Sugar Valley (Hollywood's Darkest Secret) (84 page)

Darell cut into the conversation, answering
for Tom, “Damen, chill out, dude, Tom gave me this because he knew
the stress I was under while making my first movie.”

“What? You’ve been doing this that long?”
Damen’s voice was loud, stiff, stifling to the human ear, showing
that he was powerfully angered, upset, that madness would be
showing very soon. He then blew a puff of air onto the table that
allowed the cocaine to blow into the carpet, with little sparkles
of fiberglass floating through the air, and landing all over the
condo.

Darell laughed at Damen’s doings, speaking
with pride, “You think that matters? Tom will get me more.”

“I can’t believe that you allowed, and still
allow, Darell to do this stuff,” yelled Damen.

Tom was scared, but he knew he was caught,
red-handed, so now he must come clean, and pray that Damen would
like his honesty. Tom explained, “Listen, he was under a lot of
stress, especially now.”

Darell abruptly cut him off, shouting with
madness, “Hey, don’t talk as if I’m not here, I’m not a child.”

“No, you’re just stoned,” yelled Damen.

Cramping down and up through this
moist-filled air, a rapture of depressing melancholy and anger
surfaced in Darell’s high mind, causing him to lift his body, from
the couch in a fast rhythm and punch Damen’s face. They began
fighting around Tom, breaking everything in sight, having rage to
their motives, and release of anger was their alibis. It was bound
to happen, but Damen never thought Darell would be the one who he
was going to fight tonight. This wasn’t a normal confrontation,
brawl, like they used to have in the Valley, where they would
wrestle, and play fight, but always hurting each other by accident.
After they would cause pain, they would apologize, and then fight
the next day in a wrestling, playing frenzy. But tonight was
different, unconventional, peculiar, Lucifer or some malevolent
spirit was present, causing these two best-friends to become
ex-friends in a blink of an eye, a drop of a tear, and also caused
them to break their bond, adherence, connection that they thought
was strong enough to withstand the greatest of challenges. Each
punch that Damen gave to him, meant tears would fall, plummet from
his eyes, not wanting to induce pain or any afflictions on him but
having to, only because of Darell’s abrupt, and undefined anger
toward him.

Every time Darell would punch him, he would
feel a form of relief, only because he was confusing his rage with
this situation, not realizing that the real person he should be
hitting was the man who was still sitting on the couch and the
woman who went by the name of Julienne Wells.

Damen’s last punch caused Darell to fall on
the couch, and feel languor, lassitude, fatigue, and exhaustion,
permitting him not to throw punches anymore toward Damen. Finally,
Damen got ahold of Darell’s shirt and dragged him into his bedroom,
developing rug burns on Darell’s back that pierced at his skin like
he was lying on hot coals, red-hot ones. He pushed Darell into the
bedroom, closed the door and put a chair up to the doorknob,
permitting Darell to be captured and trapped in his own room. Damen
ran up to Tom, punched him in the stomach, and forced him to the
ground by putting his arm in the back of him. This is the moment of
truth, the moment where lives would be altered, and fate would be
decided by human action. Damen watched Tom, and spoke in a low, but
angry fashion, “You listen to me, Tom Fryer, Darell is one of my
best friends, my only friend I have left. That means he is very
important to me. But now, I’m pissed because I had to fight him,
and all because of you. You better pray that I don’t win that
Oscar, because if I do, I’m going to tell the whole world how and
what you really are. I’m going to tell them about how you allowed
Darell to inflict himself with drugs. Also, I’m gonna tell them
about Vivian. You are a poor example of an agent, and I’ll be
damned if I’m going to allow your payback to come by you later on
in life. I’m gonna be the one, who is gonna be there when it comes
around to you, threefold.”

“Please, Damen, I was just trying to help
him,” Tom said softly, pleading to Damen about how he doesn’t want
him to tell. This is what Tom was trying to avoid, but it came out
with Darell’s help, inevitably happening where there was nothing to
avoid it. “Please, Damen, if you say anything, my career will be
over and my freedom. They’ll put me in jail.” Tom was trying to
push Damen’s soft spot, knowing if he did, then Damen would have a
change of heart. “I’m an old guy, this was the first time that I
actually found a client that made me the real top agent again, the
top dog.... Please, don’t take that away from me.”

Pound, Pound, Pound.

Mr. Schultz let go of his arm, allowing him
to fall on his stomach. He sat down on the couch, while listening
to Darell pound on the door, and thought about what Tom said in his
plea, how sincere and scared he really was. He was still a kind and
gentle person, and Damen was also a person who forgave often, but
when he heard Darell say in a loud scream, “Help me,” he got up
from the couch and walked to the main door; his decision was
final.

Damen stopped by the entrance, the opened
door, and stood in the doorway, saying with sadness, “Listen, this
is for your own good, Tom. If I don’t win the Oscar, then you can
be sure that I’ll announce your dark secrets after the awards.
Also, when you let Darell out, please tell him I’m sorry for
locking him up in his room.” He then turned around to face Tom’s
frightened image, and saw the gold pen that Jose and he bought
Darell for his first movie. He walked back in, grabbed the pen, and
added, “Make sure you give this pen to Darell.”

Damen ran out of the condo and out of the
condominium building as fast as fame came to Darell. When he
reached the café, he entered it with a sad look on his face. He
went inside the café and went straight to his bed, with Chuck
entering into his room immediately.

Chuck knew something was wrong with him,
walking closer to his bed, Chuck questioned, “What’s wrong? You
look sad, Damen, is something bothering you?”

“Yeah.” He explained everything to Chuck, the
fight, the drugs, and the wrongdoing that Tom Fryer did.

While Damen was explaining, Chuck began to
feel the pain that Damen was going through. When he finished his
story, his complicated but misery-filled problem, Chuck spoke,
“Don’t worry, Damen, everything will be okay. If Darell gets any
worse with drugs, then we’ll take him to rehab personally, by
force.”

“I don’t want to talk about it now, I just
want to go to sleep.” Chuck grinned toward Damen’s closed, sad, and
fatigued eyes, and got up from the bed. He shut off the lights and
exited his room, closing Damen’s door very carefully, not wanting
to disturb Damen’s sleep that he rightfully deserved.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Fear was shown to his eyes again, a
desperate, imperative struggle that formed at his vein on his
forehead, showing its blue, disgusting line, pumping blood through
its body, and showing its pump by rising once a second from his
forehead’s flesh. Tom Fryer was filled with trepidation, hysteria,
and worry once more, not elapsing, but growing even greater than it
was before, the anxiety that he tried desperately for so long to
keep hidden; the fear of Damen telling the whole world what he was
really like. Tom always assumed that Damen would tell on him about
raping Vivian, but he never was sure about it, wasn’t certain.
Well, once Damen Schultz told him that he was going to snitch,
something went off in Tom’s mind, something that he couldn’t
explain. It caused him to go a little bit berserk, deranged and
crazy, creating and forming his thoughts into a mold of immoderate,
outlandish, and drastic attempts, making him do things that a
normal person wouldn’t do, or exercise.

Once Damen left Darell’s condominium, Tom
just lay there and thought in his mind, What am I going to do
now?

Following a few hours of him thinking,
inspecting, contemplating, and analyzing while lying down on the
ground, Tom noticed that Darell wasn’t pounding on the door
anymore, that the loud annoying whacks weren’t present to his own
ears. He got up, walked slowly to the door, took the chair away
from the knob and opened it in a lingering fashion. Seeing Darell
lying on the ground, Mr. Fryer just stared at his drugged-up,
passed out body, speaking in a whisper, “The first time I find a
real client that could become a star in Hollywood and stay that
way, some kid comes along and threatens to take that away from me.
I’m not going to allow Damen to do that.”

He walked out of Darell’s condo, went down
the hallways of the building, and exited the structure; he decided
to walk home. Tom knew it was a long ways from where Darell lived,
but he figured it would give him time to think about the situation
that was brought on by Damen.

Step, Step, Step, Step.

He walked, step by step, thought by thought,
trying to comprehend the situation, and trying to understand a way
out of it, a way to make Damen not speak his mind to the world, and
keep Tom Fryer’s name clean. He walked until morning came, seeing
the sunrise in a new awesome way, suddenly making him come up with
a conclusion to this anxiety-filled confusion, this anxiety-filled
game of survival. He made a decision. It was a decision that he
hadn’t made in a long, long time, not wanting to do it, yearning to
be and think like average people, but having to do this one more
time, for his own benefit.

He got home and called up an old-time friend
of his, telling the friend to meet him at the place where he met
him before when he made this decision, this judgment of pure
sinister quality. After the call was made, he called up his
chauffeur, questioning, “Where are you? I need you to come my place
right now.”

When the chauffeur arrived, Tom jumped in it
as fast as the speed of water traveling down a hose, and muttered,
“Take me to Fred’s Tavern immediately.” When the limo finally
reached the destination, Tom told the chauffeur to wait for him,
that he’d be right back.

He walked in the tavern and noticed his
friend already waiting by the bar, filled with the sleaziest,
vulgar, and obscene people in leather, feeling that this place was
a hangout for the dregs of society. He rushed up to his friend, and
started explaining, in a confusing way, why he wanted him to come
so urgently. After he was done explaining, his friend had a bemused
look on his face. He looked at his friend’s long, black hair and
then looked away to see if anyone was listening to them. Suddenly,
Tom looked back at his friend and said while the bartender asked if
he wanted another drink, “All I want you to do is kill him.” Then,
Mr. Fryer turned to the bartender and spoke, “Yeah, another scotch
on the rocks.”

“Listen, Tommy, the last time I did a job
like this for you was ages ago. If you want me to do it right, it’s
gonna cost ya,” the long-haired man stated, rubbing a beer stain
off of his leather pants.

“How much, Mark?”

Mark started rubbing his long, black hair,
pushing it out of his face, and gawking at Tom’s nervous and
frantic image, noticing that he was trying to keep his own voice
down. Mark deciphered and explained, “Well, that depends on who I’m
going to fumigate. First, explain it to where I could understand
it, and then I’ll tell you the price.”

“Alright, his name is Damen Schultz, here’s a
photo of him,” Tom whispered, handing the photo over to Mark. “He
threatened me yesterday, I don’t want to say what he threatened me
about, but it’s serious. I want you to do what you do best, to him,
two weeks from today.”

“Why so long away? Why don’t I just kill him
tomorrow?” he questioned in a high tone, still staring at Damen’s
photo.

Tom was stressed, saying with a trembling
voice, “Please lower your voice, I don’t want the whole frickin’
bar to know I’m hiring you to kill a movie star.”

“He’s a movie star?”

Tom saw intrigued shock on Mark’s repulsive
face, the kind of look that a person gives when they win the
lottery in an abrupt moment. Mr. Fryer took a swig of his vodka,
feeling the nerves tormenting his nervous system, and responded,
“Yeah. Does that matter?”

“Well, it matters in price.” Mark began to
itch his tattoo of a dragon that was on his arm, and started to
grin a little bit, finding it funny that such a powerful man like
Tom Fryer was scared out of his mind by a young star named Damen
Schultz.

“Oh, well, anyway, the reason why I want you
to get rid of him in two weeks, is because he confronted me about
this yesterday, and I know he told his agent about it. So, if you
kill him any sooner, it’s going to look too suspicious.”

Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap.

Mark started to tap his right foot against
his own, thinking about the situation, wondering if he should do
this specific job or not. “Alright, so in two weeks I should get
rid of this Damen guy, I got it. Do you want me to do anything else
for you?” Mark then took a swig of his beer, adding, “Tommy?”

Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap.

“Yeah, don’t drink while you’re, you’re
disposing of him. I heard that you’ve become an alcoholic lately.
So don’t drink and kill at the same time, I don’t want you to screw
up. I need this guy gone, and I mean gone. My ass is on the
line.”

Tom got up from his chair, hearing Mark say
in quickness, “It’s gonna cost you three million.”

Tom then accidentally knocked over his glass
of vodka being filled with sudden shock of those digits,
questioning with utter confusion, “Three million dollars? Listen, I
don’t care how much money I’ve got; three million is still a lot of
money. Can you make it any lower?”