Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

"Will baby make four?" she wondered aloud. I hadn't noticed it before, but she had a richly feminine voice, low and hoarse and with the consistency of syrup. "That's the question on the minds of Hollywood star-watchers as rumors fly over whether the alleged Juliette-Todd-Angelica triangle is, in fact, becoming… well, a rectangle. Is Juliette pregnant? And if so, will that bring Todd rushing back to her from Angelica's arms?"

I made a wry, rueful grimace as I backed the Mustang into the spot. These people-these Hollywood stars-the way they behaved-what were they but trailer trash with pretty faces? Or maybe that wasn't being fair to trailer trash.

"All three stars are heading to New York for the premiere of the first three-dimensional movie ever: The End of Civilization as We Know It."

Glamorizing their fucked-up relationships at a theater near you.

The 'Stang slid into the parking place easily. I straightened it out. Slapped it into parking gear. I was reaching for the keys to turn off the ignition when Sally Sterling went on, a suppressed laugh turning her voice more viscous still:

"And on the lighter side… this has to be some kind of record: Patrick Piersall's attempt to jump-start his flagging career with a return to TV ended last night before… well, before it even ended."

My hand hovered where it was, my fingers surrounding the car keys without touching them.

"Patrick Piersall's True Crime America! was canceled by cable-network executives while the final credits were still rolling," Sally continued. "The network was apparently flooded with complaints that the Most Wantedstyle crime show was racist and offensive to Arab-Americans. Phone lines set up to receive crime-solving tips were shut down while calls were still coming in. The network says episodes already taped and in production will not be shown. I guess Patrick should've never left the deck of The Universal. And that's your entertainment minute. I'm-"

I turned the car off, killing the radio. I sat there behind the wheel, my hand still holding the keys, the keys still in the ignition. Boop boop boop, I thought. So much for Patrick Piersall's True Crime America! What did it all mean? I asked myself. And I answered myself: Nothing, probably. Just some TV executives' typical cave-in under political pressure.

I pulled the keys free. I pushed out of the car. I went to see Brent Withers.

Casey Diggs's former roommate lived in a dormitory off Broadway. It was a red brick high-rise with a white concrete entryway, the sort of functional monstrosity they used to slap up a lot in the fifties. It rose above the older, more stately buildings around it, a sliver of dingy red towering over the campus's noble white arches and columns and domes.

I hadn't told the kid I was coming. It was a trick I used to use back when I was a journalist. I found if I showed up early in the morning, I could usually catch the people I was looking for, and that I got more out of them when I took them by surprise like that and they didn't have time to prepare. I had the guard buzz him from the phone at the security desk in the lobby. Then I took the phone and spoke to him myself. The same adenoidal voice I'd heard on TV last night came over the line. I heard him hesitate when I said I was here to talk about Casey Diggs. He told me to hand the phone back to the security guard. The guard listened for a second, then nodded me through.

Withers was waiting for me on the third floor, peeking out the doorway of his dorm room. He lifted a chin by way of greeting as I stepped off the elevator. I came down an empty hall of closed doors and blank walls. I wasn't sure, but I thought the kid actually looked right and left as I stepped into his room-checked, I mean, to see if anyone was there to witness my arrival.

If anything, Withers looked more like a stick insect in real life than he had on TV. He had the long thin body and the weirdly long thin head and his arms, which were mostly elbows, kind of waved around a lot like a bug's antennae. He was still in the room he'd shared with Casey, I guess, because there were two beds and two desks; only one bed was stripped to the mattress and one desk was empty.

He sat on his bed, the one with the tangle of covers. I sat on the chair by his desk, the only chair there was. The room was oppressively small and cramped the way dorm rooms are, a jumble of laptop, stereo, books, unwashed shirts and slacks and underpants, plus a million photographs, the whole stick-insect family one by one and two by two and all together, plus a torn poster on the wall right behind him: three black gangsta rappas snarling as they showed off their leather and muscles and chains.

The poster made a strange contrast to the woefully pallid student on the bed. He had a solemn, almost funereal face, a lot of black hair piled on top. He waved his antenna arms around as he spoke, and blinked in slow motion as if he were fighting to stay awake till the end of the sentence. "So what's this about?" he asked me.

I told him I'd seen him on the Patrick Piersall show and wanted to ask him some questions.

"What's this for?" he asked. "Is this for a newspaper story or TV or…?" He spoke as slowly as he blinked. He seemed to be pondering every word, turning it this way and that in the light before he laid it down in front of you.

"It's purely personal," I told him. "If there's any truth to what Diggs believed, I have a friend who might be in danger. You were the one guy who seemed to think Diggs might be on to something, that maybe his conspiracy theories weren't as crazy as they sounded."

"I didn't say that."

"No, I guess you didn't. But I got the feeling there was a lot you weren't saying."

"Well, that's the whole point around this place, actually," said Brent Withers. "It's all about what you don't say."

"What is?"

"Everything. School. Business. Life."

"You mean, you're afraid you'll be punished if you speak the truth?"

"I didn't say that."

"You have any reason to think you would be?"

His hand sort of wafted over toward the empty desk behind him. "That's Casey's desk over there. Do you notice Casey sitting at it?"

"No."

"Notice his computer? His Pacers jacket? His cheesecake picture of Angelica Eden?"

"Okay. He's gone."

"Yes, he is. He got expelled. I can't afford to get expelled. My parents aren't rich. They run a couple of franchise stores in St. Louis. They made a lot of sacrifices so I could come here and I still have to get my MBA after this. You need a good MBA to get a start in business without connections. For me, a happy and successful life depends on what I don't say, so I don't say it."

"Don't say what?"

"A lot of things."

"Like what?"

"You want a for-instance?"

"Yeah. For instance, what don't you say?"

"Well, I don't say, 'Women aren't as good at math and science as men are.'"

"You don't say that?"

"I never say it."

"But you're thinking it, you mean."

"I didn't say that."

"So there's another thing you don't say."

"That's right."

"What else?"

"I don't know. How about 'African art and literature are simplistic and primitive compared to European art and literature.'"

"Uh-huh. It's a long list, I gather."

"I need that MBA."

"All right, I get you," I said. "It's a university campus, all political correctness, no free speech, pretty typical. But look: Casey Diggs didn't get expelled for saying petty stuff like that. The guy accused a famous professor of planning a terrorist attack. That's a very serious thing to do."

"Well, it is. But that's not the way things work. Not exactly." The kid paused before going on in his slow-blinking, hand-waving way. Considering every word. Planning every sentence. It was sort of hypnotic to watch. "Plenty of people at this university-not just students but professors, too-have made accusations just as serious as Casey's. They accused the United States government of destroying the World Trade Center and shuffling the blame onto innocent Islamics. They accused the president of ordering the flooding of New Orleans in order to kill black people. There are students who gathered outside the classroom of Professor Leonard Stein-a seventy-year-old man-and shouted accusations that he was complicit in the murder of Palestinians until Stein was forced to retire. None of those people has been expelled like Casey was. None of them has been penalized in any way."