First Class Killing

Chapter 10

THE GRASS WAS BROWN AND BRITTLE IN THE Hollywood Hills, and the trees looked exhausted.

“Must be a drought out here,” I said, to no one in particular. No one in particular answered. Our cabbie, a man with only consonants in his name, spoke a weirdly paced version of English with the accents on the wrong syllables. He and Tristan were busy trying to locate the party. It seemed the number we had was not marked on the street where it was purported to be. Maybe it was one of those “if you have to ask, you don’t belong here” deals.

I could have been still back at my hotel for how connected I felt to what was going on. After checking in, I had gone straight to the workout room, where my only company had been the droning television mounted in the corner. By the time I was finished pumping and running and lifting and generally trying to make myself stronger and better, I’d gone through six gym towels, three bottles of water, two and a half episodes of theKnots Landing marathon on TV, and I hadn’t thought about Jamie once.

I’d left barely enough time to get back to my room and dressed for the party. I almost cried when I looked at myself in my party clothes. Like my hair, they were new. After buying hair color at the pharmacy, I had stopped in at the mall for some speed shopping. The store had been too hip and the saleswoman too young, which had resulted in a skirt that now felt too hip, too young, and way too tight. The stilettos exacerbated what seemed to me a serious proportion problem-my legs looked as if they took up a full two-thirds of my height. The top was a spaghetti-strap knit thing that had the coverage of a cobweb. A very short cobweb, which raised another objection. I rarely went out in public with my belly button showing. Thank goodness I had thrown in a long-sleeved sweater at the last minute. As I sat in the cab, I kept pulling at the sleeves until they fit over my hands like mittens.

“Pull all the way up the hill,” Tristan told the cabbie. They had found a hidden driveway that looked promising. “Let’s see if there’s a house up there.”

There was. As Tristan settled the fare, I dragged myself out of the cab and peered up into the purple dusk at the house. All I could see was a solid face of unvarnished concrete. Admittedly, my vantage point was not ideal, but it looked like a World War II bunker without the turrets, also without an entry mechanism, at least not one that I could see.

“This way, Alexandra.” Tristan had located a trail. We dove through a hole in the trees and started up a series of terraced steps and stone walkways that wound in an ever-rising attitude through a landscaped garden with rocks and waterfalls.

“Whose party is this, anyway?” he asked.

“A producer of TV commercials,” was what Dan had said.

“You look fantastic, by the way. I love that little skirt. Truthfully, I’m surprised you have something like that in your closet.”

“Is it too-”

“It’s perfect. Relax. You look great.”

“Thanks.” I tried to believe him. Tristan could walk out of the Goodwill store looking like a German fashion designer. He had style to burn. He also had longer legs than I did and a fluid grace that seemed to have him gliding up the hill. I had to work hard to keep up and was glad when the front door, which was really a side door, came into view.

The guy posted there seemed to function as a maître d’ but was shaped and dressed more in the style of a bouncer.

“Names?”

We gave them. The bouncer checked his laptop, which sat atop an official-looking podium. Temporary fixture or permanent installation of the house?

“You’re not on the list.”

“No,” I said. “We wouldn’t be, but I have the code word. Tuna casserole.”

“Tuna casserole?” Tristan hooted. I hadn’t previously shared that secret with him. “That’s a bit prosaic, isn’t it, for a Hollywood bash?”

Mr. Bouncer ignored the critique and tapped at the keys with heavy fingers. “Give me your names and e-mail addresses. Business address preferred.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s for the mailing list. For future events.” Mailing list of business addresses. That was a heck of an idea on Angel’s part. A way to stay in touch with her target market without the wives and other significants getting a clue. We both gave our OrangeAir addresses, and we were in.

We moved through the entryway, turned a corner into the main house, and both stopped at once to behold the breathtaking view. The façade of the house might have been dull and blank, but that just made for a more spectacular contrast. Beyond the concrete windowless wall was an airy and open cloudlike dwelling, an ethereal pod hovering above the dry hills. The entire back wall of the house was windows and doors, thrown open both in design and in fact to the deep blue amazement that was the Pacific Ocean at sunset.

“Wow.” That was the only word I could come up with.

Tristan was even less original. “Ditto.”

When I brought my focus inside the house, all I could determine was that the lights were low, the music was loud, and every woman who wasn’t me looked like someone you’d see on a TV commercial. With their Botox faces and silicone breasts and augmented hair, they were the human equivalent of artificial plants. It was creepy.

“What would you like, love?” Tristan had guided me by the elbow to the bar.

“Club soda.”

“Club soda and what?”

“Nothing.” He placed the order, addressing the bartender as one service provider to another-politely. Would I prefer Perrier? That would be fine.

“I suppose not drinking is the wise choice.” He offered the cold glass to me. “Whatever is going on between you and your brother, it’s obviously knocked you for a loop. Trying to drown your sorrows will just make matters worse. That’s something I would have done in my younger, wilder days.”

“This has nothing to do with my brother.”

“Of course it doesn’t. And maybe someday I’ll grow out of this gay thing.” Something or someone behind me caught his eye.

“Come,” he said, sipping his cocktail. “There are people you must meet.”

We strolled out to the pool, a bright bar of turquoise that was languid and desultory in the evening air. In what seemed to me an engineering impossibility, the pool and the wide redwood deck were cantilevered straight out from the side of the hill.

“Tristan, oh,my God! I can’t believe this.” As usual, Tristan was swarmed by a group of women-flight attendants, no doubt-and I wondered if there was anyone who flew in the OrangeAir system anywhere whom he didn’t know.

“I didn’t know you were coming out,” one of them burbled.

“Dear, I’ve been out for years.”

They all laughed, and the typical cheek-to-cheek embraces ensued. Care was taken not to splash alcohol or flick cigarette ashes on the attire, which ranged from cocktail chic to funky tequila casual. The only thing they all had in common was a lot of skin showing, even though the setting sun was taking much of the warmth with it. I was glad I had my long-sleeved cover-up with me.

“Alexandra, these are some of your colleagues from LA.” Tristan turned to present me. “Girls,this is my friend Alexandra. Everyone be nice to her. She’s from the Boston base, and she’s with me.”

For a brief second, I was center stage, and I had exactly what I wanted. This was my chance to meet and get to know some of the LA crowd. This was my chance to hang around and listen to gossip, to be the eager DustBuster when the dirt on Angel started flying. What I had in front of me was an opportunity.

“Um…hello.”

I got an array of tepid greetings and casual nods. I couldn’t think of what to say, and before I knew it, they had turned their attention back to Tristan. After a few minutes of floating and bobbing around outside the circle, I realized the window had closed. There was also no way to siphon energy away from the Tristan vortex. He enjoyed his place in the center too much.

I was looking around for a less-intimidating situation, when I was very nearly run over by a stout, balding guy with one too many buttons open on his black silk shirt and what looked like a large, yellowing mammal’s tooth dangling from a leather thong around his throat. He introduced himself as Tony Something, the actor-notan actor. He was vaguely familiar. What does one say to actors? I couldn’t remember ever meeting one.

“So, Tony, where do I recognize you from?”

He reeled off a few titles, one or two of which I’d heard of, then launched into a few questions of his own. “I heard your friend say you were a flight attendant from Boston.”

“I am.”

“For OrangeAir?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Jesus.” He pushed his palms together and let loose with a long sigh that appeared to relieve some serious pent-up tension. Then he took me by the wrist and guided me rather insistently to a more secluded spot. I pulled my arm away and stopped before we were too secluded.

“Is there something I can do for you, Tony?”

“I need help. I lost my password.” He had this curious lockjawed way of speaking. His mouth didn’t open much when he talked.

“What password?”

“I know you gals have rules, but I didn’t give it to someone. I didn’t sell it. I lost it. I think I wrote it on the back of one of my scripts and it got thrown out. I’ve got so many goddamned sign-in names and passwords. Who can remember all that stuff? You know what I mean?”

I was beginning to. Flight attendants… Boston…secret passwords. He thought I was one of Angel’s “gals.” Cool.

“Anyway, how can I get it? Or get another one. Or whatever it is you gals do in a situation like this. I’ll pay the charge. I just really need it soon, you know what I mean? If I can’t sign in, I can’t get laid, and if I can’t get laid, you gals don’t get paid.”

That was almost too much information to deal with in one blast. I had to break it down. “I can get that process started for you, Tony, but I have to ask some questions first. This isn’t how we usually do things.”

“Absolutely. Anything. Can’t be too careful, right?”

He took a step back and inhaled deeply while staring at a spot on the ground. Some kind of acting exercise, no doubt. While he did that, I worked on my Perrier and tried to plot a course that would get me the most information for the least amount of suspicion. The key would be to get him talking. So far, that hadn’t been much of a challenge.

He looked up at me with a quick nod. “Go ahead.”

“How long have you been a client?”

He peered up into a palm tree. “About…five months. First part of the summer. I was doing a location shoot.”

“In Boston?”

“Yeah. I was flying every week, back and forth. LA-Boston. Boston-LA. I gotta tell you, it was killing me. But I had to be back here for some redubbing. Meanwhile, back in Boston, they keep cutting my lines. My agent is all the time telling me, ‘Tony, stop kvetching. At least you got work.’ It was a bad time for me. A lot of pressure. You girls saved my life.”

“How did you hear about us?”

“From a friend of mine in New Hampshire who knows one of the girls. She got him started, and he told me about it.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know her name. She was one of the pool girls.”

Pool girls?

“Why would you want to know that?”

Uh…“Because we give bonuses to women who recruit new clients. It sounds as if she deserves one. Besides, she obviously has a pitch that works. I’d like to hear it.”

“Listen, you don’t need much of a pitch to sell this thing. I wish I had a piece of it. You must be raking it in.”

“We do all right.”

“I’ll bet you do. I can’t wait to get back in the saddle, if you know what I’m saying. This password thing has got me crazy. In fact”-he stepped back and looked me up and down, as if it had just occurred to him to see who he was talking to-“are you available tonight, hon? Are you on the clock?”

He reached out and covered my left breast with his right hand. My belly button snapped back against my spine, and I was sure he would notice my eyes nearly bugging out of my head. He’d grabbed me with the hand that had been holding his drink. It was cold and clammy, and it was disgusting to have him touch me that way and beyond offensive that he would presume to do it-and I was working undercover trying to be exactly the person he thought I was.

“You’re not my usual type,” he said, moving his body up against mine. “But for something quick to take the edge off, I’d take a free taste from you.”

Now, this was getting tricky. How to continue to extract information without kicking him in the balls? I smiled, calmly took him by the wrist, and gently removed his hand. “Sweetie, I’m fully booked tonight, and why in the world would I give you anything for free?”

“To keep me from switching. Aren’t you here for the countermeasures?”

Countermeasures. He must have played a soldier in his last role.

“I just thought you girls from Boston might want to throw a counteroffer on the table. Like the airlines do it. Instead of triple miles, I get triple pussy. You know what I’m saying? Or those phone companies. Each one offering better and better deals, trying to get my business. I love being the prize.”

He was a prize, all right, and what was he talking about? “I need to know what I’m competing against. What kind of deal are they offering?”

“Two freebies with any girl of my choice in any city I choose, even in LA. They don’t have that rule about not doing it at home. I get more if I can get my friends to switch.”

Doing it at home…even in LA…which must have meant…ahhhh…

“Switch from Boston to LA?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

Tristan had been right about a new group starting in LA, only it wasn’t Angel. It was a competing group and they were going after her business.

“Do you want to make me an offer, hon? I’ve got a few minutes.”

“In Boston, Tony, we believe the quality of our service should be enough to keep you in the fold. With us, you know what you’re getting. Besides…” This time, I made the move. I took his drink to free his hands, then pressed my body against his, making sure to touch all the right spots. “If you leave now, you’ll never know what sort of countermeasures we came up with.”

He put his hands on my back. I felt his chest-and other parts-expand as he breathed through his nose, which was mashed against my throat. Then I squeezed my hand up between us, stepped back, and handed him his drink. “But if you want to switch, I understand completely, and I’ll hold off on getting that password.”

“No.” He wiped the moisture from his forehead. “Don’t hold off. I haven’t signed up with them yet. I’ll take the password. What do I need to do?”

“Just answer a few more questions for me.”