Lovers and Liars

by Brenda Joyce

  She hadn’t had a really good fuck in too long. What she needed was to be super turned on.

  Thinking about men and her needs made her look at the answering machine, and sure enough the light was blinking. She already knew who it was. Vince. Vince was good in bed, but …

  She found her black book and flipped through. Rick, Ted, Harry (who in hell was Harry?), Brad, Tony …

  Tony. Tony was very, very good. A bar pick-up, because Belinda didn’t believe in attachments. They were all one-nighters or short flings. Tony was really good. The more she thought about it, the more she remembered how much he liked giving head.

  But somehow Tony didn’t appeal to her just then, and she threw the phone book on the chair across the room. To hell with it. Tonight she would work; she could celebrate anytime.

  He couldn’t even leave a goddamn meeting to talk to his daughter …

  2

  Abe Glassman ignored his secretary, who was on his heels, striding rapidly down the thickly carpeted corridor and toward the oversized rosewood doors at its very end. His craggy, hawkish face was grim. “No calls, Rosalie,” he snapped before slamming the door in her face.

  Rosalie knew that that meant he did not want to be disturbed, and her job depended on it.

  Abe Glassman stood six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and lean, except for a paunch. But then he was over fifty—and every man, he thought, had a right to a little slack by then. He walked behind his desk to stare through the wall of glass at the panorama of Manhattan spread at his feet. New York. His city. Where it all began.

  “Fuck,” he said very succinctly.

  He could not believe that little prick. Who in hell did he think he was? He was nothing more than some smart-ass, baby-faced kid practically fresh out of diapers. Damn! Abe could not believe he had really turned down the money—that he had actually handed back the envelope filled with ten grand in sweet green cash. Damn! And he’d even had it in his hand. Abe cursed Will Hayward for being such a fucking idiot as to get himself into so much trouble that he, Abe Glassman, had to try and bail him out by paying off some two-bit cop. Jesus! He’d paid off fucking senators, for crissake, and now some bratty detective was getting moral on him, in a city without morality? New York City was filled with a hundred thousand dirty cops, and it was just his luck to try and grease this one!

  Would Detective Smith do something about it?

  Fucking nigger, Abe thought, had better keep his trap closed, or he won’t know what hit him. And that was a promise.

  Abe remembered growing up in a crowded apartment with an ill father, who had suffered a massive stroke right after the Crash in ’29. His father had been a shoemaker from Russia. He had done his business right out of the apartment, in the front room. Abe had spent most of his time playing hooky from school and fighting wops and niggers in the streets who’d jeered at his clothes and his heavily accented speech. It was okay. He hated them too.

  He had one brother and two sisters and they had always been hungry. Hunger was something Abe had constantly lived with as a child. Even today he would always clean his plate. He could not stand for anything to be wasted.

  With his father ill, there had been only a bare income from his mother’s efforts as a seamstress. Abe, the eldest child, was a good thief. He had to be. He would steal fresh produce and meats from the vendors to bring home. His mother had never said a word, but she knew. And Abe knew she had silently prayed that he wouldn’t get caught.

  At thirteen, Abe got his first real job. The local bookie on the corner was a reed-thin giant named Eddie. Abe picked up the slips the bets were written on and delivered them to Nathan Hammerstein, farther uptown. Nathan lived in a pleasant apartment—a palace in Abe’s eyes—and he wore suits and polished brown shoes and sported a fine mustache. Now, in retrospect, Abe could laugh at the airs Nathan had put on. But back then he had looked up to Nathan, vowing one day to have a suit just as fine and an even better home.

  The job paid well, a few dollars a month, and it kept food on the table for his sisters, his brother, and his mother. His father died of a second stroke in the winter of 1944.

  Abe was not yet eighteen. Because of his age he had missed the draft, which was fine with him—he’d wanted nothing to interfere with his plans. Like everybody who didn’t go to fight, Abe had found himself working in the factories of a newly mobilized economy. But with Abe there was a difference; he continued to pick up slips on the side. A man named Luke Bonzio offered him Nathan Hammerstein’s job, but Abe had politely declined. Bookmaking was not in his future plans.

  Nobody understood when Abe went to college. His two sisters were married at the ages of sixteen and fifteen, and his younger brother had taken over Abe’s old job of picking up slips. His mother had looked at him and said nothing, stitching by candlelight. He had chosen a public school, made only one friend, and took his studies very seriously. His friend was Will Hayward, a clean-cut handsome boy, a distant relation of one of the oldest families of New York, the Morgans. Hayward was nothing more than a party boy, already showing signs of alcoholism, but Abe knew that he could use Hayward and his society connections, that he would be important to him.

  The alcoholism and the gambling did not bother Abe. To the contrary. He filed that information away.

  Abe graduated from City College of New York June 3, 1948. He was almost twenty-two. Hayward had already gotten a job with a bank, thanks to a push from one of his distant relatives. Abe had no job, but he wasn’t without offers. He was approached by Luke Bonzio again.

  “You got brains and determination,” Bonzio had said. “We could always use somebody like you. You could go far with us.”

  Abe smiled. “I’m gonna go far, all right, but on my own.”

  Bonzio shook his head. He was angry. “Someday you’re gonna need us, and you’ll be sorry.”

  Abe made sure he didn’t smile until Bonzio had turned away.

  He waited two weeks before he went to the bank where Hayward worked. That was the first time he had ever laid eyes on Nancy Worth, a cousin of Will’s, just as she was leaving his office. She was not only beautiful but elegant, even at eighteen—an elegance that had been fostered through many generations. Abe decided then and there that he wanted Nancy Worth, and it didn’t matter that she was from the other side of town. “I need a loan,” he said to Will.

  Hayward looked incredulous. “With what as collateral?”

  “My mother’s shop,” Abe said.

  “How much?”

  “Three thousand dollars.”

  Hayward started laughing. “Abe, we’re good friends, but I can’t give you more than a hundred or so for that!”

  “Let’s go have lunch,” Abe said firmly.

  Turning on all his personal magnetism, which was considerable, Abe offered Hayward a partnership in return for the loan. Hayward capitulated, as Abe had expected. They made up a list of fraudulent assets, which they both signed, and Abe got his three-thousand-dollar loan. He promptly put the three thousand down on the corner candy store, which was worth fifteen, buying the lease. He turned around and sold it a few months later for twenty.

  The next lease he acquired was a restaurant’s, and when he sold that, he made double the profit he’d hoped for. Soon he had several leases going at once, all in Brooklyn. He also had his eye on some property that he wanted to develop in Brooklyn. He knew he could make a fortune putting up an apartment building if he could only get the zoning laws changed. He had Hayward approach a couple of the city councilmen, to sound them out. Hayward told him they’d be amenable to bribes.

  Abe built his first apartment buildings.

  His ambitions expanded across the river to Manhattan. The economy was booming. The value of property was soaring, and Abe wanted to build offices in the heart of the city. But he would have to tear down some tenements on one of the lots, and this time he couldn’t move the city council, not even with the color of his money, because there was an Historic New York movement afoot, led by a
couple of fat society matrons.

  Bonzio told him he could get the council to approve Abe’s plans. Abe wasn’t a fool. “What do you want in return?” he asked.

  “Just a piece of the property,” Bonzio said. “Just a small piece, six percent of the profits.”

  Abe regarded him with suspicion.

  “And you come in on a deal with us in Florida,” Bonzio went on. “We need somebody like you with a good head for real estate.”

  Abe didn’t want to do a deal with the mob, but he was starting to get overextended—he had five loans going at once. And his ambitions were uncontrollable; he wanted very much to make another deal—this one even bigger and more lucrative than the rest. And the thought of expanding his reach into new territory was heady and exhilarating. He agreed.

  Bonzio, as promised, got the council to remove their moratorium on the building in the district where the historic houses were located. Abe, as promised, went in on the deal to build a hotel in Fort Lauderdale. When it came to his attention that the wife of one of the New York City councilmen had had a serious accident and was hospitalized for six months, he frowned and shrugged the incident away as coincidence, not blackmail.

  She had been the victim of a hit-and-run.

  3

  Naked, Belinda sat on the edge of the massive Victorian bed with its half canopy, thick rosewood legs, huge headboard, and antique lace spread. It had been her one major purchase, and it dominated her otherwise empty bedroom. She carefully pulled on a stocking, fastening it to a black garter. The mate followed. Belinda stood, stepping into three-inch heels, reaching for a purple leather skirt. She shimmied into it, forgoing underwear—she never wore panties when she was in this mood. The skirt clung to her strong curves like a second skin. A gold silk blouse followed, and she was braless, of course. The blouse molded to her firm, full breasts. She added a dozen gold bangles, huge gold hoops, a couple of chains, and ran her fingers through her hair, increasing its disheveled appearance. She spot-sprayed it.

  She had decided to go out, after all. Cruising. Why not? The adrenaline flow had not ceased. She was feeling powerful It was a feeling unlike any she had ever had before—a feeling of being able to accomplish almost anything. She was launched. Her career was about to take off. Like a rocket.

  She wanted this second sale so badly she felt she could will it to come true. It would come true. She knew it. She had no doubts. Even her agent, Lester, seemed confident now that she was in. And once that sale had gone through, she could relax, breathe a little, feel secure …

  Maybe even take a vacation.

  She was having a delicious fantasy. An Oscar for Best Dramatic Screenplay. Belinda got goosebumps just thinking about it. She knew the odds were against it, so she tried not to dwell on it. But imagine: Two sales and a multi-million-dollar box office and an Oscar …

  She tried to picture Abe’s face. As he sat there in the audience while she received the silly little statue. Maybe just once he would tell her she was great. “Great job, kid,” he might say. No, he’d say, “Belinda, I’m so proud of you.” And he’d even hug her.

  Jesus, she thought, frightened suddenly. I still need his approval after all these years.

  The thought was so upsetting that she willed herself to the other extreme. I did it all on my own, she reminded herself. I did it without their support. That alone makes me a success, now, today.

  It had taken years to get an agent, by which time she had half a dozen screenplays ready but no one to handle them. It was a catch-22. You couldn’t sell without an agent, but you couldn’t get an agent without having sold something first. Then she had lucked out, meeting Lester at a bar, of all places. They had talked, and he had agreed to read one of her screenplays. And that was it. She hadn’t even slept with him.

  She had taken the hard way. She could have gone to her father. Abe Glassman had connections with everyone who was anyone on both coasts. He was close friends with several of Hollywood’s biggest moguls, including the head of Olympia, a studio that had been around since the days of Davis and Gable. Belinda knew she could have gone any one of several routes, from a direct loan from Abe to finance her own independent production of Outrage, to even an Olympia production. Not that her father had offered. But he would have just loved for her to come crawling to him, begging for his help. He loved wielding power—she had figured that out when she was thirteen. The worst part of it was, she had been tempted, out of sheer frustration, more than once. Thank God her pride had kept her from that.

  Thank God she hadn’t succumbed.

  It really couldn’t be a better start for her. North-Star produced quality films, and if they intended to make a first-rate star out of Jackson Ford, the odds were they would succeed. And he probably could act. Belinda didn’t watch television, but getting nominated three years in a row for an Emmy had to mean something. With him in her film, it probably would do well at the box office, even if the director and producer destroyed it.

  That should have given her confidence, but it didn’t. She didn’t want anyone to ruin her product. She wanted a good director, good cast, good technicians …

  The phone rang.

  “Hello, Belinda,” Abe Glassman said.

  Belinda almost dropped the phone. “Oh, hello.”

  “Rosalie says you called.”

  She was now thoroughly regretting that moment of foolishness. He didn’t care, wouldn’t care. And she wasn’t going to be soft; she wasn’t going to allow herself to be vulnerable, not when she knew him so well. He had never forgiven her for moving to California. He had never forgiven her for not marrying according to his wishes and giving him a male heir. He thought writing screenplays was an aberration. He thought she was an aberration.

  “I didn’t call,” she said smoothly. “Your secretary is mistaken.”

  There was a heavy pause. “Oh,” Abe said. Then, “How are you?”

  “Just fine,” she said.

  “Are you gonna get a chance to come east for a weekend this summer? There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  “I’ll try,” she lied. Thinking, Oh, no, not again. Because, of course, the someone was a man and eminently marriageable. Then before she knew what was happening, she said, “I sold a screenplay.” And she could have kicked herself.

  There was a moment of silence. “To who?”

  “North-Star.”

  “How much?”

  “Three fifty.”

  “Congratulations,” Abe said. “Now that you’ve proved you can write those damn things and sell them, why don’t you come back to New York and settle down? Dammit, I’m fifty-three, Belinda.”

  “No, thanks,” Belinda said on a deep breath.

  “You’ve proved yourself,” Abe said angrily, his tone louder now. “What more do you want? I’m gonna die one day, Belinda, and who’s gonna run all this? Jesus—you’re almost thirty, and if you wait much longer you’re gonna have mongoloid babies!” He was shouting.

  “I don’t want children,” Belinda grated. It was, at the very least, an untruth. “Or would you like me to go out and oblige you by getting pregnant tonight? I’m in the mood to get laid anyway.”

  “Christ! You know that’s not what I mean,” Abe said. “Why do you have to get so defensive? Every normal woman wants kids.”

  “Thank you,” Belinda said. “But I already know you think I’m abnormal.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “My career is taking off,” Belinda said furiously. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop pushing now! I’ve sold one screenplay, and as you damn well know, that means I have an in. They’re already considering another script.”

  Abe was silent.

  Coming out on top with him was rare, but Belinda plunged ahead. “North-Star is using this as a vehicle for Jackson Ford. He’s one of the hottest properties in Hollywood right now. The box office should be good, or great, depending on how much North-Star wants to put out. If Outrage does well at the box office, I’m
hot; and I’ll be selling like crazy.” She sounded more confident than she felt. She had learned a lesson a long time ago: Never expose your jugular to Abe.

  There was another moment of uncharacteristic silence. “You know that industry is nothing but ifs,” Abe finally said. “Nobody can predict what sells at the box office. And an actor that’s hot one day is in the crap heap the next. C’mon, Belinda, even you know that.”

  “Thank you,” she said, “for the vote of confidence, and yes, even I know that.”

  “What?” Abe exchanged a few words with someone off the line. Then he spoke back into the phone. “I have to go, Belinda. Will Hayward just walked in, and he says hello.”

  “Good-bye, Abe,” Belinda said.

  4

  “This dialogue is shit.”

  “Cut! Cut! Jesus Christ, Jack!”

  Jackson Ford stood on the stage, golden and glowering, ignoring his costar, a typical California blonde, who was by now used to this kind of outburst Silence was replaced by grunts, groans, and a hum of conversation as lights flicked on and cameramen stepped back from their equipment.

  The assistant producer, Nickie Felton, small, rotund, with a huge nose and glasses, mopped at his bald head frantically. “Jack, Jack, what’s wrong?” he cried, running over in a panic. The star was upset, and that absolutely must not be allowed.

  “This dialogue is complete shit,” Jack said, carefully enunciating every word.

  “Don’t worry,” Nickie Felton said, perspiring. “We got writers, plenty of writers. You want changes—we’ll make changes.”

  Without a word in reply, Jack spun on his heel and left the stage, disappearing presumably to his private dressing room.

  “That man is impossible,” breathed Edwina Lewis, a gangly assistant director. “Nothing is right, ever.”

  “Impossibly gorgeous,” drooled another woman.

  A tall, lean man strode over. “We are twenty fucking weeks behind schedule. I can’t take much more of this. If Ford doesn’t shape up, he’s out.”