“Twelve hours a day,” Susan said. “Six days a week. More if they’re behind.”
“And a show starring Jill Joyce often gets behind,” I said.
“Sandy and most of the directors have worked with her before,” Susan said. “They try to arrange to shoot most of her scenes before lunch. Close-ups and stuff. Long scenes they can use a double, or they can loop her dialogue afterwards.”
“Loop her dialogue,” I said.
“Aren’t I awful?” Susan said. She smiled happily about it. “I’m totally stagestruck. I talk the jargon. I’m not sure I can be saved.”
“In fact, one of the eighty-two things, by actual count, that I like about you is the totality of your enthusiasms,” I said.
“What are the other eighty-one?” Susan said.
“I think I mentioned them to you that Monday morning.”
“Actually, I think you concentrated rather heavily that day on maybe one or two,” she said.
The waitress came, we ordered, the waitress went away. Susan leaned toward me a little, her chin resting on her folded hands. The play was gone from her eyes.
“Actually, I hope you will help her,” she said.
“Jill Joyce?”
“Yes. I don’t know if someone’s bothering her or not; but she is so lost.”
“I’m supposed to be the detective,” I said. “You’re supposed to be the shrink.”
“I can’t help her,” Susan said. “She won’t come near me. She doesn’t have anyone. Sandy tries to take care of her, but he’s got to make the pictures. She has no one who’s simply looking out for her. Not because of her TVQ, or the syndication deal we can get five years down the road. Not because she’s Jill Joyce.”
“Think anyone’s ever done that?” I said.
“No,” Susan said.
I looked out at the Public Garden, at the leafless willows through whose spidery branches the back lighting showed.
“And you think I should,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Even at the risk of my, ah . . .” I held my hands out in the two-foot measuring motion.
Susan smiled at me as sweetly as a convent acolyte.
“You have little to lose,” she said.
5
I sat in the production office on Soldiers Field Road and talked with Sandy Salzman. Without his tasseled ski cap he was balding.
“Do you want me to protect Miss Joyce,” I said, “or do you want me to find out who’s harassing her?”
“Or if,” Salzman said. Through the picture window in his office you could look across Soldiers Field Road at the Charles River, and across the Charles to Cambridge on the other side. The river was frozen now and snow covered. There were cross-country ski tracks on it, and trampled paths where kids and dogs had cut across. It was a steady-moving river, and it took a deep chill to freeze it enough to walk on. Every year there was a thaw and someone went through.
“Or if,” I said. “But someone needs to decide. I can’t do both at the same time.”
“What’s Jill say?”
“Jill says she’s looking for one this long.” I made the measuring motion for him.
“Yeah, Jill says stuff like that,” Salzman said. “What’d you say?”
“I told her she was in luck.”
Salzman laughed.
“Then she had another glass of wine and fainted at me.”
Salzman nodded. “She does that too,” he said.
“Makes a swell date,” I said.
Salzman spread his hands and shrugged. “Jill’s a television star,” he said. “She’s been one for twenty years in a medium where a lot of people are reading weather in Topeka six months after their first show is canceled. You got Jill Joyce on a project and you’ve got a thirteen-week on-air commitment, and all three networks fighting to make it.”
“That explains why she gets loaded every lunch and swoons on strangers?” I said.
“No, it explains why she gets away with it.”
“So which is it? Protect her or investigate the incidents, whatever the hell they are, no one seems too clear on that.”
“I know,” Salzman said. “The truth is, nobody pays a hell of a lot of attention to Jill beyond keeping her in shape to go on. Line producer earns his money on one of her shows.”
“So you don’t know what you want me to do,” I said. “But you haven’t got time to deal with her.”
Salzman tapped the sharpened end of a prone pencil on his desk, causing it to flip up and somersault in the air.
“Exactly,” he said and jabbed his forefinger toward me while he said it.
There were pictures all around the office, most of Salzman; a couple with actors, the rest with dead pheasant and elk and trout.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to Jill and I’ll decide what I should do. If I decide I need to do both, I’ll hire someone to watch Jill while I investigate.”
“You have someone in mind?” Salzman said. “Jill is very tough about people.”
I grinned. “Yeah,” I said. “I got a guy in mind.”
It made me happy, thinking of Hawk with Jill Joyce.
Salzman frowned a little, but he let it pass. He was affable in the Hollywood way, and permanently pleasant, but behind it there was a pretty good mind working. And most of the time it was working on getting his show made on time, on budget. He knew when to go with the flow, and if I’d take the matter of Jill Joyce’s harassment off his back he’d agree to hiring Geraldo Rivera as a bodyguard if I said so. He knew that. I knew that. And he knew that I knew that.
“We got you through the police commissioner,” Salzman said. “Commissioner himself said you were good.”
“Man loves me,” I said.
“Actually,” Salzman said, “he remarked that he didn’t like you a bit, but you were the best at what you did.”
“Same thing,” I said. “Where’s the lovely Miss Joyce?”
“We’re shooting here today. Too cold out for Jill.”
Salzman got up.
“I’ll take you down. Ever seen film being made?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Exciting?”
“Like watching ice melt,” I said.
“I can see you’re a fan,” Salzman said.
We went out through the outer office where two young women hunched over typewriters. There was a fax machine on the windowsill, and six file cabinets, and on the wall a big, and detailed, map of Boston.
“I’ll be on the set,” Salzman said to one of the young women. She nodded without looking up.
“Remember you’ve got the teamster guys at eleven forty-five,” she said.
“Page me when they arrive,” Salzman said. We went down the corridor past glassed-in office space where people labored over computers and drawing boards and typewriters. We went down the stairs and through the lobby, with a huge promotional poster of Jill Joyce on the wall, and a receptionist at her desk, and down another corridor, past the wardrobe office and the property room and the carpenter shop to a soundstage. On the thick door to the soundstage was a big sign that said DO NOT ENTER WHEN RED LIGHT IS ON. Above the door was a red light. It was on. Salzman opened the door quietly and we went in. We were on the back side of some walls that had been assembled from plywood and two-by-fours. On the other side of those walls the space was brightly lit. I followed Salzman around the cluster of ragged crew members loitering off camera, waiting to do what they were employed to do.
The set was of an office, or two walls of an office, in which a psychiatrist, Dr. Shannon Cassidy, was confronting an obviously demented man who was armed with a Browning automatic and was pointing it at her the way everybody points guns on television, with two hands, straight out, at shoulder level.
Shannon was played by the delectable Jill Joyce, clear-eyed, kind, intuitive yet passionate, in a crisply tailored suit. In her bearing and in every word she spoke there was the kind of wise and sexy innocence that had guaranteed thirteen-week on-air pickups for twenty years. The demented man was a guest star whom I’d never heard of.
“You make any sudden moves, Doc,” the demented man was saying, “and you’re gonna be real sorry.”
Dr. Cassidy’s smile was caring and brave.
“Don’t you realize, Kenneth, that you’re the victim?” Doc Cassidy said. “I can’t let you hurt yourself this way . . . someone does care.”
She slowly extended her hand.
“I care.”
She held her hand out toward the guy, whose face ran the gamut of emotions from A to B. His face contorted, the gun shook.
“You’re not alone if someone cares,” Doc Cassidy said softly.
The demented guy suddenly lunged forward and put the gun into her hand. The director said “Cut.” And the demented guy straightened up and took his hands from his face and stopped being demented.
“Who writes this stuff?” he said.
A grayish woman with ample hips came around the desk where Jill Joyce was sitting. She wore a hand mirror on a ribbon around her waist and she held it in front of Jill while she made small dabbing motions at Jill’s hair with a little bristly brush. A makeup woman also appeared and dusted Jill’s face with a small, soft brush, the kind you might use to baste a spare rib. A young production assistant in jeans and a man’s flannel shirt handed Jill a lit cigarette and Jill dragged on it intently while makeup and hair hovered over her.
“Places,” the director said. Without his earflaps he was a thin-faced man with short reddish hair.
An assistant director said, “Quiet, everybody.” Then he said, “Rolling for picture.”
The director said, “Action.”
And they did the scene again. The sound man with his earphones, hovering over the sound console, said “Cut” after the demented guest star said his first line.
“We’re picking up a whir, Rich.”
Somebody went around the corner of the set and said something I couldn’t hear and came back.
“Okay?” he said.
The director looked at the sound man.
“Okay,” the sound man said.
And the scene rolled again, and then again.
“First one was the cover shot,” Salzman whispered between takes. “Others are for close-ups, so when they get it back in L.A. in the editing room, Milo and the film editor can cross-cut, you know?”
“Un huh,” I said.
“What do you think?” Salzman said.
“I think you’re hiring me for the wrong job,” I said. “I think you should hire me to go beat up the writers.”
Salzman shrugged. “Hard cranking out a script a week,” he said.
“Obviously,” I said.
6
“WELL, well,” Jill Joyce said as she came off the set. “The cutie-pie cop with the big muscles.”
“I didn’t think you’d noticed,” I said.
“You here to take care of me?” she said. Her on-camera makeup was a little heavy, but standing there in front of me she was fresh-faced and beautiful. Her cheeks dimpled as she spoke. Her skin was clear and smooth, her eyes sparkled with life and a hint of innocent sexuality. She looked like orange juice and fresh laundry, the perfect date for the Williams-Amherst game, in a plaid skirt, picnicking beforehand on a blanket. Her lips would taste like apples. Her hair would smell like honey. Fresh-scrubbed, spunky, compliant, brave, beautiful, decent, cute. With a TVQ that made your breath come short.
“I’m here to discuss it,” I said.
“Your place or mine?” Jill said and dimpled at me.
“Your place,” I said, “but remember, I’m armed.”
Jill giggled deep in her throat.
“I hope so,” she said. She looked at the director. “Half an hour, Rich?”
“Sure, Jilly,” the director said. “No more, though, I’m trying to bring this thing in under, for once.”
“Maybe you could make your mind up where to put the fucking camera, Rich,” Jill said. She spoke without heat, almost absently, as she walked away.
I followed her, watching her hips sway as she walked. Her back was perfectly straight. Her hair was glossy and thick. The skirt fit smoothly over her elegant backside. We went out a side door into the cold, walked twenty feet to Jill’s mobile home and went in. Jill was all business today. She sat in the driver’s seat sideways, crossed her legs, rested her left arm on the steering wheel.
“Okay, cutie,” she said. “Talk.”
I didn’t answer. I was looking down the length of the mobile home toward the bed. Above the bed, suspended from a ceiling fixture, was a plastic doll, dressed in a gold lamé evening gown, hanging with a miniature slipknot around her neck. Jill saw me looking and shifted her glance, and saw the swaying doll.
“What’s that?” she said.
I walked down the length of the mobile home and looked more closely at the doll without touching it. I could hear Jill’s footsteps behind me. The doll gazed at me from a face that looked a little like Jill Joyce, its happy smile entirely incongruous above the hangman’s knot around its throat. The knot caused the doll to cant at an angle. I could feel Jill press against me. Her hand was on my arm just above the elbow. She squeezed.
“What is that?” she said.
“Just a doll,” I said. “You recognize it?”
She stayed behind me but moved her head around for a closer look, her cheek pressed against my upper arm. She looked for a moment.
“Jesus God,” she said.
“Yeah?” I said.
“It’s me,” she said. “It’s me.”
She slid around over my arm and pressed herself against me, both arms around me, her head against my chest.
“It’s a doll of me,” she said, “as Tiffany Scott.”
Even I had heard of Tiffany Scott, the spunky, lovable girl reporter, caught up in a series of hair-raising adventures, week after week, for six years on ABC. It was the series that had made her the preeminent television star in the country. Her body was tighter against me than my gunbelt and she seemed to insinuate herself at very precarious spots.
“Got any theories?” I said.
“He did it,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, throaty with fear. “It’s . . .” She squeezed tighter against me. I would not have thought that possible, but she did it. “It’s a warning.” Her breath was short, and audible.
“Who’s he?” I said. Spenser, master detective, asker of the penetrating questions.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Then how do you know it’s him?” I said. “Or is it he?”
“He’s done things like this before.”
“He has,” I said. “But we don’t know who he is.”
I was losing control of my pronouns. “Or whom?” I said.
She turned her face in against me.
“It’s not funny,” she said.
I reached up with my free hand, the one she wasn’t clinging to, and took the doll down.
“His name isn’t Ken, is it?”
“I told you,” she said. “I don’t know who he is. I just know he’s after me.”
I got my arm free of her clutch and turned her around and steered her back to the front of the mobile home.
“I’ll need to talk to your driver,” I said.
“Paulie,” she said.
“Paulie what?”
“I don’t know. I just call him Paulie. You got a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke,” I said.
“Well, hand me some from t
he table there,” she said.
I gave her the cigarettes and she took one out and put it into her mouth and looked at me expectantly. There were matches on the dashboard in front of the driver’s seat. I stood, stepped past her, took a book of matches and lit her cigarette, then I tucked the matches inside the cellophane wrapper on the cigarette pack and put them in her lap.
“Who would know Paulie’s full name?” I said.
“I don’t know, for God’s sake, ask Sandy. I don’t keep track of every sweat hog that works on this picture.”
“The bigger they are, the nicer they are.”
She seemed recovered from her panic.
“You do coke?” she said.
I shook my head.
“Well, I do,” she said. “You got a problem with that?”
I shook my head again. She went to the breakfast nook, got the stuff out of a cabinet and did two lines off the tabletop.
“I got to work this afternoon,” she said. “You try getting up every time the light goes on. You try sparkling eight hours a day, sometimes ten or fifteen.”
“For me, it’s easy,” I said, and gave her a sparkling smile.
She paid me no attention. She was bobbing her head slightly and tapping her fingers on the tabletop.
“You going to do something about this?” she said.
I looked at her, jeeped from the coke, waiting to go out and pretend to be wonderful; evasive and self-deluded and kind of stupid, and startlingly beautiful. For all I knew she’d hung the doll herself. For all I knew “he” didn’t exist.
“Are you?” she said. She was impatient now, tapping her foot, her eyes very bright. “I’ve got to go to work. I need to know.”
Still I stared at her. She was trouble, alcoholic, drug addicted, nymphomaniac, egocentric, spoiled brat trouble. She leaned a little toward me, her eyes the size of dahlias. She moistened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue.
“Are you?” she said. “Please?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to do something about this.”
She nodded her head too many times and then headed out toward the soundstage. I was reminded of a child, off to kindergarten, frightened, sad, trying to be grown up; marching off like a little soldier, with two lines of coke up her nose.
Robert B. Parker: The Spencer Novels 1?6 Page 20
