“Is it urgent?”
“There are nude pictures of me being sold on the Internet.”
“Are you getting a percentage?”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“It was a serious question.”
“Wouldn’t a percentage require my permission? And if I’d given permission, do you think I’d be calling you?”
“Can you be here in twenty minutes?”
“I can be there in ten,” I said, but I was lying.
I was there in eight.
CHAPTER 13
Chapel’s office was near the PSU campus in downtown Portland, on the other side of the Willamette from where I lived, just off Market Street. I pulled into the parking garage just before ten and then rode the elevator up to the offices of Chapel, Jones & Nozemack. The offices were nice, comfortable and quiet, and the receptionist behind the desk was extremely pretty, and she recognized me the moment I came in, giving me a big smile.
I wasn’t even at her desk before she was speaking into her headset, saying, “Mr. Chapel? Miriam Bracca is here to see you . . . yes, sir, right away.”
“You took my line,” I told the receptionist. “Now I don’t know what to say.”
She looked immediately and sincerely apologetic. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“You can head on back.” She indicated the interior door, still giving me the big smile.
“I don’t know where I’m going.”
“Just left and down the hall. You can’t miss it.”
I thanked her and went through the door and left, and down the hall. There were framed posters on the wall, and four of them were Tailhook related—our covers and the European version of the tour advertisement. There were also a couple movie posters featuring actors and directors and writers who lived in the Rose City, and a promotional poster from last year’s Rose Festival. Apparently Chapel, Jones & Nozemack were a civic-minded firm.
The office door was ajar, and I knocked on it before pushing it open further, sticking my head inside. The last lawyer’s office I could really remember spending any time in had been the Multnomah County District Attorney’s, and Chapel’s office bore about as much resemblance to that as fish do to penguins. It was clean and bright, with a chrome desk and black leather chairs and black modular filing cabinets, and two walls were windows, giving a view of the river and the eastern sprawl of the city. I could see Mount Hood in the distance, snow-covered and sharp against the sky. The tinting on the window made the heavens look touched with green.
Chapel came around his desk to greet me, extending one hand while using the other to pull his headset off. The headset looked better suited to Mission Control than the legal profession. Fred Chapel himself was maybe in his early forties, but that was a guess, and maybe not a good one, because nothing else about him really indicated a specific age as much as a lifestyle. He was wearing blue jeans that looked either well cared for or brand-new, and a bright multi-colored sweater, and black leather walking shoes that I knew had to have come from Europe, because that was the only other place I’d ever seen them. His face was smooth and tanned, which meant he either spent a lot of the winter out of town, or under a lamp someplace, and his teeth were very white, and he smiled like he’d known me forever and was always glad to see me.
“Mim, please have a seat,” he said. “You want something to drink? Coffee or water?”
“No. Thanks.”
He dropped back into his chair, smiled. “Graham called about three minutes after you did.”
“Did he?”
“It’s a Tailhook issue as much as it’s an issue for you.”
“I’d think it’s more for me.”
“He said you’d say something like that. But you’re still part of Tailhook.” He extended an open hand. “Did you bring it?”
I hesitated, then pulled the folded sheet from my pocket and handed it to him. Chapel unfolded the paper and looked it over, then raised his gaze past it and looked me over in much the same way, and though there was nothing reductive or objectifying in the gaze, I couldn’t look at him while he did it, and so settled on the view of Mount Hood out the window instead.
“Is it possible that the photograph is a fake?” Fred Chapel asked. “Could someone have edited your head from a publicity shot and then grafted it onto the body of someone else?”
“It’s me.”
“You’re positive?”
“If it’s a fake, they’re working from an original,” I said, shrugging out of my jacket. His look was quizzical, then turned to slight alarm as I began pulling off my overshirt.
I let him worry while I got my arms out of my sleeves, leaving the shirt around my neck, revealing the tank I was wearing beneath. I turned in the chair, left and then right, showing him each of my arms. “The ink’s the same.”
“You’ve had shots showing the tats,” he said, musing as I got my shirt back in place. “Could be whoever did this just edited the tattoos, as well. Doesn’t seem likely, though. Can I ask where you got this copy?”
“My brother gave it to me this morning.”
“Did he say how he got it?”
“Someone e-mailed it to him.”
“Your brother has friends e-mailing him pictures like this of his sister?”
“I think this was a friend asking if he knew about this, rather than saying, hey, your sister’s got a great rack.”
He didn’t smile. “Do you know where the friend got it?”
“Mikel—that’s my brother—said it was off of some pay site, one of those ones that does naked-celebrity pictures.”
“Do you know the name of the site?”
I shook my head. “But I can give Mikel a call, he’ll know.”
“Maybe later. One of my assistants is looking on-line right now. When he gets back to me we’ll want to determine if the sites are the same. Let’s assume for the time being that the picture really is of you, and not a fake, then.”
“I’ve never posed nude for anyone,” I said.
“Never?”
I just looked at him.
“Maybe for a boyfriend, for fun? Or as something romantic between the two of you?”
“You’re confusing me with Vanessa. She’s the one with all the boys. I’m the one who sits in the hotel room with a guitar in her lap and crap on the TV.”
Chapel grinned. “You’re keeping your sense of humor, that’s good.”
“Am I? I’m not trying to be funny.”
“Can I ask you some questions?”
“You mean more questions? Sure.” I freed a cigarette and stopped myself from lighting it long enough to get a nod from him.
He took an ashtray from a desk drawer and slid it over to me. “You have any idea when or where the picture could have been taken?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been in over one hundred hotel rooms this past year, easy. It’s not a dressing room, I’m sure of that. I can’t remember ever being totally naked in a dressing room. In my undies, yeah, but not in the buff.”
