The Reporter (8 page)

“Here’s Usher, with ‘You Remind Me,’ she breathed into the mike. “This one’s for Linda, comin’ atcha from Steve. He says he’s
your man, Linda; he loves ya, baby….”

Where was
her
man? No more man. Going on midnight and her lights were nearly out. Just fifteen more minutes, then collapse city. Well,
drive the clunker home and then collapse. Good thing there wasn’t much traffic this late, couldn’t handle it tonight….

Came the day his second marriage broke up, hallelujah, it was Zahna’s turn. He moved into a rental house in Bel Air, and she
had a clear shot now. For the first time in the two years they’d had together,
she
could go to
his
house. When his kid was at her mother’s, they’d get stoned, romp around naked, ball each other’s brains out, and sleep till
noon the next day in
his
bed. Those days were nirvana.

But they weren’t for long. Jack would go for weeks without seeing her. When he’d finally take her call, he’d complain that
he’d been really busy. One midnight, after she got off the air and was hurting bad, she drove over to his house, like he used
to show up at her house in his married days. “Just took a chance, babe,” he’d say. His big Spanish manse was all lit up—it
looked like a party was going on. She pressed the bell.

“Who is it?” came his annoyed voice over the intercom.

“Surprise—it’s your Zahna. I just took a chance, cuz I’ve got some very good blow—”

“I’m asleep, hon; got an early call.”

“Oh, come on, half an hour.
I’ll
put you to sleep, stud. I came allaway over the friggin’ canyon—”

“Can’t do it, too beat; call you tomorrow, babe.” Click. Over and out.

A couple of weeks later, a friend told her she’d seen him at a Beverly Hills restaurant—he was with that agent Janet Orson
and another couple. He was still having sex with Zahna every now and then. No restaurants, no dinners with friends, no plays,
no concerts, no gala parties with the movie crowd—just sex. He just wanted to be alone with her, he’d say, not out at some
boring hoo-ha making small talk with people he didn’t care about; c’mon, baby, suck my dick, pretty please….

She asked him about Janet Orson. Janet Orson was his new agent, he’d said. It was business.

Then she read in the
L.A. Times
that Janet Orson and Jack Nathanson got married in the Caribbean. But two weeks after that he was calling her again, with
his “Let’s get together, babe, I really miss you, I want to get it on with you.” What
she
wanted was his balls cut off and served up on a plate.

Still, she had sex with him every time he came calling, even when he started bringing Clio around. He’d phoned her one night
at the station and said he was coming over to her house when she got off, and he had a fabulous surprise for her. She soared
through her show, fantasizing that the surprise meant the end of Janet Orson and the real beginning of Jack and Zahna, or
even that Janet was going out of town for a month. But the surprise was Clio.

Zahna was waiting when he rang the bell, and she rushed to the door and pulled it open to see… Jack on her doorstep holding
Clio by the elbow, both of them grinning. Clio was a lanky, leggy, exotic-looking black woman who worked at a dubbing house
in Studio City. She headed right for Zahna, put both hands on her cheeks, and said, “We’re gonna have some fun, girlfriend!”

“Wait, wait, wait…” Jack laughed, and ushered them both into the bedroom, where he popped the champagne he was carrying.

“I’m going to get some glasses, ladies.” He beamed. “Now don’t start without me.” Zahna sat on the bed, trying to absorb what
was going on, while Clio stood three feet in front of her and began to strip, slowly, down to black-lace bra and garter belt.
She
was touching herself, sensuously lingering on her nipples, when Jack came back into the room with three of the champagne flutes
he’d bought for Zahna. He flipped on the stereo system, and Tina Turner’s lusty voice filled the room while he poured the
wine. Zahna was already intensely coked out.
What the hell,
she thought;
this could be fun.

But he
did
love his Zahna best, loved her only, she knew. Clio was just another kinky diversion, and that was one of the things that
made him the most exciting man she’d ever known.

She also knew that he’d just married Janet for business reasons, that he needed Janet Orson and her connections right now
to help get his career out of stall, and when that happened he would divorce her like he had the other two and he would marry
his Zahna. Otherwise, why was he still seeing her? Why had he never
stopped
seeing her, never stopped
needing
her?

Zahna shook out of her reverie as the station clock came up on midnight.
Oh yeah,
she thought.
Turned out
that
was a crock.

M
eg Davis turned her small sports car west onto Santa Monica Boulevard toward the ocean, headed for Malibu. It was a week and
a day since Jack Nathanson’s funeral, and she still couldn’t stop the flashbacks. Driving stiff-backed, teeth clenched, a
vise grip on the wheel, she tried to keep the thoughts from coming. She turned on the radio, punched in a heavy-metal station,
turned the volume up high. But still, she couldn’t push the waking nightmares out of her head.

She was ten years old again, on the set of
Black Sabbat.
It was late summer, and often above 100 degrees in the Massachusetts countryside that was meant to look like the Salem of
1692. She would spend hours clamped in the wooden pillory while extras heaved huge Styrofoam stones, dipped in slimy mud and
ooze, that bounced off her head and face. The crew worked in shorts and sandals, T-shirts and halter tops, while Meg endured
the stifling heat for hours on end in Puritan garb—a floor-length gown of coarse black wool, her head covered with a heavy
wimple drawn and tied in folds under her chin—sweating for real, a good little girl, cooperating, getting it right.

Jack Nathanson was the star, playing her character’s father, a minister, a once lofty clergyman of New England’s Colonial
days
who now stood accused of being a warlock and harboring a coven of witches, including his beautiful wife and his sweet daughter.

Mr. Nathanson had told her mother that he could get a performance out of Meg that the world would remember if she’d let him
work with her every day, just the two of them. After lunch was the best time, he’d said, because union rules dictated that
the crew had to break for an hour. A golden opportunity, her mother had told her—this brilliant actor had taken a personal
interest in Meggie’s career. “Let’s change Davidson to Davis,” he’d said to her mother. “Davis is better. Meg Davis,” he’d
pronounced. And Sally agreed. Jack Nathanson knew best.

Meg’s almost daily private sessions in the star’s trailer were exciting at first. Mr. Nathanson would crouch in front of her
and act out the scenes they had coming up. “Now
you
do it.
Scream
at me,” he’d shout. “Spit in my face. Do it. Meg—spit in my face!”

“I
can’t,
Mr. Nathanson,” the good little girl would say. “I just couldn’t do that….”

Once he’d swooped her up, carried her to a chair, sat down, set her on his lap, glowered into her eyes, and said,
“Do it, Meg
—
spit in my face!”

“I
can’t,
Mr. Nathanson—” She was crying now.

He softened. “Trust me, Meg. Call me ‘Father.’ Do what I tell you—it’ll help us play our scenes.” He shifted her on his lap,
took hold of her squarely by the shoulders, put his face inches from hers, and said,
“Now
…
spit
…
in
“
my
…
face.”

She spit, and she cried; he shouted “More!” and she tried. He demanded “Call me ‘Father’!” and she sobbed, “Fa-a-a-ther,”
and spit, and dribbled, until finally he said, “That’s enough for today,” lifting her off his lap, wiping her face with his
hand. “Very good, Meg,” he’d praised with that wonderful grin of his, and scooted her off with a pat on the fanny to get into
makeup and get ready for their next scene.

He’d repeatedly told her that she must never discuss their exercises
—not with her mother, not with anyone. She didn’t. Certainly none of the grown-ups objected to the closed-door sessions. “This
costume looks perfect, Meg,” the wardrobe mistress would say. “Now run along—Mr. Nathanson is waiting to run lines with you.”
And her performance reflected Jack Nathanson’s personal coaching—the dailies were powerful, everyone said; young Meg Davis
was brilliant: in the part.

Sometimes she even liked it when Mr. Nathanson touched her, or urged her to touch him. But she was confused. Was what they
were doing dirty? Or was this just what movie people did? A ten-year-old couldn’t know for sure, but she couldn’t help feeling
that she harbored an awful secret.

Meg pressed down on the accelerator. She had to get to the child. She knew that ten-year-old Gia was the embodiment of herself
at that age before the maligning spirits had ensnared her own soul. Gia was still an innocent, but her father lurked with
the baneful specters now, the living dead, and would corrupt the daughter as he did herself if she wasn’t shielded. Meg had
to watch over Gia and pray; it was clearly her responsibility.

She made the turn onto Seashore Drive, where Gia lived with her mother in Malibu. She was always at her mother’s now, since
her father was taken to hell. Meg pulled up and parked a block away from their house. Tote bag slung over her shoulder, she
hurried down the public accessway onto the sand, and carefully spread out a lightweight blanket at the foot of a jagged, blackened
rock formation. There she settled, her back to the ocean, to watch the house. Gia would be getting home from school soon.

A relentless, white-hot sun moved lower in the sky on its afternoon passage over the ocean. Meg was calm, still, her eyes
steady on the rambling, three-story weathered gray beach house with the white trim.

Finally, the back door opened and Gia burst out onto the sundeck, the housekeeper right behind her carrying a tray with
drinks. Setting her bookbag on the table, Gia sat down and sipped her drink. Her mother came out and joined her. Peering from
under a wide-brimmed hat, Meg kept her gaze fixed squarely on the girl, focusing on her, concentrating on her soul. If she
could stay centered, she could keep the unearthly spirits from permeating Gia’s being, but she could feel the antithetic tugging
of the child’s father, a menacing, potent pull from hell.

After a few minutes, the girl bounded into the house, then reappeared with her dog on a leash. Then mother and daughter came
down the steps and onto the sand. Meg followed their progress, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses, her attention riveted
on the child’s blazing aura, which she could see emanating from her in an increasingly vivid flare as she came closer.

Do
not inhabit this young soul; do not consume this child’s essence,
Meg chanted silently as they passed by, the youngster looking over at her curiously now, her spirited Irish setter tugging
her forward.

“Come on, darling,” she could hear the mother urging. “You mustn’t stare at people; it isn’t nice,” and she nudged her lovingly
along on their walk toward the surf.

Meg felt the familiar pain swelling in her chest and the fever rising in her head, her blood pounding as she repeated her
invocation, half aloud now. “Gia must not die for my sins.”

Y
ou’re covering the auction tomorrow, Maxi,” Pete Capra said again.

“Come on, Pete,” Maxi appealed. “You know this one’s too close to home for me.”

“That’s exactly why I want you on it—you know what every piece is, where he got it, and why; you can bring behind-the-scenes
stories to an otherwise boring furniture sale.”

Maxi looked at him as if she didn’t believe what she’d just heard him say. “You really have no heart, do you, Pete?” she said
softly.

“Oh, stop it, Maxi—you were over the guy long before you divorced him. What’s the big deal?”

Maxi could only shake her head. “Pete,” she said, “there’ll be movie stars there, there’ll be celebrities, people from Jack’s
world. Put Jensen on it. He’s the entertainment reporter.”

“This isn’t
entertainment,
Maxi. This is
crime.”

It was Friday afternoon. The newsroom was buzzing with preparation for the early news block, and Maxi sat at her computer
in her glass-walled office, writing a story for the Six O’clock News. Pete Capra had barged in and was looming over her desk,
waving some wire copy, bent on assigning her to
cover the auction of the late actor Jack Nathanson’s effects at Sotheby’s in Beverly Hills the next day. Her ex-husband’s
effects.

“The only crime at the auction tomorrow will be Sotheby’s charging big money for Jack’s bad-taste stuff,” she told her boss
now, trying to lighten the mood, trying to get herself off the assignment. “People love to see big-time celebrities wasting
their money—it’s an Eric Jensen story.”

“You know Jensen’s a fucking prima donna—he won’t work on weekends. It’s in his contract.”

“Well, it’s in
my
contract too, boss. Check it out!”

“I know, I know, but you never give me any of that shit. Whatever has to be done, you do it.”

“Not this time. Put one of the general-assignment reporters on it.”

“Maxi, I want
you
on it.”

“Why,
Pete?”

Capra threw his head back in exasperation. “Because of the big picture. This is a
murder
story. A big, fat, high-profile, star-studded, scandal-ridden, loud, screeching, L.A. murder case. The
world
is interested in it. And a lot of the players will show up at that auction. Who knows what you’ll see, what you’ll hear,
what you’ll learn? Nobody on staff would be able to look at that scene tomorrow and see it with your insights. Just forget
he was your fucking husband for a day, okay?”