Feelings of Fear (5 page)

He bitterly regretted the way that he had treated her. Jack Amberson had said that he was guilty and he believed that he was. But Jack Amberson should have taken care of her. Even if he had made love to her, he should have taken care of her.

Jeff was almost ready to call off his vigil and go home when a black Lincoln appeared around the bend in the road and pulled up outside Jack Amberson's gates. It happened so quickly that he didn't really know what to do. But as the gates began to swing open, he thought:
This is your chance. This is your only chance. And this is for Susan.

He came out of the bushes and strode across the road. The sun was as bright and hot as an arc lamp. He took the automatic out of his track-suit top and cocked it. Then he circled around the back of the car, holding the gun in both hands. The windows were all blacked out, so that he couldn't see anybody inside. All the same, he fired four times into the offside back window. The noise was deafening and the Colt kicked back like a mule. The glass shattered, and he saw an arm flap up. Then – before he could fire again – the Lincoln screeched up the driveway toward the house and the wrought-iron gates began to close.

They clanged shut, and Jeff found himself standing alone in the roadway with his gun, unsure of what he had done.

He didn't sleep all night. He sat in his armchair drinking 7-Star Metaxa Brandy with the gun on the coffee table in front of him, and the television flickering with the sound turned down. He watched
High Noon
and – ironically –
Cloud Riders,
with Jack Amberson.

He was beginning to doze by the time the six a.m. news came on. He saw the picture of Jack Amberson even before he had time to turn up the volume.

“… seriously hurt in a shooting incident outside of his three-million-dollar home in Bel-Air … but surgeons said that his injuries were not life-threatening … police meanwhile are looking for a masked gunman who attacked Mr Amberson with no apparent motive.”

Jeff let his head fall slowly back. The sun was shining and the quail were warbling on the roof. Against the pale calico blinds, the shadow of a rose nodded and nodded, like a miniature death's-head on a stick. He hadn't been able to satisfy Susan. He hadn't been able to keep her. He hadn't even been able to avenge her.

He lifted the gun from the table, cocked the hammer, and pressed the muzzle against his forehead. It was surprisingly cold. There's only one way out of this, he thought. I have to die. Somebody else will have to punish Jack Amberson for Susan's death.

Jack Amberson walked into the Café del Rey and sat down at his favorite table. His four bodyguards sat next to him, much closer than they used to sit in the days before he was shot. He still looked the same, except that he was twitchier and nervier, and the left side of his face was indented. He had been lucky that Jeff's third bullet had passed through the skull of his blond-haired bodyguard before it had hit him in the cheek. All the same, it had penetrated his mouth and knocked away most of his upper teeth. Over two years later, he was still convalescing, and nobody knew if he would ever act again. Wes Craven had asked him if he would consider appearing in a new horror picture, but he had furiously refused. “What are you trying to say to me, Wes? I'm some kind of fucking freak?”

The young blonde waitress brought him a vodka martini with a twist and smiled at him, but ever since the shooting he regarded any woman's smiles with suspicion. He could never be sure if they really found him attractive or whether they pitied him. The way he felt at the moment, he would have been quite capable of killing any woman who showed him pity.

“Hey, how about her?” his bodyguard asked him. “Great gazongas, or what?”

Jack said, “You kidding me?”

“Of course not. She's a babe.”

“About four feet tall, and an ass like Yogi Bear?”

“OK, I'm sorry. I forgot you like 'em tall.”

Jack looked along the bar. There were two brunettes in clashing red suits, both of them as big as Xena the warrior goddess. There was a skinny ginger-headed girl in green. There was a blonde with huge
thighs and a mole on her cheek, furiously smoking. And then – at the very end of the bar – there was a tall, quiet blonde in an ocean-blue silk dress, with half a glass of champagne in front of her.

Jack stared at her with his eyes narrowed. He couldn't make out if she was waiting for somebody of if she was just killing time. Her hair was curled into soft, loose waves that just reached her shoulders. Her profile was classic, with a fine straight nose and a well-defined chin, and lips that looked as if they had just been licked.

Her figure was sensational. Her breasts were enormous – high and firm – and the outline of her nipples was visible through the fine shiny silk, her stomach was flat, her hips were narrow, and her legs went on and on and on, like a love song.

“Tell her I want to buy her a drink,” said Jack.

“Who, the redhead?”

“The blonde, you asshole. The cunt in the blue.”

The bodyguard went over and talked in the woman's ear, his hands folded over his crotch and his head tilted slightly to one side. The woman looked over his shoulder toward Jack, frowned for a moment, and then shook her head. The bodyguard said something else. She shook her head again.

Jack lifted his drink and mouthed the words, “C'mon, darling. Come and join me.” But the blonde shook her head again and picked up her pocketbook.

Jack did something that he had never done before. He got out of his seat and walked across to the bar and confronted the blonde himself. He smiled that old devilish smile and said, “I don't even know you, and already you've hurt my feelings.”

“I didn't mean to,” the blonde told him, in a soft, husky voice. “I just don't want your company, that's all.”

“Well, don't you see how hurtful that is? Here I am, a famous Hollywood movie star, and you don't want my company? You know how small that makes me feel?” He held up his finger and thumb, only a half-inch apart. “That makes me feel
this
small.”

The blonde stared at him with perfect blue eyes. “You can have almost any woman you want. How can I make you feel small?”

“Because I want
you,
sweetcakes, and the difference is that you don't want me.”

“I didn't say that. I just told this goon of yours that I don't make a habit of going out with men I don't know. A very close friend of mine was killed once, dating a man she didn't know.”

Jack's smile slipped slightly on one side. He hoped she wasn't making any kind of innuendo. If there was one thing he couldn't tolerate, it was people reminding him of what had happened with Susan. His pictures were still boycotted by some women's groups, and he had been dropped from several celebrity party lists. The last time he had seen Demi Moore, she had turned her back on him.

“Did you ever see
Painted Sun
?” he asked her. “Did you ever see
No Place Like Tomorrow?”

“Tell me who hasn't.”

“In that case, how can you say you don't know me? The Jack Amberson you've seen on the screen is the same man who's standing here talking to you now.”

“You mean the way you act on the screen – that's not really acting?”

He shook his head. “That's right. And I'm not acting now when I tell you that you're the sweetest thing on two long legs that I've ever seen in my life.”

The blonde couldn't help smiling. Jack popped his fingers at the bartender and said, “Pour this lady's drink away, will you, and bring a bottle of Dom Perignon over to my table. Only the best is good enough for you, my darling.”

The bartender said, “That all right with you, lady?”

Jack gave him a look that would have killed a Galapagos turtle at twenty paces. Then he offered his arm to the blonde on the barstool and led her across the restaurant. She was certainly tall – almost three inches taller than he was, and that gave him a shiver of sexual excitement. There was nothing he enjoyed more than having a tall, strong-looking woman kneeling in front of him and doing whatever he wanted.

“So, what's your name?” he asked her, sitting close to her and immediately scooping his hand into the dish of Parmesan nibbles. “And what's a betty like you doing all alone on a night like this?”

“My name's Lolicia. I work for a little independent company called Reel Life Video. You know, ‘reel' like in movie reel. I'm a personal assistant.”

“Oh yes?” he said, with his mouth full. “And whose person do you assist?”

“Nobody famous, I'm afraid.”

“I could do with some assistance myself. How do you like boats?”

“I don't know. I don't know anybody who has one.”

“You do now. I was planning on sailing to Baja this weekend. Little sunbathing. Little fishing. Little bit of this and a little bit of that.”

“It sounds wonderful.”

“Well, it would be if you came along.”

“You really want me to? You don't even know me.”

He crammed more nibbles into his mouth and smacked the cheese off the palms of his hands. “Let me guess. You were brought up someplace small. Someplace in Iowa, judging by your accent. Cedar Rapids, maybe.”

“Marshalltown, as a matter of fact.”

“There you are. That's pretty close. You were always the prettiest girl in school. Cheerleader, prom queen, all that kind of stuff. At seventeen you were engaged to be married to your childhood sweetheart Chuck,”

“Wayne, actually,” Lolicia smiled at him.

“Ah, yes, Wayne. I should have guessed. Wayne had perfect teeth but Wayne had no brain. You wanted more. You wanted fame and acclaim. You wrote off to
Playboy
to be a centerfold but got turned down. So – still believing in your talent and your beauty – you packed your bags and came to LA looking for the big time.”

“You're so
right,
” Lolicia told him. “Even down to the
Playboy
bit.”

Jack looked down at her swelling breasts. “Their loss, in my opinion.”

They finished the bottle of Dom Perignon between them and then Jack steered Lolicia out of the restaurant and into his new white Mercedes with the blacked-out windows.

“Bulletproof,” he said, tapping on the glass with his knuckles.

“Yes, I heard about that.” She was sitting very close to him and her dress was riding up very high.

“Did they ever catch the guy that did it?”

“The LAPD couldn't catch the clap.”

Lolicia put her arm through his and pressed her breasts against him. She was wearing a very strong, musky perfume that made him feel distinctly aroused.

“You know something,” she said. “Your movies don't do you justice. You're so much more handsome in real life. You have so much more charisma.”

Jack shrugged. “Sure. But a movie is like a team effort, you know? I deliberately soft-pedal my charisma so that I don't steal the picture from anybody else.”

She licked and nibbled his ear.

“You shouldn't do that,” he said. “It has a very instantaneous effect.”

“Let's see, shall we?” Lolicia coaxed him. Before he could protest, she had tugged down his zipper and reached inside his off-white Armani pants. “Ooh, no shorts. You
do
have charisma.”

She pried out his stiffening penis and slowly rubbed it up and down. Jack said, “Phew,” and laid his head back against the headrest. Lolicia bent her head over his lap and took him into her mouth, licking him around and around.

“Jesus, Lolicia, you're something else. Nobody ever made me feel like this before. I mean
nobody.”

She sat up and kissed him. “That's because nobody ever knew what you really needed. But I do. I read all about what happened with that girl. I understand all about tying-up, and plastic bags, and a whole lot of other things that you never even dreamed about. Let me tell you something, Mr Famous Movie Star, you've never been the whole way before, have you?”

He looked at her with hooded eyes. “Depends what you mean by the whole way.”

“Exactly that. Every deep-down desire you ever had. Every filthy fantasy. All that, and a whole lot more.”

She dug her fingernails into his erect penis so that he winced. He looked into her eyes and for the first time in his life he was just a little bit frightened.

“You're something,” he said. “Do you know that? You're something.”

*      *      *

He was standing in front of his dressing-table mirror turning his face to the left and then to the right to see if his cheek was really as distorted as he thought it was. Lolicia walked softly up behind him and ran her hand into his red silk robe, taking hold of his penis as naturally as if she owned it. She gently masturbated him, circling her finger around and around the opening at the end of his penis until it was slippery with juice.

“What do you think?” he asked her.

She kissed the back of his neck. “What do I think about what?”

“My face, of course. I took a .40 caliber bullet right there. Right there, see it? Took half of my fucking teeth out.”

“You look perfect to me.”

He angled his head to the left. “You think so? You really don't think it makes me look like something out of a horror picture?”

“You look perfect.”

He turned around. She was wearing nothing but a black lace bra and a tiny black thong.

“You're some woman, Lolicia,” he breathed. He slid his hand into the front of her thong and slipped his index finger up inside her. “What do you say that you start taking me on that journey that goes all the way?”

“Lock the doors first,” she told him.

“I've got two guys outside. Nobody's going to get in.”

She kissed him. “Lock the doors. They might hear one of us screaming and get the wrong idea.”