Jenna Takes the Fall

by A. R. Taylor

  “Their furniture moved with them. Don’t worry, they replaced this with a three-bedroom on, oh, you don’t need to know that now. I may say, they are two very happy, very rich women now.”

  “They’re lost to me, right?” Jenna had heard the terms of the agreement surprisingly well, considering the circumstances, but she still couldn’t believe any of it. Five hours ago she inhabited her own life; now she had stepped behind the mirror into an altogether different one. She wanted badly to wash, though, conscious of Vincent Hull still on her body. “I need some time alone,” she managed to say, embarrassed. Rudolph Hayes bowed his head and nodded.

  “The press will find you by tomorrow, so you’ll have to stay inside much of the time.”

  “For how long?”

  “For a decent interval, but we will decide that. Then we’ll let them get several good looks at you, but after that it’s off to, where is it now?”

  “I haven’t had time to figure that out.”

  Such was the plan, that after the press had had a field day with “the other woman,” and Jenna had been photographed and stalked and whatever else, her identity firmly sealed in their gullible little minds, she would disappear to some village in Europe or Fiji or Australia, or anywhere her heart desired, because she would have the money to do so, because she would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice, certainly beyond any of her dreams.

  That night, as she sank into the new bed these people had bought for her, she couldn’t stop thinking of the face of Vincent Hull, his jaw slack, in a perpetual gasp, as the paramedics hovered about him. And the look on Jorge’s face when he saw her, that grimace, appalled, horrified, confounded. She wished, she wanted so much to tell him the truth of all this and vowed to ask the lawyer about it the next day.

  “Are you mad? You can’t call him,” the lawyer said when she rushed out her intentions as soon as she got up in the morning. “The deal is to hole up, talk to no one. Your phone number has changed anyway. Despite the speed of all this, I did think you understood.”

  “But at least if Jorge knew the truth. . . .”

  The somber man interrupted her. “He could tell other people.”

  “He’s been keeping Vincent Hull’s secrets for years.”

  “In the modern world, nobody keeps any secrets, except lawyers, and they can certainly be bought. You know what the deal is, and I dare say you are capable of fulfilling it. If you weren’t, Tasha would never have enlisted your aid.” He made it sound as if Jenna were almost religiously anointed.

  The death of Vincent Hull in such circumstances was bound to whip the press into a frenzy, and it did. Ensconced in vans and camp chairs, they waited and watched at the Gramercy Park apartment house, annoying dog walkers and residents alike. Collectively they had discovered Jenna’s address in about three hours, and now she was a prisoner and did not even dare to part the curtains. Her first visitor, a hair stylist and makeup artist, almost broke a leg trying to get through the free-for-all, but once inside, she proved the only rational person Jenna had talked to since Vincent’s death. An employee of some relation to Rudolph Hayes, she turned Jenna into a hot-looking, full-on New Yorker, with shapely hair that damped down her curls and made her look truly dazzling, even while still ridiculously young. If she was the guilty temptress, she had to look the part.

  The first time she ventured outside, as the lawyers instructed, was just to get her picture taken posting a fake letter, wading through screaming lady reporters in chic suits, guys with baseball caps and boom microphones held perilously over her head, shouting photographers shoving competitors out of the way with heavy cameras. She faced down this scrum in a white shirt, black pants, a heavy jacket, and sunglasses, and it had taken every bit of nerve she possessed to open her door and descend one step and one step alone, before she rushed back inside. The next morning she adorned the front pages of the New York Post and the New York Daily News. Of course, The New York Times ran an extensive article on Vincent Hull’s demise, briefly mentioning the presence of one of his assistants at the death scene. Its placement on page four made it even more conspicuous, at least to Jenna’s eyes. Soon enough every press outlet used that first photo, a front view of her holding open the apartment door, in glasses, with that dazzling hair. She had an uneven grin on her face, highly inappropriate considering the circumstances, making her appear indifferent to his death, downright moronic. The next two times she braved the crowd, at the lawyer’s request, she wore a dark coat and a large hat, sort of like a Russian oligarch’s wife off to shop at Bergdorf’s.

  Now, while alone so much, she began really to think about her life, and more particularly about Vincent Hull. The worst of it, the very worst of it, was how awful it had been to see her lover in death. She had loved him, she had, she told herself, and to prove it, or to make her tears flow even harder, she listened over and over again to her cherished Prince CD, “Nothing Compares to U,” nothing compares to you. Her most ordinary thoughts now turned to some version of the apocalypse, and she would never recover. All had changed; she had agreed to that change.

  Another baffling element in the evolving complexity was Inti, a journalist no less, even if off in Rye. Would he believe this trumped up story? He had always seemed to know her, by the look in his eyes, but he wouldn’t understand this. She would be cast as a betrayer, a liar, and a cheat. Unbearable, these thoughts, and she wanted to wish them away, but she could never see him again, it seemed, and for the first time she began to feel the heavy burden of a decision made so quickly. The job, the affair, all to betray everyone for riches? How despicable. She felt such a deep shame that she wanted just to close her eyes and disappear. Could she communicate with him somehow and tell him this was all a lie?

  Her phone rang constantly, despite the new number, but she didn’t answer, as instructed. She had no family left, though doubtless her astounded roommates would wonder at seeing her depicted as “the other woman,” since they hardly seemed to think her a woman at all, pathetically in lust after her impossible boss. Would they believe any of this? From time to time she longed to see, just for a moment, their faces. But the one she really couldn’t get out of her mind was Jorge, and she vowed, somehow or other, to let him know enough not to hate her.

  PART THREE

  Winter, 2000

  Former Ohio resident, Jenna McCann is no stranger to her fellow students at Ohio University. Sources called her “pushy, very competitive.” She told her friends one day she would be famous. “Basically, she was something of a slut.”

  —Athens Mirror, January 3, 2000

  Mark Rothko’s painting, “Untitled,” 1969, from the estate of Vincent Macklin Hull, broke records last night, reaching the 22 million dollar mark. Curiously, his widow, Sabine Hull remarked at the auction that “the painting was so dull,” and she “wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible.”

  —Artful, February 10, 2000

  I believe in reincarnation. May Vincent Hull come back as two Asian sex slaves.

  —JORGE GARZA TO HIS MOTHER

  ONE

  Nothing in this life could have prepared Inti Weill for what happened to his erstwhile girlfriend. Two months ago, seeing her face on all the major New York papers, her obvious new look in hair and makeup, hiding herself in the oversized collar of a white blouse, had him confused and outraged, and he still had not recovered. Who the hell was she, really? Though in the major papers, descriptions of her actual position underneath Vincent Hull were restrained, he got the picture all too well. Filthy, disgusting images had roiled his mind each night ever since, and he couldn’t sleep. It outraged him that he could have been so wrong, deluded about her, more particularly about her supposed interest in him. Up until this point in his romantic life, he had been confident of his powers of seduction, having succeeded many times where others had failed. Then too he really liked women; his mother he regarded as his very best friend. About Jenna he had felt smug, priding himself in his compassion for her, stuck as she was in a chaotic big
world she didn’t seem to understand. But now, of all the people known to him on earth, she struck him as least likely to be tabloid fodder, least likely to have done what was asserted. Could she possibly have been the mistress of this aged man at more or less the same time she huddled with him in a tent in Rye, New York?

  He had, however, a more immediate concern. When the coyote story came out in the Rye Register, he had credited Jenna, “Photos by J. McCann,” a name that he now regretted using. It had been generous of him, he thought, to name her. Much as Inti realized his coyote alert was up against some stiff competition from the 86th birthday of the owner of the town hardware store, also a party for women who wore purple hats and gave to charity, still, people had read it and reacted strongly to the pictures, though so far no one had connected this minute reference (did anyone read photo attributions in the newspaper?) to the young woman at the heart of a major scandal—as yet. But they might, and then what?

  Predictably, the New York Post had raised questions regarding the timeline of the tycoon’s death and had named “his assistant, Jenna McCann,” as the woman who had called the EMTs and been found in a highly compromised position in the room with him. The New York Times discussed these details days later, in terms that could only heighten suspicions. “The mysterious timeline of Vincent Macklin Hull’s death grows even more murky. According to the family spokesman, the man collapsed at approximately 9:30 p.m. but was actually spotted in the emergency room at midnight, physicians still attempting to resuscitate him. The medical examiner’s report has yet to be unsealed, but apparently no autopsy was performed, and the man who lived in something like an imperial court was reportedly cremated and buried within two days at the family cemetery in Chicago.” To Inti’s way of thinking, the story given out to the press made no sense, and adding to his suspicions, during the next few weeks a “family spokesman” kept trying to reconfigure all this through a series of revised statements.

  Once again, Inti looked through the photographs Jenna had taken, admiringly. In the first one, a skinny, wretched-looking coyote hung down its face at the entrance to their tent. Jenna had caught her, clearly a female because the teats were still full, in a moment of surprise and curiosity. Unlike a healthily skittish animal, this one seemed desperate and dazed. Some of her fellows appeared in the background, guarded, glittering eyes visible through the foliage. Another pictured just the scrawny back end of the creature as it moved slowly off into the trees, and in yet another image, a coyote lay dead in the grass.

  He really needed more photos, as the story had become a sensation. On the very day he filed and shortly thereafter, the pictures had fanned out over the airwaves and across twenty other unexpected venues. Fliers up all over Rye detailed how to wave off the creatures, and “make yourself big” became a mantra, while zealous pet owners organized nightly hunts to scare the animals away, if not kill them. It solved a local mystery, and the story got picked up elsewhere, even so far as The New York Times. Rye had whole teams of midnight watchers in tents now, and Inti had caused it. Seriously, how many coyotes were wandering right now around Central Park, snatching up Fluffy and Fido? Zoologists had told him that coyotes really were everywhere—the stealth beneficiaries of a civilization discarding a tremendous amount of edible trash. He expected to hear from Jenna, though he chided himself for even wanting to. A fraud and a liar, that woman, using him as her beard in front of the family. He had tried every single phone number he could think of, even down to her roommates, but all had been cut off. With a shudder he recalled all the nasty things he had said about Hull, and yet he could remember no reaction whatsoever from Jenna, maybe a smile or two, and he had thought she was just being discreet about her boss. He tried briefly to reach Tasha and got nowhere, though he had little faith in a woman who basically worked for NewsLink as a professional liar.

  After his third coyote article—spinning it out for months at the behest of his editor—Inti heard from the regional New York editor at the Times with an offer to work on the “New York” section of the country’s paper of record. Out of the darkness and into the light, ecstatic to be back in the game, as he put it. Once ensconced in a new apartment and a slightly bigger desk, Inti had every intention of learning a great deal more about Vincent Hull’s death and now was positioned to do so.

  Unfortunately, he had had no idea how ridiculously similar this new job would be to his old beat at the Rye Register until, during what seemed like a long lead up to actual snow, he attended four or five zoning meetings in Westfield, New York, near Lake Erie, boring to the point of stupefaction. From there he worked up something on the wineries nearby, those that supplied grapes to the Canandaigua Wine Company, more interesting certainly, also tasty. Next he went on to write about Amish life and found himself amid a quantity of buggies and quilts, some of which had won prizes at the county fair, all of this because his editor thought him adept at “local color.” Despite being employed by a much bigger paper, he seemed even farther away from the major news of the world than ever, and these three months seemed like forever.

  Also during this time, news had died down about Vincent Hull’s death. Nevertheless, recently more facts dribbled out: his immense art collection, the many gifts to charity, random bits meant to convey his good character, and the astonishing news that he had left Tasha money to buy a co-op on Park Avenue. She certainly didn’t live there because Inti had researched the residents of the building many times, looking always for notice of a new tenant. There didn’t seem to be one. He even tried to chat up the doorman, who stared him down and remained silent.

  Inti feared that his own vanity kept forcing him to question Jenna’s actually having sex with the great man, but his instincts cried out that the story was doctored. Who had actually screwed the man to death? This question haunted him, but the principals had disappeared, and no one was talking. Even Mrs. Hull had returned to France with her children, and all mention of the family remained respectful and discreet. Someone had put a lid on it, difficult to do in the year 2000 but still doable, especially considering the reach of the family and their great wealth. For his own part, Inti felt, oddly, as if he held the keys to the kingdom. Whatever his misgivings, he had the wit to understand that potentially he sat on a big story. The girl with Vincent Hull in his death throes, he knew her, though not where she was. He could make something of this, he could use her to further his career at the Times, but during these days he was too conflicted and angry to do any serious searching.

  Inti even found it painful to try to remember whether Jenna had ever talked of favorite vacation spots or places she wanted to visit. Her horizons seemed to involve Manhattan and Mecox Bay in Water Mill. Vainly, proudly, he considered that he absolutely should not pursue this, even though she had materially furthered his great coyote success. Then again there remained a greater gift from the eccentric world of the Weill family. They had not fostered that rabid hunger that demanded devotion to career above all else. About work his mother and father affected a nonchalant reluctance to struggle, and they hadn’t had to, living off the very tolerant students of Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington.

  “There’s been an art theft in Tarrytown,” the Times deputy editor announced to him over the phone. “Get up there and see what’s going on.”

  At least Tarrytown was closer to Manhattan than the hinterlands he had of late been visiting, Inti thought as he pulled on his heavy coat. After a ride on the Metro-North Hudson line, then a trip by taxi up to the immense front door of a Tudor revival pile of bricks that sat on twelve acres, he found himself inside a mansion only Dracula could love. The harried housekeeper, a woman in her sixties who kept picking nervously at her pockets, dragged him from one large room to another, and finally to a sitting room with shimmering yellow raw silk on the walls and two empty squares where the paintings had once rested, one small, the other enormous. “See, see, they are not where they should be. Disappeared.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “Tw
o men were working here on the house, repairs, loose chandeliers and lights, all those things. When they first came, I couldn’t get hold of the missus to see or ask anything, but they had been here before so I just let them in. I kept on working, but when I went back they were gone, and so were two of the paintings.” The woman started to cry and hung onto Inti’s jacket. “Is it my fault, do you think? Oh no, so much money!” She began to moan and blew her nose into a large, white handkerchief.

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure your employer will understand,” though he was not sure of any such thing. “Do you have the names of the paintings?”

  “No, but they were beautiful, so nice. I used to love to look at them.”

  The woman did fill in information on her boss, a Mrs. Regina Pittman, wife of a big-time hedge fund manager, Jack Pittman, with a home in St. Croix and a chateau in the Loire Valley, in addition to this place. Once back at his tiny desk in the city, he phoned the woman at each, only to be told that no one could reach her at the moment, though they had tried. Finally one minion gave him a lawyer’s name, and Inti called the man.

  “Yes, Mrs. Pittman knows about this already. One was a Fragonard, quite small, the other a large Bartholomeus Spranger, the very best of his work, both worth together, maybe ten million dollars.”

  “Incredible, and the two guys just walked out with them?”

  “Apparently so, though these thefts are almost always inside jobs. We’ll have to depose everybody there, because no doubt they got help. Unfortunately the works might even be overseas by now.”