by Sean Platt
Marina sighed. “I might make things more difficult.”
Keenan stared at the van floor as if it might offer a helpful suggestion.
An idea popped into Marina’s head — Veronica Barrow.
Veronica wasn’t just a longtime friend, she was also Torrino’s agent. If anyone could arrange a meeting between them, it would be her. Marina would likely have to grovel at His Majesty’s feet, but what choice did she have? If Torrino really had one of the vials, they needed to get it.
But Marina wondered how long she and Acevedo, or hell, she alone, would play ball with the government. Could she trust them with the vials? Not likely. And the brutish behavior from Keenan and Steroid Case in the driver’s seat didn’t exactly warm her to their cause.
Marina would go along with them, for now, but only because she had no other options. She wondered if Acevedo was thinking the same thing. She couldn’t help but think he was. He’d rolled over too easily. Yes, Keenan had punched her, and he’d threatened her with a gun, but still, he couldn’t think the agent would actually pull the trigger, could he?
“So,” Keenan said, “can you get us a meeting?”
“Well, first we have to assume he’s even here. He spends half his time in Paris, or one of his other homes out of the country. I have no idea where he is at this very moment.”
“Well, can you find out?” Keenan asked.
“Can I have my phone so I can call my friend, Veronica? If anyone can get us in to see Max, it would be her.”
Keenan fished her phone from his pants pocket, then slipped the phone into her right hand, the one not cuffed to the seat.
“Don’t call anyone else or tip her off to our reason for meeting.”
Marina rolled her eyes, sighing as she dialed Veronica.
Marina didn’t know what sorts of things Veronica had said to grease the wheels, but she’d managed to land them a same-day (and virtually unheard of) meeting with Torrino at his palatial estate.
Torrino had bought his LA mansion for $24 million three years before her father’s death, then spent another $6 million on renovation. The Montecito estate was just under fourteen thousand square feet and modeled after a Northern European mountain home. The estate had eight bedrooms, a dozen full and six half-baths, a 2,800-bottle wine cellar, two indoor swimming pools, an atrium, a thirty-six-seat movie theater, and a par-six golf course. Marina’s estate had different versions of all the same things, and still she found Torrino’s home ostentatious.
Before the meeting they had to get Keenan into some clothes other than his black government thug duds.
They stopped at T. Baker’s Fine Menswear, one of the nicer men’s clothing shops along the way, and managed to find a decent charcoal suit that fit relatively well off the rack, even if it was short on the cuffs and tight around Keenan’s muscular arms.
Luther parked the van just outside Torrino’s estate, where he waited with Acevedo while Marina and Keenan drove up to the guard’s gate in a late-model Infiniti.
Luther had outfitted them both with hidden microphones and earpieces so he could track the conversation. A block away, several field agents were on standby in case things went horribly awry. Marina wasn’t sure if they were Guardsmen, Homeland Security, or something else. But she hoped they didn’t get involved. Escalation would give the government a near certainty of getting the vials.
Marina was too smart to believe that she or Acevedo could ever return to a normal life after that.
Whether the government did something awful with the vials to the world as they knew it, or killed them for silence, the longer she stayed with Keenan the more Marina felt her old world slipping away.
After driving nearly a half mile, they came to the end of the drive, where a valet took their Infiniti. As they stepped toward the house, Marina silently prayed to her father.
Please, help me. I don’t know what to do. Please give me the wisdom to know the right path, and the courage to take it.
They were met at the front door by an older woman in a red dress. Her smile and perfect teeth couldn’t hide the contempt in her icy-brown eyes. Marina remembered the woman’s picture from the church’s dossier on Torrino. Her name was Viv Schwartz, Torrino’s right-hand woman and an old family friend. There was a rumor that he’d been sleeping with her since he was a teenager, even though he’d also been rumored to have bedded half of Hollywood’s young starlets.
“Hello, Marina,” Viv said through her teeth.
“Hello, Vivian.” Marina kissed her on the cheek.
“And this is?” Viv looked Keenan up and down, her eyes obviously liking what they saw.
“This is Mr. Edwards,” Marina lied, “my new head of security.”
“Ah,” Viv frowned, though her Botoxed forehead showed no wrinkles. “I’m sorry to hear about Steven. Absolutely tragic.”
“Yes,” Marina agreed, “such a waste.”
“Just this way.” Viv led them through the living room.
After walking down a long, warmly lit hallway, they stepped through two sliding glass doors leading to a large circular room. The room’s front half was made of stone walls and columns, giving the space an old, earthy look. Beyond that room terracottas and browns surrendered to modern glass walls and steel support beams running up to a high-pitched, glass-domed roof that looked nothing like the Old World estate outside.
In the center a perfect circle glistened, ten feet deep of brilliant-blue water. Lying on a raft, wearing just shorts and shades, body glistening with oil, was movie star, Max Torrino, lounging without a care in the world.
As they made their way along the wooden deck toward the pool, Viv cleared her throat for Torrino’s attention.
“Ah,” he said, taking off the shades and sitting up on the raft, “Marina! How are you?”
Torrino hopped off the raft, dove underwater, swam to the side of his pool, and ascended the steps, smiling his billion-dollar smile. He was young, perfectly sculpted, and had blue eyes that women, and a fair share of gay men, swooned over. While Marina definitely found him attractive, his personality, his true personality, was toxic enough to make him repugnant.
“I’m good.” Marina shook his hand.
Torrino didn’t acknowledge Keenan, which didn’t surprise Marina at all. Keenan was seen as the help, and therefore unworthy of acknowledgment. Before she’d come up in the church, Torrino had viewed her in the same dismissive way.
“So, what brings you to Montecito?” Torrino walked to one of the lounge chairs along the pool’s side, grabbed a thick white towel, and began to dry himself.
“Is it possible to speak in private?”
Marina didn’t need to look at Viv to know the woman was fixing her with a polar-cap stare.
Torrino’s face faltered for a moment before he returned the movie star smile to his face. “Sure, we can talk alone. Come on, I’ll show you my new office.”
He finished drying off, grabbed a robe from the bar in the back of the room, then led them through another pair of sliding glass doors along a hallway also decorated with giant slabs of stone.
The estate, downstairs at least, was a beautiful blend of past and present. The furniture was mostly custom, except for the Louise Bradley, Fleming & Howland, and Parnian pieces that Marina hated herself for admiring.
They headed up the stairs, then down a long hallway toward the west side of the house where they stopped in front of a pair of large ebony wooden doors carved with ornate flourishes.
Torrino opened the door and entered first. Marina followed into a room the size of two of her master bedrooms sandwiched together.
If downstairs was past meets present, Torrino’s upstairs office was future modern, with black metals blended with rich dark woods, a plush crimson carpet, and five Bang & Olufsen monitors mounted on the walls. One of the monitors — not much more than a sheet of glass surrounded by steel piping— showed a 24/7 cable news channel feed while the other four monitors, two on the back wall and one on each side, al
l showed what looked to be glowing purple lava flowing into black before melting into other colors. Marina wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be art or some sort of screensaver.
She had expected to see movie posters of Torrino’s many hits, or perhaps his two Oscars prominently featured but was surprised that the room was absent of any declarations of his stardom. Instead, a long recessed bookcase ate the bottom half of the back wall, though Marina couldn’t decode a single title from where she stood. She wondered if Torrino had actually read any of the books, or if they were only for show.
As Keenan trailed her, Torrino put a hand on Ed’s chest and looked at Marina. “I thought you wanted to talk alone.”
“It’s OK,” she said to Keenan, hoping he’d not cause a scene … yet.
Keenan nodded, stepped outside the door, and said, “I’ll be right out here.”
Torrino closed the door on Keenan’s face, then led Marina toward a massive desk in the room’s center — empty save for a silver laptop with two chairs on either side of it.
This is his meeting space, cold, dark, fancy. Just like him.
Torrino sat with his back to the rear wall, and Marina sat opposite him.
He folded his hands in front of him, smiling. “So, what do you want, Marina Harmon?”
She wasn’t sure which way to go: slow and smooth talk him into giving her what she wanted or short and direct, hoping to earn his respect. Torrino was too used to the Hollywood game, and was far better at it than Marina could ever hope to be. Feeding his ego would backfire, and likely piss him off.
“I know you’re busy,” she said, “so I’ll cut to the chase. I need the vial my father gave you.”
“The vial?” Torrino feigned ignorance fast enough to fool probably anybody else. But not Marina.
“Yes, the vial my father asked you to hold onto. I need it.”
“Ah,” he said, “the vial. Wow, it’s been so long. I’d almost forgotten about that old thing.”
Torrino maintained eye contact even as his face went through the motions of trying to con her. Marina could tell he was fishing for a reaction, perhaps trying to judge the vial’s true value — if he didn’t already know.
She said nothing, waiting for him to nudge the conversation.
Torrino leaned back in his chair, crossing his fingers on the desk, also saying nothing. He could barely conceal the smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He was enjoying this moment too much for Marina’s comfort. She wondered how much crow he expected her to chew on, and what he’d demand in exchange?
“Tell me,” he said, “why do you want the vial?”
“My father asked me to get it.”
“Really?” Torrino said, thick eyebrows arching, his smile spreading wider. “Because I specifically remember him asking me to hold onto it shortly before he died. He said he couldn’t trust anyone else. Including you.”
Marina was surprised by his directness. She figured they’d dance around the issue a while longer, perhaps he’d maintain a false sincerity throughout the meeting. But no, Torrino was laying his cards on the table.
“Yes, well he’s since asked me to get the vials.”
“Vials?” Torrino said, seeming genuinely surprised. “So there’s more than one? How many are there?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
A small laugh, then, “No, of course not. Yet you expect me to hand mine over.”
“Yes, Mr. Torrino.”
“Tell me, Marina, when exactly did your father ask you to get the vials? And why didn’t he put something in his will regarding this supposed wish?”
“He asked me a few weeks ago.”
Torrino broke into a laugh, not bothering to hide his disbelief or contempt. “A few weeks, you say?”
“Yes, he came back and said that we’re all in danger, and that I had to collect the vials.”
“And do what with them? What kind of danger?”
Both Acevedo and Keenan had said to tell Torrino nothing. He was too big, with too many connections. Any hope of containing the story — the real story, not the media-hyped, random-acts-of-violence story — would be dead if they told one of the top five movie stars in the world.
She shook her head.
“Ah, not at liberty to say, right?”
Marina nodded.
“I always felt like this vial was something very powerful. Something from the Great All-Seeing. But your father wouldn’t confirm it. I think perhaps he thought I might open the vial if he did. And he was right, I might have. But I wanted to prove myself to him, prove that he was right to trust in me. So I never opened it. But man, it was sooo hard not to. Just being near the vial makes me feel so damned alive!”
Torrino slapped his chest to punctuate his virility. “A lot of people laugh at us, laugh at our beliefs, even though they don’t know half of what we truly believe. But I never doubted your father, Marina. Never. Can you say the same?”
“No, you’re right.” She shook her head. “I did have my doubts. But I think that strengthens my faith.”
“Yeah,” he said with a light laugh. Marina wasn’t sure if Torrino was agreeing with her, or calling bullshit.
“Please,” she said, “I wouldn’t ask you for the vial, but my father said I had to get them, and that the world was counting on me to do this … for him.”
Torrino ran a hand through his still-wet hair and massaged his temples as if agonizing over her request. Marina could practically smell his refusal.
He stood and circled his desk, then paused to Marina’s left, just inches away, looking down at her as he leaned his ass against the desk’s corner. Marina’s eyes drifted down his sculpted abs, stopping at the large bulge in his shorts.
She looked back up, too quickly, at his eyes.
He smiled.
Smug bastard!
He crossed his hands over his chest, casually, not bothering to hide his erection. It took a certain bravado to sit and insult someone sitting eye level with your balls. She could easily hurt him for the way he was treating her, but he knew she wouldn’t. He reveled in that knowledge, letting his cock stick straight out, daring her to hit him or move away.
“You know, I always liked you.” Torrino stared down the front of Marina’s shirt at her cleavage.
She didn’t bother to adjust, refusing to surrender in any way.
“And,” he continued, “I think your father wanted you and me to be together. He tried talking me into dating you a few times, but I always felt like it might be too weird. He thought of me like a son, you know?”
“Yes,” Marina said, wondering where he was going.
“He took me under his wing after my first movie, when everyone was calling me the next big thing. Stardom had already gone to my head, and though I didn’t know it I was vulnerable, in with a bad crowd, and soon strung out on too many drugs. My agent was a Don King of corruption, and I had an army of hangers-on all dragging me down. They were, as your father said, ‘suffocating my star.’”
He continued. “But your father saw me as more than a flash in the pan. He saw my potential and helped mold me into the man I am today.”
“You’ve done very well for yourself,” Marina said, sincerely. “I know he was proud of you.”
“Yes, yes he was. He was a far better father than my own deadbeat piece of shit, that’s for sure. Josh Harmon was the father I deserved.”
Marina nodded. “He was a good man.”
“Yes,” Torrino agreed. “And he was a far better father than you deserved.”
Marina stifled her anger. Still, she could feel her cheeks burning. If she didn’t need the vial, she would’ve stood and slapped Torrino across the face, or maybe kneed him in the groin.
Instead she kept her mouth shut, choking on crow.
He continued, not daring to let up. “You were always such a cunt.”
Torrino kept his eyes on her the entire time, like a monster toying with prey.
Marina knew for a fact that he’d
been violent with a few ex-girlfriends; it was all in the dossiers that the church kept on anyone with power. The same dossier asserting that without the church’s programs, Torrino would be a raging sociopath. Whoops, too late. It was the sort of thing Marina could’ve leaked to the press if she were a petty person, but she’d only play that card if she had to.
For now, she kept saying nothing.
“Your father didn’t deserve you either. You were, or rather are, a cancer in the church. There are people looking to have you removed, especially after this whole stink with your former head of security dying under mysterious circumstances. You know this, right?”
Marina didn’t have a chance to answer before Torrino barreled forward.
“Tell me, did he do it?”
“Who? Did what?”
“Your new head of security, this agro guy you came in with. You hired, or promoted him rather quickly, eh? So soon after your lover’s death. So, is this your new man? Is he the one that did that to your face? Or was it Steven? Ah, I get it. Steven punched you, and this new guy killed Steven. That sound right? I bet Papa would be proud, you fucking whore.”
Whore?!
Marina stood, her face on fire and heart pounding out of her chest.
Torrino held his position as she stood, just inches from Marina. She had to push the chair back in order not to bump into him. He seemed like he expected her to fall back, afraid.
She’d stand her ground, screw him.
He was about an inch shorter than her, maybe two, and it thrilled her to know that he noticed. Marina tried to stand straighter as she bore down on Torrino, hoping her strength was making his cock flaccid like the tiny man he was.
“I always knew you hated women.”
“Not all women, just whores like you who don’t know their place.”
“My place?” she said, getting in his face. “My place?!”
“Yeah,” he said, refusing to back down, eyes red, glaring into hers. “When your father died, you were supposed to go off and enjoy his money, let one of the other leaders take over the day-to-day operations, repair some of the damage you were already starting to do. But nooo, you had to go whole hog with your plans to sully the church and turn it into some bullshit liberal charity, throwing money to fucking mongrels who don’t work for a thing.”
