Crown Jewel (2 page)

Hollywood, California
Fifteen Years Later

Ricky Lam, idol to millions of fans, jammed his hands into his pockets as he strolled the grounds of his palatial Hollywood estate. He looked around, appreciating the beauty of the well-pruned shrubs, the brilliant flowers, and the brick paths that led to a gazebo at the far end of the grounds. All thanks to his acting skills and his brother's wise investment strategies. He picked a delicate, crimson flower, his fingers caressing its silky petals. He shouldn't have picked it. It would die soon. He wished he had left it on the bush. He hurried into the house and stuck it into a glass of water.

The house was state-of-the-art, befitting his star power in the movie industry. At forty-three, he was in top form. With two mini face-lifts under his belt, he could still hold his own with the young studs arriving in Hollywood in droves. He had a tinge of gray at his temples these days, but the studio expertly covered it up. He still had the same dark brown bedroom eyes, the same lean muscular body that had helped make him famous. He was still a hunk.

Variety
said he was still the Platinum Boy. They said he had it all. If they only knew. He was probably the loneliest man in all of California. He had one close friend, his stuntman, Ted Lymen. And, of course, Philly. He could never discount Philly. He was where he was today because of his brother. But Philly was not his friend. Philly wasn't even his mentor. Philly was his warden.

His relationship with Philly had never been the same after he'd returned from the exclusive addiction clinic fifteen years earlier. Instead of treating him as a brother, Philly had reduced their relationship to that of business manager and client, sometimes even warden and prisoner. Oh, they still met for dinner once or twice a year, usually at some out-of-the-way restaurant. Conversation was always strained as Philly smoked and drank, and Ricky did neither. They still went to an occasional ball game together, and Philly even came on the set and watched him work when he was in town. But it wasn't the same. It would never be the same again, and they both knew it. It was an accept-it-or-reject-it relationship. Ricky chose to accept it.

No matter what he did, no matter what he said, he hadn't been able to recapture the old relationship. Secretly, he thought Philly was waiting for him to screw up. And, like the stupid ass he was, Ricky wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He never wanted to see that look of disgust in his brother's face again. Never, ever.

In the beginning, when he had first returned from the clinic, Ricky had blamed Roxy because he needed someone to blame. Fifteen years later, he laid the blame right where it belonged, on his own shoulders.

In the dark, late at night, when no one was around, he prayed that Philly would forgive him and throw his arms around his shoulders, and say, “Let's let bygones be bygones.” It hadn't happened, and it wasn't going to happen. He knew that now. Fifteen years of being a straight arrow wasn't enough to satisfy Philly.

Ricky flopped down on a custom-crafted chair in the living room, his favorite, and picked up a script. It was untitled.
What kind of scriptwriter doesn't give his work a title?
He was supposed to read it, decide if it was worthy of his talent, then let his agent and the front office know if he was willing to negotiate. He tossed the script back onto the table.

Tomorrow was the final wrap for the movie he was working on,
Seven Hours Till Sundown.
An hour at the most, maybe two, depending on how many takes the director wanted. The wrap party was tonight, though, because once they wound up the film tomorrow, the crew was heading off to Washington, D.C., to start a new film titled
Inside the Beltway
. It was all about a politician's rage on the Beltway. He was glad he had passed on that piece of crap.

Ricky looked at the phone on the table next to him, willing it to ring. Philly was in town for the wrap party and to cart his check off to the bank, at which point he would head back to the islands to manage their two resorts.

Resorts for the rich and famous. All you needed to visit one of them was a bucketful of money and a reservation made two years in advance. It had been Philly's idea to build the resorts, pointing out that Ricky wasn't going to be able to work in Hollywood forever. Leading men had a tendency to get old, and after a while face-lifts left you looking haggard. “You need something to fall back on when that happens, Ricky,” Philly had said. “You'll never be happy playing character parts. Get out when you're on top and hobnob with the new elite where you call the shots.” It had made sense. As long as he didn't allow himself to get pissed off at his brother's financial prowess, Ricky realized that everything his older brother said made sense.

He looked down at the phone. He supposed he could initiate the call, but to what end? Ricky had never stepped over the boundaries Philly had erected when Ricky had returned from the clinic. Why start now?

He, too, was heading for the islands after the last shoot tomorrow. Thirty days of doing nothing but relaxing in his very own star suite. Philly hated it when he showed up at the resort. Ricky wasn't sure why. The attention he got from the staff? Roxy's strange attitude toward him even though he stayed out of her way?

Ricky continued to stare at the phone. Christ, how he hated tiptoeing around his brother.

He bounded off the chair and loped over to the mantel to pick up two small pictures. His sons. Children he provided for but had never seen. No, that wasn't true, he had seen them once.

It was one of two demands he'd made when he'd signed off on the deals Philly had negotiated with the boys' mothers, young girls he'd had one-night stands with during that wild time in his youth when he was Hollywood's number one hell-raiser. “Try explaining that to your studio and all those young adoring fans,” Philly had said.

In exchange for signing a confidentiality agreement, each girl received the princely sum of ten grand a month until her son finished college and the assurance that Ricky would never attempt to interfere in her son's life. One breach on her part and the money stopped cold. Philly had used the word
lawsuit
a lot when he'd talked to the frightened girls. Even to this day, both women honored the agreements. Ricky recalled the excitement he'd felt when he'd laid eyes on his sons for the first time. They'd been three then, little blond-haired boys all dressed up and hating every minute of it. They'd looked at him suspiciously and hung on to their mothers' skirts. He'd just stared at them, committing their faces to memory. It was all he could do.

The boys, born three months apart, were twenty-three now and had never met each other. In fact, neither of them knew he had a half brother. Tyler had lived with his maternal grandparents until he'd left for college because his mother was off singing with a country western band. Max had also lived with his grandparents after his mother married a real estate developer because he didn't get along with her husband. Both boys had finished college and were working. He'd been tempted to call them, invite them to Hollywood, but Philly had made him swear not to seek them out, saying he should let sleeping dogs lie. “And don't try to do it on the sly, either, Ricky, because you'll be recognized, and I'm not pulling any more of your chestnuts out of the fire.” That had been the end of that, which didn't say much for him as a father. It was always Philly's way or the highway.

He wondered what his sons would think of him as a person if they knew he was their father. Anonymously, he'd bought the boys their first cars, paid for their college educations and all medical and dental bills. They had both gone to exclusive summer camps and attended the best private schools in their areas. At least that's what Philly told him. Most of what Philly had told him about Tyler was a lie, according to the private detective he'd hired to report on his sons. A report he'd never showed Philly. Tyler had been booted out of the prestigious summer camps, usually three days after arrival. Incorrigible, the counselors said. He'd been suspended eight times while in high school and how he'd graduated was still a mystery. What was even more of a mystery was how he'd gotten into college and managed to graduate in the lowest percentile in the class. But he had graduated. Add up all the arrest charges for speeding while under the influence, loss of driving privileges, and his bad-ass attitude, car wrecks, drug experimentation, and he could have posed for a portrait of his father in his early twenties. A chip off the old block.

Max, on the other hand, could have posed as the poster boy for good behavior.

Ricky stared down at the two golden-haired boys. Three years old. That was how long it had taken to settle everything. His second demand before he'd signed off on the deal was a picture of each boy before he walked away from the six-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer's office. The pictures arrived two weeks later in the mail. He set both pictures back on the mantel.

Right now, Ricky thought his life really sucked. The phone still hadn't rung. “Screw it!” he said as he stomped his way back to the master suite of rooms where he hid out most of the time. Big Hollywood star a homebody. It was so damn funny he wanted to cry.

Ricky looked down at the phone he knew resembled something in the White House War Room. It was hooked up to the alarm system, the security gates, the intercom, and the doorbell. It had nineteen buttons he could press if he felt like it. He still didn't know how to work the damn thing. The doorbell was the funniest thing of all. No one could access his property without going past the part-time security guard, who had to open the security gates. How was someone supposed to ring his doorbell if they couldn't get to the door?

The phone rang. Ricky sucked in his breath before he picked it up. His greeting sounded cautious. It paid to be cautious with Philly. “Hello.”

It was Ted Lymen, his stuntman. “Yo, Ricky, just calling to ask if you changed your mind about going to the wrap party. You wanna go, I'll stop by and pick you up. I just got a call saying they canceled the stunt for tomorrow. We're in a holding pattern until they get a part for the race car. Probably the day after tomorrow. So, do you want to go or not?”

Cancellation meant he didn't have to get up at four-thirty to be at the studio for makeup at five. Did he want to go? Did he want to stand around making nice so Philly wouldn't chew his ass out? “Yeah, sure,” was his response. “What time?”

“Eight. Let's do the town afterward. Let's take in the Ozone Club and do a little partying. We both deserve a night out, Ricky. This flick kicked both our asses big-time.”

“Sure.” What the hell, it would beat sitting around with Philly praying to God he didn't say the wrong thing or make a mistake. “Philly's in town, you know.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I heard. So you make nice for ten minutes, and we split. I wish to hell you'd get over that inferiority thing you have with your brother. He's what he is because of you, and don't you ever forget it. Without your money, he'd be working in some cubicle managing other people's money. Go easy on yourself, okay?”

“Okay, I will. I'll see you at eight.”

As he hung up Ricky wondered if everyone thought he was a wuss where his brother was concerned.

 

The minute the gates to Ricky's estate closed behind Ted's Jaguar, the phone inside the mansion rang. The caller left a message. “The part for the car just arrived. The shoot's back on. Be at the studio by five-thirty tomorrow morning.” The same message was left at Ted Lymen's home.

The wrap party was like every other one Ricky had attended. Food, liquor, flowers, the women teary-eyed, the guys looking macho as they tried not to worry about whether there was another movie down the road. They all promised to stay in touch knowing full well they wouldn't, unless somehow, some way, they needed a favor and they had your personal unlisted telephone number. In Hollywood, like almost everywhere else, it wasn't what you knew, it was who you knew.

“How are you, Philly?” Ricky said, slapping his brother lightly on the back in a friendly gesture.

“Good. Real good. You're looking fit, little brother. I hear you're coming down to the islands.”

“I'm in the thinking stages,” Ricky lied. He'd picked up his airline tickets yesterday. “Enjoy yourself,” Ricky said, preparing to walk away.

“Didn't you forget something, Ricky?”

Ricky turned and faced his brother. “No, I didn't forget. I just wanted to make you
ask
for it.” He reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrew an envelope that he literally slapped into his brother's hand. Seeing the sudden look of embarrassment on Philly's face was worth all the angst he'd gone through that day. This time he did walk away.

“Damn, that felt good,” he said to Ted.

“How in hell can handing over fifteen million bucks to your brother make you feel good?”

“I made him ask for it, and I stared him down at the same time. I never did that before. Don't ask me why I had to do it today of all days because I don't know.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. You said something about partying…”

“I did, didn't I?”

Philip Lam watched his brother walk away. He felt a sudden urge to run after him and give him a big bear hug. He squelched the desire. One soft move on his part, and Ricky would go back to square one. He raised his eyes upward. “I'm doing my best, Mom,” he murmured.