Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (31 page)

     He left the store and unlocked his car to allow the store clerk to put his purchases in the back. It had started to drizzle, giving the silver and white Christmas lights along Wilshire Boulevard a soft-focus look, and as Danny waited for his purchases to go into the trunk, he saw a young woman walking slowly along the sidewalk, looking in the windows. She had arched eyebrows and an arched nose, as if she were trying to lift herself up from the rest of the world. A black man in a chauffeur's uniform walked behind her;
in one arm he carried packages, with his other hand he held an umbrella over her head, protecting her from the rain while he himself got wet.

     Danny smiled. That was the way to live.

     When everything was in the trunk and the clerk had gone away with a hundred-dollar tip, Danny slid behind the wheel of his expensive new car and felt new power surge through him. Money, he thought, the true aphrodisiac. He opened the glove compartment and took out the newspaper photograph of Philippa Roberts, under which Quinn had written "Is this Beverly Highland?" Although the face wasn't quite Beverly as he remembered her, he knew she would have had to alter her looks. The plastic surgeon's knife was no stranger to Beverly. She had used it before to deceive Danny and the world; she would do it again. He toyed now with the idea of not killing her after all, but of doing something far worse, like cutting up her face, giving her some scars that no amount of plastic surgery could ever erase. Maybe he would also fix it so that she never enjoyed sex again—now that was an amusing prospect. But first he had to find her.

     After that, Danny was going to have the freedom and power to do anything he wanted. Because he wasn't going to stop with Philippa; since leaving Otis's beach house, Danny had added a few more names to his private hit list, the first of which was the bastard who had won the election that Danny was supposed to have won three years ago: the president of the United States. After he took care of him, Danny had plans for others who had deserted him when the scandals broke during the primary election, with headlines such as "MACKAY'S NAME LINKED TO BEVERLY HILLS BROTHEL," "MACKAY OWNER OF PORNO MAGAZINE," and photographs dredged up from the old days, of Danny and Bonner in an old backyard washtub with a Texas farm wife, of Danny with a can of beer in his hand, grabbing his crotch for the camera. All orchestrated by that bitch Beverly. She had spent years constructing an elaborate frame-up, all with the aim of getting Danny down on his knees before her, begging her to save him. The bitch had made him crawl to her, just because of some dumb abortion he had made her have so long ago he barely remembered it. And then, after he did beg her and she threw him to the wolves anyway, everyone deserted Danny—his wife, her father, the big-mouthed
senator... Well, the list was endless. Now, with his new invisibility, Danny could pass a death sentence on anyone.

     Before guiding the Jaguar into the busy holiday traffic, Danny paused to regard the very address on Rodeo Drive that had caused his destruction three and a half years ago and had driven him to commit "suicide" in jail—Fanelli's Men's Shop, with the butterfly logo on the facade. Behind the second-story windows was the place where police claimed Danny had run a whorehouse—an establishment that Danny had known nothing about, because it had been run by Beverly Highland. The men's store was no longer called Fanelli's, the butterfly was gone, and a directory beside the entrance listed the businesses that now occupied offices that, less than four years ago, had been rooms designed for illicit sex. But erasing the evidence didn't lessen the crime. When he found her, he was going to remind her of this address and the butterfly with which she had mocked him.

     Danny turned on the car radio and pulled out from the curb, causing a Cadillac to screech to a halt. Danny laughed as he tore out into traffic.

     The San Diego Freeway had come to a complete stop as the rain came down harder and southern Californians tried unsuccessfully to deal with it. Sitting behind a truck, Danny felt his nerves draw tight; he drummed the steering wheel, his knee pumping up and down. He wished he could take out his gun and shoot every driver around him. And he might have done it if he had thought it would clear the lane for him.

     He had to get to the airport; he had to get down to Australia and find Beverly. The need to punish her was building in him like volcanic lava; if he wasn't moving soon, Danny knew he would erupt.

     When he saw other motorists getting off the freeway to take alternate routes, Danny decided to do the same, pulling out of his lane and riding the shoulder so that he could cut in front of the line of existing cars. He ignored the angry honks and whipped down the off-ramp, squealing onto Century Boulevard.

     A red light caught him and he was stuck again, breathing other cars' exhaust fumes and wishing he could just rid the world of useless people. Danny was just beginning to entertain himself with the vision of a sparsely populated planet, having just enough people to serve him, when his attention was captured by something.

     A sign on a tall building: Starlite Industries.

     The headquarters of the company that Beverly owned under the name of Philippa Roberts.

     When the light turned green, Danny whipped a sudden right turn, even though he was in the middle lane, roared down the street, and braked in the red zone in front. He couldn't believe his luck. And what a stroke of genius. Of course! Why waste time searching Western Australia for her when he could get her address right here?

     Providence, my man, he told himself, as he entered the foyer. This was no accident; you were
brought
here.

     He laughed softly as he rode up in the elevator, watching himself in the mirrored wall and thinking what a knock-out good-looking stud he was. From his silk boxers to his leather bomber jacket, he was pure
GQ.
Image made the man, he told himself. Look power, and you
are
power. Dress in eight thousand dollars and people give you respect. After all, Danny wasn't a nobody. Besides having come a blink away from the Oval Office, he had written that blockbuster best-seller back in the sixties,
Why God Took the Kennedys;
he'd gone to Vietnam Bob Hope style and dazzled the troops; he had lived in penthouses in Houston and Dallas; he had had any woman he wanted. Danny was often amazed to think how many miles and years he had come from the days when he was the ragged son of a poor West Texas sharecropper, when they had lived in shanties wallpapered with newsprint; he hadn't owned a pair of shoes until he was twelve. The alligator shoes he wore now probably cost more than his useless father had earned in his lifetime. And Danny had accomplished it all just by selling religion.

     Looking at his image in the mirrored wall of the elevator, he smiled the languid, sexy-sly smile that had made him famous. "God can be bribed," he said softly, quoting the preacher who had set Danny on the road to fame and riches. "I'm in the protection racket," Billy Bob Magdalene had said the night he had caught twenty-two-year-old Danny and Bonner trying to rip off the till during a tent revival. He had caught them with his shotgun, trying to sneak out; Bonner had peed his pants but Danny had kept his cool. "Let me tell you two pudknockers about this religion bidness," Billy Bob had said back in his trailer. "First, I remind folks that God is so angry with them
that He's got it on His calendar to squash them soon's He can get around to it. Then I kind of hint that I got some special
in
with the Lord, like I got His ear. Then I let it sort of slip that, for a small sum, I might just whisper a few words in God's ear in their defense. It never fails. They come into my tent as shit-scared sinners, and they leave feeling fully insured."

     That was the beginning moment of Danny's rise to power, when he and Bonner had signed on with Billy Bob Magdalene's traveling tent revival. Later, of course, they'd tossed the old preacher out into the desert near Odessa, and changed the name of the show to Danny Mackay Brings Jesus.

     And hadn't the world loved him for it? Hadn't they flocked to Danny's tents to hear his hellfire preaching? Hadn't they sent their dollars to him in great rolling waves until the Good News Ministries was worth billions? And hadn't that bitch Beverly spoiled it all by tricking him into owning a whorehouse called Butterfly and then telling the police?

     She was going to pay. She was going to pay.

     When the elevator reached the top floor, Danny made an entrance into the reception area as if he owned the place.

     "Howdy," he said to the young woman behind the desk.

     She looked up from the book she was reading, and when she saw Danny, a look swept across her face that he had seen thousands of times before, a reaction, he knew, that had its roots not in her brain but in her pelvis. Quickly closing the book and flashing a beautiful smile, she said, "May I help you, sir?"

     "I'm looking for Miss Philippa Roberts."

     "Miss Roberts isn't here, sir. May I take a message?"

     He produced Otis's press pass and showed it to her. "I want to do an article on Miss Roberts; I'd like to interview her. I wonder if you could give me her address?"

     "I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to give out such information. But if you like, I will give the message to Miss Roberts's secretary."

     "That would be just fine, sugar," he said, turning on the Texas genteel. He leaned against the desk, gave her a long appreciative look, then said, "Anyone ever tell you you got the prettiest eyes? I interviewed Cher once, you talk about pretty eyes. But you got hers beat cold. Did you know that?"

     "Oh...thank you," she said, flustered.

     Danny grinned. He knew that the minute he left she was going to whip a mirror out of her purse and inspect her eyes. "You sure you can't tell me Miss Roberts's address? It would save me a heap of trouble. And I'd mention you in the article. Would you like to see your name in the paper? I'd tell the world about those beautiful eyes of yours."

     "I could get into trouble..."

     "You know, sugar, I understand. And the devil knock me dead for putting you on the spot like that. You just forget I even asked. Besides, I'm a whole lot more interested in you right now than Miss Roberts."

     He did a slow turn, taking in the tasteful reception area, the glass case filled with books, the subdued lighting, and soft music coming from hidden speakers. One thing he had to hand to Beverly Highland; she had learned about real class.

     His gaze came to rest on a box of Christmas candy beside the receptionist's telephone. Danny smiled and said, "Isn't that kind of forbidden, considering this is a diet place and all?"

     She reddened and said, "Well, I'm not on a diet."

     He moved his eyes up and down her body, then said, "I'll say you're not, and don't you ever think of trying it. Mind if I help myself?"

     "I beg your pardon?"

     He picked up a small red and white striped candy cane. "May I have one?"

     "Oh, yes, help yourself."

     "You know, sugar," he said, moving the candy cane slowly between his lips, sucking on it, "I sure do like sweet things. I wonder if you'd do me the honor of going to dinner with me sometime."

     She blushed bright red. "I'd love to."

     "Unfortunately, I'm flying down to Australia tonight to interview Miss Roberts in Perth."

     "Oh, but Miss Roberts isn't in Australia. She's here."

     He stared at her. "She's here? You mean in Los Angeles?"

     "Miss Roberts came back this morning. In fact, you just missed her. She went back to her hotel."

     "Now ain't that a pleasant surprise...Where do you suppose I could find her?"

     "Well, Miss Roberts checked into the Century Plaza Hotel, but you'll have to hurry, she's going to Palm Springs tomorrow."

     "Palm Springs? Do you know where in Palm Springs?"

     "I'm sorry, I don't."

     "Thanks, sugar. You've been a big help." He winked. "I'll be in touch."

     Danny had no luck with the desk clerks at the Century Plaza Hotel. "I cannot give you a guest's room number," the young man in the blazer said, "but if you would care to leave a message..."

     Danny walked around the enormous lobby for a few moments, trying to decide what to do, when he saw the restaurant and realized it was lunchtime, and an idea came to him. On a hunch, he went up to the hostess, who said, "Yes sir, may I help you?"

     "I sure do hope so, ma'am. I'm supposed to join some friends here for lunch, and my secretary got the times mixed up. So I don't know if the reservation is for one or two o'clock. I was wondering if you could tell me."

     "Certainly. What is the party's name?"

     He started to say Beverly Highland and then remembered that she was going by another name. "Roberts. Philippa Roberts."

     The hostess scanned the reservation sheet, then said, "Ah yes. Miss Roberts's reservation is for one o'clock."

     Danny took a seat on a pink-brocade chair, hidden behind a leafy ficus, and watched everyone who came to the restaurant.

     When he saw her, a jolt went through him. It was her all right; she looked just like the news photo he had lifted from Quinn's beach house. Here she was, just feet away from him, Beverly Highland, the woman who had humiliated him, made him get down on his knees and beg, and then had destroyed him. For this woman, Danny had dangled at the end of a jail cell rope, died, and come back to life with half a brain. It was only his hatred of her, his burning passion to see her suffer, that had brought him through that ordeal at all.

     How innocent she looked, he thought, how sweetly serene and refined, her shoulder-length hair all shiny brown, the simple business suit and briefcase. She didn't look like a black-widow spider. And there wasn't
much resemblance to the woman who had sat in his hotel room on that last night, her platinum hair pulled severely back into a tight French twist, giving her an icy villainess look, all cold and passionless and deadly. Now, in her new guise, she looked soft and warm and harmless. But it was a facade that didn't fool Danny. She could try all she wanted to deceive people into thinking she was someone else, but Danny knew who she was—the woman who had killed him.