Self-Defense by JONATHAN KELLERMAN

I rang the bell. No answer. The knocker was a bronze sea lion patinaed with salt. I used it to drum the green wooden door a couple of times. Still nothing. Neither Gwen’s customized van nor Tom’s BMW was in sight. But no mail in the box, not even throwaways.

I went home and called the Producers Guild and learned that Curtis App was president of New Times Productions in Century City.

A call to New Times got me a voice mail system that required an engineering degree to understand. I pushed 6 to speak with Mr. App and got cut off.

It was just after noon.

I drove into the city, heading straight for the university library.

The computer held a dozen references to App, the most recent being five-year-old reviews of a movie he’d produced called Camp Hatchet II.

Bomb review. Maybe that was his spiritual link with Lowell. The next seven citations were more of the same. Then I found a thirteen-year-old article in American Film entitled APP ON THE DEFENSE: TEEN PIX PRODUCER SAYS HE KEEPS KIDS OUT OF TROUBLE.

The magazine hadn’t been microfilmed, but it was in the stacks. The article was an interview in which App acknowledged the dreadful critical notices he’d received on each of the nine soft-sex blood-and-gore flicks he’d produced and admitted that “my pictures aren’t Dostoyevsky, they’re popcorn for the head. But no pubic hair or nipples. Kids watch them, space out, and have a good time in the drive-in. When they’re there, they’re off the streets, so think of it as public service programming. As a parent, I’d rather have my kid watch Janey Makes the Squad or Red Moon Over Camp Hatchet than a lot of the garbage that’s on network TV.”

The accompanying color photo showed App sitting in the driver’s seat of a long-snouted red Ferrari convertible, a satisfied smile on his face, a perfect sky and palm trees in the background.

From the narrowness of his shoulders, a small man. Thin face with ratlike features and an extremely pointed chin.

Gray hair, Caesar cut, white tennis shirt, red sweater that matched the Ferrari. Great tan.

No mention of his ever optioning Lowell’s book, so either I’d guessed wrong about that or it was something he wanted to forget.

Scrolling back, I came across nothing on him for the next nine years, then a piece in The Wall Street Journal entitled RETAIL FOOD A GROWTH MARKET.

It turned out to be one of those center-of-the-front-page lightweight articles the Journal runs in order to amuse nervous businessmen. The full title read Retail Food a Growth Market If Consumers’ Special Needs Are Met: Curtis App Likes Sprouts and Jicama.

Back in those days—three years before the Sanctum party—App had been a financial analyst for an investors’ group specializing in supermarket chains, vending machines, coin-op laundries, and fast-food outlets. In the article he predicted that retailers were going to have to cater to ethnic and special needs to be successful in an increasingly competitive market.

A photoengraving showed the same pointy face with full dark Beatle-length hair.

From groceries to slasher flicks? An association with Lowell must have seemed the next step toward High Art.

I left the library and stopped at an instant-print place in Westwood. No other customers in the store, and it took exactly twenty-three minutes to obtain fifty business cards.

Good paper, ecru shade, classy embossed script.

Below that, a phony post office box in Beverly Hills and a phone number I’d used ten years ago while in private practice. Putting three cards in my wallet and the rest in the trunk of the Seville, I headed for Century City.

New Times Productions was located in a twenty-story black tower on Avenue of the Stars. A hit movie a few years ago had featured a building just like it, under siege by terrorists. In the film, a rogue cop had vanquished the bad guys using guile and machismo. Most of the actual occupants of the real-life building were attorneys and film outfits. In real life, the terrorists would have been offered a deal.

The production company took up almost all of the top floor, the exception one office belonging to an outfit named Advent Ventures.

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