Taking Hollywood

by Shari King

  ‘You pay them to do that,’ she told Brianna bashfully when they eventually stopped.

  Cue a chorus of hilarity off camera.

  Wow, she had them eating out of her hands and she’d barely said a word.

  They were clearly not strangers, as Brianna launched into an easy chat, talking about Jenny’s show (going great – highest rated on her network, new series starting next week), her new cosmetic contract (very honoured to be asked, a dream come true), her superstar children (yes, they’re so happy and balanced, and she was truly blessed). Either the beer was off or this woman was making Jenny slightly nauseous. Bland didn’t even begin to cover it. Davie Johnston – for whatever faults he might have, and there were undoubtedly plenty – was funny and sharp and irreverent. His wife was calling it in, saying all the right things, lapping up the appreciation, but she had nothing to say. Nothing new here. Please move along.

  The image of her with Davie just didn’t gel. These two didn’t match as a couple. There was no fit.

  ‘And we have to ask . . .’ Brianna’s voice took on a more serious tone. ‘Your husband, Davie, has been a long-time friend of the show and he’s had a bit of a rough time lately. How’s he doing?’

  Only because Sarah was transfixed by her face did she notice the tiny pulse of irritation on the side of her forehead and the slightest furrow of her brow. Two tiny movements, almost indiscernible, but pretty conclusive proof that this wasn’t in the script.

  ‘He’s doing great,’ Sarah said, out loud.

  ‘He’s doing great,’ Jenny echoed.

  Sarah thrust her beer into the air in celebration of her prediction skills. ‘Slam dunk.’

  ‘You know, our hearts go out to Sky Nixon and her family, and we’re praying that she’ll get well soon.’

  There was a very definite punctuation on the end of that sentence, making it clear that was the end of the comment.

  Brianna was already way ahead of her. ‘And I hear you had an extra-special celebration this past weekend.’

  Obviously delighted to change the subject, Jenny switched a gear up to tease and flirtation.

  ‘We did! We had an incredible party for our tenth anniversary.’

  ‘Thanks for the invitation,’ Brianna joked.

  ‘You didn’t get one? That’s my PA fired, then,’ Jenny shot back.

  It was the first thing of any wit she’d said all night.

  ‘Actually, it doesn’t matter because I’m sure I’ll get the opportunity to congratulate you both in person right here . . .’

  Another involuntary flinch, puzzlement this time, maybe a shade of fear. Whatever was about to happen, Jenny knew nothing about it.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Davie Johnston!’

  The camera swung back to the entrance point in the set and Davie stuck his head round it. Either the studio applause guys were doing a great job or the audience were just in a generous mood, but the reaction was fairly impressive. Not on the same scale as Jenny’s rapturous welcome, but encouraging enough.

  Sarah was surprised to find herself smiling as he walked on, head slightly bowed, eyes up, like a naughty kid caught with his hand in the reality cookie jar. There was definitely something endearing about him. Her promised chat with him couldn’t come quickly enough. She was desperate to get this interview in the bag, desperate to speak to him, to fish, probe, to get to whatever it was that made this guy such a hot mess of issues. Desperate to get to the truth. And sure that Davie was going to be the one to deliver it. If there was anything there, she’d be the one to crack him. She was sure of it.

  Out of nowhere a chair materialized next to Jenny while Brianna greeted Davie with a double handshake.

  As he sat down, giving a salute of thanks to the audience, Sarah caught Jenny’s body language. Ouch. Defensive. Stiff. Furious. The set of her jaw belying an almost simmering rage. Chick might be a good actress, but the loving wife wasn’t her best performance.

  Davie sat down, put his hand over his wife’s and gave her a beaming smile.

  The tiny delay in her reaction gave her feelings away again. This was a brilliant starting place for the interview. So, Davie, tell me exactly why your wife hates you so much? If she could kick off with that, it might throw him enough to let her burrow under his other issues. It was a process she’d perfected over years spent watching cop interviews and court cross-examinations.

  ‘So, Davie,’ Brianna said, ‘I believe you’ve got a little present for our darling Jenny?’

  The audience burst into applause again, as Davie reached in his pocket and pulled out a ring box. They had no idea it was the same ring box that he’d presented to her in a limo just a few nights before.

  He opened it to a gasp from the crowd as the camera zoomed in on the glistening ring of diamonds.

  ‘It’s an eternity ring,’ he announced to his wife, the one who was trying desperately to smile through gritted veneers. Ninety-nine per cent of the population would buy it. Sarah didn’t.

  He took it out of the box and slid it onto the third finger of her left hand, where it nestled beside a rock the size of a cola cube.

  ‘She gets one for the other hand in another ten years,’ he joked. ‘But in the meantime, we’ve got another announcement. Tomorrow we’re renewing our vows. We’re setting sail at sunset and we’ll recommit to each other, just as we did ten years ago tomorrow.’

  Was it Sarah’s imagination or did he emphasize the ‘tomorrow’?

  But hang on. Tomorrow? No, no, no. She’d hoped to interview him tomorrow. Or the next day. He’d definitely said this week and that only left tomorrow, Friday or Saturday.

  ‘And another honeymoon?’ Brianna asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Davie replied. ‘In fact, we might set sail and just keep on going . . .’

  Sarah’s beer bottle froze halfway to her lips.

  Damn. Shit. Bugger.

  Her interview just got torpedoed and sunk.

  47.

  ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ – Joy Division

  Glasgow, 1989

  Everyone knew he did it. Everyone knew he was guilty. Everyone talked about how Jono Leith had killed Billy McColl and Jono Leith fucking loved it.

  Zander watched as his dad sauntered from the car towards their block, walking with the swagger he’d developed to cover up the limp caused by Billy McColl’s men using his left leg as a trampoline. It wouldn’t happen again. Billy was dead, and just in case any of his crew got delusions of power and felt like making a name with a spot of violent retribution, Jono came permanently team-handed – two huge guys, one in front, one behind, another two waiting in the front seats of the Rover.

  Jono Leith had definitely moved up a league, and Zander had never hated him more.

  Two months. That was all the time it had taken to bypass small-time hood and manoeuvre straight to the big league, do not pass go, keep the get-out-of-jail card handy.

  The details were sketchy. It’s not as if they were reported in the Daily Record or the Daily Scot. All Zander knew was what he’d seen, and everything else was patched together from overheard conversations and rumour.

  The night Billy McColl and his men had dragged his dad out of here had been the longest of his life. His mum had shot out of the house straight to the chapel to pray with Father Cooney for Jono’s soul.

  Mirren had come over, joined Davie at the table and they’d sat there, saying nothing. Two bottles of Irn Bru and a packet of chocolate digestives had seen them through the night. The call came at 5 a.m. Jono was in the hospital but alive.

  Alive. Fucker.

  Multiple fractures – four fingers, three ribs, one leg. Concussion, cigarette burns to the forearms, three missing toenails, and wounds requiring a total of 124 stitches. None of it fatal. McColl was clearly in a charitable mood, the cops said, sniggering at their own joke. Zander, sitting on a chair beside the hospital bed, said nothing. He didn’t blame them. To them, Jono Leith was scum. He didn’t feel inclined to contradict them.
r />   A drug deal gone bad, they said. McColl brought smack up from Liverpool, agreed a keeper’s fee with Jono to store it for him. Instead, Jono had sold it on, pocketed ten grand and failed to inform the rightful owner until he came looking for it. Supply and demand gone wrong somewhere along the line. Billy expressed his displeasure, taking it out on Jono’s bones.

  Not for a minute did he think the gallus wee bastard would come back for him. That wasn’t how it worked. That wasn’t the chain of command, the rule of hierarchy.

  Apparently, no one told Jono. A week later, he dressed in a delivery uniform he’d stolen from the washing line of a post-office driver, took a gun he’d been storing for an Edinburgh hitman under the struts of Zander’s bed, limped into Billy McColl’s snooker club early in the morning, straight into the office, and shot him through the forehead.

  To no one’s surprise, twelve people in the club at the same time didn’t see a thing.

  What happened next was textbook gangland promotion 101. Jono had contacted Liverpool, done a deal to take over the route, paid for the next consignment with Billy McColl’s ten grand and bought himself into the game. No more bank jobs and security raids. Drugs were the future. The collection of hoods he’d called his associates were now his employees, all swapping intermittent windfalls for a salary.

  It was a win-win situation.

  Meanwhile, everyone, police included, knew he’d done it. Unsurprisingly, in the absence of forensic evidence or eye- witnesses, they hadn’t bust a gut to get a conviction. Billy McColl was no loss to society. And besides, they had the measure of Jono Leith and for now, they were prepared to give him some rope and hope he’d hang himself.

  Instead, Zander knew, he’d become even more unbearable than before. Back then, he’d thought he was some big-time gangster – now, he pretty much was. To his mum’s devastation, Jono no longer even pretended to care about her.

  Almost twenty years of devotion and suffering and he’d repaid her by telling her she’d been a millstone round his neck since the day he met her and proceeded to leather her until she begged God for mercy. Zander had found her broken on the outside and inside. This time she had healed, at least on the surface. Next time she might not. Zander knew the day of reckoning was coming – he just needed to get everything in place first. Had to make sure his mother would be taken care of, make sure nothing could go wrong. There could be no coming back from what he was going to do. But it would be worth it.

  As he watched the prick get closer, his stomach knotted just a little tighter. Oh yes, it would definitely be worth it. He wouldn’t fear the day he’d find his mother dead. Or have to listen to her crying over the loss of the beast she still loved.

  That was the hardest part. His mother still loved Jono Leith. And that was why he knew that she was upstairs right now, tears streaming down her face, as she watched her husband walk past her front door and into the home of the woman he’d been shagging for the last ten years. The lover who put him first, above herself, above God, above her daughter, Mirren.

  As always, Marilyn McLean welcomed Jono in.

  48.

  ‘True’ – Spandau Ballet

  Jenny Rico was a vision in white, her dark waves floating behind her as she held on to the mast of the yacht and arched her back, giving the photographer a stunning silhouette against the sunset.

  The Newport Beach Yacht Club, forty-five minutes south of LAX, wasn’t a millionaire’s playground; it was a billionaire’s playground. No matter how big your yacht was, there was a bigger one right behind it. Many times over the years Davie had considered adding a boat to his collection of toys, but – ever sensible – he’d been dissuaded by the old adage that a boat owner is only happy twice in his life: the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it.

  Now, in white pants and a white shirt, open at the neck, sleeves rolled up, feet bare, he stood in the background, staring out to sea. It was a breathtaking shot. One that would run on the front covers and centre spreads of every celebrity magazine and melt the hearts of romantics all over the country. Only when the photographer had moved on to set up the next image did Davie approach his wife. Hopefully she’d calmed down. Taken it on the chin. Accepted that she’d tried to pull a fast one and got royally outmanoeuvred. Game over, let’s shake hands and be friends.

  ‘You cunt,’ she hissed. Hold the friends.

  ‘My bad,’ he agreed, smiling for anyone watching, while speaking quietly so they couldn’t be overheard by the photographer or any of the three assistants who were floating around the set. ‘I’m a terrible guy for trying to save our marriage while giving you incredible publicity at the same time.’

  ‘Don’t you dare suggest that this is for me. This is all about you. All about making you look like husband of the year. I should have told you to fuck off.’

  ‘You should. But then you’d have lost all this lovely publicity and looked like a tit at the same time.’

  Jenny wore the scowl of a woman who was at a photo shoot that had been put together in hours, pretending that she was about to renew her vows with a husband she would quite happily drown.

  He knew he’d dodged an expensive bullet, but this wasn’t giving him any pleasure. Before all this, he and Jenny had rubbed along quite happily, she with her life, he with his. Back then, they both had the same goals – build careers, make millions, keep their personal lives on the down low so that they could continue to milk the family image and brand.

  ‘Oh Jesus Christ, a minister. You actually brought in a minister.’

  ‘Al’s idea,’ he told her. ‘One of his assistants. Got ordained on the internet.’

  ‘I’m losing the will to live. Fucking joke,’ she spat.

  There was no doubt it was ridiculous, but it was all about survival. He still didn’t have a plan or a strategy to get himself back on top. This was firefighting. Keeping the wolves at bay. He’d read a poll on the internet that morning that put him as the third most unpopular Hollywood movie star, behind Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise. Third most unpopular. Shia LaBeouf was fourth. When you lose a popularity contest to Shia LaBeouf, it’s time to give up and go home.

  ‘Last shot, Davie,’ the photographer told him cheerily. They were standing in the bow of the boat now, in a pose so corny it looked as though Celine Dion could appear at any moment and burst into a chorus of ‘My Heart Will Go On’.

  ‘OK, Jenny, face to me. Great. Gorgeous. To each other. With love. Amazing. Spectacular. OK, I think that’s a wrap. I’ll have these emailed over to Al by nine a.m. tomorrow.’

  Davie did a quick calculation. Al would have the deals brokered with the celebrity mags by the close of play, so these images would be on the newsstands by Monday. Job done. Short-term publicity win, and when she realized he’d filed, she’d have to keep quiet otherwise she’d look like a queen bitch. In a few months, when his popularity had climbed back up from somewhere around the earth’s core, they could announce that they’d amicably split.

  Her phone rang just as she was about to follow the rest of the camera crew off the boat. The cataclysmic fury that crossed her face told him that it was her lawyer breaking the news.

  ‘You’ve filed? You cunt,’ she repeated with such vehemence that Davie bypassed reason and went straight to stringent defence.

  ‘You’re absolutely right. I should have just let you file tomorrow and fuck me out of millions.’

  She didn’t even have the decency to look repentant. That wound him up even more.

  ‘Really, did you think I wouldn’t hear about it? Come on, love. You should have known better.’

  Oh, shit. He’d gone too smug. Cool, smart and powerful equals good. Smug equals dickhead.

  This was all of her own doing, but it was no big surprise that she wasn’t thrilled. Jenny was oozing fury now. Tonight she should have been lying in bed with her lover, planning how they were going to spend one of the biggest divorce payments in history.

  ‘I hate you,’ Jenny hissed.

  ‘I th
ink you’ll find you’ve covered that point already.’

  Wise enough to know that this wouldn’t end well, he decided to bring it down a notch.

  ‘Look, Jen, I never intended to file, until I heard about your shit plan. The way I see it, we can let the divorce stuff rumble on while we give it another go and hopefully make it work in time to call off the lawyers, or we can keep this quiet for now, then announce in a few months that we’ve separated amicably. That gives me time to sort out all the other stuff that’s going on.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  They might have to work on that ‘amicably’ bit.

  ‘Look, Jen, come on. Work with me here. I’ve got the boat for twenty-four hours. Want to hang out? Get something to eat? See if we can resolve this?’

  ‘Are you nuts?’ she rounded on him. Then, in a voice that dripped malice, ‘Set sail and do me a favour – don’t come back.’

  Really? Was this how it was going to be now? The new landscape of his life? Suddenly Davie was weary. Bone-weary. When she flounced off, he didn’t bother saying a word.

  She was gone. It was over. Done. He was left alone, on a yacht, on Newport Beach, feeling like shit. He cracked open a beer. Then another. Then pulled out his phone ready to call . . . No one. There was not a single person in the world he wanted to speak to. What did that say about his life?

  Sighing, he speed-dialled number one. To his surprise, it was answered on the first ring.

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ he said. ‘Just thought I’d phone and see how you’re doing.’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing. Why?’

  ‘Because you haven’t called me first in twenty years.’

  ‘I have!’

  ‘No, you haven’t, son.’

  With a crashing dent to his soul, he realized she was right.

  He was a selfish bastard.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum, honest. I just wanted to see if . . . maybe you want to come over for a couple of weeks? The kids would like to see you.’