Nice Girls Finish Last (25 page)

“These are part of a flurry of letters I got after someone placed an ad under my name in the pen pal pages of
Prison Life
magazine. I never did find out who,” I said, handing Ferber a stack of letters.

“Suspicious,” Pete said.

“Well, actually, most of them are critiques of my reporting and the stories I do, or story ideas. Not at all threatening. I get the nuttiest letters from outside the penal system. A considerable number of them from masochists for some reason. But no Verns.”

The further you are from most people, the better they look. The television screen adds a lot of distance, with a paradoxical illusion of warmth and closeness, so that you feel you know the people you see, you identify with them, or at least with their television personae.

My ex-husband Burke likened this to Carl Jung's observation of the “bush-soul,” wherein primitive people identified with the soul of something in nature. One man might feel he was sharing his soul with a tiger, another with a tree, a rock, a waterfall, an elephant, et cetera. (I think I share mine with an eighteen-pound turtle named Henri, but anyway … ) He called the obsessive fan phenomenon the “celebrity-soul” syndrome, wherein people identify too strongly with a famous figure and think that person knows their innermost thoughts and desires and is speaking directly to them, and them alone.

Hey, I'm no Jodie Foster. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the American population probably doesn't even know my name. So it is especially sad to me that some guy out there identifies with me this way. I mean, if you're going to go to all that trouble to be obsessed with someone, write them many letters, call them at home and hang up on them, even physically stalk them, you ought to aim a little higher, stalk Joanne Armoire or Diane Sawyer. “Hard work without ambition yields few fruits,” my father used to say. But hell, Lorena Bobbitt gets adoring letters from men obsessed with her, so why not me?

(And recently I was reading that Ed Sullivan had groupies, which baffles me completely.)

Especially scary to me was that this underachieving stalker would kill because of his twisted affection for me, or for my television persona.

Ferber was sorting the letters into piles by category: “obsessive love”—this included the masochist faction, led by would-be footlicker Elroy—“death threats,” and “other,” which covered unfocused rantings about freemasons, Jews, blacks, Mexicans, extraterrestrials, and missives from all those people who claimed to be delivering messages from God, Satan, or dead world leaders.

“I'll take these,” Ferber said, scooping up a bunch of letters. “See what we can find out from them, if anything.” He turned to Pete. “Her security is arranged, right?”

“I'm sending my best men to look out for her,” Pete said.

“You don't have to talk about me in the third person. Can I say something here?”

They both looked at me.

“This guy isn't threatening me, okay? Maybe you should put security on Reb, and Fennell, and Mike, in case he decides to do some follow-up work.”

“We have security arrangements for them too,” Pete said. “Don't worry. We need to give our ladies extra protection. Hector and Franco will be parked outside your building tonight, guarding you in shifts.”

I had a feeling this sexist strategy was going to cost us. At the very least, I questioned the wisdom of leaving those two alone in my nutty neighborhood. Would they be safe? But who was I to argue with professional law-enforcement people?

My mind was churning with possibilities and anxieties, but then my eye caught on a photograph Mike had given me, which I'd taped to my computer. In the mountains of Pakistan, on the Karakoram highway to China, they have signs that say,
WARNING
—
SLIDE AREA
and then
RELAX
,
SLIDE AREA OVER
. As the road gets closer to China, the signs become more economical, even Zen. The photo showed a plain triangular white road sign that said, simply,
RELAX
.

19

I
had worked hard to keep myself out of the tabloids in the last year and a half. I'm not one of those boldface mentions you read about in the columns being squired around by actors and moguls. When I get into the columns, it's usually because I've done something embarrassing. But even during the death series fiasco, I had managed to keep it quiet, keep it out of the “TV Ticker” column of the
New York Post.
I'd been lucky for a long time.

But in the morning, there, on the front of the
News-Journal,
was my face, with the big black words,
FEMME FATALE
?

Below, it asked:
DID YOU DATE THIS WOMAN?

They hated me at the
News-Journal.

It was almost all there in the story. Kanengiser, Reb, Fennell, Pinks, Anya. A gynecologist, a dominatrix, an attempted mother-killer, and two famous television personalities. Two dead, one wounded, the other scared shitless, et cetera, and all, the paper said, because of their contact with me. It was made for the tabloids.

Who had leaked all this?

“We decided to make all of this public,” Detective Richard Bigger was quoted as saying, “in hopes of saving the lives of other men who may have been in contact, even innocently, with Ms. Hudson.”

They also dredged up the old Griff murder case, as well as my live, on-air belch and a few other incidents I really wanted to put behind me.

Was I ever going to escape my past?

By the afternoon, men all over the city had publicly disassociated themselves from me. There were jokes on Democracy Wall and in the Rumor File, and someone at ANN graphics had run up T-shirts with
DON
'
T SHOOT
… on the front and I
NEVER DATED ROBIN HUDSON
on the back. I saw four or five people wearing them just in the cafeteria. Admittedly, they were pretty funny T-shirts. Har har.

Well, I would probably never get another date as long as this nut was loose. The problem with nuts is, they're so unpredictable and can be so hard to detect. I mean, there are guys like Hank, who stalks Dillon Flinder backward, who are obviously nutty. Then there are those nice quiet types who live next door for years and end up having a freezer full of dead drifters.

Around three p.m., a press release was issued by Max Guffy, which someone thoughtfully, and anonymously, faxed to me.

“Not only did I not date Robin Hudson,” he wrote. “I found her grossly offensive.”

That was rather overstating it, I thought.

No, I hadn't dated Max Guffy. I had, however, thought about dating him when we met for our pre-interview, before I blew it all with a slip of the tongue.

There's always that one question I should never ask, that one anecdote I shouldn't tell, that one comment I shouldn't make, but I can't seem to stop myself, like the cannibalism question I asked the plane-crash survivor a couple of years ago.

With Max Guffy, avant-garde undertaker, I never should have told the Lazarus-sex story.

The notorious Romanian Lazarus-sex story, which ran on one of the European wire services, never made our air, although it was probably the most widely reported story within the network for a week or so. It was one of those stories that isn't suitable, as anchorman Sawyer Lash would mis-say, “for
any
members of your family.”

As the story goes, a funeral home attendant had sex with a young female corpse, freshly dead, and the shock of it brought her back to life.

Imagine the attendant's horror. He's having sex with a dead woman who suddenly opens her eyes.

Now, imagine her horror. She wakes up after being unconscious to find a strange man is having sex with her on an examining table in a strange room.

(“Imagine that guy's ego now, standing around the bar, bragging,” my neighbor Sally had said. “‘I can bring dead women back to life.'”)

In any event, the girl's family didn't press charges, despite the vileness of the crime, because they got their Olga back. That's what I call a blessing in disguise.

(“The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” said my piggish boss Jerry Spurdle when he heard this tale.)

I asked Guffy what he thought about that, if it was possible to bring someone back to life that way. People at ANN were torn over that story, and it was endlessly discussed as some sort of extreme metaphor for the gender wars. A few argued the moral implications, as if it wasn't completely black and white and they could actually build a defense, the “might be okay if it's a matter of life and death” necrophilia defense. The rest of us argued the veracity, since the story came from Romania, a country so far into its id it brought us vampires, torchlight mobs, and Nicolae Ceausescu. But some people swore by it, so I figured I'd settle a few bar bets by asking an authority like Max Guffy. Remember, Guffy and I had had a little vodka, he'd told some morbid jokes, and I was feeling very comfortable by this point.

But Max Guffy got very defensive and angry, launching a rant about stereotypes, rigorous screening and supervision, double-teaming so the bodies were never alone, how such sensationalist crap preyed on the public's fears and helped make people uncomfortable with death.

Then, red-faced, spitting mad, he asked me to leave.

Before you rush to judge me, consider that Max Guffy specialized in offbeat funerals, funerals as performance art, as comedy, as a reflection of the individuality of the dead guy. In his spare time, he also authored pseudonymous humor books about death.

Understand also that the man was proud of the
New Yorker
article that had said he was giving death a raucous eroticism. I was just a little blunter. It's not like I asked him if
he
ever did it with a dead person. I mean, hey, anyone who can stage a Mummenschanz funeral with a straight face and then write a humor book called
101 Uses for a Dead Clown
can take a story about necrophilia.

(Make that 102 uses.)

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have told a necrophilia story to a mortician, but how often does one get the chance to tell a necrophilia story with a happy ending?

People called me all day. My ex-husband Burke called from Washington, where he was now a big-shot reporter at the State Department.

“Holden,” he said, using one of his nicer pet names for me. “Take care of yourself. I assume you're armed to the teeth with corkscrews and electrolysis needles …”

“A hot glue gun and pepper spray,” I said.

“And you still grow the poison ivy in your window boxes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I'm not really in any danger. Men who've been involved with me are in danger.”

“That's always been true of you,” he said. He was not properly sympathetic. What had once been a passionate love affair between me and Burke had dwindled down to an occasional phone call, an occasional dinner, a few shared memories, some joshing. We were like war buddies who get together every year to recall the battles they shared.

He laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“Don't tell me your legendary sense of humor in the face of everything has deserted you? I was laughing thinking how funny it would be if this stalker actually met you and discovered he didn't like you.”

“You've always known how to flatter me, Burke.”

“You take care of yourself, seriously. I'm laughing, Holden, but this guy has killed people, so be careful. I mean it. You have some protection, security?”

“Yes, I've got our top security men looking after me,” I said. I was being sarcastic. Hector and Franco did not make me feel safer. I was sure they could both be lured away from their posts by a fast-talker on a snipe hunt.

“You be careful too, Burke.”

“I will.” Burke is smart and good-looking and has a lot of obsessed women fans. He receives Fabioesque quantities of fan mail.

Dillon called. “I'd take a bullet for you any day,” he said.

“That's sweet. Kind of,” I said.

Even Eric E-mailed me from Moscow. “Don't take
any
unnecessary chances,” he said. “Keep your sweet head down.”

I had a steady stream of visitors as well. Jerry, thank God, was in meetings, which took precedence over li'l ol' me, so he would have to wait to harass me about this. But Dave Kona came in to express his concern. I couldn't help noticing the way he sized up my office.

Louis brought me some funny stories, and Phil the janitor brought me a flower.

“You're a lot like me, Robin,” Phil said. “Life throws you into craziness. But you're too silly to die too, I think.”

Ferber called me twice. Once to tell me he couldn't find Howard Gollis, and once to tell me ballistics had matched the bullet Mike recovered.

Then Mike came in.

“I'll be happy to stay at your place tonight,” he said. “Just to keep you company.”

“Thank you, but it's really not that big a deal. This isn't someone who wants to hurt me, just men who are seen with me,” I said. “Don't put yourself at risk. Be careful. This guy might take another shot.”

“Girl, I've been in much tougher spots than this one,” he said.

After he left, Tamayo came in. “You've seen the latest papers?” she said, sympathetically, and put the evening papers down on my desk.

“I'm doomed,” I said. “This was the last thing I needed right now, what with the reshuffle and the cutbacks and some nut out there shooting at any man who whistles my way … and my Aunt Maureen is in town, she's bound to see the papers and …”

“Oh, someone called about your aunt,” Tamayo said.

“Who?”

“Where did I put that message? Just a second.”

She came back a moment later. It was a message from Aunt Mo's roommate, Mrs. Sadler.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” Mrs. Sadler said when I called her back. “But your aunt didn't come back to the hotel yesterday. I woke up this morning and her bed was made. Did she stay over at your home?”