“You want me to talk to her? What if she’s—”
“We still need to find her,” Jack said. “That’s why you’re going to be taking another little trip.”
The idea pleased her, that was obvious. “Back to America?”
“Not exactly. Just to Miami, this time.”
Her expression sardonic, she said, “Another restaurant?”
“Better,” Jack told her, refusing to rise to the bait. “Much better, if it works out. You’re new here, so you aren’t known to be a Galaxy reporter. God knows you think on your feet,” he added, tapping the photos of the birthday party. “So just maybe it’ll work out.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Apply for a job,” Jack said.
Later that same day, Jack had a chat with Ida Gavin, also back from America; or, that is, from Bel Air, and the swimming pool of the overly excitable Keely Jones. The interview had gone well—when Keely Jones at last did collapse, she collapsed all the way, and Ida was precisely the right vulture to be waiting on the branch overhead at the time—and Ida had transcribed the tape and written her story on the flight back; no grass grew under old Ida’s feet.
Jack’s attitude toward Ida contained all the ambiguity of anyone who employs a mad dog because of the mad dog’s useful qualities. At work, Ida was fast, dedicated, smart and utterly without pity. Behind the harsh expression and watchful eyes, she was a very good-looking woman of thirty-four, for whom sex was merely another weapon in the arsenal of reportorial techniques.
Given her speed and single-minded dedication, she was the most resourceful and reliable person on Jack’s team, more responsible than anyone except Jack himself for the team’s success; but she was also the one member of the team he couldn’t possibly see himself having a drink with, or a conversation with, away from the job. (As for going to bed with her, ye gods!) Ida was an android, cold and ruthlessly efficient, which made her perfect for what he now had in mind. “Your next task,” he told her, when Ida came by the squaricle to drop off the Keely Jones piece, “awaits.”
Ida looked alert, like a leopard smelling a deer. “Felicia?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “What I’m giving you is the only thing right now that’s even more important. It’s industrial espionage.”
Ida had engaged in industrial espionage before. She smiled thinly, perhaps at the memory of the three-week affair she’d once had with the chief surgeon of a large Dallas hospital in order to find out whether or not a hospitalized TV series star had AIDS; negative, unfortunately, but still, it was better to know. “Which industry?” she asked.
“This industry,” Jack told her, waving a hand generally at Editorial. “Ida, some member of this team fed the Felicia name to Boy Cartwright.”
Fire shot from Ida’s eyes. Her nostrils quivered. Her fingernails grew an inch. “Who,” she said.
“That is what you are to tell me.”
“I will,” Ida said.
She would, too. Ida’s short grim history is quickly told: As a bright local Midwestern TV newsreader in her twenties, she had been swept off her feet by the sophisticated Englishman from the Weekly Galaxy, Boy Cartwright (less puffy and less obviously degenerate then), who had rushed her into an affair much as she would later do with such as that Dallas surgeon, swearing eternal fealty, encouraging her to abandon her well-begun TV news career with its first few useful contacts, and promising her a job as his good right hand at the Galaxy, while all the time he had been actually interested in nothing but some passingly newsworthy piece of showbiz info.
Her first life in ruins, Ida had followed Boy to Florida, unbelieving at first that the romance was dead, and had even managed to get herself hired by the Galaxy, though Boy had talked against her behind her back, not wanting the responsibility of her continued presence in his life. (He’d had less power at the paper, then, and so had failed.)
Once Ida had at last understood what had been done to her, something curdled in that body and brain. She had determined to out-Boy Boy, to become better than he at his own game, to beat him to scoops, outshine him, become the only woman in the world Boy Cartwright could admire and respect, while at all times keeping turned toward him a face of unremitting hate.
Hatred of Boy, and cold implacable efficiency on the job, begun as conscious determination, had both settled into habits, and by now these two characteristics had become Ida Gavin, the news machine. If she had any other facets to her personality, no one knew about them; and no one wanted to know.
“It’s within the team,” Jack told her. “Find out which one of them, Ida. Strip them naked.”
“I will bring you,” Ida said, “Polaroids of their hearts.”
FELICIA
One
Felicia scraped omelette residue into the garbage and fitted the plate into the dishwasher. Johnny, having put the butter and cream away, stood in the middle of the kitchen watching her, a discontented frown on his quasi-handsome face, a face that one critic had described as “a sculptor’s first draft of Adonis.” Felicia, aware of Johnny’s eyes on her, closed the dishwasher and looked smiling around the kitchen; not entirely spotless, but it would do. “All done,” she said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Felicia, you shouldn’t have to do housework,” Johnny said, his voice thick with the clogged fury of a man who isn’t used to frustration. “And it won’t be for long,” he added. “I promise you.”
Felicia laughed. It wasn’t that she was a beautiful girl, exactly; she had pleasant and regular features, clear eyes and ash blonde hair done in a style whose cunning secret was simplicity. It was the person behind the features, the individual who animated them, that made it seem she was beautiful. When she laughed, lifting her head just slightly in that fashion, Johnny wanted to die for her; to kill for her; to live for her; to give every other creature on the planet life in her name. “Johnny, Johnny,” she said (he loved her voice always, but never more than when it was saying his name), “I’m not the princess and the pea, you know. I’ve taken care of myself for years.”
“Well, I’m taking care of you now,” he said, then heard what he’d just said and laughed at himself. (One of the reasons she loved him was that, against all the odds, he frequently did laugh at himself.) “That is,” he corrected, “I’m hiring the people to take care of you now.” Laughter gone, he glowered around the kitchen. “Soon, I hope.”
Her own expression now troubled, she said, “Are you really sure you had to fire everybody?” “The place was riddled with spies,” he told her. “I got lax, honey. Until you came along, for a long while I didn’t have anything in my life I cared that much about, so I just let things happen, and that goddamn Galaxy bribed its way into my closets, into my bathroom. There was no way to tell who hadn’t sold out, so the only thing to do was start all over, and be sure .”
“That’s so hard on the innocent ones, though.” “Everybody got a first-rate recommendation,” he pointed out, “and fat severance pay. And if any of them were innocent and got hurt, that’s something else for the Galaxy's conscience, if it has one.”
“I don’t even see,” she said cautiously, knowing how strongly he felt about this, “why they’re so important. It’s just a trashy gossip paper, nobody believes it or pays it any attention.”
“People pay it attention, yes, they do,” he told her grimly. “But that isn’t the point. The things they say, the intrusions, the violation of the simplest standards of decency and privacy. You don’t have the thick skin, Felicia, you aren’t toughened.” He crossed the room to put his arms around her, looking at her as solemnly as a child. “They’d tear you apart, my darling. I’m not going to let that happen. I want you never in this world to be anything but happy.”
“I am happy,” she said, and kissed him. Then she laughed again, saying, “And when we have a whole new staff here, screened and guaranteed by that brilliant employment agency man—”
“Reed. Henry Reed is his name. And he is brilliant.�
�
“And when he’s done his work,” Felicia said, laughing at Johnny, but fondly, “and we have a new cook, and a new maid, and a new gardener, and a new butler, and new security people, and a new secretary, and a whole army of new people, then you’ll be happy, too, man general. Isn’t that so?”
“Stay with me, Felicia,” he told her, his arms tight around her waist, “and I’ll be happy. That’s all it takes.”
Henry Reed rested his palm on the employment application form and looked at the young woman across the desk. In a few minutes, if it seemed worthwhile, he would study the answers she’d written on that form, but at first, as was his invariable practice, he would simply talk to her, ask her questions and listen to the answers, and watch her, become aware of her on a person-to-person basis. That was much more valuable than all the filled-out applications in the world, and it was his skill at reading people rather than reading forms that had made Henry Reed Personnel Inc. the premier-quality placement service '7bnever employment agency, nothing so blue collar and crude) in south Florida, for both the better corporate clients and the most discriminating private individuals. There’s a lot of money in south Florida, and it was Henry Reed’s service to that money to provide for it the upper echelons of discreet, practiced, highly trained servitors.
“So, Miss Henderson,” he said, “you’re looking for work as a personal secretary.”
“That’s right.” She was attractive, in her twenties, neatly and personably dressed; she met Reed’s searching look clearly, without fuss. “I prefer not to work in offices,” she went on, and smiled. “I’m afraid I get bored too easily, though maybe I shouldn’t admit that to you.”
“Not at all,” he murmured. So far, he was impressed. There were several clients he could think of—one in particular, in fact—who would perhaps be very grateful for his introduction of this young woman into their lives.
“For me,” she was saying, “it just seems to work out better if I work for one specific person in a more informal setting, be he an entrepreneur, an artist, a venture capitalist, or whatever he might be.” Laughing lightly, she said, “Or she might be, I have nothing against working for a woman. In either case, that’s what’s more likely to give me the kind of varied work experience that keeps me happy.”
Reed nodded. “Would that include,” he asked, “well-known people?”
She looked alert, but uncomprehending. “I’m sorry?”
“Celebrities, you might say.”
“Oh.” A sardonic expression crossed her face. She crossed her legs, crossed her wrists on her lap, leaned back slightly in the chair; all body language for rejection. “Oh, I’ve had my celebs,” she said. “Yes, sir.”
“And would you prefer a well-known employer again?”
“Oh, no,” she said, with a palm-down right- hand sweeping movement away to the side.
“No?” Reed watched her with great care. “Would you mind saying why not?”
“I’m a good personal secretary,” Miss Henderson said, and gestured at the application form on his desk. “And those people will tell you so. But celebrities have great big heads and they’re the worst”
“They are?”
“They think they’re all that matters in this life, and it’s my job to convince the rest of the world they’re right. No more movie stars for me. Give me a nice doctor’s wife, an importer, a grapefruit heir.”
Reed smiled, sympathizing and to some extent agreeing; he had his own celebrity clients, and the grapefruit heirs were considerably easier to deal with. “You sound very certain,” he said.
“That’s because I am.”
“So if I had a celebrity, you’d absolutely turn the job down?”
She frowned, as though faced with a difficult decision. “Well, not absolutely,” she said. “I suppose it would depend. But my feelings are, I’d rather not get in that rat race again.”
“The person I’m thinking of,” Reed told her carefully, “is John Michael Mercer.”
“Oh.” She looked rather taken—and taken aback—by the idea. “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “He is famous, and ... I’d hate to turn a good job down, but ... I suppose I’d have to talk with him first, see how we get along.”
“Of course,” Reed said. Smiling thinly, he glanced at last at the application form. It would be solid, of course, every reference would check and double-check. Still smiling, at the perversity and cleverness of the human mind, he folded the form in half, then again, then leaned over to make an elaborate show of dropping it in the wastebasket. “Thank you, Miss . . . Well, I’ll go on calling you Miss Henderson, shall I? Thank you for stopping in.”
The young woman stared in blank astonishment at his face, at the wastebasket, at him again. “What are you doing?”
“Not that it matters,” Reed said, “but just out of curiosity, who are you with? The Enquirer? People? Sixty Minutes?”
“I have no idea what—“ she spluttered. “I’m just—”
“It’s a very cute approach,” Reed assured her, not wanting to entirely ruin her day. “Not absolutely original, of course, but then what is? Nevertheless, a nice approach. And you did it very well.”
The young woman, her expression on the brink of outrage, studied him a few seconds longer, then abruptly shifted; her posture became looser, her expression more frank, her mouth more sensual. “So what went wrong?” she said.
Reed smiled; he liked her, really. Too bad he couldn’t seduce her away from her present employer, place her with someone really good. But of course, he’d never be able to trust her; no one would. “You switched,” he explained, “just a teeny bit too soon.”
Rising, nodding, smiling back at him, she said, “Well, I’m new at the game.”
“You are?” Reed viewed her with honest pleasure. “You’ll be something, when you get your growth,” he said.
“Homosexuality Linked to Atheism, Experts Say,” Jack said.
“Massa hates faggots,” Mary Kate informed him, as she typed.
“No no,” he assured her. “It’s true, he won’t touch lesbianism with a rake. Remember when I had that great one?”
“I remember.”
Jack looked up, seeing it in lights. “Famous Writer’s Wife Leaves Him for Affair with Actress.”
“Massa went away and washed his hands when you told him that one,” Mary Kate recalled.
“I had everything ” Jack complained. “I had tapped phone calls, I had best-friend affidavits, I was covered more completely than J. Edgar Hoover.”
“And Massa said no,” Mary Kate pointed out. “He hates faggots.”
“He hates dykes ,” Jack corrected. “It’s because he can’t figure out how to sell them anything. What we’re talking here is male homosexuality, which he doesn’t give a shit about, and a positive religious story, which he loves. You wait and see.”
“The red pencil lines,” Mary Kate said. “I can see them now.”
Ida Gavin entered the squaricle. “Industrial espionage,” she said, with a glance at Mary Kate.
Jack also glanced at Mary Kate, and nodded his head at her, and said to Ida, “Have you cleared her?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can talk in front of her.”
Mary Kate gave Jack a long slow look, as Ida said, “I have found no one who has a special relationship, or a relationship at all, with Cartwright.” She never called Boy “Boy.” “As for people potentially in a position to be blackmailed, I have nothing solid, but there’s one area that might be explored further.”
“Which area is that?”
“Phyllis Perkinson.”
Jack looked away across the room toward the banks of reporters. Phyllis was visible over there, lying on the phone, with gestures, throwing herself into it. Jack looked back at Ida. “Tell.”
“She worked two years on Trend magazine.” Trend magazine was a glossy yuppie magazine based in New York, one that had put together a successful formula composed mostly of lists of the best s
ixty places to get a pizza in the United States and high-finance real estate scandals; a howto magazine for young MBAs, in other words.
Nodding, Jack said, “I knew that.”
“She was on special projects there, under David Levin.”
“That I didn’t know,” Jack admitted. “What next?”
“She left,” Ida said. “She didn’t get fired, there was no suggestion of trouble. She finished a piece on ham in kosher hot dogs, turned it in, quit, came down here.”
“At an increase in salary?”
“Of course,” Ida said.
“And better weather.” Jack shrugged. “Everybody’s story, Ida. What bothers you about it?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“You want to pursue?”
“Yes.”
“Pursue, then,” Jack said. “You know I trust your instincts.”
“Thank you.” Jack might have turned away then, but Ida wasn’t finished. “John Michael Mercer,” she said.
Jack gave her all of his attention. “Speak, Ida,” he said.
“Yesterday he flew to Boston, on the network’s jet.”
“Alone?”
“According to our contact at Logan, he was with a woman named Felicia Nelson,” Ida said, with no change in tone or expression.
Jack lit up like a video game. “Felicia Nelson! Oh, Ida! Where are they staying?”
“This morning,” Ida reported, “they both returned from Boston and closed themselves once again in Mercer’s house in Palm Beach.”
Mary Kate half turned at her desk to look searchingly at Ida. Jack viewed Ida through narrowed eyes. “Up there yesterday?” he asked. “Back today? What is our reading on this, Ida? What is this telling us?”
“So far,” Ida said, “we have no line into the Hall of Records, there in the state capital of Massachusetts. We’re working on it.”
“A marriage certificate, Ida? Is that what’s at the end of this rainbow? Or is that just wishful thinking?”
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