North of Montana (31 page)

I unload my handfuls of vanilla creme cookies, then sit beside Barbara and pick a strawberry off her plate.

“Have some lunch,” offers Rosalind.

“I’m okay.”

“I didn’t think you’d mind,” Barbara says of the tape.

“Hell no, I just hope you charged admission.”

We watch a close-up of Randall Eberhardt’s distraught face as I brush past him and the camera follows us down the hall. You’d think my buddies would cheer me on like they did the morning after I made that California First bust, but instead there is an uncomfortable tension in the viewing room, the way I guess it has to be when someone leaves a group and the group goes on without her.

“This will be very good for you, Ana. You look like a leader,” Barbara observes.

“Not like I’m about to wig out?” I turn in Donnato’s direction but he is back in the shadows sipping coffee. His silence is nagging. It seems like a long time since the potluck when he was fooling around, calling me Annie Oakley in black lace.

“No,” says Barbara, “it looks like you’re in control of a tight situation.”

“Pardon me,” chuckles Duane. “But this is not the invasion of Normandy, they’re enterin’ a doctor’s office, what’s he gonna do, zap ’em with his X-ray machine?”

Frank and Kyle give a couple of halfhearted guffaws.

“The media was there and Galloway made
her
point person,” Barbara answers crisply. “That’s significant.”

“Why so?”

“People around here are finally realizing that women can do the job.”

Another silence. Nobody wants to get into that.

“Duane thinks it’s a dog case,” I explain.

“There is no case,” says Duane. “Galloway and the Director are jerking each other off.”

“You’re jealous,” Barbara fairly purrs, fingering the pearl around her neck.

“Show me a case. What evidence was recovered from the search and seizure?”

Although I am pleased to see Duane irritated, I have to admit to everyone that we found nothing in the office to implicate the doctor and, in fact, the Assistant U.S. Attorney is scrambling to figure out if there’s anything to charge him with at all.

“See what I mean? Another pathetic dog-and-pony show.”

“In today’s world of media events and photo opportunities everything’s for show,” Kyle says slowly and reasonably. “Ana did what was required for the six o’clock news. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.”

The tape is over. Rosalind gets up and turns on the lights.

Duane Carter spreads his scrawny knees and leans his chair way back on its rear legs.

“I’d be scared shitless if I were you. The case is still open and you’ve got
nada—”

Luckily I’m already there. I’d been thinking about Mason’s behavior when she came to our office and that night over dinner. The dilated pupils, the shaky hands, the discordant energy when she returned from the rest room had been working the back of my mind.

“We know Mason’s an abuser,” I cut in sharply, trying not to look at the aggressive display of crotch. “I’m running criminal checks on everyone on her staff. She’s doing drugs again and she’s getting them from somewhere.”

Duane suddenly tips the chair forward. Its front feet land with a snap. “Don’t you get it? They’re pulling your chain just to keep the pretty lady happy.”

“To keep her manager happy.” Donnato sends me a piercing look that says
I warned you about this weeks ago but you insist on screwing yourself up
. “She has friends in high places.”

This seems to make Duane happy. “You’ll be riding robbery again in a week and I, for one, can’t wait to welcome you back.”

He saunters out. Kyle shakes his head.

“Don’t say it,” Barbara warns.

All I do is give his empty chair a tiny little nudge with my toe.

“I’m a big girl now.”

Donnato slides the Tupperware bowl and the pair of black salad tongs into a shopping bag.

“Keep at it,” he tells me with about the same personal interest he would show in the guy mopping the men’s room floor.

I follow him out. He shoves the bag under his desk and looks up, not entirely pleased to find me standing above him.

“So how is Rochelle doing in law school?”

“She loves it.”

“But?”

“It’s an adjustment.”

“Sounds like more than that.”

He sighs impatiently. “It’s hard on everyone, okay? Suddenly she’s not around for the kids—I’m supposed to jump in and be Superdad, but how do I do that when I’m here until eight o’clock at night?”

“So who made the salad?” I say kiddingly.

“I did, that’s how bad it is.” He starts to twirl a silver letter opener around on his desk. “Law school is good for her. She should have done it a long time ago.”

However, one flick of a forefinger and the thing spins like a knife-sharp Ninja star.

I hesitate.

“You know Duane could be right. The Mason case could fall apart and I’ll be back riding with you, giving you a hard time, could you stand it?”

In the nanosecond it takes him to decide what to say, all hope dies.

“They’ve got me partnered with Joe Positano now.”

“Who is Joe Positano?”

“Rookie transferred from Atlanta. He would have been at lunch but he couldn’t wait to get his California driver’s license, poor ignorant son of a bitch.”

“That could change.”

“What could?”

“Joe Positano. If I came back.”

Again, the killer pause.

“Who knows?” Donnato says emptily, reaching for his shoulder holster and pulling his weapon out of a locked desk drawer. I feel awful.

“Are you still mad at me because of the undercover thing?”

Donnato puts his sport jacket on over the shoulder holster.

Abruptly, “No.” Then, relenting, “So what are you going to do?”

For a moment I hold his look.

“Return a humidifier,” I say.

There is nothing more. He gives me a laconic wave good-bye, and we separate.

•  •  •

I am sitting on a bench in the Century City Shopping Center finishing a Butter Brittle Bar from See’s Candies, a treat I used to sneak after school, and feeling depressed about every element in my life except the fact that at my feet is a new humidifier inside a glossy box tied up with string, so I will no longer wake up with a sore throat those Santa Ana mornings when the humidity is zero.

Small comfort.

The conversation I had with Poppy’s doctor was bleak. We are looking at months of increasing debilitation and pain. He advised me to take it one day at a time, which in a situation like this is all the human spirit can bear. And although I’ve tried not to focus on it, hearing about my father has brought that particular sorrow close enough to the surface to be almost audible, the whisper of water inside a cave.

I miss my squad and I miss Donnato. Our innocent, comfortable flirtation is over and things with the other guys will never be the same. It all started when I went after that bank robber on my own and worsened when I went off on the Eberhardt case. Is this what I get for following my ambitions like some fool greyhound let loose on a track? While everyone else has left the park, I’m still tearing after a fake rabbit.

In no mood to go back to the office, I pick up my package and wander past the shops, taking in the bright afternoon air, wishing I could think of something else to buy that would make me feel better. All I can come up with is a fanny pack.

I figure they might have one at Bullock’s, so I push the glass doors open and plod across the cosmetics department, asphyxiating on that cloying powdery smell, disoriented by the play of glossy white and gold surfaces reflected in the mirrored posts. It’s a hell of a heart-stopper to run right into Jayne Mason.

Not the real Jayne Mason but a life-size cardboard cutout, the same one I had seen in the den in Malibu, where she was wearing an evening gown and holding a bouquet. That one must have been the mock-up, because now there is printing across the bouquet that reads Introducing Yellow Rose Cosmetics by Jayne Mason.

A girl with immaculate makeup wearing a white lab coat with a fresh yellow rose pinned over the breast sees me staring.

“We’re having a special on Jayne Mason’s new cosmetics. With every twenty-dollar purchase you get a tote bag.”

I am struck dumb. An entire counter is stacked with samples of lipsticks, mascara, eye pencils, powder, blush, nail polish. The bright silver and yellow packaging features Jayne Mason’s signature, the same careful round lettering she wrote on Barbara’s legal pad that day in the office. The amazing thing is this elaborate and sophisticated display seems to have sprung up out of nowhere. It wasn’t here when Jayne Mason made her sweep of the cosmetics department. I realize now she had been checking to see if the line was in the store, disappointed when it was not.

And all this didn’t just spring out of nowhere.

“Who makes the actual stuff?”

“It’s by Giselle.”

I see now we are at the Giselle counter and Yellow Rose is a subdivision. Their perennial product lines, Youth Bud and Moonglow—which even I used as a teenager—are displayed around the corner. So Jayne Mason has become a spokesperson for a major cosmetics company; a deal worth millions of dollars that had to have been in place long before she met Randall Eberhardt—an arrangement she and her manager would likely go to great lengths to protect.

“Would you like a makeover, compliments of Jayne Mason?” the girl asks sweetly.

She indicates a stool beside the smiling cutout of Jayne.

I emit a high-pitched giggle that seems to go on for a long time. The girl blinks and takes a step back.

“She’s already done me, thanks.”

•  •  •

Even at four p.m. the bar at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel is crowded with an international mix of people bartering for goods and services, including a pair of young call girls doing business with some well-tailored Japanese. Somehow Jerry Connell and I recognize each other across the bazaar; I make him for the most nervous man in the room.

“I am not a happy camper,” he says as we shoulder our way through.

“Rocky flight from St. Louis?”

“Next time call before you call, okay? Say: Hi, this is Ana Grey from the FBI. I’m going to give you a cardiac arrest in about thirty seconds, just wanted you to know.”

He shakes his head and grins. Fair-haired with appealing blue eyes, he’s wearing one of those ultrafashionable suits that look retro and futuro at the same time—a subtle gray houndstooth with skinny lapels. I sneak a touch as I guide him to the last empty table: heavenly cashmere.

We both order Perrier. Connell is anxious and intense, talking compulsively.

“This is scary. Giselle is a tremendously important account. They’ve only been with our ad agency three years, and so far we’ve had just one slice of their business, but we’ve done well enough with the Moonglow line for them to take a flier on Yellow Rose.”

“Your agency came up with the idea to use Jayne Mason?”

“It was Magda Stockman’s idea. Have you met her?”

He squeezes the life out of the lemon wedge floating in his glass.

“I know Ms. Stockman.”

“She called out of nowhere, said she was Jayne Mason’s personal manager, were we interested in developing a line of cosmetics for Giselle using Jayne as a spokesperson. She flew out, made a very smart presentation, and the client bought it.”

“How was the deal structured?”

Jerry Connell can’t sit still. His knees are thumping up and down, fingers drumming the table. Now he’s fingering his string-bean leather tie.

“It’s a partnership arrangement between Jayne Mason and Giselle. They manufacture the cosmetics.”

“And Jayne—”

“She’s required to do some commercials, point-of-purchase displays, print ads, and one or two speaking engagements. It amounts to about a week of her time.”

“How much does she get paid?”

“I can’t tell you that …” He grinds at the lemon wedge with the ball end of a cocktail stick. “But it’s in the high seven figures.”

“For one week’s work.”

“We like to think of it as a lifetime’s worth of public recognition.”

“You’re in a pretty business,” I say.

“Almost as pretty as yours.”

He looks at me sideways. The agitation subsides. Jerry Connell is a polished, educated salesman with a lot at stake and now he is going to make his pitch:

“So you called, Special Agent Ana Grey, and I took the next flight out of St. Louis. In order to do that, I had to give up my haircut with Sal. Do you know how hard it is to get an appointment with that guy?”

“Your hair looks okay.”

“I have to protect my client. Tell me what’s going on. Do I have a major problem here?”

“I don’t know yet. When did Jayne Mason sign the contract with Giselle?”