Burn (18 page)

Denny grinned a little, though he didn't lift his eyes. “I guess somebody's gotta do it.”

Rod laughed. “Atta boy. There's no faith in this world, Denny. There's no such thing as fair. That's why loyalty counts for something. With me? Denny? It goddamn counts for something.”

Denny Hoyle said nothing to that. He just kept staring at the bubbling foam in front of him, his grin slowly fading. Rod passed him back the bottle. This time, Hoyle guzzled long and hard.

Rod said, “Sorry to be the one to tell you.”

“Hey Rod, ” Denny said. “About all this. Maybe you just got some bad info or something. I mean maybe Luther didn't know nothing about it.”

“Sure, Denny. Could be.” Rod looked at him gently. “I guess the next thing you'll tell me is the big bald bastard isn't angling for my job, either.”

Denny glanced up. His eyes clouded, and he looked down again quickly.

“That's okay, ” Rod said. “I'm not asking you to rat out your so-called pal. I know all about it. How he's been going around to Todman behind my back, trying to make me look bad, the whole song and dance. That's the thing about these muscle freaks, Denny. Balls like little peanuts.”

“That's just Luthe. He ain't nothin’ for you to worry about.”

“Don't be so sure, ” Rod said. “Listen, you might think I've got it made. But the fact is, we're in the same boat, you and me.”

“Come on, ” Denny said. “You're the man, man. You're Rod Marvalis. Besides, you got contracts and shit, right? What you got to worry about?”

“Ask the last guy if a contract with Lomax Enterprises means anything. Go ahead. Go ask Gregor Tavlin
if there's any love and tell me what he says.” Rod snapped his fingers. “Oh, wait. I forgot. He's dead.”

Denny pressed his knuckles into his eyes.

“I didn't just get off the bus in this town, ” Rod said. “I know the score. Tell me something. Do you think they pay me what they paid Gregor Tavlin? That arrogant jag-off?”

“Guess I never wondered.”

“Well, don't bother, because I'll clue you in on a little something. It ain't even close. I'm a joke to them. They know it and I know it.”

“Nah.”

“It's time you woke up to reality, my man. All that matters is bottom dollar. These pricks know they can have Rod Marvalis for half what they had to fork over to keep Gregor Tavlin around. And they know they can get somebody young and hungry for pocket change compared to what they need to keep me. Forget about style. Forget about talent. Forget about everything you think matters in this life. And don't ever bend over to pick up your paycheck.”

“Damn, Rod. You're startin’ to kill my buzz over here.”

“Then I'm doing you a favor, ” Rod said. “Believe it or not, I lost my buzz a long time ago.”

“Dude.”

“Listen up, Denny. I'm going to tell you something. And this is something I've never told anybody. But I feel like we understand each other.”

Denny finally looked at him.

“I hate this gig, ” Rod said. “I truly do. But I'm smart enough to realize that this is as good as it's going to get for me now. I'm probably lucky it ever got this good at all.”

“Don't talk like that.”

“It's true. Before this, Denny, it was getting to the point where I couldn't even get arrested in this town anymore.” Rod reached and took the bottle back. “People forget, Denny. It doesn't matter what you did yesterday. There's no love. Ten years ago, if anybody had told me this is where I'd be right now? Prancing around in a pair of tights in front of a roomful of huffing heifers every day? I would have laughed in their face. Right in their face. Then banged their girlfriend just to make my point.”

“But you're on television, man.”

“Cable.”

“Still.”

“You don't need to try and cheer me up, ” Rod said. “It
is
a joke. My life hasn't worked out the way I thought it would, hey, fine. I'm not crying about it. There comes a point a guy takes what he can get.” Rod tipped the bottle high. “But I'll be goddamned if I'm going to let some nutless nobody like Luther Vines try and take it away.”

Denny stared at the water.

“We're the last of a breed, you and me.” Rod didn't know what that was supposed to mean, but he liked the sound of it. It sounded like just the sort of bullshit a guy like Denny Hoyle could sink his teeth into. “We've got to look out for each other.”

“I gotta tell you this is kinda fuckin’ with my head, ” Denny said. “I'm totally hammered, for one thing.”

“Sobriety is highly overrated, ” Rod said. “But for what it's worth, I know how you feel. I just wanted you to know that we're on the same side. You keep looking out for me? I'll keep looking out for you. The way
things are right now, that might be the only thing guys like you and me have going for us.”

A husky voice said, “Not the
only
thing, hon.”

Together, Rod and Denny looked to see that Cam-mie and Vivian had returned. They'd left their towels somewhere else.

It was a sight to behold. As Rod and Denny watched, the girls crisscrossed paths as they moved. This time, Cammie slipped back into the water on Denny's side of the tub, Vivian on Rod's.

“Hi, ” Cammie said.

Denny looked at her with glimmering, intoxicated eyes. “Hey.”

Cammie giggled and swung a leg over him like she was mounting a Harley Her tight smooth skin glistened like a wet seal's.

Lord, was she high.

“Last of a breed, ” Rod called over to Denny. “You and me.”

“You're a couple talking animals, all right.”

Rod leaned back and looked at Vivian. “Excuse me? Did you say something?”

He couldn't be sure in the dark, but he thought he saw her roll her eyes.

“I said talk to me, you animal.”

Before he could, she took a deep breath and went underwater again.

The clock on the dresser read 1:00
A.M.
when Adrian Timms finally peeled himself out of bed.

The clock was last year's Father's Day present, one of those that kept time by a signal from the U.S. atomic
clock in Colorado. Rachel said she'd ordered it out of one of those pricey men's gadget catalogs. Besides the time, the clock featured a temperature display that hadn't dipped below 84 degrees since the overworked window A/C unit had fried itself the day before yesterday.

A warm breeze circulated through the open windows, but it only pushed the rest of the hot air around. Convection ovens operated on a similar principle.

Drea Munoz had offered to put him up, but so far Timms had held out. Frankly, he hadn't expected the situation to go on this long. But each day this week, when he finally dragged himself home for the night, he'd found another apology note from the building manager taped to his door. Each day, the note claimed the service tech would be out the next. But each day the heat wave broke a new record, and everybody in town was booked tight with emergency calls.

Timms left his own note behind each morning, instructing the manager to make sure he sent the repair guys to the elderly couple across the quad first.

Air, no air. He hadn't been sleeping lately anyway.

At 1:03
A.M.,
88.4 degrees, Timms shambled into the kitchen. He wet down his hair at the sink, grabbed a cold beer from the refrigerator, and took the beer with him to the living room.

On his way to the couch, Timms stooped to slip out a magazine from the case file he'd left strewn across the coffee table. This was a back issue of
Health & Fitness
from last December. Timms turned back to the spot where he'd tented the magazine, right in the middle of the cover piece.

They'd titled the segment “The Bold Behind the Beautiful.” It was the annual compilation of profiles and interviews with the men and women the editors had
selected as the ten most influential people in the industry.

Down two slots from the previous year's ranking, but still holding strong at number eight: Gregor Tavlin, Club Maximum, Los Angeles.

Mostly it was fluff, nothing about Tavlin they didn't already know. But something about the article had been nagging Timms. The publication date, for one thing.

According to Lomax Enterprises, Gregor Tavlin had left “the family”—this was how the PR man, Todman, seemed to prefer phrasing it—after nearly a decade of filial love and loyalty because the man disagreed with new directions the company had begun to explore.

Timms knew canned corporate babble when he heard it. Which was exactly what he'd told Doren Lomax the morning they'd searched his office building. Without blinking twice, the CEO had sent his attorneys out of earshot and provided interpretation.

“Disagreed with new directions” was just the official explanation for the ugly truth: the company's resident alpha male had gotten territorial. According to Lomax, Gregor Tavlin had snorted and stamped his feet at the first sight of Rod Marvalis. When he hadn't gotten his way, he'd packed up his jockstrap and abandoned the herd.

Yet the magazine's lead time for the issue had obviously overlapped Tavlin's sudden departure from the same company for which he expressed such commitment in print.

If the interviews they'd conducted so far gave any indication, the Maximum Health family was a tight-knit bunch. It wasn't easy finding the employee who readily dissed the franchise. But Timms had to believe he wasn't the first person to think sacrificing Gregor Tavlin for Rodney Marvalis had to be the dumbest trade since the Dodgers gave up Martinez for DeShields.

He could remember mixing up baby formula on this same couch as he'd watched the Trojans ramble over Michigan State in the Rose Bowl the year his teenage daughter had been born. Marvelous Rod Marvalis had run for three touchdowns and thrown for another in that game. An overrated arm, but he could always find the pocket. And the guy ran the short-side option like a man possessed.

Even back then, Marvalis had been an undisciplined glory hound, and Timms hadn't been all that surprised when the guy crapped out in the pros. Still: from All-American to infomercial huckster in a double-handful of inglorious years?

Rod the Bod, they called him now.

It was sad.

And something about the whole acquisition of LifeRite, Incorporated just didn't play. These get-buff-quick scams like The Abdominator were a dime a dozen. Especially in LA., this land where impossible silicon-based life-forms roamed free among the flabby. But it didn't take an MBA to recognize that The Abdominator was aimed at a Denominator. As in Lowest Common.

Timms still couldn't factor it. Rod Marvalis shilling spring-loaded plastic just didn't jibe with the corporate image Lomax Enterprises projected.

He sat in the heat and stared at the fitness magazine. After a while, he began flipping pages.

When he noticed that he'd begun to pat his own midsection absently, he made himself stop and fetched another beer.

ANDREW
did the math in the car.

The way he figured it, the man must have been in his seventies at least, even if he'd been only draft age when he and Cedric had been busy fighting for the country that would later make each of them wealthy men. Andrew didn't know Cedric's age. He guessed the old crook had to be pushing eighty by now.

By appearances alone, Doren Lomax could have been a hale fifty-five. His hair had gone silver but stayed thick. He had a strong face, lined with character but un-withered by age. The square shoulders had yet to sag, the waistline yet to give way. Lomax's eyes were still full of steel, the smile he turned on his daughter still vibrant. Even at midnight, half in the bag.

Which was how they found him, camped in a big leather armchair deep inside the big dark house, in what Andrew took to be the man's study. Built-in bookcases
spanned the height and length of the two nearest walls. A large plasma-screen television pumped flickering blue light into the room, but Lomax didn't seem to be watching.

“Sweetie, ” he said, reaching to set a drink on the side table near his hand. Next to the glass, facedown, he placed the picture frame he'd been holding. Lomax pointed a remote control, muted the television, and rose to meet Heather. He leaned to kiss her forehead.

“I was hoping you'd be getting home soon. I haven't even had a chance to wish you a happy birthday.”

“Daddy.” She raised on her tiptoes and pecked his cheek. “I need to talk to you.”

Lomax looked over her shoulder to Andrew. Andrew turned his attention from the silenced television. He'd recognized the program on the screen the moment they'd come in. It was the same program that had gotten Heather's blood up back at the beach house. Something about the worst idea her dad ever had.

“Hello, ” Lomax said, offering his hand. “I'm Doren Lomax, Heather's father. How do you do?”

“I've done better, ” Andrew said.

Lomax looked at him. He looked at his daughter.

“You've been drinking, ” Heather said.

“I've been reminiscing, ” he told her. “Sit down and tell me what's wrong.”

Heather didn't sit. She stood and told what she had to tell, handing over the letter from her purse as she spoke. She kept talking as Lomax returned to the chair and read over the paper in his hands. He started out looking like a man scanning a business agreement; he ended up looking like a man rereading positive test results, as if the act of doing so might change the horrible news.