North of Montana Read Free Page B

Our conviction rate is not great. Often it is the Human Computer, meditating alone before this sorry montage, who provides a clue that leads to an arrest.
    When I walk into her office, Barbara is reading People magazine with Jayne Mason on the cover and eating birthday cake from a big slab someone left in the lunchroom, deep chocolate with raspberry in the middle. She pushes a slice on a Mickey Mouse paper plate toward me along with a folded napkin and red plastic fork. I have brought my mug, knowing she always has fresh brew flavored with cinnamon perking along in her personal coffeemaker.
    “I am absolutely devastated about Jayne Mason,” she says, not taking her eyes from the magazine. “My whole world just went up in smoke.”
    I look at the upside-down photos, familiar as a family album. Even now in her fifties or sixties or who knows what, Jayne Mason remains one of our truly enduring movie stars.
    “She’s a drug addict.” Barbara slaps her hand down and looks up with real hurt as if she’s been personally betrayed.
    I sip the coffee. ‘Why is that a surprise? She’s an actress. Of course she’s on drugs.”
    “Oh, come on! Jayne Mason? Every American girl’s prefeminist dream? You have to admit she’s exquisite.”
    She flips the magazine around so I can see the famous black and white portrait of Jayne Mason taken when she was barely twenty, the amazing cheekbones then described as: “Pure as the curves of a Stradivarius … heartbreaking as the Mozart played thereon.”
    Barbara is going on impatiently, “Don’t you remember those wonderful old sentimental musicals?”
    “I hate musicals.”
    “She was angelic . She always played the good-hearted farm girl whose pa just passed away or the poor street urchin who gets the swell idea of putting on a musical production, then finds out she has tuberculosis. But don’t worry—the handsome young doctor saves her life and she becomes a big Broadway star.”
    I say nothing. Barbara glowers at me with frustration. “Your idea of a tearjerker is Terminator. ”
    “That’s right. The robot dies and it’s sad.”
    “She turned down the title role in Gigi —big mistake—because she was having a tumultuous affair with Louis Jourdan at the time.” The Human Computer cannot be shut down: “Her first dramatic role was Bad Men , a famous western with John Wayne.”
    “Even I remember that. They were making love on the tallest butte in Arizona and supposedly they really screwed.”
    “Look at this!” Barbara picks up the magazine and throttles it. “She’s an addict! Like every other sleazeball on the street.”
    I swipe it from her and examine a photo of Jayne Mason taken just last week. She is getting into a limousine wearing dark glasses and a tailored white linen suit, clutching a bouquet of yellow roses, looking like she’s running for a plane to Rome rather than dodging reporters on the way to the Betty Ford Center.
    Barbara sighs. “I used to wear a full slip underneath my Catholic school uniform because Jayne Mason looked so sexy and romantic in them. The first time I saw her on the Academy Awards I was three years old and watched every year since, hoping she’d be on. She was the queen of queens in the prom gown of all prom gowns. God, I wanted to be beautiful.”
    But I am fussing over something else: “You can’t remember anything when you’re three.”
    “I can.”
    “I remember nothing before the age of five. The whole time we lived with my grandfather in Santa Monica is a blank.”
    Barbara gives a wry look over her coffee cup. “Have you spoken to your therapist about this?”
    “Why? That’s normal.”
    But Barbara’s attention has returned wistfully to the magazine.
    “I was so sorry when Jayne didn’t marry President Kennedy. They would have made the sexorama couple of the century. Nobody wears full slips anymore.” Then, without a pause, “When does Duane get back?”
    “Day after tomorrow.”
    “We’re going to