Breaking Hollywood (16 page)

Perry got up and headed for the door, with a parting, ‘I’ll keep you updated.’

‘Thanks, Perry,’ Mirren replied, then held out a hand to greet the replacement.

Brad Bernson had worked for her many times over the years, doing everything from tracking down the scumbags who were supplying Chloe with her drugs to doing background checks on potential
employees. An ex-marine, he’d gone into the military police, rising to lieutenant colonel before retiring and setting up on his own. Mirren trusted him as much as she trusted anyone. She had
to hope that, especially in this case, it wouldn’t be misplaced.

Introductions over, he took the seat recently vacated by Perry. ‘What can I do for you?’

It was one of the things that Mirren liked about him – he was straight to the point. No screwing around, no unnecessary pleasantries.

‘I need you to find out anything you can about this woman. Her name’s Marilyn McLean. I’ve written down all her details. She won’t be on any US databases, but she may
have entered the country in the last few weeks.’

Brad lifted the file with the photograph on the front. It was clearly an old one, taken many years before. Mirren had absolutely no idea whether Marilyn even resembled that image now. Her mother
had always been supremely vain, dying her hair, fixating on her appearance, desperate to halt the clock of the ageing process. The blonde hair would be piled on her head, full face make-up before
she’d leave the house, lots of pink clothes and indecently short skirts, which were excruciatingly embarrassingly inappropriate to her teenage daughter. Marilyn didn’t care. She was
Jono Leith’s mistress, and as long as he was happy, that was all that mattered.

The memories forced a wave of bile to rise from Mirren’s stomach. There was no one she despised more than Marilyn McLean.

‘Same name. Is she a family member?’ Brad’s right eyebrow was raised in question.

‘My mother.’

‘And do you want her to be approached if we find her?’

‘Absolutely not. Just let me know straight away.’

‘OK, will do. I’ll be in touch if I have any questions after reading the file.’ Brad rose and was out of there with no further discussion, leaving Mirren’s teeth clenched
with dread. For once, she wanted Brad to fail, to discover that Marilyn was nowhere to be found.

She honestly and truly hoped that her mother was dead.

‘Closest Thing to Crazy’ – Katie Melua

Zander

‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ Wes Lomax screamed. Yep, actually screamed. Zander was pretty sure that his hair fluttered in the blowback. No one in this town
spoke to a star of Zander’s calibre like that. No one. But Wes was more than just a studio head. He’d discovered Zander, Mirren and Davie twenty-two years before and made them stars,
but only Zander had stayed with him since that first movie. Wes had tolerated years of negative press, defended him against all oncoming attacks, helped him through his addictions and coped with
every shred of drama Zander had brought to his door. And right now, Zander knew that gave Wes the right to vent his frustrations with a baseball bat if he had one handy.

Round the boardroom table, the Lomax lawyers, publicity chiefs, exec producers, bean counters, several anonymous suits and Hollie, staring downwards in the hope of escaping the wrath. Only
Zander kept his head up, although he couldn’t stop a sigh. There was no getting away from the fact that he didn’t come out of this well. The only ray of consolation was that Raymo Cash
had refused to press charges, largely due to the fact that Mirren had told cops he made the first move.

‘It was self-defence,’ Zander said calmly, and not for the first time. ‘The guy came at Mirren. I pushed him back.’

‘Then fell on him and felt the repeated inclination to punch him in the face?’ Wes didn’t hide his cynicism. ‘And it just had to be the same prick you punched out last
time?’

‘I’m just lucky like that,’ Zander agreed wearily.

It was a fuck-up. There was no arguing with that. But Cash had deserved it, and given the same situation, he’d do it again.

‘Where are we with this diabolical fucking disaster?’ Wes was pacing now, flexing his forearms with dumb-bells as he went. In his mid-sixties, he was still as trim as he’d been
in his thirties. There were many facets of his character that were the stuff of legend. His voracious sexual appetite, especially for twenty-something girls and preferably more than two at the same
time. His instinct for making great movies, which had ensured the success of the Dunhill franchise and steered Lomax Films through a global financial crisis that had buried many bigger companies.
His absolutely manic, bordering-on-psychotic temper, as illustrated right at this moment.

Paula Leno, the vice-president of publicity, a twenty-two-year veteran with the company, spoke up. ‘Raymo Cash isn’t pressing charges. Why go through the tiresome ignominy of a trial
when he can sell his story to the tabloids instead? Of course, he’s spinning a different tale from Zander, saying that he was attacked for no reason. We’ve put an opposing line out
there via anonymous sources and all the papers have picked it up. It weighs in our favour that he’s not going down the legal route, as it makes it look like he has something to hide. It also
goes in our favour that the majority of the television-viewing public think he’s an arrogant asshole who is utterly delusional about his talent and popularity. In short, our polling figures
are showing that this hasn’t dented your popularity. In fact, the opposite is true. But that’s only the case because LAPD have backed up our confirmation that you were tested and shown
to have no alcohol or drugs in your system. And also the fact that – to quote Lou Cole’s column in the
Hollywood Post
– you looked “damn hot” while you were
rolling about on the ground. You really need to send her flowers. She has been the lead voice in your media defence, probably thanks to the fact that you were defending her best friend. Gotta love
press impartiality

Right now, Zander did. He made a mental note to thank Mirren for getting the truth out there, while Hollie made a physical note on her tablet calendar to send Lou Cole the entire contents of the
most expensive flower shop she could find.

Wes looked slightly mollified by Paula’s analysis of the situation, but he wasn’t ready to let Zander off the hook just yet. He turned to the row of three men in suits that clearly
came with a price tag including several zeros. He was obviously paying these guys way too much. ‘Where are we legally?’

Brian Thompson, VP of legal, did the talking. ‘No charges, so nothing official. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Cash came at Zander for financial damages. We’ll set up a
contingency for that. The big problem for us is insurance. At the moment, they’re citing the incident as breach of Zander’s behaviour clause, so we have to suspend shooting with him.
Hopefully, we can get it lifted, but there are no guarantees on it. They’re playing hard ball.’

‘Give me a revised schedule and a cost on that,’ Lomax ordered the VP of finance, sitting at the opposite end of the table.

Zander wanted to put his head on the desk and let the cool surface of the marble ease the splitting pain in his forehead. A shooting suspension could cripple production, cost millions and
– if it continued indefinitely – derail the whole movie. This was as bad as it got without the death of a star. Which right now would be a more favourable option.

Wes headed for the door. ‘And Zander, son, I’m taking every dollar this costs from your obscenely bloated pay cheque.’

With that, he was off, leaving a trail of spit and fire behind him.

‘That went well,’ Paula noted as she rose from the table.

Zander gave her a grateful smile. They’d worked together for a long time and they had a real bond of affection, despite the fact that he’d cost her more work hours than any other
Lomax talent. ‘Thanks for having my back there.’

‘It’s my reason for being,’ she told him with a smile. It was the only love in the room. The lawyers were furious, the bean counters were panicking, and Hollie was giving him
the silent treatment. It lasted all the way across the car park into the car.

Zander was the first one to break the ice.

‘Is this when you tell me you’re going to work for Matt Damon?’ he asked, repeating her much-promised threat, the one that was reiterated every time he royally fucked up. Now
being a case in point.

‘OK, so do you want the truth, or do you want me to kiss your ass?’ she finally said, rounding in the seat to face him.

‘I think I’d prefer it if you would kiss my ass.’

She ignored the suggestion. ‘You have got to stop doing this. I’m fucking furious. Zander, it has to stop. I was just starting to think that things were going to be OK again, that
you’d kicked the booze and the coke, and I wasn’t going to wake up to the headline that you were dead in some alley.’ Her voice was raising with every sentence. ‘I’d
finally stopped worrying that some rancid woman was gonna infect you because you were too whacked out to use protection. I’d finally started trusting that I could leave you alone for a whole
night without checking my phone every five minutes in case you’d gone off the rails, or got wasted or fucked up in any one of a thousand other ways. Or fricking died. I was finally getting a
life. I was dating. I even had sex! And then you go and get yourself arrested.’

‘But the charge didn’t stick . . .’

‘
I don’t care!
’ she was shouting now. ‘And don’t give me the fricking puppy-dog eyes, because they don’t work on me.’

‘Not at all? And by the way, you had sex?’

He could see by her body language that that one had dented the wall of her irritation. She no longer looked like she wanted to dole out the same treatment delivered to Raymo Cash. ‘Zander,
I love you. I do. But I swear to God . . .’

‘Matt Damon?’

She punched him on the arm, as hard as she could.

‘Matt Damon. I’ll be the best fricking thing that ever happened to him.’ She started up the engine and screeched out of the car park.

‘I could be your assistant if you fancy a career in stunts,’ Zander offered.

She ignored him, switching directly to PA mode. ‘OK, so I’ve doubled up your training schedule for the next week to keep you busy while you’re on suspension.’

‘So where are we going right now?’ he asked. The irony didn’t escape him. He was an A-list star, recognized all over the world, and barring recent events he was at the pinnacle
of his career, yet he wouldn’t know where he was meant to be from one hour until the next if he didn’t have Hollie there to direct him. Right now, all he wanted to do was go hang at the
beach with Hollie. They could head up to Malibu, pick up coffee on the way, watch the sunset and forget the world for a few hours. Peace. Tranquillity.

‘Shutters. Adrianna Guilloti has requested a meeting. I think she flew in this afternoon and the trip was unscheduled, so you might want to brace yourself for turbulence. And not the good
kind.’

Zander’s headache made a sudden reappearance, as, for the first time, he recognized the other consequence of the altercation. He had a strict standards clause in his Guilloti contract and
he had no doubt that his recent actions breached it. He could still remember exactly what she’d said when they’d made the initial deal:
Red carpets, editorials, publicity shots
– all good. Fights and anything that could lead to your clothes being accessorized with handcuffs – all bad.

His nerves felt like they were on the outside of his skin as he contemplated seeing her. Of course, she’d come to terminate his endorsement contract. And sure, that wasn’t ideal. But
the truth was, advertisements weren’t his thing, and he’d only agreed to do it in the first place because he wanted her so badly he’d have agreed to anything. That hadn’t
changed. He still thought about her constantly, craved her touch, longed to be inside her.

Adrianna Guilloti was his crack cocaine, only this time there was no rehab.

If she was going to terminate his contract, fair enough. At least then he’d be forced to shut that longing down. He’d beat the booze and the powder. Maybe it was time to get over
this one too.

The sun was setting by the time Hollie dropped him in front of the hotel’s glass doors. ‘Are you OK making your own way home? I want to head back and get to dealing with the mountain
of crap your latest stunt has unleashed upon us.’

‘Sure. I’ll walk home.’

‘Great. Zander Leith, on the beach, walking from Santa Monica to Venice in front of several hundred tourists having an evening stroll along the boardwalk. What could go wrong?’

He put his hands up. ‘OK, OK! I’ll take an Uber. I’ll call you later.’

‘Preferably not from a ten-by-twelve cell with a request for bail money,’ she warned, before adding a cheeky ‘Love you!’, then slipping the gearstick into drive and
pulling away.

Inside, he scanned the foyer, but there was no sign of Adrianna. Reception had the answer, directing him to the Beach House Suite, 1,350 square feet of pale blue and white luxury, situated on
the third floor, overlooking the sands. It was her favourite room. Overstuffed sofa, big comfortable chairs, a fireplace and shutters that could be opened to allow the breeze from the Pacific to
fill the room.

It only took one knock for the door to open, and she beckoned him in. She was obviously in work mode. Her black suit was tailored to give it a masculine edge, a stark contrast to the hint of
lace that protruded from the cami underneath. Her hair was tied back in a long, sleek ponytail, her feet supported by the red soles of her Louboutin ankle boots. In his jeans and white T-shirt,
Zander felt decidedly underdressed.

He walked past her and felt her tense as he headed straight for the minibar, then breathe again when he pulled out a soda.

‘Here to fire me?’ he asked casually. He wanted this part over now, so that he could move past it and get to the bit where she told him they could have no more contact. It made
perfect sense, and he was in no doubt that would be the case. Adrianna Guilloti valued her time, and she valued her career. She wouldn’t waste either on a guy who had been rolling about in
the street, brawling with a nobody only a few nights before. The only positive in the whole situation was that he hadn’t been wearing the latest look from her spring–summer collection
at the time.