Suddenly Nick appeared. Deftly removing the too-full glass from April’s hand, which was slopping on her dress, he replaced it with a half-full one.
‘Do you know Nick Bassalino?’ April asked, patting him fondly. ‘This is Lara—Lara…’
‘Crichton,’ Lara said, gazing directly at him as she accepted his firm handshake with an equally warm pressure of her own. The man was too handsome for his own good.
He had brown eyes, friendly and open. ‘Glad to meet you,’ he said.
Want to bet? she thought.
‘Why don’t we go to The Discotheque?’ Sammy asked yet again. ‘April? Nick? Maybe one of you can persuade Lara to come, too.’
‘Wonderful idea,’ April said gaily. I feel like dancing, and Janine’s parties—dear girl that she is—do get rather stuffy.’
‘Will you come?’ Sammy asked Lara.
She nodded. ‘I’d better tell Les and Jeanette.’
‘How about that?’ Sammy said, watching her walk away. ‘Is she something or what?’
April laughed. ‘Sammy darling, every time you meet a new girl it’s always a grand love affair for about a minute and a half.’
‘Just give me a minute and a half with this one and I’ll be happy forever!’
When Lara returned they left. She went with Sammy in his Maserati, while April and Nick followed in the Mercedes.
‘I could easily lose them,’ Sammy said, placing an amorous hand on her knee. ‘We could go by my place and pick up some outasite grass. Huh? What do you say?’
Lara removed his hot hand. ‘I gave it up,’ she replied coolly.
Sammy was speechless. He received thousands of fan letters a week from girls merely wanting to touch him, and this one didn’t even care to go with him to his house. It had been a long time between turndowns.
The Discotheque was crowded as usual, but a table was soon cleared for Sammy Albert and April Crawford. Movie stars always got premium treatment; it was one of the fringe benefits of being famous.
April ordered a double Scotch and immediately dragged Sammy onto the tightly packed dance floor.
‘They’re old friends,’ Nick said, feeling the need to explain. ‘Sammy got his first break in one of April’s films.’
Lara smiled. ‘It doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you.’
‘Hell, I don’t care. I like April to enjoy herself, it does her good. She’s a great little gal, got a lot of energy, a real tiger!’
Lara looked at him intently to see if he was putting her on, but he didn’t appear to be. He was watching April on the dance floor, a proud smile on his face.
‘You and Sammy must be about the same age,’ she remarked.
He knew what she was getting at. ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Who cares about age? You know something? April’s got more energy in her little finger than I have in my whole body.’
April this, and April that. Nick Bassalino was not going to be quite as easy to crack as she’d imagined. She was used to men falling about—married, single, it made no difference. One of Lara’s famous quotes—printed all over the world—was ‘Most men are easy lays.’ She had always found that if there was a man she wanted, he was to be had.
Not that there had been that many. There was the count; he had lasted two years. Then the film star, only a few short months. After him the German prince, a year. And then the English lord, a mere eighteen months. The Greek shipowner had lasted nearly a year. And finally Prince Alfredo Masserini. She had thought that perhaps Alfredo was the right one. He had the film star’s looks, the Greek shipowner’s money, the English lord’s youth, and the count’s charm. But in spite of it all he’d turned out to be a self-centered egoist. Like me, she thought, with a short, brittle laugh.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Nick asked curiously, trying to keep his eyes off her cleavage.
‘Nothing that would amuse you.’ She shook her head in a languid, sexual fashion so that her long, thick hair swirled forward.
He glanced at her quickly. This woman was incredibly beautiful. But what was beauty in a town like Hollywood? So many girls, so many different shades of sexy, pretty, and gorgeous. So many different shapes and sizes. Something to appeal to everyone. In Hollywood beauty was a commodity, a close relation of the hard sell.
April Crawford was something else. April was class, and distinction, and acceptance. April was a ticket to ride up there among all the movie idols he’d worshiped since he was a little kid.
Oh, no, he wasn’t going to blow April out for a quick dip in this one’s honey pot. April was a jealous lady, sharp, and full of pride. If she ever caught him straying, the shit would really hit in no uncertain fashion.
‘I hope you’re coming to the party Jeanette and Les are throwing for me tomorrow night,’ Lara said casually.
‘April makes all our social arrangements. If she knows about it, we’ll be there. My lady hates missing a party.’
Lara smiled and widened her eyes. ‘Great,’ she murmured.
What a schmuck this guy was—he was going to be easy.
CHAPTER NINE
Frank Bassalino was Enzio’s oldest son, and Enzio depended more on him than on the others, for when he had opted for semiretirement it was Frank who took over some of his more important business enterprises.
‘One day,’ Enzio was proud of saying, ‘Frank is going to be The Man. One day not so far off.’
Frank got along well with Enzio’s older business associates. They were difficult men, quick to criticize, but he was managing to create a connection.
In some ways Frank was stronger than Enzio. Born and brought up in one of the tougher districts of New York, he’d always had to fight for what he wanted, in spite of his father’s position.
Frank was not a man to cross. Thirty-six years old, he had worked for Enzio since he was sixteen and seen all aspects of his business. He had been involved in protection, prostitutes, dope, the numbers racket. Once he had enjoyed being the hit man, but Enzio didn’t approve. It was too risky and dangerous.
In his time Frank had been a womanizer in the true Bassalino tradition, going through an incredible number of females—used and thrown away like so many old Kleenex. Until, at the age of twenty-nine, he had seen a picture of Anna Maria, his cousin in Sicily, and immediately sent for her. She was fourteen years old and spoke no English. Enzio paid her family a dowry and arranged everything. When she arrived in America, Frank married her.
Like father like son. Both men had opted for a partner from the old country. Although unlike Rose, Anna Maria was timid and quiet. At twenty-one she still didn’t speak much English.
Frank and Anna Maria lived in an old brownstone house in Queens with their four children, and she was expecting another.
Frank didn’t stray much now. The occasional hooker he could beat up was about his only weakness.
* * *
When the time came to put the revenge plan into action, Rio said she wanted a shot at Frank Bassalino. She was outvoted. According to the extensive dossier they’d managed to get on him, she wasn’t his scene, not his style at all. No, they all decided, the only chance with a man like Frank Bassalino was someone fresh and innocent. A girl who would remind him of his wife when he’d first brought her to America. Beth was the obvious choice.
It turned out that there was a perfect opportunity. Frank was looking for a nanny to teach his children English. He had registered with three employment agencies and turned down all the applicants, who were mostly black or Mexican. It was decided Beth should apply for the job.
She changed her hippie clothes and put on a plain blouse and skirt. Then, with her pale hair tied back, her simple outfit, and her false references, she turned up at his house for an interview.
A maid showed her into an old-fashioned living room. The furniture was worn, and there were many religious pictures on the walls. Beth glanced around, her heart racing with anticipation.
She waited for over half an hour, and then Frank Bass
alino strode into the room with Anna Maria hovering behind him.
He was a powerful-looking man with black hair, hooded dark eyes, a moody mouth, and a beaky nose. He was attractive in a brutal way.
Beth loathed him on sight. She knew men like him—big, violent men who resented any change. Men whose physical strength was their prime weapon.
With an involuntary shudder she remembered the night at the commune when men like Frank Bassalino had come calling in the middle of the night. There were eight or nine of them, and they were drunk.
The band of drunken louts had roared up in two cars, laughing and swigging from bottles of booze. The farm was situated well off the main road. There were no neighbors, no one to whom they could run for help.
The front door wasn’t locked, and the men had burst drunkenly in, kicking the old sheepdog, Shep, until he was a beaten pulp. Then they had dragged the girls out of bed and raped them one by one while the boys were roughed up, laughingly, methodically. The men had jeered and called them names, told them to get a haircut and a job and stop piss-assing around.
It was no match. The men were big and strong and filled with the righteous power of do-gooders.
‘If you were my daughter,’ one of them had hissed in Beth’s ear as he’d pumped away inside her, T
I’d tan your hide until you couldn’t walk for a week.’
Before leaving they’d cut the boys’ hair, crudely hacking away with a rusty pair of kitchen scissors. Max had needed seventeen stitches in his scalp.
This outrage had taken place two years before, yet Beth still slept unsoundly, still felt revulsion when faced with a man like Frank.
‘Hmmm.’ He looked her over. ‘You’re kinda young, huh?’
‘I’m twenty,’ she replied. I’ve been working with children for the past three years. Did you read my references?’
He was surprised to see such a young and pretty girl. It was almost too good to be true after some of the garbage the agency had sent him. His kids would love this one, she looked so clean and nice.
There was no point in playing games. ‘Listen, you want the job—it’s yours. You get your own room, decent food, and a coupla nights off a week. Okay?’
She nodded. Was it all going to be as easy as this? ‘Can I see the children?’ she asked.
‘Sure. Hey—Anna Maria.’ He pulled his wife forward, a shy, dark girl with puffy features and a huge belly. ‘You take—uh—what’s your name again?’
‘Beth.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Beth, meet Mrs. Bassalino—my wife. She don’t talk much English—maybe you can teach her, too. She’ll take you to see the kids, show you around. Any problems, you come to me. Just remember, I’m a busy man, so make sure there ain’t too many problems. Got it? When can you start?’
Her heart was pounding. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, hiding her excitement.
‘Good girl. Anna Maria’s about to pop any time now. Some help around here is just what we need.’
He gave Anna Maria a shove in her direction, looked Beth over one more time, and left.
CHAPTER TEN
Angelo Bassalino had been sent to London after the trouble. It was only a temporary move, a discreet way of getting rid of him until the Camparo family calmed down. Gina Camparo was to be married soon, and after the ceremony—a few months, perhaps—the whole incident would be forgotten, and Angelo could be brought safely home.
Enzio had been somewhat amused by the whole affair. Angelo was his true son, a boy who let nothing stand in the way of his fine upstanding Bassalino prick.
It had been a touchy situation, and if Angelo had not been Enzio’s son, he might have found himself lodging inside a block of cement at the bottom of the East River. To screw a girl was one thing, but not at her engagement party to another man, and not where her brother and fiancé could discover you. And not when the girl was the daughter of a powerful rival—albeit a friendly one.
So Angelo was dispatched to London. There were gambling interests he could take care of there, and without too much effort Enzio arranged everything.
Angelo was not up to his expectations businesswise. The boy had none of the Bassalino drive or ambition. He had no hard core of toughness to call upon when dealing with people.
Enzio reasoned that Angelo was only twenty-four, a baby; he had plenty of time to wise up. But he also remembered himself at twenty-four, a veteran of six successful hits, already Crazy Marco’s right-hand man, a man with a big future ahead of him.
In New York, Angelo had worked for Frank.
‘He’s a lazy little punk,’ Frank constantly complained. ‘You send him to a joint to shake loose some tight cash, and you hafta send another guy chasing him ’cos he’s shacked up with some broad. Cooze, that’s all he’s got on his mind.’
Enzio tried sending him out to the coast to work for Nick, but that was even worse. Angelo fell for a sexy starlet and ended up getting his ass beaten off by her ‘producer.’
‘You’d better get yourself together in London,’ Enzio warned him. ‘A Bassalino should command respect. Screw around all you want, but you gotta remember—work is the important thing—an’ money. There’s solid opportunities for setting up over there, an’ one of these days I wanna see you control our end of it. To begin with, you work with the Stevesto organization—they’ll show you around.’
Angelo had shrugged. He didn’t care about making money—as long as there was plenty in the family, why did he have to work his butt off scoring more? It didn’t make sense. Let Frank and Nick keep the Bassalino respect going—they enjoyed it, he didn’t.
He didn’t argue with his father. Nobody argued with Enzio. There had been a time when he had expressed a wish not to go into the family ‘business.’ He’d wanted to be an actor, or maybe a musician. At sixteen those were his ambitions. When Enzio found out about it he’d beaten him with a leather strap and locked him in his room for a week. Angelo never mentioned it again.
London was a fine town, as Angelo soon discovered. Lots of pretty girls and friendly people. A person could walk the streets without fear of getting beaten up and robbed.
An apartment had been arranged for him, and he went to work for the Stevesto setup. It was easy potatoes; all he had to do was keep his eye on a couple of casinos and begin getting the hang of things.
Angelo was happy. He could have a different girl every week if he felt like it, and he did feel like it. He had to have sex every day. It was a habit—like morning coffee or doing push-ups—a habit he enjoyed excelling at.
Angelo was not tall and muscular like his brothers. He was slighter in build, almost skinny. And his face was more angular, with high cheekbones. He liked to wear his hair thick and long—a minor freak-out—and sometimes he featured a Che mustache and stubbly beard.
‘You look like a fuckin’ commie,’ Enzio was always screaming at him. ‘Jesus! Whyn’t you cut off that hair, buy some decent clothes—a suit maybe. You look like shit. Why can’t you take after your brothers?’
Fuck his brothers. Angelo kept his personal appearance exactly as he wanted. It was about the only way he could spit in his father’s eye without doing too much damage.
* * *
The full contingent of English press turned out at Heathrow Airport to meet Rio Java. Her reputation always preceded her.
She stepped off the plane in an outlandish pink catsuit, trailing a full-length leopard-skin coat over one arm.
‘Hi, boys,’ she greeted the army of photographers. ‘What do you want me to do?’
What didn’t they want her to do. Rio Java was always good for a front-page picture.
She had been making headlines for years. A heroin addict at eighteen, Rio had first been discovered in a rehab center by the very famous avant-garde film maker, Billy Express, who was making a movie about drugs called Turn On/Turn Off. His intrusive camera followed her every move as she was given the treatment—the cure. He didn’t miss a thing, and the result was instant stardom. It wasn’t long before she m
oved into his life permanently, gave birth to his baby (an event he filmed in loving if somewhat lurid detail), and starred in all his future projects. Billy Express was extremely successful and very, very rich. The more pornographic of his movies had made him a fortune.
Rio lived with Billy and his entourage in an elegant New York brownstone he shared with his mother. It was not the ideal arrangement, but his mother—a former Ziegfeld girl—came with the package.
Rio felt she owed Billy a lot. He was responsible for making her a celebrity, and she loved every minute of her notoriety. Off heroin, she had no objections to joining Billy, his friends, and his mother on their constant LSD trips. One memorable night she found herself sharing Billy’s bed with his Chinese boyfriend, Lei. It amused Billy to have them make it together while he filmed their lovemaking. The result was that Rio became pregnant again, and Billy was delighted. He loved children and lost no time in having the top floor of his house redecorated as a nursery, just in time for the birth of Rio’s twins—two tiny Chinese boys.
They were all happy. Billy, his bizarre mother, Lei, the children, the entourage. They made their movies, threw outrageous parties and existed in a sort of delicious, stoned vacuum.
Until one day Rio met Larry Bolding. He was a very straight married senator in his mid-forties. He came to one of Billy’s parties, and Rio took one look at the suntanned face, the suit, the honest eyes, and flipped out. There was something about Larry Bolding that attracted her with a passion.
‘I have to have him,’ she whispered to Billy.
‘No problem,’ he replied easily—jealousy was an emotion unknown to Billy. He selected a pill from his pocket. ‘Slip this in his drink and he’s all yours.’
In a rare moment of clarity Rio decided against spiking the senator’s drink. She wanted him without having to resort to drugs. She wanted him to want her.
Larry Bolding had a politician’s smile and a very direct gaze. Rio went to work. She was no slouch when it came to seduction.