Deal to Die For Read online

  Chapter 3

  “Fish pond? What the hell do you mean, fish pond?” The big man stopped himself, glanced around the outdoor terrace of the Griffith Park clubhouse, worrying that his voice had carried.

  He shouldn’t have bothered. It was misting lightly and most of the golfers were huddled inside, swapping lies in the grill room. Just one old fart at a table across the way, adding and re-adding his scorecard, frowning, wouldn’t have budged for an atomic blast.

  “Just like I told you,” the Chinese guy sitting across from him said. “Man fall in fish pond”—he lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness—“get away.”

  “Sounds like fucking Confucius,” the big man said, fuming, drumming the table with his fingers. Next thing, someone would walk outside, recognize him, want to know what was going on, never mind the sunglasses and Lakers cap he had donned. Not much chance of that, it being a city course and far too déclassé for most of his associates, but look what had happened already. If Chinese gangsters could screw up, where did that leave you?

  “Sorry?” the Chinese guy said, not sure if he was being insulted.

  “Forget it.” He sat back in his chair, drumming the table with both hands now. His gaze lit on the old guy across the terrace, who was furiously crossing something out on his scorecard, penciling something else in. The guy’s face had grown beet red, and he seemed to be talking to himself.

  A mess, the big man was thinking. A big freaking mess. That’s what he got for bringing in someone like Richard Mendanian in the first place. Offer a bottom feeder a nibble, he’s going to try and take the whole chunk, every time. He turned back to the Chinese guy, tapped the newspaper that lay between them.

  “Here’s what I don’t get. Your people try to take this chauffeur out, but he gets away. How come he doesn’t go straight to the cops?”

  “Maybe has something to hide.”

  He thought about it a moment. He’d met some of the hangers-on in Mendanian’s orbit. Sleazewads following a bigger sleazewad, champing down the chunks that fell off. Sure. It would make sense, the driver being some kind of criminal. Who’d believe some guy who probably looked like he stepped out of a pirate picture: “No sir, I had nothing to do with killing my employer. It was two Chinese guys in cop suits that did it.”

  The big man nodded, pointing at the paper again. “So now this chauffeur is a suspect,” he said. “At least there’s that much in our favor.”

  “You worry about nothing. Man turn himself in, talk all he want to. Knows nothing in the first place.”

  “He’s a loose end,” he said. He stared glumly out over the golf course. Four guys in rain suits walking down a fairway, looked like they were ready to clean up radiation. What a fucking game.

  The Chinese guy shrugged. “Nothing to worry about. Cops think he in on it.” He tapped his finger on the paper between them. “Forget this man. Are bigger fry to fish.”

  He stared. “It’s ‘bigger fish to fry.’”

  The Chinese guy thought about it. “Make more sense the other way,” he insisted. He was quiet for a moment, then moved on. “Who going to make our movie now?”

  “There’s a zillion guys where Richard Mendanian came from,” he said.

  “Need someone to trust,” the Chinese guy said.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You say don’t worry about this Mendanian. No problem. Look what happens.”

  “I’ll do it if it comes to that,” he said. “I’ll move to fucking Show Dog and set up shop myself.”

  “Guangdong,” the Chinese guy said, patiently correcting him. “Lot of money riding along this. Lot of movies, lot of money.”

  “Riding on this,” the big man said, correcting in turn. “Like riding on a horse.”

  The Chinese guy shrugged. “Maybe need to see somebody else after all.”

  “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar,” he said.

  “Lot of dollars involved,” the Chinese guy said. “Don’t need any more mistakes.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. From the Chinese guy’s expression, he wasn’t sure he was being convincing. Then he thought of something else. “I’m getting a little low on that fish oil you’ve been sending me,” he said. “I like to keep stocked up.”

  The Chinese guy waved his hand. He hoped that meant something positive, but it was always hard to be sure.

  He might have pressed him on the matter, but there was a noise across the way then and they both turned. The old guy who’d been adding and re-adding his score had slumped backward in his chair, knocking his carry bag over with a crash. His head was flung back, his mouth open to the sky. His face had turned the color of old sheets, his hands splayed limp at his sides. It occurred to the big man that whatever the old fart had done to his score, he was already in the process of explaining it to some higher authority.

  “Man not look so good,” the Chinese guy said. “Maybe ought to tell someone…,” he added, turning back.

  But by then he was speaking to air.

  Chapter 4

  “Well, I think that when people think of Paige Nobleman, they think poise.”

  Actress and reporter, they were sitting at a table in a corner of Outré, the newest in the ever-evolving series of industry hot spots. Paige had been staring at the one empty table in the place, a definite power table, the ultimate see-and-be-seen spot, wondering idly who would command the post on this day.

  Paige turned back to the smiling magazine reporter, trying hard to keep her coffee cup from sloshing over as she raised it toward her lips. Poise, she thought. Focus on the concept. Bring it in to the core of yourself, fix it, let it radiate back out. First principles of the profession.

  “It’s all an act,” Paige said, mustering an equally mindless smile. This girl across from her was clearly a rookie, twenty-five, twenty-six tops. Thick mop of blonde hair, flawless skin, jaw-dropping figure inside—more or less inside—those swathes of Banana Republic cotton. What could such a person know about the need to maintain poise? And she’d just used the same word three times in one sentence. Paige hoped there was a good copy editor somewhere in the chain of command.

  The reporter laughed in a good-natured way. “That’s hard to believe,” she said. “The kind of men you’ve played against and all.”

  Paige saw a young man in a sleek three-piece suit cut a glance across the room. Attorney-turned-producer flanked by two others in similar suits, combined age under a hundred, they’d come to Outré to settle all the important business of the entertainment world amid the linen and the china. His gaze flittered across Paige’s features—was there a flicker of recognition there?—then settled in on the bosomy young reporter. Paige wanted to call out to him: Poise, ace. Give some thought to poise. But instead, she took a sip of coffee, returned the cup to the saucer. Deep breath. No spills, no rattling of china. Yet.

  The reporter gestured at the empty table then. “That’s Richard Mendanian’s table, you know.” She said it in a hushed voice, no need to startle any fellow diners.

  Paige glanced over, a bit surprised. Richard Mendanian, king of the sleaze pic, when there had been such a domain. He’d offered her a part once, in the early days. She’d turned it down, not necessarily because of the nature of the film, for she’d been too hungry at the time to be fussy about questions of art. She wouldn’t even have minded taking her clothes off in the film Mendanian was making. It was just that she refused to take them off there in Mendanian’s office, before the shooting started.

  But now Mendanian was dead, shot to death in the hills. Robbery was the official motive, though one of the trades had speculated that it had been some kind of drug deal gone bad. In any case, Richard Mendanian was dead. And she was dying, too, careerwise, at least.

  “I didn’t know,” she told the reporter at last, surprised he’d have the king-of-the-table locked up.

  “He was spreading the word around he was back in
the fast track, that’s what I hear. He took a lease on that spot from Albertine. I guess everybody’s too freaked out to want to sit there now. Or maybe his rent’s not up.”

  Paige shrugged. “They’ll put some tourists there soon enough,” she said. The reporter laughed in agreement, took the cue to get back on track. She checked her notes, then glanced up at Paige.

  “I watched White Dungeons again yesterday? That nude scene with De Niro? I mean, you just blew him away. And he got to wear a towel through the whole thing. How did you manage to stay so cool?”

  A towel and a beige Speedo underneath that, Paige wanted to add. Instead she smiled. “It helps when you have a good script,” she said. She was wondering when it had happened, when it had come to be you could ask a question without actually posing it, just add a rising inflection at the end of your line.

  Not line, she corrected herself, sentence. This was real life. This girl was interviewing her, a retrospective piece, she’d said. For Christ’s sake. What did it mean, someone doing a “retrospective piece” before you’d even turned forty?

  “It’s more than that,” the reporter insisted. “Garbo had it, and Hepburn…and you,” the reporter said.

  Paige did some quick calculations, figuring that the reporter had just removed her at least two generations from her own peers. But hey, Garbo, Hepburn…and now Nobleman. They could tear down the Hollywood sign, carve their poised likenesses into the side of the mountain in its place.

  “I’ve got some work to do before I enter that company,” she said mildly.

  “Oh, that’s what I mean,” the reporter said. “You’re always so together!”

  “Lori…,” Paige began, feeling the onset of a massive headache about to claim her.

  “Jorie,” the reporter corrected her. “Jorie Hubbard.”

  “I’ll tell you something, Jorie.” She paused, her gaze holding on something over the reporter’s shoulder. She was staring now, across the crowded main room, through an elegantly framed archway, into one of the many secluded nooks provided by Albertine, Outré’s famed chef and owner, for the patrons more interested in privacy than in proving their place in the industry pecking order.

  A waiter had drawn aside a curtain that shielded the alcove in order to flambé something for his customers. It was a couple, the young woman—dark-complexioned, her hair twisted into a braid that wound exotically about her neck—facing outward, the man with his back to Paige.

  The light was dim, and Paige would be damned if she was going to fish her glasses out of her purse in front of Jorie Hubbard, but she’d lived with the same man for a half-dozen years, knew the shape of his movements as well as the shape of his nose. When the man in the alcove reached his hand out to stroke the cheek of the woman with the dark braid, pulled her close and kissed her, Paige felt her stomach turn over.

  “What were you going to tell me?” Jorie Hubbard asked.

  Paige blinked. The waiter had withdrawn, the curtain had fallen closed. She turned back to face the reporter. She couldn’t say she was surprised. Not with the way things had been going lately with Paul, but still…having to see it…her lover with another woman in the very restaurant…

  “You were going to say something,” the reporter prompted again. She had a pen in her hand, a tiny leather-bound notebook on the table open beside a bowl of chilled summer blossom soup.

  “Yes,” Paige heard herself saying, her eyes still on the swaying curtain.

  “And…” Jorie Hubbard staring at her, a little puzzled now.

  Paige forced her gaze from the curtain, forced herself from what might be going on in there now—sea scallops flying this way, seared duck salad that, all fangs and claws and dark braids in the cactus spine soup…

  “I grew up in Miami,” she said to Jorie Hubbard. “It was a different place back then. A small Southern town, really. I was the most awkward, gangly, unprepossessing kid you ever met.”

  Paige heard the sound of her own voice clearly, was herself impressed with the breezy, carefree tone. Jorie was scribbling furiously, still shaking her head in disbelief.

  Paige’s gaze fell upon the knife that was part of her place setting. There seemed to be a fairly sharp point there. She’d prefer a saber, of course, something she could use to hack down those curtains over there like De Niro had in White Dungeons, slicing in half the two thugs hiding behind them in the process, but a steak knife would do. She’d be able to make her point in the alcove, wouldn’t have to face a life sentence.

  “In high school,” she was saying, “I went to this citywide debate tournament?” There. She’d got it, rising inflection, asking the question, Jorie Hubbard nodding encouragement. “No one knew who I was, of course, and there we all were in this big auditorium?” More nodding. Paige picked up the knife. A satisfying heft, but why be surprised? This was Outré, after all, and Albertine was no piker.

  “Anyway,” she continued. “When it came my time to speak, they called my name and I was too scared to answer.”

  “What happened?” Jorie Hubbard asked.

  “Nothing,” Paige said. She had the knife turned around in her hand now, held it like a seasoned assassin, point digging into the soft linen tablecloth. She leaned forward, rested her chin atop her fist, felt the knifepoint sink a bit farther into the several layers of linen below.

  She smiled again at Jorie Hubbard. “I listened to them call my name again and again, until finally they gave up and went on to the next person. I waited out in the hall until it was all over and then I rode the bus home. I told my mother I lost.”

  “That’s a great story,” Jorie said, shaking her head. She’d left off scribbling for a moment. “It’s hard to imagine you getting all choked up like that.”

  “I suppose it is,” Paige said, sighing. She was doing her best to keep her smile propped up. She glanced at the curtained alcove again, laughed miserably to herself, put the knife back in its place as their waiter arrived with lunch.

  “If you’ll just excuse me for a minute,” she said to Jorie abruptly.

  The waiter had to step smartly out of the way as she pushed herself up and brushed past him. The buttery fragrance of the shrimp dish she’d ordered had overpowered her, threatening to send whatever it was she’d had for breakfast all over the trio of power brokers who were staring at her as she hurried out.

  She’d barely made it into the hallway leading from the main dining room when the tears came, blurring her vision so that she had to make her way toward the ladies’ room by feel. She fumbled along the narrow passageway, past the maître d’s station, unoccupied, thank God, and no one in the foyer, just give her a few minutes to herself, she could handle this, she had poise, she could cope…

  …when she felt a hand at her elbow, someone guiding her back toward the front.

  “Ms. Nobleman.” Dear God. Albertine himself. His cultured voice, soft, solicitous, discreet. But tomorrow it would be all over the trades: “What aging, ultrapoised lady of the silver screen was seen weeping her way toward the ladies’ room while her significant other held court with a pasha’s daughter elsewhere in the same glitter dome…”

  She turned to face him, wondering if a sufficiently poised expression might divert his attention from the otherwise ruin on her face. “I am sorry,” he said, before she had a chance to say anything. He’d given her his little bow, kept his face averted. It took her a moment to understand he was only apologizing for disturbing her.

  “I told the party, no phone calls, but they say it is emergency.”

  She stared at him, her mouth working, shaking her head. “Phone call?” she repeated.

  “Your sister,” Albertine nodded. “From Florida. She say it is about your mother.”

  And then she knew. The call she’d been dreading for months now. “Oh God,” she said, forgetting about the state of her career, about Paul, about gossip and everything else. And followed Albertine to the phone.

  Chapter 5

&nb
sp; “So tell me, what do you think, my friend?”

  Deal glanced at Emilio, but said nothing. He was standing outside the body shop entrance, watching idly as the metal door to one of the bays clattered up its track. A chrome-sided lunch wagon pulled into the courtyard of the warehouse-cum-cottage industry complex, tootling its horn outside a furniture maker’s place: lunch at ten-thirty in the morning.

  Emilio was standing beside him, one hand on the key-operated door opener, the other sweeping grandly at whatever was behind the door. Emilio, who’d insisted he come right over, grinning, waiting for his reaction like some Latin Pat Sajak, spin the wheel and win this baby, Deal thought.

  Other than that, Deal wasn’t thinking much at the moment. In fact, he’d spent the last few days trying not to think at all, just moving around where he had to—checking in on the endless restoration work at Terrence Terrell’s mansion, overseeing the construction of a small strip center in Perrine—just keeping it going, like one of the pod people. Like they said in that old movie, life was so much simpler that way. Yesterday, he’d shown up at the Terrell site, taken a nail apron away from one of his workers, launched into two hours of frenzied hammering, nailing partitions together until his arm seized up with cramps. He’d dropped the hammer, clutched his arm, looked up to find the whole framing crew watching him, concern etched on their faces. El jefe es loco, that was the consensus he drew from their expressions, and they were probably right. Maybe not crazy, but crazed, sure enough.

  When the door had risen high enough, Emilio ducked under the frame and flipped a light switch on the wall inside. A couple of banks of fluorescent tubes flickered to life, and Deal, who thought he’d become impervious, felt his stomach lurch. There, gleaming in gunmetal flake under the bluish-white lights, crouched like some dream out of the distant past, sat the Hog. As impossible, as real, as terrible in its dumbness as the Sphinx itself.