saw a cop at the perimeter yelling into a bullhorn, his mouth partially in view, the cords of his neck straining but no sound at all issuing forth.
I could hear nothing but my heartbeat, the muffled echo of my shouted words. 'What did you do? What did you do to her?'
And then I was barreling for that closed door, moving in hateful slow motion. SWAT blew in--I sensed the vibration, the shrapnel spray from the splintering front door peppering the back of my neck, the wood panel flying past my head. I was feet from the closed door, yelling my wife's name. I heard the officers behind me, felt the heat of their bodies, the air moving from their limbs, their shouts. Each strand of the carpet stood out, a sea of fibers stretching between me and my wife. My arm was ahead of me, reaching, veins splitting the back of my tensed hand. Someone struck me low at the calf, knocking me off balance, but I righted myself, still hurtling forward, almost there. The officers hit me at once, high and low, wrapping me up and hammering me down into the floor. My head collided with someone's heel, sending me into a spin, darkness coming on to blot out my last glimpsed image--that door, still closed to whatever bloody sight lay beyond.
Chapter 58
I step out of the headmaster's office at Loyola High, walk across the verdant front lawn, and tip my face to the sun. It's July, my favorite month. The gloom has finally burned off. For such an impatient town, Los Angeles likes its summers to come late.
In my hand flutters an offer to teach tenth-grade American literature. I will certainly accept, but I didn't want to do it in the room; I wanted to draw out the sweetness of anticipation, like putting off the bottom half of an Oreo to drink more milk.
I am free of legal trouble. After literally days of grueling interrogation, and with the help of some of those well-placed phone calls Gordon Kazakov is so fond of, I managed to untangle myself from all charges. As Detective Sally Richards might have pointed out, I did have justice, truth, and all that crap on my side as well. Excessive scrutiny actually helps when you're innocent.
Even the lawsuit against me for not punching Keith Conner was dropped. With no more Keith to protect, Summit Films wanted to get as far away from me as possible. You know you're in dire straits when no one wants to sue you anymore. At final tally my legal costs were almost precisely what I'd netted from my screenwriting deal for They're Watching.
The movie opened last month, not with a bang but a whimper. On its second weekend, I finally worked up the nerve to go see it. Feeling like a self-abusing pervert in a pussycat theater, I watched from the back row of an empty Valley cinema. It was worse than I could have imagined. Though Keith was afforded some respectful deference, the reviews were understandably blistering. Predictable plot, trite dialogue, bled-dry characters, the pacing pumped to a steroid-rage confusion of edits. It was, in its own way, masterful in its incompetence. Kenneth Turan suggested that the script might have been generated from a software program.
As my name flickered during the closing credits, it struck me that--like so many of those first-round wailers on American Idol--I was never really very good at this. Getting fired off They're Watching was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I'd come close to throwing away everything that I'd built because I had never bothered to reexamine a childhood dream that I didn't even want anymore.
I'm happier watching movies than writing them.
I'm happier teaching.
Standing on the front lawn, I open my eyes again. I turn and look at the school, and in the reflection of the chapel window I see myself. Khaki trousers and a button-up from Macy's. Battered backpack in hand, dangling at my side. Patrick Davis, high-school teacher. After all this I'd wound up where I'd started.
But not really.
I climb into my Camry. The interior is a bit scorched from the stun grenade, but not too bad, since my face had been good enough to absorb most of the blast. I can't afford a new car yet, but I did have the dashboard buttons and dials fixed, and I've vowed not to punch them anymore.
I hide the job offer in the glove box like treasure and head home, running the 10 west, then cutting up to Sunset Boulevard so I can surf the curves. The air blows through the open window, riffling my hair. I watch the mansions roll by behind their gates, and I don't wonder or care what it would be like to live in them.
My life isn't like Enemy of the State anymore. It's not Body Heat or Pay It Forward either.
It's my life.
I stop off and pick up dry cleaning, nodding to the clerk, whose eyes linger a beat too long on my face. People look at me differently now, but less so every day. If fame is fleeting, then L.A. infamy is the blink of a firefly. But still, things are not back to what they were. They never will be. There are night terrors and waking panic and from time to time I still break a cold sweat checking the mailbox or opening the morning paper. And most days, when it's too quiet or not quiet enough, my thoughts drift to my wife, bound and held in the back room of a clapboard house. How she'd tried to fight her captors. How she'd sunk her teeth into DeWitt's arm when he'd gagged her. How, in the grip of blind fear, she'd felt in her heart of hearts that she was going to die.
Sally was honored as a hero at her funeral. Which she was. More and more I think of heroes as ordinary people who decide to give a damn about what they do, not what they might get. Watching her casket descend, I felt heartsick. I doubt I'll encounter her combination of composure and wry incisiveness again. Her son is being adopted by a cousin. The pension board is reviewing Valentine's case, and it seems unlikely his four boys have as straight a road ahead.
The four men in that clapboard house--none of whom were actually named DeWitt or Verrone--all copped pleas. In return for offering testimony against Festman Gruber, they'll avoid the needle, but they all had to agree to life without parole. I think of Sally and Keith, Mikey Peralta and Deborah Vance, and I am pleased that those men will be eating off trays and looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.
If they can be believed, they were the entire team for this job. Ridgeline and the numerous shell companies enfolding it are being vigorously investigated, but from what's trickled back to me, it's been tough sledding once that paper trail hit Bahrain.
Bob Reimer, the face of the scandal, has not fared well. His pretrial motions drag on, and he's looking at special circumstances, which could mean the death penalty. As he forges forward with gray-miened unflappability, prosecutors and media continue to dig into the Legal Department at Festman Gruber. Reimer's well-heeled colleagues are wading through a sea of lesser indictments, and some of them may likely join him in lockdown someday if he isn't executed.
Festman's higher-ups were predictably outraged at everything that had transpired. Their stock price has plummeted, and I bet that hurts the bastards most of all. Without a single public volley being fired, the naval sonar contract moved from Festman Gruber to North Vector. That Senate vote on decibel limits is fast approaching, and Kazakov seems to have a pretty good sense of which way it'll go.
Thank you, Keith Conner. Your life for a cause. James Dean never saved the whales. But in a weird way, you did.
Trista Koan got another movie greenlit. It's about frogs in the Amazon being killed off by global warming, and they have some new kid, a crossover pop star, doing the voice-over. He's not supposed to be half bad. When his last album went gold, he replaced Keith on that billboard outside The LaRusso Agency, and maybe, if he's lucky, it'll still be there next month.
I turn at Roscomare and drive up the hill, passing couples walking dogs, gardeners loading pickups, that McMansion with Tudorbethan mock battlements. Paul McCartney whispers words of wisdom from my banged-up speakers, and then the on-the-hour news breaks in. One of the Lakers got caught with a transvestite in a Venice Beach bathroom stall. I turn off the radio, let the breeze blow past my face and clear all that scandal and prurient interest from the air.
I stop off at Bel Air Foods and walk the aisles, checking items off my mental list, whistling a tune. I'm almost at checkout when I remember. I go back and grab some prenatal vitamins.
Bill rings me up. 'How you doing today, Patrick?'
'Great, Bill. You?'
'Never better. Working on the next script?'
'Nah.' I smile, at ease in this moment with myself, the world. 'I love movies. That doesn't make me a screenwriter.'
His gaze lingers on the vitamins as he slides them across the scanner, and he looks up and gives me a
