Show Business Kills (26 page)

At the bank of pay phones, Rose stood for a while, cleaning
her glasses with the hem of her black blazer, trying to formulate what words she’d use to break the bad news. When Julie said
she didn’t have any money to pay for an airline ticket, Rose would tell her that wasn’t a problem. Then she’d call Western
Union and wire her enough to cover her travel expenses, or charge the ticket to her own credit card, to be sure Julie could
get here to say what might be her last good-bye to her sister.

Finally she steeled herself, then dialed zero and the area code, and then the number she had for Julie in her Filofax. There
was a bong after she punched in her credit card number, and a computerized voice saying “Thank you for using AT and T.” The
phone in Beaver Falls rang twice before a man answered it, with that odd Pennsylvania dialect Rose remembered the four friends
used to try to imitate when they were in school in Pittsburgh.

“Hallow?”

“May I speak with Julie O’Malley, please.”

“Whozis?”

“My name is Rose Schiffman, I’m a friend of her sister Jan’s.”

“Oh yeah. Holdon. N’kay?”

“Yes.” While she waited nervously, Rose wondered how many times bad news had been transmitted through this phone she was holding.
How many people had stood just where she was standing, at the phones nearest surgical ICU, having to say, “I’m sorry to have
to tell you this, but…”

She was the one who had called Allan’s family in New York on his last day. To tell them it was only a matter of hours until
he’d be gone. She was the one who managed to say the words, “You’d better come as soon as you can.” She
was the one who had heard Allan’s mother wail, “My baby,” on the other end of the line, and his father taking the phone to
say, “Oh, no, oh dear God. We’ll be there tonight.”

“Hallow?” Rose heard the fear in Julie O’Malley’s voice.

“Julie, this is Rose Schiffman, do you remember me?”

“Yeah, hi, Rose. Sure, I remember you. And I already know about Jan. It was on the local news here,” she said. “I called over
to the hospital, but they put me through to some nurses’ station and nobody there would tell me anything. Is she…?”

The local news. Of course, Jan was a big enough star to have this be all over the news. Rose felt stupid for not having called
Julie immediately. “She’s still alive, but she’s not doing well,” Rose said. While she was filling Julie in on as many details
as she could, trying to be gentle, she imagined Julie dissolved in shocked tears at the other end.

This was the kind of news you should give to a bereaved family member in person, at a time when you could put your arms around
them, be there to comfort them when they lost control. After she’d told Julie everything, she was silent, and there was no
sound but the hush of the long-distance line, until finally Julie spoke.

“Rose, you’re real nice to call me,” she said, “and all I can say is, I hope she lives through this. She’s a good person.
But if she doesn’t make it, I can tell you one thing for damn sure. I’m not takin’ that adopted kid of hers. And even though
we never discussed it, I’ll bet anything she left him to me.”

A tremor ran through Rose, and she took in a deep breath and tried not to cry. She held the phone with her left hand and put
her right hand over her mouth, as if to stop any angry words from rushing out.

“I mean, not too long ago,” Julie went on, “Jan told me,
and she was kidding around with me at the time, but she said, ‘You better hope I die young, girl, because in my will, I left
everything including the bobby pins to you.’ Which, believe me, I’ll take. But I’m the one who tried to talk her out of taking
in some kid whose real parents are God knows who. You know what I mean, Rose?”

Rose felt as if she’d been kicked. “No, I don’t know what you mean,” she said, leaning against the wall next to the phone.

“Well, here’s the deal. Last month I let my boyfriend move in here, and we have a great thing going, and he’s already raised
a few kids of his own. So, believe me, the last thing he wants at this stage of his life is somebody else’s kids.”

Rose wanted to hang up, but instead she calmed her anger with long, deep breaths and listened to Jan’s sister rattle on about
her boyfriend and their great life together, and finally, when she couldn’t stand to hear another word, she said, “Julie…
will you come out to California to be here, in case Jan doesn’t come out of this? I’ll take care of the cost of the airline
ticket. I’ll pick you up at the airport, and you can stay at my house.”

There was silence, then Julie said, “No. I’m not coming out. Thanks for the offer, Rose. But I don’t see what good it would
do.”

“Julie, Janny loves you as if you were her child. Maybe hearing you in the room could bring her back,” Rose said. “Maybe if
she thought you needed her, she’d find her way up and out of this coma. I mean, my husband’s the doctor, not me, but what
if the way these things work is that the unconscious person fights her way back to consciousness when she knows how needed
and how loved she is? I’ll call the airline now if you…”

“It’s a nice thought, Rose,” Julie interrupted, “but I don’t believe that’s the way it works. Anyway, call me back if you
find out that Janny wants to be buried back here near my parents.”

“I’ll do that,” Rose said, and hung up the receiver. She felt weak and sad and tired. Poor Joey. Jan’s little baby. Julie
was probably right. Jan would have left his guardianship to her. She leaned against the wall and tried to collect herself.
Finally she needed to sit down so badly, she just slid into a heap onto the floor, next to the bank of pay phones. She was
staring straight ahead when Marly came around the corner.

“Oh, hon, what is it?” Marly asked, hurrying over to sit next to her.

“All Jan’s sister had to say was that she’ll take any money Jan leaves her, but she sure as hell doesn’t want
him
, meaning Joey, and she won’t even come out to say what might be good-bye to Jan.”

“Maybe it won’t be an issue, maybe Jan’ll be okay,” Marly said, and she took Rose’s hand, but when Rose looked into her big
green eyes, the fear that Jan probably wouldn’t survive was there. “I came looking for you because I think maybe we should
walk down there and try to get into the ICU.” They both stood and walked back toward the waiting room.

Ellen was pacing when they arrived. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that there are no police around here?” she asked when she
saw them. “I would have thought the hospital would be surrounded by them. I mean, there’s some man walking around out there
who shot our friend, and he could come back and try to finish her off. I’d think there’d be a cop at every door of this hospital.
Certainly on this floor. I’m going to go down to the lobby and find out what they’re doing about securing this place.”

“I’ll come with you,” Rose said, thinking again about the brownie in the cafeteria. Maybe while Ellen threw her weight around
with security, she’d go and get the brownie.

They were standing by the row of elevators when the up arrow above one of the doors was illuminated, then there was a whoosh
and the doors opened. A round-faced woman in her late thirties looked at the three of them. She had curly brown hair and was
dressed in an inexpensive navy pants suit, with a white shirt underneath and a scarf tied clumsily around her neck.

“Is this seven?” she asked them. “Surgical ICU?” She held the bucking elevator doors open with the same hand in which she
held a battered brown briefcase.

“Yes, it’s right around the corner,” Marly answered.

“Are you ladies going up?” she asked them as if to offer them the elevator car she was vacating now that she’d determined
she was in the right place.

“No, down,” Ellen said.

“Oh, okay,” the woman said and let the elevator door close with a hiss behind her. She smiled politely, then moved off down
the hall as Ellen impatiently pressed the down button again, and they saw her turn around and look at Marly.

“Aren’t you Marly Bennet?” the woman asked.

“Get out the Jell-O,” Rose said under her breath as Marly nodded and the woman walked back to where they were standing. The
woman pulled a badge out of the pocket of her jacket.

“I’m Detective Rita Connelly from the West Hollywood police department. I’m investigating the Jan O’Malley shooting. I was
just over at the house snooping around, and so I thought I’d come by here and see how she was doing. I recognized Marly Bennet
because I used to love watching
‘Keeping Up with the Joneses.’ And I put you together with Jan O’Malley because of this,” she said.

“This is Rose Schiffman and Ellen Bass,” Marly said. “We’re all close friends of Jan’s.”

“Ahh,” the policewoman said. “College friends, right?”

“How did you know?” Rose asked. Rita Connelly shuffled through her briefcase and pulled out a plastic bag through which they
could see a sheet of glossy fax paper.

As Marly leaned in to look at it, she could smell the musky odor of cigarettes on the policewoman’s clothes. The fax paper
had a list of names of some of the West Coast drama alumni from Carnegie.

“You can all look at it,” she said. “Just leave the Baggie on it. It was in the foyer of Jan’s house,” Rita Connelly said.
“It looked as if it had fallen behind an umbrella stand.”

“All of our names are on there,” Rose said.

“Why don’t we go sit down?” the policewoman asked, and they all walked back into the waiting room. All of the other people
who had been there were gone. Rita Connelly shuffled around in her briefcase. “Anybody care if I smoke?” she asked, pulling
out a box of Marlboros.

“The hospital might,” Ellen said, and Rose smiled inside, knowing that under ordinary circumstances anybody lighting a cigarette
in Marly’s presence was subject to a lecture about what their murderous secondhand smoke was doing to others. While Rita Connelly
lit a cigarette, the three friends leaned in to look at the typed sheet in the Baggie. Each alum’s name was followed by a
career update. But unlike the lists that were in the alumni magazine, this one had each graduate’s home address next to it.
Jan’s name and address were circled. And so were all three of theirs. Next to each of
their names someone had written a word or two that the handwriting made hard to decipher.

“Anyone know why she’d have this?” Rita Connelly turned her head away from them to blow out the cigarette smoke.

Rose looked carefully at the policewoman, taking her in. You know you’re aging when doctors and police all look like such
babies to you, you worry about putting your life in their hands, she thought.

“Maybe Jan was going to do some fund-raising for the school,” Marly said.

“Jan? There’s no way she’d ever be able to hit anyone for money,” Ellen said. “She didn’t have the time, or the personality
it takes to call and do that. Jan’s the person other people ask for money. She’s a soft touch, but she could never be a hustler.”

“And besides, if this is a list of people she was going to call, why would she circle her own name?” Rose asked.

“That’s not Jan’s handwriting on there, either,” Marly said. “Those words. What are they?”

“Looks like ‘nanny,’ maybe ‘receptionist,’ and that might be ‘proofreader,’ the policewoman said. “The list was faxed to someplace
in the 619 area code. That’s San Diego.” Then she took another drag of the cigarette, and as the smoke came out, she asked,
“How’s she doing?”

“Not great,” Ellen said.

“Tell me about what was happening in her life. Anybody hate her? Envy her? Resent her? Want her out of the way for any reason?”
There were no ashtrays anywhere because the hospital had a no-smoking policy, so with an ease that meant she’d done it before,
Rita Connelly removed the cellophane
from the Marlboro box, held it open in her hand and flicked the ashes into it.

“Everyone envied Jan,” Marly said. “She was beautiful and warm, and even though on the show she was a ‘bad girl,’ the fans
loved her.
TV Guide
recently called her a ‘soap diva,’ but not because she was temperamental, God knows. She was anything but that, but because
her character had grown into such a powerful figure on daytime TV.”

“There were lots of weirdos around that show,” Ellen said. “Even one of the women writers, who didn’t like her, and a wacko
who sat outside the studio every day and told the guard he was going to marry Jan someday.”

“Yeah, I know about him,” Rita said. “We’re looking for a guy right now who broke into the studio and onto the set this week.
He might be harmless. On the other hand, we have to check it out. Any of you ever argue with her?”

“We all argued with one another,” Ellen said, “but not in any dangerous or threatening way.”

“And I’m sure you can each account for where you were at four o’clock this afternoon.”

“I was in a meeting at a movie studio in Culver City with the producer and three of his staff,” Rose said.

“I was in an executive meeting at a studio in Burbank with my colleagues,” Ellen said.

“I was in Gelson’s Market in Pacific Palisades tearing up copies of the
National Enquirer
that had photos of my children’s father on the cover,” Marly said, thinking after she did how that event seemed to have taken
place weeks ago, and that Billy making love to her… dear God, could it have only been this morning?

The police officer thought about what each of them had
just told her and looked at them with what seemed to be admiration, or maybe she was mocking them. “You three are some high-powered
ladies,” she said.

“Believe me, Rita,” Marly said, sighing, “like everything else in this town, it’s all an illusion.”

“You telling me?” Rita said. “I’ve worked this precinct for twelve years, and I’ve seen it all. Brought people into this hospital
in conditions you wouldn’t believe, with God knows what stuck into every orifice of their poor beat-up bodies. And most of
the time there’s some press agent outside the emergency room, trying to tell not only the photographers, but us, the police
department, who saw it all, that it never happened. You have to love it,” she said, stubbing out what remained of the cigarette
on the bottom of her shoe, blowing on the butt and putting it into the little cellophane holder she’d made.