Star Island

"For Larissa's DUI, asshole. The Idol?"

  "No problem."

  "I heard that before. Tomorrow morning. Nine sharp, the usual place."

  "Which is?"

  "Don't pull this shit with me, Claudius. I ain't got the patience," said Fremont. "I told you, there's a man in Bogota said I can call him for a favor anytime. Is that how you want to play?"

  "See you tomorrow."

  "That's more like it." Fremont hung up, thinking: He better show up.

  At the other end of the line, a person who was not Bang Abbott smiled as he pocketed the tangerine BlackBerry. Chemo had no intention of meeting with Fremont Spores. To ease his boredom, the bodyguard had been answering Abbott's calls, listening to the tipsters' hype and then casually agreeing to whatever fee they demanded. It was an amusing window into a realm of specialized bottom-feeding that was unfamiliar to Chemo. He saw no point in offering up the photographer's new cell number because, after tonight, the greedy sleazeball would be permanently out of business.

  Turning back to his National Geographic, Chemo got immersed in the surgery article and lost track of time. An hour slipped away before he remembered that he'd left Abbott and Cherry alone in a bedroom. They were still there, passed out in the sack, when Chemo charged through the door.

  The corpulent paparazzo lay facedown and nude, except for his baseball cap and Bluetooth earpiece. The Nikons hung from their straps on the bedpost. The former Cheryl Gail Bunterman was wearing a jade-green kimono and one snakeskin cowboy boot. The bodyguard took a wrist and felt for a pulse. She stirred, blinked her eyes and lifted her head.

  "Not you," she mumbled.

  Chemo said, "Congratulations. A new low."

  "Like I'd seriously do Claude again. No way." She cast a drowsy smirk at her snoring bedmate. "What a freakin' lightweight," she said.

  Chemo jerked his thumb toward the bathroom. "Go clean up."

  "Yo, I didn't even blow the dude. I swear!"

  Yo? Chemo had forgotten to put that one on the cattle-prod list.

  Cherry sat up and yawned with a simian grimace. "God, my hair's a disaster."

  "Not compared to the rest of you."

  "By the way--Tanny's 'happy pills'? I snuck down the hall and found 'em," she said smugly. "So there."

  "How many did you feed Abbott?"

  Cherry smiled to herself. "Three or four. I dunno."

  "Great. I'll be here all goddamn night." Chemo used the sheathed head of his lawn trimmer to jostle the inert photographer, who snuffled but did not awaken.

  From the folds of the bedcovers Cherry uncovered the bottle of Grey Goose, which was empty. She was too woozy to whine about it. Chemo watched her gimp in the oversized boot toward the john. She closed the door and vigorously commenced to vomit, ripe woofs echoing off the Italian marble.

  Chemo took out Abbott's BlackBerry and punched in Janet Bunterman's number.

  "We're done here," he said.

  "Already?"

  "Way done. Come get her."

  The combination of alcohol, olives and pills adversely affected Bang Abbott's sleep pattern. He dreamed that a shark was chewing his ass off. A flurry of young women on the beach were cheering and taking pictures. They all wore little black dresses. Bang Abbott was struggling frantically to get out of the water but the shark wouldn't let go of his butt cheeks--a grisly replay of the attack on Terence Hughes, the unlucky tourist who'd unwittingly waded into Bang Abbott's chum slick at Clearwater Beach all those years ago. Hughes had wound up with 179 stitches and Abbott got a Pulitzer.

  The paparazzo didn't often suffer nightmares, and this one was vivid. The fiery, coiling pain he experienced seemed authentic, and largely unbuffered by the Lortabs that he'd gobbled idiotically on a dare from Cherry Pye. When he twisted around to punch the dogged shark with both fists, that hurt, too. Hurt like a mother.

  Help me! Bang Abbott cried out in his sleep.

  But the babes on shore just kept laughing and snapping photos with their candy-colored cell phones. Meanwhile, the shark made a high-pitched humming sound as it munched his salty flesh.

  I'm bleeding! wailed the photographer.

  And he was.

  "Wake up, Slim. Let's get this over with."

  Bang Abbott opened one sticky eyelid and saw Chemo looming like a scabrous buzzard. The rotor stem of the weed whacker was still spinning. Bang Abbott saw that his own knuckles were skinned, and a crimson saucer-sized wound glistened on the vast jellied slope of his right buttock. With a moan he rolled over on his back and yanked the bedcovers up to his neck. The Bluetooth fell out on the pillow.

  "Why'd you slice me?" he bleated.

  "'Cause you tried to ace me out of the action." Chemo propped the motorized yard tool on the headboard. In his good hand rested Bang Abbott's Colt .38.

  "What the hell's going on? Where's Cherry?" the paparazzo asked. He had no memory of getting laid but he was reluctant to rule out the possibility. Why else would he have removed his clothes?

  "She's back at the hotel with mummy and daddy," the bodyguard said.

  Bang Abbott fought to clear his senses. He correctly perceived that his bold scheme was in jeopardy.

  "Anything bad happens to me," he warned, "Cherry's done."

  Chemo gave him that basilisk stare. "Nice try, dickbrain."

  The photographer sat up, bracing on his elbows. His head felt like a cracked cinder block. "Those toilet shots I took of her double--with the needle? Anything happens to me, those pictures are all over the fucking Internet. Cherry is finito."

  Chemo put the gun under his good arm and from his shirt pocket took out Abbott's replacement cell phone, the one that had been used to photograph Ann DeLusia holding the dirty hypodermic at the Marriott.

  "You mean these pictures?" the bodyguard said.

  Bang Abbott sagged. The bastard had gone through his pants while he was passed out.

  "You keep losin' your phones," said Chemo. "That gets expensive."

  The photographer hastily composed himself. "You can toss that stupid thing in the ocean, for all I care. I already e-mailed the junkie shots to my laptop, which is back in L.A. There's an editor at the Eye, he doesn't hear from me by noon tomorrow, he's sending a guy out to my apartment."

  Chemo didn't seem concerned. He appeared to be thinking. He tucked away Abbott's cell and again drew out the pistol.

  "I got two sets of orders," he said. "First: The Lark sisters, they're gonna put out a PR story saying it was Cherry--not the actress--who got snatched by a maniac and held prisoner while he made kinky pictures. The stuff you took today, they're gonna leak a few choice shots just in time for the tour. The idea, I'm guessin', is to juice ticket sales. And if you don't shut up and get on board, the Buntermans run to the cops and have you busted for kidnapping. Then, while you're sittin' in jail, they sue your fat ass in civil court."

  Bang Abbott could scarcely absorb what he was hearing.

  Chemo went on: "But Mr. Lykes, he's got a different plan. He wants me to kill you."

  "No! What?"

  "I'm supposed to make it look like a suicide. The way it'll come out, Cherry escaped from your hideout and ran away. You knew the law was gonna track you down and lock you up for a thousand years, so--pow!--you capped yourself. Remember that fuckwit who murdered Versace? That's how he bought it, shot himself dead while the cops were closing in," Chemo said. "Only yours would be what they call 'assisted.'"

  "I don't believe this." Bang Abbott was trembling. His eyes cut to the handgun--he was fairly sure the bodyguard had emptied all the bullets into the clown painting.

  Chemo delivered another hair-raising smile. "No, Slim, I saved one round for you."

  "Big mistake!" The photographer jabbed the air with his bandaged twig of a forefinger. "You kill me, all those junkie shots go viral and Cherry's new album is DOA. The tour? What motherfucking tour? Don't you get it?"

  "You're the one doesn't get it," said the bodyguard.

  At that moment, his brain fog cleared and Bang A
bbott realized that Chemo was pure criminal, a freelancer who couldn't care less what happened to Cherry Pye's career. Bang Abbott believed he might save his own hide if he could just get the man invested.

  "How much is Lykes paying you?"

  Chemo said, "Eighty grand."

  "Get serious." Bang Abbott squirmed; the bloody laceration on his rear end was starting to stick to the sheets. "I'm worth twice as much to you alive. Three times as much."

  "This oughta be good. Keep talkin'."

  "You see the pictures? They're amazing," Bang Abbott said. "Take a look."

  Chemo stuck the gun in his belt. He grabbed one of Abbott's Nikons and sat down in a high-backed chair to scope out the lowlife's work. He was surprised by how good the shots had turned out--even those with the perforated clown painting. Through the eye of Abbott's camera, Cherry looked infinitely more interesting than she really was. Someone who'd never spent any time with her might conclude from the photographs that she was actually deep and mysterious.

  "I'll be damned," Chemo said.

  Bang Abbott's hopes skied. He was fully committed to talking his way out of being executed.

  "Lost Angel. What do you think?" he asked the bodyguard. "For the title, I mean."

  "Title of what?"

  "My book of Cherry's portraits--Lost Angel. Or maybe Doomed Angel."

  Chemo looked doubtful. "You got enough of her to fill a whole book?"

  "Plenty," said Bang Abbott. What he didn't have was a publisher--yet. "First I'll sell a couple of the shots to some upmarket rag like Maxim or maybe W. You know, just to give the world a taste. Then, soon as things heat up, I'll put the book project out for bids in New York."

  "Tell me again why I shouldn't just shoot you and get the money from Mr. Lykes."

  "Because I'll cut you in for forty percent of whatever I make, and I intend to make a bundle."

  Chemo said, "I can see you never had a partner like me before."

  "Fine. Fifty-fifty."

  "Or I could just whack you anyway and sell the pictures myself."

  Bang Abbott produced a trenchant laugh, which wasn't easy because he was terrified. His sphincter had puckered to the size of a tick.

  To the bodyguard he said, "You wouldn't know where to start. They'd rip you off big-time, I mean you'd be screwed blue and tattooed. Man, there is zero honor in my business."

  "Really? I used to be in the mortgage trade." Chemo peeled a cracker-sized flake of skin from his jawline. "Nothing but saints and choirboys there."

  Bang Abbott watched the feathery slough flutter to the floor. "It would be a major collection, a big coffee-table book," he added, squaring his hands to illustrate the impressive dimensions.

  "How much would it sell for?" Chemo asked.

  "Thirty-nine, forty bucks."

  "You're nuts, Slim. Nobody's gonna pay that much to see pictures of some messed-up ho that can't even sing."

  "Oh yes, they will," Bang Abbott said, "after she's dead."

  Chemo thought the book idea was ludicrous, but he believed the individual photos could be valuable under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, Abbott was correct about one thing: Chemo didn't know shit about dealing with magazines and tabloids. For that he would need the paparazzo.

  He craned closer to inspect the image in the camera's viewfinder--Cherry wearing the unbuttoned Polo shirt and frog boxers on the veranda, looking out across Biscayne Bay toward the Miami skyline. The gnawed fingernails of one hand were lightly tracing the zebra portion of her tattoo, while the other hand--the one cuffed to the rail--clutched a disposable lighter. She wore an expression that someone who didn't know her might mistake for one of turbulent rumination, but Chemo could tell she was just jonesing for another smoke.

  "I got a better plan than yours," he said.

  Bang Abbott swallowed an olive-tinged burp. "Can I hear it?"

  "You get to live," Chemo told him. "That's all you need to know."

  26

  The tantalizing tweets had already begun. Cherry's ghostwritten blog entry was polished and ready to go. So was the press release describing her fictitious abduction, sordid imprisonment and daring escape. Producers from Showbiz Tonight, Extra and ET had been alerted to expect a blockbuster tip. All that remained to be done--before launching the bogus story--was to secure Ann DeLusia's silence.

  At least that's what the Larks thought.

  "Annie left the hotel," Janet Bunterman was saying. "Took all her stuff."

  "Oh, she'll call," said Lucy.

  "The girl's not stupid," her sister added.

  Maury Lykes removed the celery stalk from his Bloody Mary and chomped off the head. "Let me get this straight: We've lost the actress again?"

  "Temporarily," said Cherry's mother.

  "The one person who can blow the whole deal wide open--your daughter's double."

  "She's not a double, Maury, she's just a stand-in."

  "More like a crawl-in." The promoter crunched loudly on the celery. "This is unfuckingbelievable. You people said you could handle her."

  The Larks would have frowned, if they could. Ann DeLusia wasn't their responsibility.

  Janet Bunterman said, "She's been through a lot. I'm sure she'll come around."

  Maury Lykes spat a mulched gob of green fiber into his cocktail napkin. "Aren't we missing a key member of the brain trust?"

  "Ned's with Cherry. Her costume fitter's stopping by after dinner."

  "Jesus, I'm not talking about Ned. I'm talking about Chemo," Maury Lykes said.

  He speared a scallop off a platter of finger food, checked his Rolex and wondered if something had gone wrong on Star Island. It seemed unlikely that the humongous bodyguard could have been outwitted or overpowered by the dumpy likes of Claude Abbott, but show business had taught Maury Lykes that nothing was a lock. Arranging the murder of a paparazzo wasn't the worst thing the promoter had ever done on behalf of a star, but it carried some uncommon risks.

  "This," he said, gnawing on the scallop, "tastes like a broiled tumor."

  "Try it with the ponzu sauce," Janet Bunterman suggested.

  Lucy Lark said, "What if Abbott doesn't cave? The needle shots he took of Ann are bad. With that horrid tattoo, she looks just like Cherry."

  "Those pictures'll never get out," asserted Maury Lykes. "They can't."

  "Even if they do, it's not the end of the world." This from Lila, catching even her sister by surprise. "No, seriously, I've been thinking about it. Handcuffing a young woman to a toilet and forcing her to shoot up--it would show what a total ghoul he was, wouldn't it? And how gutsy Cherry was for fighting back and making her escape?"

  Lucy sat forward intently. "She's right. We can run with that."

  "If we have to," said Lila. "Whatever's in that syringe doesn't have to be heroin or meth. We can always say it was--"

  "Coke," her sister proposed.

  "Sure. Or maybe ketamine."

  Maury Lykes rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Gee, I feel so much better."

  "Can we please change the subject?" Cherry's mother said.

  There was a rapping at the door. One of the twins got up and let Chemo in. He sat down on the couch between Janet Bunterman and Maury Lykes. To make room for his legs, he kicked the coffee table away.

  "Well, we've all been waiting patiently," the promoter said. "How was the prom?"

  Chemo adjusted his hairpiece. He asked for a Diet Pepsi, and Lucy brought him one.

  "What happened with Abbott?" Maury Lykes pressed. "Is he cool, or not?"

  That was the code word he and Chemo had agreed upon--cool meant "dead."

  "Change of plans," Chemo said.

  "What's that mean?" asked Janet Bunterman. "Where are Cherry's pictures?"

  Maury Lykes noticed his own feet twitching, a symptom of high anxiety. Evidently the photographer was still alive, and the potential complications were ugly to contemplate.

  Chemo took off his Palin frames and cleaned the lenses with the corner of a napkin. "I got
both of the man's cameras. The pictures are stored on the memory sticks."

  "Thank God," sighed Cherry's mother.

  "So, where are they?" Lila said.

  "Yes, we'll need to see them ASAP," her sister emphasized.

  Chemo put the glasses back on and said, "Here's the deal. The cameras, they're in a safe place."

  "I knew it," said Maury Lykes.

  "That's right. They're mine now."

  "Let me guess: You and Abbott came to an agreement."

  Chemo shrugged. "His options were limited."

  Janet Bunterman looked lost. The twins, who hadn't seen this scheming side of the bodyguard's personality, were simultaneously alarmed and intrigued. But, once again, they were ignored.

  When Maury Lykes asked Chemo how much money he wanted for the photographs, he laughed and said, "Get in line."

  "What the hell are you talkin' about?"

  "Abbott has the primo connections."

  Lucy Lark said, "Hold on. Are you talking about the tabloids? Because we can't make our kidnap story work for Cherry if we don't control these pictures. Nobody's going to believe her without photos."

  "Even then, it won't be an easy sell," noted Lila.

  Chemo pinched a loose tassel of dead skin from his brow. "Maybe I can spare one or two shots. Say fifty grand each."

  Janet Bunterman gasped. "Are you insane?" A hundred thousand dollars was way beyond the budget discussed by her and Ned. She turned to Maury Lykes and said, "What's happening here? Can't you do something?"

  The promoter was trying to maintain his poise. Instead of killing the paparazzo, Chemo had conscripted the sonofabitch and confiscated the goods. Maury Lykes, who hadn't seen it coming, grudgingly admired the pock-faced brute. By his own devious maneuvering, Chemo was no longer just a contract worker; he was a player.

  "Let's think about this," said Maury Lykes, "in a way that would be mutually beneficial to everyone."

  "What for?" The bodyguard scrutinized the hors d'oeuvres. "I got the photos. You got jack." He passed on the scallops and selected a Cajun-fried shrimp.

  Maury Lykes turned to Cherry's mother and said, "I need to speak to him alone." Then, to the Larks: "Don't make another move until you hear from me."