The Devil You Know (7 page)

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beads of sweat on her forehead. ‘You run the publicity department here, don’t you? It won’t make very good publicity when I go to the papers and tell them that you’re running a twenty-year institution out of his lease …’

William Rothstein was smiling now, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. ‘Now I get it,’ he said, and his words were soft and vicious. ‘Fiorello. You’re his kid. This whole thing is a stunt. You’re here to blackmail me.’

‘You can’t talk about blackmail, cutting off” our electricity ‘ ‘Let me save you some time before I get security to throw you out,’ Rothstein said silkily. ‘You aren’t going anywhere with this stoW. Do you know how many apartment ads we run in the Post and the News and the Village Voice? We get hundreds of people like your father every day, thinking it’s open season on developers, that they can trade in their shitty leases for hundreds of thousands more than they’re worth. If anybody did pay any attention to you - which I highly doubt - we would simply use your presence here today as evidence of your blackmail.’

‘We aren’t extorting you. You are driving us out. What about my father’s livelihood?’

Rothstein shrugged. ‘Your father was offered fifty thousand dollars to settle with us. Instead, he chose to go to the police, to make trouble. If you take on this firm, you face the consequences.’ He leaned forward in his chair, casting dark eyes up and down her slim body. ‘You’re a very attractive girl. Is that why he sent you to me?’

Rose flushed scarlet, rage and shame bringing the blood to the surface of her cheeks. She took a step forwards, her hand shaking, intending to slap him in the face.

‘Oh-ho, a regular wildcat.’ She couldn’t believe it; he was actually laughing at her. ‘I don’t think so, Missy. You’re a little out of your depth here.’

There was a knock on the door. ‘Mr Rothstein? It’s Melissa. Shall I call security?’

Rose’s ice-blue eyes flashed. ‘You’ll regret this, Mr Rothstein.’ ‘Urn. Yeah. I’m sure I will.’

He leaned back, chuckling. Rose wi:enched the door open, facing

a pneumatic blonde in her twenties who glared at her.

‘You didn’t have any appointment ‘

‘I’ll show myself out,’ Rose said, ignoring her. She walked down the hall, cheeks burning, as the girl screamed, Tm calling security!’

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There was a fire exit next to the elevator. I

This was unbelievable. They were ruined. And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

Rose helped her parents get through the next two weeks. She contacted their landlord and got him to waive the notice period. She found a cheap two-bedroom in the Bronx, and ringed ads in the Help Wanted section. Her father closed the store, sold off what equipment he could, and donated the food to a homeless shelter. She tried not to let him reflect too much on the loss of his place.

‘It’s really an opportunity,’ she told her father. ‘You know, starting over. You have five thousand bucks and no stress. And anyway, Mom needs you to be strong.’

She told her mother the same thing, and watched each of her parents force a calm exterior for the other.

Paul Fiorello found himself a job. He got a Deli Manager position at a Pathmark store on Third Avenue, a decent job. It pafd.less money, and it was taxable, and it wasn’t his own business, lose knew that every day he put the uniform on, he felt humiliated. But her father never complained, and the job carried health benefits. Her mother got to go to the doctor’s more often, and did her best to make the new apartment feel like home.

But her father was a man with a broken spirit, and Rose became obsessed with putting it back together again.

Her grades went to pot. All the subjects she’d loved at school suddenly seemed like a big waste of time. English - who cared? History was the past. Geography … even Math …. Rose just did not care. She was never likely to travel abroad, and as for Math, today there were calculators and computers. None of this rubbish mattered.

What mattered was money.

William Rothstein had taught her that.

Rose thought about him every day. And not just him; about the soft carpets, the rich woods, the blonde, twenty-something secretary. The toys that money bought him and his firm. And the power. The ability to take twenty years of someone’s hard work, expertise in their field, and a loyal customer-base, and just throw it away.

Money had paid for that lawyers’ letter. Money had bought off the

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NYPD. Mon(‘y greased the wheels at City Hall and got the press off yonr back. W hen P,.othstein had said that to her, she had believed it.

Fuck school, Rose thought bitterly, using language in her head her father would have belted her for if she’d ever said it aloud. What she needed was money. She wanted a place her father could not be thrown out of, and a home they owned themselves. A place with a garden in the back, where her father could grow his tomatoes.

Well, she was going to get it. And she was going to get it from real estate.

If that snivelling little shit lothstein could do it, so could she.

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Poppy turned into the guesthouse’s drive and parked the car. She thanked all the rock ‘n’ roll gods her parents owned this place, near Sunset, keeping it for their maid, somewhere she could stash her ride and not worry it would get stolen. Nobody was home except the housekeeper; she could see Conchita’s Mercedes station wagon in the garage, the one she sometimes got picked up from school in. Quickly she got out, before she could be seen, and ducked out into the base of the Hollywood Hills. Conchita probably wouldn’t rat her out, but why take the chance?

The guest house was a spacious bungalow without muck of a view, but with a fantastic little garden instead - Daddy had installed a small fountain, imported from Italy, to go with the bougainvillea ad thick climbing roses over the fence. The scent of flowers was intense there that it almost muffled the smell of gasoline fuel and smog. Of course, the best thing about the guesthouse from Poppy’s point of view was that it was close enough to the Strip to walk.

Poppy clip-clipped her way two blocks south to where the Hyatt stood, tall and boringly functional. There were always cabs parked out front. She got into one and told him to take her down to the lLainbow.

‘But that’s only-‘

Poppy flung ten bucks at him. ‘I know, but I don’t wanna walk.’ ‘You got it,’ the guy said, pulling out.

Poppy grinned. Like they said in Spinal .Tap, money talked and bullshit walked.

Excitement crackled through her. She’d made it. The late summer sun was sinking behind the glossy towers of Sunset Strip, and sloe could see a few hookers right over there, too close to the chichi hotels for the doormen to feel comfortable - the cops would be along in a second - and over there, the first knot of metal-heads, dudes in jeans and black leather jackets with mullets, or long straight

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hair down to their asses, and a few Motley Crue-style glamsters - the guys with lipstick had to travel in packs, or they’d get beaten up. The girls kicked ass, too. You had punk chicks and biker chicks and then you had the L.A. babes - dudettes, as KNAC called them - girls with sprayed-on black pants, low-slung studded belts, fingerless lace gloves, and platinum-blonde hair teased up to the sky. The ones who couldn’t get implants got padded, push-up bras. Every chick had lip liner, red talons, and tons of attitude.

Poppy loved it. She couldn’t wait. She wondered who was playing tonight. Even the shittiest gig offered possibility; getting drunk, hanging out, flirting with the boys. Even better, flirting with the band. Poppy’s wet dreams all involved Jon Bon Jovi and Rick Savage, and sometimes even Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys. It was cooler to like Slayer, but Poppy didn’t care. Really hard metal made her ears bleed. But it was still cool to go to those gigs, too; you were part of the heavy metal brotherhood, and you got to piss off: Debbie Gibson fans. Which had to be a good thing in anybody’s book.

The cab screeched to a halt outside the club. Poppy stepped out

and shook her long, carefully highlighted honey-blonde hair. ‘Hey, baby.’ ‘What’s up, sugar?’ ‘Lookin’ fine …’

Poppy pretended not to hear the calls of appreciation as she walked into the crowd, but she bit back a tiny smile. Somebody saw

it, and a storm of wolf-whistles followed her up the queue to get in. The bouncer on the door saw it and beckoned to her.

Poppy raised one delicately arched brow and put her manicured nails over her boobs, which were looking even bigger in the pushup bra she had crammed them in to, her low-cut top revealing generous amounts of cleavage. She pressed her hand to them, as if to say, Me?

‘Yeah, you, sweetcakes.’

The bouncer looked her up and down, taking in the glorious tits, the pale eyes and tanned skin, the expensive highlights, the black miniskirt, the high-heeled ankle boots and fishnet stockings. Together with that pretty face and soft teenage skin, she was a little slice of metal heaven. She looked like she belonged in a Cinderella video.

The girl walked towards him in a confident way. Usually girls would come up deferentially, desperate for a pass or a ticket or.just to

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avoid being thrown out. Not this kid. He didn’t have respect for her,

of course; wasn’t his way with girls; he just liked the looks of her. ‘You’re on the list,’ he said.

Poppy rewarded him with a stunning smile, displaying perfectly white, straight teeth that were the result of eighteen months with the

best orthodontist in Bel Air.

‘Hey, thanks,’ she said.

‘Hey, luck that, man.’ One of the Hell’s Angel biker dudes at the front of the queue growled with fury. ‘You didn’t even check her name. You don’t even know her name.’

The bouncer stared him down. He worked out on Muscle Beach

and he could take any drunk-ass biker.

‘Her name’s Baby,’ he said.

Poppy started to pull out her fake ID.

‘You don’t need that.’ He winked at her, and Poppy smiled back. This was what made her feel sexy and alive, little tributes to her beauty like this. One of the dirty, unmade-up biker chicks started to call her a bitch. Poppy tossed her hair and walked into the club.

Some people - her parents included - would call it crazy and dangerous for a girl to be out on the Sunset Strip alone. Especiay a Bel Air Jewish princess like Poppy. But they were wrong, Poljay thought. It was all about the care and feeding of men’s egos. On .(!e, Poppy had been in the front row at a Bad Brains gig and the moth pit was so intense she thought she might get crushed. She’d turned a sweet smile on the guys behind her, and they had put their arms either side of her on the stage lip, creating a little pocket of protected space for her.

The club was packed. Condensation literally dripped off the walls; kids packed in together, sweat on foreheads, jackets consigned to the cloakroom. The girls did better than the dudes; they could peel off layers of clothing. Maybe it was designed to have just that effect. Poppy’s eyes flickered over tonight’s crowd, seeing all the girls in just their lacy bras, some of them with marker pen marks across the creamy flesh. The adrenaline crackling through her kicked up a notch, loadies were scurrying across the club stage, pulling away equipment; setting up other stuff. Plastic cups and other trash were scattered across the floor. Obviously one band had already left the stage, and another was coming on. That was OK - support bands

usually sucked. Poppy walked up to the bar.

‘Hey, cutie,’ the barman said.

He recognised Poppy. She was in here often enough, busting the

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legal drinking age, but hey, it was the Eighties, who didn’t? Anyway, girls like her should be drunk. It gave you a better shot with them. Although a fox like this one had to have some big-ass metal-head boyfriend hanging around.

‘Jack and Diet Coke,’ she said, with not quite enough bravado to pull it off.

‘Coming right up,’ he agreed anyway.

Poppy took a seat at the bar and sipped at her icy drink. Oh, man, this was heaven. All the sexy dudes with their long hair and muscles . . not that she ever wanted to do anything with them. She was way too young. She was saving herself for something other than a one

night stand, even if they were cool and rock ‘n’ roll.

These boys were strictly eye-candy.

But this was her scene. Her crowd, her people, her brotherhood. It might not have been the Sixties, but there was a vibe here that her parents and Tipper Gore and the PMP,.C, the suburban moms’ pressure group that agitated to ban metal stars and their R-rated lyrics, would never understand. To Poppy’s shame, her own mom had actually joined the PMIC. But it wasn’t all about Satan, it was all about fun. Sex, drags, and rock ‘n’ roll. What the hell was wrong with that?

She thought music beat the shit out of the film business. Poppy took another slug of the fiery spirit, cool to her mouth, but burning her throat. Mom would freak when she told her she wanted to quit her acting lessons. When would they get it? She wanted to be a rock star, not some boring old actress. Going to auditions and whining at an agent, no thanks. Poppy wanted to found an all-girl rock band and get out there, banging her blonde hair all over the place and toting her axe around. Or maybe she’d be a bassist. Bassists were cool, because they had a lot less to play, so they could move all over the stage. Ideally, Poppy wanted to be a lead singer, but despite Mrs Teischbaum’s singing lessons, she unfortunately had a voice only

marginally better than a frog with a particularly hoarse croak. ‘And now …’

The lights dimmed. A huge roar went up from the crowd, who were punching the air at the ME and making ‘devil’ sounds.

‘Please welcome - Dark Angel!’

Dark Angel started to play.