“That’s what I said.”
“You said exec.”
“Well associate’s what I meant.”
Negotiations
LISANNE CALLED TO SAY that she was from the sangha and had a gift for the house. Burke said that, since the arrest, things had been kind of crazy and he wasn’t having anyone over until next week. She didn’t want to intrude and suggested they meet somewhere nearby. Burke was half-intrigued and wanted to check her out. Maybe she was fuckable.
The voice on the phone had been familiar but he couldn’t quite place it. When he saw her, he laughed: the chubby one with the angel’s face who loved cleaning toities. That was all right. He liked ’em with a little extra padding.
She had that blissed-out look, scarier in a nascent fattie — bit of a red flag but so what? He’d seen crazier. Anyhow, what could she do, suffocate him with her tits? She was a Buddhist, and they didn’t act out. He got right to it and asked about the gift. She said she was good friends with the studio executive Tiff Loewenstein (Burke, of course, knew who he was, even though the connection to his son didn’t at first compute; maybe Loewenstein was a sanghanista) and how Tiff had entrusted her to bring an ancient Buddha statue to Kit’s trailer during his last shoot. As a present. Out of curiosity, she asked Burke if he’d had a chance to see that Buddha and he said no, everything in the Benedict house of any value had been inventoried, packed, and stored by the insurance folks. That’s when Lisanne told him she had an “energetic replacement.” She called it by its unwieldy name and Burke couldn’t help but laugh out loud. He was starting to think she was a certified wack job, but what the fuck, she cleaned a mean toilet. He was in an expansive mood. Lisanne remained unperturbed. She said she’d been given the Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration Buddha as a gift herself — not from Tiff — and that it was now her desire to pass it on as a sacred offering to the Lightfoot household. When she told him it was extraordinarily expensive, that got his attention. The piece, she said, celebrated Paramasukha-Chakrasamvara, a tantric deity that Kit seemed destined to possess. Lisanne recounted how she saw his son at UCLA on the night the monks ululated over that very god in the midst of their solemn public ritual. “Tantric” got his attention too, and he asked Lisanne if she knew anything about tantric sex. Burke said he read somewhere that Sting was into it and that it was all about holding back orgasm. Lisanne said she didn’t know much about that but was sure that all things tantric could only be taught by an authentic guru. Burke said he had a special guru when it came to sexual matters and she asked who and he said Master Bates. He said his friends called him Stormin’ Norman and he ran the Master Bates Motel. She smiled but didn’t get it — any of it. His blood was up and he got horny for her. Burke asked if she knew anything about kundalini. Lisanne said that it was “serpent energy” and began talking about chakras from the little she’d learned in books. Burke started calling it cuntalini — what the hell, she’d either leave the table or not, she was a wack fattie and he wanted to ball her, he didn’t give a shit what her reaction was — and said Master Bates told him that after cuntalini it was always important to smoke a cigarette and eat Rice-A-Roni. He couldn’t get a rise out of her and that made him hornier. He asked when she wanted to bring over the Super Tampon Piss-Wheel Segregation Buddha and without batting an eye Lisanne said the best time would be when no one from the sangha was there because she didn’t want others to think she was currying favor. He thought: Well well well. Maybe this fat cuntalini’s a dirty bastard. Maybe ol’ loosey-goosey’s in what we call a righteous orangutan heat. Lisanne said the Buddhist community was a bit incestuous and even enlightened people gossiped and misinterpreted. Incestuous — you got that right, fatso. Daddy’s going to do some major rectal probe enlightening. Show you nirvana six ways from Sunday. She said the Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration Buddha would do wonders for the house and was even partially responsible for the arrest of the person who did his son — and all beings — such a terrible wrong. Get on that Piss-Wheel of Fortune. Integrate that Buddha-bootie. Super-ream that lard-ass bumper butt. She said the Buddha would help Kit to heal his crown chakra. Burke said his crown needed healing too. Said he had a purple crown with a big ol’ hole that needed healing, big-time. Master Bates called the geyser-hole Old Unfaithful.
Lisanne smiled vacantly, unhearing. She looked through him but saw only Kit, who was her breath and her benefactor, her friend and neutral person, her enemy, and the being she didn’t even know. She looked through him and saw all things human and animal, seen and unseen, waiting to be born and waiting to die.
They made a plan when she should bring it.
After the Fall
THE DETAILS OF the arrest of Kit Lightfoot’s assailant, himself a Lightfoot manqué, predictably became a nightly news staple, as did a legion of seamy Hollywood Babylon-redux celebrity crime scandal minidocs in general — and the shadowy fringe world of look-alikes in particular. (Becca and Annie noticed how they always used clips of Kim Basinger from L.A. Confidential.) The creep turned out to be one of Elaine Jordache’s third-string loser-hires; when he wasn’t working low-end convention sideshows or Mar Vista bachelorette parties at the Look-Alike Shoppe’s behest, he made his living as a housepainter and petty grifter. When they pinched him, the Kit got nervous, and hastened to cop a plea. Herke Goodson immediately came to mind.
The down-and-out look-alikes hooked up around a year ago on the rent-a-star circuit. They became friendly but hadn’t spoken in a while — the Kit still being miffed at a beating Goodson gave him outside a club in Playa del Rey. For months before, “Rusty” had been showing off pages of a script he’d written, a murder mystery entitled “The Trainer.” Because of certain coy remarks and a plethora of plot minutiae that struck him as a little too authentic, the Kit always had a hunch the story was based on something real. After he shared his potential Get Out of Jail Free card with the LAPD, Virginia detectives were quick to ID Herke Lamar Goodson as the subject of numerous outstanding warrants for home-invasion burglary and aggravated assault, and as the suspect in a high-profile local homicide.
• • •
BECCA MOVED IN with the Dunsmores on the same day she was interviewed by the police. Investigators went through every square inch of the Venice love nest. The idea of pervy old detectives handling her underthings made her skin crawl. Rusty’s arrest hadn’t yet been announced, and Becca was glad — she wasn’t in the proper frame of mind to be stalked by the tabloids. Annie said she’d probably be in the national papers too. Becca dreaded that. When the time was right, she would have to call her mom to preempt any freakouts.
The cops were like cordial pit bulls. They brought her in every day, for a week. They talked to the Dunsmores, and Grady started getting paranoid. He was afraid that even though he never had a clue about Rusty’s bad boy status, they’d bust him for “consorting.” Cassandra reminded him that one of the outcomes of the Rampart suit was that his record had been expunged — he was no longer classified as a parolee. Grady said it didn’t matter: they were gonna nail anybody who won a settlement. “Payback’s a motherfucker.” He threw out their dope. They cleaned up their act for a while.
Living at the Dunsmores’ was handy. Becca signed a contract making her coassociate producer with profit participation on any project or projects that QuestraWorld produced re: the compelling saga of Herke Lamar Goodson, a.k.a. “Rusty” Crowe. (Annie and Larry told Becca that she could be “like Rosanna Arquette in The Executioner’s Song.”) The contract also stipulated that Becca’s rights as a real-life personage in said project(s) would be waived, that a writer or writers could deem to make her life or her person “more interesting” (Cassandra’s words) without fear of legal reprisal and that Becca would make herself available for attendant press and publicity chores, lending name and/or image to the promotion of said QuestraWorld product(s), electronic press kits, print ads, et cetera. The contract came with a five-thousand-dollar check and Cassandra’s word that there would be more — which really helped because Viv had fired her and she was completely broke.