Wages of Sin (28 page)

Remy Lelourie used an advertising flyer as a fan to blow a wind on her face. “Stop your complainin', Freddy,” she said. “At least we'll only be dancing through the first tune. The other couples are going to have to keep on flapping until they all either quit or drop dead of heart attacks.”

As if on cue, the radio announcer told the spectators on hand, and those listening in their homes, that one time a dance marathon in Chicago had lasted one hundred and nineteen days. “There you go,” Remy said. “I give them a day and these kids'll be dragging their poor, aching feet across a floor that's going to feel like it's coated with glue.”

Freddy blew a snort out of his handsome Latin nose. “They're all idiots, and just because they're idiots doesn't mean we got to be idiots along with them.”

In a way, Remy knew how he felt. She didn't know why she'd agreed to do this; she couldn't remember agreeing to it. The studio must have agreed for her.

She'd never minded this kind of thing before, though; it came with the fur coats and diamond jewelry and her name in lights on the marquee and above the title. Only she didn't want to be here today. She wanted to go back to the Conti Street house, to the
garçon-nière,
and wait for Day to come home. Lately, it seemed that her life was just an interlude between when she'd last seen him and when she would see him again.

Still, it was a bright, beautiful morning, and in spite of missing her lover and not really wanting to be here, she felt happy. They'd decorated the jigsaw balusters of the dancing platform with bunting in the Mardi Gras colors of yellow, green, and purple, and with balloons that bobbed in a gentle breeze that was scented with popcorn and cotton candy.

The band looked jazzy, too, in their white silk shirts and white hats. Their instruments caught and bounced the sunlight like mirrors. The radio announcer was telling the crowd and his listeners at home that they would probably go through a dozen bands before the dance marathon was over.

Waitresses in short black skirts and starched white aprons were passing out free paper cups of Zip Cola. The soda pop company had erected a huge billboard next to the bandstand with a ten-times-life-size image of Remy herself jigging the Charleston on top of a piano, a bottle of Zip in her hand and what was surely one of her sillier smiles on her face. And above her bobbed head in bright red script: “Put a little Zip into your life.”

“So how much did they pay you to do that testimonial?” Freddy asked.

Remy felt her face go hot because he'd caught her looking at the billboard. He probably thought she'd been admiring herself.

As it happened, they'd paid her five thousand dollars, but if she told him he'd fall into a jealous funk. He was only getting five hundred dollars a week to her ten thousand for making
Cutlass,
and he groused about it constantly. Freddy had never been able to live with the Hollywood axiom that there was always somebody out there better looking, richer, or more famous than you were.

“A gentleman never talks about money, Freddy. It's vulgar.”

“Who says I'm a gentleman?”

“You're an actor. Pretend.”

Freddy had always been able to laugh at himself and he did so now. He threw back his head and the bright sunlight etched the crow's-feet deeper into the edges of his eyes and exposed the creping skin beneath his chin, and she felt a sudden pity for him. And fear for herself. Their business was all about looks and Freddy was losing his, and every time he grew a year older, so did she.

His laughter cut off abruptly, but not because he'd caught her staring at him. His gaze had focused on something behind her, and he said, “Hey, I'll be right back. I got to go see a man about a dog.”

“Ten minutes,” the radio announcer said. “Ten minutes and Miss Remy Lelourie is goin' to be showin' y'all how they do the shimmy out there in Hollywood.”

The reporters, picking up their own cue, all turned their cameras her way, and dozens of shutters snapped in volleys, sounding like a fieldful of crickets.

Garrison Hughes of
The Movies
caught Remy's eye and wagged his flash lamp at her in a sardonic greeting. She smiled and waved back and blew him a kiss, playing the part of the movie star while he took his shot. She figured it was the least she could do for the poor man after Day had broken first his camera and then his wooden leg.

It was growing hotter, and she thought about going to stand under the shade of the billboard, but then she saw that Freddy was there, talking to a shaggy-haired man who was all wrapped up in a coat in this heat. The man was selling Freddy something, all right, but it wasn't any dog.

Freddy and his friend weren't the only ones enjoying the shade provided by the giant billboard. Peter Kohl lounged with one hand braced up against one of the board's supporting struts, looking very much the moving picture director in his jodhpurs and tall boots and open-necked shirt. The man he was facing looked like he'd just rolled out of a skid row dive: with his cheap, wrinkled suit, his big, knobby bald head and round, thick shoulders, and his long gorillalike arms. Far from being a bum, though, Max Leeland was the head of Bright Lights Studios, and one of the richest and most powerful men in Hollywood.

At the moment, the studio boss and his director were arguing about something, and from the way Max kept throwing black scowls in her direction, she didn't need to strain her pretty little movie star head to guess that the something was her.

Max Leeland had ridden over here to City Park with her earlier this morning, in the studio's chauffeured car. The studio boss was still trying to sweet-talk her into accepting his contract, but she could tell all that effort to be nice was starting to wear on him. When she'd told him for the umpteenth time that she was still thinking it over, the black hairs that sprouted from his ears had started to quiver.

Now he punctuated whatever he was saying to Peter by thumping the director in the chest with a stiff finger and stalking off. Peter stared after the man a moment, then turned, crossing the expanse of green lawn that surrounded the bandstand, threading through the throng of spectators and expectant dancers, and heading her way.

“Five minutes,” the radio announcer's voice crackled over the microphone. “And once she starts, my friends, she won't end until only one lucky couple is left alive and standing.”

“Don't you even start, Peter.”

The director brushed his star's cheek with a phantom kiss. “You're breaking my heart over this, Remy…And a good morning to you, too, by the way.”

“I don't really break hearts,” she said. “It is all only an illusion. An optical effect.”

She had looked away from him, but she could still feel him staring at her profile. “It always astonishes me,” he said, “how you continually underestimate the amount of wreckage you are capable of leaving in your wake.”

“It's my fame and fortune to walk away from if I want to.”

“It isn't only your fortune, and you know it. If you don't want to give up your cop, then bring him back out to California with you.”

Remy had to smile at the idea of her tough, swaggering lover who was addicted to risk, getting his kicks from such tepid things as champagne baths and tango dancing and petting parties in the purple dawn.

Peter curled his fingers under her chin and turned her head around so that she was facing him and looking him in the eyes. “I want you to listen to me very carefully, Remy darling. Listen and believe: Max Leeland is not going to take no for an answer.”

She knew he was serious and she believed him. She'd heard the rumors about Max Leeland being “connected,” and that Bright Lights Studios got a lot of the financing for its movies by laundering money for the Chicago Mafia.

She laughed, though, and pulled away from his touch. “Lord, Peter, you sounded like you were reading those lines off a title card.” She twirled a mock mustache and growled in a fake German accent. “I vill not take no for an answer.”

His head came up and his pointed beard jutted forward, but she caught the burn of pain in his eyes, and she was suddenly sorry for having teased him just because he cared for her.

“Peter…” She lifted her hand to touch him, but he stepped out of her reach.

“Men don't fall out of love with you once they've had you and lost you, Remy,” he said. “And I'm no exception.”

He turned and walked away from her, and she watched him go around to the other side of the bandstand. He stood there a moment, as if undecided about where to go next, but then she realized he'd only been waiting there for the dark, good-looking man in natty plus fours and a polo sweater to join him.

The man was Max Leeland's baby brother, Eli. Eli Leeland served as the casting director for most of Bright Lights's pictures and he was notorious throughout Hollywood for holding auditions for both male and female roles on the blue velvet couch in his office. She wondered what he was doing here in New Orleans, though, since he rarely came to a set once the picture went into production.

Eli seemed to have picked up in the argument with the director where his brother had left off, pointing a finger in Peter's face this time, instead of poking him in the chest with it. Peter listened for a moment, his eyes on the ground, and then he looked around at her, and even from this distance—because she knew him so well—she could see the desperation on his face.

It isn't only your fortune
…Lord, she must have seemed particularly dense a moment ago, but she understood it all now. Bright Lights had made Peter Kohl personally responsible for getting her signature on that contract, and if she knew the Leeland brothers, they hadn't asked him nicely.

Peter stood motionless now, looking at her across the empty dance floor, then he wrapped his hands around his neck, and stuck out his tongue and bulged his eyes in the way of a man dangling on the end of the hangman's rope. She laughed at his antics, but she also felt the burn of tears in her eyes.

Oh, Peter
…She didn't love him anymore in the way that she had when she was twenty-two, but she still cared for him deeply. In a way he was the father she'd never had, and she owed him, owed him plenty.

For he had rescued her at a time in her life when she'd badly needed rescuing, and he'd given her back something she hadn't even known she'd lost—her courage and her self-respect.

A movie star is rarely left alone.
Cutlass
's lead cameraman, Jeremy Doyle, had been hovering in the background while she talked to Peter, and he now came up beside her. She turned to him, blinking to keep the tears that threatened from spilling over.

“I'm sorry, Jere. Did you need me for something?”

The cameraman's ruined face rarely showed emotion, but his gaze was soft with concern as he looked her over. “Are you all right?”

She forced a smile. “I'm only tired is all. Of being Remy Lelourie…Oh, Lord, that must've sounded terribly conceited.” She brushed at her cheeks. The tears had fallen after all, and they were ruining her makeup.

“It sounded honest,” he said. “Which is a rare thing in our world.”

She looked up at him, and this time her smile was real. “You're a sweet man, Jere.”

He smiled back at her, the scars creasing and buckling like stiff paper. “That's me. Sweet…Still, I'm going to need you to be Remy Lelourie for just a little longer this morning. The studio's rapacious publicity machine needs stills of this little shindig we're having. So I'll be over there,” he said, pointing at the Zip Cola billboard, “and while you and Freddy are dancing, I want you to look my way and do that little baby doll pouty thing you do with your bee-stung lips.”

“Baby doll pouty thing? Oh, God…” Remy said, and laughed.

“One minute till showtime,” the radio announcer said.

Alfredo Ramon took her hand, and they walked out into the middle of the platform—a Hollywood dream come true. He in a white tie and top hat, and she in a drop-waisted flapper dress decorated with hundreds of pearls, crystal beads, and tiny mirrors.

The crowd of spectators and contestants fell into an expectant hush that was disturbed only by the snapping shutters of dozens of cameras. “Hey, Remy!” someone shouted, and then they all were chanting her name, “Re-my, Re-my, Re-my Le-lourie.”

She turned in a circle, smiling, laughing, waving, feeding off them. She was being Remy Lelourie and loving it now. Touched by the magic.

Johnny Dedroit put his trumpet to his lips and began to belt out “Runnin' Wild,” and Freddy swung her out across the dance floor in a frantic shimmy.

They danced alone in the middle of the platform, while the crowd screamed and whistled and threw flowers at them, and old Mardi Gras beads.

Runnin' wild, lost control

Runnin' wild, mighty bold

Feelin' gay, reckless too
…

The master of ceremonies fired a pistol into the air and the contestants poured onto the platform. The band segued into “Heebie Jeebies,” and the flappers and their sheiks shimmied and shook until the wooden floor began to quake beneath their feet.

Remy and Freddy had stopped dancing to watch them, laughing together. He still had her by the hand and his palm was icy wet with sweat, his whole body jittering with a heroin high. She could feel the pulse in her own palm beating against his flesh, and then from out of nowhere she thought of the man who called himself Romeo, and it struck her that he could be out there now, watching her. The man who had written to her in human blood.

She felt vulnerable suddenly, with the dancers jostling her and pressing against her, and just then—as if her fears had conjured the threat into a reality—a hand reached out and snatched one of the tiny mirrors off her dress.

She turned toward Freddy, to tell him that he had to get her off the floor.

Her mouth opened on his name, just as an explosion ripped through the bandstand in a billowing cloud of smoke, shredding the bunting and popping the balloons. A string of smaller explosions followed, rat-tat-a-tatting through the panicking crowd. The dancers on the platform simultaneously all had the same thought—to get off.

Freddy kept hold of her hand as they were buffeted and pushed. He dragged her toward one of the gaps in the balustrade, but then a shrieking girl in a red-fringed dress knocked Remy to her knees, tearing her loose from Freddy's grasp. A man kicked her in the side, and she would have been trampled if another man hadn't grabbed her arm and hauled her back to her feet.