Aztec Sun Page 6

  “Yeah. Let’s hope Melanie Greer is. And John.”

  Sandra smiled. “How can they not shoot the scene when you created such a magnificent sunset in the window?”

  Luis beamed with pride.

  She left the tech booth, ducked under some scaffolding and followed a meandering route to the door and outside. In truth, she was delighted by the delay in filming. It gave her a chance to roam the studio grounds without Diego hanging onto her arm and talking her ear off about how wonderful everything was.

  Why, if everything was so wonderful, was Melanie having problems? Why had John Rhee blown a fuse? Why was filming being postponed?

  Why was were drugs Rafael’s “thing”?

  It took Sandra a moment to adjust to the glaring sunshine after the artificial light of the sound stage. Near a neighboring building, she spotted a few men unloading a moving van, the contents of which could have come directly from the Salvation Army—old, serviceable furniture, dusty lamp shades, rug remnants with fraying edges. More recycled sets, she guessed, secretly pleased by the studio’s frugality. If she couldn’t find a better story in all this, perhaps she’d write about how one studio managed to put together movies on the cheap. The high-rolling producers of Hollywood could learn a thing or two from Rafael Perez, the genius with the dark skin and darker eyes and the adoration of everyone who worked for him—even if he wouldn’t share his T-bird.

  ***

  THERE SHE WAS, ALONE.

  Not alone, actually. She was talking to the guys Rafael called his scavengers, a trio of pack-rats who roamed the yard sales and flea markets of Los Angeles County, scrounging items that might come in handy in future projects. Rafael had hired the kids last year. They’d been on probation at the time, all of them convicted of disorderly conduct. They hadn’t had a run-in with the law since Rafael had taken them on.

  Not that he had worked any miracles, turning their lives around and making them see the error of their ways. All he’d done was give them a job, a chance.

  Exactly as someone had once given him a chance when he’d been young and lost.

  He couldn’t imagine the scavengers telling Sandra Garcia anything he didn’t want her to know. Their police records notwithstanding, they were good kids, and they seemed happy to be working for him.

  But Rafael didn’t like her wandering about the studio grounds unattended. He didn’t trust her.

  He turned from the window and groaned. The truth was, he did trust her—to get people to open up, to talk. She wasn’t sneaky or underhanded. What she was was skilled at her job—digging and then going public with whatever she unearthed.

  She was more than skilled. When she looked at a person, her eyes saw past the surface. Rafael had felt her x-raying his soul when she’d gazed at him across the table in Cesar’s yesterday evening. She’d gotten under his skin, way deep. Maybe it had nothing to do with her being a reporter, but rather was because she had such long black hair and smooth, silky skin. Maybe he’d been responding to her ability to maintain the upper hand, even as she’d pretended to yield to him.

  Maybe it was the way she’d peered up at him from the driver’s seat of her car, her eyes shimmering with... what? Curiosity? Expectation? Hope?

  Desire?

  Or had he only been seeing his own desire reflected in her face?

  Why wasn’t Diego with her now, orchestrating things? He had promised he would keep an eye on her. Whatever Rafael thought of her—and he didn’t want to analyze his thoughts to any great extent—he wouldn’t have her poking around the studio on her own. He trusted her too much to do exactly what she’d come to Aztec Sun to do: find a story worth writing about.

  A story about the tensions on the set, about the inability of Melanie Greer to stay cool enough to get through her scenes despite Diego’s increasingly hollow-sounding reassurances that he had her on a short leash.

  From the start Rafael had been aware of the rumors circling around the actress. She was young, naive, looking for fun. At times she reminded him of his own recklessness as a youth. He too had lived only for the present, for fun—until fate had crashed over him with its deadly undertow.

  Would it take a similar tidal wave to wake Melanie up? Or was he worrying needlessly? Diego insisted that everything was under control, that Melanie was only suffering from nerves and that once the cameras began to roll in earnest she would be magnificent.

  It would be bad enough if Diego turned out to be wrong. Far worse would be to a reporter from a major city daily on hand to witness the disaster and write it up for mass consumption.

  Even stopping by his mother’s house last night hadn’t eased his mind. Usually such visits relaxed him, but last night all the woman had done was complain that he wasn’t eating right—”Too much gringo food,” she’d lamented. As she’d filled him a plate of leftover stewed pork and frijoles refritos, she’d told him he looked lousy, he wasn’t taking care of himself, a whole litany of maternal criticisms. Then she’d asked him to send Ricardo money for cigarettes. It wasn’t enough that Rafael was supporting Ricardo’s wife and children. No, he also had to support Ricardo, because without money, without cigarettes, maybe he wasn’t safe.

  Rafael had capitulated. His mother was a good woman, strong, a survivor in a world where too many people didn’t survive. For her, he’d send money to his brother in prison.One powerful woman in his life was enough, he thought, compulsively turning his gaze back to the window for another glimpse of Sandra. She wasn’t really like his mother. Her features, while just as resolute, were gently polished, while his mother’s had been carved by sun and sorrow. Sandra was slim while his mother was robust; if Sandra had muscles they would no doubt have been shaped by health-club exercise, not by years of labor in the tomato and lettuce fields of the Imperial Valley. No south-of-the-border accent tainted Sandra’s elegant speech. No glimmer of pleading shone from the darkest part of her eyes.

  Yet as different as they were, the two women shared certain attributes: a steadfast gaze, a certainty about what they were after...and an ability to get Rafael to agree to things he’d never intended to agree to.

  Rafael liked to believe he was hard. But his mother had always been able to find the softness inside him.

  God help him if Sandra could find it, too.

  Chapter Four

  SANDRA ROLLED THE SLEEVES OF HER BLAZER up an extra cuff. The bitter aroma of melting asphalt made the air seem even hotter than it was.

  Up north in Berkeley, flashes of red and yellow would be tipping the leaves right now. The breezes lifting off the bay would mute the sun’s fire and carry a green, cleansing fragrance. Sandra loved Los Angeles, but sometimes, when the heat grew oppressive and the air was so stagnant and heavy with pollution it left a sour taste on her tongue, she felt homesick.

  Still, Los Angeles had user-friendly beaches. It had mild, dry winters and a zillion restaurants that stayed open all night. It had news, it had stories. It had a film studio like Aztec Sun, where three ghetto kids could get a job buying useful junk at garage sales instead of hanging out on street corners, drinking cheap wine and shouting lewd remarks at every woman who walked by.

  If she really couldn’t dig up a better story, she’d write the human interest article Flannagan wanted. Only she’d write it her way, with her slant: an essay on what a better place Los Angeles would be if street punks could find legitimate employment.

  That Rafael Perez was rich and successful wasn’t news. That he appreciated the value of cast-offs, whether they were discarded items from a flea market or discarded youngsters from the neighboring barrio—that was news.

  Loitering near the trailers Diego had told her were reserved for Aztec Sun’s “stars,” she spotted the studio’s sole star approaching, her blond hair bouncing around her face and her hips twitching with each step. Melanie Greer brightened with a smile as she spotted Sandra and jogged over. Her smooth, pale skin was dry despite the heat; her designer jeans hugged her legs and her earrings dangled below her dai
nty chin. Her eyes were wide, glassy in the glaring sunlight.

  “Hi,” she said, digging into a pocket of her jeans and removing a key.

  “Have you got a few minutes?” Sandra asked. “I’d like to interview you if I could.”

  “Sure.” Melanie’s smile was as blinding as Diego’s, but on her it looked genuine. “I was just planning to have my lunch. This morning’s shoot is...well, shot.” She succumbed to a fit of giggles, then climbed the two steps to the door, unlocked it and sauntered inside, beckoning Sandra to follow.

  The interior of the trailer was a mess.

  Having spent much of her youth in the kitchen of a bustling restaurant, Sandra had been indoctrinated in the “cleanliness is next to godliness” faith, and she tried not to judge others based on her own impeccable standards. But Melanie’s trailer was so chaotic, Sandra recoiled.

  Articles of clothing were strewn across the floor in wrinkled mounds. Empty diet-soda cans cluttered every available surface. The tiny sink in the kitchen area held stacks of dirty dishes. A feather pillow lay on the floor near an overflowing waste basket. Crumpled tissues like tufts of cotton blanketed the jumble of cosmetics on the vanity table, the stool for which had toppled over.

  “Excuse the state of the place,” Melanie said blithely, picking a path through the debris to the refrigerator. “They offered to have the service clean it for me, but I said I didn’t want anyone coming through here when I wasn’t around. Janitors could help themselves to things, you know what I mean? Are you hungry?”

  “No, thanks.” Standing amid such outrageous slovenliness took away Sandra’s appetite.

  “I’m absolutely famished,” Melanie declared, pulling a bowl of pineapple chunks out of the refrigerator and kicking the door shut. “I would sell my grandmother’s headstone for a hamburger right now. A bacon cheeseburger dripping with grease, and a side of fries. But the camera, you know...”

  “The camera?” Sandra scanned the room uncertainly. Were they being filmed?

  “It adds ten pounds. I’ve got to keep my weight under one-ten or my agent’ll send me packing. Over at A Touch of Madness they’ve got a clause in my contract that says if I gain weight they can kill off my character.”

  “It’s a cut-throat business, isn’t it,” Sandra commented, shoving aside a silk dressing gown and lowering herself onto the lumpy sofa.

  Melanie righted the stool and sat on it. She popped a chunk of pineapple into her mouth and chewed. “That’s what I love about Aztec Sun,” she said before swallowing. The words emerged garbled, and a stream of pineapple juice dribbled down her chin. “Anything I want, Diego’s under orders to keep me happy. Are you writing this down?”

  “I’d like to, if it’s all right with you.” Sandra removed her recorder, balanced it on her knees, and turned it on. Then she opened her notebook and pen. “So, does Diego Salazar keep you happy?”

  “Ooh, that sounds X-rated!” Melanie wrinkled her nose and giggled, slobbering more pineapple juice down her chin, which she wiped haphazardly with her hand. Her eyes remained saucer-round, her pupils so large they all but obliterated the baby-blue irises. “He doesn’t keep me happy that way. I bet he’d like to, though. These Latin men and their machismo ... Is it just me, or do they have a thing for blondes?”

  “I think it’s you,” Sandra told her. “You’re so pretty, and they’re thrilled to have you working on their film.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they tell me. Not that they’re willing to put their money where their mouths are. They’re paying me less than I get at Madness, if you actually figure out what I’m getting per hour. It’s union scale, period. But my agent said it was a good move for me, that I should start working my way from the small screen to the big screen. And there’s so much to learn, so much pressure—it’s better to learn how to do movies while I’m in a low-budget flick. If I had to carry a major film—not that anyone offered me one, but they will. Once they see how good I am in White Angel, they’ll stop thinking of me as just a small-screen ditz, you know? They’ll stop worrying about what I can handle and whether I can carry a film. They’ll see how good I can be.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about your character?”

  “In White Angel?” Melanie grabbed a tissue from the vanity table and blew her nose. She sniffled a bit, dabbed at her upper lip, and discarded the tissue on the vanity table. “Her name is Michelle. She’s an uptown girl slumming it with the big bad hombre.” She pronounced it hahm-bray. “There’s a conflict with Paco’s gang. That’s Antonio Torres’s character—Paco. I’m like the gang’s mascot, you know? But I really love Paco, and I’ve got to prove I’m not just a rich white lady looking for an interesting experience.” She sniffled again, this time using her hand to wipe her nose. “It’s a stretch for me, a great part. And I don’t have to take off my blouse—they hired a body double for the sex scenes, thank God. Because I have enough people talking about me behind my back without baring my boobs on the screen, you know?”

  “What do people say about you?”

  “Oh, you know. Bimbo. Snow-brain. Candy girl. Like I said, it’s a cut-throat business. Did I say that?”

  “I think I did,” Sandra said helpfully.

  “Well, whatever.”

  “Snow-brain?” Sandra asked.

  Ignoring the question, Melanie popped another chunk of pineapple into her mouth. “I started out as a model, did you know that? Everyone said, ‘You’re too short to model.’ I showed them they were wrong. I modeled swimsuits, I did runway, I did petites even though I’m technically too tall for petites. I mean, what do these jerks know? I had ambitions. I came out to Hollywood—did you know I’m from Kansas? Did Diego tell you that?”

  Sandra closed her pen and let the recorder capture the spate of words, which spilled from Melanie’s juice-glazed lips too fast for Sandra to write down. Melanie’s pupils remained dilated, her chin glistened with pineapple drippings, and her hands fluttered vaguely through the air as she prattled. Snow-brain, Sandra contemplated, guessing sort of snow Melanie’s critics had in mind. Guessing that candy girl refer to nose candy.

  “Kansas,” the actress went on. “The most boring state in the universe. It’s so flat, on a clear day you can see all the way to Canada. I said to myself, ‘Melanie, you’ve got to get out of here.’ So I came to Hollywood, and one thing it’s not is boring.”

  “When you aren’t acting, what do you like to do?” Sandra asked, cringing inwardly at how stilted the question was. It was the sort of thing Flannagan would want her to ask.

  Melanie smiled defiantly. “I like to party, party, party. Does that make me sound like a bimbo?”

  “No.” Oddly enough, it made her sound young and naive. “Aztec Sun doesn’t seem like a party type of place.”

  “Rafael is strictly nose-to-the-grindstone. But deep down, he’s a peach. He lets me do anything I want. He told Diego, ‘Melanie is our star. Make sure she’s happy.’”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Is the ocean wet? This whole experience has been a kick.”

  “You don’t seem to get along with John Rhee.”

  “He’s a jerk. But I’ll tell you this—” Melanie leaned forward and tried to look earnest, though her gaze refused to settle on Sandra “—nobody is going to pay money to see White Angel because some dude named John Rhee directed it. They’re going to pay money to see White Angel because Melanie Greer is in it. And because Rafael Perez produced it. Because people like his movies and they like me. Rhee is lucky we’re bringing him along for the ride. The man is a royal pain. He thinks I’m an air-head.” Her eyes darted to the recorder and she sniffled her runny nose. “Am I supposed to say these things?”

  “Only if you want,” Sandra said.

  “Well, just tell me, whose picture appeared on the cover of TV Guide last April? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t John Rhee. If he knew what was good for him, he’d get off my back and let me do my thing. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to use the little
girl’s room.” Melanie knocked over the stool when she stood. She wove through the obstacle course of clutter to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

  Sandra let out a long breath. Merely listening to Melanie was exhausting.

  She heard water running through the thin wall separating the bathroom and the living room. She didn’t know how much time she had before Melanie emerged.

  She rose from the couch and crossed to the vanity. The profusion of crumpled tissues was astonishing.

  She located a comb and used it to prod the tissues aside. A mirrored tray held a mind-boggling assortment of lipsticks, powders and cakes of eye shadow; every major brand seemed to be represented. Next to it a straw basket overflowed with barrettes, hair pins and ribbons. Next to that sat a Wedgwood plate holding a tangle of earrings and necklaces.

  Sandra gently twirled the tail of the comb through the snarl of silver, gold and beads. A narrow sterling pin revealed itself, and when Sandra scrutinized it more closely she saw it wasn’t a pin at all. It was a tiny spoon.

  Okay. So Melanie had cocaine paraphernalia in her trailer. That didn’t prove she used cocaine. Even if she did, it didn’t prove she was high on the drug right now. And if she was, she wouldn’t be the first Hollywood starlet to use drugs.

  Sandra heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. She set down the comb and pretended to fix her hair in the three-way mirror above the table. She heard another flush, followed by the splash of water running in the sink once more.

  With a furtive glance toward the closed bathroom door, Sandra dared to lift the cocaine spoon. She had no idea what to look for, what telltale signs would reveal the use to which the spoon had been put. Sighing, she dropped the spoon back onto the plate and turned away.

  The toilet flushed again.

  Sandra moved to the kitchenette and swung open the refrigerator. The shelves were jammed with cans of diet soda and bottles of mineral water, along with some limp celery and two pineapples. No drugs.