Sympathy for the Devil (22 page)

“So, do I call the lawyers and tell them to start up bankruptcy proceedings or what?”

“What's on the floor?” I asked, avoiding the inevitable answer she was waiting for.

“On the floor? Oh! It's a fax.” The long white roll of fax paper had been keeping itself pretty busy while we'd been out.

“What is it?”

Holly bent down and rolled it all up, trying to get to the beginning. “It's from Six Star Pictures,” she said.

Wes looked at me. “We've never done any parties for them, have we?”

I shook my head. Six Star was the result of a merger between two of the oldest and most venerated broke movie studios in Hollywood. Two years ago a Japanese car company spent billions and bought them out.

“What's it about?” I asked Holly, who was still reading.

“Oh my god!” she exclaimed. “Read this.”

I looked at the letterhead, which was from the head of legal affairs at the studio. Puzzled, I read on.

That was as far as I read. Wesley, who had been reading over my shoulder, was silent.

“Bruno arranged all this. He was selling his company to Six Star for big bucks, and as a little twist of the knife, he forced them to buy some insignificant catering company as part of his deal,” I said in wonder.

“Why would he do that?” Wes asked, stunned.

“To piss them off, I expect. Just for fun.” I started to reread the fax.

“Does that mean we get three million dollars?” Wes was just catching on.

“If we want to let go of this treasure.”

“But then what will we all do?” Holly wondered.

“We've always wanted to move up into major event planning full time. How about Mad Bean Events?” Wes suggested.

“And why must all of our ventures feature my name?” I asked, full of curiosity.

“Because you're so lucky!” he said, with the exhilaration of discovering all of his bills were about to be paid off.

“But I'm still mystified,” Holly said. “Why did Bruno arrange for Six Star to give all that money to
us
?”

“Maybe he just got a kick out of making the Japanese buy something they couldn't possibly want. The power angle. Or maybe he felt it would pay Wesley back on that old Los Feliz score and, this way, it wasn't even coming out of his pocket.”

“You should hear yourself,” Wes said. “You still have a soft spot for that monster. You think of him as a prankster, a naughty kid bugging the big corporate grownups, a guy just out to pay off an old debt!” Wes shook his head. “More likely, he was after you, Maddie. He was planning to offer you one of his legendary bribes.”

Bruno had dealt in a sick kind of barter; celebrity contacts, the glamor of his lifestyle, the money, the parties, Hollywood's largest dreams…anything you wanted.

Wes was warning me. Accept the bribes, and Bruno
grabbed your soul. And it appeared that death hadn't slowed him down much.

Holly said, “I'll go get you a Diet Coke.”

Wes was thinking of something else, now, because he was staring at me with a silly grin on his face. “Remember the soothsayer?”

“Angelica.”

“Well, yes. But, no. Think of her as the soothsayer on Halloween. She predicted you'd meet a dark man. That's Honnett. And she said you'd come into a lot of money.”

“I thought that was the thirty thousand, but of course I gave that back.”

Wes said, “Think bigger. Like a hundred times that. Then didn't she say something about a change of career?”

“We're selling the old catering business and starting a new one. Yikes. And didn't she tell you, Wes, that your life was soon to be in jeopardy?”

“Right. And I laughed. Was there anything else she said? 'Cause I'm getting frightened here.”

“She said Arlo was going to propose, but of course, Bruno put her up to that one. Angelica told us that he was trying to scare everyone, and that is a pretty scary idea.”

Wes eyed me to see if I was serious. I avoided his look.

“And let's see,” I went on, shifting quickly. “Didn't she warn me to wear sunblock?”

“What?”

“‘Beware of the sun.' That's what she said.”

“The sun? Oh, my god. She was warning you about the
son
! About Graydon.”

I looked at him. I mean, what could I say?

Holly walked in, breathless. “Madeline. It's the phone. Arlo's calling. He said he's drunk and he's quitting his job and he wants to marry you and move to Montana. He's so funny.”