Star Island (37 page)

“I got a better plan than yours,” he said.

Bang Abbott swallowed an olive-tinged burp. “Can I hear it?”

“You get to live,” Chemo told him. “That’s all you need to know.”

The tantalizing tweets had already begun. Cherry’s ghostwritten blog entry was polished and ready to go. So was the press release describing her fictitious abduction, sordid imprisonment and daring escape. Producers from
Showbiz Tonight, Extra
and
ET
had been alerted to expect a blockbuster tip. All that remained to be done—before launching the bogus story—was to secure Ann DeLusia’s silence.

At least that’s what the Larks thought.

“Annie left the hotel,” Janet Bunterman was saying. “Took all her stuff.”

“Oh, she’ll call,” said Lucy.

“The girl’s not stupid,” her sister added.

Maury Lykes removed the celery stalk from his Bloody Mary and chomped off the head. “Let me get this straight: We’ve lost the actress
again?”

“Temporarily,” said Cherry’s mother.

“The one person who can blow the whole deal wide open—your daughter’s double.”

“She’s not a double, Maury, she’s just a stand-in.”

“More like a crawl-in.” The promoter crunched loudly on the celery. “This is unfuckingbelievable. You people said you could handle her.”

The Larks would have frowned, if they could. Ann DeLusia wasn’t their responsibility.

Janet Bunterman said, “She’s been through a lot. I’m sure she’ll come around.”

Maury Lykes spat a mulched gob of green fiber into his cocktail napkin. “Aren’t we missing a key member of the brain trust?”

“Ned’s with Cherry. Her costume fitter’s stopping by after dinner.”

“Jesus, I’m not talking about Ned. I’m talking about Chemo,” Maury Lykes said.

He speared a scallop off a platter of finger food, checked his Rolex and wondered if something had gone wrong on Star Island. It seemed unlikely that the humongous bodyguard could have been outwitted or overpowered by the dumpy likes of Claude Abbott, but show business had taught Maury Lykes that nothing was a lock. Arranging the murder of a paparazzo wasn’t the worst thing the promoter had ever done on behalf of a star, but it carried some uncommon risks.

“This,” he said, gnawing on the scallop, “tastes like a broiled tumor.”

“Try it with the ponzu sauce,” Janet Bunterman suggested.

Lucy Lark said, “What if Abbott doesn’t cave? The needle shots he took of Ann are bad. With that horrid tattoo, she looks just like Cherry.”

“Those pictures’ll never get out,” asserted Maury Lykes. “They can’t.”

“Even if they do, it’s not the end of the world.” This from Lila, catching even her sister by surprise. “No, seriously, I’ve been thinking about it. Handcuffing a young woman to a toilet and forcing her to shoot up—it would show what a total ghoul he was, wouldn’t it? And how gutsy Cherry was for fighting back and making her escape?”

Lucy sat forward intently. “She’s right. We can run with that.”

“If we have to,” said Lila. “Whatever’s in that syringe doesn’t have to be heroin or meth. We can always say it was—”

“Coke,” her sister proposed.

“Sure. Or maybe ketamine.”

Maury Lykes rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Gee, I feel
so
much better.”

“Can we please change the subject?” Cherry’s mother said.

There was a rapping at the door. One of the twins got up and let Chemo in. He sat down on the couch between Janet Bunterman and Maury Lykes. To make room for his legs, he kicked the coffee table away.

“Well, we’ve all been waiting patiently,” the promoter said. “How was the prom?”

Chemo adjusted his hairpiece. He asked for a Diet Pepsi, and Lucy brought him one.

“What happened with Abbott?” Maury Lykes pressed. “Is he cool, or not?”

That was the code word he and Chemo had agreed upon
—cool
meant “dead.”

“Change of plans,” Chemo said.

“What’s
that
mean?” asked Janet Bunterman. “Where are Cherry’s pictures?”

Maury Lykes noticed his own feet twitching, a symptom of high anxiety. Evidently the photographer was still alive, and the potential complications were ugly to contemplate.

Chemo took off his Palin frames and cleaned the lenses with the corner of a napkin. “I got both of the man’s cameras. The pictures are stored on the memory sticks.”

“Thank God,” sighed Cherry’s mother.

“So, where are they?” Lila said.

“Yes, we’ll need to see them ASAP,” her sister emphasized.

Chemo put the glasses back on and said, “Here’s the deal. The cameras, they’re in a safe place.”

“I knew it,” said Maury Lykes.

“That’s right. They’re mine now.”

“Let me guess: You and Abbott came to an agreement.”

Chemo shrugged. “His options were limited.”

Janet Bunterman looked lost. The twins, who hadn’t seen this scheming side of the bodyguard’s personality, were simultaneously alarmed and intrigued. But, once again, they were ignored.

When Maury Lykes asked Chemo how much money he wanted for the photographs, he laughed and said, “Get in line.”

“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

“Abbott has the primo connections.”

Lucy Lark said, “Hold on. Are you talking about the tabloids? Because we can’t make our kidnap story work for Cherry if we don’t control these pictures. Nobody’s going to believe her without photos.”

“Even then, it won’t be an easy sell,” noted Lila.

Chemo pinched a loose tassel of dead skin from his brow. “Maybe I can spare one or two shots. Say fifty grand each.”

Janet Bunterman gasped. “Are you insane?” A hundred thousand dollars was way beyond the budget discussed by her and Ned. She turned to Maury Lykes and said, “What’s happening here? Can’t you do something?”

The promoter was trying to maintain his poise. Instead of killing the paparazzo, Chemo had conscripted the sonofabitch and confiscated the goods. Maury Lykes, who hadn’t seen it coming, grudgingly admired the pock-faced brute. By his own devious maneuvering, Chemo was no longer just a contract worker; he was a player.

“Let’s think about this,” said Maury Lykes, “in a way that would be mutually beneficial to everyone.”

“What for?” The bodyguard scrutinized the hors d’oeuvres. “I got the photos. You got jack.” He passed on the scallops and selected a Cajun-fried shrimp.

Maury Lykes turned to Cherry’s mother and said, “I need to speak to him alone.” Then, to the Larks: “Don’t make another move until you hear from me.”

The twins followed Janet Bunterman out of the suite. As soon as the door closed, Maury Lykes said, “Hey, what the fuck? We had a deal.”

“Opportunity knocked,” said Chemo.

“How much do you think those bimbette pictures are really worth? Seriously.”

“Guess we’ll find out.”

The promoter presented a theory that the market value of Abbott’s Star Island collection would be basically chump change
unless
Skantily Klad
became a commercial smash. “You need this album to go big,” he advised Chemo. “You need Cherry Pye’s name back on the charts—if you’re interested in the major bucks, that is.”

The thought had occurred to Chemo, as well. A hit CD and a sold-out tour would make Abbott’s moody portraits a much hotter commodity when Cherry finally overdosed. The bodyguard understood that he now had a stake in keeping the stoned nitwit breathing for at least the next two months.

“The tour opens where?” he asked.

“Right here in Miami,” said Maury Lykes. “Then we take it to Orlando, Charlotte and so on up the coast.”

Chemo hated to fly, not because he was afraid but because his extreme height made the seating miserable.

Maury Lykes laughed. “She goes private, man. You’ll have tons of legroom.”

“Plus, I’m keepin’ that forty grand you gave me. For the hit.” Chemo intended to live on the cash until Cherry punched out.

“I’m glad you brought that up.” Maury Lykes slid closer and dropped his voice. “The other forty thousand, the second half, it’s still out there.”

Chemo grabbed some curly hairs on the promoter’s neck and twisted hard. “I told you, I’m not gonna whack the fat boy. He’s got ace connections for brokering those pictures.”

The jerking of Maury Lykes’s head caused something to pop in his neck. “Stop!” he yipped. “It’s not Abbott who needs to be killed. It’s somebody else.”

“Who?” Chemo demanded. “What’s his name?”

“It’s a her, not a him.”

“Jesus Horatio Christ.” The bodyguard let go of the promoter’s hair and shoved him to the floor.

“Just hear me out,” said Maury Lykes.

For all his character defects, Bang Abbott wasn’t prone to self-pity. He regarded himself as a seasoned street warrior—the job of hounding celebrities was mined with disappointments, deceits and
humiliations. In Bang Abbott’s lowly league of paparazzi, a good day was one in which you weren’t spat upon or kneed in the groin. Still, reflecting upon the past week, he found it difficult not to feel snakebit. His expensive Nikons had been stolen by a starlet, recovered, then stolen again. He had mistakenly carjacked the starlet’s double, who then somehow shot off his trigger finger. Then, just as things were finally looking up, he was assaulted by a double-crossing one-armed bodyguard who sadistically weed-whacked his ass flab. Most dispiritingly, Bang Abbott’s ambitious plan for exploiting the inevitable self-destruction of Cherry Pye was in ruins. The
Lost Angel
portraits he’d taken of the singer at Star Island—in his opinion, the finest work of his career—were in the clutches of the seven-foot, pizza-faced Chemo, who had promised him only a photo credit and some vague overspill of the profits.

And now Peter Cartwill was on the line, spoiling Bang Abbott’s dinner. The photographer had been relaxing outdoors at the News Café, inhaling a couple of cheeseburgers while watching all the gorgeous zombies stroll by on Ocean Drive. He’d called the editor of the
Eye
to say he was all right, and that there was no need to retrieve his laptop from the apartment in Los Angeles.

“Too late. Our guy fetched it yesterday and it arrived by FedEx this morning,” Cartwill said. “Your screen saver, by the way, is disgusting.”

“But I told you guys to wait till tomorrow!” Bang Abbott protested. “And only if I didn’t call by noon.”

“Really, Claude. That’s sort of sad.”

Cartwill was right. Bang Abbott knew better than to trust a tabloid editor.

“You’re not thinking straight,” Cartwill observed. “I’m worried about you.”

“It’s been a rough stretch.”

“These pictures, Claude, I must say … ”

“So you found ’em?”

Cartwill’s chuckle had a fluttering quality. “The file was marked ‘Toilet Art.’ Somehow our IT lads managed to crack the code. What’s she shooting up, by the way—smack?”

Bang Abbott swigged a gulp of warm Pellegrino and almost
choked on a lemon rind. If those pictures leaked out now, Cherry Pye’s tour would be doomed, the Star Island portfolio would be worthless and, worst of all, Chemo would hunt him down with that goddamn lawn trimmer and chop him into two hundred pounds of steaming slaw.

“You can’t publish those shots, Peter.”

“And why would that be?”

“It’s complicated,” Bang Abbott said.

“Actually, it’s not. You remember the last conversation we had? About the picture you took of Cherry outside the Viper Room? The one we paid six grand for?”

“I remember.”

“Except Cherry was actually in the ER at Cedars that night.”

Bang Abbott said hotly, “You believe that stupid nurse and not me?”

Cartwill’s tone made it clear that he did. “The woman handcuffed to the toilet in these photographs—tell me the truth. Is that really Cherry?”

“Ha! Check out the freaky tatt.”

“We have, Claude. Our guys in Digital enlarged the images. They say it looks like a henna.”

Bang Abbott’s Bluetooth fell off his head and landed in a glop of catsup. He wiped down the earpiece and, after two false stabs, re-inserted it.

“She’s also missing a freckle,” Cartwill was saying, “on her left wrist.”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“The truth, Claude, or we’ll never touch your stuff again,” Cartwill warned. “Once the word gets out, you’ll be shooting cruises and bar mitzvahs the rest of your life.”

It was a hollow threat; Bang Abbott was confident that he’d always be able to peddle his celebrity candids somewhere. The market was bottomless in the purest sense of the word. However, considering the hefty lease on his Mercedes, he couldn’t afford to be banned from top-paying magazines and tabloids such as the
Eye
, fussy as they might be about the authenticity of their art.

“Okay, Peter, you got me. It’s not Cherry in those shots.”

“Ah.” Cartwill sounded no more superior than usual. “She’s pretty. Who is it?”

“Long story,” Bang Abbott said.

“What’s in the spike?”

“Tap water.”

“Claude, this is so disappointing.”

“But, listen, the picture outside the Viper Room after the Emmys, the girl in the leather mini—that was an honest mistake.” Bang Abbott wasn’t about to sit mute while his reputation was shredded. He was good at what he did, even if most people considered what he did to be despicable.