Breaking Hollywood (22 page)

Relocating to LA was the best decision she’d ever made. There were many things about Glasgow she missed. The humour. The office full of unpredictable characters. The buzz of putting a
newspaper out every morning. The drive to make sure that the best breaking stories had her byline on them.

Other than that, she didn’t miss anyone special from home. It would be lovely to have the occasional Sunday lunch with her parents, but their twice-weekly phone calls filled that void.

She’d been in a three-year relationship with a lawyer, but that was gone, ended when she caught him indulging in a spot of mutual masturbation with his best friend’s girlfriend over
Skype. The mental image thrown up by that memory made her smile. How ridiculous had that been? A grown man, a pillar of society, sitting at his office desk in an expensive suit, tugging on his
penis while he watched a vacuous blonde tease her clit with a purple dildo.

Relationship over, and no, it hadn’t broken her heart. By that time she’d already met Davie and sensed a connection.

It hadn’t been a tough choice to make the move. It was late February now. If she were back in Glasgow, she’d be in thermal clothes, freezing her arse off in torrential rain while
door-stepping some piece of criminal crap. Or on the tail of a bent cop who was tipping off a crime family about their surveillance.

Here, she was basking in the heat of another glorious day, wearing a vest and denim shorts to go to her day job. True, she was still on the trail of criminal crap, but at least the beverages
beat the insipid dishwater spat out by the vending machine at the
Daily Scot.
She poured another coffee, this time an espresso from the chrome masterpiece that sat on the caramel granite
counter in the kitchen. The La Marzocco GS/3 had been a gift from Davie when she moved in, and it perfectly illustrated the differences in their lives – the piece of machinery that made her
coffee cost more than two months’ rent.

After turning on her MacBook, she pulled up her ‘work in progress’ and checked the word count: 40,000 words, with six chapters already written. So far she’d covered the
subjects of Hollywood deaths, the ageing process, drugs, alcohol, the club scene and the rise of talentless fame. That was her favourite chapter. A look at the stars who had no extraordinary skill
other than to make money. It was the modern-day Pied Piper situation and she was at a loss to explain it. Were people’s lives really so empty that they worshipped at the temple of a nobody
because they wore great clothes, or had a sex tape, or had a great ass?

Loose leaves fell out of her notebook when she turned to the page of scribbles she’d jotted down after last night’s visit to the club. The current chapter was ‘Behind the
Fame’, a look at the reality behind the lives the young stars in the town were leading. The image of perfection and gilded privilege masked the fact that half were in therapy, and the main
reason the others weren’t was because they were too arrogant and wasted to agree to seek help.

Over the years there had been so many high-profile examples of teen-star meltdowns, breakdowns, therapy or behaviour that ended with the slamming of a cell door. Britney. Lindsay. Paris. Justin.
Sky.

They were the poster stars for a generation who no longer wanted to be a famous noun. No actors, no footballers, no singers. Now they just wanted to be famous. Didn’t matter how they got
there.

In the club last night, there had been several faces she’d recognized in the crowd. A couple of rising actresses on a hit vampire gorefest. The stars of a reality show based around the
boutiques on Melrose. A rapper and his entourage of six stunning models had passed her on the way to the VVIP room. But there was nothing new, nothing that was going to give her a real edge on this
subject – and if she was going to get the kind of book deal she needed, she was going to have to pull in something sensational.

Closing the notebook and switching back to the laptop, she stared at the screen for a few seconds, hoping for inspiration. Nothing. No matter what angle she took, it had been done before. What
she needed was fresh information, a new scandal, something she got to first, so she was going to have to up her game and get back out into the clubs tonight. There was plenty of material out there.
She just had to find it.

Sighing, she opened the camera function on her laptop. Last night’s phone footage had automatically downloaded from her iCloud and it was much easier to watch on the bigger screen.

She turned down the volume, having no wish to permeate her calm with the thudding assault of a deafening techno beat.

The camera started to slowly pan from the left of the screen. As it passed a recess in the far wall, a glimpse of flesh made her press ‘pause’ and zoom in. She hadn’t noticed
that the night before. A guy in a fluorescent orange T-shirt, his red jeans pushed down his thighs, had the legs of a girl in a short yellow and green striped dress wrapped round his waist and they
were in full-blown sexual motion. Sarah didn’t recognize either of them, so they were obviously just clubbers out for a good time. Although, if she did encounter them in the future, she might
suggest that if they wanted to have that good a time, they should probably wear clothes in a colour that didn’t make them look like they were starring in a flick called
Rainbow
Porn.

Moving across the room now, the camera dipped down onto the lower floor, taking in the entrance to the room and the two security staff standing there, one of them in conversation with a clubber,
the other eyeing the revellers for trouble and potential business for their two-man drug ring. The bar came into shot, populated by the extraordinarily attractive staff who were robbing it blind.
Nothing of note there. That was the bar in any club in LA.

Over to the far corner of the room now, the wild crowd, Jordan Lang and his buddies, all of them coked up and partying, grabbing at the girls in their group. As the son of Kent Lang, one of the
most famous producers in the history of film, you’d think he’d have a little more discretion. But no. Sarah had heard through the club-scene gossip that his father had cut him off a
long time ago, seeing him for the vile cretin that he undeniably was. It was no secret that he and Mirren’s daughter, Chloe Gore, had been an item for a while. What had she seen in him?
Good-looking, yes, but so clearly a grade-A sleazebag. Or douchebag, as they said here.

The image on the screen stopped as it reached the end of the footage. Nothing of use there so far. Shame. Time to get back to the job of actually putting words onto a page, then. Moving the
cursor across the screen, intending to shut down the video function, she inadvertently nudged the ‘play’ button and it started over again. Couple in doorway having sex. Security guys on
door, one scanning the room, the other talking to . . .

Her finger hit the ‘pause’ button like it was a buzzer on a quiz show and she’d suddenly realized she had the right answer in a sudden-death tiebreak.

She stared. Stared harder. Zoomed in. Stared some more. Changed the angle. Increased the brightness. Panned back out.

And stared again.

Neither man was looking in the direction of the camera.

The security guard, six foot of pure muscle, was stooped over, listening to what the other guy had to say, but their hunched postures didn’t conceal a sleight of hand that was passing
something from one man to the other.

The stranger was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, leather jacket, a beanie hat pulled down low on his forehead, but it was his face that Sarah was fixated on now.

There was something in his profile that she recognized. The angle of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbones, the contours of a face that she had seen many times before.

Sarah sat back and let the contradictory emotions pull her gut in two different directions.

This was it. This was the story. The one that would make her name.

It was also a story she didn’t ever want to write.

She stared again, hoping to reach a different conclusion.

But no.

Standing there, taking a small package from a prolific drug dealer, was a guy who made the hearts of teenage girls across the globe beat faster.

Standing there was Logan Gore.

‘Crazy World’ – Aslan

Davie

‘For fuck’s sake, can you call those two off? I feel like I’m in some kind of messed-up movie called
Honey, I Shrunk the Guy From TV
.’ Davie
flounced into the room like a petulant child, slamming the door on the two close-protection officers assigned by security chief Mike Feechan. They’d been stuck to him like glue since the
moment he left home. He’d come to the studio for a run-through, rehearsal and soundcheck, headed back out and hit the gym, stopped off at the
Family Three
studio to see the kids, had
an awkward conversation with his ex-wife, Jenny, and her life-bitch, Darcy, who just happened to be there at the same time. If those guys really wanted to save his skin, they could start by taking
out Darcy fucking Jay every time she sneered about his paternal competency.

He slumped onto the leather chair at the head of the boardroom table. Mellie was sitting with a coffee and her feet on the desk, taking five minutes off from being producer, director and show
runner of the whole fucking world. She acted like he’d just strolled in with a cheery ‘Good afternoon.’

‘You’re late,’ she told him, like a schoolteacher irritated by an insolent child. It wasn’t far from the truth. ‘You missed Mike Feechan.’

‘Good.’

‘Davie, don’t be such a brat. You need him. Some psycho out there has something twisted on you and you need to start taking it seriously. It totally pisses me off.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I always thought that if anyone was going to butcher you while you slept, it would be me,’ she said dreamily.

Davie’s laughter snapped him out of his fugue. ‘OK, so where are we?’

Mellie checked her watch. ‘An hour until showtime. Don Michael Domas is in dressing room one,’ she said, with the closest thing that came to her being impressed. Domas was one of the
five-star ensemble cast on
Call Me
, the sitcom that was the
Friends
of this generation. ‘Lauren Finney is in dressing room two. Carmella is in dressing room three, and on a
scale of wasted she’s probably a six.’

‘She came to the house this morning with Jack Gore. Wants him to replace Jizzo on the show.’

Mellie looked up, nodded slowly, thinking about it. ‘I used to think he was a pretty impressive guy, but he’s seriously off the rails. Midlife-crisis city. That whole thing with
Mercedes Dance last year was a train wreck,’ she mused, citing the on-set affair with the young actress that had destroyed Jack’s marriage to Mirren. ‘And since the DNA test
proved he wasn’t Daddy Dearest and his movie tanked, he’s just a fucked-up, inappropriately dressed has-been desperately trying to reclaim his youth and career.’

She paused, before concluding, ‘I think he’d be perfect.’

‘See! That’s why I love you. Set up a meeting with the network and we’ll run it by them, but I’m in. And they’ll go for it if we push it. Done deal,’ he said
confidently.

‘Will do. OK, we need you on set in thirty minutes, so if you want to go schmooze the talent – or Carmella – then go now.’

Davie jumped back out of his chair, re-energized. Nothing kept his mood down for long. He’d been this way since he was a kid, always on the go, a million things to say, every bit of him
restless. He was like a bag of snakes on a caffeine rush.

‘Don’t dare move,’ he warned the black-suited lumps of muscle at the door as he passed them. He wasn’t going to come to danger in his own frigging studio. Unless Princess
was in the building. The thought gave him a minor shudder. That had been a close one. Must behave better.

Thank God
American Stars
was a weekly show and he didn’t have to face her again for another few days.

Tonight, it was all about
Here’s Davie Johnston.
Domas would ensure great ratings, but he was too smart on media to say or do anything that would have the office workers of
America chatting at the water cooler tomorrow morning. That was Carmella’s job. And music from Lauren Finney would give him another iTunes boost among the kids. It was all good.

Davie headed for the corridor that housed the dressing rooms. He was old school. He didn’t send production staff to do his research or set up links to conversation items. Too impersonal.
He genuinely wanted to get to know them, probe a little deeper, find angles to make the interviews more meaningful and insightful. He’d already spent an hour on Facetime with Domas this week
and by the end of it they had a pretty good rapport going and had already established a baseline of trust.

In the Domas dressing room, the man himself was remarkably chilled. Most stars came with an entourage in double figures, all of them bowing to his every whim. Not Domas. He was lying on the
sofa, completely relaxed, necking a beer while watching an old Bond movie on the TV. In the corner, one assistant, immersed in a book. Who even did that in LA any more?

Domas leaned up on one elbow and shook Davie’s hand.

‘Good to meet you in person this time,’ he said casually. ‘Thanks for having me on the show’

Davie hoped his surprise wasn’t obvious. The majority of the guests expected
him
to thank
them
; then they’d spend at least ten minutes blowing mutual smoke up each
other’s ass, declaring eternal admiration and a history of worship.

The expression ‘big fan of your work’ was exchanged in LA as often as an STD.

By the time they were finished, they’d have done everything but promise the other an internal organ should a transplant ever be required. Then they’d part and have forgotten the
conversation by the following week.

‘Thanks again for taking time out to Facetime the other day. And congrats again on the Globe. You deserved it,’ Davie told him truthfully. Domas had won the award for Best Actor in a
Television Series, Musical or Comedy.