Chapter 32
Michael
Here’s a secret the LAPD keeps pretty close to the vest, and one they’ll deny to your face. If they want to get into your house, they’ll get into your house no matter who you are or what security system you have. They didn’t need Ken to give them my maid’s key. They had tools.
My gate was broken, and the door to the main house had been broken in. I couldn’t believe they’d even knocked on the door of the guest house when I saw that, but I had no time to ask before I was put in a squad car and driven away.
Outside the broken gate, they waited. I’d never resented the paparazzi before, with their cameras and catcalls. But that day, with everything in my life interrupted, a day of explanations ahead, and ugliness between Laine and me, I hated them. They stood a respectful distance from the police car, but they caught me there. I’d be stuck in a room explaining things while they guessed at the truth and made up lies about Laine.
And it was so titillating. What could be better than Michael Greydon staring at child pornography with his hands in his pants? It explained why I hadn’t had a long-term relationship since Lucy, why I didn’t stay out late or do drugs. My vice was worse than a simple substance abuse problem. It was the story of the year, and they’d ignore the truth for as long as they could, because the truth was honorable and real.
The LAPD didn’t book me right away. They took me into a room and asked questions, the most pertinent being, “Did you or did you not arrange for the purchase of sexually explicit photographs of an individual you knew to be under the age of eighteen?”
Once my lawyer, Joe Barnett, showed up in his suit and aftershave, I told him the truth, because that was what I knew how to do. Then I admitted to the LAPD that yes, I’d arranged for the purchase of the pictures, and yes, I knew that the girl in them was under eighteen.
They booked me without hearing the rest of it. Barnett had told me that was what would happen. I asked about Carlos. They told me he was being held but not arrested. I asked about Laine. No one would tell me if she was all right.
“Find out,” I told Joe. “I don’t care what you have to do.”
“If she’s implicating you—”
“I don’t care. Make sure she’s not alone. Make sure she’s not upset. Go to her house and make sure she’s okay.”
He agreed, but he lied. I knew it from the way his mouth moved. He was as invested in protecting me as I was invested in protecting Laine. There was nothing in it for him to check on her and report back to me.
So I sat in the quiet cell, which was comfortable enough with its soft seat and frosted glass, as if designed with a pending apology in mind. I thought about what I’d done, and not done, and the foolhardy arrogance that had led me there. Laine’s past had been her secret. She’d protected it, and because of me, it was no longer a secret. It had the potential to go horrifyingly public. Guilt lay on top of regret, whispering potential ammunition in my ear.
You arrogant, overconfident ass. This is her life. It’s not a movie. It’s not a story you’re telling yourself about yourself.
“She’s fine,” Ken said after my two-hour wait in the apology room.
We sat across a table in a white room with a wood table. Portraits of dead cops looked down at us.
“How do you know?” I asked, infuriated by his casual posture, his legs crossed and foot shaking at the ankle as if he needed to be somewhere else.
“If she’d killed herself, we’d have heard.”
“You know what, Ken—”
“Don’t you even think of firing me.” He put both elbows on the table. “You need me, and I’m not wasting my breath convincing you of it. I don’t care if you admit to me that what you did was stupid, but once you’re out of here, you’d better admit that to the public. They want your head.”
“It was stupid,” I said.
“Good. That’s progress.”
“Did the pictures get out?”
He didn’t answer.
I slammed my hand on the desk. “Answer me.”
“Yes.”
A vacuum opened in my chest, and my heart fell into it.
Ken continued. “Her brother—”
“Foster brother.”
“This Jake guy had them scheduled to post to a porn site,” he said. “He was going to use that to pressure her, but they went up while he was being questioned.”
“We can’t stop it, can we?”
“Look, she’ll get over it. You, on the other hand, might not.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I want resources behind getting those pictures taken down. I know it’s impossible to get them all.”
“It’s just plain impossible. If she were nobody, I could contain it. But she’s not. She’s your girlfriend.”
My girlfriend. The word sounded infantile.
“So here’s what we have outside these walls,” Ken said, “and try not to get discouraged by the fact that it’s all bad news. On one hand, you’ve got a news media cycle that only knows why you were arrested. They haven’t found out that you sent your bodyguard to get pictures of your girlfriend to protect her. All anyone can envision is America’s Boyfriend beating off to shots of naked little girls. On the other hand, Laine’s pictures are taking a slow tour around the porn world tagged as ‘vintage teens.’ They’ll get drowned out in two weeks by the flood of shit on the internet. But when you explain publicly what happened, people will start searching for the pictures, and she doesn’t look that different. They’ll stop being a fetish tag and start showing up on CelebrityOgler.com with blurred nipples.”
I must have made some move with my hands or some expression that betrayed my immediate rage. I didn’t have a word besides No for the invasion that would be.
As if Ken saw an opening, he leaned forward. “If you don’t want to get run out of town, you have to explain what happened. If you want those pictures to die a quick, painless death by irrelevance, you have to quietly yet openly dump her now. No one will care about her enough to search.”
“Quietly yet openly? What the hell is that?”
“Call her a girl you used to know, had a short thing with, then start talking about the movie.”
“What movie?” I was biding my time in asking that. I didn’t know what to think, so I asked a meaningless question.
“Any movie. Just make the studio happy, because Bob Rice is cancelling contracts. You’re already in breach for not doing the PR you agreed to.”
I shook my head. There was no use in talking further to Ken. I wasn’t leaving Laine. If there was a third way out of this, I would find it. Breaking up with her wasn’t an option, even if it was the best way to protect her.