Heartland (19 page)
She inspected him. “You'll tell me?”
“If you ask me again. But I'm afraidâ”
“I won't run, Slim.”
“Don't say that 'til you've heard me out.”
She took his arm in a two-handed grip. And repeated the words. “I won't run.”
The band played modern country with a solid bond to Southern rock. They sported both a mandolin and a hard-fisted guitar. They followed Roy Acuff with the Allman Brothers. The dance floor filled with people doing everything from the cowboy two-step to the modern wrangle. Closest to their table, a little towheaded boy in pink suspenders swung the hands of a lovely Latina with wildflowers in her dark hair. Kelly slid her chair around and used her grip on JayJay's arm to draw it around her shoulders. Easy and natural, like she'd been doing it for years. They sat and listened and returned the smiles of those who glanced their way. Just another couple out for a night on the town.
When the band took a break, she said, “One question.”
“Say what?”
“I get to ask you a question, you answer, and you don't ask the same thing back.”
He was too comfortable feeling her closeness to argue. “I suppose.”
“How is it that a handsome galoot like you isn't staked out and branded?”
“I loved the wrong woman, is the simple answer.”
“What was her name?”
He leaned a little closer, took a deep breath of her perfume and the clean scent of her hair. “Tell the truth, I don't rightly recall.”
She turned without drawing away, which brought her face so close he felt her breath on his cheek when she said, “You big fibber, you.”
“She ran off with a rodeo rider.”
“Sounds like a woman seriously lacking in the smarts department.”
“Said she wanted somebody who hankered after a life beyond the next valley.”
Kelly's reply was cut off by the owner's teenage daughter approaching their table. She wore a sullen expression and carried a tone to match. “My momma says I've got to come apologize for what I said.”
Kelly put some space between them and motioned for JayJay to stand up. “Sit yourself down here, darling. What's your name?”
“Felicity.”
“So you did what your momma asked. Now tell me the boy's name.”
“What boy?”
“The one your momma would like to stake out over an anthill.”
She looked square at Kelly. “Roy.”
“And what's this Roy of yours into, tattoos?”
“Dirt bikes.”
“Same thing. You want some advice of the been there, done that variety?”
Felicity gave what to JayJay looked like a thoroughly teenage shrug. “I guess.”
Kelly looked up to where JayJay still stood by what had formerly been his chair. “Make yourself useful, JayJay. Go ask the band if they know âGotta Serve Somebody.' ”
Felicity made a face. “He makes you call him that on a
date
?”
“It's his real name.”
“Get out.”
“For real.”
“That is just so totally twisted.”
Kelly draped an arm around Felicity's chair. “Honey, twisted is the one word that totally describes Hollywood.”
“Are you an actress or something?”
“Or something.” Kelly looked up. “What you waiting for, Slim?”
JayJay asked, “ âGotta Serve Somebody' is a song?”
“Tell me you're kidding. As in Bob Dylan?”
“Duh,” Felicity said.
“I mean, really,” Kelly said.
“Whatever,” Felicity said.
The two ladies looked at each other and burst out laughing.
JayJay crossed the empty dance floor and said to the band leader, “My place just got hijacked by a sixteen-year-old girl overdosed on lip.”
The guitarist fingered a riff and replied, “My teenage daughter is why I spend so much time on the road.”
The drummer called over, “His teenage daughter is why I want to get back.” Then he drummed the air over his snare.
The band leader patted his side pocket and said, “I been meaning to shorten the life span of that feller. Somebody send a roadie for the six-shooter I left backstage.”
The drummer grinned. “Lucky for me you can't hit the side of a barn at two paces.”
He asked JayJay, “What can I do you for?”
“Y'all take requests?”
The bass guitarist said, “We don't do no Hollywood plinkety-plink.”
The drummer said, “Does this feller look like a plinkety-plink kinda guy?”
The bass guitarist said, “Hollywood does things. They make you eat squid and pretend you like it. There ain't no telling what he wants. Could be something that killed old Fred Astaire, and then where would we be?”
The lead guitarist said, “Don't mind him. He was born in a bad mood and it's only grown worse. What you want to hear?”
“The lady asks if you'll play âGotta Serve Somebody.' ”
“That old Dylan number. I believe I heard that somewhere before.”
The bass guitarist said, “My momma was always after me to learn that one. I told her I just play the music, I don't live the lyrics.”
The drummer pointed with both his sticks and said to JayJay, “I'll even play you some Hollywood plinkety-plink if you'll go ask your lady if she'll come decorate our stage for a while.”
“Now there's an idea,” the guitarist said.
JayJay said, “I don't know if she can sing.”
“Mister, if she's got a voice to match her looks, we're all in trouble.” The band leader pointed a thumb at the mixing board. “We'll just crank the volume down and give all the folks here a reason to stare our way.”
JayJay walked back to the table and waited for the two ladies' heads to disconnect. “The man wants to know if you'd like to sing it with them.”
To his surprise, Kelly rose and said, “I wouldn't say no.” She hugged Felicity and said, “You're a sweetheart.”
“This has been so totally cool,” Felicity said, and even managed a smile in JayJay's direction. “Bye.”
He asked, “What was that all about?”
Kelly patted his arm. “Sorry, Slim. You lack the necessary gene to understand.”
Her approaching the stage was enough to draw goofy grins from all the band members. She shook hands with each of them. They stood around and laughed together long enough for JayJay to grow semi-jealous. Then they did some head nodding, talking through the music thing, Kelly giving the impression that she knew just exactly what she was doing.
The lead guitarist stepped to one side. Kelly flipped her hair back over one shoulder, turned around, and plucked the microphone from the stand.
For the first time that night, not a single eye in the place was directed JayJay's way.
Kelly said, “This song comes compliments of all the fine folks at New Road Baptist Church in Sioux Falls.”
She turned and nodded to the band.
The drummer clicked them down four beats. The bass and the lead guitarist came in together, the low-driving thunder of electrified Dylan after his conversion experience. Kelly danced them through that first round without moving her feet, just driving them along with a gentle motion. She lifted the mike and dived straight in.
JayJay rose to his feet because the dance floor filled up and he couldn't see. But the folks weren't dancing. The floor was just too full for much motion. He pushed his way through. Folks made way reluctantly. He pressed forward until he was standing close enough to get a full view.
The lady could just plain sing.
Her voice was somewhere below what he'd have expected. A rich, raspy growl, like a proud lioness who just
owned
that mike. The second time through that refrain, she lifted her voice a notch and belted the words with a feeling that punched JayJay right at heart level. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you got to serve somebody. Oh yeah. He couldn't nod strong enough without using his entire body. The lady wasn't just singing now. She was telling
truth.
When she was done the crowd erupted. JayJay stood there so astonished he forgot to applaud until some fellow started slapping him on the back, like he had to hit somebody and JayJay was closest. Kelly looked down at him and grinned, then waved at the crowd and started off the stage. But the crowd wasn't having any of it. The lead guitarist pulled her back and pleaded with words JayJay didn't need to hear.
She looked at JayJay. He motioned for her to stay where she was. She gave him a different look then, one that warmed him all the way back to his solitary table. One that left him full of something new. Something that was way beyond pride. Something that approached a feeling he didn't even need to name.
T
he Ivy was a Hollywood icon. It had starred in two recent movies. Bookings for lunch in the main room were impossible unless the table included somebody featured in
Hollywood Reporter
. Now there was a second Ivy, known by insiders as the Spillover. Ivy Two was down on Santa Monica Boulevard, three blocks up from the pier. Martin Allerby climbed from his evening ride and said to the parking valet, “How much to leave me a free space on either side?”
“A ten spot should do.”
“Fine.” He had the bill ready. Ten bucks was still less than parking in downtown New York. Which was a poor excuse for this polite Hollywood robbery. But in truth, Martin really didn't care. After all, Centurion paid.
Allerby's daytime ride was a Volkswagen Touareg. He had packed it with twenty thousand dollars' worth of extras, lifting the sticker within shouting range of a Porsche Cayenne. But Allerby had bought it for the emblem. When agents saw him pull up and park a people's car, their faces fell.
Nighttime, however, he drove a classic sixty-nine Rolls-Royce Corniche. Café-con-leche exterior, dun convertible top, ivory leather interior. Grace Kelly's car. Cary Grant's car. A ride so fine he chose this restaurant because it would take him an hour to drive there.
Milo Keplar crossed the street and said, “Early as usual.”
“You were walking through the park? Are you nuts?”
A narrow park lined a fifteen-block stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard, fronting the cliff and the pier and the beach and the sea. Human flotsam flooded there at sunset. A
Los Angeles Times
reporter had recently spent a week undercover, hearing how vagrants from as far away as New Orleans and Toronto used the park as their winter address. Messages were brought in and passed with the evening shadows. Rail mail, the reporter had called it, for the vagrants' time-honored method of crossing the nation. Carried by alcoholics and druggies and psychos. It took months to arrive and cost the drug of choice to receive. Allerby had bought the story's rights and now had a script under development for a television movie. The working title was Allerby's idea: The Park at the End of the World.
Milo replied, “Just taking a stroll down memory lane.”
Allerby knew little about Milo's early days, except that after escaping his Eastern European hovel, he had been raised by distant relatives in a gunfire-ridden stretch of Albuquerque. “Have you seen our guest?”
“He's already inside, drinking his third dose of atmosphere on the rocks.”
When the hostess showed them to their table, the attorney's first words were, “Robert De Niro just walked by.”
“Could be. He's got a place down in Malibu.” Allerby offered his hand. “How are you, Leo?”
“Yeah, fine.” He shook hands without taking his eyes off a pair of blonde Valley strollers in their matching pick-me-up outfits of micro-suede. “Man, this is a universe removed from Ojai.”
Leo Gish was forty-eight and still severely bruised by his ex-wife's divorce attorney. He was overweight and balding and wore a suit that shouted lawyer from the sticks. His eyes held the desperate quality of a man who was watching his entire world spin out of his grasp. And every glance in a mirror only heightened his alarm. His days were numbered, and almost all his dreams were gone.
Thump the man, Allerby thought as he opened his menu, and Gish would sound as ripe as a melon.
They spent most of the meal enduring Leo Gish's ongoing tale of woe about his avaricious ex. Gish halted his tirade only to sigh over the Santa Monica flesh market. The Ivy's front terrace was the most expensive show in LA. Allerby barely touched his food, promising himself a decent meal when this tedious business was behind him. “How are things with the man?”
The man, as in Carter Dawes, owner of Centurion and Gish's principal client. “I just finished drawing up his will.”
“And?”
“No mention was made of his Centurion holdings.”
Milo could not completely mask his eagerness. “So the man is definitely selling.”
“Unless he gets better.” Gish tracked a trio of high schoolers dressed for the Ungaro runway. “He's recovered before. But this time . . .”
“You think it's different.”
Gish dragged his gaze away from the sidewalk. “Our deal is still valid, right?”
“You have our offer down in black and white,” Allerby reminded him. “The five percent and the seat on the Centurion board are yours soon as our deal gets green-lighted.”
Gish forced himself to focus. “He's ready to cave, is what I think.”
Allerby fought for calm. “We'll have our attorney table the offer tomorrow.”
“You've got the financing in place?”
“All of it.”
“Where is it coming from?”
“Half from Solish and his group. The other half has to remain secret for a little while longer.”
Allerby saw Gish flash a momentary concern. “What is it, Leo?”
“Far as I can see, everything is solid. Dawes will receive an offer from a private group offering top dollar. He's always said he wanted to keep Centurion from being swallowed by one of the majors.”
