Richard Blakely turned the corner and smiled. Ray Kitson was going to pay for that later in such a painful and spectacular way that it almost made him giddy to think about it.
16
“Would you like some champagne, Devin?”
Lori Plom didn’t wait for an answer before pouring a second glass from the limo’s stash of Cristal.
“Oh. No thanks...” Devin smiled politely. “I don’t actually like champagne.”
Lori crinkled her nose like there was something odoriferous in her nasal area. “Who doesn’t like champagne?”
Devin figured it was rhetorical.
Lori persisted. “...Really?”
Devin shrugged like, ‘what can I say?’
“Well, that’s STRIKE ONE!!’ Lori laughed. Then she went ahead and gulped down the champagne herself. “I’m just kidding. You can be weird about champagne if you want, lookin’ like that!”
Lori laughed some more. Then suddenly stopped and peered at Devin sideways.
“You’re not AA are you?”
“No…”
“Good,” Lori said. “I don’t need another fuck-up in my life.”
Devin rubbed her eyebrow, looking at this woman. What had she done to Nadia to deserve this?
Lori’s phone rang. She glanced at it. “Oh God. Speaking of drama… My ex.” She picked it up and barked into it. “What?”
Devin gazed out the window. They were not nearly close enough to the theater.
Lori continued to talk into her phone in little barky bursts. “I don’t give a shit who you’re with. You should fuckin’ see who I’m with! Oh, you’ll see… No FUCK YOU!”
Devin closed her eyes in silent horror, and wished to be anywhere else.
Lori hung up the phone. “Sorry. She’s crazy.” She turned her body towards Devin. “SO! You were a model!”
“Um, I was… And an actress.”
“Yeah, I saw some ads you did. You were hot shit. Why’d you quit?”
“My heart wasn’t in it.”
Lori looked at her blankly like that line came out in Esperanto. “Yeah, but it was glamorous…”
“I guess.”
“Did you do runway stuff?” As Lori waited for the answer, she wrapped her freckle-framed lips around the edge of the champagne glass and tilted the contents down her throat. All with one horsey like eye on Devin.
“No… mostly print work. I was too short for runway.”
“How tall are you?”
“I’m five seven. And I was too fat.”
Lori looked horrified. “You were fat?”
Devin laughed a bit at her horrified response. “Yes, I was 200 pounds.”
“Oh God. Ew.”
Said the woman who was definitely skirting 185.
“I’m kidding. I just mean I was always a size 6 not a size zero. And I have kind of broad shoulders so I-”
“Plus you’ve got that rack,” Lori added conversationally
Devin sighed. “Thaaat’s nice…” She said quietly to herself.
Lori reached for the Cristal bottle and poured herself a refill.
Time to get off the modeling subject.
“So, anyway,” Devin said, “Tell me about you, you work at--”
Lori’s eyes sparkled as she interrupted her. “You ever do Victoria’s Secret Stuff?”
Devin wished she had another answer. “Yes.”
Lori lit up like a Christmas tree. “Woah! That is some hot shit…Bet you were awesome.” She eyed Devin’s chest. “What’re you... like a 36C?”
“Are you…kidding me?”
Devin’s face must’ve registered her total disapproval of this line of questioning because Lori qualified that with, “It’s okay… I used to work in a bra store.” Like that made it better.
Devin just looked at her. “Really…We’re having this conversation…”
Lori wasn’t dissuaded. “34C?”
Again, no response. If Devin wasn’t actually standing with a sales clerk at Nordstrom’s, this wasn’t going to get an answer.
“That’s it, isn’t it? 34C?” Lori took a glug of champagne. “I knew it. I could always guess. It’s like a gift I’ve got.”
“How wonderful…”
Lori looked at her a beat. “Should we make out now so it’s not awkward later?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fair enough.”
Lori’s phone rang again. She glared at it. “Fuckin’ psycho bitch.” She pressed the silence button.
“So!” Lori said cheerfully. Devin marveled at the fact that Lori seemed to think this date was going perfectly fine. “Then for some reason you quit all that…”
“Mm hmm…” This theater couldn’t come quickly enough.
“And now…” Lori’s face drooped like she was sticking her hand in a bowl of wet noodles. “You’re a police detective…”
“That’s right…. I’m a Detective at the Beverly Hills Po-”
“I don’t know...” Lori said making an ‘ew’ face.“Isn’t that a little unfeminine?”
Said the woman wearing the modified man’s tuxedo.
“I don’t think it’s-”
“See, I don’t go for butch…”
Devin felt hope spring up in her. “So I guess this won’t work out between us then.”
Lori looked at her. “I’m not saying YOU’RE butch. But your job… come on.”
Devin just smiled. This was getting funny. She shrugged. Not much she could do about her butch job.
Lori sniffed snootily. “My friends and I are all lipstick lesbians. You know, like my friend Amber – guys are hitting on her all the time… You want to see a picture?”
“Why not?”
Lori held her phone up, sorting through one picture after another of hard faced lesbians who happened to have long hair and manicures.
“That’s Amber… Katrine…And that’s my ex Mynah.”
“They’re lovely,” Devin said. That last one looked like an apple doll with a mop on her head.
“I think femininity is really important,” Lori said, as she kicked up a red high heel. “Don’t you?”
Devin shrugged. “I’ve never really thought about it.”
“But would you ever be attracted to a woman who wasn’t femme?”
“Sure, why not?”
Lori made that hand in the wet noodles face again. Combined with a bit of the bad smell under her nostrils look. “Really?”
Devin straightened her dress. She looked out the window. Thank GOD they were close. “I think all women are beautiful. Besides, I kinda think it’s important for someone to be a good person, don’t you?”
Lori laughed that big laugh again. “HAHAHAHAHA…. who gives a shit about that as long as they’re hot?”
Devin looked out the window. “Wowsa. I guess we’ll agree to disagree on that one…”
“Yeah, I guess…” Lori put her champagne glass down. “Okay, so when we get there, can you tell my friends you’re a model?”
Devin let out a snort of laughter. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I told them you were.”
“Lori, how about we cross that bridge when we come to it?”
“Okay… Just cause you know a lot of the movies I’m repping are up for awards tonight. And I know a lot of people there. Like Glynn Fielding…And Kyle Samson… They’re good good friends…”
Devin looked at her blankly.
“You know who they are don’t you?”
“Not really.”
Lori laughed. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re pretty then! I’m with the pretty, dumb girl tonight.”
Devin felt her face flush with anger. “Okay… I’m about over it here.”
“I’m sorry… I was just kidding.”
Devin shook her head and looked out the window. “Wow...”
Lori leaned in. She put her hand seductively on Devin’s knee.
Devin turned to her. “Okay...Really?”
“Com
e on, one kiss before we get there?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Is that a no?”
Devin lifted Lori’s hand off her knee and plunked it back on her own lap.
“That’s a no.”
17
Backstage at the theater, 93-year-old movie legend Kyp Valentine was having a conversation with a Snapple Machine.
“Did I tell you about the time I did a picture with Elizabeth Taylor? She was a hellcat!”
23-year-old PA Genevieve Taylor spotted the goings on and gingerly approached the old timer.
“Mr. Valentine?”
He turned around. “Well, hi ya there, cutie! Ain't you a doll?”
Genevieve blushed. “Thank you Mr. Valentine... um, can I bring you to your dressing room? You’ll be presenting early in the show so it’s best if we know where you are.”
“ ‘Course, doll face, lead the way.”
Kyp Valentine, once a strapping leading man, once a six foot tall arrogant son of a bitch, misogynist womanizer, was now stooped and small and leaning on the arm of a young girl who fifty or sixty years ago would have been blowing him instead of carrying him. He let out a sigh of fury for that fact and pasted on a smile.
They came around the corridor to where the dressing rooms were. Kyp Valentine noticed a group of security men leaving the area of the director’s booth.
“What’s that there?”
Genevieve looked. “Oh, that’s Mr. Leise... The head of security for tonight. He’s checking everything over.”
Kyp furrowed his overgrown gray eyebrows. “Leise... Leise... Gunther Leise or something?”
“Yes, that’s right. Well, close. Gunnar.”
“Right. Gunnar Leise. I’d like to say hello. He helped my daughter Cassie a few years ago – you know my daughter?”
“The actress? Of course. Everyone knows her, Mr. Valentine.”
He sneered. “Okay, don’t overdo it. She’s not as big as her old man.”
“Oh... right... sorry.”
“Yeah, Leise came to my house and had dinner. My daughter had a stalker. Did you know that?”
“No, Sir.”
“It’s true. Some fucking nut fresh out of a loony bin. Showed up at her house, so they called the cops. They found him out by the pool fucking an inflatable dolphin in the mouth.”
“Oh...”
Genevieve looked a bit stricken.
Kyp looked at her. “Sorry, honey. Was that crass?”
“No... Not at all.”
“Listen, you tell him to come see me in my dressing room. I want to say hi.”
“Who?”
“Gunnar Leise. Tell him to come see me.”
“I will, Sir.”
Kyp loved it when a girl called him sir. He made all the Hollywood Boulevard hookers he hired call him sir and Mr. Valentine. He loved them on their knees and subservient. The words did something to him. Even now. He checked to see if anything was stirring downstairs, but remembered he hadn’t taken his Viagra today as he didn’t want to accidentally pop one on stage when he spied some choice cleavage in the front row.
They got to the dressing room. Genevieve let go of Kyp Valentine’s arm at the exact moment he was going to pretend to stumble. This led him to actually stumble; he fell forward and landed on his hands and knees. Like an old man. Or a pathetic whore.
“Mr. Valentine, are you okay?”
Kyp Valentine looked around to see a dozen or so people backstage watching him.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
Two male PA’s rushed over and picked him up. Like a dolly or a baby. Or worse, a woman.
“I’m fine... let me go. Let go of me... I’m fine...”
The men obliged.
Kyp looked at Genevieve, enraged with his lot in life. He wasn’t sure why he hated her. He forced a smile. The kind that made America actually believe he was a national treasure.
“You just tell Gunnar Leise to come see me...”
18
Outside on the entrance to the red carpet, LAPD Lt. Bronco Bennett smirked at teen star Kaden Conroy. “Your Mommy give you your ID?”
Kaden Conroy glared at him, holding out his passport. “You don’t have to be such a dick about it.”
Bronco Bennett looked at the picture on the ID then at Kaden Conroy. “Arright. Go through... Hey, how ‘bout an autograph for my daughter.”
Kaden Conroy made his way up the red carpet, as the flashbulbs started going off. “How ‘bout you go fuck yourself?”
Bronco Bennett shook his head. “Tch tch... language.”
Bronco surveyed the red carpet. A limo pulled up. Some red haired guy in high heels got out with some gorgeous creature. “Damn...That is a fine piece of ass...” Bronco Bennett said quietly. He nudged one of the officer’s he was working with. “Tommy, I’d tap that.”
Tommy glanced over to where Bronco had nudged his head and saw the woman there. He nodded so he didn’t get in trouble. “Yeah.”
At that moment, the woman in the black dress turned toward Bronco and he recognized her. His face fell.
“Oh Jesus... Her.”
Devin Jones stood on the entrance to the red carpet, having just stepped out of the limo. She looked around at the mob scene. There was a roar of people, people in bleachers, reporters off in the distance on the actual red carpet, throngs of fans being held back by barricades across Hollywood Boulevard and security everywhere you looked.
She had brought her badge and ID, as she knew she’d be required to identify herself as a police officer. She usually carried it with her off duty anyway. Some officers carried their guns. She felt that was a bit much. Like she didn’t need to know she was packing heat while watching a movie at The Grove. But she always had a small leather wallet with her flat badge and ID tucked away in her purse or her pocket or in this case, her evening bag.
Devin smiled at the gap toothed valet girl in the red jacket who was closing her limo door behind her.
“Welcome to the Hollywood Screen Awards,” the girl said cheerfully.
“Thanks.” Devin looked around. “Wow, it sure is -- ”
Devin would have said more, but was startled by what walked into her peripheral vision - the sight of Lori Plom goose-stepping in those red high heels. Sure, some people need to learn to walk in heels... but this one... She came around the car with her legs ramrod straight, feet kicking forward. All she needed were some jackboots and a wave to the emperor.
She kicked her way over to Devin. “Shall we?” Lori said.
They walked and goose-stepped together up to the red carpet entrance where security were checking IDs and wanding people.
As they approached, Devin felt Lori Plom’s hand on the small of her back guiding her – a bit too familiar and a bit too possessive.
Devin shot her a look. “No hands necessary...”
Lori looked straight ahead. “Oh come on, it’s not a big-” then Lori Plom glanced at Detective Devin Jones and caught the don’t fuck with me look in her eye. At which point Lori’s hand flew off like it was propelled by an electric charge.
“Fair enough, fair enough...” She raised an eyebrow. “Later...”
“No, not later.”
“Oh, you’ll change your mind...”
“Pretty sure I won’t.”
“I give good foot rubs...”
Oh God. Ew and Oh God.
Lori held up one of her beefy freckly hands. “I’ve got magic fingers.”
“Anyway...” Devin said.
Lori winked. Was that green mascara? Who even knew they made that?
“Gotcha...” Lori said. “Later.”
“Not Later.”
Lori smirked. “We’ll see.”
“No, we won’t.”
Lori grinned, undeterred.
Why was this woman so insanely confident? Devin thought of sweet shy Caitlin who had absolutely everything going for her but still walked into a mailbox and blushed, and here was this buffoon with no appealin
g qualities whatsoever and all the confidence of a rock star. It wasn’t right. And three cheers for the shy.
“Here’s your ticket,” Lori purred.
“Thanks.”
As they got up near the front of the line, a bit too late to turn around, Devin spotted that asshole Bronco Bennett checking IDs.
“Oh, fuck…” she whispered.
Devin knew Bronco Bennett all right, what with him all but raping her 7 years ago when she was a patrol officer in West Hollywood, when he drove her home after a shift. She managed to fight him off, breaking his nose and giving him a knee in the groin that practically made him a woman. But she wondered how many women hadn't. She had taken Russian Self Defense for four years after the incident with Christy, vowing she would never be helpless like that again. And when the time came to use it, it wasn't on a perp it was on a fellow officer.
Her subsequent complaint wound up causing more trouble for her than him –she had crossed the thin blue line and the other officers let her know. Eventually she couldn't even call for backup, because she knew it wouldn't come. Finally she had to transfer, so she chose Beverly Hills.
Bronco Bennett, on the other hand, walked away with a slap on the wrist, but still acted hard done by. As if he had been the one assaulted that night.
Devin looked around the red carpet, hoping to find another entrance. There wasn't one.
Meanwhile Lori noticed someone already on the red carpet well ahead of the security area. “HEY MYNAH!!” Lori bellowed right next to Devin’s ear. She turned to Devin. “There’s my ex. She’s an agent at CAA. Wait till she gets a load of you. She’s going to shit.”
“Okay, but can you not yell in my-”
Too late. “MYNAH! OVER HERE! CHECK THIS OUT!”
In the distance Devin saw a hairdo-d manicured skinny heffalump in a gown see them and start marching over towards them with all the grace of a dog getting out of the bathtub. She stopped short on her side of the entrance and gave them both the finger.
Devin rolled her eyes. “This is fun...” She said quietly.
If she thought that was bad, she should have seen the next thing which was Lori Plom standing there with her two arms outstretched. One was pointing at Devin like a neon sign over a rest stop motel, the other was reciprocating the finger.
This is Devin Jones Page 6