Star Island (21 page)

He said, “You’re as smart as I think, it won’t be long before the paparazzi will be chasing
you
. Trust me, I know the game.”

“I don’t want to be famous,” Ann sniffled, “not like that.”

“Of course you don’t. What an awful life. Who wants to be rich and beautiful and desired?” He waggled the Colt at her. “Now, I’ve gotta go meet with a guy, so be a good girl and hop in the trunk.”

“I’ll do no such thing. You’ll have to shoot me first.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“Take me along. I’ll behave.”

“You want some breakfast?” Bang Abbott asked.

“Sure. Absolutely.” Ann was as hungry as she was tired.

The photographer drove to a spiffy new McDonald’s, where Ann was one of two breakfast customers wearing a short black party dress. The other was a muscular transvestite in a Fanta-colored wig. Bang Abbott ordered three pungent burritos, while Ann asked for an Egg McMuffin. Bang Abbott told her she had exactly four minutes to use the bathroom, during which time he crushed two Ambiens and stirred them into her orange juice.

After she returned, he said, “Now this is important—who’s gonna freak the most, they don’t hear from you for a couple days. You got a boyfriend?”

“Nope,” Ann said through a dainty mouthful of food.

“Mom and Dad?”

She shook her head. “Negative.”

“Are they both dead or something?”

“You missed your calling, Claude. You should’ve been a grief counselor,” Ann said. “No, they’re not dead. I never met my father, and Mom and I are what you call ‘estranged.’ She wanted me to be a teacher.”

The paparazzo grunted. He had effortlessly fit an entire burrito into his cheeks.

“A Sunday school teacher,” Ann added. “Her religion treats the theatrical arts as pagan foolery. That includes television.”

Bang Abbott wiped his fingers on his shirt.

“Everything was more or less okay until one of my mother’s so-called friends called her up after she saw me on a Maxipad commercial,” Ann went on, “and ever since that day, proper Rachel DeLusia has not spoken to her wayward daughter. I guess I should have taken that Duncan Hines booking instead—Mom can seriously pack away the brownies.”

“So, what you’re sayin’ is, nobody’s gonna miss you for a little while if you don’t answer your phone—”

“Which fell in the motel toilet—”

“What about your friends?” Bang Abbott asked.

“They’ve pretty much given up on me.”

“How come?”

“’Cause I don’t tweet and I don’t text.”

The photographer raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you’re one of
those.”

“So the answer is no, nobody’s going to miss me.”

“Okay, then, good.”

“Yeah, fantastic. Twenty-four years old and I could fall off the planet without a soul noticing.” She didn’t mention the crazed homeless dude from Key Largo who’d promised to come rescue her—a noble offer, but really …

“Claude, I’m getting awful tired.”

“Finish your juice,” he said.

She was snoring like a bear by the time Bang Abbott got back to the parking garage. He drove up to an empty floor and put the Buick at the far end. After locking Ann in the trunk, he huffed to the elevator where he finished his last McSkillet on the ride down, crumpling the empty wrapper and tossing it on the floor. The sunlight blasted him in the face when he walked out of the garage, so he pulled down his brand-new Miami Marlins cap and aimed himself for the park.

The man called Chemo was waiting by the volleyball nets. He
was wearing a loose black warm-up suit with one sleeve cut off, and gay squared-off eyeglasses. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

They headed down the beach—the dumpy, shuffling paparazzo and the gangly, lopsided bodyguard—drawing stares from even the jaded South Beach regulars. Chemo seemed oblivious to the attention, but Bang Abbott felt uncomfortable. He was accustomed to being the peeper, not the peeped at, and he felt naked without his cameras.

“I found that item you were lookin’ for,” Chemo said.

Bang Abbott tried to conceal his elation. “Yeah?”

“You’re a busy beaver, Slim. Damn thing rings 24/7.”

“How much you want for it? I’ll give you five hundred.”

Chemo stopped to admire a topless Latin woman who was playing Kadima with a small boy. It was a nice scene, a long damn way from the prison yard at Raiford.

The Kadima ball landed in the sand at Chemo’s size-fourteen feet, and the youngster ran up to fetch it.

Oh Jesus
, the photographer thought.
That poor kid’ll be sleeping with the lights on for the rest of his life
.

Yet when Chemo handed him the ball, the boy looked up, waved his paddle and said,
“Gracias.”
He didn’t appear even slightly traumatized. Bang Abbott was amazed—the little gerbil must be farsighted.

Chemo resumed walking. “I been authorized to negotiate for the girl,” he said over his shoulder.

The bodyguard had a large stride, and Bang Abbott hustled to keep up. “Negotiate
what?
I get an all-day shoot with Cherry, they get their cute little imposter back, safe and sound.”

“No deal. Twenty-five large—the money for the actress chick, straight up.”

“You crazy?” Bang Abbott blurted.

“Plus, maybe I’ll throw in the BlackBerry.”

“Do I look that stupid?”

Chemo’s cheerless smile exposed the dingy nibs of his front teeth. “A fat perv is what you look like to me,” he said.

Bang Abbott was steaming. “Twenty-five grand is a joke. Do
you have any fucking idea what this girl Ann knows about Cherry Pye? The damage she can do?”

“I can probably jack ’em up to fifty if maybe you slide five my way,” said Chemo. “Also, I strongly advise you don’t hurt the actress unless you want to die extra slow, and skinned out like a damn trout.” Ominously he hoisted the vinyl-cloaked weed whacker.

Bang Abbott dropped back a step. “Christ, I’m not a killer!”

“Well, I am. Where’s she at now?”

“She’s safe, swear to God. Asleep in the car.”

Chemo had stopped walking again, due to the unexpected presence among the power tanners and Frisbee tossers of at least a dozen uniformed law-enforcement personnel. Some were Miami Beach cops and some were Customs and some were Border Patrol. The photographer turned clammy with fear, the Colt feeling like an anchor on the frayed waistband of his trousers.

Cool as ice, Chemo said, “Hey, Slim, check this out.”

The object of the officers’ interest was a blue-over-white Donzi speedboat that somebody had beached at high speed during the night. Tourists were clustered around, snapping pictures with their cell phones. The boat had trenched across the sand and now lay canted to its port side, thirty yards from the waterline, a row of empty Land Shark bottles aligned neatly on the transom. Nobody was on board, and the cops seemed eager to locate the driver and/or passengers.

“Talk about drunk,” Bang Abbott said.

Chemo surmised it was a smuggling operation. “They bring Haitians over from Bimini,” he explained.

“And just leave the damn boat?”

“All the time.”

“Crazy,” said Bang Abbott.

Chemo turned and headed back in the opposite direction, the photographer at his heels.

“Go back and tell your people I don’t want their money, I want Cherry.”

“Or what?” the bodyguard asked.

“Don’t worry. I got a plan.”

“Shit for brains is all you got.”

A seagull had caught sight of Chemo’s exotic hairpiece and began dive-bombing for nest material. As Bang Abbott tried in vain to shoo away the bird, Chemo smoothly unveiled the yard trimmer attached to his stumped left elbow joint. He touched the switch and, with one sweeping motion, he annihilated the gull in mid-swoop. Clumps of mulched feathers fell like sticky snow upon a group of lotion-drenched French models, who began to squeal disharmoniously.

To Bang Abbott, Chemo said, “Fifty grand’s a lot of money, Slim.”

“No can do,” said the shaken photographer, and started running as fast as his gelatinous legs would push him toward Ocean Drive.

The assistant day manager of the Comfort Inn was named Vincent. He liked his job. The speed was just right, leaving him plenty of energy at night for cruising the clubs, where he dealt Ecstasy, roofies and bootleg Cialis. Somehow the money was always gone by dawn, so Vincent was grateful for his gig at the motel.

He was slouched in front of his laptop, downloading some particularly extreme porn, when a street person appeared at the check-in desk. The man was quite tall and he had a fake eye that looked like it came from a stuffed moose. He was dressed in a crusty trench coat and wore two ratty gray braids growing at odd measures from his shaved scalp. The braids were garnished with colored plastic cylinders.

“Good morning,” the man said.

Vincent smiled neutrally. “I’m sorry. We have no rooms available.”

“I don’t need a room. I need information.”

“We’re not hiring at the moment,” Vincent said, at which point the street person reached over and confiscated Vincent’s laptop, which was by far the most valuable thing he owned. Vincent hopped to his feet and said, “Give it back or I’ll call the cops!”

The man asked Vincent if his boss was aware that he was jerking off to gang-bang videos on company time.

“Gimme that back!” Vincent cried and lunged across the check-in desk, but the street person was surprisingly agile.

“Isn’t this supposed to be a family establishment?” the man said. He snapped the laptop shut. “I’ll give this to the police when they show up. They’ll want to see all the filth.”

Vincent believed that his boss—the manager, who was due to arrive any minute—would react poorly if the lobby was full of cops, and even more poorly if the cops were gathered around Vincent’s laptop watching Jenna Jameson do a frat-house pledge class.

“What do you want, dude?” he asked.

The street person said, “Man named Claude checked in late last night. What’s the room number? He had a young woman with him.”

Vincent logged on to the motel’s desktop. “Here it is—Claude Abbott. They’re in 432.”

“How’d he pay?”

“AmEx,” Vincent said.

“You’re kidding.”

“We don’t take cash after midnight. You want me to call up to the room and tell ’em you’re here?”

“Just give me a key, son. It’s a surprise.”

“Okay, what about my laptop?”

“When I’m done,” said the street person.

“Done with what, dude?”

“Socializing.” The man took the key card and went to the elevator. He kept Vincent’s laptop pinned under one arm.

As soon as Vincent was alone, he darted from behind the desk and hurried toward the parking lot to intercept his boss, if necessary. He had no desire to call the police, who would inevitably run his name in their database and learn he was on probation for grand theft, a drunken transgression involving a golf cart, a tow chain and an ATM machine. Vincent had neglected to mention the episode on his employment application.

Seeing no sign of the boss’s car, he hustled back to the lobby and assumed his duty position at the check-in counter. Moments later, the street person stepped off the elevator and informed him that
Room 432 had been vacated; Mr. Abbott and his companion were gone.

“I never even saw ’em,” Vincent said, “and I got here at seven-fifteen.”

“There was a phone in the toilet bowl.”

“Don’t look at me!”

“I’ll need his credit card slip.” The stranger motioned with two fingers.

“Man, you know I can’t do that.”

The street person said, “Okay.” He sat on the floor and tugged off one of his rancid sneakers and started pummeling the shell of the laptop until Vincent surrendered the paper invoice upon which Claude Abbott’s American Express information was imprinted.

“Thank you, son,” the man said. He returned the dented computer to Vincent, who with both arms clinched it to his chest.

“What’s your problem?” he hissed angrily at the stranger.

The man took a beer bottle from an inside pocket of his coat, sucked down the dregs and placed the empty on the counter. “I hope you recycle,” he said.

Cherry Pye’s mother and father weren’t the only Buntermans who were counting on
Skantily Klad
to be a megahit. Each of Cherry’s deadbeat brothers held a bogus high-paying position with her personal management company, and none was intellectually equipped to go out and find a real job. Leonard, the eldest, lived in Steamboat Springs and spoke to his famous sister maybe once or twice a year, whenever his stash of autographed swag ran out. The middle brother, Adam, divided his time between Barbados and Cabo, and communicated with the family mainly through bank transfer notices. The youngest of the boys, twenty-three-year-old Joshua, had a gallery in La Jolla dedicated to homoerotic sculpture and watercolors on butcher paper, painted with the tail of his deaf Persian cat.

The former Cheryl Bunterman had no idea what level of cash flow was necessary to keep herself and her moocher siblings afloat.
However, Ned Bunterman, who managed the books, was keenly aware that the family’s lifestyle would change immoderately if
Skantily Klad
bombed. The money—all that money from the other albums!—finally had dried up, and the Buntermans were rapidly burning through Cherry’s seven-figure advance for
Skantily
.