Beverly Hills offered a particular kind of privacy. Behind its gates and garden walls, a family could live only minutes from one of the world’s busiest entertainment industries while keeping the details of its own existence largely out of sight. An impressive address announced success without requiring the people inside to explain very much about themselves. Visitors could admire the house, notice the cars and leave with the reassuring impression that its owners had done well.
There was an established vocabulary for that kind of achievement. The swimming pool, the expensive education and the space to accommodate guests all said something about the person paying for them. In a city built partly on selling images of desirable lives, such things were readily understood. Whatever difficulties a family might have, the visible evidence suggested that its members possessed every possible advantage in overcoming them.
On North Elm Drive, the Menéndez family had acquired the appropriate surroundings. Their home offered a pool, a guesthouse and the comfortable separation that a large property could provide. There was room for four people to occupy themselves without constantly encountering one another, even as their lives remained bound together by money, expectations and the ordinary obligations of being a family.
José Menéndez had spent much of his adult life climbing toward places like this. The distance between his arrival in the United States as a Cuban teenager and his position in the entertainment business could be measured in promotions, salaries and increasingly impressive homes. Kitty had accompanied him through that ascent, while their two sons had grown up with opportunities that their father’s success made possible. From outside, the direction of travel seemed unmistakable.
By Sunday, August 20, 1989, another working week was approaching. Lyle was 21 and Erik 18, old enough for questions about college, careers and independence to occupy a household that had invested heavily in their futures. Inside the house, a television was playing. Beyond the property, Los Angeles continued through the last hours of its weekend, while the garden walls afforded the family their customary privacy.
