Rafael had capitulated. His mother was a good woman, strong, a survivor in a world where too many people didn’t survive. For her, he’d send money to his brother in prison.One powerful woman in his life was enough, he thought, compulsively turning his gaze back to the window for another glimpse of Sandra. She wasn’t really like his mother. Her features, while just as resolute, were gently polished, while his mother’s had been carved by sun and sorrow. Sandra was slim while his mother was robust; if Sandra had muscles they would no doubt have been shaped by health-club exercise, not by years of labor in the tomato and lettuce fields of the Imperial Valley. No south-of-the-border accent tainted Sandra’s elegant speech. No glimmer of pleading shone from the darkest part of her eyes.
Yet as different as they were, the two women shared certain attributes: a steadfast gaze, a certainty about what they were after…and an ability to get Rafael to agree to things he’d never intended to agree to.
Rafael liked to believe he was hard. But his mother had always been able to find the softness inside him.
God help him if Sandra could find it, too.
Chapter Four
*
SANDRA ROLLED THE SLEEVES OF HER BLAZER up an extra cuff. The bitter aroma of melting asphalt made the air seem even hotter than it was.
Up north in Berkeley, flashes of red and yellow would be tipping the leaves right now. The breezes lifting off the bay would mute the sun’s fire and carry a green, cleansing fragrance. Sandra loved Los Angeles, but sometimes, when the heat grew oppressive and the air was so stagnant and heavy with pollution it left a sour taste on her tongue, she felt homesick.
Still, Los Angeles had user-friendly beaches. It had mild, dry winters and a zillion restaurants that stayed open all night. It had news, it had stories. It had a film studio like Aztec Sun, where three ghetto kids could get a job buying useful junk at garage sales instead of hanging out on street corners, drinking cheap wine and shouting lewd remarks at every woman who walked by.
If she really couldn’t dig up a better story, she’d write the human interest article Flannagan wanted. Only she’d write it her way, with her slant: an essay on what a better place Los Angeles would be if street punks could find legitimate employment.
That Rafael Perez was rich and successful wasn’t news. That he appreciated the value of cast-offs, whether they were discarded items from a flea market or discarded youngsters from the neighboring barrio—that was news.
Loitering near the trailers Diego had told her were reserved for Aztec Sun’s “stars,” she spotted the studio’s sole star approaching, her blond hair bouncing around her face and her hips twitching with each step. Melanie Greer brightened with a smile as she spotted Sandra and jogged over. Her smooth, pale skin was dry despite the heat; her designer jeans hugged her legs and her earrings dangled below her dainty chin. Her eyes were wide, glassy in the glaring sunlight.
“Hi,” she said, digging into a pocket of her jeans and removing a key.
“Have you got a few minutes?” Sandra asked. “I’d like to interview you if I could.”
“Sure.” Melanie’s smile was as blinding as Diego’s, but on her it looked genuine. “I was just planning to have my lunch. This morning’s shoot is…well, shot.” She succumbed to a fit of giggles, then climbed the two steps to the door, unlocked it and sauntered inside, beckoning Sandra to follow.
The interior of the trailer was a mess.
Having spent much of her youth in the kitchen of a bustling restaurant, Sandra had been indoctrinated in the “cleanliness is next to godliness” faith, and she tried not to judge others based on her own impeccable standards. But Melanie’s trailer was so chaotic, Sandra recoiled.
Articles of clothing were strewn across the floor in wrinkled mounds. Empty diet-soda cans cluttered every available surface. The tiny sink in the kitchen area held stacks of dirty dishes. A feather pillow lay on the floor near an overflowing waste basket. Crumpled tissues like tufts of cotton blanketed the jumble of cosmetics on the vanity table, the stool for which had toppled over.
“Excuse the state of the place,” Melanie said blithely, picking a path through the debris to the refrigerator. “They offered to have the service clean it for me, but I said I didn’t want anyone coming through here when I wasn’t around. Janitors could help themselves to things, you know what I mean? Are you hungry?”
“No, thanks.” Standing amid such outrageous slovenliness took away Sandra’s appetite.
“I’m absolutely famished,” Melanie declared, pulling a bowl of pineapple chunks out of the refrigerator and kicking the door shut. “I would sell my grandmother’s headstone for a hamburger right now. A bacon cheeseburger dripping with grease, and a side of fries. But the camera, you know…”
“The camera?” Sandra scanned the room uncertainly. Were they being filmed?
“It adds ten pounds. I’ve got to keep my weight under one-ten or my agent’ll send me packing. Over at A Touch of Madness they’ve got a clause in my contract that says if I gain weight they can kill off my character.”
“It’s a cutthroat business, isn’t it,” Sandra commented, shoving aside a silk dressing gown and lowering herself onto the lumpy sofa.
Melanie righted the stool and sat on it. She popped a chunk of pineapple into her mouth and chewed. “That’s what I love about Aztec Sun,” she said before swallowing. The words emerged garbled, and a stream of pineapple juice dribbled down her chin. “Anything I want, Diego’s under orders to keep me happy. Are you writing this down?”
“I’d like to, if it’s all right with you.” Sandra removed her recorder, balanced it on her knees, and turned it on. Then she opened her notebook and pen. “So, does Diego Salazar keep you happy?”
“Ooh, that sounds X-rated!” Melanie wrinkled her nose and giggled, slobbering more pineapple juice down her chin, which she wiped haphazardly with her hand. Her eyes remained saucer-round, her pupils so large they all but obliterated the baby-blue irises. “He doesn’t keep me happy that way. I bet he’d like to, though. These Latin men and their machismo … Is it just me, or do they have a thing for blondes?”
“I think it’s you,” Sandra told her. “You’re so pretty, and they’re thrilled to have you working on their film.”
“Yeah, that’s what they tell me. Not that they’re willing to put their money where their mouths are. They’re paying me less than I get at Madness, if you actually figure out what I’m getting per hour. It’s union scale, period. But my agent said it was a good move for me, that I should start working my way from the small screen to the big screen. And there’s so much to learn, so much pressure—it’s better to learn how to do movies while I’m in a low-budget flick. If I had to carry a major film—not that anyone offered me one, but they will. Once they see how good I am in White Angel, they’ll stop thinking of me as just a small-screen ditz, you know? They’ll stop worrying about what I can handle and whether I can carry a film. They’ll see how good I can be.”
“Why don’t you tell me about your character?”
“In White Angel?” Melanie grabbed a tissue from the vanity table and blew her nose. She sniffled a bit, dabbed at her upper lip, and discarded the tissue on the vanity table. “Her name is Michelle. She’s an uptown girl slumming it with the big bad hombre.” She pronounced it hahm-bray. “There’s a conflict with Paco’s gang. That’s Antonio Torres’s character—Paco. I’m like the gang’s mascot, you know? But I really love Paco, and I’ve got to prove I’m not just a rich white lady looking for an interesting experience.” She sniffled again, this time using her hand to wipe her nose. “It’s a stretch for me, a great part. And I don’t have to take off my blouse—they hired a body double for the sex scenes, thank God. Because I have enough people talking about me behind my back without baring my boobs on the screen, you know?”
“What do people say about you?”
“Oh, you know. Bimbo. Snow-brain. Candy girl. Like I said, it’s a cutthroat business. Did I say that?”
&nbs
p; “I think I did,” Sandra said helpfully.
“Well, whatever.”
“Snow-brain?” Sandra asked.
Ignoring the question, Melanie popped another chunk of pineapple into her mouth. “I started out as a model, did you know that? Everyone said, ‘You’re too short to model.’ I showed them they were wrong. I modeled swimsuits, I did runway, I did petites even though I’m technically too tall for petites. I mean, what do these jerks know? I had ambitions. I came out to Hollywood—did you know I’m from Kansas? Did Diego tell you that?”
Sandra closed her pen and let the recorder capture the spate of words, which spilled from Melanie’s juice-glazed lips too fast for Sandra to write down. Melanie’s pupils remained dilated, her chin glistened with pineapple drippings, and her hands fluttered vaguely through the air as she prattled. Snow-brain, Sandra contemplated, guessing sort of snow Melanie’s critics had in mind. Guessing that candy girl refer to nose candy.
“Kansas,” the actress went on. “The most boring state in the universe. It’s so flat, on a clear day you can see all the way to Canada. I said to myself, ‘Melanie, you’ve got to get out of here.’ So I came to Hollywood, and one thing it’s not is boring.”
“When you aren’t acting, what do you like to do?” Sandra asked, cringing inwardly at how stilted the question was. It was the sort of thing Flannagan would want her to ask.
Melanie smiled defiantly. “I like to party, party, party. Does that make me sound like a bimbo?”
“No.” Oddly enough, it made her sound young and naive. “Aztec Sun doesn’t seem like a party type of place.”
“Rafael is strictly nose-to-the-grindstone. But deep down, he’s a peach. He lets me do anything I want. He told Diego, ‘Melanie is our star. Make sure she’s happy.’”
“Are you happy?”
“Is the ocean wet? This whole experience has been a kick.”
“You don’t seem to get along with John Rhee.”
“He’s a jerk. But I’ll tell you this—” Melanie leaned forward and tried to look earnest, though her gaze refused to settle on Sandra “—nobody is going to pay money to see White Angel because some dude named John Rhee directed it. They’re going to pay money to see White Angel because Melanie Greer is in it. And because Rafael Perez produced it. Because people like his movies and they like me. Rhee is lucky we’re bringing him along for the ride. The man is a royal pain. He thinks I’m an air-head.” Her eyes darted to the recorder and she sniffled her runny nose. “Am I supposed to say these things?”
“Only if you want,” Sandra said.
“Well, just tell me, whose picture appeared on the cover of TV Guide last April? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t John Rhee. If he knew what was good for him, he’d get off my back and let me do my thing. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to use the little girl’s room.” Melanie knocked over the stool when she stood. She wove through the obstacle course of clutter to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Sandra let out a long breath. Merely listening to Melanie was exhausting.
She heard water running through the thin wall separating the bathroom and the living room. She didn’t know how much time she had before Melanie emerged.
She rose from the couch and crossed to the vanity. The profusion of crumpled tissues was astonishing.
She located a comb and used it to prod the tissues aside. A mirrored tray held a mind-boggling assortment of lipsticks, powders and cakes of eye shadow; every major brand seemed to be represented. Next to it a straw basket overflowed with barrettes, hair pins and ribbons. Next to that sat a Wedgwood plate holding a tangle of earrings and necklaces.
Sandra gently twirled the tail of the comb through the snarl of silver, gold and beads. A narrow sterling pin revealed itself, and when Sandra scrutinized it more closely she saw it wasn’t a pin at all. It was a tiny spoon.
Okay. So Melanie had cocaine paraphernalia in her trailer. That didn’t prove she used cocaine. Even if she did, it didn’t prove she was high on the drug right now. And if she was, she wouldn’t be the first Hollywood starlet to use drugs.
Sandra heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. She set down the comb and pretended to fix her hair in the three-way mirror above the table. She heard another flush, followed by the splash of water running in the sink once more.
With a furtive glance toward the closed bathroom door, Sandra dared to lift the cocaine spoon. She had no idea what to look for, what telltale signs would reveal the use to which the spoon had been put. Sighing, she dropped the spoon back onto the plate and turned away.
The toilet flushed again.
Sandra moved to the kitchenette and swung open the refrigerator. The shelves were jammed with cans of diet soda and bottles of mineral water, along with some limp celery and two pineapples. No drugs.
Was cocaine supposed to be stored in the refrigerator for freshness? Sandra had no idea. Some of the students at private school she’d attended had trifled with drugs. They’d been the rich kids, the ones with the perfect clothing and the Mercedes convertibles, the girls who lived to party, party, party. Sandra, the chicana scholarship student who’d waited on tables at her parents’ restaurant during school vacations, hadn’t been friendly with them. She’d never thought to ask them what temperature was best for storing cocaine.
She heard the toilet flush yet again. She closed the refrigerator less than a second before Melanie waltzed out of the bathroom. Her face sparkled with residual water; her eyes looked as hard as diamonds. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I’ve got some pineapple chunks here somewhere.”
“No, that’s all right.” If Melanie wasn’t high on something, she was the most addled woman Sandra had ever met.
She surveyed the mess one more time, searching for ideas, clues, anything, that would lead her in the right direction. A script, a framed photograph from home, anything.
She spotted a fluffy teddy bear half hidden beneath the cushions scattered on the floor. “Oh, look at him! Isn’t he cute!” Sandra wasn’t the sort to go gaga over a stuffed animal, but she was desperate to spark a revelatory reaction from Melanie.
Melanie reached the bear at the same time as Sandra. Melanie apparently wasn’t the sort to go gaga over teddy bears, either. She lifted the creature by one ear and tossed him onto the sofa. “Diego gave him to me.”
“Why?”
Melanie shrugged. “I told him I didn’t like roses. I think it was his way of making a pass at me.”
“He must be sweet on you.” Sandra smiled conspiratorially.
Not surprisingly, Melanie giggled. “Diego makes passes at anything with breasts. He probably goes into the supermarket and makes passes at the rotisserie chickens. Has he put the moves on you yet?”
Sandra recalled his Spanish compliments and air kisses. “I guess he has, sort of. Nothing high-pressure, but he does have a way about him.”
Melanie nodded. “He’s all right. He’ll do anything I ask. But I think that’s because he gets his marching orders from Rafael, and Rafael tells Diego to keep me happy. Now, if Rafael made a pass at me…” She drifted off with a sigh.
“Has he?” The idea of Rafael setting his sights on Melanie caused jealousy to nip at Sandra. She had no right to feel that way. Rafael’s love life was nothing to her. Yet, for one irrational, inexcusable moment, she found herself longing to be the woman Rafael Perez made a pass at.
“Damn the man. He acts like a monk around me,” Melanie complained, then giggled. This time Sandra did her the kindness of joining in. “I mean, he is sexy! Those eyes of his, you know? I’ve worked with sexy actors, and let’s face it—they look better on the screen than they actually are in real life. On A Touch of Madness, I could tell you stories… When you’re working with them, all you see is their pasty make-up, and you smell their bad breath, and you’ve got to pretend they’re turning you on. Now, that’s acting. But Rafael, there’s no make-up, nothing fake. I’d sacrifice my points on this picture just to get a glimpse of hi
m without his shirt on. I mean, you look at him and it’s like the bottom of your stomach drops out. Do you know what I mean?”
Sandra smiled. She knew too well what Melanie meant, but her sense of self-preservation would never allow her to admit it. “He seems awfully straight-arrow for someone in the film business,” she said.
“That’s Rafael, all right. Too cool to get down in the mud with the rest of us. He has Diego get muddy instead. Diego’s primary responsibility is to keep me happy.”
That was the third time Melanie had used that phrase. “When you say happy,” Sandra probed, “what exactly do you mean?”
Melanie stared directly into Sandra’s eyes. Sandra could see the droplets of water glistening on Melanie’s chin, the raw skin edging her nostrils, the redness rimming her eyes. “Happy,” Melanie said, not a hint of a smile on her lips. “You know what I mean. Happy. Okay?”
Sandra absorbed everything about the high-strung woman before her—the bloodshot eyes, the chapped nose, the short, shallow breaths Melanie took, the chalky skin stretched too tightly over her cheekbones and chin. Melanie looked wired, she looked intense, she looked slightly crazed—in fact, she looked anything but happy.
It wasn’t enough to stake a story on. Sandra needed more. She needed to know specifically what Diego did to keep his star “happy,” and why Rafael Perez placed the burden of keeping Melanie “happy” on Diego while he himself refused to get down in the mud, and whether signing Melanie to an Aztec Sun contract had entailed more than simply hiring an actress to play a role.
But damn, there could be a story in it, if Sandra got lucky. “Diego keeps you happy on Rafael’s orders,” she said carefully, seeking confirmation.
“Diego would do anything for Rafael.”
Bad Boy Heroes Boxed Set Page 41
