The Reporter (5 page)

She pushed her chair back from the table and crossed her unbelievably long, golden legs in a gesture of impatience—she wasn’t
used to being slowed down.

“My husband, Irving Zimmerman, uh, my ex-husband Irving Zimmerman, well, he was my husband at the time—”

“Yuh, got that,” Capra prompted, trying not to look at her legs, or her anything, trying to look her straight in the mauve-tinted
glasses.

“Irving…
we
… needed a fire hydrant. We’d just bought the Benedict Canyon house, the big one, but it wasn’t big enough for Irving, so
he wanted to add on. When he applied for the permits they told him he had to put in a fire hydrant, because of a new city
ordinance that covered hillside building. Or, since the property next door already
had
a fire hydrant, if we could get an easement from the owners, whom we hadn’t met yet, an easement to use
their
fire hydrant if there was a fire, then we wouldn’t have to put one in.”

“Uh-huh,” Maxi deadpanned. Ordinarily, either she or Capra would make the teller cut to the chase, but eyeing her boss’s rapt
expression, she guessed that this particular teller could take all afternoon and it’d be fine with Pete.

“Well, the fire hydrant turned out to be a whole lot more than just a fire hydrant, because they said we’d have to widen the
driveway so a fire truck could get up it and another fire truck could come down at the same time, and that meant we’d have
to tear out the walls, and a bunch of trees, and all the lights, and resurface the driveway, and put in a wider electric gate—anyhow,
the whole thing was going to cost about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Capra whistled. A quarter-million bucks for a fire hydrant!
That was twice what his
house
was worth. Pete Capra was still concentrating on not looking at this woman below the neck.

“Now, it’s not as if Irving couldn’t afford his own fire hydrant,” she was saying, “but he saw no reason to pay for one if
he could get one for free. That makes sense, right?”

That made sense to Capra.

“So,” Taryn Zimmerman went on, “Irving invited our new neighbors, Jack Nathanson and Janet Orson, to come over for a barbecue,
and Irving put some steaks on the grill, and popped some champagne, and we ate, and we drank, and we talked about Jack’s movies
and the shopping centers Irving built, and we got a little drunk and we were having a great time, and Irving put his arm around
Jack and told him we needed an easement to hook onto his fire hydrant.”

“And then what?” asked Capra, who was trying to stay focused on the narrative.

“And Jack said sure, just get a letter over to his business manager, and he gave Irving Mr. Bloom’s number, and he said Sam
would take care of it.”

“But he didn’t?” Maxi was trying to move this along.

“Well, what really happened, I mean much later, when, like I said, I was sleeping with Jack, and that’s a whole other story,
though it does have a lot to do with—”

Does this totally red woman know that she’s talking about my ex-husband?
Maxi wondered. She thought about getting up and leaving Capra alone with her; she had things to do.

“Anyway,” Taryn Zimmerman was saying, “what Jack told me much later, like in bed, was that the next morning he called Sam
Bloom and told him some asshole next door wanted something to do with a fire hydrant, so write him a letter and say that you’ve
reviewed the situation and you’re sorry but you have to turn him down.”

“And your husband knew that?” Capra asked.

“Well, no, but when he got that letter from Sam Bloom, he
couldn’t believe it. He ran over to Jack’s house waving the letter and saying he didn’t get it, it was no skin off Jack’s
ass if someone signed on to his damn fire hydrant, it wouldn’t cost
him
anything—Irving couldn’t believe that his new best friend next door was not falling all over himself to do him this favor,
like people usually did. Jack just laughed at him, which
really
pissed Irving off! Jack said, ‘Sorry, buddy, I gotta do what my business manager tells me; that’s what I pay him for,’ and
Irving knew that was a crock of shit.”

Irving Zimmerman was a name well known in the high-end commercial construction business, and also in police business. Years
back, Maxi had investigated a tip from a source in the Department of Building and Safety, of all unlikely places, that a certain
building inspector, who had turned up missing and was never found, was planted upright in the southwest abutment of the shopping
center at Westwood and Pico that was built by Zimmerman Construction, a building inspector who had held up the project and
pissed Zimmerman off. Irving Zimmerman had a reputation as a man you didn’t want to piss off.

“So you think your ex-husband killed Jack Nathanson because he wouldn’t give him an easement to his fire hydrant,” Capra said,
acting as though he thought this was totally plausible.

“No, no, it goes on….” That’s what Maxi was afraid of.

“Irving shelled out the money, had the engineering done, and put in the hydrant, built our new wing, two bedrooms with baths,
an office and a gym, and he was mad as hell the whole time, and he never talked to Jack Nathanson again—”

“But obviously
you
did,” Capra observed with a smile.

“Like I said, that’s a whole other story, but I’m getting to that….” Maxi wasn’t interested in a story about yet another woman
her ex-husband had slept with; Capra was rubbing his hands together—he couldn’t wait to hear this woman tell it.

“Well, it just sort of happened,” she said. “You know how those things happen….”

“Yeah,” Capra encouraged her. Maxi was ashamed for both of them.

“Anyway, long story short, one day Irving was at work, and I’m out by the pool getting some sun with no top on—I do that so
there’s no tan line—” Capra ran a finger under his collar.

“And I hear a noise, and I look up, and there’s Jack Nathanson standing there, and I ask him how did
you
get in here, and he grinned like he does, uh, did, and said the gardener must have left the gate in the chain-link open,
and I was so surprised to see him I forgot to cover up my tits, and, well, it was kinda too late by then anyway, and he said
hey,
you and 1
shouldn’t be enemies, and he told me Janet was at work, and you know, we talked, and he said he knew a director who had a
little part for someone exactly like me in his next picture, was I interested, and one thing led to another.…”

“So what happened?” asked Capra.

“Well, we had a thing going, usually in the afternoons. Janet was always working. He said he didn’t have sex much with her
anyway—”

Yup, that sounded like something Jack would tell a woman,
Maxi thought.

“So how long did this go on with you and Nathanson?” Capra asked.

“Until he died,” she said. “Well, till the week before he died, actually. Anyway, the point I’m getting at—”

Oh
good, the point,
thought Maxi.

“Irving came home early one afternoon. I mean, he
never
came home early. He was always late, if anything. But one day, he just walks into the guest room; that’s where we used to
do it. We couldn’t do it at Jack’s house because Carlotta, his housekeeper, was always there, and sometimes Gia and Ginny.
Ginny was Gia’s nanny at Jack’s house—are you following this? So anyway,
Irving comes home early and asks Mrs. Hicks where I am, and the bitch tells him I’m in the guest room, so he walks in, and
there we are….”

“And?” Capra prompted. Maxi noticed beads of perspiration on his forehead.

“And he doesn’t say word one to Jack, who gets up and puts on his clothes and leaves. He says to me, ‘Get dressed and pack
a suitcase.’ I say, ‘Why, where are we going?’ And he says, ‘We are going to a hotel, and I am gonna drop
you
off, and I’ll send the rest of your stuff wherever, and my lawyer will be in touch with you.’

“And he practically drags me into our bedroom, and he says, ‘Get dressed,’ and
he
threw a bunch
of
my things in a suitcase, all the wrong clothes of course, nothing went with anything, and he shoved me and the bag in the
Range Rover, and I said, ‘Aren’t we gonna
talk
about this?’ Like didn’t it ever occur to him that he was forty years older than me and the three-minute sex didn’t exactly
get it done for me?”

“So now you’re divorced,” Maxi put in, “and you two are not friends.” It was nearly four, and Maxi had to prepare for the
six o’clock broadcast.

“Friends!” She spat it out. “Oh, I’m so
sure!
He made me sign a prenuptial agreement. It said if the marriage broke up before five years I’d get a hundred grand as a rehabilitative
settlement, plus everything I had when we got married, and I had a green 1982 Toyota Corolla when we got married, so he had
his people go out and buy me a frigging green ’82 Corolla! It’s parked right out there in your lot, that prick.”

“So you think he killed Jack Nathanson,” Maxi interrupted, wearying of this. She closed her notebook and stood, indicating
an end to the meeting, at least for her.

“No, I don’t think he killed Jack. He wouldn’t actually
kill
a guy. But he sure as hell could
have
it done, and he was
majorly
pissed at Jack Nathanson, and if I understand my ex at all, it would take a lot less than—”

“So you and Nathanson had a thing going,” Capra cut in. “You must miss him, huh?”

“Sure, I miss him,” the ex-Mrs. Zimmerman said. “He was gonna get me in the movies.”

C
abello and Johnson watched the dazzling Taryn Zimmerman sashay out the door. Having elicited no interest in her theory as
to who killed Jack Nathanson from reporter Maxi Poole, she’d driven from Channel Six in Burbank to the Hall of Justice in
downtown L.A. to tell it to the detectives on the case.

“So what do you think?” asked Johnson.

“I think I need oxygen!” Cabello grinned.

“Yah, yah,” Johnson said dismissively. He usually got a kick out of Cabello’s raging Italian hormones, but he had no time
for them now. “So did Irving Zimmerman have Jack Nathanson done?”

“If you’re seriously asking that, I’d like to sell ya the Hollywood Sign,” Mike shot back. “But yikes! What a major babe!”

“Nathanson had a
lot
of major babes in his tent,” Johnson said.

“Yeah, Debra Angelo, jeez!” Cabello offered, fanning himself. “And I wouldn’t mind having Maxi Poole between the sheets….”

“What
about
Maxi Poole?” Jon threw out. “We know she was at the murder scene. During the murder.”

“No,” Mike countered, “we know that dipstick actress
thinks
she saw her at the murder scene. She might just be covering her own ass. Besides, there are a lot of black Corvettes around
town.”

“You know,” Jon said thoughtfully, “I don’t think Debra Angelo is a dipstick at all. I get the feeling all of that’s an act,
that she knows exactly what she’s doing, and exactly what she’s saying. And if she says she saw Maxi Poole driving away from
her house that day, I get the feeling she saw Maxi Poole driving away. She wasn’t exactly bursting to tell us that, remember?
Do those two know each other?”

“They’d have to. While Maxi Poole was married to Nathanson, Debra Angelo would have picked up and dropped off the kid.”

“Oh, right, and they probably swapped notes on the kid, did their mother thing. Do they like each other?”

“Who knows?” Mike said.

“Still, I’d like to hear Maxi Poole tell us where she was last Saturday afternoon. Should we haul her in?”

“Uhh… What do
you
think, partner?”

“I think… I think… Lemme bounce this off you,” Johnson tossed out. “I think no, not now, not yet. We know she’s not going
anywhere, and we know she’s digging, for real or pretend, and we know she’s good. And she’s real close to the people in Nathanson’s
world. And the second we bring her in, the station’s gonna take her off the story. I can’t believe Capra hasn’t done it already.
I say let’s sit on it for now and see if she turns anything up.”

“Oh, right,” Mike sneered. “Like she’s gonna call us and tell us what she digs up.”

“You’ve got a TV.” Jon grinned. “We’ll see it on the Six O’clock News!”

M
axi sat in a back booth at Land’s End, a small café on Pacific Coast Highway, drinking coffee, scanning the L.A.
Times,
watching the door, trying to stay awake. It was 6:38 on Saturday morning, she was exhausted, and Debra was late. She’d managed
about four hours’ sleep between falling into bed the night before and falling into her car this morning for the hourlong drive
to the beach. Debra had called—they
had
to meet, she’d said, but wouldn’t say what was so urgent.

Maxi and Debra belonged to an exclusive club, whose membership roster was now permanently closed: former wives of Jack Nathanson.
They’d shared some laughs at his expense, of course, but they also culled surprising insights from each other. It helped,
because both women, different though they were, had the same misgivings about themselves when it came to Jack. Jack Nathanson
wasn’t a man you could dismiss from your consciousness when you signed the divorce decree.

Debra had just arrived and was climbing down from her jaunty vermilion-red Jeep, in exercise sweats and dark glasses, trying
to keep a low profile. Still, she turned heads when she walked into the half-empty coffee shop. That was Debra. She slid into
the booth opposite Maxi and took out a cigarette.

“I thought you quit,” Maxi said. “This time was for good.”

“Yes, darling, but it’s better than doing drugs, don’t you agree?” She lit up.

“They’ll make you put it out,” Maxi protested. Debra shrugged and took a deep drag.

“So how goes it?”

“Oh, splendid,” Debra returned, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling. A few other diners shot her a look, but when she met each
of them squarely in the eye and gave them a little nod and a smile, they all smiled back sheepishly and returned to their
breakfasts, content with a personal acknowledgment from the extraordinary Debra Angelo.