Falling Star (8 page)

There were four big windows, two for what
looked to be the dining room. She looked down at the stone in her
hand, then back at the first window on the left.

Then she threw it, fast and hard.

Right in the kisser. The rock sliced through
the window as if it were made for the job, then skidded along the
hardwood floor inside. The impact set off a shrill alarm.

"You coming out, Miles?" she screamed. Then
she raced back to the rock pile and selected the next stone for its
greater heft. That one she smashed through the window just right of
the one she'd already broken. This time all the glass in the frame
fell to the hardwood with a satisfying crash. The third she aimed
at a smaller window in opaque glass, probably the window for a half
bath.

After that, she lost count, lost all track of
sense and time, until she paused, panting, her shoulder sore from
hurling rocks the size of canteloupes. Trembling she raised her
left hand to stare at her ring finger, winking with her platinum
wedding band and diamond engagement ring. Without a second thought
she wrenched them over her knuckle and flung them through the
largest broken window, exulting in the tinny clatter they made as
they skipped along the hardwood. "Pawn them, why don't you, you
bastardl" she shrieked. It was then that she noticed a middle-aged
Hispanic woman standing at the other end of the driveway, a white
plastic grocery bag dangling from each hand, calmly watching
her.

The women stared at each other for a moment.
Then the Hispanic woman shrugged. "I think he'll get the message,
missus."

Tuesday, June 18, 7:52 PM

Kelly pushed out her breath for her final
sit-up. Two hundred. She grunted and sank back against the
rust-colored shag carpet in her shoe box of an apartment.

It was almost eight, so Howard would be by
shortly. Great. She'd have two workouts that day: the usual plus an
extra to placate her shit-for-brains managing editor.

But it had to be done. He was mad at her and
she had to get him over it. After all, as managing editor Howard
had a lot to say about assignments. And assignments dictated
airtime.

Reluctantly she heaved herself to her feet
and over to the fridge. She pulled out a Gatorade and propped the
door open with her hip, enjoying the deliciously cold air as it
wafted over her flushed skin. Absently she looked around. From the
kitchen she could see almost all of her one-bedroom unit, housed in
a mammoth West Los Angeles complex. Her apartment was on the sixth
floor of Number Four Tower, all of them vying for Most Nondescript.
Even the interior screamed generic. Almost everybody who lived
there was single: hordes of newly divorced men prowled the laundry
and workout rooms all hours of the day and night. She felt like she
should be living in a snazzier place—shouldn't a TV reporter be
living in a snazzier place?—but in L.A. housing prices were
sky-high. It just had to do until she could get a house, and who
knew when that would be. She wasn't exactly good at saving for a
down payment.

Kelly twisted the cap back on the Gatorade
and jammed the almost empty bottle back on a shelf crowded with
diet sodas, abruptly deciding she wouldn't shower. Why bother?
Howard liked her sweaty and no doubt he'd get a rise out of her
current getup: short shorts and a strappy midriff-baring tee. And
who needed a bra? Not a 24-year-old with implants.

Kelly loosed her brunette hair from its
rubber band and plumped it with her fingers, reviewing the day's
events. Not good. Susan and Eric Mann, the parents of
Darryl-the-car-crash-victim, somehow had seen her piece. Meaning
they'd seen the blood-and-guts video. Meaning they knew she hadn't
mentioned that their kid had died.

Just her luck! Tony and Ruth and Howard had
some big powwow about what they'd do if the Manns sued the station
but Kelly had managed to dodge it, which was what had pissed Howard
off. She snorted. As if the Manns had a leg to stand on!

The doorbell buzzed. Showtime.

She opened the door a strategic crack, just
enough to let Howard see her. He looked his usual preppy self,
pin-striped shirt and khakis, both creased after the day's labors,
and Topsiders sans socks. Like almost every other ambitious
thirty-something who passed through local television, Howard
Bjorkman was using it as a stepping-stone to bigger things. Read:
network. But Ivy Leaguer though he might be, he wasn't quite
well-bred enough to stop his eyes from flickering down Kelly's body
as she stood enticingly at her door. She noticed, trying not to
giggle, that his slicked-back hair was newly combed and that he
smelled of fresh cologne. How many other employees did he get so
spruced up for? She opened the door wider. "Come in," she invited
huskily, laughing softly as he brushed by. He was a goner.

She felt his eyes on her ass when she angled
past him to get some beers, bending over real far to give him a
nice long look at her rump, perhaps his favorite part of her
anatomy. She closed the door with a bump of her hip and, nipples
hard from the blast of cold air, sashayed toward him. She stopped
herself from smiling as she handed him a beer and reached out to
ruffle his ash-brown hair. He swatted her away.

"Ooh, you wanna play rough." She giggled,
leaned forward, and licked his ear.

"Quit it, Kelly." He rose and slammed his
beer on the glass coffee table with such force that a few drops
flew out and splattered the
People
magazines. "You're not
getting away with it this time."

"You're the one who's trying to get away."
She pouted and moved closer to grab his belt buckle.

"Where the hell have you been?" He twisted
away. "I must've paged you fifteen times! You knew you were
supposed to be in that meeting, so where were you?"

"I never got the message," she lied.

"I suppose your pager is broken? And your
cell, too?"

"They're both a little hit and miss."

"Right." He clenched his jaw.

Kelly had the sudden thought that the
hardness in his face made him fairly attractive. Again she grabbed
for his buckle, but again he batted her away.

"You shouldn't be taking this so lightly," he
muttered. "Ruth is pretty pissed."

Kelly rolled her eyes. So what else was new?
"What about Tony?"

"It's hard to tell. But believe me, there's
no news director around who wants his station to get sued."

Kelly sank onto the black Naugahyde couch and
crossed her long bare legs, rhythmically kicking one in the air.
"You think the Manns'll sue?"

He threw out his hands. "They've got every
right to! That video before the ambulance came? And not reporting
that Darryl Mann was dead? That's huge!"

"So I didn't do a double and triple check."
Kelly rose and reached languorously for his belt.

"You failed to repent that a man was dead.
And checking is a key part of being a reporter, perhaps the most
important part."

She waved her hand dismissively. Yeah, right.
Like the real careful reporters were the ones getting all die
airtime.

She watched Howard pace in front of the bar
that separated the kitchen from the living room. He was wiping his
brow, looking straight out of an ad for some Wall Street investment
product. Serious and kind of cute, at least for the extreme short
term. She approached him and draped her arms around his neck. "So
even though I'm such a naughty reporter," she whispered, pushing
her pelvis into him, "you still like me?"

"Stop screwing around, Kelly." But now his
voice was strangled. "I'm telling you, this is the last time."

"Then let's make it good." Slowly she licked
his mouth, aware of his growing erection. Right on time.

She locked his gaze as she pulled off her
top. She knew her breasts were magnificent and, to men with far
more self-control than Howard Bjorkman, irresistible. His eyes
glazed, and slowly, a little roughly, she pushed down on his
shoulders until his mouth was at her nipples. "Do me, Howard," she
ordered, certain he'd oblige.

*

Kelly lay against the couch, the Naugahyde
now sticky against her skin. Howard was in the shower singing
"Desperado." She chuckled softly. That man was never in tune, in or
out of bed.

Maybe she should have become an actress.
Lazily Kelly reached for Howard's khakis, in a heap next to the
glass coffee table with the jockeys still inside. TV news and
acting were a lot alike, but the payoff to succeeding as an actress
was bigger. The competition, though, was hell. Kelly shook out the
khakis and pulled the wallet from the back pocket. Those girls were
to-die-for beautiful and there were so damn many of them. There
were a lot of good-looking girls in TV news but few true babes. In
that group she was a clear ten.

Howard had a twenty, two tens and four ones.
She lifted the tens and two of the ones and returned the wallet,
idly poaching a cigarette from the crumpled pack in the other
pocket. Howard's voice carried from the shower. "Why don't you come
to your senses? You been out ridin' fences for so long now." Man,
he was happy now. She lit the cigarette. Morons always were. It was
like that news director in Bakersfield who told her everybody in
his newsroom had an IQ of a hundred fifty plus. Then what were they
doing in California's armpit?

The water stopped. Howard must be clean
enough now to go home to Sally, or whatever her name was, who was
apparently so stupid she couldn't tell her boyfriend had just done
the nasty with his favorite coworker. Kelly fingered the khakis
again, pondering taking the twenty before he came out. She could
use it.

"So you'll be more careful from now on?"
Startled, she pulled her hand back when Howard emerged from the
bathroom wrapped in a towel, his legs sticking out from the thick
white fleece like hairy tree trunks.

"I'll be careful," she lied.

"I can count on you to get script approval in
the future? Show up to meetings? And do your level best not to get
the station sued?" He bent to towel his feet. "I don't want to have
to cover for you again."

Kelly ground out her cigarette. He hadn't
minded covering her twenty minutes ago. "Will you do something for
me?"

"Again?" He tossed the towel in the general
direction of the bathroom. It landed in a heap in the hall.
"What?"

"Will you tell Tony you think I should do
some fill-in anchoring?"

"You mean for Natalie?" He laughed and pulled
on his jockeys. "Get in line."

"But I never get a chance." She shimmied
closer. "It's not fair."

"Life's not fair." He stepped into his
khakis.

"I hope you're not telling me you won't talk
to Tony." She couldn't stop an angry note from creeping into her
voice.

"I'm not saying that." He pushed her away and
reached for his shirt, finally glancing up to meet her eyes. "It'd
be great for you to do some anchoring, Kell, but I can't just make
it happen,"

She arranged her full lips into a pout.
"Couldn't you just help me, Howard? I do so much to help you." She
batted her long lashes at him. "And I could do even more." She
brought her mouth close to his ear. "Didn't you tell me you have a
fantasy about two girls at one time? Who could pull that off better
than me?" He blinked. "You do for me," she whispered, "and I do for
you."

Slowly Kelly turned and strolled back to the
couch, chuckling softly. That should keep him on good behavior
through the July sweep. She flipped open a
People
, the face
of the actress on the cover stained a light amber by the spilled
beer. Out of one eye she watched Howard make three attempts before
he finally succeeded in attaching his watch to his wrist. She gave
him a coy wave from the couch when he let himself out.

*

Geoff switched off the speaker phone, his
brow creased with worry. No way even he, the Aussie with the
perennially sunny disposition, could put a positive spin on the
afternoon's events.

He scanned his computer screen, reviewing the
scrupulous record he'd kept of the dozen calls he'd placed. Four
were to news directors in Los Angeles. Another eight were to their
counterparts in other major television markets, selected for their
superior news departments. But no matter how carefully Geoff chose
his target, or how subtly he engaged him in conversation, he came
back devoid of serious interest in Natalie Daniels.

It was going to be tougher than he'd thought
getting Natalie another anchor offer.

Disgustedly Geoff shut down the computer
file. Though it was couched in news directorese, the lack of
interest always boiled down to the same two things. She was too
old. And too expensive. He'd hawked male clients who were
high-priced geriatric patients compared to Natalie and never heard
those complaints. He hardly considered himself a feminist, but on
this particular afternoon, on behalf of this particular client,
Geoff was pissed.

And worried.

To make matters worse, Scoppio was
stonewalling him by not returning phone calls. Geoff knew it was
just another tactic to keep him off balance but still he found it
irritating. This was the one aspect of agenting he disliked: at
base he was a supplicant. He could cajole, he could reason, he
could manipulate, but he couldn't force news directors to do what
he wanted. Especially when he couldn't get them on the phone.

Restlessly, Geoff flicked a switch on the
master remote that squatted on a corner of his expansive desk, one
unit that controlled all three of his televisions, both his VCRs,
the Nakamichi stereo, and for an added fillip of excitement, the
sliding door on the adjacent wall that hid the 48-inch Sony flat
panel. He played with a few buttons on the remote, rewinding the
tape in the left VCR and rerouting the connection so it would play
on the Sony screen.