Читать книгу The Notorious Pagan Jones - Nina Berry - Страница 9

Mercedes was asleep when Pagan got to the infirmary, so she sat down quietly next to the bed and stared at the wad of bandages wrapped around her friend’s shoulder.

That was where Susan Mahoney’s stiletto had slid into Mercedes. It had made a sickeningly slick noise as she’d yanked out the thin, shiny blade. Blood had dripped from the knife’s tip as Susan had poised it over Mercedes’s throat.

Stop thinking about that, stop! The important thing was that Susan hadn’t succeeded in finishing off Mercedes. She was going to be okay.

Pagan focused on her friend’s relaxed left hand, studying the smooth brown skin and clear nails. They were cut short, but not too short. Pagan had begun to keep hers the same length after Mercedes had explained that you needed enough nail to effectively rake your enemy’s face or neck to draw blood. But let the nails grow too long, and they’d bend back or snap during a fight, which not only hurt but might distract you at a crucial moment.

Not exactly something Pagan’s manicurist had chatted about, back in the day. Life in Lighthouse had been horrible, but it had taught her a few things Hollywood couldn’t. Not just how to put your body weight into a punch or how to choke down canned meat for dinner, but things like how to know when someone meant you harm, and how stay in the moment. Mercedes had impressed upon her that if you let too many thoughts of the past or fears of the future cloud your thoughts, you might not survive the present.

All those lessons might come in handy if she was going back into the real world.

If she was going to stay sober.

Mercedes’s eyelids fluttered and snapped open. Like Pagan, she slept lightly and woke all at once. It was one of the many things they’d been surprised to find they had in common.

“Hey,” said Pagan. She wanted to squeeze Mercedes’s hand, but she refrained. M didn’t care for sentimental words or physical demonstrations of affection. “You’re doing great.”

The brown eyes studied her, crinkling a little at the corners. “Thanks,” Mercedes said. Her normally smooth, deep voice was scratchy but calm. “For saving my life.”

Oh, right. Pagan had so thoroughly avoided thinking about how Susan Mahoney had almost succeeded in stabbing Mercedes a second time, how the big redhead had aimed for the throat, that she had also blanked out how she herself had stopped it. Her vision had narrowed down to the freckled hand holding that stiletto, and a strange conviction had taken over.

Not this time.

Somehow, despite her own injuries, Pagan had fought her way to her feet and propelled herself into Susan, tearing her off Mercedes before Pagan had blacked out.

“Thanks for not dying,” Pagan said, her voice hoarse but steady.

Mercedes let out the barest breath of a laugh. “Anytime.” Her gaze traveled over Pagan and the room they were in, empty except for the bed and some medical equipment. “It’s not like the witch to lock us in here together.”

“We’re not locked in,” Pagan said. “We’re free. Well, free of solitary anyway.” As Mercedes listened, frowning, Pagan told her all that had happened that morning, stumbling a little as she tried to convey the bizarre dynamic between Devin Black and Jerry Allenberg.

“I’m hoping I can call you from Berlin,” she said. “So if Miss Edwards tries to retaliate against you at all, you let me know.”

“I’ll be fine.” Mercedes was dismissive. “It’s your situation that’s radioactive, so you better call me.”

“It’s just a movie shoot,” Pagan said, sounding as casual as she could. “It’s not life and death.”

Mercedes slanted her eyes at Pagan in her best who are you kidding look. “First thing, you go to one of those meetings.”

“A.A.” Pagan shifted uneasily on the bed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Mercedes raised her eyebrows. “You promise me you’ll go?”

Pagan waved one hand airily. “I’m fine, really.”

Mercedes’s brown eyes took on an implacable look. “Promise me you’ll go to a meeting.”

Pagan looked at her best friend, her only friend, and said reluctantly, “If there’s time, and if they have meetings in Berlin, I’ll go.”

“If, if!” Mercedes made a tsking sound with her tongue. “Just go.”

“Okay, okay!” Pagan threw up her hands. “Can I hang out here with you for a bit longer before I leave, at least?”

Mercedes relaxed. “Who’s going to tell me crazy stories about the guests on Ed Sullivan after you’re gone?”

“You won’t need Ed Sullivan,” Pagan said. “I’m going to send you every single brand-new tabloid magazine I can lay my hands on.”

“Coolsville,” Mercedes said, looking sly. “I can read what they’re saying about you.”

* * *

The tiny windowless room they’d shared felt so empty without Mercedes. Miss Edwards had brought Pagan the suit she’d worn the day she walked into Lighthouse, but it was now too big in the chest and the hips. Prison was apparently an excellent dieting tool.

Now the suit looked like something another girl would wear. Pagan wasn’t sure who that girl was—a spoiled drunk movie star or a sad orphan going off to juvenile detention—but she wasn’t either of those people anymore, and the outfit was all wrong. After they allowed her to shower, she folded up the suit and her old white gloves and left them behind for Mercedes to trade, donning her saggy garters, stockings, and scuffed flat shoes under the scratchy gray Lighthouse uniform for the last time.

She didn’t take anything else with her. As Miss Edwards clomped angrily in front of her toward the front door, Pagan paused to listen to the voices of the girls in the distant classroom, now reciting geometry proofs. Their chant faded behind her as she walked out the double doors and the sunshine hit her face.

All the snappy last words she had prepared to say to Miss Edwards fled her brain the moment she gazed up at the azure sky. Hot, dry August air swept through her hair. After nine long months, she was free.

At the bottom of the steps lurked a long black limousine with fins like a shark. Leaning against it with the passenger door open beside him was Devin Black.

He pulled the door open wider. “Ready to go home?”

Home. Without a family waiting for her, she didn’t know what that meant anymore.

In a blink everything seemed oppressive—the heat; the hard yellow light; the empty, waiting house that still held Ava’s stuffed animals and Daddy’s golf clubs.

And the car. It wasn’t remotely red or a convertible, but the thought of getting in it made her queasy. Nine months since the accident, and the memories were waiting there, circling like vultures.

“What are you waiting for? You can’t stay here.” Miss Edwards’s voice sliced through the dread. “Even if you’re not ready to go.”

Pagan glanced over her shoulder. Something about Miss Edwards’s condescending smirk made the big scary world out there a lot more appealing. “Thanks ever so much for all your kindness.” She bestowed a wide, fake smile on the woman. “I’ll be sure to mention you in my first magazine interview.”

Miss Edwards’s face froze. Knowing that she probably looked more like a war refugee than a movie star in her stained uniform and ponytail, Pagan nonetheless did her best model sashay down the steps. The dark depths of the car swallowed her. She didn’t look back as Devin got in after her and slammed the door.

Inside it was air-conditioned. She sank back into the smooth, deeply cushioned black leather seats as the driver stepped on the accelerator and they glided away. The limo’s velvety bounce was nothing like the low-down rumble of her Corvette, and she began to relax. Low storefronts and empty, fenced yards flashed past as they headed west. She was free.

Or was she? The unreadable expression on Devin Black’s face wasn’t reassuring.

“Does the car bring back bad memories?” he asked, his voice mild.

“The car?” Dang, he was perceptive. She’d have to be careful around him. “It’s no big deal. I’m cool.”

He leaned forward and opened a small cabinet set into the partition between them and the driver. “Something to drink?”

She stared at the tiny refrigerator. The luxury of it being here, inside a car, reminded her of her old life. Limousines, movie premieres, and fridges full of alcohol. She’d never appreciated it, or feared it, the way she did now. “Got a Coke?”

“Sure.” He grabbed a bottle and used an opener to remove the cap. She took it and sipped, her first taste of Coke in months. It was delicious and icy cold.

Devin reached into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out a red-and-white pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

Winston. Her brand. This guy had done his homework. But why? She took the unopened pack, and the plastic wrap crackled in her hand. She could almost taste the smoothly acrid smoke and feel the filter of the cigarette between her index and middle fingers. All she needed was a martini in the other hand. Cigarettes and alcohol went together like drive-in movies and making out. One without the other just didn’t make sense.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll save these for later.”

He nodded and removed his sunglasses. In the cool dark of the limousine interior, his eyes were shadowed. “The plan was to take you directly home. We got permission from Judge Tennison to air out your house. The studio has sent over a designer with some clothes for you to choose from, with a hairdresser and manicurist on standby. Is there anywhere you’d like to go first?”

“You mean, like a record store?” She tucked the cigarettes away in her skirt pocket. Maybe one day she could face them without a drink. “I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s new from Ray Charles.”

“We could do that if you like. Or is there some sort of organizational meeting you should attend?” When she looked at him blankly, he added, “The Friends of Bill W?”

Pagan nearly did a spit take with her Coke. “A.A?”

He regarded her, his face neutral, and said nothing.

Of course, he meant well, and she had promised Mercedes. So she’d go. She really would. But certainly not with Devin Black tagging along. She’d attended exactly two meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous between getting out on bail after her arrest and being sentenced to Lighthouse. Everyone there had been her parents’ age or older. They’d tried so hard not to stare at her that she’d felt both conspicuous and invisible, like a ghost no one wants to admit is haunting their house.

“I’m fine,” she said to Devin Black. It came out sharper than she intended.

“If you say so.” He couldn’t keep a slight tone of skepticism out of his voice. “You should know that the studio has assigned me to make sure you get to Berlin without incident.”

Which meant he’d been assigned to keep her off the bottle. Resentment flared. “What I drink is none of the studio’s—or your—business.”

He didn’t drop his gaze. “We have a considerable investment in you.”

She stared right back. “You knew the risks when you brought me into this.”

Unexpectedly, a slow smile spread over his face, as if he couldn’t help it. “The risks. And the rewards.”

He slid stormy blue eyes over her, and a warm flush stole up her neck to her cheeks. She hadn’t blushed for a boy since the last time she’d seen Nicky, her first and only boyfriend. She’d forgotten how exciting it was to get flustered like that.

“The reward of seeing me look like a fugitive from a chain gang?” She made her voice tart, which helped the flush subside. It wasn’t as if she could truly be attracted to Devin Black. He was a studio minder, her jailer. He might be useful for now, but he was her adversary.

“You’re talented enough to make any role believable.” At her incredulous look, he leaned forward and said, “No, really. I remember seeing that they’d cast you in Leopard Bay as a homeless street girl and I thought, That will never work. But it was an astonishing performance. For once they gave the right person the Golden Globe for most promising newcomer.”

The role in Leopard Bay had been her most challenging, something to be proud of before her career devolved into fluff like The Bashful Debutante and Beach Bound Beverly. By then, she was too busy hanging on Nicky’s arm and getting down to some serious drinking to worry about the quality of her movie roles. If they’d all been as rigorous as Leopard Bay, her drinking problem might have been noticed—by her father, by her fellow actors, by the studio. Maybe things would have been different.

“I was more excited about getting the BAFTA,” she said. “As far as I know the British Academy can’t be bought, unlike the Hollywood Foreign Press.”

He smirked. “As far as you know. What was it like to work with Richard Burton?”

Pagan looked out the window, remembering a brooding, pockmarked face, a warm presence. “He’s even more charismatic in person, but he was sort of sad. He caught me sipping from his hip flask one day, and all he did was take it away from me very gently and shake his head.” Leopard Bay had been shot not long after her mother died. She’d started drinking in secret. “He helped me practice my Welsh accent.”

Pagan shook off the memory. Time to learn more about the mysterious Mister Black. “Where are you from?”

“New York.” He eased back into the leather seat and stretched out his long legs so that they almost touched hers. “Born and raised.”

“You don’t have a New York accent,” she said. “You sound like me.” Pagan had been coached in elocution from an early age. Once her career as a baby model had taken off, her mother had made sure she grew up trained in how to speak, move, sing, and dance. She now spoke with a nondescript American accent, instead of sounding like a California girl.

“Education drills out the quirks,” he said with a shrug. “But I don’t have your gift for mimicking accents.”

After the barest pause, he gave her another smile. It was warm. Deep. But she didn’t blush this time. That pause, that fraction of a second, before he flashed her that smile, opened up a part of her brain she hadn’t used in months, years. The smile was perfect. His eyes even crinkled at the corners exactly the way they should. But Pagan knew it was fake, because she was trained to know.

Devin Black was acting. Behind his seeming spontaneity lay an iron control.

Pagan curved her lips into a shy smile to simulate her own coy response, her mind racing. Liars were a dime a dozen in Hollywood. She herself was one of the best. But Devin Black was more than a liar. He was dangerous.

Strange forces were at work. And for her own sake, she had to unmask them.

Devin Black wasn’t the only one who could flirt to get what he wanted.

“You’re a New Yorker, so you must have been to the Stage Deli over on Houston,” she said.

The Stage Deli was on Seventh Avenue, not Houston. If Devin was indeed from New York, he’d know that. “My dad and I ate there all the time when I was shooting that musical in Manhattan. He had the pastrami sandwich five times in a row.”

Devin’s blue eyes narrowed slightly. “Katz’s Deli is on Houston. The Stage Deli’s on Seventh.”

“Oh, Katz’s!” She lifted one palm to the sky as if asking heaven to return her brain. “That’s what I meant.”

So Devin knew New York. That didn’t mean he wasn’t lying. She scooched an inch closer to him on the leather seat. “We’ll be stopping in New York on the way to Berlin probably, right? What’s the hot new thing on Broadway these days?”

He tilted his head, musing. “I was hoping to see The Happiest Girl in the World, but it closed in June.”

“I was hoping to be The Happiest Girl in the World.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Then my life turned into West Side Story in a hurry.”

“Have you heard from Nicky Raven recently?” he asked, his voice deceptively light.

Nicky. Just the sound of his name squeezed all the blood from Pagan’s heart. Born Niccolo Randazzo, Nicky sang smoother than Sinatra and could swing like Louis Armstrong. Nicky, with his thick brown hair swept back in a wave, those flexible lips that had kissed her so many times, and that slightly crooked nose lending his boyish face a tougher cast. Just the sound of his name sent everything inside her swirling upward like a dust devil.

The first time she’d seen him, he’d been swaggering past Stage 12 on the Universal lot, singing his latest hit, “Sunlight on Her Face.” His dark eyes had lighted upon Pagan as she’d walked past, and he’d stopped dead, taken her hand, and said, “Hey, beautiful. I’m gonna marry you.”

He’d asked her to dinner on the spot, and with her father’s permission, they’d dined that night at The Brown Derby. It was the first of many long, romantic evenings together.

She caught Devin Black’s assessing gaze and stifled the tumult inside her. He’d asked her about Nicky to see how flustered she would get, to test her weak spots. It was cold-blooded…and smart as hell.

Or maybe he wanted to know if she was over Nicky—for himself.

“Not recently.” Her voice was a study in nonchalance. “Has he put out a new album or had a hit single lately?”

“Not that I noticed.” Devin gave her another appreciative look. “Perhaps he’s run out of inspiration.”

She leaned in close, wishing she had a lower neckline to deploy or at least some lipstick. “Perhaps you and I should take in a show when we hit New York.”

He inclined toward her, a smile playing around his mouth. It looked genuine. “There’s only time for dinner, but I know a place…”

He stopped, as if catching himself, and his smile straightened into a resolute blank. “At the airport we can get a decent meal before we get on the plane for Berlin.”

Although his voice was pleasant, the already refrigerated air took on a chill. Without moving a muscle, Devin Black had become as remote as the waning moon.

But she’d gotten to him. Pagan leaned back in her seat, suppressing a smile. He’d warmed to her for a moment, the same way he had when they’d discussed sequels to popular songs. He’d probably pulled back because he was worried about losing his job if she beguiled him too thoroughly. But with a little work, she might transform him from prison warden to adoring acolyte.

“Perhaps once we get to Berlin, you could show me around,” she said, her voice soft. “I’ve never been there.”

He didn’t turn his head to look at her. “Once we get to Berlin you’re going to be very busy trying not to get fired off the first movie set you’ve been on since you quit drinking. Better to concentrate on that.”

Rage flooded her. Had she been completely mistaken, thinking he found her attractive? Or was he the type of jerk who lashed out when he couldn’t have what he wanted? Either way, he was utterly disagreeable.

“I was a better actor drunk than you are now,” she said. It was a stab in the dark. He was performing in some way, and he didn’t have to know she couldn’t figure him out.

He gave her a cold smile. “Think how splendid you’ll be now that you’re sober.”

Sober. What a dismal word.

Uneasy silence settled between them. She sipped her Coke. The car turned north on La Brea and slid past the old Chaplin studios.

A cherry-red convertible overflowing with laughing people zoomed past them, radio blasting a raucous song she didn’t recognize. Pagan suppressed a sigh. A few months ago that had been her. She and Nicky had been drunk on love and success, and other things. He’d driven her down Sunset Boulevard, singing along to his own voice as his number one single played on the radio.

Another car went by, and she was afraid to look out the window to see who was driving it. Nicky could still be in Los Angeles, for all she knew. She tried to picture running into him now, ten months after he’d stopped calling. She imagined a look of pity crossing his face when he saw her, the disgust he’d try to keep from his eyes. The same dark eyes that had once held so much love, so much desire.

She was real gone over Nicky still. Good thing she was going to Berlin, far from anywhere she and Nicky had ever been.

A need to run, to move, to get away from this car, from Devin, from everything, pushed through her like a wave.

As they turned west on Hollywood Boulevard, she pressed the switch for the automatic window to bring it humming down. Warm dry air rushed over her face, and she stuck her head out. So what if Devin thought she was crazy? She needed to breathe.

She closed her eyes as the wind whipped her hair back, pushing against her eyelids. Shadows pulsed over her, dimming the sunlight briefly. She opened her eyes to look at the palm trees towering above, slipping past like signposts.

She turned her head to gaze back east down Hollywood Boulevard. As they rose up an incline and her hair lashed at her face, she caught a glimpse of Grauman Theater’s swooping Chinese roof. She’d hoped to have her hand—and footprints­—added to the greats already enshrined in the concrete there. No way that would happen now.

They crested the slight hill and headed down again. Grauman’s disappeared from sight. Mansions and gardens lined the road. The Hollywood Hills rose, brown from the summer, to her right. Up there, on the narrow curves of Mulholland Drive, was where she’d crashed her Corvette. Where Daddy and Ava had died.

She didn’t want to run or let the air breeze over her anymore. The wind—or something else—had scoured that need out of her. She pulled back into the stillness of the car and shoved her hair back into place. Devin Black sat unmoving, not looking at her as they turned right onto Laurel Canyon.

Not long now. She’d be back home. Where she had nothing but the spirits of the dead to comfort her.