All Night Long (6 page)

The courtroom was the biggest in the building. Rows of seating for a hundred spectators, the judge's bench high above the floor, and big windows that let in plenty of natural sunlight that reflected off the cool chromium of the courtroom's floors. Kiley spotted Sid and Serenity in the second row. Bruce was sitting
with the colonel and Susan several rows back. Tom was near them.

“Do you think Mommy will win?” Serenity asked as Kiley slid in beside her.

Kiley mustered up the most reassuring smile she could. “Of course she will, sweetie. You'll be seeing her in no time.”

She wished she could believe it as much as it sounded like she did.

She was about to offer more reassuring—if vacant—words, when a hefty bailiff with bald spots stomped in from a rear door and stood at attention in front of the judge's bench. “Oyez, oyez, oyez. Silence is commanded on pain of imprisonment while the honorable Judge Timothy Terhune of the Superior Court of the State of California enters the room. All rise.”

Judge Terhune entered, swung his gavel into the bench like a hatchet, shuffled some papers, and then addressed the gallery. “Now, before we begin, I know this is a particularly high-profile case, so I want to make perfectly clear that this court will disallow the use of any and all photography. And there are no televisions in this courtroom, as you can see. This is a
closed court
.” He surveyed the room to let the statement's gravity sink in. “We're not trying to draw an iron curtain here, but I don't want to be accused of turning the courtroom into a three-ring circus.”

The gallery nodded solemnly. “So as long as we can maintain some decorum, I think the proceedings will go smoothly. Thank you. Bailiff, the defendant, please.”

Another bailiff opened the rear door. Platinum entered, with Richie Singleton at her right hand and his team of supporting lawyers in tow. She looked as vigilant as the figurehead on a ship, her solemn face preparing for the trial.

So much for Judge Terhune's appeal for restraint. The courtroom thundered its applause for the celebrity defendant.

Judge Terhune hammered his gavel until the clapping died down. “Order! Order! Will the defendant please take her seat?”

He waited patiently until Platinum turned from the gallery and gracefully sat. “In the case of the State of California versus Ms. Rhonda Jones.” Laughter overtook the last part of his sentence, and Terhune was forced to wait until the hilarity of Platinum's little-known legal name had washed through the courtroom. “Is the prosecution ready for its opening statement?”

“Today marked the first day of the Platinum child-endangerment and drug trial at the Beverly Hills courthouse. Let's go to Maria-José Escalera for a summary of the day's proceedings. Maria-José?”

The television picture shifted to the courthouse steps, where a beautiful, slender Latina reporter with perfectly arched brows and too much maroon lip gloss was reporting. Esme edged closer to a television suspended over the bar at Deep South, the popular cowboy/country music club in the heart of Hollywood. This club was the venue of the wrap party for
Montgomery
, the set-in-the-Deep-South small-town indie picture in which Jonathan Gold-hagen had a major role.

Though by Hollywood standards the movie was low budget—in the six- or seven-million-dollar range—the wrap party itself was lavish. There was a chuckwagon buffet, a five-piece country band rocking the house, two mechanical bulls set
up inside a small corral of hay bales, and what seemed like the cast, crew, and families of several indie movies and one or two studio blockbusters in attendance. Most everyone was clad in western wear for the party, except for Esme. She'd worn black jeans with white stitching, a black tank top, and one of Jonathan's custom-made white cotton dress shirts over it, knotted just above her waist. She just couldn't see herself in chaps and a cowboy hat.

Jonathan stepped up behind her; she felt him put his strong arms around her. She leaned into him. “Watching the news?”

“Shhh.” Esme really wanted to hear. “It's about Kiley's boss.”

“Okay, okay. Let's check it out. Then let's mingle.”

They listened as the reporter briefly described the day's proceedings in the courtroom and the media circus outside. Since the judge was not permitting cameras in the courtroom, it was up to reporters like this one to give their impressions of the testimony and the lawyers' performances. As Jonathan and Esme watched, Escalera waxed poetic about both the prosecution's and the defense's opening statement, and related that actual testimony would start the day after tomorrow because the judge had previously scheduled a minor medical procedure.

“The nature of that medical procedure is still a mystery, but Judge Terhune assured the lawyers and the jury that he'd be back in court on Wednesday. This is Maria-José Escalera, Eyewitness News.”

The moment the broadcast was over, Esme saw a cowboy-hatted, bandanna-wearing bartender point a remote at the TV and switch it over to the end of the Dodgers' game with the Mets.

So much for interest in the
real
news of the day
, Esme thought.

Jonathan lifted Esme's hair and brushed his fingertips across the back of her neck, making her shudder. In a good way. “How's Kiley doing?” he asked.

“I think okay, I haven't talked to her since— Hey, there she is. Let's go ask her.”

Kiley had just stepped into the bar area with her boyfriend, Tom.

“Tell you what, I've got to go check in with my director. I haven't seen him all night,” Jonathan said, then patted his pants for his phone. “Get the coverage, text me, and I'll hook up with you when the speeches begin.”

Esme was mildly disappointed that Jonathan didn't want to hang out with her, but she understood. Movies were a business, just like nannying or tattooing. There were things you wanted to do and things you had to do. The things you had to do always came first. Tonight, the thing that Jonathan had to do was put on a good show for everyone associated with his movie.

“No problem.” She stood on tiptoe—Jonathan was easily six foot two—and kissed him, then watched him in his faded Levi's and checkered shirt as he threaded through the thick crowd into the main room of the club. Meanwhile, she saw Kiley and Tom working their way over to her.

“How's my favorite non-felon?” Esme quipped.

Her friend sighed. “I don't drink, otherwise I'd be drunk.”

Tom rubbed Kiley's neck sympathetically. “I'm gonna get myself a beer. You want anything?”

The way Tom touched Kiley made Esme smile. So many times, Kiley had worried about whether Tom was into Kiley as much as she was into him. That gentle touch answered that question, so long as Kiley was secure enough to listen to it.

“Just a Coke, I guess,” Kiley told Tom as he moved off to the bar.

“Coke it is.”

Esme couldn't help admiring the rear view as Tom sidled up to the bartender. “Looking good.”

“Imagine,” Kiley joked, “that
and
a hundred thousand dollars.”

Esme raised her eyebrows. “Someone is paying you a hundred thousand dollars to date someone that hot? Sign me up.”

“It isn't like that.” Kiley frowned, then quickly explained how she'd been approached outside the courthouse by an editor from the
Universe
and offered six figures to tell her story to the magazine.

“Damn,” Esme said. “Are you going to do it?”

“Do what?”

Esme and Kiley turned. There was Lydia, in the shortest Daisy Duke cutoffs Esme had ever seen, an old Houston Oilers football jersey that had been chopped practically to nothing with scissors or a knife, and a straw cowboy hat that would have looked stupid on almost anyone else but that was astonishingly sexy on her.

“Hey, y'all. Before you ask—yes, I'm here with Billy. I didn't get a chance to thank you properly, Esme. So here are some Amazon-style thanks.” With those words, she flung herself into Esme's arms with so much enthusiasm that Esme was literally rocked back on her heels.

Esme was not used to being grabbed like that, and frankly, she didn't like it. On the other hand, she really liked Lydia. “You're welcome. Where's Billy, then?”

Lydia chucked her chin toward the main room. “Back there
someplace. He's friends with the production designer on Jonathan's movie. I think they're networking.” She turned to Kiley. “So who are you going to do?”

Esme had to laugh. For a girl who had very little actual sexual experience, Lydia certainly talked about it a lot. “Believe it or not, we weren't talking about sex. It was about money.”

Lydia grinned. “Two subjects near and dear to my heart. Do tell, Kiley.”

One more time, Kiley told the story of the magazine guy from the
Universe
who had offered her all the money for her story.

“You're going to do it, aren't you?” Lydia's head swiveled as a chiseled, barechested African American guy in cowboy chaps strode by.

“How can I?” Kiley asked. “It's not my story to tell.”

Lydia pulled down the brim of her cowboy hat and exaggerated her drawl. “It's like this, sweet pea. Y'all are gonna fess up on the witness stand for free anyway. Why not get some benefit from it?”

“Because it's just … it's not right,” Kiley insisted.

Tom came back from the bar with a cardboard tray of Cokes and a couple of Lone Star beer bottles. Lydia immediately took one of the beers and hoisted it in Kiley's direction. “Does your boyfriend know what a good person you are, Kiley?”

“Yes, I do,” Tom replied. “Sometimes too good.” He lifted a Lone Star of his own to Kiley.

“Did she tell you she's passing up a hundred thousand bucks for about an hour's work?” Lydia pressed.

Tom reached for Kiley's hand. “She can tell me all about it while we go dance. Do you know how to two-step, Kiley?”

Kiley reddened slightly. “Not a clue.”

“Time to learn. Excuse us.” He led Kiley off in the same direction that Jonathan had departed earlier.

Lydia sighed. “That boy looks good coming
and
going.”

The party was getting truly raucous now, with huge whoops and shouts coming from the main room, and the country band putting enough drive in their music to have it edge dangerously toward rock and roll.

“I've got a great idea!” Lydia shouted over the pounding beat.

“What?” Esme said.

“Let's dance, too!” Lydia grabbed Esme's hand and yanked her toward the dance floor, where they were soon surrounded by the young and the beautiful. Dancing with another girl wasn't at all strange to Esme—when she and her ex-boyfriend, Junior, went to the salsa clubs in east Los Angeles, Esme and her girlfriends would dance all the time—but dancing to twangy country was another thing entirely. The lead singer was singing a song about mixing Southern rock and country, but Esme just couldn't get into the music.

“What's the matter?” Lydia, who immediately had started boogying to the music as if she'd grown up on it, instead of on Amazonian tribal chants, stopped dancing.

“These aren't my tunes. I'm taking a break.”

“Could you go buy me a bottle of real expensive champagne?” Lydia asked over the music.

“It's an open bar,” Esme pointed out. “It's all free.”

Lydia bumped her hip into Esme's. “I'm foolin'. But just out of curiosity, rich girl, how much money did Jacqueline pay for her tattoo last night?”

“Too much. I'll be back.”

Esme snaked her way through the crowd toward the bar. Truth be told, she'd taken home fifteen hundred dollars the night before for four hours of work, plus a dinner that had been delivered by room service from the kitchen of the Polo Lounge, a landmark of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Fifteen hundred dollars— Jacqueline had been so pleased with the tattoo that she'd tipped extravagantly—was three times what Esme made at the Goldhagens' in a week, for less than a tenth of the time invested. Every time she thought about this, she had to wonder: why in the world was she still a nanny? If her business took off, she could make three hundred thousand dollars a year for creating art.

Then she thought how disappointed her mother and father would be. “We're not working this hard so you can carve up and paint people's arms,” her father had told her in Spanish when they'd had a family dinner last Saturday night at their tiny bungalow in Echo Park. “You keep this job, you go to that good school so you can be someone someday. Tattoos are for
cholos
.”

Esme reached the bar. There were a half dozen people in front of her waiting to place drink orders, including two gorgeous girls who were making out. It was clear to Esme that they were doing this for show, as they kept looking around to see who was looking back. Both girls had visible tattoos. The strawberry blonde with the blunt-cut bob had a dolphin peeking out from the low-cut back of her pink silk shirt, and the brunette had a yin-yang sign on her lower back that dipped into the top of her designer jeans.

Talk about boring body art. Hell, she could probably talk those two girls into new tattoos right this minute if she wanted to. She would learn about who they were, their hopes and
dreams, and design a tattoo for both of them that was one of a kind, utterly unique. Those girls would recommend her to more girls and more guys … and if she was really careful and saved nearly every penny, soon she would have enough money to buy her parents a decent house and get their immigration status regularized. She could always go to school later on. Was she out of her mind not to?