Read Online West of Paradise by Gwen Davis - Free Book Online Page A

a touch of color in his lucky tie, the one he always wore the day before the case would go to the jury. He usually won.
    â€œSustained.”
    â€œI want to answer anyway,” Jessup said, ignoring the hand signals from his lawyer, who angled himself so neither the judge nor jury would see. “I don’t need any publicity.”
    â€œAnd yet you have a publicist, a whole department of them on staff.”
    â€œThat’s to promote my pictures.”
    â€œYou have no wish for self-promotion?”
    â€œI don’t need it.”
    â€œAren’t there little gates outside the complex you have at the studio, with some kind of brand above them, with what you claim is your family seal?”
    â€œThat’s decor,” said Jessup. “Decor is a very important part of Hollywood history. David O. Selznick had his name hanging in the breeze, like a shingle. I got shingles from her, too. All around my waist. I couldn’t breathe. Her book nearly strangled me.”
    â€œCan we get him to stop making speeches, your honor?”
    â€œJust answer the question,” said the judge.
    â€œYes. There are gates.”
    â€œAnd what purports to be a family seal?”
    â€œI come from a very good family,” said Jessup contentiously. “My mother also had to be hospitalized.”
    â€œIn response to your young companion’s hanging himself?”
    â€œHe was unstable,” Jessup said. “Actors in this town commit suicide all the time. There’s a lot of pressure. Competition.”
    â€œNot because you threw him out?”
    â€œThat was months before. Sarah made it seem in her book as though it had been the same day, as if I had killed him. She ended the chapter on me on that terrible note. She betrayed me. She let me believe nothing of my life would be between the covers. And then she made it read like I killed him!”
    â€œI didn’t even know about that kid when I started the book.” Sarah was on her feet. At the time she had an ordinary haircut, subdued on the outside, as she tried to be on the inside. But the press, focusing on the two combatants as much as the trial itself, had labeled her surprisingly colorless, the less interesting of the two, with Jessup the one with the passion. So her lawyer had agreed that if she wanted to show emotion at some point, it might be a good idea. Just not to overdo it.
    â€œAny further outbursts,” the judge said, “and I’ll hold you in contempt.”
    Sarah sat back down.
    â€œShe made it read as though I had driven him to it,” Jessup said. “I wanted to be invisible. She agreed I would be. Instead she held me up to ridicule…”
    â€œDo you deny you boasted to Sarah Nash there wasn’t a man you couldn’t have?”
    â€œYour honor.” William Arnold half stood.
    â€œIt wasn’t a boast,” Norman said.
    There were seven women on the jury and five men. It was, unusually, a highly educated jury, the defense team having gone for as much intelligence as possible, since the issues of breach of contract and fraud were complex. Jessup had crowed of his accomplishments and standing in the community sufficiently through the trial that the jury’s patience appeared to be wearing thin. Everyone was tired. Even the court watchers, those retirees who spent their days at the courthouse in Santa Monica rather than watch soap operas, seemed relieved when Jessup was excused from the stand, and the judge called a recess. These were in the months before the televised Simpson affair, which turned a trial, even more than baseball, into a national pastime.
    It had not been Crowley’s intention to finish with him quite yet. But the words “It wasn’t a boast” seemed to hang on the air, suspended, underlining the vanity of the man. And after all, it was Santa Monica, where in spite of AIDS benefits, supposed progress, and political correctness, a rose by any