Hot Shot (20 page)

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Kitty said, turning over the motor. “Look in the backseat.”

It was a bag from Computer City. Inside was a brand-new laptop.

“I don't know beans about computers. Is it the right one?” she said, in the tone of a grandmother asking if the Christmas sweater fit.

“It's great.” It was an IBM-compatible, not a Mac, but who cared? It was state-of-the-art, and my stolen PowerBook was the cyberequivalent of a '79 Pacer. “Thank you.”

“You can thank the management of the Beverly Hillshire for that.” Kitty backed out of the driveway, chuckling. “They seem to want to get on your good side.”

We caught Wilshire going west. The beautiful day had held. The sky behind the buildings on Miracle Mile was delft-blue, and the palms lining the boulevard looked majestic instead of ratty. I hugged the new computer on my lap. Life was good, at least for the moment, and these days I was learning to savor those tiny instants.

Kitty drove like an old lady: leaning forward over the steering wheel, hands at ten and two o'clock, chattering away. “Hand me those sunglasses, dear, would you? Thank you. You can put on the radio if you like. Just no hard rock, please.” She fumbled the glasses on. “This has been a heck of a day. Right after I drop you off, I'm going out to Century City to meet with this gal who called my office a few days ago. Seems she did a layout for
Playhouse.
Well, it turns out that she's studying at some Bible college back East and it's turned into a big hoo-hah. They're trying to expel her, but the girl's got some moxie.”

I laughed. “Kitty, how did you get involved in all this?”

“All what, dear?”

“The scandal business.”

“I've been around a long time. I'm a survivor.” We stopped at a red light in front of the La Brea Tar Pits. “Do I have lipstick on my teeth, dear? Hand me that box of tissues.”

“What did you do before you were a talent agent?”

“Well, I'm from Indiana. I came to Hollywood a long time ago, when I was very young. I'm almost as old as that fellow there,” she said, pointing to a mastadon sculpture stuck in the tar. “But I could type sixty words a minute and I knew Gregg shorthand, so I figured I could get a job in the movie industry. I got an apartment in Carthay Circle and a job in the typing pool at Metro. There was one fellow there who kept requesting me. He was a press agent—we didn't have the term ‘publicist' back then. And his name was Harry Keyes. Harry asked me to marry him, and we went independent and set up our own shop. Keyes and Keyes. Harry taught me how to be a press agent.”

“Those days always sound like more fun,” I said wistfully.

“Well, they were. You would have enjoyed it. This town was like a big club where everyone knew one another. The war was over. Times were good. People had money and style and fun.”

A fragrance ad went past on the right. The usual emaciated jailbait model stared out of a grainy black-and-white billboard. Who the hell would want to smell like her?

“What kind of publicity did you do?”

“Silly things. Stunts, really. We would take some starlet and cook up an award for her. Make a big deal out of it. ‘The West Coast Milliners' Guild gave its prestigious Chapeau Award to so-and-so.' We'd rent some crazy hats from Western Costume, take a few pictures of the girl, and send them out all over the country. Of course, no one knew that the West Coast Milliners' Guild was me and Harry.” She laughed.

“So how did you switch from press agent to talent agent?”

“Harry died in the Sixties. After that, it wasn't any fun.” She nosed the Mercedes through a yellow light at Robertson. “Not just because he was gone, but the whole business seemed to change. No one dressed up and went out at night anymore. The nightclubs closed. All anyone could think about was Vietnam. And we didn't have movie stars anymore, we had
actors.
Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda …

“So I gathered up some of the old-timers who weren't working and tried to find them jobs. It worked, for a while, but then most of them died off or retired. The only new clients I ever had were people who'd been dropped by every other agency in town.”

“You really enjoy this, don't you?”

“My dear, I love it. At my age, who would have guessed that this old broad would still be working? And something about it feels like the old days. A lot of nonsense and razzamatazz.”

Kitty chuckled. “In a way, Scandal Inc. was the biggest publicity stunt I ever pulled.”

*   *   *

My clothes were still at the Beverly Hillshire, so I had Kitty stop at Claudia's so I could pick up a few things. Fortunately, Claudia's car was gone. I wasn't up to dealing with her. Or Lydia and the other Dubuissons, for that matter.

“I'll just wait out here, dear. You take your time,” said Kitty. Translation: Make it snappy.

The place was more of a mess than ever, with Lydia's suitcases open atop my packing boxes. Her presence was everywhere: gardenia scent, a scarlet blouse draped over a chair, gaudy earrings in the ceramic bowl where I kept my keys, next to a Hot Wheels track. A stack of true-crime paperbacks and airport novels—the kind of stuff Claudia never read—sat on the computer station. My laundry was stacked in a corner of the living room, just where I'd left it the night before Shelly Nguyen knocked on the door and my life spun out of control.

I slipped on the outfit I liked to wear at the computer: a T-shirt, my old high-top Converses, and a pair of black gym shorts with
RHODES
on the rear. Going to the hospital, okay, but I was damned if I was going to write
Mann's Woman
while wearing a papery gown that gave the world a view of my ass.

My shaving kit was in the trunk at the foot of Claudia's bed. Back when we had separate apartments, I kept a second set of toiletries at her place: razor, shaving gel, toothbrush, lens case, a tube of Speed Stick. There were also a couple of condoms at the bottom, along with a tiny tube of nonoxynol-9 lubricant. We hadn't had to use those for a while. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time we'd made love.

The place didn't feel like home anymore.

I put the shaving kit and several changes of clothes into a spare suitcase and started to write a note on the telephone pad, but I couldn't think of anything to say past
Claude.

I wadded it up and threw it in the trash.

On the way out the door, I realized that I didn't have anything to read. The nearest thing was Lydia's stack of books, and I wasn't up for true crime these days. At the bottom was a novel with an embossed-foil cover, the kind of thing you'd buy at an airport concession and leave in the seat pocket when you deplaned.
77 Rodeo Drive,
it was called. Jocelyn had a whole stable of writers cranking out these things, which she called “shop-and-fucks.”

What the heck, I thought, throwing it into my suitcase. After all, I was on my way to the very heart of shop-and-fuck.

*   *   *

“There's the parking entrance,” I said as we cruised by the famous fountain in front.

“That's not what we're looking for, dear.”

Kitty drove down a side street and made an abrupt left turn into an unmarked driveway that slanted down. At the foot of the drive was a guard shack and a gate—not a striped-arm wooden gate, but a rolling steel portcullis that looked like it could repel a camisado by Leo Lazarnick's Darth Vader van.

The guard went around to the back of the Mercedes and checked the license plate before approaching the driver's window.

“Welcome to St. Elizabeth's,” he said. “Pop the trunk for me, please. While I check that, you can get out your identification.”

Satisfied that there weren't any
Celeb
reporters hiding in the trunk, the guard took our driver's licenses and murmured into a phone. The gate rolled open, and we drove down another level to a small parking garage. There was an elevator door there, framed with ficuses. A woman in a blue business suit was waiting.

“Kieran O'Connor? Hi, I'm Linda Jackson. I'll be helping you get settled.” She smiled at Kitty. “I'm sorry, ma'am, but from this point on it's patients only.”

“Thanks, Kitty. I really appreciate it.”

“All in a day's work. It was a cinch. You'll call me and let me know how it's going?”

“Of course. Bye, Kitty.”

“Good-bye, dear.” She gave me a rosewater-scented kiss.

I watched her drive back up the ramp, feeling a little pang of sadness. If Kitty Keyes was forty years younger, I might have asked her out.

*   *   *

I don't know what I expected from St. Liz's—Armani hospital gowns, gold-plated bedpans, and IV bottles made of Steuben glass—but 4 West felt like a spa. The hall was extra-wide, to accommodate gurneys and such, but the floor was carpeted, and the halls were softly lit by hidden wall sconces. Vivaldi played from unseen speakers. Hockney swimming-pool prints hung on the walls. That familiar hospital scent—medicine, disinfectant, and the unmistakable smell of sickness—was replaced by a light whiff of jasmine.

And then I passed a woman in a wheelchair. Her face was bright red and blotchy, with dots of blood seeping out around the bandages, and surgical tape crosses were stretched across her nose. She looked like the victim of an acid-throwing attack.

“How are you doing today, Mrs. Young?” Linda asked.

“Mmfnn,” Mrs. Young said. The effort made a fresh flower of blood bloom under her bandages, and my lunch lurched in my stomach.

Linda took me into a sitting room and filled out my check-in information. “Sign this,” she told me. “I know it's complicated, but read it all. We have to sign 'em, too.”

AGREEMENT OF CONFIDENTIALITY
, it said at the top. The rules had been written in English, but this jobbie was in pure lawyerese. All the
whereases
and
heretofores
added up to just one thing: If I (“hereafter known as the ‘Patient'”) ever breathed a word about anything or anyone I saw at St. Elizabeth's (“hereafter known as the ‘Health Care Facility'”), my ass would be grass and the St. Liz legal team would have my spleen for breakfast.

“Do you get approached by the press a lot?”

“I can't tell you that. But when it does happen, we're required to report it to our supervisors immediately. If we don't, that's grounds for termination. We're very serious about protecting our patients here.”

Linda took my picture with a device that looked like the driver's license machine at the DMV. The I.D. the machine spit out was a white plastic card that hung around my neck by a cloth ribbon. On the back was a magnetic strip. The front said
O'CONNOR KIERAN
. “Keep that on,” she said. “If you have to leave the floor, you'll need it to get back.”

Rumor had it that the rooms on 4 West were like suites at the Beverly Hillshire. Not quite, but not bad. The bed had a cherry headboard, the carpet was Berber, and the TV stood in a mahogany armoire instead of hanging from a ceiling bracket. Floor-length drapes covered the facing wall. A small desk/dining table combo was tucked into one corner. But there were handrails on the walls, and a nurses' station call button draped over the headboard.

“You'll find outlets and such for your computer behind the table,” Linda told me. “There's a copy of the meal plan on the nightstand. Make your selection and leave it on the door by the time specified. If you want something that's not on the menu, or if you just get hungry, there's a call button on the phone for our chef.”

“Chef?”

“Four West has its own chef. You don't have any dietary restrictions, so you can have whatever you want.” Linda stopped at the door. “If you need anything, just call Veronica in Guest Services. That button's on your phone, too.”

I laughed. “This hospital has a concierge?”

“Welcome to St. Elizabeth's,” she said, smiling, and closed the door behind her.

It shut with a soft, authoritative
click.

Well, I thought, how can I get the Beverly Hillshire to pay for this for the rest of my life?

I turned on the radio, which was preset to a New Age station, and unpacked what few clothes I'd brought into the lowboy. All set. The drapes were on the south-facing wall. Maybe I could catch the last of the afternoon sun.

I drew them and was surprised to find more wallpaper. No window at all.

St. Liz was serious about security.

Just try to get me now, Brooks Levin.

I unpacked my computer from its bubble-wrap swaddling and began looking over the manual, but there was an uneasiness I hadn't felt before.

I felt as though I'd landed in a velvet-lined safe-deposit box.

15

I
SPENT THE EVENING
unpacking the computer, reading the manual, and noodling with some of the features. By nine o'clock, I was already nodding off, so I climbed into bed and got my first good night's sleep in days.

4B12 turned out to be the ideal writing environment. With no windows and the clock turned to the wall, the room felt hermetically sealed, like a bathysphere or a casino. Meals showed up without me asking. The only reading material in the room was my shop-and-fuck, which I didn't even crack.

Using the information I'd gleaned from Leo Lazarnick, Betty Bradford Mann, and Sloan Baker, I padded out the extant manuscript, filling in blanks, guessing at motivations, reconstructing scenes and conversations. Instead of fussing over every sentence, I wrote in a straight line, never looking back. When the pain in my spine became too intense to ignore, I walked the halls, chatted with the duty nurses, read magazines in the lounge, and played Minesweeper on my new computer. But I kept going back, and by the time I went to bed, I'd written sixty-three pages.

*   *   *