North of Montana (32 page)

“Two years ago. It takes time to gear these things up.”

“So the deal was in place when she went into the Betty Ford Center?”

“It was.”

Remembering Magda Stockman’s impassioned speech about how all the publicity around Jayne’s drug problem had irrevocably damaged her career, “Didn’t that worry you?”

“We were assured the thing was treatable and it would be handled with discretion.”

“But it wound up on the cover of
People
magazine.”

“Any time you go with a celebrity endorsement there’s a measure of risk. They’re unpredictable. They’re human.”

“But didn’t it bother your client that their spokesperson was a drug addict?”

“It wasn’t like she was mainlining heroin. This fancy doctor got her hooked. I think there was sympathy in the executive ranks.” He smiles engagingly. “Who hasn’t done a little Xanax to get through the day?”

I put my hands flat on the table and lock into his eyes.

“Did Magda Stockman make the statement to you that Jayne Mason’s addiction was the doctor’s fault?”

“Yes, and she said not to worry, he was being prosecuted for it.” Jerry Connell stares at me. “Isn’t he?”

“Not until we can find something to prosecute him for.”

He starts fiddling with the tie like it was a piccolo.

“Whatever. As far as my client is concerned, at this point it probably doesn’t matter.” He’s talking to himself. “The public perception is such that …”

He trails off, looking into the distance, calculating the public perception.

“Well,” he concludes, “Giselle is protected.”

“How is that?”

“Worst-case scenario: Mason is in breach of her contract. We pull the product, we sue, bam-boom.”

He slaps the table two times and seems ready to get back on the plane.

“I don’t understand. How would she be in breach?”

“We have a morals clause.

“Show me.”

•  •  •

Although it is almost eight o’clock at night in St. Louis the lights are burning at the advertising agency of Connell and Burgess. Somebody back there sends a copy of the morals clause in Jayne Mason’s contract through the hotel fax. I read it line by line as it feeds off the machine:

M. MORALS. If Spokesperson should, prior to or during the term hereof or thereafter, fail, refuse or neglect to govern Spokesperson’s conduct with due regard to social conventions and public morals and decency, or commit any act which brings Spokesperson into public disrepute, scandal, contempt or ridicule or which shocks, insults or offends a substantial portion or group of the community or reflects unfavorably on Spokesperson or Manufacturer, then Manufacturer may, in addition to and without prejudice to any other remedy of any kind or nature set forth herein, terminate this Agreement at any time after the occurrence of any such event.

I thank Jerry Connell and shake his hand, folding the thin paper and tucking it carefully into an inner pocket of my blue briefcase.

TWENTY-ONE

WHEN I ARRIVE at the office the following day I find Duane Carter sitting in my seat playing with my surfer troll doll, the one wearing a Walkman with fuchsia hair standing up straight.

“Stop fondling my troll.”

Duane grins.

“Get out of my chair.”

“That’s no way to address your supervisor.”

I drop the blue canvas briefcase onto the desk for emphasis. Unfortunately the force of the concussion causes my sunglasses to slip off my nose but I make a great save and continue to glower at Duane.

“You’re not my supervisor, now move.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. Catch this.”

He pushes the Calendar section of today’s
Los Angeles Times
at me. The whole top half of the page is taken up with a giant photograph of Jayne Mason sitting in her den looking vulnerable and funky and oh-so-real in a denim shirt and loose curls, huge eyes with no makeup, like she just came down from a breakfast of skim milk and toast to share her darkest troubles with you, the reader.

I have to stand there while Duane quotes from the article about how Jayne first became sensitized to victims of corrupt doctors who overprescribe narcotics in her therapy group at the Betty Ford Center. How as a result of the publicity surrounding the lawsuit, the investigation of Dr. Eberhardt has escalated to include the California Medical Licensing Board, which has suspended his license to practice medicine. Although the FBI continues to neither confirm nor deny its own investigation, it is bringing a supervisor who specializes in health care industry fraud out from headquarters in Washington, D.C., to review the situation.

“You’re off the case, gal.”

“Don’t believe what you read in the papers,” I reply coolly.

“Some of his colleagues at the hospital say your buddy Eberhardt was subject to bouts of depression.”

“Under all that stress, who wouldn’t be?”

“They say he’s a superachiever, always pushing for perfection, the type who can’t handle failure. Goes back to his Harvard Med School days. How does the media find out stuff we don’t?”

He enjoys my discomfort.

Looking down, I catch a paragraph stating that Dr. Eberhardt “remains sequestered in his north of Montana home” and is not available for comment on the advice of legal counsel. I can picture him and Claire quivering behind that huge door.

Duane stands up and hands me the paper. “It was a good shot. You’ve had a couple of good shots lately, but like I tried to explain before, you’ve still got some work to accomplish before you move on.”

“And how did
you
move on, Duane?” I am heaving rapidly, spitting resentment so it is hard to articulate the words. “I’ve been in for seven years, you’ve been in for eight. Tell me the secret of how you got so far ahead.”

He takes his time answering and when he’s ready he moves the black forelock aside, patting it down on the top of his head with pale fingertips like he’s sticking it there with glue.

“I made a deal with the Devil.” The look in his dark eyes is enigmatic. “When I was a teenager I wanted to get out of Travis County and have success at an early age, and one day I told that to the Devil, and here I am.”

“Really? And what did you trade with the Devil for your success?”

“That’s between him and me,” Duane answers without smiling and leaves.

I sit there for some time, awed by the realization that he was 100 percent serious.

When I switch on my computer the little box next to Mail is blinking, so I call it up and there are the results of the criminal checks I was running on everyone I could find who works, advises, profits, eats, sleeps, or plays within a hundred-mile radius of Jayne Mason. Everyone is clean enough, except for the limousine driver, Tom Pauley, who got into a little trouble with stolen goods when he was a state cop and had to leave the force.

I remove the morals clause from the zippered compartment of the blue briefcase, grab a printout of the report on Pauley, and run down to the SAC’s office.

•  •  •

Galloway gets up from behind the desk and comes toward me, gesturing apologetically with a cigar. “Sorry you had to read about it in the paper.”

“So it’s true? I’m off the case?”

“The Director saw Jayne Mason crying her eyes out on
Donahue
and went ballistic. He wants more firepower in terms of the media. It has nothing to do with you.”

I am silent.

“I’m putting in for your transfer to C-1. Congratulations.”

He waits for my reaction. When there is none he bends his knees, so he can hunch over and squint at me in the eyes.

“Am I crazy or were you all over me to get that transfer?”

“Right now a transfer is beside the point.”

I show him the fax and explain that because of this morals clause, scandalous conduct—like being a dope addict—could have jeopardized a multimillion-dollar contract. I tell him my belief that Mason was lying all along about Randall Eberhardt’s culpability.

But Galloway is not impressed with my beliefs.

“They brought in the big gun from Washington, let him handle it.” He’s standing up again, arm around my shoulder as he walks me to the door. “You did a good job with what you had.”

“Okay, you don’t like the morals clause—” I ball it up and toss it into the trash and flourish the printout under his nose. “How about this: new lead. Jayne Mason’s driver was busted for trading in stolen goods when he was a state cop.”

Galloway raises his eyebrows. “Stop the presses.”

“We know Mason is an abuser. I’m going to squeeze this guy and find out the real supplier, then I’m going to bust her for possession.”

“Holy shit.”

Galloway’s hand flies off my shoulder like it was a red hot frying pan.

“Ana, we’re getting off the track.”

“What if I can prove possession and trading in illegal substances on the part of Jayne Mason?”

Exasperated, “That is not the direction
anyone
wants to go.”

“I know, but—”

Galloway stops me with a finger to his lips. He speaks softly and slowly, bouncing the finger to the rhythm of his words like a nursery rhyme: “Let us remember the suspect in this investigation is still
Randall Eberhardt
. Now listen carefully and tell me the answer: How will this help our prosecution of the
suspect
?”

“Maybe it clears him,” I say.

•  •  •

It turns out that, despite whatever trouble “in the castle” between Tom Pauley and Maureen, during off-hours they have been living together in her rented apartment in Pacific Palisades, a comfortable suburban townlet just across the canyon from Santa Monica. Despite the mini-mailing of the main drag, it still feels like the fifties up here—families and ranch houses—which is why Maureen’s place is so unusual.

The house is on a winding street, behind a large sliding gate. I walk down stone steps to the sound of trickling water; an artificial stream pools in a stone basin covered by water lilies and populated by real live burping frogs. Straight ahead is a small wooden deck overgrown with magenta bougainvillea, a white wrought-iron table, and chairs overlooking the misty curve of Will Rogers Beach, the bluish mountains, and the silver ocean all the way out to Point Dume. The vista is priceless.

Although there are houses cheek to jowl along the street, in this glorious spot there is nothing but silence and wind through the flowers. It makes you hunger for Cheddar cheese and salty crackers and bourbon, watching the sunset on the deck. Turning back toward the house the view is equally charmed: gabled roofs, gingerbread trim, a Hansel and Gretel hideaway.

The door, carved of soft wood with Balinese figures entwined in dance, is slightly open. I knock, get no response, and walk inside.

“Hello? Tom? It’s Ana Grey.”

Nothing.

I pass a bedroom with rumpled sheets on a four-poster bed and clothes strewn over a worn Oriental rug. The air smells of sandalwood and sex. There is a dressing table loaded with antique perfume bottles, half of them knocked over and smashed. The closets are open and so are the drawers. Straw hats, dolls, and shawls are scattered everywhere as if picked up and tossed off their window seat. It looks like Tom and Maureen were robbed.

I become more certain when I enter the ransacked kitchen. A pot is turning scorched and black, all the water boiled away, the burner still lit. I turn off the flame, crunching over a box of dried spaghetti spilled across the floor. Someone hurtled a bottle of apple juice against the wall. Someone else was throwing cans. I hear a soft moan coming from another room. The adrenaline goes up, weapon comes out.

I move quietly down a hall that is decorated with ominous looking African masks to a living room with two windows of diamond-patterned glass opening to an ocean view. There are more masks, dolls with staring eyes and perfect china faces, secondhand sofas stuffed with pillows covered with chintz. A mobile of glass prisms in the window catches the sharp afternoon sun, spinning bars of colors over everything.

And in the middle of the dizzying rainbows, planted stock-still on those bowed naked sunburned legs, is Tom Pauley, wearing nothing but a white T-shirt, slowly masturbating.

He rolls his eyes toward me, red-rimmed. I catch the sheen of white stubble along an unshaven jaw.

“Ana,” he mumbles mournfully, “help me out.”

His thumb and forefinger move down the enlarged red-blue penis with a glistening drop of semen at the head. I reach over and grab a woolly afghan off a rocking chair and toss it to him.

“Jesus, Tom, cover it up.”

He holds the blanket in front of himself, sinks bare-assed onto the sofa, and starts to cry.

“What went on here?”

“We had a fight.”

“Where is Maureen?”

“Gone.”

Tom is bent over double, holding his head in his hands.