The Schadenfreude Society 8
1 Hogan Place
"Uh-oh...There goes the neighborhood," Detective Lennie Briscoe commented cheerfully as he entered the EADA's Office, Detective Rey Curtis directly behind.
Briscoe expected Jack McCoy and Jamie Ross to be there, of course, and Ben Stone too. A friend of his had been framed, after all.
But…
Neil Gorton?
After the Heidi Ellison Murder, and the incredibly nasty trial of Eddie Newman, Briscoe expected Gorton to be as welcome in the DA's Office as the Bubonic Plague.
But there Gorton was, having a friendly coffee with the three other lawyers.
"Close your mouth Lennie," McCoy was smirking. "You don't want to swallow a fly."
"Let me guess, Counselor," Briscoe grinned back. "Dan Duvall?"
""Yeah…" McCoy picked up his coffee. "Hopefully, he'll be the one card that brings the entire house down. Dig up everything you can on him."
"We will…"
Lennie had never followed the whole Celebrity Culture thing. But his ex-wives had, and his daughters too, so he wasn't entirely in the dark as to how those things worked.
Outside, Briscoe turned to Curtis. The younger man sighed as he got into the driver's side of their car.
"I hope this won't be as nasty as the Eddie Newman Case was," he started the car, and Briscoe sighed too.
Curtis' marriage had been on rocky ground when the Newman Case hit; the result of a brief indiscretion on Curtis' part the day of Mickey Scott's execution. But he and his wife had been working to repair the damage.
Then one of the Newman's Defense attorneys had done her level best to discredit Curtis by insinuating an affair between him and a Hollywood exec, Lisa Lundquist.
There hadn't been an affair, although Lundquist had certainly made her intentions clear on the matter.
Curtis, however, had stood firm in his resolve to be faithful to his wife.
The insinuation of infidelity had almost torpedoed Curtis' Marriage anyway.
"The sooner we nail Duvall, the sooner this whole thing will be finished," Briscoe said. "Let's get on this."
…..
27th Precinct
"Dr. Duvall's been a very busy boy," Lieutenant Anita Van Buren commented as she looked down at Duvall's phone logs for the past three years.
She had already seen his financials for the last three years. He'd made a decent pile of money in the course of his career; no great surprise there. The man was a psychiatrist to Hollywood's elite, and his fees were entirely in keeping with the status-financial and otherwise-of his clientele.
But some of his patients' names rang some chimes in Van Buren's memory…
"Let me see that list of Emory Chance's friends again," she asked Rey Curtis.
"So..." Van Buren read the names off the list. "Emory Chance, Nathaniel Freed, Lana Lerner, Toby Gillis, and Steven Sokolov. They're Dr. Duvall's patients too."
Which meant that Doctor/Patient Privilege was attached…
"Yeah," Briscoe said. "Chance's rag is Stars in Their Eyes. Freed and Lerner co-own Hollywood News. Gillis owns Star-scope, and Sokolov owns Cine-news…"
"I see those mags every day, at the grocery checkout," Van Buren put the list down. "Always with some dirt to dish on someone."
"That's the rags for you," Lennie shrugged. "Always with something on someone."
"But now we can't be sure it's the actual truth anymore," Van Buren sighed.
"With these mags, LT, were we ever sure?"
"Ain't that the truth," Van Buren sighed.
She had learned a long time ago, to take anything those magazine said with more than a grain of salt.
Celebrity Magazines had a reputation for…creativity…where the truth was concerned.
Everyone knows Celebrity rags lie…
But…this was different. This was celebrity magazines committing crimes to discredit celebrities.
This was celebrity magazine owners committing murder to discredit celebrities…