Naked In LA (Naked Series Book 2)

by Colin Falconer

When I sat in that little flat in Miami, I swore I’d never be poor again, vowed I would do anything to drag myself out of that mess and I had, I was as good as my word. Maybe I would never be happy, but I was going to be the richest sad girl in Hollywood.

  He sauntered out of the fog and skimmed a stone on the water. Then he put his hands in the pockets of his white linen suit, stood there with his hair straggling over his collar and shook his head at me. “When are you going to listen to your father, cariña?”

  “He’s never going to find out, right? We can go on like nothing ever happened.”

  “Of course he’s going to find out. If one of his shady little associates doesn’t tell him then Angel will. You played right into his hands.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  You want my advice, cariña? You can’t change what you’ve done; you can only make it better tomorrow.”

  “He told Inocencia he loved me. So he’ll forgive me right?”

  He grimaced. “Maybe.”

  Even a ghost can lie.

  The morning sun started to burn off the fog and Papi faded away too. But his advice stayed with me; yes, of course Reyes would find out. All I could do was tell him that I was sorry, promise him it would never happen again. I’d beg him if I had to. I would tell him he was right about me but that I’d learned my lesson and that I wanted him back forever. Hadn’t he said it was fate?

  He had loved me from the moment he set eyes on me, he said so himself. So we could get through this one thing, right? This was just one stupid mistake, he would see that. Perhaps he even had some secrets himself. We would tell each other everything and then start over again, it would all be okay.

  My new picture with Steve McQueen was getting great reviews. Sinatra had offered me the lead in his next picture. Nothing could go wrong now. From now on there would be a new Magdalena Fuentes.

  Everything was going to be okay.

  When I got home there was a telegram waiting for me. But it wasn’t from Havana or even from Miami. It was from right here in LA. He was already home.

  The front door was open and his bags were in the hall. He was out on the pool deck, with his back to me, his feet on the balcony rail, smoking a cheroot. He had his head back, staring at the darkening sky. I ran up and threw my arms around his neck. His embrace was cool. He knew, of course he knew.

  This was how I remembered him the very first time I saw him, he was wearing a dinner jacket and crisp powder blue shirt, looking like he was about to go out and play cards - or get lucky. “You’re all dressed.”

  “I’m taking you out to dinner.”

  I glanced at the bedroom. “But you’ve been away nearly two months. I thought perhaps we could reacquaint ourselves first.” I put my cheek next to his and softly bit his ear. I thought I was pretty clear about what I wanted.

  He ignored me and went back into the house. “Get a dress on,” he said. “We’ll go to the Beachcomber.”

  One of the perks of even minor stardom was to be able to show up at a restaurant unannounced and have the maitre d’ scurry off to find a table. Once, I would have had to queue for a seat by the washrooms with everyone else.

  Reyes was in a belligerent mood. From the moment we sat down he ignored the menu and ordered another rum and coke with lime. Cuba Libre. Was that a clue? I braced myself for the inevitable.

  “What’s the matter, princess? You look like you’ve swallowed a pigeon. Is your conscience bothering you?”

  “Should it?”

  “You had me followed in Miami.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you were having an affair.”

  “We’re not married, so even if I was, it wouldn’t be an affair.”

  “Call me old fashioned.”

  “I’m disappointed. I’ve always been honest with you, princess, I asked you to move in with me. I didn’t have to do that. If I was still out tomcatting, why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. How am I supposed to know anything about you? You are always going off and you never tell me where you are or what you’re doing.”

  “Let’s keep it that way. It’s safer.”

  When the drinks arrived he raised his glass. “So I hear congratulations are in order.”

  “Thanks. It’s my first leading role.”

  He raised an eyebrow. So, there was at least one thing the great Reyes Garcia didn’t know before anyone else.

  “I wasn’t referring to your film career.”

  “What then?” I looked him right in the eye. If he’d acted hurt I would have been on my knees begging forgiveness, but his belligerence just antagonised me.

  “It’s all over town,” he said. “Either you’re having an affair with our nation’s top executive or he was interviewing you to be the next Defence Secretary. Cuba should be top of your list of “Things To Fix” if you want my advice.”

  I couldn’t answer him, couldn’t remember any of the pretty speeches I’d prepared.

  “You couldn’t get the richest boy in Havana, so you’re now aiming for the most powerful man in America. You never take a backward step do you?”

  “Please, Reyes.”

  “You still think you’re the only girl at the party and that every man wants you to fill his dance card. You’re treading dangerous ground here, princess. He has women everywhere. He’ll have one of his secretaries put you on the White House Christmas card list and that will be it, you’ll never hear from him again.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “What was it like? Tell me?”

  But I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Please don’t hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, I admire you. You worked two jobs to pay your father’s medical bills, you finagled money out of a mafia prince to bankroll your little adventure here, you got yourself a leading role in a Hollywood movie while fucking the President of the United States. I’d say you were a high achiever. But stay away from Jack from now on. European royalty don’t mind humble beginnings but the Kennedy’s only marry Ivy League. Besides, he’s already spoken for.”

  “Please, don’t.”

  “You know, this is the sort of thing that can end a promising career.”

  “Ironically, Ted seems to think it will be good for me.”

  “I wasn’t talking about him. This whole country is in love with his wife, do you not see that? I thought he would have learned his lesson after Marilyn, but there must be a self destructive streak in him, same as there is in you.”

  I wanted him to forgive me, I wanted him to pretend that none of this had ever happened so we could drive out to Big Sur again and have a picnic on the sand. I wanted him to make love to me tonight in his bed with the blinds open and the cool night wind rippling the surface of the saltwater pool. I wanted to wake him up with steaming coffee and scrambled eggs with lots of pepper the way he liked them. I wanted to lie on the grass and watch the sunset with my head in his lap while he read my latest script. I wanted to watch him smoke a cheroot on the deck and hear him laugh at some stupid cartoon on the funny pages.

  I took his face in my hands and made him look at me. “I love you, Reyes. I’m so desperately sorry. You have to listen to me.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “But you don’t understand.”

  “I think I do.”

  “I made a mistake, Reyes.”

  “Yes, you did. You’ve made several. Enough, let’s not drag this out.”

  “But I mean it, I love you.”

  “But I mean it - I don’t care.”

  He looked so tired and so indifferent. He didn’t even look like he was listening anymore. “You can’t just stop loving someone.”

  “You stopped loving Angel when you saw him for what he was. Now I know the feeling.”

  “Please don’t stop loving me,” I said, but my voice was strangled and I couldn’t even be sure that he heard me.

  “Princess, I loved y
ou as much as I ever loved any woman. But I can’t risk it again. Maybe you do love me, but I tore up my rule book for you, and the rules say if you ever forgive a woman once, she’ll make you keep doing it for the rest of your life. For a moment you tempted me to change my mind about all that, but it seems that it was a good rule after all. I’ll not be made a fool for love ever again. There’s a romantic inside me and I have to beat him down before he undoes me. For God’s sake, don’t cry, princess.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “If I believed that, then I really would be lost.”

  “You remember that night when you showed me how to dance?”

  “I remember it very well.”

  “You said it’s not about knowing the steps, it’s about knowing the soul. Don’t you see my soul, Reyes?”

  I saw something flicker in those dark eyes but I couldn’t decipher it. “That was then, this is now,” he said. “I’m a little older than you, princess, and I have had a lot of experience and it tells me that people don’t change, they just become more desperate.”

  “But I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

  “Well I guess we’re both about to find out.”

  “Please don’t leave me.”

  “Princess, I’m already gone.” He pushed his chair back. “I almost forgot,” he said. “I brought you back a present.”

  He went back out to the car and came back in with a tattered parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. I stared at him in bewilderment.

  “I was in Havana. Don’t ask me what I was doing there. But while I was there I got you this.”

  I tore off the brown paper. Inside were three photograph albums. My hands started to shake. I opened the first album and there was a picture of my mother taken on the Malecón, by the sea wall, back in the early fifties. She was holding me and pointing to the camera. I supposed my father must have taken the picture.

  “Reyes...”

  “Maria is doing okay, by the way. She’s still a maid, but her boss is a general in the Jose Martí battalion. She sends her love and hopes that one day she sees you at the movies. I have her address, I wrote it on this piece of paper and put inside this first album right here. She’d like a signed glossy so she can boast about you to her friends.”

  “How did you get this?”

  “It wasn’t easy. But you remember that day we met in the Fontainebleau in Miami, you said it was the one thing you regretted leaving behind, you said you felt as if you’d lost a part of yourself. So I left no stone unturned. I would have done anything for you.” He held out his hand. “I want my spare key.”

  I reached into my purse and gave it to him. “Let me get the check,” I said.

  “No, I insist.” He threw some money on the table. Then he left, dropping the key in the fish tank on the way out.

  That was a neat touch. He really knew how to underline his point, that man.

  Chapter 34

  The shooting schedule for Coming Home, Frank’s new movie, was around ten weeks, and so far it had gone without a hitch. He tried to seduce me on screen and off it but the only time I ever gave in was when it was in the script.

  I had a limousine pick me up on the lot at the end of each day, but one day, instead of one of Carey’s Cadillacs, there was a black Plymouth with dark tinted windows. For a moment I thought it might be Jack. Then a thick set man in a dark suit got out from behind the wheel and came towards me. He didn’t have one of those little lapel badges like Kennedy’s guy had, and he was chewing a toothpick. He took my upper arm in a discreet but vice-like grip and led me toward the car.

  He held the door open. I froze, wondered whether I should try to run. But my escort wasn’t about to loosen his grip, and besides, what was the use? Angel knew where I lived. He would hardly chase after me; if he wanted to talk he would just find a less discreet way to kidnap me.

  I decided to retain some scrap of dignity and slid into the back seat as if I were the First Lady.

  There was a bottle of Dom Perignon on ice. Angel cracked it and handed me a flute. He poured some of the champagne into my glass and then one for himself. His driver headed out of the lot toward Brentwood.

  I sipped the champagne, sat back and waited.

  “I told you we’d see each other again,” Angel said.

  “Where’s my driver?”

  “We gave him the day off.”

  “You didn’t torture him and kill him, did you? It would create a lot of problems with the union.”

  “I torture and kill who I like. Fuck the union.”

  I guessed that would set the tone for the rest of our conversation. Angel really needed to get over himself. “How did you get in here? I thought Fox had security.”

  “We got a lot of friends in this industry.”

  How different he was from the scared boy I remembered. I wondered how many bodies he had to cram into a barrel and dump in the river before Bobbo promoted him to middle management. That was the trouble with the mob these days: they were promoting these boys right up to limousine status without ever giving them enough experience in the field.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “I’m listening, I have no choice.”

  “We go back a long way, you and me.”

  “Too long.”

  “I was just thinking the other day how I helped you out in Miami. You remember? You were living in that shit hole with your old man, serving coffee and burgers to shitbags in baseball caps. You had all these medical bills. But I helped you out. It’s good to have friends, right?”

  “What do you want, Angel?”

  “And I was thinking what a nice funeral your father had. Nice headstone, too. Doesn’t seem so long ago. You know why? Because it wasn’t that fucking long, and now look at you, you’re a big movie star, and you forgot where you came from, forgot your roots.”

  “You got well paid for your favours.”

  “Yeah? Because I don’t think so. I can get tail whenever I want it and it doesn’t cost me what I was paying out for you.”

  “I thought you did it because you loved me.”

  “Well maybe now I’m asking you to love me back a little.”

  “You want me to cuddle you?”

  “You really crack me up, baby. What a sense of humour. Does your new boyfriend like how you make jokes all the time?”

  I wondered how he knew about Jack, but then it hit me, if he were tight with Sinatra then it would be more surprising if he didn’t know.

  “I went to meet him one night in Malibu. It was a bad mistake and it hardly counts as a love affair.”

  “I think you should give it more time.”

  I stared at him, looking for some hint of irony. I didn’t see any. “It’s my decision who I sleep with.”

  “Now you’re being naïve.” He laid a hand along the back of the seat, played with my hair. I twisted away but that only seemed to amuse him.

  “I’m not going to be the President’s whore again.”

  “You see the way you twist things? The way to look at it, you’re helping your career.”

  “I don’t need Jack Kennedy to get me parts in movies anymore.”

  “I’m not talking about Kennedy, I’m talking about me.”

  “You want me to be your spy?”

  “No, we know what Jack and Bobby are doing. We know that Bobby is going after Jimmy Hoffa, and that he wants to shut down our operations on the east coast. We know all that.”

  “So what is it you want?”

  “I want you to kill him.”

  It was like he’d slapped me. I stared at him with a stupid look on my face for so long that finally he waved a hand in front of my eyes, laughing. “Hey, baby. You okay? You need smelling salts?”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I’m asking a favour, that’s all.”

  “You want me to kill the President of the United States?”

  “His name’s Jack, and he sleeps, fucks and eats like
everyone else. It’s not an easy hit, I give you that, so we need to put someone close to him. Hey, Jackie hates him but she doesn’t hate him that much, even though she’s married to him. Besides, hate is not a good reason for killing people. You’d be doing this to show gratitude for all I have done for you, for all that I and my associates can do for you in the future.”

  I tried to get out of the car even though we were doing fifty on the freeway. He grabbed my wrist, still laughing.

  “Listen to me--you won’t believe how easy this is. We got some pills, the Agency gave them to us to use on Castro, They’re straight out of one of their labs. But we got bigger problems now than that bearded fuck. We kill him, and we still got Bobby Kennedy on our back. So I figured we take advantage of scientific progress and use it where it does us most good. You don’t have to worry about a thing, baby. These things dissolve in water; they don’t leave a trace. It will look like he’s had a heart attack while you’re giving him the ride of his life. Naturally first thing everyone does is hush it up, get you the hell out of there. By the time the autopsy results come back - and baby, this shit is almost impossible to trace - the new President is in the White House and he’s someone we can work with. There’s lots of guys in the Agency and the military who see things our way. Everyone will be happy to leave things just as they are. Meanwhile you got more friends than the Pope, wouldn’t surprise me if you win an Oscar next year.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Well there’s guys in Chicago and Miami, my father-in-law included, who think it’s a pretty terrific idea.”

  “I won’t do this. I would never kill anyone, there’s nothing you can do to make me part of this.”

  Where was the Angel I knew, the soft, vain, arrogant beautiful boy that I chased down the stairs into the street just by throwing my shoes at him? As much as I hated him, I wished him back now.

  “Think it over, baby.” He stroked my hair. “You don’t want to go making hasty decisions.”

  “It’s impossible,” I said. “I only saw him that one time. Even if I agreed to this--and I never ever will--it wouldn’t do you any good.”