7
Bernard Antillio had attached himself to Jagged Cat when the studio first optioned the screenplay. He, along with Sheela, had been the leverage to green-light the picture. Bernard was considered a hot director. His last picture, Three, had been nominated for a Golden Globe, and swept away its competition at Cannes, Toronto, and Sundance.
The guy looked the part. He had shaggy black hair that he wore over his ears like a fuzzy helmet. He left his white oversized shirts unbuttoned at the top to display a thatch of black chest hair. A narrow face, darkly complected, was home to large brown eyes that projected a brooding intensity. A good distribution deal on Three had not only boosted Bernard to fame, but had paid for his new digs.
The house dominated a brush-covered lot atop the mountain on Miller Drive. The structure itself looked like haphazardly stacked triangles impossibly propped up with stainless steel columns that glittered in the lights. A wag had once said it looked like a pile of giant cement mousetraps that had been sprung and then filled in with glass.
From the highest of the pointed decks, one could see from La Cienega to the Valley. As Rex stood at the prow of one of the highest wedges—a combination of roof and deck—he nursed his scotch and stared out at the endless lights of the city spread so far below. They made an improbable seascape of twinkling yellow that illuminated the high clouds with a murky lemon glow.
His mind was knotted around Sheela’s fixation on the New York attack. Now they had a what? A private investigator? And she would discover what? That a wacky fan had jumped at Sheela? Things like that happened. Adulation bred obsession. Stars like Sheela had to accept the lunatics, stalkers, and sycophants.
He chewed his lip, glanced back at the party visible through the windows, and listened to the music and chatter rising from the lower decks. A woman’s high laughter carried over the babble of voices. They were mostly the movers and shakers from Jagged Cat, although the usual smattering of producers, execs, agents, stars, and wannabes had shown up. The place would have been packed but for a Russell Crowe gala in Bel Air.
Glancing down two levels, he could see Sheela in her pale blue dress. People crowded around her—supplicants in search of favor from the goddess of the moment. He wondered how she was bearing up under the demands. Adulation and parasitism had a great deal in common.
He turned his attention back to the view and recalled the afternoon. Rex couldn’t help but grin at the memory of Christal Anaya’s rich eyes. He would dream about her for a while. She had spunk—something he didn’t see very much of these days.
Bernard came walking up, a drink in his right hand, his left arm draped suggestively over a young blond girl’s shoulder. When Rex glanced at her, his first impression was of shining white teeth, vacuous beaming eyes, and tits that had absorbed too much Miracle-Gro.
“Hey, Rex,” Bernard greeted, his smile that of a satisfied barracuda. “Good to see you. I hoped you’d come.” He glanced over the railing at the people clustered around the bar on the lower deck. Down at ground level, a muscular young man dove cleanly into the pool. Knots and clusters of people could be seen chatting on the lower levels and through the tall windows. “Great party, huh?”
“Yeah, and if that kid working for the valet scratches my Ferrari, I’ll have his liver flayed with a weed eater.”
Bernard flashed his white teeth. “They’ve got insurance. I heard in advance that Felix was coming. Never piss off a lawyer who can afford a Bentley. Either he’s very good, or he lucked into a tobacco settlement.”
Rex nodded, smiling warily. “Yeah, I wanted Felix here.” He pointed. Two levels down Felix was talking to Fillip Hart, the studio CFO. “As we speak, he’s telling Fill that Sheela’s on the way out.”
“Out of what?” Bernard continued to grin, his teeth white against his dark narrow face. The blonde under his arm was beaming up at him, awe and anticipation in her wide blue eyes.
“You’ve read that latest crap they’ve written into the script?”
Bernard’s eyes narrowed, and he took a slurp from his glass. The girl frowned, as if suddenly confused. Bernard chuckled, apparently unsure if he wanted to fire back at Rex or if it was a joke. “Valerie, let me introduce you to Rex Gerber. Rex, Valerie.”
“Hi, ya,” Rex granted, lifting his scotch glass in a mock salute.
“Rex is one of the last of the true Neanderthals.”
Rex grinned. “So? Let me guess. You optioned the Scott Ferris story?” The grin died. “Don’t fuck with the script, Bernard. You’re not good at it.”
“Fuck you, Rex! Jagged Cat needed more punch. That’s what we added. In case you haven’t been paying attention, box office is where it’s at. The marketing research indicates—”
“Bernard.” Rex lowered his voice. “I’ll tell you just what Felix is telling Fill. We’re going back to the original screenplay, or Sheela’s exercising her option to bug out.”
“Rex, she signed the contract.” It had finally soaked into Bernard’s shaggy head that Rex was serious.
“She did, to do Jagged Cat the way it was way back when. Remember how it used to be a story instead of a blood fuck?”
“The public wants—”
“People want Sheela Marks doing what she does best. And it ain’t being raped by her father before she chops him in two with a shotgun.” He waved down Bernard’s protest. “That’s it. End. Finis.” He smiled at the girl. “Nice to meet you.” He left Bernard sputtering and cursing.
He walked through the rich aroma of pot where four people sat passing a joint in the shadow of a palmetto and stepped through the sliding doors into the house. He squinted in the lights just as Tony Zell caught his eye. Tony lifted a hand and excused himself from Jodie Foster’s manager.
Either it was a trick of the lights, or Tony had put something in his blond hair to make it slightly iridescent. The gold chains around his tanned neck were visible inside a loose black silk shirt. Three gold rings adorned his right ear.
“Rex?” Tony greeted, taking his arm and pulling him off to the side. “Fill me in, buddy. I’m hearing stories.”
“Yeah, it’s true,” Rex began. “Sheela’s really cranked about it.”
Tony made a pained face. “Why? I tell you, it’s no big deal. So, it’s a little publicity. It’ll blow over. Not that it hurts, huh?”
“Bad publicity? I’d call it a bit more involved than that.” Rex crossed his arms, looking into Tony’s perplexed blue eyes. He waved away Aaron Purcell, who was walking up with a beaming smile on his thick lips. “Later, Aaron. Okay?”
“Yeah, see me.” Aaron nodded happily at Tony and veered away.
“It’s not a big thing!” Tony insisted. Then he asked, “Did Lymon put her up to this?”
Rex made a face. “What would Lymon care? And, yeah, it is a big thing. Sheela might be on top right now, but she’s vulnerable. Women always are. She might survive one dunking, but she’s not a man. She can’t take two.”
“Why?” Tony looked worried as he fingered the gold ring on his left index finger. “Are there threats?”
“Nothing that Felix can’t handle. Look, they don’t want the publicity. If they don’t handle this right now, it’ll be in Daily Variety’s Monday edition. It’ll be talked all over town that the screenplay’s such a piece of shit that Sheela’s walking. That kind of negative … What?”
“What are we talking about?” Tony looked perplexed.
“Jagged Cat. What the hell did you think we were talking about?”
“Sheela’s walking on Jagged Cat?”
“Haven’t you been listening? I sent you a memo. Either they go back to the original story, or we’re gone. Remember that clause that Felix put into the contract? We gave up two percent of box office for the right to ankle if anything pissed us off.”
Tony nodded, thinking.
“What the hell were you talking about?”
“This thing at the St. Regis in New York.” Tony shook his head. “I don’t know why it weirde
d Sheela out so much. I mean, man, these things happen. She knows that.”
“Yeah, well, Lymon found her a PI—a woman, no less. You’d think it was a movie. A real bitchin’ number, too. Mexican, I’d guess. Like Jennifer Lopez, but more intense. Not J-Lo. Raquel, from the old days. Classic, with that fire in her eyes.”
Tony’s gaze had fixed on infinity. “She got a name?”
“Christal Anaya. Ex-FBI. Lymon gave me a thumbnail on her. She got caught fucking some of the Washington brass. They were going to kick her out, so she resigned rather than make a stink.”
Tony gave him a careful scrutiny. “You think she can do anything?”
Rex shrugged. “Hell, how would I know? If you ask me, it’s a waste of money. But, yeah, if there is anything there, I think she’s a bloodhound. She’ll sniff it out.”
Tony had fixed his gaze on one of the bronze statues that stood in the corner of the room. It looked like green spaghetti that dripped water.
Rex rattled the ice in his glass. “Meanwhile, you might stop and have a nice chat with Fill. Just mention that we’ve still got a deal with him for two pictures. Ask him what he’s got in mind for a replacement if Sheela legs on JC.”
Tony nodded, and he fingered his gold chain. “Yeah, I’ll do that.” After a pause he glanced up. “FBI, huh? No shit?”
“Why are we here?” Christal asked as she looked around at the expensive furnishings in Morton’s. The tablecloths, the centerpieces, the diners in fashionably tasteless dress left her uneasy. Something about the young beaming staff didn’t seem right to her. They hustled about with an unaccustomed alacrity, smiling, seeming to be happier than circumstances warranted. And then she got it: They were too beautiful.
“I want you to get it out of your system.” Lymon waved around. “Morton’s is probably the most famous restaurant in Beverly Hills. So, here you are. This afternoon you sat across the table from Sheela Marks. Tonight you’re where all of Hollywood’s greats either eat or have eaten.” He pointed to a booth in the back. “There’s Governor Schwarzenegger with one of his managers. Evidently he’s tired of the Capitol lunchroom up in Sacramento. That or he wanted to talk business with someone. As many movies are pitched, brainstormed, and green-lighted in places like this as in board rooms.”
She chewed thoughtfully on her salad as she shot a furtive glimpse at Schwarzenegger. God, the guy was big! He looked older than he did in the movies. “Okay, so just what is it that I’m supposed to be learning here?”
“That once you get past all the hype, the money, and other bullshit, we’re just dealing with a bunch of people. Stressed out, but still just people with all the baggage that entails. True, they’re more egotistical and screwed up, but then they’ve got the means to support and reinforce their egotistical and screwed-upness.”
“Sheela didn’t seem screwed up.”
“Nope. That’s one of the reasons I like working for her. She still has horse sense.”
“Horse sense?” Christal lifted a dark eyebrow. “Is that a bodyguard technical term?”
He stuck a fork tine into a tomato wedge. “Not yet … but it ought to be. I said horse sense because she comes from a Canadian farm where they raised horses—mares, more precisely—for urine. Some kind of estrogen source for menopausal women, or some such thing. And in the end result, you can’t use the term common sense.”
“Why not?”
He lifted the tomato, studying it. “Because sense is never common.”
“No, I guess it isn’t.” The way he was looking at her made her nervous. “What is it, Lymon?”
“Did you have any training in witness protection, personal security, that kind of thing?”
“Some.”
“Look, Christal, there are four main causes of danger in the personal protection business: Intentional injury, where someone comes gunning for your principal. Unintentional injury, where the attack is targeted on someone else and Sheela just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; she’s collateral damage, if you will. Third are silly accidents. Say she trips over a cable while receiving an award, or maybe just slips in the bathtub.”
“And the fourth?” Christal asked as she finished her salad.
“The fourth is an invasion of the principal’s privacy. Sheela is a very private woman that the whole world would like to keep under a fisheye lens.” Lymon stabbed a chunk of romaine. “My job is to keep her safe from all four of the above-mentioned threats.” He studied her as he chewed, swallowed, and said, “Do you understand that difference?”
“What difference?”
“The difference between keeping a person safe and being a cop.”
“Well, yes, I think so.”
“Cops make lousy bodyguards.”
“Why?” She smiled up as one of the too-pretty young men took her salad plate.
“They see trouble coming, and have to stick their chins right into the middle of it. Where a cop is running in to collar the bad guy, a good personal security agent is already shagging his principal out the back door. I want you to learn these two words, Anaya: Cover and evacuate.”
“Cover and evacuate,” she answered. “I know that personal security is all defensive, but you hired me to dig up the reality behind these odd attacks, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but I want you to learn something about executive protection, too.”
“Why?”
“Do you know how many women are in this business?”
“No.”
“Damn few.” He smiled. “You’re going to need a job when this is all over. I want to see if you’ve got the right chops for a permanent position with LBA.”
“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” She paused. “So what got you from the Marines to the bodyguard business?”
He had a vacant look. “I’m not sure you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
She wondered what lay behind those crowbarlike eyes he turned on her. “All right. It was one of those things that happen to guys who do crazy shit. You start to balance on the edge of the abyss, taunting the dragons that lurk in the deep. A good friend told me I was either going to go over, or I had to get out.”
“Go over how?”
“I’m an adrenaline junkie. Each mission is a high. You can be caught or killed any second. Your mind and body are so alert, so alive, it’s an endorphin rush. After you are extracted, you decompress, but you no longer feel complete. Something’s missing, and you can’t wait for the next so you’ll be whole again. You get desperate, waiting, hoping. The more dangerous the last mission was, the more you crave the next. It got so that every time I was out of the field I had to be training. If I was on enforced R and R I got crazy, started looking for trouble.”
He tapped the side of his head. “I’ve got the kind of brain that gets addicted. It’s a weird personality trait. Anything I do, I have to watch myself. I keep wanting more and more. A good friend figured it out before I did. So I had to quit before I got myself—and probably some other people—killed.”
“I’d think working here would be just the opposite.” She indicated the glitzy surroundings. “It’s artificial. Fake. Arnold over there, he’s not the real world. Reality is in Peoria, or Baltimore, or Denver, or somewhere.”
“You’re right I’m here for balance,” he replied. “But I don’t expect you to understand. Like I said earlier, it’s something inside my head.”
The main course appeared, the impossibly pretty waiter placing her salmon on the table before stepping back for Lymon’s lamb.
She picked up her fork. “You’re sure it wasn’t the glamorous lives of the stars? A chance to rub some of that glitter off onto your elbows?”
He chuckled before washing a cube of lamb down with red wine. “Maybe. Back in the beginning. That’s another reason I like Sheela. She hasn’t self-destructed yet.”
“Yet?” She raised an eyebrow.
He watched her, those hard hazel eyes making her uncomfortable. As if he were seein
g … what?
“There is an old saying.” Lymon wiped his mouth on the cloth napkin. “Just before God decides to destroy you, he makes all of your wishes come true. Celebrity comes with a price, Christal. A terrible gut-wrenching cost to the body and the soul. Filmmaking is an alluring business filled with unpleasant people doing unpalatable things in an unattractive place.”
“Uh, hey, boss, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but that’s a pretty fancy place Sheela lives in.”
“Yeah. The walls are nice, but they’re still walls.” He picked at his lamb. “She wears a collar twenty-four/seven, and it’s starting to chafe. She lives surrounded by twenty-four-hour security. We have restraining orders out on three different stalkers who have tried to get into her house. One, our good friend Krissy, was carrying a scalpel and a butcher shop bone saw last time she tried to get over the wall.”
“For what purpose?”
“Krissy wouldn’t say exactly—just that it had something to do with making sure Sheela understood how much Krissy loved her.”
“God.”
“Hey, nutty fans are the easy part. You only worry about them when you wake up at three in the morning and can’t get back to sleep. The press, on the other hand, has her life under a microscope. Somehow paparazzi managed to get photos of her being intimate with each of her last two male friends. The average person in the streets takes their privacy for granted. Sheela’s last romance began to flower at a private resort outside of Dallas. Someone managed to get a camera into her bedroom. The next day … Are you all right?”
Christal forced herself to take a breath, aware that her facial muscles had tensed and her heart was pounding. “It’s nothing. But, yeah, for the record let’s say I do understand. What happened? The photos came with a note? Payment for nonpub?”
“Are you kidding? This was Sheela Marks and Ronaldo de Giulio, the Italian director. There they were, next day, splattered all over the tabloids. Front page. ‘Sheela and Italian Flame Caught in Love Tryst!’ It was a disaster.”