Judith Krantz (30 page)

“Who the hell is Jazz Kilkullen?”

Only one rep, Phoebe Milbank, knew the answer to that question, and she had signed Jazz to a contract before the booklets were mailed.

Phoebe Milbank represented only Mel Botvinick and the car photographer Pete di Constanza. After signing Mel and Pete, Phoebe had deliberately refused all other clients, although dozens of hopefuls came knocking at her door every month, carrying portfolios of their best work.

It was infinitely more important, Phoebe decided firmly, to spend every available second of her time doing an outstanding job with her two major photographers, who together billed over a million dollars a year. Phoebe didn’t believe in the quick buck, although she worshiped the steady one. There was plenty of time to choose, with close evaluation and hardheaded conviction, a third and probably final client after she had steadily boosted Mel and Pete’s prices and multiplied the number of people vying for their work.

Jilly phoned Phoebe to update the final list of people who would receive the birthday booklet. Crafty and ever on the alert when her clients were concerned, Phoebe had heard a note in Jilly’s voice that made her curious enough to drop by Botvinick’s studio to take a look at the booklet before it was mailed. Electrified by what she saw, not taking the time to ask a single question about Jazz, the skinny blond whirlwind had pounced, for she knew that as soon as the booklet was in circulation Jazz would be the target of every rep in the business. By the end of the day, with the help of Mel’s unqualified blessing and his strong recommendation of Phoebe, Jazz had agreed to sign with her.

Phoebe, giddily astonished at her own uncharacteristic impulsiveness, talked her new client into going out to lunch with her the next day to celebrate. Jazz was still working as a Girl Friday until Jilly could replace her, and she insisted that they eat at the little Chinese joint around the corner from the studio, so that she could get back to work quickly.

“You’re pretty cool for a girl who’s going to be awfully rich and famous,” Phoebe probed, looking Jazz over with the avid curiosity of a mail-order bride who has just married a perfect stranger.

“Phoebe, we’re going to work together very closely,” Jazz said tightly. “It’s important that you understand some things about me that aren’t general knowledge. Fame will never be my motivation. My mother was Sylvie Norberg.”

“Oh my God, Jazz, I’m sorry!”

“Thank you, Phoebe.”

“But no one at the studio said …”

“I never told them. It’s an old story and a sad one. There was no need to talk about it.”

“I should have guessed. You have her eyes, her look … you’re so much like …”

“I know.” Jazz closed Phoebe’s rising excitement down by her tone. “I’m very close to my father,” Jazz went on quickly. “I spend most weekends down at our ranch near San Juan Capistrano—the land is important to me, more important than you can realize. I don’t want to lead a life in which I find I don’t have time for my father or the ranch. So if there’s a job that pays a ton of money but takes me away from California for a very long time, turn it down.”

“Just like that?”

“
Faster
than that, Phoebe.”

“What about my possible buyer’s remorse here? My new client doesn’t want to be rich or famous! This could cut into my piece of your action.”

“Change your mind, I’ll understand. And nothing’s been signed yet.”

“No way. I said ‘could,’ not ‘would.’ We’ll work around it. Leave that to me. Is there anything else I should know?”

“Now that you know that being rich and famous aren’t my priorities, what else is there?”

“Men?”

“Nothing important. I’m married to my work.”

“Of course.” Phoebe tossed her banana-yellow
hair and every one of her pointy bones expressed disbelief.

“You’ll see.” Jazz laughed at this improbable creature who had swept in, scooped her up and declared that she could orchestrate a great career for someone about whom she knew nothing. If Phoebe hadn’t been Botvinick’s rep for two years, Jazz would never have agreed to get involved with a rep who was so grandiose in her thinking.

“Listen, Jazz, when will Jilly get a replacement for you?”

“She’s interviewing this afternoon. No reason she shouldn’t find someone right away. It’s a marvelous job.”

“Good, because I have your first assignment.”

“What?”

“Last night I had dinner with a photo editor from
Esquire
. I showed him the booklet—you have a way of digging out and illuminating a woman’s inner sensuality, even if she isn’t a recognized sexpot. Most women can’t tell when or how another woman is sexy—it’s a gift. I’d never noticed how deeply sensual Sharon and Jilly are—Sharon icing a cake was positively
carnal
, and Jilly on the phone—she gets an X-rated expression on her face. So you’re set to photograph two, let’s call them … middle-aged … women for a cover story for
Esquire
—going right straight for their hidden sensuality, the guarded, deep, but
intensely
private and
privately
intense sensuality that people miss in them, but that is brought out by their work. That’s the only angle
Esquire
wants. Sexy middle-aged broads.”

“Who might they be?” Jazz asked. She knew that Phoebe, for all her elaborate stage directions, had to mean Linda Evans and Joan Collins. So this was what a rep did.

“Margaret Thatcher and Nancy Reagan.” Phoebe watched Jazz out of the corner of her eye to catch any surprise.

“Why’d they leave out Mother Teresa?” Jazz asked with unblinking curiosity.

Phoebe gave her an appreciative, tinkling giggle, a mixture of fluff and flint. Jazz was a quick learner. “You’ll do Mother Teresa for the Christmas cover of
Vogue
. She represents the spirit of this year’s ultimate chic, or so they told me over the phone this morning. And since your fashion stuff with Tinka was as sensational as your portraits, they want you for fashion as much as for celebrity portraits.”

“How could they have possibly seen the booklet yet?”

“Conde Nast has an L.A. office.” Phoebe crunched an egg roll with self-satisfaction.

“What else did you do this morning?”

“All in good time,” Phoebe answered. The sixteen-page portfolio for
GQ
, showing twenty-five years of Warren Beatty’s women, hadn’t firmed up yet. She never told a client about a job that wasn’t a sure thing, because they’d blame her if it fell through.

Phoebe had been up all night, feverishly plotting the moves for Jazz’s immediate future. She intended to have Jazz concentrate exclusively on editorial work for the next year. That was the way to make her famous fast. Lucrative advertising contracts would follow the editorial work, but they could wait until next year, when Jazz would be firmly established as the most interesting new celebrity photographer in the business. Tonight, when Phoebe saw Jann Wenner for drinks, she’d clinch the
Rolling Stone
cover shot.

“I suppose you’re a Republican?” she asked Jazz. “Being from Orange County.”

“Why do you ask?” Jazz quirked an eyebrow at Phoebe. What did her politics have to do with anything?

“It’s something you could knock off on a weekend without missing your visit with your father.”

“How so?”

“San Juan Capistrano is just a short drive from San Clemente, isn’t it?
Rolling Stone
wants a portrait of Nixon for the tenth anniversary of Watergate.”

A
fter the Fiesta of September 1990, Jazz’s life at Dazzle grew busier than ever. For a month she was booked so steadily, with each shoot starting so early and lasting so late, that she had been able to go down to the ranch only twice: unsatisfactorily short visits that lasted from Saturday lunch to late afternoon on Sunday, when she had to start back to L.A.

Casey Nelson hadn’t been visible on either of the two Saturday nights. Mike Kilkullen reported that he got up long before sunrise to conduct his business affairs, using the fax machine he’d installed in his room. The two men had been having dinner together at the hacienda almost every weekday night, but when Casey knew that Jazz was expected, he tactfully took himself off so that father and daughter could spend what little time they had without the constant presence of a stranger.

Jazz was feeling city-bound, pushed to the limit and ragged around the edges. The time she usually reserved to spend at the ranch, riding and walking and
sailing, renewing her contact with the land, was essential to balance the taut, breathtaking pace of her work, the pitiless pressure of the clock, the need to stretch and stretch again for each new assignment so that her work never became repetitive or predictable.

Jazz complained to Sis Levy about her workload, but her studio manager answered that the fault lay with Phoebe. The next time Jazz found that she had a minute to spare, toward twilight on a Thursday in late October, she confronted her rep with the overscheduling.

“Land sakes, Miss Jazz, you’re a caution,” Phoebe replied, blinking in amazement. “Here I work my dialing finger to the bone to make sure that you get your choice of all the prize jobs, and what’s my reward? Of course you’re busy. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be doing the job you pay me for. Mel and Pete are perfectly happy, and they work as hard as you do. Incidentally, do you know how many years you’ve been going home to Daddy on the weekends?”

“I haven’t counted,” Jazz flared.

“Well, I have. It’s been eight years. Some people might … just might … say it was—oh—a bit unusual. You’re a big girl now, Jazz.”

“What are you trying to say, Phoebe?”

“Frankly, Jazz, I’ve been concerned about you for some time now. I understood perfectly when we met, but you’re twenty-nine, and you’ve never been seriously involved with a man. Could it be because of your tie to … the ranch?”

“I don’t believe this,” Jazz said incredulously. “You’re trying to meddle in my private life—you?”

“Why not me, Jazz? I know you as well as any woman does, maybe better. We’ve been working together for a long time, and I have your best interests at heart.”

“Why do I suddenly not believe that?”

“Maybe you don’t want to hear what I said.”

“Phoebe, stay the fuck out of my head,” Jazz said in a deadly voice, “and clear every single booking
with me before you accept it. That’s an order, not a request.”

As she slammed out of the office Jazz missed seeing the tiny, vindictive twitch of Phoebe’s lips.

My, my, Phoebe thought, oh my. Ever since Jazz threatened to leave if she repped Gabe, that girl had been getting more and more independent. But someday, someday for sure, that girl would want something badly, and then, if her rep didn’t get it for her, she’d realize where the real power lay.

Things like that had a way of happening, Phoebe decided, in high spirits. They always did when she started to concentrate on them.

Jazz ran up to her studio in a cold fury, sent Sis, Melissa and Toby Roe home early, locked up the studio herself and found herself in her car driving north toward Trancas, way beyond Malibu, before she collected herself enough to decide to go home.

Suddenly she felt that she needed something like a nice cup of tea, or at least something that would produce the vaunted effect of a nice cup of tea. A martini, if she only knew how to make one. She hoped that she had teabags in the kitchen, for usually she ate breakfast at the studio. Maybe she would get into that old quilted bathrobe she’d been trying to throw out for five years and make a few friendly phone calls. She was too angry at Phoebe to drive around aimlessly. She shouldn’t be behind a wheel when all she could think of was taking that skinny wretch by her skinny tentacle of a neck and doing something unspeakable and final to her.

She turned the Thunderbird and headed back to her apartment in Santa Monica. There was little traffic as she left the 405. Anxious to find herself in familiar surroundings, she shifted into third. Her car responded instantly. Nothing wrong with this old beauty, Jazz reflected, no Anniversary Countach for her. What was the point of a car that could do 186 miles per hour when the speed limit was 55? If she
asked Pete a question like that, he’d just look at her pityingly. Obviously, if you had to ask, you didn’t need to know. Weren’t worthy of knowing.

The sound of a siren and the sight of a flashing light in her rearview mirror brought her hastily back to the present. She braked the instant she heard the siren, but a glance at the speedometer told her that all was lost. She was only down to forty, and seconds had passed. She pulled over to the curb, rolled down the window and prayed. “Hey,
great
car!” the policeman said with enthusiasm.

“Thank you, Officer,” Jazz replied, with a stirring of hope.

“See your license, please?” he asked in a friendly way.

Jazz handed it over obediently, hope killed. Friendly or not, there was absolutely no point in sweet-talking or trying to vamp him. She knew. Oh, how well she knew. He disappeared, went back to his car and radioed in her number to the computer at headquarters. He returned, busy writing out a ticket.

“How fast was I going, Officer?” Jazz asked politely, out of resigned curiosity rather than any hope of redemption.

“Fifty.”

“But that’s five miles
under
the limit,” she objected, as boldly as she dared. “Under, Officer, not over.”

“You’re in a residential zone, lady. All residential zones are posted at twenty-five miles an hour. You were twenty-five miles an hour over the limit.”

“Twenty-five miles an hour?” She was incredulous. “Nobody goes twenty-five miles an hour! If they did, you’d pull them in for obstructing traffic!”

“They’re all just as guilty as you are.”

“Oh God. Why are you so mean?” It was a whimper, not a question.

“You’ve had two moving violations in the last year. If you go to Traffic School, you can get this ticket off your record. Otherwise your insurance rates go up. One more and we take away your license.”

“Traffic School. Please, no,
not Traffic School
, anything but that.”