Icon (35 page)

M
AX COULD SEE
the stars. There were a million of them. He was just rolling along. The pain was unrelenting, huge. People were talking around him, but that didn’t affect him. His hands were numb. They didn’t work. He felt cold. Something—blood?—pooled inside him.

Darkness lowered. He was in a tunnel. Up ahead was a light.
What was the joke?
he thought. It would come to him. He had all the time in the world. Something about the light at the end of the tunnel.

Then he had it. The light at the end of the tunnel was a
train
.

He smiled. He’d remembered the joke.

He felt as if he’d been wrapped up in the cocoon again, back when he was in the tank. But Tess, the deputy, was there. No, she was a detective now. She was talking to him in that calm way she had. She was telling him to hang on.
Hang on, Max, hang on.
But he didn’t feel like hanging on.

The voices around him were loud and sharp. He’d lost Tess’s voice; it had been submerged in all the babble. Where was Tess? He couldn’t hear her anymore.

The lights were bright, annoying.
Leave me alone
, he thought.
I’m trying to die.

Then the glare got brighter, and everything went white.

Epilogue

A
TAP CAME
on the door to Max’s hospital room. Dave Finley ducked his head in, holding flowers.

“Can I come in?”

Max nodded. He’d been expecting it. Dave had kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the tabloids. The big story was about the crazy woman who’d tried to kill Max. The idea that she was still at large made people in Hollywood nervous. Did she have it in for just Max, or was she after celebrities in general?

Shaun Barron had led the Yavapai sheriff’s car on a five-mile chase before she’d ditched the car in a field and escaped. They had searched everywhere, but she was gone.

Vanished.

Max hoped she’d died somewhere of one of her wounds. But he doubted it. They would have found her body.

And here Dave was, the Judas goat, holding a bunch of giant lilies from Trader Joe’s. They’d already left rust-colored spots on his shirt.

Max would be released soon. Although he’d lost a lot of blood and needed a transfusion, he’d been lucky. The bullet had gone into the muscle just to the left of his stomach, a through-and-through shot. If it had been a half inch the other way, it would have been another story. As it was, he’d been in terrible pain and in and out of consciousness the first couple of days. They’d made him walk too—unbearable.

“Jesus, buddy, you look bad,” Dave said, standing about five feet away. “You lost a lot of weight.”

“A week in the hospital will do that to you,” Max said, wincing. His muscles hurt like a son of a bitch. His voice was weak. He’d heard someone on some tabloid TV show comment that Max was a “shadow of his former self.” Which was easy to see from the photos that had cropped up all over. Max in a backless gown, battered, bruised, sallow, and thin. One of them had caught him shuffling along with the rolling IV pole.

He didn’t even look like Max Conroy anymore.

Detective Tess McCrae had been the one to tell him that Gordon White Eagle had committed suicide. Max didn’t know how to react to this, so he didn’t react at all.

To be honest, he didn’t care.

Arrests had been made and bond paid. The wealthy didn’t sit in jail like everybody else. A frightened woman told her story to the tabloids, citing Max as the hero who had saved her daughter and herself.

Max’s life had been turned upside down, but he was heartened to know that Talia’s life had been turned upside down too. And Jerry’s. Instead of making millions on his estate, they were paying lawyers just to keep them out of jail.

But if Max had won, he didn’t know exactly what the prize was. But he
was
improving. The doctor told him he would suffer no permanent ill effects from the gunshot wound.

“Hey.” Dave was standing over him. “You got a vase, so I can put these in water?”

“Just leave them on the counter over there.”

Dave laid them down and stared out the window. “Hey, man, I’m sorry about what happened. That was some really bad stuff.”

Max said nothing.

Dave came over to the bed and stared down at Max. “It’s unbelievable, what that woman—”

“Dave, don’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“I know.”

Dave stiffened. A muscle in his jaw moved.

Max felt some satisfaction at Dave’s discomfort. Although, of course, it was nowhere near the discomfort he felt all the time now.

Dave said, “You know what, man? I had nothing to do with what happened on the soundstage. I was gone. You can ask anybody.”

“You set me up.”

Dave’s eyes got hard, bright. His face turned red. “What did you expect? You say ‘you know.’ Well,
I
know too. I know about you and Karen. I saw you—you and my wife screwing your brains out! You think I didn’t have a
right
?”

Max said nothing.

“Look, I wanted to get back at you, I’ll admit that. But I didn’t expect for them to try and kill you! No way would I be a part of something like that. Sure, I’d hurt you. I’d screw you up if I could. After what you did? You bet I would. They used me. And if you think about it, all I did was drive out and pretend I was you. We used to do that all the time.”

“You knew what they were going to do.”

“No, bud. I swear. I swear to God. I thought they were gonna screw you over, maybe. Get you beat up or something. But I never thought they’d kill the golden—”

“Goose,” Max finished for him.

“I swear. I’m looking you in the eye. I swear.”

Max sighed. He didn’t have the energy. And Dave could see it, because he came forward, up close to the bed, and peered down at him. “You’re my
best friend
,” he said. “I admit I hated you for what you did. Hated you. I’ve resented you ever since it happened. But I wouldn’t do something like that.”

Let it go
, Max thought.
It doesn’t matter anyway.
“I’m sorry about Karen. She and I both are. She loves you—it was just something that happened. It doesn’t mean anything.”

It doesn’t mean anything.
In his world, the person he used to be, it
didn’t
mean anything. But now he knew what pain he’d caused. Dave hated him. He hated Max so much he’d conspired with Jerry Gold and Gordon White Eagle and Talia L’Apel to kill him.

When Dave walked out, he nearly ran into Tess McCrae, who was coming in with flowers of her own.

From where Max was sitting, the view had just gotten a whole hell of a lot better.

February—Los Angeles, California

J
UDITH
G
OLDMAN WAS
touching up her makeup in the bathroom of Shabu Shabu when the door opened. For one moment, Judith thought it was a man behind her, dressed to the nines in a black tux. But no, it was a woman. Maybe one of the actresses who would be at the Oscars tonight—there were always one or two who liked to dress up like men. This one wore the tux like a second skin. Her hair was cut close to her skull, and she wore no makeup at all. Judith dabbed at her eyelashes with mascara, trying to scrutinize the woman without appearing to look at her.

The woman was fooling with her cummerbund. It had come undone, and although the woman appeared to be lean and athletic, there was a bulge there. A
pregnant
actress, maybe, Judith thought.
Hollywood.

She glanced in the mirror and saw the woman in the tux looking directly into her eyes.

A goose walked over her grave.

As the woman stared into the mirror at her, Judith first felt uncomfortable, then nervous, then downright spooked. The woman held her eyes until Judith looked away.

For a moment, Judith caught a whiff of something rank, as if a wild animal had somehow gotten in here. Her imagination, of course. But the fear she felt when those feral eyes caught hers in the mirror—that was the word: feral. Judith started putting her makeup back into her cosmetic case,
throwing
the stuff in, her hands fumbling with the zipper, until she gave up and jammed the whole thing into her Fendi bag.

She mumbled an excuse for taking up room in front of the mirror, just aiming for the door to get
out
. The woman in the tux shot her cuffs and just looked at her, and suddenly Judith felt ridiculous.

It was only a woman in a tux, for God’s sake.

M
AX AND
T
ESS
walked on the beach in Puerto Vallarta. It was just before dusk, and the sun looked like a blood orange melding with the water. Max was having a hard time regaining the weight he’d lost from his time in the hospital—he knew he looked like a skinny beach bum. He’d grown his hair long. Tess told him she liked his beard.

He’d just met her at the airport.

This was their first date. Neither of them knew where this was going.

It was still hard for Max to believe that Gordon White Eagle had committed suicide. The story had been fodder for the news outlets and celebrity sites. Psychiatrists and psychologists were interviewed ad nauseam, explaining that there was a grandiose type of personality that, when faced with the hard cold reality of prison or an end to fame or fortune, chose suicide. Apparently, it was a common solution for egomaniacal sociopaths.

And there was Gordon White Eagle’s life, neatly tied up in a bow.

Talia had sued him for divorce. Since the moment she’d been picked up by the DPS outside the Sonic Drive-In across the freeway from the outlet mall—she’d been waiting for a taxi to come get her—Talia had been uncooperative with the police. She’d canceled the baby from Africa, moved in with Jerry briefly, then moved back out the following week. Jerry had retained one of the best defense lawyers in LA—which was saying something. He was charged with several counts, running the gamut from embezzlement, to conspiracy to commit murder, to accessory to murder. Jerry swore he had been framed, and his lawyer had asserted to Max that Jerry would not spend one day in prison. Max believed him.

It looked like Talia would soon be charged with conspiracy to commit murder as well. Her lawyer was not as good as Jerry’s, but they played golf together.

Since Talia and Jerry wouldn’t be getting their hands on Max’s estate, Max had enough money to buy the one thing he desired most, the best
divorce
lawyer in LA. Scratch that: the best divorce lawyer in the world.

Max had been let out of his contract for the three remaining
V.A.M.Pyre
films. The young up-and-coming heartthrob, Dylan Harris, had been signed in Max’s place.

He hadn’t fought the studio. The only thing he really felt was relief. If he was going to continue on as an actor, he didn’t want to be hamstrung by a part like Starker in
V.A.M.Pyre
.

Max
had
talked about his career with his psychotherapist, though. The psychotherapist, like his lawyer, was the best money could buy, and Max needed the best to untangle the snarl of strange thoughts, hallucinations, and night terrors Gordon White Eagle had planted in his mind.

“Look,” Tess said. “The Oscars.” She led him to an open beach bar and they took a couple of stools where they could see the television set.

Max glanced at the television set, but he felt like a bystander. At one time in his life, acting had been challenging and enjoyable. He had eaten, drank, and slept acting. And then it had morphed into celebrity, which had siphoned off the good parts of being an actor and left only the bad.

He’d loved acting.

Screenplays still managed to make their way to his door. Recently, Max had found himself thinking how he would play a certain scene, how he would develop a character that interested him. He was through with vampires. But there were some roles he found himself excited to contemplate. The kinds of roles that could get him nominated for an Oscar.

Max ignored the drinks, the beer, the parasols and olives, the smell of alcohol on the patrons’ breaths.

If he even considered drinking alcohol, if he considered taking the meds he used to take, he would feel the ripping inside his gut.