The Biggest Story in Hollywood #3
“But what Ramona heard means that Chad and Sloan put Juliette on the dinghy,” Sam said, working out her thoughts as she spoke.
“Incapacitated, it sounds like. Because right before Ramona was hit—right before someone hit her, surely—Juliette needed help to walk. How was she supposed to have gotten herself into a dinghy when she couldn’t walk?
And Chad made a sick joke at her expense.
‘She said she wanted to leave, and now she’s fucking left, hasn’t she?
’ He knew she couldn’t leave. They were the ones who made sure she left. ”
“They loaded her unconscious body onto that boat, started the motor, and sent her out onto the ocean in the dark!” Bex’s distress was absolute.
“They knew she was impaired! They knew she couldn’t swim!
They knew they’d knocked out the only person who would care enough to help her!
But they didn’t do anything to rescue her from certain death until Ramona came to and got the police, and by then it was too late? My God.”
Kessler didn’t say anything to refute Bex’s conclusions. He’d reached the same conclusions years ago and said nothing.
Sam was glad for the bigness of the Pacific, half obscured by rain. The ocean was big enough, she’d always thought, to wash anything clean.
But it was also a graveyard full of ghosts.
“You called her your muse,” Sam said. “She trusted you, but you didn’t help her. Why the hell not?”
Kessler looked mournful. “At the end of the day, I didn’t feel that I had any more to bring to the situation than Ramona had already given to the police.
I did check to make sure the police had the report.
Her story was in the hands of the only people who could do something about it.
That was my feeling at the time. Especially after I talked to Chad and Sloan to get their story of what happened. ”
“Why did you need to get their story?” Bex asked irritably. “What did you think, that they would provide independent confirmation of a murder? Of course they blamed everything on Juliette.”
“What they said seemed to match what the witnesses on other boats heard. They’d failed sobriety tests. It was hard to believe they were in a state to conspire to murder.”
“Did Ramona fail her sobriety test?”
“No.”
Sam pulled her sweater tighter around herself, needing to feel the protection. “That means Ramona could have fallen in a spill. She could have been doused deliberately, for that matter.”
“Chad sent a hoard of lawyers after her. After Archie, too, because of the documentary. I’m sure that’s why Archie wasn’t helpful to you, beyond his loyalty to Ramona. He had to hire an attorney back then.”
Bex growled. “Oh my God, spare me the tedious legal abuse of this man!”
Sam wondered if Juliette’s death had been the origin point of Chad’s threats to bring in his legal team.
It was a pattern he still fell back on. It had worked so well for him.
He’d kept Ramona from telling her story.
He’d kept the documentary from being released.
“He stopped it,” she said. “But why did he stop it? Is there evidence in it? How could there be, if Juliette’s still alive in it?
” She looked at Kessler, who hadn’t answered this question when they asked it earlier.
“Was there any footage for the documentary filmed after Juliette died?”
“No, it was already wrapped and edited. Cineline had been running a marketing campaign in advance of the release.”
“Right. They’d already done the movie poster.
All six members of the Ice Crew posed together, maybe for the last time.
But then they pulled it because Chad and his lawyers made it too expensive to bother distributing.
” That made sense. What didn’t make sense was why Chad had gone to such lengths to suppress the documentary. What was he afraid of?
She thought of the Velvet Chair. The cigarette machine with its sign, DON’T FORCE THE LEVERS YOU CRETINS.
Macie smoking in the abandoned club, telling them about the documentary.
Handheld camera, interviews on sidewalks, dark cut-ins of grainy footage of the crew piled on sofas.
The boys, me, and Juliette were often drunk or high.
Then Sam’s mind jumped to Kessler’s home theater.
The Ice Crew had made this man famous. He’d been living steeped in that nostalgic glory for so long that he’d become an archivist of it. He’d been waiting a long time for someone to come along and tell him the jig was up.
“You know,” Sam said. “You know what was in the documentary that Chad is afraid of. Show us.”
Kessler took a long pull from his pipe. The sharp smoke shuddered out from his lungs.
Then he reached into a pocket, pulling out his phone.
He swiped at the screen for long enough that Sam wanted to smack it out of his hand.
Finally, he handed it to her. Bex drew close to watch over her shoulder as Sam pushed the white “play” triangle hovering over Chad Bevington’s twentysomething face.
“Oh, you’re going to take a girl home tonight, Lennox?” Chad was laughing, sitting on a huge beanbag chair with Sloan, who leaned forward to tap his ash into a tall glass vase on the floor.
“Shut up. I’m a gentleman.” Sloan flicked his butt in the direction of the camera, which caught it sailing off screen. “If the Smashing Pumpkins move the souls of the fair sex tonight, let’s just say I’m soulful.”
Chad snort-laughed, and the way he couldn’t stop giggling at Sloan’s performance of painful coolness suggested there was something helping his laughter along. His red eyes were more evidence. “I know how you move a girl’s soul,” he said.
Sloan bent to light another cigarette, and Chad knocked his fedora off. “Shut the fuck up, Bevington.”
Chad kept snickering as he picked up a can of beer that had been between his knees and then mimed pouring something into it from a vessel between his fingertips. “Here you are, milady. Just close your eyes and enjoy your soul moving.”
Sloan hit him with his hat.
Sam paused the video and set the phone down on the table. Her neck was hot. Nausea landed in her stomach with a sick punch.
“Stupid joke,” Kessler said. “That’s what I thought at the time, but it was just the kind of jokes guys made.”
“No,” Sam said. “Rape has never been a joke.”
Kessler swallowed. “But after everything with Juliette, and what Ramona told me, her version of events, I thought about it. I thought about it more when Chad suppressed the movie.”
“You think he was afraid that the circumstances of Juliette’s death were suspicious enough for people to see that scene in the documentary and believe she’d been roofied,” Bex said.
“Even if Juliette’s death wasn’t reinvestigated, he and Sloan would have been convicted in the court of public opinion. ”
“And that threat never went away,” Sam said. “It’s as true today as it was back then.” She speared Kessler with a pointed look. “Who knows about this favor you cashed in for Archie with the head of Cineline? Is it possible Chad found out about the documentary coming out of the vault?”
The director shook his head. “Niels has kept it locked down. The subjects’ contracts were such that the footage belonged solely to the studio. I’ve been scrupulous about keeping my involvement quiet. I’m not looking for a headache from Chad or anyone else.”
Sam took a deep breath, considering Kessler.
Something was off.
“How does it benefit you to cash in so many chips with Cineline and resurrect this documentary?” she asked.
He didn’t respond. He didn’t look at her.
“Ramona,” Bex said. “You feel guilty. All these years later, you want to do something, and calling in this favor with a studio executive is the only way you can think of to make amends. Not going to the police and giving them a statement. Not apologizing to Ramona and asking her what she would like to do. All you can think of to do is release this film into the snake pit of public speculation and, of course—of course—earn box office at the same time. For fuck’s sake.
” Bex looked disgusted as she turned her face away from Kessler’s suddenly flaming cheeks.
“Is there anything else you want to unburden yourself of?” Sam asked. “Any confessions you might otherwise end up taking to the grave?”
Kessler knocked out the contents of his pipe into an enormous blown-glass ashtray on the table, then rubbed his thumbnail with his index finger. “Just … if Ramona’s missing. I’ve never known her to—well, to be anything but someone a person can count on.”
“I know that.” Sam stood up. “But you could have told the rest of the world. If you’d wanted to support Ramona, you could have sacrificed and stuck your neck out for your muse.” She said the word with heavy sarcasm. “When we find her, I’ll be sure to tell her just what a help you’ve been, Tom.”
Sam’s phone buzzed from her bag. Bex put her hand on her own, then opened the top and slid out her phone for a fast peek. “It’s Frankie.”
“We’re finished here,” Sam said.
“Well, you know where to find me.” With this, Kessler got up and led them through the fog and down the halls of his beautiful shiplike home to the drive.
Sam didn’t feel sorry for him.
In Fergus’s truck, Bex slipped out of her shoes and crossed her legs on the passenger seat. She retrieved her notebook and began furiously writing. Sam started the engine and backed slowly out of Kessler’s driveway, pointing them in the direction of downtown.
They drove for a little while. Sam listened to the soft scratching sounds of Bex’s gold pen and let her mind empty of everything but the foggy road in front of them.
“Do you really believe there isn’t any way word of the documentary rerelease hasn’t leaked?” Bex asked after a few miles.
“Ramona knows,” Sam said. “It’s hard to believe she’s the only one.”