North of Montana ag-1

by April Smith

  Duane suddenly tips the chair forward. Its front feet land with a snap. “Don’t you get it? They’re pulling your chain just to keep the pretty lady happy.”

  “To keep her manager happy.” Donnato sends me a piercing look that says I warned you about this weeks ago but you insist on screwing yourself up. “She has friends in high places.”

  This seems to make Duane happy. “You’ll be riding robbery again in a week and I, for one, can’t wait to welcome you back.”

  He saunters out. Kyle shakes his head.

  “Don’t say it,” Barbara warns.

  All I do is give his empty chair a tiny little nudge with my toe.

  “I’m a big girl now.”

  Donnato slides the Tupperware bowl and the pair of black salad tongs into a shopping bag.

  “Keep at it,” he tells me with about the same personal interest he would show in the guy mopping the men’s room floor.

  I follow him out. He shoves the bag under his desk and looks up, not entirely pleased to find me standing above him.

  “So how is Rochelle doing in law school?”

  “She loves it.”

  “But?”

  “It’s an adjustment.”

  “Sounds like more than that.”

  He sighs impatiently. “It’s hard on everyone, okay? Suddenly she’s not around for the kids — I’m supposed to jump in and be Superdad, but how do I do that when I’m here until eight o’clock at night?”

  “So who made the salad?” I say kiddingly.

  “I did, that’s how bad it is.” He starts to twirl a silver letter opener around on his desk. “Law school is good for her. She should have done it a long time ago.”

  However, one flick of a forefinger and the thing spins like a knife-sharp Ninja star.

  I hesitate.

  “You know Duane could be right. The Mason case could fall apart and I’ll be back riding with you, giving you a hard time, could you stand it?”

  In the nanosecond it takes him to decide what to say, all hope dies.

  “They’ve got me partnered with Joe Positano now.”

  “Who is Joe Positano?”

  “Rookie transferred from Atlanta. He would have been at lunch but he couldn’t wait to get his California driver’s license, poor ignorant son of a bitch.”

  “That could change.”

  “What could?”

  “Joe Positano. If I came back.”

  Again, the killer pause.

  “Who knows?” Donnato says emptily, reaching for his shoulder holster and pulling his weapon out of a locked desk drawer. I feel awful.

  “Are you still mad at me because of the undercover thing?”

  Donnato puts his sport jacket on over the shoulder holster.

  Abruptly, “No.” Then, relenting, “So what are you going to do?”

  For a moment I hold his look.

  “Return a humidifier,” I say.

  There is nothing more. He gives me a laconic wave goodbye, and we separate.

  • • •

  I am sitting on a bench in the Century City Shopping Center finishing a Butter Brittle Bar from See’s Candies, a treat I used to sneak after school, and feeling depressed about every element in my life except the fact that at my feet is a new humidifier inside a glossy box tied up with string, so I will no longer wake up with a sore throat those Santa Ana mornings when the humidity is zero.

  Small comfort.

  The conversation I had with Poppy’s doctor was bleak. We are looking at months of increasing debilitation and pain. He advised me to take it one day at a time, which in a situation like this is all the human spirit can bear. And although I’ve tried not to focus on it, hearing about my father has brought that particular sorrow close enough to the surface to be almost audible, the whisper of water inside a cave.

  I miss my squad and I miss Donnato. Our innocent, comfortable flirtation is over and things with the other guys will never be the same. It all started when I went after that bank robber on my own and worsened when I went off on the Eberhardt case. Is this what I get for following my ambitions like some fool greyhound let loose on a track? While everyone else has left the park, I’m still tearing after a fake rabbit.

  In no mood to go back to the office, I pick up my package and wander past the shops, taking in the bright afternoon air, wishing I could think of something else to buy that would make me feel better. All I can come up with is a fanny pack.

  I figure they might have one at Bullock’s, so I push the glass doors open and plod across the cosmetics department, asphyxiating on that cloying powdery smell, disoriented by the play of glossy white and gold surfaces reflected in the mirrored posts. It’s a hell of a heart-stopper to run right into Jayne Mason.

  Not the real Jayne Mason but a life-size cardboard cutout, the same one I had seen in the den in Malibu, where she was wearing an evening gown and holding a bouquet. That one must have been the mock-up, because now there is printing across the bouquet that reads Introducing Yellow Rose Cosmetics by Jayne Mason.

  A girl with immaculate makeup wearing a white lab coat with a fresh yellow rose pinned over the breast sees me staring.

  “We’re having a special on Jayne Mason’s new cosmetics. With every twenty-dollar purchase you get a tote bag.”

  I am struck dumb. An entire counter is stacked with samples of lipsticks, mascara, eye pencils, powder, blush, nail polish. The bright silver and yellow packaging features Jayne Mason’s signature, the same careful round lettering she wrote on Barbara’s legal pad that day in the office. The amazing thing is this elaborate and sophisticated display seems to have sprung up out of nowhere. It wasn’t here when Jayne Mason made her sweep of the cosmetics department. I realize now she had been checking to see if the line was in the store, disappointed when it was not.

  And all this didn’t just spring out of nowhere.

  “Who makes the actual stuff?”

  “It’s by Giselle.”

  I see now we are at the Giselle counter and Yellow Rose is a subdivision. Their perennial product lines, Youth Bud and Moonglow — which even I used as a teenager — are displayed around the corner. So Jayne Mason has become a spokesperson for a major cosmetics company; a deal worth millions of dollars that had to have been in place long before she met Randall Eberhardt — an arrangement she and her manager would likely go to great lengths to protect.

  “Would you like a makeover, compliments of Jayne Mason?” the girl asks sweetly.

  She indicates a stool beside the smiling cutout of Jayne.

  I emit a high-pitched giggle that seems to go on for a long time. The girl blinks and takes a step back.

  “She’s already done me, thanks.”

  • • •

  Even at four p.m. the bar at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel is crowded with an international mix of people bartering for goods and services, including a pair of young call girls doing business with some well-tailored Japanese. Somehow Jerry Connell and I recognize each other across the bazaar; I make him for the most nervous man in the room.

  “I am not a happy camper,” he says as we shoulder our way through.

  “Rocky flight from St. Louis?”

  “Next time call before you call, okay? Say: Hi, this is Ana Grey from the FBI. I’m going to give you a cardiac arrest in about thirty seconds, just wanted you to know.”

  He shakes his head and grins. Fair-haired with appealing blue eyes, he’s wearing one of those ultrafashionable suits that look retro and futuro at the same time — a subtle gray houndstooth with skinny lapels. I sneak a touch as I guide him to the last empty table: heavenly cashmere.

  We both order Perrier. Connell is anxious and intense, talking compulsively.

  “This is scary. Giselle is a tremendously important account. They’ve only been with our ad agency three years, and so far we’ve had just one slice of their business, but we’ve done well enough with the Moonglow line for them to take a flier on Yellow Rose.”

  “Your agency came
up with the idea to use Jayne Mason?”

  “It was Magda Stockman’s idea. Have you met her?”

  He squeezes the life out of the lemon wedge floating in his glass.

  “I know Ms. Stockman.”

  “She called out of nowhere, said she was Jayne Mason’s personal manager, were we interested in developing a line of cosmetics for Giselle using Jayne as a spokesperson. She flew out, made a very smart presentation, and the client bought it.”

  “How was the deal structured?”

  Jerry Connell can’t sit still. His knees are thumping up and down, fingers drumming the table. Now he’s fingering his string-bean leather tie.

  “It’s a partnership arrangement between Jayne Mason and Giselle. They manufacture the cosmetics.”

  “And Jayne—”

  “She’s required to do some commercials, point-of-purchase displays, print ads, and one or two speaking engagements. It amounts to about a week of her time.”

  “How much does she get paid?”

  “I can’t tell you that …” He grinds at the lemon wedge with the ball end of a cocktail stick. “But it’s in the high seven figures.”

  “For one week’s work.”

  “We like to think of it as a lifetime’s worth of public recognition.”

  “You’re in a pretty business,” I say.

  “Almost as pretty as yours.”

  He looks at me sideways. The agitation subsides. Jerry Connell is a polished, educated salesman with a lot at stake and now he is going to make his pitch:

  “So you called, Special Agent Ana Grey, and I took the next flight out of St. Louis. In order to do that, I had to give up my haircut with Sal. Do you know how hard it is to get an appointment with that guy?”

  “Your hair looks okay.”

  “I have to protect my client. Tell me what’s going on. Do I have a major problem here?”

  “I don’t know yet. When did Jayne Mason sign the contract with Giselle?”

  “Two years ago. It takes time to gear these things up.”

  “So the deal was in place when she went into the Betty Ford Center?”

  “It was.”

  Remembering Magda Stockman’s impassioned speech about how all the publicity around Jayne’s drug problem had irrevocably damaged her career, “Didn’t that worry you?”

  “We were assured the thing was treatable and it would be handled with discretion.”

  “But it wound up on the cover of People magazine.”

  “Any time you go with a celebrity endorsement there’s a measure of risk. They’re unpredictable. They’re human.”

  “But didn’t it bother your client that their spokesperson was a drug addict?”

  “It wasn’t like she was mainlining heroin. This fancy doctor got her hooked. I think there was sympathy in the executive ranks.” He smiles engagingly. “Who hasn’t done a little Xanax to get through the day?”

  I put my hands flat on the table and lock into his eyes.

  “Did Magda Stockman make the statement to you that Jayne Mason’s addiction was the doctor’s fault?”

  “Yes, and she said not to worry, he was being prosecuted for it.” Jerry Connell stares at me. “Isn’t he?”

  “Not until we can find something to prosecute him for.”

  He starts fiddling with the tie like it was a piccolo.

  “Whatever. As far as my client is concerned, at this point it probably doesn’t matter.” He’s talking to himself. “The public perception is such that …”

  He trails off, looking into the distance, calculating the public perception.

  “Well,” he concludes, “Giselle is protected.”

  “How is that?”

  “Worst-case scenario: Mason is in breach of her contract. We pull the product, we sue, bam-boom.”

  He slaps the table two times and seems ready to get back on the plane.

  “I don’t understand. How would she be in breach?”

  “We have a morals clause.

  “Show me.”

  • • •

  Although it is almost eight o’clock at night in St. Louis the lights are burning at the advertising agency of Connell and Burgess. Somebody back there sends a copy of the morals clause in Jayne Mason’s contract through the hotel fax. I read it line by line as it feeds off the machine:

  M. MORALS. If Spokesperson should, prior to or during the term hereof or thereafter, fail, refuse or neglect to govern Spokesperson’s conduct with due regard to social conventions and public morals and decency, or commit any act which brings Spokesperson into public disrepute, scandal, contempt or ridicule or which shocks, insults or offends a substantial portion or group of the community or reflects unfavorably on Spokesperson or Manufacturer, then Manufacturer may, in addition to and without prejudice to any other remedy of any kind or nature set forth herein, terminate this Agreement at any time after the occurrence of any such event.

  I thank Jerry Connell and shake his hand, folding the thin paper and tucking it carefully into an inner pocket of my blue briefcase.

  TWENTY-ONE

  WHEN I ARRIVE at the office the following day I find Duane Carter sitting in my seat playing with my surfer troll doll, the one wearing a Walkman with fuchsia hair standing up straight.

  “Stop fondling my troll.”

  Duane grins.

  “Get out of my chair.”

  “That’s no way to address your supervisor.”

  I drop the blue canvas briefcase onto the desk for emphasis. Unfortunately the force of the concussion causes my sunglasses to slip off my nose but I make a great save and continue to glower at Duane.

  “You’re not my supervisor, now move.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it. Catch this.”

  He pushes the Calendar section of today’s Los Angeles Times at me. The whole top half of the page is taken up with a giant photograph of Jayne Mason sitting in her den looking vulnerable and funky and oh-so-real in a denim shirt and loose curls, huge eyes with no makeup, like she just came down from a breakfast of skim milk and toast to share her darkest troubles with you, the reader.

  I have to stand there while Duane quotes from the article about how Jayne first became sensitized to victims of corrupt doctors who overprescribe narcotics in her therapy group at the Betty Ford Center. How as a result of the publicity surrounding the lawsuit, the investigation of Dr. Eberhardt has escalated to include the California Medical Licensing Board, which has suspended his license to practice medicine. Although the FBI continues to neither confirm nor deny its own investigation, it is bringing a supervisor who specializes in health care industry fraud out from headquarters in Washington, D.C., to review the situation.

  “You’re off the case, gal.”

  “Don’t believe what you read in the papers,” I reply coolly.

  “Some of his colleagues at the hospital say your buddy Eberhardt was subject to bouts of depression.”

  “Under all that stress, who wouldn’t be?”

  “They say he’s a superachiever, always pushing for perfection, the type who can’t handle failure. Goes back to his Harvard Med School days. How does the media find out stuff we don’t?”

  He enjoys my discomfort.

  Looking down, I catch a paragraph stating that Dr. Eberhardt “remains sequestered in his north of Montana home” and is not available for comment on the advice of legal counsel. I can picture him and Claire quivering behind that huge door.

  Duane stands up and hands me the paper. “It was a good shot. You’ve had a couple of good shots lately, but like I tried to explain before, you’ve still got some work to accomplish before you move on.”

  “And how did you move on, Duane?” I am heaving rapidly, spitting resentment so it is hard to articulate the words. “I’ve been in for seven years, you’ve been in for eight. Tell me the secret of how you got so far ahead.”

  He takes his time answering and when he’s ready he moves the black forelock aside, patting it down on the top of his head w
ith pale fingertips like he’s sticking it there with glue.

  “I made a deal with the Devil.” The look in his dark eyes is enigmatic. “When I was a teenager I wanted to get out of Travis County and have success at an early age, and one day I told that to the Devil, and here I am.”

  “Really? And what did you trade with the Devil for your success?”

  “That’s between him and me,” Duane answers without smiling and leaves.

  I sit there for some time, awed by the realization that he was 100 percent serious.

  When I switch on my computer the little box next to Mail is blinking, so I call it up and there are the results of the criminal checks I was running on everyone I could find who works, advises, profits, eats, sleeps, or plays within a hundred-mile radius of Jayne Mason. Everyone is clean enough, except for the limousine driver, Tom Pauley, who got into a little trouble with stolen goods when he was a state cop and had to leave the force.

  I remove the morals clause from the zippered compartment of the blue briefcase, grab a printout of the report on Pauley, and run down to the SAC’s office.

  • • •

  Galloway gets up from behind the desk and comes toward me, gesturing apologetically with a cigar. “Sorry you had to read about it in the paper.”

  “So it’s true? I’m off the case?”

  “The Director saw Jayne Mason crying her eyes out on Donahue and went ballistic. He wants more firepower in terms of the media. It has nothing to do with you.”

  I am silent.

  “I’m putting in for your transfer to C-1. Congratulations.”

  He waits for my reaction. When there is none he bends his knees, so he can hunch over and squint at me in the eyes.

  “Am I crazy or were you all over me to get that transfer?”

  “Right now a transfer is beside the point.”

  I show him the fax and explain that because of this morals clause, scandalous conduct — like being a dope addict — could have jeopardized a multimillion-dollar contract. I tell him my belief that Mason was lying all along about Randall Eberhardt’s culpability.