“It was just bizarre, afterward. I think a lot of people, a lot of my so-called friends, thought I was fantasizing about the whole thing. But the divorce went on the record, you can’t do it in secret. So they thought I’d snared the ultimate catch, especially for an actress, and royally blown it. Around then, it occurred to me that to suit my new life, I needed a new set of friends. Or at least, I needed to cut the old ones loose. And I tried to get back to normal, or to what had passed for normal. It was tricky though. The kind of theater companies that used to give me acting work thought I was some kind of rich bitch now and wouldn’t give me the steam. And I was invited onto the boards of all these charities, you know, the ones for AIDS and MS that all the businessmen’s wives organize, so they must have thought the same. So it was tricky. I know, I didn’t exactly have it tough. But it was…here’s the thing, having been unsure about Jack, I’d found, during the time away from him, that I had completely fallen for him. So that trip to L.A…. the way he kept me at a distance, the way he humiliated me…it shook me. I…I didn’t see anyone, I didn’t see another man for years, I didn’t have a relationship. I…I went from being a silly little girl to, to someone who thought her life was over.
“And of course, I was self-indulgent, I could afford to be, I didn’t have to pull myself together and put on a face for the world, I could let the whole thing drift. Drift, that’s the word. And then…and then I regrouped, to an extent, I got a couple of jobs, I got a small part in Fair City, and it was coming up to Christmas, and I went out to a club.
“And there was Jack.”
“And everyone was whispering, you know, the people I was with, the cast were whispering, because it was still like some urban myth, like, remember people used to say Stan Laurel was Clint Eastwood’s father. Type of thing, that was what me and Jack were, a fucking urban myth. And the town had to be Dublin.
“And we were all in a booth, and he was at the bar, giving it Life and Soul Jack, you know, Brendan Behan Jack, this was after Man in the High Castle and Jack Was Back, and all I could think was, is there a window I could crawl out, maybe I could hide in the ladies’ until he leaves, why hasn’t he gone in behind the velvet rope with Bono and the Corrs, and everyone with me is ever so subtly ignoring him by staring at him nonstop with blank expressions on their faces like they don’t know who he is, and finally, inevitably, Jack spots me, and his face, well, he looks pleased, and there’s a lull in the music, I find out afterward because he asks the DJ to stop playing, and he heads for me, and as he’s walking he starts singing, that thing Pavarotti used to sing at the World Cup in Italy—”
“Nessun dorma.”
“That’s the one, he’s singing that, and everyone’s looking, at him, and all the celebs are piling out to see what’s happening, and people are clearing a path as he goes, and he’s heading straight to our booth, and everyone’s looking at him, and then everyone’s looking at me. And he hits the top, the high C, is it, and everyone is clapping, and he goes down on his knees in front of me and says, mouths, really, in a whisper: ‘Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.’”
Geri Foster pauses, full, high at the memory, visibly moved.
“A Hollywood moment,” I say.
“A moment of pure bullshit,” she says with considerable passion, but her face is glowing and her eyes shine. “Why do we fall for his bullshit, Ed?”
I smile, and shake my head, and she answers her own question.
“Because reality isn’t enough for us. Or too much for us. And Jack is so good at making it seem as if we can break its bonds. There was everyone clapping and cheering. It was very hard to resist. Too hard for me.”
“You got back together.”
“And I got pregnant.”
“Jack thinks you were pregnant to begin with.”
“Jack…Jack has five-year-old twin girls he hasn’t seen. He says they’re not his. Isn’t that what he told you? Jackie and Joanie. You know what that was, that was the week we spent here. He said if I had a baby boy, I was to call him Jack. And I said, what if I had twins? And he said, well then, Jack and John. And I said, what if they were girls? And he didn’t say anything, so I said, Jackie and Joanie. But God Almighty, do you think I called them that, after what he put me through? He kept referring to them by those names, as if I was trying to, I don’t know, trade off his name. He says they’re not his. But every year, on their birthday, he transfers what anyone would call a substantial sum into my account. They could get through Harvard on what he’s given them so far. But he’s in Dublin for ten weeks and he won’t see them. What do you think that says about Jack Donovan? I’ll tell you what it says, that he’s a fucking disgrace, that’s what, a disgrace with a guilty conscience. Because if he genuinely thought those girls weren’t his, why would he do that? But this way makes us all…degraded. I haven’t touched a fucking penny of it. And you know, I tried to get out of the marriage without taking a penny, why would I turn into some fucking breadhead chippy now?”
“Why didn’t you just have a paternity test?”
“Why the fuck should I? How dare he? He made the running! Each time he’s approached me, and then he’s run away. Why is that my fault? Why does he have the right to accuse me of being some gold-digging whore who’d…this, yes, can you believe this story, who’d get pregnant by another man, and then go to a nightclub to snare a man she doesn’t even know is going to be there, who in any case hasn’t spoken to her in five years, but who will inexplicably get the hots for her there and then and go home and spend a week in bed with her expressly so that she can claim he’s the father of her child. Fuck off! I mean, I know the plots of Jack’s movies aren’t his forte, but that wouldn’t even work for a porno. He’s…and it’s up to me to prove I’m not! How is it up to me? How dare he?”
Geri shakes with anger. I can’t answer her, largely because I agree with her. The revelation that Jack is paying her extra money for the children makes me want to throw the money he paid me in his face and tell him to sort out his own problems with the aid of people who are actually qualified to deal with them. It strikes me all the more forcibly that he has manufactured the letters himself, that he is having some kind of elaborate nervous breakdown and that there is very little I can do for him, particularly since he is not going to be frank with me.
Geri has moved from rage to tears; it’s as if someone has cut the strings holding her up; she crumples onto the couch, weeping. I don’t think she wants to cry on my shoulder, but apart from that, it’s the same old Jack Donovan scene. I want to leave, but I can’t move. I feel responsible. And there is one more question I need to ask.
“I’m sorry,” Geri says, breathing deeply. “I’m really sorry, I just…I was so stupid to, to hope…to hope that, because Jack was going to be shooting here, he might at least want to see the girls. So stupid. I even hoped, maybe, because he’d sent you around…it’s the hope that…that’s the worst thing, isn’t it? Because there hasn’t been anyone else, you know. People think I’m weird. ‘You’ve got to get on with your life,’ they say. But I’ve two girls to look after, and anyway…actually, never mind the girls, the girls have nothing to do with it, who decided the normal thing is, when one relationship doesn’t work out, get another one that will? What does that say about the relationship…I hate that word…what does that say about love? About your heart? That it’s like something you buy, and if it doesn’t work out, or no longer suits, you can return it to the store and get a replacement? That it’s inexhaustible? I think if your heart is inexhaustible, it means you haven’t been using it right. That you’ve never really been in love. We used to read stories about women who died for love. About widows who would never look at another man. But now, women say, forget him, move on, he’s not worth it. But love isn’t about the other person being worth it. It’s about what you give. You have no right to expect anything in return. I’m sorry. You want to say something. Here endeth the lesson.”
“Geri, did Jack…was Jack ever violent to you?�
�
“No. No, never, never a hint of it. Why?”
“When he broke down crying, remember, and said there were some things he could never be forgiven for, what do you think that was about?”
“I don’t know. But it never occurred to me that he would be violent. Why?”
“I just…needed to ask.”
“No. And I’ve been with men…with one man, who was, so I have an antenna for it? I never got the slightest vibe that way from Jack. He’s a mad wayward bastard and a cruel, coldhearted prick, but he wouldn’t lift his hand to you, I’m sure of that.”
…and Amanda’s hand flashed to her cheek so that I wouldn’t see the bruising on her face…
I stood up.
“I have to go. Thank you for talking to me. I’m sorry to have brought all this up. It’s no consolation, I know, but for what it is worth, I think Jack has behaved very badly.”
Geri Foster stands too, and wipes her face with her hands and looks at me with anxious, grateful eyes, and I see again how worn away her confidence has become, how underneath the careless facade she had presented when I arrived is a woman whose life has been flung every which way by Jack Donovan’s genuine carelessness. The tang of Jo Malone perfume catches me again, and heightens the sense I have of outrage on a woman’s behalf by making it personal. I think of Anne’s girls asking me what life was like in the olden days. It seems to me that Geri Foster could tell them a thing or two about what love had been like then, the kind of love that puts its object before itself, that is selfless, that deals in sacrifice. They’d probably understand that as the kind of love a parent has for a child, but not that a woman could, or indeed, should, have for a man.
“Do you think Jack is mentally ill?” Geri says, and the degree of solicitude she exhibits for the man she has been railing against moments earlier is poignant.
“I wouldn’t be qualified to make a judgment like that,” I say. “But it seems to me that, as I said earlier, Jack is experiencing a certain amount of unease about key aspects of his life, you being probably the most significant. And while he doesn’t seem to want to tell either of us directly what he thinks or what he wants to do, it appears he’s maybe hoping we can figure it out and…I don’t know, somehow solve it for him. I don’t know.”
I’m not used to confiding in the people I interview on behalf of a client, but then, I’m not used to trusting them more than I do the client. Geri Foster sees me to the door, and I thank her and wish her well.
“Tell Jack…despite what he might think…I know he’s in love with his own guilt, with his own shame…tell him I’d like to see him. And tell him the names of his children, Alice and Daisy. Tell him their names, would you?”
I say that I will. And as I stand in the doorway with Geri Foster, I feel the hope that her love brings, and I join in it, in hoping that Jack will see her, and see his children, hope for that, at least. This June afternoon, as the sun spills through the front door of Geri Foster’s darkened house, it doesn’t feel like too much to ask.
CHAPTER 12
My phone had rung a couple of times while I was in Geri’s house; I had set it to silent. There’s a photo message that looks like spray-painted graffiti on a concrete wall, but I can’t make out the details. The call I had missed has a 610 area code; the message I retrieve is from my ex-wife in L.A., saying she needs to speak to me, nothing bad, but the sooner the better. I hadn’t heard from her in a while. There was a time that I couldn’t speak to her at all, couldn’t hear the sound of her voice without remembering the death of our daughter, and the way she had betrayed me. I resented the life she had made with another man, the man with whom, it turned out, she had always been in love. I resented the son they had had together, the happiness she had found. But I had gotten past my resentment before it destroyed me; I had wished her well and meant it, and we had stayed in touch. I’ve never been much of a letter writer, and that extends into my not being much for sending e-mail, but she knows this, and is happy to send me long missives and receive my perfunctory responses. Lately, for one reason or another, mainly the frequency with which she has begun to reminisce about our marriage, I have started to wonder whether her domestic life is as happy as it had been, and that is very much on my mind as I get the Amazon on the road and call her.
“Good morning.”
“Ed. Thanks for calling back so soon.”
“You’re welcome. It’s what time there? Eight? Early.”
“Not when you’ve a four-year-old boy.”
“Right.”
“Hey, I was thinking about you a few days ago.”
“I should hope you think of me every hour on the hour.”
“That would be the four-year-old.”
“What’s so special about being four? I was four. Piece of cake. And it only lasts a year.”
“I’ll just go out and come in again, shall I? ‘I was thinking about you a few days ago.’”
“‘Really? How come?’”
“There’s this new Sandra Bullock movie, where she has a nude scene.”
“The things these women do for attention. Is she not afraid her mother might see that?”
“And I thought of Speed, remember? Seeing it on opening day down in Third Street Promenade? Can’t remember was it the Laemmle or Mann’s. That was her first big movie. And our first big date.”
“I do remember. It lasted an entire weekend. The book says you’re not supposed to do that on the first date, big or otherwise.”
“I mustn’t have finished that book. Or maybe some of the pages were stuck together in mine. An entire weekend, you say.”
“That’s the kind of girl you were. I wasn’t complaining.”
“And then we didn’t see each other for five years.”
“You were too impressed by me. You were scared I was out of your league. You were—”
“You were screwing the blonde who murdered your boss.”
“Yes. Well. Nobody’s perfect.”
“Ed, I got a call this morning from Donald Coover. You remember him?”
“Don Coover. LAPD detective? Robbery homicide?”
“That’s the guy. Says he’s with the Cold Case Unit now.”
“Still part of the same division. He call you?”
“He was looking for you. I think he thought you might still be in town.”
“Did he say what it was about?”
“No. He said you’d know, it was something you’d remember. But you’d need to call him fast, as it was…I think he said this, it was going to break big.”
“Wow. Okay. I’m out and about, could you text me his number?”
“I’ll send you his desk and his cell. He’s going to be out and about himself today. When he thought you were gonna be here, he was hoping you could come out with him, out to Point Dume.”
We might have said some other stuff to each other, but I have no idea what, and any notion I might have held of gleaning something about the condition of her romantic life had gone out the window. All I can think is the following: that I first met Don Coover at the Detective Support Division in Parker Center, where he was toiling in the Missing Persons Unit, some sort of career bottleneck before he made the grade at Robbery Homicide. I reported the three extras who went missing from the Ocean Falls set at Point Dume State Beach. Coover took their details, and they went into the system, and that’s where they had stayed. And now he wants to meet me at Point Dume.
I hold off until I get back to Holles Street; I don’t want to be at the mercy of international cell phone reception. I get into my office and sit behind my desk and make the call.
“Coover.”
“Detective, it’s Ed Loy.”
“Ed Loy. Long time. How’s life treating you in the Emerald Isle? My wife and I have wanted to visit for years.”
“My advice is, get here soon, before they close the place down.”
“I heard that. I heard you folks had a hell of a party all right.”
“Someone told
us the bar was free. Now the bill is here. Where is that guy?”
“I hear you. I think we need to find that guy in California, too.”
“I heard you were out in Malibu this morning, Don. What is that, a day on the beach? Are you out on your yacht? Maybe you’re that guy.”
“I wish. No, I’m out here on a bluff above Point Dume State Beach, Ed. I have a small unit digging the earth at a set of coordinates, one of the map references I was given. They are in the process of uncovering at least one, and more likely what I suspect are three sets of human remains.”
“Three bodies?”
“Is my belief.”
“You think it’s the three girls?”
“That was quick. I think it could be. I don’t have…I checked missing persons for Malibu going back twenty years, they’re the only ones who connect as a trio.”
“Desiree, Janice and Polly?”
“You remember the names.”
“You always remember the ones that got away. Funny, Jack Donovan is in Dublin right now, shooting a movie. I’m working a case for him and Maurice Faye. Just the same as fifteen years ago.”
“That’s a coincidence all right.”
A coincidence. I wonder if Don Coover believes in coincidence. I don’t.
“So you said, a map reference you were given? How where you given it?”
“Anonymous tip-off to Parker Center. Requested me specifically. I’m assuming…hold up a second there, Ed.”
I hear the low burr of the breeze off the ocean. It blows cold down the line, colder than it ever gets in Malibu.
“All right: we’ve got three heads.”
City of Lost Girls Page 15
