Wicked Ambition (47 page)

The one with the scar singled out Principal. ‘You and me, let’s go.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Whassamatter, pussy? You afraid to get heavy without your boyfriends?’

Principal pulled a gun. ‘Take care what you say.’

The others backed off. Slink stepped in. ‘Put that thing down, man, take it easy.’

‘What the fuck you doin’?’ Gordon hissed. ‘Where’d you get that shit?’

Principal took aim at his adversary.

‘This ain’t the way we roll.’ The other crew had their hands in the air. ‘We said no guns. Drop the weapon.’

‘You mess with me—’ Principal released the catch ‘—then this
is
the way we roll.’

Gordon noticed a new guy on the far side of the lot, cutting through to the residential street behind. He was tall, well built, and wore a rain-soaked beanie hat. A kit bag was thrown over one shoulder.

‘C’mon, man, let’s bounce.’ Principal’s nemesis showed his back.

‘Don’t turn away from me.’

The guys kept walking, and then everything swung in slow motion. The driver’s side opening, two of them vanishing but Principal’s adversary still there, and then Principal raised the gun and in a split second the world imploded. A flock of birds took to the sky in a ripple of dark wings. Principal misfired and caught his opponent in the leg.

‘My fuckin’ knee, my fuckin’ knee, you fuckin’ shot me, you
fuck
!’

The guy on the other side of the lot had his hands up; he was walking over, trying to make the peace. Gordon lunged. The gun flailed. He found the pistol gripped in his own hands, momentarily, as he tried to stop it firing but in that same process it blasted. A bullet tore through the air and then too fast, too terrible, a body slumped to the ground, louder than it should have been, a sack of bones hitting concrete.

The guy was felled like a tree, clutching his stomach.

‘Shit, G!’ Principal exclaimed. ‘You shot him! You fuckin’ shot him!’

‘Get the hell outta here.’ Slink ripped open the door to the truck. The other crew had already bolted.
‘Now.’

‘No way, man,’ Gordon whimpered. He dived for his casualty but strong arms restrained him, pulling him back. ‘No way, man, he can’t die, we’ve gotta help him…’

Their victim was staggering to his feet, the rain coming down in sheets of silver and gold, and Gordon could see it now: blood draining on to the road, staining it crimson in the harsh yellow light, sparkling like pink crystals. Stomach gripped, weaving, the man started to move, half running, half crawling, bent double on the axis of his pain.

‘Get in, man, let’s split!’

The door was open. Gordon’s legs were stuck. He couldn’t abandon the wounded. He had shot someone; if they didn’t get help, this guy was going to die…

‘Follow him,’ Gordon commanded, slamming the door. They’d pick him up, take him in; to hell with the rules, he had to right a wrong.

Slink was at the wheel. ‘Forget it, G, y’hear? Forget it—’

But Gordon still had the weapon in his hands. He raised it. ‘Follow him now, motherfucker, or I’ll put a bullet in your fucking head, I swear to God—’

‘Easy, G, nice and easy…’

‘Do it!’

When they emerged the guy was buckled on the street. That was when the screams came. They watched a smaller boy, a little kid, running from the opposite end of the street, so fast but not fast enough, and calling a name that got lost on the wind.

‘Move! Move! Drive!’ Principal yelled. ‘Drive!’

The boy was on his knees, cradling the man’s head.

The last thing Gordon saw before the street began to fill was the lost look in the boy’s eyes, raised to the sky, searching, before the car screeched off.

64

T
he LAPD received their tip-off in June. Their suspect was Ivy Sewell, female, Caucasian, twenty years old. She was five-foot-seven, a redhead, blue eyes, skinny ass.

‘Sure takes balls to murder your own mother,’ commented Detective McEverty, tucking into a donut and glancing through the file. ‘How’d they know she’s here?’

‘Does it matter?’ said his colleague Moretti. ‘If she’s hard up for cash she’ll be making money the usual way. I say we cruise the strip, see what we find.’

‘Just like any other night, then,’ teased McEverty.

‘Aw, so funny.’

‘Flight receipts.’ The chief entered the room and slammed down a file. ‘That’s how we know Ivy’s here. It’s been confirmed in London and over here. Wake up, boys.’

McEverty and Moretti exchanged glances.

‘This is Ryder’s twin,’ he said. ‘Take a look at the pictures. Evidence suggests she plans to act fast. Ivy left too many indicators in the UK to feel secure out here. She’s
aware she’s gonna get caught and that time’s running out—meaning it’s running out for us, too.’

‘What indicators?’ asked Moretti.

The chief flipped open the file, which was packed with photographs taken inside the London flat. Pictures and clippings of the music icon Robin Ryder covered every wall.

‘Looks like a shrine to me,’ commented McEverty.

‘Something like it,’ agreed the chief. ‘This place was searched top to bottom. Whatever the broad’s got against her sister, it ain’t pretty.’

‘We need to find her.’

‘No shit, McEverty.’ Moretti grabbed his jacket. ‘So what are we waiting for?’

Ivy was creeping closer. With each day that passed and brought her one step nearer to retribution, her surveillance of Robin Ryder adopted a new energy. Everywhere the singer got photographed, every man she was with, every move she made and every word she uttered was diligently noted and remembered. Detail dictated the masterpiece.

Robin’s tour had ended. On the morning the star arrived back in LA and headed to her villa, Ivy was waiting, a hooded figure obscured in the trees.

Next stop, the ETV Platinum Awards…and her very last performance.

Ivy watched for a long time. She watched Robin open the door and go inside. She watched her embrace the German, a souvenir brought back from Vegas. She watched as the bedroom blind was pulled and she watched until it was raised again. She watched as a second car pulled up and a black man climbed out—Leon Sway, the athlete whom Robin
had got close to. With his arrival came the first twinge of jeopardy.

Leon had been hanging around Robin for months and Ivy didn’t like his persistence. Men who came in and out of her sister’s life were one thing; men who clung on were another.

Did Leon have feelings for her? It wasn’t a concept Ivy could abide.

Feelings made people…unpredictable.

Leon was hesitant—perhaps not such a threat, after all?—as he went to the door. He was about to knock, seemed to change his mind and return to the car, then quickly paced back.

The German answered, bare chested, a towel around his waist. Ivy couldn’t hear the exchange, but it was brief. Leon retreated almost immediately, hands up in a gesture perhaps of having made a mistake, and seconds later was backing out of the drive.

On instinct Ivy returned to her own car and followed. Reflex made her believe that Leon Sway was trouble. She couldn’t risk him compromising her campaign.

She was willing to remove any obstacle that could stand in her way.

Any protector of Robin would perish himself.

PART 4

65

F
or the first time in pop music memory, a major awards ceremony was happening and Fraternity hadn’t received a single nomination.

‘That’s it for us,’ declared Joey Lombardi. ‘After the promo’s wrapped for
Seven Days
, the band’s over. We’re finished.’

Kristin ran into him at a signing in NYC: the boys still had an album to promote and were going ahead without Scotty, who was allegedly off recording solo material.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said once they were done. ‘That sucks big time.’ Brett and Doug were loping about outside, miserable and chain-smoking while they waited for their pickup; the cute, apologetic smiles having vanished the instant their sparse gathering of disconcerted fans had scattered. Diehard devotees of the remaining four were trying their best to stay supportive but especially for the younger ones the whole affair was deeply upsetting. The guys were tinged irreparably by Scotty’s transgressions and everyone knew it.

Joey ran a hand through his hair. It had gotten longer since Kristin had last seen him.

‘Does it?’ he countered. ‘I don’t know, I’m kinda relieved.’

‘You are?’

‘It had to end someday.’ Joey smiled drily. ‘We couldn’t keep on going for ever. And it was starting to get weird, you know, singing all the corny stuff we did, having ten-year-old fans when we were twenty-three…’

Kristin thought of Bunny and swallowed her regret. Italy—Alessandro, mainly—had done her a world of good, but she was still finding her feet back in LA and having to get used to a city without her sister in it. The Platinum Awards were two weeks away and would spell her first big performance since her new record had launched.

‘What next?’ she asked softly.

‘Search me…’ He attempted humour. ‘You got any suggestions? C’mon,’ he teased, ‘you’re the queen of reinvention. HQ says that’s the only way forward but I’m not convinced. If we’re not Fraternity, I don’t know what we are. I don’t know what I am.’

‘You’re one part of Fraternity. That doesn’t change.’

‘But that’s just it. We’re all one part and so when one of us goes it doesn’t work any more. We can’t carry on as a foursome; it wouldn’t be right.’

‘So where do you go from here?’

Joey shrugged. ‘It’s good not having a clue. No more management monitoring our every move, no more being told what we can and can’t wear, what our hair should be like, if we’re allowed girlfriends…’

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

He blushed. ‘No!’

‘Yeah, right…’ Come to think of it Joey had never confessed to having a girlfriend.

‘There is this one girl.’ His glance swept across her. ‘It’s nothing, though…’

‘What do you mean, it’s nothing?’

‘Well, she doesn’t feel the same.’

‘Have you asked her?’

‘Of course not!’

Kristin felt a ripple of jealousy. It took her by surprise. She changed the subject.

‘Did you hear Scotty’s presenting an award at the Platinums?’

‘Yeah. He’s sure come out of this better than Fenton, hey?’

Kristin agreed. Scotty’s PR had been clever. Although a performance at the biggest event in the industry calendar was out of the question, the planned appearance—in a position of servility, no less—would remind the public that Scott Valentine might be humble but he was still a player, and one who refused to endure humiliation in the shadows.

‘I’ll see you there?’ she asked, really hoping that she would.

‘Yeah.’ He touched her arm before the others called for him to go. ‘Expect so.’

Scotty almost didn’t recognise his former lover. In the visitors’ room, a sterile, depressing space flanked by blank-faced, emotionless police officers and divided by a bank of seats on either side of a pane of glass, he tentatively took a booth and picked up the phone.

Fenton looked haggard and thin. Half the man he used to be—literally.

‘Prison food no good?’

Scotty’s joke fell flat: perhaps targeting Fenton’s sensitive weight issues within seconds of arriving had been a bad idea. His already weak smile toppled off his chin.

Fenton stared back at him, hollow-eyed. It was worse than any rebuke or aggression. If Fenton had shouted and screamed and accused Scotty of having left him here to perish as the villain while he, Scotty, went on
The State Show
and had a PR machine pouring every hour into steering his train-wreck of a career back on track that would at least have been something. As it was, his ex-manager’s silence was chilling to the core.

‘How are you doing?’ he asked lamely.

Another inane question. But Scotty didn’t know what else to say.

‘How am I doing?’ Fenton repeated flatly. He was unshaven, his eyes sunken and his skin grey.
‘How am I doing?’
He leaned in. ‘I haven’t seen my family in weeks, Scott. I’ve been locked in a cell. My career and my life are over. I’m eating crap. I’m sleeping on a single wooden bunk for three hours a night, too afraid to close my eyes in case any of the perverts in here decide to tear me a new asshole. I need to ask permission to take a freaking dump. I’m lonely. I’m scared. I’m furious. I’m wretched. How do you
think
I’m doing?’

Scotty bowed his head.

‘Why did you come?’ Fenton asked bitterly. ‘You’re no good to me.’

He didn’t look up. He couldn’t. Ever since the men had
known each other, Scotty had been reflected in his manager’s eyes through a golden glow. To be regarded so hatefully made him see how much he’d relied on that refuge. It shocked him how bad it made him feel.

‘I—I had to see you,’ he stammered. ‘They told me I couldn’t, I’m not supposed to—’

‘Cut the crap, Scott. Get to the point. It might look like I have all the time I want in here but I’d rather not spend it listening to you.’

Scotty steeled himself. ‘I’m going against them.’ He met Fenton’s gaze. ‘It’s not right you being held when they don’t know the facts—’

‘No shit,’ Fenton cut in. ‘What’s this, an attack of conscience? You sure took your sweet time getting there.’

‘I’m going against the label and telling the truth,’ Scotty pushed. ‘I’m telling the cops. I’m telling them and everyone else that what happened between us was mutual.’

Fenton didn’t speak, just kept watching Scotty through the glass.

‘I could sit it out and let you take the rap,’ Scotty continued, hitting his stride. ‘I could play the victim, that’s what they want—and I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t be easier. But I won’t. It’s not right you being in here. It’s not OK. And I know that whatever I say now isn’t going to come close to making up for what a coward I’ve been but I have to try, don’t I?’

The other man gave nothing away. ‘Why now?’ he insisted. ‘Why not before?’

‘I was scared.’

‘
You
were scared?
You?
Don’t make me laugh.’