Ellipsis (12 page)

“Is your stipend regularized?”

“Say what?”

“Do you get a fixed amount of money from her per month?”

His look grew wary and defensive. “Fixed? No. I wouldn't say it's fixed.”

“Then how is your compensation calculated, if I may ask?”

He had finally found something he needed to keep secret. “What the fuck business is it of yours, anyway?”

I got as prissy as I get. “I don't mean to pry, of course, but if we're to go forward with Ms. Wells in a major way, I need to know what kind of financial obligations she has already undertaken. Arrangements that might adversely impact any effort she would be able to make in our behalf.”

My persistence made him angry. “Shit. I ask her for money and she gives it to me. When she feels like it. If I beg her hard enough. Is that what you want? Shit. I need a drink.”

Mickey lumbered out to the kitchen and returned a moment later with a can of Colt 45. He held it up. “Got another if you want.”

“No, thanks.” Mickey plopped down on the couch with the grace of a cannonball. “I was wondering what's the most money Chandelier has ever given you at one time, Mr. Strunt.”

He started to resist, then relented in service to the greater good, which was his future solvency. “What the hell. She gave me twenty grand once. To help me buy this place. Last month she gave me fifty.”

“Thousand?”

“Singles. Fifty lousy bucks. She earns that in a minute. I should sue the bitch is what I should do. Got plenty of lawyers ready to take it on, too.”

“How long have you and Chandelier been divorced, Mr. Strunt?”

“Mickey. We split twelve years ago June first.”

“Did you get a substantial property settlement?”

His blush told me I'd touched a sore point. “I got zip, practically. She claimed she didn't have nothing, but she and her dyke lawyer hid most of her money offshore, I know that for an actual fact. But the idiot working for me couldn't prove it.”

“Do you get alimony?”

“Alimony? Shit.
Guys
don't get alimony, you schmuck. Sorry,” he added when he realized he'd insulted me. “The divorce thing still gets me hot.”

I waved the apology away. “Understandable. One final point. If Ms. Wells signs with us, would you expect a participation of some kind, Mr. Strunt?”

“Mickey. Damn right I would.” He drained his beer while he thought it over. “You can do that?”

“We could arrange some sort of consulting contract, I imagine.”

Suddenly listless, Mickey lifted the can in a mock salute, unable to make himself believe he would ever be on easy street. “Well, here's to you, Mr. Vice President of whatever. Go to it, pal. Get me what I deserve.”

I stood up. “I'll do my best,” I said in all sincerity, and we shook hands once again. “By the way, when's the last time you saw your ex-wife?”

“Last month, like I told you.”

“Is that your only contact? When you approach her for money?”

“Yeah,” he grumbled. “Why else?”

“What about the child? Aren't you Violet's father?”

“Hell, no.”

“Then who is?”

“Beats me, mister. And you know what? Chandelier don't know who he is, either.”

Chapter 12

The television studio occupied the entirety of a nondescript stucco building five blocks south of Market and two blocks west of the Hall of Justice, beneath a web of freeway underpinnings that looked like an outtake from
Blade Runner
. Given the aggressive insularity of show business, I anticipated a lot of trouble getting to where I needed to get, but someone, probably Lark McLaren, had paved the way for me.

A cheery receptionist handed me off to a perky girl guide who took me through a labyrinth of offices to the door to Studio B. After making sure the red light was safely off, she ushered me inside and introduced me to a producer named Carmen, a hyperactive bundle of nervous anxiety clutching a clipboard to her chest and a pen in her teeth and who clearly saw me as another in a long line of potential glitches that could ruin her day.

The event Carmen was producing was called
Magda Makes Sense
, a noon-hour talk-show broadcast over the largest independent TV station in the Bay Area, featuring an Oprah wanna-be named Magda Danielson. Magda was a former Raiders cheerleader and current society grande dame who was married to an investment banker who had gotten rich giving seed money to Sun and Cisco in exchange for a portfolio full of common stock. Magda was smart and uninhibited and the show was popular and at times controversial, although I had to admit that my supporting evidence was only hearsay—I'd never seen Magda or her show before and neither had anyone I knew. It's amazing how much trivia you accumulate just by being alive.

“They told me you were coming but they didn't tell me why,” Carmen was saying around the pen, manically and uneasily, her eyes flitting about the studio to be sure no catastrophe was in the offing so close to airtime.

“I just need to take a look around,” I said as I took a look around.

“For what?”

I returned my gaze to Carmen. “Ms. Wells is a bestselling author.”

She stuck her pen behind her ear and chewed her gum three times. “That's why she's here, isn't it?”

I nodded. “Bestselling authors have fans.”

“Duh?”

“Most of Chandelier's fans are sweet and kind and generous.”

“Goody for them. But what does that have to do with Magda?”

I spelled it out. “But some of them
aren't
sweet and kind, some of them like to make pests of themselves. And those are the ones I'm looking for.”

Carmen frowned. “You mean stalkers and such?”

“Something like that.”

She ran some scenarios through her mind. “That shouldn't be a problem, I guess. As long as you're not stumbling around the studio when we're live.”

“You haven't seen any pests yourself this morning by any chance?” I asked as Carmen started to turn away.

Her lip wrinkled. “Only the ones who work here.”

“No one out of place? Work being done that wasn't ordered? Phones being repaired that no one knew were broken?”

She shook her head. “Nothing like that is going on. I'd know if there was.”

“Then I'll just poke around for a while.”

A thought made her brow furrow with suspicion. “You won't be needing to talk to Magda, will you? She doesn't like it when her prep period is interrupted.”

“Does Magda carry a weapon?”

“No. Of course not. Why?”

“Then I don't see why I would need to see her.”

She started to go into it, then passed. “Good. Great. Fantastic. Well.”

She started to walk away but I put out a hand to stop her. “It might help if I knew the schedule you'll be following.”

Carmen looked at her watch, which was her only adornment. “Ms. Wells is due in ten and she's always prompt. She'll go straight to makeup, then Magda will speak with her in the greenroom at five till the hour. Airtime is noon sharp. Chandelier will come on at six after and stay till we wrap at twelve-thirty.”

“Where's makeup and the greenroom?”

She pointed toward a blue door. “Through that, then look for the signs.”

“Thanks. I'll let you get back to work.”

Carmen dashed off to forestall some calamity that was visible only to her, and I began to tour the studio.

It was a hive of electronics, of course, a forest of cameras, lights, TV monitors, and computer screens that were linked by a tangle of cords and cables that made me envision vipers. The set itself was à la Oprah as well, with a couch and an easy chair separated by a coffee table with fresh-cut flowers spilling out of a blue ceramic vase. The backdrop was a phony window draped with a phony curtain that masked a phony view onto a real blowup of the Golden Gate Bridge as seen from the yacht club. The mundane decor in the middle of the high-tech accoutrements gave the enterprise a schizophrenic aspect, which maybe explains why TV does such bad things to our brains.

Studio B itself was essentially an open bay filled with communications gear, so it took no time at all to confirm that the only people in sight seemed essential to the production. I got fishy looks from time to time, as though I was suspected of being a mole in hire to union or to management, but otherwise they paid me no mind. Five minutes later, my only conclusion was that if I ever worked in TV, I'd want to be the lighting guy.

The studio was one thing but the rest of the building was another. Half a dozen doors opened off the studio, and they led to a warren of rooms that served for everything from equipment storage to the dressing room for the star of the show. I opened all the doors that were unlocked, which numbered maybe a dozen. Most opened on to slipshod offices, desks topped with phones and laptop computers and walls hung with TV monitors and marking boards—producer-pods, I supposed, the offices of all those people listed in the closing credits. One large room held two entire sets—one for the newscast and another for a cooking show, mini-rooms on wheels that went to and fro to conform to the mandates of
TV Guide
.

Whenever I ran into anyone who asked if they could help me, I told them I was looking for a strange-looking guy from advertising. The theory was that my lie would elicit a response if anyone even marginally lethal had been seen in the vicinity. Of course that assumed Chandelier's nemesis would fit the description of odd in some sense of the term, which may have been a stretch given the variety of people who apparently had reason to do her harm. When I had no luck with sightings of strange men, I switched genders, but no one had seen the spacey woman from wardrobe, either.

The next door I knocked on had a sign that read
MAGDA
taped to it at a slightly crooked angle. Below that was a sign that said
PRIVATE
, with a handwritten notation that read “Magda Means
You
, Stupid.” Stupid knocked anyway, and a muffled voice immediately cursed me. Since show business wasn't my life, I opened the door nonetheless.

Two women were in the room, which was mostly full of racks of clothes and piles of makeup receptacles. A young black woman wielding a powder puff the size of a muskmelon was dabbing it on various promontories on the other woman's physiognomy. The other woman had a black net over her black hair and a white towel draped over her shoulders. The only other garment I could see above the part of her that was hidden by the dressing table was a filmy black brassiere that seemed inadequate to its purposes, which was probably by design.

The woman in the bra looked up, but the other woman kept dabbing industriously, as though she were putting out a fire. “Who the hell are you?” the woman in the towel and bra demanded, in a preemptive tone that identified her as the Magda Danielson who made sense.

“Maintenance,” I said.

“No one called for any maintenance. Can't you read? Get the hell out.”

I shrugged. “Someone said a fuse went out and something smelled like burning rubber. But if you got no problem, I got no problem.”

“Fine.”

I looked back toward the corridor. “Seen my assistant around?”

“No,” the woman who had to be Magda spat. “I have a show going on in ten minutes and guess what?”

“What?”

“It's not about you and it's not about fuses. So why don't you disappear.”

I blew her a kiss and disappeared.

The next room I entered was painted green from floor to ceiling and carpeted in the same shade, one that suggested money. Sitting on matching green chairs and a green tweed couch were Chandelier and her tenders—Lark, Sally, Amber, and two other women I didn't recognize who apparently were there to fetch and carry. Chandelier's face was eerie with makeup—overly orange, overly smooth, and overly rigid, like waxed fruit. The rest of the women sat like pointers with a whiff of wild bird, which is to say they were alert to Chandelier's slightest whim.

When she heard the door open, Chandelier turned my way. “Well?”

“No problems as far as I can tell.”

“You're sure?”

“I don't have a bomb-sniffing dog, but I'm as sure as a mere mortal can be.”

“I guess that will have to do.”

“Do you want me to stay for the show?”

“Of course.”

“And afterward we're still at Steinway Books?”

She nodded. “I'll have Jed stop for a latte on the way over, so that will give you time to check it out before we arrive.”

“Fine.”

She turned toward Lark McLaren. “You're sure Magda has the questions I want her to ask?”

“I gave them to the producer ten minutes ago.”

“And you got the pages faxed to the book clubs this morning?”

“On schedule, Ms. Wells.”

Chandelier nodded absently, as if she didn't really care about the nuts and bolts of the business but couldn't keep from obsessing on them because she'd been doing it for years. “How about placement?” she went on. “Are our people out making sure the chains gave us the windows and end caps Madison House paid for?”

“They're checking even as we speak.”

“Amazon, too?”

“Right.”

“I damned well better be front and center in ‘What We're Reading' this time around.”

“You will be.”

Without thinking, Chandelier shoved her fingers through her hair, got them covered with hair spray, and scowled. “Get Dianne back in here. Christ, she put enough hold on here to frost a cake. And you'd better make sure Magda's going to play ball with the questions. She gets testy when she thinks I'm suggesting that she doesn't do her homework. But I don't want any improvising, especially not this morning. When she improvises, she gets bitchy.”

“Fine.”

Lark plucked her cell phone out of her purse, and the diversion gave me a chance to duck out. I returned to the studio and found a director's chair tucked behind a make-believe bookcase and sat down to enjoy the show.