Chances

by Jackie Collins

  Sexual tension between them was hot. She could feel it. She knew he could feel it.

  One night he came on very strong. Helena was out of town visiting friends. They had dined together, talked a lot about old times: Gino, the Bel Air house, Dario. When she was at the door of her room, he pressed her arm and said, “I’ll come in.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Why not?” He was surprised.

  “I make it a habit to avoid married men.”

  “I thought you didn’t even bother with their names, let alone whether they were married or not.”

  He was so close that she could feel his breath on her cheek. She wanted him more than she had wanted anyone in her life. Sweetly, she said, “Take your smart-ass remarks and stick them where they’ll get the most laughs. Good night, Marco. Sleep warm.”

  She was in her room and the door was closed on him before she could weaken.

  Oh, God! Was this what love was supposed to be, a searing pain all over that either had you in the depths of gloom or grinning like a clown? The perfect opportunity to have him—and she had turned it down. Why?

  Because when she had him she wanted him for keeps. That’s the way it had to be. No other way.

  And it would happen. She would make it happen.

  Dario never did send for Eric, so after six months Eric appeared one Saturday morning with two suitcases and many recriminations.

  “I’ve been busy.” Dario sulked. “You can’t stay here.”

  “Here” was Gino’s luxurious apartment complete with live-in cook and daily maid.

  “Why not?” demanded Eric, determined to insinuate himself into Dario’s life again.

  “Because you just can’t. People will find out: Costa, maybe my sister…”

  “We lived together in San Francisco.”

  “That was different.”

  “Why?”

  They argued for ten minutes, then reluctantly he was forced to let Eric in. He had no intention of allowing him to stay. He had discovered the joys of living alone and hunting alone. Who needed Eric anymore?

  Eric took one look around the sumptuous apartment and decided he had made the right move. He settled in and refused to budge.

  Dario was angry and frustrated. He was having enough trouble with Lucky. All he needed was for her to find out he was gay.

  The bitch had taken over. While he pottered around the office doing nothing very much, she queened it over everyone, and Costa let her get away with it. It wasn’t that he particularly wanted to get involved, but it infuriated him that he was treated as a nobody while big sister got the treatment. “Gino wanted me to learn the businesses,” he pointed out peevishly to Costa one day. “Not Lucky.”

  “You want to learn, be here every morning at eight sharp. Prepare to finish seven, eight, nine at night.” Costa replied brusquely. “That’s what Lucky does.”

  Dario had no intention of doing that. He liked to sleep late in the mornings, then drive his Porsche sports car down to the Village and meet with friends. Every day he held court at a small Italian restaurant. The table in the corner was reserved especially for him, and sometimes as many as fifteen or twenty people would crowd around it. Money was no problem—whatever he wanted he just asked for. Gino had left instructions to that effect.

  Yes, he had lots of friends, and he had no desire to share them with Eric. But Eric was not to be shifted. Once in, he was there.

  “You can’t stay,” Dario insisted.

  “I have nowhere else to go,” Eric whined. “I came all this way just to be with you.”

  When he went to touch Dario it was all over. Dario attacked him with an uncontrollable violence he had never suspected he had in him.

  Eric moaned in pain and delight. “I didn’t know you were into violence…. Oh, Darry, we’ll be so happy together.”

  As time passed, Lucky worked hard and played hard. She was a resolute businesswoman, demanding and getting the best from the people she employed.

  The small failing cosmetic company she had taken over was starting to do very nicely indeed. Her methods of obtaining new accounts were somewhat unorthodox—a little bribe here, a little threat there. She knew the product was good, and if she had to use a little persuasion to get others to find out, it didn’t bother her. Usually the Santangelo name worked wonders.

  She flew back and forth to Las Vegas constantly, noting that Marco and the beautiful Helena were still firmly married. She still wanted him, never stopped wanting him, but it had to be on her terms.

  Very rarely she thought of Gino, whose empire she was taking over. She was building his hotel, realizing his dream—yet they had not spoken or been in touch with each other at all.

  A woman wasn’t good enough to go into business, huh? Too emotional, huh? She would show him.

  When Gino left he had offered her nothing. With Costa’s help she was taking it all. Legally it was hers anyway—hers and Dario’s. She thought about her brother and frowned. Such a screwed-up boy. She wondered if and when he would ever straighten out. Poor blond beautiful Dario. What a waste….

  Dario and Eric lived together uneasily, pursuing a lifestyle neither of them had ever experienced before. New York was full of new kicks, and Dario had the money to explore every avenue: perversions, thrills, parties, clubs.

  Together they ventured into the thriving underground world of the homosexual community. It was not all glamorous and romantic and eyes-across-a-crowded-bar. There was the sordid side, the meat racks, the quick sex, the beatings, and the sado-masochistic happenings. Eric found he was into all that. He dragged Dario along with him.

  Soon they began to throw wild parties of their own in Gino’s apartment, entertaining on a lavish scale with free coke and grass and anything else their guests required.

  It wasn’t long before stories began drifting back to Costa, who refused to believe them. He informed Lucky, who wasn’t surprised. She had long suspected.

  “I’ll go see him,” she told a worried Costa.

  “We’ll both go,” he said.

  Lucky called up her brother and told him that she and Costa wanted to meet with him and would be at the apartment that afternoon.

  Dario put down the phone. The fact that Lucky had taken control of the Santangelo empire did not bother him much. As long as he was left alone and had access to unlimited funds, he was satisfied. But now it sounded as if the bitch had found out his secret. She had spies everywhere.

  He was confident that Gino would never get back to America anyway. Time was passing and nothing was settled. He wrote him a dutiful letter every few months and that was the extent of their contact. His father never replied, but Costa assured him the letters were received and enjoyed. After a while Dario stopped writing altogether and nothing was said.

  “Eric, go out and stay out,” he told his friend. “I’ll meet you later.”

  His sister. Lucky. She arrived looking cool and sharp and businesslike in a white suit. Costa—her lap dog—was with her, of course.

  She did not mince words. “Things have got to change, Dario. You’re playing out scenes in public that should be your own strictly private affair. You get what I’m saying?”

  “It would kill your father if he ever found out. Can’t you see a doctor? Get yourself cured?” Costa fretted.

  What did the old fart think it was? Measles? “I can do what the hell I like,” he said, glaring at Lucky. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  She sighed. “That’s where you are very very wrong, baby brother. If you don’t want to cool down your activities, then I’ll just have to see that things aren’t quite so easy for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You remember all those papers you signed?”

  Yes, he remembered. Occasionally Costa or Lucky would ask him to come to the office to put his signature on some papers. He never read them, he just scrawled his name and ran. Now Lucky began to tell him in cool concise terms that he had signed everything ove
r to her. “I’m moving you out of this apartment to a smaller place and putting you on an allowance. Maybe that’ll get rid of some of your ‘friends.’”

  He glared at her. “If you do that I’ll call Gino.”

  “Sure, go ahead. I know he’ll be thrilled when he hears about you.”

  Dario visibly paled. “You can’t do that.”

  She raked him with a look that said it all. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me, little brother. Just as long as you do what I want, you’ll never have to worry about me telling Gino. Oh—and cut out the drugs. A little grass is as far as you should go. Get it?”

  Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!

  But he would get her, he would think of a way. After all, he was a Santangelo too.

  Steven

  1975

  When Steven started work as an Assistant D.A., he soon proved himself to be a steely and successful prosecutor. At first being on the other side of the fence was strange for him, but within a few weeks he knew it was what he had always been cut out to do: prosecuting sons-of-bitches who sold drugs to children, bribed police officers, beat up women, raped, tortured, murdered. Seeing these men locked away was the kind of job satisfaction he had always craved.

  It did not take long for his reputation to spread, and defense lawyers would throw up their hands in despair if their client was unlucky enough to come up in court with Steven Berkely opposing.

  Cops, on the other hand, were delighted if cases they had worked on long and hard were put in his capable hands. He was a winner. No slimy fish slipped through his tight net. Criminals got what they deserved. Steven did not play to lose.

  He was incorruptible, a fact which reassured many an undercover investigator who had worked nonstop for months to break a particularly difficult case. Especially as corruption seemed to be the order of the day—with everyone on the take, from the neighborhood patrolman to the police captain.

  Steven was not to be had. This he proved very early in his new career, when he was approached outside the building where he lived one night by two men who informed him it would be to everybody’s advantage if they “had a little talk.”

  It did not take a genius to work out what was about to take place. Steven was in the middle of an extortion case. If all went according to plan, Louie Legs Lavinchi, a small-time criminal, would get a ten- or eleven-year jail sentence at least.

  “Sure,” he had agreed, thinking fast. “Let’s talk. Tomorrow morning—eight o’clock—here.”

  The two men were surprised. They had heard he would be difficult, might need a little friendly persuasion. “Why can’t we talk now?” one of them asked.

  He glanced around. “Take my word for it, now’s not the time. Tomorrow. O.K.?”

  Nonplussed, they watched him enter his apartment house.

  Immediately he phoned his superior and told him what he thought was about to happen. “I want to be wired,” he insisted. “Let’s get these two scumbugs for attempted bribery.”

  “Come on, Steven, you’re a lawyer, not a cop. It could be dangerous.”

  “Give me a good backup. I want to do it.”

  And he did. A miniature listening device taped to his chest recorded every word as the two men alternatively bribed and threatened him on Lavinchi’s behalf.

  When money passed hands, the backup team moved in to arrest the two men, and eventually they received jail sentences for “Attempting to bribe a public official; menacing and threatening the same said official.” Louie Legs Lavinchi went inside for twelve years, and Steven’s reputation grew. He did not look back. For four years he did his job to the best of his ability, enjoying every moment of it.

  During that time he became very friendly with a young black detective named Bobby De Walt. Bobby specialized in undercover narcotic busts. He was in his twenties but looked ten years younger, with outlandish street clothes and his hair in an afro. He was always horsing around and playing practical jokes. Underneath the happy exterior lurked a very tough cop indeed. Bobby De Walt had made more narcotic busts than anyone else in his unit. And Steven had had the pleasure of prosecuting more than a few of them.

  They made a strange-looking pair when they ventured out on the street together: Steven, so straight and good-looking; Bobby, wild and funky. Often they would sit in a bar near the courthouse talking until all hours. Sometimes they would go to a restaurant. They enjoyed each other’s company. They also enjoyed female companionship.

  Steven was pleased and surprised one cold January night in 1975 when Bobby said, “You gotta have dinner with me tomorrow. I found the top fox in the world, man. I’m gettin’ married.”

  Steven was curious. Bobby had never struck him as the marrying type. But when he met Sue-Ann he understood immediately. She was nineteen years old, with curly hair, a sweet smile, and an even sweeter disposition.

  Bobby wasted no time in fixing up the wedding. Within a month Steven found himself in a pleasant Queens church acting out the role of best man. It was there he met Sue-Ann’s cousin, Aileen. He noticed her at once. She was tall, well groomed, attractive. She worked as an interpreter at the UN and lived with her parents in a pleasant brownstone on Seventy-eighth Street.

  He took her out four times, and when she refused to go to bed with him on the fourth date he dropped her. Nicely.

  He continued to date, but he did not forget her. Aileen was the only girl who had ever turned him down. The rest were always available—however nice, however respectable. And while he realized that this was quite acceptable in the day of the pill and women’s lib, as the months went by he still thought about Aileen.

  Age seemed to have caught up with Carrie all of a sudden.

  When she looked in her mirror she saw the same face, the same smooth skin—only a few lines here and there to belie her more than sixty years. The thing was, she felt old inside, a kind of dead feeling that she couldn’t seem to shake.

  What had her life been for? How depressing that for the last thirty-two years she had been living a lie. Even her own son could not be told the truth. Especially her own son who spent his life fighting the very people she had grown up with, pushers and junkies, whores and pimps. They aren’t all bad, Steven. Sometimes people do things because there is no other way out.

  Often she would lie in bed all morning and let her mind wander back. Whitejack. What a man. How she had loved him for a time. When it had been good it had been very good. She and Whitejack and Lucille…. The old jazz joints… Smalls Paradise… The Cotton Club… fancy clothes… dancing and hot loving… Good days at first, until Dolly… big white fat Dolly… and the drugs….

  She brought her arms from under the covers and searched for the old needle marks, the scars, so faint you couldn’t see them at all, unless you knew they were there.

  Her mind drifted back over her time in the institution. She could remember very little of those long blank years.

  Then she thought of Bernard and smiled. He had known everything about her, and still he had loved her.

  Elliott was so very different. She was his trinket, his possession. He had married her for his own reasons. Maybe he had suspected, seen something in her eyes. In the privacy of their designer-decorated bedroom he always treated her like a whore.

  And the horrible thing was that she had put up with it, accepted it, and by doing so encouraged him to continue to act that way. The thought of having no money or position had tied her to him like an invisible rock.

  And now he was old. His sexual demands were less. One day he would be gone altogether. The thought frightened her. She didn’t want to be alone. She couldn’t face life alone.

  The telephone interrupted her thoughts. She considered ignoring it, just letting it ring. But then it occurred to her that it could be Steven, so she picked it up quickly.

  “Carrie? How are you?”

  Jerry Meyerson. Of course. Not a week went by that he didn’t call. How flattering that a thirty-six-year-old boy should be in love with her. She sighed wearily. “H
ello, Jerry. How are you today?”

  “I’m great. You sound terrible.”

  “I’m just a bit low.”

  “Good. I am just the person to cheer you up. Lunch. The Four Seasons.”

  “Not today, Jerry.”

  “Yes, today. I have a sensational divorce case I know you’ll want to hear all about. It’ll make you laugh, make you cry…. It’ll chase the blues away.”

  She thought about her new Saint Laurent suit and decided that getting up and getting out had to be better than lying in bed all day.

  “I’ll see….”

  “Perfect. One o’clock. Don’t be late.”

  Bobby De Walt had been working on a case for months. His wife, Sue-Ann, pregnant with their first child, saw little of him. Steven dropped by their house a lot and kept her company.

  One night when he arrived at the small tract house he found Aileen there. They had not seen each other in eight months. She looked as surprised to see him as he was to see her.

  They both looked to Sue-Ann, who shrugged nonchalantly. “I didn’t know either of you was comin’ by tonight.”

  “I can’t stay long,” Aileen decided swiftly. “Just popped in to see how you were getting along.”

  “I can’t stay long either,” Steven said quickly.

  “I’m sure you can both stay long enough to eat,” Sue-Ann murmured, smiling her sweet smile and laying out dishes of hot juicy spare ribs, corn fritters, and German-style potato salad.

  Steven’s taste buds went into overdrive. “Maybe I’ve got time for just a bite,” he said, sitting at the table.

  Aileen had not eaten all day. She looked at the food, then at Steven, then she too sat down.

  “I have to call my mother,” Sue-Ann said, leaving them alone.

  “So… how have you been?” Steven asked, chewing on a delicious spare rib.

  Aileen helped herself to a generous portion of corn fritters and replied, “Busy. And you?”

  “The same.” He thought about their last meeting. A movie. Dinner at a good Chinese restaurant. Then, casually, he had said, “Let’s go back to my place.” So confident had he been that she would say yes that he was already driving there.