by Neil Russell
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Every person with me lost somebody. Tonight our dead will finally sleep.”
“Then I really am sorry…sorry that it had to be you.”
I thought for a moment he was going to embrace me, but he changed his mind and extended his hand again. I put my left hand over our grip, and he did the same. Then he turned and walked back toward the house.
I got in the Bentley, half-expecting to find Archer in shock and needing a hospital. Instead, she reached over and took my hand. I put the car in gear. When we reached the front of my grandfather’s former home, muzzle flashes were visible through the white-draped windows, and there was a sudden rush of flame inside the front door.
Archer put down her window, stuck her head into the cold and yelled, “For the record, Colonel, the entertainment was fucking grand. Just fucking grand.”
Epilogue
It was December on Dove Way, but the night was warm, so I’d cracked the French doors in the bedroom. I looked at the clock on the nightstand. 3:47.
Since I live near the end of the street, it isn’t unusual for someone to use the apron in front of my gates to turn around, but the car out there now had been sitting with its lights on and engine running for a couple of minutes.
I got out of bed, slipped on a bathrobe and walked out onto the balcony. The front gate obscured all but a pair of unidentifiable taillights. Then a man stepped into view and lit a cigarette. Manarca.
I went back inside and hit a button that opened the gates. Archer lay sprawled across the sheets, sound asleep. Her half-packed luggage was strewn around the room. Rudolfo had called from Rome and said he needed her—desperately. His modeling coordinator was completely incompetent, and the Milan show was approaching. He wanted her to stay at least a year.
Then Jannicke had dropped in unexpectedly and asked if she’d consider doing a photo shoot in Norway. Top money and a guaranteed cover of Elle. I knew Archer wanted me to try to stop her, but even if I’d been able to, I wouldn’t have. She wasn’t finished with that life yet, and in truth, I wasn’t finished with mine.
We’d gone to the cemetery the previous afternoon so she could say good-bye to Kim. Unlike the downpour when we buried her, it was a perfect Southern California day, and the celebrity-obsessed were meandering the grounds, including a dozen or so lined up to make rubbings of Marilyn’s marker.
Archer brought along a HUG ME—I’M LONELY cactus, and after setting it on Kim’s grave, she asked me to say a few words. It’s not my line of work, but I gave it some thought, then said, “If it’s true we enter the next life cleansed of the past, then no one deserves it more. Good luck, Kim. We both would have liked to have known you better.”
“Amen,” said Archer.
Suddenly, I felt somebody at my elbow. It was an attractive young lady, not long out of her teens, dressed in jeans and a skimpy UCLA T-shirt. She had an expensive camera draped around her neck. “This somebody famous?” she asked.
I looked at her. “No.”
“Good, all the other kids have done stars until I want to puke.” She regarded Kim’s marker for a moment. “Cool poem,” she said. “Mind if I take a picture?”
“I think my sister would approve,” Archer said.
The girl focused and snapped off a couple of shots. When she finished, she said, “Kinda young. How’d she die?”
“She was murdered,” I answered.
“No shit. By who?”
It should have been an easy question, but it wasn’t. And while I thought about it, Archer answered. “By life.”
The girl looked at us and seemed about to say something else when another young lady with a camera came trotting up, out of breath. “Hey, Angela, Soledad just told me that little girl from Poltergeist is buried here. You know, the one who yelled, ‘They’re heeeere.’ Her older sister in the movie too. Jesus, how weird is that? You know where they are?”
Angela rolled her eyes at us as if to say, see what I mean. “Sure, Sheila.”
We watched them walk away, and Archer said, “At least Kim won’t suffer from a shortage of laughs.” Then she slipped her hand into mine, and we headed back to the car.
Downstairs, Mallory had the house decorated for the holidays, once again putting Macy’s to shame. He got more out of control every year, but he always pushed it through by telling me that the party for Sister Vonetta and her students couldn’t be the same ol’, same ol’. Really?
Somewhere in the east wing, he’d be sleeping to an old movie. Growing up with a father mostly gone, his mother had put him to bed with the television on when she went to work, and he’d been so terrified that he pretended the voices belonged to angels. Now he can’t sleep without them. We’d head down to the boat Christmas Eve and stay through New Year’s. This would be Bert’s last of both, and the plan was heavy on everything, especially the laughs.
I opened the front door and saw Manarca resting casually against the fender of a Pontiac Grand Prix with a nice set of rims. Not police issue. Since he didn’t look like he wanted to come in, I went out.
“You didn’t ring, Detective,” I said.
He looked at me and smiled. “Now that I’ve had time to check you out, I didn’t figure I had to. Looks like I was right, doesn’t it, Sergeant?” He leaned on the last word longer than he had to.
He offered me a cigarette, and I took it. We smoked in silence for a while, then he opened the passenger door of the Grand Prix, reached in and came out with a clear plastic evidence envelope. Inside was a scorched, but legible, sheet of paper. The outdoor lighting provided enough il lumination to see the twenty or so names on it and, about halfway down, to make out mine and Archer’s. Konstantin Serbin’s guest list.
“Recognize it?” Manarca asked.
“Should I?”
“There are four more pages, if you need them. One hundred and two people.” He paused. “Everybody dead.” He looked at me. “Well, almost everybody.”
“I get on a lot of lists. Occupational hazard.”
He laughed, but not with much mirth. “Some guy in London with a name like a bank merger sent this. Asked me to look you up. Mention that they worry a lot.”
“You can tell him I’m fine.”
Manarca wasn’t finished. “I checked with a friend over at Homeland Security. National Security type. Didn’t even have to call me back. Knew you right off. Said you were in the UK at the time. And that just before that you’d been in Corsica when some shit went down. Corsica? Isn’t that where that prick Dante was from?”
“Late prick,” I said.
“Fuckin’ shame. Now, how about putting away the tango shoes and telling me how come people on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be keeping track of you?”
“How about telling me why an LAPD detective cares.”
“That’s the same thing my friend in Homeland Security asked. Told him I didn’t. I was just handling some bullshit assignment for the chief.”
“That true?”
“Yep, but I’m a naturally curious guy. Occupational hazard.”
I looked at him for a couple of seconds, then smiled. “I think maybe somebody thought they saw Paris.” He didn’t laugh this time, so I added, “Happens. Even to professionals.”
Manarca hesitated, then nodded. “Ain’t that the truth.” He took back his list, got in the Pontiac and started it up. Just before he pulled away, he rolled down the window. “Hey, I almost forgot. Your buddy in London said to mention the name Bibiana. Let you know she opened a gallery in Dubai.”
Dubai. Made sense. Follow the money. I didn’t offer a comment, and Manarca rolled up his window. I watched him drive through the gates then went back inside.
I went to the bar and poured two fingers of the Bowmore 40 that had just arrived. The warmth of the fine single malt felt good. I opened a drawer. The key was where it should have been.
I made my way to a door just off the study—the room that had so aroused Kim’s curiosity that she’d g
one outside to look. I inserted the key into the substantial dead bolt, stepped into the darkness and closed the door behind me, standing still for a moment to let my eyes adjust.
As always, the plantation shutters were closed, but the full moon bathed them in enough light to give shape to the larger pieces in the room. I noticed the faint odor of furniture polish. Mallory again. Always one step ahead. Everything else was the same as I’d left it more than a year ago.
I walked to the center of the room, careful to avoid bumping into the ottoman I had kicked several times in the past, and reached for the matches that should have been there. They were, but they’d gotten pushed a few inches to the left. I struck one and lit the single white candle.
I sat down and pushed the cover off the keyboard. I started to play, but the notes were hollow, uninspired. I got up, crossed the room and touched a switch. While the turntable came to life, and the stylus fell silently into the first groove, I eased into a large leather chair.
My mother’s words and Sanrevelle’s voice filled the room….
The snowflakes of midnight drift gently to ground, Painting streetlights and rooftops without making a sound.
I sit here alone in this world turned to art.
Christmas always breaks my heart.
Caressing your picture by the glow of the fire.
A last look between us, a smile of desire.
Wrapped up in your bathrobe, trying to find,
A kiss still in hiding; a touch left behind.
A house full of memories; songs full of lies.
Champagne in a teacup; tears in my eyes.
You went on the wind, without a last kiss;
I reach out to catch you, but I always miss;
You slipped out of my life like a dream in the dark.
Christmas always breaks my heart.
I turn in the night, and you’re not there to hold.
When I need you most, your side of the bed is cold,
You promised me that we’d never part.
Christmas always breaks my heart,
Christmas always breaks my heart.
The cards are unopened, tucked away in a drawer,
Poems filled with verses I can’t feel anymore.
Pretty pictures and words that good people send.
Prayers for a heart that won’t ever mend.
I’m trying to be brave, like you taught me to;
Trying to be strong, for the friends
(the friends) that we knew.
But deep in my soul, there’s a place that’s still true,
Where my life has meaning, because once I had you.
You went on the wind, without a last kiss;
I reach out to catch you, but I always miss;
You slipped out of my life like a dream in the dark.
Christmas always breaks my heart.
I turn in the night, and you’re not there to hold.
When I need you most, your side of the bed is cold,
You promised me that we’d never part.
Christmas always breaks my heart,
Christmas always breaks my heart.
Acknowledgments
This book would not exist—or it would have someone else’s name on it—if it were not for the talented writer, director, art lover and collector, Nick Meyer, whom I tried to convince to write it, and who told me to write it myself. What I think he actually said was, “Leave me alone already.” Thanks, Nick.
I would also like to thank my wife, Sandra, for reading my ramblings and telling me where I wasn’t funny or clever or insightful or particularly literate. And for occasionally pointing out where I was. My sons, Andrew and Trevor, for their unfailing support. And my late boxer, Annie, for sleeping on my feet while I typed and eating the things on my plate I wouldn’t.
I am also grateful to my sister, Marsha Russell, the extremely gifted designer, from whom I appropriated some of the more tasteful design elements in the story, and her husband, Lee Tawes, for his unwavering support. And to my brother-in-law, Scott Ricketts, for making sure I never ran out of pasta sauce or laughs.
Every first novel needs a fan in the right place at the right time. Mine was Doug Grad at HarperCollins. My sincerest gratitude to him. And to the person at HC who had the power of the pen to say yes, Liate Stehlik…thank you, Liate, very, very much. To my editor, Matt Harper, who fielded the unenviable task of dealing with an aggressive, often wrong Hollywood hardhead, a thank-you isn’t nearly enough, but thank you, Matt.
During this adventure, I was fortunate enough to meet Lisa Erbach Vance, my literary agent at Aaron Priest. Every ship needs a calm voice at the helm and a steady hand on the tiller. Thank you, Captain Vance, from your unruly crew of one.
Warm thanks to: Homer Hickam for putting his own heavy workload aside and reading my manuscript; my friends and fellow writers, Joe Stinson, Dennis Hackin and John Mullins for slogging through early drafts; fellow author and friend U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel, who somehow found time between gavel raps to read and give comments; and two of the best people—and producers—in Hollywood, Stephanie Austin and Walter Coblenz, for their kind words and unfailing encouragement.
I would also like to give special thanks to my terrific attorney and friend, Jay Coggan; to my always supportive Hollywood agents, Tony Etz and Matthew Snyder at CAA; to my Mississippi attorney, friend and covert writer, Ned Currie; and to the brilliant composers, Chris Lang and Cesar Benitez, who set music to “Christmas Always Breaks My Heart,” and to Benny Faccone, who made magic with the track.
To Clive Cussler and Gayle Lynds, I am still overwhelmed by your praise. Thank you again.
For twenty-five years, my friend and business partner, Bob Turner, has never failed to be there for me. I have no idea what he thought of the book, because no one can tell what Bob really thinks about anything, but he read every word and let me know where I was right and where I wasn’t. And that’s all one can ask for.
I also owe a great debt to Frank Yablans and the late Norman Weitman for taking a chance on a wet-behind-everything college kid and bringing him into Paramount Pictures. And to Robert Evans for making the movies I get to put on my resumé.
Lastly, I would like to thank the person who inspired me to write in the first place. She died before I could invite her to Hollywood and take her and her tall collars, flashy skirts, hoop earrings and French chanteuse hairstyle onto a studio lot, then to Spago for dinner. Betty Ruth VerBeck didn’t look, talk or act like a steel town, high school English teacher. She twirled like a dancer when she read poetry, swooned over her desk when she loved an essay and laughed so loud when she was happy that you could hear her in the gym three stories down. But she sent this sixteen-year-old kid home every day with his mind racing with possibilities. Sleep in peace, Miss VerBeck.
Neil Russell
2010
About the Author
NEIL RUSSELL is founder of Site 85 Productions, Inc., a Beverly Hills-based intellectual property rights company. A former senior executive with Paramount, Columbia, MGM/United Artists, and Carolco Pictures—the company that produced the Rambo movies, Terminator 2, and Total Recall—he also founded and headed Carolco Television Productions. Site 85 has entered into partnerships or licensing arrangements with Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Activision, MGM, ABC, F/X, Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment, Pearson, Scott Free, Heyday Films, Tribune Entertainment, FP Productions, Hyde Park Entertainment, and others. Neil also authored the book Can I Still Kiss You?: Answering Your Children’s Questions about Cancer, which grew out of his two successful battles with the disease.
A graduate of Parsons College, Neil is a member of the Naval War College Foundation and a former board member of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. He is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Writers Guild of America West, BMI, and other entertainment industry organizations. Neil has also been made an honorary member of the Hmong community of Laos for his fund-raising efforts to provide Hmong children w
ith prostheses for limbs lost to mines.
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By Neil Russell
CITY OF WAR
Copyright
“Christmas Always Breaks My Heart.” Lyrics by Neil Russell. Music by Chris Lang and Cesar Benitez. Copyright Russell/Lang/Benitez. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CITY OF WAR. Copyright © 2010 by Neil Russell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © January 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-198768-7
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