The Perfect Ghost (17 page)

Two loud and jovial men piled into a nearby pick-up truck, faces red with beery afterglow, balancing boxes of pizza on their knees. I inhaled the scent of molten mozzarella as I exited the car.

The counter man carded me when I ordered a beer. I paid in advance and an elderly woman with an apron over her jeans brought reheated slices—one mushroom, one cheese—to my rickety table. I bent and tucked a folded napkin under a table leg, then held both hands over the steaming pizza, absorbing the heat, considering how odd it was to eat in a public place, sit down to a meal surrounded by strangers. The walls were orange and grimy, but the light was cheerful and the sounds of clattering silverware and idle chatter pleasant. The slices looked limp and unappetizing, but I felt a surge of confidence shoot through my veins. I drank beer. I took a bite, felt the cheese squish against my palate as I opened McKenna’s folder.

The first two pages were reprints of letters in tiny blurred print, jammed together eight to the page, deploring the immorality of actors, letters that, except for their explicit and modern vocabulary, could have been written at the time of Will Shakespeare or Joseph Jefferson or when Eugene O’Neill lead his dissolute company to the dunes. Each was dated, and the initials C.C.T., added in pencil, indicated they’d all been published in
The Cape Cod Times
. Occasional sentences were heavily underscored. “At Cranberry Hill, the only work girls do is the Devil’s work” featured a string of hand-drawn exclamation points. The names of the senders had been carefully obliterated.

I downed half my Budweiser. Teddy, I have to say I didn’t see the need to pay some wing nut for the startling revelation that the Cape housed its share of screed-writing cranks.

In addition to excoriating the behavior of actors, there was an underlying drumbeat of financial dissatisfaction, an echo of the kind of stuff Donna, the hairdresser, had mentioned. Letter writers warned that the land surrounding the theater, a valuable town asset, was in grave danger of disappearing from the tax rolls forever. Two recommended closing the theater outright, encouraging commercial development of the site so that more year-round jobs would gravitate to the Cape.

One letter, with even smaller type and an official-looking logo, proved indecipherable. I strained, but the print was so tiny I couldn’t make it out. I studied the letterhead, but McKenna had used a Sharpie to mutilate the name and address. When I held the blotchy document to the light, I could make out four letters of the last name. I wrote them down along with the only legible words in the next line of print: “Islands District.”

When I flipped to the third page, the letters gave way to rough copies of photographs. I chewed pizza and ran my eyes down the page. Attractive young men and women cavorted in foam-topped waves, faces blurred, bodies hard and lean. Two or three girls were topless and I wondered if they were local girls following the devil’s dictates. A photo near the bottom caught my eye. A man who might be Malcolm, a younger Malcolm with no gray in his hair. The background was a street scene, no hint of the ocean, a low-slung building.

I flipped to the fourth page and discovered remnants of a cramped list. Glenn McKenna may have been in your pay, Teddy, but he was nuts. The CIA did less redacting. Line after line had been heavily X’d out. The remaining text seemed to be a record of occasions on which police had been summoned to Cranberry Hill, a list of complaints by neighbors concerning loud parties, or heavy traffic on narrow roads after a performance.

Aha! On July 27, 2004, actors lit a beach bonfire without obtaining the required permit. If this constituted the dark and seamy underside of a great man’s life, it was less than compelling. I was tempted to ball the papers up and use them for target practice on the over-the-counter TV screen, blacken the eye of the perky sportscaster previewing the upcoming Red Sox season. I wanted to forget McKenna, declare him a homeless bum who stored squirrel food in his backpack along with whatever current “project” he imagined himself “working” on. But you weren’t a fool, Teddy. If you gave him money, you must have had a reason. Surely you hadn’t entrusted him with a tape on which Brooklyn Pierce made some game-changing, book-altering revelation?

I finished my beer and imagined Pierce, Ben Justice himself, striding into the pizza parlor, waltzing through the neon-lit doorway. What a stir that would cause. The idea made me reconsider McKenna’s usefulness. If Pierce were staying on the Cape, McKenna, the celeb freak, might know where to find him. I left half the pizza, cold and shining with grease, on the table.

The rented house sat quietly on the dark street. Moonlight picked out the skeletal branches of overhanging pines. I pulled into the drive, killed the engine, and listened to the silence, glad I’d left the living room lights on. Their welcoming glow shone through a crack in the curtains.

I dumped my coat in a heap at the door, booted my laptop, consulted McKenna’s grimy business card, and entered the URL for CCtruthtelling.com into my browser. If McKenna were any good, he’d have Pierce splashed across his home page. Brooklyn drew eyeballs. His antics, rehab stints, girlfriends, and excesses were the stuff of gossip Web sites. Not till I was staring at the opening screen did I admit my desire to view McKenna’s brainchild whether or not it led to Pierce’s current whereabouts.

Considering my impression of McKenna, CCtruthtelling.com was a surprisingly professional product—garish, but well-designed—and McKenna, to give him his due, gave the viewer an immediate eyeful of photos and screaming headlines: Unexpurgated tales of debauchery! Nude sunbathing! Drugs and lechery on luxury yachts! CCtruthtelling invited readers to submit their pix! Tell their stories! Advertise here! By Web standards, the site wasn’t a skin show, more an innuendo show, a malice fest. The lawsuit-protection question mark was invoked frequently. Ads for tattoo parlors, escort services, and other celebrity Web sites rimmed the screen.

The Cape area boasted several souls who might qualify as celebrities in any jurisdiction, movie stars like Chris Cooper. Ben Affleck’s mother owned a house in Truro. Martin Sheen was occasionally spotted at area beaches. But at CCtruthtelling, anyone who dated a celebrity was a celebrity; a member of a pro sports team was a celebrity; a model was transformed into a celebrity if she appeared on the arm of a sports hero. Anyone who appeared on a reality-based TV show was a celebrity. A Barnstable girl who sang on
American Idol
was fair game for any cell phone photographer or tattletale ex-boyfriend. Any politician or ex-politician or family member of a politician signed up for lifelong harassment. The special “Catch a Kennedy” section was devoted to photos of any member of the famed political clan approaching or leaving their Hyannis Port estate. Since Garrett Malcolm was a superstar and anyone who worked with him was the goods, you, Teddy, would have been a first-class “get.”

You called celebrity “fame’s shallow second cousin,” but I know you felt its lure. You never missed reading the daily “Names” section in
The Boston Globe
and when a publication date approached, you sent advance notice to the gossip mavens. You kept score. How many TV interviews did our book on movie fave Gemma Haley rate? More or fewer than the subject of our previous book? Forgive me, but I sometimes thought you were jealous of the celebs, miffed if not angry that TV hosts chose to interview them instead of you.

Pages of CCtruthtelling, salaciously labeled first base, second base, and so on, were devoted to the Cape Cod Baseball League, picturing athletes embracing females in various stages of undress. If a girl dated a member of a Cape Cod League team, her photo—not a high school graduation shot, either, but a shot of her drunk in a gutter—was duly posted and her entire family publically demeaned. Pages devoted to Cape summer theater were, if anything, worse. Last summer’s “superstars” were relentlessly photographed: Kirsten Dunst! Dakota Fanning! Libby Beckwith! Orlando Bloom! Olivia Wilde!

I had no idea so many famous and semifamous souls set foot on Cape Cod, all seemingly unaware that McKenna had them in his sights. I hadn’t noticed any photographic equipment through the tinted windows of the van, but McKenna was a wizard with a telephoto lens. Over half the photo credits were G. McKenna, and while the majority of photos weren’t obscene, they were lurid and nasty, the kind of shots that celebrated the awkward, drunken encounter, the bathing-suit bra prior to readjustment.

I wondered if McKenna paid waiters in top-flight restaurants and chambermaids at ritzy inns to tip him off, or if he relied exclusively on volunteers. The site didn’t seem like much of a revenue source, but the ads must bring in something. I continued scrolling, searching, for mention of Brooklyn Pierce.

I was embarrassed at how often I found myself staring at photos of overexposed flesh. It was like stopping at the side of the road to view debris from a train wreck, but I was unable to look away. I believe in freedom of the press, but I found myself questioning its limits. Glenn McKenna would say he was pushing the boundaries, no doubt. He probably had a dozen lawsuits pending.
The Boston Herald
is a tabloid, but compared to CCtruthtelling, it was
The New York Times
in the golden age of journalism.

Which married actor spent the night with which beautiful actress? Who nuzzled his way-too-young gf at the Nauset Beach Club Thursday night? I slummed my way through CCtruthtelling, amazed by the level of innuendo, the lack of verified fact, the smutty speculation about people who were not celebrities at all, just ordinary folks who ought to enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy. Some shots must have been deliberately posed. And most of the females must be paid rather than amateur talent. If the girls in the photos were merely dates, earnest if misguided teens, wouldn’t at least one of them have grabbed Daddy’s shotgun, always supposing Daddy didn’t grab it first?

I pictured the blue van with the tinted windows. Not only must McKenna live in it, he must constantly move it. If he had a fixed abode, enraged fathers would line up to shoot him.

I tore my eyes from the site when I realized I was scanning for photos of Malcolm, photos of the director with other women. I fled to the kitchen and gulped a glass of water, berated myself for that indulgent beer. While standing at the sink, just to do something with my left hand, I opened the drawer to the left, a junk drawer, the kind you find in any kitchen. The magnifying glass was the first item I saw.

Relieved I hadn’t tossed McKenna’s folder in the trash along with the remnants of pizza, I perused it under the glass. The four letters I’d copied from the illegible missive were “oole.” “Islands District,” the words I’d picked out of the official-looking seal were part of the phrase “Office of the Cape and Islands District Attorney.” The letter thanked the sender for his timely warning concerning a local resident, one Garrett Malcolm.

CHAPTER

twenty-six

Tape 132

Patrick Fallon O’Toole

4/2/10

Teddy Blake:
Thanks for making time to see me.

Patrick Fallon O’Toole:
Well, a person could say I’ve got time to burn now. Pleasure to meet you, read that book you wrote, the one with that actress, what’s her name, yeah, Gemma Haley. That was one helluva read, so I’m happy to cooperate. Retired man’s got nothing but time. They make any movies outa your books?

TB:
Not yet.

PFO:
Well, they ought to. Really, they should.

TB:
Thank you again. For the compliment as well as your time.

PFO:
Retired, unemployed, same difference. So, you’re writing about Garrett Malcolm this time? Let me say right off, I’ve got nothing but admiration for the man and his work, and I hope he doesn’t hold that old business against me. It was the job, and I had to do it.

TB:
I’m gathering background material.

PFO:
Okay, like I said, I’ve got the time. And probably, I mean if he’s in on this, if it’s an authorized biography—

TB:
It is. Actually, it’s an autobiography. In Malcolm’s own words.

PFO:
Bet he’ll have a few choice ones for me and not exactly printable, either. I go back a ways here, District Attorney better part of thirty years, knew the old man, Malcolm’s dad, Ralph, so I probably saw Garrett on stage before I ever met him, though Shakespeare’s not exactly my thing, went to opening nights every summer to keep the wife happy. She liked to get all dolled up. I’m more of a golfer, but my wife, she always wanted to see the shows, and it was a good thing I went, I suppose, got to mix with the people and all. Just not my kind of thing, watching grown-ups prancing around a stage, not that I don’t like a good Clint Eastwood movie, you know?

TB:
Can you zero in on your professional contact with Malcolm? When did that begin?

PFO:
I’m not gonna go back to when he was a kid. Statute of limitation, boys will be boys, and all that business. He and that cousin of his, the Foley boy, they got up to their share of high jinks, but if I had to write down every stupid thing I did when I was a teenager, that would be one helluva long list.

TB:
Mine, too.