Microsoft Word - Rogers, Rosemary - The Crowd Pleasers (47 page)

"Not more than that he is being extremely cautious. But that may be for several reasons. What have you heard from our contact?"

Harris did not answer directly. Fingers went up to smooth his mustache before he said tightly, "Tomorrow's filming should tell us a great deal, don't you think? And when Markham and Carol get here, we'll know more. In the meantime, Rufe's having little hints planted in the political columns-in preparation for the big revelations, when the time is right."

Espinoza was a patient man-he waited.

Almost unwillingly Harris said, "Carnahan's working for them all right. More or less.

They snatched his sister-she's married to Vito Gentile-and the two children. I suppose that didn't give him much of a choice. But all the same .. ."

"Yes." Espinoza smiled, revealing white teeth. "But all the same, that means he has more reason to hate Reardon, doesn't it?"

A hint that Webb Carnahan, because of his connections and his past, might be useful to them in the end. Harris registered it, remembering that Espinoza had Mafia connections because of his role in the drug traffic business. But at least he hadn't objected to the clever plan Harris had come up with while he was watching the last set of dailies. Very clever-even Rufus Randall had admitted as much. Pleydel had been enthusiastic..

The next few days would tell.

Anne had locked the door to her room. Harris could understand that. Brightman's latest tape had been very revealing-he was glad she had gone to see Brightman soon after the filming. She was fighting her own sensuality-that was normal. By the time this was all over and behind them, she would be different. She might even be grateful to him for rescuing her.

Harris looked at his watch. Today was tomorrow already-four o'clock in the morning.

The moon had set a long time ago and everyone should be asleep.

He'd been a long time falling asleep, and now, suddenly,he was awake. He was alone tonight, thank God. No heady, overpowering scent of woman and sex. Webb pressed the button on the watch which was all he was wearing, and the dial glowed red. Four-twenty-five, and his wakeup was for five-thirty. Christ, what was he doing awake at this ungodly hour? Automatically, he reached for a cigarette. Might as well.

He'd turned out all the lights when he'd gone to bed, and left the heavy drapes open to the soft darkness that was broken now only by the distant glow of the lights they left on all night. Not many in the big house. A very pale, diffused glow in the cabin next to his-occupied by Jean Benedict. Maybe she was afraid of the dark.

Just a short scene to get over with this morning. With Anne; He frowned into the blackness. Annie baby. Was she safely snuggled in Harris's arms or Karim's?

Why had he bothered, last night at dinner? Seeing her there, without her usual escort, looking lost, had proved irresistible, but he didn't know, even now, what he had been trying to prove.

The cigarette tasted lousy. All filter and no flavor. He ought to quit altogether or take up cigars, like Rufus Randall.

Tomorrow, after he'd done his stint, he'd drive into town again-without company, this time. Call old buddy Peter and get his orders. Think about Lucy-he hoped she wasn't too scared. Big Daddy Reardon would look out for Anne.

Suddenly, a shadow moved against the dark outline of the patio doors. Becoming twin shadows. He stubbed out the cigarette, suddenly alert.

Jean Benedict's husky whisper was song and lyric merged into one.

"I can tell you're not asleep. Did you know I was one-fourth Cherokee? It's too late to sleep and too early to be awake alone. We decided, Sarah and I, that we could maybe keep each other company, the three of us-like warm against the cold outside.

Like finding out and learning . . . and early morning's no time to be alone .. ."

Half-chant and half-music, pulling his mind out of the dark places where it had been wandering.

Anne's eyes felt gritty from too little sleep and the fine sand thrown up by the tires of the pickup driving them to the location of the morning's filming.

She was too tired to feel keyed up as she usually did-or to care that Karim, sitting beside her, kept his arm about her shoulders, pulling her more closely against him each time they bounced over a rut in the road.

The sand dunes were on the far side of the island, slipping down into the ocean.

Occasionally they had picnics there during her childhood summers. Today, they would be a part of the desert. Special Effects would take care of all the little details, and no one watching Greed for Glory would ever realize they hadn't traveled to the Mojave Desert for this particular segment.

Yves was anxious about the light-he had come out here very early, with the camera crew, to make sure everything was set up just right.

"I wonder what he would have done if it had turned out to be a foggy morning?"

"Probably stood there like Moses ordering it to roll back!"

The girls from Makeup and Costume talked over Anne's head as if she weren't there-or was merely a window mannequin. So much the better-she herself didn't feel quite real. And she was glad that Yves had skipped his usual little pep talk this morning.

The sunlight looked pale in comparison to the van with its bright artificial lights. Anne sat in a canvas chair and looked down at the script. No more nerves-just another stint to be got over with. And then, if the day stayed fine, maybe she would go into town and see if Carmel had changed very much. Perhaps she'd have lunch there, go shopping in the plaza like any tourist. Wear her oldest, most faded pair of levis-she needed to get away from this closed-in artificial atmosphere.

A shadow fell across her shoulder. She looked up quickly, and into Karim's smiling face. Without a word of apology he lowered himself into the chair next to hers.

"Are you studying the script only now? I think I know this part by heart." He was wearing sunglasses and she couldn't see his eyes. She only knew she disliked and mistrusted him, and yet circumstances forced her to act civilized towards him.

"Civilized"! It was an overdone word-meaning something before, but not now, not recently, when she'd watched the layers of so-called civilization peeling off almost everybody around her, to show their real selves.

"Has Pleydel told you of this insistence of his on realism? We are to fall into our parts and become what we are supposed to be. You did very well yesterday."

She was in costume, a peasant-type blouse that left her arms bare, and he stroked the length of one arm before she pulled it away from him instinctively.

"Please, Karim! I really am trying to concentrate,'

"Are you? Very good." He laughed-she had the impression that he was about to say more, but just then Yves walked over to them, looking impatient, a frown of concentration between his brows.

"Anne, here you are! Come along, my dear, we have to set up the first scene."

No stand-ins today. And the standing around was kept to a minimum as both Yves and the camera operators kept an eye on the sun. She and Webb. He did nothing more than raise one eyebrow at her-his idea of a greeting, she supposed wrathfully, wondering why he always had the power to put her into a temper. And where was Anna-Maria this morning? Standing on the sidelines watching?

No more moonlight, sending her mind spinning and dancing on the silver edges of swells; breaking like splintered glass against rocks and beaches. This was the morning after, and she was sane again, able to take Webb as he was.

But what was he? She once knew what she had been looking for-herself, maybe, freedom, whatever that meant. She was no longer certain. But Webb-the image, the women-

"Very well, we are ready at last." Anne heard Yves' voice with relief. She was ready to get this over and done with, so she could have the rest of the day to herself, to be herself.

"Good morning. Christ, is it afternoon already? They still filming?"

Harris had stayed up later than any of them last night, and had risen early. He'd been on the telephone all morning; and mixed with a sense of satisfaction at having accomplished so much was a feeling of resentment at the others. Espinoza and Randall had taken off at dawn to play golf; and Randall still wore his golfing clothes, his cigar stuck at a jaunty angle in his mouth.

"They're still out there, as far as I know." Harris made his voice sound noncommittal.

"You know what a stickler Pleydel can be. Where's Sal?"

"Downstairs having a shower and changing, I guess. His girl friend came with us, to caddy." Randall gave a bark of laughter. "You should have seen those guys' faces!

Hear anything new?"

"Carol's arriving this afternoon. Parmenter and his friend" -Phelps's look was significant-"ought to be here sometime tomorrow. It's the weekend, so everyone else will probably go into town or fly down to the city. We ought to have time to talk and plan the last-minute details."

"Uh-huhl" Randall grunted around the cigar that was already filling the room with foul-smelling smoke. "And Carnahan? We have his angle figured out yet? Can't underestimate his connections, you know. When this thing breaks .. ."

Randall watched as Harris Phelps tried to keep the annoyance from his face.

"Nobody's underestimating anyone. And we do have the advantage of knowing what he's up to, don't we? And why. As I've said, we could turn that to our advantage.

Right now our contact in Washington is working on finding out where they're holding his sister and the children."

"And in the meantime, what's Reardon up to?"

Harris permitted himself a tight smile. "He's playing it slow and cautious. Remember that he has only suspicions to go on, the bastard. And he daren't pull anything too obvious. Not now, with the press"-he nodded at Randall-"screaming at his heels.

Parmenter doesn't like all those CIA exposures Norm's been printing in his column, by the way, but he understands what we're doing and why-we'll have to do a certain amount of explaining when he gets here, you know."

"Oh sure." Randall had a way of dismissing unimportant details with a wave of his cigar. Now he actually grinned. He was a man of action, and the weekend promised plenty. The first big move forward. A few more weeks, and ...

He snapped back to attention when Harris Phelps said carefully, "I had a call from Petrakis, too. Everything's going well at his end. I talked to him about our-slight problem with Karim, and he felt sure the emir would understand whatever measures we have to take. Although they do not have to be too extreme-on our part, that is."

The two men exchanged a look. They had talked until late the previous night.

"Which scene were they shooting today?"

There was a flickering change in Harris Phelps's cold gray eyes-there for an instant, then gone, as they turned opaque.

"A very short sequence between Anne and Webb Carnahan. The scene-if you remember the book-where Glory steals Jason's horse when he's asleep and takes off, planning to turn him over to the soldiers who are looking for him."

She was riding bareback-remembering how to ride, although the horse, well trained, made it easy for her. Glory, running away from the man she alternately loved and hated. Looking for the soldiers who would rescue her ... although the small patrol into whose midst her bolting horse took her was more interested in Glory herself.

A series of short scenes. She had to say few words, only to register various emotions. With her hair hanging loose and tangled and her face deliberately dirt-smeared by the makeup girl, it wasn't too difficult.

At least there was no Webb to cope with. This was really acting. Easy to show fear and revulsion when the grinning soldiers began to paw at her body.

She was being dragged along with them, screaming-and then they let her fall, moving away from her as their commander rode up, barking out an order in Spanish. Boots polished to a meticulous shine. Whip tapping against them. Fearfully, she looked up, to encounter malicious black eyes, nasty-smiling face.

"So! I find you again, eh? Or you have found me." She was pulled to her feet. "Which is it? You look a trifle the worse for wear since I saw you last, senorita. Did your Americano tire of you so quickly?"

"Please-please! I ran away from him ..." "Did you? Were you looking for me? You must tell me all about it." Dream-or new nightmare? Yves had only to call, "Action I"

and she moved and reacted like an automated doll.

They had erected a makeshift tent, and he threw her down on the ground just inside it, thrusting her. ragged skirts up as he threw himself over her. Her blouse ripped under his hands.

"You must show me what he has taught you since he made you his whore. And I think my men are anxious to find out, too."

Not real, not true. This was Karim, not Webb, and his face looked just as it had that night when she had been asleep and not quite asleep. Her struggles to escape him were in earnest now, but he kept laughing. Putting his hand over her mouth, half-smothering her when she would have screamed. Putting his other hand, hidden from the cameras, between their bodies, and between her thrashing legs. Hurting her so much that her arching convulsions looked as if she were responding to him.

"You will like this, and this-and anything else I choose to do with you. I am making you mine, do you understand that? Just as you were the other night. And when this is over, you will come away with me-I will have you begging for my favors, blonde bitch, just as you beg for his with your eyes that follow him everywhere!"

Karim's voice was only a whisper, but through the nightmare of pain and degradation she heard every word he said.

Rape. "Don't fight it, or they might kill you." "Lie still and enjoy it." Other words she had heard or read jostled themselves in her mind. Don't worry, this wasn't real-it wasn't happening to her, to Anne, any of it. Only to Glory, a make-believe woman who didn't know her own mind-in a make-believe book written by a woman called Roberta Savage. She'd read it in London. She'd read the script, which was all words and camera angles on different-colored pages. Let her mind cling to that and forget everything else. In the end she'd wake up and find she had been dreaming again.