Beautiful Disaster (3 page)

If necessary, the staff of Salvation Pointe will come to this house and take you by force. And it’s not kidnapping when your mother signs the consent form
.

She played back Paulina’s threat in her mind, recalling the determination in her eyes, the conviction in her voice. There was no escaping this. Christina felt cornered, like a wounded animal.

“I don’t mean ‘run away,’ ” Carb clarified. “It doesn’t have to be a Lifetime movie. Just stay somewhere else until things calm down.”

“My mother would consider that running away,” Christina said helplessly.

“Well, I’ve got a place in Chelsea if you change your mind. It’s small but nice. I’m a neat freak. Chances are I won’t even be there. Tomorrow I head out to L.A. and after that D.C. and Miami.”

His travel plans intrigued her. “That sounds like an exciting way to live. What do you do?”

Carb hesitated. “Since I’m wearing your vomit, I feel like I can tell you the truth.” But then he looked at her, as if still deciding.

Now Christina was more intrigued. “What? Are you some kind of spy?”

“No, but it’s a job that requires almost as much discretion.” One beat. “I’m an escort.”

For a moment, the true meaning didn’t register. But then it did. “So women pay you for…”

Carb nodded. “And men, too. Mostly men, actually.”

Christina was stunned. “What’s the difference between an escort and a…”

Carb filled in the blank that she didn’t want to say out loud. “Prostitute?”

Christina bit down on her lower lip, nodding guiltily, hoping that she hadn’t offended him.

“You can’t get me by the hour,” Carb explained. “People pay me for companionship—special evenings out, weekends, vacations. If sex occurs, then it’s the result of two consenting adults making that decision. It doesn’t always happen. One of my regular clients is high up in the Pentagon. That’s why I’m going to D.C. We’ve never even kissed. He just likes to hold my hand while we watch war movies on DVD at his townhouse in Georgetown. Of course, we’re usually just wearing our underwear.”

Christina laughed.

Carb laughed, too. “I know. It’s weird. But he’s a sweet guy.”

“So if you see men and women, then you must be…”

“Bi, yeah. At the end of the day, I like thin blondes with big tits and dominant jocks along the lines of rugby and lacrosse players. Sexually, I’m all over the map.”

Christina just stared at him, instantly reminded of her first encounter with Keiko, the Japanese girl who had been so radically honest about being a lesbian. Now Carb was making these bold announcements.

She wondered if there would ever be a day when she could speak this openly. To Christina, sexuality was still such a private subject. It was why she channeled all of her erotic energy into the creation of
Harmony Girl
. Dealing with the issue through her art seemed like the safest way to explore it.

In Christina’s
manga
, the title character lived in an enchanted forest filled with magical animals, and she communicated with them only through music. The plot focused on a romantic triangle involving Harmony Girl’s love for a dashing prince and her growing feelings for a young female artist named Lychee, who made secret trips from her village to the forest in order to obsessively sketch Harmony Girl’s portrait.

“I’m serious about my apartment,” Carb was saying. “It’s yours if you want it.”

Christina massaged her temples with her fingertips, feeling more punishment from the vodka binge coming on, this time in the form of a headache. She gave him a fuzzy look, puzzled by his instant trust and generosity. “But you barely know me.”

“Well, I’d say we’re fairly intimate. I saved your life, and you threw up on me.”

She considered the point, smiling. “This is true.”

“Just think about it. You don’t have to tell me now.”

A strong yearning to defy Paulina came over Christina. But something held her back. She just wasn’t ready to strike out with such rebellion, and this realization filled her with a deep sense of shame. It was a shame that would prevent her from telling any of her friends where she was going. Salvation Pointe would be her pathetic secret to keep.

All of a sudden, Christina realized that the music had stopped. She rose up, peering beyond Carb to see that only a few stragglers remained on what had once been Tar Beach, the ultimate rooftop event. It seemed odd. Max’s parties usually lasted all night long. “What happened to everybody?”

Carb leveled a serious look. “A drug overdose tends to clear the room.”

Christina blanched.

“Gorgeous girl,” he went on. “Somebody said she was only fifteen. When the paramedics took her away, she was in rough shape.”

A terrible fear registered as Christina’s mind whirled with the vague recollection of hearing Max scream his sister’s name just before the fall. “Oh my God. Was it Shoshanna Biaggi?”

Carb nodded in confirmation.

Frantically, Christina scanned the area for her purse, desperate for her Sidekick II. It was nowhere. She ransacked her brain, trying to remember when she last held her Hysteric Glamour bag. But everything was foggy. “Shit!” she screamed. “Somebody stole my purse!”

“
Relax
,” Carb said. “I saw one behind the bar just a while ago. It’s probably yours.” He led the way.

Christina followed him, her mind racing. The sight of the leopard-print army fatigue–patterned handbag flooded her with relief.

She dashed for it and fished out her mobile, scrolling through the missed calls and the text message from Max. Then she halted, almost too terrified to learn the outcome. Was Shoshanna dead or alive? Finally, Christina conjured up the courage to make the call.

Max picked up on the first ring.

The moment Christina heard his voice, she knew the answer.

From: Mimi

How killer is the NYC party scene?

2:09 am 4/09/06

W
here and when did you last see her?” the uniformed police officer asked.

Dante’s stomach was in a tight ball of knots. He
knew
something had gone very wrong and the terrible feeling only grew exponentially with each passing moment. “At a party not far from here. I’m pretty sure it was after midnight.”

“What kind of party?”

Dante fought hard to harness his annoyance. “A friend of ours put it together. He called it ‘Tar Beach.’ It was a rooftop blowout. I don’t know the exact address.”

“Big crowd?”

“Maybe a hundred or so. It was hard to tell. People were coming and going.”

“Hey, Curran,” another officer said as he approached. “Here’s the chick we’re looking for.” In his hand was a magazine folded back to a page featuring celebrities in swimwear. Vanity St. John was shown cavorting around South Beach in a bikini. “Somebody had this at the front desk.”

Curran glanced at the photo, then back to the other officer. There was a silent exchange between the two men that translated, “She’s hot, man. I’d nail her.” Typical guy shit. “Is she your girlfriend?”

Dante hesitated. “We’re friends.”

Curran searched Dante’s face for greater meaning. “Friends with benefits?”

Dante glared at him. “Are you a real cop? Because this sounds like a Q and A I’d have with some dude over a beer.”

The other officer snorted his laughter, then walked away muttering, “Mouthy little punk, isn’t he?”

But Curran stayed put. He gave Dante a withering stare. “I’ll ask the questions, kid. If you’re sleeping with this girl, then more power to you. I’m not impressed. I’m not jealous, either. I’m just trying to get a solid read on the situation. You see, where I come from, a guy wouldn’t let a ‘friend’ who looks like that leave a party and go back to her hotel room alone. Did the two of you have a fight?”

Dante sighed his frustration. “Does it matter?”

“I’ll decide what information matters.”

Dante sank down onto the bed and covered his face with his hands, feeling like precious time was being pissed away. “Yes, we had a fight.”

“About what?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Dante mumbled.

“What’s that?”

This time Dante shouted his answer. “I couldn’t tell you!”

“Why not?”

“Have you ever argued with a drunk girl?” Dante challenged.

Curran gave a rueful nod as if to concede the point.

“We had a fight at the party,” Dante explained. “She left. I wasn’t that far behind her—twenty minutes, a half hour at the most. I came straight to this room. The door was ajar, so I stepped inside. I found the place trashed just like it is now. That’s when I called hotel security. And then I discovered that.”

Dante pointed to the open bathroom. From his position on the edge of the bed, the message on the mirror was clearly visible.

A DIRTY BITCH WUZ HERE

Just seeing it again made Dante’s body shudder.

Curran gave the blood graffiti a quick glance. “Any idea who might write something like that about your friend?”

Dante shook his head.

Curran’s partner shuffled back and reentered the conversation. “Turns out this Vanity St. John is the same girl who had a sex video all over the Internet a few months ago. She also tried to off herself in Miami by ramming a brand-new Mercedes into a fuel tanker.”

Curran studied Dante carefully. “Maybe she’s an attention junkie. Any chance that she wrote those words on the mirror herself?”

Dante rose to his feet, stunned and more than a little angry now. “No way.”

“Hey,” Curran’s partner put in, “stranger things have happened. Remember the runaway bride? That whack job hacked off her hair and faked a kidnapping.”

“She didn’t stage this!” Dante insisted.

“The staff on duty at the front desk saw her return to the hotel but didn’t see her leave,” Curran said in a tone so reasonable as to be patronizing. “Maybe she’s with another friend in the hotel.”

Curran’s partner finger combed his goatee with a sigh. “This must be the night for famous young girls in trouble.”

Curran gave him a curious glance. “How do you figure?”

“Didn’t you hear? Max Biaggi’s teenage daughter OD’d at some party.”

The news hit Dante like a shock to the solar plexus. He just stood there, unable to think, to move, to breathe.

“You take a mortal man/And put him in control/Watch him become a god/Watch people’s heads a’ roll…”

The Megadeth track thrashed violently from the bookshelf stereo as Vanity lay there, every limb stretched to the limit and tightly bound, the Sony Handycam capturing every moment.

He stood over her, filming her stark mad fear, as if he were the director of the sickest reality show on earth.

“Please untie me,” Vanity begged. “The ropes hurt.”

In answer, he zoomed in for a close-up of her tear-stained face, a twisted smile curling his lips. “Pain is good drama.”

Vanity fought for calm, struggling to piece together the events that had brought her to this point. Vividly, she remembered needing to leave Tar Beach, to get away from Dante. She had gone back to the hotel, where the asshole bartender at Wetbar refused to serve her a drink. There was a hostile exchange of words, and then she returned to her room.

After that, the memories seemed to just fade into oblivion…wait…she recalled something else now. An irritating episode at the door with her key card. She made a dozen or so attempts, but just couldn’t get it to swipe properly. Of course, being wasted didn’t help the situation. Finally, she conquered the task. The blinking green light above the knob had been her reward. All Vanity wanted to do was sleep. She pushed open the door.

And then someone had crashed into her body from behind, simultaneously forcing her inside the suite and covering her mouth with a foul-smelling handkerchief, at which point everything turned to black…until she woke up…here.

Different room. Same hotel. And the prisoner of Jayson “J.J.” James.

He looked awful, like a man who had aged years within months. There had been a dramatic weight loss, a once-athletic body now gaunt and wiry. Even more alarming was the condition of his skin—rough, patchy, far and away from the sun-kissed surfer dude perfection of his Gap model days.

Their sordid history spiraled through Vanity’s mind. A hot minute ago, J.J. was a second-tier male model with an appetite for drugs and partying. Vanity had met him on various shoots, seen him out at the major clubs. And more than once he had charmed her into a night that she would regret the next morning.

The most regrettable of all had been the Surfcomber incident. That’s when J.J. set up a hidden camera to film their bedroom action. Learning about it had pushed Vanity to the edge, resulting in a deliberate car crash that left her unable to walk for months.

At first, Max had cut a deal with J.J. to bury the footage. But J.J. kept a copy and months later began selling the video as a pay-for-play download. Vanity’s father had dispatched his attorneys to annihilate not only J.J., but also any website or Internet service offering the X-rated content. Though the legal maneuvering worked, the damage had already been done. So many had seen the tape and could still find it through clandestine channels.

“J.J., please…don’t do this to me,” Vanity cried out desperately.

“ ‘Don’t do this to me.’ ” His voice was hoarse and mocking. “You’re the one who’s doing it. You put your daddy and his lawyers on my ass. They’re watching me.”

Vanity shook her head in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

“They tapped my cellphone. They want to kill me.”

She watched him stalk over to the mirrored hutch littered with crushed beer cans, garbage, and drug paraphernalia. His own four-hundred-dollar-a-night crack den.

J.J. grabbed a glass pipe and set it ablaze, making the tiny, fast-burning rock disappear as he expertly inhaled the smoke directly into his lungs.

Within a few seconds his eyes dilated, and he began to preen around the room, turning the camera on himself in a disturbing show of exhilaration and omnipotence.

Five minutes later he crashed, suddenly withdrawn and depressed. He rambled nonsensically, about the WB/UPN network merger ruining his shot at television stardom and about fashion editors conspiring to end his modeling career.

Vanity’s fear intensified. Drugs had been part of her world since she was thirteen. Marijuana, pills, cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, ecstasy. The whole gamut was always available at parties, in VIP club rooms, from older friends, on photo shoots. She had seen every illegal substance be consumed by casual users and addicts alike.

But Vanity had never witnessed a true junkie up close, and that’s exactly what J.J. had become. A total crackhead. And completely unpredictable. The sight was at once frightening and pathetic.

J.J. stepped back to the hutch, searching frantically for another white rock. He found a small pebble and proceeded to go through the motions again. Lighting the hot pipe…inhaling the sweet smoke…waiting for the quick high.

The telephone jangled, its subdued electronic ring barely competing with the relentless growl of Megadeth.

At first, J.J. merely stared, as if fascinated by the flashing light. But then he broke the trance and stepped over to the desk. “Hello…okay…” He hung up. “Somebody’s complaining about the music.”

Vanity quickly envisioned a strategy that might get someone to the room. And with J.J. halfway through the high of his last hit, the plan just might work. “Fuck them!” she screamed. “This is your room! Turn it up!”

His crazy eyes widened at the suggestion. “Yeah, you’re right.
Fuck
them!”

Vanity’s heart beat wildly inside her chest as she watched J.J. twist up the volume until the walls vibrated with the sonic assault of “Symphony of Destruction.”

Suddenly, he stopped and zeroed in on her with a strange look, his face turning dark. “It’s your dad’s lawyers again! When are they going to leave me alone?”

Vanity watched in horror as J.J. produced a hunting knife with a gut hook and serrated edge. “I’ll make them disappear. Untie me. Give me a chance to call my father. It’ll be done. I promise.” She tried to stare deep into his eyes, to reach him in some way.

J.J. scratched his arm with the knife, instantly drawing blood. But if he noticed the cut at all, it didn’t register. That’s how far gone he was.

Vanity struggled to wrench free from the tight knots. Her wrists were raw and bleeding from the rope burns, the pain so intense that it felt like her skin was being ripped all the way down to exposed bone. But the effort was futile.

Now J.J. stood over her and raised the knife.

Vanity’s eyes focused on the steel blade.

“As long as Daddy’s dirty bitch is alive, he’s going to protect her,” J.J. said.

And then his arm plunged down.