“I think I mentioned them to you that Monday morning.”
“Actually, I think you concentrated rather heavily that day on maybe one or two,” she said.
The waitress came, we ordered, the waitress went away. Susan leaned toward me a little, her chin resting on her folded hands. The play was gone from her eyes.
“Actually, I hope you will help her,” she said.
“Jill Joyce?”
“Yes. I don’t know if someone’s bothering her or not; but she is so lost.”
“I’m supposed to be the detective,” I said. “You’re supposed to be the shrink.”
“I can’t help her,” Susan said. “She won’t come near me. She doesn’t have anyone. Sandy tries to take care of her, but he’s got to make the pictures. She has no one who’s simply looking out for her. Not because of her TVQ, or the syndication deal we can get five years down the road. Not because she’s Jill Joyce.”
“Think anyone’s ever done that?” I said.
“No,” Susan said.
I looked out at the Public Garden, at the leafless willows through whose spidery branches the back lighting showed.
“And you think I should,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Even at the risk of my, ah…” I held my hands out in the two-foot measuring motion.
Susan smiled at me as sweetly as a convent acolyte.
“You have little to lose,” she said.
Chapter 5
I SAT in the production office on Soldiers Field Road I and talked with Sandy Salzman. Without his tasseled ski cap he was balding.
“Do you want me to protect Miss Joyce,” I said, “or do you want me to find out who’s harassing her?”
“Or if, ” Salzman said. Through the picture window in his office you could look across Soldiers Field Road at the Charles River, and across the Charles to Cambridge on the other side. The river was frozen now and snow covered. There were cross-country ski tracks on it, and trampled paths where kids and dogs had cut across. It was a steady-moving river, and it took a deep chill to freeze it enough to walk on. Every year there was a thaw and someone went through.
“Or If, ” I said. “But someone needs to decide. I can’t do both at the same time.”
“What’s Jill say?”
“Jill says she’s looking for one this long.” I made the measuring motion for him.
“Yeah, Jill says stuff like that,” Salzman said. “What’d you say?”
“I told her she was in luck.” Salzman laughed.
“Then she had another glass of wine and fainted at me.”
Salzman nodded. “She does that too,” he said.
“Makes a swell date,” I said.
Salzman spread his hands and shrugged. “Jill’s a television star,” he said. “She’s been one for twenty years in a medium where a lot of people are reading weather in Topeka six months after their first show is canceled. You got Jill Joyce on a project and you’ve got a thirteen-week on-air commitment, and all three networks fighting to make it.”
“That explains why she gets loaded every lunch and swoons on strangers?” I said.
“No, it explains why she gets away with it.”
“So which is it? Protect her or investigate the incidents, whatever the hell they are, no one seems too clear on that.”
“I know,” Salzman said. “The truth is, nobody pays a hell of a lot of attention to Jill beyond keeping her in shape to go on. Line producer earns his money on one of her shows.”
“So you don’t know what you want me to do,” I said. “But you haven’t got time to deal with her.”
Salzman tapped the sharpened end of a prone pencil on his desk, causing it to flip up and somersault in the air.
“Exactly,” he said and jabbed his forefinger toward me while he said it.
There were pictures all around the office, most of Salzman; a couple with actors, the rest with dead pheasant and elk and trout.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to Jill and I’ll decide what I should do. If I decide I need to do both, I’ll hire someone to watch Jill while I investigate.”
“You have someone in mind?” Salzman said. “Jill is very tough about people.”
I grinned. “Yeah,” I said. “I got a guy in mind.” It made me happy, thinking of Hawk with Jill Joyce.
Salzman frowned a little, but he let it pass. He was affable in the Hollywood way, and permanently pleasant,
