What's a Girl Gotta Do?

by Sparkle Hayter

  “Sit down at the desk and write what I tell you,” she said, ignoring my questions. “Dear … everyone.”

  I wrote it.

  “I can no longer go on with my …” She thought hard. “Guilt. Write that—I can no longer go on with my guilt, which I brought on myself by killing Larry Griff and Greg Browner. I did it to conceal my … sordid affair with Greg Browner, which went on while I was married to another man.”

  Amy wasn’t known for her imagination, so I guessed this was her confession, being made through me. It was small consolation to know my friends would realize I’d never write a suicide note like this, that I would never go out spouting clichés, never without a good quote, and never with a gun. I was more a swan-dive-from-the-Statue-of-Liberty kind of dame.

  Also, the purse-cam was rolling.

  As I was writing, Louise Bryant, sensing that the balance of power had shifted in the room, began to rub against Amy’s legs, trying to get Amy to feed her.

  “I think you should tell me why I am going to die, at least,” I said, adopting my best Nathan Hale expression, honor in the face of death. “You owe me that.”

  “I don’t owe you a thing,” Amy said. “Cat, stop it!”

  Amy tried to kick Louise lightly away, and then she pushed a little harder. Louise Bryant responded in character, faking a retreat, then turning around and jumping on Amy’s legs, vertically, digging her claws into Amy’s hose and calves.

  “Ouch! Goddamn it!” Amy said, stopping to yank the cat off and letting her gun hand relax, fatally, for a moment. Long enough for me, emboldened by the presence of the purse-cam, to twist her wrist and grab the gun.

  Thank God for Murphy’s Law.

  “Okay,” I said, standing up from my desk. I took a deep, deep breath. “Now we’re in business.”

  You know how people behave differently when there’s a camera on them, especially a video camera? For a minority of people, this brings out their worst selves, but most of the time, people behave like the people they think they really are, their funnier, nicer, more reasonable selves. Like this Afghan commander who, in the heat of battle, told Joanne Armoire to “shoot my good side.” It’s a most interesting phenomenon.

  I was aware that purse-cam was recording me and I wanted the world to see me in a good light, behaving heroically. I would take the moral high ground here and treat my prisoner with honor. I would not pistol-whip a pretty, pregnant lady.

  Then I thought: This woman has her own show, she has my husband, and she intended to take my life and my beleaguered reputation too.

  “You can’t kill me, I’m pregnant!” Amy said. She was starting to weep and shiver.

  “Oh well,” I said, dispassionately. “The first thing I want you to do is take all your clothes off. Do it!”

  There. Now there was something in it for the tabloid TV shows, something they could show with the help of three black strips.

  “Good, now walk over to that planter. Pick it up. Rub your face in the ivy. Good. Now, under your arms. Across your breasts. Put it down and rub your butt on it. Good. Now turn around and look at the hidden camera, there, on top of the TV. And now, I want you to tell me everything.”

  “This confession will never stand up in court. You have a gun on me. It’s coercion.”

  Everything she said while she had the gun on me, however, was on videotape and that would stand up in court. Now, my purpose was to satisfy my curiosity.

  “I’m not trying to get a confession,” I said. “I’m just a reporter cultivating a source. Now, what about Eric?”

  “Eric who? Eric Slansky, you mean? What about him?” She was puzzled. “Eric has nothing to do with me.”

  “How did you get back to the Marfeles? Did you get out of one cab, take another back?”

  I hoped to get her whole story on the purse-cam recording, but just then I saw the flash of red and blue police lights through my curtains. I figured Claire had gotten my message and called the cops.

  So instead of getting Amy’s story, I did a very shabby thing. I stuffed the brown envelope I’d picked up at General Delivery under a stack of newspapers so the police wouldn’t see it. If I gave it to them it would become evidence. I might never see it again and there were certain things I needed to find out first. I was curious.

  You understand.

  Louise Bryant, sensing the balance of power in the room had once again shifted, started weaving between my legs.

  “Not now, Louise,” I said gently.

  The cops pounded on the door and I let them in. Bigger, jumping once again to the wrong conclusion, saw me with the gun and grabbed my arm. Amy was crying hysterically. A uniform handed her clothes to her while I tried to explain to Tewfik what was going on. I told him about the purse-cam tape and the envelope still at the post office. Bigger released my arm.

  Tewfik went over to the purse. “There’s a camera in here, huh?”

  “Yeah. It’s still recording.”

  “And what’s this?” Bigger asked, checking out the ivy planter by the fire escape, turning the leaves over, stooping to smell it. Probably making sure it wasn’t some form of mutant marijuana.

  “Don’t touch the plants,” I warned, but he ignored me. Now that he had made contact, it didn’t seem the propitious moment to let him know it was poison ivy.

  “You can turn it off now,” Tewfik said. “Can you play that in your VCR?”

  “Not without A/V cables,” I said.

  Tewfik turned to Bigger. “Richard, poke your head out the window there and see if that Channel 2 crew caught up with us.”

  Bigger opened the window, leaning right into the poison ivy. He hollered down to a cameraman and within ten minutes we were all hooked up and watching the purse-cam tape. It was bad quality, it was grainy, and the tiny fish-eye lens distorted it somewhat, but the essential truth was there, in Amy’s own words and actions before Louise Bryant and I wrestled the gun from her hand.

  Tewfik looked at me with new respect after that scene. But when he watched me make Amy strip and rub her body with ivy, his expression changed. And Bigger started to squirm.

  Amy was read her rights, and Tewfik let the Channel 2 guys get some shots from the hallway.

  I fed Louise Bryant. A uniformed cop led Amy away, in handcuffs, still crying, insisting that it wasn’t her fault.

  “Good thing Claire called you guys,” I told Tewfik, cheerleading to compensate for not disclosing the envelope in the stack of newspapers next to my armchair.

  “It was your boss who called,” Tewfik said.

  “McGravy?”

  “Mr. Spurdle.”

  A bunch of my elderly neighbors were clustered around my door as Tewfik accompanied me downtown for questioning. Mrs. Ramirez was not among them. It was not until I was outside on the stoop that she threw open her window to yell to the police, “Well you finally got her. It’s about time. Good riddance to bad rubbish!”

  There were quite a few reporters outside waiting for me, taking in every word.

  “Her place is full of call girls and transvestites!” Mrs. Ramirez continued as the cameras rolled. I made a note to send her flowers.

  Tewfik hustled me past the reporters as they shouted questions, their eyes frantic and demanding. Soon all the shouting just turned to white noise, kind of a low, hollow screech. It was surreal; the sun moved between the buildings across the street and suddenly the whole scene was blindingly white. I felt somehow removed from it all and said nothing, until I saw Claire with a crew and a live truck. I told her everything I could before Tewfik yanked me away.

  Chapter Eighteen

  JERRY WAS FURIOUS WITH ME because I let the cops have the purse-camera tape without running a dub for us.

  “You had the tape and you handed it to a cop?”

  “So he’d see I wasn’t the killer. It’s evidence, Jerry,” I said, although I couldn’t be too sanctimonious, since I’d returned to my apartment for the brown envelope before reporting back to work. “They’ll release
a dub soon.”

  I’d just come very close to losing my life, but, hey, the news must go on.

  Claire, because she knew of my involvement more intimately than anyone, reported the story and provided the information that Amy was apparently after the same job Claire had had her eye on, doing on-air reports introducing Greg’s celebrity guests. I was assigned to prepare a “reporter’s notebook” piece for the eight.

  I locked my office, told the switchboard to hold all my calls, pulled out the envelope and, from the wad of individually stapled reports, picked out the one on Amy.

  The first sheet, the “stats” sheet, showed that Miss Amy Penny was born Michelle Amy Soxhaug, and remained Michelle Soxhaug until she was sixteen. Her mother was married three times and left her between marriages with a reluctant aunt and uncle in Garibaldi, Alabama.

  Not the kind of thing that would go over well with the near-miss in-laws, but certainly nothing to kill for.

  The third time around, Amy’s mother married George W. Penny, an automotive parts salesman, and Amy moved to Tennessee, where she took her stepfather’s name, had a little nose work done, and went on to become Miss Mason-Dixon Line.

  Griff’s report indicated she’d met Browner at a personal appearance she made as TV spokesmodel for that upscale low-dust baby powder at a gathering of ANN advertisers and he’d invited her to interview at ANN. She came in through the “Greg” door, like Madri, and he had discreetly “mentored” her with an eye to bringing her on to his show in a custom-made job. Claire had never had a chance.

  Still, I couldn’t see a motive for two murders and an attempted murder—mine.

  I read on.

  Amy’s association with Greg didn’t end once she got to ANN. Griff had a photo of Amy and Browner in a torrid embrace. Griff also had some medical records, including a full amniocentesis report on a twenty-five week old fetus, for which Amy had reverted to her old name, Michelle Soxhaug. I didn’t understand all the notations, but Griff had summarized the contents:

  The fetal blood type is incompatible with the blood type of Miss Penny’s fiancé, Burke Avery, a.k.a. Heinrich Stedlbauer. It is, however, compatible with that of Mr. Browner.

  Holy shit. Image conscious Amy Penny was not going to have the daddy she needed—and fast—for her baby if Burke learned this. No wonder Griff picked me to dish the dirt to.

  Okay, I only had to read the report on Amy Penny, and the report on Browner, and the report on me, but I read them all. I know I should have taken every irrelevant report and shredded it at once out of respect for my colleagues. But I didn’t. I couldn’t resist temptation.

  Larry Griff had covered the waterfront. There were credit reports, summaries of conversations with old friends, ex-friends, neighbors, teachers, employers. The stuff about Joanne and the APC was there, with pictures, which, I regret to say, I lingered over. Susan’s many lovers were listed—including, sadly, Greg Browner, which explained why she didn’t want her boss Solange, Greg’s ex-wife, to know. Madri’s entire sexual history was there, showing that she did, in fact, share a hotel room with “Heinrich Stedlbauer” on several occasions during my marriage.

  There was nothing on Solange.

  After I read it all, I felt kind of sleazy for invading their privacy. Sleazy, but with curiosity sated. Then I shredded everything but the report on Amy. That I kept.

  Claire knocked on the door. “Do you have a script? Jerry wants you to track soon, and I have to re-edit my six o’clock for the eight so I can’t help you.”

  “I’m working on it,” I said.

  I wrote up my story, leaving out the sordid details about the “innocent” people investigated. Jerry changed the script, I changed it back and tracked it, and the piece made the eight o’clock with two minutes to spare.

  Later, Claire and I went to Tatiana’s for omelets and grain to celebrate my continued living and her breakout reporting.

  “Jerry’s making himself out to be your savior,” Claire said. “He told me when he saw your message he knew you would never meet me at a steak house. So he called the cops.”

  “I had Amy at my mercy before the cops got there,” I said.

  “You know Jerry. He’ll milk it forever,” she said. “So—you were wrong about Eric.”

  “Claire, I just can’t trust my instincts,” I said. “I’m not fit for dating. I need to take a refresher course first.”

  “No, you can trust your instincts, but you don’t. You listen to all these other voices. What was your first instinct about Eric, the very first, honestly?”

  “That I really wanted to have sex with him.”

  “What was your first instinct about Amy Penny?”

  “That I really wanted to punch her lights out.”

  “And what was your first instinct about Burke?”

  “That he was full of himself, almost sociopathic, but he was really cute.”

  “Right on all counts,” Claire said.

  “Well, Eric still has some stuff to explain…,” I said.

  “So do you, my dear.”

  “Yeah.” That’s what happens when you’re too close to a story—right smack in the middle of it, in fact, instead of on the outside looking on objectively. You lose sight of things and you make mistakes.

  “Have you talked to Burke?”

  “No. I figure I’m one of the last people he wants to hear from right now. You know, when we first split up, I wished horrible things would befall him, but this exceeds my wildest revenge fantasies. It’s really overkill, it’s justice of Greek proportions.”

  Poor Burke. He took a medical leave and went to rest at his parent’s country house in the Hamptons. He always loved the ocean. I was going to call him or send a card but I really didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t covered in Vogue’s Book of Etiquette. I felt bad for him, though. Poor guy. He used to have such good taste in women.

  The purse-cam tape ran all over the news, ours and others, in the next week. Most of the story is out now.

  I say most because one never knows when the story is really over. Just recently, I was reading that archaeologists now believe the Philistines weren’t the loutish, barbaric beer-guzzlers their enemies painted them to be. They were actually cultured and refined wine-drinkers with highly evolved arts and technology for their time.

  This just in: The Philistines were slandered. Forget what you’ve read. Even back then, there was media bias.

  The stock price is up too, slightly. Paul Mangecet is rumored to be gunning for a big Hollywood studio, but his Christian no-load mutual fund still holds ten percent of JBS, and the next shareholder meeting promises to be a media circus.

  McGravy made a play to get me back into general news, but Jack Jackson himself vetoed it. “She and Jerry are a bang-up team,” he said. “And I’m going to keep them together. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

  Claire, however, is up for a weekend reporting spot. Kinda like Ruby Keeler—she went in a producer, came out a star.

  Even Louise Bryant has had offers. Get this. Some agent saw my cat on the news, and wants to sign her to an endorsement contract. My cat gets an agent before I do. My cat could make more this year than me. It’s a strange world.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Robin Hudson Mysteries

  1

  Someone had left a guillotine in front of my building.

  It was a Tuesday night, and I’d just come from picking up my cat, Louise Bryant, at her agent’s office, where I received a lecture about her bad attitude, how she refused to eat the sponsor’s cat food, fell asleep under the hot lights whenever she felt like it, and kept clawing the Teamsters, one of whom had come down with rather a bad case of cat-scratch fever. We had one more shoot before our contractual obligation was fulfilled and I could retire the old girl.

  She was whiny and I was tired when the cab let us off on Avenue B at Tenth Street, in a part of Manhattan known variously as Loisaida, Alphabet City, and the East Village. Con Ed was venting steam throu
gh a big orange and white striped tube, sending big, misty clouds into the air. Because the city had recently installed new streetlamps with a pinkish glow, the steam was pink, and gave the street a sinister, demimondaine cast. A slow wind blew the pink fog my way, enveloping me, and I had one of those chills, you know, the kind they say you get when someone is walking over your grave.

  That’s when I saw the guillotine, wedged between two garbage cans in front of my stoop as if someone had thrown it out with the trash. The absence of severed heads in the vicinity told me this was not a working guillotine, as the practicality of such an item in a neighborhood crawling with youth gangs known for dispensing summary justice would not have gone untested. Closer inspection showed the blade to be rubber and firmly bolted in place.

  “Now that’s what I call a deterrent,” I said to Louise Bryant, who was growling softly in her carrier.

  Pink mist swirled around the guillotine. When the mist cleared, I saw the telltale signature CHAOS REIGNS in red spray paint on the sidewalk. CHAOS REIGNS is a guerrilla art movement that drops its work randomly throughout New York’s Lower East Side.

  As my head was on the company chopping block at the moment, this seemed anything but random to me. No, this was an omen if ever I saw one.

  My name is Robin Jean Hudson and I am a reporter in the sleazy Special Reports unit at the prestigious All News Network, where I have an ironclad contract that binds me to them, and them to me. And no, I am not one of those faces you see set before the hills of Sarajevo or the august halls of government or the wreckage of a natural disaster. You see me, trying very hard not to look embarrassed, in those four-minute reports on shoddy sperm banks, UFO abductees, and the shady side of the hairpiece industry.

  Things were not good at the All News Network. Ratings and advertising revenue were down across the board—except for the two fat cash cows, Special Reports and the Kerwin Shutz show. Rumors of cutbacks, shakeups, and reshuffles were rampant. Morale was abysmal. The company mandarins were in intensive meetings and the place was crawling with high-powered talent flown in for these meetings. Something was brewing, the air was heavy with it. And it would happen soon.