Once in the back seat, she read out the address on Hollywood Boulevard she had retrieved from the phone. Thank God they still made movies in this town, she thought, at last allowing herself to sit back and breathe.
To guard against interruption, the anti-smog mask she had snaffled from the hospital remained glued to her face. It was a reliable rule: when you wore it, taxi drivers were less eager to talk. Conversation was such an effort – each word muffled, requiring constant repetition – that most didn’t bother. She could stay still and quiet and concentrate.
In truth, such a feat seemed impossible. Her body seemed to be suspended in a flotation tank; she imagined herself enveloped in a viscous liquid, containing the nutrients she needed to survive. Being halfway between wakefulness and sleep was not unusual for her. But this sensation was different: the heavy dose of codeine was urging her to shut down her brain and let the drug do its work. It wanted her to float away.
She looked back at her phone, staring at the short message, barely more than a hundred characters, on Weibo that she had kept open, as if fearful it might vanish if she clicked away from it. A postgrad at Berkeley had seen the weibed image of the latest crime scene and had noticed something amongst the paraphernalia: the discarded bag that had apparently contained the lethal drug.
Only one type of H comes packaged like that. Prepared to wager that the killer used #3.
That meant nothing to Maddy first time round and nothing, it seemed, to anyone else on her timeline. No one had picked it up. But even through the thick analgesic cloud, a distant bell had rung. Something she had seen in the early hours of Wednesday morning, when she worked through the night, reading and reading and eventually writing the story that Howard Burke had taken down after fifteen minutes. The reference had come in an extended piece that had appeared on one of those quasi-literary, high-end websites, journalism dressed up as art. She could see the headline: Strangers Among Us.
The writer had spun an imagined, interminably long account of life in the LA garrison, the facts few and generously spaced. The most memorable passage was about drug use on the base, how it was officially forbidden, punishable by death or extended imprisonment, yet was said to be surprisingly widespread. Not among the regular soldiers, of course, but among the officer class elite. The drug of choice was cocaine, but some heroin leaked through too. It was not bought on the street market, but smuggled in via the shipments that came to the garrison each week from the home country. Heroin #3 was Beijing heroin. It was found nowhere in the United States except in the string of pearls, the PLA bases along the west coast, chief among them Garrison 41 at Terminal Island by the Port of Los Angeles.
They pulled up on Hollywood and Hudson. Maddy had checked the store’s opening hours and she was in luck. Better still, it was too early for tourists: later on in the day and a shop like this could be heaving. Right now, the neighbourhood – of pizzerias, tacky murals on shuttered storefronts and signs promising ‘maps of the stars’ homes’ – was just waking up, the cheap coffee barely brewed. She took the driver’s cellphone number and told him to keep driving around the block until she called. She then took a few slow, ginger steps and went inside Hollywood Wigs.
The shop was cramped and crammed, like the toy stores of her childhood, each shelf filled with an identity parade of mannequin heads, all frozen in the same, wide-eyed stare suggesting vague alarm. But Maddy wasn’t there to look at the Barbie-doll faces. She wanted to look at their hair. Wild, Medusa-style snakes of red and yellow on one, Marilyn-style platinum on another, geisha black on the third. There were crazy purple curls, and Betty Boop bobs, untamed auburn and Princess Leia brown. Madison was disappointed. Her internet search had promised a specialist wig service, regularly used by the movie business; this looked more like a novelty shop, the provider of comedy hair for Hallowe’en.
‘Can I help?’
Asking the question was a short, older woman in thick glasses, her hair so daringly unfashionable that Madison wondered if she had lifted it from one of her dummies. She was wearing a housecoat, as if she had just come in from her kitchen. Now that Maddy thought about it, perhaps she had.
‘I want to be blonde,’ Madison said quickly. ‘As convincing a blonde as I can be.’
The woman gave Maddy a glance up and down, followed by a grandmotherly look of concern as she assessed her face. Then, in a gesture whose tenderness caught her by surprise, she reached up and touched Maddy’s hair. ‘This is because of the treatment, yes?’
The feeling of an older woman’s fingers on her hair, the gentleness of her voice, made Maddy’s eyes prick. She had stroked her mother’s hair in recent years, but she could not remember the last time her mother had done the same for her. She felt movement behind her tear ducts. But it went no further, dammed up by the drugs or the need to get on, it didn’t matter which.
‘When did you start?’ the woman said, still assessing Maddy’s hair. It felt wrong to lie about such things and especially to a woman like this, but she was not going to complicate matters by correcting her.
‘I’ve just come from the hospital,’ is what Maddy said. ‘And I need a wig.’
‘Well, dear. Take a seat and I’ll show you what we have. You can look at textures and lengths and then we can make up a—’
‘I’m afraid I don’t have much time.’
The woman nodded, her lips forming a shape of resigned sympathy.
‘No, no,’ Maddy said quickly. ‘I mean I don’t have much time this morning. I need to have a wig right now. One that’s ready-made.’
‘Oh, but, dear, for this situation it’s better to have one that looks like your hair. And that takes time.’
‘I need to be blonde. And I need to make the change now.’ Maddy held up her hand, blocking any further protest. ‘I’m sure it’s crazy. But it’s what I need right now. Please help me.’
The woman retreated to the storeroom, her eyebrows raised and her palms up in surrender, the whatever-you-say gesture people make when complying with the demands of the unhinged. It was a gesture Madison had seen often.
She emerged seventeen minutes after she had gone in, her hair a close-cropped blonde. As she levered herself slowly back into the cab, she caught a glimpse of herself in the rear-view mirror. The woman looking back at her seemed older but, unexpectedly, somehow sexier too. The shorter hair was less innocent, more knowing. She could not have said why.
The driver was talking to her. ‘Where to now?’
She thumbed through her past emails until she found the office address of the only person she could think of who might be able to get her where she needed to go. That he was also a doctor was a bonus.
Charlie Hughes shared his practice with two other physicians on Wilshire and Crescent in Beverly Hills, a building wedged between upscale boutiques and a Maserati dealership. The instant Maddy walked into the reception, she half-regretted giving him even the distracted, eyes-glazed sympathy she had provided at least half a dozen times over the years. All his whining, you’d have thought he was waiting tables or shining shoes while he waited for his big Hollywood break. Instead, he was clearly making a mint treating the aches and pains of the Beverly Hills set.
Still, it was only a half-regret. Had she not been a rare, friendly face to him, most recently at the Mail Room that night, the gambit she was about to play would not have had even its current, wafer-thin chance.
She thought of giving her name at the desk, but seeing the waiting room already filled, at nine in the morning, with the surgerized faces and manicured nails of half a dozen ladies of leisure, she changed her mind. She sent a text instead.
Charlie. It’s Maddy Webb. I’m in your lobby. That might work, she thought. But just to make sure, she added three more words. Hollywood is calling.
Fifteen seconds later and Charlie emerged, dressed this time as a doctor rather than a pining movie wannabe. Set against his white coat, his dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses now looked impressive rather than nerdy. She noticed the ev
il looks she was getting from the mannequins: how did she get to jump the line?
‘Maddy? Is that you? You look awful.’
‘Thanks, Charlie.’
‘I mean, you don’t look well. Here.’ He led her to an empty consulting room where, to her relief, he invited her to sit down on the examination bed. ‘What the hell’s going on? I’ve been hearing all this stuff about you. And what’s with the hair?’
She gave the most potted version she could manage. She didn’t need to do much more, given that the key elements had been on the news.
‘I should have called you about Abigail,’ he said finally. ‘I just didn’t know how … there’s been so much going on …’
You mean you’re so self-absorbed the idea never crossed your mind, Maddy thought but didn’t say. Instead she replied, ‘What, with Devil Monk? They gonna make your film?’ She heard her own feigned enthusiasm and thought it didn’t sound bad, considering.
He shook his head. ‘I love that you remember that project, Madison. It proves I’m right: audiences will fucking love this movie.’ His face clenched on the word ‘love’. Then he remembered himself. ‘But I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk movies. Not at a time like this.’
‘As it happens …’ She did not want to ask him for help. She doubted that would work. She had another approach she would try first. ‘There is something that could come out of this.’
‘How’d you mean?’
‘Put it this way, this news story is already pretty dramatic, right?’
‘Sure.’
‘When that piece of mine appeared online, and was taken down? I don’t want to say too much, but when that happened there was some … interest.’
Charlie Hughes’s eyes brightened. ‘You mean …?’
She nodded.
‘Like a major studio?’
She nodded again. ‘All I’m saying is, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. LA Times stories have become movies. Some reporters like to write the screenplays themselves. But some like to, you know, hand it over to an experienced screenwriter.’ Her eyes bored into his. ‘Someone who knows what they’re doing.’
He gave her his serious face, as if to say ‘I won’t let you down.’
‘But there’s something the story needs, Charlie. If it’s to work. And truly you’re the only person who can make it happen.’
Chapter 40
He gave her something for the pain, something that would, he said, help her more than codeine and without making her woozy. He was not specific about the name and his tone suggested dubious legality. She suspected a Chinese import but was too tired to probe.
‘Now,’ he said, pulling up a seat in the consulting room for the first time. ‘What’s the plan?’
She walked him through each step. What he would say, what they would say in response, what he would say next and what he should do if anything went wrong. She explained her role and how it would relate to his. She offered a modest backstory, including responses to any possible objections. She was methodical, imagining and addressing the range of possible scenarios in a way that would, she understood, astonish anyone who knew her physical state. Charlie, for one, appeared stunned. But what Maddy knew about herself was that such calm, forensic rigour did not represent some kind of remarkable defiance of her medical and emotional situation. It was confirmation of it. This was how she reacted under extreme stress: like the control room of a nuclear power plant, she would cool automatically under pressure. It didn’t make her feel any better.
He heard her out, asking some shrewd questions. But, troublingly for Maddy, they had a common theme: fear. ‘It’s a little risky, Madison,’ he said after five minutes. ‘I can’t do it,’ he said after fifteen.
Madison had prepared for this. Indeed, she had expected it, considering it far likelier than a yes. She had readied her response.
‘OK, are you absolutely sure about this? That your final answer?’ She gave a weak smile.
He nodded.
‘OK,’ Maddy said. ‘But you’re still going to do it.’
‘No, Maddy, I’m not,’ Charlie replied, offering a mirthless smile of his own. ‘Maybe I wasn’t clear. Your scheme is way too dangerous, especially given my position. I’m not going to do it. No way.’
‘No, Charlie, you will do it. Because if you don’t I’m going to write that you’ve been identified by police sources as the likely supplier of illegal drugs, including heroin, to the garrison and possibly to the killer himself.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding. There’s no way you’d write that. The police would deny it in a second.’
‘Not a second. It would take at least fifteen minutes. That’s how long my story about the China connection was up on the Times website before it was taken down. Long enough for it to go right around the world, long enough for it to trigger one of the biggest mass demonstrations this city has ever seen. Want one of those outside this office, Charlie?’ She made a show of tilting her head towards the front entrance, as if she were imagining the thousands gathering outside at this very moment.
The doctor was paling, his skin beginning to match his coat. ‘You wouldn’t dare. It would, it would … ruin your reputation, making up shit like that.’
‘Oh sure, I’d weib a correction a few hours later. I reckon people would be pretty forgiving. Stress of the situation and all that. I might even offer an apology.’ She fluttered her eyelids, a picture of sweet innocence. ‘But the damage would be done, by then. To you, I mean. What do you think they’d be saying in there?’ She nodded towards the waiting room. ‘“No smoke without fire,” they’d say. “And that girl from the LA Times has been right about everything else. She’s got all those awards. Must be something to it.” Maybe we’ll go see Dr Cohen instead.’ She smiled again.
He shook his head, his eyes kept firmly on his feet. ‘You know, it’s true what the guys say about you, Madison.’
‘Oh and what’s that, Charlie?’
‘That you might be a great fuck but you’re one messed-up, crazy bitch.’
‘Well, now you know at least half of that is true, don’t you, Charlie? So get your car keys. We’ve got some people to visit.’
Before they left, Charlie sent Maddy off to what he insisted on calling a ‘fitting’ with one of the nurses. He made clear this was not any kind of favour to her. Rather he was engaged in ‘risk-minimization’. When Maddy emerged, she was dressed in white cotton trousers with a jacket that buttoned at the side. She caught a glimpse of herself, bruised and exhausted, in the mirror: she looked like a beautician in need of one of her own treatments.
They went in Charlie’s car, an Audi convertible. As she walked unsteadily across the street, a childhood memory of Fords and Chevys floated into her head. How long ago that seemed. These days, if you had money, you wanted a European import. If you were on Maddy’s kind of income, you drove Chinese.
She gave one last look over each shoulder, concluding that whoever had been pursuing her before, including the men who had beaten her, had apparently been thrown off the scent. The blonde wig and the nurse’s outfit might have helped.
As they drove down the 405, Charlie demanded they go through the plan one more time, saying each element of it to himself, committing it to memory. He had not come around to it; he remained hostile to the very idea, convinced it was suicidal in its risk. Even once he realized he had no choice but to comply, he did not give up hope of persuading Madison that her plan was doomed and that she should think again. But she would not budge.
Motivated solely by the desire to save his own skin, he worked through with her the possible defects, Maddy doing her best to insure against them. Intermittently her mind became as clogged and cloudy as the smog-filled air all around them, but as they headed south on the 110 she decided she could do no more. This was the best she could come up with.
As they got nearer, Charlie’s fear hardened and solidified. If he could h
ave backed out, he would. But together they had concocted a story that, with refinements and in the absence of any alternative, he glumly accepted as sufficiently plausible to try.
Charlie was known to the guards on the gate, his car was on their system, which was an advantage. But it didn’t mean he could just stroll into the garrison whenever he chose. Usually he would come for a specific appointment, his patient letting security know in advance that he was to be admitted.
That had been Maddy’s first thought. Charlie should call one of his patients, saying he was concerned about recent test results: having looked at them again, the doctor would say he had detected what he believed was an alarming pattern and it would be best if he came over right away.
‘That’s unethical on so many levels, Maddy.’
‘Afterwards, you can say it was a rogue test. The worrying numbers turned out to be wrong. Don’t tell me that doesn’t happen all the time.’
‘It happens. But not deliberately.’
‘You mean you might get a summons to the LA medical board on a minor ethical violation? That would be terrible.’
That hushed him. Next, with a great show of reluctance, Dr Hughes enunciated into his in-car microphone the name of the patient from the base he had seen most recently. It was the Princeling he had waved to at the Mail Room that night; it turned out the young officer had come in for an examination earlier that day. It was ideal; his test results had only just come through. Dutifully, the Bluetooth device dialled the number. They waited as the phone rang.
There was no reply. Maddy shook her head at leaving a message. ‘Call another one.’
Hughes tried half a dozen patients among the garrison’s officer corps, all without success. ‘I think their access to cellphones is restricted during the day. Or maybe they’re on, you know, manoeuvres or something,’ Charlie offered. Maddy came up with an alternative that she explained in the briefest terms.
‘That’s even worse than the first idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll get struck off.’
The 3rd Woman Page 31