Nina Berry - City Of Spies

How had he known? Or was it only a guess?

She was accustomed to the hatred that came her way for killing Daddy and Ava in the car crash. But most of the world didn’t know the intimate details of the ten months she’d dated Nicky. Pagan’s image until the crash had been sweet and spotless. Good girls didn’t sleep with their boyfriends. Good girls waited for marriage, and she’d seemed like a good girl till it all came falling down.

After the crash, few people ever learned she’d started drinking at age twelve. The studio’s publicity team had made sure any previous, smaller incidents were never brought to light.

Fewer still knew that she’d gone further with Nicky than good girls allowed.

Jared took Tony by the shoulder and pulled him aside to speak with him alone on the other side of the room. Tony looked over at her, his nose wrinkled with contempt, and she had to look away.

Pagan had started dating Nicky when she was fifteen and deep into the bottle to numb herself after Mama’s suicide. Having Nicky’s delighted attention, knowing he desired her above all else, had been almost as intoxicating as the martinis. He’d nearly filled the dark hole in her heart. For that reason alone she would’ve done anything he asked, as long as he loved her.

And Nicky had truly loved her. He still might, even though he’d impregnated and married another girl, a girl who looked an awful lot like Pagan.

Whether or not she’d truly loved Nicky, Pagan wasn’t so sure now. The alcohol had clouded her judgment, to say the least. She’d done a lot of things she might not have, if she’d been sober. She regretted so much, but before the accident there had also been good times. That period in her life could be smeared with either a gritty or a rosy haze, depending on the day.

She realized she was leaning against the bare wall, shoulders hunched, so she forced herself to stand up tall. Good posture was the key to faking self-assurance, Mama had said. And once you fooled everyone else into thinking you were confident, somehow you fooled yourself. Right now she needed to fake it, hard.

Jared left Tony and came to stand in front of her, a watchful look in his eye. “How are we doing?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” She kept her tone cool, distant. At least she wasn’t trembling.

“I’ve asked Tony to change his attitude, and he has agreed. We need to make this work. How do you feel about that?”

Pagan glanced over at Tony. He was staring fixedly at a chalk mark on the floor.

“I think we should take a break for the rest of the day and try again tomorrow.”

Jared shook his head. “We need to get you both back on the horse immediately, to mend this. Then I’ll let you go.” He paused, trying to get a read on her face. “You’re still not up to speed, my dear. You need the practice.”

Pagan kept her face very still. She could do this. “Then let’s practice.”

Jared smiled and leaned in to speak in a lower tone. “You know he’s an insecure little bitch and you’re going to dance him off the screen, right?”

It was a transparent attempt to bolster her, but she couldn’t help a tiny smile. Underneath her humiliation, a little spark ignited and began to burn it away.

People said ugly things because they were ugly inside. Or at least that would be her theory until she got through the rest of this rehearsal.

“Excellent. Tony, let’s do it a few more times, please. Nadia?” Jared cued the wizened one at the piano as Tony got into position and Pagan began her lonely initial steps.

Tony stepped in and grabbed her hand vigorously. Stiff, Pagan turned toward him and did her back ocho in surprise. As he pulled her in again, she couldn’t help it; her resistance was real, and his grip on her hand tightened until her finger bones cracked.

Only a few more steps. She forced herself to melt, to yield as they went through the dance. She twirled around him, resentful planet to his glowing, annoying sun, yielding to his pull.

The last flurry of intricate moves involved hooking her leg around his, then withdrawing, followed by a series of little flicks of her heel as she pivoted within his embrace. As they began, Tony shoved her this way and that.

“Angle, angle your hips!” Jared shouted at Tony. That was how you guided your partner, not by force.

But Tony wasn’t listening. The angry glitter in his eyes, the power in his grip, was frightening, as if he might throw her instead of dip. He pushed her hip too hard and squeezed her hand cruelly. Pain shot down her arm.

She managed the first two kicks perfectly, anyway, but on the third she pivoted too far. The pointed heel of her dance shoe jabbed right into Tony’s groin. He let out a sickened grunt of agony and released her.

She hadn’t meant to do it.

Had she?

Either way, his anguished grimace was very satisfying. She stepped back as he doubled over, hands clutched between his legs.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice calm, as if she’d stepped on his toe. “My fault.”

Tony fell to his knees, sucking in air. “You bitch,” he said with a groan.

Oh, yes, she was feeling better now. Amazing what a little accidental violence could do for your spirits.

“Your face is purple,” she said. “You might want to change your tanning oil.”

Jared rushed to Tony’s side, eyes wide. “Are you going to be able to keep dancing?”

Tony shook his head. His lips completely disappeared as he pressed them together.

Pagan gathered up her trench coat and purse. “Same time tomorrow?”

Tony’s burning glare as he struggled to sit up was a balm to her soul.

“I think tomorrow maybe we’ll go through your little rumba number with David instead,” said Jared.

David was Pagan’s other costar, a dim, sweet boy she could wrap around her finger with one flutter of her eyelashes.

“If you think that’s best,” she said, and sauntered out the door, even as her spirits sank. Tony Perry and the terrible script were only the first challenges this movie was going to throw at her.

CHAPTER FIVE

Buenos Aires, Argentina

January 10, 1962

CÓDIGO

The code of behavior which governs the dance.

Eight days of rehearsal and several grueling flights later, Pagan and Mercedes landed at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires, rumpled and grouchy.

Devin Black was not waiting for them.

It was at a sunny eighty-five degrees as they made their way down the rickety metal stair onto the tarmac. A strong humid wind nearly snatched Pagan’s pillbox hat off her head and whooshed the skirt of Mercedes’s Zuckerman pink cotton piqué sheath dress so high her garters showed. The Pan Am stewardess in her chic blue uniform ran easily down the stairs after them to ask for an autograph for the captain, smiled her regulation Revlon Persian Melon lipstick smile and trotted back up the stairs.

“How does she look so unwrinkled?” Mercedes asked as they straggled into the terminal.

“I know,” Pagan said. “My garters have found a new home, embedded in my thighs.”

Inside they found a short, square man in a neatly pressed black uniform and cap holding a sign that said Señorita Jones.

“My name is like a terrible alias,” Pagan said to Mercedes. “Buenos días, señor. Soy Pagan Jones.”

He blinked at her and Mercedes, then looked down at his sign and back up at them. “Buenos días, señoritas,” he said. Under his formidable black mustache, his uneven teeth flashed in a smile. “I’m sorry. They didn’t tell me you spoke such beautiful Spanish.”

Pagan laughed and continued in Spanish. “Mercedes is the real expert. What’s your name?”

“Yo me llamo Carlos Cavellini,” he said, except he pronounced yo and llamo with a zsh sound at the beginning of the word instead of a y. He gestured for them to follow him and they fell in as he led them through the airless, bustling airport. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”