Hot Shot (8 page)

*   *   *

I tossed my duffel out the bedroom window. It landed with a squish in the still-wet ground. The drop was twelve feet or so. I breathed deeply, made sure my laptop was strapped securely to my back, relaxed my knees, and dropped after it. Ouch. I laid in the dichondra, trying to catch my breath and still my heart. Biscuit, the neighbors' Jack Russell terrier, came over and sniffed me without any particular interest, as if I dropped into his backyard every morning.

Claudia was waiting for me in the supermarket parking lot at Fourteenth and Wilshire. Her sunglasses hid her eyes, and I couldn't read her face.

“Thanks, Claude.”

She started the car and we merged with the noontime traffic on Wilshire. “So where are we going?”

“There's some cheap motels over on Pico. But I need to go to the ATM first.”

After a minute, she said, “I drove past the house. What have you stepped in, Kieran?”

“A pile of Biscuit's shit.”

She reached over and punched a cassette into the dash, and the sad, sweet voices of Lyle Lovett and Shawn Colvin came out of the back speaker. I looked at Claudia's hand. There was a white clayish material under the nails, and her second finger was bare.

“Where's your ring?”

“I took it off this morning when I was grouting the bathroom.”

“You could have put it back on,” I said after a moment.

“I just forgot.”

I looked out the window. A homeless crone was inching her way up the sidewalk, towing a caravan of shopping carts roped together with knotted plastic bags. “Did you really forget?”

“Oh, Kieran.” Claudia's voice was exhausted. “There's enough going on. Drop the paranoia.”

Claudia pulled into the Wind & Sea, an anonymous little fleabag motel with a neon schooner on the roof and a battered marquee that advertised
W KLY RATS
•
FREE L CAL CAL S
•
COL R TV
. I sat in the car while Claudia used her Visa to book me a room for a week. She had already driven away by the time I got the rusty key in the door marked 17.

*   *   *

I unpacked my bag into a pressboard drawer and turned on the A/C. A trickle of air dribbled out of the ceiling, a wheezy wisp that could only be described as luke-cold. The room had a bed with a ratty chenille spread, a television on a swivel pole, and chocolate hi-lo carpeting that crunched under my sneakers. It smelled like the inside of a dryer. I turned down the bed and found something brown on my pillow.

It wasn't a mint.

Well, I thought, at least I've got
FREE L CAL CAL S
.

Information didn't turn up any Sloan Bakers in the metro area. Next I tried a buddy of mine who worked for the phone company. We had a deal: free screening passes in exchange for access to what he called the “unlistings.”

Still no Sloans in 310, 213, or 818, but there were three unlisted S. Bakers, one in each area code. I jotted down the numbers, for the first time feeling slimy about it. Before, using my pal at the phone company had felt like just another arrow in a well-connected reporter's quiver. Now it seemed something a sleaze would do.

What the hell. I dialed the 310 S. Baker. A woman picked up.

“Sloan?” I said cheerfully. Rule one: Disarm them. An unknown voice on the phone saying “I'm looking for Sloan Baker” would get anyone's guard up.

“You've got the wrong number.” Click.

From the sound of it, 213 S. Baker was an elderly black woman with a hearing problem. And 818 S. Baker was an answering machine: Steve and Stephanie couldn't come to the phone right now, but I got to hear their toddler's rendition of “Good Morning Starshine.” I made a vomiting noise at the sound of the beep and hung up.

Strike three and out. I sighed and got out my long-distance calling card.

The
Celeb
offices were in Cocoa Beach, Florida. A receptionist explained that Gina Guglielmelli was a staff writer in the L.A. bureau and gave me Gina's extension. She picked up on the first ring. I explained who I was and why I was calling. She chuckled.

“O'Connor, you wouldn't give away your sources,” she said. “Why should I?”

“I'm not asking you to betray a source. I just want to talk to ‘Desiree.' Obviously she's willing to talk. And I'm not your competition. Can't you just pass my number on to her and let her make the decision?”

There was a long pause. “Let me ask you something,” Gina finally said. “Would you ask the same thing of me if I worked for
The New York Times?
”

“… No.”

“O'Connor, I'm a reporter. Oh, I know that you people in the so-called legit media think we're all a bunch of ambulance chasers and gutter crawlers, but I have standards the same way you do. Higher, probably. I double-check and triple-check my sources.”

“I'm sure you do, but—”

“But nothing. You want my c.v.? I went to Yale and the Columbia School of Journalism. Did you?”

I didn't say anything.

“Now tell me again why you expect me to put you in touch with a source I cultivated.”

“That you paid for, you mean.”

“Like you don't. Like you've never taken a source to lunch, or a Kings game, or done all kinds of favors for them.”

“I have never taken a source to a Kings game.”

“A screening, whatever. Can you tell me you've never done that?”

“Okay,” I said tiredly. “You win. Sorry I bothered you.”

“The world's changed, O'Connor. What's news has changed.” She laughed. “And you legitimate types are still playing catch-up. I love it.”

Gina Guglielmelli was still laughing as she slammed down the phone.

*   *   *

Red numerals on the bedside clock read 2:17. The glow from the laptop and the yellow sulphur lights in the parking lot gave the room a radioactive look. I took off my glasses and rubbed my aching eyes. Carpal tunnel was beginning to twinge through my fingers.

The last Felina tape had just clicked to a stop. It wasn't enough. Face it, I wasn't Barbara Walters. I wasn't even Gina Guglielmelli. The only thing to do was get some sleep, dump the facts into Jocelyn's lap, and let her sort them out and break the news to Jack Danziger. Right now I was too tired to think about it.

The phone rang: once, then twice. I checked the clock again: 2:18
A.M
.

A third ring.

Jocelyn still didn't know where I was staying. Could the press jackals have tracked me down to the Wind & Sea? We'd paid for the room with Claudia's credit card, and the desk clerk hadn't seen me check in. It was probably Claudia.

The phone rang a fourth time. I took a chance and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“You going ahead with the book?”

“What?”

“I said, you going ahead with the book?”

It was a man's voice. Not threatening, just deep and very, very self-assured.

“Who is this?”

No answer.

“How did you find me?”

“Think twice, buddy. Think twice.”

The line went dead.

I sat on the edge of the bed with the receiver in my hand. The room glowed yellow.

*   *   *

After stepping out of the Jacuzzi, I stood on a bath mat that oozed up around my toes and reached for the woolly robe by the tub. The towel rack turned out to be heated. It was like putting on a feverish sheep.

I had been at the Beverly Hillshire for eight hours and I was enjoying every pig minute. The difference between writing a low-key cheesy tell-all and a high-profile cheesy tell-all was as big as the difference between—well, the Wind & Sea and the Beverly Hillshire Hotel.

I'd been in this suite once before, to interview a romance novel cover stud whose chest implants and steroid injections had given him a truly alarming pair of he-boobs. This time it was all mine: the berber carpets, the Porthault linens, the projection TV, the data and fax ports that bristled from every outlet, and the charming verdigris balcony overlooking the intersection of Wilshire and Rodeo. The room managed to be both luxe and high-tech, like a decorating collaboration between Jackie Collins and Bill Gates.

And—most important—it was all paid for by Jack Danziger.

By the time I talked to Jocelyn, I had calmed down to the point where the sound of a car pulling into the Wind & Sea parking lot didn't have me ready to lock myself in the bathroom. Jocelyn, on the other hand, was horrified. By eight-thirty, Kitty Keyes had shown up in her Mercedes to ferry me over to the Beverly Hillshire in cheerful style. Either she was as ditzy as she looked or death threats just came with the territory in her line of work.

I'd spent the morning napping and trying to set up interviews, with little success either way. The top of the list—and the longest shot—was Dick Mann's widow, Betty Bradford Mann. Her press agent, Susan D'Andrea, guarded her clients in the same relaxed way that Nancy guarded Ronnie in the White House. Apparently D'Andrea had been deluged with requests for interviews; I spoke to some D-level assistant who told me to fax over a formal interview request. Translation: Buzz off.

Kitty Keyes had spirited up a beeper number for Sloan Baker, and I'd got a number for Vernon Ash through another reporter at the paper. I'd left messages for both, but neither had called back. The only response I'd had was from the Ensenada police, who faxed me back a press release on Felina's murder and a polite refusal to discuss the matter further. The fax told me that a search of the house revealed that valuables were taken. The cops' official take on it was a tragedy, a robbery gone wrong. Even if it wasn't, I was sure the police would cover it up for fear of scaring off the wealthy Americans in the neighborhood. A crazed killer would have the same effect on Via del Paraiso that the shark did in
Jaws.

The phone rang. One of the perks in the suite was an unlisted phone that didn't go through the hotel switchboard. Management changed the number after each guest checked out.

“I'm returning a call left on my beeper. Who's calling, please?” She was aiming for a professional woman's voice, but a certain lazy nasality sneaked through on “beeper” and “please.” A Valley doll—fer sure, fer sure.

“My name's Kieran O'Connor. I wanted to know if we could get together—”

“I don't know how you got this number, but you'll have to go through my agency,” she interrupted.

“No, Sloan,” I told her dryly, “that's not the kind of hour I want to spend.”

*   *   *

Smooth Moo was a juice bar and New Age soda fountain adjoining Le Sweat, a particularly overpriced fitness palace on La Cienega. I pulled into the parking lot of Le Sweat and gave my keys to the valet. People in L.A. are nuts. They'll spend an hour on a StairMaster, but they won't walk fifty feet from their car to the gym.

One whole wall of Smooth Moo was glass, giving patrons a good view of the beautiful people as they crunched and burned and flexed and abbed their way to Aryan perfection. Taken individually, all the women were gorgeous, but in aggregate they blended into a boring, homogenous whole. I couldn't imagine myself having a conversation with any of them, much less a relationship. That's what I liked about Claudia. She worked out at the YWCA.

At Smooth Moo, the milkshakes were called smoothies and started at eight bucks apiece. There was also a bewildering list of optional mix-ins: bee pollen, acidophilus, protein powder, brewer's yeast. I chose the P-Nutty Pow—a concoction of peanut butter, bananas, and honey—just because it looked like the least healthy thing on the menu.

While I waited for Sloan, I sipped my P-Nutty Pow and watched the gym Barbies. Each of the high-tech stationary bikes was occupied by a blonde reading a script. They couldn't all be actresses. Maybe Le Sweat handed out old scripts at the reception desk, like getting a copy of
Newsweek
at the dentist's.

A woman walked in through the street entrance, and I almost choked on my P-Nutty Pow.

It was Felina.

No. On second glance, this woman was younger, maybe thirty. Still, the resemblance was striking. From a distance, they could have been, if not sisters, then maybe a star and her stunt double.

*   *   *

I tried to make some small talk—lay a little verbal grease before the grilling began—but Sloan wasn't much interested. She ordered a drink called And Tofu, Too and brushed the hair out of her eyes. Up close, the resemblance started to fall apart. The retroussé nose was too obviously a rhinoplasty, and the streaks in her hair were Clairol instead of chlorine. Small differences, but they added up to the difference between a beauty queen and first runner-up.

“Okay. I'm here,” Sloan said, as if the sentence itself was an effort. “Now what do you want from me?”

I got out my tape recorder. “You mind if I—”

“Put that away. I'm not giving you any interview.”

“It's not an interview. I'd just like you to answer a few questions.”

“Forget it. I'm not going to rat anyone out.”

“Without getting paid for it, you mean?”

She folded her arms and glared. “What does that—”

“Get off it, Sloan. You sold your Dick Mann story to
Celeb
and to
Headline Journal.
”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Come on,
Desiree.
”

“You come on. Who do you think you are, Woodward and Birdstein or something? It's no secret that Dick Mann hired sex workers. It doesn't mean I ever slept with him.”

Sex worker,
I guessed, was the union term for hooker, like
maintenance engineer
for janitor. It sounded so much nicer than
ho
or
hoochie.

“Everyone in town knew that Dick Mann liked hookers,” she continued. “Hey, I've got some other big scoops for you. Rock Hudson was a fag. And Joan Crawford smacked her kids.”