Guilt

CHAPTER 38

Floyd Banfer placed a hand on Jack Weathers’s cashmere sleeve. “He’s also one of yours?”

Milo said, “Who is he, Jack?”

Weathers wrung his hands. “A guy … M.J.”

Milo said, “Melvin Jaron Wedd. When did you place him at the compound?”

Weathers muttered something.

“Speak up, Jack.”

“Three years ago. Give or take.”

“What’s his job title?”

“Estate manager,” said Weathers. “I’d placed him before, similar thing.”

“Whose estate did he manage before?”

“Saudi family, gigantic place in Bel Air. Four, five years ago.”

“And before then?”

“No, that was the first. They had no problems with him-the Arabs. They moved back to Riyadh.”

“So you sent him to Premadonny.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Who solicited your help?”

“Business manager.”

“Who’s that?”

Weathers’s eyes traveled to the right. “Not the manager directly, some assistant.”

Floyd Banfer said, “Or some assistant’s assistant.”

Weathers regarded his nephew crossly. “That’s the way it goes with people at their level.”

Milo said, “Who’s their business manager?”

“Apex Management. They handle a lot of the biggies.”

“What do you remember about M.J.?”

“A guy,” said Weathers. “I think he had some bookkeeping experience. Him I did check out. What’s the problem with him?”

“Maybe nothing, Jack.”

“Maybe nothing but you’re carrying around his picture?”

“His name came up.”

“Meaning?”

“His name came up.”

Weathers waved a hand. “Frankly, I don’t want to know. Now can I go and try to pay some bills? I’m no civil servant, got no cushy pension and overtime.”

Milo said, “Sure. Have a nice day.”

“Sure?”

“Unless you’ve got something more to tell us, Jack.”

“I’ve got nothing. To tell or to hide or to relate or report. I’m in the service business, I find service people for clients who need service. What they do once they’re hired is their business.”

Bracing himself on the bench’s center divider, he got to his feet, buttoned his blazer. Banfer stood and took him by the elbow. Weathers shook off the support with surprising fury. “Not ready for a scooter yet, Floyd, let’s get breakfast, Nate ’n Al, Bagel Nosh, whatever.”

Working hard at casual.

Banfer tapped his Rolex Oyster. “Sorry, appointments.”

“Busy guy,” said Weathers. “Everyone’s busy. I should be busy.”

He hobbled away.

Banfer said, “His blood pressure’s not great, I hope the stress doesn’t cause problems.”

Milo winked. “That sounds like prep for a civil suit.”

“Not funny, Lieutenant. Are we through?”

Before waiting for an answer, Banfer headed east on the parkway. A curvaceous female jogger came heading his way. He didn’t bother to look.

Milo sat down on the bench. “I drove by that private road this morning. Like I thought, tough surveillance. The county registered the compound as eleven acres, divided into three legal parcels, all registered to another holding company called Prime Mayfair. Tried a trace-back, it dead-ends at a paper-pusher who works for Apex Management.”

I said, “A lot of plot to thicken.”

He looked up Apex’s number. Got transferred a few times. Hung up, shaking his head.

“Got stonewalled by an assistant’s assistant’s walking-around-guy’s gopher’s peon’s underling slave. Not that anyone would tell me anything even if I could get through. Weathers’s destroying his files doesn’t help, want to take bets he’ll be torching Wedd’s soon as he gets back from breakfast? And for all the tough talk to Banfer, there’s nothing I can really do about it.”

“At least you’ve got confirmation that all three of them worked together.”

He kicked a leg of the bench. Unfolded Wedd’s DMV shot and stared at it for a while. “I need face-time with this prince but getting into that compound’s as likely as being invited to an Oscar after party.” He smiled. “Actually, Rick was invited to one a few years ago. After sewing up the DUI daughter of some hoo-hah producer who drove her Aston into a wall.”

“Did you go?”

“Nah, both of us were on call that night … okay, I’ll figure out a way to watch the place. After I recanvass the park, see if the staff or the regulars remember anything.”

He checked with Reed and Binchy to learn if Kelly LeMasters’s story had pulled up anything solid. It hadn’t. Same for the anonymous Crime Stoppers line.

I said, “Breakfast? Nate ’n Al, Bagel Nosh?”

“No, thanks, already ate.”

Prior meals had never deterred him before.

I said, “Hope you feel better.”

Back home I put in a call to Dr. Leonard Coates.

Len and I were classmates in grad school, worked together for a year at Western Pediatric. I stuck around at the hospital, putting in time on the cancer wards while Len shifted to a Beverly Hills private practice.

Soon after hiring a publicist, Len began getting quoted in the popular press. It didn’t take long to acquire a celebrity patient load, and a few years in he’d taken over the penthouse floor of a building on Roxbury, was overseeing half a dozen associates. While suffering from a serious case of Hollywood Sepsis.

It’s a progressive condition, also known as Malignant Look-At-Me Syndrome, leading to excessive dependency on public exposure, self-invention, and the narcosis of fame.

Len’s addiction had led him to write a useless pop-psych book, peddle countless treatments for screenplays and reality shows, obsess on getting his picture taken at certain parties in the company of eye candy. Tall and slim and meticulously bearded, he plowed through a succession of women. I’d stopped counting his marriages at four. He had two kids that I knew of and the few times I saw them they both looked depressed. The last time Len and I had run into each other was at a hospital fund-raiser. Smiling all the while and checking out the crowd nonstop, he’d spent a lot of time griping about “ungrateful brats. Just like their mothers, you can’t fight genetics.”

His service operator put me on hold. The audio track was a sales pitch for “Dr. Coates’s compelling new book Putting Your Life in Balance.”

The operator broke back in as a synopsis of chapter 1 was ending. The gist was “Stop and Smell the Roses.” I’d never known Len to have a hobby.

She said, “Sorry, Doctor’s unavailable but he’ll get the message.”

I said, “How’s the book doing?”

“Pardon?”

“Dr. Coates’s new book.”

She laughed. “I just sit here in a small room and answer the phone. Last thing I read was a utility bill.”

To my surprise, Len called my private line nine minutes later.

“Hey, Alex! Great to hear from you! How’s life treating you?”

I said, “Well, Len. You?”

“Off-the-chart busy, it never stops. But what’s the alternative? Stagnation? We’re like sharks, right? We need to keep moving.”

“Congratulations on the book.”

“Oh, you heard the tape? We’ll see how it does. I calculated my hourly fee writing it. Somewhere south of ten bucks an hour but my agent claims it’s a stepping-stone. She’s been getting nibbles for a talk show, says I’ve got more people-warmth than you-know-who, so maybe. What’s up?”

“What do you know about Prema Moon and Donny Rader?”

A beat. “May I ask why you’d care about people like that?”

“Hollywood types?”

“Shallow types,” he said. “That’s my bailiwick, you’re not going to encroach on my territory, are you, Alex?” He laughed. “Just kidding, you want ’em, they’re yours. Though you have to admit, I’m better suited to that kind of thing because we both know I’m about as deep as a rain puddle in August. You, on the other hand … please don’t tell me you’ve sold out, Alexander. I’ve always thought of you as my positive role model.”

Guffaws, rich, loud, audio-friendly.

“You’re selling yourself short, Len.”

“Not in the least. Know Thyself is my first commandment. Meanwhile, I just bought myself a new Audi R8, the convertible. Tuned it up so the compression’s insane, real beast, and trust me, that didn’t come from listening to whiny mothers. Bet you’re still with the old Caddy, right?”

“Right.”

“There you go,” he said. “Loyalty and solidity. Maybe one day it’ll be a classic.”

“I can hope.”

“So what’s with the sudden interest in the Golden Gods?”

“You know them?”

“If I did, would I be talking about them? No, I don’t know them personally but after all these years … how can I put this-okay, let’s just say if someone told me either of them had Proust on the nightstand I’d figure it was for a drink coaster.”

“Not intellectuals.”

“None of them are,” he said, with sudden fury. “They’re genetic freaks-bipedal show-dogs able to memorize a few lines. Sit heel stay emote. Even if they start out with some native intelligence they’re egregiously undereducated so they never know anything. I had one-obviously I won’t tell you her name-who came in to talk to one of my staff about a problem kid. But only after she was turned down by the Dog Whisperer. Why’d she go to him first? Probably to get on TV. But the reason she gave us was all animals are the same, right? It just takes the proper vibrations to make everything perfect.”

I laughed

“Sure it’s funny,” said Len, “except we’re talking about a five-year-old with enough problems to fill the DSM and Mommy wants to treat him like a pug. Anyway, no, I’m not personally intimate with either Prema or Donny but I have heard that he’s borderline IQ and she basically runs things. Now, same question: Why the curiosity?”

“Be my therapist, Len.”

“Pardon?”

“I need you to keep this in confidence.”

“Of course. Sure.”

I told him about the broken appointment two years ago, the surfacing of Premadonny’s compound in a current criminal investigation.

He said, “Oh, my. See what you mean about tight lips. And even without the whole ethical thing, no sense getting on the bad side of people like that.”

“They’re that powerful?”

“That’s the town we live in, Alex. You didn’t grow up here, right? You’re from some wholesome flyover place-Nebraska, Kansas?”

“Missouri.”

“Same difference. Well, I was born in Baja Beverly Hills, my dad was an aerospace engineer, back then the studios had their influence but it was mostly about rockets and planes, real people making real product. Not the bullshit-purveying company town it is now. So good luck.”

“He’s no genius and she runs the show.”

“Supposedly he’s close to retarded-’scuse me, developmentally disabled. And living with Stupid, she’d need to run things, no?”

“She sounds like the perfect political spouse.”

“Ha! There it is-that acid wit Alexander occasionally allows himself to indulge in. I used to dig when you did that in school. Made me feel better about my own uncharitable cognitions. I used to dig our time in school, period. Western Peds, too, Alex. They worked us like galley slaves but we knew we were doing good every day and it was exciting, right? We never knew what each day would bring.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Like the time we were trying to have lunch, I remember like it was yesterday, we’ve got our tuna salad and our coffee on our trays, are about to finally take ten minutes and you get paged and this look comes over your face and you just leave. Later, I run into you and you tell me some patient’s father brought a gun onto the onco ward, you spent an hour talking him down.”

“Good times,” I said.

“They were, man. Especially ’cause I ate your tuna.” He laughed. “Imagine that, today-shrink gets a call, handles it, finito. Nowadays there’d be a mass panic, some gross overreaction due to protocol, and someone would probably get hurt. I did some of that shit myself when I was there, Alex. Crisis interventions no one heard about because they were successful. Those were great times.”

“They were, Len.”

“But get real and move on, huh? I do love my R8. How many miles on the Caddy?”

“Lost count by the third engine.”

“Beyond loyal, we’re talking commitment. Well, good for you. And great to hear from you, friend, we need to do lunch.”