Born To Be Wild

“Yes, even for me. Not impossible, I would probably have managed it, since I was the one who put the D.A. in office in the first place and the last thing he’d ever want to do is embarrass me.”

“Grandmother said my father accused you of breaking the law-extortion, stock manipulations-business as usual?”

“Your grandmother was always a fanciful woman.”

“Then why is it you never call me by my name?”

He stares at her a long moment. Finally he says, “It’s a ridiculous name given to you by a pompous, hypocritical charlatan who has done nothing in his life but swindle people out of their money with the idiotic promise of setting them on the path to eternal life. It makes me sick, always has.”

“Me as well,” Sunday says.

He looks surprised.

“The thing is, I’m not at all sure my father is a charlatan. Have you ever watched him on TV?”

Her grandfather looks disgusted. “Oh, he’s a good actor, I know that. He has an oily charm that appeals to gullible people. Don’t let him draw you in because that’s why he’s come back-to draw you in, to make you believe all of us were wrong about him.”

“That’s certainly possible,” Sunday says. “Was it true? Did you cheat people? Break laws? Ruin lives?”

He gives a scratchy laugh. “You, of all people, ask me that? You know as well as I do that power, no matter how wisely used, can have bad consequences, for some. When elephants fight, the grass suffers, as they say. You do it yourself every day. Have you done a head count of the people you’ve hurt with your company policies? Your buyouts? You don’t think much about who gets hurt, do you? Of course not. Your mother never did either. She enjoyed having power, until you managed to take it from her. Are you honest enough to admit it? Tough enough?”

She looks at him steadily. “You wanted to kill your own son-in-law because he stood up to you?”

She waits a moment, but he doesn’t answer her.

“Why did you react so violently to what he said to you?”

“You’re like a damned lawyer. You don’t answer a question, you ask another one. Your mother trained you well.”

“My mother never trained me at all. What she did was send me out of the country. Or was it you who did that? You who saw to it that I, the hypocrite’s seed, was removed from your sight?”

He sips a glass of water from the carafe at his side. He sets the glass down, looks at her thoughtfully. “Self-pity doesn’t suit you, it hangs better on Susan. Maybe it was good for your character that your mother cut you loose-very well, that we cut you loose. Yes, I was the one who insisted I wanted you gone.” He snaps his fingers in her face. “Gone.”

She is stiff with pain, but she tries not to show it. She’s known how he felt, but hasn’t ever admitted it, never asked him or her mother. She stares at him. She smiles. “Why then, thank you, Grandfather.”

“You’re good. Very good. You would have made an excellent lawyer.”

She draws a breath, shrugs. “Think of it as part of your heritage, Grandfather-and his.”

Her grandfather looks at her broodingly-

“Clear!”

The last scene. A relief. Once out of her makeup, back into jeans and a T-shirt, Mary Lisa walked out of the studio into the bright late afternoon sunlight. She rummaged in her purse for her sunglasses. There were people from the studio scattered around her. She raised her face to the sun, smiled. She’d wait for Lou Lou right there.

But then she heard Lou Lou yelling her name. She heard a scream, and then the rumble of a motorcycle. It was close, coming closer. It was jumping the curb, roaring louder than a rocket now, coming straight at her.

FORTY-NINE

The last network radio soap opera went off the air in November 1960.

It happened in an instant. Jeff Renfrew shoved her back against the door, and the bike skidded sharply away, tires screeching, engine revving. Jeff leaped forward, and threw a hard punch, hitting the rider against his shoulder. The bike jerked and skidded some more, but the man in the black helmet managed to stay on and keep the bike upright. He turned on a dime and took off, bounced over the curb and wove back between two cars, horns honking all around him, curses filling the air. Jeff raced after him and cut him off before he could pick up speed. He kicked the back tire, but the guy managed to pull in front of a car, blocking him off. Jeff stepped back, watched the bike speed up, and knew he couldn’t catch the guy now. He trotted back to Mary Lisa.

“You okay, Mary Lisa?” Her face was perfectly white, people were hovering around her, all talking at once. She blinked, then to his surprise, she smiled at him. “Thank you, Jeff. You saved my neck.”

Suddenly they heard a horrendous screech of brakes, a car horn sounding, and the sickening sound of a loud thud.

They ran back out on the sidewalk, toward the sound of the crash. Cars were stopped, drivers leaping out, trying to find out what had happened. They ran around the side of a white Pathfinder and saw the driver leap from the cab and run toward the front of the SUV. Traffic was gridlocked now, nobody was going anywhere.

A man was lying on his side in front of the SUV, unmoving, his Honda motorcycle beside him, one of its wheels bent nearly in two.

“It’s him,” Mary Lisa said. “The man who tried to run me down.”

Someone yelled that he’d called 911.

The driver of the SUV was on his knees beside the man and felt for his pulse, all the while saying the motorcycle had jumped right in front of him. He took off his light jacket and laid it over the man. His helmet was still on his head.

People from surrounding cars converged, elbowed their way through to see the man.

“The guy jumped right in front of him! I couldn’t believe what that bike was doing!”

“Is he dead?”

“You’re Mary Lisa Beverly?”

“You’re on Born to Be Wild, right? You play Damian Sterling, don’t you?”

Mary Lisa started to go down to her hands and knees next to the man, but Lou Lou grabbed her. “No, stand back now, okay? The ambulance will be here soon. There’s nothing you can do.”

“Do you think he’s dead, Lou Lou?”

Mary Lisa sounded perfectly calm and that worried Lou Lou. “It doesn’t matter. Now, you come back with me.” As she spoke, she called Daniel on her cell.

They soon heard sirens in the distance, then the paramedics’ voices.

“Let us through! Come on, folks, move aside.”

They saw the paramedics, and then a police officer, striding through the crowd, telling people to step back.

Mary Lisa stepped up to him and said, “Excuse me, but the biker, he tried to kill me.”

The officer’s head whipped around. “What did you say? Who are you?”

“I’m Mary Lisa Beverly. We’ve called Detective Daniel Vasquez at the Lost Hills Station. He’s on his way.”

“Who is the guy?”

“I don’t know. He’s got a helmet on.”

“They’ll leave it on too. The doctors will take it off. So you don’t know who he is?”

“No.”

The officer was trying to understand what had happened when Daniel ran up. People hovered around her, nothing new in that. She sat on a bench in front of the studio, sunglasses perched on her nose, a bottle of water in her hand. She was speaking alternately to a Burbank police officer and to Jeff Renfrew. He heard her say, “I can’t believe it’s over. Officer, this is Jeff Renfrew, he saw the guy coming toward me and shoved me out of the way. Then he kicked his back tire, messed him up. We still don’t know who he is. Detective Vasquez, thank heaven you’re here.” She gave him a huge grin. “It’s over.”

“I’ll want to hear everything, Mary Lisa, everything, but first things first.”

“I don’t know if he’s dead. They left his helmet on. I don’t know who he is.”

“That, Mary Lisa, we’ll find out fast enough.” He nodded to Lou Lou. “Okay, you guys want to come with me?”