Sinners
Authors: Jackie Collins
Praise for Jackie Collins
‘Sex, power and intrigue – no one does it better than Jackie’
heat
‘A tantalising novel packed with power struggles, greed and sex. This is Collins at her finest’
Closer
‘Bold, brash, whiplash fast – with a cast of venal rich kids, this is classic Jackie Collins’
Marie Claire
‘Sex, money, power, murder, betrayal, true love – it’s all here in vintage Collins style. Collins’s plots are always a fabulously involved, intricate affair, and this does not disappoint’
Daily Mail
‘Her style is pure escapism, her heroine’s strong and ambitious and her men, well, like the book, they’ll keep you up all night!’
Company
‘A generation of women have learnt more about how to handle their men from Jackie’s books than from any kind of manual . . . Jackie is very much her own person: a total one off’
Daily Mail
‘Jackie is still the queen of sexy stories. Perfect’
OK!
‘Cancel all engagements, take the phone off the hook and indulge yourself’
Mirror
Also by Jackie Collins
The Power Trip
Married Lovers
Lovers & Players
Deadly Embrace
Hollywood Wives – The New Generation
Lethal Seduction
Thrill!
L.A. Connections – Power, Obsession, Murder, Revenge
Hollywood Kids
American Star
Rock Star
Hollywood Husbands
Lovers & Gamblers
Hollywood Wives
The World Is Full Of Divorced Women
The Love Killers
The Bitch
The Stud
The World Is Full Of Married Men
Hollywood Divorces
THE SANTANGELO NOVELS
Goddess of Vengeance
Poor Little Bitch Girl
Drop Dead Beautiful
Dangerous Kiss
Vendetta: Lucky’s Revenge
Lady Boss
Lucky
Chances
First published under the title
Sunday Simmons and Charlie Brick
in Great Britain by W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd, 1972
This edition published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Chances, Inc. 1972, 1984
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Jackie Collins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WCIX 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-84983-615-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-84983-616-6
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY
Herbert Lincoln Jefferson stared disgustedly at his wife, Marge. She sprawled on a couch in front of the television, legs apart, displaying fat white thighs, eating an orange so that the juice dribbled down her chin, and holding a beer can from which she took occasional swigs. She was wearing a blue cotton dress which was so tight that it had split under one arm. Her huge bosom hung in a dirty white bra which peeked through the split. A stranger seeing her would have found it hard to judge her age, and perhaps assessed her as ten years older than she was. Actually she was thirty-five.
‘I’m going,’ Herbert announced.
Marge didn’t shift her eyes from the TV set. She crammed some more orange into her mouth and mumbled, ‘OK, hon.’
Herbert left the faded pink house, one in a row of many faded houses. He kicked viciously at Marge’s cat which wandered under his feet, and started the walk to the bus stop. It was early evening and particularly hot. Herbert felt enraged that he had no car. Everyone had a car in Los Angeles. Last week he had had a beautiful shiny grey Chevrolet, but they had taken it away as he hadn’t kept up the payments.
Herbert was of medium height, a thin man with brown hair and sharp features. He wasn’t good-looking, he wasn’t ugly, he was just perfectly ordinary-looking. He was the sort of man you never remembered, that is unless he stared at you with his oblique brown eyes, and then suddenly you would get an odd sort of shudder. His eyes were mean and cruel and grabbing.
There was a young Mexican girl at the bus stop in front of him, and he appraised her quickly. Too skinny and too young, but a virgin, he was sure of that. He pressed up against her as they boarded the bus, and she turned round and gave him a startled look. He ignored her and took a seat next to a plump matron, probably some rich movie star’s housekeeper. No, if she was, she would have her own car.
There was a musty smell of dried sweat in the bus, and Herbert wrinkled up his nose in disgust. He had taken a shower before coming out. Sometimes he showered four or five times a day. The man he really admired was Tiny Tim, because he had read somewhere that he showered every time he took a leak. Herbert really admired such cleanliness.
The plump matron shifted in her seat. She didn’t like the pressure of Herbert’s leg beside her. But he stared straight ahead with his ordinary face, and she was sure he couldn’t be doing it purposely.
The old bag’s wearing suspenders, Herbert thought. One of them was digging into him. He moved his arm so that it nudged against the side of her bosom. She squashed nearer to the window, and Herbert stared impassively forward.
At the next stop the woman got out, and Herbert shifted his knees so that she had to squeeze past him. He felt the outline of her big buttocks against his knees, and he laughed silently. Old cow, give her a thrill. They all loved a thrill, even the old ones.
He thought lovingly about the letter he had sent to sexy red-headed film star, Angela Carter. He had mailed it the previous evening, and she had probably read it by now. He had managed to get her home address; that was an advantage of doing the job he was in now. They had a file in the office of most of the film stars’ addresses. He was working for a chauffeur service employed by Radiant Productions. It was most important when writing to people that you were sure they would open the letter themselves. That was the whole point.
To Angela he had written lovingly in glowing and explicit terms about what he would like to do to her. No detail had been spared and he enclosed a small plastic bag into which he had proudly masturbated.
It was one of his better literary efforts, and he hoped that Miss Angela Carter appreciated it.
The bus arrived at his stop and he walked the short distance to the Supreme Chauffeur Company.
The woman caressed the man beneath her, and in return his hands stroked her arched naked back.
She was beautiful in no conventional sense. Long wild hair, framing a tanned, almost animalistic face. Eyes a mixture of brown and yellow. Mouth wide and sensual.
They lay on a bed with black silk sheets, one sheet covering the woman just below her waist. She had a marvellous body, a combination of long limbs, curves and fine muscles.
She sighed and bent to kiss the man. He was also naked. A brown hard body with hairs on his chest and a fine display of muscles.
As they kissed she reached down to the floor, and from under the bed produced a small gun which she stealthily brought up to his head.
Ending the kiss she whispered, ‘Goodbye, Mr Fountain.’
In one quick movement he threw her off him and twisted the gun from her hand.
Furious, she crouched on the floor glaring at him.
He laughed. ‘Better luck next time, baby, you’re not dealing with a Boy Scout.
She brought up her arm to try to strike him, and a voice shouted, ‘Cut.’
Sunday Simmons’s hands flew to cover herself. Quickly a wardrobe lady appeared and threw a robe around her.
Abe Stein, the director, strolled over. He was fat, and chewing on an ancient, stinking cigar. He spoke to the man lying on the bed. ‘Sorry, Jack, too much tit.’
Jack Milan grinned. He was a well-preserved forty-nine, with jet-black hair and a smile that had kept him hot at the box-office for twenty years. ‘There’s never too much tit for me, Abe old boy.’
Everyone within earshot laughed, except Sunday who huddled miserably on the floor, clutching the robe around her.
Why had she ever agreed to do this film? In Italy, in fact in most European countries, she was regarded as almost a star; and here in Hollywood, she was treated as a nothing.