to reschedule.”
“Jayne likes yellow roses.” Figuring if everyone else is calling her Jayne I’ll give it a try.
“Yes, she does.”
And that’s it. He leaves me with the coffee and the souvenir Manet. I have never been told quite so graciously to take a flying leap.
• • •
I walk down to the beach, what the hell, the path across the sloping lawn looks enticing, bordered by fluttering pansies in combinations of yellow, red, blue, and purple that remind me of my mother’s cotton hankies flapping on the clothesline in the backyard. At the top of the cliff a sea wind powerful enough to blow the hair straight back is like an elixir drowning you with exotic promises — Hawaii is out there and China, after all — so by then there is no choice, so what if the wet air wilts the beige linen suit I wore to meet the movie star, I grip the metal chain that loops along the steep wooden stairway and make my way down a hundred vertical yards of headland rock.
Here I am sitting on Jayne Mason’s private beach at three in the afternoon as the sun reflects off the sand like a mirror with just the right intensity of heat, watching the whitecaps on green water, tasting the salt in the air, no noise, nothing in the brain but wind, no other humans or their works within view, utterly alone, thinking I would cheerfully commit a capital crime in order to have something like this, when a man climbs unsteadily over the rocks adjoining the next cove. For a moment he is a black silhouette against the brilliant screen of light and I think he must be a fan of Jayne Mason or a tabloid photographer trying the marine approach to her property. I get off the weathered wooden chest I am perched upon, my hand hovering instinctively near the weapon under my jacket.
As he lumbers closer I realize it is Tom Pauley, the limousine driver.
And that he is completely naked.
“Tom,” I call out to warn him, “it’s Ana Grey, FBI. We met in the alley, remember?”
“Sure do.” He continues walking until he is standing right next to me. “Gorgeous day.” Unconcerned, he opens the chest. Inside is a tangle of old netting, some clothes, folded towels, and a red cooler. Inside the cooler is fresh ice and some brown bottles of Mexican beer and fruit sodas and half of a shrink-wrapped watermelon.
“Jeez, Tom. We have to stop meeting like this.”
He grins. His lips are sunburned and chapped. Shoulders padded with fat. A pale distended belly. The usual dangle. And a pair of bow legs the color of boiled Santa Barbara shrimp.
“Have a beer.”
“I’ll take a black currant — boysenberry.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was invited.”
“By who?”
“Your boss.”
“Someone under investigation?”
“Could be.”
“Someone on staff?”
“Yes, Tom. We know all about that scam you’re running.”
He smiles and raises his eyebrows over the Dos Equis.
“Got me.”
“You can run but you cannot hide.”
We stand there looking out to the ocean and I’m the one who feels like an idiot because I’m dressed, don’t ask me why.
The tide is coming in faster now. The boulders Tom climbed over are almost totally obscured by foamy surf, which makes it harder for a second figure, a woman, to make her way around the jutting cliff, clear the rocks, cross the sand, and join us.
“Meet Maureen.”
Also naked.
Maureen is a very thin redhead, too thin, as if she’s got an eating disorder. She has bony arms and flaccid thighs, two small mounds with flat nipples for breasts, but great hair. Ropes of terrific red hair whipping around in the quickening breeze.
Maureen takes Tom’s hand and says nothing. I guess she’s shy. She reaches for a denim shirt inside the locker but instead of putting it on — as I hope she will — spreads it out and lies down.
Tom grabs a towel and sits cross-legged next to her, his middle-aged form like a big pile of pearly white Crisco beside her delicate nymphette body. One meaty hand tips the bottle of beer to his mouth while the other smooths Maureen’s young freckled forehead.
“You two look like you want some privacy.”
“No, no. We’re just on a break.”
“This is how they take coffee breaks in Malibu?”
‘Whenever possible,” Tom grins.
“You both work for Jayne Mason?”
“Maureen does her clothes.”
“I have a friend named Barbara who, due to a tragic childhood deprivation, is obsessed about Jayne Mason and where she gets her clothes.”
Maureen shrugs her bare shoulders. “She takes them.”
“What do you mean, takes them? From a store?”
“From the studio.” Maureen keeps her face to the sun, speaking without opening her eyes. “She’ll be like talking to a grip or someone, doing her Greta Garbo imitation, and I’m backing the car up to the dressing room and carrying out boxes of stuff.”
‘What kind of stuff?”
“The stuff she wore in the movie. I guess it’s kind of like hers anyway.”
“Does this behavior have anything to do with the drug problem?”
“That’s over. She gave up drugs,” Maureen tells me in a solemn voice. “Big time.”
Tom rolls over and props up his head on an elbow.
“They all steal from the studio, Ana. Standard operating procedure.”
“Someone will go, Where did you get that dress? And she’ll go, Oh, it’s from my personal designer, Luc de France, when it’s really from Twentieth Century-Fox. I love Jayne.” Maureen smiles into the infrared rays.
I realize this girl can’t be more than twenty years old with about as many brain cells.
“How long have you been working for Jayne?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a year?”
“Isn’t that fast to be given such a big responsibility? Don’t they have union rules?”
“Maureen’s an assistant,” Tom explains. “There’s someone else — or actually a few people — in charge of, you know—”
“Designing, buying, fitting,” Maureen chants like a child at her lessons, “conceptualizing.” She waits. Her eyebrows frown. “I don’t really want to do clothes.”
“No?” I drain the bottle.
“I have a great idea for a screenplay.”
“Little Maureen’s big dreams.” Tom strokes her hair affectionately.
He smiles placatingly. I toss the bottle back into the cooler.
“Why don’t you stay and join us?” he offers.
“Join you in what?”
“Whatever.”
I look out at the ocean one more time. The waves are six feet high now, heavy and forbidding.
