They're Watching Read online

  Even the lawsuit against me for not punching Keith Conner was dropped. With no more Keith to protect, Summit Films wanted to get as far away from me as possible. You know you’re in dire straits when no one wants to sue you anymore. At final tally my legal costs were almost precisely what I’d netted from my screenwriting deal for They’re Watching.

  The movie opened last month, not with a bang but a whimper. On its second weekend, I finally worked up the nerve to go see it. Feeling like a self-abusing pervert in a pussycat theater, I watched from the back row of an empty Valley cinema. It was worse than I could have imagined. Though Keith was afforded some respectful deference, the reviews were understandably blistering. Predictable plot, trite dialogue, bled-dry characters, the pacing pumped to a steroid-rage confusion of edits. It was, in its own way, masterful in its incompetence. Kenneth Turan suggested that the script might have been generated from a software program.

  As my name flickered during the closing credits, it struck me that—like so many of those first-round wailers on American Idol—I was never really very good at this. Getting fired off They’re Watching was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I’d come close to throwing away everything that I’d built because I had never bothered to reexamine a childhood dream that I didn’t even want anymore.

  I’m happier watching movies than writing them.

  I’m happier teaching.

  Standing on the front lawn, I open my eyes again. I turn and look at the school, and in the reflection of the chapel window I see myself. Khaki trousers and a button-up from Macy’s. Battered backpack in hand, dangling at my side. Patrick Davis, high-school teacher. After all this I’d wound up where I’d started.

  But not really.

  I climb into my Camry. The interior is a bit scorched from the stun grenade, but not too bad, since my face had been good enough to absorb most of the blast. I can’t afford a new car yet, but I did have the dashboard buttons and dials fixed, and I’ve vowed not to punch them anymore.

  I hide the job offer in the glove box like treasure and head home, running the 10 west, then cutting up to Sunset Boulevard so I can surf the curves. The air blows through the open window, riffling my hair. I watch the mansions roll by behind their gates, and I don’t wonder or care what it would be like to live in them.

  My life isn’t like Enemy of the State anymore. It’s not Body Heat or Pay It Forward either.

  It’s my life.

  I stop off and pick up dry cleaning, nodding to the clerk, whose eyes linger a beat too long on my face. People look at me differently now, but less so every day. If fame is fleeting, then L.A. infamy is the blink of a firefly. But still, things are not back to what they were. They never will be. There are night terrors and waking panic and from time to time I still break a cold sweat checking the mailbox or opening the morning paper. And most days, when it’s too quiet or not quiet enough, my thoughts drift to my wife, bound and held in the back room of a clapboard house. How she’d tried to fight her captors. How she’d sunk her teeth into DeWitt’s arm when he’d gagged her. How, in the grip of blind fear, she’d felt in her heart of hearts that she was going to die.

  Sally was honored as a hero at her funeral. Which she was. More and more I think of heroes as ordinary people who decide to give a damn about what they do, not what they might get. Watching her casket descend, I felt heartsick. I doubt I’ll encounter her combination of composure and wry incisiveness again. Her son is being adopted by a cousin. The pension board is reviewing Valentine’s case, and it seems unlikely his four boys have as straight a road ahead.

  The four men in that clapboard house—none of whom were actually named DeWitt or Verrone—all copped pleas. In return for offering testimony against Festman Gruber, they’ll avoid the needle, but they all had to agree to life without parole. I think of Sally and Keith, Mikey Peralta and Deborah Vance, and I am pleased that those men will be eating off trays and looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.

  If they can be believed, they were the entire team for this job. Ridgeline and the numerous shell companies enfolding it are being vigorously investigated, but from what’s trickled back to me, it’s been tough sledding once that paper trail hit Bahrain.

  Bob Reimer, the face of the scandal, has not fared well. His pretrial motions drag on, and he’s looking at special circumstances, which could mean the death penalty. As he forges forward with gray-miened unflappability, prosecutors and media continue to dig into the Legal Department at Festman Gruber. Reimer’s well-heeled colleagues are wading through a sea of lesser indictments, and some of them may likely join him in lockdown someday if he isn’t executed.

  Festman’s higher-ups were predictably outraged at everything that had transpired. Their stock price has plummeted, and I bet that hurts the bastards most of all. Without a single public volley being fired, the naval sonar contract moved from Festman Gruber to North Vector. That Senate vote on decibel limits is fast approaching, and Kazakov seems to have a pretty good sense of which way it’ll go.

  Thank you, Keith Conner. Your life for a cause. James Dean never saved the whales. But in a weird way, you did.

  Trista Koan got another movie greenlit. It’s about frogs in the Amazon being killed off by global warming, and they have some new kid, a crossover pop star, doing the voice-over. He’s not supposed to be half bad. When his last album went gold, he replaced Keith on that billboard outside The LaRusso Agency, and maybe, if he’s lucky, it’ll still be there next month.

  I turn at Roscomare and drive up the hill, passing couples walking dogs, gardeners loading pickups, that McMansion with Tudorbethan mock battlements. Paul McCartney whispers words of wisdom from my banged-up speakers, and then the on-the-hour news breaks in. One of the Lakers got caught with a transvestite in a Venice Beach bathroom stall. I turn off the radio, let the breeze blow past my face and clear all that scandal and prurient interest from the air.

  I stop off at Bel Air Foods and walk the aisles, checking items off my mental list, whistling a tune. I’m almost at checkout when I remember. I go back and grab some prenatal vitamins.

  Bill rings me up. “How you doing today, Patrick?”

  “Great, Bill. You?”

  “Never better. Working on the next script?”

  “Nah.” I smile, at ease in this moment with myself, the world. “I love movies. That doesn’t make me a screenwriter.”

  His gaze lingers on the vitamins as he slides them across the scanner, and he looks up and gives me a wink.

  I drive home, pull in to the garage, and sit for a time. To my left, up on the shelf, Ariana’s wedding dress is visible through the sealed clear-plastic bin. I open the glove box, remove the job-offer letter, read it again to make sure it’s real. I think about our venerable and flawed kitchen table, the freshly painted baby blue walls of my former office, and, flooded with gratitude, I cry a little.

  Juggling the grocery bags, I walk out front to the mailbox. A jolt of apprehension strikes me as the lid drops, but the mail today—like yesterday and the day before—is just the mail. I tuck it under my arm and stand, regarding the house I have fallen back in love with.

  Next door there is a Realtor’s sign in the Millers’ front lawn. They are liquidating their assets to make the paperwork easier. Beyond Martinique’s silk drapes, I can see a young couple inside being shown around. Their whole lives ahead of them.

  Near the fresh-turned soil beside our own front lawn lie a pair of slender gardening gloves and a trowel. I start up our walk, a baguette sticking out of one of the grocery bags like in a postcard of France. I think about all the things I used to chase for all the wrong reasons. And how by standing still I now hummed with a vitality I’d never known.

  On the porch I set down the bags and pull from one the bouquet of mariposas. Lavender. I step forward and ring the bell like a suitor. Her footsteps approach.

  Ariana opens the door. She sees me, sees the flowers, and extends a hand toward my cheek.

>   I step across the threshold, into the warmth of her palm.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my splendid editor, Keith Kahla; my publisher, Sally Richardson; and the rest of my team at St. Martin’s Press, including but certainly not limited to Matthew Baldacci, Jeff Capshew, Kathleen Conn, Ann Day, Brian Heller, Ken Holland, John Murphy, Lisa Senz, Matthew Shear, Tom Siino, Martin Quinn, and George Witte. My UK editor, David Shelley, and his gifted crew at Sphere. Überagents Lisa Erbach Vance and Aaron Priest. My beloved attorneys, Stephen F. Breimer and Marc H. Glick. Rich Green at CAA. Maureen Sugden, my copy editor, for improving my grammar, my diction—no doubt even my posture. Geoff Baehr, my technology guru who at times feels like the technology guru. Jess Taylor for early remarks. Philip Eisner, who lent me his considerable reading talents. Simba, my faithful Rhodesian ridgeback, the perfect underfoot writing companion. Lucy Childs, Caspian Dennis, Melissa Hurwitz, M.D., Nicole Kenealy, Bret Nelson, M.D., Emily Prior, and John Richmond for performing various invaluable tasks. And finally Delinah, Rose Lenore, and Natty—my collective heart.