The Reporter (2 page)

Maxi reached out and tapped Julian on the shoulder, breaking his reverie. Turning, he smiled broadly at Nathanson’s two beautiful
ex-wives, taking a hand from each in each of his. “Nature’s noblewomen, both of you,” he exclaimed. “How are you two? And
Gia,” he said, stooping to shake the girl’s hand.

“We’re fabulous, Julian.” Debra smiled, blowing him a kiss. Turning then, with Gia in tow, she set off toward the rabbi standing
at the head of the coffin-cum-shrine. As she wound through
the crowd, an indelicate wolf whistle was heard from someone among the gathered.

“Jesus, what’s she gonna do?” Julian half exclaimed.

“I have no idea,” Maxi answered, her eyes also fixed on Debra. Maxi had long ago realized that there was no predicting what
Debra Angelo would do, ever. This whole crowd knew that Debra had loathed Jack Nathanson, and vice versa. Seven years before,
they’d all been witness to the couple’s public, trashed-about, dragged-out divorce and custody battle, each sordid accusation
from one prompting a topper from the other. And now she was going to give him a
eulogy?

Wendy, too, watched Debra’s languid progress toward center stage. “Sensational!” she noted in her version of a stage whisper.
“Skintight black, tasteful gold jewelry, four-inch ‘fuck-me’ pumps…” Debra was somberly guiding young Gia before her, aware
that every eye in the house, as it were, was on her aristocratic, wriggling fanny wrapped in quasi widow’s weeds, the wind
tossing voluminous hair barely contained by the diaphanous Isadora Duncan scarf wound around that perfectly made-up, exquisite
face that registered grief, though
tout le monde
knew she wasn’t grieving.

“Debra Angelo might not be the world’s greatest actress,” Wendy whispered to Maxi, “but she sure knows how to make an entrance!”

Maxi had to smile—Debra had this crowd mesmerized as she stood serenely now, hands on her child’s shoulders, speaking in hushed
tones. Heads craned forward, the better to hear her. She was saying that Jack had loved his daughter, and Gia wanted to say
a few words in her daddy’s memory.

Gia started to cry, which immediately sobered Maxi. In the five years that she had been her stepmom, Gia could always break
her heart. The girl was stammering now that she loved her dad, that she was going to miss him, sobbing harder now, caught
in this odd, truly scary situation for a little girl who was looking
down at her smiling father lying in a see-through box. She was trying to remember the little speech that Debra had coached
her on. “My daddy told me to read good books,” she mumbled. “He played… uh… video games with me….”

After a painful few minutes of this, Debra knelt and gathered her in a tearful embrace, then took her hand and led her away,
back through the crowd, stepping carefully around headstones studding the grass toward a waiting limousine with Gia’s nanny
inside.

The rabbi had called the next eulogist, Sam Bloom, Jack Nathanson’s business manager and closest friend, best man at all his
weddings. Sam chattered the deceased’s praises, telling stories about what a consummate professional he was, what a helluva
guy he was.

Next, former child star Meg Davis approached the rabbi. She spoke haltingly, staring down through that peculiar casket at
230 pounds of the dead Jack Nathanson dressed in very odd burial clothes, odd, but it was the kind of outfit the man had virtually
lived in lately, the kind the news photos showed he’d got shot in, and probably the only type of apparel they could find in
his closet that fit him, since Jack was currently in
fat
mode: a tan safari jacket, a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and khaki pants with an elastic waist.

The speaker was tall and frail looking, with long, straggly auburn hair that seemed uncared for, and a drawn face scarred
by dissipation. She was blowing her nose and talking about how Jack Nathanson had made her a star in
Black Sabbat,
she was only ten when she’d read for the part, and how wonderful he had treated her and her mother—

But something was going on, a scuffling, some sharp words, and heads began turning, Julian, McAdam, Maxi, Wendy, people all
around them, the widow, the rabbi, and the rest, and what they saw completely diverted their attention from Jack Nathanson
lying face up in his plastic box.

The now-grown-up
Black Sabbat
child had stopped reminiscing in midsniff, and was looking up to see what she’d lost her audience to. Wendy, ever the journalist,
moved quickly toward the action. Maxi and Julian stood frozen. Four uniformed Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies, one of them
female, and two detectives in plainclothes, guns drawn, had positioned themselves outside Debra Angelo’s limo, barking orders.

“Come out of the car, lady!”

“Hands over your head!”

“Leave the kid—you stay in the car, little girl.”

Two of them began tugging at the actress, hauling her out of the limo. Debra was protesting, screaming indignantly, yanking
away from them, and now and then shouting obscenities with a Romanic timbre, as the nanny looked on in horror, and Gia hung
on to her mother’s skirt and howled with terror.

Then Debra let out a piercing shriek and fainted while the cops were reading her rights, having just told her that she was
under arrest for the gunshot murder of her former husband, Jack Nathanson.

M
axi punched off her cell phone and dropped it into her purse. No surprise that she didn’t get any answers from the sheriff’s
department—it was too early. Not that she could count on information from them ever, but it was worth a try. She’d called
in the arrest to the news desk at Channel Six, and told the assignment editor that the pool camera had it all on tape. Debra
was her friend, but news was her job. They’d have the story in minutes anyway. The entire media would have it, and it would
be every station’s lead tonight.

“Well,
this
show’s over,” Wendy hissed. “It’s anticlimax from here. Let’s get back to work, Max.”

“We can’t leave till he’s in the ground,” Maxi whispered.

“Oh. Sorry. My funeral etiquette’s rusty.”

“I need to pay my respects to his widow,” Maxi said.

“Yeah, congratulate her. She got off cheap.”

“Stop it, Wendy. Someone will hear you.”

“Okay, you go give your condolences to the final Mrs. Jack Nathanson, and I’ll get the truck and bring it around. I’ll pick
you up by that tree over there,” Wendy said, pointing to a purpling jacaranda up on the road.

As Wendy headed off to where they’d parked the news van,
Maxi made her way toward Janet Orson. She couldn’t help wondering how Janet was feeling, as the man she’d married less than
a year ago in a romantic ceremony on a moonlit beach in lush Saint Thomas was about to be laid to rest. Their nuptials had
been written up everywhere, and featured on all the news and entertainment shows. Maxi remembered the night she had to voice
over their wedding video on the Six O’clock News, while her coanchor sat next to her stifling snickers. It did seem weird,
reporting on her ex-husband’s marriage. And tonight, even more surreal, she’d be reporting on her ex-husband’s funeral.

Maxi tried to remember how
she
had felt when she’d been married to Jack for less than a year. Was she still in honeymoon phase? No, she wasn’t. Because
fifteen minutes after the ceremony, it seemed, Jack had turned into a whole different guy. Maxi noticed it right away, maybe
because she was a trained reporter. She just pretended she didn’t—until she couldn’t pretend anymore. But she had no idea
how Janet felt today. Janet Orson was forty-three, beautiful, and highly successful. She’d made the long, steep climb in the
entertainment business from studio stenographer to top talent agent, one of the first women who’d managed to break through
the agency world’s rugged glass ceiling. She had justly earned the respect of the industry, and had amassed a fairly sizable
nest egg for herself. On the day of her marriage to Jack Nathanson, she’d told the press that it was time she focused on her
personal life.

Though never married before, Janet had had hundreds of dates, escorts, one-night stands, and short-term liaisons, all chronicled
in the trade columns—there had been no shortage of men on either coast who wanted to romance the stunning, powerful Janet
Orson. And she’d had one very significant other, one long and well-publicized love affair with a talented, highly successful
screenwriter whom she’d launched by selling his
Moon-doggie
, a charming little film she had believed in that grossed an astonishing 78 million domestic.

Evidently she had believed in
him,
too. He was tall, dark, Adonis-handsome, smart, fun, attractive in every way. The two were an A-list couple for years, and
they’d seemed perfectly suited and divinely happy, until he dumped her at the top of his career for a red-hot, pencil-thin
blond actress half his age. The news of their surprise marriage appeared in the daily
Variety,
and, it turned out, no one was more shocked to read about it over coffee and breakfast rolls than Janet Orson.

Then she met Jack. And Maxi was sure that Janet must have felt like she’d died and gone to heaven, because Jack Nathanson
got an A-plus in courtship. He was candlelight dinners and little blue boxes from Tiffany and first-class jet trips to Aspen,
New York, Saint Moritz, Rome. Just six weeks after their first date, Jack and Janet soared off to the Caribbean for their
divine storybook wedding, while all the bells were still ringing and the fireworks were still going off, Maxi was sure.

She saw Janet now, standing with the rabbi, talking quietly. The Debra Angelo debacle had apparently put an end to the spontaneous
eulogies. “Janet,” Maxi said, as she came to her and took her hand, “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, Maxi…” The two had known each other for years; Maxi had interviewed Janet several times. Now she could see hurt and confusion
in this woman who was usually the epitome of composure.

“What was
that
about?” Janet asked Maxi. “I couldn’t see what was going on….”

“Debra was… arrested.”

“For… for
this?”
Janet exclaimed, gesturing toward her late husband’s bier.

“Yes. They read her the Miranda rights on a murder charge.”

“But would she…
could
she…?” Janet knew that Maxi and Debra were friends. Maxi knew that Janet didn’t quite approve of Debra.

“I don’t know anything more than you do, Janet.”

“Well, Debra
hated
Jack—”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Maxi cut in, to stop any more conversation about Debra. Maxi didn’t know what to think
about the rowdy arrest of Debra Angelo just minutes ago, and she certainly didn’t want to speculate about it with the “final
wife,” as Wendy had dubbed Janet Orson.

“Well…you can be kind in the coverage—”

“Oh, I won’t be doing it,” Maxi said. “My coanchor or I will voice the story on the newscast, but I won’t be writing it or
putting it together. How are you holding up, Janet?”

“I’m in a daze. It’s all been happening so fast—”

The rabbi was handing Janet a rose from the arrangement atop the fiberglass casket. As the two women looked down at Jack,
Maxi had a great urge to ask Janet why she’d chosen that outré piece of quasi–modern art as a final resting place for the
man they’d both been married to, but she thought better of it. Instead, because the bizarre presentation of Jack Nathanson
in death a couple of feet in front of them was impossible to ignore, she heard herself commenting on the deceased’s apparel.
“In those clothes he looks so… so like himself,” she stammered. Then wished she hadn’t. But Janet didn’t seem offended.

“Sam Bloom said don’t buy him a suit, nobody’s ever seen him in one except in the movies,” she said. “And Sam knew him better
than I did, certainly. But that
smile
on his face!” Janet went on, shocking Maxi with that one. “The undertaker put it there. When I asked him why, he said because
your husband’s wearing this funny outfit, I figure he must be a funny guy.”

Maxi wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to laugh. She settled for saying nothing, just looking somewhat perplexedly at the
widow. Which evidently prompted Janet to go on. “And once the smile was there, the undertaker said, he couldn’t take it off.
Then he actually explained
why
he couldn’t. Physically. Oh, God, Maxi, it’s been a nightmare.”

But how do you feel about your husband being dead?
Maxi
wanted to ask, but didn’t. They were distracted by the pulleys that were now moving the casket over the grave site, about
to lower it into the ground. This should be a private moment for Janet, Maxi knew. Giving her what she hoped was a reassuring
hug, she headed off to find Wendy in the Channel Six news van.

After watching Maxi Poole’s retreat for a few seconds, a tall woman in Harry Potter glasses, her hair pushed up under a floppy
poor-boy cap, inserted herself squarely between the coffin and the widow. With pad and pencil poised, she asked, “How do you
feel, Mrs. Nathanson?”

Janet felt a stab of discomfort. A reporter. Not television; there was no camera. Print. The L.A.
Times?
The
New York Times,
perhaps? Or
Variety?
The woman presented no credentials. Before Janet could respond, a burly man in jeans and a rumpled T-shirt jumped in front
of them to the edge of the grave, hoisted a camera, and snapped off a series of flash-popping pictures as the coffin, with
film legend Jack Nathanson in full-bodied view, descended into the ground.

Amid a cacophony of outraged protests, the man whipped around and said to no one in particular, “Sorry, I gotta bring in his
box shot.” With that, clutching his camera, he ran across the sodden grass toward a waiting van, funeral guests shaking their
fists after him, Joan Collins among them, someone shrieking, “…fucking tabloid vermin!”

P
igs!” Debra Angelo had muttered in the backseat of the sheriff’s radio car. “How
could
you do that in front of my child? I didn’t kill the sonofabitch.”