The 3rd Woman

‘Correct. We can all get along. No matter who we are. But with one group in mind especially.’ Pausing for a response and not getting it, Leo gave what was meant as a prompt, watched by the rest of the room. There were about a dozen of them, almost all young, including those who were not interns, written off, in the brutal vernacular of the trade, as mere muffins: sugary snacks for the delectation of the older hands. Susan Patinkin, campaign veteran, was the only person present over the age of forty. ‘The clue is on the screen.’ He rewound, freezing on an image which included two Chinese men. Neither were in uniform, but both were of military age.

Susan looked, then sighed. ‘Your point is?’

‘My point is that, yes, this ad is saying we can all get along. Even those guys.’ With his back to the screen, so that he could still face Susan, he gestured towards the Chinese faces. ‘But what’s wrong with this picture?’

No answer from Susan, so now he looked around. ‘Anybody?’

A hand went up. Young guy in a T-shirt decorated by a chimp in headphones, doubtless involved with social media. Leo had no idea of his name. He pointed at him instead. ‘You.’

‘They’re not singing?’

Leo hurled his pen at him, forcing him to duck. ‘For fuck’s sake! Am I really the only person who can see the problem here?’ He turned back towards the screen, spooled to the final few seconds, halfway through the final refrain. The choir was in full voice.

‘… you’re my home!’

‘OK.’ It was Susan, sheepish at the back of the room.

‘Thank you!’ Leo said to the ceiling, his hands spread like a preacher at the pulpit. ‘Yes, Governor Richard Berger will bring harmony to the state of California. Yes, he will ensure the people of this state will get along with each other and even with the garrison. Yes, there will be no riots on his watch. But that doesn’t mean he wants these guys to stay forever. He doesn’t want California to be their home.’

Susan had now abandoned the data logs on her tablet. ‘California, We Love You.’

‘Better.’

She had another go. ‘California, Place of Harmony.’

‘Too Chairman Mao.’

There was silence. Eventually Leo turned to the woman who had been at his shoulder, taking notes during the viewing, and who was, as it happened, wearing a tightly fitted top: knitted, cream-coloured and, Leo clocked, unable to hide a pair of very generously shaped breasts. ‘Collect four suggestions for alternative tag lines to run on this spot. Then focus-group all five.’

He was already at the door, giving a curt nod to Susan as he passed her, when the assistant called out. ‘Focus-group five? But you said we needed four. What’s the fifth?’

‘Richard Berger. Bringing California Together.’

There would be another year of this, Leo thought. All right, closer to ten months, but it would be like this every day. In fact, days like this would seem like a breeze come the fall. He remembered what Bill Doran used to say, his face cragged and scarred after more than thirty years on the road: ‘Campaigns are never tiring – unless you lose. Then they hurt like hell.’

As Leo boarded the jet that would take him and Mayor Richard Berger to Sacramento – squaring the Democratic delegation in the state assembly, ensuring they endorsed early and often – he allowed three thoughts to circulate. First, he had no intention of losing. He would sweat from now till the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November to ensure his boss was installed in the Governor’s Mansion. Second, he already regretted his own, populist suggestion that the mayor, as the Democratic candidate, should eschew the private jet offered to him by donors and fly commercial whenever possible. Make no mistake, come Memorial Day, if not earlier, Leo would be invoking that ‘whenever possible’ clause and the wiggle room it very deliberately allowed.

Third, he was thinking of Bill Doran. He knew that was bad form, or ‘malpractice’, to use Doran’s preferred word. It was a violation of one of Bill’s own commandments: never let them get inside your head. Normally, Leo observed that stricture without effort. But this time was different. His adversary, his opposite number on the rival campaign, was the very man who had taught him the fundamentals of political combat. If Leo were to win in November, he would have to turn his first boss and ongoing, if occasional, mentor into a loser.

That they would clash one day, he had always known. They were on opposite sides of the aisle. It was only through a freak accident that they had worked together in the first place. It was Leo’s first campaign. He had signed up straight out of college as an unpaid volunteer for a millionaire Democrat-turned-independent, who had hired Bill Doran – the best known Republican consultant in the state – to underline his new, bipartisan credentials. It was a gimmick that had ended in disaster: the candidate was crushed, despite the expensive advice he had hired.

But it had been the best possible education for Leo. Doran spotted him early, deeming him ‘the brightest of the bunch, no contest’. He let him sit in on strategy meetings way above his pay-grade, patched him into conference calls with the candidate, allowed him to hear Doran alternately soothe or rev up ‘the talent’ before the cue came to walk out on stage at a rally or fundraiser. ‘You can do this. You’re going to be the next senator from the great state of California.’ All bullshit, but necessary.

Soon Doran was beckoning Leo to come forward and look over his shoulder when the data came in, the charts and spreadsheets filled with numbers gathered by pollsters crawling over every corner of California. Doran taught Leo to look first for Ventura County, specifically the 26th Congressional District. ‘That’s a toss-up seat, Leo. If you’re ahead there, you’re ahead.’

As for TV spots, Doran was the master. There was no one with a better grasp of the visual campaign. What looked right, what looked wrong. No detail escaped him. To this day, more than nine years later, Leo could not look at a TV ad for anything – from soda pop to Depends undergarments – without seeing it through the eyes of his former mentor. When they last met for a drink, after running into each other during a straw poll event in Bakersfield four months ago, he had sat back and listened, astonished to discover that Bill Doran’s supply of political wisdom was still not exhausted. The man himself, however … well, that was a different story.

Leo buckled up. The boss was next to him, still on a call to a radio station in Oakland. ‘I agree, Trisha. That’s one reason why I’m running. I want to be able to look every Californian in the eye and …’

Leo made a mental note. Save the ‘every Californian in the eye’ for the tax pledge. Don’t waste it on other stuff, blurs the message.

He gazed out of the window, the candidate having been placed in the aisle: ‘No point flying commercial if people don’t see you flying commercial.’ Leo thought about the Mail Room last night, enjoying the images his memory reflexively served up for his perusal. He caught himself as he realized it was not Jade or her long neck and backless dress that he was picturing but the maddening, repeatedly insulting Maddy Webb. His reflection in the porthole told him he was smiling.

‘Trisha, I’m glad you asked me that. I know in my own area …’

Good. Berger was learning. Leo had told him: fight the habit of the last years and stop mentioning Los Angeles by name. It only turns off voters upstate. Downstate too, for that matter. Anywhere but LA, in fact.

He could see the mayor was on his last question. Quick check of the phone before take-off. He scrolled through his messages. One from an old friend.

Just heard. Can’t believe it.

Just heard what? He couldn’t stand it when people played enigmatic. Total power trip, lording over you the fact they had caught some nugget of knowledge that you lacked. He would not succumb. He would not send the words his pal wanted to hear: ‘Can’t believe what?’

It was bound to be about the food export story. There were new figures showing Californians were exporting so many of their staples – oranges, strawberries and avocados among others – they were running short themselves. He checked his watch. Yep, this was about the time the numbers were due for release.

But he checked Weibo to be sure. He scrolled through, but stopped short.

Tragic news about @maddywebbnews’s sister. Thoughts and prayers are with her family.

And then:

What a senseless waste of precious life. Hearts go out to @maddywebbnews #tragedy

That came with a link to an LA Times story:

Abigail Webb, 22, an elementary school teacher from North Hollywood, was found dead early Monday in what police now believe was a likely homicide. An LAPD spokesperson would give few details, but sources indicate the cause of death was a heroin overdose. Despite an initial examination of the dead woman’s apartment which could find no confirmed signs of forced entry, detectives say a later probe of the scene found damage suggesting a break-in. Ms Webb is the younger sister of the award-winning LA Times reporter, Madison Webb.

Leo read the words several times over, believing it less and less each time. He and Madison had been together for just short of a year, but he had seen Abigail at least a dozen times. She was the first member of her family Madison had let him meet. He liked her: she had all the fizzing energy of Madison and none of the taidu, the attitude. Perhaps a bit too wide-eyed for his tastes, but her enthusiasm was contagious. He and Maddy had been to see a show at the Hollywood Bowl on a double date with Abigail and a short-lived boyfriend, dropped soon afterwards. But once those two were up and dancing, Maddy and even Leo – usually too shy and world-weary for such things – had felt compelled to follow.

Now he thought about it, Madison was different around Abigail. The cynicism receded; she was gentle. She smiled more. In their moments together, the older looking out for the younger, he realized he had caught a glimpse of the mother Maddy might one day be – a thought which he had never articulated at the time and whose tenderness shocked him.

He read the weibs again. He was scrolling further down, as if he might see a message voiding the others, announcing a mistake. He kept scrolling.

‘Leo, you better shut that down. Take-off.’

He said nothing, but turned off the phone all the same and stared right ahead.

They were fully airborne, the plane straightened, before the mayor spoke. ‘You mind telling me what this is about? You look like shit.’ Getting no answer, he pushed on. ‘You’ve seen some numbers and you don’t know how to break it to me, is that it? This that Santa Ana focus group? I’m not worried. Wait till we’re on the air in—’

‘It’s nothing to do with the campaign.’

‘You don’t care about anything but the campaign, so tell me: what’s the problem?’

Leo turned his face to look at his boss for the first time. ‘There’s been a murder. Woman, early twenties, found dead in her apartment in North Hollywood. Suspected heroin overdose.’

Berger hesitated, letting his eye linger, as if he were assessing a job applicant rather than his most trusted advisor. ‘OK.’

‘We need to get out ahead of this one, Mr Mayor. We have to make sure that this is investigated with the utmost thoroughness.’ His own voice sounded strange to him, too formal.

‘We always do that, Leo.’

He tried to steady himself, took a sip from the water glass on the tray in front of him, which appeared to have arrived by magic: he had no memory of anyone giving it to him. He told himself to get a grip. Focus.

‘LAPD are only calling it a “likely” homicide. Which means they’ve got some doubts. But the victim’s sister’s a journalist. She’s going to be demanding answers. High-profile, award-winner, big following on Weibo. That means this case is going to be noticed. People are going to be watching the Department, the DA, to see how they handle it.’

‘Sure.’

‘And they’ll be watching you. You don’t want to be going into the summer with a big, unsolved murder on the books.’

‘So what’s your advice?’

‘I think that when we land your first call should be to the Chief of Police, ensure this case is a priority.’

‘As soon as we land, huh? That urgent.’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Anything else you want to tell me?’

Leo turned back towards the window, the city below now little more than a blur. He pictured Abigail and then he pictured Madison. He shook his head.

‘Anything else you ought to tell me, Leo?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘Like what?’

‘You sure you don’t have a conflict of interest here?’

Leo hesitated, so Berger spoke again. ‘I know who the victim of this murder is, Leo. The police department of this city – sorry, of the area – do still talk to me. I know her sister is your ex, so there’s no need to bullshit me, OK?’ His gaze lingered into a stare until eventually he looked away, towards the window, watching the earth below swallowed up by clouds. When he turned back, he was wearing an expression Leo had not seen before, one that unnerved him. ‘As it happens, I agree with your advice,’ the mayor said. ‘We need to get out in front on this one. In fact, I’d go further. You need to make this story go away. And, most important of all, you need to keep me out of it.’

Chapter 8

The phone had been buzzing all day and was buzzing again now, vibrating its way across her desk. Maddy glanced down at the screen and decided she would treat this the same way as the rest, that she would not pick up.

She had ignored Weibo altogether, or rather she had avoided the continuous flow of messages directed at her. She did not want to read words of condolence, no matter how touching or heartfelt. She had, however, taken a look at Abigail’s timeline: so far it consisted of tributes and declarations of shock – many of them addressed to Abigail herself. She skimmed her sister’s Facebook page too, filling up with messages in a similar vein. But for herself, she wanted none of it.

She had made two exceptions. The first was a call from Katharine, saying that Enrica was on her way over with a vat of soup and that she would not take no for an answer. At that moment, Enrica had grabbed the phone, proving she was not in fact on the way, and said, ‘Darling, don’t even talk to me. Just let me into the kitchen. I’ll be silent, I’ll be invisible. But you have to eat.’ Maddy had conceded, but just hearing her bereaved friend’s voice had apparently proved too much for Enrica. She sent something like a howl down the phone, which brought Katharine back on. ‘She loves you so much, that’s all.’

The second call was from Quincy. Maddy had stared at the phone for at least six rings before finally deciding to pick up.

She offered no pleasantries, but asked straightaway about the conversation between Quincy and their mother. ‘How was it?’

‘Well, it’s done.’

‘Did she understand?’

‘I think so. She asked after you.’

‘After me?’

‘First thing she said. “Is Madison OK? She’ll know what to do.”’

‘She doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

‘I’m not so sure, you know. With her, I’m not so sure.’

‘Do you think it was right to tell her? Maybe we should have spared her. Or maybe we should have asked Dr Glazer first.’

‘If you felt that way, Maddy, you should have told me. Or come with me. Otherwise you don’t get to have an opinion.’

‘I’m not … I’m not arguing with you.’ Madison sighed, turning her mouth away from the phone so that her sister would not hear her exhalation. ‘I’m grateful you did it, Quincy. You’re braver than me.’ She said it and it sounded right, even though she knew it was partly a lie. And for a second she remembered the secret that, brutally, she now held alone, the event that existed in the memory of no one but her.

She felt a wave of tiredness, one of those that seemed to taunt her. She knew that if she did not surrender to it immediately, closing her eyes this instant, the moment would pass. Perhaps this was how surfers felt on the ocean, confronted by the rare perfect wave that seems to say, ‘Ride me now or lose me forever’.

‘Yes, well. It’s done.’

‘And she understood it was Abigail. Did you need to explain that?’

‘I think she understood. I said it was peaceful, that it was an accident.’

‘Maybe we should have said she’d gone travelling or something.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Madison. It’s everywhere already. When I went to see Mom, they were showing a picture on the local news. That’s why we had to tell her. Better coming from us, or rather better coming from me, than the TV.’

‘What picture?’

‘From the high school yearbook.’

‘Jeez.’ There was a silence down the line. ‘Quincy, you still there?’ Another pause and then her sister’s voice.

‘I think it’s because of you.’

‘What, the picture? I would never—’

‘I don’t mean you gave it to them. I mean this interest in Abigail. It’s because of you.’

‘I’m not sure that makes—’

‘Of course it is. It’s all over Weibo, tributes from journalists and news people. And on the Times website: “Abigail Webb, sister of the award-winning LA Times reporter.”’

‘Is that what it says? I had no hand in that, Quincy, I promise.’

‘Well, the damage is done. You can’t change your precious career, can you? That’s why I’m going to the school now, to pick up the kids. I’ve got to get to them before Facebook does. Though I’m probably too late.’

But those were the only two calls she took. The rest, Maddy let pass. Once or twice, she checked her texts: messages of sympathy and shock from friends, colleagues, from Howard on the newsdesk, scolding her for filing in such circumstances (adding that they planned to run the piece tonight and she should call if she had any suggestions for accompanying graphics), even from Jane Goldstein herself. And a couple from Jeff Howe, unreturned because they were apparently offering no news. ‘Just wanted to check in, see how you’re doing. If there’s anything …’

She thought about resting but was too agitated even to attempt it. She was aching all over, the bright, pulsating centre of the pain as always radiating out from, and homing in on, her lower back. All she could see was Abigail on that slab.

The pacing back and forth in front of the window was providing nothing except the illusion of respite. Maddy returned to the computer, to look again at the tabs she’d left open. One was on the pharmacology of a heroin overdose:

Heroin is an opiate, similar to morphine but more potent, quicker-acting and more addictive. It acts as both an analgesic (pain suppressor), and an anxiolytic (anxiety suppressor), as well as producing a feeling of euphoria.

There was information on the signs that any doctor would look for if presented with a person suspected of an overdose: weak or no pulse, delirium, drowsiness or disorientation, low blood pressure, shallow, slow or laboured breathing, dry mouth, extremely constricted ‘pinpoint’ pupils, discoloured tongue, lips and fingernails turned blue, muscle and stomach spasms and constipation.

Jessica had seen the strange colour of Abigail’s tongue and had reported the blue of her lips – though, poor thing, she had assumed those were things that happened to every dead body. Abigail had been her first corpse.

It struck Madison that Abigail would have been just as clueless. Thank God, she had seen no such horrors in her short, bright life. That stuff had been left to Maddy, who had seen enough nastiness for both of them. She had done her best to spare her younger sister.

But she had not done enough.

The subject will typically pass out very rapidly in what may feel like a euphoric, rapturous rush. The breathing will slow, they will become cold and sweaty, the hair can become matted with sweat, excess saliva may exit the mouth, so that the subject can appear to be drooling, although the mouth will also be dry. Eventually, the breathing stops entirely and later the heart will follow.

None of that was any comfort now, but Maddy filed it away for later use: the meagre solace that her sister did not die in pain.

There was a bit more – about how heroin could elude an initial examination by a coroner because the key chemical agent disperses within the body after death – but none of it helped. She headed to the search window on the machine and typed the words ‘heroin’, ‘death’ and ‘Los Angeles’.

A raft of news stories appeared. New figures released by the Health and Human Services Department, the opening of a rehab clinic in Burbank, academic research on methadone by UCLA. She refined the search adding the initials, ‘LAPD’.

That turned up some brief stories from the Metro section of the LA Weekly:

A batch of heroin linked to a number of fatalities is believed to have claimed the life of a known drug user in South Central LA. The 33-year-old man died suddenly at a property on Normandie Avenue shortly after 5pm Wednesday. Police are not treating the death as suspicious and have referred it to the coroner for an inquest. ‘The deceased was a known drug user and his death follows a number of other deaths of drug users in the region in recent weeks,’ said a police spokesperson.

There was the story of a mother in Vermont Square who had narrowly escaped eviction after a court found that she had knowingly allowed her twenty-seven-year-old son to store heroin and crack cocaine in his bedroom. Another about an addict jailed for dealing drugs to a cop. And one more about a successful, undercover police operation that had ‘smashed’ a drugs ring operating out of Boyle Heights.

The problem was in that first story: known drug user. That there was a whole netherworld of dealers, addicts and corrupt cops, themselves addicts; of skeletal teenage girls selling their bodies to pay for the next fix; of men who would roam the city looking for coin boxes, on payphones or parking meters, to smash, hoping to disgorge enough quarters to pay for another bag of powder – that this Hades existed in the streets and alleys of this city, she already knew. It had been part of her beat. After child abuse stories, it was the area of crime reporting she hated most.

But that was not Abigail’s world. No one could have been further from it. Quincy’s words from early this morning – You don’t always know everything – resurfaced once more, as they had all day. Whatever Quincy had meant by that, it surely didn’t extend to Abigail sinking to the level of those lowlifes.

Madison stared at the screen, suddenly aware that she didn’t even know what she was looking for. She sprang back up and paced again, her teeth crunching down on the top of the plastic pen she had been chewing for the last half-hour.

Drug addicts who’d died of drug overdoses were not going to help. She needed to find people like Abigail, those who were avowedly non-junkies who had nevertheless died that way.

But how? As she walked around the room, she thought of the story she would write reporting what had just happened to her sister. What would the headline say?

She rushed back to her seat and typed the words in the search window:

Mystery heroin death

A string of items appeared, one linking to a novel, another to a TV movie, a third to a story in London three years earlier. She added another word to her search. California.

Now the page filled with news stories, including several from the other end of the state and from two or three years earlier. She eliminated those, confining herself only to deaths that had taken place in the last year. Her first click was on the San Diego Mercury Tribune, from nine months ago.