The Guilty Plea Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    This was typical of Goodling. A control freak, in Kwon’s opinion, she complained bitterly about being hounded by the celebrity press, at the same time courting their attention at every turn. This was especially true when one of her new films was about to be released, or when she was showing off her newest boyfriend.
    Last September, when she’d been here at the Toronto International Film Festival to promote her latest film, Goodling had met Terrance Wyler at the Wyler Foods Festival Picnic. Remet, to be exact. The pair had dated twenty years before, when they were students at a small college in Vermont, and hadn’t seen each other since. For once, the attraction on Goodling’s part appeared to be genuine.
    Kwon, who came to Toronto every year to cover the festival, received a tip from an actor who had been a part-time waiter at the picnic and had snagged a picture of Goodling and Wyler kissing behind the tent. The story went international—everyone loved the old-flames-rekindled angle. Wyler and his wife had broken up the next week.
    This morning Kwon knew that Goodling had an 8:15 pickup. The actress planned to slip out the side door to her limo. Kwon had positioned one photographer, dressed like a street person, in the bus shelter across the road. A second, wearing a tracksuit, was in the lobby. With her door opened a crack, Kwon had a clear sight line of Goodling’s door, room 408, diagonally across the hall.
    It was the part of the job Kwon adored. Catching the moment. No matter how rich and famous they were, there was no magical way for celebrities to get out of a hotel. No Scotty to beam them up. Sooner or later they had to walk the walk, and Kwon was going to be there.
    Hard work. That’s how she’d broken the Brad torn condom story, the Britney implant piece, and the Jessica sixth-toe blockbuster. In her pursuit of celebrity trash, Kwon bought off hotel workers, charmed flight attendants, and cajoled hospital workers. She would wait endlessly in nightclub parking lots, hotel lobbies, and illegally parked cars. Most of all, she outthought the dumb-ass actors and their entourages of arrogant handlers.
    Of course, at her age Kwon really shouldn’t have been doing this anymore. By the time they were forty-five, most reporters had graduated to being editors, content to lounge behind a desk and let the young guns stay up on all-night stakeouts or go through a celebrity’s garbage before the truck arrived.
    Her parents thought she was flushing her brains down the toilet. Last weekend she’d trekked out to Long Island for dinner. There were her two younger sisters, parked in the living room with their lily-white husbands and their kids in OshKosh and Ralph Lauren. All of them had been right on time, of course. Kwon was an hour late.
    What did they expect? She’d just landed the Marc and Jennifer satanic fertility story, for God’s sake. But all her family saw was Margaret, still single, with no professional degree behind her name. The night ended as they always did, with Kwon and her parents screaming at each other in full Korean rage.
    Goodling’s door opened a crack. Gotcha, Kwon thought.
    She tensed. A stocky guy in a baseball jacket came out and looked down the hall in the other direction, toward the elevator. Kwon shut her door before he turned back her way. She counted on her fingers. She estimated that ten seconds was enough time for the bodyguard tocheck that the coast was clear and get Goodling into the hallway. She’d paced it out late last night: it was ten steps from her room to 408, then fifteen steps to the elevator.
    Eight, nine, ten . Kwon stepped into the hall. Right away she knew something was wrong. The bodyguard was staring back toward room 408, looking concerned. Goodling was still inside.
    Kwon had no choice. If she turned back, it would alert the guard. She’d planned to film a secret video with the handheld camera while they were in the elevator together. She started down the