“So where was all this pressure coming from?”
“Dr. Randall, where else? I always thought the guy was a snob. Here was his wife drying up inside and he’s out playing Doctor to the Stars.”
“With Jayne Mason?”
“Dig this: he had a pass for the security gate, a key to the front door, and Jayne Mason used to pick him up from his office in her limousine and take him around to charity dinners and the movies.”
“Were they having an affair?”
“No, just for the hell of it. She gave him the key for emergency house calls.”
“Why Randall?”
‘Who knows. Because she felt like it and he was star-struck, like any dope just in from the boonies. For a doctor, I’ve got to tell you, he wasn’t very smart. I’ve done a lot of work for movie stars. It doesn’t take many brain cells to figure out all they want to do is use you.”
“So you think Jayne Mason was using Randall Eberhardt.”
“Using him how?”
“To get drugs.”
“No, to me it was just the opposite. He was trying to get her
He swirls the sugar in a second iced tea.
“Claire came to that birthday party alone, right, and met me and the rest is history. The reason why Randall wasn’t there and couldn’t come was because he had to go out to Malibu to take care of Jayne Mason, who supposedly had a cold.”
He leans forward and taps a finger on the Mexican tile inlaid in the tabletop.
“Claire told me later when he got out there he found Jayne Mason lying in bed, completely naked, covered with her own feces and vomit.”
He taps each word for emphasis:
“It’s a good thing he had that key because she’d almost OD’d on downers. That’s when he checked her into the Betty Ford Center.”
I think about it.
“Then where did she get the drugs?”
He shrugs. “She must have a street connection somewhere.”
I nod. It’s a good guess, an educated guess you might say. But if Randall Eberhardt weren’t supplying Jayne Mason with narcotics, why is she going after the doctor now, as if her life depends on it?
• • •
To the west a gray mist has blended the ocean with the sky, creating a curtain of fog. The surf looks mild and green in the late afternoon light, playful, benign. Bicycle wheels spinning along the bike path, tiny as gears in a watch, throw off faint metallic sparks of light.
“Are you still seeing Claire?”
“It ended a couple of months ago when she decided she was still in love with Randall. No surprise. She could never let go, she clings to him like a life raft.”
“How did it end between you two?”
He rubs a knuckle across his short hair.
“Pretty bad. She was at my place, late getting home, she calls Teddy Feign’s because Laura was over there playing with their little girl.…” He sighs. “And she finds out over the phone that Laura’s fallen into the pool and almost bought the farm.”
I’ve put the pen down and stopped taking notes. My heart is beating faster because I know from his dread tone of voice — and because I shouldn’t be here in Claire Eberhardt’s place, feeling what she must have been feeling sitting across from this hunk Warren Speca — that we are about to make an abrupt turn onto a dangerous track.
“We jump into my truck and race over to Teddy’s house. Claire’s saying the Our Father all the way. Teddy wasn’t home at the time. The housekeepers already called 911 and the street was jammed with paramedics and cop cars. You don’t want to ever come home to that. Claire gets out of the truck and almost faints into the arms of this black woman cop. I don’t go into the house — what am I doing there, right? — but Claire comes back out to tell me Laura’s all right, she never even lost consciousness. Turns out it was the housekeeper’s fault.”
“Which housekeeper?”
“I forget her name.”
“Was it Violeta?”
“Yeah. Violeta.”
I feel a dull thud in the chest, the way you do when you hear something bad about someone you have come to like.
“Did you know Violeta?”
“Uh-uh. I think I ran into her once, when I showed up at Claire’s.”
“When was that?”
“One time toward the end. We didn’t see each other for a month after the thing with Laura, then Claire told me it was over.”
“Why? Guilty conscience?”
“Yeah, she thought it was all her fault, but also she claimed going through it with Randall brought them together.” He makes a wry sideways frown. “What can I tell you? The thrill was gone.”
He flicks the empty glass forward with thumb and forefinger.
“This is the first place I took her when we started being together.”
We wait for the elevator in front of a large antique mirror in a wooden frame painted with roses. Warren Speca has put on a baseball cap that says Warner Bros. Studios. I look at us in the mirror. The bartender is slipping a pot of chili into the steam tray in preparation for happy hour. The elevator arrives, empty. We step inside.
“The first time we kissed was right here.”
We stand in silence as the capsule shimmies and starts its descent, the way they stood, close together, awkward and lusting.
If he surprised me with a kiss the way he first kissed Claire Eberhardt, I know it would be just a brush, a tease, nothing you could take offense about, the way it was for her: a token from an old friend, remembrance of the days in high school when they weren’t afraid of what they didn’t know, when they rushed headlong into it all — a summer night in a moving car and all the windows down, intoxicated by the syrupy vapor of Southern Comfort and the jumbled weedy smells of a pitch-dark country road. The headlights off, blind, picking up speed.
SIXTEEN
THE NEXT DAY I get some disturbing information from Boston.
“Bay Pharmacy searched their records back to 1985 and the only prescriptions filled by Claudia Van Hoven were for an eye infection and some female problems,” Wild Bill says casually over the phone. “Even so they weren’t written by Randall Eberhardt.”
“Maybe she went to another drugstore and didn’t remember the name right.”
“I‘m checking into that now, little senorita.”
Suddenly I’m not buying Wild Bill’s jocularity. The breathless quality of his voice betrays fear, which is instantly communicated to me in a rush of adrenaline.
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?”
“Not by a long shot.”
