Cherry Pye's mother leaned forward and peered critically at Ann's upper lip, which was still swollen. "That won't do," she said with a frown.
"I quit, Janet."
"What?"
"I met a fantastic guy. We're getting married," Ann said.
"Stop."
"He's a doctor. We're starting a family right away."
"You can't quit now--not before the tour."
"His name is Carlos, and he's brilliant."
Janet Bunterman said, "What are we paying you these days, Annie?"
"Eight hundred a week. Like you don't know."
"Well, how about nine?"
"Make it a thousand," Ann said.
"Oh, for heaven's sake."
"Carlos interned at Johns Hopkins and then he camped in Sierra Leone for a year, vaccinating lepers."
"You are so full of baloney," Janet Bunterman said.
"He's teaching me the mandolin."
"This isn't funny. Cherry's still my little girl."
Ann shrugged. "I'm totally serious about quitting. I want a life of my own."
"But you're an actress," Janet Bunterman said. She had finished the smoothie and was gnawing the tip of the straw. "The part about the car accident--was that true? Please tell me you didn't get beat up on a date or something."
"No, Janet. It wasn't a date." Ann suddenly felt like crying and she didn't know why.
"I'm glad you weren't hurt badly. I mean it."
"How touching," Ann said. She was trying to recall how much money she had in the bank. Six or seven grand tops; it wouldn't last long in L.A.
Cherry's mother said, "So, we've got a deal, right? Everything's cool?"
Ann reached over and pinched the twice-modified tip of her employer's nose. "I'm tired of playing your whacked-out daughter. I want my own vida loca."
"After the tour," Janet Bunterman quacked.
Although Bang Abbott had been blessed with a flaccid conscience, he felt an occasional prick of regret concerning his role in the unfortunate mauling of Terence Hughes, an orthodontist from Montreal who'd come to Florida on a four-day vacation with his family. Hughes was not an incautious fellow, and he'd done nothing to deserve what happened to him. There had been no shark warnings posted at Clearwater Beach that Sunday morning, no way for a visitor to know that a school of hungry lemon sharks had been lured close to shore with a bucket of rancid grouper guts.
On the rare occasions Bang Abbott talked about the incident, he would emphasize that it had never been his intention to cause bodily harm. The photograph he'd sought, and composed graphically in the viewfinder of his imagination, was a portrait of primal mayhem--pale innocents stampeding in terror from the green surf, a dark dorsal fin looming in the froth behind them. Bang Abbott was a film buff, and Jaws had been one of his favorites. There was nothing more compelling in photojournalism than capturing a moment of raw fear, and that was the picture that Bang Abbott had sought. At the center of his dream shot he had envisioned a young mother with grim desperation in her eyes, trying to escape from the water while clutching a toddler under each arm. However, in a pinch he would've settled for flailing teenagers, or even a couple of wobbly retirees.
To prepare for this masterpiece, Bang Abbott had hung around the charter docks and schmoozed a few of the local captains, who told him that large schools of lemons and blacktips cruised the Gulf shallows at certain times of the year, though attacks on humans were quite rare. The sharks were usually following migrations of bait, and displayed no appetite for any prey larger than a two-pound mullet. Bang Abbott had asked if the beasts could be chummed--purely for sportfishing purposes, of course--and the charter captains had said sure, it was easy. All you had to do was dump some bloody fish.
So, one Saturday night, under the pretense of an angling expedition, Bang Abbott had obtained (in exchange for a fifth of Jim Beam) a jumbo bucket of smelly grouper heads and entrails from the mate of a boat called the Master Baiter IV. The following morning, shortly after dawn, Bang Abbott had gone to the beach and selected a stretch that he knew was popular with the family crowd. After a messy struggle he'd managed to transfer the fish parts to a large mesh bag, which he staked to the sandy bottom in about four feet of water. Then he had waded back to shore, fitted long lenses on two of his camera bodies, and sat down to wait as the tide fell, carrying the irresistible stench into the Gulf.
Terence Hughes had arrived at eight-thirty with his wife and three children, none of whom expressed any enthusiasm for swimming. There were perhaps a dozen other tourists cavorting off the beach when Hughes splashed in the water alone, wearing flippers and an ill-fitting mask. By that point, Bang Abbott already had mounted one of his Nikons on a tripod and aimed it toward the area offshore where he had submerged the chum bag.
For a man whose life's work was visual composition, Bang Abbott maintained an uncommon lack of wonder about the natural world. He had never photographed a sunset or a meadow of wildflowers, or even a flock of pelicans. If there wasn't a human being somewhere in the frame, Bang Abbott wasn't much interested. His knowledge of animal behavior was sparse, based on hokey films and staged television documentaries. Among his many misconceptions was a belief that sharks cruising in skinny water would automatically be easy to see because their dorsals would protrude above the surface. His plan, once he'd spotted the first fin, was to shout a warning to the swimmers and then begin shooting, so as not to miss a frame of their panicky flight.
The scheme was ill-conceived and preposterously dangerous. Bang Abbott had assumed that the sharks, following their noses, would race to the seeping chum bag and pay no attention to the thrashing tourists. When the screams broke out he'd been caught by surprise, because no telltale fins were visible from his improvised photo station. And he'd been authentically shocked when one of the tourists, a man in his thirties with a dive mask strapped crookedly to his face, cried out that he'd been bitten.
Howling, the victim had sloshed toward the beach, his legs churning frantically against the waves. As he'd watched through his clicking camera, Bang Abbott noticed that the man was advancing slowly, as if dragging a heavy weight. Other tourists were struggling to get out of his way, yelling and shoving one another aside.
The reason had become evident when Terence Hughes neared the shore and his torso emerged above the waterline. A dusky young lemon shark weighing perhaps forty pounds had affixed itself to the poor man's ass. The apparition had been bizarre indeed, the gathered onlookers erupting in horrified cries. From a distance it had initially appeared that Terence Hughes was wagging an enormous chubby tail, but Bang Abbott's Nikon quickly brought the gruesome tableau into focus. The stricken man had held out his arms and pleaded for assistance, but nobody--not even his wife--would venture near him.
Marine biologists later theorized that a top row of the shark's teeth had become snagged in the reinforced nylon waistband of Terence Hughes's recently purchased and festively patterned board shorts. Once the stuck creature became suspended out of water, its bulk (combined with its manic exertions) had ripped the swimsuit from Terence Hughes, leaving him bleeding and exposed. The lemon shark had fallen back into the water and swum off with the torn swimsuit and a grapefruit-sized chunk of the Canadian's left buttock.
Lifeguards had cleared the beach swiftly and marine patrol officers had arrived in fast boats, one of which snagged its propeller on the mangled remnants of a freshly soiled chum bag. By then, Bang Abbott was gone. It had never occurred to him that the elderly fellow who'd been illegally walking his Jack Russell on the beach at daybreak had taken a cell-phone snapshot of Bang Abbott dragging the sack of fish into the surf, or that the old fart would download the photo and e-mail it to the St. Petersburg Times after reading that Bang Abbott had won a Pulitzer Prize for the Chilling Florida Shark Ambush.
The ensuing controversy was fueled by indignant bloggers who wanted Bang Abbott prosecuted for instigating the fateful feeding frenzy. Ultimately, the dog walker's cell-phone image was deemed too fuzz
y to be conclusive, so the Pulitzer committee decided not to strip Bang Abbott of its coveted honor. Terence Hughes recovered from his wounds and went on to enjoy a brief spell of celebrity; he and his surgeon appeared on Maury and other popular interview shows, presenting graphic video of his butt-cheek reconstruction. Meanwhile Bang Abbott continued to insist that the disputed photo couldn't have been staged because both victim and shark obviously weren't faking it, and that furthermore there was no law against chumming up sea life near a public beach.
Glad to be free of the newspaper business and its stuffy ethics, Bang Abbott was soon thereafter thriving in his new career as a paparazzo. The provenance of his work product was never questioned, nor were his methods, which is why he was rattled to find himself being interrogated rather snippily by Peter Cartwill, managing editor of the National Eye.
"Claude, I must say, that's quite an adventure. I mean, really." Cartwill was smiling somewhat coldly.
"Well, it's true. Every word," Bang Abbott said.
"So, Cherry Pye brought you to Miami on a private jet."
"Yeah, that's right."
"And fucked your brains out along the way."
"Peter, would I make this up?"
Bang Abbott had gone to the Eye's main newsroom in Boca Raton with a plan to sell his sex story for enough money to cover the cost of the lost cameras, now in Cherry's possession. Bang Abbott had enjoyed a solid relationship with the Eye, which had published a dozen of his celebrity-in-disarray photographs. Bang Abbott figured this deal would be a no-brainer--he'd just talk into a tape recorder, then one of the hacks on the copy desk would write it up with Bang Abbott's byline: "Seduced by Stoned Pop Star at 35,000 Feet!"
Or something like that.
"But you've no proof," said Cartwill, "not a single picture." He was one of those tough Aussies who'd learned the trade on Fleet Street and come to the United States during the post-Elvis tabloid boom.
"I told you, she swiped my goddamn Nikons!"
"Yes, Claude, it's all quite fantastic."
"And yours, for ten grand."
Cartwill chuckled. "I'm afraid the answer is no. The whole thing is too unbelievable."
"But that's only because you know me, Peter. Your readers, they don't have a clue what I look like."
"It's a first-person story. We'd have to run a picture," Cartwill said.
"Hell, you don't have to use mine." Bang Abbott pointed across the newsroom at some good-looking kid standing at the coffee machine. "Put his face on the damn thing. Who cares?"
"I'm sorry, mate."
"Your loss. I'll sell it to the Enquirer." Bang Abbott was annoyed that Cartwill didn't acknowledge the obvious hook in the story. "How many shooters you heard of that got balled by a superstar? And then fuckin' robbed? C'mon, Peter, gimme a break."
Cartwill said, "Actually, it's good you stopped by. You remember this one?" He handed Bang Abbott a color print, an eight-by-ten. "We put it on page two."
"Sure. That's Cherry after the Grammys. Outside the Viper Room."
"And you're quite certain it's her?" Cartwill asked.
Bang Abbott felt like he'd been kicked in the nuts. Did Cartwill know about the look-alike? He said, "You guys bought the damn picture! Of course it's her."
But he was studying the photograph closely. Cherry--if it was Cherry--had been wearing a leather miniskirt and Chanel shades when she came out of the club and dashed across Sunset. Bang Abbott's flash had caught one side of her face, a washed-out exposure typical of night shoots. Lev was at her side ... but what did that prove? After all, it was Lev who'd told Bang Abbott that Cherry had duped him more than once.
Cartwill said, "We got an e-mail about this one, Claude. From a nurse at Cedars, she's a faithful reader of our paper. She said Cherry couldn't have been at any after-parties that night because she was in the emergency room, getting her stomach pumped."
Bang Abbott didn't take his eyes off the picture. The longer he studied it, the less certain he was. The woman could have been Cherry Pye, or she could have been the double he'd photographed on the stretcher behind the Stefano--in such poor light, it was impossible to say.
"It's Cherry, man. Who the hell else would it be?" Bang Abbott blustered. "The guy walking beside her, that's her bodyguard. Name's Lev. Here, look."
Cartwill took back the print without glancing at it. "We really don't ask many questions. You know that, Claude. This is a competitive business, and things happen."
"Not to me they don't."
"However, the IDs must be one thousand percent positive," Cartwill went on. "It's really the only rule we have. We run a shot of Charlize, it better damn well be Charlize. It's not their lawyers we're worried about, it's our reputation."
Bang Abbott said, "Your reputation?"
Peter Cartwill seemed dead serious. "Readers buy our paper to see photographs of fabulous people living fabulous lives. If they think we're faking our pictures, they won't buy the paper anymore. The stories themselves can be total bullshit, and often they are, but so what? The public has no way of knowing what's true and what's not. But the photographs have to be real, Claude, because that's what gives credibility to the journalism."
"You bet," said Bang Abbott, thinking: Did he just say "journalism"?
"They see a photo of Julia leaving the supermarket, they'll believe she's got two cartons of Marlboros in the bag because she's desperately trying to drop ten pounds for the new Soderbergh film. But it must be Julia in the picture for the story to play."
"What are you sayin', Peter?"
Cartwill tapped a forefinger on the desk. "Be careful, that's all. We don't want to get burned."
"No worries," Bang Abbott said thinly. When he stood up, he noticed that the color print from the Viper Room shoot was pinned firmly beneath the editor's left elbow.
"In the old days, there was wriggle room. You know--a wink and a nod," Cartwill said. "Not so anymore. Somebody smells a rat, it's all over the bloody Internet. Next thing you know, I'm getting phone calls. And I don't want phone calls, Claude."
Bang Abbott could no longer hold back. "Wait--you're sayin' you guys don't dick around with the pictures anymore? No Photoshop, no airbrush, nuthin? Not even those Bahamas shots of what's-her-face, that whale from Jenny Craig? The one your boss has been bangin' for two years? You're sayin' every photo your paper runs is legit? Get fucking real, Peter."
"Things are changing," Cartwill said. "Have you checked out our Web site? We're buying video clips now."
"Oh Jesus." Bang Abbott hated those TV stakeout crews. Total slugs.
"We pay pretty well," Cartwill remarked.
"But not for true stories like mine."
"Not without pictures, no. It's a shame about your cameras." The phone on the editor's desk began to ring, and he said, "I need to take this."
Bang Abbott paused at the door. "It really happened, you know. Up in the plane? She practically raped me."
"I believe you, mate," said Cartwill in a tone so merciless that it filled the photographer with rage.
8
The man called Chemo had come to the attention of Maury Lykes a year earlier during halftime of a Miami Heat basketball game. Maury Lykes, who had floor seats, spotted in the third row a former client named Presley Aaron, a pipe fitter turned country singer. Under the guidance of Maury Lykes, Presley Aaron had recorded a string of megahits, including "Unbreak This Broken Heart" and the crossover tearjerker "Daddy, What's My New Momma's Name?"
But stardom had been hard on Presley Aaron, whose room-temperature intellect was easily overwhelmed by all the money, women and media swirl. He went hurtling off the rails, and after his fourth arrest (with two Memphis call girls and a shaving kit stuffed with crystal), Maury Lykes had fired him from the label. At the time, the promoter had felt certain that Presley Aaron would wind up dead under seedy circumstances. Yet the scrappy redneck had managed to kick his dope habit and win back his ex-fashion-model wife and two young kids, a triumph of will and true love that
was exhaustively chronicled on the morning shows and in the tabloids.
Intrigued by the prospect of a comeback album, Maury Lykes made his way to where Presley Aaron was sitting and they embraced warmly. The singer seemed to bear no ill will toward the promoter for cutting him loose. "Rock bottom's exactly where I needed to be," he said.
Maury Lykes couldn't conceal his amazement at Presley Aaron's transformation from pallid degenerate tweaker to buff bronze stud. The musician said he'd been saved by the good Lord and also his stepbrothers, Jake and Ernest, who had put him in rehab and then hired a special bodyguard to hang close and keep him straight. "Every time I'd fuck up, he beat the everluvin' shit outta me," Presley said fondly. "The man's an angel."
It was at that moment when Chemo appeared, looming above the crowd. In one arm he cradled two large sodas, and on the other arm, which was partially sheathed with a zippered bag, he balanced a cardboard tray of cheese-jizzed nachos. Maury Lykes had seen plenty of freaks and goons in his career, but he'd never set eyes on anyone like Chemo. When Presley Aaron introduced him, Chemo grunted a raspy response and sat down to dine. Maury Lykes pegged him as an ex-basketball player who'd been in some hideous accident involving fire or chemicals, possibly both. Maury Lykes figured the man's arm was so disfigured that he chose to keep it covered and spare others from the sight.
Presley Aaron, it had turned out, was starting his own TV ministry and had no plans to revive his country-music career. Maury Lykes wished him well and returned to his seat. Throughout the second half of the game he caught himself glancing back at Chemo, who was skimming a landscape magazine while picking at the skin tags on his face. The man was as formidable as he was repulsive.
Later, Maury Lykes called Presley Aaron to ask if Chemo ever did any freelance crisis management, and Presley Aaron was nice enough to offer the man's cell number. When Janet Bunterman fired Lev, Maury Lykes immediately knew whom he wanted as a replacement bodyguard for Cherry Pye. Presley Aaron, now solidly clean and sober, agreed to let Chemo out of his contract.