“At least half an hour before the press conference. I want time to ask some questions.”
“All right,” Clara Walsh said. “I’ll—let me get on the phone. Do you want us to meet you over there? The press conference is there, so it would be—”
“Here will be fine. Come up to the room. I’ll get it straightened up before you arrive.”
He’d also get dressed before they arrived, but he saw no point in saying so. He hung up, then reached into his suitcase for a clean pair of pants. He pulled them on and went across to the desk to look at the computer. He typed in “Mark Anderman,” but all that came up were stories about the murder, which wasn’t surprising. He tried “Steve Becker,” but all that came up that time were stories of the murder too, and one or two about the Hugh Hefner Suite. He looked at the screen for a moment and got up again.
Here was what these people did, the way they lived, in a universe of publicity, a universe where nobody was really real unless he was very well known. It didn’t matter among whom he was well known, or what he was well known for. It only mattered that he was front and center, that his name was in papers and magazines and on television, that people he didn’t know had heard of him. There was no shame, in anything. Men of Gregor’s generation would have been ashamed to be thought of as living on a woman’s money. These men did not care, and some of them actively sought out women to take care of them. The public did not reject them for it. It laughed sometimes, but it didn’t reject them, and when they got dumped it sometimes found itself sympathetic. Men and women both, in Bennis’s generation, would have been ashamed to be seen living off family money. There was something snobbish about inheriting a pile of cash, and parasitic, and it had to be atoned for by good works. People like Kendra Rhode didn’t mind being known for living off family money at all, and didn’t see a reason why she should be expected to do anything. Doing was for people who absolutely had to, and boring. It wasn’t “hot,” and it wasn’t “fun,” and it wasn’t anything to worry about. Family money, unlike the kind you had to earn, lasted forever.
Gregor looked back at the computer. Then he got a clean shirt out of the suitcase. Then he sat down on the side of the bed again and picked up the phone. He knew Bennis’s cell phone number by heart, but he was hoping to get her at the apartment. More and more, he liked the entire idea of land-lines.
Bennis picked up, saying “Hello” against a chorus of voices elsewhere in the apartment. It hadn’t occurred to Gregor that she might have company.
“It’s me,” Gregor said. “What’s going on over there? It sounds like you’re holding a convention.”
“I’m in the bedroom. There’s a bunch of people in the living room. And some in the kitchen. Donna is throwing me a shower.”
“You’re having a party?”
“Sort of,” Bennis said. “What about you? Where are you? Did you get in touch with Janet? They said on the news that you were going to give a press conference, and we thought we’d settle down and watch you.”
“I have not gotten in touch with Janet,” Gregor said, “but I did look up Box Hill Confections on the Internet. I’ll get around to the other stuff you wanted me to do. Right now, I want you to do something for me. You’re pretty good at searching for things on the Internet, right?”
“I’m good enough,” Bennis said. “Donna’s better.”
“Fine, if Donna has time, get her to help you. I need you to find everything you can on a man named Steve Becker. I don’t know if it’s Stephen with a ph or with a v.”
“Who is he? Or is the point that you don’t know?”
“I’m not entirely sure who he is, in the ordinary way,” Gregor said. “He was some kind of minor functionary on the film out here, and for a while he was Arrow Normand’s boyfriend. Or something. I don’t know what you call it in circumstances like these. Anyway, she went to Las Vegas with him and a group of other people, and they stayed in this ridiculously expensive—”
“Oh, I know,” Bennis said. “The Hugh Hefner Suite at the Palms. I heard about that. It’s nine thousand square feet and has its own pool, and it costs forty thousand dollars a night. Do you really mean you hadn’t heard about that before you went out there?”
“It’s not the kind of news I tend to pay attention to,” Gregor said drily. “The thing is, Arrow Normand went out to Las Vegas with Steve Becker, but she came back with Mark Anderman—”