Sinners (31 page)

*    *    *

Charlie was anxious to leave the hospital. The doctors had insisted that he stay there for at least a week’s observation, but he was bored and jumpy and felt he didn’t need to. Besides there was the film he was shooting; the delay was costing a lot of money. He knew that while he had been unconscious there had been talk of a replacement. The director and producer had both been to see him, and he had reassured them that he would be back within a week.

He had received a stream of visitors.

Laurel and Floss came, friendly and anxious, bearing a gift of chocolate cake heavily impregnated with pot which Charlie, unknowingly, had given to the nurses, who had never been quite the same since.

He was glad to see Phillipa, serious and apologetic about the last evening they had spent together. After all, there were more things to a relationship than sex.

The Swedish starlet who had been in the car wreck with him was basking in all the publicity. She came to visit him with two photographers. He saw her, but banned the photographers. She was furious.

At his age, and in his position, he knew it was ridiculous to run around with little starlets just so people would think what a swinger he was. Why should he care what people thought?

True to his word, Clay arrived with his chauffeur to take Charlie home.

Home was his suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which seemed depressingly quiet and empty without George pottering about.

Clay had invited him to stay a few days with Natalie and himself, but Charlie declined. He wanted to finish the movie and then take a holiday. In a way things had worked out for the best. Now he was not committed until the end of the year and could do what he wanted.

He fell once more into the routine of working at the studio all day, and seeing Phillipa in the evenings.

He made good use of Clay’s chauffeur, but found him cold and withdrawn and could not establish any contact with him. This disturbed Charlie, who needed some sort of rapport with the people who worked for him.

Phillipa complained that Herbert was always staring at her in a strange way. Charlie replied that it was because most of her long hippy clothes were transparent.

‘I’ve seen him somewhere before,’ she said, ‘I wish I could remember where. I don’t like him. I hope you get rid of him soon.’

The next day Charlie gave Herbert a hundred-dollar bonus, and sent him back to Clay.

Clay, who really no longer needed him, gave him a month’s salary and dismissed him.

It was nearly a week later when Phillipa remembered where she had seen him. ‘It was on the Strip one night, several months ago. He was cruising along in a big black car and he picked up this girl. I didn’t know her but we had all been chatting – she was in a bad way – needed money. Anyway this creep in the car picked her up and the next day she was found murdered in the hills.’

Charlie laughed incredulously. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Why?’ Her face was tight and serious. ‘It was him, I’m sure of it.’

‘Oh, come on, you sound like a bad movie, love. Anyway, if it had been
that
important, you would have remembered him before.’

‘I think we should do something.’

Charlie laughed. ‘What did you have in mind? Phone up Clay and say, “Hey, about your chauffeur – Phillipa just remembered she saw him pick up a girl several months ago who was later found murdered”?’

‘I can’t stand you when you’re flippant, you remind me of my mother.’

She knew how to put the boot in.

‘All right, if it will make you happy we’ll call the police, and you’ll find out the case was solved the next day, and Herbert what’s-his-name will sue you for a fortune.’

‘Forget it, Charlie, let’s just forget it.’

A week after Claude’s return he telephoned Sunday. She could hardly keep the hurt and anger out of her voice.

‘I’ve been so busy,’ he complained.

‘Didn’t you get my messages?’ she asked.

‘Come up to my hotel this evening. We’ll have dinner, I’ll explain.’

‘Don’t you want to come to my house and see Jean-Pierre?’

‘He’s fine, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She bit her lip, hating and loving at the same time. ‘But I thought you’d want to see him.’

‘Another time,’ he said brusquely. ‘Tonight I want to talk to you. Be here at eight.’

He hung up, leaving her angry and confused. She knew that if she were smart, she would give him back his child and walk away from the relationship. And she planned to be smart.

*    *    *

Claude opened the door of his suite. He was wearing an all-black outfit and tinted glasses. He smoked a short black cigarette.

Sunday couldn’t help thinking how much he looked like a French movie star. The compelling, almost ugly face, the long rangey body. She felt her reserves start to crumble.

The attraction, she reminded herself, was purely physical. He had come at her with his body first, and that was all he had ever given.

‘Hello.’ He kissed her briefly on the cheek.

She brushed her hand in her hair nervously, determined to stay unaffected. ‘Hello, Claude, you’re looking well.’ Everything she wanted to say sounded like an accusation, so she remained silent. What she wanted was a drink, an exchange of small talk, and then a discussion about when Jean-Pierre should be delivered back – nothing dramatic, no hysterics.

‘Your breasts are getting smaller,’ he remarked, rubbing his hands familiarly across them.

She backed away angrily. With a sudden sickness, she realized that merely his touch made her desire him, and she knew that he knew it too.

Would it matter if she went to bed with him one last time? Men behaved like that continually. After all, she was a grown woman, and there was nothing wrong in wanting sex.

As if reading her thoughts, Claude said, ‘Let’s screw first and talk after.’ He was already peeling off his black silk turtle-neck sweater.

She hesitated. She wanted very much to be able to say no.

‘Come on.’ He stood naked in front of her and roughly fiddled with the thin snake-skin belt on her brown trousers.

She stood still while he stripped her item by item, until her clothes rested in a small pile beside them.

Then he was on her, knocking her on the floor, his hands and mouth rough.

She was silent, listening to the stream of obscenities uttered in French and English. It reminded her in a frightening way of the letters she had been getting.

Her body responded to his, but her mind remained above them, a detached onlooker.

Afterwards, when Claude went into the bathroom, she huddled on the floor, feeling the bites and scratches he had given her.
Why did she still love him so much?

He emerged in good spirits. ‘You’ve changed,’ he said. ‘You’re better at it now. Who’s been teaching you?’

It insulted her that he did not care if she had been with other men.

‘I want you to do my film,’ he said abruptly. ‘You’re probably a terrible actress, but I’m a director who can do something for you. I don’t believe in false modesty. If you do it, it will make you as an actress. But you have to put yourself in my hands entirely. You have to
live, eat
and
breathe
Stefanie.’

She had read the script. She knew she could do the part, but she hadn’t thought in a million years he would ever think of her.

She stared at him for a long thoughtful moment, then she nodded. ‘Thank you, Claude, I know you won’t be sorry.’

*    *    *

Carey was not excited at the prospect of meeting Claude Hussan. She regarded as a no-good bastard any man who could treat Sunday the way he had done. She was also sceptical about Sunday doing his film. Was it the right vehicle for her? She read the script, and wasn’t sure. Sunday was too young and beautiful to fit the part. More important, was she a good enough actress? It was heavy stuff, and Carey wasn’t sure if Sunday could manage it. There were also explicit sex scenes. In the hands of an American director they would cause no embarrassment, but who knew what Hussan would expect his leading actress to do?

Sunday had phoned that morning, bubbling over with delight. As far as she was concerned, there were no uncertainties. She would make the picture, and that was that. Carey had to insist on having the script sent over at once, since Claude wanted to settle contracts and money that very afternoon.

‘Accept anything,’ Sunday had said. ‘I
have
to do it.’

Carey would have been a lot happier for her to do the film with Jack Milan. Now came this bombshell, Claude Hussan’s first American film.

He had insisted on meeting Carey in his suite, although she would have preferred to see him at her office.

A secretary answered the door, a girl typical of the many out-of-work actresses who also typed. She asked Carey to take a seat, then disappeared into the bedroom.

Carey leafed through a copy of
Films and Filming
.

The secretary re-emerged shortly, now clad in a polka-dot bikini. She collected some papers from the desk, said ‘Mr Hussan will be right with you,’ and wiggled out the door.

Carey’s first impression was of Hussan’s eyes. They were the eyes of a man who had made it, but done many things along the way to get there. Then she took in the rest of him, and suddenly Sunday’s hang-up became clear.

‘You want a drink?’ he offered.

She said no, annoyed at the fact that he neither bothered to introduce himself or even acknowledge the fact that he knew who she was. But she was being silly. Of course he knew who she was.

He lounged in a chair opposite her and stared.

She tried to establish control. ‘I’m not sure if this is the right part for my client,’ she began.

He interrupted her. ‘Neither am I. She’s probably a terrible actress, but in my hands that doesn’t matter. I know what I want and I am prepared to take a chance. This film will make her.’

‘She’s already made. I could sign contracts for her tomorrow that would keep her working solidly. She’s very much in demand.’

‘Crap, that’s all she’s done, commercial crap.
I
will develop this girl, and as an actress, not as a big-breasted wonder.’

‘I can’t argue,’ Carey said stiffly. ‘Sunday has made up her mind, as you well know. Her price will be high, the usual stipulations that she approves all publicity stills and material about her, no nude scenes, no—’

‘Don’t waste your breath. We will pay her fifty thousand dollars, plus she signs a personal contract with me. If I want her naked hanging from a light fixture, I’ll have her that way. Don’t you worry about it, just tell Sunday, she’ll agree.’ He went to the desk and picked up some papers. ‘Here’s the contract. I want it signed and back here tomorrow.’

*    *    *

Carey, shaking with anger, drove straight to the studio.

‘You can’t do it,’ she told Sunday when she came off the set. ‘He won’t pay your money, nor allow you any special clauses. You’ll be completely in his hands. He could ruin you.’

‘Relax, he won’t ruin me. Have you seen any of his films? He’s brilliant.’

‘But your money – if you drop your price now it will be bad. I
know
I can get you good money on the Milan film, and maybe even a piece of the action. I—’

‘Don’t knock yourself out, Carey. I love you and appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but whether you like it or not I just
have
to do Claude’s film.’

Carey sighed. ‘This man has some hold over you, and I bet I know where it is. Right between the legs.’

‘You’re wrong, it’s not that. Just be patient and go along with me. I
know
this film is right for me, and if it’s not,’ she smiled softly, ‘then I’ll get out of this business.’

Lena, the Swedish starlet, was suing Charlie for three million dollars.

‘All she had was a couple of bruises,’ he told his lawyer incredulously.

‘She’s suing for back injury, permanent headaches, a scar on her leg and blurred vision.’

‘Why doesn’t she throw in a broken neck while she’s at it? Christ, these money-grabbing little hookers are unbelievable!’

‘Of course you’re not responsible. Insurance will cover you. I’ll keep you informed.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

He had finished shooting the movie, and was staying in a rented house in Palm Springs with Phillipa.

Under doctor’s orders he had to relax and take things easy for a few months. He didn’t know how he was going to do
that
, for after only a week of inactivity he was going mad.

Phillipa was no great help. She was there and that’s about all there was to the relationship – no sex, just companionship, and a strange companionship at that. She rarely spoke except to comment on some disaster somewhere in the world.

He often wondered why, if she were so concerned, she was not out doing something. She seemed quite content to exist with him in the very luxury she was always criticizing . . .

His day was routine. Up at nine, a work-out, a sauna, a swim. Then he read the papers by the pool until lunch was served by the maid. After lunch he had a sleep upstairs and then from four until dinner at seven he would potter about with his stereo sets or cameras.

Phillipa was a reluctant model for his photography. He had to shift her, complaining, out of her chair, and move her around almost by force. It made him laugh. It clearly showed the difference between actresses and other girls. Actresses were only too delighted to pose for innumerable photos, changing their clothes, their expressions, their hairstyles, anything just to continue their love affair with a camera lens.

He remembered one day he had started taking pictures of Dindi early in the morning and she had posed happily until eight o’clock at night. She had changed her outfit forty times!

After dinner they watched television, usually smoking a little grass.

Charlie wished he could do something creative, perhaps write or paint, but his talent lay strictly in performing.

He had never looked so good in his life – thin, suntanned, in great shape.

He spent a great deal of time on the phone, talking to his children, or chatting to George in hospital to cheer him up. He spoke to Lorna, who was obviously embarrassed about the letter she had sent him when she thought he might not recover. Their conversation was short and flustered.