DROPS BOMBSHELL. HAPPY JACK CAUGHT IN LOVE NEST. POLLY GETS HER
CRACKER. IT’S ALL A LIE, SAYS CANDY LANDIS. CANDY STANDS BY MAN. Then the networks picked it up-a more somber tone but the same voyeuristic thrust: “Family Network chief Jack Landis accused of rape by alleged longtime mistress. Financial improprieties also alleged. An unidentified board member said to be demanding an investigation.”
Then Jack responded. Media rivals were trying to destroy him. Filth peddlers wanted to drag him down into the gutter with them. The usually buttoned-up Candy broke into sobs on the show-who could be so cruel to do something like this? Polly Paget was a tool. The Family Cable Network will go on. Candyland will be built! Wild applause… audience members wept unashamedly. It was beautiful.
Then Polly’s idiot lawyer held a press conference. Polly made a statement. She looked awful on camera and sounded worse. The good gentlemen and ladies of the press shredded her during the Q and A. She came across as a hard, cold, calculating… bimbo. It was awful.
That, Graham told Neal, was when the minority owner called Ethan Kitteredge at the bank. Kitteredge paid off Polly’s lawyer, brought in a new firm, and arranged for Polly Paget to drop out of sight.
The press went crazy. A missing Polly Paget was much better than an all-too-present one. Delicious speculation seized the public. Where was Polly? Why had she run? Had someone threatened her? Did this prove she was lying? Where was she?
“We put a fake Polly on a plane to L.A.,” Graham explained, “and drove the real Polly up to Providence. She hid out at Kitteredge’s house for ten days while the lawyers grilled her. That’s when we decided we needed your dubious services. So we got on a private plane, flew to Reno, and here we are.”
Hiding Polly turned out to be a brilliant move. With Polly not there to open her mouth, the minority owner was able to fill the ravenous media void with stories of cost overruns, lavish expenditures, and shoddy accounting until the press, inevitably, dubbed the affair “Pollygate.”
And media magic struck Polly, too. Missing, she made the delicate transition from bimbo to sex symbol. Mysterious, she became a combination of Garbo and Monroe. Casual friends sold their stories for four figures. Grainy snapshots went for more. Offers came pouring into the new law firm and went unanswered-television interviews, magazine stories, a centerfold.
It was a feeding frenzy, a media circus. The only thing missing from Pollygate was Polly.
3
Where is she?”
Candy Landis asked this question as if she actually expected an answer.
Her husband, Jack, stood against the big floor-to-ceiling corner window she had specially built to give him views of both the River Walk and the Alamo. She thought he looked handsome standing there, his full head of hair still black, his back straight, his tummy hanging just slightly over his belt.
Charles Whiting cleared his throat and started again. “She left her New York apartment in the company of a tall, heavyset male Caucasian and entered the back of a black limousine with opaque windows.”
“Opaque? What’s opaque?” Jack asked.
“You can’t see through them, dear,” Candy Landis said.
“Opaque,” Jack Landis repeated to himself. “Go ahead.”
“The limousine proceeded to La Guardia Airport, where Miss Paget exited the vehicle in the company of the same male Caucasian. The subject then proceeded to a first-class counter at American Airlines-”
“What subject?”
“Miss Paget.”
“So what’s the subject?” Jack Landis asked. “Geometry… history? Are we back in junior high or something?”
“That’s an FBI phrase,” Candy explained. “Isn’t that an FBI phrase, Chuck?”
“It’s a general law-enforcement term, Mrs. Landis.”
“So then what did the subject do?” Jack Landis asked as he watched a young lady with legs longer than a deer’s stroll along the sidewalk.
Charles Whiting cleared his throat again. In his years with the bureau, he’d had occasion to brief the director several times and hadn’t been interrupted like this. But then again, Charles cut a distinguished figure. At fifty-four, his six foot three inches were still taut and ramrod-straight. Even under his gray suit, his shoulders showed the effects of his fifty daily push-ups. There was just enough gray on his temples to give him an air of experience, and his blue eyes were clear and firm.
“The subject boarded a flight for Los Angeles,” Charles said. “Then…” Whiting paused.
“Go ahead, Chuck,” Candy Landis said.
“Well… that’s when we lost her, ma’am.”
“Lost her? Lost her!” Jack Landis yelled. “What did she do, parachute or something!”
“She was a… uh… different woman when she got off the plane, sir.”
“I’ve felt that way after a long flight myself,” Candy said.
Jack gave her a look that was meant to be withering. It wasn’t.
To his disappointment, Candy looked as composed as she always did. Her heart-shaped face was freshly made up, her lipstick was perfectly painted on her thin, tight lips, and every single one of her blond hairs was in place and then sprayed into a perfect halo of shining marble. She was wearing her usual business suit: tailored jacket, mid calf skirt, a white blouse with a rounded collar and a little red bow.
She’s a goddamn pretty woman, Jack thought, but she looks like a painted statue, and about as soft.
Charles Whiting jumped into the awkward silence. “When she exited the aircraft, she was not Polly Paget.”
“Was she in the company of the aforementioned male Caucasian?” Landis asked acidly.
“Yes, sir.”
“So they pulled a switch in this opaque limo, huh?”
“That’s what we think, sir.”
“Too bad we didn’t think that before she disappeared, huh, Chuck?”
Chuck assumed that Landis meant this to be a rhetorical question and didn’t answer. He’d become familiar with rhetorical questions at the bureau. The director liked them.
The next question wasn’t rhetorical.
“Who’s behind all this?” Candy asked.
Jack Landis turned around slowly, his hands spread out and his jaw open in mock disbelief.
“Oh, come on, boys and girls,” Jack said. “We know who’s behind all this, don’t we? I mean, shit, it don’t take Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., to figure out that Peter Hathaway tried to use this lying bimbo to get my television stations from me. She couldn’t go through with it and now he’s whisked her away before people find out he’s behind it. Believe you me, Pollygate is over with.”
“But it isn’t over with, Jackson,” Candy said patiently. “Restaurant receipts are down, franchise offers are down, and contributions to Candyland have just about dried up.”
Jack chuckled. “Okay, but I’ll bet the ratings on the show are way up, so we’re making up in advertising dollars whatever we’re losing on the other end.”
And, Sam Houston, will you look at the bumpers on that one.
“Not even close,” Candy said. She’d spent three days reviewing the figures with the comptroller. “Ratings are up, but most of our advertisers are family-oriented businesses, and they’re nervous about being associated with a scandal.”
“Get new advertisers, then,” Jack snapped. “Get some with some cojones.
Whiting winced at the vulgarity. Candy didn’t blink a perfect eyelash.
“Well, hell, the woman disappeared, didn’t she?” Jack asked. “Don’t that just prove what I been saying all along, that she made this whole thing up?”
Candy answered, “As a matter of fact, the polls show that her credibility rating has gone up six points since she disappeared from public view.”
“Up?” Jack yelled.
“Up,” Candy answered. “Sixty-three percent of respondents think that it is ‘more likely than not’ that you slept with her-”