Hot Shot (16 page)

“To hell with off the record. How about we just talk.”

“Okay.”

I waited. She looked at me, puffed her cigarette, and looked away again.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing—”

“This book. About my family. Don't answer that. It's obvious. For the money, right?” Her voice wasn't accusatory, just dead-dry. “No … don't answer that either. Of course you are. That's why people do anything. That's why I'm doing this movie. That's why Lesley's taking Richie to the Pizza Kitchen. That's why Susan didn't want to leave. Because we all get paid. Because of money.” She laughed, a harsh bark. “What's that song from
Cabaret?
‘Mon-ey makes the world go around, the world go around…'”

“I'm not out to hurt you, Ms. Mann.”

Betty snorted. “We all have jobs to do. Every single one of us. But you know something?”

She took a long hit off her cigarette and ground it out.

“I think
your
job is really, really,
really
shitty.”

I didn't say anything.

“I never had any intention of giving you an interview. I just wanted to meet you.” Betty lit another cigarette and turned on her ashtray, one of those smoke-eater models that gives off a low whine. “And I wanted you to meet me. I wanted you to see that this person you're writing about—this name that sells the tabloids and the books, this
celebrity
—is a flesh-and-blood person just like you.”

Call me cynical, but the speech seemed a little rehearsed. The emotions were real enough, but actors have a way of performing without even realizing it.

“I'm not writing a book about you, Ms. Mann. I'm writing a book from Felina Lopez's notes.”

“Which would not be of any interest to anyone, and which would not be published by anyone, if it weren't for her involvement with my husband.” Now she was a starchy lawyer on a nighttime drama. “Conceded?”

“Conceded.”

Her eyes flicked down to my left hand. “Married?”

I looked at the claddagh ring on my second finger, the ring that matched Claudia's. “No.”

“Engaged?”

“Let's say involved.”

“Involved. I love that word. It's a way of being committed without committing.”

“Ms. Mann—”

“Skip it. So you're involved. Let's say your—girlfriend or boyfriend?”

“Girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend made a mistake. Had an affair. The two of you worked it out between yourselves. It was a brief unhappy moment in a long, happy life together. Then someone decided to make the whole mess public, years afterward. How would you feel?”

“I wouldn't feel very good at all.”

“How would you feel if reporters were going through your garbage, looking to make up stories? Because that's happened, too. My husband wasn't dead two weeks, and I had tabloid jackals going through my garbage cans. What was I supposed to do, put on a wig and dark glasses and drive the stuff to the dump myself?”

Starchy Lawyer had been replaced by Wrongly Accused. “Ms. Mann, you and your husband—”

“So I sent Lesley to Adray's to buy a paper shredder. I even had her take the shredded stuff home with her and put it in
her
trash can. And they still came back. You know what horrible secret they found this time? A box of
Ding Dongs.
I'd bought them trying to get Richie to eat
something.
And the next Monday, I'm on the front page of
Celeb:
‘Grieving TV Star on Wild Eating Binge.'”

“Ms. Mann,” I said, “like it or not, you and your husband are public figures.”

“And that entitles you to go through my trash cans?”

“I didn't do that, did I?”

“You met my son. Is he a public figure? Even if he was, does that excuse you from human decency? Prince William lost his mother because of people like you.”

I didn't say anything. The ashtray whined like a mosquito.

“I'm scared for him,” she said quietly. “No. Scratch scared. Terrified. Because of what happened to you-know-who.”

The star to whom she alluded was a sitcom queen and a staple in the tabloids. A tabloid reporter had called child protective services, posing as a neighbor, claiming the star was beating her ten-year-old son. It was a lie, but the agency was bound by law to check it out. And the tab got its story: The star was being investigated for child abuse.

“Is it fair that I can't take Richie to Gelson's because I don't want him to go through the checkout line and see the garbage that you people have written?”

“I don't work for the tabloids. And I don't think he's old enough to—”

“Oh, he's old enough. Old enough to be sucking his thumb and wetting his pants again. He's old enough for
that.
” She jabbed her cigarette into the ashtray.

Now I knew why I'd been invited. I was a stand-in for everyone who had been hounding her, for all the Frank Grass-leys and Gina Guglielmellis of the world.

“First of all, I'm sorry for your troubles, but I haven't caused any of them. I really haven't. Second, I think that maybe your husband should have considered you and your son before he got involved with Felina Lopez.”

“My son wasn't even
born
then!” The contempt in her voice was acrid. “I don't blame Dick for this. I settled that in my mind a long time ago. I don't even blame Felina Lopez. It's you tabloid people who—”

“I'll repeat myself. I'm not a tabloid reporter.”

“No. You're not. You're worse.”

“How am I worse, Ms. Mann?”

“Because the tabloids go off the rack in a week. What you're doing is going to sit in bookstores for months. And it's going to be the one thing people remember about me and my husband.”

“You're wrong. People don't remember these things.”

She shook her head. “What's the first thing you think of when you think of Liberace?”

“Las Vegas.”

“Bull. You think two things:
gay
and
AIDS.
”

“Being gay and having AIDS are nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Of course they're not. My point is, the man entertained millions of people for fifty years, and you still think
gay
and
AIDS.
None of what he accomplished matters. And ten years from now, the name Dick Mann will come up and the first thing they'll think of is
drugs
and
whores.
Because of your book.”

She seized my arm. “There is a child here. A little boy. A little boy whose father made some mistakes. And now his father isn't here anymore. Isn't that enough for any five-year-old to bear? Do you have to make it worse?”

The ashtray hummed. I waited for her to continue, but she wasn't speaking hypothetically now. She really wanted an answer.

“… I don't know what to tell you.”

Betty looked at me as if she were examining a sample under a microscope. “Of course you don't. Just do me this. You think of that little boy's face when you're writing.”

She dropped my hand.

“All right. I want to have my lunch now. I think we're finished here.”

I stood up and gathered my things, waiting to see if she said good-bye, but she was eating a slice of pineapple as if I'd left a long time ago.

11

W
HEN
I
GOT BACK
to the Hillshire, all I could think about was another shower. I felt grody, and it wasn't just the Valley heat and the smog. I wanted some time to myself before seeing the Dubuissons, and I was in the perfect frame of mind to evict a certain nonpaying houseguest.

But the room was quiet. Not a room-service cart to be seen. A maid had been in to make up my pallet on the sofa. The bedroom door was closed, but the French doors to the balcony had been left open and the curtains were fluttering.

“Sloan?”

No answer.

Good.

I pulled off my tie and sat down on the sofa. There were two messages on the voice mail, and I pressed the button as I pulled off my tie and sat down on the sofa.

“K-man, it's Jack.” I could picture him leaning back in his ergonomic chair, hairy knuckles laced behind his head, talking into the headset that all the Hollywood bigwigs wore. “Just wanted to see how your meeting with Betty went. How's the book coming? I'd love an early look. I've got a dinner and a screening tonight, so try to get back to me before four-thirty. Talk to you.”

K-man? I made a mental note to call him the Jackster next time we met. Message two clicked in.

“Hey, it's Lazarnick. Call me.”
Click.

Dialing, I wondered what that fat toad wanted. I hadn't even mentioned the nude photos to Jack Danziger, much less brought up the idea of buying them for the book. It would be my pleasure to tell the Nazi Paparazzi we would give him a pass.

He picked up on the first ring.

“It's Kieran O'Connor.”

“Hey. Just called to gloat. You snooze, you lose.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You haven't seen
Biz
yet? What the fuck kind of reporter are you?”

“I don't know. What kind of photographer are you, Leo?”

“Go pick up
Biz
and you'll see what kind of photographer I am.” Lazarnick laughed. “You snoozed and you losed. Nice doing business with you, chump.”

Click.

*   *   *

The Beverly Hillshire newsstand displayed
Biz
and the other industry dailies right next to
The New York Times
and my own paper. There was nothing Felina-related on the front page. I bought it and took it upstairs.

I found Leo's item buried on page 16, in the “Mag BIZ” column:

The BIZ Insider has learned that fotog
Leo Lazarnick
has sold 20-year-old pix of
Felina Lopez
to the British magazine
Roué.
Sources say the pix are nude shots, taken when Lopez was a struggling teenage thesp.

Sources at
Playhouse
and several American tabloids confirm that Lazarnick approached them last week with the pix. The asking price: $80,000.

Lopez, who was slain at her Mexican home earlier this month, became the center of a brief tabloid frenzy after it was revealed that
Jack Danziger
at Danziger Press was preparing an instatome about her life. The former prostitute had fled to Mexico after appearing as a witness in the
Vernon Ash
criminal trial.

Reached in London,
Roué
assistant editor
Colm Graham
would not comment. Lazarnick did not return phone calls.

Well, at least they left my name off this one.

I went into the bedroom and pulled off my shoes. Eighty thousand dollars for a few titty shots. I wasn't sure whose priorities were more screwed up: Lazarnick's,
Roué
's, or the world's.

Or mine.

I peeled off my jacket and draped it over the suit tree for housekeeping. Sloan's bed had been made up as well, but the bathroom sink was still a hodgepodge of alpha-hydroxy this and seaweed-masque that. At least there was a fresh robe on the back of the door.

As I stepped into the shower, the sight of my body in the full-length mirror stopped me. I'd never been a fine physical specimen—Claudia once described me as “stocky but scrawny”—but the growing thickness around my waist had settled into a spare tire with some to spare. I used my fingers as calipers and found that I could pinch quite a bit more than an inch. Once this book was done, I should probably use some of my Danziger money to make a down payment on a membership at Le Sweat, or at least the Sixth Street Y.

I turned the water on full force and tried to wash off my encounter with Betty Bradford Mann.

My meeting with Betty. That's right; I'd forgotten something.

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later, wrapped in a towel, I took my blazer off the suit tree. In the breast pocket was my microcassette recorder.

I removed it and pressed Rewind for a few seconds.

“—ten years from now, the name Dick Mann will come up and the first thing they'll think of is
drugs
and
whores.
Because of—”

I stopped it and popped out the tape. The microphone had been sensitive enough to pick up her voice, even through the lining of the blazer. I'd wondered about that as I'd slipped it into my pocket and pressed the Record button.

Standing there, staring at the little plastic rectangle, I knew why the tab reporters were paid the big bucks. Conscience costs.

It wasn't too late to redeem myself. All I had to do was disembowel the cassette, step out on the balcony, and unspool it like ticker tape all the way down to Wilshire Boulevard.

Even if I did, though, it was too late. I'd crossed a line that I never thought I'd approach, much less overstep.

I opened the closet and got down on my knees.

The safe popped open as if it had been waiting for me. The tape went in the back, under my laptop and next to my copy of the manuscript. I shut the door and gave the tumblers a spin before I went back and
thwupped
down on the bed. The room was dark and deliciously cool.

At the moment when I'd pressed the Record button, I'd told myself that it was just to help refresh my own memory, that I'd never obtain an interview with anyone under false pretenses, much less tape something that was supposed to be off the record.

But the book wasn't coming together.

And what Betty had to say would go a long way toward fixing it.

Besides, I told myself, what if I included her denouncement of the tabs? What if I put in her defense of Dick Mann, her plea to leave Richie alone? That might add another dimension to the story, beyond the world of sex and drugs, of Vernon Ash and Sloan Baker. It might fill out the picture. It might make people think. It might …