The Perfect Location (31 page)

‘Jason,’ he said, looking up at her with worship in his eyes.

‘I’m about to order some lunch, Jason. How about I get us something and then we can talk, okay?’

Jason smiled eagerly at her and nodded. Calypso walked over to the phone and dialled room service. ‘Hello, it’s Calypso Gable in Bungalow 7. I would like to order a green salad, and … a burger and fries?’ She looked at Jason. He nodded again. ‘Yes, a burger and fries and a Diet Coke and a Coke.’

Smiling at him warmly, she walked back to him and sat down opposite. ‘So, Jason, tell me about yourself. Why do you need two million dollars?’

‘Well, I’ve got a website. I write about celebrities everyday. People send me things – videos, photos and that’s how I got the tape of your mom. I needed to make some money. I thought you would be happy to take it off me. No one really cares about your mom, but they do about you. You know?’

Calypso was shocked at his naïve yet cunning plan. ‘Jason, what you’re doing isn’t right, you do know that, don’t you?’

‘But you have money, you’re rich. I know, I see the life you all lead. I want to have it too. Why shouldn’t I?’ He was hostile now.

Calypso was careful. Jason was innocent in some ways yet unstable, clearly feeding on the lives of the famous, desperate to be a part of their world, yet hating them for having what he didn’t have.

‘I get it, Jason. I get it. We have it all, huh? You deserve some of it also, yes?’

Jason nodded again, mollified by Calypso’s apparent understanding.

‘How do you want this to work, Jason? Two million dollars is a lot of money to get my hands on, you know that?’

Jason smiled, sweetly. ‘I know, but you have to give me the money or I will put the tape up on my website. Either way, I will make money from it.’ He laughed and didn’t seem so sweet after all, Calypso thought.

Calypso picked up her bag from the chair next to her. ‘I will write you a cheque now for $500,000 and then I will pay you three more instalments over the next three weeks. It’s the best I can do. I need all copies of the tapes and a signed statement you will never release this footage in any form on any platform.’

There was a knock at the door again and Calypso realized it would be room service. Opening the door, she waved the waiter in, who set up the food. As she thought, the food was too tempting to Jason. Eating at the Chateau Marmont with Calypso Gable was a dream come true for him. The circumstances were irrelevant; he didn’t seem to show any concern at all other than licking his lips at the burger.

Calypso took a sheaf of papers and a pen from her straw bag and placed them in front of Jason on the small coffee table. Picking up the bowl of fries she placed them down beside him. Taking a fry from the bowl, she popped it in her mouth.

‘If you can just sign these, I can give you your cheque. Then we can eat. Cool?’ she said brightly.

The smell of the salty fried food was too much for Jason. Taking the pen, he nodded eagerly. ‘Cool,’ he said.

Calypso placed the documents in front of him. He signed all and then put a fry into his mouth. ‘Yum,’ he said, like a small child.

He was intriguing and repelling at the same time, she thought. He spent too much time looking into celebrities’ lives, and now he needed to be a part of them, to belong. And the only way he thought he could make that happen was if he had the money to buy his entry card.

Calypso wrote him a cheque for $500,000 and handed it over. ‘So, here is your money,’ she said loudly.

‘Thanks,’ said Jason, folding it up and putting it in his back pocket.

Then the bedroom door opened and the female and young male agent came into the living room. ‘You are under arrest for grand larceny.’

Jason looked up at Calypso, his eyes filled with tears. ‘You hate me,’ he cried.

‘I don’t know you, Jason,’ said Calypso sadly, and walked away into the safety of the bedroom. One of the other agents was on the phone and the man sitting at the recording equipment smiled at her wryly. ‘Hell of a job, huh?’

‘I thought he would be older, scarier, not this sad teenager internet dork. It’s awful,’ said Calypso genuinely.

‘You never can tell, I guess,’ said the man, packing up the equipment. ‘I’m going to need the device,’ he said, pointing to Calypso’s body.

‘Sure, I’ll just go and take it off.’

Calypso went to the bathroom and pulled off the tape that held the wires close to her skin. It hurt and for a second she enjoyed the feeling of pain; it made her feel real in an unreal situation.

By the time she walked out of the bathroom, Jason had already left with the two male agents for questioning. The female agent was waiting for her. ‘If it makes you feel any better, you weren’t the only celebrity he was blackmailing. He had tapes and letters of several high profile people we knew of. We thought it might have been him when this came to our attention but you were the only one willing to sting him. There are a few people who owe you a lot.’

‘You mean I was the only one stupid enough to do this?’ said Calypso incredulously.

‘No, the only one brave enough,’ the agent replied.

‘But it will still go to court, though. It could all come out then,’ Calypso said, worried.

‘No, it won’t get to court. He’ll do a plea bargain. He will do time for this, so whatever is the least amount of time is what his lawyer will push for. Grand larceny in the state of California is a big deal, particularly with people in the spotlight. He’s looking at between seven and fifteen years, I think,’ said the agent as she walked Calypso into the sitting room.

‘But he’s delusional, he needs help, not jail. He’s a baby,’ said Calypso, concerned for the large child.

‘He’s thirty-two,’ said the agent, raising one eyebrow. ‘He just acts like he’s a kid to claim diminished responsibility.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Calypso exclaimed, sitting on the couch.

The agent sat down and ate a fry. ‘He has previous convictions for identity fraud, so don’t feel too bad. He is a unit, hopefully he will go to minimum security and get the help needed as you said.’

‘But now I feel bad, I feel like I should have tried to help him instead of setting him up,’ she said remorsefully.

‘Sometimes you have to do what you need to do to help everyone. The picture is bigger than just you, if you excuse my pun.’ The agent laughed to herself. ‘What you did today was extraordinary. You’re clever, and the food was a brilliant touch. You knew he would go for it and getting him to sign those documents … I’ll need those, by the way. Full admission of guilt. No way he’s going to show anyone now. We have agents at his property now, taking everything for safekeeping.’

‘I feel so bad.’ Calypso slumped down. ‘I feel like I’ve sent someone to their execution.’

The agent got up. ‘Calypso, what you did today was protect yourself, your mother and many other people. He would have kept doing this for years to come. You did the right thing for the future, even if it feels like the wrong thing now. Don’t judge yourself too harshly, you did good. You did it because you want to protect your mom, right?’

Calypso sat in the bungalow for a long time after the agents had left with Jason. Had she done it to protect her mother, as the agent had said? Or was it to protect herself?

A wave of sadness came over her and she felt the tears prick her eyes. Trying to push them down, she pulled out her phone and looked up a number and dialled it.

‘Hey Kel, it’s Calypso.’

‘Hey there. How you doing?’ asked Kelly.

‘Shit,’ said Calypso and started to weep down the phone.

‘Come over, okay? Come now and we can talk. Can you get here? Want me to come and get you? Are you at home?’

‘No, I’m at Chateau Marmont. I can get there, I think. Text me your address?’

Calypso began to feel calm hearing Kelly’s voice. She needed a different perspective on this situation that was tinged with her own guilt. When she arrived at Kelly’s, she checked her face in the mirror of her car. I look older, she thought, noticing small lines around her eyes that she was sure weren’t there before Italy.

Kelly opened the front door as soon as she heard Calypso’s car and walked out and held the girl in her arms. Inside, Calypso sat nursing a mug of chamomile tea and poured her heart out. Kelly listened for almost an hour, saying very little apart from murmurs of support or sympathy. Finally, as Calypso reached the end of her tawdry tale, she wiped her eyes again with the last of the tissues Kelly had handed her when she arrived and raised her eyebrow. ‘So what do you think?’

Kelly paused. ‘I think this is a fucking romance of the year.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Calypso. Her head was thumping and she felt so tired.

‘Love makes us do weird things. Your mum, although she did something you and I would find hard to do, loved you in her own imperfect way. She did what she did because she loved you. And underneath all the anger, you did what you did today at the hotel to protect her and your father because you love them.’

‘You don’t think Leeza just did it because she wanted me to be famous?’

‘No, I think she wanted you to be famous, so you could do what she couldn’t in her own life. Yet clearly, the boundaries aren’t strong between you. She wanted to give you what she knew she would never have. To some people, being famous seems like the answer.’

Calypso laughed cynically.

‘I’m not condoning what she did but I think she did it out of desperation, ambition but mostly love.’

‘What about me today with the FBI? I don’t know why I did it, to protect myself or to protect my parents?’

‘Probably both, but that’s okay. You have to have some self-respect. What that Jason dude did was wrong and there’ll be many people happy to see him off the web for a long time.’

The subject of TG hung over the two women and finally Calypso spoke. ‘Did you know what TG did to Raphael?’

‘I don’t know all the details but Raphael is a nasty piece of work. TG wasn’t just protecting you but also the film, other women. It wasn’t just about you.’

Calypso felt ashamed. She knew she had been self-involved and self-important when she had judged TG so harshly. ‘TG did what he did out of love, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah, babe.’

‘I’ve been horrible to him but I don’t know whether I want to be back with him again after all that’s happened. I feel different. I don’t think I’m that naïve girl in Italy anymore.’

‘Well, you can only tell him the truth,’ said Kelly.

‘I don’t know if I want to tell him about Leeza.’

‘Just go with it and do what your heart tells you. You’ll know when you see him.’

Calypso pulled out her phone and dialled his number. ‘Hi, it’s me. We need to talk.’

Never underestimate the power of a good haircut for a woman’s ego, thought Sapphira as she dried her hair in front of the bathroom mirror. Jack had insisted on dinner for the three of them at Al Covo in Venice, as he was leaving for London the next day for a few nights to fulfil a publicity tour for a film he had made the year before.

‘I’m not sure we should be seen out,’ said Sapphira. ‘It will be bedlam if the media know we’re here together,’ she said as she attempted to dunk her pastry into her third coffee for the morning.

Sapphira’s appetite had increased and she was slowly putting on weight. It suited her; her face had filled out, her skin was clear and her eyes bright. Jack had been in raptures at her new haircut and Alex had winked at her and said, ‘Sexy’ as she walked past him on the stairs. Sapphira felt herself blush. It had been a long time since a man had made her blush.

‘If we go out, if any paps see us then there will be a nice article about our threesome in Venice,’ said Jack from his morning paper. ‘We are going out, Sapphira. I’m afraid you are becoming agoraphobic and I haven’t the resources to help you with that one,’ he laughed.

Sapphira threw a soggy bit of pastry at him. ‘You’re a shit, Jack Reynolds.’

‘I know. I do what I can. Be downstairs at 8.30 pm. Dress to impress.’

As Sapphira finished her hair and make-up, she looked at the clothes in her wardrobe. She decided on a L’Wren Scott, high-waisted leather skirt and a black Dolce and Gabbana high-necked silk poet’s blouse in a neo-classical print and ribbons on the sleeves. Giulia had brought it over for her with a cache of other designer clothes she had ordered on Sapphira’s behalf. Some of them Sapphira would never have considered wearing before, but now she felt different. Softer and gentler somehow.

Pulling on black fishnets and high patent leather Christian Louboutin platform heels, she clipped in gold hoops, sprayed herself with Bulgari Black perfume, grabbed her black leather clutch bag and took the lift downstairs.

Alex was waiting by the door. Handsome in a black suit and white shirt, open-necked, showing his chest just a little. ‘Hello,’ he said, looking her up and down. ‘You look amazing, as always.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, flustered by the way he looked at her. ‘Too much?’ she asked, playing with the ribbons on the sleeves.

‘Enough,’ he answered and bent down to kiss her cheek, breathing in her perfume.

Sapphira felt her knees weaken a little. ‘That’s good to know,’ she said huskily.

‘Hello, young lovers,’ said Jack as he came in, attempting to insert his silver cufflinks into his pale pink shirt. ‘A little help here?’ And he extended each arm to his guests with a cufflink in each hand.

Sapphira and Alex laughed and did as he asked. ‘You should not live alone, Jack, you are hopeless,’ said Alex, patting down his cuff.

They headed out into the crisp night air. Venice’s lights reflected like jewels in the water of the canals. As they sailed towards the restaurant, Sapphira felt excited to be out. She squeezed Jack’s hand. ‘You are a doll for bringing me out,’ she whispered.

Jack smiled at her lovingly. ‘You look wonderful, Sapphira. I am more proud of you than I’ve ever been of myself. You did it. You are doing it! You deserve the best in life,’ he said, looking at Alex, who was staring out the window at the traffic on the water.

‘Don’t get any ideas, cupid. I’m not nearly ready to have any sort of relationship. My doctor says I have to know myself first without the sex before I can start any sort of relationship,’ she said quietly.