Playing Dead

by Jessie Keane

  Lucco looked at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses.

  ‘The child will not be my brother or sister,’ he said coldly.

  ‘But . . . the kid’ll be your father’s, like you,’ she said.

  Lucco suddenly sprang up and struck her hard across the face. Sophie fell back amid the tangled sheets. Lucco pinned her down there. He glared into her shocked eyes from inches away.

  ‘The child is not my brother or sister,’ he roared.

  ‘All right, okay,’ said Sophie hurriedly, tears of pain spilling out from her eyes. He’d slapped her once or twice before, just love play, but this time he was frightening her. She knew all about his connections, she knew he’d used them to help her up the ladder of fame, and she liked that. Or at least, she had. But now . . . her face hurt from the blow. She hoped he hadn’t marked her. She had work tomorrow.

  ‘You understand me? This kid is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Yeah. Got it,’ said Sophie, and suddenly he released her and lay back.

  She looked at him warily. She reviewed all that she had been about to say, and decided against saying any of it. Silently, she watched him. He had a big erection jutting up from between his thighs; hitting her always seemed to turn him on. She adored Lucco, but she was coming to realize – not to put too fine a point on it – that he was a bit of a shit.

  Lucco saw her looking, and glanced down his impressive body. ‘Mount me,’ he ordered.

  Would he hit her again if she refused? Sophie decided not to risk it.

  Lucco lay back, sighing restlessly as Sophie straddled him and guided him smoothly inside her.

  Everything he had feared since the day Annie Carter had come into his father’s life was coming to fruition. He tried to consider it all logically, furious though it made him feel. Constantine was forty-seven while his new English wife was twenty-seven – twenty years his junior.

  The Carter woman – Lucco couldn’t bear to think of her any other way – was closer in age to him, his brother Alberto and his sister Cara than to their father. It was obscene. And now the worst had happened. Marrying the whore had been bad enough, but now his father had impregnated her; there would be a baby.

  Why hadn’t his father just had her if he wanted to – she was just a cheap English gold-digger after all; she’d have been grateful to receive the attentions of a man like him. He didn’t have to go and marry her.

  Lucco thought of Annie, his father’s new wife. Her glossy, cocoa-brown hair, her dark green eyes, her intriguing body, always discreetly hidden, but . . . oh yes, guessed at by Lucco. He didn’t doubt that she was hot between the sheets, to have snared his father so easily. And now she was going to give him a child; a new child who would supplant his grown-up children in his affections. He felt sick at the thought, furious.

  ‘You know what? My father’s right. It is time I got married,’ he said aloud. It was all arranged, anyway – not that he’d confided that to Sophie. Why the hell should he? The wedding was only two months away now. Of course it was expected of him, part of the process that would see him assuming control of his father’s empire one day. Already he was caporegime like Alberto, joint second-in-command beneath their father; but he, Lucco, was the eldest son, the rightful heir. It was good to appear settled, married, respectable; there would be children, his own children; family life.

  Sophie stopped bouncing up and down on Lucco’s cock and raised her head. She looked at his face, her blue eyes wide with surprise and a sliver of hope; all right, sometimes he lost it, but so what? She adored him, and she was excited by his powerful family with its dubious links to the underworld. Was he proposing . . .?

  ‘Not married to you, obviously,’ said Lucco, correctly interpreting her gaze.

  His marriage had been arranged ever since he was eighteen. He was going to wed his dull little second cousin Daniella. He’d been reluctant before, dreading the day, but now he could see it might be a good thing. Now he appreciated the need to get some kids off Daniella at the earliest opportunity. If anyone was going to inherit his father’s considerable fortune, he would make sure that it was his line, his sons – not hers. And not Alberto’s, either.

  ‘Harder,’ he said, and Sophie obeyed while Lucco closed his eyes and thought of Annie, his father’s wife.

  Chapter 3

  Cara Barolli Mancini, Constantine’s daughter, got the news just as she was finishing lunch with her girlfriends and her second cousin, who was fresh off the boat from Sicily. They were in the plush uptown apartment that Cara shared with her husband Rocco.

  The second cousin, Daniella, was her brother Lucco’s intended, a laughably rough-around-the-edges girl with long frizzy black hair, big frightened eyes, lamentable dress sense and nothing of any interest to say for herself. She had been sitting there like wood all through the meal, her hands folded in her lap, her head bowed, the conversation of the assembled Park Avenue princesses buzzing around her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked one of Cara’s friends, looking at her face when she came back into the room.

  Cara shrugged and sat down again. Her pretty mouth twisted. ‘Apparently, my father’s wife is going to have a baby,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! Well . . . congratulations, darling,’ said the friend, looking at Cara’s stormy face with uncertainty.

  Even Cara’s closest friends knew you had to treat her with kid gloves. The dreamy-eyed quality Cara possessed was a thin veneer. She was very beautiful, with her tumbling blonde hair, her heavy-lidded blue eyes and her voluptuous mouth, always half open, pouting, inviting. But she could be touchy and arrogant. Daddy was an important man in this city, and she never tired of letting everyone around her know it.

  Cara couldn’t trust herself to speak, not yet. She was crazed with rage. How dare he get that tramp pregnant; how dare he foist a filthy half-sibling on his three truly legitimate children?

  ‘When . . . is the baby due?’ asked Daniella in her stumbling English.

  Cara looked across at her with irritation. Poor stupid sacrificial lamb, shipped over here to marry elegant, arrogant Lucco with the razor-sharp tongue. Lucco would demolish the girl, Cara didn’t doubt that.

  ‘I don’t know that yet,’ she said.

  ‘She’ll have a baby shower, won’t she?’ another friend asked as the maid cleared their plates away.

  ‘She’s English,’ said Cara. ‘I doubt she even knows what that means.’

  The friends were silent for a long, awkward moment. Cara’s own marriage had so far proved fruitless, and they all knew she wanted a child. It was whispered covertly among them that Rocco might even have some problems in the bedroom department. Which wasn’t surprising, really; Cara had a strong, vocal character, but Rocco was quieter – too quiet to put her in her place sometimes, which was what they all secretly thought she really needed in a man.

  Cara was staring at Daniella. Lucco had met Daniella at the age of eighteen when he visited Sicily with Constantine. She had been sixteen then, virginal and shy, socially inept. She still was. The marriage had been agreed between Constantine and her father, and there had been celebrations, countless bottles of fiery yellow Strega consumed and many a tarantella danced because it was a huge honour for any daughter to receive a proposal from the son of a great Don.

  Now Cara watched Daniella sourly. Lucco is going to eat her alive, thought Cara. She knew her brother.

  Not that she much cared about the fate of this little paisan from the old country. She had her own problems.

  Chapter 4

  Alberto, the youngest son of Constantine Barolli, received the news when he went to collect Layla, his stepmother Annie’s bright and adorable five-year-old from her first marriage, from his Aunt Gina’s that afternoon.

  Layla ran to him; she loved her big brother Alberto. He swept the giggling child up into his arms while Gina looked on sourly. She was putting the phone back on the cradle and she looked as if someone had just told her something really, really bad.

 
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Alberto in concern.

  ‘Your father’s wife,’ said Gina, her mouth pursing even as she uttered the words.

  Alberto knew that Gina despised Annie. Gina would have despised any woman who came close to her brother. She had hated Alberto’s own mother, Maria – and after Maria’s death, he knew very well that Gina had hoped there would be no more women; but then along had come Annie Carter with her ‘whore’s tricks’, bewitching his father – according to Aunt Gina.

  Privately, Alberto believed that his aunt was too possessive, clinging to Constantine in a way that was both selfish and faintly perverted. He for one was delighted that his father had found happiness with his second wife.

  ‘Annie? What about her?’ Alberto glanced at Layla.

  ‘Your father tells me she’s expecting a child,’ said Gina. She didn’t look overjoyed about it.

  Alberto’s attention sharpened. ‘And it’s fine? She’s fine?’

  Gina nodded tensely.

  ‘Well, that’s good news.’

  ‘Good? How can it be good?’

  Alberto stifled a sigh. He knew Gina would never soften towards Annie, and he knew she thought him a fool for liking his father’s second wife so much. But, to him, Annie was family now. He could be the hard man, the tough caporegime when it was required of him, but at heart he was a family man, and both more reserved and more reflective than his elder brother Lucco.

  Sometimes, he had to do bad things, difficult things, for the family good. Quiet and polite though he was, he had been responsible for many deaths while carrying out his father’s orders. But he could never delight in the pain and suffering of others, as Lucco did.

  ‘You hear that, Layla?’ Alberto bounced the little girl in his arms, smiled into her dark eyes. ‘You’re going to have a new little brother or sister to spoil, how about that?’

  ‘Yay!’ said Layla.

  Gina watched her nephew with a glacial eye. Alberto was a good boy, but he was too amiable, too soft. Couldn’t he see how this would affect his own standing in the family; how it could affect them all? Constantine’s English wife had up until this point been an unwanted, isolated interloper with little say in the running of things. Now her status would radically change. She would be the mother of the Don’s baby; her position would be assured.

  ‘Are we going to go home and see Mommy now?’ asked Layla, watching her big stepbrother’s handsome face and not seeing the expression on Gina’s.

  Alberto smiled. Mommy. Layla was sounding more American every day. ‘We sure are. And we’ll stop off on the way and get her some flowers, okay?’

  Gina watched them, her expression surly. Flowers, for the love of God. She turned away, irritated. Personally, she would rather see flowers laid on the Englishwoman’s grave.

  Chapter 5

  ‘Well,’ said Rocco Mancini reluctantly, signalling to the waitress for the check, ‘I must go.’

  ‘So soon?’ his dining companion pouted. They were tucked into a corner table beside the window at a seedy little diner on Lexington and Third, where neither of them would be known. It was a cheap place, tacky, charmless; full of losers and fat, contented mothers with shrieking infants. It wasn’t what either of them would have chosen, but that was simply the way it had to be. Snatched moments in random places.

  ‘Yeah, Cara’s got plans for this evening.’

  Cara always had plans for the evening. Dinner with the Vanderbilts; the Nixons’ charity ball in aid of the Third World; the invitation – which had filled Cara with wild-eyed joy – to fly to Washington for the September opening of the Kennedy Arts Center, with the premiere of Bernstein’s mass for the late president.

  There was always something – some silly social engagement they just had to be seen at. Rocco was not interested in any of it, but still he had to go.

  The waitress came over, chewing gum and wearing a grubby white apron. Rocco paid, his aesthetic face pinched with distaste. The waitress withdrew. Rocco stood up, shrugging into his jacket. He was tall and very thin, with dark curly hair, bright lime-green eyes and a big sensuous mouth. He looked at his dining companion’s expression and sat down again, sharply.

  ‘Look, you know it has to be this way,’ he said, grasping the pale hand on the table.

  ‘I hate her,’ said his companion. ‘Cara has you all the time, at her beck and call. And what do I have? Just the dregs.’

  There was nothing Rocco could say to this. It was true. But he knew he couldn’t afford to make waves. He had the lifestyle he had always craved, the cars, the apartments, everything. He summered in the Hamptons, wintered in Aspen, lived a life of ease and plenty. And that was all thanks to his marriage to Cara Barolli. If he tried for separation, or – God forbid – divorce, then all that would be over.

  And he had no wish to make so powerful an enemy as the Don. Would Constantine Barolli just accept his daughter being dumped like so much excess baggage? Rocco didn’t think so. Already, Rocco was aware that he had been tested and found wanting by the Don. He wasn’t a made man, he wasn’t even a capo in his father-in-law’s organization yet, and he resented that. But he knew he had a lot still to prove.

  And what about his own father, Enrico? He would be exceedingly angry if Rocco made waves. Constantine and Enrico Mancini went way back. There would be hell to pay.

  ‘My darling,’ said Rocco, ‘you know it’s you I love.’

  ‘But you’re with her.’

  Rocco stood up. They’d had this same conversation many times; it never got them anywhere. ‘I’ll see you here on Friday. We’ll take the boat out on the Sound, how’s that?’ he said hopefully.

  His companion was hard-eyed for a moment. ‘What, and you’ll screw me again in the cabin, where no one can see?’ Then the look faded to a faint smile, remembering . . . ‘Ah, all right. You got me, you know you have.’

  Smiling, Rocco moved out of the booth. He looked around and then dropped a quick kiss onto Frances Ducane’s almost effeminately smooth cheek.

  ‘It’s you I love,’ Rocco repeated, against Frances’s skin. ‘Goodbye, my darling.’

  And then he was gone, leaving the young man sitting alone at the table, wondering why he always, always had to play second fiddle in life. Now it was to his lover’s wife, but before that he had lived in the long shadow cast by his father, Rick Ducane.

  Chapter 6

  1938

  Before Rick Ducane became a big Hollywood star and household name, he’d been Lionel Driver, a struggling British actor. Frances had inherited his russet hair; he had the identical penetrating grey eyes. Lionel had looked like an aristocrat. He had his own father to thank for that, a good-looking chancer who had married and then cheerfully abandoned his mother with her bad nerves and her whining little voice.

  Lionel’s voice was the first obstacle of many he had to overcome. Born within the sound of Bow bells, he had a pronounced Cockney accent, and it was a bugger to lose. But lose it he did, practising his vowel sounds hour upon hour in the stone-cold and stinking privy in the backyard behind their tenement building.

  ‘Fuckin’ toff,’ his schoolmates snarled at him.

  They’d shoved him against a wall, kicked him, then stolen his meagre pocket money.

  Lionel didn’t care.

  He had plans.

  He worked in a series of dead-end jobs until his twenties, then, without regret, he left his mum and the slums of the East End to go to Stratford-upon-Avon and start trying his luck in auditions. He worked hard, even if it was mostly unrewarded, painting backgrounds, helping with props. But then he got a small break, and started treading the boards in walk-on parts, and was approached by an agent.

  On the advice of his new agent, he then abandoned the stage and went to try to make his name in Hollywood. Once or twice he even hung out hopefully around the constellation of bright stars that haunted every party. Lana Turner, Spencer Tracey, Clark Gable – they were all there, and all far too high-powered to acknowledge the existence
of a handsome starstruck stranger from quaint little England.

  ‘What we need here is an angle,’ said his agent.

  Or for you to get me some fucking work, thought Lionel. But he asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’ve been a Shakespearean actor. A real thespian.’

  ‘Only in walk-on parts though.’

  ‘Who cares?’

  So Lionel’s résumé now stated that he’d played the lead in King Lear to rave reviews. But even that didn’t get him off the breadline. Nobody wanted an English hero right then, and he was too good-looking to play the part of the hero’s chubby best friend.

  One day he was waiting with around twenty other hopefuls at yet another audition, this time for a small part – a destitute man – in a Warner Brothers movie. It was only a walk-on, but he was desperate and bloody near destitution himself.

  As usual, his bowels turned to liquid at precisely the wrong moment – he was next but one up – and he had to go off to find the toilet. He passed two men fiddling with one of the new smoke machines. A crowd of people hurried past. Was that brilliantly stylish blonde at the centre of them Barbara Stanwyck . . .? He walked on, looking back, entranced by the allure of stardom, the way that cluster of people stuck to her like iron filings around a powerful magnet. He wanted that. But was he going to get it?

  He was starting to seriously doubt himself. Maybe these endless rejections were a sign that he was never going to make it. And Warners were a bunch of slave-drivers anyway. Everyone in the building called the place San Quentin after the notorious prison. Did he want to work for people who drove their staff – even their stars – so hard?

  Well . . . yes. He did. Anything they wanted, he’d do. He had to get there. But this was getting to be the last-chance saloon now. This was his last audition, he’d promised himself. If he didn’t succeed today, then he was going home. Not to his old mum in the East End, sod that; but back to England, to try his luck again there.