The bulky blue and white Channel Six News van scudded to a stop on Wilshire, across the wide boulevard from Sotheby’s in the heart of Beverly Hills. It was after noon on Saturday, and the auction was already in progress. Several other big vans bearing the logos of competing news outlets, local and national, were already parked along the curb, which was a red zone, but the police rarely ticketed newsies. They cultivated good relations with journalists and news operations, to come off in the best light possible in the day-to-day fracas that was news in L.A.
Maxi hopped down from the truck as her cameraman, Rodger Harbaugh, raised the big, unwieldy microwave mast to feed the signal back to the station. Rodger was a street-smart news wars veteran, a wiry man with short brown hair and a sun-weathered face, who always got his shots with the least possible fuss. Maxi was glad she drew Rodger today, and not one of the station’s puffed-up auteurs who would try to make Gone with the Wind out of this shoot. She didn’t want to be here, she fervently hoped none of her colleagues would make her part of their story because she was once married to Jack Nathanson, and she intended to get in, get her footage, do her stand-ups, and get out. Hoisting her bag onto her shoulder, she walked around to the back of the van where Rodger had begun unloading gear.
“Down and dirty on this one, Rodge—no frills, okay?”
“You got it, Max. How’d you draw this duty, anyway?” Everybody at the station, in fact everybody in the business, knew that Maxi Poole was one of the late Jack Nathanson’s exes.
“Pete had a bug in his drawers about me doing it—”
“You couldn’t reason with him?”
“He quit smoking again.”
“Aah.”
Rodger hoisted the heavy minicam up on his right shoulder, lugged a leather bag filled with tapes, lights, filters, lenses, battery packs, and other assorted photographic supplies, and hefted the big aluminum tripod with his left hand.
“Sorry I can’t help you with any of that,” Maxi said.
“I know. We’d get nailed.” It was against union rules for reporters to touch any camera crew equipment. Maxi broke that rule routinely when there were no other news personnel around who might feel strongly enough to file a grievance. They crossed the eight lanes of Wilshire and climbed the stairs into Sotheby’s lobby, showed their credentials, and went inside the auction hall.
There were the usual greetings and camaraderie between competing news crews. If any of them thought it odd that Maxi Poole was covering the auction of her deceased ex-husband’s effects, none of them let on to her. There would be some wagging about it, Maxi knew, but she shrugged it off—they didn’t pay her mortgage. Still, she couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable, especially being confronted yet again with all the pieces that had furnished her own home for years. Seeing it all jammed together here, lined up row after row in Sotheby’s showrooms, unrelieved by a plant, a lamp, a book, the pieces presented even more of a drab lot than they had at Janet’s house three days ago.
Rodger scoped the place for a spot where the light was best, while Maxi scanned the hall to see if she recognized anyone she could grab for a sound bite. Feeling a touch on the shoulder, she jumped. Tension, she thought. When Jack Nathanson was in a room—and she could definitely feel him in this room—there was tension. Sexual tension, excitement, anxiety, hostility—conflicting emotions, but never indifference.
“Hi, Maxi…Forgive me for startling you.” It was Janet Orson.
“Hello, Janet.” She smiled. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, it’s going,” Janet said. “It’s all going! Sotheby’s has agreed to take whatever’s left for a lot price, so today will be the last of it.”
“You got a good turnout,” Maxi said, attempting to ease the awkwardness they both felt in this situation. The two looked around the room. A tall, stunning woman with titian hair, in leather shorts and suspenders over a halter top, was ambling about, inspecting the paintings.
“That’s Taryn Zimmerman,” Janet offered. “Lived next door to us for a while. She was married to Irving Zimmerman, the developer.”
“I know,” Maxi said. “She came to the station and tried to sell us on doing a story suggesting that her ex-husband had Jack killed.”
“Did she tell you she was having an affair with Jack?”
“You knew?”
“Of course I knew. Wives know.”
“The old Jack Nathanson mystique.” Maxi sighed.
“Yup, they can’t get enough of him, even after he’s dead.”
At that, Maxi scrutinized Janet’s face—the widow looked surprisingly like she didn’t give a damn.
“Oops, there’s another one,” Janet said, mischief in her eyes. Maxi followed her gaze to an emaciated young woman who might have been beautiful once, but now, her eyes hooded, her skin pasty, her auburn hair hanging in tired clumps, she looked like another casualty of hip L.A.’s love affair with drugs. “Meg Davis, the child actress in Black Sabbat.”
“She was at the funeral,” Maxi observed.
“And now she’s here. Probably was also hooked on Jack.”
They took another look at the woman, who was unsteadily holding a glass of champagne in one hand and a bidding card in the other. “She looks like she just got here on the mother ship and she’s still on Venusian time,” Janet commented with an impish smirk, again surprising Maxi with her lack of even a trace of bitterness.
“Guess Jack collected them,” Maxi offered absently, then quickly added, “I’m sorry, Janet; that was probably offensive.”
“Hardly,” Janet said with a wry lift of her brow. “You’ve been there. By the way,” she added, “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“I had no choice,” Maxi rejoined. “My boss has some goofy idea that by cozying up to the people who knew Jack, I might sniff out his killer.”
“Not so far-fetched,” Janet remarked, scanning the massive auction hall. “I can see at least half a dozen people right now who might have had the motivation to do it.”
A couple in their fifties, conservatively dressed, were approaching them. The woman reached for Janet’s hand. “Hello, dear,” she said. “My husband was the director of photography on two of Jack’s films. We had dinner with him several times. He was charming and witty, a wonderful man.…”
After some reminiscing the couple drifted off, and Janet surreptitiously rolled her eyes. Maxi was seeing a whole new side of Janet Orson, and she was enjoying her.
“I’ve got to get to work, Janet,” she said now. “If you spot the killer, bring him over to my camera, would you? My boss would be so proud.”
Janet’s smile reached her eyes. “You’ve got it. Meantime, if you see anything here that you want, let me know. For you, it’s free.”
Maxi scanned the hall. “How about that black boxwood corner number adorned with the ormolu gargoyles with the ivory teeth?” she said, pointing to an oversize, dreary-looking Gothic cabinet propped against a far wall. “I used to keep Yukon’s toys and dog food in that thing.”
“I’ll have it shipped to your house,” Janet deadpanned, and she gave Maxi a gentle elbow to the ribs. Maxi couldn’t wait to tell Debra—this woman was definitely a new member of the Club.
She moved off through the furniture and the crowd to where Rodger had set up lights and was shooting B-roll. As soon as she came close enough, his eye still in the camera lens, Rodger grabbed her arm with his free hand. “Here’s your story, Max!” he whispered. He was rolling tape on Meg Davis, who was now bidding on some kind of movie prop that had been used in Black Sabbat.
The auctioneer’s voice droned on, and each time the bid price escalated, Meg Davis raised her bidding card again. Rodger was getting it all on tape. Maxi checked out the item on the block, an ornamental crucifix of some kind.
“Sold,” sang the auctioneer with a bang of his gavel, “to the woman with bid number three-eleven. Congratulations, ma’am. You can claim your purchase at the desk in about an hour, after it’s processed. Next item, lot number fifty-six, a painting by…” And on it went.
“Let’s go,” Maxi said to Rodger, and as she ran ahead to where Meg Davis stood, she spotted other reporters rushing toward the woman. Maxi got there first, with Rodger on her heels, toting the camera.
“Ms. Davis,” she said, “I’m Maxi Poole from Channel Six. Can you tell us about the purchase you just made?”
“N-no. Please…” the actress stammered, holding her hand up in front of her face, palm out, as if to ward off something evil. Maxi saw fear in the woman’s eyes. As other reporters swarmed around, Maxi held her own hand out to keep them at bay. Meg Davis dropped her bidding card, turned on her heel, and fled. The press contingent, Maxi included, stood and watched as she pushed her way through the crowd, stepping on shoes, causing one startled woman to spill a drink, until she made it to the front of the hall and disappeared inside the women’s rest room.
Maxi looked at her colleagues. “Guess she isn’t giving interviews,” she said to no one in particular.
“What the hell did you say to her, Maxi?” a friend from Channel Four asked.
“Nothing, honestly—” Maxi started.
“Shit, I think she’s still in the coven,” a cynical reporter from Access Hollywood threw out, causing the rest of them to laugh as they began to disperse in pursuit of more willing interview subjects.
Maxi stood alone with Rodger. “You got the bid from the beginning?” she asked him.
“Almost the beginning. I got more than enough.”
“And did you get a close-up on the item she bought?”
“Of course.”
“Great. Let’s go grab someone from Sotheby’s to talk about exactly what the thing is. Then I’ll voice over your setup shots of the merchandise, and do a stand-up close in front of the auctioneer’s podium. Then we’re done.”
The reporters’ mandate at Channel Six News was that no story was worth more than a minute-thirty, unless it was the Second Coming; then you could go a minute-forty-five. And Maxi wanted to get out of there. She had just learned that the movie prop Meg Davis had purchased was the cross that the child witch had masturbated with in Black Sabbat.