Trashed
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
EPILOGUE
Teaser chapter
Praise for the novels of Alison Gaylin Trashed
“Sex, lies, and serial killers. Alison Gaylin takes us on a wild ride.” —Lisa Gardner
“[Gaylin’s] novels are quirky, suspenseful, passionate, endearing. Label me a big fan.” —Harlan Coben
“The hectic pace and huge cast of extras keep the reader guessing right to the end.” —Publishers Weekly
“Tapping into her own experiences as a journalist for In Touch magazine, Gaylin has written an action-packed tale of suspense that will appeal to fans of Mary Jane Clark and Lisa Gardner.” —Library Journal
“A perfect blend of ice-cold suspense and warmhearted good humor. . . . I’m not sure how Gaylin does it, but believe me, she does it.” —Lee Child
“Creepy and suspenseful . . . Trashed could have been trashy, but instead Gaylin makes it a fun and juicy read.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Trashed succeeds because Gaylin is a talented writer. Her dialogue and observations are caustically hilarious.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“The book is at its best when Gaylin sticks to satirizing celebrity culture. . . . Effective and occasionally poignant, [this] is what makes Trashed worth picking up.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Highly entertaining and satisfying . . . Gaylin impresses us with her deft use of metaphors, analogies, and witticisms, and she skillfully keeps the story moving.”
—The Tennessean
“Everything shines in Trashed. The tightly woven plot never fails, the wide-ranging cast of characters is drawn in razor-sharp fashion, and Simone is a wonderfully entertaining heroine. . . . A winner in every way.”
—MyShelf.com
“A fluid, tight story blends the glitz and glamour of Hollywood with the ‘trashiness’ of the tabloids and paparazzi.”
—News and Sentinel (Parkersburg, WV)
“Snappy and suspenseful, this contemporary thriller keeps you guessing right up to the end.”
—Hudson Valley magazine
“The plot is compelling and believable. . . . If Gaylin writes another novel, I will try it without hesitation—no matter what the setting.” —American Way magazine
“It is both a thriller and a send-up of the genre, a giddy frolic through La-La Land with a cast of characters that leave the reader smiling at human folly and guessing at whodunit until the very end.”
—Chronogram (Hudson Valley, NY)
“The story contains color and elegance galore. Her fun characters and surprising plot twists keep the reader turning pages.” —Romantic Times
“[Gaylin] writes what she knows, having survived ten years of entertainment journalism with her wit . . . intact.”
—San francisco Chronicle
“Pure fun from beginning to end.”
—Poe’s Deadly Daughters
Hide Your Eyes
“Not your standard deadly-serious crawl past slimy alleyways—nope, it’s a headlong rush into the muck and panic, in cute boots. Hide Your Eyes is a smart, snappy piece of deviltry. Welcome to a fresh new talent.”
—New York Times bestselling author Perri O’Shaughnessy
“Sharp debut suspense . . . a consistently entertaining evocation of Manhattan’s strange and artsy underside, narrated by a heroine with a beautifully judged blend of warmth and wit, independence and edge.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Punchy, comic and clever, Hide Your Eyes will blow your mind.” —Lisa Gardner
“Full of suspense and trendy sex.” —Chicago Tribune
“A delightful combination of wit, romance, and captivating suspense.” —Romantic Times
You Kill Me
“Deliciously chilling. . . . Clever inner monologue paints Samantha as the hero we all hope we’[ll] be.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A breezy, buoyant blending of romance and mystery, with dark edges.” —Tri-County Woman
Other Books by Alison Gaylin
Hide Your Eyes
You Kill Me
Coming Soon
Heartless
ONYX
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
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First Onyx Printing, August 2008
Copyright © Alison Sloane Gaylin, 2007
All rights reserved
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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To Mike, with admiration, amusement, and love.
Not necessarily in that order.
Acknowledgments
First off, spec
ial thanks go out to Det. Mike Coffee, retired, formerly of the LAPD’s North Hollywood Division. Anything I got right in this book is due to his remarkable ability to answer all my idiotic questions clearly and precisely. Anything wrong . . . well, that was just me.
I’d also like to thank my terrific agent, Deborah Schneider, as well as everyone at NAL—especially Kara Welsh, Kristen Weber, Molly Boyle, and Tina Anderson; the tirelessly accurate copyeditor, Bill Harris; and the greatest thing since sliced bread, my editor, Ellen Edwards, without whom there would be no book.
Much as I love to make stuff up, it took a village of smart friends to help me with the research for this book. Specifically: Margaret Black; Catherine Kimbrough and Kathleen McLaughlin, who gave me an insider’s view of LA; Cameron Keys and Tinker Lindsay, who set me up with sources on everything from homicide to hard partying and took me to bars and made me dinner and drove me superfast down Mulholland Drive at midnight and I could go on and on; Jon Beatty and Thomas Beatty for their insight into Young Hollywood; plus Dan Wakeford and Martin Gould, who helped me with Nigel’s Britishisms and allowed me to experience the unique taste of Mar-mite. Thanks, blokes!
As ever, dear friends and family deserve thanks for their support, including Sheldon Gaylin, Marilyn Gaylin, Beverly Sloane, Abigail Thomas, Jo Treggiari, James Conrad, Paul Leone, my fellow First Offenders Karen E. Olson, Lori Armstrong, and Jeff Shelby . . . and many, many others. My mind is a sieve, but you know who you are.
And in a special circle of gratitude, my family: husband, father and structure god, Mike Gaylin. And Marissa Anne Gaylin—best daughter ever. I love you guys.
PROLOGUE
The right pair of shoes can change your life forever.
An overstatement, maybe, but that’s what Nia Lawson was thinking when she put on the silver Jimmy Choo heels, stood in front of the full-length mirror affixed to the inside of her closet door, and whispered, “Thank you, Jesus, for these shoes.”
Nia had read Baum’s Wizard of Oz—and in the book, the magical slippers were silver. Ruby may have looked better in Technicolor, but silver was the original idea, so Nia saw these silver slippers—these thousand-dollar marvels of modern couture—as her own personal talisman. For the past nine years she’d been lost, but these babies would take her back up that Yellow Brick Road, the road to stardom. She just knew it.
Plus, they made her legs look awesome.
Nia stared at her reflection—checked it out, the same way a man would, starting at the shoes, then climbing the length of her smooth, tanned legs, across the red miniskirt clinging to the soft bow of her hips, then up, lingering on the black silk blouse, unbuttoned just enough to show the generosity of nature.
Nia ran her fingers through her platinum hair and gave the mirror her most seductive look: the one with the half-closed eyes, the moist, parted lips, the throat, offered up like a creamy dessert. . . . “Oh, Mr. Big Shot,” Nia said to the mirror in her Some Like It Hot voice. “You’re making me blush ever so.”
Ten years ago, one of those tabloids—the crazy ones with the headlines about alien abductions and Hitler’s secret love child—one of them had run a story claiming “scientific proof” that Nia was the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.
That was back when she first hit—when she’d just left the teen drama Life as I Know It and was shooting her first movie, The Taste of Saffron, and Vanity Fair included Nia on its Hot Young Hollywood cover and no one could mention her name without saying “It Girl” first. That was when Esquire waxed philosophical about “the sweet rebellion” of Nia’s natural curves and her publicist was suggesting she insure her ass for one million dollars, “so we can give something cute to People.”
It was before she met Mack Calloway—California congressman, former pro basketball player, happily married father of two, with the house in Mission Viejo and the big fluffy golden retriever . . . The Next President of the United States. It was before she met Mack and slept with Mack and fell in love with Mack and talked to the wrong person about Mack . . . her stylist, Renee, whom she had considered a friend. It was before Renee told the whole story to a tabloid reporter and Mack said, “How could you, Nia?” and she became Marilyn for real. Home wrecker Marilyn. “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” Marilyn. Mack’s marriage fell apart, along with his presidential bid. “You ruined my life,” he said. And though she swore to him she hadn’t spoken to the tabloids, he didn’t believe her.
No one believed her.
The Taste of Saffron tanked. Nia’s agent dropped her. Her publicist dropped her too. She accepted a $200,000 offer from Playboy—but outside of a stint on The Surreal World, that was the last high-profile job Nia ever got. Until now.
Well, she had yet to sign an actual contract—but that was only a matter of time, with Mr. Big Shot in her life. “You’ve still got it,” Mr. Big Shot had told her. “If anything, you’ve got it even more.”
Mr. Big Shot had given her the shoes. She’d found them in front of her door in a box with a big red bow on top. No note, but she knew they were from him. She turned around, admired the stiletto heels, delicate as wishbones. “You even knew my size. I’m ever so flattered.”
Nia heard a knock on her apartment door. She dropped the pose and scurried up to it, thousand-dollar shoes clacking on the floorboards as if they couldn’t believe they were stuck here, in this eight-hundred-dollar-a-month roach palace, so close to LAX that if you opened your window you could smell jet fuel.
She pressed her cheek up against the smooth door and peered through the peephole. Mr. Big Shot was wearing a dark T-shirt and jeans, and said, “Hello, Nia,” as if he knew she was watching him. Even his voice was important. As she opened the door, her heart pounded so she could feel it in her throat, her cheeks.
Nia hadn’t felt this way since Mack, and she wasn’t sure what was causing it. Was it him, or was it the idea of him?
He said, “You look perfect.”
“How did you know my shoe size?”
He smiled. His teeth were so white—a white more suitable for cameras than the real world. “Careful research, ” he said.
And Nia found herself smiling back. “You are good.”
He walked into her apartment. Nia had spent the past five hours cleaning it. She’d mopped the floors with Murphy Oil Soap and scrubbed the bathroom fixtures until they gleamed. She’d vacuumed her throw rug and laundered the sheets that covered her futon and dusted the coffee table within an inch of its long and battered life. She’d Windexed the framed Saffron poster that hung over her stereo—the only evidence of success she’d been able to hold on to, the rest having gone to creditors years before. She’d bought fresh flowers—tiger lilies and orchids—and put them in a vase she’d soaped and rinsed for half an hour. She’d even cleaned out the inside of her toaster, yet still she felt compelled to say it: “Sorry about the mess.”
“I don’t see any mess, Nia.” He was tall—easily a head taller than her—and by that virtue alone he seemed to overpower the one little room. But it was status that made him enormous. As she watched him moving around her apartment, clicking off a lamp, drawing the shades closed, bending down to examine her collection of CDs with such quiet authority, Nia felt him taking over. Soon it was as if her entire living space and everything in it belonged to him—her included. Had it always been this overpowering, dating VIPs? “Do you want to listen to some music?” she said.
He smiled, clicked on the radio, and found a station he liked. One of those easy-listening stations they played in doctors’ offices, the whispering deejay promising “music to relax by.” No doubt it had some form of “L-I-T-E” in the call letters. Nia hated this crap. She was partial to guitar rock—Nickelback, The Offspring—though at thirty she was trying to grow out of it. She’d bought herself some John Mayer, some Coldplay. But she would never like this stuff. Not ever. A pale, liquid song started to play—probably Kenny G or Yanni or someone else too wimpy to use his full name.
“Perfect.” He turned the musi
c up loud.
She forced a smile. “Yes.” Well, taste in music wasn’t everything.
He moved toward the futon and sat down on it, patted the space next to him. His hand was very large and smooth, like polished rock. As Nia walked, she realized her legs were shaking.
He said, “Don’t be nervous.”
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, focused on the Kenny G or whatever it was. Compose, she told herself. Compose. . . . And by the time she was finally ready to speak, she had found it, the Some Like It Hot voice. “I’m not nervous. I’m excited. And that is ever so different.” She could barely hear herself over the music.
He leaned in close. She smelled the chemical mint of his breath. “Excited?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“You’re sweating.” He touched the tip of his finger to her upper lip. “Right there. Do you always sweat there when you’re . . . excited?”
She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, didn’t like the way he brought the finger to his mouth and licked off her sweat. It wasn’t sexy. It made Nia feel like a science experiment, and that, combined with the song . . . she’d never heard anything so soulless in her life. It sounded like a cell phone. It occurred to her that he might not be very good in bed, but then she brushed the thought out of her mind. Don’t pull diva attitude. Beggars can’t be choosers.
She said, “Do you mind if I turn the music down, sweetie? I can’t hear myself think.”
“What?”
She spoke more loudly. “Do you—”
“I’m just shitting you,” he said. But when she got up to change it, he grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. “Pwetty please? I really like this song.”
Pwetty please? “Uh . . . sure, okay.”
He touched her hair, brushed his lips against hers so softly that the softness lingered, made her crave more. She thought, What’s wrong with a little baby talk? Nobody’s perfect. . . .
She felt his hand on her waist and a warmth spread through her. “You really are so Marilyn,” he said.