Reckless Disregard (44 page)

Lovely’s gray eyes emit a serrate glare. “What the fuck, William, did you force that poor girl to have the baby and then to abandon it two years later?”

“Paula wasn’t someone you could force into anything.”

Lovely shakes her head in disbelief and then stands and walks to the other side of the room, as far away from Bishop as she can get without leaving.

“The ‘Scotty’ in those letters,” I say. “Sam Turner?”

“Yeah, Paula called him Scotty,” he says.

“Are you the girl’s father?” I ask. “Because I don’t think Sam Turner was.”

Any residual bravado leaks out of him like air from a punctured tire. He fully deflates, becoming old and frail in an instant.

“You never saw her, never even looked for her after Turner died, did you, Bishop?” I say. “What was it? If you pretended Alicia didn’t exist, she wouldn’t? Is that how it works for you?”

“I always made sure Sam Turner had plenty of—”

“Don’t justify your behavior by telling me you provided for her financially,” I say. “I don’t understand people like you.”

“I do,” Lovely says softly.

There’s a difference—when her son Brighton was born, she was twenty years old, trapped in a sordid lifestyle. When Bishop’s daughter was born, he was twice Lovely’s age and on his way to becoming a billionaire. But I leave it alone.

“Did you know that Lovely and I were attacked last night?” I ask.

“One of those crazy followers of your client,” he says. “Killed the Kreisses and your paralegal—crimes you and your client falsely accused me of committing.”

“She says her name’s Courtney,” I say. “Claims to be Felicity’s daughter. There is a resemblance. And Courtney’s the daughter’s middle name.”

He shrugs helplessly. “I can’t believe she’d . . . Your client. He claims to know where she is.”

“Poniard won’t tell me.”

Bishop nods sadly.

“If this fable were true, why wouldn’t you just have asked McGrath to come forward?” I ask. “She could’ve cleared matters up in an hour.”

“She would’ve come back if she really knew what was going on,” he says. “She’s a recluse, too fragile, too sheltered from the outside world. Being back in the spotlight, hounded by the tabloids, picked apart by the online vultures would kill her. I wouldn’t do that to Paula to save my own skin. I did it before, but not again. You must understand what I’m saying now that the world knows you were Parky Gerald.”

I’m not about to let Bishop make this about me. “One last question,” I say. “Given what you just told me, what possessed you to bring a lawsuit and expose yourself to all this public scrutiny?”

“How could I not? What would I have told my wife, the board of directors, the shareholders?” He glances at Lovely across the room. “Lou Frantz told me it was a slam-dunk winner.”

“That’s what he said when he thought you were an honest man,” she says.

We’re all spent, quiet for a long time. Finally, I say, “Here’s what you’re going to do, Mr. Bishop. You’re going to dismiss the lawsuit against Poniard right away. And you’re going to . . .” My eyes fall on the
Satan’s Boatman
cassette on the end table. For some reason, the movie’s bizarre opening scene projects on my brain. And then I see it.

“I need to use your VCR,” I say. “I know you have one.”

“Stern, I told you I didn’t want to see that—”

“No. I only want to watch the beginning. I need to ask you something about it.”

Nate Ettinger rocks back in his office chair and puffs on his unlit pipe. “I’m glad I could play a small role in finally exposing Bishop for the criminal he is. Of course, it was Clifton Stanley Gold who was the brave one.” He leans forward and clasps his hands loosely. “You’ve freed me, Parker—you and Brenda. I’m so grateful that she convinced you to let me testify. For the first time in years, I no longer feel cowardly. And Bishop can’t harm me anymore.” He frowns. “He can’t, can he?”

“No chance,” I say.

He sits back again, relieved. “You said on the phone there were a few loose ends I could help you with.”

“Something in your book on eighties Hollywood,” I say, picking up the copy I brought and turning to the section on Felicity McGrath. “I was just wondering how you knew that Felicity McGrath was born in Springfield, Illinois.”

“I can’t remember specifically, but I did a lot of research, so it must have been out there somewhere.

“Actually, my staff and I couldn’t find anything like that.”

“I’m an academic. Research is my job.”

“Well, I’m an attorney and research is my weapon. I wouldn’t have missed information like that.”

“What’s this about, Stern?”

“It’s about the fact McGrath made up a fictional city of her birth for the opening scene in
Satan’s Boatman
.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Who knows why a writer does anything? Maybe she didn’t think coming from North Hollywood was exciting enough. The only way you could’ve believed she was from Springfield, Illinois, was if you saw the movie. Or worked on it with her.”

“This is some sick practical joke, right? In honor of the unlikely reunion of Parky Gerald and Nate Ettinger after all these years?”

“Not only were you on the set of
Satan’s Boatman
, you were the one who substituted heroin and cocaine for saline in the syringe that killed Hildy Gish. You just thought that it would be William Bishop who died. He was the one who was supposed to take the first needle. But he and Gish ad-libbed at the last moment and the drugs went into Gish’s arm.”

“You’re insane, Stern.”

“About the needle being meant for Bishop? I watched the scene. He was going to inject himself. And Bishop told me that they improvised at the last minute. Or, if you mean, where did I learn that McGrath was only
pretending
to be from Illinois, I finally remembered that Clifton Stanley Gold told me McGrath started with him when she was a thirteen-year-old still in middle school. Turns out that McGrath was a Valley girl. The story about being a runaway was McGrath’s embellishment—she was a wild, restless teenager, threatened to run away, but Gold made her stay home in exchange for acting lessons. But there was nothing about Springfield, Illinois, until
Satan’s Boatman
. You didn’t do your homework, Professor.”

“Get out of here, Stern, or I’ll call security.”

“I wouldn’t do that, E.”

“What did you call me?”

“
E.
That’s what Paula McGrath always called you, right? I got that from Bishop, too. She started calling you that way back in seventy-nine, on the set of
The Boatman
. And you know what? She calls you that in the
Satan’s Boatman
video, says, ‘Cut and print, E.’ You operated the camera for that scene, didn’t you?”

The muscles in his forehead knit together to form an ominous glower. He isn’t a benign college professor anymore.

“And then there’s Luther Frederickson,” I say. “Bishop and I have gotten to be very close. You know,
the enemy of the enemy is my friend
, and all that? He admitted to me that he paid off Boardwalk Freddy to disappear. Helped him through rehab and everything. It turns out that Frederickson wasn’t just a panhandler and a transient, he was a businessman. It seems our lapsed accountant was supplying drugs to half the junkies on the beach. And he says that he sold you the heroin and cocaine not long before Hildy Gish died. Of course, he thought you wanted it for recreational purposes, had no idea until now that Gish even OD’d.”

“I told you, Stern, you’re crazy. Why ever would I do something so horrible?”

“You know, it’s not something that I like to acknowledge, but by genetics and upbringing I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist. So when something goes bad, I think big—Mafia, Sanctified Assembly. I fight against the tendency, but . . . in my defense, there were a lot of things in this case that confirmed my biases. But as my mentor Harmon Cherry used to say, evil is most often mundane, personal—and so trivial. You worked on the original version of
The Boatman
and thought you deserved way more credit than Bishop gave you. Then, a couple of years later, Bishop took over the production company you were with, discontinued development of all your projects, and fired you. He never liked you, thought you were a no-talent fake, that as a producer you had no taste. He took away your chance at succeeding in Hollywood. And here you are, stuck teaching as an untenured professor at a small-time college. That’s motive.”

Ettinger presses his lips together.

“Then McGrath contacted you in 1987 about reshooting
The Boatman
. You thought it was going to be your opportunity for glory. Or maybe you just saw it as the chance for payback. So you read the scene where Bishop and Gish were both going to pretend to shoot heroin—Bishop was going to go first—and you spiked the vial with real drugs. But the actors changed the scene and Gish died. After that happened, I’m sure you really were afraid that Bishop would find out what you did and come after you. Then you conveniently showed up at the trial and volunteered to testify against him because you could make sure he was implicated once and for all in Felicity’s disappearance. You could finally help ruin him forever.”

There’s a clatter under Ettinger’s desk, and when he raises his hands above the ledge he’s holding a gun. I didn’t see that coming, though I should have—he’s been afraid for years that William Bishop’s men would come after him, undoubtedly more so because of the lawsuit against Poniard.

What I feel is not fear but an odd sense of bewilderment. I’m an attorney, dedicated to resolving disputes in a nonviolent way, and yet this is the second time this week that someone has pointed a gun at me.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Nate,” I say. “You’re not going to shoot me in a crowded office building.”

“Stand up,” he says.

I stand. He clumsily takes off his sport coat, drapes it over his arm, and uses it to conceal the gun. Unlike Courtney, he can’t keep his hand steady, and I realize that his jitters are just as dangerous as her psychopathic calm.

“Outside,” he says.

I open the door and step into the corridor. He follows, and as soon as he’s out the door, two uniformed cops grab him and wrestle him to the ground. Standing over them with her service revolver drawn is Detective of Homicide Angela Tringali. At the moment, she no longer looks like a real estate broker.

“Damn it, Stern, this isn’t what I had in mind when I agreed to let you do this,” she says.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Yesterday, I met with Tringali in person, telling her that I had information relating to the McGrath disappearance, could help her solve a homicide—but not McGrath’s. When she pressed for details, I refused to reveal them unless she let me spend some time alone with the unnamed killer to try to elicit something incriminating. Ettinger’s mistake about Springfield, Illinois, and even Frederickson’s statement about selling the drugs, isn’t strong proof of guilt. She demanded that I tell her what was going on, but I wouldn’t unless she agreed to my demands. After shouting at me for five minutes and threatening me for two, she relented, but only if I wore a recording device like I did in that silly movie where I portrayed an eleven-year-old undercover agent. An hour later, I played her the
Satan’s Boatman
video clip depicting Gish’s death and explained why I believed Ettinger was responsible.

Now, she shakes her head. “You didn’t get him to say anything useful and he could’ve—”

“Here’s my free legal opinion, Detective. The fact that he pulled a gun and tried to move me to another location is admissible evidence of guilt. I just made your case miles easier.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” Ettinger shouts and then realizes even saying that is too much.

The cops read him his rights and lead him out in handcuffs. I lean against the wall to keep from falling until everyone has left. Then I let the enormity of what happened wash over me. On wobbly legs, I make my way down the hall to the men’s room, where I hide in a stall and vomit. When it comes right down to it, having a revolver pointed at you is far more debilitating than a case of courtroom stage fright.

Brighton keeps trying to launch
Abduction!
in the hope that Poniard will bring Felicity back for a sad farewell. It’s silly, but he needs to say good-bye. The only image on the screen is William the Conqueror in prison stripes, even though the HF Queen says that Bishop isn’t really going to jail. Brighton thinks Bishop is a bad man, but the HF Queen says that he’s just weak, that all that money and power meant zero.