Bluff

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  “Hey, Brent, howya doin’? Fun party, huh?” Sklar says, ushering Hobbs into the apartment.

  Hobbs has been to Sklar’s apartment on several occasions when the two men had information for each other they didn’t dare discuss over the phone. Hobbs thinks of it as minimalist hell, but he envies the wealth it represents. He can’t help comparing it to his own humble digs in a shabby, rent-controlled brownstone. He wants to make some real money and now’s his big chance. The public can’t get enough of this scandal. Sunderland’s battered image is as shocking as a jackhammered face on Mount Rushmore. Hobbs knows if he plays his cards right, he’ll hit bestseller trifecta: a billionaire, a bimbo, and bigamy.

  Hobbs and Sklar sit in the living room and have coffee.

  “Dany’ll be out in a minute. So how do you know Magma?” Sklar asks.

  “I met her at some dinner.” Hobbs is purposely evasive. He never tells Sklar any more about his personal life than he has to.

  “So are you guys an item?” Sklar probes.

  “Not really.”

  “They call her Magma the Magpie, you know. She repeats everything she hears and makes up the rest. I wouldn’t take anything she says too seriously.”

  “You mean like the fact she fired you?”

  “I know she likes to tell people that. But, truthfully…? I had to let her go as a client.”

  “Really? How come?”

  “Because she doesn’t have enough money for my fees. I only took her as a favor to Jean. Can we speak frankly before Danya comes?”

  “Sure.” Hobbs takes out his notebook and pen.

  “Off the record?”

  Hobbs nods.

  “Truthfully…? Dany’s nervous about seeing you. The press hasn’t treated her too kindly, as you know.”

  “I can see that would be a concern,” Hobbs says, thinking of a recent New York Post cover featuring yet another grainy photo of Danya in a G-string, hanging off a pole, with the headline: BILLIONAIRE BIGAMIST’S BIMBO!

  “I told her you’re a good guy.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “Brent, is it fair to say I’ve been helpful to you in the past?”

  “It’s fair to say we’ve been helpful to each other,” Hobbs says.

  “Candidly…? I’m giving you the scoop of a lifetime here. You understand that, right? I’m counting on you to reciprocate.”

  Hobbs squints. “Reciprocate?”

  “I’ll spell it out for you, Brent. Jean Sunderland is a woman scorned who thinks that by trashing Danya in the public eye she’s gonna delay the consequences of legal steps that were taken by me during her husband’s lifetime at his own direction. Danya’s the sweetest kid you’re ever gonna meet. She’s not some slutty gold digger. It’s only fair the public hear her side of the story.”

  “Which is…?”

  “That she’s a innocent young woman who fell in love with a powerful man who fell in love with her and wanted to take care of her forever. Pure and simple.”

  Though Hobbs suspects there’s nothing simple about this story and even less that’s pure, he nods noncommittally. “I’m eager to meet her.”

  Sklar perks up. “And, right on cue, here she is now.”

  Danya is standing in the doorway, paused under an arc of light. Hobbs is struck by how young and fresh-faced she looks—nothing like her raunchy photos. Except for a hint of lip gloss, she’s wearing no makeup. Her thick dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Her gray jumpsuit is a not altogether successful attempt to play down her voluptuous curves. Tall and tan and young and lovely…The Girl From Ipanema incarnate, Hobbs thinks.

  “Dany, sweetheart! I was just talking about you. Come join us,” Sklar says, waving her in.

  Danya is hesitant. She eyes Hobbs warily as she sits down.

  “Hello, Mrs. Sunderland. I’m very sorry for your loss,” Hobbs says respectfully.

  “Thanks.” She’s clearly surprised and appreciative he called her Mrs. Sunderland.

  Hobbs studies the face that’s launched a thousand headlines. She’s not classically beautiful, but there’s a striking sensuality about her. Her teenage face and luscious body are a striking combination. To Hobbs, she is the quintessential “femme enfant,” the child woman who seems alluringly oblivious to her own charms even as she flaunts them. It’s easy to see why an old guy like Sunderland—or any guy, for that matter—would fall for her on the spot.

  Danya sips her coffee, peering at Hobbs over the rim of the mug. Their eyes meet. Her stare lingers. Hobbs wonders if she’s flirting with him or sizing him up, deciding if she trusts him enough to talk. He knows from experience that most people yearn to tell their stories. The trick will be how to get her started.

  “Danya… May I call you Danya?” Hobbs says.

  She shrugs. “Sure.”

  “Please call me Brent.” She nods like a biddable child. “So how did you and Mr. Sunderland meet?” Hobbs asks.

  Sklar jumps in. “Dany was a young, impressionable kid, trying to become a professional photographer. She was all alone in the world. She’s gorgeous so she got a job making the most money she could in order to pursue her dream. That job happened to be stripping. Are we supposed to condemn her for that? I mean, how sexist can you get?”

  Danya bows her head. Hobbs can’t tell if she’s embarrassed, upset, or what. All he knows is that she’s not going to open up to him as long as Sklar is there.

  “Burt, I think it’d be more effective if Danya told her story in her own words,” Hobbs says.

  “I agree. Dany, tell him in your own words.” Sklar leans back on the couch, crosses his arms, prepared to listen.

  Danya doesn’t say anything.

  “Go on, baby,” Sklar urges her. “Don’t be afraid of Hobbs here. He’s on your side…right, Hobbsy?” Sklar says with a wink.

  Danya sits in silence with her head bowed. Hobbs twiddles his thumbs. Sklar’s eyes dart back and forth between the two of them.

  “You two just gonna sit there? How are we gonna get this thing done?” Sklar says. “Go on, baby. Tell Brent how Sun seduced you. She had no idea he was married. If Jean wants to play that angle, we’ll sue her for defamation. Right, baby?”

  Danya rises abruptly and walks out.

  “That went well.” Hobbs puts away his notebook.

  “Wait,” Sklar says.

  Sklar finds Danya in the bedroom.

  “What’s going on, baby? Why won’t you talk to Hobbs?”

  “Because you won’t let me! You keep interrupting.”

  “I’m just trying to get you to open up, that’s all.”

  “I can’t talk with you sitting there. You make me nervous.”

  Sklar is wounded. “I make you nervous? Dany, honey…I’m doing all this for you.”

  “I feel embarrassed talking to him in front of you.”

  “You’re kidding. You know you can say anything you want in front of me. Truthfully, Dany…? I know more about you than you know about yourself.”

  “Then you give him the goddam interview!”

  “Calm down, sweetheart. Calm down. It’s important we get your story out there A.S.A.P. Brent’s just the man to do it.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Trust me. I do plenty for this guy. He’s wouldn’t dare screw me. What’s the matter? Don’t you like him?”

  “How the fuck would I know? I only know every time I open my mouth, you answer.”

  “Okay, okay…” Sklar says begrudgingly. “I’ll go in the other room if it makes you happy.”

  They go back into the living room. Sklar leaves Hobbs and Danya alone to talk, but tries to eavesdrop on their conversation. At one point he hears them discussing digital cameras. At another, Danya is telling him about her beloved Mooncat. Sklar automatically tunes out whenever that little sue
de rat is mentioned. Sklar is relieved that Danya and Hobbs seem to be hitting it off, although his jealousy is triggered when he hears them laughing together. After an hour or so, he can’t stand it anymore.

  He walks in and says, “Okay, time to break you guys up. Dany and I have an important three o’clock meeting. You need to get ready, sweetheart. Hobbsy, you all set?”

  “I think I’ve got what I need, thanks,” Hobbs says, rising.

  Hobbs gives Danya a courtly bow as he shakes her hand. “It’s been a pleasure, Danya. Here’s my card. If you think of anything else you might want to say, call me.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “To blog or not to blog, that is the question…”

  Hobbs is having a Hamlet moment.

  He’s back in his apartment, sitting at his computer, sipping a noonday Bloody Mary, obsessing over how to write up his interview with the enchanting, elusive Danya Dickert Sunderland. He needs to meet his self-imposed three o’clock deadline.

  Hobbs knows that the age of journalistic integrity has pretty much gone the way of all typewriters. It’s terrorist times out there. Hobbs once considered himself a “serious” writer, marching onto the publishing field in a red jacket with gold braid and a gleaming standard of integrity. He had contempt for those coonskin-capped frontiersmen of the Internet who jumped out of cyberspace posting any goddam thing they pleased, true or false. He knows now that people would rather read an entertaining lie than a boring truth. Who can maintain old standards in a war zone? He started his own blog. The public doesn’t want nice; they want vice. The sewers of corruption and desire hidden beneath the lives of the great and powerful are what really interests them. That’s why he deals with Burt Sklar, who feeds him salacious inside gossip in exchange for useful ink.

  Hobbs and Sklar have made similar deals before. But this story is gargantuan compared with all the others. Sklar gives him access to a key player if he writes a puff piece about her. Hobbs gets a mega book deal. Sklar gains some traction for Danya’s side of the story.

  Quid pro bimbo.

  Hobbs can see why Sunderland was so smitten with her. Still, he can’t quite understand why a rich and powerful guy like Sunderland would commit bigamy? Why not just have an affair? Why did Sunderland risk everything to marry Danya? Did she threaten to leave him? Was he so enamored that he couldn’t face losing her? What makes a well-known man like Sunderland commit such a reckless crime?

  Just for the hell of it, Hobbs Googles “Famous Bigamists.” A lot of Mormons come up, starting with Brigham Young. But Hobbs is more interested in the secular cases where people maintain secret second spouses until they die, or until someone outs them. He gets a chuckle out of what he finds.

  Who knew the writer Anais Nin was a bigamist? Female bigamists are rare, yet the celebrated author of Delta of Venus maintained two marriages for eleven years, schlepping back and forth between her first husband, a banker in New York, and her second husband, an ex-actor with the Trollopian name of Pole, in California. Hobbs chuckles to think that when Nin wrote: “Ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls!” she could have been on a plane flying from one husband to the other.

  Then there’s that super high-flyer, Charles Lindbergh, who loved Nazis as well as three German women (two of them sisters) while he was married to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, his talented wife who wrote, Gift From the Sea. Lindbergh wasn’t technically a bigamist, but he might as well have been, having maintained separate families on two continents. His wife never suspected a thing until he died and she found out her hero husband was actually the gift from hell.

  As for the jaunty old journalist and television personality, Charles Kuralt… He met Patricia Elizabeth Shannon when he was “On the Road” and promptly took her off the road and into his bed. They shacked up for thirty years in Montana with her kids from a previous marriage. The world was shocked to find out about his double life only after he died and Shannon sued his estate. Love has its limits.

  Now Sun Sunderland will be added to this list of consummate deceivers because of a comely stripper who stole his heart. Hobbs liked Danya when they talked. Despite her sexy vocation, she came across as a decent, not too bright beauty who fell in love with a powerful father figure who wanted to marry her. How could a girl in her position resist?

  As Hobbs goes over his notes, he starts to wonder if he’s been played by Danya. The fact that she didn’t tell him any romantic stories about Sunderland bothers him now more than it did at the time. Usually when people are in love, they can’t wait to harangue anyone who will listen with details about the relationship—particularly if the beloved has died and memories are all they have left.

  Hobbs was a captive, interested audience. Yet, curiously enough, Danya didn’t seem to want to talk about Sunderland. When he asked her how they met, she responded by asking him if he, himself, had ever experienced love at first sight, as though that answered his question. Now that he thinks of it, every time he asked her a question, she threw a question right back at him. He found himself talking more than he ever had in any interview he can remember. He now realizes Danya was interviewing him—not the other way around.

  Why?

  Did she really want to get to know him before she opened up to him? Or was she simply afraid of revealing herself? Maybe she didn’t really love Sunderland after all. Or maybe she was just nervous because Sklar was lurking in the background. Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a deeper story here—one she was reluctant or afraid to tell? Or, perhaps, one she’s eager to tell—but only to the right person. One thing Hobbs is sure of: Something’s roiling beneath the surface of this child woman. He can feel it.

  But a bargain’s a bargain, so Hobbs bangs out a short flattering piece about Danya, portraying her relationship with Sunderland as a Trilby-Svengali situation where innocent young Danya was hypnotized into doing everything the older, powerful Sunderland said. He throws in standard stuff about how difficult life was for her trying to make ends meet in order to pursue her dream of being a photographer. He sticks in that weird thing she begged him to say about her wearing her mom’s blue satin dress at her illegal wedding because her mom was looking down from heaven. “Please don’t forget to say it was blue satin,” she pleaded with him.

  He reads the article over, knowing it’s a piece of sentimental crap, but one that will cement his position as the inside man on this juicy case. He’s sure Sklar will be pleased and give him further access. He punches a key and sends the blog into cyberspace.

  Hobbs is making himself a sandwich with what’s left of two-day-old chicken salad, when the phone rings. He answers with his usual greeting: “Hobbs here.”

  “Brent, it’s Danya. I need your help!”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  It’s past three-thirty. Sklar’s in his office conference room, along with Mona Lickel, two associates from her firm, and a notary public standing by. Lickel has gone over the documents she’s prepared for Danya’s and Sklar’s signatures at least twice as they wait for Danya to arrive. Sklar has called Danya’s cell phone and the land line in his apartment several times. No luck. His limo driver is still waiting for her downstairs. Sklar is cursing himself for not insisting they go together.

  “You better hope she hasn’t flown the coop,” Lickel warns.

  “She couldn’t, even if she wanted to—which she doesn’t,” he says defensively.

  Sklar’s confident Danya didn’t go anywhere because she has nothing but pocket change. He cancelled all her credit cards just in case she got some cockamamie idea she needed to get back to D.C. to see that fucking cat. He knows it’s going to be a literal CAT-tastrophe when Danya finds out that skinless little freak is in cat heaven. He’ll blame it on the neighbor.

  “Burt, are you quite certain she understands she needs to sign these documents before we can proceed in any meaningful way?” Lickel says.

  Sklar rese
nts how dismissive Lickel is of Danya, and always has been.

  “Yes, Mona. What makes you think I haven’t made that clear to her?”

  “The fact that it’s three-thirty and she’s not here,” Lickel says dryly.

  Mona Lickel has questioned this scheme right from the beginning—not only because she’s resentful of all young and beautiful women in general, but also because she never trusted Danya to be as clueless as she seemed. Danya signed all the signature pages that Sklar put in front of her, supposedly without inquiring what they were. No one could be that naïve, Lickel thought, unless they were morons. Was it possible Danya did as she was told because she didn’t want to appear to be a gold digger? Did she really have no clue she was forming a tontine with Sun Sunderland and Burt Sklar—survivor takes all?

  Lickel, a spinster who graduated magna cum laude from Columbia Law School and became the first woman partner in her firm, loathes the fact that this bimbo is about to hit the jackpot simply because she had a billionaire wrapped around her G-string.

  Of course, with Lickel’s help, her old friend and client Burt Sklar will benefit equally well. The Durable Power of Attorney and the tontine were Sklar’s ideas, and Lickel set them both up. He’ll amply reward her when the time comes because she knows too much. But, at the rate things are going this afternoon, that time may not come as quickly as Sklar planned. Lickel knows better than anyone that Jean’s lawsuit will delay them and delay puts them all at risk—the biggest one being Maud Warner.

  When Maud Warner is captured she’ll continue blabbing about how her mother was duped in the same way as Jean. Jean will use that. Sun’s Durable Power of Attorney was executed legally—even if a key witness is now dead. However, if Jean continues to protest that her husband would never have knowingly signed such a document, the law might look askance on a coincidence which turned out to be so profitable for Sklar and for Sunderland’s illegal wife.

  Lickel has impressed upon Sklar that getting these companies properly set up as soon as possible will present Jean with a Gordian Knot which will take years to undo. In the meantime, Sklar and Danya will maintain they have control over the companies and various offshore bank accounts. At the very least, this will make Jean amenable to a settlement.