the parking lot with a fistful of cash and a starter pistol, red-eyed and strung out, desperate to stay ahead of the demons.
“I don’t think we should go for a warrant without a full background check on the patient.”
“When will we have it?”
“I’m waiting for a call from the Boston field office.”
Galloway lets go of the phone. Behind him torrents of rain cascade down the steamy windows.
“I know you really want this case.”
“Jayne Mason is not a case. Jayne Mason is a goddamn complex political situation waiting to explode just like the Cuban thing.”
He reaches toward the coffee table, gestures in frustration.
“Where’s your lucky belt buckle?”
“Gone.”
Instead he grabs the remote, points it at a TV on the credenza, and savagely pushes the button.
In perfect synchronicity with his mood the local news is showing live helicopter coverage of a fifty-foot camper being swept out of a flooded trailer park and carried along by the deluge, smashing apart against a railroad bridge, the pieces washing out to sea. We both stare with fascination at the slow inevitable destruction.
Then Galloway gets out of the chair restlessly. “The Director is on my ass. The press is on my ass. The district attorney calls me at home—”
“Jayne Mason’s calling here.”
“What for?”
“She wants us to do something about helicopters flying over her property.”
This causes Galloway to almost twitch himself right out of his skin.
“We’ve got to resolve this thing before it gets out of control.” He picks up a handful of yellow messages. “This morning alone I got three phone calls from Mason’s personal manager.”
“I hear she carries a lot of personal influence.”
Galloway grimaces. A thin whistle escapes through his back teeth.
“You don’t know the half of it and neither do I.”
“What’s the half you do know?”
“I was briefed on Magda Stockman by, let’s say, an official source in the Administration when we got the case. She’s one tough cookie. Came over to this country from Hungary during the revolt in 1957, got a job in Macy’s Herald Square selling lipstick, had a knack for it, went on her own, ran a snooty beauty shop up on Madison, met some famous Broadway actress and became her manager.”
“Where’s the political influence?”
Galloway mouths the cigar. “That came from ratting on her old Communist buddies to interested folks in Washington.”
“You mean she wasn’t escaping from the Communists—”
Galloway nods. “She was one of them. A party member. But more than that, an opportunist.”
“So she came to America—”
“Greener pastures.”
Now we are nodding together.
“Isn’t it great?” Galloway grins like a carnivore. “I’ve got the darling of the Republicans on my back on top of all this other crap with the Cuban thing.”
“The Bureau’s looking at hard times.”
Suddenly he has stopped listening, absorbed by an anchorwoman on the TV screen wearing a low-cut electric blue suit with a lacy camisole peeking out underneath.
“There’s a lesson to be learned,” he muses. I politely wait to hear it: “Hollywood.”
I nod soberly.
Galloway turns from the television set, his face composed.
“Maybe I should put someone else on the Mason case.”
Icy fear goes through me. “Why? I’m handling it.”
He hesitates. “I wish the hell you didn’t remind me of my fourteen-year-old daughter.”
“I’m not your fourteen-year-old daughter. And don’t worry — I won’t get pregnant.”
Galloway laughs. Or at least his tight shoulders heave up and down in a fair imitation. He’ll ride with me. For the moment.
“What else do you have cooking on this doc? What other sources can be approached and remain confidential? Neighbors who can’t stand the guy, disgruntled employees, the gardener, the mailman, a love affair, what?”
“If it’s there, I’ll find it.”
They have gone back to live coverage of the storm. A lone fireman is stranded in a flat plane of green water, holding on to a post with one hand, a walkie-talkie in the other.
“I want hard evidence by the end of next week. If he’s guilty, let’s put him away,” Galloway grunts.
“Done.”
His eyes go back to the man trapped in water up to his chest.
“Poor bastard.”
“Don’t worry. The chopper’s going to pull him out.”
But Galloway does not look convinced.
THIRTEEN
I GO BACK to my desk and have a long conversation with the Bank Dick’s Undercover Disguise, arguing that it is imperative to first complete the background check on Claudia Van Hoven to be certain she will make a sound witness. To this end, I leave an urgent message at the Boston field office for Wild Bill.
Following up on Galloway’s idea to look for someone close to the doctor who would be motivated to talk, I go through the file again and come to the printouts subpoenaed from the phone company. During a period of several months a whole lot of calls from the Eberhardt home were made to a local 454 number listed as belonging to Theodora Feign. After highlighting them with a marker it becomes graphically clear that Ms. Feign is linked to the Eberhardt household in some way: for one week alone there are twenty pink lines.
The Bank Dick’s Undercover Disguise and I are working on the same wavelength. We agree that since the calls were placed from the residence during the day they were most likely made by the wife, maybe to a girlfriend, maybe her only friend in California, someone the displaced nurse from Boston could unload on about how lonely she is over in the contemporary Mediterranean on Twentieth Street.
Theodora Feign could be the kind of source Galloway is looking for. But if I call her cold, she could easily turn around and tell bosom buddy Claire the FBI has been asking questions about her husband, thereby blowing the entire operation and busting me back to desk duty.
To be safe, I should talk to someone who has knowledge of Theodora Feign’s relationship with the Eberhardts. Who would know?
It was obvious from cruising the streets that there was a dual society north of Montana, upper-middle-class whites and working-class Hispanics living in parallel worlds. While the white women are absent you can see the housekeepers gathered on shady corners of those lush residential streets with crowds of strollers and babies, gossiping in Spanish like there’s no tomorrow, and it’s a safe bet, I explain to the Bank Dick’s Undercover Disguise, that the gossip has to do with the white women and how much they pay and how they run their households and who has an unhappy marriage and who is good friends with whom.
If Theodora Feign were close to Claire Eberhardt, there’s a good chance her housekeeper, Violeta Alvarado, would have known, and maybe Violeta talked about it with
