Star Island (33 page)

Skink went to a window and looked down with despair at the crowded shore and the crowded water. “It’s the second day of spring,” he said in a dead voice.

Then he walked into the nearest closet and shut the door behind him.

Ann knocked gently. “Don’t worry. We’re getting out of here.”

She took a four-minute shower, brushed her teeth, pulled her hair into a ponytail, and put on a blouse and slacks. When she came out of the bathroom, Skink was on the balcony, hurling Bartlett pears and Gouda wedges from the gift basket. He had a strong arm, and it appeared that he beaned a volleyball player on the beach twelve stories below. A small crowd was clustered around the Speedo-clad victim while one onlooker pointed upward at the facade of the hotel, in the direction of Ann’s room. She tugged Skink inside and moments later they were in the service elevator, a form of covert egress with which Ann was familiar in her role as Cherry Pye.

Once on the street, they merged, more or less, into the throngs of tourists. It could not be said that Skink blended in, but he wasn’t the only outrageous figure attracting notice. Although past its heyday, South Beach remained a sun-soaked runway for preening grotesques and needy narcissists.

Ann, on the other hand, seemed to be the only one rolling a travel bag. She grabbed Skink’s arm and said, “This isn’t going to work.”

“I’ll be heading south, though not until I have a word with Mr. Abbott.”

“Oh, forget about him.”

“Too late,” Skink said.

“He didn’t hurt me.”

“Did he—”

“No, captain. I swear.”

“Nonetheless.”

Ann said, “What are you going to do to a guy like that? He’s already pathetic.”

“In a herd, his sort would be culled.”

“For heaven’s sake.”

At that moment, the dead rabbit came unhitched from Skink’s belt loop and dropped to the sidewalk between his shoes.

“Damn,” he said, stooping to retrieve it.

Ann yanked sharply on his coat. “Don’t. I’m begging you.”

He paused and took note of the surroundings. The air smelled
heavily of corned beef because they were standing in front of a busy deli, bursts of customers going in and out the door. A small girl who’d spied the furry brown form on the ground was reaching down to stroke it when she was jerked clear by her mother.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Ann whispered anxiously to Skink.

“But it’s sinful—”

“To waste good meat. Yeah, I get that.” She clamped onto one of his thick wrists and led him away. After a few blocks his gait slowed and his breathing came in gulps. They turned up an alley, where he sat down clutching his head.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I need a still, dark place.”

“Or?”

“Bedlam. Bloodletting. Who can say?”

“Just ’cause I made you lose the bunny?”

“Once all this was mangrove swamp.” Skink made a weary sweeping motion with one arm. “Annie, there was no Miami Beach—they dredged up all the sand from the ocean bottom. It’s entirely unnatural, an obscene facade. And every few years they’ve gotta dump more sand, thousands of tons, or else the whole goddamn place would disappear into the sea.”

He was whirlybirding his braids, the shotgun shells clicking like dice.

“I’m far out of my element,” he added.

“Thanks for the insight.” Ann sat down in front of him and with a fingertip lifted his unshaven chin. “Where’s your phone, captain?”

Absently he patted the trench coat. “It’s here somewhere.”

When the call came, Marcus Mink was in a meeting with an actress who had recently changed her name to Tessa Cloudfeather in hopes of landing the plum role of Sacagawea in an upcoming biopic about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Marcus Mink faced the sad task of informing his lissome young client that she’d lost
the part to a genuine Native American, and that she should probably go back to being Tessa Grunwald, as casting calls for Indian maidens were relatively few and far between. Tessa had absorbed the news stoically; a quick puke, two rails of blow and she was solid. Marcus Mink told her she had a world-class attitude—good things were bound to happen.

Then he excused himself to take the call from Ann DeLusia, one of his low-maintenance favorites, whom he hadn’t heard from in months.

“How’s our gorgeous pop stunt double?” he asked.

“Tapped out. I just spent three days being held prisoner by a paparazzo. What else have you got for me?”

“You mean in the way of work?”

“No, Marcus, in the way of lasagna recipes. Don’t be a schmuck.”

“Girl, I haven’t heard that sweet voice in ages.”

Ann said, “Gosh, was
I
supposed to call
you?
I thought it was the other way around—the agents call the clients.”

“Word is, the new album is way lame.
Skantily Klad
with all k’s? I don’t think so.” Marcus Mink had an ironclad policy against getting to the point, unless there was wonderful news to pass along. “Don’t forget to phone me from the road. I want to hear stories.”

“I’m not going on the tour. I’m done being Cherry Pye,” Ann said.

“The Buntermans fired you? They can’t do that!”

“I didn’t get canned, Marcus. I’m quitting.”

“What happened?”

She said, “Never mind. Tell me what’s available.”

Marcus Mink spun in his chair and gazed out the window at a verdant sliver of Westwood Village Memorial Park. The lone celebrity grave that he could see from his desk was that of Don Knotts; only the senior agents got a view of Marilyn’s crypt. Someday Marcus Mink would have one of those offices.

“Sugar, I’m afraid there’s not a whole lot happening,” he said to Ann DeLusia. “Some commercial work, maybe a soap opera. You still speak Spanish, right? It’s brutal out there.”

“No movies?”

“Oh, the usual.” Marcus Mink riffled through some call sheets. “Pert but clueless receptionist. Third hooker on bar stool. Pregnant hitchhiking vampire.”

“Would I have lines?” Ann asked.

“Just a few. The hooker gets torched in a tanning bed, so they’ll want a big scream.”

“I smell a Golden Globe.”

“Look, I know this Cherry gig isn’t megastellar. But it’s steady work, Annie, and you’re pulling down eight bills a week. Most young actors, be honest, they’d ride that train for as long as they could.”

“Which I did,” said Ann. “By the way? Janet bumped me up to a thousand, but I’m bailing anyway.”

“No, no, no!” Marcus Mink grieved for his lost commissions. He wondered what had happened that pushed her to the breaking point. “You mentioned a paparazzo?”

“Just do your damn job,” she snapped, and hung up.

After leaving the mansion they gathered three estates away, beneath a banyan tree on the manicured emerald-green lawn of Julio Iglesias. The Larks had a connection, having represented a friend of a friend of the Latin heartthrob during a routine paternity scandal. Julio’s Star Island mansion was being renovated, but his people sent word that Cherry Pye’s parents could hang out as long as they wished in the backyard, which overlooked Biscayne Bay. The cabana, however, was off-limits.

“I’ve seen that fellow before,” said Janet Bunterman, referring to Abbott, “lurking in the maggot mob.”

“He didn’t look so scary. Mr. Chemo can handle him, no problem,” her husband asserted. “Cherry will do fine.”

The Larks, who met the Buntermans there, took advantage of the outdoor setting by lighting up. They were less worried about Cherry’s photo shoot than about the latest disappearance of Ann DeLusia. The twins weren’t convinced it was an abduction.

“Why would she call him ‘captain’ unless she knew him?” Lucy wondered aloud.

“I thought the same thing,” Janet Bunterman said, “but that’s how she talks to everyone—you know, saucy, unflappable Annie.”

Ned Bunterman’s scornful appraisal: “No way that guy is captain of
anything
. He’s a stone derelict.”

Lila shook her head. “Lucy’s right. The whole thing smells.”

It was crucial to their media strategy that Ann be safely under wraps. The plan was to pay her off and then threaten to sabotage her future career if she ever blabbed. In the twins’ view, an ambitious actress posed a much greater threat than a devious street photographer, who was basically a single-cell organism motivated by greed and/or lust. Ann DeLusia was more complex and unpredictable.

“What did the new kidnapper look like?” Lucy Lark asked.

“Big, dirty, shiny bald head with braids,” Cherry’s father said. “And one eye was screwed up.”

“You’ve never seen him before?”

“I would’ve definitely remembered. His smile was outstanding,” said Janet Bunterman. Realizing how that might have sounded, she added quickly, “The dental work, I mean. For a homeless person? Off the charts.”

Tautly, Ned said, “I didn’t notice his smile. I
did
notice the shotgun.”

Lila took another drag and blew the smoke sideways. As usual, she and her sister were thinking the same thing: Annie could sink the whole damn boat.

The night before, the Larks had stayed up late to polish the draft of Cherry’s future blog entry about her abduction and sordid humiliation at the hands of a demented fan, identity unknown. To improve the story, the twins described the singer’s abductor as tall and hooded, with rippling muscles and a Middle Eastern accent. He carried a camera, and forced her to pose for degrading photographs under threat of death. On the third night, Cherry boldly escaped through a window and found herself alone in a snake-infested
wilderness, possibly the Everglades, where she wandered for hours before collapsing.

I woke up in a Miami hospital—bruised, thirsty, but happy to be alive
, the blog continued, Lucy at the keyboard.
I have no clue how I got there, but I’ll always be grateful to the person who rescued me from that swamp, wherever it was, and also to the doctors and nurses who looked after me
.

As for the vicious dude who kidnapped me and hassled me for all those days and nights, I’ve got, like, one thing to say: You can’t hurt me anymore!

At that point, Lila took over:
As jazzed as I am to be free, I know my nightmare isn’t really over. I wish I could forget some of those things he did to me—and I’m sure there’s other stuff that our Lord and Savior doesn’t want me to remember. I can’t even imagine what that monster plans to do with all the awful pictures he took, but they could totally show up anytime on the Internet
.

So I want to prepare all of you—friends and loyal fans—for the shock. I did what I had to do to save my own life
.

Then Lucy finished it off:
But I refuse to let this coward, like, haunt me. That’s why I’m going ahead full throttle with the big concert tour to promote my hot new CD
, Skantily Klad.
Even though I’m pretty wiped out from the hostage thing, I’m still rehearsing every single day, determined to put on a super-awesome show that you’ll never, ever forget!

Love, hugs, and kisses … CP
.

For the Larks, ghostwriting as an airhead had turned out to be fun. Neither of them doubted that lowly Claude Abbott could be persuaded to shut up and disappear. The specter of being prosecuted and concurrently sued into destitution would be a powerful incentive to cooperate. The twins suspected, however, that Ann DeLusia would not be so easily corralled.

“Let’s say it wasn’t another kidnapping,” Lila said. “Let’s say it was a getaway. Maybe she was friends with the shotgun guy and—”

“She wasn’t escaping from Abbott,” Lucy broke in. “She was escaping from all of us.”

The Buntermans looked muddled and distressed. Ned swatted awkwardly at a bug and wished he were on a plane heading home.
Florida was a callous, uncultured place; it brought out the worst in people. Ann was the last person he would have expected to cut and run.

Fumbling with a tube of French sunblock, Cherry’s mother said, “Annie’s upset because we didn’t tell the police she was in the Suburban when Abbott swiped it. This is understandable.”

The Larks were frowning, although an outsider would have been hard-pressed to notice.

“How do we reach her?” Lila asked.

Janet Bunterman said she had no idea. “She drowned her phone.”

“Suppose she doesn’t call,” Ned Bunterman said.

“That would be bad.” Lucy palmed her iPhone, skimming through e-mails. “Unless she’s dead. Otherwise it’s best to keep an open dialogue.”

Cherry’s mother said she didn’t think the gun-toting vagrant intended to kill Ann. “I really didn’t get that vibe.”

“Me, neither,” Ned Bunterman said. “And Annie didn’t look all that scared.”

“Because she knew the guy. That’s our working theory,” said Lila.

“Which means you should probably expect a call,” Lucy said to Cherry’s parents. “Be prepared to open the checkbook.”

Janet Bunterman sighed in resignation. “So, what would be fair?”

The twins snickered bleakly. Fairness had nothing to do with it. “She can slaughter us, that’s the problem,” said Lila. “Think of what would happen, Annie goes to the cops and spills everything. Sure, we can say she’s disgruntled, bitter, whacked-out, whatever. They’ve still got to investigate—and then the story’s all over the media. We’re talking a Cat 5 shitstorm.”

“Ten thousand dollars. Twenty?” Janet Bunterman scowled at her husband and raised her hands. “Little help, Ned?”

He said, “Maybe we should talk to Maury.”

A sleek hundred-foot yacht idled past, a red-and-white flag fluttering on the stern. A tallish middle-aged couple, dressed in
matching white linens, stood hatless on the upper deck. They were listening to a piece of classical music, which drifted to Star Island on the breeze.

Ned Bunterman saw the lettering painted on the transom and felt a melancholy twinge beneath his breastbone:
Sweet Dreams
was the name of the yacht. It was registered in Copenhagen.

“Start at fifty grand,” suggested Lucy Lark. “See what she says.”

“That’s a lot of money,” Cherry’s mother remarked unhappily.

Lila fired up another cigarette. “It’s a bloody bargain, Janet.”

“All right, then, how high would you go?”