The Anything Goes Girl (A Brenda Contay Novel Of Suspense Book 1)

by Barry Knister

  “Why?” Renee studied her.

  “Because I’m sick and you have to humor me,” she said. “I’ll call in the morning.”

  They hugged. There was no point in telling her about Lindbergh. Brenda let go, and Ned stepped forward to hold her. “He’ll be with you in a minute,” she told her friend, and Renee stepped into the hall.

  Brenda held Ned a second longer, then turned him away from the entry. “I need your help. What you heard has to get out.”

  “What a bunch of scumbags,” he said. “Using people like lab rats.”

  “I need to get back to Southfield tonight.”

  He looked at her and frowned. “No deal. Look at you. You’re sweating, you’re exhausted.”

  “I’m not, I’m pumped. The sweating’s good for me. I want you to see Renee gets to the Marriott, then come back at ten.”

  She raised the cassette recorder with the phone patch from Moser. “Take this with you, I want to play it for someone.” He took it. “Does Stock still drink at the Radisson after the eleven o’clock?”

  “Still holding court.”

  “They lease a suite for him.”

  “It’s in his contract. One pre-paid drunk tank for Detroit’s worst driver,” he said. “What are you planning?”

  “When did you ever know me to plan anything?”

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  At nine, Brenda was brought one of the hi-cal shakes. She drank it in front of the elderly nurse, thanked her, turned out the light and got into bed. Just before ten, she got back up and dressed quickly in the dark.

  Mercygrove was small and private. Other than the closed ward, patients were not closely monitored. She got her shoulder bag, took the elevator to the basement level, and exited through the rear service entry. Keeping clear of the parking lot’s security lamps, Brenda followed the darkened drive to the county road. Ned was waiting on the shoulder. She got in and slammed the door.

  “You shouldn’t be doing this,” he said, driving away.

  “I’m fine.” She remembered what Haffner had said about a gray Lincoln, and turned to look. The car following was too far back to see. “Do you still have the cassette I sent from Honolulu? The drunk and the bartender?”

  “I have a copy in the trunk,” he said. “Jerry and Stock loved it. I’m not kidding, Stock wanted to run it to explain your absence. He wanted to say it was possible aliens took you aboard the mother ship.”

  “When we get to the hotel, take the phone patch to him. Be real CIA about it, he’ll like that. He’ll have people with him, so take him aside. Give him the recorder in the men’s room. When he comes out, tell him I have to talk to him in his suite. Make sure he comes up alone. There’s a VCR in there?”

  “He tapes Page One.”

  They smiled at each other in the car’s dark windshield. Everyone at W-DIG thought Lou Stock must pray every night for something to happen to Ray Kramer, the network’s late-night news guru. In Stock’s favorite dream, who else could take Kramer’s place? Among regional anchors, wasn’t it Lou Stock who had asked the most embarrassing questions during the last presidential primaries? Hadn’t The New York Times said so in their piece on regional coverage? Hadn’t Stock pointed this out every day until the election?

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  When they reached the hotel, Ned parked opposite the lobby entrance. He went to the trunk and rummaged through film gear, found the Honolulu tape and slammed it shut.

  “Got the recorder?” He held it up. “Okay. But before you see Stock, there’s one more thing.”

  “There always is with you.”

  “I need a prop. Have someone bring a wheelchair to the elevators.” Brenda had found a bandana on the console in Ned’s car and began tying up her hair. Ned sometimes wore it on the Harley.

  He seemed to understand, turned away and walked toward the hotel. She finished with the bandana and waited a minute before moving between parked cars, past the doorman, into the posh marble and brass interior of the Radisson Hotel. On her left, water cascaded from a no-splash fountain. Next to it, music came from a programmed baby grand.

  She looked from the piano to the frosted windows of the gaslight-era bar, where Lou Stock did his drinking after the evening show. She crossed the lobby to the bank of elevators.

  Sweating, Brenda turned and watched the fountain. Water curled over its smooth curb; the whole glossy oblong was deep green, shining under recessed ceiling lights, like a small, angular Pacific. “Eleanor Rigby” ended on the programmed piano and “Stella by Starlight” began. On the ship, Ehrlich had kept playing the Japanese tape in the wheelhouse. Stupid, Brenda had told him. Do you think any ship could hear over their engines?

  It hadn’t mattered. The tape had held a kind of hope for him.

  A bellhop came from the far side of the lobby, pushing a wheelchair.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  Five minutes later, Ned stepped from the bar. He passed the fountain, saw her and came forward. She pushed the UP button.

  He handed her a room-key card. “I see you got the chair. Lou’s listening to it again. The first time, he looked ready to audition for Patton. ‘They’re fucking with one of my people,’ he says. Definitely the tape got to him. What now?”

  The doors opened. “Go have a margarita, I’ll call you at the bar.” Brenda watched him turn away and felt guilty. She needed him, but had not wanted to involve others.

  She rode to the sixth floor and rolled the chair down to Stock’s suite, used the card. Inside, floor lamps turned low bathed the suite in a soft glow. Fresh flowers rested on a console, a fruit basket. A big Sony and VCR occupied an entertainment cabinet. Stacked on top were tapes of Stock’s own news shows, and Page One. Through the open bedroom door, she saw the bed was turned down. Golf clubs against the wall, Memory Lane pictures on the walls. Stock kept a condo in upscale Birmingham, but must spend most nights here.

  She had her shoulder bag, and went in the bathroom. The bandana headscarf was black, and she had brought the black robe Stock had sent. She put it on over her blouse and slacks, slipped on her sunglasses, and checked herself in the mirror. She looked much worse than she actually was. Good.

  Back in the main room, Brenda turned on the TV and VCR, inserting the tape made in the Honolulu airport. Al, the Hawaiian bar customer, was frowning into the camera, talking about the alien’s scientific community. She sat in the wheelchair and positioned herself next to the TV. After a minute she heard the elevator, then someone in the hall. The door opened and Stock entered.

  “You have questions, Lou, but give me the first shot.”

  He closed the door, and came forward slowly. “Christ, honey… Chambers told me you were doing better.” He looked alarmed, just as she wanted.

  “Keep what you see in mind, Lou. I see it for the opener. What you heard downstairs? The guy on the tape is talking about a total, unethical rip-off of nice people in paradise. Think in terms of polluting Eden.” She pointed to the TV. “Remember the color I sent from Hawaii? Total coincidence. I had no idea it was connected.”

  Brenda pointed again to the screen. “This guy’s talking about a research lab owned by GENE 2, in Hawaii. People getting sick. It’s not space aliens, Lou. It’s closer to home. The island I went to is being used as a lab for cancer research. The people are the lab rats. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Stock pointed at the set. “That—”

  “Hear me out, Lou,” she said. “I’m The Lightning Rod. A local pop personality, not a serious news person.”

  He started to speak.

  “No, Lou, let me finish. We both know it’s true. This means the story has to have some weight. That’s you. The guy on the phone patch is an entomologist. Black, articulate, very good visuals. You think Ray Kramer won’t go to Condition Red? Believe it. Kramer’ll be your gofer on this. Your handyman. I see a book, Lou, I’m not exaggerating. A Pulitzer. Tell me this isn’t what ‘in the public interest’ means.”

  Maybe it was
working. Stock had a short attention span, but stayed focused when he was the center of the attention. “What’s with these bugs in your apartment? Ned told me—”

  “Not important. Do you see it so far?”

  “I see it, honey.” Straddle-legged, Stock now unbuttoned his signature blazer and put his hands on his hips. “Do it,” he said. “Pitch me.”

  “Everybody knows the problems you face, the pressure.” Stock waved this off. “Fine, but we all know. It isn’t lost on us. A lot of very bad people will try to get to you—”

  “Any cocksucker thinks—”

  “Let me finish. They’ll try to compromise us before it gets off the ground. There’s real risk. If you followed that tape downstairs, you know these are not nice people.”

  Stock was pacing now, hands on hips, thinking. He walked into the bathroom and snapped on the light to check his hairpiece in the mirror, then came back out. “I like the Catholic mission,” he said. “A whisky priest in the tropics would be good. This Moser said he was at some mission.”

  “Correct.”

  Stock again paced beside her wheelchair, thinking about it. After a minute, she reached out her hand, trembling the fingers for effect. “Look at my hand.” In the last three days, the skin on her face had returned to normal, but her hands were still wrinkled and worn-looking.

  Stock winced. “Honey, I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t want sympathy, Lou. I just want you to know what happened to one of your people.” She pointed to a group of photos on the wall above the couch. “Your kids,” she said. “Better days. In this business, something always gets lost. You’ve given your whole life to the public interest. Sacrificed yourself for the business. No one can tell me you’d let Ray Kramer take this story away from you.”

  “Damn!” He stared at the TV.

  “I want you to send someone out there to talk to Moser,” she said. “To set it up for you before we lose our advantage.”

  For the next ten minutes, Stock brainstormed, expanding his role, reducing hers. “The satellite uplink would be a bitch out there,” he said. “What’s the company again?”

  “GENE 2. Drugs, research.”

  “Never heard of it, must be small-time.”

  “Neff Industries owns it. But listen to this. Neff’s positioning to unload GENE 2 before the story breaks.”

  Stock stopped pacing and looked at her, nodding sagely. “I told everybody you were ready to move up to co-anchor.”

  “But we need someone out there.”

  He nodded.

  “Before you go out, I’ll do a little piece on my ordeal, to prime the pump for you.”

  Stock nodded again.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  Stock agreed to take a cab to his condo so Brenda could spend the night in the suite. If he stayed, Neff might try to smear them both. “Never mind I’m a basket case,” she said. “They have a file on my bad-girl school days. And they’d use your lady’s man reputation.”

  “They would,” he said, liking the idea. “I want these fuckers, Brenda.”

  When he was gone, she called the lobby bar. “What happened?” Ned asked.

  “So far, so good. But you know Lou. If he stops to think about all those crud diseases, he may back out.”

  “Give me details.”

  “Later. I need you to tape a message.”

  “Now?”

  “See you in five minutes.”

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  “Hello, Morris. Believe it or not, what you’re looking at is your sister. What you’re looking at is what our mother will see, unless you come back with the nice man who brought you this tape.”

  She coughed for effect and hunched over in the wheelchair.

  “Here’s the deal,” she said. “In addition to sending even more alarming pictures of myself to our mother, I will also call Kiley & Friedman. I will describe for them how you gave me insider information about GENE 2. How you detailed the contents of a certain memo you found in a Xerox machine. By your own account, this is likely to make employment for you in New York a hard row to hoe. Yes, I am a bitch. Too bad, Morris. I need you to tell me what you know about the people buying GENE 2. When you get here, I’ll give you information that will convince you this is necessary. I believe you might actually save your shop a lot of grief.”

  Brenda sat up straighter in the wheelchair, took off her sunglasses and looked back into the camera. “The truth is, I’m feeling better.” She took off the bandana and shook out her hair. “In fact, mother doesn’t ever have to know you concealed from her the terrible experience I went through. Remaining in New York as you did. Especially if I tell her the Times piece her friends are going to show her was grossly exaggerated. If you’re planning on more squash at the Harvard Club, I’ll be seeing you later today. I will also buy you a large bottle of Poison perfume.”

  She gave the V-for-victory and nodded to Ned to stop the camera. He clicked off the two floor lamps. It had hurt to look at them, and Brenda rubbed her eyes as he refitted the lampshades.

  “It’s the only leverage I’ve got,” she told him, watching as he looped the extension cord hand-to-elbow. “We’re both afraid of her.”

  Ned telescoped the camera tripod. “People are full of surprises,” he said. “If I don’t take this to your brother, I suppose you’ll phone my mother.”

  Brenda called the airline and booked Ned’s ticket, then wrote down Morris’s summer address and phone number in Manhattan. “Call from the airport,” she said. “Tell him you’re coming with a tape from me.”

  After he left, Brenda locked and chained the door, feeling dizzy. Moving toward the bedroom, she held onto furniture, reached the bed and sank face down.

  After a minute, she rolled on her back, cupped her breasts and kneaded them tentatively. With the shakes and hi-cal meals, perhaps they were fuller. But it wasn’t what she was feeling for. It was stupid of her; tumors took months to develop.

  She dropped her arms and closed her eyes, remembering what Moser had said. Just two women, no one else.

  “Room service.”

  The knocking started again. Brenda looked to the nightstand clock. Eight-twenty. If Ned had left on time, he’d be hailing a cab at LaGuardia.

  Slowly, she eased off the bed and walked into the front room. The lights were still on, and morning sun poured through sheer curtains. When she was growing up, it had irritated her father to find lights on in the morning. He would get Morris and her out of bed, and herd them downstairs to watch him turn them off. His confidence in the power of example had never worked.

  At the door, she thought of Lindbergh and looked through the peephole. The distorted features of a man in a white jacket swam outside. Breakfast must be part of Stock’s contract. Brenda opened the door. The waiter rolled a butler’s cart into the room, followed by Betsy McIntosh.

  “Good morning,” she said. “I’ll take it.” McIntosh tipped the waiter and closed the door behind him. “Great robe. You look much better.” She pointed to the coffee table. “Here, or the dining table?”

  Why wasn’t she surprised? “It’s definitely your show,” Brenda said.

  “This will be cozier.” McIntosh positioned the cart before the grouped furniture and started removing warmer covers. She set down dishes, silverware. “Coffee or tea?”

  “Coffee.”

  She poured into two setups as Brenda moved to the couch and sat. She took up her cup as McIntosh sat opposite, briefcase balanced on her knees.

  “Don’t let your eggs get cold.”

  “I like them cold.”

  “I’m not the enemy, Brenda.”

  “Oh, but you are, Betsy.”

  “All right, I’m the enemy. The eggs aren’t.”

  She looked at the breakfast plate. Poached eggs on rye toast, the way she liked them. The simple detail made it pointless to ask how GENE 2’s PR director had known where to find her.

  McIntosh glanced at the wheelchair resting before the Sony. She looked pained
, shook her head. “Anyway—” She turned back and opened her attaché case. “The enemy has news.”

  She took out a manila envelope and separated the Velcro seal. “This is just a sample of the scientific and contract information we’re prepared to give you,” she said. “So you can do a complete, accurate treatment of the GENE 2 fiasco.”

  “Policy changes at the highest level,” Brenda said.

  “You were right, we were wrong,” McIntosh said. “It’s that simple. After you left, I realized full disclosure’s ultimately better for us. This is going to get out, we can’t stop it. All we can do is insure the story isn’t garbled. As you know, we aren’t legally vulnerable. Open to a lot of criticism, yes. Maybe an investigation. But stonewalling isn’t going to apply, Brenda. We’ve decided to take our medicine and get on with it.”

  “That’s a nice figure of speech.”

  McIntosh looked to the ceiling and sighed. “Touché. But medicine it is. As you now know from Calvin Moser, a pre-treatment for breast cancer.”

  Brenda felt disappointment, and knew from McIntosh’s expression it must show. She already knew of the ham operator’s phone patch. “Radio signals aren’t hard to monitor,” McIntosh said. “The pre-treatment’s almost one-hundred percent effective. It’s going to save more lives than you can imagine.”

  “Give or take a few people going nuts and drowning themselves.”

  “That problem’s been solved,” she said. “You don’t believe me, but it’s so. The experiment’s been replicated in the Philippines. A formula variant with no contraindications whatever. It’s in there.” She pointed to the envelope. “We’ll take the heat for means, but we know the end result’s going to far outweigh the short-term negatives.”

  Brenda sipped her coffee. The news filled her with relief for herself, qualified by feelings of selfishness. If the drug did work, McIntosh was probably right. What was a little exploitation of brown people here and there? What were a few deaths, if millions could be immunized against one of the great killers? She watched McIntosh close the attaché case, efficiently arranging documents on her side of the coffee table.

  “That’s nice, Betsy.”