The Reporter

by Kelly Lange

Genres: Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Jack Nathanson's third wife Maxi is helping the police with their enquiries into Jack's murder. Many have a motive for killing him but for Maxi the spotlight must be beamed on to Jack's secret mistress who had a longer shelf life than anyone.

Release date: October 14, 2009

Publisher: Mysterious Press

Print pages: 328

Sample

Reporter Maxi Poole couldn’t take her eyes off the bizarre translucent coffin, and the man lying inside on a bed of ruched
white satin, with a smile on his face, and holding a set of onyx rosary beads in both hands—her ex-husband. Rosary beads? she thought. But he was Jewish. And smiling? He was terrified of dying. None of it made sense to Maxi, including and especially the fact that the man was, undeniably, dead.


It was a bleak fall day, one of very few in usually sunny La-La Land, as the tabloids call Los Angeles. Many of the film industry’s
most notable personages stood huddled against the chill—world-famous producers, directors, writers, stars—shoulder to shoulder
around the spot where the transparent coffin stood on its preposterous-looking gilded bier. No matter that most of them were
noteworthy for yesterday’s triumphs, not today’s, and certainly not tomorrow’s; they were noteworthy still by virtue of illustrious
past accomplishments and significant contributions to the art of cinema.


Maxi pressed her back against a pink flowering myrtle tree, literally trying to blend with the scenery. It didn’t help that
she was five-foot-eight and wearing a short, bright red, zip-up sweater with a red-and-white tweed miniskirt. Somehow, black
hadn’t
seemed to suit for this occasion, but now, looking at the sea of women and men in black, she might have liked to rethink that
wardrobe choice. Too late. She pushed her cropped blond hair out of her eyes, straightened her sunglasses, and folded her
arms. Just get through this, she reminded herself.


Next to Maxi stood her producer, Wendy Harris, all of five-foot-two on platform shoes, ninety-three pounds, tawny red hair
and lots of it, with notebook in hand. In muted voice, clearly getting a huge kick out of the tribal rites of old Hollywood,
Wendy was doing a comedic commentary, blithely pointing out luminaries, has-beens, and hangers-on. With her face deadpan and
her eyes straight ahead, Maxi gave Wendy a sharp elbow to the ribs.


“What!” Wendy blurted, making some small attempt to stifle a grin. “We’re supposed to look like we’re working, aren’t we?”

Maxi rolled her eyes. She straightened up and forced herself to concentrate on the remains of her late ex-husband. Bad enough
Wendy was having such a good time; it would be disastrous if she caught the mood herself and broke into nervous giggles. And
she knew it could happen.


There was a rustling in the crowd, and Maxi saw actress Debra Angelo approaching them, her young daughter in hand. Debra caused
a stir in any crowd. She was striking in a very short, very tight black Versace suit, a gold-flecked chiffon scarf wrapped
loosely around tons of dark hair, and impossibly high heels that kept sinking into the soggy cemetery turf. Debra had been
the wife before Maxi. At some point in Maxi’s marriage to Jack Nathanson, the two women had got around to comparing notes,
and became friends.


Maxi reached out to hug her. “God, this is grim,” Debra murmured in her ear. “Grim, just like him.”

“What, Mom?” piped up the winsome child at her side, her daughter—his daughter.


“I was just telling Maxi it’s a dreary day for a funeral,” Debra said with just a touch of a lyrical Italian accent. “But
Daddy wouldn’t mind that, would he, darling? He rather liked gloomy weather.”

Smiling down at Gia, Maxi whispered, “How’s she doing?”

“Bewildered,” Debra said of her cherubic-faced ten-year-old, the child she’d been trying for a decade to bring up as a normal
youngster, Maxi knew, with little success.


“Oh, there’s Carlotta,” Debra said. Carlotta Ricco was Jack Nathanson’s housekeeper. The woman adored Gia. Seeing the girl
now a few feet away, she opened her arms, and Gia scurried into her embrace. Alone for a minute, Debra breathed, “Maxi, what
the hell are you doing here?”


“Working. Covering the funeral,” Maxi said with a dismissive shrug and a look toward her producer, and knowing that Debra
wouldn’t buy it.


“Yeah, right!” Debra whooped, louder than she’d meant to. Then she glanced up quickly to see if anybody had heard. Scanning
the crowd, she muttered, “Look at these dinosaurs, Maxi. And who came up with that ridiculous Lucite coffin? Even he had better taste than that, which is saying precious little, God knows. But the man was Gia’s father, after all—”


“And the reason why she gets in fights in school, and pulls her hair out at night,” Maxi put in.

“That’s going to change now,” Debra hissed. “Now that the sonofabitch is dead.”

“Shhhh,” Maxi cautioned.


“Right. Damn, I am ruining these shoes!” Debra observed, glancing down at the fine black suede that was now coated with grassy, muddy ooze. “Fucking
seven-hundred-dollar Manolo Blahniks, but it can’t be helped—you never know where your next part is coming from. Shouldn’t
there be at least a few au courant movers and shakers among these turgid mourners?”


Maxi chuckled. She marveled at Debra’s indomitable spirit. Debra Angelo was arguably not a brilliant actress, but she had,
to date, played the parts of several memorable ladies, largely by dint
of a big personality coupled with a sculpted, exotic beauty that was rendered all the more extraordinary on-screen—the camera
loved her, attested many a director of photography, loved those cheekbones. And even though she had really only one act, so
to speak, it was an act in sufficient demand, that of the funny, ballsy, off-the-wall, altogether endearing and thoroughly
Americanized Italian jewel.


Carlotta walked Gia over to them, and with the child in the middle, all three women hugged. Kind, genial Carlotta had been
with Jack Nathanson through all of his wives, and now she had tears in her eyes. “You’ll come to the house after?” she asked.


“I’m sorry, Carlotta, I have to get to work,” Maxi said.

“And I’m not sure Gia would be up to going to her daddy’s house today,” Debra put in. “But Carlotta, you’ll still see her,
as much as you’d like. Okay?”


“Okay.” Carlotta forced a smile and gave Gia another squeeze.

Debra linked her arm through Maxi’s. “Walk with me,” she urged.

“Walk with you! Where?” Maxi was trying to be invisible, and walking anywhere with Debra Angelo was akin to walking in a blazing spotlight.


Looking toward the casket, Debra tugged on Maxi’s arm. “C’mon,” she said, sotto voce. “Let’s give ’em a show—past wives united!”
Nudging Gia ahead, she sauntered forward, pulling a reluctant Maxi along, with Wendy following behind.


Debra drew the little group up short behind a man who was talking louder than was seemly. “Jesus, what’s with the see-through
coffin? Is it supposed to be a symbol or something? I mean, was there some kinda glass coffin in one of his movies?”


The question was posed by a formerly famous star of a formerly famous television series, who had long since lost it all to
booze and the horses. Still, he had a certain cachet that was kept alive by colorful stories of his colorful doings in the
tabloid press.



“No, no,” Julian Polo, who’d been the deceased’s agent, replied distractedly. “I guess Janet picked it out—Jack was a big
collector of contemporary art. He looks good, though, doesn’t he?”


“Listen!” Debra whispered in Maxi’s ear behind them, her concupiscent lips widening into a grin. Debra relished dish about
their mutual ex; Maxi hoped that her higher self would one day stop being fascinated by same, but it hadn’t happened yet.


“Ahh, they shoulda planted him under his star on Hollywood Boulevard, he’da liked that,” the actor groused.

“He didn’t have a star,” mused the agent, who knew everything about his famous, infamous, complex, and now dead client. Mind you, Julian
Polo wouldn’t usually admit to anyone that movie superhero Jack Nathanson, multiple Oscar winner, didn’t have a star on the
world-renowned Hollywood Walk of Fame—that would be bad PR, and the deceased still had a picture coming out, from which the
agency would get ten percent of his points. But this poor excuse for a man standing next to him wasn’t anybody. He used to be James McAdam, popular star of Doctor Bryce, which placed in the top ten for almost a decade on NBC. Now look at him, drunk even at a morning funeral—he wouldn’t remember
any of this tomorrow.


“Whaddaya mean he doesn’t have a star?” McAdam prattled on. “Everybody’s got a star. Pat Sajak has a star. Jamie Farr has a star. I have a star, for chrissake! Jack was one of the greatest actors ever lived. ’Course he has a star.”


But Julian wasn’t about to tell even this out-of-the-loop has-been the story. Years ago, when Jack’s career was in its prime,
Julian had confidently applied to the committee for a star to honor his client’s brilliant body of work. The vote has to be
unanimous, and almost always is, but the chairman subsequently reported that every one of the members threw in a thumbs-down
for Jack, not a single yea, and in fact one colleague, a makeup artist who’d
worked on one of his pictures, was heard to say as she tossed in her ballot, “He can eat shit and die!”


“Sorry, pal, but we knew your boy’s not the most popular guy in town,” the chairman had said. “Now, you can resubmit his name
every other month,” he’d added, “but to be honest with you, I think this whole committee would have to die and be replaced
by people who didn’t know him….” So no star on Hollywood Boulevard for legendary actor Jack Nathanson.


Julian turned his attention to the rabbi, partly to shut McAdam up—interesting that Janet would choose a rabbi, he thought,
since Jack was an admittedly bad Jew, religiously speaking.


Last month, Julian and his wife were at Spago with Jack and Janet, and the dinner conversation got onto religion. Jack remarked
that ever since he made Black Sabbat, his Academy Award–winning period film about a witchcraft trial that echoed a high-profile contemporary case of a priest falsely
accused of child abuse, he was into the whole Roman thing—the Mass, the music, the majesty. “Confessing your sins has to beat
seeing a shrink,” he’d said. “And how about exorcising the devil! We oughta do that one on you, Julian, roust the devil out
of you,” he’d said with a smirk, “and out of every goddamn agent in the business.” He’d turned to Janet then and said, “When
I die, darling, don’t bury me in a tallis; put some rosary beads in my hands.” And damned if she didn’t do it, Julian thought
now, gazing at his late client clutching the beads. Janet never really got the joke with Jack.


Maxi reached out and tapped Julian on the shoulder, breaking his reverie. Turning, he smiled broadly at Nathanson’s two beautiful
ex-wives, taking a hand from each in each of his. “Nature’s noblewomen, both of you,” he exclaimed. “How are you two? And
Gia,” he said, stooping to shake the girl’s hand.


“We’re fabulous, Julian.” Debra smiled, blowing him a kiss. Turning then, with Gia in tow, she set off toward the rabbi standing
at the head of the coffin-cum-shrine. As she wound through
the crowd, an indelicate wolf whistle was heard from someone among the gathered.


“Jesus, what’s she gonna do?” Julian half exclaimed.

“I have no idea,” Maxi answered, her eyes also fixed on Debra. Maxi had long ago realized that there was no predicting what
Debra Angelo would do, ever. This whole crowd knew that Debra had loathed Jack Nathanson, and vice versa. Seven years before,
they’d all been witness to the couple’s public, trashed-about, dragged-out divorce and custody battle, each sordid accusation
from one prompting a topper from the other. And now she was going to give him a eulogy?

Wendy, too, watched Debra’s languid progress toward center stage. “Sensational!” she noted in her version of a stage whisper.
“Skintight black, tasteful gold jewelry, four-inch ‘fuck-me’ pumps…” Debra was somberly guiding young Gia before her, aware
that every eye in the house, as it were, was on her aristocratic, wriggling fanny wrapped in quasi widow’s weeds, the wind
tossing voluminous hair barely contained by the diaphanous Isadora Duncan scarf wound around that perfectly made-up, exquisite
face that registered grief, though tout le monde knew she wasn’t grieving.


“Debra Angelo might not be the world’s greatest actress,” Wendy whispered to Maxi, “but she sure knows how to make an entrance!”

Maxi had to smile—Debra had this crowd mesmerized as she stood serenely now, hands on her child’s shoulders, speaking in hushed
tones. Heads craned forward, the better to hear her. She was saying that Jack had loved his daughter, and Gia wanted to say
a few words in her daddy’s memory.


Gia started to cry, which immediately sobered Maxi. In the five years that she had been her stepmom, Gia could always break
her heart. The girl was stammering now that she loved her dad, that she was going to miss him, sobbing harder now, caught
in this odd, truly scary situation for a little girl who was looking
down at her smiling father lying in a see-through box. She was trying to remember the little speech that Debra had coached
her on. “My daddy told me to read good books,” she mumbled. “He played… uh… video games with me….”


After a painful few minutes of this, Debra knelt and gathered her in a tearful embrace, then took her hand and led her away,
back through the crowd, stepping carefully around headstones studding the grass toward a waiting limousine with Gia’s nanny
inside.


The rabbi had called the next eulogist, Sam Bloom, Jack Nathanson’s business manager and closest friend, best man at all his
weddings. Sam chattered the deceased’s praises, telling stories about what a consummate professional he was, what a helluva
guy he was.


Next, former child star Meg Davis approached the rabbi. She spoke haltingly, staring down through that peculiar casket at
230 pounds of the dead Jack Nathanson dressed in very odd burial clothes, odd, but it was the kind of outfit the man had virtually
lived in lately, the kind the news photos showed he’d got shot in, and probably the only type of apparel they could find in
his closet that fit him, since Jack was currently in fat mode: a tan safari jacket, a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and khaki pants with an elastic waist.


The speaker was tall and frail looking, with long, straggly auburn hair that seemed uncared for, and a drawn face scarred
by dissipation. She was blowing her nose and talking about how Jack Nathanson had made her a star in Black Sabbat, she was only ten when she’d read for the part, and how wonderful he had treated her and her mother—


But something was going on, a scuffling, some sharp words, and heads began turning, Julian, McAdam, Maxi, Wendy, people all
around them, the widow, the rabbi, and the rest, and what they saw completely diverted their attention from Jack Nathanson
lying face up in his plastic box.



The now-grown-up Black Sabbat child had stopped reminiscing in midsniff, and was looking up to see what she’d lost her audience to. Wendy, ever the journalist,
moved quickly toward the action. Maxi and Julian stood frozen. Four uniformed Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies, one of them
female, and two detectives in plainclothes, guns drawn, had positioned themselves outside Debra Angelo’s limo, barking orders.


“Come out of the car, lady!”

“Hands over your head!”

“Leave the kid—you stay in the car, little girl.”

Two of them began tugging at the actress, hauling her out of the limo. Debra was protesting, screaming indignantly, yanking
away from them, and now and then shouting obscenities with a Romanic timbre, as the nanny looked on in horror, and Gia hung
on to her mother’s skirt and howled with terror.


Then Debra let out a piercing shriek and fainted while the cops were reading her rights, having just told her that she was
under arrest for the gunshot murder of her former husband, Jack Nathanson.



Maxi punched off her cell phone and dropped it into her purse. No surprise that she didn’t get any answers from the sheriff’s
department—it was too early. Not that she could count on information from them ever, but it was worth a try. She’d called
in the arrest to the news desk at Channel Six, and told the assignment editor that the pool camera had it all on tape. Debra
was her friend, but news was her job. They’d have the story in minutes anyway. The entire media would have it, and it would
be every station’s lead tonight.


“Well, this show’s over,” Wendy hissed. “It’s anticlimax from here. Let’s get back to work, Max.”


“We can’t leave till he’s in the ground,” Maxi whispered.

“Oh. Sorry. My funeral etiquette’s rusty.”

“I need to pay my respects to his widow,” Maxi said.

“Yeah, congratulate her. She got off cheap.”

“Stop it, Wendy. Someone will hear you.”

“Okay, you go give your condolences to the final Mrs. Jack Nathanson, and I’ll get the truck and bring it around. I’ll pick
you up by that tree over there,” Wendy said, pointing to a purpling jacaranda up on the road.


As Wendy headed off to where they’d parked the news van,
Maxi made her way toward Janet Orson. She couldn’t help wondering how Janet was feeling, as the man she’d married less than
a year ago in a romantic ceremony on a moonlit beach in lush Saint Thomas was about to be laid to rest. Their nuptials had
been written up everywhere, and featured on all the news and entertainment shows. Maxi remembered the night she had to voice
over their wedding video on the Six O’clock News, while her coanchor sat next to her stifling snickers. It did seem weird,
reporting on her ex-husband’s marriage. And tonight, even more surreal, she’d be reporting on her ex-husband’s funeral.


Maxi tried to remember how she had felt when she’d been married to Jack for less than a year. Was she still in honeymoon phase? No, she wasn’t. Because
fifteen minutes after the ceremony, it seemed, Jack had turned into a whole different guy. Maxi noticed it right away, maybe
because she was a trained reporter. She just pretended she didn’t—until she couldn’t pretend anymore. But she had no idea
how Janet felt today. Janet Orson was forty-three, beautiful, and highly successful. She’d made the long, steep climb in the
entertainment business from studio stenographer to top talent agent, one of the first women who’d managed to break through
the agency world’s rugged glass ceiling. She had justly earned the respect of the industry, and had amassed a fairly sizable
nest egg for herself. On the day of her marriage to Jack Nathanson, she’d told the press that it was time she focused on her
personal life.


Though never married before, Janet had had hundreds of dates, escorts, one-night stands, and short-term liaisons, all chronicled
in the trade columns—there had been no shortage of men on either coast who wanted to romance the stunning, powerful Janet
Orson. And she’d had one very significant other, one long and well-publicized love affair with a talented, highly successful
screenwriter whom she’d launched by selling his Moon-doggie, a charming little film she had believed in that grossed an astonishing 78 million domestic.



Evidently she had believed in him, too. He was tall, dark, Adonis-handsome, smart, fun, attractive in every way. The two were an A-list couple for years, and
they’d seemed perfectly suited and divinely happy, until he dumped her at the top of his career for a red-hot, pencil-thin
blond actress half his age. The news of their surprise marriage appeared in the daily Variety, and, it turned out, no one was more shocked to read about it over coffee and breakfast rolls than Janet Orson.


Then she met Jack. And Maxi was sure that Janet must have felt like she’d died and gone to heaven, because Jack Nathanson
got an A-plus in courtship. He was candlelight dinners and little blue boxes from Tiffany and first-class jet trips to Aspen,
New York, Saint Moritz, Rome. Just six weeks after their first date, Jack and Janet soared off to the Caribbean for their
divine storybook wedding, while all the bells were still ringing and the fireworks were still going off, Maxi was sure.


She saw Janet now, standing with the rabbi, talking quietly. The Debra Angelo debacle had apparently put an end to the spontaneous
eulogies. “Janet,” Maxi said, as she came to her and took her hand, “I’m so sorry.”


“Oh, Maxi…” The two had known each other for years; Maxi had interviewed Janet several times. Now she could see hurt and confusion
in this woman who was usually the epitome of composure.


“What was that about?” Janet asked Maxi. “I couldn’t see what was going on….”


“Debra was… arrested.”

“For… for this?” Janet exclaimed, gesturing toward her late husband’s bier.


“Yes. They read her the Miranda rights on a murder charge.”

“But would she… could she…?” Janet knew that Maxi and Debra were friends. Maxi knew that Janet didn’t quite approve of Debra.


“I don’t know anything more than you do, Janet.”


“Well, Debra hated Jack—”


“Is there anything I can do for you?” Maxi cut in, to stop any more conversation about Debra. Maxi didn’t know what to think
about the rowdy arrest of Debra Angelo just minutes ago, and she certainly didn’t want to speculate about it with the “final
wife,” as Wendy had dubbed Janet Orson.


“Well…you can be kind in the coverage—”

“Oh, I won’t be doing it,” Maxi said. “My coanchor or I will voice the story on the newscast, but I won’t be writing it or
putting it together. How are you holding up, Janet?”


“I’m in a daze. It’s all been happening so fast—”

The rabbi was handing Janet a rose from the arrangement atop the fiberglass casket. As the two women looked down at Jack,
Maxi had a great urge to ask Janet why she’d chosen that outré piece of quasi–modern art as a final resting place for the
man they’d both been married to, but she thought better of it. Instead, because the bizarre presentation of Jack Nathanson
in death a couple of feet in front of them was impossible to ignore, she heard herself commenting on the deceased’s apparel.
“In those clothes he looks so… so like himself,” she stammered. Then wished she hadn’t. But Janet didn’t seem offended.


“Sam Bloom said don’t buy him a suit, nobody’s ever seen him in one except in the movies,” she said. “And Sam knew him better
than I did, certainly. But that smile on his face!” Janet went on, shocking Maxi with that one. “The undertaker put it there. When I asked him why, he said because
your husband’s wearing this funny outfit, I figure he must be a funny guy.”


Maxi wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to laugh. She settled for saying nothing, just looking somewhat perplexedly at the
widow. Which evidently prompted Janet to go on. “And once the smile was there, the undertaker said, he couldn’t take it off.
Then he actually explained why he couldn’t. Physically. Oh, God, Maxi, it’s been a nightmare.”


But how do you feel about your husband being dead? Maxi
wanted to ask, but didn’t. They were distracted by the pulleys that were now moving the casket over the grave site, about
to lower it into the ground. This should be a private moment for Janet, Maxi knew. Giving her what she hoped was a reassuring
hug, she headed off to find Wendy in the Channel Six news van.


After watching Maxi Poole’s retreat for a few seconds, a tall woman in Harry Potter glasses, her hair pushed up under a floppy
poor-boy cap, inserted herself squarely between the coffin and the widow. With pad and pencil poised, she asked, “How do you
feel, Mrs. Nathanson?”


Janet felt a stab of discomfort. A reporter. Not television; there was no camera. Print. The L.A. Times? The New York Times, perhaps? Or Variety? The woman presented no credentials. Before Janet could respond, a burly man in jeans and a rumpled T-shirt jumped in front
of them to the edge of the grave, hoisted a camera, and snapped off a series of flash-popping pictures as the coffin, with
film legend Jack Nathanson in full-bodied view, descended into the ground.


Amid a cacophony of outraged protests, the man whipped around and said to no one in particular, “Sorry, I gotta bring in his
box shot.” With that, clutching his camera, he ran across the sodden grass toward a waiting van, funeral guests shaking their
fists after him, Joan Collins among them, someone shrieking, “…fucking tabloid vermin!”



Pigs!” Debra Angelo had muttered in the backseat of the sheriff’s radio car. “How could you do that in front of my child? I didn’t kill the sonofabitch.”


They took her to the sheriff’s station in Malibu, venue of the crime, where she was booked, printed, strip-searched, and photographed.
Next, they transported her to the Sybil Brand Jail for Women in East Los Angeles, where superlawyer Marvin Samuels was already
waiting with bail money, having been alerted to her crisis by a friend at the funeral who happened to have a cell phone in
his pocket and great affection for Jack Nathanson’s first wife.


Everyone knows there’s no bail on a murder rap in L.A. County, and nobody knows what Marvin Samuels did to get Debra Angelo
out on bail—beg, plead, promise, bribe—but get her out he did, on a million dollars’ bond. By the time the two walked out
of Sybil Brand, a sizable contingent of media had gathered outside, f. . .