Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) Read online

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “I will cut you.” She didn’t mean it, of course. Even coming from the wrong side of Pico Boulevard, her threats were all affect.

  “Brown eyes. Black hair.”

  “You must be off blonds since Dickerino Boy.”

  “Six feet. Built. My god, his hands. They weren’t narrow or soft. They were wide, and... I’m not making any sense. But when he looked at me, my skin went hot. All I could think about was… you know.”

  “You got a number?”

  “Not even a name.”

  Her phone dinged, and three people approached at once. Her day had begun. She turned away from me but flipped her head back. “You just got woken up.”

  three.

  en years ago, I couldn’t have gotten a donut three blocks away from my loft without getting jacked. In Los Angeles at the turn of the second millennium, the wealthy moved from the city’s perimeter back to the center. And if anyone was “the wealthy,” it was me.

  We lived in an old corset and girdle factory. It had been abandoned in the sixties, used as a warehouse by a stonecutter and cabinet maker, then expanded and converted into lofts just before the Great Recession. The units had gone at fire sale prices. I could afford whatever I needed, but Daniel had insisted on paying half, and the recession hit him hard. So a short sale downtown loft at a million and change it was.

  And I was stuck with it. He moved to Mar Vista after I kicked him out, and I commuted across town to Beverly Hills to run client accounting at WDE.

  Studios did not cut checks to talent; they cut checks to their agents. The agents deducted their ten percent fee and sent the client the rest. Thus, Hollywood agencies were the beating heart of the industry, the nexus through which all money circulated.

  And most of them were still cutting paper checks.

  I’d been hired to move the company from paper to wire transfer, and I’d done it. I’d convinced old guard agents, grizzled actors, below the line talent, banks, and business managers to get into the twenty-first century. Many of our clients still insisted on bike-messengered and armored-trucked paper checks, but they were more and more the minority. New clients weren’t given a paper option.

  I was still necessary to manage the rest of the paper trail, chase studios for payment, and run the department, but I felt my job was done. The only thing worse than the idea of living with my job was the idea of living without it, of drifting into a life without purpose. My sister Fiona had made an art form of it in her youth, and I’d watched her slip into debauchery. I’d do anything to not be her.

  But there I was, closing my eyes and seeing those hated checks. I heard the tones of my follow-up call to the messenger service, the tip tap as Pam logged them in one by one, and I thought, I want to burn it all and then slip into oblivion. I never did. I dreamed about it sometimes while I spaced off looking at the numbers or listening to one of the agents throw his anxiety on the table when a client’s check was a day late.

  I thought about law school then dismissed the idea. If I became a lawyer as well as an accountant, I’d be so valuable I’d be miserable.

  “Hey, Fly Girl.” Gene stood over my desk. “Rolf Wente’s business manager needs you to follow up with Warner’s.”

  I tapped my phone log. “We have calls out to them.”

  “You look tired. How was the weekend? Do the whole party thing?”

  If I didn’t answer, and if I wasn’t specific, he’d spend fifteen minutes telling me about his party habits. “Went to dinner the other night. We saw this lounge act. The singer was terrific. Faulkner. Something Faulkner. Like the writer.”

  “Never heard of her,” he said.

  “Nice voice. Original.”

  “Whyncha send me the deets? Maybe we’ll get out there on the WDE dime. Bring the assistants. Make them feel loved.”

  “Okay.” I turned back to my work, hoping he’d leave.

  “And get on Warner’s, okay? We lose old Rolf, and we’re up the ass on the dry highway. Let me know about the singer by the end of day.”

  I didn’t realize that by suggesting a musician, I was obligated to ride the company dime to yet another show at Frontage. I was exhausted even thinking about it, until I remembered the man with the pink tie. I grabbed my phone and went outside.

  I walked by Barney’s. It was bridal month, apparently. High end designers had their white gowns in the window. Jeremy St. James had a jewel-encrusted corset over a skirt no more modest than a strip of gauze. Barry Tilden layered dove white feathers on skirt worthy of Scarlet O’Hara, topping it all with a bodice made purely of silver zippers.

  “Deirdre?” I said when I heard her pick up. “You there?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Ten. What are you doing next Thursday night?”

  Sheets rustled. “I have to be at the shelter late.”

  “Wanna go out?”

  “I can’t do anything fancy, Tee. It makes me sick.” My sister Deirdre despised the consumptions of the rich. She lived in a studio the size of a postage stamp and put every penny of her trust fund interest toward feeding the hungry. It was noble to the point of self-destruction.

  “It’s not fancy. Kind of dumpy. I don’t want to go with just work people. They all look at me like they’re sorry for me about Daniel. I hate it.”

  “I’m not a good buffer.”

  “You’re perfect. You keep me on my toes.”

  She sighed. “All right. You’re buying, though. I’m broke.”

  “No problem.”

  We hung up, and I fist-pumped the ivory Sartorial Sandwich in the last window. I needed Deirdre there to give me a reason to escape the WDE crowd, especially if the breathtaking man was there.

  four.

  ow many have you had?” I asked Deirdre.

  “My second.” She took her hand off her mop of curly red hair to hold up two fingers. All eight of us shared the red hair, but only she had the curls. “Not that it matters.”

  “It matters,” I said.

  “No,” Deirdre said, putting down her glass. “It doesn’t. Do you know what matters?”

  “Let me guess. The poor and hungry?”

  Deirdre huffed. I’d caught her before she could make her speech. She hated that. “You’ve got more money than the Vatican. You’re cute as a button. Yet you think you have problems.”

  “Looks and money aren’t the whole of a person.”

  “Don’t pretend they don’t matter. They do. If you saw what I saw every day.”

  My sister was sweet and compassionate, but she was a belligerent drunk. If I let her, she’d tell me my sadness came from material idolatry and that it was time for me to give all my money to charity and live in service to the poor. I’d often considered the possibility that she was right.

  The musicians had come by and then disappeared again. The lights dimmed, and she appeared by the piano singing “Stormy Weather” as if she wanted to rip the clouds from the sky but couldn’t reach high enough. Monica Faulkner, a nobody singer in a town of somebodies, stood in front of the piano singing other people’s songs in a room built for other purposes. She moved from “Stormy Weather” to something more plaintive. My God, she was fully committed to every word, every note.

  There was no halfway with that woman. I’d seen her sandwiched between my brother fingering her and fucking her, and I’d felt bad. But not today, she had control over me. She sang in the tempo of keys clacking and printers humming. There was an open place inside me, past where the professionalism cracked and the weariness fissured and the sadness throbbed. She caressed that place then jabbed it.

  I missed Daniel. I missed the hardness of his body and the touch of his hands. I missed his laughter, and the way he cupped my breast in his sleep, and the weight of his arm on my shoulder, and the way he brushed his light brown hair off his face. I missed calling him to tell him where I was. I was an independent woman. I could function fine without him or anyone. But I missed him, and
I missed being loved. Once he’d cheated on me, all my delight in his love drowned in bitterness. I was wistful for something dead.

  “You all right?” said a male voice.

  Gene had left the table to come talk to me at the bar. He was my “type”: dark blonde, straight-laced, ambitious, easy smile, confident. But he was awful. Just the most awful Hollywood douchebag.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “She’s good. The singer. ”

  “Great.” I felt an absence to my right, where Deirdre had been standing.

  “I think we could do something with her. Little spit and polish, shorter skirt. Use the body. Sammy’s got Geraldine Stark under contract. She’s trying to move into fashion. Could be a tight package.” He winked as if I might not get his double entendre.

  “I hope it works out,” I said. “I’m off to the ladies’.”

  “See you back at the table.” He picked up his glass. “Don’t be a stranger.”

  Deirdre wasn’t in the bathroom. I ended up looking at the same roll of toilet paper from two weeks ago. Still one square hanging. A different roll, obviously, but the same amount. Not enough.

  Just not enough.

  The hall outside the bathroom led outside, where a little seating area with ashtrays was blocked off from the parking lot. I heard yelling and repeated calls of “bitch.” Though I normally avoided disagreeable behavior, I went to look.

  A red Porsche Boxster was parked in the handicapped spot, and on the hood, all five-eleven, hundred-and-fifty pounds of her, Deirdre sprawled on her back. The man yelling was six inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter—if I didn’t count the weight of the petroleum in his hair products. He wore head-to-toe leather and had a voice like a car screeching to a halt.

  “Get. Off. The. Porsche.” He pushed her as he yelled, but she was dead weight.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  He may have heard me. I had no time to think about that; the rest happened so fast. He pulled at Deirdre’s lapels, yanking her forward. Like a baby with a bellyful of milk, she projectile vomited. It splashed on his jacket, the ground, and the car. He squealed and let her go. She rolled off the hood, puking as she went, and landed on the ground.

  “Fuck!” he yelled as I tried to sit my sister up against the wheel. “Shit. God. Puke? Puke is acid! Do you know what that’s going to do to the paint? And my fucking jacket?”

  “We’ll pay for the damage.”

  I was too busy with Deirdre to bother looking at the creep. She was unconscious. I squeezed her cheeks and looked into her mouth to see if she was choking. She wasn’t, because she threw up right down my shirt. I leaned back and said something like ugh, but it was drowned out by the man in leather.

  “This is a custom paint job. Fuck! Bitch, the whole car’s gotta be redone. And I got a thing tomorrow.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, tapping Deirdre’s cheek.

  If he hadn’t been blinded by his rage and stupidity, Leather Guy probably wouldn’t have done what he did in front of me. Holding his arms so they didn’t touch the puke on his chest, he came around the car and kicked Deirdre in the hip.

  “Hey!” was all I got to say.

  I didn’t even have a chance to stand and challenge him before he fell back as if an airplane door had opened mid-flight. Then I heard a bang. I looked back at Deirdre, because in my panic, I thought she’d fallen or gotten hit by a car.

  A voice, gentle yet sharp, said, “Does she drink like this often?” A blue-eyed man with a young face and bow lips crouched beside me. He didn’t look at me but at Deirdre. “I think she’s got alcohol poisoning.”

  Another bang. I jumped. A splash of vomit landed on my cheek, and I looked up at the hood of the car. Leather’s cheek was pressed against the hood of the Porsche.

  “Spin,” Bow Lips said, “take it easy, would you?”

  Above him, with his arm pinning down Leather’s face, was the breathtaking man, ignoring his friend. “Tell this lady you’re sorry.”

  “He should apologize to my sister, not me,” I said.

  “Fuck you!” The douchebag wiggled. He got thumped against the hood for his trouble. “I ain’t saying shit.”

  Spin pulled Leather up by his collar and slammed his face on the hood until he screamed.

  “I’ll call 9-1-1,” said Bow Lips.

  “But I—” I thought you were this guy’s friend. I stopped myself, realizing he was going to call about Deirdre, not the creep getting his face slammed against a car.

  “Say. You’re. Sorry,” Spin said through his teeth.

  Leather’s face slid to the edge of the hood, wiping puke, until I could see the blood and paint-shredding stomach acid mixing on his cheeks from my crouching position. He spit a little blood.

  He was a douchebag and he’d kicked my sister, but I felt bad for him. “It’s okay, really, I—”

  “Yeah, we have an emergency.” Bow Lips. Unflustered. Into the phone “Alcohol poisoning.”

  Bang.

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Do you believe him, Contessa?” Beautiful. Even beating the hell out of some guy on the hood of a Porsche. “Do you think he’s sorry?”

  I caught a hint of an accent in his voice. Italian? He was speaking to me, one eyebrow arched like a parabola, his face closed with resolve, impassioned with purpose, yet calm, as if he was so good at what he did he didn’t need to break a sweat.

  “Yes,” I said, “I believe him.”

  “I believe he regrets it,” he said. “But I don’t believe he’s remorseful.” He leaned toward me on the owner of the Porsche, who was crying through a bloody nose. “What do you think?”

  I don’t know what came over me. The need to be truthful turned me and that gorgeous man into cohorts. It was intimate in a safe way, and the creep in leather needed to suffer. “No, I don’t think he is.”

  His smirk lit up the night. I feared a full-on smile might put me over the edge.

  “Show her you mean it,” he said in Leather’s ear but looked at me. “Get the puke off this ugly fucking car.” He wouldn’t let the guy move. “Get it off.”

  “Female,” Bow Lips said, all business. “Mid thirties. Built like a brick shithouse.”

  “Lick that shit up, or you’re kissing the hood again.”

  Leather choked and sobbed, blood pouring from his nose. I stood up and looked at the guy who had kicked my sister. I felt something pouring off the two men locked together on the car. Heat. Energy. Something that crawled under my skin and made it tingle. And when the creep stuck his tongue out and licked the vomit off the hood, the tingle turned to a release from anxiety I hadn’t realized I carried.

  “That’s right,” Spin said. “You believe him now, Contessa?”

  “Yes.”

  Spin yanked the man up, and I knew from the look on his face that he was going to make the guy kiss the hood again. The distance and force applied would not just break, but smash bones.

  I stood. “I think you’ve made your point.”

  Spin’s face, so implacable, breached into something gentler, more open, as if an understanding reached not his intelligence, but his adrenal glands. He smiled. “I thought you’d enjoy a big ending.”

  “My sister will be bruised. His face is cracked open. Justice is served.”

  “Come vuoi tu,” he said, yanking the creep back again. “Keys.” He held out his hand as Leather cried, tears streaking the mass of blood.

  “No, man, don’t take my car.”

  “This car?” He pulled the keys out of Leather’s pocket and hit a button. The doors unlocked, and the lights flashed. “You’re taking this low-class piece-of-shit car out of my sight.” He pushed the man inside and closed the door.

  In a few seconds, the car started and screeched away.

  “Ambulance coming,” Bow Lips said from behind me, his voice strained.

  He had stood Deirdre up and was about to fall under her dead weight. His friend intervened and helped carry her to the smokers’ ben
ches. From inside, I heard clapping. The singer was done. People would come out for their cigarettes soon. The breathtaking man pulled the sleeves of his jacket straight and touched his tie. Nothing was out of place.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yes. You?” He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered me one.

  I refused with a tilt of my head. I glanced at Deirdre, who leaned against Bow Lips. He’d need to be rescued.

  “I’m fine. Covered in throw up, but fine,” I said.

  “You didn’t get upset, seeing that. I’m impressed.” He poked out a smoke and bit the end, sliding it out of its sardine-tight box while absently fingering a silver lighter.

  “Oh, I’m upset.”

  He smiled as he lit up, looking at me over the flame. He snapped the lighter shut with a loud click, taking his time. I had a second to run and sit next to my sister, take a step back. But I didn’t.

  “You don’t look upset,” he said. “You’re flushed. Your heart is racing. I can see it.” He stepped forward. “Your breath, you’re trying to control it. But it’s not working. If I saw you like this in a different time or place, I’d think you were ready to fuck.”

  Just watching me, he let the smoke rise in a white miasma. My lungs took in more air than they ever had in such a short period of time. Foul language usually put the taste of tar and bile on my tongue, but from him, it sent a line of heat from my knees to my lower back.

  “I don’t like that kind of talk.” It was out of my mouth before I realized I didn’t mean it.

  “Maybe.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a white business card. “Maybe not.”

  I took the card. Antonio Spinelli, Esq., and a number in 213. I glanced up to ask him what kind of lawyer made douchebags lick puke off a car, but he was already walking toward a black Maserati. Bow Lips gently leaned Deirdre against the wall.

  “Thanks,” I said, pocketing the card.

  “Take care of her.” He indicated that I should sit next to Deirdre before one of the many smokers exiting the club did. “She’s dangerous.”