Flawless (12 page)

“Come back to us if something ’appens,” the bored duty sergeant told Scarlett dismissively.

“Like what? Waking up with a carving knife between my shoulder blades?”

“It’s probably just kids tryin’ to wind you up, miss. Try not to worry.”

Scarlett tried not to worry. The next morning she woke to find her car tires had been slashed and a laminated note superglued to her windshield:

Next time it might be your neck.

This, surely, the police would have to take seriously.

“I do sympathize, Miss,” the officer who came to her apartment said apologetically. “It’s terribly upsetting when something like this happens. But chances are we’re still dealing with local kids up to no good.”

“
Kids
?” said Scarlett, exasperated. “Kids use spray paint. They don’t have laminating machines. Most of the ones round here can’t even spell ‘neck.’ I know who’s behind this, and he’s no kid, believe me.”

“Hmm, so you said,” said the policewoman, in the sort of conciliatory tone she might use to pacify a violent lunatic. “The American billionaire diamond chappie.” She made Brogan sound like Scarlett’s imaginary friend. “You see, the problem is that without any actual
evidence
of him being involved, Miss Drummond, there’s not a lot we can do. These sorts of empty threats towards someone like yourself, in the public eye, they’re a lot more common than you’d imagine. You’d be amazed.”

I’m amazed at your incompetence
, thought Scarlett, furious.

“It’s not just empty threats. Someone tried to poison my dog, you know. Treats laced with rat poison, left on the ground outside my flat. What if a small child had eaten them?”

The policewoman looked down at her shoes.

What the hell do I pay my taxes for?
thought Scarlett. But once she calmed down, she could see that perhaps the policewoman had a point. The Brogan theory did sound a bit far-fetched when one actually said it out loud.

As a last resort she’d turned to Cameron, who’d trained as a lawyer before he joined Goldman, to see if there might be something she could do to protect herself legally.

“Like what?” he laughed, over lunch at the Wolseley. “Sue him for your Autoglass bill on the window? Don’t be silly, Scar. You haven’t a shred of evidence that O’Donnell was involved in any way, and frankly I find the idea quite preposterous. You and your little gaggle of
Tatler
groupies are far too small-fry for a man like him to be bothered with.”

“He didn’t seem to think I was such small-fry when I met him in New York,” Scarlett shot back defensively. “He was busy telling the head of Cuypers how much damage Trade Fair has done to his business before I interrupted him.”

“Yes, well, perhaps you shouldn’t have interrupted him,” said Cameron piously. “What do you expect if you go around baiting big businessmen and generally making a nuisance of yourself?”

“Hold on.” Scarlett shook her head. “A moment ago you said you thought I was being preposterous. Now you think he
is
involved, but it was
my
fault for provoking him? You think I’m responsible for getting my own tires slashed?”

“I think whoever was responsible did you a favor. That car’s a bloody eyesore.”

“What about a restraining order?” asked Scarlett, who didn’t find the situation remotely funny.

“On O’Donnell? No chance. They’d throw you out of court.” Wiping his wet lips with his napkin, Cameron looked his sister in the eye. “If you honestly think this is Brogan O’Donnell’s doing, and you’re worried about it, the solution lies in your own hands. Give up this nonsense campaign of yours, write him an apology for whatever foolishness you got up to in New York, and let bygones be bygones.”

“Bygones?” Scarlett pushed back her chair in defiance. “Over my dead body.”

“Yes, well. Let’s hope not,” said Cameron.

Jake Meyer fixed the waiter with a frosty stare.

“There must be some mistake,” he said.

“There’s nothing wrong with that card. Run it through again.”

He was sitting outside at Il Sole on Sunset, soaking up the California sunshine and gossipy lunchtime atmosphere in the enchanting company of Greta Saltzman, the sultry German-born wife of the producer Michael Saltzman, and one of his most generous clients, when his Amex was returned to him a second time.

“Sir, I don’t mean to be rude,” said the waiter, looking equally frosty. “But we’ve run this card twice now. Perhaps you’d like to take care of the check another way?”

Cracking his knuckles, Jake got to his feet.

“Or perhaps you’d like to do as I ask, sweetheart, and run it through your machine. Again.”

It wasn’t a question. The waiter hesitated for a moment, but taking in Jake’s biceps bulging through his Abercrombie T-shirt and the murderous violet-blue eyes narrowed beneath his blond bed-head of hair, he decided to opt for caution. Sighing heavily, he scurried back into the restaurant.

“It’s really not a big deal, you know,” said Greta, who’d also clocked Jake’s Power Ranger arms and was hoping to put them to better use than waiter bashing once she got him home. “I’m happy to pay.”

“No way,” said Jake. “Thanks, but I’ll give them my bleeding watch if it comes to that. I’m not taking your husband’s money.”

Greta roared with laughter. “You won’t take his money, but you’ll take his wife? And what about all the thousands you’ve taken off him for diamonds over the years?”

“That’s different,” said Jake. “That’s business.”

“And me?” Greta looked at him archly, her slanting, playful eyes dancing with desire and expectation. “What am I?”

“You, my dear, are purely pleasure,” growled Jake, returning the look. He did love a flirtatious woman. What was the point of
being sexy if you were too uptight and prissy to do anything about it, like the saintly Scarlett Drummond Murray? “All’s fair in lust and war. But that doesn’t mean I can fleece your old man for lunch. Trust me, if you were a guy you’d understand the difference.”

It was awkward being embarrassed like this in front of Greta and the other wealthy diners, pretending not to be watching the unfolding drama from their neighboring tables. In LA, and in Jake’s business particularly, appearances were everything. It was acceptable to be in debt, but totally unacceptable to drive a shitty car, for example, or to have one’s platinum Amex turned down in public. As long as you appeared successful, no one much cared whether you actually were.

But Jake himself cared deeply, and the business side of his life had been distinctly rocky lately. Things were not yet that bad—he was pretty sure today’s Amex problem was a technical hitch, rather than a total absence of credit—but it was fair to say that the triumphant high on which he’d ended last year, screwing over the Brooksteins, seemed light-years away now.

After a fraught Christmas in London, he’d promised Danny he’d put the kibosh on using simulants, and he’d stuck to his word. With the exception of the Brookstein deal, they’d never made up a huge part of his income anyway. But there was no doubt that a return to purely legitimate diamond trading involved a lot more work and effort than he’d been used to of late, and in particular a lot more travel. This was the perennial diamond dealer’s dilemma: you needed to travel, often on long, risky trips to far-flung corners of the world, in order to source the best ice at the best price. But if you abandoned your patch for too long, you ran the risk of some rival moving on to your turf and nabbing your clients before you got back.

With the Oscars in February, no dealer in their right mind could afford to leave LA before March. In past years, that’s what most of Jake’s competitors had done, disappearing as soon as the awards were over. Low on stock himself after the Oscar season
frenzy, Jake would typically use simulants like cubic zirconia, YAG, or GGG to tide him through the spring months, cleaning up while his competition was out of town. Then he’d run his own, shorter trip to Africa in June, before the summer rush and when the LA market was already overwhelmed with dealers trying to offload their newly acquired product. It was a strategy that had served him well for years and made him the most profitable independent in town.

This year, however, unable to sell synthetic stones, he’d been forced to join the March exodus. By the time he got back into town in late May, having been delayed a week by a deeply unpleasant stint in a Kazakhstani jail, some opportunist named Tyler Brett was all over his clients like a fucking rash. What was particularly galling was that Tyler was in fact an ex-daytime-soap star, considered something of a heartthrob among Hollywood women of a certain age. The guy might not know a decent diamond from a packet of peas, but he sure as fuck knew how to sell himself, and he’d stolen from Jake big-time.

“Sorry about that, sir.” The waiter, all smiles now, had returned to their table. “I don’t know what the problem was, but it seems we were third-time lucky.”

“Great,” said Jake coldly, signing the check. The guy could smile and make nice all he liked. If he thought he was getting a decent tip now, after showing him up in front of Greta like that, he could whistle for it.

“So.” Greta slipped on her oversized Oliver People sunglasses. They were all the rage in LA this season, which Jake thought a shame, given that they hid pretty girls’ faces and made them look like giant bugs. “Your place or mine?”

“Yours, definitely,” said Jake. He’d long ago made a policy decision never to bring women home unless he was really serious about them—which was never. The last thing he needed was some married stalker knowing where he lived. “You are sure Michael’s away?”

“Positive.” She smiled, allowing him and the rest of Sunset Boulevard a glimpse of her sky-high legs in a crotch-skimming white sundress. “We shouldn’t leave together though. I’ll go first and wait for you at the bottom of Stone Canyon.”

Watching the Mexicans on valet duty drool surreptitiously as she curled herself into her pink Lamborghini, Jake began to perk up. So what if Tyler “Nine Inch” Brett was having a good few months? His novelty value would soon wear off, and the diamond-hungry wives at the Brentwood tennis club would be beating down Jake’s door once again. In the meantime, he’d just enjoyed a damn good lunch and was about to get the best head in Hollywood from Greta Saltzman. Things could be worse.

“Meyer!”

Al Brookstein’s booming, furious voice shook the air like an earthquake as he spotted Jake from across the street.

“I want a word with you, you son of a bitch! You sold me a lump of frikkin’ glass!”

In a split second, Jake weighed up his options. He could stay and try to reason with the irate Al. Technically he could deny the accusation—GGG wasn’t glass; it was garnet, and for six hundred grand he could hardly have expected the real deal—but one look at Brookstein’s red, straining face told him his chances of success were slimmer than Nicole Richie on a diet. Halfway across Sunset now, weaving his portly form through the angrily beeping traffic, the veins on his temples stuck out so far that Jake could see them from here.

If he waited for the valet to bring his car, they might as well serve him as fresh chopped liver on tonight’s menu; Al was clearly going to skin him alive in about twenty seconds. No, the only thing for it was to make a dive for his keys and run for the car himself.

Leaping across tables like James Bond, spilling drinks and plates of mung bean salad as he went, he reached into the valet booth for his car keys on their distinctive white-and-blue
Tottenham Hotspurs fob and bolted past the trash cans into the parking lot. By some miracle, no one had boxed him in. He could jump into the driver’s seat and go.

His fingers were trembling so much it took a second or two to start the ignition and auto-lock the doors. As soon as he slipped the Maserati’s silver gear stick into drive and began to pull forward, Al rounded the corner of the alley, shaking his fist like a cartoon baddie.

“I’ll kill you!” he roared. “I’ll fucking rip your fucking balls off, you British prick!” The next thing Jake knew, he’d lowered his bald head and begun running straight at the car, charging it like some sort of crazed bull.

Slowly, Jake edged the Maserati forward—there was nowhere else to go, and he didn’t want to kill the guy. But Brookstein kept on running, finally flinging himself onto the hood, where he landed with an almighty chassis-buckling thud.

“Get out of that car!” he yelled, battering the windshield with his fists. It would have been comic had Jake not been convinced that with a few more blows he might actually break the thing and climb inside, broken glass and all. He hadn’t felt this frightened since the time his parents took him and Danny to Whipsnade Zoo for their tenth birthday, and they’d broken down in a field of monkeys, who proceeded to jump all over the car, stripping it of everything portable from windshield wipers to hubcaps, baring their teeth and shrieking uncontrollably all the while.

On that occasion, he’d memorably wet his pants. This time, he decided to take the more dignified option of fighting back. Speeding up into the alley, he swung the car sharp right onto Sunset. Al clung on manfully for a couple of seconds, but soon fell to the ground, curling up and rolling to the safety of the sidewalk like a hedgehog. Jake’s last image of him in the rearview mirror showed him bruised but still screaming, waving a wrenched-off wiper like a dagger at Jake’s taillights.