Billy called after him, "You stay out of it, old man! Stay away from that baby! You go near that baby, I'll make you regret it!"
The only answer he got was that low, knowing laugh, which faded to nothing as the old man limped out of sight.
* * *
Chapter 2
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For the next several days, Billy tried not to think about the baby named Jesse. What the hell good could it do to think about that kid? That kid would get along just fine with his aunt what's-her-name and all of his dead mama's money. That kid didn't need someone like bad Billy Jones in his life. Some men just weren't meant to be fathers. Billy knew that because he was one of them.
Oggie had been right about a few things, like when he'd said that Billy had no family feeling at all. Billy Jones was born to make loud music, make love to pretty women and just generally have a good time. He had always been that way, as far back as he could remember.
Twice, he'd gone and let himself get married. Both marriages had been disasters. On the positive side, they'd also been short. And childless.
No, he didn't need a kid. He didn't want a kid. And any kid with any sense wouldn't want him for a dad.
And yet damned if he could stop thinking about that beaming baby face.
He started having a recurring dream. The dream took him back to that clean, quiet house in Sweethaven, Kansas, where he had been born. In the dream, he slowly entered the parlor. He looked around, dreading what he'd see. His gaze would find the mantel. There, as always, stood that picture of him as a baby. And right next to it, in an identical frame, sat the picture of Randi and Jesse that he'd seen on the news.
In the dream, Billy would turn from the picture to find his mother and father sitting on the sofa nearby. They sat very straight, side by side, but not touching. They looked at him, looks that judged and condemned. And they spoke in unison, quoting from the Bible, he thought.
"If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?"
Somewhere around the bit about the scorpion, Billy would wake up, running sweat. He'd look around, feeling kind of sick, wondering where he was – and then remembering: his own bedroom in Studio City.
For a few minutes, he'd wish that he'd brought someone pretty and soft home with him the night before. He would want gentle hands reaching for him. Someone to hold him close and make all the soothing sounds a lover will make for a man who wakes at her side from a nightmare. But then, as his sweat dried and his heart settled down to an easier rhythm, he'd be glad he was alone. This thing about the kid was nobody's business but his and the kid's. And Randi's, if she hadn't been dead. And maybe what's-her-name, the aunt's.
About a year ago, when he'd heard that Randi had added herself to the growing list of Hollywood single moms, Billy had experienced a moment or two of pure panic. He'd wondered if he might be the dad.
But then he'd dismissed the idea. After all, she'd never said a word about any baby to him. He figured it must have been some other guy, someone she'd hooked up with right after him. And Randi had known damn well how he felt about having kids. He'd been careful to tell her, to make the point very clearly right up front: no wedding bells and no rug rats. She'd said he didn't have to worry. She didn't want a kid, and he was hardly marriage material.
Still, if she'd found herself pregnant, she should have said something; she should have let him know.
And what about what's-her-name, the aunt? Did the aunt know who Jesse's father was? And if she did, what then? Did she plan to hide the truth forever, to raise the kid without ever telling him who he should be calling Daddy?
On a Monday at five a.m., a week and a half after seeing his son's picture on television, Billy woke in a sweat once again. He shot bolt upright in bed and let out a cry like a skinned cat. Then, as he gasped for breath and hoped his heart wasn't going to beat its way right out of his chest, he decided he'd had about enough of this crap.
Between the nightmares and the wondering, he just plain couldn't take it anymore. He had a few questions for what's-her-name.
He threw back the tangled, clammy sheet and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Then, after switching on the lamp, he yanked open the drawer of the nightstand and fumbled through the junk in there until he came up with his well-worn black leather address book.
Ranch's number came to him before he even flipped it open. There had been a time, after all, when he'd dialed that number a lot.
A funny ache went through him, as he started to dial it again. And for a moment, clear as day before him, he saw Randi, dressed in the kind of clothes she'd always loved to wear: a skintight leather skirt and a lace-up formfitting leopard skin top. Black silk stockings. Spike-heeled shoes. She was grinning, her gold hair shining, her huge blue eyes full of fun and challenge. Ready for anything. Anytime. Anywhere.
He'd really tied one on when he'd heard she was dead. Just to think that she wasn't there anymore, in the same world he lived in, had depressed the hell out of him. It wasn't a torch-carrying situation. He'd known it was time to move on when she'd dumped him. But damn. He had liked her. And, in his own way, he mourned for her.
Now, sitting on the edge of his bed with the nightmare sweat cooling on his skin, the phone in his hand and her number half dialed, he found himself missing her all over again. She'd been a hell of a woman. The world was a little more boring without her in it.
And he wasn't going to call the mansion, after all.
Billy set down the phone. Then he rose from the bed. He spent a moment looking around for his jeans. But when they didn't present themselves, he forgot about clothes. The room wasn't cold, anyway. He got his Martin from where it waited for him in the corner and sat on the floor. The guitar felt good in his hands, as it always did. He strummed a few chords and fiddled with the pegs a little. Then he began to fool around with a new melody that had sneaked into his head.
Three hours later, he'd written a song: "Never To See You Again." He put the Martin back in its case and stood the case back in its place in the corner. Then he took a shower, found his jeans, a shirt and some boots and went out for breakfast at the IHOP a few blocks away.
Once he'd knocked back a plate of blueberry pancakes and four cups of coffee, he went to visit his agent, Waverly Sims. They discussed the songs Billy had written lately and he made arrangements to cut a few demos that Waverly would offer around.
Waverly wanted to take Billy to lunch, so Billy followed him into Hollywood. They ate at one of those chichi restaurants Waverly liked. It was on Melrose, in a tent. One of those places where they put lime slices in the ice water and the salad looked as if it was made out of weeds.
After the lunch, he said goodbye to Waverly and got back in his car. Without making any kind of conscious decision about it, he found himself headed west, for Bel Air.
* * *
Randi's mansion wasn't too far from the Bel Air Country Club. The huge house couldn't be seen from the street, which was lined with waxy-leafed magnolia trees and long stone walls. The stone walls appeared no more than decorative. Masses of bougainvillea, honeysuckle and jasmine tumbled down over the gray rock. But Randi had once explained to Billy that the top of the fence, beneath all the pretty greenery, was wired to an elaborate alarm system. To get in there, you had to ring at the big iron gates.
Billy drove up, rang and gave his name over an intercom, half expecting to be denied entry. But the gate opened. He drove up the twisting driveway, past expanses of emerald lawn dotted here and there with palms, jacarandas and lemon trees. The house came into view, an Italianate villa with a red tile roof, butter yellow walls, tall Palladian windows and white marble stonework. At intervals along the front, Doric columns loomed up, supporting balconies fenced in iron lace.
As he approached the imposing facade, Billy remembered the first time Randi had brought him here.
"
I bought it because I could," she'd told him in that husky voice of hers. "Because when the palm trees rustle in the balmy breeze, they whisper to me. They say, 'You've come a long way, baby.'" She had laughed then, a laugh that was low and throaty and got him thinking about getting her prone. She tugged on his arm and grinned up at him. "You know what I mean – baby?"
In response, he'd let out a growl and started peeling off the little bitty tight piece of nothing she was wearing at the time.
Billy stopped before a long box hedge in the paved entrance court. A uniformed driver materialized, more or less out of nowhere.
"Just leave it right here," Billy told him. "I won't be staying long."
The man gave a brief nod and headed in the direction of the garages. As soon as he was out of sight, Billy turned and marched between two wide-spaced marble columns and up to the gracefully arched double front doors. He rang. The doors swung back.
A Tom Cruise look-alike in a tux greeted him. "This way, Mr. Jones."
Billy followed the butler out of the marble-tiled entrance hall and down a number of intersecting corridors. They passed a lot of large, sunny rooms stacked with packing boxes, where the furniture was covered in white drapes. Apparently the plain-Jane sister was ditching the villa for new digs.
After they'd walked about a mile, they finally came to the office room he remembered from before. The door was open. The sister – what the hell was her name: Verity? Constance? – was waiting for him behind her fancy inlaid mahogany desk, a stack of papers in front of her and one of those notebook computers at her elbow.
The studly butler coughed discreetly. "Mr. Jones is here."
The woman looked up, those ugly glasses of hers magnifying her eyes in a way that made them seem to bulge. Her brownish hair was skinned back, her face scrubbed so clean it gave off a shine like a newly waxed floor. She reminded him of some giant, solemn insect – an insect that had somehow got itself all dressed up in a tidy gray business suit.
She flicked a bug-eyed glance at the hunk to Billy's right. "Thank you, Lance."
Lance gave a brief nod, then turned and strode off, leaving Randi's sister and Billy to stare at each other for a minuscule period of time that somehow, to Billy, seemed as if it went on for about two hundred years.
Finally she spoke up. "I've been meaning to contact you. To be honest, as of yet, I hadn't quite gathered the courage."
Her words could mean only one thing: she knew Randi's kid was his.
Randi's kid was his. The reality hit him all over again, making his stomach churn and his knees turn to rubber.
He wondered bleakly what had come over him, to show up here, at the mansion Randi used to call home. Yes, he'd been putting up with a nightmare or two lately. And he was a little curious about the kid who looked so much like him.
But what the hell did he plan to do about it, now the sister had as good as admitted the truth? He knew nothing about fatherhood – he wanted to know nothing about fatherhood.
The sister was looking at him through those scary magnified eyes of hers. "Please," she said. "Don't just stand there in the doorway staring at me as if I've committed some unconscionable crime. I'm sure, somehow, that we can work this out." She gestured toward a chair opposite her desk. "Sit down."
It was so damn quiet. He hated quiet. He wanted to ask the insect woman to turn on a little music, but there was no stereo in sight.
She gestured at the chair again. "Please."
He stepped over the threshold. "I'll stand."
She gave a tiny have-it-your-way shrug, then took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. He watched her, feeling a fraction easier for the brief moment that she didn't have those eyes pinned on him.
But the moment ended all too soon. She settled the glasses back in place and folded her hands on her desk pad, which was one hundred percent free of doodles and smudges. "Mr. Jones. I—" Her voice broke. She looked away, then seemed to force herself to look at him again, and to go on. "I loved my sister. She was generous and funny. And talented. And … good." He saw defiance in her giant eyeballs, as if she dared him to say a bad word about Randi.
Billy had made a lot of mistakes in his life, but he wasn't about to make one right then. He kept his mouth shut, though he couldn't help picturing that famous shot from a certain men's magazine, that shot of Randi spread out on a zebra skin rug, wearing nothing but a diamond watch, a butterfly tattoo and look of pure, unbridled lust.
Unaware of Billy's disrespectful thoughts, the sister continued, "Still, the fact is, she should have told you about the baby. I tried to convince her to tell you. But she felt you weren't cut out to be a father. That you had no desire to be a father. So when she found out she was pregnant, she—"
"Dumped me." He felt self-righteous, suddenly. It wasn't a bad feeling, especially not compared to scared spitless, which had been his basic emotional state since he entered that damn, silent room. He let his lip curl a little, giving the woman a good, solid sneer. "She dumped me flat."
The sister flinched. "Let's just say she ended your … liaison."
Billy decided to enjoy being the wounded one. He had a right, the way he figured it. He had been kept in the dark. "That's a fancy way of putting it." He made a low sound in his throat, one intended to indicate his total disgust with the way he'd been treated. "But dumped is dumped, no matter how you try to gussy it up."
The woman's mouth pursed into a tight little bud. "Please. Randi did what she thought was right. And now she's gone. Now I'm Jesse's guardian. And I will do what I think is right."
Billy decided he felt a little too queasy to keep on standing, after all. He dropped into the chair opposite her, the one he'd refused a moment ago. He forced out his next words. "And what exactly do you think is right?"
"Well…" She patted the tight little bun at the back of her neck and fiddled with her glasses some more.
"Well, what?" he demanded, pleased at how dangerous he sounded, since he felt about as menacing as limp spaghetti.
She gulped and blinked. "Mr. Jones, I think your son should know you."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means I think he should have a chance to build some kind of relationship with you. I think…" The sentence kind of ran out of steam. She leaned toward him, frowning.
He threatened her by deepening his scowl. "What?"
She seemed to have forgotten that he was scaring her. A strange, soft look came over her. The corners of her mouth turned up slowly in a tender smile. For a moment, even with those bug eyes, she was pretty.
Then she said, "You're terrified."
He realized that he hated her.
She rubbed it in. "You're scared to death."
He gave her the kind of dead, flat look he usually only granted an adversary in a poker game. "The hell I am."
She shook her head and let out a chuckle of amusement.
He felt the urge to leap across her desk, grab her by her scrawny neck and choke that knowing look right off her face. But he didn't move. Any show of emotion right then would only serve to prove her point.
"Would you like to meet him?"
What the hell was she babbling about now? "Meet who?"
She shook her head again, still wearing that smug little smile. God, he hated women like her. Women who thought they didn't need men. Women who thought they knew everything. Women who acted so damn upright and superior. Give him a good-time gal with a forgiving heart and a tolerant mind any day.
"Your son," she said. "Would you like to meet your son?"
No! a voice in his mind shouted. I'm not ready for this. I'll never be ready for this! "Yeah," he replied in his best nerves-of-steel tone. "Take me to him. Now."
She emerged from behind the desk. As she walked toward him, he realized that he'd never seen her – Charity? Faith? – except from the waist up before. Beneath that button-down gray business suit, she appeared to have a pretty good body: respectable breasts, a discernible waist and legs he'd look
at more than once on any other kind of woman.
She moved right past him, stopping to turn at the door. "Please. Come. I'll take you to him."
His mind kept screaming no, but for some reason, his body got out of the chair and followed her. From behind, it became more clear that her body wasn't bad at all. And when she'd smiled, back there in the office, he'd seen that she could have been pretty, if she wanted to be. Still, she chose to hide her looks behind ugly glasses and skinned-back hair. It was just a mystery to him, what made a woman like that tick.
They turned left at the end of the hall, and then right at the end of that hall. Billy watched the gently swaying bottom of Randi's dowdy sister, concentrating on feeling superior to her – and trying his damnedest to keep his mind off where they were going and the child he would meet for the first time when they got there.
Finally, Hope or whatever-her-name-was stopped before a closed door. She rapped lightly.
After a moment, an older woman answered. "He's napping," the woman whispered, in a tone damn close to reverence.
Felicity or something turned to Billy. "We could just tiptoe in. See if he wakes up. How's that?"
He longed to say, Let's forget it. I'll come back some other time – like in a couple of decades or so. But instead he found that his head was bobbing up and down.
The older woman stepped back. Billy and Randi's sister entered a playroom, with murals of suns and rainbows bright on the walls and more toys than in FAO Schwartz. Dazed, Billy looked around him, wondering if maybe this was all just a bizarre extension of the nightmare that had brought him here in the first place. Any second now he expected his long-dead mother to pop out from behind one of the toy cabinets, ready to quote him a little more chapter and verse.
"I'll be in my rooms if you need me," the older woman whispered.
"Thank you, Alma," the sister said.
The older woman left them, going through a door a few feet away.
"This way," said Amity or Modesty. She started for a door opposite the one they had just come through.
The Taming of Billy Jones Page 2