“After trying to kill you with a box of spaghetti, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to tell me how you supply Dilaudid and Dexedrine and Valium and cocaine and all the rest of it to Jayne Mason.”
“I have nothing to do with that.”
“But you know who does.”
His jaw tightens. His lips compress. The apartment suddenly seems very small, the doll faces fetishes, the Hansel and Gretel house a closed-in obsession.
“It must have been fun while it lasted, you and Lolita with the fourteen-year-old tits.”
“Go to hell.”
“New plan: you get dressed and we cruise over to Westwood.”
“What for?”
“The Bureau has a keen interest in this case and I’m sure this hotshot specialist from Washington would like to talk to someone who has intimate knowledge of what goes on in Jayne Mason’s house, maybe go over a little of your own past history.”
The rainbows spin over us.
“It’s not me.”
“Okay.” I let out a big, benevolent sigh like I’m finally letting him off the hook. Gently, compassionately, “Why don’t you put on some clothes?”
He picks up a pair of sweats from the couch, slips them on, and plops back down with a righteous look, rubbing the sweat from his temples.
“We know it’s Dr. Eberhardt,” I say, as if confiding a professional secret. “We’ve already busted his ass.”
Tom Pauley shakes his head, sneering. “That’s exactly the reason I hated the feds when I was a state cop. You guys are so fucking arrogant and so fucking wrong.”
I can see he’s got a bone to pick, so I hand him a great big turkey thigh: “We believe that we have an airtight case against the doctor.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Yeah, well I was there.”
“Bullshit.”
Now he’s on the moral defensive, red-faced and indignant: “Jayne almost offed herself with downers, okay? The doc comes out to Malibu and sees this and suddenly he gets it: the lady is an addict. He goes to her manager, who’s obviously the one who runs her life, and says, We’ve got to help this lady get off drugs or she’s going to die.’ Magda says, ‘I’ll do everything I can to help.’
“Jayne throws up for two days, she’s sick as a dog, they send me out at eleven o’clock at night to get some kind of goddamn tea. I have to drive all the way to Culver City to find an all-night health food store, and when I get back I hear them going at it in the den.”
“Fighting?”
“Jayne’s into that helpless little-girl thing, whining that she has to go to Betty Ford like the doctor says. Magda tells her”—imitating the throaty accent—“ ‘He only wants your money, Jay. Nobody loves you as much as I do.’ ”
“Magda was trying to save the contract with the cosmetics company.”
“Magda was trying to control Jayne, period. She heard from Maureen that Jayne was getting close to this doctor and it freaked her out. Who do you think convinced Jayne to cut the guy off at the knees?”
“All roads lead to Magda.”
“While Jayne was seeing the doctor, she tried to go straight but she was a mess — crying jags, migraines, panic attacks. Finally she went back to Maureen. Maureen didn’t want the responsibility so — you’re right — she took it to Magda.”
Finally the dynamic of that overwrought household becomes clear, but I want it from Pauley.
“Maureen didn’t want responsibility for what? Sorry if I’m being dense.”
“For getting Jayne high,” he exclaims with frustration.
There is silence. Rainbows turn slowly in the dust-laden air. Realizing what he has said, Pauley’s face crumples but stops short of tears.
“Maureen is Jayne Mason’s street connection,” I supply softly. “That’s why she’s kept around as a ‘wardrobe girl.’ ”
“She’s a cokehead,” Pauley says in a deep, choked voice. “As if you couldn’t tell. Magda had her on a golden string.”
“Paid for her habit?”
“You’ll never get Magda. That’s the beauty of it.”
I desperately wish I were wearing a wire.
“Unless you turn witness. Against Magda and Maureen.”
He doesn’t answer. The face is hardening now, the eyes two cold ovals of red.
“Let’s say in exchange for immunity from prosecution for any part you might have played in the sale or consumption of narcotics.”
“Jesus, Ana, that is total crap.”
‘We need your testimony.”
He thinks it over. After a moment, he slowly assents by nodding his head.
Just to make sure, “If you love her, why give her up?”
He seems different now, set, a grown-up man who realizes this is the last moment he may have to regain any control over the rest of his life.
“When you came out to the house,” he asks, “did you ever meet Jan, the brainless beach bum?”
The windsurfing instructor with the righteous calves who was watching them that day on the beach through a pair of binoculars.
“I remember Jan.”
“Maureen was fucking him the whole time.”
Tom Pauley sweeps a pair of undershorts up off the floor in an angry arc and stalks toward the bedroom.
• • •
Maureen huddles in the interrogation room bawling like a baby.
“I can help you,” Galloway is saying softly. “We can get you through this terrible situation, or do you want to wait until your lawyer gets here?” he adds, because the tape is running.
“This is going to kill my dad.”
Galloway hands her a tissue. I let him go for it. My job is to sit there with my legs crossed, projecting female sympathy.
“The best thing you can do for your dad is take care of yourself, Maureen. You haven’t been doing a very good job of that, have you?”
Maureen shakes her head. She’s so clogged up with tears she can hardly breathe. The wan cheeks are raspberry red.
“Tell us where you bought the pills.”
“I can’t.”
“Are you afraid of the dealers?”
She nods, pushing at the wet hair across her eyes.
“You have good reason. They’re bad people. But see”—here Galloway sighs like the problem is really his—“if you don’t give them up, you’ll go to jail and they’ll be out on the street doing business as usual. Is that fair?”
“It’s my own fault.”
I nod encouragingly.
“That’s true and eventually you’ll have to deal with that. But right now you can help yourself if you assist our
