I did the same, listening to his ragged breath on the other end.
“Hiya,” I said, doing a little wave.
He stared at me just long enough to hammer home what a ridiculous greeting that was, then answered back, “Who the hell are you?”
I cleared my suddenly dry throat. “Uh, I’m…Daisy.”
“Daisy what?”
“Moses.”
“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Daisy Moses was the granny’s name on The Beverly Hillbillies.”
I was impressed. He knew his classic TV.
“Okay, fine. I’m not Daisy.”
“Obviously.”
“But it’s not important who I am. It’s important what I can do for you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “And that would be?’
“Look, I…have a friend…who works for a major publication here in Los Angeles.”
“Great, a fucking reporter.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and moved to get up.
“Wait!” I shouted, banging on the glass.
“Don’t touch the glass!” the guard behind me boomed, prompting both the gum-less brother and Joaquin’s new lover to glance my way.
“Sorry,” I said, holding both hands up.
But, luckily, it had gotten Pines’s attention, too. He sat back down, putting the receiver to his ear again.
“What.” More of a threat than a question.
I swallowed that dry lump again. “Look, I can help you. At the moment, the public is ready to write you off. Let them hear your story.”
“I could give a shit what the public thinks,” he said. He was surprisingly spunky for a billionaire who had just spent the last week in jail.
“Fine. But the studio heads read the papers, too. You think you’re ever going to get a job in this town again? Let alone work with child actors?”
“I never touched no kids,” he argued.
I wagged a finger at him. “Don’t be naïve,” I shot back. “You know as well as I do that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It matters what people think you’ve done. Guilty until proven innocent. And,” I added, “it’s my job to tell people what to think.”
He paused, seeming to digest this for a moment. “What paper you work for?”
“The Informer.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, recognition slowly setting in. “I know you,” he said, his jaw clenching. “You’re that damned gossip columnist.”
“Uh…”
“I’ll tell you what you can do for me, Tina Bender. Go fuck yourself.” He slammed the receiver into the set.
“No!” I banged on the window again.
“Don’t touch the glass!” The guard’s hand hovered over his firearm.
I threw both hands up in surrender. “Sorry!”
But I was glad to see Pines hadn’t walked away. He stood, his arms crossed over his chest, glaring.
I gestured to the telephone and mouthed the word, “please.”
I attributed it to the fact that waiting back at his cell were hours worth of nothing that he reached for the receiver again.
“You have some nerve coming here,” Pines growled into the phone. “You’ve been crucifying me since day one.”
“I never printed anything that wasn’t true.”
“You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass, girl. You print rumors.”
I cocked my head to the side. “So, tell me a rumor, Pines.”
He shook his head back and forth, a big, creepy smile spreading across his unshaven face. “You know how many reporters, legitimate reporters, would give their left nut to get an exclusive with me? You think I’m just gonna give it to you?”
I took a deep breath. It was now or never. “Jake Mullins.”
“Who?”
“He was in your last film. Played the dad. OD’ed on sleep medication a couple of months ago.”
Pines paused. Then nodded as if reluctant to admit any connection. “Yeah. I remember. What about him?”
“I heard you two were pretty chummy.”
“We worked together.”
“But you knew he took sleeping pills?”
Pines narrowed his eyes. “So what if I did? The guy took one too many. It was an accident.”
“He took one handful too many. Where were you the night he died?”
“So you wanna pin this on me, too?” he asked, throwing his arms up.
“What I want is to know how well you knew Mullins.”
He paused. Then a slow grin spread across his face. “Well enough to know that he got what he deserved.”
My heart sped up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He leaned forward, his face inches from the grimy glass. “Look, kid, I think I’ve told you enough. You want to know about Mullins? I want something in return.”
“I told you I’ll print a positive story about-”
But he cut me off, waving his hands in the air. “No, no, no. I want something tangible. Something now.”
I bit my lip. “What?”
“Porn.”
I did a mental eye roll. “No way. I am not bringing you pictures of naked kids.”
He shook his head. “Boys, girls, men, women-I don’t care. I just need some porn! Look, I’m dying in here, all right? The hottest thing I have to look at are National Geographics with all the tits blacked out. I need something to get me through the day.”
I chewed my lower lip, doing a backward glance at the guard by the door. I was pretty sure that nudie magazines were up there with shoelaces on the prison nono list.
However, I could just imagine the look on Barbie’s face when I waltzed in with an exclusive from Pines…
I leaned in close. “Playboy or Hustler?”
“So, how’d it go?”
I slid into the passenger seat of the Hummer.
“He knows something about Mullins.”
Cal raised an eyebrow my way. “And?”
“And, if I want to know what it is, I have to bring Pines porn.”
“They allow that in jail?”
I shook my head. “He wants me to bring it to the preliminary hearing tomorrow afternoon. He says he can slip me in as some sort of counsel.”
Cal gave me a hard look. “I’m not sure I like that.”
“Relax. It’s a courthouse. His lawyer will be there. It’s perfectly safe.”
“It may be safe, but I still don’t like it.”
I looked down at the dash clock. “Well, Felix isn’t going to like it if I don’t get this story typed up pronto. So less talking, more driving.”
Cal grunted something that sounded suspiciously like a dirty word but complied, pulling the Hummer back out onto the street.
Unfortunately, it was after five in Southern California, which meant all freeways and major arteries in the city became virtual parking lots, the average speed topping out at ten miles per hour. Not surprising, it was dark by the time we finally reached the Informer’s offices again. Immediately, I hit my computer, pulling up a word processing program to type up my Pines interview. I had just gotten the first sentence down when a breathy voice interrupted.
“Tina?”
I spun around to find Allie standing behind me, squinting at the screen over my shoulder.
Instinctively, I hit the “off” button on my monitor. “Did you want something?” I asked, pointedly.
She straightened up, focusing on me. “Felix said I should get with you on where we are with Pines.”
We. I hated that word.
“I am looking at a possible angle involving a coworker,” I said, emphasizing the pronoun in question.
“Who?” Without invitation, Allie pulled a chair up beside my desk.
The last thing I wanted to do was give Reporter Barbie my inside scoop. On the other hand, Felix had been pretty clear about us working together. And I had a feeling where I was concerned, lately his patience was thinner than an Olsen twin. So, I made a compromise.
“I talked to Pines.”