Authors: James Scott Bell

Try Fear (9 page)

“What are you saying? That Carl didn’t kill himself?”

“I’m not saying anything. Just trying to get all the information.”

“Well, I think anybody’s capable of anything, under the right circumstances. Or wrong circumstances. Whatever.”

His face drifted to a sad place again.

I said, “The night Carl was arrested for DUI, he said he’d gotten crazy at a party. Were you at that party?”

“Matter of fact, I was.”

“Anything you can tell me about it?”

Barstler sighed. “Christmas party. A mixed bag. An actor friend gave it. About twenty, twenty-five people.”

“Was Tim or this Sonny Moon there?”

“Tim was there early, but he left. I don’t know if he had a fight with Carl or not. All I know is Carl was out of it and just
drinking like crazy. I tried to stop him but he told me to… well, he told me off. I got mad and avoided him. At some point
he was parading around in a Santa hat and not much else. I went outside after that, spent some time talking to other friends.
When I went back in the house he was gone.”

“Did Carl get into it with anybody else?”

“I didn’t see it. People were pretty ripped and laughing.”

I gave him my card. “If something comes to you and you want to tell me about it, give me a call, huh?”

“How’s Kate doing?” he said.

“Shook up, of course.”

“Tell her I said hi. I always liked her.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
I drove down to Hollywood and parked in front of the Scientology building, just east of Highland. I looked across the street
but didn’t see anybody who matched the description Barstler gave me. I put in a Duke Ellington CD and watched the passersby.

It was like being in a pod in some space movie. I was observing another planet.

Hollywood has changed a little since that day in 1887 when a land speculator named Dixon decided this spot would be a good
place to build homes. It was mostly Chinese fruit growers back then, leasing the land. Life was slow and productive.

Now it was fast and pointed in no particular direction. Years ago the city planners thought a glitzy new center at the corner
of Hollywood and Highland would spread renewal up and down. The street is cleaner, but the stretch from the Pantages to the
El Capitan Theatre still seems to be rife with smoke shops, tattoo parlors, clothing stores, tourist traps, eateries, and
tagger practice. On weekends the club scene springs to life, but that’s largely hidden in the day.

Yet Hollywood represents nothing if not hope. And huge industrial cranes in the skyline signaled major projects ahead. An
influx of business, some that might even stay, despite the tax burden.

The one constant is the street scene, the crazy mix of those who hang out on the brass stars of the Walk of Fame. Many of
them runaways. They say maybe four hundred kids live on the streets of Hollywood at any given time. They scour the alleys
at night, trading sex for a fix, or paying with what they make panhandling.

If they’re lucky, somebody at one of the teen drop-in centers gives them just the right break, the right word, maybe the right
kick in the pants. And they get out of the life.

Most aren’t so lucky.

The con has always been a big part of the Hollywood scene. And phony religionists run some of the biggest. Any nimrod can
set himself up as providing the way, the truth, and the life, and start collecting donations.

Just spout some high-sounding claptrap in L.A. and it’s a sure bet more than one person will start handing you the green.

Ellington was taking the A Train and I was wondering what sort of religion I’d set up if I were a conman, when I saw a Mohawk
across the street.

T
HE HAIR WAS
only part of the giveaway. The acolytes around him were another. Five or six young women stood around in a traveling ad hoc
circle, flyers in their hands. A guy in a large-brimmed hat worked a guitar behind them.

The circus came to a stop in front of the white brick building next to the Hollywood Wax Museum. Here they set up shop.

I got out of my car and crossed the street at Highland. Then I walked down toward the new breed of moonies.

One of the girls handed me a flyer. It was full color, double sided. On the front was a headline:
The CIA’s Plan to Brainwash All American Citizens
. There was a drawing of man’s head in the middle of the page, with half his skull removed so you could see his brain.

Several little men in suits were standing on the brain with mops, scrubbing. Text wrapped around the picture. I didn’t read
it.

“Thanks,” I said, putting the paper in my back pocket.

“We take donations,” she said. She was maybe eighteen and had that runaway look.

“I want to talk to the reverend,” I said.

“Are you a cop? Because we—”

“No, just another pilgrim.”

“Pilgrim?”

“You know, like Thanksgiving.”

She didn’t know. Her face was a blank. I walked past her and came up behind the Mohawk, who was talking to another girl. She
looked at me and Mohawk turned around.

“Reverend Son Young Moon?” I said.

“That’s me, brother.” He smiled.

“Crazy name,” I said.

“Not if you’re the second coming.”

“Of Jesus?”

“What do you mean by
Jesus
?” he said. “Do you think Jesus is some person dropping out of the sky, or is he a universal spirit?”

“You tell me,” I said.

“We are the Universal Worldwide Church.”

“Sort of redundant, isn’t it?” I said.

“What is?”

“If it’s the universal church, that includes the world already.”

He just looked at me.

“So do you have any celebrity clients,” I said, “like your competitors across the street?”

“Sure. But I can’t tell you.”

“Uh-huh. Confidential, right?”

He nodded. He looked like a peacock nipping at water.

“So I guess you’re not all that credible with the tourists yet. You need a celebrity.”

His ragtag acolytes were crowding in. Like this was going to be a show.

“Are you familiar with the Demiurge?” Sonny Moon asked with a smirk, as if I wouldn’t have a clue.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s a term I believe first used by Plato. Later, by Plotinus. Right?”

That set him back a little. “Very good, but that’s not the only place. The Gnostics identified the Demiurge as the Yaweh of
the Old Testament. They thought he was evil, because the world he created was evil. Now, if you were to make a movie about
the Demiurge, who would you have play him? Christopher Walken, of course. No question about it. Chris Walken looks evil, but
in fact he is good.”

I said, “People actually pay you for this?”

One of his disciples, a girl with a railroad spike through her lower lip, said something in what sounded like a clicking African
dialect. Then I realized it was a tongue stud clacking on her teeth. Anyway, what she said sounded like an insult. I think
she was suggesting I try rectal-cranial inversion.

“Far be it from me to criticize the free exercise of religion,” I said. “But maybe a little truth in advertising would help.”

“What do you mean by that?” a woman with a hawkish nose said.

I said, “Why do you think gas stations are advertised in the Yellow Pages under service stations?”

They all looked at me like I had issued a Zen koan. Maybe I had.

“Because,” I said, “our commerce depends on the benign lie. If you drink the right beer, you’ll get the right chicks. If you
take our pill, all your problems will be solved. And the idea is to get the money to flow to the top. And the Rev here is
the top of this particular chain.”

“Man,” he said, “did you come down here just to take me on? You don’t look the part.”

“I’m always interested in what people think,” I said. “Especially if they’ve set up a business.”

“Not business. Religion.”

“Oh right. So it’s tax free.”

He smiled. His little friends laughed. Like he was the cleverest thing on earth.

“I’m also interested in where you were on the night of January thirtieth,” I said.

“Why would you be interested in that?”

“Because somebody died.”

“That’s news? People die all the time.”

“Carl Richess only died once.”

The Rev didn’t change expression. “Is that someone you know?” he said.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

He shook his head.

“He’s somebody you’d remember,” I said, “because you had some fights with him, when he was with Tim.”

The Rev’s eyebrows twitched. His plume shuddered a little. “Who are you?”

“Somebody who is in search of all truth. Now, why don’t you tell me where you were on January thirtieth?”

“I don’t got to tell you nothin’.”

“Suddenly you’re talking street?”

Railroad Spike Girl said, “He don’t got to tell you nothin’.”

“World without end, amen,” I said. “Only maybe the cops would like a word with you.”

“Look, man, what do you want from me? So I knew Carl, why should I tell you about it? You come to my house and practice deception.
That’s the evil in you. I can get it out if you want me to.”

“I can get it out all on my own,” I said.

“I haven’t seen Carl in months, okay? I have no idea why he’d want to kill himself.”

“Did I mention he killed himself?”

He didn’t so much as blink. “I can’t waste any more of my time,” he said.

“You know what I think, Reverend? I think you’re a hack. I think making up a religion and taking people’s money from them
is what small-minded hacks like you do because you can’t do anything else.”

This time there was a little twitch around his cheekbone.

Then a very large dude in a T-shirt without sleeves shouldered his way to me. He was my height but beefier. He had one arm
that was tat sleeved, and a face like a can of knuckles. He looked older than the rest, maybe mid-thirties. And it was like
he came out of nowhere, or some doorway, because I hadn’t seen him before.

“You better get outta here,” he said. He smelled funny. His hair was black and slick and gave off some sort of perfume. A
sweet smell. Sick sweet over knuckles. A stomach turner.

I waited for Moon to call him off, the way a homeowner directs Fido back into the house. But he didn’t say anything.

“You hear me?” Knuckle Face said.

“Is this a religion of peace?” I said.

The guy started to reach for me with his right hand. So I gave him the
oay ubi shime
. The jujitsu thumb grip. Old but reliable. I caught his thumb in the webbing of my right hand and bent it back, and down
he went. He was on his knees in half a second. And screaming out.

The Rev said, “Let him go!”

“Call him off,” I said.

Instead the Rev, the man of enlightenment, the punk preacher, kicked me in the shin.

I let the big guy go and grabbed a handful of the punk’s hair. That made it easy to manipulate his head. Like riding a horse
with a handful of mane.

I jerked his head down. He retaliated by hitting my knee with his nose.

Blood spurted from the holy proboscis. He dropped to the sidewalk.

His followers cackled and cheeped and gathered around their fallen master.

Then I heard one blast of a siren. A black-and-white pulled up. Good. Let the law settle this one. The law was just. The law
was fair.

“W
HAT ARE YOU
arresting
me
for?” I said as one of the patrol officers cuffed me.

“In the car, please, sir,” he said. “Watch your head.”

“Why don’t you clean up the street?”

The officer helped me into the back of his car.

At Wilcox station they marched me in, past a wooden bench to which a skinny old man was shackled. He smelled like he was sitting
out a drunk. The arresting patrol officer put his gun in a locker, then had me buzzed in to meet the jailer.

They took my property, scanned my prints, then stuck me in a cell with two other guys.

One of them was a white kid, sitting on the end of a bed. He had his head in his hands.

The other guy was in his early twenties, black, wearing a blue hoodie. He sat on a top bunk, dangling his legs. He studied
me as they clanked the cell door shut.

“What you doin’ here, man?” he said, smiling.

“Good question,” I said.

“DUI?”

“No.”

“Why they puttin’ you in a cell?”

“Violence.”

“You?” He said it almost mockingly. “You beat on some guy?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. What for?”

“Bad religion.”

My cell mate frowned. “What you talkin’ about?”

“Some dweeb out on the boulevard,” I said. “Taking people’s money.”

“Oh yeah. Got it. Whatta you do, man?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

This seemed to please him. I got a clue from the laughter that lasted almost a minute. The guy with his head in his hands
finally looked over at me, like I was a new exhibit at the zoo.

The laughing guy said, “Man, I wish a couple of my lawyers’d get thrown in here.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “What are you here for?”

“Ice,” he said.

“How much?”

“Couple of rocks.”

“Man, that stuff’ll kill you,” I said.

“So?”

“So you want to be dead?”

He shrugged. “Gonna be someday.”

“Why rush it?”

“Why not? We just doin’ time. You, me, him.” He jerked his thumb at our silent cell mate.

“So why don’t you do something with the time?” I said. “Besides get high.”