Body Copy (7 page)

Tremaine said, “I’m assuming you guys won the business.”

“They awarded the account to Gale/Parker that day.”

Tremaine thought about the story, thinking, man, that’s really going far out of your way to communicate your passion. Dramatic too, Roger Gale using the fact that he worked for Ford as an exclamation point to his pitch.

Ta-da! Expecting a big guffaw from the room, almost. Not even considering that this might seem a little obsessive, a little invasive, a little weird. Maybe he just didn’t care what it seemed like.

Tremaine said to Matt, “That’s an impressive display of commitment. Risky, too. You never know how someone’s going to respond to something like that.”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Passion, creativity, with a little risk thrown in. That’s what Roger Gale lived for.”

Tremaine talked to some of the other creatives, some account execs, and Roger Gale’s long-time assistant. They 59

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added to the image of Gale forming in Tremaine’s head but didn’t give him anything to sink his teeth into. No real knowledge of the man outside the halls of Gale/Parker.

That changed when he sat down with a man named Jack Sawyer.

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Jack Sawyer was a man Laurie had told Tremaine he had to talk to. When Tremaine got to Sawyer’s office—his three orange steel walls—he was surprised to see an older man, maybe fifty-five, maybe even older, in jeans and cowboy boots sitting at an old polished wooden desk, one that had clearly been brought in.

“Excuse me,” Tremaine said. “Are you Jack Sawyer?”

In a rusty, gravelly voice, the guy said, “That’s me.”

Sawyer stood up, bowlegged, a little bent over. This guy was an old cowboy working with a bunch of kids.

“I’m Donald Tremaine.”

“Yeah, I know who you are,” Sawyer said. “Donnelly told me you were coming. And I remember your old surf video. You were a crazy bastard.”

Michael Craven

Tremaine considered explaining that, no, he wasn’t crazy, but why get into it? This guy seemed like a character, somebody who might tell him something he hadn’t already read in the reports or online.

They shook.

“Have a seat,” Sawyer said.

Tremaine did.

Sawyer said, “So, Nina hired you to figure out who killed Roger?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I can tell you, almost for sure, that nobody in these halls did it. I was one of the first employees hired here, and I know everyone who’s ever worked here. There were people who got sour over getting passed up for a promotion or something. But nobody wanted Roger dead.

Everyone respected him too much. The cops kept asking questions about whether he cheated on his wife because he kept such crazy hours, and there are women everywhere you look here. Have you noticed?”

Tremaine said, “Maybe.”

“Maybe,” Sawyer said. “I like that. But crazy hours, leaving the agency at midnight, grabbing a drink somewhere, things like that, that’s advertising. That doesn’t mean he’s banging some broad in a broom closet. I suppose if he was having an affair with someone who worked here and she got pissed, she might have done it, but I don’t think that happened. If he was having an affair, he wouldn’t have been doing it here.”

“Why is that?”

“Ad agencies are worse than sewing circles. Everyone knows everything about everyone. And if the big guy 62

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was involved with anyone, people would have found out.

You know how you tell if two people at an agency are doing it?”

Tremaine shrugged.

“They don’t talk to each other. The people flirting with each other, they’re just having fun. The people ignoring each other . . .”

“They’re having lots of fun,” Tremaine said.

“Yeah,” Sawyer said. “And it happens all the time in agencies ’cause you’re here all the goddamn time. That’s one of the reasons I got in the business. But Roger? I don’t think he ever had that kind of fun, not here at least. I never heard anything like that. Never.”

“What about outside the office?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know what he did outside the office. He didn’t socialize with people from the agency much.”

“Who did he socialize with?”

“Fancy people. That was important to his wife.”

“What do you mean? Hollywood types?”

“Not really. Old-money people. People down at L.A.

Country Club. People who look down on Hollywood.”

“That doesn’t sound like Roger Gale’s kind of crowd.”

“I don’t think it was, but why do you say that?”

“Well, I didn’t know him, obviously. But the image I have of him so far is that he was an artist, a guy who cared about creativity, about substance. It doesn’t seem like he’d be concerned with status that much. It seems like his work was his big passion.”

“It was his big passion. That’s why he was here all the time. That’s why he went to some of the lengths he went 63

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to do great work. That’s why he still wrote body copy at fifty-nine years old.”

“Body copy?”

“Yeah. Body copy is . . . let’s say you have a magazine ad. Well, there’s the big headline up top. Then there’s a couple paragraphs below it explaining all the great things about your product. Writers hate writing that shit ’cause nobody reads it. So they make the junior writers do it for them. But not Roger Gale. He still wrote it himself, even as head of the agency. He didn’t care if no one read it; he wanted it to be perfect. That’s passion.”

Tremaine said, “So, back to the country club crowd . . .”

“Yeah,” Sawyer said. “Roger’s work was his passion. But his wife, she had her say, too, and she’s a strong woman.

And, like I said, that world was important to her.”

“Right,” Tremaine said. “When you’re married, it’s a give and take. I’ve been married. I know that to be true.”

“Look at me.” Sawyer said. “Do I look like the kind of guy who wants to go to Linens-N-Things this weekend?”

“No, you don’t,” Tremaine said, “but I bet that’s what you’re doing.”

“That would be a smart bet. Because I love my wife.”

Tremaine nodded and said, “Did Roger Gale love his wife?”

“I don’t know,” Sawyer said. “He acted like he did. But Roger Gale was a master manipulator. It’s what he did for a living.”

“And it’s what he lived for.”

“That’s right,” Sawyer said.

Tremaine liked Jack Sawyer, got a kick out of his candor, felt like he could ask him real questions.

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Tremaine said, “Who, if anyone, do you think I should talk to?”

“It’s a tough call. Nobody seems to know anything. I’m sure you’ll talk to Evelyn, but she won’t tell you much.”

“Do you think she has much to tell?”

“I doubt she’s hiding anything, but she didn’t like the attention the murder brought. You know, nice people down at the club don’t get murdered. So, even if there are little things that might help you, personality traits and whatnot, they’ll be tough to pull out of Evelyn.”

Tremaine said, “It always helps me to talk to people who knew a victim, even if they don’t have much to say. I might find out later that they gave me more than I realized.

This guy Matt Bishop, he basically just told me how great Roger Gale was . . . But he might have helped me. I just don’t know yet.”

“Well,” Sawyer said. “I don’t want you to find out later that I helped you. I want to help you now. There’s this ad hack right down the road, Tyler Wilkes, that’s who everybody thinks might have done it.”

“I’m hearing his name a lot.”

“Tyler runs an agency in El Segundo called Think Big.

You’ll love this guy. You think you’ve seen some poseurs around here? This clown’s so caught up in competition and advertising, he might have been able to convince himself that Roger needed to die so he could win himself a sneaker account. Wait till you see his agency. He ripped off the design of this place just shamelessly. And did a bad job at that. He’s also got a blow habit, so maybe he’s crazy.”

“How do you know about the blow?”

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“The whole industry’s a sewing circle, not just the indi-vidual ad agencies.”

Tremaine kept talking to Sawyer. Turned out, Sawyer ended up asking as many questions as Tremaine. Wanted to know about his surfing career. Specifically, the parts where girls in bikinis came up out of nowhere and propo-sitioned the world’s number one.

“I thought you were married,” Tremaine said.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear.”

“It didn’t happen that often,” Tremaine said.

“Just lie to me and tell me it did.”

Tremaine laughed and said, “Okay, it did.”

Sawyer got a faraway look in his eye and said,

“Really?”

On his way out, almost not believing he hadn’t asked him yet, Tremaine said, “So, Jack, what do you do here?”

Sawyer said, “I’m just an old hack, now. Back in the day, though, I used to be a pretty good art director. Used to partner with Roger on all the early stuff.”

Tremaine respected the old guy, still doing his thing after all these years.

“These days, though,” Sawyer said. “I just come in here to make sure the place doesn’t go to shit. Make sure it doesn’t get too phony.”

“I bet Roger would have appreciated that,” Tremaine said.

“I hope so.”

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C H A P T E R 11

Tremaine walked back to Laurie Donnelly’s office after a long day at the agency. He was looking forward to talking to her, but he was really looking forward to
finishing
his talk with her, for no other reason than he wanted to go back to the trailer and catch an evening surf. He entered her space, with the four walls each a different height, and almost ran into her as she was on her way out of her office.

Now, standing right in front of him, she said, “Want to grab a beer?“

It took Tremaine off guard a bit and he said, “Now?”

“No. In a month. Yes, now.”

She had that playful smile, the one she’d had when he’d first met her.

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“Well,” Tremaine said politely, “I was thinking of interviewing you here, then heading home for a surf.”

“You can go for a surf anytime,” Laurie said. “But I might not ever ask you to have a beer again.” She smiled again and said, “Come on, it’s a change of scenery. Plus, I have a joint.”

“You’re assuming just because I’m an old surf pro that I smoke pot.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good guess.”

She said, “Do you know a bar down the street called Brennan’s?”

“Been there many times,” Tremaine said.

“Well?” she said.

Having a drink with an attractive, mischievous, forty-something woman whom he was interviewing for a case could lead to trouble.

So Tremaine said, “I’ll meet you there.”

At the bar, a nice, dark little dive, three beers and one joint in, Laurie said, “You know, to find out who killed him, it’d be nice.”

“Nice?”

“I was very sad for a long time, I still am. But it’s been a year and I can think about it now without that feeling of shock. I’m curious; I want to know why. Who hated him enough to kill him? You know?”

“You said you never saw him outside of work . . .”

“No one really did. Roger and his wife, they were society people. Big shots, even for L.A.”

“Jack Sawyer told me that, said they hung around with the old-money crowd.”

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“Right,” Laurie said. “Roger wasn’t from that world, but he could fit in anywhere, and he used his charm on those people to get their business. Bank clients. Things like that. But I did know Roger pretty well because he worked all the time, so I was around him a lot. He didn’t invite me down to the club, but when you’re around someone that much, you get a feel for them. And I liked Roger Gale. I really liked him. He was so smart.”

Laurie finished her beer and held her empty glass up to Tremaine to see if he wanted another. He did.

Tremaine said, “What about this guy Tyler Wilkes? Everybody seems to be talking about him.”

“He’s a poseur. A successful poseur but a poseur. No, not even successful, he was handed his agency by someone else who built it up. So he’s always fighting that. Tyler’s just one of the many creative directors in the business who was jealous of Roger. He’s into drugs supposedly, too. He might have thought that if he killed Roger he could be the ad king of L.A. That people would start to respect him.

That means a lot. There’s a lot a money in advertising.”

They sat there at the bar for another hour, talking about Roger Gale, to be sure, but moving off the subject, too.

Talking about other things . . . Life.

Tremaine looked at Laurie. Into her forties, but still really sexy. She’d kept her figure up, and the corkscrew blonde hair fit her just right. It was wild, like her. Tremaine found himself now not so much looking at her as checking her out. He imagined what she looked like naked, standing in front of him.

The beers—and the joint—were sending his mind in a different direction, clouding his judgment. He liked it.

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Tremaine snapped out of his daydream and said, “Did you ever notice anything unusual about Roger?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, was there ever anything, anything, that struck you as odd? I understand he was an unusual guy to begin with, taking a job on a Ford assembly line and things like that. But, did you ever have a moment where you said, that’s
interesting
, even for him. It could be small, inconsequential, anything.”

“Yes and no,” Laurie said. “I got to work one morning really early. I was the first one in.”

“Even before Mary O’Shaughnessy?”

Laurie laughed and said, “I know, she’s such a climber.

Anyway, I found Roger in his office asleep. In the same clothes from the day before. He woke up, right as I walked by his office.”

“He’d slept there?”

“I guess. Now, we all worked late a lot. But we always went home eventually, even if it was five a.m. You know, go home, take a shower, come back around ten. That’s why I said yes and no. Because it was kind of unusual, but on the other hand, Roger Gale was a workaholic, so who knows?”