“Are you a cop?” she asked.
He left it out there for a few seconds, then said, “That's your icebreaker?”
“You want to answer?”
The question didn't really surprise him. Pepe said her husband had taken a big drug fall a few months ago. The feds had probably been all over her. But why'd she wait so long to ask? “No.”
“No, you don't want to answer, or no, you're not a cop.”
“No, I'm not a cop.”
“A federal agent?”
“Wouldn't that qualify as a cop?” They were at the last light before the Brookhaven barrens, miles of tress still black and gnarled from a wildfire a few years back. Traffic was scarce out here this early in the morning, especially heading east off-season. “I mean, if you're asking because you think you're under surveillance?”
“I don't know, maybe.” Not taking it too seriously. Like she had nothing else to talk about, so why not this. “Anyway, are you either?”
“No.”
“How did you know I'd be thinking that?” She sat up a little straighter. “That perhaps I was under surveillance and asking for that reason?”
“My boss mentioned your situation. He's a fan.”
“What you're saying is he likes my tits.”
So it was going to be like that.
“He did mention your rack,” Dane told her. “In passing.”
Her chin firmed up and she waited a while before saying anything more. “I don't know if I'm paranoid or not paranoid enough. I've got to ask that of everybody I meet for the first time, that I have any contact with. If they're cops. What a way to start every conversation. The police have been tailing me for months.”
“I thought they already put your husband away.”
It made her half close her eyes, the ridges of her eyebrows coming down. “They think I was in it with him, like I'm one of those Colombian drug czar's wives that take over the empire when their husbands get shot.”
“But you're not?”
“No, I was stupid, I thought he was a good director. He was moving up to more lavish mansions even though, I found out later, his last three movies lost money. We were only married eight months when he was arrested. The lawyers start showing me this paperwork, all his tax shelters, his write-offs, the production company receipts. On paper he was in debt up to his eyes, but he's buying me four-carat chandelier necklaces and sable coats.”
“You can't be too mad at him then.”
“I was stupid.”
Dane didn't know why, but he believed her. She probably wasn't quite as unaware as she made out, but diamonds and cash had a way of fouling your vision. He said, “How long's it been?”
“Since they got him? Almost five months. They weren't satisfied just bringing him down and about twenty of his associates, from Beverly Hills to Bolivia. They think he was connected over here on the East Coast and they want to shake up the New York movie industry the way they did LA. They don't realize there's hardly any connection at all, it's two totally different worlds. Now they've got my apartment bugged.” She was getting more nervous, keeping her eyes on his in the rearview mirror. He could feel how urgently she wanted him to believe her. “They were a couple of fun years, and eight good months of marriage, but all in all I would've been better off if I'd never gone to Hollywood.”
“And kept on dancing?” The words were out of his mouth before he realized it. He really hadn't learned much about keeping his damn mouth shut when it counted.
“How do you know about that?”
“My boss again. He said you've got a dance scene in one of your movies that you couldn't have faked.”
“He's got a good eye for talent, that guy.”
“He knows what he likes.”
“You see the film? Under Heaven's Canopy. I do the dance because I have to keep the terrorists amused while this supersoldier killer saves the planet from nuclear war.”
“I swear,” Dane said, “I'm gonna rent it tonight.”
“You said your boss was a fan, but not you?”
“I haven't had much opportunity for watching movies, the last couple of years.”
She picked up on what he was saying. “Oh, I see.”
“But back to the feds,” he said. “You're giving them too much credit. They must've built a solid case against your husband in order to take him down, ferret out the laundering fronts. It's been months, you say, so if they haven't brought you into it by now, why do you think they'd keep coming after you?”
“Because I'm an actress. They think it's fun, rubbing elbows with movie people while they're trying to crack some international drug cartel. They want to bust me because it ties the film industry in with importing. Like they never realized before that where there's money, there's drugs.”
“They realize it. They just have to pretend they don't, or they'd have no jobs.”
“So that's why they're clinging to me.”
Dane didn't buy it, but she seemed committed to her reasoning. “If they've already got your man, I don't see why they'd keep after you, even if it is fun for them. Rousting producers and all that. Feds walking into Silver Cup Studios and getting sitcom stars' autographs. Even that would get old quick. They would've either busted you with your husband or right afterward.”
“That's not what my lawyers say.”
“They're stringing you on so you keep paying them.”
“Everybody who's supposed to help clear up the situation just keeps perpetuating it so they get paid?”
“Exactly.”
She thought about it for a minute, doing the math, counting up all the cost for unnecessary hours. “You might be right. But what if you're not?”
“I don't think asking every person you meet if he's a cop is going to do you much good in the world. Be patient. Stay out of the action for a while, go back to LA and make your movies. Under Heaven's Canopy Part 2. Kick the shit out of a few more terrorists on screen. Get in a few snappy one-liners.”
“I don't fight them. I just dance for them, you know, seduce and sort of beguile them. Except for at the end, I get to shoot a rocket launcher into the main bad guy, blow him off a bridge.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. My cool action hero line is, ‘I'm gonna rock your world, baby!' Then I blast him.”
“You do a commentary track on this movie?”
“A special extended edition is due out next year, but with my husband in the joint, I don't think they'll be asking me to participate for a while. Too much bad publicity right now. Later, who knows?”
She'd taken off her shades and Dane could see a mischievous glint in her gaze, maybe because he was talking to her without judgment. Maybe something else they'd eventually get around to. She seemed pleased with herself, playing up to him.
The tabloids and newspapers must be putting her through the wringer, printing her nude pictures with little black x's over the nipples, showing how degenerate she was. “If it's not cost-effective for them, the feds will have to pack up their shit and go on to the next case. If they're even watching you at all.”
“Feds never give up,” she said, like she knew it for a fact. “I've learned that much. All they've got is time. I saw that when they kept coming after my husband, going through every piece of scrap paper, reel of film, interviewing hundreds of members on his film crews.”
“If you're really clean, they'll eventually veer off.”
“I'm not that clean,” she said.
It almost made him laugh. “No one is. You've just got to be less dirty than the guy next to you.”
“I was, but they're still on me.”
“Maybe.”
All that talk and she'd never once mentioned her husband's name.
Dane settled back and she did the same, and the mood grew comfortable, kind of friendly. He double-checked his map and the address on the sheet as he pulled into the village, then drove around the traffic circle and up to Montauk Manor.
A ritzy old-fashioned hotel built a century ago, where some investors owned suites and rented them out like time-shares. Middle of October, with the hint of winter rolling in off the ocean, the place looked pretty empty. He wondered who she was meeting and felt an unexpected pang of jealousy.