Mackie
Being famous sucks.
We had landed safely in Grimsby and I felt just a touch of motion sickness but otherwise the flight exhilarated me. Somehow, I had conquered my fear of flying! Once I had deplaned, though, I was almost immediately swarmed with curious fans and autograph seekers.
“Let me send for Scott,” Justin had said, before I left.
“No, I’ll be fine,” I said, somehow remembering that Scott was my bodyguard. Some internal voice scorned bodyguards but that internal voice was a liar and I vowed I would never trust it again. These people were no danger but neither could I just barrel my way through them. I stopped for just a minute to sign a ten-year-old’s notebook and the next thing you know I was surrounded and trapped. A bodyguard could have bullied me through the crowd but I just didn’t have the heart to disappoint anyone.
So, it was with great relief when a pair of police officers parted the crowd for me. “Step away, step away,” he said. “Jeez, give the lady some breathing room.” He scowled at a crowd then turned to me and smiled. “I’m Bleeker.”
“How can you stand all this?” a woman officer asked me. She looked more annoyed for me than I was. “Come on, now, folks push back. Sainte-Cloud.” It took me a moment to understand that was her name.
“Let’s get you out of here,” the male officer said. He took my arm and led me through the crowd. I signed a few autographs as we went but he herded me forward with such force and speed that we quickly left the sighing crowd behind.
“Christ, Eden, that’s a rookie’s mistake,” Bleeker said. “No backup. What were you thinking?”
“Fame has addled her brain,” Saint-Cloud, the woman, said. “You should have at least called ahead. It’s lucky we saw you.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” I said. They were talking to me as if they personally knew me.
“We’re a team, right?” Bleeker said. He had a nice smile and, unfortunately, a nicer wedding ring. He kept checking out my chest—an experience that had become immensely familiar to me in only eight hours. But he averted my eyes.
“A team?” I said. Had I been a cop before becoming a movie actress? No, of course not. My resume had listed child credits. And I was only twenty-five.
“Even if some of us have gone Hollywood,” Sainte-Cloud said, rolling her eyes. “Where on Earth are you headed?”
“Well, I thought I’d head for my old condo,” I said. “Over in Little Shanghai.”
“We’ll give you a lift,” the guy said.
“Oh, you don’t have to,” I said.
“Hey, you’re still a part of the family, remember? Besides, you look like you need all the help you can get. But if I were you, I’d check in with the precinct first.”
“Yea, you’ve probably got cases,” the woman said as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
What? I felt like I’d stepped out of the Twilight Zone and into…well, an even weirder place.
“I’m a cop?” I asked.
“Yea, sure, Hollywood,” Sainte-Cloud said. “If you say so. Indefinite leave or something?”
“That’s it,” Bleeker said. “Still should check in.”
They led me out of the terminal and to their police car. We managed this without creating much of a disturbance. Indeed, few people looked my way at all. Only a couple of airport security guys so much as said boo to me. Too strange.
“Say, what do you guys know about what happened behind Murray’s?” I asked, following a sudden inspiration.
“Murray’s?” Bleeker said. “Where’s that?”
“Little Shanghai,” Sainte-Cloud said. “You still are keeping tabs, eh? Don’t know who’s in charge. We could drop you off at the thirteenth if you want.”
“Sure, that would be great,” I said.
#
“What do you want, Eden?” Detective sergeant Sholty said. He was suspicious of me but in a territorial way. “Hollywood too boring?”
I’d been dropped of at the 13th precinct and had just waltzed in as if I belonged. Everyone recognized me and while they also acknowledged my new “Hollywood” stature they just as clearly dismissed it as a kind of personal quirk. How can being in movies be a quirk? I didn't know. But they truly perceived my appearing in motion pictures as a screwy hobby (which they should poke fun at) without considering it absolutely contrary to being a cop. I’d asked the desk sergeant who was in charge of the investigation at Murray’s and he sent me to Sholty.
“Tell me what happened behind Murray’s,” I said.
Sholty looked me in the eyes though he was sitting down. He must have been six-ten or taller—he looked like a failed NBA player and judging from some of the basketball trinkets on his desk I decided I wasn’t far wrong.
He shrugged when I mentioned Murray’s. “Not much to tell.” He slid some files over at me. “Yesterday a guy died there.”
“What was his name?” I asked.
“Darren Dark. No kidding, that’s his real name. Probably had it changed in court but I haven’t found a record of that yet.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Peter Dinklage-looking motherfucker. Short I mean. Good looking, well-dressed. The FBI swarmed the scene when they found out he was there. Mob connections.”
“Really?” I said, my spine suddenly on ice.
“Yeah, but no record. He was in great shape, perfectly healthy but he just up and died. We’re still waiting on the full autopsy but something stinks. I just got off the phone with the ME and he swears up and down the toxicology is clean but I told him to run it again and he said that’s what the FBI said. I hate cross-jurisdictional bullshit.”
“They give you his file?” I asked.
“I said it was the FB fucking I. Of course not!” He looked slyly at me. “Maybe they’d give it to you, though. If they do, I’d appreciate a peek.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. Who was I that the FBI would let me just waltz in and look at their files?
“Also, a woman disappeared at about the same time. She still hasn’t been gone twenty-four so she’s not missing yet. But we got an APB out for her anyway.”
“What’s the woman’s name?”
“Michaela Normand,” he said. “Same spelling as yours first name”
“Do you have a picture of her?” I asked.
He shuffled through some papers and handed me a picture of, well, me. “Look familiar,” I said, holding it up to my cheek.
It was a crazy thing to do. “Yea, right, you could be sisters. The cow and the sex kitten. I can see it now.”
Cow? What an asshole! “What did you find out about her disappearance?”
“Nothing, yet,” he said. “Hell, maybe she found the body and just ran away. The owner of the place kept saying she would never abandon her meal. I guess you don’t get to be that fat if you can’t eat after finding a body, huh?”
My fists curled into balls. “She found the body?”
“Nah, some guy named Kenneth Nolan. I just figured that’s why she bolted.”
“What have you found out about him?”
“Smelly as shit,” Sholty said. “I got a nasty feeling about him but nothing to back it up.”
“He’s a sex predator,” I said, the words just slipping out.
“No shit? Don’t tell me he scraped the bottom of the barrel and went after the cow?”
I grabbed his shirt with a surprising amount of force. “Don’t call her that. She’s a real person with real feelings and she deserves some respect, damn it.” I hadn’t even realized how angry I’d become.
“Jesus, Eden, calm down,” he said. A couple of cops came over and pulled me off Sholty. I let them.
“Everything OK here?” a voice said.
“It’s fine Captain,” Sholty said.
“Oh, great, great, it’s good to see love at the workplace. Eden, my office, now!”
“I didn’t mean nothing by it,” Sholty said. “I’m gonna find her. You think I should run this Nolan guy in?”
“No,” I said. “At least not for this. Check out Velma in ’99 and Karen in ’87.”
“What is that a puzzle?” he asked.
“Those are the names of women he raped.”
“And how do you know that?” Sholty asked.
“I read his mind.”
“Yeah, fuck you.”
“Please look into it.”
Sholty caught my eyes. “Yeah, sure, if that’s all you got. You think he’s got something to do with Darren Dark’s death. Shit, that name sounds so stupid.”
“No,” I said. “But I know he’s as smelly as you think he is.”
“I’ll check it out. I don’t suppose you’ll really tell me where you got that?” I shook my head.
“Are you done, Eden!” the Captain said. “Get in here! Or are you too busy for police work what with being a Hollywood star and all?”
That elicited a great deal of laughter. They really were treated me like a cop who’d somehow gotten into a reality show instead of a bona fide movie actress.
Cranshaw, the precinct Captain, delivered a long and sarcastic lecture about mixing fame and police work. Then he mentioned a couple of other mysterious deaths in Little Shanghai and tossed me three thick files. “Yes, the paper work accumulates when you play actress.”
I tried not looking baffled when I exited the office but before I could get very far he said, “Oh, yea,” he reached into his desk. He slid out a badge and a gun. “Don’t forget these.”
“Right,” I said, scooping up both. I looked at the badge and the accompanying police ID: sure enough, there was my name and picture, Michaela Eden.
The strangest thing of all was that something about this seemed perfectly natural. No, I didn’t suddenly have a deep understanding of police work. About all I knew about cops came from watching TV. But being with these people, in this atmosphere, felt proper.
“Mackie!” called a female detective. “You can take this desk.”
Before I could thank her, she rushed away and I sat down, hoping for at least a few minutes of sanity. Someone offered me a cup of coffee which I gratefully accepted. The mug they gave me had my name written on it—“Hollywood” Eden.
Could this day get any crazier? It could. It did. But the part where things became saner would be what scared me the most.
