The Reporter
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 Kelly Lange
All rights reserved.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
Originally published in hardcover by Mysterious Press
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56852-4
Contents
Advance Praise for lhe Reporter
IN HOMAGE TO THE GREAT SUE GRAFTON
A
is for
A
LICE
—my wonderful mom
&
A
RTHUR
—her kid brother
…
with love!
R
eporter Maxi Poole couldn’t take her eyes off the bizarre translucent coffin, and the man lying inside on a bed of ruched
white satin, with a smile on his face, and holding a set of onyx rosary beads in both hands—her ex-husband.
Rosary beads?
she thought. But he was
Jewish.
And smiling? He was
terrified
of dying. None of it made sense to Maxi, including and especially the fact that the man was, undeniably, dead.
It was a bleak fall day, one of very few in usually sunny La-La Land, as the tabloids call Los Angeles. Many of the film industry’s
most notable personages stood huddled against the chill—world-famous producers, directors, writers, stars—shoulder to shoulder
around the spot where the transparent coffin stood on its preposterous-looking gilded bier. No matter that most of them were
noteworthy for yesterday’s triumphs, not today’s, and certainly not tomorrow’s; they were noteworthy still by virtue of illustrious
past accomplishments and significant contributions to the art of cinema.
Maxi pressed her back against a pink flowering myrtle tree, literally trying to blend with the scenery. It didn’t help that
she was five-foot-eight and wearing a short, bright red, zip-up sweater with a red-and-white tweed miniskirt. Somehow, black
hadn’t
seemed to suit for this occasion, but now, looking at the sea of women and men in black, she might have liked to rethink that
wardrobe choice. Too late. She pushed her cropped blond hair out of her eyes, straightened her sunglasses, and folded her
arms.
Just get through this,
she reminded herself.
Next to Maxi stood her producer, Wendy Harris, all of five-foot-two on platform shoes, ninety-three pounds, tawny red hair
and lots of it, with notebook in hand. In muted voice, clearly getting a huge kick out of the tribal rites of old Hollywood,
Wendy was doing a comedic commentary, blithely pointing out luminaries, has-beens, and hangers-on. With her face deadpan and
her eyes straight ahead, Maxi gave Wendy a sharp elbow to the ribs.
“What!” Wendy blurted, making some small attempt to stifle a grin. “We’re supposed to look like we’re working, aren’t we?”
Maxi rolled her eyes. She straightened up and forced herself to concentrate on the remains of her late ex-husband. Bad enough
Wendy was having such a good time; it would be disastrous if she caught the mood herself and broke into nervous giggles. And
she knew it could happen.
There was a rustling in the crowd, and Maxi saw actress Debra Angelo approaching them, her young daughter in hand. Debra caused
a stir in any crowd. She was striking in a very short, very tight black Versace suit, a gold-flecked chiffon scarf wrapped
loosely around tons of dark hair, and impossibly high heels that kept sinking into the soggy cemetery turf. Debra had been
the wife before Maxi. At some point in Maxi’s marriage to Jack Nathanson, the two women had got around to comparing notes,
and became friends.
Maxi reached out to hug her. “God, this is grim,” Debra murmured in her ear. “Grim, just like him.”
“What, Mom?” piped up the winsome child at her side, her daughter—
his
daughter.
“I was just telling Maxi it’s a dreary day for a funeral,” Debra said with just a touch of a lyrical Italian accent. “But
Daddy
wouldn’t mind that, would he, darling? He rather liked gloomy weather.”
Smiling down at Gia, Maxi whispered, “How’s she doing?”
“Bewildered,” Debra said of her cherubic-faced ten-year-old, the child she’d been trying for a decade to bring up as a normal
youngster, Maxi knew, with little success.
“Oh, there’s Carlotta,” Debra said. Carlotta Ricco was Jack Nathanson’s housekeeper. The woman adored Gia. Seeing the girl
now a few feet away, she opened her arms, and Gia scurried into her embrace. Alone for a minute, Debra breathed, “Maxi, what
the hell are you doing here?”
“Working. Covering the funeral,” Maxi said with a dismissive shrug and a look toward her producer, and knowing that Debra
wouldn’t buy it.
“Yeah, right!” Debra whooped, louder than she’d meant to. Then she glanced up quickly to see if anybody had heard. Scanning
the crowd, she muttered, “Look at these dinosaurs, Maxi. And who came up with that ridiculous Lucite coffin? Even
he
had better taste than that, which is saying precious little, God knows. But the man was Gia’s father, after all—”
“And the reason why she gets in fights in school, and pulls her hair out at night,” Maxi put in.
“That’s going to change now,” Debra hissed. “Now that the sonofabitch is dead.”
“Shhhh,”
Maxi cautioned.
“Right. Damn, I am
ruining
these shoes!” Debra observed, glancing down at the fine black suede that was now coated with grassy, muddy ooze. “Fucking
seven-hundred-dollar Manolo Blahniks, but it can’t be helped—you never know where your next part is coming from. Shouldn’t
there be at least a
few
au courant movers and shakers among these turgid mourners?”
Maxi chuckled. She marveled at Debra’s indomitable spirit. Debra Angelo was arguably not a brilliant actress, but she had,
to date, played the parts of several memorable ladies, largely by dint
of a big personality coupled with a sculpted, exotic beauty that was rendered all the more extraordinary on-screen—the camera
loved her, attested many a director of photography, loved those cheekbones. And even though she had really only one act, so
to speak, it was an act in sufficient demand, that of the funny, ballsy, off-the-wall, altogether endearing and thoroughly
Americanized Italian jewel.
Carlotta walked Gia over to them, and with the child in the middle, all three women hugged. Kind, genial Carlotta had been
with Jack Nathanson through all of his wives, and now she had tears in her eyes. “You’ll come to the house after?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Carlotta, I have to get to work,” Maxi said.
“And I’m not sure Gia would be up to going to her daddy’s house today,” Debra put in. “But Carlotta, you’ll still see her,
as much as you’d like. Okay?”
“Okay.” Carlotta forced a smile and gave Gia another squeeze.
Debra linked her arm through Maxi’s. “Walk with me,” she urged.
“Walk with you! Where?” Maxi was trying to be invisible, and walking
anywhere
with Debra Angelo was akin to walking in a blazing spotlight.
Looking toward the casket, Debra tugged on Maxi’s arm. “C’mon,” she said, sotto voce. “Let’s give ’em a show—past wives united!”
Nudging Gia ahead, she sauntered forward, pulling a reluctant Maxi along, with Wendy following behind.
Debra drew the little group up short behind a man who was talking louder than was seemly. “Jesus, what’s with the see-through
coffin? Is it supposed to be a symbol or something? I mean, was there some kinda glass coffin in one of his movies?”
The question was posed by a formerly famous star of a formerly famous television series, who had long since lost it all to
booze and the horses. Still, he had a certain cachet that was kept alive by colorful stories of his colorful doings in the
tabloid press.
“No, no,” Julian Polo, who’d been the deceased’s agent, replied distractedly. “I guess Janet picked it out—Jack was a big
collector of contemporary art. He looks good, though, doesn’t he?”
“Listen!” Debra whispered in Maxi’s ear behind them, her concupiscent lips widening into a grin. Debra relished dish about
their mutual ex; Maxi hoped that her higher self would one day stop being fascinated by same, but it hadn’t happened yet.
“Ahh, they shoulda planted him under his star on Hollywood Boulevard, he’da liked that,” the actor groused.
“He didn’t
have
a star,” mused the agent, who knew everything about his famous, infamous, complex, and now dead client. Mind you, Julian
Polo wouldn’t usually admit to anyone that movie superhero Jack Nathanson, multiple Oscar winner, didn’t have a star on the
world-renowned Hollywood Walk of Fame—that would be bad PR, and the deceased still had a picture coming out, from which the
agency would get ten percent of his points. But this poor excuse for a man standing next to him wasn’t anybody. He
used
to be James McAdam, popular star of
Doctor Bryce,
which placed in the top ten for almost a decade on NBC. Now look at him, drunk even at a morning funeral—he wouldn’t remember
any of this tomorrow.
“Whaddaya mean he doesn’t have a star?” McAdam prattled on.
“Everybody’s
got a star. Pat
Sajak
has a star. Jamie
Farr
has a star. I have a star, for chrissake! Jack was one of the greatest actors ever lived.
’Course
he has a star.”
But Julian wasn’t about to tell even this out-of-the-loop has-been the story. Years ago, when Jack’s career was in its prime,
Julian had confidently applied to the committee for a star to honor his client’s brilliant body of work. The vote has to be
unanimous, and almost always is, but the chairman subsequently reported that every one of the members threw in a thumbs-down
for Jack, not a single yea, and in fact one colleague, a makeup artist who’d
worked on one of his pictures, was heard to say as she tossed in her ballot, “He can eat shit and die!”
“Sorry, pal, but we knew your boy’s not the most popular guy in town,” the chairman had said. “Now, you can resubmit his name
every other month,” he’d added, “but to be honest with you, I think this whole committee would have to die and be replaced
by people who didn’t know him….” So no star on Hollywood Boulevard for legendary actor Jack Nathanson.
Julian turned his attention to the rabbi, partly to shut McAdam up—interesting that Janet would choose a rabbi, he thought,
since Jack was an admittedly bad Jew, religiously speaking.
Last month, Julian and his wife were at Spago with Jack and Janet, and the dinner conversation got onto religion. Jack remarked
that ever since he made
Black Sabbat,
his Academy Award–winning period film about a witchcraft trial that echoed a high-profile contemporary case of a priest falsely
accused of child abuse, he was into the whole Roman thing—the Mass, the music, the majesty. “Confessing your sins has to beat
seeing a shrink,” he’d said. “And how about exorcising the devil! We oughta do that one on you, Julian, roust the devil out
of you,” he’d said with a smirk, “and out of every goddamn agent in the business.” He’d turned to Janet then and said, “When
I die, darling, don’t bury me in a tallis; put some rosary beads in my hands.” And damned if she didn’t do it, Julian thought
now, gazing at his late client clutching the beads. Janet never really got the joke with Jack.