The twins followed Janet Bunterman out of the suite. As soon as the door closed, Maury Lykes said, "Hey, what the fuck? We had a deal."
"Opportunity knocked," said Chemo.
"How much do you think those bimbette pictures are really worth? Seriously."
"Guess we'll find out."
The promoter presented a theory that the market value of Abbott's Star Island collection would be basically chump change unless Skantily Klad became a commercial smash. "You need this album to go big," he advised Chemo. "You need Cherry Pye's name back on the charts--if you're interested in the major bucks, that is."
The thought had occurred to Chemo, as well. A hit CD and a sold-out tour would make Abbott's moody portraits a much hotter commodity when Cherry finally overdosed. The bodyguard understood that he now had a stake in keeping the stoned nitwit breathing for at least the next two months.
"The tour opens where?" he asked.
"Right here in Miami," said Maury Lykes. "Then we take it to Orlando, Charlotte and so on up the coast."
Chemo hated to fly, not because he was afraid but because his extreme height made the seating miserable.
Maury Lykes laughed. "She goes private, man. You'll have tons of legroom."
"Plus, I'm keepin' that forty grand you gave me. For the hit." Chemo intended to live on the cash until Cherry punched out.
"I'm glad you brought that up." Maury Lykes slid closer and dropped his voice. "The other forty thousand, the second half, it's still out there."
Chemo grabbed some curly hairs on the promoter's neck and twisted hard. "I told you, I'm not gonna whack the fat boy. He's got ace connections for brokering those pictures."
The jerking of Maury Lykes's head caused something to pop in his neck. "Stop!" he yipped. "It's not Abbott who needs to be killed. It's somebody else."
"Who?" Chemo demanded. "What's his name?"
"It's a her, not a him."
"Jesus Horatio Christ." The bodyguard let go of the promoter's hair and shoved him to the floor.
"Just hear me out," said Maury Lykes.
For all his character defects, Bang Abbott wasn't prone to self-pity. He regarded himself as a seasoned street warrior--the job of hounding celebrities was mined with disappointments, deceits and humiliations. In Bang Abbott's lowly league of paparazzi, a good day was one in which you weren't spat upon or kneed in the groin. Still, reflecting upon the past week, he found it difficult not to feel snakebit. His expensive Nikons had been stolen by a starlet, recovered, then stolen again. He had mistakenly carjacked the starlet's double, who then somehow shot off his trigger finger. Then, just as things were finally looking up, he was assaulted by a double-crossing one-armed bodyguard who sadistically weed-whacked his ass flab. Most dispiritingly, Bang Abbott's ambitious plan for exploiting the inevitable self-destruction of Cherry Pye was in ruins. The Lost Angel portraits he'd taken of the singer at Star Island--in his opinion, the finest work of his career--were in the clutches of the seven-foot, pizza-faced Chemo, who had promised him only a photo credit and some vague overspill of the profits.
And now Peter Cartwill was on the line, spoiling Bang Abbott's dinner. The photographer had been relaxing outdoors at the News Cafe, inhaling a couple of cheeseburgers while watching all the gorgeous zombies stroll by on Ocean Drive. He'd called the editor of the Eye to say he was all right, and that there was no need to retrieve his laptop from the apartment in Los Angeles.
"Too late. Our guy fetched it yesterday and it arrived by FedEx this morning," Cartwill said. "Your screen saver, by the way, is disgusting."
"But I told you guys to wait till tomorrow!" Bang Abbott protested. "And only if I didn't call by noon."
"Really, Claude. That's sort of sad."
Cartwill was right. Bang Abbott knew better than to trust a tabloid editor.
"You're not thinking straight," Cartwill observed. "I'm worried about you."
"It's been a rough stretch."
"These pictures, Claude, I must say ... "
"So you found 'em?"
Cartwill's chuckle had a fluttering quality. "The file was marked 'Toilet Art.' Somehow our IT lads managed to crack the code. What's she shooting up, by the way--smack?"
Bang Abbott swigged a gulp of warm Pellegrino and almost choked on a lemon rind. If those pictures leaked out now, Cherry Pye's tour would be doomed, the Star Island portfolio would be worthless and, worst of all, Chemo would hunt him down with that goddamn lawn trimmer and chop him into two hundred pounds of steaming slaw.
"You can't publish those shots, Peter."
"And why would that be?"
"It's complicated," Bang Abbott said.
"Actually, it's not. You remember the last conversation we had? About the picture you took of Cherry outside the Viper Room? The one we paid six grand for?"
"I remember."
"Except Cherry was actually in the ER at Cedars that night."
Bang Abbott said hotly, "You believe that stupid nurse and not me?"
Cartwill's tone made it clear that he did. "The woman handcuffed to the toilet in these photographs--tell me the truth. Is that really Cherry?"
"Ha! Check out the freaky tatt."
"We have, Claude. Our guys in Digital enlarged the images. They say it looks like a henna."
Bang Abbott's Bluetooth fell off his head and landed in a glop of catsup. He wiped down the earpiece and, after two false stabs, re-inserted it.
"She's also missing a freckle," Cartwill was saying, "on her left wrist."
"Are you fucking serious?"
"The truth, Claude, or we'll never touch your stuff again," Cartwill warned. "Once the word gets out, you'll be shooting cruises and bar mitzvahs the rest of your life."
It was a hollow threat; Bang Abbott was confident that he'd always be able to peddle his celebrity candids somewhere. The market was bottomless in the purest sense of the word. However, considering the hefty lease on his Mercedes, he couldn't afford to be banned from top-paying magazines and tabloids such as the Eye, fussy as they might be about the authenticity of their art.
"Okay, Peter, you got me. It's not Cherry in those shots."
"Ah." Cartwill sounded no more superior than usual. "She's pretty. Who is it?"
"Long story," Bang Abbott said.
"What's in the spike?"
"Tap water."
"Claude, this is so disappointing."
"But, listen, the picture outside the Viper Room after the Emmys, the girl in the leather mini--that was an honest mistake." Bang Abbott wasn't about to sit mute while his reputation was shredded. He was good at what he did, even if most people considered what he did to be despicable.
"Cherry's people sometimes use a double," he informed Cartwill, "to throw us off."
"Maybe that's who balled you on the Gulfstream."
"I'm serious. They've got this chick on the payroll, some nobody actress."
Cartwill said, "I'm about to do you a huge professional favor, Claude. I'm going to delete these dreadful images from your laptop. Come by the office and fetch it before you fly back to L.A. And don't ever pull another shitwhistle stunt like this again. Are we clear?"
"Crystal," said Bang Abbott, buoyant with relief. "Hey, I'm still down on South Beach. Is anything happening?"
"Not much. Hasselhoff's shooting a German aftershave commercial by the pool at the Delano, and Megan Fox is in town for a club party."
"Yeah? Where?"
Cartwill said, "No worries, mate. We've got it covered." Then he hung up.
Bang Abbott ordered an eggplant and a side of fries. For a man whose lofty dreams had been stomped to tatters, he maintained his usual robust appetite. He wasn't sure that the spooky bodyguard's plan was going to work, but it wasn't like he had a vote. The man was a killer. If he happened to make some dough off the Star Island photos and dribble a few bucks to Bang Abbott, hey, it was better than nothing. And sure as hell better than being dead.
At the very least, Bang Abbott had successfully contrived to spend a whole d
ay with Cherry, ending in a tangle of sheets. Although it now seemed unlikely that sex had occurred, the time wasn't wasted. Something big had happened. That last boozy hour with the young singer had served to dissolve the warped and misbegotten fascination that had overpowered Bang Abbott in recent days. Cherry was truly the simplest of souls, as vacant as she was beautiful. It was no act.
The conversation had been excruciating. Granted, the woman was only twenty-two, but she'd been a star for almost half her life. Surely something interesting must have happened along the way. Of course she stayed high all the time, Bang Abbott thought. That's what boring people do.
No, he was cured of his Cherry fixation. Eventually he might have come to enjoy being a serious portrait photographer with a respectable oeuvre, a mercurial artiste sought out by troubled divas. But Bang Abbott was at heart a denizen of the streets--studio settings were too tidy and sterile for his style. He preferred the challenge of an openly hostile work environment where daily he was cursed, loathed, snubbed and evaded. Bang Abbott loved the chill, and he loved the chase.
Among paparazzi, only the most resilient and remorseless could thrive. Hell, this thing with Cherry Pye was just one more crappy gig. Bang Abbott had felt worse about himself after Charlie Sheen urinated in his ear.
Oddly, of his two most recent female subjects it was Cherry's decoy who had made the greater impression. She was scrappy and funny and proud, a different sort of handful. In the aftermath Bang Abbott found himself thinking more frequently of Ann, and he remained convinced that someday she'd be famous for something.
Packing his cheeks with curly fries, the photographer was feeling increasingly upbeat about his own prospects. Although the mutant bodyguard had impounded his expensive Nikons, Bang Abbott still had the secondhand Pentax that he'd bought, along with the cheap cell phone, at the Hialeah pawnshop. What other survival tools would he possibly need?
Unfortunately, the contact numbers for his best sources were programmed into his lost BlackBerry, so Bang Abbott was working from a reconstructed roster of tipsters. But he wasn't worried; he'd started from scratch before.
"Well, lookie who's here!" A man nearly as unkempt as himself stood with a shit-eating grin beside the table. He had three nice Leicas strung around his neck.
"My lucky day," Bang Abbott said.
"Dog, ain't you even gone ask me to sit down?" It was Teddy Loo. He took a seat anyway.
"Do have a fry," Bang Abbott offered sullenly.
Teddy Loo had a pipe-stem neck, a wide slice of a mouth and gleaming, bugged-out eyeballs. He looked like an anorexic bullfrog. He said, "How's it hangin', Claude?"
"Long and strong. Same as always."
"You here for Megan Fox?"
"Oh, you bet," Bang Abbott lied.
"I heard she's stayin' at the Standard."
"Ha! Who fed you that shit?"
"Why? What'd you hear, dog?" Teddy Loo wrinkled his nose and hunched forward.
"The Clevelander is what I heard," Bang Abbott said. He was totally winging it.
"What the fuck is that smell? God."
"You don't like eggplant?" Bang Abbott wasn't about to admit that he'd spritzed his pits and crevices with a product called Axe "body spray." Ann's sharp comments during her captivity had caused him to rethink his libertarian outlook on hygiene.
Teddy Loo said, "The Clevelander--you sure 'bout that?"
"Rock solid."
"Cool. And the party's still Wednesday night, right?"
"Absolutely."
"At Pubes is what they said."
"I heard the Mondrian, but that's spongy." Bang Abbott winked. This was going to be fun. "Are you shootin' for the Eye?" he asked Teddy Loo.
"Good guess. How 'bout you?"
"The Globe."
"Yechh."
"Tell me about it." Bang Abbott stood up and slapped a fifty on the table. "See you in the trenches," he said to Teddy Loo.
"Yeah, dog. Thanks for the intel."
"Anytime." Bang Abbott was smiling as he walked down Ocean Drive. It was second nature to him, working these fools.
Like riding a bicycle.
27
Before being snatched by Bang Abbott, the worst thing that had happened to Ann DeLusia while acting as Cherry Pye's double was the funeral of Nils Creosoto, a Formula 1 driver and international playboy with whom Cherry had been romantically linked, meaning she had slept with him more than once.
As sometimes happened in the celebrity world, the circumstances of Nils Creosoto's death were more mundane than the tabloid media would have wished: He was run over while jaywalking in broad daylight on Bleecker Street down in the Village. Worse, he was stone sober and fully clothed at the time. The motorist who flattened Nils Creosoto wasn't a disgruntled ex-girlfriend or an envious racing rival, but rather an innocent Nigerian immigrant who'd been driving yellow cabs for eleven years with a spotless record.
Police determined Nils Creosoto was entirely to blame for the accident. As he stepped from the curb into traffic, he was fatally engrossed in a newspaper--specifically, the New York Post, which was scattered like pigeon feathers upon impact. It was later speculated (by the Post, naturally) that Nils Creosoto had been reading a Page Six item about himself at the time he was struck and killed. The gossip nugget, accompanied by a photograph of him and Cherry Pye leaving the Morgan Hotel, read as follows:
Hunky Swedish-Greco racing ace Nils Creosoto is no longer spinning his wheels with pouty Mary Kate Olsen. Last night he steered new flame Cherry Pye to the Yanni concert at the Garden, then back to his ultra-cozy suite for a victory lap.
Confides a Creosoto pal: "It's getting pretty serious. I haven't seen him this happy in a long time." Lucy and Lila Lark, high-powered spokespersons for Cherry Pye, say the troubled pop star is "healthy, whole and enjoying life. She's very fond of Nils."
Time will tell whether he really turns out to be Le Man, or just another quick pit stop for wild-child Cherry.
The former Cheryl Gail Bunterman was saddened though not incapacitated by the unexpected death of Nils Creosoto. They had been out on exactly three dates. Contrary to the media speculation, there was nothing serious about the relationship. Auto racing bored Cherry to tears, and Nils had a disconcerting tendency to double-clutch during sex. Their last outing had been a letdown because Cherry had gone to Madison Square Garden expecting to see an exotic magic act. She'd had no idea that Yanni was a musician.
Shortly after Nils Creosoto got thumped by the taxi, the Larks mass-emailed a somber press release announcing that Cherry was "shocked and devastated" by the tragic news. She was, in fact, on her way to Steamboat Springs with an adult-film star named Rod Harder. A few days later, when the schedule of memorial services for Nils Creosoto was announced, the twins told the Buntermans that Cherry should attend. They said the funerals presented an opportunity to display her sensitive, compassionate side. Appearing as the grief-stricken girlfriend could only improve her image--it was the next best thing to being a widow, the Larks explained.
But Cherry was in no condition to go. So while she was being escorted back to Los Angeles for her semiannual septum reconstruction, Ann DeLusia was boarding a plane for Europe. Her first stop was Gothenburg and then Athens. Half of Nils Creosoto's ashes were scattered from a speeding Ferrari in each city, following lugubrious church ceremonies in which Ann convincingly sobbed and shuddered in the front pew. That was awful enough. Worse were all the consoling hugs from the race driver's heartsick relatives, who (thanks to global media saturation by the Larks) had been led to believe that Cherry was his fiancee, the light of his life. The Swedes were stolid mourners but the Greeks wept deliriously. By the end of the trip, Ann had become dangerously depressed.
"As I recall, we let you keep the funeral dress," Cherry's mother said.
"I gave it to Goodwill," said Ann.
"But that was Vera Wang!"
"See, Janet, this is the problem."
Both sides had agreed to meet at Dinner Key aboard a yacht
owned by a producer friend of Maury Lykes. The Buntermans were accompanied by Chemo, garbed in corduroys, vintage Beatle boots, tan beret, his red Sarah Palins and a loose leather jacket that concealed the sheath of his ominous prosthesis. Ann brought Skink, refashioned in a tailored suit by Ermenegildo Zegna, blue pinstripes with a matching eye patch. She had persuaded him to lose the lopsided though festive braids, and his hairless, sun-cured dome glowed like burnished teak. The sawed-off Remington was stowed in a Converse gym bag that sat on the deck between the governor's new size-thirteen Kenneth Coles. The incongruously uptown look kindled Janet Bunterman's secret attraction, although Ann's companion displayed no interest in anyone other than her.
Even Chemo was initially taken aback. He hadn't expected the actress to show up with a jumbo bodyguard of her own, and he felt somewhat underdressed.
"Annie, you've been a real lifesaver for us," Cherry's mother was saying. "The Creosoto gig--like you said, above and beyond the call. Time after time, you've come through for our Cherry when the chips were down."
"You mean when she was down," Ann said.
Chemo smiled to himself. This chick was a pisser.
Ned Bunterman cleared his throat. "We're prepared to offer you fifty thousand."
Ann wrinkled her brow in feigned disbelief. "For being kidnapped, drugged and humiliated? Did I mention that the guy took a three-minute pee while I was handcuffed to the damn toilet? Try to put a price tag on a moment like that."
Cherry's father reddened. Chemo said to Janet Bunterman: "Tell her the plan."
"Yes, please do," said Ann. "Hang on--I forgot to introduce my friend. This is the governor."
Skink, who was picking his teeth with a desiccated mockingbird beak, said nothing. The Zegna threads had put him in a ruminative frame of mind; it had been decades since he'd worn a suit and proper shoes. The outfit stirred fractured memories of Tallahassee.
Cherry's mother sat forward. "All right, here's the play: In a few days we'll give out a story saying our daughter was abducted and held captive by a deviate fan who was posing as a paparazzo. Abbott won't be mentioned by name, but a couple of the photos he took of Cherry on Star Island will be strategically leaked to create, you know, maximum buzz."