God bless hops and malt and cool mountain water, heaven's midnight nectar. God bless the women who spread their legs when they saw him coming.
He grinned lopsidedly at the women and they smiled back. Ah, sweet conquests.
4
Hollywood: "To survive there, you need the ambition of a Latin American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony."
Billie Burke, Filmgoer's Companion
Karl LaRosa knew the car behind him was a tail only after he made his fourth turn, taking him from Hollywood to the freeway that led to North Malibu. Coincidence. No, he didn't believe in coincidence. You got what you worked for; you brought into your sphere what you needed; you hit on the right idea because you focused your mind in the right direction. No, this was not just some driver going his way. This was someone stuck right on his ass.
It could be anyone. An L.A. gang who wanted his car. It wasn't a new Jaguar. It was, however, a primo sports coupe, 1985. Carjackers might not know the difference.
Or the tail might be a pissed-off client. A damn nutcase. Anyone.
He put the pedal to the floor and took his chances on getting a speeding ticket. None of the thoughts he'd just had concerning the tail made him care much about having to face a cop. In fact, if whoever was behind him had mischief in mind, a cop would be a godsend.
His Jaguar pulled away from the headlights in his rearview. He slipped over two lanes to the fast lane and saw it was clear ahead. The speedometer was already rocking at ninety and slamming on. The motor hummed along like the well-kept, handmade beauty it was. He kept the car in A-1 condition mostly because he loved it, but also because of the long commute he made to and from work. He couldn't outrun a 'vette or a Ferrari, but for some reason he didn't think the tail was one of those sleek expensive jobs. The headlights were too far apart for that.
Still he could see the car behind him gaining.
His foot pressed the floorboard as if more pressure might cause the Jaguar to go faster. Now the speedometer jiggled at one hundred and the motor purred like a contented beast. The speedometer inched over, going into the red line.
He catches me, Karl thought, and plays bumper cars, we are both in serious shit here.
His speed rose another twenty miles an hour. There was a hundred and eighty on the gauge, but he'd never tried burying it and he didn't think he had the guts to try it now. The lane ahead was still clear. It was Sunday night, almost two in the morning. Good thing. If there had been heavy traffic he could never have gone so fast.
He checked the rearview and driver's side mirror. Oh man. It was really coming. The tail was just a car length back. It was coming like a train, straight for his back bumper. That would never do. The Jaguar couldn't hold the road if it got a jolt. Or rather, the Jaguar might hold, but he wasn't sure his driving skills were up to it.
He lifted his foot from the gas pedal. As the tail neared, it fell back to keep from ramming him. When the speedometer read eighty, that's when it happened.
Karl screamed just as if he thought the driver of the other car might hear him. "Hey, don't hit my car!"
Metal rapped metal as the bumpers touched, then there was a surge and Karl fought the wheel, his foot hovering, but not touching the brake. If he hit the brake it was all over. They'd both go catapulting over a side lane and into other traffic.
The lights behind him backed off. They fell back a car length, two, three. Karl slowed more, his heart bongoing in his chest in a crazy boom-boom rhythm. Despite the wind coming through his cracked open side window, he felt sweat slip down his forehead and sting his eyes.
As he watched the rearview and side mirrors, he saw the headlights swing over two lanes to an exit and leave the freeway.
"What was that all about?" he asked aloud. "What in hell was that about?"
He moved over carefully two lanes, his speed down to a normal sixty miles an hour. He realized he was breathing fast and he bet if he could see his face in the rearview mirror it would be white as driven snow.
Lucky, he thought. You're a real lucky son of a bitch, Karl LaRosa. Whoever played tag with you decided at the last moment to give it up.
Maybe it had been a drunk, a stupid drunk, his mind warped by alcohol vapors. Or someone on drugs who came to his senses just in time to avoid a horrible wreck.
Once off the freeway and driving down the quiet night streets of Malibu, Karl sighed. His workweek recently was eating up his weekends, running all the days together. Tonight he'd been locked in his office finishing up paperwork on a new client. She'd want instant results, as if the world should bow down to her whims and wishes. Most of them were like that. Now, I want it now. I can't wait, it's got to be now.
Not that he was bitter or cynical, not yet. He'd been in Hollywood since his college days and he was used to it, used to the get-it-done-by-yesterday mentality. He actually had a lot of sympathy for his clients. This was Barracuda City. It infected newcomers with such apprehension and longing that they couldn't help pushing, shoving, hurrying as if tomorrow was too late and next year, well, next year didn't even exist.
He knew how much they cared and how much they needed success. That's what made him so good. He understood the fire that burned them and so he made allowances. He had patience when others didn't. He was very good as a personal publicity manager and it was his empathy that made all the difference.
He turned into his driveway and hit the remote for the garage door. He drove inside, shut off the motor and sat a moment. He should see if the bumper was dented. Maybe it was all right . . .
Just as he grabbed up his leather zippered case of papers from the passenger seat and opened the car door, he saw something askew.
The door leading into the house was open.
It was never open. Never. It was locked until he unlocked it.
There might be someone inside still. Would he not only be nearly run down tonight, but maybe murdered by a burglar?
He glanced at his car phone. He'd look stupid if he called out someone and there was nothing wrong. Maybe he should check out the situation first. He slid out of the car quietly. He pushed the door shut just until the interior light went off, then pressed harder until the latch took. He moved softly to the door leading from the garage into the kitchen. He touched the doorknob, stood listening.
No sounds. They were gone already or they were in some part of the house where he couldn't hear them.
He peeked around the door, opened it wider, slipped inside. He had no weapon, didn't believe in guns, didn't like them. Frankly, guns scared the hell out of him. Olivia had offered him a 9mm Glock automatic from her collection, but he said thanks, no thanks, that looks like a killer to me. Now he wished he'd taken it and stashed it in the Jaguar.
Maybe he should just get back in the car and call the cops. That's what a smart homeowner would do.
No, he was already inside now and there were no voices, no secretive sounds of movement. He couldn't detect the presence of another human.
He halted and took stock. The light over the stove was on as he had left it. No one here. No problem here. Nothing seemed out of place. He hadn't known he'd been holding his breath, expecting to see disaster, until now that the air rushed out of him all in a whoosh.
He turned to the door leading to the living room. Lamp on in there. He didn't leave lights on in the rest of the house, only the light over the stove. So someone had left it on. He was almost certain the intruder was gone. The house felt forlorn and empty the way it always did when he first entered.
His footsteps on the tiled kitchen floor rung through the room and no one came running, brandishing a handgun in his face.
He worked up spit enough to call out in a cranky, scared voice, "Anybody in there?"
He paused, listening hard. Nothing. They were gone. He or she was gone. "They're gone, Karl, catch your heart and slow it down." Admonishing himself this way did the trick. Almost. He calmed, was suddenly afraid again when his footst
eps creaked over a low board in the wood floor. He couldn't help his irrational fear, but it made him angry, too. Would Lee Marvin or Robert Mitchum be this scared? Would John Wayne? Hell no.
He straightened up. Glanced around the living room and saw nothing at all disturbed. Everything lay and sat just as he'd left it. His coffee mug on the glass dining table near the far wall of windows. His reading glasses he kept at home, just as he'd placed them that morning on the latest copy of Variety on the coffee table. Nothing missing that he could tell. There sat the big CD player unit, the television and VCR, even the Oscar his father had won in the forties for Best Supporting. Hell, if this was a burglary, they'd have surely taken Oscar. No one in the universe would break in and leave behind the gold-plated statue.
Perplexing. Why break in if they didn't want to steal something?
The hair tingled at the back of his neck. He swallowed and it hurt, like the muscles in his neck were tight as newly strung fence wire.
It was something else. Whoever had been here wasn't interested in stealing his things. Whoever it was hadn't been looking for anything special. Then what . . . ?
He hurried now, dropping his leather case to the sofa, running through the room to his bedroom. He didn't know what he expected. A couple of teenagers lying startled and naked on his bed, caught in their illicit guilt. Or a dead body lying across the mattress, throat cut. Or . . . just anything but the soft light twinkling from the bedside lamp and the small, folded note lying on his pillow. He didn't expect that at all.
He straightened again, found that he'd been moving in a crouch, like some kind of animal going to ground and ready to spring. His fists were balled. He opened his hands now, flexing the fingers, and, after looking around the room quickly for signs of anything out of place but finding nothing, he moved to the unmade bed. He stared at the paper on his pillow without touching it. It was a sheet of cream stationery folded in half. His name, KARL, was printed in block letters with black ink.
He picked it up finally and flipped up the paper to read.
Dear Karl, dearie, dear heart, my love.
Karl could hardly force himself to read further. So far the words made no sense to him. He could not imagine who might have written them or why.
He read on.
I hope you can find a way to forgive me for intruding into your privacy. I can't tell you how I got in. I might want to come again, you see. Don't bother to change the locks, by the way. It won't stop me.
I've missed you every single day, hour and minute we've been apart. If you'd only give me one more chance I would do anything. You know I'd lay down my life for you.
The one thing I can't do is give you up.
I love you too much to ever give you up.
Karl's gaze rose from the end of the page where there were Xs and Os in the place of a signature. Xs and Os, like a lovesick kid would put at the end of a love letter.
He sank onto the side of the mattress and read over the note again. And a third time, his brow furrowing, his mind turning and tumbling, trying to decipher from the printed letters or the words who might have written them.
He refolded the note and closed his eyes.
He had a real problem.
Any one of several women might have written it, he admitted. He did not think himself promiscuous, but he certainly had had his share of relationships. Too many of his affairs ended in recrimination and long sorrow; that's the way it was out here with all the competition and the passion that sometimes got displaced onto people like him who helped a novice become a pro. He told them—didn't he tell them?—not to get serious, no commitment, please, let's not become too fond of our arrangements; it's not you, it's me. I'm not sure I'll ever be ready for another lengthy relationship. My marriage going on the rocks took away my hankering for all that.
Olivia might have written this note.
Or Marilyn.
Maybe his ex-wife, Robyn.
Or Catherine.
Fury at how the note-writer had included the thinly veiled threat "don't bother to change the locks"—overrode his wonder at who it might be.
He stood, flinging the note to the floor. He went through the house checking all the window locks and made sure the kitchen door from the garage was locked. Then he put a chair beneath the doorknobs on the front, garage, and back doors.
No one was coming in while he was here. He'd make damn sure of that! So what if it made him look like a scared little sissy pants. He wasn't going to bed without the doors secure.
When he'd finished, he returned to the bedroom and undressed. He hastily brushed his teeth, yawned widely at his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, and didn't remember the note until he crossed the carpet barefoot for bed. He stepped on it, creasing one corner of the folded stationery. He stooped, picked it up and dropped it into the trashcan next to the bedside table.
"To hell with it," he muttered.
He wondered if the Jaguar bumper was damaged as he crawled between the sheets, and was about to worry about who had gotten into his home to write the note, but the deep tiredness in his bones slithered throughout his body as he settled into bed. He fell into sleep as if he were diving through a wave and being lost in an undertow.
Dead to the world and any danger it might hold.
5
"Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade."
Miranda Richardson, The Guardian, London
Cam forced Jackie Landry to redo the shot where he entered the house and found the note on his pillow.
"Cut!"
This was the ninth take. He'd gone through this nine times and had been screamed at nine times. He now rubbed down his face with both hands, refreshing himself. Immediately the girl from makeup rushed over and patted him down with powder so his skin wouldn't shine from the lights. He always forgot and she always had to run over.
"Listen." Cam came right up to Landry on the set, but he was still shouting loud enough for his rant to carry clear across the room. "You don't look scared to me. If you don't look freaked out, this scene doesn't work, I keep telling you that. What's the matter, you didn't get enough sleep, you didn't get laid, what the hell's the matter with you?"
Jackie knew not to talk back. "Let me try it again."
"You're fucking right we're trying it again. Remember? You just got off the freeway and could have been killed. Your heart's already beating like crazy when you drive into the garage. You see the door open. Somebody might be inside. They might have a goddamned Uzi in there, or at least a .45. If you want to ever break to eat lunch, you have to get this right. Now show me scared."
He walked off, turned, walked back again. "You've never been in the service, I know that, but have you ever in your life been in jeopardy? Ever been in danger?"
Jackie, at a loss and feeling horribly harangued, hung his head and mumbled, "I fell off my brother's roof once.”
“You what?"
"I fell off a roof. That was pretty scary. I slipped going up after a kite, broke my arm in two places."
Cam threw up his hands and stalked off. "He fell off a fucking roof and broke his arm."
Jackie, chastised, was now in the proper mood. Cam scared the shit out of him. He never knew if he was going to yell at him or sock him in the nose. If he had to retake it again, Cam was going to slug him, he just knew it. And if that happened, he'd hit him back. He wouldn't want to; he knew if he did he'd be off the picture, but no one laid a hand on him without getting twice as much in return.
"Quiet on the set!"
Jackie focused on the garage door. When the cameras were rolling, he walked to it in trepidation. This time the shoot went smoothly. Cam yelled, "Cut!" after Jackie flopped on the bed, pulling the covers over his naked legs, his eyes falling closed on the close-up. Jackie struggled up from the mattress.
"That was great. That wasn't spectacular, but it was great. See, all it takes is acting."
Jackie glanced over at Olivia
Nyad as the wardrobe person, Betty Ann, handed him a robe to slip over his jockey shorts. He never wore jockeys. He preferred boxers. His privates had shriveled up like a bunch of raisins with everyone watching him fail over and over to get the scene right. Olivia grinned.
"I don't think it's so funny," he said.
"Honey, trying to get you to look frightened is like trying to put a frown on Fabio. You're too handsome for your own good."
He tried to smile. It was a half-assed compliment, but it was a compliment nevertheless and he needed one just then. "I've never worked with Cam before," he said by way of explanation. Or maybe it was an apology.
"After you work with him this time, you won't work with him again either."
"Why not?"
"Because he eats actors alive. By the end of this film, you'll be shark bait."
Again Jackie sighed. Olivia was probably right. He had heard every actor ought to do one film with Cam, but only one. Many claimed that's all it took to learn the most important lessons about why they became actors in the first place. You found out if you loved the work enough to take that much abuse.
"You haven't worked with him before either, have you?”
“Never had the pleasure."
"He always yell like that?"
"Mostly. It's his method."
He gave her a puzzled look.
"You know. Some of them cajole, some fall in love with us, some are reasonable and depend on appealing to the intellect. But Cam, he's temperamental and that's how he gets his way."
"He's manipulative."
She laughed. "Don't say that so he can hear you. Even though you're right."
Robyn strolled by and tossed off, "Good work, Jackie." He watched her sashay past, his gaze riveted on her ass in the tight white slacks. Robyn was one of the few people in show business who came on a set in tight clothes. Most people wore whatever was comfortable. Sometimes they had to stay eighteen hours and tight clothes could hurt you. But not Robyn. She lived up to her model-like beauty, always showing it off.
DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels Page 22
