attorneys.
The money staggered Layla when she checked into it. The deal with Gunion was worth millions, since the Mistry name was immensely lucrative. She was in the top ten on
Forbes
magazine’s list of top-earning dead celebrities, lagging behind Michael Jackson, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe but gaining on Elizabeth Taylor.
The line of perfumes linked to her name—
Tarin
(floral accents),
Mistry
(spice),
Joshua
(for men)—brought in hefty licensing fees. There was said to be a Tarin Mistry hologram on the way. In a
Vanity Fair
article, Monaghan held out the tantalizing prospect that, “through the glories of CGI,
Joshua Tree
might not be the last Tarin Mistry movie.” In show business, death didn’t mark the end of a star’s usefulness.
Monaghan and Mistry. There was nothing like serious amounts of cash to bind two names together.
She put in the call. “This is Detective Layla Remington of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. I need to reach Gus Monaghan.”
They handed her off to a couple of gatekeepers. How many were there—how many levels and buffers and rings of hell surrounded the man himself? What did it take to protect the most successful producer in Hollywood?
After more transfers, a male voice came on the line. “Detective? I’m Pablo Puente, Gus’s personal assistant.”
One of them, anyway,
thought Remington.
“I’m afraid he’s unavailable right now. May I help you?”
“Unavailable, like how? Unreachable by phone? Out on a film set? No coverage somewhere?”
“What’s this in reference to?”
“An investigation.”
“I can have Jimmy give you a jingle,” Puente said. “He’s Gus’s brother. And his attorney as well.”
Remington for sure knew who Jimmy Monaghan was. Hollywood’s lawyer. Get a call from Jimmy Monaghan, your phone started to melt in your hand, all that power on the other end of the line. She told the assistant that she’d prefer to speak to Gus Monaghan himself. Puente promised to inform his boss.
She was being pissy, she knew. She could very well find out the producer’s movements, or make preliminary inquiries at least, without bothering the man himself. But she hated,
hated,
the self-importance of the movie industry in Los Angeles, the sway it had over the whole town.
Remington mused about the three competing brands of arrogance then at play in America—on Wall Street and in Washington and around Hollywood. The first two were based on the old reliables, money and power. But the third? Images dancing on a screen in the dark.
Out and about that afternoon, Remington drove right past Monaghan’s production offices at Paramount. She had an impulse to bull her way through studio security and beard the guy in his lair. She didn’t really believe that he had anything to do with Merilee Henegar. After all, what did she have to go on?
She recalled an element of Gus Monaghan’s mythology. He didn’t actually stay in his office much. There were stories of him roaming the freeways in a caravan of vehicles, restless, always on the move. Talent took meetings with him not at his production office but in his limo.
All of which naturally called to Remington’s mind the tail she had picked up when she drove away from the Henegar scene. Could it be? She discounted the notion. But there was something else, too. Something that Brandi Henegar had mentioned.
“A couple weeks before she went missing, Merilee said that she had met a producer on the Tarin Mistry movie.”
Just a single comment that the victim may or may not have made to her mother. But with it Gus Monaghan became a box that Remington had to check off.
Meanwhile, she had to go see a man about a corpse.
Chapter 7
Medical examiners classify deaths in different ways. They distinguish among the manner, cause and mechanism of death, with some M.E.’s listing mode of death, too. In the instance of Merilee Henegar, Dr. Ed Gladney, the L.A. County coroner, ruled the manner of death to be homicide,
The money staggered Layla when she checked into it. The deal with Gunion was worth millions, since the Mistry name was immensely lucrative. She was in the top ten on
Forbes
magazine’s list of top-earning dead celebrities, lagging behind Michael Jackson, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe but gaining on Elizabeth Taylor.
The line of perfumes linked to her name—
Tarin
(floral accents),
Mistry
(spice),
Joshua
(for men)—brought in hefty licensing fees. There was said to be a Tarin Mistry hologram on the way. In a
Vanity Fair
article, Monaghan held out the tantalizing prospect that, “through the glories of CGI,
Joshua Tree
might not be the last Tarin Mistry movie.” In show business, death didn’t mark the end of a star’s usefulness.
Monaghan and Mistry. There was nothing like serious amounts of cash to bind two names together.
She put in the call. “This is Detective Layla Remington of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. I need to reach Gus Monaghan.”
They handed her off to a couple of gatekeepers. How many were there—how many levels and buffers and rings of hell surrounded the man himself? What did it take to protect the most successful producer in Hollywood?
After more transfers, a male voice came on the line. “Detective? I’m Pablo Puente, Gus’s personal assistant.”
One of them, anyway,
thought Remington.
“I’m afraid he’s unavailable right now. May I help you?”
“Unavailable, like how? Unreachable by phone? Out on a film set? No coverage somewhere?”
“What’s this in reference to?”
“An investigation.”
“I can have Jimmy give you a jingle,” Puente said. “He’s Gus’s brother. And his attorney as well.”
Remington for sure knew who Jimmy Monaghan was. Hollywood’s lawyer. Get a call from Jimmy Monaghan, your phone started to melt in your hand, all that power on the other end of the line. She told the assistant that she’d prefer to speak to Gus Monaghan himself. Puente promised to inform his boss.
She was being pissy, she knew. She could very well find out the producer’s movements, or make preliminary inquiries at least, without bothering the man himself. But she hated,
hated,
the self-importance of the movie industry in Los Angeles, the sway it had over the whole town.
Remington mused about the three competing brands of arrogance then at play in America—on Wall Street and in Washington and around Hollywood. The first two were based on the old reliables, money and power. But the third? Images dancing on a screen in the dark.
Out and about that afternoon, Remington drove right past Monaghan’s production offices at Paramount. She had an impulse to bull her way through studio security and beard the guy in his lair. She didn’t really believe that he had anything to do with Merilee Henegar. After all, what did she have to go on?
She recalled an element of Gus Monaghan’s mythology. He didn’t actually stay in his office much. There were stories of him roaming the freeways in a caravan of vehicles, restless, always on the move. Talent took meetings with him not at his production office but in his limo.
All of which naturally called to Remington’s mind the tail she had picked up when she drove away from the Henegar scene. Could it be? She discounted the notion. But there was something else, too. Something that Brandi Henegar had mentioned.
“A couple weeks before she went missing, Merilee said that she had met a producer on the Tarin Mistry movie.”
Just a single comment that the victim may or may not have made to her mother. But with it Gus Monaghan became a box that Remington had to check off.
Meanwhile, she had to go see a man about a corpse.
Chapter 7
Medical examiners classify deaths in different ways. They distinguish among the manner, cause and mechanism of death, with some M.E.’s listing mode of death, too. In the instance of Merilee Henegar, Dr. Ed Gladney, the L.A. County coroner, ruled the manner of death to be homicide,
Similar Books
