Jimmy punched in the access code that Brooke Danziger had given him, and the elevator doors opened. He rode it to the top level of the Malibu house, his stomach doing flip-flops as much from nerves as from the swiftness of the ascent. The doors opened, and he crossed the deck quickly. The hydraulic lap pool was covered now, bubbles visible under the slats of the decking, the smell of chlorine rising into the cool night air.
He hesitated at the front door, feeling the familiar nervous tingle in his fingertips. It was always like this when he was about to walk into someplace he wasn't supposed to be. He had been breaking and entering since he was a teenager; even grown up he still liked slipping past doormen and security guards like the invisible man. The front door lock was easy, a Schlage lever tumbler. Jimmy whipped the pick gun out of his black leather jacket, a spring-loaded contraption with various picks and tension settings. It took him less than eight seconds to open the front door. He didn't leave a scratch on the lock, but eight seconds-he was out of practice.
He had made his first pick gun in high school, using a locksmith's manual, a coat hanger, and two clothespins. It was big and awkward, but it had worked well enough for him to break into the Griffith Observatory and give his science class a late-night tour. The one he was using now was a model formerly used by the FBI-he had bought it legally over the Internet. He stepped inside, crossed to the alarm keypad on the wall, and entered the five-digit number. The house echoed with the easy-listening music that was supposed to make potential burglars think someone was home.
Brooke had said that the screening room was on the lower level, down the first set of stairs and to the right, but he did a quick walk-through of the house. He had time-between the premiere of My Girl Trouble and the party afterward, the Danzigers would be gone five or six hours at least.
The kitchen featured brushed-chrome industrial appliances, polished copper pots and pans, and a two-hundred-year-old French butcher block. Six different brands of mineral water lined the refrigerator door, and the produce bins overflowed with exotic fruits and baby vegetables. The guest bedrooms smelled musty, but the master suite had a king-sized canopy bed, a built-in sauna, and a pink marble Jacuzzi overlooking the ocean. Photos of Michael and Brooke with A-list stars and Hollywood power players covered the walls. Brooke looked bored.
Jimmy walked downstairs to the screening room, fumbled around, and switched on the overhead lights. It was a large room with high ceilings, a THX sound system, and thirty-six rocking-chair seats with velvet cushions and wide armrests: four rows of offset seats, nine to a row, each one offering a perfect sight line to the quartz-light screen. At the rear of the room, behind an acoustic-glass partition, a smaller room housed two 35-millimeter projectors.
He started with the film storage unit, a six-foot-high steel cabinet, probably fire resistant and earthquake proof. He pulled out a small flashlight and checked out the lock. Damn. Wafer tumbler, very high quality. He made a minute adjustment in the pick gun, gently inserted it into the lock, and rocked it. Five minutes later he was soaked with sweat and the lock was still cold. He stopped, listening. The music in the house seemed louder. He opened the door of the projection room. Nothing. He left the door wide, then went back to the cabinet and adjusted the pick gun again. The trick was to make just enough contact with the beaded wafers inside the lock to engage the mechanism without sliding off. It took him almost twenty minutes to pop it.
Danziger had a 35-millimeter print of every film he had produced or greenlighted, plus DVDs of the top hundred films of all time. Jimmy checked every DVD, opened every aluminum film can, opened every drawer and compartment; it took him almost a half-hour. Nothing. No surveillance videotapes, CDs, DVDs, or Polaroids. No microfilms, holograms, or infrared satellite images of Brooke and Walsh fucking like rabid weasels. Nothing. Jimmy closed the cabinet, locked it again, then started a search of the room, looking for something out of place.
Yesterday Brooke had told him that Danziger was up late every night now, listening to the love tapes in the screening room, while Brooke was supposedly sound asleep, overmedicated on downers. Jimmy had told her to wait until he had been in there for an hour last night, then beat on the door, hysterical, full of bad dreams and desperation. She was to cling to him and insist he take her back to bed and stay with her. A man like Danziger would have a routine, a mental checklist for putting away his stash-Brooke's interruption might make him careless.
Jimmy walked the aisles, even plucked at the carpet, searching for a hidden storage area. He paid particular attention to the seat in the middle of the first row, obviously Danziger's command center, with a CD-DVD player within easy reach. On the right armrest of his seat was a control panel, allowing him to adjust volume, start, stop, fast-forward, and reverse. On the left side was a console containing two one-liter bottles of mineral water. He lifted a bottle, checked inside, then replaced it. Too bad. He started toward the projection room, then stopped. He definitely heard something upstairs.
He took the steps two at a time, grabbed a large knife from the kitchen, and went through every room. There was no one there. No one on the deck either. His car was alone in the driveway. He walked back into the kitchen and replaced the knife, then heard the noise again. He had left the refrigerator door ajar-the motor kept kicking in, trying to maintain temperature. Sheepish now, he walked over and closed the door. Then he opened it again and stared at the bottles of mineral water. There were bottles with bubbles and without, waters from Poland, France, New York, and Finland. Glacial water, spring water, geyser water-every bottle was icy cold.
Jimmy walked back down to the screening room. He opened the console beside Danziger's seat and felt the bottles of mineral water. Room temperature. His heart beating faster now, he removed the bottles and lifted the metal sleeve from the console's base. There was an electrical connection in the sleeve to a refrigeration unit, but it had been disconnected. Danziger had been in a hurry last night. Jimmy reached down into the container, into a hidden compartment, and pulled out a small box. The box was filled with DVDs labeled by date and placed in chronological order. The last one was dated September 24, the day Heather Grimm had been murdered. His hand trembling, he slipped the DVD into the player in front of Danziger's chair.
He turned down the overhead lights from the seat. There was no prologue, no title, no credits. Just the empty living room of Walsh's bungalow, then Walsh walking back through the frame, closing the curtains in the front window. The image quality was rough, a slightly distorted wide-angle shot, but the sound was crisp-Jimmy could clearly hear the hiss of Walsh's butane lighter as he fired up a joint. He wandered back through the frame and out of sight into the kitchen. Jimmy could pick out details in the room now: a Baggie of weed and a script on the coffee table, a rumpled bed to the left, and there, gleaming on the fireplace mantel, Walsh's two Oscars.
Jimmy heard the back door of the bungalow open, heard the creaking of the hinges. The wind off the ocean whistled through the room, rippling the top pages of the script. He heard voices from the kitchen now, Walsh languid, and another voice, girlish. Heather Grimm showing up at the beginning of the disk was an indication that Danziger had either edited it or had been watching the house and knew when to start recording. For about five minutes Jimmy listened to their playful banter. Then Walsh backed into the room, followed by Heather Grimm.
Jimmy sat forward in his seat. He had seen photos of Heather before, grainy newspaper shots and her Young Miss Whittier coronation glossy, but he had never seen her… alive. And she was alive. She wore a lilac bikini, her hair curling around her shoulders. Her tan line showed at the edges of her breasts and the tops of her thighs as she sat on the bed, bouncing gently. Even with the poor image quality, she was so beautiful-coquettish and innocent at the same time, and aware enough to use both of those qualities.
Walsh bent down beside her and took her foot in his hand, examining the Band-Aid he had put on her wound. He kissed her toes while she giggled. She got up suddenly and walked over to the mantel and picked up one of the Oscars.
Jimmy fast-forwarded through the mutual seduction and saw Walsh offer her cognac and pot. Heather held the joint delicately between her thumb and forefinger. Their clothes came off sometime after that, he didn't know how long exactly, but the afternoon shadows were deeper now, and Walsh was laying out rails of cocaine on the coffee table. Later they had sex on that rumpled bed, Heather riding him like a cowgirl, calling him "Horsie" and laughing as he bucked and whinnied under her. Jimmy raced past, feeling ashamed for her, ashamed of himself for having to watch.
The DVD played on: Walsh pulled the drapes and turned on the fireplace; the flames were reflected on their sweaty skin. Walsh snorted coke off Heather's belly, then smoked brown heroin off a wrinkled square of aluminum foil. Heather asked to try the heroin, but Walsh refused, just like he had told Jimmy in the trailer.
Jimmy raced through the disk. Walsh was sluggish, dressed in a purple robe, Heather in a T-shirt and panties. Walsh smoked more heroin, shaky now; he spilled smoldering junk onto his bare thigh, and Heather laughed as he jumped up, the robe flapping around him. It made Walsh angry. He grabbed her by the hair and shook her, and she slapped him. They struggled on the bed and rolled onto the floor, and Jimmy wondered if Walsh was going to bash her brains out with the statue next. After all his investigating, all he had dug up, it wouldn't surprise him if Walsh had killed her.
Walsh staggered to his feet, his cheek bleeding where Heather had scratched him. He came after her, but he was slow and unsteady. He flopped down on the bed after a few moments, staring at the ceiling. Heather looked down at him, drool running down his chin, then disappeared out of the frame.
Jimmy fast-forwarded until Heather reappeared, her hair in pigtails, her T-shirt torn now. She stood in front of the mirror. It took Jimmy a few moments to realize she was twisting her face up, trying to cry. A knock on the door interrupted her efforts. Jimmy jerked, and so did Heather. She checked the mirror, then left the frame again. Jimmy heard her talking with someone, sobbing. He turned the sound up louder and heard a familiar voice identifying himself as a police officer.
Heather walked into view with Sugar Brimley beside her. Sugar looked not that much different than he did today, dressed in a gray suit. "There -there he is," she said, lower lip quivering as she pointed at Walsh on the bed. "He's the one r-r-raped me."
Brimley laid a big hand on Heather's shoulder. She shook him off, but he put his hand back on her again.
Jimmy clenched his teeth.
"I cut my foot on a piece of broken glass under the sand. He said he would take care of it," said Heather. "He seemed so nice at first."
"Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault," said Sugar.
"My mom is going to be so mad," said Heather. "I'm not supposed to take the car."
"She's just going to be happy that you're safe." Sugar's hand had drifted to the back of her neck, between her pigtails. He let the loose blond strands float through his fingers.
Jimmy's chest hurt.
Sugar kicked the edge of the bed. "Wake up." He kicked it again, harder, and sent Walsh bouncing. "Hey you, you're under arrest."
Walsh slept on.
"How am I doing?" Heather was bent over the coffee table, her pinkie nail filled with cocaine, poised halfway to her nose. She looked back at him. "Was that r-r-rape thing a little over the top?"
"What?"
Heather snorted the cocaine and licked her fingernail. "Should I be crying more, or go with the brave-little-girl reading?" She dipped into the mound of coke on the table again and stood up, her eyes bright as supernovas. "I want to get it right for the cameras. You think the TV people will want to interview me here or at the hospital?"
Sugar crossed over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. "What's going on?"
Heather squirmed and waited until he let her go, one bare breast peeking out through the torn T-shirt. "Knock it off, pops. April told me about you."
"April?"
"Like you don't know." Heather glanced at the bed again. "I'm a good actress, really, really good, but cops make me nervous. I was freaking this morning, almost backed out, but April said not to worry, she had taken care of everything. Our little secret, that's what she called it. Like we were spies or something." She eyed the cocaine but decided against it. "Should I get dressed?"
Sugar took a long time answering. "No, not yet."
Jimmy's hands ached from gripping the arms of the chair. He could have switched off the recording, could have slipped the DVD into his pocket with utter certainty of what was about to happen, but he let it play.
Sugar walked to the mantel and took down one of the Oscars. "Is this what I think it is?"
"Isn't it cool?" Heather turned toward Walsh snoring on the bed. "He is just so famous. You wouldn't think to look at him now, but he's got like this… scent, and when he kisses-"
Sugar swung the Oscar down onto her head-not full force but hard enough that she crumpled to the floor. "I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry." He stared at the little gold man in his hand as though it had a mind of its own.
Walsh stirred on the crumpled sheets.
Sugar checked his suit for blood, checked his trousers and his shoes too, then went to the bed, lifted Walsh up under the arms, and carried him over to Heather.
Heather groaned and got to her feet, groggy. She rubbed the back of her head, blood dripping down her ponytail, then looked at Sugar. "What happened?"
Walsh mumbled something as Sugar put the Oscar into his hand, wrapped his own mitt around it, and then swung the statue against Heather's head again, swung it as hard as he could, and caught her just above the eyebrow. Blood sprayed across Walsh's face, his robe, his bare feet. The director jerked in the warm rain. Heather slid to the floor, but Sugar helped Walsh give her a few more whacks anyway. He needed to be sure.
"Hey… hey, let go of me." Walsh's eyes fluttered, awake now. He dropped the Oscar, the statue dripping red.
Sugar shook him so hard that Walsh's head flopped from side to side. "Gee whiz, buddy, what have you done?"
Jimmy put the disk on hold, Sugar and Walsh frozen onscreen. He couldn't bear it anymore. In the sudden silence he heard the sound of heavy breathing. He turned around and saw Sugar at the back of the room, tears running down his cheeks.