“As a group? I couldn’t pin it down—maybe making the video? Emil I saw in prison, two days before he died. I went to visit, to try to help. Then—heartbreak.”
I drank again and Bahari did too, studying the brick wall. From out of the blue, he said, “Nothing I tell you tonight could explain how it made me feel, what happened to him.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, Adam. To this day I think of Emil Elkaim as the son I wished I’d had. Privately, of course.”
“But…you had a beef—with Durazo.”
Bahari frowned. “Who said that? I never even met the boy.”
“You didn’t?”
“Not even once—they’d already kicked him out. I worked with Devon the piano player, Geoffrey Grunes. And Emil—he was the big talent. We were two soldiers, he and I, we understood each other.”
Bahari tasted a bigger sip and his wistfulness morphed into a kind of conviction—he pointed at me. “And I agree with his father. One hundred percent. I know Emil could not have killed…anybody. Not. A. Chance. And he didn’t belong in that jail.”
“You went to see him.”
“Yes, we spoke. He cried to me from behind the glass. He was only eighteen, nineteen, for fuck’s sake. Then it was my turn—I wept the whole way home.” Bahari raised his eyebrows, his mouth went slightly crooked—half-bitter, half-throttled—and then he mumbled “we were soldiers” again.
I wanted to hate him, or at least sidestep his charisma, but it wasn’t easy. In a matter of minutes, Bahari did have me hypnotized in a way—transfixed. The wine had taken the edge off my nerves, but inside the softness, I flashed that I could be in the hands of a true crazy—maybe that was the space from which his curious power emanated. This wasn’t a street-level thug like Sandoz or even a Hollywood hustler like Roger Paulsen. This was a man driven by ideas, strange ones. Picking up on my concentrated static, his crooked grin disappeared and he said, “But you didn’t come here to listen to me get sentimental. You want the facts. Salud—to Emil, may his memory be a blessing.”
We finished our glasses.
I said, “I had no idea they made a video.”
“Oh, it’s marvelous—we’ll watch it.”
“Tonight?”
“Absolutely tonight.”
Then he got up and ambled to a small, annexed room I hadn’t noticed, a cramped office for the wine cave. He opened the door and ducked in, considering the file cabinets, trying to remember something. It’s funny how he seemed to transform yet again at this distance, in this new, smaller habitat. Bahari obviously was an art collector, a brewer of wines, a breeder of fish, a wealthy bon vivant who knew how to party. And yet the man in the back room of a brick cave, rummaging in bathrobe and PJs, digging through an old file cabinet, a little confused, frustrated by fading memory, did not exactly look like a life enjoyer. In fact, he kind of reminded me of Lazerbeam—another wounded shlub trying to get in on the action.
“Aha!” Bahari pulled out one of those oversized old black VHS cases and jiggled it with triumph. “Pandora’s box.”
The sight of the video box made my pulse quicken—I had a gut sensation that it contained the secret key, the final puzzle piece. Bahari told me to pour some more and bring the glasses, then he motioned me to the far end of the cellar where he knelt to pull open a floor door. I peered down a long staircase disappearing into darkness.
“Oh no,” I said. “No thanks.”
“It’s my screening room, Adam. I’m not gonna chain you to the wall and whip you!”
Balancing one-handed on the cool brick wall, I followed him down.
34
With the flick of a switch, a blaze of crimson-gold beauty—a small-scale Mediterranean movie theater with three rows of overstuffed red velvet couches facing a ruffled red velvet curtain cascading down to a stage of polished maple, flanked by regal red-and-gold checkerboard walls with gold Greek columns stretching to the old-fashioned hand-painted red-and-gold tin roof.
I said what anybody would have said: “Holy shit.”
Bahari said, “It’s fun.” Then he popped open the front of the stage—a half-dozen gizmos were in there blinking and waiting.
“Sit down, relax, please.” As he fiddled with the bulky ultra-ancient JVC, he added, “You gotta be the most hypervigilant person I’ve ever met.”
I snickered but took a seat in the second row, sinking into the plushness, looking all around. A person could get lulled way out of reality in a room like this. I tried to stay on track.
“So—Doctor. If you think Mr. Elkaim is right, who did kill Reynaldo Durazo?”
He popped the cartridge into the JVC—it closed like the mouth of a hungry alligator.
“Some crazy—obviously. There’s so many out there you can’t count ’em.” When he saw that I wasn’t satisfied with his answer, he turned to me and added, “That’s really all I got, kiddo. Don’t think I’m happy about it. Not a week goes by where I don’t ask all the same shit you’re asking.” He shrugged. “It is what it is. All I can tell you is…I wanted to…have a band, be a part of the excitement. And then it all went to hell. Veni, vidi…no vici.”
“So you’re telling me you just…happened to pick the wrong bunch at the exact wrong time?”
“You’re being sarcastic, but it’s not far from the truth. Indeed, I walked right into a tragedy.” He started fumbling with a remote. “I can never remember how the hell you work this thing.”
I waited, sunk deeper into the red plush, felt its taut smoothness. Four cone-shaped black Bose speakers perched at me from every corner in the room like faceless robots. I was a little drunker than I thought.
As the automatic curtains rose smooth, Bahari cracked his tilted smile. “Get ready to have your mind …blown.”
Then: a beam of light cutting through the darkness, just like creation.
A white screen, and then, in eighties digital type:
TELEGRAPH / “Big, Wide World” / MCA Records & Tapes
“They signed?” I said.
“Almost,” Bahari said with a grunt. “Music Cemetery of America—we never inked.”
“Did…Cinnamon know about the video?”
“The little manager girl?” He shook his head somberly and my belly tightened. They burned their muse.
On the movie-sized screen, old-school digits counted down—PICTURE START—8-7-6-5-4-3—then one spin of the clock and the opening bars blared—too loud for two listeners.
On the giant screen, a Euro city scene, in that mushy ’80s too-rich video color, made worse by being blown up to full movie screen—young Devon Hawley Junior, in dark shades and a suit with a full head of curly-blond hair, talking on a pay phone. Cut to a svelte brunette model type on the receiving phone line, trying to look Russian, but it was pre–Fall of the Wall, fake Russian, a wannabe Nastassja Kinski in red lingerie—she slams down the phone and now she’s getting dressed up either for going to a discotheque or doing a top secret spy operation, I couldn’t tell, but a fan blew her hair every which way in her apartment, typical ’80s glamour shtick.
Cut to a long, slow-moving limo, Grunes at the wheel, hair combed back straight, looking awkward and bad actorly. He gets out, opens the door, as blond, suited, skinny-tied Hawley Junior gets in the ride—he’s out on the town.
I watched like someone at a horse race, fixed on it, but Bahari stood to the side and his gaze was on me, measuring every impression. It was like he was trying to read my mind and control me by telekinesis and sell me the video all at the same time.
“Paris?” I said.
“We shot on the Columbia lot.”
The motif was coming into view: super-suave international ultra-chic rock and roll spies. Oy vey.
