The Reporter (23 page)

“No, no, no,” she assured him, and smiled at the group around the table. “I’m okay. It’s just all so hard to believe…. Would
you order me an Armagnac?”

“You’re a trouper,” Alan said, signaling a waiter. “We won’t stay long; one quick drink and I’ll get you home.”

A young man approached the table, one of the restaurant’s parking attendants. He came over to Alan. “Mr. Bronstein,” he said,
“I have those tickets I told you about.”

“Oh, great, Billy,” Alan said, and extended his hand. Billy gave him an envelope, and left. “Wants to be an actor,” Alan explained
to the group. “Don’t they all, huh? These are for a play his workshop is doing; I told him if I couldn’t go, I’d give them
to someone who counts.”

The waiter arrived and they ordered drinks. The group chatted about the film’s prospects, and congratulated themselves on
throwing a very successful fundraiser—the morning publicity should get the movie launched in a climate of goodwill.

Later, as their limousine made its way toward the Beverly Hills Hotel, Janet felt suddenly drained. She longed to climb into
bed and obliterate all thoughts of the murders, of Meg Davis, of Jack, the movie, the business, her future. Resting her head
against the back of the car’s plush upholstery, she closed her eyes and tried to relax.

The sound of a siren behind them jolted her alert, and she opened her eyes to the strobe of flashing lights bathing the interior
of the limo. “What the hell—?” Alan muttered, and they both turned to see a squad car behind them. They were in a tony residential
area on Canon Drive. A voice over a loudspeaker invaded the neighborhood stillness: “Pull over to the side of the road. Please
pull your vehicle over to the curb and park, and roll down all your windows.”

“I don’t know what I did, Mr. Bronstein,” the driver said, tossing back a nervous look to Alan as he pulled the cumbersome
stretch limo over to the right and stopped. Quickly, he pressed the buttons to lower the windows, front and back.

An officer in the tan shirt, green pants, and helmet of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, his gun drawn, stepped
to the window on the driver’s side and looked back into the interior of the car. “Mr. Alan Bronstein?” he asked.

“I’m Alan Bronstein—”

“Please step out of the vehicle, sir, and keep your hands above your head.”

As Alan did so, another man approached from the radio car, a tall black man in street clothes. He produced a leather ID folder
with a badge and credentials bearing his name, Jonathan Johnson, and the inscription of the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau, then
he began with “You have the right to remain silent….”

When he was finished quoting the Miranda rights, he took a
search warrant from his pocket, explained what it was, and presented it for Bronstein’s inspection.

“What are you looking for?” Bronstein questioned.

“We want the envelope you received from William Randall James at Mortons restaurant tonight,” Johnson said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alan protested, his arms raised.

Johnson nodded to the other deputy, who had his gun trained on Bronstein. With his free hand, he reached into Bronstein’s
top left inside coat pocket and retrieved the envelope. He handed it to Johnson. Janet recognized Johnson as one of the detectives
who had been at her house the day Carlotta was found murdered. Johnson tore open the envelope and looked inside, then put
it in his own coat pocket.

“You can take Ms. Orson home now,” he told the driver. Then, looking at Alan, he said, “Mr. Bronstein, you’re coming with
us.”

H
ow many keys did you make for Bronstein?” Mike Cabello asked Billy James, who was shivering in the fluorescent glare of an
interrogation room at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice.

“I don’t remember,” Billy said.

“Whose keys did you press? I want names.”

“I don’t remember—”

“Oh, yeah?” Cabello roared. “Well, you better fucking
start
remembering, or you’ll be sitting in the slam with scumbags who are gonna love that pretty blond hair of yours. Whose keys
did you give him tonight?”

“I’m not saying anything till I get a lawyer,” Billy said.

“We told you to call your lawyer. You said you don’t
have
a lawyer,” Cabello snapped.

“You’re supposed to get me one, aren’t you?”

“Fucking TV movies,” Cabello muttered. “You punks are so fucking smart. Okay, if we’re done talking here, we’ll get you booked.
You know the charge: conspiracy to commit fraud.”

The door opened, and Jon Johnson walked into the room with Alan Bronstein. “Ahh, together again, the dynamic duo,” Mike Cabello
jeered. “Nice of you to dress up for us,” he said to Bronstein, eyeing his tuxedo.

“You can’t hold me,” Bronstein said coldly.

“You’re keeping real intelligent company, Bronstein,” Cabello said, cocking his head toward Billy James, who sat cowering
in his chair.

“I’ve got some keys, Mike,” Jon Johnson said, taking the yellow envelope out of his pocket and handing it to his partner.

“Thanks,” Cabello said. He removed three keys from the envelope and turned them over in his hand. “Why don’t you take Fred
Astaire, here, and book him, Jon.”

Jon Johnson led Bronstein out of the room. “See,” Cabello explained to Billy, “your uptown friend is gonna call his high-priced
lawyer, and his high-priced lawyer is gonna get him out of here in an hour. He’ll be sleeping in his comfy bed in Beverly
Hills tonight. Now, we’re gonna get you a lawyer, yes, but it’s gonna be a low-rent lawyer—we got some pips on the public-defender
roster—we’re gonna find you one, but your guy might not be able to get you outta here tonight. Or this year.”

“When do I get a lawyer?” Billy asked.

“Oh, soon, soon,” Cabello said, “but I hope you had enough paydays from Bronstein to hire yourself a big, expensive lawyer
down the line, cuz you’re goin’ down, and Bronstein ain’t goin’ with you, I guarantee it. He’ll be back eating shrimp at Mortons,
and you’ll be inside, eating macaroni with bugs in it.”

“Can I have my lawyer now?” Billy asked. He had chills and he was sweating at the same time.

“In a minute, in a minute.” Cabello waved him off. “I just want to paint a picture for you, Billy. I just want to tell you
that I don’t think Bronstein’s gonna say ‘Look, I ain’t leavin’ here till my little buddy Billy goes with me. I ain’t goin’
to Mortons till Billy James comes too, cuz nobody can park my fucking Porsche like Billy can.’ I don’t think he’s gonna say
that, do you?” Billy shrugged, and said nothing.

“I’ll let you in on something,” Cabello went on in measured tones. “We are searching Bronstein’s house right now, and his
office, and we will find every fucking key he’s got. Now, if they’re marked, and I’m guessing they are, we’ll know the names
I’m looking for. It’d just go down better for you if you tell us first. But if they’re
not
marked,” Cabello went on, “and my guys have to take that fucking pile of keys and go try every fucking door in L.A. County
to find out where they fit, and it holds me up for-fucking-ever on my murder investigation—I said
murder,
Billy—then I’m going to be majorly pissed. Unless you want to cooperate and help me out, that is—then I might want to help
you
out, if you get my drift.”

Billy was looking at him, weighing what he was hearing.

“Unless, of course, you think your pal Bronstein is such a prince he’ll stick his neck out to get you out of this,” Cabello
added with a wicked smirk.

“Michael Eisner. Those keys are Michael Eisner’s, the chairman of Disney,” Billy said, pointing to the keys Cabello was holding
out in the palm of his hand.

“Oh, yeah? Who else’s did you do?”

“Jeffrey Katzenberg, Warren Beatty, Sam Breneman, Mike Ovitz…” Billy began singing.

Smiling, Cabello picked up the phone and put in an order for a public defender. Then he walked down the hall and entered the
room where Jon Johnson and another deputy were sitting with Alan Bronstein.

“We’re waiting for his attorney,” Jon told Cabello. “Leo Greenwood. He’ll be here any minute. Mr. Bronstein has asked Mr.
Greenwood to also represent William James in this matter.”

“Awww, too late,” lamented Cabello. “The little asswipe already has a lawyer. And he volunteered a list of names, by the way.
Jesus, Bronstein, you went big! Bob Zemeckis, Tom Hanks, Steven Soderbergh…”

While doing some checking in low places on Alan Bronstein, Cabello had unearthed the nuts and bolts of a scheme that Bronstein
had been running for years. A source told him
that Bronstein had a ringer who was duplicating keys belonging to the top people in the business; then he would send the guy,
dressed as some kind of night janitor, into their offices with the keys at two, three in the morning on fishing expeditions
with a tiny Minox.

“It’s beautiful!” Cabello had told his partner. “A regular Tinseltown Watergate. It’s how Bronstein always seems to know what
scripts his marks are bidding on, what kind of numbers are in the contracts on their desks, things like that.”

“What does he do with the information?” Johnson had asked.

“He uses it when he’s negotiating, when he’s chatting up deals. Nobody could figure out how Bronstein always seems to get
the good scripts, the great packages, the right stars. Now we know—he has everybody’s inside information.”

“But you say the one thing he never got that he always wanted was Jack Nathanson’s wife,” Johnson countered.

“That’s right. But he’s got her now,” Cabello said.

“But would he
kill
to get her?” Johnson asked.

“My opinion?” Cabello threw out. “This is a guy who’d kill his grandmother if it would get him a better split on a deal.”

“Well, if you’re right about this little scam of his, he won’t have the widow for long. He won’t have much of
anything
for long,” Johnson declared.

Cabello had checked for twenty-four-hour key shops and found out that there were three in the city, one of them on the Westside,
in the Rexall on La Cienega. He’d gone in and asked the man who ran the key service whether he had any repeat business that
seemed like a lot, that seemed unusual for the average Joe who needed to get keys made. When Cabello flashed his badge, the
clerk lifted the cash register drawer and showed a check for thirty-one dollars. Guy was in there every other week, he said,
good-looking young blond dude. The check had
no printed name or address on it, but it had a bank number, and it was signed
W. James.

The detective put a trace on the account, which was in the name of one William Randall James. There were three men named William
Randall James licensed to drive in the state of California, and one of them lived in West Los Angeles. A check on that one’s
Social Security number showed that he received regular paychecks from the parking concession at Mortons, the trendy restaurant
at Melrose and Robertson that was frequented by showbiz folks. Bingo!

Cabello and Johnson set up a surveillance detail. The two plainclothes deputies who staked out Mortons had no trouble making
William Randall James—he was the only blond guy parking cars there. On a hunch, one of the deputies went inside and asked
the hostess what time Mr. Alan Bronstein was expected. She looked at her book and said she didn’t have him down for that day,
but next Tuesday there was a big movie premiere—Monogram Films had a table reserved for after-dinner drinks at 11:30, and
Mr. Bronstein’s name was on their list. Cabello and Johnson decided to show up for that party themselves. Johnson took Bronstein
in, and Cabello nailed Billy James.

Now both detectives sat in an interrogation room talking to Bronstein and his lawyer, a well-known entertainment attorney.
A few minutes after they got started, Paul Rossen and Andy Gomez, the deputies who had been conducting the search of Bronstein’s
house, burst in the door.

“Hey, Mike, merry Christmas a little early!” Gomez chucked a brown bag full of keys on the table.

“That was fast,” Mike said appreciatively. “How’d you guys find ’em?”

“Easy,” Rossen said. “We kicked in the door to his house. Excuse me, sir,” he said to Bronstein, “you’re gonna need a
locksmith. And we had the board-up people secure your house with plywood and bolts, so probably a carpenter, too.”

Bronstein groaned.

“Anyway, Mike,” Rossen went on, “they were in a drawer in his den. You want me to check them in to the evidence room?”

“No, leave ’em here,” Cabello said. “I wanna play with my Christmas present for a while.”

Gomez and Rossen left, and Mike emptied the bag of keys out on the table. Each set was on a separate ring, and each was tagged
with a name. Different keys had markings like HOME, OFFICE, CAR. Mike saw the attorney wince.

“Congratulations, Bronstein,” Cabello said, rummaging through the keys. “You got the A-list here! I guess everybody eats at
Mortons.” Then he found the set he was looking for, on a ring marked J. NATHANSON. Cabello picked them up by the key that
was labeled DEBRA, and dangled them in front of Bronstein and his attorney. “Marvin Samuels, he’s Debra Angelo’s lawyer, told
us that her ex had a key to her house so he could bring the kid inside if he got there early and nobody was home,” he said.
“Now, it looks like Nathanson’s killer slipped into Ms. Angelo’s house with a key—there was no forced entry. And it was the
middle of the afternoon, so the alarm wasn’t set.”

“What about Meg Davis?” Greenwood put in. “I thought
she
was your killer. She committed suicide—isn’t that classic open and shut?”

“Oh, yeah, we hear all the geniuses in your business are saying Meg Davis was a witch, and she spirited herself in through
the walls and killed Jack Nathanson for making her loony.” Cabello laughed. “It might be hard for you to believe this, guys,
but we don’t think so. So we checked up on everybody we knew had a key to this front door,” Cabello went on, twisting the
key marked DEBRA between his thumb and his forefinger, “but we had no idea
you
had one, Bronstein!”