Chapter Thirty-Two #4
At least this hadn’t been as bad as Lisa Baxter, whose mother had told him the young actress committed suicide after Jerry never hired her even though she “had relations” with him on his office sofa.
He hadn’t known that kid was only seventeen, since her agent claimed she was twenty-one.
He never fucked kids, and not just because he didn’t want to end up on trial like Errol Flynn—teenagers had breath like bubble gum and only wanted to talk about Elvis Presley (who, from what he’d heard, was fine with taking his teenage fans to bed).
But he’d never forgotten Lisa’s pure, trusting face, although he hadn’t bothered to find her even a bit part like he’d promised, refusing to see her again.
Her mother had cussed him out and hung up on him when he reached out to her, so he should have learned his lesson about apologies then.
Since he had sobered up, the faces were like a parade when he tried to sleep at night, too many to count. Especially Mazelle’s.
Jerry consoled himself with the beauty of the lodge she had built up here.
The fifty-foot pines on these snow-dotted grounds, untouched by loggers, surrounded him with regal order.
And the mountain! He hadn’t noticed when the car first drove up, but the view of the mountain’s white peak was worth millions.
Her property looked like a boutique resort in Aspen, and she’d built it herself.
He’d helped her earn this money, and she’d done more with hers than he had with his.
All he had to show for his time on this earth was the designer clothes stuffing his wife’s closet, a couple of vacation homes, and a failed Italian restaurant chain back home in New York.
He had his movies, but although the Lazy Mazy franchise had been his most successful, it wouldn’t leave a lasting mark.
He wasn’t exactly considered a visionary.
He’d squeezed every dime out of the old Negro-picture model, trying to beat the changing times, not realizing how much the backlash in the press had muddied his name, and Sharpe’s.
And Mazelle’s. Especially Mazelle’s.
Sharpe was writing for television, and Lorenzo could still pull together enough backing for a couple movies every year, and more since he’d merged with Destiny Pictures.
But Mazelle’s career, as she’d just confirmed, had never recovered.
He’d kept expecting to see her rise with Horne and Dandridge—she had the looks, God knew—but that Lazy Mazy shtick had been kryptonite in the New Hollywood.
And he had lied to get her to do it. He had disrespected her marriage, pretending he was Darryl Zanuck taking his pick of every girl who walked into his office with a dream.
Five abortions, one girl dead. He’d gone too far with Mazelle too.
Mazelle must hate his guts, so what had he expected today? Even if she had only wanted to scare him when she said she invited him here to kill him, he should have known they would never end up in bed. And that look in her eyes…
After he first got engaged to Maria, a woman he’d been seeing on the side had pulled a gun on him, and he recognized that maniac look on Mazelle’s face. She wanted him dead even if she didn’t have the nerve to pull it off.
Jerry shivered, buttoning his coat, pulling his lapels higher across his cool cheeks.
He hadn’t been religious since he was a kid—until he watched those bus headlights barreling toward him in blinding white cones like the chariot of the Angel of Death, only to evade him after he closed his eyes.
For a full minute, he’d thought he was dead, his brain still swimming in the booze.
But now he pulled out the crucifix he wore on a gold chain nestled under his turtleneck.
He pressed it hard between his thumb and index finger, feeling the indentation of Christ’s figure on the cross against his skin. The uncomfortable pressure soothed him.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. Jerry didn’t know much about praying, but from now on he would ask God for forgiveness and forget about the rest.
He almost hadn’t called Mazelle. For six nights, he went to bed with a clean heart knowing that one more day had passed without calling her.
He hadn’t had sex in nearly a year—and Maria hadn’t touched him in as long as he could remember—but he hadn’t called the most beautiful woman he knew even after she invited him to.
Jerry felt the hair on the back of his neck tingle, so he turned around and saw that Mazelle was watching him from the window the way she had been waiting for him to arrive.
He couldn’t make out the look on her face through the pane, but something was wrong with this girl that wasn’t just about a disappointing career.
He imagined that adorable smile she’d had when she first started playing Little Mazy, winning over the whole world, including him.
He blew her a half-hearted kiss and didn’t wait for a reaction before he followed the path toward the side of the property. Hope you’re okay, kid.
He walked toward the three cabins, taking the pathway through the lawn turned muddy by snow melting in direct sunlight.
Ahead, the cabins were nestled by snowbanks in the shadows of the trees blanketing this side of the property.
As he walked, he noticed that Mazelle was matching his pace inside the house, moving from window to window to watch him in that bright red robe.
She scurried like she wanted to make sure he wouldn’t break in.
Crazy broad, he thought despite his efforts at penitence. He needed to get the hell home.
The white wooden cabins across the backyard from the kitchen porch were fashioned like miniature seaside cottages with their own small porches.
Ten yards sat between each of them, an impression of solitude.
Hadn’t the driver said he was going to a cabin?
Jerry paused, scanning them. None of the cabins looked occupied, all curtains drawn and lights off.
With an embarrassed sigh, he climbed the steps of the nearest cabin and knocked on the door. “Hey, uh…” What did he say his name was? “… Grady? Sorry, but this ain’t working out, man. Can you just give me a ride back to town?”
No answer. Nothing stirring. Shit.
At the next cabin, he knocked again. “Grady?” he called.
No sound came from inside.
But behind him, a loud set of wind chimes rattled with discordant music, nearly burying the thunk against the house’s wall.
Jerry whirled around so fast that his neck cramped, but he wasn’t fast enough to see anything except gold-colored chimes swinging wildly beneath a window farther down the wall.
That wasn’t any fucking wind. Had Mazelle done that?
But no—when he looked toward the closed kitchen door, he saw her red robe pressed against the window inside. She wouldn’t have had time to run to the other window to ring those chimes, much less get back in place so fast. She was just watching him like… (Like she’s waiting for something.)
A heavy shroud of dread fell over him. Something was going on not quite within his grasp, and his chest felt bricked up. She’d brought him out here to the middle of nowhere and now her driver had vanished?
“Grady?” Jerry called as he jogged to the last cabin.
This one was the most shaded by tighter formations of pine trees, with cooler air because of the packed snow.
He knocked with unintended force, six or seven times.
His knocking was loud enough to hear anywhere on the grounds, with the side of his fist, the way he would have pounded if he were trapped in a dark room.
“I’ll pay you thirty bucks cash to drive me to town! ”
No one was going to answer. He panted. His breath’s condensation showed him how hard he was breathing.
He’d walked into a trap. In his old neighborhood, you had good instincts or you didn’t grow up, and Giovanni Lorenzo had always had excellent instincts. Everything inside him screamed that he should run. (Did you tell anyone you were coming here? she’d asked. Jesus.)
This stank of a hit job. But instead of having her driver shoot him in the car, Mazelle seemed to be toying with him. Playing a game. You stupid pezzo di merda, he chastised himself.
He looked up at the trees spiraling above him and realized he had seen this place before—in a dream.
The night he had the inspiration to take Mazelle to the party at the Ambassador, he’d dreamed of standing in a spot identical to this one, penned in by towering pines on the porch of a white dollhouse.
The memory colored itself in with each new detail.