On the three-week anniversary of the day I was shot, I went home. I’d had to negotiate hard with my surgeon, Dr. Ted Goldman, a lanky, ponytailed genius with a Hoboken accent like a Mafia hit man and the same reverence for profanity as Benny Joe Willis. He wanted to keep me another week, but I made promises up the ass that I would follow his instructions to the letter, which consisted mostly of putting a no in front of everything I normally have to do, like to do and can’t live without. But I’d have flown in a planeload of Scandinavian supermodels to give him backrubs if that’s what it would have taken to get me out.
Dove Way had never looked so good. Mallory had turned the downstairs library into a convalescence center, complete with hospital bed, exercise equipment, and a television the size of a drive-in theatre. My meals he prepared precisely to the doctor’s specifications, which meant that after two days of stuff that could only be described as warm and wet, I threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t come up with a greasy burger and some heart attack fries.
Fortunately, they’d invented Carney’s for that eventuality, so Mallory made a run down Sunset for double cheeseburgers and a trough of chili fries, complaining all the way. Tacitus did his part too, sending up dinner the next night. After what I’d done to his restaurant, I was grateful there wasn’t a grenade tucked under the fusilli.
But it was a hollow existence. I couldn’t get rid of the image of Kim, her head hanging over the back of her chair, one hand touching the floor, the other still demurely in her lap. I tried Ambien, then something stronger, and though both put me to sleep, neither kept me from dreaming. I was taking Vicodin, so I couldn’t even drink myself into a stupor. After a while, I just let the night sweats come. And when in doubt, abuse those closest to you. I moved upstairs and shouted at Mallory to get the goddamn hospital smell and all that goddamn equipment out of the library.
Later that week, we buried Kim on one of the few rainy days we get in Southern California. It came down in sheets all the way to Westwood Memorial Park, a cemetery incongruously tucked in behind some high-rises on Wilshire Boulevard. Not many people even know it’s there, but it’s a popular final resting place for Hollywood celebrities, and we passed the graves of Natalie Wood and Roy Orbison on our way to the tented gravesite.
I saw a producer friend, David Permut, bareheaded and wet, heading across the lawn with some flowers, which I assumed were for Rodney Dangerfield, since they’d been close friends. He stopped and said he’d read about the shooting and wished me a quick recovery. I thanked him, then we went on with our respective duties.
Mallory had done the legwork and discovered that Kim’s mother had bought three plots twenty-five years ago, probably hoping her missing husband would someday join her, and there’d be one left for Kim if she wanted it. Kim’s mother and Truman York now occupied two of the graves, and we put Kim in the last. He wasn’t there to speak for himself, but I thought Commander Cayne would have been okay with that.
I didn’t know what kind of service Kim might have wanted, so I told Pierce Brothers, the owners of the cemetery, to select something appropriate. They brought in a Presbyterian minister to read from the Song of Solomon and a talented soprano to sing a quiet rendition of “Amazing Grace.” I chose “Flight One” by the tragically talented poet Gwendolyn MacEwen to be inscribed on her headstone, and I asked the minister to read it at the end. I think Kim would have approved.
During the service, I watched the mourners, but other than Gary Wainwright, who was now on crutches, I didn’t recognize anyone. Most appeared to be coworkers, along with some neighbors who stood with Gary.
Halfway through the service, I saw a large silver BMW pull up and double-park outside the 8-ft. iron fence along Malcom Avenue. But the rain plus the distance and angle made it impossible to see inside. After a moment, the driver’s side window went down, and a pair of binoculars extended out a few inches.
Tourists and paparazzi routinely lurk around L.A. cemeteries, hoping to catch a celebrity attending a funeral or visiting a grave, so it could have been something that simple. But the binoculars held on our little group longer than I thought was necessary to determine we weren’t front page.
Then a yellow DHL truck pulled up behind the BMW and honked, but the car didn’t move. The DHL guy used some loud profanity and gave a New Jersey salute as he navigated the narrow space around the car, but the binoculars remained in place. Shortly after the minister finished the poem, people began to leave, the binoculars disappeared, and the BMW drove away.
On the way out, I asked the funeral director to let me know if anyone called about Kim. I really didn’t expect anything, but I wanted to cover every base.
As Mallory and I were making our way to the car, Gary came up and asked if I knew what was going to happen to Kim’s house. I told him my attorney was checking to see if there was a will, and I’d let him know. He said he’d fixed the back door and would keep up the lawn. I thanked him.
But I wasn’t ready to go yet. I sent Mallory on to the car, turned and went back to Kim’s grave. I stood over it and read MacEwen’s poem again.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen
This is your Captain speaking.
We are flying at an unknown altitude
And an incalculable speed
The temperature outside is beyond words.
If you look out your windows, you will see
Many ruined cities and enduring seas
But if you wish to sleep please close the blinds.
My navigator has been ill for many years
And now we are on Automatic Pilot: regrettably
I cannot foresee our ultimate destination.
Have a pleasant trip.
You may smoke, you may drink, you may dance.
You may die.
We might even land someday.
Then I said good-bye and went home, leaving Dana Kimberly York alone with Gwendolyn’s words, the comics, the singers and the stars.
One of the promises I’d made Dr. Goldman was that I wouldn’t drive, but I was going stir-crazy. So the day after the funeral, I grabbed Walter Kempthorn’s negatives and the security DVD from Ralphs and eased myself into my truck. I managed to get to Benny Joe’s driving with one good hand and wincing at the pain in my chest every time I hit a bump. Why I didn’t take the more comfortable Rolls suggests that getting shot lowers your IQ.
Benny Joe isn’t much for anybody else’s pain when he could be talking about his own. “You shoulda seen me when I went for that midnight swim after my fuckin’ wife drained the pool.” I wanted to laugh, but it hurt to even smile.
“Actually, I was praying you’d check the fuck out,” he continued. “Then those Babe Ruth pictures woulda been mine.”
“Probably not with Jake Praxis around.”
“You still friends with that fuckin’ throat slitter? Jesus, get some fuckin’ taste.”
“Spoken like somebody on the wrong end of a negotiation.”
“Fuck you.”
While the Dobermans slobbered on the living room windows, we went upstairs, and Benny Joe got to work with his equipment. It was like watching Jerry Rice catch passes. Effortless. An hour later, he was printing enhanced blowups of two photos—the one in the paper, and another from a more severe forward angle that Walter had probably taken when he’d first gotten out of the car.
Even working through the van’s windshield, Benny Joe’s magic had been able to enhance Tino and Dante’s faces to the clarity of a mug shot—red headband on Tino and Denver Broncos baseball cap on his partner.
“Give me a couple of days, and I’ll tell you what fuckin’ brand of cigar the stocky asshole is smoking,” Benny Joe said.
The second photo wasn’t as important as I’d hoped. Only a tiny sliver of the first letter of the van’s front license plate. Benny Joe and I agreed it could be B, D, P, or R. Not enough for a DMV run.
Then Benny Joe projected the four and a half seconds of Ralphs footage onto a fifty-inch monitor and went through it one millimeter at a time. He zoomed and corrected and sifted, and when he was finished, the spider on Tino’s forearm was as clear as a National Geo shot. Oval-shaped thorax, seven delicate legs with a space for an eighth and thirteen comma-shaped marks on its abdomen.
“Fuckin’ Bonifacio Executioner,” said Benny Joe matter-of-factly. “A deformed one, but I’d know it anywhere.”
“What?”
“The fuckin’ spider, man. Think black widow on acid. Venom’ll eat the fuckin’ lungs out of a German shepherd.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
He lifted his right pant leg, revealing an ugly red scar running halfway up his shin. “What the fuck do you think?” he said. “They wheel you in, and nobody even fuckin’ asks. They just cut you open and drain the fucker before they have to take off your leg.”
“Bonifacio? As in Corsica?”
“Fuckin’ A. Took a ferry over from Nice on my fuckin’ honeymoon. Good views and great food, somebody said. But I didn’t give a fuck cause I was followin’ a tip about a Marseilles shooter in the JFK hit.”
I rolled my eyes. “How’d that work out?”
“Don’t ask. Guy I went to see washed up onshore with his tongue cut out a couple a days before I got there. All I got was this fuckin’ scar. I’ll tell you one thing, though. The next time one of those Corsican motherfuckers smiles, it’ll be the first.”
After a moment, I asked him, “You got a safe in the house?”
“Better. A fuckin’ underground vault out in the yard.”
I thought about that and came up with a mental picture of Tino getting his face eaten off by the dogs. I liked it. “Okay, anything happens to me, you take all of this out to LAX and give it to a guy named Mitchell Adams. He’s a skycap at Delta. And you do it personally. Got it?”
“Jesus, you know I’m fuckin’ afraid to fly. Airports give me the fuckin’ willies.”
“Take a pill. And remember. Personally. Give me your word.”
“Fuck.”
“Good enough.”