13

It had proved surprisingly difficult for Alan Marcus to persuade Jenni that she could now buy a condo of her own. As smart as she was, she claimed that numbers were not her forte (a word that she pronounced “fort” and not “fortay”). But Alan, who in addition to being an attorney was a CPA and an MBA and who had volunteered to act as Jenni’s money manager, persisted. She knew that he had ulterior motives in so doing: her living on her own would greatly increase his opportunities of going to bed with her, which were now limited to his sporadic visits to the studio and a couple of occasions in his office, after hours, on the couch. She liked Alan and she enjoyed the casual sex with him, but she wanted to keep it infrequent; she was afraid that otherwise there might be a repetition of her college affair in Fresno.

With Barry Bergman she had no such worries. He was easy to be with, the sex was great, and she felt quite comfortable living in his guest cottage. Until quite recently, that is.

She had been getting the impression of late that Barry was somehow relying on her as a kind of chaperone for Lesli. Lesli had, as long as she had known her – about a year and a half by this time – been unpredictable and erratic in her behavior: men, substances, work... and all these elements seemed intertwined in Lesli’s world. But as a roommate and then as a fellow actress Jenni, while not feeling indifferent, did not feel responsible for her. She could understand that Barry, as an employer, had concerns. But they were his to deal with. And it was this thought that made her decide on that morning, another sunny one in late November that quickly turned from cool to unseasonably warm, that she would call Alan and ask him to use his real-estate connections to help her buy a place.

Jenni had heard Lesli drive her brand-new BMW convertible into the carport, followed by some conversation between Lesli and Barry and then the sound of Barry driving away in his BMW. She felt no desire to get out of bed. Shooting on Moving Around had begun, and the previous day’s exertions with Steve Kelly had tired her out. Steve, she thought, was too much of a would-be romantic hero, and Frank Bond’s directness was more fun. Barry couldn’t – or maybe wouldn’t – get Frank for this one; perhaps it was not enough of a starring role for him, the central character being hers. But there were three other guys besides Steve.

She finally had to get up. Before entering the bathroom she looked out her window and saw Lesli floating in the pool on her back, with a dreamy expression on her face.

Afterwards, having put on jeans and a tee-shirt, she looked out again, opened the window and, seeing Lesli in the same position but in a different part of the pool, called out:

“Hi, Les!”

“Hi, Jen!” was the sleepy-sounding answer.

“Listen, I want to go to Mort’s for breakfast. Wanna join me?”

“No, you go ahead. I ate at home before I got here.”

It was the answer Jenni had been hoping for. Lesli seemed to be getting disconnected from reality over the last month or so, and talking with her had become increasingly difficult; she would rather eat alone. Besides, some guy at Mort’s would undoubtedly strike up a conversation with her. She wondered if this time someone would finally acknowledge having seen her in a porn flick.

“Okay, Les. See you later!”

“Yeah!” was all that came back from the pool.

Jennifer Garabedian had been introduced to recreational, purely physical sex by her gymnastics coach in high school, and she vastly preferred it to the few romantic entanglements that, as a very attractive young woman, she could not avoid. But it was one of these romantic boyfriends who had taken her, for her eighteenth birthday, to see an X-rated movie, and from that night on she had had recurrent fantasies – ones she had shared with no one, not even her cousin Rachel – about being a porn actress. Not that she ever intended to act on them; the farthest reach of her ambitions was to become a legitimate actress, stage or screen, who would not flinch from the most explicit part given to her by some daring director. But the vagaries of life had led her to the verge of replacing the great Gina George as the leading star of BB Productions.

Once again, there was no shortage of attention paid to her at Mort’s, but no one admitted to having seen her in the movies. She found it hard to believe that none of the twenty- to forty-somethings who frequented the place ever went to adult theaters or watched adult videos. Was it something they preferred to hide, out of shame? Or were they respectful of her privacy? If so, that was nice of them, but she did not want her privacy respected. She had made the great, daring leap of exposing her sexuality to the world, and that was what she wanted respect for.

While Sofia Marés liked the idea proposed by Gina George – she was all in favor of honesty in art – she conceded almost apologetically that, as Albert Bosch had predicted, she could not bring herself to act on it. The search for a local body double proved quite difficult. Sofia was quite dark – a throwback to North African invaders a thousand years ago, Mario had commented – and her exotic allure was part of what had made her a star locally and, to a limited extent, elsewhere in Europe, including France, where she had once landed a featured part in an Albert Bosch film. Her type was not at all common in her region; they might have to go to the south of Spain to find someone like that, but those parts were still in the throes of Catholic puritanism. Albert had thought of Marseille as a place where they might find someone suitable, but he had no connections there. It occurred to Gina that a Mexican girl from LA might do just fine, and she knew that there were some working in the industry, though not for Barry Bergman: his aim was exclusively on the white-bread mass market. But of late the industry had developed some ethnically oriented sectors, and she knew of a Latino studio that a former cameraman of Barry’s named Bill Martinez had started, with Barry’s help. She told them that she would call Barry first thing in the morning. Mario, for one, found her plan quite intriguing.

When Jenni returned to Barry’s house she saw that Lesli’s car was still there and Barry’s was still missing. “Hi, Les!” she called out in the direction of the pool, and when she heard no reply she repeated the call louder, still to no effect. Without actually looking at the pool she concluded that Lesli was somewhere in the house, and she went into her room to change into a bikini. When, as she was tying the bra, she looked out the window, the sight of the pool made her stop dead in her movements. Her bra fell to the floor.

Trembling, she grabbed the phone and called Barry’s private number at the studio. There was no reply. She looked at the watch she had just taken off and concluded that Barry was probably on his way to the gym. With no further hesitation she dialed 911 and, once the call was completed, quickly picked up her bra, put it on, grabbed a robe, and ran out to poolside. Lesli was still floating in the pool, but face down.

The police and paramedics arrived almost at the same time, just as Jenni had put on her robe. The paramedics put Lesli on a stretcher and carried her into an ambulance. A policewoman approached Jenni to question her but she, without waiting for her questions, told her that she was Jennifer Garabedian and that she was living in the house as the guest of Mr. Henry Bergman, who in all likelihood was working out at the gym whose name and address she gave the officer. She concluded with “This is how I found her, officer, when I came back ten minutes ago and called you.” The policewoman judged the young woman to be too distraught for any further questioning, and so she left her alone. Jenni, however, had the presence of mind to ask her for a favor.

“I hope that my name doesn’t get released to the media,” she said.

“There’s no reason why it should, Miss Garabedian,” the policewoman replied.

Barry Bergman was on the hip-adduction machine when he heard someone come into the gym and ask if a certain Henry Bergman was working out there. The attendant began to say, “There is a Mr. Bergman but...” when Barry noticed that the questioner, though in plain clothes, was presenting a police badge.

“I am Henry Bergman,” he called out.

“Would you please come here,” the detective said to him, and then, turning to the attendant, “Is there some place we can talk in private?”

“Why, sure, there’s no one in the office.”

“Thank you.” And, to Barry, “Would you come in here, please?”

Barry knew better than to ask if something was wrong. Of course something was wrong. And the policeman, with unaccustomed brevity and without resorting to police lingo, told him what had happened.

“Mr. Bergman, do you know the victim’s real name?” he asked as he concluded his recitation of the facts as he knew them.

“What do you mean? Isn’t it Leslie Lyman?”

“We’re not sure.”

“But that’s what she had on her driver’s license; that’s what she used when we had her contract notarized.”

“We checked her so-called driver’s license, and it’s a fake. The DMV has no record of a Leslie Lyman. But her picture matches that of a teenager reported missing in Arizona three years ago...”

“Teenager? She’s... she was twenty-two! Wasn’t she?”

“Well, if the fingerprints match as well, then she was a runaway named Doris McCutcheon who turned eighteen just a few months ago – you’re lucky that way. It seems that Doris’s mother was married at one time to someone named Leimann, so she might have gotten the idea for the name from him.”

“My God, my God...” Barry was saying, “this is... too much!”

“At the moment we have no grounds for charging you with anything, Mr. Bergman, but we suggest that you suspend any production activity at your studio while we run a check on the ID’s of all of your performers. And the DA may have other ideas, not to mention the Feds.”

By afternoon it had been established that Lesli’s blood contained traces of alcohol, cocaine and barbiturates in significant amounts. Barry, with a demurely dressed Jenni by his side, drove to the studio, where he was met by Alan Marcus, another lawyer who was a part-time associate of Alan’s, and a plain-clothes officer from the Valley Division, to whom he gave the paperwork on all the actors currently under contract. The studio staff were told to go home.

When Jenni found herself alone with Alan for a spell, she said to him, “I was just going to call you today to tell you that I was ready to buy a place, but now I don’t even know if I have a job.”

“Don’t worry, honey,” said Alan with a smile, “this is soon going to blow over. And I know that you’re more than ready, especially after what happened.”

“Okay,” said Jenni, “let me know when you find something.”

Late in the evening the phone rang in Barry Bergman’s study. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi, Barry.” The voice was that of Gina George; he hadn’t heard it since June, just before she had left for Europe.

“Gina! How did you find out?”

“Find out what?”

“About me being in trouble.”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“You mean you didn’t know?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m calling to ask you for a favor... But what kind of trouble are you in? You never get in trouble!”

“I’ll tell you, but first tell me what kind of favor you need.”

“I need a girl for one day’s work as a body double for an explicit scene.”

“You mean, for you?”

“Hah hah, very funny. No, not for me.”

“So Albert Bosch is going explicit?”

“It was my idea. You know, it’s the movie that’s been released already...”

“I know.”

“Of course you do. Albert and I want to reshoot some of the scenes, and the other actress is married, sort of, and...”

“I get it. So who do you want? You can have anybody you want. Like I told you, I’m in trouble. We have to stop production for a while.”

“Money problems?”

“No. A girl who was working for me OD’d on something or other and drowned in my pool – well, she didn’t actually drown but she died in my pool. And it turns out she was just barely eighteen; she’d been using a fake ID that said she was twenty-two. So now the cops want to check out everybody’s ID.”

“So she was seventeen when you hired her! But that’s a federal crime! I remember Traci Lords...”

“I know, but it seems to be close enough that they’re unlikely to prosecute, especially since she’s dead.”

“Poor girl! Was it anyone I knew?”

“No, it was someone new; she was in my three last movies, Campus Capers, Vixens at Play and A Bard in the Bush. I’ve pulled Vixens, though.”

“You mean Jenni or Lesli?” Gina asked, elongating the final vowels of both names.

“It was Lesli. Her real name, I just found out, was Doris McCutcheon. So tell me, what type of body double do you need?”

“Uh... actually, no one that’s working for you. More of a Mexican type, like maybe from Bill Martinez.”

“Then I suggest you call Bill directly. I’ll give you his home number, and you can tell him what you need. You two know each other, after all: he’s shot you in action.”

“That’s true,” Gina conceded.

“For me,” Barry went on, “it would be better if I stay out of the business for a while. Here’s Bill’s number.” And he recited it from memory.

There was a knock on the door. Barry put his hand on the receiver and called out “Yes!” The door opened and a teary-faced Jenni stood in the doorway.

“Are you in any kind of legal trouble?” Gina was asking.

Jenni pointed in the direction of the bedroom, indicating that she would be waiting for him there, and closed the door.

“Alan doesn’t think so,” Barry answered Gina, “but you never know. You remember that our DA has been talking about cracking down on the industry, and this may be his chance to be another Ed Meese.”

“Another what?”

“Ed Meese, you know – the US Attorney General, who is on this crusade against pornography.”

“Oh, him. Well, Barry, all I can say is, good luck! But if I’m going to call Bill Martinez, I’d better do it now, before it gets too late. Bye!”

“It was good to hear from you, Gina.”

At breakfast, Gina George was able to tell Albert, Mario and Sofia that Carla Ortiz, whose just-faxed photograph she had in her hand, would be arriving on Sunday evening and in all likelihood ready to work on Monday. Gina would cover the expenses out of her own pocket. She passed the fax around the table and Mario could be seen smiling approvingly.

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