Stuart Woods - Swimming To Catalina

“Don’t you think he needs it?”

She shrugged. “Maybe, but…”

“I know you’re in a tough spot, but you’ve got a decision to make. I wouldn’t want either Arrington or Vance to get hurt because you make a mistake.”

She reached over, took hold of his necktie, and pulled him toward her. “I wouldkill to help that man.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Stone said, disentangling his tie from her grip, “but could you act against his wishes if you thought it would help him?”

She thought about that. “Probably,” she said.

“Then let’s get out of here.”

“I’m supposed to call after I’ve seen you get on the airplane.”

“So, call.”

She reached into her purse and produced a card and a key. “Here’s my home address and the key; the alarm code is four-one-one-four. Repeat that.”

“Four-one-one-four,” he said.

“Go into the terminal, rent a car, and go to my house. I’ll be home around seven, and we can talk.”

Stone smiled and kissed her. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said.

“I hope to God I am,” she replied, “or I’m going to be in a lot of trouble.”

Stone was feeling flush, what with a check for twenty-five thousand dollars in his pocket, so he asked the rental car agent for a Mercedes. After half an hour’s wait, he was picked up and driven to the agency’s Beverly Hills location, where he was given a choice of a dozen luxury cars, including a Rolls-Royce. He chose a Mercedes SL500, which had a smaller engine than he had grown accustomed to but would do in a pinch.

Using the supplied map, he found his way to Betty’s house, which was on a quiet street south of Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, near Neiman-Marcus. He let himself into the house, tapped in the alarm code, and left his luggage, including his elegant new suitcase, by the stairs. He thought the house probably dated from the thirties, but it had been renovated in striking fashion and was handsomely furnished. Apparently there was good money in working for movie stars.

He checked the refrigerator and found the makings of a sandwich, along with a lot more food, and had some lunch, then he found his way upstairs, hung up his clothes, and collapsed on Betty’s king-sized bed. It was after six when he awoke.

He went back downstairs, checked the fridge again, and looked through the cabinets, then started making dinner. At a quarter past seven he heard the front door open, and Betty walked into the kitchen.

“Jesus, it smells good in here,” she said. “What are you making?”

“Just some pasta; would you like a glass of your wine?”

“Thank you, yes sir.”

He poured her a glass of chardonnay. “So how was the rest of your day?”

“Weird. I’m unaccustomed to keeping things from Vance.”

“I appreciate your helping me.”

“As long as I’m helping Vance, too.”

He got dinner onto the kitchen table, and they sat down.

“This is delicious!” she said. “I don’t know why I would have wanted the chef from Grimaldi’s, when I could have you.”

“Anytime,” Stone said, raising his glass.

“I’ll drink to that.”

“Why don’t you bring me up to date on what you know so far? Start when Arrington disappeared.”

“I didn’t know she had disappeared,” Betty said. “Vance came into the office and said she had to go back to Virginia to see her folks about some family matter. I got her a round-trip ticket to Dulles and sent it over to the house. I assumed she made the plane.”

“Was there anything in Vance’s behavior that was different from the way he usually is?”

“He seemed preoccupied, I suppose, starting that day. I had to tell him things two or three times before he’d remember them. That was about it.”

“Had he ever been that way before?”

“Yes, I suppose he had, when he’d had something on his mind. Vance tells me a lot, but he doesn’t tell me everything, and usually I don’t ask.”

“Did he get any unusual phone calls around that time?”

“What do you mean by ‘unusual’?”

“Any calls that frightened him or made him angry?”

“Vance is an actor, and like most actors he’s always acting. He doesn’t give away much.”

“Not even to you?”

“Sometimes, not often.”

“Did he repeatedly get calls from the same person?”

She thought about that. “I remember, the day after Arrington left, Lou Regenstein called him several times over the afternoon, but that’s not really unusual. They do a lot of business together, and they’re very close.”

“Any calls from David Sturmack?”

“Not that I recall, but that wouldn’t have been unusual, either.”

“Any from Onofrio Ippolito?”

“That’s a name I had never even heard until Vance gave me an invitation list for the dinner party with his name on it. Although I noticed him at the party, I didn’t put a face to the name until we saw him at Grimaldi’s.”

“So Vance and Ippolito aren’t friends and haven’t done business?”

“Not that I’m aware of, and there isn’t much in Vance’s life that I’m not aware of.”

“Let me ask you something else: from my perspective, Vance seems to have a seamlessly successful life-he’s handsome, rich, at the top of his career, married to a wonderful woman, and has the esteem of everyone he knows and millions that he doesn’t.”

“That’s a pretty fair assessment, I guess.”

“What are his weaknesses?”

“Personal? Business?”

“Both.”

“Well, on a personal level, he’s not as good a lover as you are.”

Stone laughed. “I’m flattered. So, you’ve had an affair with Vance?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that. Vance has probably slept with very nearly every woman he knows, at least once.”

“So how often did you sleep with him?”

“Now you’re straying into my personal life.”

“You’re right; I’m sorry.”

“An even dozen times,” she said. “I counted.”

“Why did you stop?”

“He stopped. It was his call.”

“Why his call?”

“Because he’s a movie star.”

“And that’s more than just a man?”

“In this town, it is. You don’t know anything about movie stars, do you?”

“No; Vance is the only one I’ve ever had a conversation with.”

“Let me tell you about movie stars.”

“Shoot.”

“There are several kinds of power in this town: the most important is the power to get a movie made. After that, there’s personal influence, wealth, beauty, sexual magnetism, and, finally, the power to tell anybody in town to go fuck himself and that person has to go fuck himself. Vance is one of the very few people in town who has every one of those powers-in spades. Not even men like Lou Regenstein and David Sturmack have every one of those.

“Movie stars are centered on themselves in a way that ordinary mortals can’t begin to grasp. Friends, wives, children-all those people come second to The Career, which means the movie star. The star can feel that way about himself without a trace of guilt or doubt, because he knows that everything depends on The Career-which friends he has, the support and protection of the wife and children. Therefore, any decision that must be made is made on that basis-‘Will this action react to my benefit? I’m not speaking of momentous decisions, I’m speaking of any decision. ‘Where shall I have dinner tonight,’ for instance, translates into, ‘Where will I be seen, be shown off to the maximum benefit for me?’”

“You’re perfectly serious?” Stone asked.

“Perfectly. And if small decisions are made this way-the relative warmth of a greeting, where to park the car, when to go to the men’s room-then you can imagine how much effort goes into a major decision, such as which movie to appear in. A movie star’s first question to himself when he’s presented with a script is, ‘How will this script advance my career?’”