Naked In LA (Naked Series Book 2)

by Colin Falconer

  Pat Lawford wasn’t there to meet and greet this time. A Secret Service man opened the door to the limousine and took me in the back way through the gardens. There were no dogs, no children playing on the beach.

  Jack was standing by the floodlit pool, holding a martini. After the Secret Service guy had left us, he turned around and smiled at me. “Hello, kid,” he said. “How are you?” Kid. I realised he couldn’t remember my name.

  “You been here before?”

  Dios mio, he didn’t even know who I was.

  “No,” I said. “I never have.”

  “It’s my sister’s place. Has great views.”

  He was wearing a dressing gown; I guessed he had just been in the pool. His back brace lay on one of the pool chairs and he moved stiffly without it. It was canvas and ribbed with steel rods. I’d heard about his back problem from Reyes, it was why he wasn’t playing football with Peter and Bobby that afternoon on the beach.

  “It’s a relief to get the damn thing off at the end of the day,” he said, catching me staring at it. “My valet has to practically winch it on every morning, pulling the straps loop by loop like that scene between Scarlett and Mamie in Gone With the Wind. Only I’m Scarlett.”

  “No one would ever know,” I said.

  “That’s called politics,” he said. “I tell people who ask me about it that I got it during the war, sometimes I say it was playing college football.”

  “Was it?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Just one of those things. Some days it’s agony, I can hardly move.” This was a different Kennedy than the one I’d seen at the table that night--his guard was down. “Some days it’s a little difficult, you have to shake a hands and be in a lot of places, I guess it’s like a football player playing through an injury. Sometimes you take one for the team. So, kid, are you in the movies?”

  Chapter 31

  I didn’t ride back alone. One of his aides jumped in the back with me. He didn’t introduce himself. “You don’t mind if I ride in the back with you?” he said, as if I ever had a choice.

  He sat facing me with his back to the driver. I couldn’t see his face clearly in the dark, he wore a dark suit and thick glasses, he could have been any one of a thousand men I’d seen in press pictures hovering around him. He made me put a scarf over my head as we drove out even though it was almost midnight.

  I huddled into a corner of the limousine. I felt numb.

  He settled back, clearly accustomed to these sorts of journeys and these sorts of conversations. “So,” he said, like he was interviewing me for a job. “I’ve been hearing good things about you. They say you could have a big career ahead of you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hollywood is very much an insider’s town. I guess you know that? Everyone helps everyone else. That’s the way things work.” When I didn’t answer, he added: “It’s good to have friends.”

  I looked out of the window, stared at the moon scudding through the clouds.

  “You know, it would be a shame if any of this gets out.”

  “You mean if I spoke to the papers?”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean. We don’t want any publicity for this kind of thing.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Sometimes people are tempted.”

  “Don’t worry, Mister Whoever-You-Are. My lips are sealed.”

  “He’s a great man and he is doing great things for this country. We don’t want to see him embarrassed in any way.”

  “You’ve made your point, but I assure you I would be as embarrassed if this got out as he would be.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way. You know, we could be of great help to you in your future career. I believe you have a very important audition next week.”

  “Sinatra wants a new leading lady. He’s going to sing That’s Why the Lady is a Tramp just for me. All I have to do is stand there.”

  There was an awkward moment. Whoever he was, he didn’t understand irony. He shifted about and cleared his throat. “I’ll make some calls,” he said. “If Frank knows the President prefers you for the role, I’m sure there’ll be no problem.”

  I didn’t say anything more and neither did he. We rode the rest of the way in silence. Just as well, I could barely hear him anyway over the sound of Papi yelling at me.

  The first time I walked in to Delhane and Associates I had been expecting something straight out of The Maltese Falcon; instead of paper cups full of bourbon and a blowsy blonde sitting behind a walnut veneer desk. There was wall-to-wall carpet and a reception desk with a smart chrome-plated sign on the wall behind it. There were even copies of Time and Newsweek in the waiting room.

  Delhane himself didn’t look like a private detective; he looked like a harried and overworked accountant. He was bald and wore horn-rimmed glasses and he certainly didn’t know how to knot a tie. He had his secretary bring me coffee, and then he opened a file and reviewed my case like he was looking through my previous year’s tax return.

  There were a lot of manila files like mine all over his desk. I supposed a man in his line of work was never short of customers, not in this town. I often wondered why movie people ever bothered to get married at all.

  What was I thinking when I came to him? The simple answer was that I wasn’t thinking at all, I was just angry, and that’s the worst frame of mind to make any decision.

  He was furiously chewing gum. He explained that he was trying to give up smoking and the gum helped, though I didn’t remember asking him for an explanation. He must have been a heavy smoker, too; the fingers of his right hand were almost yellow from nicotine.

  He slid two glossy black and white photographs across the desk.

  One showed Reyes at the door of a nondescript suburban house; the picture was blurred and I guessed it had been taken with a telephoto lens. He was wearing sunglasses but there was no doubt it was him. He had on a white suit and a black shirt, he looked like a pool hall hustler. The chameleon had transformed himself again for his latest commission in Florida.

  The other photograph showed him walking out of the house a little later, his jacket slung carelessly over one shoulder.

  “The first photograph was taken at 3:16 in the afternoon. The other at 5:07.”

  “Did he see your - associate?”

  “No, this guy’s real good.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” I said.

  “My men are professionals.”

  “He probably taught them. He saw him, I guarantee it.”

  Delhane didn’t like that. He frowned and tapped his pen against his teeth.

  I wondered what Reyes had thought when he knew he was being watched, did he guess the reason? He was used to being followed, if not by his underworld competitors then surely by the FBI. Would he ever suppose I might do something like this?

  I looked through the rest of the report.

  “Your man lost him after he visited this house?”

  Delhane looked embarrassed. “He said there was a lot of traffic.”

  “He would have lost him anyway. Where were these photographs taken?”

  “Tampa Bay, Florida. All the lady’s details are there on the back page.”

  I looked at the name and winced.

  I must have groaned aloud as well, because Delhane leaned across the desk and asked me if I was all right. “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks.” Was this the reason he couldn’t tell me where he was going? No, I couldn’t believe that. He had broken another of his rules and had been mixing personal matters with business.

  I pulled myself together and handed back the file. I searched in my bag for my chequebook. “I’ll settle your account now.”

  “You don’t want me to follow it up?”

  “No, this is enough.”

  “Our clients usually want something more...damning.”

  “This is what I asked for, I have no complaints.”

  He shrugged, as if t
o say: “well, it’s your money, lady.” He passed his invoice across the desk. I wrote out my personal cheque and handed it to him.

  “Perhaps we can be of service again sometime.”

  “I certainly hope not. But thank you, you have been very efficient.”

  When I walked out into the sunshine, I felt dirty. Damn you, Angel, telling me something it was best that I never knew. I’d allowed myself to be manipulated. He had told me he would kill me if he ever found out that I was with Reyes, but it seemed he had instead done something a little more refined and far more lethal.

  He had made me jealous.

  As I walked back to the car, I saw a couple sitting in the sunshine outside a restaurant drinking wine, their fingers entwined on the table. I felt a pang. I had Hollywood, I almost had celebrity, and I had even had lunch with the Kennedys. But I didn’t have that, and that was what I wanted most of all.

  I remembered what Reyes had said to me, that if I ever found happiness I would find a way to screw it up. At the time, I had laughed in his face.

  I got into my new Ferrari Spider and started the engine. That man Ray Charles was on the radio again, part of his personal campaign to torment me: “Your Cheating Heart.”

  I turned it off. I would have thrown it out of the car if the manufacturer hadn’t bolted it in to the dashboard.

  So, Tampa Bay, Florida. Now that I knew, what was I going to do about it?

  Chapter 32

  The address Delhane gave me was in Ybor City in Tampa. The cab took me down a brick paved street to a timber house with a rusted tin roof, a brick-pillared porch and an overgrown garden with a sorry-looking palm tree. I stood outside for a long time, just gathering myself before I knocked. It was going to be hard facing the other woman in Reyes” life.

  The door swung open.

  Inocencia hadn’t aged; she’d just lost her light. She looked up at me from her wheelchair and her face creased into a frown of disappointment. “Did he tell you about me?”

  “No, he didn’t. I found out.”

  “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “What else could I do?”

  “I wanted everyone to just let me be.”

  She still had that torchy voice that had carried so many boleros; it was the rest of her that had changed. She had been tall when she had legs, tall and skinny. Men had catcalled to her on the stage. She still carried some of that beauty in her eyes and her high cheekbones, but she had put on weight sitting in that damned chair, and the spark was gone from her face.

  She turned around and went back inside but left the door open. I followed her.

  “I told him I didn’t want to see you.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “He came by just by a few weeks ago.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You know?”

  I looked around. There were framed black and white photographs of the Left Bank on the walls as well as copies of her records, 78s from Havana. One of her boleros was playing on the gramophone player in the corner, “Love is Dangerous.” She took the needle off.

  “Sit down. Might as well get comfortable since you’re here. You want coffee?”

  I nodded. There was an old piano in the corner, the lid was open and I struck a couple of keys. “It seems like yesterday you were teaching me how to play.”

  “You still play?”

  “No, I haven’t touched a piano since I left Havana.”

  “I teach lessons now and then. It pays the rent. It’s Reyes who helped me pay for this new chair. He’s been good to me. He comes by whenever he’s in Florida.”

  We looked at each other.

  “I told him I didn’t want you here, taking pity on me. I try not to see anyone from the old days, only him.”

  “I didn’t know you’d gotten out of Havana.”

  “He helped me, organized some things for me. I told him I didn’t want him feeling sorry for me, he said I was his friend and he never let down his friends and I believe him. He never would.”

  She went into the kitchen to make the coffee. I took a closer look at the photographs on the wall. I found pictures of her with Rock Hudson, another with Edith Piaf from the early fifties.

  When Inocenia came back out of the kitchen she said: “All I got is memories now.”

  “I wish we knew who planted the bomb that day. Lanksy swore to us he had nothing to do with it.”

  “Doesn’t matter who it was, my legs are gone just the same. I can get by without the legs, it’s what it did to my back, this endless pain and all these operations. If it wasn’t for Reyes, I don’t know what I’d do. He pays all the hospital bills. Enough of that, come and drink your coffee.”

  I joined her at the table by the window. It was good coffee, thick and strong.

  “So I hear you’re doing just fine now. A movie star and all.”

  “I’m not a star, I’ve had small roles in a couple of pictures.”

  “Reyes says it’s just a matter of time.”

  “Well we’ll see.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “I wanted to see you again.”

  “No, that ain’t it. You’re here because you thought he was seeing another woman.”

  “Am I that transparent?”

  “Of course you are, you always were. Most useless goddamn liar I ever knew.”

  I hung my head. I was just so ashamed of myself, it didn’t matter to me anymore about playing the big movie star, down deep, I knew I had let myself down, I had let Papi down.

  “You know he loves you, don’t you?”

  I shook my head. “How can I possibly know that?”

  “Because I’m telling you so. He told me himself, said it was the first time, and he’s known from the start. And if he said it, then I believe him. I don’t know what it is about you but he has it bad. I said to him, “don’t you hurt that girl,” and he swore to me on his life that even when he’s away from you he’s true to you. That’s no little thing, there’s a lot of temptations for a man like that when he’s away from home.”

  She might as well have taken out a gun and pistol-whipped me.

  “Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you want him? You tell me you don’t want him and I’ll find a way to get out of this chair and wring your damn neck.”

  “Yes, I want him.”

  “He says no woman can do for him like you can. Now that’s real bolero, sweetheart. He’s just scared he’s going to lose himself in you, that’s all.”

  If he didn’t find out what I’d done then everything might still be all right. But how could I stop him from finding out? Reyes always seemed to know everything the day before it happened.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I think I might have blown it with him.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve cheated on that man.”

  “I thought he was cheating on me.”

  “Now that is the lamest excuse for bitchery I ever heard my whole life.”

  I nodded. She was right.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to ask him to forgive me.”

  “Well that won’t work, I’m telling you now. He’s a good man, taken in all his parts, but forgiving is not his strong suit. You’d best try lying and hope to the good Lord Jesus he never finds out.” She put down her coffee cup so hard it almost broke the saucer. “If you love him so bad, why did you do it?”

  “I just couldn’t accept that he actually loved me.”

  “Oh my good Lord. You know why I didn’t ever want to see you again?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because I can’t stand the damn sight of you, girl. I always hated you, you were so smart and so beautiful and you always had to be the centre of attention. And in the end you got the only man I ever loved as well. And you know the worst thing? You didn’t even care!”

  I finished my coffee, right down to the dregs.

  “I guess you don’t
want me to come and see you again?”

  Inocencia had said more than she’d intended. “I didn’t mean any of that,” she mumbled.

  “No, you’re right,” I said and got up to leave. I looked down at the gramophone by the door and put the record back on. There was the scratching of the needle and then Inocencia’s gravelly voice from all those years ago, singing “Love is Dangerous,” and suddenly I was back in the Left Bank, sitting next to my papi in his white linen suit at our table right there in front of the stage.

  When I look in your eyes

  I see how I used to be

  When I look in the mirror

  I see what’s become of me

  I can’t stay here with you

  I know you’ll break my heart

  It’s love that brings us together

  It’s love that tears me apart

  “Seeing you makes me think of everything I want to be,” she said. “You have him and you have your legs and you have your looks.”

  “Let me help you.”

  She shook her head. “Reyes takes care of anything I can’t, but I’m settled here now. I have friends come by and I can get myself down the street. I do all right. I know you still feel guilty, but you shouldn’t. It wasn’t you that put that bomb in the club that night.”

  “You taught me so much, Inocencia.”

  “Well maybe you’re done learning now.”

  “Maybe. I guess I’ll find that out when I get back to LA.”

  I let myself out, walked back to the main street and got a cab back to the airport. I never hated myself more.

  Chapter 33

  When I got back to LA I drove up the coast, back to Big Sur, found the little beach where we had swum that day. It was early morning and there was fog along the beach, muting every sound. As I trudged along the tide line the seagulls took off at my approach.

  I wondered where Reyes was and when he would be back. I guessed he was in Cuba. It wasn’t hard to figure why, probably running messages for the government outside official channels.