Steven Bochco (7 page)

CHAPTER 13

Dennis has seen a lot of wealthy people's homes, but even by the standards of wealth he's familiar with, the Paulson estate stands alone. On three acres of prime Bel Air real estate, the two-story, thirty-thousand-square-foot house is beautifully situated on the highest point on the property, which also features a guest house, a tennis court, a pool, and separate servants' quarters.

Dennis drives through the tall iron gate and tins the armed private security guy in the blue blazer, who calls him sir and directs him up the driveway to the front of the house. At the door, Dennis quickly huffs into his cupped palm to make sure the garlic from the linguini he had at lunch hasn't hung around past its welcome.

The door opens, and a uniformed maid greets Dennis and walks him into the library, telling him Mrs. Paulson will join him shortly.

Looking around, Dennis is prepared to bet his pension no one living here has ever read a single one of the leather-bound volumes lining the walls of the magnificent wood-paneled room.

“I've read every one of them,” Linda Paulson says, entering the room, her hand outstretched in greeting, as if she could also read minds. Then, smiling, she says,
“Not.”

“What a place,” Dennis says, shaking her hand, and he's not kidding.

“It's bigger than we need, but it was my husband's before we were married,” and her self-deprecating little shrug says, what's a girl to do?

Dennis tells Linda he appreciates her taking the time to see him, he won't keep her long, but if he could just ask her a couple of questions, he's interviewing everyone who knew Ramon, he'll let her get back to her reading.

His little play off her joke earns him a dazzling smile, and Dennis thinks to himself he wouldn't mind seeing a tape of Linda Paulson banging
any
one.

“I doubt I can tell you much about him past what you probably have already,” Linda says. “I hardly got to know him at all.”

“How long were you taking his class?” Dennis asks.

“About four months or so. I used to be a working actress in my salad days, before I met Marv, and while I haven't really pursued my career since then, I thought it would be fun to take some classes, kind of stretch out my acting muscles.”

She tells Dennis she certainly knew Ramon was something of a womanizer, and while it was none of her business, it was pretty obvious that he'd slept with a number of the girls in his class.

“Did he ever come on to you?” Dennis asks, and Linda laughs.

“No,” she says. “I don't think he was very interested. I'm a happily married woman, Detective, and there were a lot of very pretty single girls in class who were half my age.”

Dennis is willing to bet double or nothing that Ramon
was
very interested, that he was probably all
over
Linda Paulson. What he isn't sure of is whether
she
was all over
him,
though from having seen pictures of her fat slob husband, Marv, Dennis figures it's at least fifty-fifty she thought about it.

Dennis has been around long enough to understand why a beautiful woman like Linda Paulson would hook up with a fat piece of shit like Marv, if you don't think about it too specifically. If you only think about the fact that, okay, he's rich, they hang out with lots of celebrities, they have floor seats at the Laker games, there's a certain cachet in Hollywood that comes from being with a rich, powerful tub like Marv—Dennis gets it. But stop and think about it
specifically.
What's it like being with this fat fuck when you're
not
out in public at Spago or sitting in your floor seats at the Laker game or sitting next to Jay Leno in Marvin Davis's tented backyard at a table for ten that your fat-ass husband paid fifty thousand bucks for?

Or how about what's it like watching him shovel forkfuls of pasta into his mouth or listening to his wet, disgusting farts when he's brushing his teeth and doesn't think you can hear it over the sound of the water running?

What's it specifically like having to spread your legs for this pig first thing in the morning, pretending you love it, while he airmails his disgusting wake-up breath all over you and you're covering your mouth with the pillow so he'll think you're trying to stifle your cries of ecstasy when all you're really trying to do is get your nose out of the jet stream?

Start thinking about it like that, Dennis says to himself, it's a whole different picture, and he can't help wondering what kind of woman is willing to whore herself out to a guy like that for money. Does that sound naÏve? Maybe in this town it is. Maybe in any town. But still.

So anyway, Dennis does his Columbo shit, admiring the museum-quality art on the walls, telling her he hopes she wasn't offended by his questions, he's just doing his job, etcetera etcetera. And then, as she's walking him to the front door, Dennis says, “It probably won't come up, but if it did for some reason, could you verify your whereabouts the night Ramon was murdered?”

“Am I a suspect, Detective?” Linda asks coyly. “Should I lawyer up, as they say?”

Dennis grins. “You're watching too many cop shows on television.”

“You're right about that. Marv had his poker cronies over,” Linda says, “and I stayed up in my bedroom watching television. Pretty romantic, huh?”

In spite of himself, Dennis is charmed. “Let me ask you one last thing, Mrs. Paulson—if you hardly even knew this guy, how come you called him on the phone the night he was murdered?”

To which Linda replies, slick as snot on a doorknob (Dennis's expression, not mine), that the reason she called was, she was looking for a recommendation from him about who she should partner with on a scene for class.

“Oh yeah?” Dennis says. “What was the scene?”

“Well, I'm probably a little old for the part by now, but I wanted to do Maggie from
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
”

“Good choice,” Dennis says. “People say Williams is dated, but I always loved that play.”

CHAPTER 14

One of the actresses in Dennis's pile of eight-by-tens from Lars is a terrific-looking blonde named Veronica Wallace, and even though she's not a charter member of the Ramon Montevideo Secret Sex Tape Club, there's something about her photo that he's drawn to. Maybe it's her genuine smile or her sparkling eyes, which, you can tell, even in a black-and-white picture, are blue.

He places a call to the agency listed on her résumé, the Artists' Group, and winds up speaking with some fast-talking little jerk named Ari Goldstein. Dennis says he's trying to get in touch with Veronica Wallace, and the kid says, “In reference to what?”

Dennis says her name came up in a murder investigation, and Dennis needs to talk to her at her earliest convenience.

“Holy cow,” Ari Goldstein says. “Is she a suspect?”

“Just tell her I'd appreciate a call back,” Dennis says, and he gives Ari his cell phone number.

Dennis figures that actresses are always available for calls from their agents, so he isn't surprised when Veronica Wallace calls him within thirty minutes. The words
murder investigation
in connection with your name will usually get your immediate attention.

Over the phone, Dennis says he has a list of Ramon's students and he's interviewing everyone on it. Could he meet with her for a few minutes at her convenience?

“Sure,” Veronica says, “but I don't know how much help I'll be. I didn't know him except to take his class.”

Dennis assures her that's okay, he's just going down the list, talking to everyone, regardless. “You never know how sometimes a casual observation, or something you don't even think is all that important, can really make a difference.”

So Veronica tells him she's got an audition at Paramount. She can swing by after, say between three-thirty and four?

“That'd be great,” Dennis says, and because he knows that talking to cops makes most people nervous, he tries to relax her by asking what she's auditioning for, and she tells him she's going up for a role in
JAG.
“I bet you'd look great in one of those uniforms,” he says, and with just that one remark he can almost feel her relax.

She laughs and says, “Let's hope the producers feel the same way.”

After Dennis hangs up the phone, he stares at her picture for a good long time, knowing you can never tell much about a person from a photograph (unless, of course, it's of a dead body) but deciding nevertheless that Veronica Wallace doesn't look the type who could kill a man in hand-to-hand combat.

When Veronica finally shows up, looking around the place with the kind of nervous curiosity you always see in people who've never been inside a police station before, Dennis says to himself,
Wow.
Because while you can always hope that the rest of the package measures up to the head shot, more often than not, it doesn't. Sometimes, in person, the actress is much older. Or heavier. Or the body's not so good. Maybe her legs are upside down—thin in the thighs and thick through the ankles—which is a particular turnoff for Dennis. But Veronica Wallace in person delivers on the promise of her picture. Great face, great eyes, great body, and when she smiles—
wow.
Even when she says the line he's heard a hundred times before—“I've never been in a police station before”—she says it in a way that makes him realize he's starting to get a crush on her.

“We could've done this someplace else,” he says.

“No, I wanted to see it.”

“Well, the Hollywood Division of the LAPD isn't being featured in
Architectural Digest
anytime soon.”

Her laugh is a compliment, and it fills him with warmth. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” he asks.

“No thanks.”

“C'mon, let's go in here,” and Dennis ushers her into the little TV room, where he and Lonnie have been watching all of Ramon's tapes. “I appreciate you coming in,” Dennis says.

“It's my pleasure, Detective.”

“Call me Dennis, please.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you mind if I call you Veronica?”

“My father's the only one who ever called me Veronica,” she says. “Everyone else calls me Vee.”

Dennis and Vee sit down on the couch facing the TV set, and he likes the way she doesn't seem to mind that it's a ratty piece of shit. “I see what you mean about
Architectural Digest,
” she says, but there's no put-down in her tone.

“How'd your audition go?” Dennis asks.

“Okay, I think, but you never really know till your agent calls. I was always so insecure. If the producer was nice, I'd think I did great, and if he was a dick, I'd think I did lousy. Now I just wait till the phone rings.”

Vee winds up telling Dennis a couple of her worst audition stories, including the time her husband set her up to audition for a movie he'd written, and he was so nervous introducing her to the director that when it was time to leave the office, he opened the door and backed into the guy's private bathroom.

“Did you get the part?” Dennis asks.

Vee shakes her head. “I was so embarrassed, I could barely get through the audition. I never read for anything my husband wrote again.”

“So you're married.”

“Separated. In fact, we split up the same day Ramon was murdered.” Which is the signal Dennis was waiting for to commence his interrogation.

“How well did you know him? Ramon, I mean.”

Vee says she only knew him professionally, but he was a really good teacher and a charming guy.

“He ever make a pass at you?”

Vee laughs. “Ramon made a pass at everyone. You'd be insulted if he didn't.”

“But you didn't respond.”

“No.”

“Do you know anyone who did?”

“Other than myself, I'm not sure I know anyone who didn't.”

“Do you know Linda Paulson?”

“Sure.”

“What about her?”

“And Ramon?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don't know. Y'know, she's older, very attractive, but she's married to a very rich guy . . . If I had to take a guess . . .” Vee shrugs. “I don't know . . .”

“What was it that made Ramon so attractive to women?”

“You always knew what the deal was with him. He always made you feel sexy, and he was totally clear it was just about sex, not about getting involved, and that's very appealing to a lot of women.”

“But not to you.”

“I guess I'm not that kind of girl,” Vee says, and Dennis is rewarded with a smile when he remarks that he's glad she isn't.

“Did any of the women in your class talk about their relationship with Ramon, tell you any stories about him?”

“What kind of stories?”

“That he was kinky for this or that, or he liked it rough?”

Vee shakes her head. “No, nothing like that. But sometimes they'd gossip about what a stud he was.” And she holds her hands about a foot apart to indicate the rumored size of Ramon's dick.

Dennis grins, which tells Vee, among other things, that he's not afflicted with penis envy. “Any jealousy you picked up on, or maybe a jealous husband or boyfriend you heard about?”

“I'm sorry, no.”

“Did he have any enemies that you knew of?”

Vee laughs, then says no.

“What's so funny?”

“I'm sorry, but it's like I'm reading for a part in
Law and Order
or something, except it's for real.”

“Y'know, it's none of my business,” Dennis says, “but I spoke to your agent, this Ari Goldstein guy, and he sounded kind of like an immature jerk.”

Vee laughs again. “Ari Goldstein
is
an immature jerk. And he's not my agent. He's my agent's assistant.”

Now it's Dennis who laughs. “Gee, I guess he lied to me.”

“There's a shock,” Vee says.

An awkward silence then, as if there are no other questions to ask, but neither of them wants the conversation to end. Finally Dennis stands, signaling the interview's over. “Thanks for coming in, Vee.”

“My pleasure,” she says.

“I know this isn't strictly speaking professional of me, but would you consider going out with me sometime?”

Vee's smile lights him up. “I've never gone out with a policeman.”

“You don't have to worry,” Dennis says. “I'm potty-trained.”

“That's a relief,” Vee says.

Out in the squad room, Dennis asks for Vee's phone number, and she writes it for him on the back of her eight-by-ten. “I'm staying with a girlfriend in Hollywood till I figure out my life,” she says, “but that's my cell number.”

And then, because Dennis can't ever stop thinking like a cop, or maybe it's because he already has feelings for Vee that are making him nervous, he asks her if she ever heard about Ramon liking to tape himself having sex with women.

Vee looks almost shocked by the question. “No, I never heard that. Did he?”

“Not to my knowledge,” says Dennis.

“What a creepy thought,” Vee says, and then she blesses him with her smile again. “Call me.” And she's gone.