It All Began in Monte Carlo (33 page)

He gave her back the photographs, looked into her small predatory eyes, looked so hard he felt her recoil.
“You cheap bitch,”
he said. His low voice was filled with so much hate and menace, Kitty flinched.

“But don't you see,” she cried. “It's
me
they're blackmailing. It's
me
in those photos, my face is
everywhere
. You have
ruined
me, Eddie Johanssen. I will be all over the tabloids and no one will ever want to know me again, I won't be able to go anywhere. You are destroying me.” She reached beseechingly for his hand but he pulled away. “Eddie, oh
Eddie,
I was only making love to you, doing what you asked. You wanted the collar, you wanted me to whip you, you wanted the handcuffs . . . It was all
you
. I only did as you asked because I was a woman falling madly in love. Don't you see, Eddie, they are asking
me
for two million euros and I don't have it. If I don't pay, I am ruined. And maybe worse . . .”

She left the threat hanging in the air, watching to see how her ploy was going down with him. It had been Jimmy's idea to use
her
face, to say it was
she
who was being blackmailed, that Eddie was not the primary target, so she would never be thought of as the blackmailer.

“Someone wanted to get me,” she whispered. “And now they have. And I only did it for love—and for the wonderful sex. Oh you are sooo sexy Eddie,
so
great. You are
perfect
. Can't you see how much I
love
you. How much I
want
you. How I
need
you? Eddie, oh Eddie, you cannot
betray
me. I'm a helpless woman whose life will be destroyed if you don't help me.”

“And if I do?” Eddie's voice had that icy calmness again that got Kitty nervous.

“Then they'll give me the videos, they'll go away, leave us alone.”

“And if I don't?”

Kitty slumped back in her chair, regarding him sadly. “Then I'm afraid we are both ruined, Eddie. You
and
me. I know you're in trouble with your divorce, and the custody of your children. It's such a pity. But you did what you did, you made love to me and someone took a video, and now we are there for everybody to see.”

She slid the photos back in the envelope along with the note, licked the flap, sealed the envelope, then pushed it across the small table at him.

“I cannot bear any more right now,” she said in that small teary voice. “I'm a woman who has been put in a terrible compromising position. And
you,
Eddie, put me there. Only
you
can get me out of it now. Please, do not let me down. Never betray me, Eddie.
Never.
”

Collecting her bag, Kitty got unsteadily to her feet. Eddie did not get up.

“And if I do ‘betray' you, and don't pay, Kitty. What then?”

“Then they'll kill us both,” she said simply. And with that she turned and walked out.

 

 

Back in his room, Eddie spread the incriminating photos on the desk. There was no doubt it was him, his face was lit as clearly as if he were making a movie, which unwittingly, he had. And so was Kitty's. Her unfortunate teeth stuck out like the rat she had been named for, her neck was as wide as her face and her small eyes were pinched in a grimace of pretend ecstasy.

But how did he know it was pretend? Perhaps he had really gotten so drunk he had fucked her and couldn't remember. Dear God, he had never been that kind of man; he loved women, loved making love, but not this . . . this
obscene
affair with the S and M collar and her wielding a vibrator. He gave silent thanks to the fact that in order to make love to a woman he had never been reduced to having her use a vibrator to get off. This woman was sick, she was crazy and she was so brashly unattractive to him, to everything he knew and treasured about women, their bodies, their love, their ability to make wonderful love, he knew he could never have been a knowing participant in this fraud. He had been duped, set up, ready for a blackmail attempt.

The phone rang. Automatically, he answered. It was Kitty. “I just wanted you to remember that night. I want you to know, darling Eddie,
you
are the only man who could make me come like that. The
only one in a very long time. You can see the truth in those pictures. You were wonderful and I can't live without you . . . You must help me Eddie, you cannot betray me . . .”

He slammed down the phone, threw it across the room. Rage danced before his eyes, blackening the scene, his life . . . the cheap bitch had him by the balls, literally. For the first time in his life he was feeling a rage so blind he could have killed, killed to protect his children, his wife, his friends, his way of life . . .

He went out and stood on the terrace in the dark. He had never felt more alone in his life. Gradually, the blackness of the rage left him. His hands stopped shaking. He began to think more logically. He could not allow himself to become insane with anger because of this terrible woman. He must control himself. Figure out exactly what had happened. Then figure out what to do. He thought about calling his lawyer—but with what story? How was he to explain the photos that he had no knowledge of?

He went back into the room, poured himself a vodka. Drank it neat. He sat on the sofa, eyes closed, and willed his thoughts back to that night.

He saw himself entering the bar, the flaming redhead he knew as Kitty Ratte was smiling at him, her tiny eyes squeezed into slits, beckoning him over, asking him to join her in a drink, she had so much to tell him, about Sunny. Of course she had used Sunny as the hook. Kitty wasn't so dumb after all. He remembered that clearly now. He remembered her ordering him a second drink though he had not even finished the first, her shoving it toward him, saying drink this you will feel better . . . and then him thinking he must have had too much; feeling strange, elated yet weak . . .

Of course,
now
he remembered. She said he must be hungry, said she made the best Swedish meatballs in Monte Carlo, and since he was Swedish she would cook for him, they would be the best he had ever eaten.

They'd walked out of the bar together, her arm was around his
waist. Oh God, they must have looked exactly like a pair of lovers on their way to a rendezvous. He wondered who had seen them, who had noticed?
Of course
: the silver-haired barman. Eddie had caught his skeptical glance. The barman had known something was going on . . . and Eddie would bet he also knew all about Kitty, who she was, what she was. She must be well-known in hotel bars around town.

Kitty had driven him to her house, she had eased him onto a sofa, put his feet up, a cushion behind his head, turned on all the lights until he protested it was like a film set . . . and of course that was exactly what it was. He saw it all now, every overhead light beaming into his eyes, the lamps lit, the awful Eurovision music; the way she arranged him so precisely on the sofa, obviously facing the video camera; her bringing him another drink, to make him feel better, and then her standing there, posing sexily, her cellulite thighs wobbling as she came toward him with a single meatball, on what seemed now to have been an enormous white plate. A single meatball that must have contained the final drug; the date-rape one that put him out of reality and erased his memory . . .

Whatever happened after that was documented in the photos in front of him. Looking at them Eddie thanked God he could not remember.

He got up, paced again to the terrace outside his window, thought again about calling his lawyer, about calling his wife, trying to explain. About calling Kitty telling her what a supreme cheap bitch of a lying whore she was. But what he really needed right now was a friend. He had plenty, around the world, but there was no one here, in Monte Carlo, who would understand. Except perhaps the one woman he had hurried back to Monte Carlo to see. It wasn't Sunny Alvarez, she was beyond his reach. It was the woman he had spent a calm relaxing pleasant day with and who had called him her friend.

He checked his watch. Ten-thirty. Was that too late to call? He paced some more, thinking about it, thinking about what to say,
how to explain. Surely it was not too late to call a friend, someone he could pour his heart out to, who could bring some sanity to this terrible situation; someone who might understand because her very innocence would be a kind of protection.

 

 

Pru was eating an apple. At least she was about to eat it but looking at it she thought it was almost too beautiful to bite into and ruin. Red on one side, green on the other, exactly like Snow White's. She wondered if Eve's apple had also been like that.

Since the delicious lobster fettuccini lunch she had been really careful about whatever entered her mouth. As well as careful about whatever entered her thoughts, because she had to admit, she had thought about Eddie quite often.
Too
often, she decided, taking a bite out of the apple and settling back against the pillows.

Tesoro stretched full length next to her, front paws touching her arm, back legs full out. The dog looked like one of those pajama holders you bought little girls for a gift. Unzip its tummy and put your sleepover jammies inside. Pru smiled, remembering when she had done that. Did kids still do that nowadays? In this era of electronic games and text messages and Twitter and anything else that distracted the mind from the lovely everyday things. Like a beautiful apple and a dear little dog, who belonged to her friend Sunny.

And that was another problem. Pru had spoken to Allie yesterday, and again today. Allie had not heard from Sunny. Not a single word. She had tried calling her cell phone, texting, e-mailing. Nothing, and now Allie was worried. Especially since she had also called
Maha at the hotel only to be informed that Madame Mondragon had departed and there was no forwarding address. They had given her a cell phone contact number however.

“But when I called,” Allie had told Pru, “that number had been disconnected. Turned out it was one of those throwaway phones, you know the kind you buy for twenty-nine bucks, the kind used by people who don't want to be traced, like erring husbands, or hookers.”

Pru said amazed, “I'm sure Maha wasn't a hooker.”

“Of course she wasn't,” Allie agreed. “Maha was a lady. She would never do anything Kitty Rattish.”

“Kitty Ratte?” Pru was getting an eye-opener.

“Well, what else could that woman be but a hooker, as well as a bitch.” Allie thought for a moment then added, “I could think of a better word to describe her but I am too much of a lady to use it. Unless provoked, of course.”

Pru laughed. She knew the word Allie meant. She had never used it in her entire life, though she had read it in books. And she surely knew its meaning.

“I'll see if I can find out where Maha went,” she promised, but of course there was no further information at the hotel, and now Sunny was missing and Allie was afraid to call Mac because Sunny had wanted to keep her trip to Mumbai a secret, and surprise him with her new role in life. Neither Pru nor Allie wanted to ruin that for her, so they'd decided to give it one more day and if Sunny did not get in touch, then they would have to tell Mac.

“He's still in Prague,” Allie told Pru. “I have his number. Of course Ron would have been with him if he hadn't fallen off the horse and broken his damn leg.” She said Ron was doing okay and that she would fly back the next morning and together she and Pru would work things out.

Then, a couple of hours later, Ron had phoned. “Hey, Pru, you're never gonna believe this,” he said, in a tone that was somewhere
between stunned surprise and a laugh. “But Allie fell off her horse and broke her leg.”

“The same one as yours?” Pru found herself asking, stunned.

“No. Mine's left, hers is right. Now we're both in casts and on crutches. Well, she will be when they let her out of the hospital bed. Godamit, we can limp along together, holding hands, good foot forward.”

“I like that image,” Pru said, grinning, though she felt terrible for Allie.

Anyhow, that had left her here, all alone in a hotel suite in Monte Carlo, except for Sunny's Chihuahua, who she was getting way too fond of to want to give back. Plus a head full of dreams of a handsome man with whom she had shared a delicious lunch in a sunfilled South of France piazza, and who had kissed her and called her his friend. She was a lucky woman, if a worried one.

She lay back in bed, blond head against the pillows, TV on without the sound, watching a French movie with Allie in a small role, called
Les Étrangers sur la Plage
.

Pru had almost forgotten she was now a blonde, she'd become used to it very quickly. And used to not having a double chin; used to clothes sliding over her body more easily. She surely wasn't thin but she had lost that awful bulk for which the ex-who-shall-be-nameless because she couldn't stand his name, was entirely responsible. Life dealt you things sometimes, jabs of pain, sorrow, defeat that sometimes women, and perhaps men too, did not know how to cope with. Dealing with deceit was hard.

Was that pain over now? Pru certainly hoped so. More, she believed it. The man did not deserve even a thought from her newly blond head, and the woman he had taken up with could have him. Let
her
pay for his new Jag, or even the red Porsche with the vanity plates, the Guccis on his feet, the Viagra he needed, the American Express platinum card with which he had taken her out to dinner. Paid for by Pru of course. No more, though.

She turned up the sound on the TV, enjoying hearing Allie speaking French so deliciously, with her slight American accent, that Pru was sure every man in France must be in love with her.

And then the phone rang.