North of Montana ag-1

by April Smith

  “Now that doesn’t make any sense at all.” The more he tries to be reassuring, the more I know the ship is sinking fast. “Why would she make up something like that?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, but we’ve got to find some other substantiation to her claim that Eberhardt overprescribed. Otherwise we have no corroborating witness.”

  “I hear what you’re telling me.”

  “Did you pull her hospital records?”

  “Haven’t had a moment—”

  “I’ll do it,” I say abruptly, cutting him off with the touch of a button.

  Four minutes later I am talking to Dr. Narayan, Randall Eberhardt’s former boss at New England Deaconess Hospital. He says he will pull Van Hoven’s chart by the afternoon and his lovely measured English accent is filled with promise. In my experience even the most educated people find it a turn-on to ride posse with the FBI.

  The Bureau requires us to pass physical fitness tests every six months and you get three hours a week built into your schedule for exercise, so it isn’t goofing off for me to walk across the parking lot to the Westwood Community Recreation Center on Sepulveda and do a twenty-two-minute mile in the public pool. I am so wired there is nothing else but to hurtle myself down a tunnel of water as fast as I can, focusing on the big cross on the opposite wall, taking pleasure in the neat flip turn and the rhythm of the push-off and the glide and the power that comes from those abdominals I’ve been crunching every night; today I have power to spare and even welcome the challenge of the lady in the orange bathing suit paddling down the center of the fast lane, which adds another 10 percent of effort to the workout.

  I return to the office with wet hair and all cylinders firing smoothly. After a good swim I am loose enough to cope with anything, which is fortunate because Rosalind has a message waiting for me to call Dr. Narayan in Boston.

  “Claudia Van Hoven was treated here for fractures and trauma sustained in an automobile accident,” the doctor tells me enthusiastically. “Before that she had a long history of psychiatric treatment for all sorts of illness from depression to schizophrenia until finally she was hospitalized at Ridgeview Institute in Georgia and accurately diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, which we used to call multiple personality disorder.”

  “Hold it. You’re telling me she’s one of those people who takes on different voices and personalities?”

  “Right.”

  “Isn’t that kind of far out?”

  “Dissociative identity disorder is probably more common than you realize. It’s a mechanism for the psyche to avoid trauma by literally becoming another person. In Ms. Van Hoven’s case it seems to have begun in early adolescence, stemming from sexual abuse by a neighbor. From the looks of this record,” he goes on, “twenty-three separate personalities have been documented in the patient, including an aggressive male named Allan.”

  “She said Allan was her helper.”

  “Yes, some patients refer to certain alters as ‘helpers’—that is, helping personalities. Did you notice any switching when you talked to her?”

  “Switching?”

  “Did you actually see her become somebody else through a change in voice pattern or physical attitude—”

  “Jesus, no.” A chill goes through me.

  “Interesting.”

  Struggling to get back to understandable reality, “Can we believe what she told us about Dr. Eberhardt?”

  “That would be tricky.”

  “But she seemed totally rational. She was intelligent and shy — said she played the violin.”

  “That was probably her personality named Becky.”

  “Becky! What is this — the Twilight Zone? Look, she had a husband and a baby. She was wheeling a stroller.”

  “Did you actually see the baby?”

  “No. But it was starting to rain,” as if that explains anything.

  Dr. Narayan’s tone is gentle. “I’m sorry to tell you that I doubt very much if there even was a baby in that carriage.”

  The idea that she was out there in the cold pretending to be taking care of a baby — and that I bought it — leaves me awed. Finally:

  “In your professional opinion, given her condition, is there any way Claudia Van Hoven could make a credible witness in a court of law?”

  “Ultimately? Not a chance.”

  I hang up the phone and take my head in my hands, hoping to crush my temples together into an unrecognizable mass. The sleeves and chest of the Bank Dick’s Undercover Disguise hanging on the coatrack nearby are puffed out and stiff as if filled with expanding hot air.

  I have no corroborating witness.

  And Galloway is expecting results tomorrow.

  I could whine to my boss that I had been guaranteed the Van Hoven gal was good, but that the old drunk in Boston screwed up by not checking her out. As angry as I am right now, I can’t bring myself to give up Wild Bill. A letter of censure would only jeopardize his retirement and besides it would not solve my problem, which is to present hard evidence of Randall Eberhardt’s guilt.

  For a long time I sit there with my mind scrambling like a rat inside a wall pawing with needle nails. I make notes, I make charts, but I can’t see how to make a case against the doctor. All we have is an actress’s unconfirmed story. Then the phone rings and it is Jayne Mason herself.

  She is the last person I want to talk to. I’m not interested in helicopters flying over her property, or maybe this time it’s a late garbage collection she wants me to fix.

  Surprisingly, she is totally contrite. She needs to talk to me but doesn’t want to go into it further on the telephone, may we meet?

  Since, the last time, it took about a month to arrange a meeting and then she showed up a week early and at a completely different location, I am somewhat grouchy and suspicious of the entire venture, but she promises her car will pick me up in front of the Federal Building at 4:45 that afternoon, and it does.

  • • •

  It quickens the heartbeat to walk past the crowd to a shiny black limousine waiting just for me. Heads turn. I feel giddy and a dufus grin has plastered itself across my face.

  Tom Pauley opens the door with a knowing nod. It’s not like climbing into a car, it’s like entering a room, a room that smells of lipstick and fine leather, with pearly white panels of light glowing around the edges, a chrome shelf holding crystal decanters with silver tags around their necks — Whiskey, Rye, Gin. I can stretch out my legs and still be miles away from the state-of-the-art console with built-in TV, VCR, CD player, and tape deck, above which a sheet of dark glass separates us from the driver. There are two telephones, a fax, and even a clip-on holder for what looks like a long test tube that holds one yellow rose. As we leave the curb a row of glasses tinkles against a mirrored backlight and a pile of scripts slides across a miniature kilim rug, spreading itself out like a fan.

  “Thank you for coming, Ana, dear.”

  Jayne Mason, fully made up with Parisian red lips and dark shadowed eyes, hair pinned up in a twist, briefly puts her hand on mine, then turns back toward the window with a pensive stare. She is wearing hot pink silky trousers with white heels and a hot pink silk T-shirt underneath a white blazer with the sleeves pushed up. There is a multitude of gold bangles on each wrist and around her neck a pearl choker with some sort of sparkly thing hanging off (it’s hard to see in the soft light). She looks like she means business, in a Palm Springs sort of way. Sitting so close I can catch her body scent — like a lingerie drawer spiced by a clove sachet.

  It is easy to picture how Randall Eberhardt was drawn into this sultry female womb, accompanying Miss Mason to exclusive fundraiser dinners, wheeling around town in a private bubble, protected by one-way tinted glass. As I observe a group of office workers waiting for a light to change on Wilshire Boulevard, I realize that the ability to see people when they can’t see you is usually reserved for us law enforcement types; what a thrill it must have been for the doctor to share the privilege.


  Then Jayne Mason begins to sing. Her head is still turned away from me and the voice is musing and low, as if I weren’t there:

  “In the wee small hours of the morning / While the whole wide world is fast asleep …”

  So this is what all the attention and fussing is about, why people put up with the silliness and the excess, why Magda Stockman has chosen to place her body between Jayne Mason and the rest of the world, why someone like my grandfather could actually be moved by a performance: this gift.

  I steady myself as the limousine rocks gently around a corner, listening to Jayne Mason’s voice, unadulterated and flawless; for this moment, one of the elite.

  • • •

  We enter the Century City Shopping Center by some VIP entrance I never knew existed, parking behind another limousine, this one a double stretch in white. Jayne Mason puts on big dark glasses and fits a pale straw fedora over her French twist.

  “Forgive me. I have to check one thing,” she says as Pauley comes around to open the door.

  So I get out and follow. On the escalator I say, “If I’d known we were coming here, I would have brought my humidifier,” which of course makes no sense to her but she isn’t interested anyway, eyes on the widening bright space above us.

  Once we hit solid ground she’s off like a smart missile weaving through the crowd toward a predetermined target. I have to quicken my pace to keep up. I’ve never seen a woman move so effortlessly in high heels. She is fixed dead ahead and pays no attention to the stares that come her way, shedding them off like raindrops from a nose cone. The nice thing about Century City is that it is an open-air mall and you get sunshine and updrafts and outdoor food stalls and guys selling cappuccino from wooden carts — but all of that goes by in a zip. The target is Bullock’s.

  She pulls the chrome handles on the glass doors and strides across the cosmetics department on the first floor.

  I guess she’s looking for a certain type of perfume because we make the circuit in about thirty seconds, past brass-trimmed counters, beautifully made-up salesgirls, customers, glossily lit displays, collections of fancy bottles, the two of us reflected in mirrored posts — she in vivid white and pink, me in khakis and a blazer — and gone. Overly sweet hot air envelops us and disperses in an instant as she hits the glass doors again and we’re back out on the sidewalk.

  “I guess they didn’t have it.”

  “No.”

  “Want to try somewhere else?”

  “If it’s not at Bullock’s, it’s nowheresville,” she says despondently.

  We pass a chocolate shop and a place that sells dishes, keeping up the sprint.

  “What did you want to talk about?”

  “I did want to talk but now I’m not in the mood, are you?” she asks intimately, as if we’re on a shopping spree and maybe we should have some tea and rest our feet.

  “Actually, yeah, I’m ready to talk anytime. It’s my job.”

  We’re passing a complex of movie theaters.

  “Have you seen Days of Thunder?” she asks.

  “Not yet, but I like Tom Cruise.”

  A modest crowd is lining up to buy tickets for the early bird shows. Without another word, Jayne Mason walks ahead of everyone, shows the cashier some kind of card, gets two tickets with no exchange of cash, and we’re off on another escalator up to the lobby.

  This is definitely a left turn in the proceedings.

  “I’m not sure I can do this—”

  “Oh screw that,” she says. “Let’s go look at Tom Cruise.”

  So we do. We actually do. We sit there and eat popcorn, Jayne Mason and me. It’s my kind of movie, full of bravado, and I enjoy it tremendously.

  “ ‘Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse,’ ” Jayne Mason observes as we step out of the theater. “That was my line in a picture I made with Stewart Granger. Now he was a dreamboat.”

  It is dark. Small white lights entwined in the trees and colorful banners flying off the Food Market create a carnival effect. People sit under yellow umbrellas eating teriyaki and kebabs and cheeseburgers at outside tables with their jackets buttoned up on this cool early summer evening, shoppers whisk by with floating white sacks. I feel flushed with the excitement of being on a first date: I like this person. I want to know more.

  “Let’s eat. Someplace wonderful,” Jayne decides, and I acquiesce happily, enjoying the extraordinary experience of walking beside a world-famous movie star and the secret pleasure of knowing we are going back to a VIP entrance where we will get into a private limousine and be driven across the city to someplace wonderful.

  • • •

  We pull up at an Italian restaurant with a modest neon sign and a small green canopy. Tom Pauley gives a wry salute as we leave him back at the car. What a job. No wonder he’s down at the beach whenever possible. Inside there’s a cozy bar hung with clusters of half-size Chianti bottles and a huge photo of JFK. The walls are covered with movie posters and head shots of Lucille Ball, Don Rickles, and President Eisenhower, among others. I don’t see Jayne Mason in the crowd.

  A slump-shouldered gentleman in a worn tuxedo says, “Good to see you again, Miss Mason,” and leads us into the main room, which is awash in soft orange-red light. The sweeping curved banquettes are orange-red and an assortment of ginger-jar lamps with linen shades have orange-red bulbs. Most of the tables are empty and white napkins are standing up throughout the restaurant like a herd of rabbit ears.

  We pass a display case filled with models of trucks and pictures of that same slump-shouldered gentleman, thirty years younger, with the Pope. We pass two geezers complaining about losing at Santa Anita, and a decked-out blonde with some sleazeball type talking real estate deals. The waiters seem too old and depressed to notice their famous customer, but then I recognize an actor from a cop show and figure this must be a Hollywood hangout, the real thing.

  “I’ve never had good luck with men and so I’ve always had to fend for myself,” Jayne says suddenly.

  We are sharing an appetizer of fried zucchini, which, truthfully, they do better at T.G.I. Fridays. Jayne is drinking vermouth and I’m enjoying my 7UP and the clown art on the walls.

  “My third husband, the used car king, was the final straw. He treated me like a piece of dirt under his feet. I used to wonder why the manicurist came out of his office wiping her lips.”

  She pours us each more water from a small ceramic pitcher in the shape of a rooster head, which is the signature piece of the restaurant.

  “He was the one who spent all my money. We were divorced in 1959. What else could a gal from Oklahoma do, flat broke with two children to support, except sing and dance her little heart out? So I did dinner theater, regional theater, hotel bars, any gig I could get, from Vegas to Palm Beach to Poophead, Iowa, and back. I did that for years, then I met Maggie Stockman.”

  “She’s a smart lady.”

  “She has no life,” Jayne says. “Her clients are her life.” Mason points the broken end of a bread stick at me. “She is an angel sent from heaven. Excuse me.”

  On her way to the ladies’ room she passes a husband and wife wearing formal clothes. It is amusing to watch them trying to say, “That’s Jayne Mason,” without moving their lips.

  She returns with fresh lipstick and Magda Stockman still on her mind.

  “Maggie was the one who told me I should do drama. She convinced Joe Papp to take a risk with A Doll’s House and it changed my life, not only because it was wildly successful, but because it changed my thinking about myself.”

  “You knew you were good.”

  “I knew I was an actress. I left Ninety-first Street, rented a house in the Hollywood Hills, and within three years I won my first Oscar. You see, it’s all about self-image. We can’t let anyone take that away from us.”

  A mumbling waiter brings two plates of Manicotti Dolly Parton. I had stared at the menu, confused by the Shrimp Angeli Mickey Rourke and the Chicken Dabney Coleman, and deci
ded to get whatever she was getting.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard terrible things about me — that I’m late on the set, that I’m drunk or high or rude, but let me tell you, the crew loves me.” She drains the drink and says it again, “The crew loves me” with too much emphasis and I wonder if the cocktail is already getting to her.

  “I’m having a wonderful time,” I say as we dig into our fat creamy noodles, “but what does this have to do with Randall Eberhardt?”

  She folds her hands on the tablecloth so the bangles splay out with a golden splash. “This is why I am so passionate about bringing this man to justice. Despite everything I have learned, I am still a sucker for the male animal, and Randall Eberhardt took advantage of me all over again. I’ve worked too hard.”

  She accepts another vermouth. “I’m sure you’re too smart to fall for that kind of thing.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “How do you handle men?”

  “I avoid them at all costs.”

  Jayne throws back her head and laughs. “Oh my dear, we don’t want to do that.”

  “It works.”

  She regards me quizzically, then hunches her shoulders in the white cotton jacket and works for a while on the Veal Johnny Carson.

  “My third husband, the used car king, once secretly filmed us making love. Not many people know that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone you can trust?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Magda’s the only one who’s stood by me all these years. Thank God for her and my children and grandchildren. I’ve had a rough time of it, but I still believe in romance.”

  She catches the indulgence in my smile.

  “I’ll bet you think it’s silly to wear all this makeup. I don’t do it for men, I do it for myself. I wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and keep putting it on and putting it on until I see something looking back.”

  She laughs and I laugh with her, although trying to follow the increasing zigzag of her conversation has lost me.