For that reason Bang Abbott didn't waste his time staking out the nonstop clusterfuck known as Miami International. Instead he raced out to the Tamiami Executive Airport, which was favored by celebs sneaking in and out of the city. He parked near the charter-jet terminals in a shady area from which he could scout for an approaching black Suburban.
At that very moment, a gaggle of Bang Abbott's ruthless cohorts was swarming the doors of a sushi bar on Lincoln Road where Jennifer Aniston was innocently sharing California rolls with Robert Downey, Jr. A waiter had called to tip off Bang Abbott and, for an extra hundred bucks, offer exclusive access through a fire exit.
Although the Jen shot would have been a slam dunk, Bang Abbott had blown it off in favor of a fading, no-talent pop bimbo who was one bumbling overdose or drunken car wreck away from Slab City. The paparazzo was convinced that when Cherry Pye finally bought the farm--either by gagging on her own puke or wrapping her Beemer around a utility pole--it would be chronicled as an American tragedy, the death of a beautiful and ruined innocence.
Marilyn redux.
Bang Abbott wanted to be the one who documented this tawdry decline in photographs, which he grandiosely imagined as one day hanging in some museum of hip modern art, next to those of Avedon or Annie Leibovitz. And of course he wanted the body-bag shot.
Now a black SUV appeared in the distance, and Bang Abbott used his binoculars to verify the make. It was a GMC Yukon, not a Suburban, but that brainless bellman could easily have confused the two wagons. Bang Abbott waited until it pulled to the curb and then lurched from his rental car, aiming a camera with the motor drive whirring.
Cherry Pye did not emerge from the SUV, but her bodyguard did.
"Hello, douche nozzle," he said to Bang Abbott.
"Give me five seconds, Lev, that's all I need," the photographer pleaded, gesturing at the tinted windows. "One pretty smile for all her fans."
"She's not in there," Lev said.
"Come on. Just one picture."
"See for yourself." Lev stepped away from the door.
Bang Abbott squeezed past the bodyguard and stuck his lumpy head inside the Yukon, which indeed was empty. "Goddammit!" he brayed. "Where is she?"
"Don't know. Don't care." Lev lifted his garment bag off the seat. "Jesus, man, when's the last time you took a shower?"
"I'll give you five hundred bucks," Bang Abbott declared. "Just tell me where she's at."
"Why not," Lev said. "But make it fast." He held out an open palm.
Bang Abbott warily counted out the bills. "How come you never let me pay you off before?"
"Because Cherry paid me more."
"Screw you, Lev. Where the hell can I find her?"
The bodyguard looked at his wristwatch. "My guess is thirty-six thousand feet, somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico."
"You're hilarious. You could be the Jewish Chris Rock, you're so damn funny."
"Seriously. Cherry's mother fired me," Lev said without rancor. He pointed to a Lear warming up on the tarmac. "That's my ride, numbnuts. It's been real."
Eyeing the waiting jet, Bang Abbott groped in his camera bag for a longer lens. "You're fucking with me again, right? My lady is on that plane."
Lev laughed. "Try Stevie Van Zandt. He's giving me a lift to Teterboro--we go way back."
Bang Abbott made a clumsy lunge for his misspent cash, but the bodyguard flattened him with a head butt.
"One more hot tip," Lev said, looking down at him, "just so you get your money's worth: That girl you shot at the hotel this morning, it wasn't Cherry."
"No shit," Bang Abbott wheezed.
"They totally faked out your fat ass."
"Like I care."
"And it wasn't the first time, either."
"What?" cried Bang Abbott.
Lev said, "I hope you get cancer of the schlong. I hope it falls off in your hand." He stepped over the sprawled photographer and disappeared through the doors of the terminal.
3
Janet Bunterman phoned the hotel room and said, "Take a few days off, Annie."
Ann DeLusia knew what that meant: Cherry Pye was heading back to rehab.
"With pay, right?" she asked Cherry's mother.
"Oh, I suppose."
"'Cause I'm sure you want me on standby."
"Just in case," said Janet Bunterman. Her daughter often fled rehab--or, as Janet Bunterman insisted on calling it, "dietary camp."
Ann DeLusia said, "How's she doing, Janet?"
"Fast asleep in her own bed. She'll be better tomorrow."
"You're already back in L.A.? That was quick."
"We chartered," Janet Bunterman said.
"Sweet." Ann reminded herself to ask for a raise when she got back to California.
"We'll need you here by next Wednesday. Usher's label is having a big party for him at the Beverly Wilshire," said Cherry's mother.
"Okay," Ann DeLusia said. There was no cause to get excited. She wouldn't actually be attending Usher's party; she would be pretending to attend. The obligatory black SUV would transport her from Cherry Pye's house in Holmby Hills to the hotel, where she would be hustled through a back entrance in plain view of the lurking shooters. She would be placed in a private room for an hour or two, and allowed to kill the time by watching Pay-per-View and ordering pizza. Then Cherry's bodyguard would escort Ann out of the hotel, through the same door, to be photographed by the same unsuspecting horde. The purpose of this exercise was to give the false impression that Cherry Pye was out and about, vibrant and carefree, when in fact she was moping through three group sessions a day at Malibu's most exclusive twelve-step clinic.
It was a peculiar gig, working as an undercover stunt double for a celebrity space case, but Ann DeLusia made more money than most of her struggling actor friends. Her plan was to bank a chunk of dough so that when a promising role finally came along, she could afford to say adios to the Buntermans. Unfortunately, there was an increasing likelihood that Janet's daughter would accidentally snuff herself before then, in which case Ann would again be waiting on line with her friends, auditioning for soap operas and sanitary-pad commercials.
Cherry's mother said, "Keep your cell phone on."
"I'll probably blow out of here tomorrow."
"Where to?"
"Key West, maybe. I don't know," Ann said. "Or Grand Bahama."
"Don't forget to go heavy on the--"
"Sunblock. Yeah, Janet, I know."
While Ann DeLusia was able to tan, Cherry Pye typically turned pink and blistered like cheap vinyl. It was necessary to Ann's function as a decoy that she resemble the pale singer, so a bronze glow would be problematic, even at a distance.
In most other ways the two women looked alike. Both stood five six. Both wore size seven shoes. Ann weighed 118 pounds, while Cherry fluctuated between 120 and 126, depending on her monthly water retention and alcohol intake. Cherry's straight blond hair was a half shade darker than Ann's, but that was an easy fix. Neither of them owned distractingly oversized breasts; while Ann's were natural, Cherry had worn out three sets of implants and was shopping for new ones. Both women had roundish faces, small unreconstructed noses and dimpled chins. These similarities were neither uncanny nor accidental; Ann DeLusia had been hired principally because of her likeness to the former Cheryl Bunterman. Her acting skills were a bonus.
The most noticeable physical difference between the two women--even more obvious than their complexions--was in the eyes; Cherry Pye's were green, while Ann's were brown. Because Ann had a phobic aversion to contact lenses, she usually donned grotesque designer sunglasses before leading the paparazzi on a chase.
"Do you have your passport?" Janet Bunterman asked.
"Shit," Ann muttered. The passport was in her apartment, back in West Hollywood. That meant she could forget about the Bahamas.
Cherry's mother said, "Key West is fun. We always stay at the Pier House."
"Sounds good to me."
"There's a topless beach,
but--"
"Don't worry, Janet. I've got about a gallon of SPF 50."
The prospect of another loud night among the posers of South Beach was so depressing that Ann asked the concierge to locate a rental car. By dusk she was fed, packed and rolling fast, the toneless voice of the nav system directing her southbound on the turnpike extension. She'd never been to the Keys, but she figured anyplace had to be more interesting than Ocean Drive.
Traffic on Highway 1 was clotting up in Florida City, the last stop on the mainland, so Ann jumped off on the Card Sound Road, an unlit two-lane toll route through North Key Largo. Her GPS companion was briefly unsettled by this move, but she ignored its stern instructions to make a U-turn and instead mashed down the accelerator.
Soon a new driving map appeared that conceded Ann wasn't lost, although she was adding a few miles of swamps and mangroves to her trip. A handful of cars blew past heading the opposite way, but otherwise she was alone in what looked like a tropical twilight zone. She wondered what had happened to all the god-awful suburban sprawl; suddenly there wasn't a rooftop in sight. Eventually the road took a turn, and out of the emptiness appeared a small fishing village where hand-painted signs touted fresh blue crabs for sale. She spied a waterfront joint called Alabama Jack's, and she considered stopping for a potty break. But the place looked dark, so Ann drove ahead to the tollbooth. When she reached out of the car window to pay the dollar, she felt raindrops on her arm.
The attendant said, "There's a squall blowin' through. Take it easy on the bridge."
"Thanks," said Ann, thinking: What bridge?
Then it was rising from the lonely road ahead of her, a steep concrete arch over a broad, choppy channel. Gusts of wind shoved the rental car as it started the climb, so Ann slowed down, squinting through the rapid swipes of the windshield wipers. At the top of the span she touched the brakes just long enough to take in the view--northward, across Biscayne Bay, the spread of greater Miami glowed golden yellow through a light fuzz of clouds; the other way, under clearer skies beyond Card Sound, was the scattered twinkling of the islands. As Ann coasted down the big bridge, past the hunched fishermen and their lanterns, she imagined herself crossing some sort of cosmic seam between two diametric realms. It felt liberating and borderline adventurous to be leaving one world for the other, even if a tourist hotel was waiting at the end of the journey.
She smiled to herself, and turned up the radio. The rain softened to a drizzle, the speedometer crept to sixty, and before long she was back on emotional autoglide. Thick mangroves hugged both sides of the road, pinching the headlight beams. Ann experienced a sensation of shooting through a long slick tunnel. Two small bridges jounced the car, but the sharp bend is what caught Ann by surprise.
That, and the hoary, drenched figure crouching on the center line.
She had only milliseconds to see it was a man, and he was lifting something wet in his hands.
Ann cursed and jerked the wheel and instantly felt the car begin to fly. The crash seemed to unfold so slowly that it became dreamlike, and for that reason she wasn't quite as scared as she should have been.
Still, spinning airborne in a rented Mustang toward a wall of mangroves, Ann understood that her vacation plans were being radically altered.
Cherry Pye awoke at midnight and somehow made her way to the kitchen. Hearing ice cubes clatter on the tile, Janet Bunterman threw on a robe and hurried down the hall.
"Hey, where's Lev?" Cherry asked.
"We fired him, remember? Back in Miami?"
"Not really."
"What are you drinking, honey?"
"Cranberry juice," Cherry said.
"And what else?"
"Chill out, Mom." Cherry stepped to a window, parted the drapes and peeked outside. The street was empty--no TV crews, no photographers. "Where are they?" Cherry asked.
"Who cares."
"I miss Lev. He was cool."
Janet Bunterman said, "You want something to eat? Let me get Marissa to make us some omelettes."
"He had his you know what pierced."
"Or crepes. Would you like some crepes?" Janet Bunterman asked.
"I'm talking about Lev. He had a platinum thingie right through the tip--it looked awesome."
"Thanks for the visual," said Janet Bunterman, thinking: Maybe she does hate me. That would account for the raspberry thong and the T-shirt that said FIRST PRIZE.
Cherry Pye yawned and flopped down on a leather couch. "When can we go back to Florida? Tanner's leasing this amazing house on Star Island."
"We're taking you to Malibu for a week. Maury insists."
"Not Rainbow Bend again. No fucking way."
Cherry's mother said it wouldn't be so bad. "They've got a new yoga instructor from Bangladesh. Plus, one of the Poon Pilots just checked in--I saw it on the E! channel. The drummer, I think."
"Screw Maury. I'm not going to Rainbow Bend," Cherry said, "and you can't make me."
Janet Bunterman reminded her daughter that Maury Lykes had invested a humongous sum of money in Cherry's upcoming CD, which would sink like a sack of petrified cowshit if the concert tour didn't go well. And Maury Lykes was disinclined to send Cherry out on the road with a case of "gastritis."
"Honey, we can't afford another Boston," Janet Bunterman said gently.
"Do I get a new bodyguard for the tour? Because I want a black guy this time. And he has to be shiny bald, like Britney's guy. That young man looks so bad," Cherry said. "Fact, I want two big bald black dudes. And they've gotta know kung fu, or whatever that crazy shit was that Lev used on my stalker in Dallas."
"That was just a fist," Janet Bunterman said. "A good old-fashioned fist to the groin. Maury has a security man he wants us to hire. He says he's better than Lev."
Cherry leered. "Better at what?"
"Why do you say these things? Are you trying to break my heart?"
"I'll do Malibu on one condition, Mom. I get to change my name."
"Don't worry, sweetie, we always check you in as 'Sally Simpson.'"
"No, not just for rehab. I want to change my name for real."
"What?"
"For good."
Janet Bunterman was determined to stay cool in the face of her daughter's goading. She said, "The CDs have already been boxed for shipment, okay? The tickets are printed, the Web site is up and running. You're a brand, honey. An entertainment franchise."
"Whatever. Diddy changes his name, like, every other week." Cherry got up to refill her glass. Her mother, who followed her to the kitchen, was relieved to see her pouring straight Ocean Spray, and no vodka.
"I want a one-word name," Cherry said, toasting thin air. "Like Beyonce and Madonna and Eminem--stop giving me that look, Mom. I hate that."
Janet Bunterman said, "You know what Maury's going to say: The whole world knows you as Cherry Pye, so don't mess with a good thing. That's how Maury thinks."
Cherry shrugged and slurped at her juice. "You want to hear it, or not? I thought you should be first."
"Sure," her mother said thinly.
"Cherish!"
"One word. You're serious."
"Yeah, just Cherish. Is that sick or what?" Cherry Pye started bobbing. "Yo, c'mon evahbuddy, put your hands together for Cher-ish! Cher-ish! Cher-ish!"
Janet Bunterman said, "We'll talk about it after the tour."
Cherry announced she was hungry, but not for omelettes or crepes. She poked her head in the refrigerator. The sharp light shone harshly on her blanched, splotchy face. "I crapped out a pile of birdseed," she said. "What's that all about?"
"Reincarnation," said her mother.
"Hey, you think this ceviche is still good? Here, smell it for me."
On the day Michael Jackson overdosed, igniting the most loathsome media frenzy since the O. J. Simpson trial, Bang Abbott was 2,500 miles from Los Angeles. He had flown to Nassau to check out a sketchy but enticing tip that Mitt Romney was frolicking with a pair of Italian hookers on Paradise Island. The Republica
n presidential contender was said to have checked in at the Atlantis resort under his own name, and the National Eye had already prepared a splashy double-decker headline:
MORMON BIMBO TRYST--
IT'S WETTER IN THE BAHAMAS!
Unluckily for Bang Abbott, it was a different M. Romney--Melvin, a widowed veterinarian from Joplin, Missouri--who was visiting the islands in the company of his two grown daughters. Neither of the women had ever been mistaken for a Mediterranean prostitute, and they didn't know what to make of the obnoxious fat photographer who dogged them at Cable Beach while their father was playing blackjack. As soon as Bang Abbott confronted the equally bewildered Melvin Romney, who bore no resemblance to the former Massachusetts governor, the paparazzo rushed back to the airport and called the Eye.
That's when he learned that the King of Pop had expired. Bang Abbott immediately dropped to his knees and broke into a racking sob that other passengers assumed to be a cry of grief, which indeed it was. Bang Abbott knew Jackson's death was a lost once-in-a-lifetime opportunity--a photograph of the unbagged body would have fetched half a million dollars, maybe more. It would have been an epic tabloid coup, bigger than Elvis in his casket or Lennon on the autopsy slab.
Bang Abbott's pain was made worse because he'd anticipated such a squalid demise for Jacko, and had been meticulously cultivating potential sources, from entrepreneurial paramedics to disgruntled mortuary personnel. He'd even sent Dodger tickets to a 911 dispatcher who had agreed to make Bang Abbott's number the second one she dialed (after fire rescue) if there was an emergency at Jackson's rented mansion.
Yet all the photographer's preparations had been in vain. The golden window for getting a blockbuster photo comes in the first chaotic hours after a celebrity mishap; after that, the chance of scoring an exclusive is remote. Bang Abbott was helplessly, maddeningly stuck three time zones away from the scene of the Jackson cataclysm. By the time he barreled off the plane at LAX--after an excruciating delay in Atlanta--the Gloved One's corpse was safely in the custody of the coroner and the story belonged to television. The brigades of paparazzi that had descended from all corners of the earth upon Los Angeles were, in Bang Abbott's opinion, as brainless as lemmings. There was no picture worth the risk of a fatal trampling, unless the pallbearers dropped the casket and MJ himself did a horizontal moonwalk down the steps of the Staples Center.