The Notorious Pagan Jones

by Nina Berry

  “I’m fine,” she said to Devin Black. It came out sharper than she intended.

  “If you say so.” He couldn’t keep a slight tone of skepticism out of his voice. “You should know that the studio has assigned me to make sure you get to Berlin without incident.”

  Which meant he’d been assigned to keep her off the bottle. Resentment flared. “What I drink is none of the studio’s—or your—business.”

  He didn’t drop his gaze. “We have a considerable investment in you.”

  She stared right back. “You knew the risks when you brought me into this.”

  Unexpectedly, a slow smile spread over his face, as if he couldn’t help it. “The risks. And the rewards.”

  He slid stormy blue eyes over her, and a warm flush stole up her neck to her cheeks. She hadn’t blushed for a boy since the last time she’d seen Nicky, her first and only boyfriend. She’d forgotten how exciting it was to get flustered like that.

  “The reward of seeing me look like a fugitive from a chain gang?” She made her voice tart, which helped the flush subside. It wasn’t as if she could truly be attracted to Devin Black. He was a studio minder, her jailer. He might be useful for now, but he was her adversary.

  “You’re talented enough to make any role believable.” At her incredulous look, he leaned forward and said, “No, really. I remember seeing that they’d cast you in Leopard Bay as a homeless street girl and I thought, That will never work. But it was an astonishing performance. For once they gave the right person the Golden Globe for most promising newcomer.”

  The role in Leopard Bay had been her most challenging, something to be proud of before her career devolved into fluff like The Bashful Debutante and Beach Bound Beverly. By then, she was too busy hanging on Nicky’s arm and getting down to some serious drinking to worry about the quality of her movie roles. If they’d all been as rigorous as Leopard Bay, her drinking problem might have been noticed—by her father, by her fellow actors, by the studio. Maybe things would have been different.

  “I was more excited about getting the BAFTA,” she said. “As far as I know the British Academy can’t be bought, unlike the Hollywood Foreign Press.”

  He smirked. “As far as you know. What was it like to work with Richard Burton?”

  Pagan looked out the window, remembering a brooding, pockmarked face, a warm presence. “He’s even more charismatic in person, but he was sort of sad. He caught me sipping from his hip flask one day, and all he did was take it away from me very gently and shake his head.” Leopard Bay had been shot not long after her mother died. She’d started drinking in secret. “He helped me practice my Welsh accent.”

  Pagan shook off the memory. Time to learn more about the mysterious Mister Black. “Where are you from?”

  “New York.” He eased back into the leather seat and stretched out his long legs so that they almost touched hers. “Born and raised.”

  “You don’t have a New York accent,” she said. “You sound like me.” Pagan had been coached in elocution from an early age. Once her career as a baby model had taken off, her mother had made sure she grew up trained in how to speak, move, sing, and dance. She now spoke with a nondescript American accent, instead of sounding like a California girl.

  “Education drills out the quirks,” he said with a shrug. “But I don’t have your gift for mimicking accents.”

  After the barest pause, he gave her another smile. It was warm. Deep. But she didn’t blush this time. That pause, that fraction of a second, before he flashed her that smile, opened up a part of her brain she hadn’t used in months, years. The smile was perfect. His eyes even crinkled at the corners exactly the way they should. But Pagan knew it was fake, because she was trained to know.

  Devin Black was acting. Behind his seeming spontaneity lay an iron control.

  Pagan curved her lips into a shy smile to simulate her own coy response, her mind racing. Liars were a dime a dozen in Hollywood. She herself was one of the best. But Devin Black was more than a liar. He was dangerous.

  Strange forces were at work. And for her own sake, she had to unmask them.

  Devin Black wasn’t the only one who could flirt to get what he wanted.

  “You’re a New Yorker, so you must have been to the Stage Deli over on Houston,” she said.

  The Stage Deli was on Seventh Avenue, not Houston. If Devin was indeed from New York, he’d know that. “My dad and I ate there all the time when I was shooting that musical in Manhattan. He had the pastrami sandwich five times in a row.”

  Devin’s blue eyes narrowed slightly. “Katz’s Deli is on Houston. The Stage Deli’s on Seventh.”

  “Oh, Katz’s!” She lifted one palm to the sky as if asking heaven to return her brain. “That’s what I meant.”

  So Devin knew New York. That didn’t mean he wasn’t lying. She scooched an inch closer to him on the leather seat. “We’ll be stopping in New York on the way to Berlin probably, right? What’s the hot new thing on Broadway these days?”

  He tilted his head, musing. “I was hoping to see The Happiest Girl in the World, but it closed in June.”

  “I was hoping to be The Happiest Girl in the World.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Then my life turned into West Side Story in a hurry.”

  “Have you heard from Nicky Raven recently?” he asked, his voice deceptively light.

  Nicky. Just the sound of his name squeezed all the blood from Pagan’s heart. Born Niccolo Randazzo, Nicky sang smoother than Sinatra and could swing like Louis Armstrong. Nicky, with his thick brown hair swept back in a wave, those flexible lips that had kissed her so many times, and that slightly crooked nose lending his boyish face a tougher cast. Just the sound of his name sent everything inside her swirling upward like a dust devil.

  The first time she’d seen him, he’d been swaggering past Stage 12 on the Universal lot, singing his latest hit, “Sunlight on Her Face.” His dark eyes had lighted upon Pagan as she’d walked past, and he’d stopped dead, taken her hand, and said, “Hey, beautiful. I’m gonna marry you.”

  He’d asked her to dinner on the spot, and with her father’s permission, they’d dined that night at The Brown Derby. It was the first of many long, romantic evenings together.

  She caught Devin Black’s assessing gaze and stifled the tumult inside her. He’d asked her about Nicky to see how flustered she would get, to test her weak spots. It was cold-blooded…and smart as hell.

  Or maybe he wanted to know if she was over Nicky—for himself.

  “Not recently.” Her voice was a study in nonchalance. “Has he put out a new album or had a hit single lately?”

  “Not that I noticed.” Devin gave her another appreciative look. “Perhaps he’s run out of inspiration.”

  She leaned in close, wishing she had a lower neckline to deploy or at least some lipstick. “Perhaps you and I should take in a show when we hit New York.”

  He inclined toward her, a smile playing around his mouth. It looked genuine. “There’s only time for dinner, but I know a place…”

  He stopped, as if catching himself, and his smile straightened into a resolute blank. “At the airport we can get a decent meal before we get on the plane for Berlin.”

  Although his voice was pleasant, the already refrigerated air took on a chill. Without moving a muscle, Devin Black had become as remote as the waning moon.

  But she’d gotten to him. Pagan leaned back in her seat, suppressing a smile. He’d warmed to her for a moment, the same way he had when they’d discussed sequels to popular songs. He’d probably pulled back because he was worried about losing his job if she beguiled him too thoroughly. But with a little work, she might transform him from prison warden to adoring acolyte.

  “Perhaps once we get to Berlin, you could show me around,” she said, her voice soft. “I’ve never been there.”r />
  He didn’t turn his head to look at her. “Once we get to Berlin you’re going to be very busy trying not to get fired off the first movie set you’ve been on since you quit drinking. Better to concentrate on that.”

  Rage flooded her. Had she been completely mistaken, thinking he found her attractive? Or was he the type of jerk who lashed out when he couldn’t have what he wanted? Either way, he was utterly disagreeable.

  “I was a better actor drunk than you are now,” she said. It was a stab in the dark. He was performing in some way, and he didn’t have to know she couldn’t figure him out.

  He gave her a cold smile. “Think how splendid you’ll be now that you’re sober.”

  Sober. What a dismal word.

  Uneasy silence settled between them. She sipped her Coke. The car turned north on La Brea and slid past the old Chaplin studios.

  A cherry-red convertible overflowing with laughing people zoomed past them, radio blasting a raucous song she didn’t recognize. Pagan suppressed a sigh. A few months ago that had been her. She and Nicky had been drunk on love and success, and other things. He’d driven her down Sunset Boulevard, singing along to his own voice as his number one single played on the radio.

  Another car went by, and she was afraid to look out the window to see who was driving it. Nicky could still be in Los Angeles, for all she knew. She tried to picture running into him now, ten months after he’d stopped calling. She imagined a look of pity crossing his face when he saw her, the disgust he’d try to keep from his eyes. The same dark eyes that had once held so much love, so much desire.

  She was real gone over Nicky still. Good thing she was going to Berlin, far from anywhere she and Nicky had ever been.

  A need to run, to move, to get away from this car, from Devin, from everything, pushed through her like a wave.

  As they turned west on Hollywood Boulevard, she pressed the switch for the automatic window to bring it humming down. Warm dry air rushed over her face, and she stuck her head out. So what if Devin thought she was crazy? She needed to breathe.

  She closed her eyes as the wind whipped her hair back, pushing against her eyelids. Shadows pulsed over her, dimming the sunlight briefly. She opened her eyes to look at the palm trees towering above, slipping past like signposts.

  She turned her head to gaze back east down Hollywood Boulevard. As they rose up an incline and her hair lashed at her face, she caught a glimpse of Grauman Theater’s swooping Chinese roof. She’d hoped to have her hand—and footprints­—added to the greats already enshrined in the concrete there. No way that would happen now.

  They crested the slight hill and headed down again. Grauman’s disappeared from sight. Mansions and gardens lined the road. The Hollywood Hills rose, brown from the summer, to her right. Up there, on the narrow curves of Mulholland Drive, was where she’d crashed her Corvette. Where Daddy and Ava had died.

  She didn’t want to run or let the air breeze over her anymore. The wind—or something else—had scoured that need out of her. She pulled back into the stillness of the car and shoved her hair back into place. Devin Black sat unmoving, not looking at her as they turned right onto Laurel Canyon.

  Not long now. She’d be back home. Where she had nothing but the spirits of the dead to comfort her.

  As Devin Black held Pagan’s own front door open for her and she walked into the high-ceilinged entry, three women with perfectly coifed hair and identical black pumps bustled down the stairs to introduce themselves.

  So much for ghosts. The house was full of actual people. Pagan was too overwhelmed to catch their names, but she did hear the words manicure, makeup, and haircut, and that was enough to distract her from the sight of Ava’s grand piano draped in a huge white cloth in the music room, from the gilt-framed photos of her mother, father, and sister on the mantel.

  The beautician, who had very shiny red hair, didn’t give her time to dwell on anything, guiding her into the master bedroom, where her father had slept, and stepping into the master bathroom before pausing to look expectantly over her shoulder.

  Devin Black was there ahead of them, by the side of her father’s bed, squinting up at the small, brilliantly colored painting of a woman in a garden that her mother had hung in a place of honor on the wall.

  “Do you like it?” Pagan asked. That painting was one of her favorite things in the world. The dazzling smudges of scarlet, violet, and orange flowers led to a path strewn with lilac and golden sunlight where the suggestion of a woman in a dark blue dress stood, holding a white parasol.

  It reminded Pagan of her grandmother Katie, her father’s mother, and her vibrant garden in Maine the last spring they visited, shortly before she’d died of stomach cancer.

  “Exquisite,” Devin said, peering closer at the thick swirls of paint. “It’s a Renoir.”

  Pagan was surprised. “That’s what the man who gave it to Mama said.” She paced closer to it. “I figured he had to be lying.”

  Devin’s eyes continued to travel over the intricacies of the painting. “Was this man a relative of yours?”

  “I don’t think so.” Pagan frowned, trying to remember. She’d been eight years old when the man had come to visit. She’d forgotten about him until just now, but he could be a link to her mother’s past, back in Germany. “Doctor somebody. He was very tall and commanding. But his voice was nasal and whiny. He stayed with us for a couple weeks, so Mama must’ve known him well.”

  “Where did he go after he left here?” Devin asked.

  “I don’t know. He was waiting here till he caught a boat somewhere,” she said. Devin was staring at the painting again. It was mesmerizing. “I love it, but it’s got to be fake.”

  “No.” Devin’s voice was meditative, almost dreamy. “Renoir painted it the summer of 1873 when he was staying with Monet.”

  Pagan stared at him. How could a studio publicity hack know so much about art? “Are you an artist?” she asked.

  “What? No!” He laughed. “I’ve just been fortunate enough to see a number of works by the great Impressionists up close.”

  “Did you work in a museum?” she asked. “Or do you moonlight as an art forger?”

  The laughter in his eyes died, replaced with a wariness and something that almost looked like pain. She was about to apologize for she knew not what when he gestured toward the bathroom and the sleek redheaded stylist. “Linda, my dear, do what you can with this creature.”

  Devin vanished, and Pagan was left in her parents’ bathroom, made unfamiliar by a large hair dryer set up over a hard chair next to a serving table covered with rollers and twelve different shades of pink nail polish. Linda was already mixing something that smelled like peroxide in a little bowl.

  “First we make you blonde, then we do a wet set, and Carol can do your nails while you dry,” Linda said. “How’s that sound to start?”

  Pagan caught sight of herself in the mirror—the stiff, bedraggled, ash-colored hair, the unruly eyebrows, the chapped lips and too-big brown eyes that looked lost without mascara. Her mother would never have approved.

  “That sounds like heaven,” Pagan said.

  Linda, who couldn’t have been much older than Pagan, popped her gum and offered her a pack of Fruit Stripe. “The studio told me to do your hair exactly the way it was in The Bashful Debutante, just so you know. Chin length, curled under and blondest of the blond. Sorry if you were hoping for something else.”

  Pagan unwrapped a cherry-striped stick and bit down on it slowly. The sweet, fake-fruit flavor flooded her mouth. She would have killed to have a pack of gum just a few hours ago in Lighthouse, and here it was now, offered to her freely. Funny how reform school made you appreciate things everyone else took for granted. “Anything will be better than how it is now.”

  Linda chewed her gum with a casual sassiness that was fun to watch. May
be Pagan could use the mannerism for her character. “No offense,” Linda said, “but it’s a mess. So you just relax. Magic Linda can fix anything.”

  “Oh, so you’re my fairy godmother,” Pagan said. “I’ve been waiting for you to show.”

  “Bippity boppity shampoo,” Linda said with a grin, pointing at a tube of Lustre-Crème. “Right after we make you a real blonde again.”

  As Linda brushed and sectioned off Pagan’s hair, readying it for the peroxide, Carol came in and lifted Pagan’s right hand to examine her fingernails. “I like to keep them short,” Pagan said. She probably wouldn’t need to scratch anyone’s eyes out on the movie set, but prison habits died hard.

  As Carol set her hands to soak and Linda began painting peroxide into her hair, it took her back to being in the makeup chair early in the morning before the day’s shooting began on a film. Makeup artists knew everyone’s secrets—who had acne and who had a toupee, whose red eyes were due to too many uppers and whose were caused by an all-night argument with their spouse. All the best gossip happened there.

  “So I’m dying to know what’s hot on the radio now,” Pagan said. “Last new song I heard was ‘Georgia on My Mind,’ for crying out loud. What’s Ray Charles’s latest?”

  Carol shrugged. “Search me, but that Pat Boone is dreamy.”

  Linda made a face. “I like that Bobby Lewis song you hear all the time now, ‘Tossin’ and Turnin’,’ even if he can’t move like Jackie Wilson.”

  “Nobody moves like Jackie Wilson,” Pagan said. “Elvis tries, but…”

  “Oh, Elvis!” Linda wiggled happily, snapping her gum. “That boy is killer diller. I’d play backseat bingo with him any day of the week.”

  “Linda!” Carol admonished with a grin and began filing Pagan’s nails.