by Jane Heller
“Oh, I’ll hang on to the evidence all right,” said Rosa. “But if he ever threatens to ship us back to Mexico, he’s going to be very, very sorry. We may be in this country illegally, thanks to him, but he’s done more illegal stuff than either of us ever dreamed of.”
Maura leaned over and whispered, “Could you please translate already? I don’t understand a single word they’re saying!”
“Shhh,” I whispered back. “I’ll tell you later.”
She shrugged and waited silently for Rosa and Carlos to leave us alone.
But they didn’t leave us alone. “Did I ever tell you that you’re sexy when you talk about blackmail, Rosa?” Carlos teased, his tone turning playful.
“No. But you’re welcome to tell me now,” she said with a flirtatious giggle.
“Okay, baby, you turn me on when you even mention the word ‘blackmail.’ ”
“And you’re hotter than you were the day I married you.”
“Then how about showing me,” he said. “We’ll close these doors, turn off the lights, stretch out on the couch, and have ourselves a good time.”
I turned to Maura and mouthed the words, “They’re about to have sex.” She looked as taken aback as I was.
Sure, Rosa and Carlos were free to do it whenever and wherever they wanted, but did they have to want it right then? In the same room with us?
While we stood together in that closet, horrified, embarrassed, wishing we were anywhere else, Victor’s two paragons of hired help jumped each other.
“Yeah, that’s good,” she moaned several minutes in.
“So good,” he moaned back at her.
“Now touch me here. And faster. Faster!”
“As fast as you can handle it, baby,” he panted.
“Yeah, that’s it. Oh, Carlos. Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Okay, stop!”
Every time we thought they had stopped, they started up again, with Rosa issuing commands and Carlos responding like the red-hot lover he apparently was. It was nearly an hour before they pulled their hands off each other, opened the doors, and staggered out of the room.
“Sheesh. I feel like some creepy voyeur,” I said.
“A shower wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Maura agreed. “Do you think it’s safe to come out or do you think they’ll be back for more?”
“All I know is that Rosa is incredibly orgasmic,” I said.
“All I know is that I’m incredibly claustrophic,” she said. “I’m getting out of this closet whether they come back or not.”
“Wait.” I held her arm. “Here’s what they said about Victor. He’s keeping them in this country illegally, he’s committed more serious crimes, too, and they have evidence of these crimes that could give them leverage against him. Whatever he did, they must be in on it.”
“Wow! Maybe they helped him dispose of his wife and now they’re all in bed together, so to speak."
“Maybe. Oh, Maura, we finally nailed Victor. Once I tell Mom what we overheard, she’ll never spend another night in this house.”
“Call her on your cell when we leave. Right now, we’d better hurry back to the screening room so Quentin doesn’t miss us. The movie should be just about over and he’ll be turning on the lights.”
We were safely in our seats in time to see Jackie Chan kickbox the villain and “the end” pop up on the screen. We thanked Quentin for showing us the movie, told him to be sure to say hello to Victor when he returned from his trip, and scrambled for the door. Once outside, I hugged Maura and told her I couldn’t have gotten the goods on Vic without her help.
“It was my pleasure,” she replied, “although after listening to Rosa and Carlos go at it, I’d say they were the ones who had the pleasure.”
“Didn’t they though.”
“The important thing is that you have concrete information to give your mother now.”
“Yup, I just hope she appreciates it.”
twenty-six
I reached Mom on her cell phone just as she was climbing into her limo after her dinner with the Fin’s advertising people.
“Hi, it’s Stacey,” I said. “I know it’s late, but I’ve got to see you right away.”
“Are you sick?” she said. “There’s a stomach virus going around. Everybody’s complaining of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea—”
“I’m fine.” I cut her off before she went into more detail. She wasn’t a hypochondriac exactly. She just enjoyed discussing medical maladies the way others enjoy discussing, say, gardening. “Would you meet me somewhere? So we could talk for a few minutes?”
“I’m heading over to Victor’s,” she said, then giggled. “I like sleeping there even when he’s away. I can smell his smell in the master bedroom. I find it erotic.” Please.
“I’d rather not meet at his house, if that’s okay,” I said. “What about the Regent Beverly Wilshire? It’s a convenient spot for both of us. We could sit in the bar and have a nice after-dinner drink together.”
“I don’t drink after-dinner drinks, you know that. They keep me up, not to mention give me heartburn.”
“Then we’ll have some nice herbal tea. See you soon. ’Bye.”
I hung up before she could object further.
Fifteen minutes later, we were ensconced in the back corner of the hotel’s bar, sitting on a plump sofa and sipping from pretty little glasses of port. I had ordered it before she arrived, figuring that chamomile was certainly not going to take the edge off what I had to tell her but that port might.
“So,” she said. “What’s this about? I’m always delighted to see you, dear, but you’ve got a problem, I gather. Is it Jack? Are you two on the outs? Tell your mother.”
“It’s not about Jack,” I said tenderly, eager to break the news but wanting to cushion the blow. “It’s about— Okay, let me start over. I know how fond you are of Victor and I can see why. He’s bright and animated and treats you well.”
“What is it, Stacey? Spit it out already.”
“All right. There’s something I’ve just found out about him and you need to hear it.”
She glared at me. “This isn’t going to be one of your fresh-mouth accusations regarding his poor wife, is it?”
“Not specifically.” I cleared my throat. “While I was at his house tonight, I overheard Rosa and Carlos talking.”
She sighed impatiently. “I thought I explained why they’re not too fond of me. They don’t like me taking over the household. They’re used to ruling the roost, to cavorting all over the place with no supervision.”
I flashed back on the cavorting they’d been doing in the library only a couple of hours before, and took another sip of port, hoping to drown out Rosa’s “Faster! Faster!” “This time, what I overheard them talking about was Victor, not you, Mom. Maura was there, too. We happened to be within earshot just as they were having a very incriminating conversation.”
“Incriminating? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“For starters, they’re illegal immigrants. Victor is keeping them in this country under false pretenses, which means that he’s also cheating the IRS by paying them off the books. I know everybody does it, Mom, so it’s not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but you’ve always been such a stickler about playing by the rules.”
I waited for her to register shock or anger or disgust, but she didn’t emit a single shriek. Instead, she shrugged and said, “He told me they were here illegally.”
“What?”
“Sure. He tells me everything, because he’s a sharer. Can you say the same about Jack?”
“Of course, but this isn’t about Jack. It’s about Victor and how he’s harboring Rosa and Carlos.”
“For your information, he has a dam good reason for ‘harboring’ them, as you put it. Apparently, Rosa and Carlos each have elderly parents in Mexico who are not well and who are desperately in need of money. Victor is such a generous, sweet man that he’s been willing to stick his own neck out not only to
let those two stay in America but to pay them in cash so they’ll have more to send to their loved ones.”
I blinked at her, amazed that she continued to condone Victor’s shady behavior and dumbfounded that she’d bought his absurd story about the tragically needy parents.
“I’m not saying I like the idea of them being here illegally,” she went on. “But I respect Victor’s motives for allowing them to. He’s helping them, Stacey. He’s helping them because he’s a wonderful, wonderful man. If only you’d accept that.”
Jeez. This was going to be harder than I thought. “Mom, there’s more. Take another sip of port.”
“I’ve had enough port. I can feel the acid building up in my stomach already. I’ll never get a good night’s sleep now.”
“Fine. Don’t take another sip. Just listen, because here’s the really bad news. Rosa and Carlos said unequivocally that Victor is a criminal. They said he’s done a ton of illegal stuff and should rot in jail. They said they’ve got evidence against him. Those were their precise words. I’m so sorry, Mom, but I heard their conversation. Yes, it was in Spanish, but I understood it perfectly.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Look, young lady, you may be my daughter, but you’re not very smart when it comes to dealing with domestics. Rosa and Carlos are a couple of ungrateful idiots if they talk like that behind their employer’s back. Calling him a criminal just because he’s letting them live under his roof!”
“Mom, Mom. That’s not why they called him a criminal. They were referring to other crimes he’s committed.”
“What crimes?”
“They didn’t say.”
“There. You see? Nonsense. Complete nonsense. I love Victor and he loves me, and everything else is immaterial.”
So she was giving him a pass yet again. He had her totally bamboozled.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said. “If Victor did commit a crime—something much more serious than the immigration thing—would you love him then? Or is this guy the Teflon Man in your mind?”
“I don’t like your tone or your insinuation,” she said, her voice rising. “Victor would never commit a serious crime, not knowingly. The only one who’s guilty of anything is you.”
“Me?”
“You. You’ve never been able to lie to your mother and tonight is nothing new. You and Maura didn’t happen to overhear Rosa and Carlos talking. You went over to Victor’s tonight with the sole purpose of snooping, of eavesdropping, of doing anything you could to poison me against him. You were snooping around at his house, weren’t you, Stacey? Weren’t you?”
I started to deny it, but why bother? She was right: she could always tell when I was lying, ever since I was a kid.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Maura and I did go over there hoping to find some proof that the man you think you love isn’t who he seems. It was for your own good. I was trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting,” she said huffily, her nostrils flaring.
“Yes, you do. I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, Mom: Victor is up to his eyeballs in slippery stuff. You’ve got to trust me on this.”
“Trust you? About men? I don’t hear any wedding bells in your future, Stacey. I don’t suppose Jack has asked you to marry him, has he?”
“Not yet,” I said defensively.
“That’s what I thought. You go through one bad apple after another and you want me to listen to you about Victor?”
“That’s not fair,” I said, my own nostrils flaring. “I may not have a marriage proposal on the table, but Jack is no bad apple. He’s loving and sensitive and totally honest, unlike your bad apple. Wait, let me correct that: your rotten apple.”
“Victor is not a rotten apple!” she said, her face reddening with rage.
“He is so! He cheats the government and sleeps with women a fraction of his age, and he just may have murdered his wife!”
“That’s enough!” she barked, waving her arms in the air. “I refuse to listen to such disrespectful talk for a single minute more!”
With those fighting words, she rose from her chair, threw a couple of twenty-dollar bills on the table, and announced that she was leaving.
“So you can’t stand to hear the truth, is that it?” I said, as angry at her as she was at me.
“Here’s the truth,” she said, poking her finger at me. “I consider myself lucky that someone as worldly and intelligent and attractive as Victor Chellus has chosen me. He’s not an angel, God knows, but then no man is.” She turned to go, but returned for one last parting shot. “Oh, and don’t call me to apologize. Starting tonight, I’m officially not speaking to you!”
Gee, that went well, I thought, and polished off her port and mine.
twenty-seven
I had a pain in my gut as I always did when I fought with my mother. I hated it when she was mad at me, and the last thing I intended to do was to push her away, right into Victor’s arms. I suppose I should have waited until I had more conclusive information about him, but I was desperate to protect her. Too desperate. A case of premature explanation, that’s what I had.
I spent the night at Jack’s, who did not have a case of premature anything. We made love like two people who were truly committed to each other, and all my conflicts and fears melted away when he was holding me. I woke up the next morning feeling optimistic; that somehow I would wrest my mother from Victor’s emotional grasp and make up with her.
Meanwhile, I had a little project I hoped would distract me, and I planned to tackle it the minute Jack left for the studio. Kyle, his assistant, had called me the previous week to say that the crew of Good Morning, Hollywood was throwing a surprise party the following month to commemorate Jack’s fifth anniversary as host.
“We’re going to make it a rowdy, warts-and-all roast of your boyfriend,” Kyle had said with a mischievous laugh. “We’re crazy about the guy, you know that, but we can’t wait to put him in the hot seat for a change.”
“Great idea,” I’d said. “How can I help?”
“Glad you asked. We want to dig up old videos, old clippings, anything he did when he was first starting out in the business, and use them as part of a This Is Your Life-type evening. Basically, we want to embarrass the hell out of Mr. Television Star by putting him back in touch with his humble beginnings as a print reviewer.”
“I love it. And he’ll love it, too, Kyle.”
“He’d better or I’m out of a job. Anyhow, knowing how he’s such a saver—does he keep his grocery lists, too?—I’m betting he’s got all those old clips and videos at his place. And since you have access to them, I was wondering if you could hunt them down for me on the sly.”
“Sure. You want to go all the way back to the articles he wrote for Variety and The Hollywood Reporter?”
“Absolutely. We’ve got to remind him that he used to be a lowly beat reporter for the trades before becoming a pompous film critic.”
I’d promised Kyle I’d look for Jack’s professional memorabilia the first chance I got.
Well, today’s the day, I thought when I was alone in his house the morning after the blowup with Mom. Maybe I’ll be more successful at digging around in his past than I was at digging around in Victor’s.
I drank some coffee, then fought my way through Jack’s clutter en route to his office, smiling to myself as I pictured his reaction to being roasted by his pals. Even though he took movies seriously, he didn’t take himself seriously, not deep down, and so I expected him to be flattered by the party and good-natured about having his early work held up to public scrutiny.
Since Kyle had specifically asked me to pull all the old stuff, I started at the beginning of Jack’s career and searched his filing cabinets for folders with clippings from both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. I chuckled when I came upon the Variety file, because it was out of order alphabetically and should have been at the back of the cabinet instead of up front.
That’s my pack rat, I t
hought as I began sifting through the bulging folder. I don’t know how he ever finds anything around here.
I skimmed the articles, my heart swelling with pride whenever I read the “Jack Rawlins” byline. I tried to imagine how he must have felt all those years ago, covering stories about distribution companies and weekend grosses and studio executives who were leaving one company for another—all aspects of the business about which he couldn’t have cared less. I knew he must have perceived the job as a way to gain exposure for himself within the industry, as a stepping-stone toward reviewing movies someday, as an entry into the magical world he’d worshiped since childhood.
I continued to read through the clippings, weighing which ones I’d give to Kyle for the surprise party, when the headline of one of Jack’s articles caught my attention—and held it.
I stared at the headline, just fixed my eyes on it for several seconds, before the meaning of it, the reality of it, the enormity of it sunk in.
It read: “Theatre Prexy Chellus Plays Happy Tune Amid Fraud Charges.”
I clutched the clipping in my hand and felt my mouth go dry. What the hell is this? I wondered as I tried to make sense of what I was looking at, tried to keep a clear head even though a thousand thoughts were bumping up against each other. Part of me went immediately into denial, as I formulated simple, innocent explanations for the piece, theories that would allow my faith in Jack to remain intact. The other part of me was wild with suspicion and mistrust and the certainty that whatever was in the article would absolutely wreck us, and it was that part that propelled me over to Jack’s desk chair.
I sat down and began to read avidly, to pore over every word of the piece. According to Jack, Victor owned a chain of movie theaters, mostly in small-to-midsize markets, that operated under the name Victory Theatres. Not only had Vic been accused of bilking the studios out of their fair share of his profits, but he’d been rumored to be pirating prints of first-run movies, selling them overseas instead of shipping them back to their distributor. What’s more, the backers of his renovation project—the upgrading of his older theaters to modern multiplexes—were hounding him for the money they claimed, he owed them.