The Reporter (6 page)

“Oh, splendid. Everybody in this town thinks I gunned down my ex. I guess it’s a short leap from I
should
have to I
must
have. Meantime, my phone isn’t exactly ringing off the hook—the industry doesn’t relish stopping production because one of
its stars is sent up the river.”

Maxi smiled. Debra went for the comic take even in the worst of circumstances. “So why are we here?” she asked her.

“Because I didn’t want to talk about this on the phone, Maxi. I was brought in for questioning again, Marvin was with me,
and they grilled me again,
intensely,
on everything I saw, heard, and did last Saturday. I told them I saw
you
driving away from my house right after Jack got shot.”

Maxi blanched.

“What the hell were you doing there, Maxi?”

“I didn’t know you saw me—”

“Well, I did. I didn’t tell them at first, but goddammit, Max, I’m out on bail on a murder rap! I could go to prison for ten
years! These guys aren’t fooling around. I’m terrified,” she breathed, grabbing Maxi’s arm. “So talk to me. What were you
doing at my house last Saturday?”

“I was running errands, and I was going to drop off that computer spelling program I ordered for Gia.”

“So how come you didn’t call? You always call.”

“I just happened by the store and stopped in on a chance, and they’d just received it. I thought if I ran it out to you before
Jack came for Gia they could work on it over the weekend. Jack was always great with helping Gia learn—”

“So why didn’t you just drop it off at Jack and Janet’s place? That would have been a hell of a lot closer.”

“It didn’t occur to me.”

Debra looked dubious. “So you decided to drive all the way out to Malibu with it without even calling on the way? Let me know
you were coming? You have a cell phone, Maxi.”

“I was going to call, but you know you can’t get a signal down through Malibu canyon, and when I broke out at the coast I
was just about there, so I didn’t bother.”

“You knew Jack was coming at two. You knew he was never late. And neither of us liked running into him if we could help it.
So you got to my house precisely when you knew he’d be there? Come on, Maxi.”

“Hey, if I saw him it would’ve been, ‘Hi, Jack,’ a smooch for Gia, ‘here’s the speller that works with her Mac, the instructions
are inside, happy spelling,’ and out of there—I had nails at three back in town.”

Debra’s eyes narrowed behind her shades. “What was the big deal about rushing it out right away?” she asked. “We’ve been waiting
for that spelling program for three weeks.”

“Debra, you told me she flunked two spelling quizzes that week, remember? If I didn’t get it to her that weekend, she’d have
had to wait another week. You know I can only do errands on weekends, and you can’t depend on the mail.” Debra was interrogating
her, and Maxi didn’t like it.

“Okay, so out you came with the speller, all the way to the house. So why didn’t you come in?”

“Because when I was driving down your street I heard sirens behind me, so I pulled over to let whatever it was pass. Turns
out
it was the Malibu sheriffs, as you well know, and I watched them screech to a halt in front of your house! So I just got out
of there.”

“That’s not you, Maxi. You’re a reporter—you don’t take off when you see police action. You go find out what’s going on. More
important, you don’t run when a friend might be in trouble. We
are
still friends, aren’t we?”

“Well, I saw you at the door letting the deputies in, so I knew you were okay, and I knew Jack would never hurt Gia, so I
thought maybe something was going on between you and Jack, and I didn’t want to be a part of it. So I took off.”

Debra digested this. “Okay,” she said slowly, “all very innocent. So why didn’t you tell the police?”

“Oh God, Debra, I know that was stupid, but I didn’t know you saw me. I didn’t think anybody saw me. And when I heard the
news, heard what happened, I freaked. I knew it would
not look good
if they found out I was there when he was shot. It looks bad enough as it is.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“Debra, I have not told you
half
the financial horror stories that have been landing on my head.”

“You mean the back taxes?”

“I mean the income taxes, I mean the capital gains tax on the house he sold before he moved in with me, I mean another million-dollar
signature loan that turned up, and on, and on, and on—it was looking like I might be working for his creditors for the rest
of my life.”

“So you figured they’d think
you
killed him?” Debra asked incredulously.

“Well,
somebody
killed him.” It was Maxi’s turn to look closely at Debra.

“It wasn’t me, Maxi.”

“And it wasn’t me.” The two women sat in silence now, and
Maxi could see that behind the dark glasses Debra was weeping. “I am so scared,” she whispered, tamping out her cigarette.

Maxi took her hand. She had marveled that Debra had the mettle to talk to the press, video and print, tell how outraged she
was, how she and Jack had made peace, how Gia needed her daddy, it was shock enough that her father was dead, and now they
were actually blaming her mother,
think
of it, she’d tell them, choking up. It was a vigorous front, and an exhausting acting job, she’d confided to Maxi. That’s
why she’d wanted to meet at this early hour, and at this out-of-the-way place—to avoid them.

“Max,” she said, “if something happens to me… I mean, if I have to go away, you know, even for a little while, I want you
to take Gia. Will you? I don’t want her in Italy with my mom and dad. I want her to continue with her school, and her friends,
with no more disruptions—”

“Of course I will, you
know
I will, Deb,” Maxi cut in.

But there was no stopping her. “There’s only you, Maxi, and Gia adores you, and you’d be good for her….” Debra was sobbing
now.

“Shh, shh, shh,” Maxi cautioned, squeezing her hand, looking around to see if people were noticing, and of course they were.
Everyone, especially in the tight little community of Malibu, knew who they both were, and knew that movie star Jack Nathanson,
their mutual ex-husband, had been murdered.

A
wful!” Maxi exclaimed aloud to no one. Driving across town on Monday night, a gigantic billboard perched across from Tower
Records on the Sunset Strip had caught her eye, a huge ad showing a pair of female larger-than-life legs in fishnet stockings,
spread apart, elongated in five-inch heels. Atop these legs, a black leather miniskirt cupped just under the butt of the woman
we couldn’t see. And between the legs crouched the Jack Nathanson character, the detective, looking up at her. It was an ad
for Jack’s movie, his last,
Serial Killer.

She’d read on the wires that the studio, in the wake of the star’s murder, was going to bring the picture out earlier than
planned. Maxi knew the movie; she was married to Jack when they started shooting it. There was no female character like that
in the film, no leggy sexpot in a leather micro-mini. The woman on the billboard did not exist in
Serial Killer.
Maxi looked up at it again. Large text beside the sleek pair of legs read:
THE LAST TIME YOU WILL EXPERIENCE A NEW JACK NATHANSON THRILLER
!

Maxi winced. Beyond tasteless. This exploitive publicity so soon after Jack’s murder had to be the work of the notorious Alan
Bronstein, Monogram’s head of production. Bronstein—brilliant, charming, and a touch sinister by reputation—was coiner
of the credo “It’s not how you play the game, but whether you open at number one.” He had met the young Janet Orson when she
was the new “girl” in the steno pool back when they were both at Fox. He’d been her protector and big brother, and the one
who’d encouraged her to become an agent. And she turned around and brought a lot of hot stars and great scripts his way. A
symbiotic relationship. Diller and Von Furstenburg. And it was common knowledge in this company town that Bronstein was, and
had been for years, in love with Janet Orson.

If it weren’t for Janet, industry gossip had it, Bronstein wouldn’t have
looked
at a Jack Nathanson movie. The two men had clashed famously several times through the years. Bronstein hated Nathanson, and
he especially hated that the brash, charismatic actor had married the woman he loved. Also, Bronstein was a businessman, and
Jack Nathanson hadn’t made a hit movie in ten years. That Monogram was distributing
Serial Killer,
Maxi knew, was strictly a gift for Janet.

Alan Bronstein was thinking about Janet Orson on the drive over Coldwater canyon to his lunch meeting at Mortons, the restaurant
where he and Janet had had a long-standing habit of having dinner together on Thursday nights. When Janet met Jack Nathanson,
Alan had warned her not to get involved with him. This was a bad guy, Alan had told her repeatedly, citing atrocities, stories
about how badly Nathanson had treated people in the course of business or pleasure. But Janet was not to be dissuaded. Then
came her call saying that Jack didn’t want her to have those Thursday night dinners with him anymore, because he wanted that
time with her himself.

Soon after, Janet Orson became the third Mrs. Jack Nathanson. For a long time Bronstein had no contact with her, and that
hurt. Until the day she turned up at his office unannounced. He’d surprised himself at how choked up he became. And then she
laid it on him. Jack’s production company needed
a distributor for
Serial Killer,
and she wanted Alan to take the project on.

“Really!” Alan had said, raising his eyebrows. “But Jack doesn’t even
talk
to me. Why would he want me bringing out his picture?”

He would, she’d told him, and she didn’t have to explain why. Word was out that the picture was a dog, and nobody wanted to
touch it. But Alan Bronstein could never say no to Janet Orson.

She’d looked so small in his office, sitting opposite him in one of the big leather club chairs, Janet gamely standing by
her man. Bronstein, who had always been in the industry gossip pipeline, knew exactly what was going on in that marriage,
what he’d known was bound to go on, because Jack Nathanson was an animal who wouldn’t change. He was cheating on her in Vegas,
partying with Sammy Minnetti and the good old boys when he’d go there to gamble or see a fight; he’d cheat on her on movie
locations; he was even doing it right under her nose with some tough hooker disc jockey, Bronstein had heard.

He worried about Janet. He worried about Jack bringing home diseases. He worried that Janet would be publicly humiliated.
And he worried about her assets, worried that being married to Jack, who was rumored to be pretty much tapped out, her money
would go out a lot quicker than it came in. Somebody, he’d vowed to himself that day, had to stop Jack Nathanson.

He pulled into the parking lot at Mortons now, and a young parking attendant rushed over. “Hi, Billy,” Bronstein said, getting
out of his car. “Watch the doors, will you?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Bronstein.” The young man beamed, jumping into the black Porsche Turbo. Bronstein was a regular at Mortons,
one of that industry in-spot’s more colorful customers.

Bronstein was
connected,
the stories went. He had no trouble finding Mafia money to fund his projects if he needed it, people said. Word was that
Bronstein had even killed a man, that he was
taking a meeting with a certain mob figure who was investing in a certain movie, and in some way there were drugs involved,
and the gangster turned up dead that night, shot in his own den on his own green plaid sofa, which they showed on the television
news. But there was no record anywhere that he had been meeting with Alan Bronstein that night, and Bronstein had flown to
Vegas and gotten a room at Bally’s, where the night manager was an old friend and predated his registration by a day. In a
bit of revisionist history, the story went, Alan Bronstein had checked into Bally’s in Las Vegas at ten o’clock at night,
and Tony “Ears” Ergatti was killed in Los Angeles sometime after midnight.

If Billy was going to be denting doors that afternoon, he was not going to dent the doors of Alan Bronstein’s Porsche!

M
axi had never seen this enormous villa on Benedict Canyon Drive, where, for the past year, her ex-husband had lived with his
new wife. Janet Orson had called and asked if she’d like to have the two lovely pieces of furniture back that she’d given
to Jack in their divorce. She wanted to give Maxi a chance to reclaim them, Janet had said, and she suggested that Maxi come
by and see if there was anything else of hers in the jumble that Jack had amassed, before all of it went to the auction house
tomorrow. Curious, Maxi had ducked out of the newsroom at lunchtime and driven over the canyon.

Maxi didn’t know Janet well, though she had done several interviews with her through the years. She’d called Janet a few times
since her marriage to Jack to say she’d just found some marvelous pictures of Jack in a drawer, or some books of his that
he might want, and she was sending them over, that kind of thing. She’d always found Janet amiable and courteous.

And Maxi was fond of those two pieces of hers, a Winchester walnut chest of drawers with a serpentine front and carved feet,
and a George Bullock mahogany collectors’ cabinet with beautiful inlays that had fifty narrow file drawers. Jack had used
them at their house—the chest had been filled with his under
wear and the cabinet with his working files—so she’d told him to keep them. Now, she thought, she might as well have them
back.

Carlotta let her in, and Maxi embraced the sweet-natured woman. She had always loved Carlotta Ricco, who’d taken such good
care of Jack and his family, all his families. Jack used to joke that Maxi married him to get Carlotta. Standing in the foyer
now, Maxi peered into the massive living room at furniture and artwork she had lived with in
her
home in what seemed like another life.