Stephen and I were adults, not schoolboys. We exchanged no telltale grins but ambled through the salon and into the foyer with that studied nonchalance illicit lovers have cultivated from time immemorial. But beneath my placid exterior I was already reliving our torrid antics and happily imagining even steamier assignations to come. Could I lure him over to my place some night when Gilbert was out? Was my bedroom nice enough? Would I need a bigger mirror?
The problem with euphoria, of course, is that it lowers your defenses, leaving you vulnerable to predators lurking in the underbrush, which is why I gave no thought whatsoever to Claire until she fell on me from behind as we strolled down the upstairs hall. Seizing me by my collar and belt, she frog-marched me back to her room. Stephen, so recently assured by me of her benign placidity, watched in pardonable confusion. “You too!” she barked, motioning for him to join the party. When he failed to do so immediately she stomped over, grabbed him by the sleeve, and dragged him to her door.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
“Just get in!” she snapped and shoved us both inside, slamming the door behind her. The room was all but identical to my own, the sole addition to the decor being Gilbert, who sat at the foot of the bed and wore the dazed, beleaguered look of a suspect hauled in for questioning on a day when the good cop has phoned in sick.
“Watch who you’re shoving!” scolded Stephen.
“Excuse me, Your Highness,” said Claire, offering a sarcastic curtsy. “Just sit.”
“I don’t know what your problem is but I don’t take orders from —!”
“Sit!”
Stephen scowled but some instinct told him to obey and he parked himself resentfully on a love seat. I sat next to him, bracing for the worst, which Claire wasted no time in dispensing.
“Your friend under the table —did you have sex with him?”
Stephen just stared, aghast at the impertinence of the question.
“Did you?”
“What are you talking about?” he replied with the knee-jerk outrage such calumnies invariably provoked from him.
“Your little chum,” prompted Claire. “Golden boy. What were you doing before Mum and the missus crashed the party?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about! There was no one under that table,” he declared so forcefully even I almost bought it. “Philip will back me up, won’t you?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“I saw him, you idiots!” said Claire. “And what’s more I saw you see me see him, so do not please imagine you can act your way out of this. I know all about what goes on in Moira’s VIP rooms. This one told me everything.”
She indicated Gilbert, whose fascination with his lap remained undiminished.
“Nice going!” I sniped. Unfair of me, I know, since I’d have sung like a drunk show queen had Claire worked me over. It was vital though that Stephen view me as a stalwart confidant who’d never crack under pressure.
“Look,” said Stephen, rising to face her, “if you think you can shake me down here —!”
“Oh, sit, you stoned jackass. I’m not trying to shake you down. I’m trying to save your sorry ass, though I’m guessing it’s too late for that.”
Stephen, accustomed to a touch more obeisance from his employees, said, “Hey! There’s no need for name-calling!”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Hurt your feelings, love? I have not begun to name-call, you conceited, overprivileged oaf! You dick-brained, Oscar-fucking imbecile!”
Stephen turned to me with a flustered, betrayed look that broke my so recently euphoric heart.
“You told me she wouldn’t be a problem!”
“Trust me,” said Claire, “I am the least of your problems! Do you even begin to realize the magnitude of the blunder you’ve made in delivering yourself into the hands of Moira Finch? Do you have the first idea whom you’re dealing with?”
“Claire,” I explained weakly, “has never liked Moira.”
“No, I never have, Stephen. Neither have these two. And do you know why? Let me spell it out for you. Moira,” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest, “is not a nice lady! She is a thief, a liar, and a grifter par excellence. She is a backstabbing con artist who would sell her own mother for a Tic Tac, and if a vampire bit her, the vampire would die. That, my friend, is the woman you have so shrewdly entrusted with your most incendiary sexual secrets!”
“What are you talking about?” exclaimed Stephen, eyes bulging. “Philip said she was great!”
“He had to. She was blackmailing him!”
“What?” yelped Stephen, recoiling at his least favorite word.
“It was hardly blackmail,” I said, rising, alarmed, to my feet. “More an exchange of favors.”
“It’s why they brought you here in the first place,” said Claire. “Because Moira made them. She threatened to spill our dirty little secret, which is that our spec script, the one that made Bobby recommend us, was this one’s”— she thrust a finger at Gilbert —“clever little rewrite of Casablanca. ”
“I don’t think it matters how we got the job!” said Gilbert. “What counts is the bang-up job we’ve done on the new one, which is completely our own work and —”
“Shut up about the fucking script!” snarled Stephen. He sprang to his feet and began pacing frantically about the room.
“Is this true, Philip?” he demanded. “She blackmailed you into bringing me here?”
I said she had not done so explicitly, but conceded that we’d sensed a certain danger in saying no.
“She wanted a big fish,” said Claire, “and thanks to these two she got one. Which brings us back to Oscar —was that your idea or Moira’s?”
“Of course it wasn’t my idea! He just walked in!”
“And you were stoned?”
“It relaxes me!”
“A bit stronger than usual, was it?” asked Claire.
Stephen gaped at her as if she’d guessed the name of his fifth-grade crush.
“How the hell’d you know that?”
“Then one thing led to another?” pressed Claire.
“None of your damn business!”
She stared at him in amazement and something like pity, which unnerved me more than her wrath.
“And it never occurred to you she might be filming it?”
It clearly had not. The suggestion literally floored Stephen, making him stagger backward and trip over an ottoman. As he lay there, his face a rictus of horror, I wondered briefly if he’d had an actual coronary, his body making the snap decision that death would be preferable to life in a world where such footage existed and was easily downloadable.
“You think she filmed it?! ” said Gilbert, sounding less alarmed than eager to secure premiere tickets.
“If I know Moira,” sighed Claire, “that’s exactly what she did, what she’s been doing from the start. Roping in the suckers, pinhole cameras in every room, biding her time till she can name her price.”
“Fuck!” The expletive did not spring from Stephen’s lips but rather rocketed from the back of his throat like a forcefully Heimliched olive pit.
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK!!”
“Now let’s not panic!” I said, rushing to help him up.
“Don’t touch me!” he growled. “You’re the asshole who set me up for this!”
His words were like daggers and I brimmed suddenly not with guilt but anger at Claire, whose alarmist theory had turned my beloved against me. I wheeled on her. “Well, thanks a lot for getting him all freaked out! For all we know it’s never even occurred to Moira that she could — oh, shit!”
For an image had just detonated in my head. It was of the small security room located off Moira’s office. I recalled the locked door, the pugnacious little guard, the computer equipment. Mostly though I remembered the rows of flickering video monitors. Hadn’t one displayed a room much like that in which our recent sexcapades had unfolded?
“What?” demanded Claire.
I described my discovery, which did little to lessen Stephen’s hysteria. He was pacing now like a caged puma, his thoughts no doubt centering on Oscar and his own regrettably abandoned calls for brisker fucking.
“Don’t worry, Stephen! I’m going to fix this!” I vowed.
“Oh, really, Phil?” he said with venomous sarcasm. “And just how are you gonna do that?”
“Yes,” chimed Gilbert snidely, as if he bore no responsibility for our present dilemma. “Do tell us your master plan!”
The desire to regain lost love is a powerful spur to invention and I swiftly hit on a strategy. I outlined it in broad strokes. Stephen seemed cautiously hopeful, Claire offered astute embellishments, and Gilbert said he’d been about to suggest it himself.
Stephen called downstairs and asked for Moira. He told her there was a matter of some delicacy he wished to discuss but could not do so in his suite as Gina was there. Could she meet him in Philip’s room? Moira consented and we hastened next door to my room, where Claire, Gilbert, and I secreted ourselves in the closet. Moira arrived and when she’d advanced far enough into the room we pounced and tackled her to the floor.
“Get your goddamned hands off me!”
She struggled, demonic and wild-eyed as though fearing an unsolicited exorcism, but Claire and Gilbert held her down while I frisked her and found the prize I was after—her key ring. I smiled, dangling it before her in triumph.
“How dare you assault me! You give those back right now or I’ll say something you’ll wish I hadn’t!”
“You mean the Casablanca business?” said Claire. “Sorry, love, those beans are all spilled. Now it’s your turn to come clean.”
“Have you been filming me?” demanded Stephen.
“What?” replied Moira, doe-eyed and bewildered.
“My massages!” he snapped. “Have you been filming them?”
“Of course not!” she exclaimed, scandalized. “The very idea! You know I treat my clients’ privacy with the utmost respect!” She jerked her head toward Claire. “I suppose she’s the one who’s been filling your head with this rubbish?”
“If it’s rubbish,” said Claire, “then you won’t mind waiting here while we pop downstairs and check out your little video room.”
Moira heaved an irate sigh and shook her head, marveling at our paranoia.
“Fine. You’ve got the keys. Knock yourselves out.”
She sank into a chair and gazed out the window with the bored superior look young poetesses wear in algebra class. This was not the response we’d anticipated and the four of us exchanged a puzzled glance. Moira, taking advantage of our momentary inattention, sprang from the chair and flew toward the door. She managed to open it and very nearly got out but Stephen, making good on his boast that he does his own stunts, gave chase, dove to the ground, and grabbed her ankle, causing her to fall. He dragged her caveman style back into the room, ignoring her shrill threats of legal action, which Claire promptly silenced with the aid of a rolled-up pillowcase. We then secured her hands and feet with neckties and deposited her, bound, gagged, and furious, back into the chair.
We agreed it would take two of us to guard Moira and prevent her, if possible, from turning into a wolf and leaping out the window. Claire and Stephen agreed to stay with her while Gilbert and I plundered her sanctum.
As we raced down the hall I stopped suddenly, struck by a disquieting thought.
“What?” said Gilbert.
“The guard,” I said, describing the malevolent Kewpie doll who’d barred my way earlier.
“You say she’s tiny?”
“Yes, but her gun’s not.”
“Ah.” Gilbert frowned. “We’ll have to distract her then.”
“How?”
Gilbert pondered the matter for all of three seconds, then darted back down the hall to where a fire alarm was mounted next to an extinguisher. He triggered it and the tranquility of the spa was instantly shattered by a clangorous din. Doors flew open and startled guests, Claire among them, popped their heads out. I rushed back, told her to sit tight, then rejoined Gilbert, who was standing at the top of the stairs, smiling proudly down at the chaos he’d wrought.
As anxious guests streamed into the lobby from the bar and salon, our eyes remained fixed on the door behind the reception desk. In due course it opened and out came the receptionist along with slutty raccoon girl. Seconds ticked by and I began to wonder if Kim’s dedication was such that she’d sooner face incineration than abandon her post but she finally emerged, scowling, from her den.
“Yeesh!” said Gilbert. “Who put a dress on Danny DeVito?”
As Kim busied herself herding patrons out to the lawn it was simplicity itself to dash down the stairs, nip behind the desk, drop to a crouch, and waddle into the office. As we’d expected, the door to the security room was locked, but the fourth key we tried opened it.
Once inside, we closed the door and inspected the bank of video monitors. There were twelve in all, displaying four different treatment rooms from three angles each. Two of the rooms were now empty. In the other two rooms buff young men were struggling hastily into their clothes while their clients, gentlemen of middle years, huddled in robes, looking fretful and thwarted.
Beneath the monitors was a counter on which sat an Apple laptop with a large screen. I hit COMMAND-F for “find” and typed in “Donato.” This led me to a folder that bore his name and contained thirty-two items, the icons for which were little filmstrips, suggesting video files. Each was labeled by date, the most recent being today’s. I clicked on it and the screen filled suddenly with remarkably crisp footage of Stephen sitting on the massage table, smoking the joint as Ricky kneaded his neck. I pressed COMMAND-QUIT and the scene disappeared.
“Watcha do that for?” squawked Gilbert. “They weren’t even naked yet!”
“There’s no time, you horny idiot! Check the drawers and cabinets!”
A hasty search yielded a Lucite box containing twelve shiny disks like DVDs. They were in paper sleeves on each of which was scrawled some famous name, Stephen’s among them.
“You take these, I’ll get the laptop!” I said, disconnecting the cables but keeping the power cord. Satisfied we’d confiscated all we could, we exited through Moira’s lair to the outer office, entering it at the precise moment that wee Kim barreled in from the lobby.
“ You! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she inquired, reaching for her gun.
My usual strategy in moments of such dire peril is to freeze in horror and pray to wake up. But I had a megastar to save and wasn’t about to let this surly Cerberus stand between me and his tender gratitude. Noting that she was standing on a beige carpet runner and that we were not, I dropped to a squat and gave it a brisk yank, causing her to plummet the relatively short distance to the floor.
“C’mon!” I yelled and we fled, Gilbert taking care to stomp on her kidneys so as to extract still more wind from her sails. We sped through the lobby and out to the driveway, where the confused guests milled about, anxiously speculating on the whereabouts of the fire.
“Shit!” cried Gilbert, frantically patting his pockets.
“What?”
“We valeted!”
The LA custom of valeting—leaving one’s keys and car with a fellow who parks it for you then retrieves it when needed—is normally a welcome convenience. There is nothing like it, however, to put a crimp in a getaway, which is why your savvier burglar eschews the practice entirely, preferring to keep a driver waiting or, at the very least, self-park. There was no chance that even the speediest valet could retrieve Gilbert’s car before Moira’s enraged sentinel emerged from the spa, pistols blazing.
“Moira’s keys!” said Gilbert. “Is her car on there?”
I whipped the ring from my pocket and saw that it indeed held a key to her Porsche. This was a timely stroke of luck as the enraged thuglet had just exited the lobby and was letting rip some full-throated war cries.
“Stop! Thief! S
top them!! ”
We sprinted madly toward the parking area in search of Moira’s Porsche. It would not, we promptly realized, be easy to find, since, owing to the affluence of her clientele, the lot looked pretty much like a dealership. Fortunately for us, Moira liked her boss lady perks and the RESERVED FOR M. FINCH sign led us swiftly to her gleaming black Carrera.
Gilbert took the wheel. We peeled out, tires screaming, and roared down the driveway at a speed that brought loud rebukes from guests near its edges. We barely heard one last furious cry of “Stop them!” before we passed through the gate.
After we’d traveled a safe distance, taking many an arbitrary turn to foil pursuers, I borrowed Gilbert’s cell, having left mine at the hotel, and called Claire. I informed her of our success and asked if she’d retrieve Gilbert’s and my luggage as we’d not be returning to Les Étoiles anytime soon. I asked to speak to Stephen. I told him what we’d found, laying it on pretty thick in the derring-do department, then asked if he wished to rendezvous later for a handoff. This drew a howl of protest from Gilbert, who saw no reason to relinquish the disks before we’d had a proper screening.
Stephen said he was bursting to take possession but couldn’t meet us tonight owing to Gina, whom he’d just glimpsed from the window. She was wandering the grounds, searching hysterically for him, convinced, despite the conspicuous absence of fire, that he lay trapped in some smoldering corner of the spa. She’d be hurt and wonder why he hadn’t sought her out during the scare to make sure she was safe. To abandon her again for some mysterious nocturnal errand would only further inflame her suspicions.
“Can’t you just tell her you’re antsy and want to go for a drive?”
“Uh, she’s kinda heard that one a lot.”
He said he’d call me first thing come morning to arrange a handoff. Then Claire took the phone and urged us not to return home as Moira knew where we lived and was not above dispatching ungentle emissaries to reclaim her prize. We agreed this was prudent and arrived some twenty minutes later at the Chateau Marmont, having stopped just once, at Gilbert’s request, for popcorn.