Dream a Little Death, page 22
And then there was the music.
Big Fatty—Wilby Goodrich, I mean—had not only transformed his body, he’d swapped gangster rap for uptown funk. I’m talking R&B-inspired, gospel-infused, get a room and make a baby music. Think the Reverend Al Green. Think Marvin Gaye. Then throw in some T.I. and R. Kelly to make it clear that this wasn’t your mother’s slow jam.
I enjoyed the show. Really I did.
It was professional, slick, and—lineage aside—completely and utterly soulless.
Whatever else he was, Big Fatty was a visionary.
But Wilby Goodrich was a hack.
By the time I came back from the bathroom, he’d performed his encore. The night, however, was far from over. The audience was chanting his name, and tossing flowers from the vases on their tables. He couldn’t get enough. The man had lost two hundred pounds, but he was still hungry.
“Sweet Jesus.” He gave the audience a wicked grin. “What do y’all think? That I can go all night?”
More cheers.
“I see we’ve got a wedding party here.” The “Bridezilla” sash Sheena was wearing must’ve given it away. “How about a request from the bride-to-be?”
One of Sheena’s bridesmaids whispered, “‘Just the Way You Are,’ by Bruno Mars?”
The other one whispered, “‘What You Need,’ by The Weeknd?”
Sheena turned to me. “What do you think?”
I downed some liquid courage, then looked up at the former Big Fatty, and said, “I want to hear the Velvet Underground’s ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror.’ Can you do that for me?”
I saw the confusion register on his face. But only for a second. Then he bared his big, white teeth. “That ain’t the only thing I can do for you, sweetheart.”
When he was done singing, he shook a few hands, took a few pictures, and signed a few autographs. Then he crooked his finger at me, summoning me to the other side of the red velvet curtain.
That’s the thing about us groupies.
We know how to get backstage.
Chapter 42
“Have a seat.” Fatty whipped a sheet off of a tapestried ottoman. “I’ll be right back.”
Before I could object, he’d disappeared down a spiral staircase.
One minute, then I was going after him.
I took a quick look around. Not much to see backstage except wedding paraphernalia: wicker trellises, papier maché cupids, iced branches wrapped in tulle. Some of it was haphazardly covered in sheets, the rest was blanketed in dust. Backstage looked like the place love went to die.
But if I closed my eyes I could imagine it in Bugsy Siegel’s day, a vast open space crammed with movie stars in evening dress, smoking, drinking, and losing money at the roulette wheel or the craps table. Then it was off to the brothel for more good, clean fun.
Fatty’s grace period was up.
There was no railing, and the staircase was steep and rickety. Down below was the basement, a rabbit warren of rooms lit up by some bulbs dangling from cords, all snaking into a single power strip. Talk about a fire hazard. At the far end I could see a couple of stacks of cardboard boxes, and a pile of dirt blocking off a corridor. Must’ve been one of the old tunnels.
“That you, sweetheart?”
A door swung open, banging against the wall. The sound echoed through the dank space. I followed it into a makeshift dressing room. Fatty was seated on a folding chair, his back to me.
“It’s cold down here,” I said.
Fatty pulled on a clean T-shirt, then slapped some cologne on his freshly shaven face. “Relax. Daddy’ll warm you right up.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah. I had a feeling.” He caught my eye in the mirror. “How’d you find me?”
“I asked around,” I said.
“No such thing as privacy these days. And you should know. Tabloids ate you up and spit you out, didn’t they?”
So he knew who I was. I guess that made us even.
“I’m still standing,” I said.
“No surprise there. You got looks, money, family. Most of us don’t have it so easy.”
“Spare me,” I said.
He spun around in his chair. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” Then he stood up. “I think you’d better stop playing and tell me why you’re here.” He came closer. “I know I look good, but I don’t think it’s ’cause you want to fuck me.”
The mask was slipping.
I hadn’t expected it to happen so fast.
“I’m here because people have been hurt.” I backed away.
“You scared of me?” he asked.
“A little,” I answered truthfully.
“I’m not gonna lay a finger on you. Beer?”
“No, thanks.”
He popped open a bottle and took a slug.
“Please stop,” I said. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. Lives have been ruined. Somebody is dead. You can help make it right.”
“Why me?”
I waited a beat. “Because of Carmen Luz.”
“‘Forget the former things,’” he said. “‘Do not dwell on the past.’”
“Excuse me?”
“Isaiah 43:18–19. ‘See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?’”
“Are you asking me a question?”
He slapped his hand on the table, hard enough to send his beer crashing to the floor. “Fuck, no! I’m a Christian! I left the bad shit behind when I got out of prison. I renewed my body and I renewed my soul. I walk with the Lord now. That’s why I call myself Wilby Goodrich. Will B. Good. Do you not understand?”
“I get it. Fatty Arbuckle. It’s pretty interesting your taking his alias.”
“We have a lot in common,” he said carefully.
“You see yourself as a martyr.”
“Jesus was a martyr. I don’t compare myself to the Lord. I’m grateful for his forgiveness and love.”
“You can stop now. I know you didn’t rape Carmen Luz.”
He looked surprised that I was willing to come out and say it. But I was getting impatient.
“Say something,” I said.
He shook his head. “You’re some kind of crazy, aren’t you? Yeah, I raped her. But I’ve paid my debt to society. That shit is over.”
“The evidence was compromised. And I’ll bet I know just who messed with it.”
“D.N.A. doesn’t lie.”
“Sure it does,” I said.
D.N.A. lies.
Cops lie.
People lie.
“Dreama, little Dreama.” He stood right in front of me. I could feel his breath on my face. Then he leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “You’re so goddamn smart, then tell me. If I didn’t rape her, who did?”
He was daring me to say it.
So I did.
“Miles McCoy,” I said. “He told me everything.”
Now Fatty was the one backing away. “I’m leaving. I got people waiting for me.”
I ignored him. “Miles raped his girlfriend Carmen Luz, and then he had you take the fall for him.”
Fatty put his head in his hands. “Shut up.”
“And as payment,” I pressed on, “he bought you a big house to live in.”
When I’d looked up Fatty’s house, I’d found the owner of record. Dixon Steele, LLC. Dixon Steele was the name of the down-on-his-luck screenwriter played by Humphrey Bogart in Nicholas Ray’s noir masterpiece In A Lonely Place. Miles couldn’t resist an inside joke. Well, that’s what I’d thought at first. Then I’d realized that he’d been waiting for someone to figure it out. And that on some level he wanted to be caught.
“Was it worth it, Freddy?” I asked.
“I told you to shut up.”
“I don’t even know what to call you. Freddy? Fatty? Wilby? You keep changing your name, but you can’t run away from what you did. You let a rapist go free.”
Fatty sank down into his chair. He was exhausted. Exhausted after spending two years in prison for something he didn’t do. Exhausted after covering it up for years after that.
“It isn’t so simple,” he finally said.
“Then why don’t you explain? I want to understand.”
He had his back to me. He was staring at himself in the mirror. Maybe he was finally ready to see who he was.
“I’d been out partying that night with a couple of buddies,” he said. “Carmen was there, too. Girl liked to have a good time, you know what I’m saying? No harm in that. We were all adults.”
Carmen had been all of twenty-one at the time.
“We wound up at her place. We were messed up on molly, coke, tequila, you name it. But everybody was chill. Having a good time, you know? Then her sugar daddy shows up. Miles McCoy. I knew him only by reputation. Pretentious asshole who thinks his shit doesn’t smell. Anyway, he isn’t exactly happy to see her all shitfaced, with a bunch of strangers. I don’t need any trouble so I leave. A couple hours later, the phone rings. Two in the fucking morning.”
He didn’t have to tell me that it was Pee Chee Lowenstein. The mastermind behind his thwarted comeback.
“We go back a ways, me and Pee Chee,” he said. “She wrote about me when she was at Spin. I remember the day that article came out.” He snorted out a laugh. “I thought I’d hit the jackpot. I didn’t know shit about this business, turns out. It isn’t for folks like me, with tender hearts.”
I wasn’t about to deny him his illusions. Not when I still needed him.
“Long and short of it,” he said, “I didn’t become who I was supposed to become. Things got a little out of hand. I wound up going inside. It was hard that first time. Even for a gangsta like me. When I got out, nobody was there for me, except for Pee Chee. She’d just been fired from her magazine job and we got together. We understood each other. We had plans. We were going to put an album together. We were going to show everybody.” He shook his head. “Another fucking disaster.”
He was losing focus. “What exactly did Pee Chee say when she called?”
“That she needed me. That I was the only one who could help. She’d found Miles on the floor. He’d gone through a couple of bottles of bourbon, and blacked out. When he woke up, he didn’t remember what he’d done to his girlfriend. Which was beat her ass and rape her and leave her to die.”
Jesus.
He was telling me what I already knew, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear.
“At first,” Fatty said, “I didn’t get why Pee Chee was telling me. She started going on about my career, how it was over, how I wasn’t getting another shot, how I had to face reality. I had no fucking idea why this woman was pouring salt in the wound. Then she started in on wouldn’t I like to get away from all the vultures in L.A.? Wouldn’t I like to have some peace and quiet? Wouldn’t I like to finally get clean?”
“All you had to do,” I supplied, “was spend a little time in prison.”
He sighed. “She said Miles couldn’t survive prison, but I’d done it before and I could do it again. And if I did this one, lousy favor for them I could have everything I ever wanted. I could have a car, I could have a boat, I could have a beautiful house on a beautiful fucking lake.”
“You’d just been at Carmen’s that night. Your D.N.A. was all over. It was the perfect setup.”
“Until now,” Fatty turned around. “Until you showed up here.”
“No,” I replied. “Until Maya figured it out.”
“Maya Duran?”
“Miles’s fiancée.”
“I know her from way back. She was a dancer.”
“She worked with you on ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror,’” I said. “I saw footage from that night. It was amazing.”
He nodded. “Damn shame the girl tried to kill herself.”
“She didn’t. Miles tried to kill her. I think so, at least. He couldn’t trust her to stay quiet.”
Poor Sleeping Beauty.
Disney may have given her a storybook ending, but in the original version, the prince doesn’t save the princess.
He rapes her while she’s sleeping.
“And then there was the third girl,” I said. “Lizeth Pimentel.”
Fatty closed his eyes. “Carmen, Maya, and Lizeth. All of them sweet enough to make your teeth ache.” He looked at me. “What happened to Lizeth?”
“She’s dead.”
He said, “Fucking Miles McCoy.”
All of a sudden, the bulbs out in the corridor started flickering, then went out.
And Big Fatty and I were left there, alone in the dark.
Chapter 43
“Must be the wind,” Fatty said. “Got a match?”
I rifled through my basket, but couldn’t find one.
“Never mind,” he said. “Come with me.”
We stumbled out into the pitch-black corridor. Fatty made his way over to the cardboard boxes, and dug around in the top one until he found a flashlight. Then he flicked it on.
Standing there, illuminated by a beam of light, was Pee Chee Lowenstein.
With a gun in her hand.
I froze as the bulbs overhead sputtered back to life.
“Nice tiara,” she said to me.
Fatty handed her the flashlight, stretched his arms behind his head, yawned.
Pee Chee tucked the flashlight into the belt of her neon yellow jumpsuit. She’d obviously dressed for the occasion.
“It’s been a long time, Freddy.” Her eyes ran up and down his newly sculpted body. “I’ve got to hand it to you. It takes a lot of self-discipline to do what you did. Too bad you couldn’t keep your mouth shut when it really mattered.”
Fatty cocked his head at me. “You talking about her? She’s not a problem.”
Pee Chee tightened her grip on her gun. “No, you’re the problem. We had a deal.”
“I held up my end,” he said. “I could’ve come back for more. I could’ve bled you fuckers dry. Lucky for you my vice is lust, not greed.”
Lust, not greed.
Oh, my god.
I’d gotten the whole thing wrong.
I’d listened to the lies Fatty was spewing without questioning why he was so eager to spew them.
It wasn’t Miles who’d raped Carmen.
It had been Fatty all along.
I looked at him, and he could see in my eyes that I knew the truth.
“Bitch wanted it,” he said with a shrug.
Pee Chee shook her head. “This is exactly why you keep fucking up, Freddy.”
“I served my time,” he said. “I don’t have to pretend anymore.”
She said, “The problem is your lack of discretion. It’s like Miles always says. Discretion is the one thing that can’t be taught.”
“Miles, Miles, Miles.” Fatty rolled his eyes. “All this time and you can’t shut up about the man. You’re fucking pathetic.”
Pee Chee raised an eyebrow. “I believe you’re the one who’s fucking pathetic. As I remember, it wasn’t me who made a phone call at two in the morning with blood on my hands. It was you.”
Fatty spat out, “Don’t act like you did me some kind of favor. I was the one who did you a favor.”
Suddenly, the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
Fatty calls Pee Chee at 2 a.m. He tells her what he did to Carmen. He needs her help. She’s a fixer, after all. Pee Chee tells him to calm down. That he’s come to the right person. Pee Chee Lowenstein is indeed the right person. Because she knows an opportunity when she sees one.
The woman can’t believe her luck. She can’t bear seeing Miles and Carmen in love, and now, by a quirk of fate, Fatty has given her a way to tear them apart. Pee Chee is going to tell Miles he’s the culprit. He’s a hopeless drunk, after all. He blacks out, does things he doesn’t remember. Things he isn’t proud of. Miles must have given Carmen that black eye. He’d have felt guilty about it. And Pee Chee decides to use his guilt against him.
That night she convinces Fatty that she can massage the evidence. That he will serve a minimal sentence. And that when he gets out of prison, Miles will compensate him generously for his trouble. After Fatty agrees to her scheme, she wakes Miles up and makes him face up to what he’s done. She tells him he’d not only beaten the woman he loved, he’d raped her and left her to die. But if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll let Fatty take the blame. Carmen had been unconscious through the whole ordeal. She couldn’t know who was responsible. Could Miles bear for her to know the truth? Pee Chee knew he couldn’t. She knew he was weak. Oh, Pee Chee. Did you feel triumphant as you watched the shame eat away at Miles’s soul?
“I can see the wheels in your little pea brain turning.” Pee Chee stared at me down the barrel of her gun. “You think you know something. But you don’t have the slightest idea who I am or what I want.”
“I know you’re in love with Miles,” I said.
“Give the bitch a gold star,” said Fatty.
“Shut up.” Pee Chee ran a hand through her wild red hair. “I’m going to deal with you next.”
“Don’t fucking threaten me,” said Fatty.
Pee Chee waved her gun at him. “You. Move. I want you next to Dreama.”
Fatty came over to where I was standing. He gave me a sidelong glance, which I made a point of ignoring. It was hardly like I could trust him. I had to think for myself now.
“Any more insights, Dreama?” Pee Chee asked. “Your arrogance amuses me.”
“You like to be in control,” I said.
“Somebody has to be,” she said.
“But you’re never going to find what you want,” I said, “if you’re not willing to let down your guard.”
Pee Chee shifted her weight a little. She was getting antsy. I had no idea what that meant for me, or for Fatty. “Wow. That’s some nerve you’ve got, lecturing me on love. From what I hear you’re no expert.”
“I don’t claim to be,” I said. “I’m just trying to learn from my mistakes.”
“You didn’t know Carmen,” Pee Chee said. “She wasn’t good for Miles. She didn’t understand him.”
“I guess Maya didn’t understand him either,” I said.
