“DeMarco Productions.”
“May I speak to Samantha, please?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Luke Jannis.”
Paul’s son. What was I supposed to do with this? I’d met Luke several times—over dinner, a brunch, and once at Paul’s place, where Luke had shown me Mystery Manor, downloaded it onto my iPad, and guided me through the first six or seven levels. At the time, I didn’t know enough about the game to understand how anyone could be addicted to it. I still didn’t know since I’d never played again.
“Luke. What a surprise.” I walked toward the far end of the pool so that I wouldn’t be overheard. “What’s going on?”
“I . . . I . . .” His voice broke.
“It’s okay, Luke, take a couple of deep breaths. Then talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
I opened the sliding-glass door that led into my office, went over to my altar. I lit my three candles—and asked only for wisdom about how to deal with Luke, Paul’s lost son.
“He threw me out,” Luke said. “He threw me the hell out.”
I didn’t know that Luke had moved back home. “The last I heard, Paul was in court with you.” I squeezed the bridge of my nose, could feel tension building in my skull. “Can you fill me in?”
And he did, chapter and verse in legalese that sailed over my head. But the bottom line—the human line—was that he needed a ride to his girlfriend’s place and could I help him out, please? Please?
Call your mother, dude. Call Flannigan. Call your messed-up old man. But I couldn’t say any of it. “Sure, as long as she doesn’t live in San Diego.”
He laughed, a small, broken sound. “She’s, like, twelve miles away. She can’t pick me up because she’s at work.”
“Where’re you?”
He was waiting at a gas station several miles up the road.
I hung up, told Clara and Marvin what was going on, said I’d be back shortly, and asked if they’d stick around till then? Keep an eye on things? They said sure, no problem, but Marvin looked irritated and followed me out of the kitchen.
“Sam, there comes a time when you have to draw a line, establish boundaries. He’s not your kid. Paul needs to deal with this.”
Marvin didn’t know that I’d turned my own father away from the gate at the bottom of the driveway, that I’d had him arrested at my daughter’s school. There were some things you didn’t tell even your closest friends.
“He’s a kid with a shit for a father. I don’t mind doing this. I’ll be back shortly.” I swept my purse off the hallway table and left.
En route to the gas station, I called Liza and explained what was going on. I was so sick of drama, all drama. Yet I wondered if at some level I craved the drama because of the contrast it offered. Was it a psychological aberration, an addiction like Mystery Manor was for Luke? Was I that messed up? Had my past damaged me irreparably?
Liza said she would make some calls, find out what was what. When I turned into the gas station, Luke was sitting on the curb between two vacuum machines, a backpack at his feet. He was emailing or texting on his phone. The headlights struck him, and he looked up, a handsome young man with his father’s wide jaw. His eyes and hair were the color of walnuts.
He stood, swung his pack over his shoulder, and I got out and walked over to him. “Hey, Luke. Where’s your car?”
“He wouldn’t let me take it. He . . . he said that until I can make the car payments, he’s keeping it. It’s his.”
“How’d you get here?”
“A taxi.”
“How come you didn’t have the cab drop you off at your girlfriend’s place to begin with?”
“I didn’t have enough money to get over there.” He sounded embarrassed. “I haven’t worked since before I went into rehab.”
We walked to my car, the night air wrapping around us, soothing me, but only briefly. Moments later, I pulled out onto the highway.
“Can’t your dad loan you some money?”
He laughed, but it was a hollow, bitter sound. “Yeah, sure. He could. But he won’t. He says his money is all tied up in investments, movies, yada, yada. Actually, his money is tied up with attorney fees and his ridiculously trumped-up lifestyle. He slapped twenty bucks on the table and threw me out.”
“What’s happening with your court case?”
“Dad, uh, paid off the rehab facility, and they dropped the charges. But my attorney says I’m probably going to do time for the credit card thing.”
“Thing? You mean the credit card fraud?”
“Yeah.” He twisted in the passenger seat like a restless little kid. “My life is pretty screwed up right now. Then again, that’s nothing new. I’ve been screwed up since I was born. My whole family is a mess.” He glanced at me, his smile forced, his face vampire pale.
“Where’s your mother?”
“San Francisco, living with some guy.”
“Can she help you out?”
“Sure. But she won’t.”
Pathetic. Maybe people should have to be licensed to become parents. Not that I’d always done such a great job, but I was learning. And I hoped that what I was learning would ensure that Isabella would never turn out like Luke, a poster child for the dysfunctional Hollywood kid.
Luke gazed out the passenger’s-side window. “After I got arrested, my mother called my old man relentlessly, blaming him for everything. He’s pissed because he had to hire a lawyer, pay off the rehab place, and she didn’t help out with any of those bills. Then again, she doesn’t have that kind of money. Neither does he, not really.” He shrugged, then keyed in the address for his girlfriend’s place on the dashboard GPS. “I can get a waiter job at the place where my girlfriend works.”
“When is your court date for the fraud charge?”
“A couple of months, my attorney said. No firm date yet. I’m out on bond. That’s the other thing that pissed him off. He had to put up the bond money, and it was substantial.”
I didn’t ask how much. But I suspected the bond money and Paul’s other recent expenses explained why I still hadn’t gotten the money he owed me.
For a few minutes, we didn’t say much. The silence felt weighted, uneasy, and I sensed that Luke had more to say. “Did you manage to get everything you needed from the house before he tossed you out? Clothes, your computer, whatever else you needed?” I asked.
“Yeah, Jim Finnegan helped. He drove me to the nearest shopping plaza and I took a cab from there. I don’t think he wanted to leave Dad alone.”
I felt something coming in what he was about to say, and I knew it wasn’t going to be good. I braced myself inwardly.
“My dad really has a grudge against you, Ms. DeMarco. It comes out when he’s been drinking, which is most of the time now. Tonight, I walked into his office and found him loading and unloading a gun, a nine-millimeter. When I asked him what the hell he was doing with a gun, he pointed at a photo of you on the wall, then aimed and fired, and said that if he couldn’t have you, no one else was going to have you, either. That’s what set this whole thing off. He and I had a really bad argument about how screwed up he is, and that did it.”
That image of Paul shooting at my photo was so vivid, I nearly drove off the road. “My God, he hates me that much?”
“He hates himself that much, Ms. DeMarco. Also, you gotta understand that his ego is huge. No woman he’s been in love with has ever dumped him. Other women have, but no one he has loved, at least not that I know of.”
The female voice in the GPS instructed me to turn left and continue for another half mile to the next turnoff. I couldn’t get that image out of my head, Paul shooting at my picture on the wall. Target practice. Bang, bang. Two shots to the center of the photo’s forehead. You’re dead, Sam. Anxiety twisted through me. It was one thing to live with this sort of anxiety durin
g the Tony years, when it was business as usual. But I was no longer that same person, and I disliked the familiarity of this anxiety, this coil of fear in the pit of my stomach.
“Don’t be surprised if he does something to sabotage the movie,” Luke said. “He won’t call it that, he may not even be conscious of what he’s doing, but that’s what it’ll be.” He shook his head and ran his hands over his jeans. “There’s a huge, dark shadow inside my dad.”
I knew all about those dark shadows in people—my mother, Vito, Tony, Alec, Paul. Was there something like that inside John? I didn’t sense it when I was with him, but in the past I’d been wrong about people about whom I felt it was best to assume there might be.
“My friend Jake is staying at my girlfriend’s place, too. After he nearly died from some STD he picked up and then went back to rehab and was released, his father threw him out. Your daughter’s lucky she has a mother like you, Ms. DeMarco. Compared to a lot of Hollywood types, you’re the most normal person I’ve met in a long time.”
I appreciated the compliment, but if I was normal, then nearly everyone around me was nuts.
“I appreciate your honesty, Luke.”
“You needed to know all this,” he said. “Maybe you should hire a bodyguard.”
“Was Jim Finnegan at the house when your father fired the gun at my photo?”
“Yeah. He barreled into the den, expecting to find dad or me dead. When he saw your photo on the wall, riddled with holes, he told my dad he needed professional help. They had a huge argument, and Jim stormed out of Dad’s office and told me to get my stuff, that he’d drive me to the shopping center.”
“You have arrived at your destination,” the GPS announced. I pulled over to the curb on a tree-lined street of apartment buildings.
Luke dug into his jacket pocket, withdrew twenty bucks. “For gas. I lied about not having enough money for a cab over here. He lent me a hundred bucks. I just wanted you to hear all this, in person.”
I gently pushed his hand away. “Keep it. I’m really grateful you took the time to tell me all this, Luke.”
He smiled sadly, fitted the strap of his pack over his shoulder, opened the door. We traded cell numbers, then he swung his legs out. Just then, the door to the apartment building opened and a tall, thin man hurried out. “Hey, Luke.”
“Hey, man.” Luke motioned him over to the car. “You need to meet a normal parent.”
I stepped out of the car, and when Luke introduced us, Jake thrust his hand across the Prius roof. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. Luke talks about you a lot.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Jake.” He was a cute kid with curly dark hair, but so emaciated he could’ve been a refugee from Auschwitz. “Luke says your dad tossed you out?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Me and Luke, we’re a couple of orphans. But I’ve got a job, and it’s going to be okay.”
“If you guys need anything, Luke has my number.”
“Thanks, Ms. DeMarco. We appreciate it.”
Lost souls. I sat there watching them climb the steps of the apartment building. Before they disappeared inside, Luke turned and waved.
I understood I had made the right decision about Vito, about keeping him away from Isabella. Bad enough that she’d lost her father, but it would be even worse if Vito was in our lives. All the toxicity and venom that Paul had unleashed on Luke would be like a spring day compared to what Vito’s presence might do to my daughter.
Liza called back as I drove away from the building. “Where’re you now?” she asked.
“I just dropped Luke off. Why?”
“Well, I had a rather disturbing conversation with Flannigan. He thinks that Paul is in total meltdown and that you should take steps to protect yourself. Those were his exact words, Sam.”
A chill licked its way up my spine. “Luke said the same thing.” I told her about my conversation with him.
“Christ, Sam. I’m going to call King and Prince and let them know about this.”
“No, don’t do that. He wouldn’t try anything on the set, in front of industry peers.” Except that wasn’t quite true. He’d exploded in front of Prince down by the swimming hole.
“A rational man wouldn’t. But it sounds like Paul’s no longer rational. If he tries to pull anything again, Sam, get a restraining order against him.”
“Prince would then look at me as someone who had compromised the film.”
“That means it would cost Gallery money to fire him. Paul must have gotten something to that effect in his contract with them. I’m going to mention this to Brian. He’s more grounded than George. Flannigan wants to quit. He’s looking for work elsewhere. He’s had it with Paul and has worked for him for sixteen years. I told him I’d hire him in a heartbeat.”
Exhaustion nearly overwhelmed me. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow. What time should I meet you to go shopping?”
She understood and didn’t press the issue. “Meet me at ten,” she replied, and named a shop in downtown Malibu.
• • •
That night, I lay awake thinking about what Paul might do, freaking myself out. A hundred different scenarios played out in my head, all of them equally real, viable. Were Liza and I—and Luke—the only ones who saw Paul as dangerous? George Prince seemed to think that Paul would behave because he knew he was walking on thin ice. I didn’t know what Brian King thought. It wasn’t as if he’d said anything to me. John certainly understood where Paul was coming from, but he was an investor in the movie, not a co-owner of the studio, and he didn’t make hiring and firing decisions. He made suggestions.
I heard the girls out by the pool, splashing around and laughing, and suddenly imagined Paul entering the house through the pool area, mowing down Isabella and her friends like one of the Charles Manson crazies. It terrified me more than the fact that after he mowed them down, he could rush into the house looking for me.
He wouldn’t be able to drive through the gate, but if he was determined enough, he could scale the wall. We didn’t have a dog, and I suddenly wished we did. Some huge, ferocious Rottweiler would do, for starters.
I quickly got out of bed and moved through the house, making sure the doors and windows were locked. I couldn’t engage the security system because the girls were still going in and out from Isabella’s room to the patio. But I flicked on the outside security lights and turned on the security camera at the gate.
Think you’ll scale the wall when you’re bathed in light, Paul?
Damn unlikely. I had lived with this kind of paranoia and fear during the years with Tony and his fists, and I hated it. But my situation now was vastly different from what it had been back then. I was older, wiser, and, yes, rich.
I could hire bodyguards and a security company to keep an eye on my property and Isabella, too, if that was what it took. I refused to cower in fear this time around and didn’t intend to allow any man to make me feel diminished or fearful.
Just the same, I allowed my body to absorb the cool night air, and looked around. Was Paul hiding in the bushes? Nuts, but there you had it, the way your head could play tricks on you when fear entered the picture.
Marvin came out of the guesthouse, no doubt won-
dering why all the security lights were on. I realized they probably shone through his bedroom window and felt bad that the lights had awakened him. He spotted me and trotted over in a short robe and bare feet.
“What’s with all the lights, Sam?”
“A bout of paranoia.” I recounted what I’d learned.
His eyes widened, and he ran his fingers through his hair, glanced down toward the gate, then at me. “You should let Brian know all this. He can fire Paul even if Prince won’t.”
Should I? I didn’t really know at this point. I was so badly shaken by what Luke had told me and so pissed off that I had become the object of Paul’s meltdown, I
doubted if I was thinking straight. “Wouldn’t that just give Paul another reason to detest me? Wouldn’t it make me look like some sort of diva?”
“Who gives a shit how it makes you look? The point is to protect yourself.”
“Marvin, I think Paul is in deep shit financially. If he’s fired from the film, I may never see that option money.”
“What good is option money if you’re dead, Sam?”
It was that word, dead, that followed me back into the house.
Dead—not afraid, not diminished, not humiliated or controlled, but dead.
Buried.
Six feet under.
I dimmed the security lights, except for the ones that shone directly on the gate, then sat at the kitchen table sipping hot tea, mulling over my options. I brought out my iPad and went online and Googled Malibu security companies. Nothing leaped out at me. I decided to ask Liza about it tomorrow. She would know whom to hire—for the house; for Isabella, so that she was never confronted again by Vito; and for me.
EigHT
Despite the fact that Isabella and her friends had stayed up half the night, they were ready by nine the next morning when Lauren’s mother, Becka, came by to take them to her house for the rest of the weekend.
“Thanks so much for having them over last night,” Becka said as she came into the house. “It gave Ben and me a chance to finish the script for the last show of the season. And, wow, it’s good!”
Their TV show had been called Breaking Bad meets House of Cards, an accurate description for a riveting sixty-minute drama on Showtime about a powerhouse couple in the TV business. Marvin, Liza, and I had watched the first two seasons.
The three of us came away convinced that it was all true—that Becka and her hub were the powerhouse couple, that he had a drug problem, that infidelity was the norm in their marriage. In fact, their agent was on Liza’s speed dial, and he confirmed it. Their lives were the creative fodder for the show.
Hello Hollywood Page 11
