Fade to Black (6 page)

E
lizabeth crumples the newspaper and tosses it to the hardwood floor beside her chair. She rises abruptly, crossing restlessly to the window to part the dark green brocade draperies. She lifts one of the slats in the Venetian blinds to peer out into the night.

The light from the room behind her obscures the view until she presses her face right up to the glass. Only then does she see that the quiet, curving dead-end street is seemingly deserted.

She drops the blind and steps back from the window....

Then leaps into the air and cries out as a sudden shrill sound pierces the air.

The phone …

It’s just the phone....

She clasps a trembling hand against her mouth and turns toward the telephone, which sits on an end table across the room.

It rings again.

And again.

There are only two people who might be calling her.

One is Manny Souza, the eight-year-old boy she befriended in the local park a year ago. He alone possesses her unlisted telephone number; on the rare occasions when her phone rings, it’s been him.

Until now.

There’s only one other person who might be calling—who might somehow have gotten hold of her number.

But how?

And why?

Why is he doing this to her again?

She lets the phone ring, clamping her hands over her ears to shut out the persistent noise, until it finally ceases a full minute later, leaving her alone in the room with the crumpled newspaper and the ticking clock.

“W
e’ll be ready for you in about five minutes, Mr. Johnson,” calls a bespectacled production assistant, sticking her close-cropped dark head into the small glassed-in cubicle.

Brawley Johnson nods at her.

She’s what he privately refers to as fashionably ugly. He knows it’s a stylish look; still, he wonders why women want to do that to themselves—wear boy-shorn hair and horn-rimmed glasses and boxy, baggy clothes that reveal not a hint of flesh or a womanly curve.

Not his kind of woman at all.

His kind of woman …

No.

Not
kind
of woman, as if there is an entire class of available, perfect specimens all ripe for the choosing.

There had been only one woman for him.

Cindy O’Neal.

The bitch
.

He absently thrums his fingertips on the Formica tabletop, then realizes he probably appears nervous to anyone watching from the other side of the glass.

The last thing he needs is for anyone to think he’s uncomfortable about the prospect of appearing on camera. He has to show them that he’s utterly relaxed, a real pro at this television stuff.

He straightens his posture and tries to appear at ease, wishing he had a magazine to leaf through casually.

He resists the urge to jiggle his leg impatiently, licks his lips, and finds that they taste strangely waxy, thanks to the lipstick the makeup woman insisted on applying.

“You don’t want to look washed out on camera,” she had said, peering into his face as she applied the lipstick. She was decent-looking and he had almost opened his mouth to flirt with her the way he flirts with anyone attractive, before he realized that she smelled faintly of garlic. There was a telltale white paper bag from an Italian restaurant on the counter behind her.

It was all he could do not to wrinkle his nose in distaste as she breathed into his face while she worked on him. He was so eager for it to be over that he hadn’t even protested the makeup she’d applied.

Now, here he is, about to go on national television, wearing rosy pink lipstick. He won’t look washed out—he’ll just look like a freakin’ fag.

He fumbles in his pocket for something to wipe it on, but comes up with nothing.

Washed out
.

Yeah, right.

With this tan, he’s going to look washed out. He’s spent every day this week roasting at the beach, just so he’ll look his best today.

Not that, at the beginning of the past week, he’d even had any interviews set up. But with August twenty-second looming on the horizon, he figured the press would come sniffing him out. They do it every year.

Only it’s not always television.

Back when it first happened, five years ago, he was on every talk show and newsmagazine program that existed, not to mention the actual network news.

But ever since, he’s done only some local television news spots whenever they commemorate Mallory Eden’s death with scholarship presentation.

Mostly, it’s print reporters who ask him for comment. A couple of times he’s been interviewed by legitimate newspapers, and the tabloids always want to talk to him.

But today it’s
Scoop Hollywood
, a live half-hour entertainment news program with millions of regular viewers.

And here he is, bronzed and buffed, and dressed in head-to-toe Versace.

She taught him to dress, Cindy did.

Mallory
, he corrects himself.

That was a subconscious slip. He rarely thinks of her as Cindy anymore. She had, of course, officially stopped being Cindy when she started calling herself Mallory Eden, but it took him a while after that to stop thinking of her as Cindy O’Neal. Because at home, with him, away from the glare of the cameras, she still acted like her.

At least, for a while.

Still asked for his opinion, still laughed at his jokes, still gave him blowjobs whenever he asked. Maybe not as eagerly as she once had, but at least she made an effort. At least she was there for him.

Especially when he reminded her that he had been with her from the beginning.

He was her one remaining tie to her past life.

And he knew her deepest, darkest secrets....

One in particular.

Whenever he brought that up, she started acting nice to him again.

But gradually she had changed so much, he barely recognized her. Her emotional distance from him had grown in direct proportion with her success. The more she got caught up in all that Hollywood crap, the less attention she gave to him.

And if she was worried that he would reveal her big secret, she didn’t let on.

Finally, one day, just after they had returned from a week-long vacation
he
had paid for—even though he was making far less money than she was by that time—she fucking moved out of their one-bedroom Long Beach apartment. She relocated to a rented house in the Valley with her friend Rae, a real phony whom Brawley had never liked.

And from there Mallory went straight to Malibu, to the Mediterranean-style beachfront mansion with the fancy gates and the picture-perfect landscaping and the professional decorating inside.

Not that he’d ever been inside—as an invited guest anyway.

How many times, in the years that followed, had he threatened to reveal her deep, dark secret to the press?

“Go ahead,” she would say, looking at him with those fake blue eyes, making him wonder whether she was as undaunted as she appeared.

But he had never been able to bring himself to do it. He was saving that secret as a last resort. He couldn’t use it to win her back—only to destroy her. He hadn’t had the chance.

But it’s never too late....

“Mr. Johnson?”

It’s the production assistant again, smiling and gesturing. She has a speck of something dark caught between her front teeth.

“We’re ready for you,” she says.

He nods and gets up, following her into the adjacent dimly lit studio, where he will once again tell the world, in a halting, grieving voice, how much he still misses his dead lover, Mallory Eden.

“R
ae darling.”

“Hello, Flynn.”

They embrace, the golden-haired starlet and the flamboyant retired agent, beside the table at Mitsuhisa, the trendy nouveau Japanese restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

Flynn Soderland casts a shrewd eye over her well-sculpted features and thinks that she has aged; well, who hasn’t? His own hair is fully white-gray now, he reminds himself, and his hairline seems to be shrinking back from his face at an alarming rate.

Still, he is no longer in the business—at least, not technically.

But Rae Hamilton is still a working actress—for the most part. Until recently she had played the role of dim-but-adorable Rainbow Weber on the soap opera
Morning, Noon, and Night
. But poor Rainbow had been hacked to death by a machete-wielding serial killer during May Sweeps.

“How have you been, really?” Flynn asks Rae after they’ve ordered—sashimi and salad for her; a shrimp dish in wasabi butter sauce for him. He leans forward and lays a gentle hand over hers, finding it icy.

“Do you mean since my character was killed off?” she asks, her blue eyes narrowing at him as she sips her club soda.

“I mean since your best friend was killed off. Five years ago today, to be exact. Isn’t that why we’re here?”

They get together for lunch every year on this date—at first to console themselves over her lost friend; his lost client. Now that the grief has waned and they have little in common, they continue the tradition out of habit. He suspects Rae is as reluctant as he is to let go entirely.

“Oh. I didn’t realize you were referring to Mallory.” She shakes her head and echoes, “God. ‘Killed off.’ You always were blunt, Flynn.”

“Well, it was your phrase.”

“I was talking about Rainbow Weber, who, in case you aren’t a soap fan, met her maker a few months ago.”

“I’m not a soap fan, but I watched.”

“What did you think?”

“You were very good.”

A white lie never hurt anyone in Hollywood, that’s for damn sure.

And anyway, it wasn’t that
she
was so awful. It was the writing, the melodrama … just not the kind of scene that’s conducive to an actress’s reputation.

He can tell, by the world-weary expression in her blue eyes, that she’s perfectly aware of that truth.

He continues. “But I was more concerned that you might be upset over Mallory, even after so many years. I’m just … worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re out of work, and because you look …”

“What?” she presses when he trails off.

Never criticize an actress on her appearance
.

He may have retired, but he hasn’t lost the Hollywood touch.

“You look sad,” he says. “Or tired. In your eyes. They’re not sparkling.”

“Well, hell. I was up before dawn this morning to tape a live interview with one of those New York morning shows.”

“Good for you,” he tells her, thinking maybe, contrary to local gossip, she isn’t out of work after all. Has she landed a role without his hearing about it?

Maybe he’s more out of the loop than he realizes. He still lives right there in the Hollywood Hills; he continues to subscribe to the trades and to dine with his friends in the industry. But it’s not the same as being in the business.

He asks tentatively, “What are you publicizing, Rae?”

“Are you kidding? You just said it yourself. Today’s the fifth anniversary.”

“Ah, yes.” He nods, surprised at his own momentary lapse. Of course she had been interviewed about Mallory.

Even after all these years the media wants to rehash her life, her death, as though some new detail is going to pop up and stun the world.

“I’m surprised they don’t come after you,” Rae remarks. “After all, you were her agent.”

“But you were her best friend.” He pauses, then admits, “And anyway, they
do
come after me. I’ve talked to several print journalists recently about Mallory, but I’ve decided not to do television interviews any longer.”

“Too emotional?”

He nods, though of course that isn’t the case at all. He’s perfectly capable of controlling his emotions, particularly on camera. It’s just …

Who wants to have their balding head and wrinkled, liver-spotted face broadcast to millions of people?

“You always were a proud SOB.”

He looks up, startled, at Rae’s comment.

“And you’re a lot sharper than you look,” he responds.

“Touché.” She smiles and shakes her head so that her long blond hair flips back, behind her shoulders.

She tells him, “I’m glad you’ve noticed. It’s taken me a long time to shake that pesky dumb-blonde image.”

He doesn’t tell her that sometimes it’s better not to try too hard. Not everyone likes a smart cookie—not here anyway.

Mallory knew that instinctively, without his having to tell her. She knew just how to play it, the role of the sweetly sexy, slightly zany girl-next-door. She never worried, the way Rae always has, about being seen as a bimbo.

Not that anyone—within the industry or beyond it—perceived Mallory Eden as a bimbo. Far from it Her superb comic timing was pure genius, and she had always been quick-witted with the press, tossing off quips with the aplomb of a shrewd professional. She was able to laugh at anything—including herself—a rare trait in Hollywood.