But as Joshua Greene stood up, tugged his jacket down to hang as best it could, and fixed Lola with a cold hard stare from behind the lenses of his hundred-dollar glasses, he assumed the authority of the whole of New York State. Suddenly, he was no longer a tubby little man in a shiny grey suit from Men’s Wearhouse, but a prosecutor with the weight of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office behind him.
‘Ms Fitzgerald!’ Joshua Greene said sternly, and Lola jumped. For a moment her eyes met her mother’s – Suzanne was pale with worry, clinging onto India’s hand – and Suzanne tried to paint a smile of reassurance for her daughter.
Lola quickly averted her gaze. If she looked at her mother for more than a second, she’d burst into tears out of sheer fright.
‘You’ve already admitted to this court that you defied its orders when you skipped bail, isn’t that so?’ Joshua Greene said.
‘I didn’t actually skip bail, ’ Lola said weakly. ‘I mean, I did, but I came back. I wasn’t trying to run away.’
‘We’ll talk more about the circumstances under which you left the country later, ’ Joshua Greene said with relish. ‘Obviously, you had help in skipping’ – he emphasised the word – ‘bail.’
Oh my God, Evie! Lola realised in panic. She had been so caught up in her own desperate situation that she hadn’t thought how badly this would reflect on her accomplice. Evie had lent Lola her passport – well, Lola could always say that she’d stolen it. But Evie had covered for Lola when the police came by the apartment – that was undeniable. Evie could be prosecuted too.
Through a huge force of will, Lola kept her eyes fastened on Joshua Greene’s face. She wouldn’t look to the far right of the courtroom, where Evie and Lawrence sat in the last row, discreetly, in order to avoid the scrutiny of the many reporters present. Evie had pulled her hair back under a beret, and was dressed in dowdy layers of sweaters over a pair of jeans, managing to look nondescript enough so that no one would recognise her as Diamond the showgirl, or Evie Lopez, Ben Fitzgerald’s scandalously young mistress.
If they know she’s here, they might arrest her right away! Lola thought frantically, determined not to give away Evie’s presence.
‘So tell me, Ms Fitzgerald, ’ Joshua Greene was saying with undisguised relish, ‘since you’ve already shown yourself utterly contemptuous of the rules and regulations of this court and the State of New York, why should anyone here believe a word you say from now on?’
Lola opened her lips to answer, but Greene pressed straight on.
‘Were you really going to Italy to convince Mr Scutellaro to change his story?’ Joshua Greene demanded. ‘Or were you travelling there to engineer the circumstances by which Mr Scutellaro met his tragic death?’
Lola gasped in shock.
‘Your Honour!’ Simon Poluck leaped to his feet so fast Lola heard his chair bounce back against the wooden divider behind it.
‘Mr Greene!’ the judge snapped. ‘You try that once more, you’ll have an automatic mistrial on your hands!’
‘I’m sorry, Your Honour—’ Joshua Greene started.
‘The jury will disregard the entire last question by ADA Greene, ’ the judge said, turning to the jury box, her forehead so crinkled with annoyance that it looked like corrugated cardboard. ‘That is a line of speculation which does not enter into this trial in any way.’
‘Duly noted, Your Honour, ’ Joshua Greene said.
But the damage had been done. Lola could see it in the jury’s faces. They thought she was a double murderess. That she had killed her father, and then gone to Italy to arrange a hit on the man who was going to testify against her.
She was going to be found guilty of murder.
Across the courtroom, Evie’s big brown eyes were wide with fear. Like Lola, she had been petrified that Lola would give her away somehow, that she would be arrested on the spot for having helped Lola leave the country. And just because it hadn’t happened yet didn’t mean it wasn’t coming.
Evie wasn’t sure what the penalties were for helping someone accused of murder skip bail, but she sure as hell didn’t want to find out.
Heart racing, she eased herself out of her seat, motioning to Lawrence to stay put; someone needed to stay, to hear what was going on in the courtroom. Evie was too agitated to sit still. She slipped out through the doors at the back, her heart racing, as the prosecutor thundered at Lola:
‘You killed your father, didn’t you? You stuck a needle full of insulin in him, knowing that it was sure to kill him!’
It sounded as if Lola had started to cry. Evie couldn’t stick around for that, either. The doors swung shut behind her and she stood there for a little while in the wide echoing corridor, staring straight ahead of her but seeing nothing, not the long sweeping shiny marble staircase, the panelled walls. Nothing but Lola’s face on the stand, crumpled with misery and desperation.
And the stony faces of the jury, who seemed all too clearly to have made up their minds already that Lola was guilty as charged.
That bitch Carin is going to get away with murder, Evie thought bitterly, bile rising in her throat, so sour and acrid that it gagged her and made her cough. She looked around for a water fountain, her eyes watering, and crossed the hall to the nearest one, drinking deeply.
She straightened up, wiping her mouth, and then her head jerked back in shock.
Because, standing right in front of her, leering down at her slight figure, was Rico, his hands shoved in his pockets, his crotch pushed forward, his black eyes hard and full of menace.
‘Well, hey, babe, ’ he said.
And his lips slid back from his teeth in a predatory smile.
‘Get the fuck away from me, ’ Evie said between clenched teeth.
Despite herself, she took a step back. Even with his hands safely in his pockets, Rico’s aura was aggressive. His stare was horribly familiar: she found herself remembering with vivid, skin-crawling clarity the way he had stared at her naked body in the bedroom of her penthouse after he’d pulled the towel off her.
Rico was like the worst type of client she’d ever had to deal with in the Midnight Lounge. Only there, she’d had bouncers looking out for her to some degree. Making sure, at least, that she didn’t get knocked around so badly that she got marked, or so beat up that she couldn’t get back onstage for another dance.
Alone with Rico, without even a bouncer at the door, Evie wouldn’t put money on her chances of avoiding either or both fates.
She swivelled around, looking to see if she could get past him.
‘Oh no, babe. Don’t you walk away from me, ’ he said, smiling as if he wanted to sink his teeth into her. ‘Wait till you see what I got in my pockets for you.’
‘Eeww, ’ Evie said. ‘I’ve got no interest in your disgusting—’
And then her voice tailed off as his hands, the skin bluish and stained with the fading jail tattoos, emerged slowly from his trouser pockets, and Evie saw the glittering diamond pasties dangling between his fingers.
She stared at him, lost for words, as his smile deepened.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ he said, grinning now. ‘You want these back, don’tcha?’
He stepped towards her, and this time she stood her ground. It was all she could do not to grab for the pasties and try to run.
‘You worked hard for these little babies, ’ he said, sneering at her. ‘Jeez, when I think of the state of Mr F before he kicked the bucket . . . he was gross, man. Really gross. Should be a treat for you to take on a hot stud like me.’ He winked at her. ‘Hey, when I think about it, you should be paying me, babe.’
Evie rolled her eyes.
‘So here’s the deal, ’ Rico continued. ‘I got these off Carin. The stuff I got on her, she owes me big time. And she didn’t want these. I mean, with all her money? What’s she gonna do, break ’em down and make ’em into earrings or somethin’? So I got ’em as a bonus.’
He put one of the pasties back into his trouser pocket, keeping t
he other one wrapped through his fingers.
‘I saw you come out, and I grabbed the chance, ’ Rico said. ‘So here’s what’s gonna happen. You come into the men’s room with me now’ – his free hand made an unmistakeable gesture towards his crotch – ‘and you do what I tell you to do. And you get this one.’ He held up the small twinkling circle of diamonds. ‘Then, in a few days, I call you, set up a meet. You come over, we have a big party. I mean, big. All night long, whatever I say. You dance, you sing, you fucking stand on your head if I say so. And then you get number two.’ He patted his pocket. ‘You get your pair. They’re worth way more together than apart, Carin says.’
Evie’s eyes were fixed on the shine and twinkle of the diamonds, the way they caught and refracted the light in gleams of red and blue and clear pale green.
‘How do I know I can trust you?’ she asked, her voice sharp.
He grinned.
‘You don’t. But look at it this way.’ He nodded down the corridor. ‘You come with me now, it’s gonna be a quickie. And then, you get this for being a good girl. So you figure, hey, maybe Rico’s a man of his word, and when I call you up, you get your ass over to where I tell you.’ He licked his lips. ‘Believe me, Carin’s a money pipeline. You play your cards right, you’ll make a shitload of dough from me. I like the idea of ploughing Mr F’s fields, you know what I mean? Having me a pricy whore just like he did.’
He grinned at her.
‘I’ll check there’s no one in the john. You wait outside till I call you in, OK?’
He walked off down the corridor, his wide shoulders rolling, his legs slightly apart because his over-pumped, steroid-swollen thighs were rubbing against each other.
And Evie followed.
It’s just a few minutes, a voice in her head was repeating. Just a few minutes. You’ve done worse. If you get both of those pasties – they cost Benny a hundred grand, so you could maybe get forty for them – I mean, forty grand! That really is a deposit on an apartment! With what you’re pulling in from Maud’s, you could have a decent place to live that isn’t a rat-infested illegal loft in Bushwick!
Forty grand, Evie. Forty grand.
Somewhere you don’t have roach motels in every corner. Where you don’t hear the rats scurrying behind the walls as you go to sleep at night.
Don’t think about what you’re doing. Just think about the forty grand.
Rico had cased out the men’s room. He stood in the doorway, beckoning. And Evie’s feet were moving. It was with a weird, out-of-body sensation that she felt herself propelled towards him. She watched, as if she were floating above herself, as she walked through the open men’s room door.
Rico was in the last stall, standing in front of the toilet seat, his trousers dropped to reveal a tight shiny pair of briefs. As she reached him, he hooked his thumbs in the waistband of the underpants, pulling them down.
‘See?’ Rico leered triumphantly. ‘He likes you already! You’re lucky, bitch.’ He looked down complacently at his crotch. ‘He don’t just go for everyone, you know.’
OK, if he’s hard already that means he’ll come faster, Evie told herself. This’ll be over before you know it. And what’s the worst that can happen? So you do what he wants and he doesn’t give you the diamonds. It won’t be the first time you got shafted by a guy.
Hah. That’d be funny, if it were happening to someone else.
She took a good hard look at Rico, as if he were a john in the club and she were assessing his spending power. His custom-tailored suit had clearly been very pricy. Ditto his shoes. So more than likely that Rolex dangling from his wrist, clearly visible as he wrapped his hand round his penis, was actually real, rather than the Canal Street knock-off she’d thought it was. Rico was rolling in money. Being Carin Fitzgerald’s hatchet man must pay very well indeed.
Remember what he said about wanting a pricy whore, just like Benny had? He likes that he’s paying a lot for this. He’s getting off on paying you a ton of money to humiliate you by making you suck him off in the men’s bathroom.
When you’d worked in the Midnight Lounge for a couple of years, you learned how to read the kind of man who paid for female services. Evie looked into Rico’s beady dark eyes and knew that he wouldn’t try to cheat her after she’d done what he told her to do. This was all about his ego, about his taking over Benny’s girl and paying what Benny had paid for her. This was him trying to take Benny’s place.
Forty grand, Evie. Think what that’ll buy.
Rico snapped his fingers and pointed to the tiled floor directly in front of him.
Evie’s hand was still on the scratched Formica-covered door of the disabled stall. She hesitated for a moment. All she’d need to do was turn and walk out. Back to the safety of the corridor, the courtroom, her seat beside Lawrence.
Lawrence, who she wasn’t even seeing any more, who she didn’t even have to feel guilty about . . .
‘Good girl, ’ Rico purred as she sank to her knees. She winced at the cold hard tile, which was already cutting into her kneecaps.
Have to make this fast, she told herself grimly.
‘Do it just like you did Mr F, ’ Rico instructed, as Evie pushed her hair back from her face. ‘I got a billionaire’s whore, I wanna billionaire’s blow job! Here.’ He pulled one of the pasties out of his pocket and dangled it in her face. ‘See that? You make it worth it, bitch, and it’s all yours.’
Don’t think about it, Evie. Just do it, said the little voice in her head.
And Evie reached out and took hold of Rico’s cock, guiding it to her mouth.
Chapter 41
‘Miss Fitzgerald? Do you need to take a break?’
The judge was leaning sideways, swivelling her head to get a full-on look at Lola, who was sobbing into a tissue which by now was patchy with damp sooty blotches. When Dior had been testing its high-tech Diorshow Black Out waterproof mascara and guaranteeing it as 100 per cent smudge-proof, it clearly hadn’t given samples to defendants on trial for murdering their own parents.
‘I don’t, thank you, ’ she said to the judge, and saw Simon Poluck, seated at the defendant’s table, give a little nod of approval at the courtesy. He had been stressing all along that the better manners she showed, the less likely it would be that a jury would believe that she was a killer.
Lola looked over at the jury.
‘I can keep going, ’ she said firmly, suppressing the little catch in her voice. She was scared that if she asked for a break from Joshua Greene’s cross-examination, it would only be worse when he started up again. For the past forty-five minutes he had been worrying her as relentlessly as a dog with a bone full of marrow, finding new ways to ask her the same questions, trying to break her down.
No matter how many times Simon Poluck barked:‘Your Honour, this question has been asked and answered!’ Joshua Greene would come at Lola from a different angle, his eyes glinting menacingly from behind his glasses, taking her through every detail of that last visit to her father, throwing in comments about her extravagant lifestyle, doing what even she could see was an utterly successful job of painting her to the jury as a depraved, money-hungry socialite desperate enough to do anything, anything at all, to ensure that her ‘money tap’, as he called it, was turned back on.
‘Miss Fitzgerald?’ Joshua Greene snapped. ‘Are you ready to answer the question now? I’ll remind you of it, shall I?’ he said, striding back towards the witness box. ‘I was asking you where you went after you were forced to settle your hotel bill at 60 Thompson? When the manager effectively made it clear to you that, without a functioning credit card, you would no longer be welcome to stay there?’
‘She didn’t quite say that, ’ Lola said weakly.
‘So where did you go, Miss Fitzgerald?’ Joshua Greene persisted.
Lola opened her mouth to say that she had packed her bags and gone straight to the Plaza. And then she met the prosecutor’s eyes, and the lie died on her lips. From the triumph in his stare, li
ke a cat about to pounce on a mouse that has just made the fatal tactical mistake of going left rather than right, she realised suddenly that the prosecution knew about her brief, abortive attempt to sneak into Madison’s apartment, the bribe of her beautiful lemon sable wrap to Mirko.
This was going to make her look terrible. Bribing a doorman with the clothes off her back. Nothing could make it so clear that, before her father’s death, Lola had been utterly and completely at her wits’ end. This pathetic little story would demonstrate with merciless clarity that Lola had really had absolutely nowhere else to turn besides the charity of a former fiancé who might decide to withdraw it from one moment to the next.
It was the biggest motive possible. Financial desperation.
She darted a frantic glance towards Simon Poluck, hoping against hope that he would have some objection that would save her from having to answer the question. Joshua Greene, watching every fleeting emotion that played across her face, scanning it with the experience of years spent in courtrooms, cross-examining reluctant defendants, smiled nastily, his round chubby features contorting into a grimace of satisfaction.
But Simon Poluck wasn’t looking back at her. He was huddled over to his second chair, who was squatting down by the side of the table, whispering something to him, her eyes wide and staring, one hand tapping convulsively on the leg of the table for emphasis.
Joshua Greene’s smile deepened as he saw Lola floundering, hoping for a rescue that wasn’t going to come.
‘Miss Fitzgerald, I’m going to have to press you! Will you please answer the question – where did you go when you were forced to leave the 60 Thompson hotel?’ he thundered.
‘Your Honour!’ Simon Poluck jumped to his feet. ‘We have just been presented with new evidence that is so explosive that I couldn’t wait a moment longer to bring it to your attention—’
Divas Page 41
