Eve's Men Read online

  Even now, as she finished telling him about the bulldozing and went on to other things, Charley caught himself paying as much attention to her eyes and mouth as to her words. Still, he learned that Eve was indeed an actress, a failed one. Jewish on her father’s side, Irish on her mother’s, she had been raised in comfort in Santa Barbara, where her father was a prosperous tax attorney. After studying theater arts at UCLA for a couple of years, she married a lawyer colleague of her father’s, divorced him a year later, and seriously set about becoming an actress. Getting nowhere in New York and London, she returned to Los Angeles, got a new agent, and landed a few parts in various cable TV movies.

  “And other real dreck,” she said. “Bikini and beach stuff. Even a cavewoman epic. My fanny’s been on screen more than my face.”

  “That’s a shame,” Charley said, adding, “I think.”

  Eve gave him a wry look. “Well, it was. At least for my so-called career, it was.”

  “Well, I suppose you have to do movies like that in the beginning.”

  “Maybe so. But I just couldn’t hack it—the cattle calls and the humiliation. In the end, I wound up pretty much like Brian. Maybe the business didn’t want me, but the stars did.”

  Charley made no response to that, waiting for Eve to elaborate. But she apparently preferred to leave the matter as it was, which made him wonder why she had brought it up in the first place. There were many things Charley wanted to ask about Brian, particularly his long-standing problem with drugs, as well as the state of his finances, considering that his bail was likely to be substantial. But Charley didn’t want Eve to feel that he was pumping her, so he sat back and let her continue to take the conversation where she would. As he expected, she never strayed far from Brian. Regarding his use of drugs, Eve claimed that he no longer used them at all except for alcohol and tobacco. And even with these, she said he tried to minimize their harmful effects by strenuously working out. In Venice he ran the beach and swam in the ocean; here he swam in the motel pool for thirty and forty minutes at a time.

  He was in great physical shape, she said. Unfortunately she could not say the same about his attitude, his outlook on life.

  “More and more, he just seems to do things with no thought to their consequences. And I guess the making of Miss Colorado was simply the last straw. I mean, here’s his onetime lover, this has-been star and longtime drug addict, and they’re going to portray her as a helpless victim in the clutches of a cruel, drug pushing boyfriend.”

  “Which was not the case,” Charley said, unsure what the truth was.

  “Definitely not. My God, when Brian first met the lady, she was doing heroin as well as coke and just about everything else. She’d been a hype for years, and everyone knew it. At least Brian got her off heroin for a while. Yet the script has him the big villain, like Ike and Tina Turner, for God’s sake.”

  “Can’t he get an injunction? Can’t he sue?”

  “No, they’re not using his name. And anyway, it’s just a movie, they say. Just entertainment, not history.”

  “Except to the young and the unread, which means practically everybody.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “How is he with you? I mean, has he changed there too?”

  Eve shrugged. “I guess—to a certain extent anyway. He’s quieter and scarier, and I’m unhappier. His attitude says it’s time for deeds now, not words. And he seems—I don’t know—almost relieved about it all, as if he’s finally found his way, finally knows what his life is about.”

  “That doesn’t sound too good.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “So what’s he going to do—keep trying to shut the movie down?”

  “He says not. But I don’t know.” Eve’s eyes, filling again, looked faceted in the candlelight, like a pair of emeralds. “I don’t know what he’s going to do. I’m not even sure I know him anymore.”

  Charley smiled sadly. “I remember the feeling.”

  Walking back to the motel with Eve, it bothered him that he could not see Brian’s bulldozing of the movie set as she did, as a noble, hopeless blow struck against the forces of darkness, all the Hollywood scum more interested in ticket sales than in the truth. But then Charley knew he was operating under a handicap, having grown up with Brian and having learned the hard way that his brother’s grand gestures of rebellion were usually more grandstanding than anything else. Charley couldn’t help thinking that if Brian felt anything as he bulldozed the movie set, it was probably pure animal pleasure, the joy of destroying so much so easily. Worse, Charley would have bet that if the movie studio suddenly offered Brian a job—say, as executive producer on the film—he would have pocketed the money in an instant and eagerly pitched in, whoring up the movie right along with the best of them.

  Charley said none of this to Eve, however. He wanted her to think well of him, and he judged that such a cold dose of fraternal cynicism would not have been to her liking.

  Chapter Two

  It was already close to noon. The charges had been read, Brian had pled not guilty, bail had been set at forty thousand dollars. And Eve was still waiting, sitting on a bench now outside the county clerk’s office. Like the old stone building it was in, the office was from another time, its interior walls gleaming cherry wood with large glass windows that rattled every time a truck climbed the hill outside. Through the glass, Eve watched as the men inside struggled through the red tape holding up Brian’s release. She could have joined them. Charley had even held the door for her, but she had declined. The clerk, a chubby mess of a man, was a cigar smoker, and his office smelled like it. Even though she herself smoked cigarettes and knew that she probably reeked to nonsmokers like Charley, she still could not abide the odor of cigar smoke. Enough of it and she would surely have gagged.

  Of the six men, two seemed to be mere spectators: the burly Chicano deputy and the public defender, who looked as if he’d been selling vacuum cleaners for the last thirty years. The others—Brian, Charley, the bail bondsman, and the clerk—were sitting at a table, signing and shuffling papers. Of these, the bail bondsman looked the happiest, smiling almost constantly under a pencil-line mustache. With his greased-down black hair and bright blue suit, he looked as if he were auditioning for the role of slimy bail bondsman.

  In time the clerk got up and went over to his desk and the others followed, standing around while he stamped and stapled. And Eve could not help comparing the brothers as they waited, Brian standing with his arms folded, looking superior and aggressive while Charley seemed almost to hover over the group, slightly bent and head cocked, like some kind of latter-day Cooper or Stewart, his very stance a gesture of kindliness and accommodation to a shorter world. Though Brian as usual was the best-looking man in the room, Eve had to admit that Charley cut quite a figure too in his single-breasted beige suit—an Armani, she would have bet—set off with a blue button-down and a wheat-colored silk tie. As Brian often said, his brother obviously wasn’t hurting for money.

  Finally Brian came out into the corridor, followed by the deputy and the public defender, who went different ways, the PD toward the front entrance, the deputy in the other direction. But Brian stopped him.

  “Hey, chief!” he said. “Listen, I want you to thank the sheriff for me. I’ve really enjoyed my little stay here, especially those unforgettable nine hours I spent in the pigpen with all your relatives.”

  The deputy glared at him. “Better watch it, asshole, or you goin’ right back in.”

  “Hey, I meant it as a compliment, chief. I was referring to the noble descendants of Cortez and Quetzalcoatl. So what, they drink paint thinner and carve on each other’s private parts? Nobody’s perfect, right?”

  The deputy dismissed Brian with a wave of his hand and went on up the hallway. Eve was not amused.

  “Do you have to do that? Always baiting the people who can harm you the most?”

  “It’s called standing up to the enemy.”

  “He’s
not the enemy, for God’s sake. He’s just a cop.”

  “Right, the enemy,” Brian said. “Listen, don’t you want to hear how it went in there? We’re in clover, baby. Charley made the last payment on the business—over forty-five grand.”

  “Didn’t you have to use some of it?”

  “No, and the sweetest part is I can cash it today. He’d already phoned his banker at home and they certified it by wire or something like that.”

  “Well, what about the bail?”

  “Charley put the four down and signed a note on one of his houses—one he’s rebuilding. Some complicated reason he had to buy it outright—I don’t know. Anyway, he brought the deed with him, so it’s all taken care of.”

  Eve wished she felt happier about the news. “We should all have a brother like Charley,” she said.

  But Brian didn’t share her gratitude. “Come on, it’s like I told you. Him and that barracuda wife of his stole me blind. I should’ve held out for twice what they paid me, and they know it.”

  “Twisted your arm, did they?”

  Brian gave her a look. “Hey, who the hell’s side you on anyway?”

  “Who’s side? You mean Charley’s the enemy too? After what he’s just done?”

  Brian grimaced, as if her obtuseness caused him exquisite pain. “Drop it, okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “We might as well go face the fucking reporters,” he said, starting down the corridor toward the front of the courthouse. “Otherwise they’ll be chasing us all day.”

  Eve followed. “What about Charley?”

  “He’ll catch up.”

  On the broad stone steps outside, the media were gathered like a flock of vultures patiently waiting for some poor creature to breathe its last so the feast could begin. As usual, the TV crews were at the front, the cameramen sitting or squatting, for the moment letting the courthouse steps bear the weight of their equipment. At Brian’s appearance, though, they scrambled to their feet, hoisting lights and cameras. And to Eve’s surprise, Brian went straight over to them, smiling slightly, as if he were somewhat embarrassed, like a hometown hero arriving at the train station to bands and bunting. The reporters barked out their questions, then thrust their mikes at him like a phalanx of swordsmen.

  “Why did you do it, Brian? What did you hope to accomplish?”

  “Why did you plead innocent? You did it, didn’t you?”

  “Did you do it for Kim, Brian? Are you still in love with her? With the memory of her?”

  Brian raised his hands if he were a candidate quelling the overenthusiasm of his troops. “Look, this is no big deal,” he said. “I went out there—I don’t know why—maybe just to see where they were going to shoot the movie, I don’t know. And then I guess I went into some kind of weird fugue state, something like that. All I know is, I have no memory of the incident. It’s all a blank in my mind.”

  The chorus erupted again:

  “Are you serious?”

  “Is that your defense, then, Brian?”

  “Do you really expect people to believe that?”

  At that point Charley had come out onto the portico too. Seeing him, Brian immediately began moving in his direction, pulling Eve along. When one of the cameramen got too close, practically striking them in the face with his camera, Brian shoved him away, then caught the man before he fell, even smiled benignly at him, still playing at the role of hometown hero.

  “Hey—sorry about that,” he said, turning then to Charley.

  “Where’s your car, man? Let’s go!”

  And the three of them did, running as fast as they could from the hungry flock behind them.

  An hour later Charley and Eve were standing at the walkway railing at the motel, looking down at Brian in the pool, swimming tirelessly from one end of it to the other, with his face submerged except when he would draw a breath on every fourth stroke. At each end of the pool, he would flip under water and push off, like a competition swimmer.

  “He in training for the Olympics?” Charley asked.

  “Sometimes I think so.” Eve lit a cigarette.

  They were both hungry and wanted to go out for lunch, but Brian had insisted that he swim first.

  “I’ve got to wash that shitty jail out of my soul,” he’d said.

  “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” Eve had told him. “After that, we leave.”

  “So be it.” In his trunks by then, he had hurried out the door, heading for the pool. Now, twenty minutes later, he was still going strong.

  “Why don’t we just leave without him?” Eve said.

  “Oh, I think I can probably last another few minutes. Why don’t you try to reach your friend Rick again?”

  Rick Walters, an acquaintance of hers, was assistant to Damian Jolly, producer-director of the movie Miss Colorado. Charley had discussed with Eve some ideas he had about Brian’s situation, things he might be able to do in return for Jolly’s help in getting the charges dropped or at least reduced, and she was enthusiastic. Charley thought it would be a good idea if he and Brian could meet Jolly and talk things over.

  Through other Hollywood friends, Eve had learned Rick’s Colorado Springs phone number—Jolly’s number actually—and had tried earlier to reach him, at the time not quite sure why. Now, having a reason, she had phoned twice in the last hour, not getting him either time, however.

  “I guess once more can’t hurt anything,” she said, heading for her room.

  “Good. Meanwhile I’ll go down and see if I can drag Esther Williams out of the pool.”

  It took another hour, however, before the three of them were sitting at a restaurant table, waiting for their food over drinks, a beer for Brian and martinis for Eve and Charley. The restaurant, the Firebird by name, sat on a cliff above the interstate, which ran along the base of the foothills, roughly dividing the city from the mountains. Indian rugs and pottery and other artifacts crowded the wood-and-glass structure, whose windows offered spectacular views of the area, ranging from the sprawling city itself and the distant Air Force Academy to Pike’s Peak and Cheyenne Mountain, in whose depths were the still-unpressed buttons of the Cold War, doomsday at a touch.

  “So you got in touch with Jolly’s loverboy,” Brian said.

  Eve sighed. “None of that, all right? If Rick’s able to arrange a meet with Jolly, you put a lid on your precious homophobia, understand?”

  Brian smiled ruefully at Charley. “It’s so handy to live with your warden, you know? You never have to wonder what you can and can’t do. They just tell you.”

  “Like with the bulldozing?” Charley said.

  Which made it Eve’s turn to smile. Sitting next to Brian in the booth, she gave him a playful shove. “What’s this? No comeback? We’re waiting, dear.”

  “Jesus, is this the way it’s going to be? Two against one all the time? I’ll get paranoid.”

  “Get?” Eve said.

  Brian looked at her, then at Charley across the table. “Seriously, if Jolly gives us a meeting, what the hell good is that? What can I say? Can I make restitution? Not unless I win a lotto jackpot or something. Or do I just say I’m sorry as hell, and he lets me off the hook? Don’t be stupid. The hairy little monkey is overjoyed at all this. He not only gets to bankrupt me and send me to prison, but he gets all this free publicity besides. He’ll want to help me about the same time Pike’s Peak out there turns into Old Round Top.”

  “Bad as all that?” Charley said.

  “Yeah, every bit that bad.”

  Eve gave Charley a look, as if to say, Well, here goes. “Charley has some other ideas,” she said. “A different approach.”

  “Like what?”

  When they were kids, Charley often had found himself interceding on his little brother’s behalf, sometimes winning him pardons that the stubborn little bastard refused to accept. Though Charley suspected that he was headed down that same garden path now, he went ahead anyway.

  “Well, first there’s the insurance,” h
e said. “Jolly and the studio are probably totally covered for what you did, including downtime. So they’ve got no reason to press for restitution. What you said about the free publicity, I think that’s the key. When the movie opens around the country, what if you were to start making all the talk shows, maybe even criticizing the movie from your angle, saying it wasn’t true, wasn’t the way things actually were. I don’t think Jolly or the studio would care, as long as they were getting the publicity.”

  Having just lit a cigarette, Brian was blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” he said. “You want me to enter into some sort of agreement with Jolly to promote his fucking movie about Kim Sanders and me—the same movie I just tried my damnedest to shut down. You don’t see any hypocrisy in that?”

  Eve blew. “Hypocrisy, my ass, Brian! We’re looking for a way to keep you out of prison, that’s all! Can’t you get that through your thick skull?”

  “Trouble is I do get it. You think I’m a total flake and what I did was bullshit.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but that’s what you think. Unfortunately, I could care less. I did what I did because I believed it was right. And I still do. One way or another, I’m still gonna shut down that fucking movie. And I don’t plan on going to prison either. Is that clear enough for you?” He raised a fist and tapped it against Eve’s forehead. “Am I getting through?”