A silence fell. I waited a few beats, then cleared my throat and stepped into the room. “Gentlemen, you must be Mr. Girdwood and Mr. Amory.”
They turned their heads toward me, expressions startled. Amory rose from his chair. I went over to them, extending my hand first to him and then to the manager. “I’m Sharon McCone, Charlene’s sister. And this is my friend Hy Ripinsky. Or have you met?”
Behind me, Hy said, “We’ve met.”
The two men exchanged glances, probably wondering if we’d overheard their conversation. I took the opportunity to slip onto a bar stool. “Hy’s implementing Ricky’s new domestic-security program,” I told them, “and I came along for the ride. You know, I think I missed both of you at the house-warming. It’s a pleasure to meet the people Ricky’s spoken so highly of.” I paused, smiling at Amory. “Well, he wasn’t speaking so highly of you after your meeting with Winterland yesterday. Your condom proposal didn’t go over very well.”
Amory smiled back—thinly. “We’ve all agreed it was a bad idea, Ms. McCone.”
“Please, call me Sharon.”
Hy had moved behind the bar. “Drinks, anyone?”
Amory looked down at an empty glass on the table. “Thanks—Glenlivet and water, please.”
Girdwood rattled the ice in his glass and took it and Amory’s to the bar. Hy dispensed fresh cubes and poured, opened a bottle of Chardonnay and brought a glass of it to me, fetched a beer for himself.
“Ripinsky,” I murmured as he took the stool next to mine, “if you ever part company with Renshaw and Kessell, you’ve got a fallback position as a bartender.”
He winked at me.
“So,” I said, turning to the manager and attorney, “what brings you down here?”
“Drafts of contracts to go over,” Amory said. “Winterland expedited them; that’s how eager they are for the additional Savage licensing—minus the condoms, of course.”
“And you?” I asked Girdwood.
He shrugged, the flowers on his Hawaiian shirt fluttering. “I’m here in case he needs me.”
“Needs you? In what way?”
“Well, for one thing, the single of ‘Midnight Train to Nowhere’ is being released to radio next week. We’ll be monitoring the BDS reports on airplay.”
“BDS?”
“Broadcast Data System. It samples airplay on a hundred and forty-three country stations nationwide, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Billboard’s charts’re compiled from it. If play isn’t good, Rick’ll need me to hold his stress level down and interface.”
“Interface?”
Girdwood stifled a sigh, impatient with my outsider’s ignorance. “That’s what managers do, Sharon. I interface between him and the label, him and his publicist, him and his booking agent—and anybody else or anything that can come between him and his work. In many ways a manager is a hand-holder.”
That still didn’t explain why he’d come down here tonight.
Amory tossed back his drink and went to the bar. “Too bad you can’t interface between him and his wife,” he said softly.
I glanced at him and my eyes met his in the back-bar mirror. He smiled ironically at me and set his glass down. Ethan Amory, I was sure, knew I’d overheard his earlier conversation with Girdwood. I hoped he considered me as naive as I pretended to be.
“Kurt,” he said, “drink up. We’ve got dinner reservations in La Jolla.” To Hy and me he added, “If you see Rick, tell him we’ll be back around ten and would like him to hold some time open for us.”
I nodded and watched them leave the room. “Why,” I said to Hy, “do I get the idea that they came down here for other than their stated reasons?”
“Why wouldn’t you? Ricky says he doesn’t trust either of them; they get my gut-level alarm system going. And your instincts along those lines are finer tuned than either of ours.”
“So what is going on?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Come on, Ripinsky, help me out.”
“Well, they’re here for reasons of self-interest, that’s for sure. And I’d say that their self-interest lies with making sure Ricky stays on top. Girdwood was talking a good fight while they were watching that video, but it’s obvious he’s worried. Maybe about the same thing that’s got Amory worried—namely, the situation with your sister—but maybe not.”
“I don’t think Amory likes Charlene.”
“No, but Girdwood does.” Hy hesitated, frowning. “I wish I didn’t feel like everything’s caving in here.”
“The marriage, you mean?”
“More than that.”
“What, specifically?”
“I can’t put my finger on it, but—”
A heavyset woman in a plain blue dress that resembled a uniform came into the room; she had a high brow crowned by white braids that twined around her head. Her lips curved into a tentative smile.
“Ah, Nona.” Hy got off his stool and motioned for her to join us. “This is Mrs. Savage’s sister, Sharon McCone.” To me he added, “Mrs. Nona Davidson, the lady who keeps this place functioning.”
I shook hands with the housekeeper. She said, “Chris asked me to tell you she’d like to see you in her room, if it’s convenient.”
That surprised me. Charlene and Ricky’s eldest daughter had never related particularly well to her Aunt Sharon; if anything, the cool, blond teenager seemed to find me eccentric and a bit off-putting. “I was about to go up there,” I said, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to show me the way. The layout of the house confuses me.”
Nona Davidson smiled sympathetically. “It’s an odd design. I’ll be happy to take you to her.”
Chris’s room matched her cool exterior: a bright, white space with large windows overlooking the pool, dominated at one end by a bed with a black-and-white checkerboard spread and at the other with a desk and computer setup. Everything was spare and high tech, without any of the usual teenage clutter. My niece sat in a director’s chair, smoking, her long Spandex-encased legs propped on a second chair. She regarded me narrow-eyed through the smoke and, though it was an activity forbidden by her parents, made no effort to conceal the cigarette. Only the slight tremor of her fingers as she raised it and inhaled told me she was under considerable strain.
“Aunt Shar,” she said, motioning at the bed, “please, sit down.”
I kicked off my sandals and sat, tucking my feet under me. “So what’s happening?”
She smiled faintly. “What’s not happening? Some crazy person’s after Dad. Your boyfriend’s ordering us around like we were in the marines. Mom’s gone ballistic. Dad lit into Mom the second he walked into the house. And Jamie’s in her room puking and crying. Otherwise everything’s great.”
“And you? How’re you holding up?”
“Me? I spent the afternoon online to the TechnoWeb’s Distressed Teen board. No,” she added quickly, “I didn’t let anything slip about the Dad situation; Hy cautioned us against that.”
“Did the people on the board help any?”
“Some.” She hesitated. “The thing is, I know I’ll be all right. I know crazies go with Dad’s territory. And I know why he and Mom are fighting.” To my raised eyebrows she nodded. “Yeah, I do. You can’t help but hear things. Their fights, and her whispered phone conversations, and all her stupid attempts to cover up. But we’re not deaf or blind, Jamie and I. We know she’s seeing somebody else, and now that she’s told him, it’s driving Dad over the edge. What they don’t understand is that it’s driving us over the edge, too.”
“But you say you’ll be all right?”
She got up, fetched an ashtray, and crushed out her cigarette; immediately she lighted another. “Yeah, I will be. I’m not like Jamie, all soft inside. And I’m not like either Mom or Dad. Or Mick or Molly or Lisa or Brian. God knows who I take after, but—” And then she broke off and looked into my eyes, cigarette halfway to her lips.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Well, may
be.”
“For sure. Why do you think we’ve never been the best of buddies? I’m always uncomfortable around people who are too much like me, and I bet it’s the same for you.”
“Huh.” She thought that over. “Well, then you know I’ll be okay. But that isn’t the reason I wanted to talk to you. I wondered—d’you think you could do something to help Jamie?”
“She’s in that bad a state?”
“Yeah, pretty rocky.”
I stood up and reached with my toes for my sandals. “I’ll try. Point me toward her room, would you?”
When Chris left me at Jamie’s door, she gave my hand a tentative squeeze.
Except for its size and general configuration, Jamie’s room was the exact opposite of her sister’s: a sunny yellow, with bright southwestern rugs. One wall had been turned into a bulletin board covered with layers and layers of pictures, cards, posters, invitations, and drawings. On the back of the bathroom door hung a life-size cutout of Ricky from his Broken Promise Land tour; a mustache, beard, and devil’s horns had been sketched in, as well as several earrings and a bone through his nose. There was clutter everywhere: books, tapes, clothing, sports equipment, stuffed animals.
Jamie had been lying on her bed listening to rap music when I knocked, and she called for me to come in. Immediately she muted it, got up, and rushed into the bathroom. Water ran for a moment, and then she came back with a fresh face-wash that did nothing for her red, puffy eyes. Her tiny features were lost and mournful under her mop of outrageously permed brown hair. She perched on the bed again, turning the CD player off with the remote.
“How’re you doing?” I asked, removing some sweats from an armchair and sitting.
She shrugged, smiling wanly.
That bothered me; Jamie had always been the outgoing child, the one you could never get to stop talking.
“You have a nice birthday?”
“It was okay. Thanks for the check you sent.”
“You have a party?”
“Yeah, but that security guy showed up in the middle of it, and Mom started pitching fits.”
“Tough being cooped up like this.”
“Yeah—and all because Dad did something stupid.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s what Mom says.” She paused. “Of course, Mom says a lot of shit these days, and you never know what’s true. Are they still in their room fighting?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll bet they are.” She balled her fists and pounded them against her blue-jeaned knees. “I hate it! I wish they’d just go ahead and get a goddamned divorce!”
I hesitated, unwilling to meddle in what was a private family matter. Then I told myself that my niece badly needed to talk this through and, besides, the Savages were my family too. “You really think divorce is a possibility?”
“About the only one.”
“Why?”
She was silent, her eyes shifting away from mine.
“Jamie?”
“… Oh, all right. Mom’s seeing somebody else—this guy named Vic who she met last year when he was a guest lecturer in her department at USC. He’s head of one of those monster money funds and they’re doing something in China and he wants Mom to go on a trip to Beijing with him. I think she’s going to do it, and that’s going to totally blow the marriage.”
“Is she in love with this Vic?”
“I think so. She’s been sneaking around for months now, and Dad’s been suspicious. She finally told him the truth the other morning before he went up to San Francisco. Now she’s scared of what he’ll do, and she’s making our lives miserable.” Jamie paused, out of breath and, I thought, shocked at herself for blurting it all out.
She certainly did know a lot about my sister’s affair, but somehow I couldn’t imagine Charlene confiding in a fifteen-year-old. “How’d you find this out?” I asked.
She looked down and shrugged.
“I won’t tell.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Well. I have a bad habit.”
“And that is…?”
“I listen in on people’s phone calls.” She looked up, adding defensively, “Only sometimes. Only when they’re talking about things I need to know.”
“And you needed to know—”
“Why my mother’s ruining all our lives? Yes, Aunt Shar, I did need to know that.”
I should take her to task, I thought, but she did have a point. Besides, how could I? I’d made a career of snooping into other people’s business.
“Jamie…” I began.
“I know it’s wrong. Even Chris says so, and she’s got about a zillion bad habits of her own.”
“Chris knows what you did?”
She nodded.
“Who else did you tell?”
“Nobody. Mick’s too far away and he’s really kind of disconnected from the family. And I don’t think the others’re old enough to handle it. I’m not handling it all that well myself; I throw up a lot.”
Poor kid! The knowledge of her mother’s secret and her guilt over how she’s found it out were eating her up. No wonder Chris had asked me to talk with her.
I asked, “When is this trip to China supposed to take place?”
“In two weeks.”
Smack in the middle of the Midnight tour; that was going to do wonders for Ricky’s performances. Bad, bad timing, Charlene.
But I couldn’t muster up any anger toward my sister. Like Kurt Girdwood, I remembered how she’d suffered silently through all the lean years while Ricky relentlessly pursued his dream. I’d witnessed her loneliness and need and desperation. And, I now realized, I hadn’t had a clue as to what actually went on inside their marriage.
Jamie was watching me as though she hoped I’d say a few magical words that would make everything all right again. I got up and began to wander around the room, stopping here to study a picture, there to examine a book jacket. There was an entertainment center between the windows, and I ran my eyes over the CDs—
Through the plastic cover of one, Arletta James smiled, sitting on a stool, dressed in lace and satin. A Post-it note had been stuck over the title, and on it the words “Listen to cut 4” were written. Written in the same hand as the notes Ricky had received.
Quickly I picked up the CD and turned it over. Scanned the list of songs. Cut four was “My Mendacious Minstrel.”
In an overly casual tone I asked, “You like this album?”
“God, no!”
Of course she wouldn’t; the CD she’d been listening to earlier was by Snoop Doggy Dogg. “Where’d you get it?”
“Birthday present. Mom said it just appeared some time in a pile of packages she had put away for me in one of the guest-room closets. The woman who recorded it is an old friend of Dad’s.”
“Did you listen to it?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Then would you mind if I borrowed it?”
“Keep it, it’s yours.”
“Thanks.” I started for the door.
“Aunt Shar? Do you think Mom and Dad’ll bust up?”
I wanted to hand her a reassuring lie, but she needed to be prepared. “It’s a good possibility.”
“What’ll happen to the rest of us?”
The question was so forlorn that I went over and hugged her. “Jamie, don’t worry. Besides your parents—who love you regardless of what’s happening between them—you’ve got Grandma and Melvin, Grandpa and Nancy, John, Joey, Patsy, and me—as well as our spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, children, and even pets, if you prefer them. All I can tell you is that you won’t be alone in this.”
She gave me a tremulous smile and pressed the remote to reactivate Snoop Doggy Dogg’s dulcet tones.
On the way down the hall I clutched Arletta James’s CD so hard I cracked the plastic cover. My pulse beat was rapid and my mouth had gone dry. Once again the note writer had made his or her point: Ricky and his family could be got
ten to—even on their own turf at his daughter’s fifteenth birthday party.
When I reached the entryway I heard voices coming from the living room. I skidded slightly on the tiles, hurried over to the archway. The sun had vanished over the distant sea and the sky was layered in glorious reds and oranges, shading to magenta and then deepening to midnight blue.
Irrelevantly I thought, What is that saying about a red sky being a warning?
Outside the glass wall the woodsy vegetation was shrouded in darkness. Light from underwater spots made the black depths of the pool glimmer, but around it the shadows were as thick and warped as the Torrey pines.
Not good for the security lights to be off. I’d have to remind Hy to have his team check them.
In front of the window wall Ricky stood, barefoot and clad in cutoffs and a T-shirt, talking with Virgil Rattray. The road manager was dressed all in black again; his long tresses swayed as he made some point, tapping my brother-in-law’s shoulder for emphasis. If it hadn’t been for the light from a lamp on a low table, I’d have mistaken him for a tall, thin woman.
I paused at the top of the steps. The wide expanse of glass made me feel vulnerable, naked. I’d seen few blinds or draperies on windows in this house; of course, on twenty wooded acres they wouldn’t be necessary for privacy.
Both men heard me and turned. Ricky took a step forward, opening his mouth to speak. Rattray moved around him.
The glass wall shattered.
I saw the bullet hole first. Then cracks began to run helter-skelter like a slow-motion film of a spring thaw. Shards flew inward as a shot boomed somewhere in the blackness beyond the pool.
Virgil Rattray crumpled to the floor.
Ricky just stood there.
I lunged forward, tackled him, and brought him down.
Ten
People were shouting and running into the room. I could hear Hy on a walkie-talkie, yelling for the guards to search the property, to let no one on or off. There was a heavy weight across my lower body. Ricky. I reached toward him, and my hand touched shards of glass and a thick, slippery liquid.
Blood. I could smell it. Too much blood to have come from superficial cuts.
Panicked, I struggled to move, but Ricky was already rolling off me. People crowded around us now, and someone pulled him to his feet. I moved onto my side, felt glass cut into my forearms, and winced. I couldn’t see Rattray.
The Broken Promise Land Page 10