Star Island (29 page)

She said, “Maybe I’ll go back to L.A. and write a screenplay.”

Bang Abbott snickered.

“What?”

“You,” he said. “You kill me.” He put the camera down and started wiping his lenses. “When this is over, what you should write is your own ticket, understand? They’ll give you whatever you want because they got no choice. And if they’re too dumb or too cheap to pay up, then you turn the screws. How? Figure it out—somebody tips off somebody, and all of a sudden it’s viral: ‘Cherry Pye uses a double!’ You got a blog, right?”

Ann snapped her fingers.
“That’s
what’s been missing from my life!”

“Start a blog,” Bang Abbott advised. “Go easy at first, but get their attention. And leave me out of it, for sure.”

She smiled. “But why, Claude?”

He knelt down heavily and seized her chin and placed his moist round face inches from hers. Ann was startled.

“’Cause nobody will believe that part of the story,” he said, “and nobody—not a single human soul—will back you up. Don’t you get it? It’ll be your word against mine, and by then Cherry will have seen my pictures and creamed all over herself because she never looked so hot. I’ll be golden, princess, and the Larks will put out a statement saying you’re just another—”

“Disgruntled ex-employee,” Ann murmured through her teeth.

“Bingo. With emotional problems.” His breath felt hot and rank on her cheeks. “They’ll say you made up the kidnap story just to get attention and advance your own lame career. It’ll be so ugly, you’ll never recover.”

With a grunt he arose. “But, see, the whole look-alike gig,” he said, “all these months you’ve spent behind the scenes, that’s a real problem for them. You know certain dates and places, details that
could be nailed down by the tabs—like what happened at the Stefano last week. One of the bellhops saw them wheeling Cherry out the kitchen exit, puking in a bucket—you think that mangy little monkey wouldn’t sell his story for party money? And he ain’t the only one, either. The dam breaks, Cherry and her crew would be
muy
screwed-o. Think about it.”

Ann was reluctantly impressed that the paparazzo seemed to have pondered all the angles. She herself had never been good at smelling the blood in the water. Deep at heart, however, she had no appetite for orchestrating a seedy shakedown.

“All I wanna do is go home and start over.”

Bang Abbott sneered. “That’s what they all say.”

“Know what, Claude?”

“Spare me. I gotta go unhitch the train.” He shuffled into the bathroom and shut the door.

Ann lay down on her back, the handcuffs clinking against the metal leg of the bed. She wondered if the photographer had kept her little black dress, and if there was a chance in hell of getting it dry-cleaned before tomorrow.

Cherry Pye asked, “What’s that?”

“Cattle prod,” Chemo said. He’d bought it at a farm-supply store in Kissimmee, the same week he was paroled from prison. It was a Sabre-Six Hot-Shot, with a fiberglass shaft and nickel-plated contacts. He used it for jobs that were too dainty for the weed whacker.

“Looks sorta kinky. How’s it work?” She was slurping another Red Bull, painting her toenails.

“I’ve been making a list in my head,” Chemo said.

They were outside, on the balcony terrace of her suite, Cherry wearing a
DOG THE BOUNTY HUNTER
T-shirt and a sky-blue string bikini bottom. The sun was intense so Chemo had smeared his face with 70 SPF sunblock, which made him look like a seven-foot mime. He was waiting for his meeting with Maury Lykes.

“Like, what kinda list?” Cherry asked, and he touched the end
of the cattle prod to her bare thigh. She made a noise like a chicken going under the wheels of a truck, and pitched over sideways in the patio chair.

“Every time you say
like
, I prod your ass,” he explained. “Also on the list:
awesome, sweet, sick, totally
, and
hot
. Those are for starters.”

She stopped writhing after a minute or so. Her first breathless words were: “What the fuck, dude?”

“That’s another one—
dude
. Consider yourself warned.”

“It’s, like, electric or somethin’?”

He shocked her again. “Hell, yes, it’s electric. They use ’em on rodeo bulls.”

“But this is how I always talk,” she cried. “I can’t just stop all of a sudden!”

Chemo figured her brain functioned at the same simple level as livestock’s. “Some of the prison guards upstate used to pack these bad boys,” he said.

Cherry hopped to her feet and called him a monster and ordered him to throw the cattle prod away.

“Relax. It won’t leave a mark,” he said.

“How the fuck would
you
like it?” she shouted, then recoiled with a flinch.

The bodyguard smiled. “See, it’s already working.”

“But how come you didn’t zap me?”

“’Cause you used the word the right way—as a verb, not an interjection. ‘I like good weed’ instead of ‘I want some, like, good weed.’”

A Carmelite nun with whom Chemo corresponded in prison once sent him a book of basic grammar, which he practically memorized. His own speech wasn’t flawless, yet he tried not to butcher the language.

“No volts for acceptable usage,” he said to Cherry.

“I hate you!”

“That’s better. Stick with simple sentences.”

“I’m tellin’ my mother. Maury, too.”

Chemo said, “Go ahead. They won’t believe you.”

He pulled from his pocket the tangerine BlackBerry, which had been trilling all day.

“Hey, my phone!” Cherry exclaimed. “Give it here.”

“It’s not yours. You stole it from Abbott.”

“That is soooo totally bogus.”

“Look out,” Chemo said, and stung her twice with the cattle prod—once for
totally
and another for
bogus
, although it wasn’t officially on the list.

He left her flopping on the terrace and went inside to call Maury Lykes, who’d promised to return after his sit-down with the Ticketmaster people. The promoter answered on the first ring and said he was riding up in the elevator. As soon as he walked into the suite, Chemo looked him over and said, “Ticketmaster, my ass.”

Maury Lykes turned crimson. “Mind your own damn business.” Cirque de Soleil was auditioning in town, and he’d hooked up with a pair of Czech spinners whose combined age was at least thirty-five. “Where’s our girl?” he asked.

“Pilates on the patio,” Chemo said.

“What’s that thing you got there?”

“Cow motivator.”

Maury Lykes exhaled. “Oh Jesus.”

“Don’t worry. It won’t leave a mark.”

“Honestly? Anything I don’t need to know, I don’t wanna know.” Hurriedly he led Chemo into one of the bedrooms and shut the door. “Okay,” he said, “about Star Island.”

“Lay it out.”

“Between you and me, I can’t afford any more surprises. All this fuckin’ drama.”

Chemo said, “Exactly.”

“Loose ends, whatever. I’m tryin’ to run a business here.”

“You got enough headaches,” the bodyguard agreed.

They briefly discussed the particulars. “But nobody else can know,” Maury Lykes said.

“I wasn’t gonna send out invitations.”

“How’s fifty sound?”

“Like you’re jerkin’ my chain.”

“Seventy-five,” Maury Lykes countered. “Best I can do.”

Chemo’s smile belonged in a Gahan Wilson cartoon. The promoter didn’t know whether to laugh or crap his pants.

“Maury, you’re a goddamn liar. Eighty grand, with forty up front.”

“Deal. Now tell me the truth—how’s she doing?”

“Cherry?” Chemo’s lips curled in distaste. “She’s a pain in the ass, but I’m keepin’ her straight. Why do you think she hates my guts?”

Maury Lykes turned away. He was standing at a window that overlooked Biscayne Bay. The sun was in his eyes, so he slipped into his blue-mirrored Oakleys.

“When Michael died,” he said, “his backlist shot through the roof. Every album he ever made went back on the charts. Same for Elvis, same for Lennon. But Cherry Pye is no Jacko, and she’s no Beatle. She OD’s and there’ll be a decent retail bump for maybe a month, mainly iTunes, depending on how long they drag out the toxicology. But after that, she’s basically finished. Her catalog ain’t exactly timeless, okay?”

Chemo was twirling the cattle prod like a baton. “Is this my problem?” he said.

The promoter wheeled around, nervously rubbing his hands together. Chemo thought the shiny sunglasses made him look like a giant deerfly.

“We’ve sold seventeen, maybe eighteen mil in tickets for the
Skantily
tour,” Maury Lykes said, “but, unfortunately, the show’s not insured. Nobody would touch her because of all the rehabs, so I had to start my own company and write the fucking coverage myself—which leaves yours truly on the hook in a semi-disastrous way if Cherry’s inconsiderate enough to pull a Heath Ledger. So what I’m sayin’, my brother, is this: I need you to keep this airhead alive for as long as possible, because she’s got no goddamn shelf life once she croaks.”

Chemo said, “Can’t help you there. Sorry.”

“What do you mean?”

“After tomorrow, I’ll be movin’ on.”

“To do what?”

“High-end evictions. The banks, they’re hard up for muscle.”

“Please,” Maury Lykes said, “I’m begging you, don’t go.”

“No, it’s the smart play. Once this thing’s done, you won’t want me around.”

The promoter paused to think about it, and he had to agree.

“Besides,” said Chemo, “one more day, I’ll end up killin’ her myself.”

Maury Lykes manufactured a lighthearted laugh, in hopes that the man was joking.

As his nickname suggested, Ruben “Whaddup” Coyle was not a man of broad vocabulary. He nevertheless was popular with a particular kind of woman, owing to his stature as a player in the National Basketball Association. Whaddup Coyle currently was listed as a point guard on the roster of the first-place Miami Heat, though he’d been sidelined indefinitely with a groin pull. The injury had occurred not on the basketball court but rather on a three-meter diving board at a private estate in Coconut Grove, while Whaddup Coyle was being ridden reverse cowgirl-style by his real-estate agent, a natural redhead who seemed intent on moving the property.

It was a nice place, six bedrooms and a basement gym, but Whaddup Coyle was looking to rent, not buy. He got traded on average every nineteen months, so he never stayed with one team long enough to flip a house and come out ahead on the deal. And, as even Whaddup Coyle knew, the market in South Florida was especially suck-ass. He made his modest housing intentions known shortly after he and his realtor fell off the diving board, while he was dog-paddling with groin afire toward the marble steps of the pool. The real-estate agent toweled off, wrung out her contraceptive sponge and frostily referred Whaddup Coyle to some rental firm in the Gables. She never called again, yet he soldiered on.

Within a week he’d found a two-story on Venetian Isle that featured not only a lap pool but a billiard room. Best of all, it was only fifteen minutes from South Beach, where Whaddup Coyle was doing most of his rehabilitating, usually into the wee hours. During his journeyman NBA career, Whaddup Coyle had earned a reputation for ragged off-court behavior. Consequently, the coaching staff of the Miami Heat had asked him to please employ a car service whenever he went clubbing. They felt entitled to such a request, since they were paying Whaddup Coyle the profane sum of five million dollars a year and he was scoring—before his injury—a measly seven points a game. The least he could do was hire a driver and stay out of trouble.

But Whaddup Coyle said no thanks. He leased a liquid-silver supercharged XKR convertible, which he soon thereafter wrapped around a pine tree after leaving the Forge (fatigue, he told the state troopers). The second Jaguar he drove off the Rickenbacker into Biscayne Bay (the cop who found him was a hoops fan, and gave a friendly read on the Breathalyzer). A third convertible rolled off the Fisher Island ferry into Government Cut, the vehicle carelessly left in Drive while Whaddup Coyle was distracted by a young heiress to an Italian shoe-polish fortune (swimming, fortunately, was among her myriad talents).

Now Whaddup Coyle was on his fourth Jag, and the leasing company had warned it would be his last. He’d also received a stern phone call from his coach, who’d gotten wind of the other mishaps and now wanted Whaddup Coyle to come in for a physical, which was league code for a urine test and drug screen. Because of the contractual repercussions attached to proof of substance abuse, Whaddup Coyle contrived to forestall the medical exam as long as possible and allow his six-foot-six system to repurify itself. He swore off marijuana, cocaine and opiates, heroically limiting himself to alcohol, which was not only legal but disappeared from the bloodstream within hours after intake.

Sunday nights being relatively quiet on South Beach, Whaddup Coyle had difficulty finding a party after the Heat-Nets game. His favorite hangouts were dead, so he tried the Shore Club, where he
traded phone numbers with a Finnish model who promised to meet him later at the Rose Bar in the Delano. She showed up with a utility infielder for the Arizona Diamondbacks and proposed they all get a room. At first Whaddup Coyle was cold to the idea, but eventually his curiosity about Scandinavian poon outweighed his disdain for baseball players. He thought it actually might be fun to show off in front of the little runt.