” He looked straight at the camera. “Lila, I'm sorry. I hope I didn't go in any way that made things tougher for you than I already have.

“I'm leaving you whatever I have in the bank, my house and all its contents. But I don't have to tell you there are people waiting in line with claims against me. Some gonifs I beat fair and square who still took me to court, and won because I made the mistake of telling the judges to go fuck themselves. You know me, with people who think they're in charge.

“Plus there's the IRS.
And
the lawyers who are bringing this to you now. I owe them for the time in court—plus the other guys' attorneys' fees. Without me there to put up a fight, I guess they'll take pretty much everything.

“Herb and I do have a new picture coming out, and if it's a winner maybe the studio can be leaned on to give you some share. Darcy Linette is a decent woman, very active in charities, so maybe she'll realize that you deserve something. But I wouldn't hold my breath because she's got that whole fucking corporate bureaucracy to work through, and charity ain't their game.

“I wouldn't hold my breath.” He repeated the words, and gave a gentle chuckle. His smile, like his voice, was curiously gentle, lighting up his face. “I guess that's really just an expression now.

“But I
am
able to leave you a little something that could put you in the catbird seat. This town, as you probably figured out by now, is all about power. I have something on a truly major player. The other item in this packet is an audiotape that should give you a three-picture deal, or a place on the board of his studio, which comes with a pretty steep stipend, as they say when they've been to Hahvahd.” He pronounced it in the Bostonian manner, slyly, slightly contemptuously, as if he had, indeed, gone to Yale, and had traditional reason to look down or at least askance at Cambridge. “I don't know if you want to get involved in this shitty business, but if you do, this is your passport. Don't be intimidated by the fact that you don't know anything about making movies. They got clothes designers who connect with the right star, get them to feel dependent, and make themselves producers. Hairdressers who hoist themselves up by their clients' tresses like they was Rapunzel, climbing to the towers of power. So don't be shy. And don't take crap from anybody. You're worth all of them.

“Listen to the tape alone. As Benjamin Franklin said, three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. As far as I know, since you're playing this tape, I'm the only one who qualifies.

“I wish I could give you something more concrete. You've been the only one in my life I could always count on—”

At this point Lila burst into sobs. Convulsive they were, wracked, as though she were vomiting tears.

“I'm sorry you couldn't say the same about me. But I really loved you, probably still do. I mean, even now, when I'm not there anymore. If I'm anywhere, I bet included in my package is how I feel about you. I hope that counts for something.”

By now, Lila was wailing uncontrollably. The phone rang. Anita hit the remote control and stopped the tape while Kate picked the receiver up. It was the desk clerk, saying someone had heard screams, asking should he call 911.

“No, it's okay,” Kate said. “We've been to a funeral.” She hung up the phone, and the video resumed.

“Well, I'm outta here,” Larry was saying. “Probably by now I'll be doing lunch with Orson Welles in that big Chasen's in the sky. I've got a lot I'd like to ask him. I really would've loved to be a great filmmaker. But what can you do? You do what you can. I even would've loved to have left you with Rosebud. You know, some big mystery about what was really important to me. The thing I missed out on, grieved over losing. But I don't think even I know what that was.

“So all I have to leave you is the tape. May it serve you well. Au revoir, I sincerely hope.”

The screen went dark.

*   *   *

After they were gone, after she had pulled herself together, and Kate had put a box of Kleenex where she had easy access to it, Lila played the audiotape. Anita had loaned her a small cassette player, and called an agency for her for home nursing care, which she was sure Larry's health insurance could cover, since Lila was still officially his wife. Otherwise, she said, the firm would be glad to sue the city of Santa Monica, on contingency. It seemed to Lila as close as that young goy lawyer could get to being warmhearted.

There was music on the tape. Larry with his sense of theatrics, his love of song, producing, staging, putting a curtain around whatever it was he was going to show. It wasn't until a little further in that Lila realized the music was actually happening wherever the scene was playing out, part of whatever was going on, the squeaks that she'd thought were bad violins the springs of a mattress going up and down.

“Oh, God, I love these,” the man was saying.

“And I love that you talk in bed,” said the woman, throatily. “Most men…” there were moist pauses “… don't like to talk when they're making love.”

“Why?” he said, with difficulty.

“Because talking requires an answer,” she whispered. “And you'd rather my mouth was doing this.”

A pause. He groaned.

“Oh, Larry,” Lila said. “You really going to make me listen to this?”

When it was over, Larry's voice came on the recording. “Honey,” he said. “That was Victor Lippton, tobacco zillionaire, and new head of Cosmos, with his mistress, Alexa de Carville. Not
exactly
a poor person either. Her father invented a utility software that writes all kinds of letters for you, sold it to a giant corporation for a bundle.

“Richest of all is Victor's wife, daughter of a Hong Kong businessman whose enemies often turn up in Victoria Harbor.
If
the weights fall off and they turn up at all. So this is nothing he would like her to find out. Or take a chance on her finding out.

“Call him at Cosmos—it's in Culver City, the number changes all the time as the owners do, so call information. Ask for Victor Lippton. Tell his secretary you're Larry Drayco's widow, and I left him something.”

*   *   *

“How did he get it?” Victor Lippton asked, white-faced. They were alone in his office, which he had shown her with the automatic pride of very rich men who knew they didn't have to impress anyone, and so impressed everybody. Four interior designers had banded together to make it an instant understated showplace, erecting it like a tent over a society wedding in less than two days. Carpenters and electricians from the studio had done the construction work, seamlessly, flawlessly, with unbelievable speed. That is to say, it would have been unbelievable, Victor had said, smiling benignly at the start of their meeting, had their futures, like the suite, not hung in the balance.

The offices jutted out like a ship's prow over the garden below, the corner of the main room at an improbable angle, finished with floor-to-ceiling glass. To be in that place, even in the wheelchair they'd brought her in, had given Lila a slight attack of vertigo, a condition that seemed to be shared by Victor once he heard the tape.

“I don't know exactly,” Lila said. “Somebody he knew at the
National Enquirer,
probably. They were always doing exposes on him.” She said it as she always did, without any kind of
A
sound, so it rhymed with noses, only having read the word. “After a while he started trading information, and you know Larry. He had a knack for making friends.”

Victor Lippton guffawed. It was a nasty sound, artificial in its merriment.

“What I would ask myself,” Lila said, “before I sent any more hate and mistrust to Larry, is how did they get under her mattress?”