Breaking Hollywood Page 27

  ‘You don’t smoke,’ Zander pointed out.

  ‘I’m starting,’ Hollie replied. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to deal with this life and you is to imbibe as many chemical substances and cocktails as possible. Excuse the irony in that statement.’

  Despite himself, he smiled, then leaned over and nudged her. ‘Thanks for believing me. I can’t decide whether that makes you loyal or deranged.’

  ‘I think definitely both. But you know if I had any doubt at all, I’d kick your ass.’

  He knew that was true. In the car home after the meeting with Wes, he’d had one priority – making Hollie believe him.

  As soon as the doors were closed, he’d turned to her and spoken slowly and calmly. ‘I didn’t use.’

  At first, she didn’t reply.

  He repeated, ‘I. Didn’t. Use.’

  Her gaze locked on his. ‘I know. I believe you.’

  The strange thing was, he knew that this time she did. She had no reason to trust anything he said. God knows, he’d lied to her before, usually right before she found him lying upside down in a pool of his own vomit beside a dumpster in a strip club’s alley.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if you were using, then right now you’d be ranting and raging, and you’d probably have punched at least one wall on your way out. You get crazy defensive when you’re guilty. But more than that, I’ve watched you every day since Chloe died and I know that even when you want to get completely wasted, she stops you. I think she always will.’

  The uncharacteristic lump in his throat had prevented him from answering. All he wanted to do was reach over and hug her. He had no idea what he’d done in life to deserve Hollie Callan being a part of it, but he was so, so grateful. His anxiety level plummeted. She was here; she believed him; he didn’t need to say another word.

  She’d started up the car and pulled out of the lot, completely silent. Eventually, Hollie cracked.

  ‘Zander, we need to do something about this. Obviously it’s a mistake. A huge, great, freaking big mistake. We need to get people on it, question it, get it sorted out.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Forget it?’ Hollie was looking at him like he’d gone completely crazy. It might be close to the truth. It was more than that, though. He was seething at the injustice of it and the fact that Wes hadn’t even given him the benefit of the doubt. Fuck that. They didn’t want him? Fine. He’d move on. He had enough money to last him ten lifetimes, and let’s face it, the twenty years he’d spent in this business hadn’t exactly brought him happiness and fulfilment. All that mattered was that the people he cared about knew the truth. But as for the movie bullshit?

  Enough.

  He was done.

  And suddenly, that didn’t feel like such a bad thing.

  ‘Oh, here we go,’ Hollie had exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air.

  Zander wasn’t following. ‘What?’

  Hollie was the one who switched straight to rant-and-rage mode. ‘You and your strong, silent, pride bullshit. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that if they don’t believe you, they can go fuck themselves.’

  When no argument was forthcoming, she ploughed on. ‘But it’s not that simple, Zander. If they cancel you, the word will go out that you’re using again and your career won’t survive the backlash.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m done,’ he replied calmly.

  ‘Oh, cut the big, butch nonsense. I believe you’re clean, Zander, but after this, the rest of the world won’t. You think anyone will give Downey Jr another chance if he fucks up again? Mel Gibson? Come on, you know how it works. If this gets out, there’s no coming back for you. If you want to walk away from this life, then fine. No problems. But do it on your own terms, not because of some lie or fuck-up that we can’t explain.’

  It made sense. He knew it did. But he was suddenly weary. Nothing was where it should be. Nothing was bringing him happiness. Right now, he just wanted to keep on driving, see where he ended up. Just keep going until this cloud lifted from his shoulders and he felt he was somewhere he wanted to be.

  Mirren.

  Why did he think of her at that moment?

  He had to tell her about this, but how could he? Didn’t she have enough going on right now? But for no other reason than for her, he needed to prove that he hadn’t taken drugs, hadn’t let down her daughter.

  ‘OK, I’m buying it. But, Hollie, whatever way this rolls out, I’m done with this. I’m over this business. I hear you on the drug test, though – we need to find out why it’s messed up.’

  ‘Hallelujah.’ Hollie immediately snatched her phone and dialled the number of Zander’s lawyer, routing it through the Bluetooth system on the Durango so that it was on hands-free. For his sins, Bernard Edwards had been on Zander’s payroll for a decade, the different divisions of his company handling everything from assault charges, past and present, to false paternity accusations, contracts and negotiations.

  ‘Hollie Callan,’ Bernard stated the obvious. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s not good when your number is preprogrammed into a lawyer’s phone,’ Hollie observed, laughing, ‘Sorry to call you so late – and no, he’s not in jail.’

  ‘So you just pre-empted my next question,’ Bernard replied.

  ‘Is this a bad time to tell you you’re on speaker and Zander is here?’

  ‘There goes my Christmas bonus. Hi, Zander. Sorry about that. But I’m guessing you’re not calling me at this late hour because all’s going well in your life.’

  He had a point.

  ‘If only. Listen, Bernie, here’s what’s happened.’

  He outlined the situation, Wes’s reaction and his own response.

  Bernard listened in silence, except for the rustling of paper as he flicked over a page in his notebook. He famously took handwritten notes of every meeting and phone call.

  ‘Leave it with me. I’ll get the guys on it now. We’ll have a writ on Lomax within the hour demanding complete confidentiality on the test results and on Zander’s contract termination, and we’ll also secure the test results, clinic details and analysis so our own people can look into it. Do you want to use your own investigators, or shall we use ours?’

  ‘Go with your guys – keep it all in-house,’ Zander told him.

  ‘We don’t want any of this getting anywhere near the press,’ Hollie added.

  ‘If it does, it won’t be from our end. However, the confidentiality writ doesn’t guarantee there won’t be a leak at Lomax – just means they can’t publicly announce it. Look, we’ll come down heavy, lay it on thick, protest innocence, wrongful accusations et cetera. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to keep a lid on it until we find out what’s going on. I’ll keep you posted.’

  ‘Thanks. Appreciate it.’

  Hollie cut the call. ‘OK, I’m feeling like we’re being productive here. Argh, I’m fricking furious. How can this happen, Zander? I don’t get it. How can a negative test somehow turn into a positive one?’ she asked, as she pulled up and stopped at a red light on Pico.

  ‘Mistake. Wrong label. Contamination,’ Zander suggested. ‘Could be any one of loads of reasons, I guess.’

  ‘And you don’t think the timing is strange?’

  ‘What timing? Oh, here we go. You have a conspiracy theory. I’m a grassy knoll.’

  ‘Come on. Your apartment gets trashed one day, positive drug test another? It’s like we’re in the middle of a really bad movie and you’re next to die.’

  ‘Shit happens.’

  ‘Not like that it doesn’t. I don’t know. Just feels . . . off. I want to get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘Right, then, Nancy Drew.’ They turned right onto Ocean Drive and headed towards the Fairmont Miramar. Hollie had offered to let him stay with her until they got his place straightened out, and while his first instinct had been to accept, his second was to refuse on
the grounds that he infringed on her life enough. Hadn’t she already said she was dating? Going out? The last thing she needed was Zander sitting on the couch when she came home with some dude.

  Easiest thing was to check into a bungalow at the Fairmont. As he’d crashed out to sleep that night, his last thought was that his career was over and he really didn’t give a fuck.

  Now, in the morning light a couple of days later, his feelings hadn’t changed. For the first time in decades, he had had a couple of sober days to really think about his life, and much as deep introspection wasn’t his thing, he knew he should care that it had all gone to hell. But fuck that. Look at his life: what did he have to show for it? No kids, no marriage – the longest relationship he’d had would be considered a short-term romance in anyone else’s book. He’d never travelled – unless it was to a location shoot or to the opening of a Dunhill movie. Even then, he’d fly in a couple of days before the premiere for press junkets and straight back out after the screening. He’d been to Tokyo, Sydney, London, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Rio, Paris and Rome, and he’d never seen anything other than the inside of a hotel or limo.

  Bernard Edwards had filed a wrongful termination case against Lomax, and Zander saw Hollie’s point about leaving on his own terms, but the truth was, it still didn’t matter. Would it bring Adrianna to him? She’d made it perfectly clear that she wanted him only when it was convenient for her. He was a forty-two-year-old man – bit too old and too wise to be someone’s bitch. Had his movie career brought him any other long-term happiness or fulfilment? No. It was a job.

  Beside him on the step, Hollie took his cigarette off him for the second time and inhaled deeply. ‘No word yet on the tests. Bernard’s people are on it, though.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Cool? Is that it?’ she replied, her irritation obvious.

  ‘What’s up with “cool”?’

  ‘Because it’s not fricking cool. None of it is. I don’t get this, Zander – I just don’t get why you don’t care. Is it because of her?’ He knew she meant Adrianna but was being bloody-minded by not saying her name.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered honestly. ‘I just know that I’m finally sober, after all these years, and it’s like now I’m seeing things with a clear head, I’m not sure it’s what I want. Fuck, I sound like a spoilt brat.’

  ‘You do,’ she agreed. ‘But you’re—’ Her words were interrupted by the ringing of a cell phone. Hollie checked the two phones sitting on the side table. ‘It’s yours.’

  She looked at the screen, then immediately adopted an expression of concern. ‘It’s Mirren. Have you told her yet? You need to tell her.’

  ‘I will.’

  He pressed ‘accept’. ‘Hey, Mirren.’

  She didn’t even open with a ‘hello’.

  ‘You failed a drug test.’

  A statement, not a question.

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘Don’t fucking dare give me an excuse, Zander. You promised.’

  He could hear she was crying the kind of tears that came from rage and anger, and the realization that he had made her feel like that confirmed his suspicions that he was the biggest prick on the planet.

  ‘Mirren, it was a mistake. An error. We’ve got people investigating it.’

  Her laugh was thick with scorn. ‘Really, Zander? That’s all you could come up with? It was a mistake? Oh God, how many times have I heard that? A mistake.’

  Now she just sounded weary and devastated and stressed. Really, really stressed.

  ‘I believed you. I really did.’

  ‘Mirr—’

  ‘Oh fuck off, Zander. Stay away from me. I’ve had enough of liars to last a lifetime.’

  Snap.

  Hollie came out of the bungalow carrying two glasses of soda, saw his face. ‘Shit, what happened? What did she say?’

  Snap.

  The synapses in his brain couldn’t connect to formulate an answer. He was too focused on the two glasses . . .

  Snap.

  . . . on the cravings that had suddenly overtaken his mind and body.

  Snap.

  And he knew. He absolutely, definitely knew that he needed to top up the soda with Jack Daniel’s.

  36.

  ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’ – Rockwell

  Sarah

  Another day, another city. And much as she was reluctant to admit it, Sarah’s enthusiasm for the road was beginning to wear thin. How pathetic was that? The glimmer of her rock-star life was tarnishing faster than a Stratocaster in a storm.

  There had been New York, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, back to New York and now they were working their way down the Eastern Seaboard. New Jersey. Philadelphia. Baltimore. Washington, DC.

  If there was an upside, it was that the rest of the crew had stopped treating her like a stranger and started to act like she was just another one of the team. It was a positive move, made them less wary around her, made them drop their inhibitions. She knew now that Ringo was having a full-blown affair with one of the dancers, whose boyfriend worked on the crew as a light technician. Unlike Ringo and the dancer, Sarah also knew that the lighting technician had been aware of the affair from the start and was hoping it would burn itself out. She really wanted to advise Ringo to avoid standing directly under a rig.

  She’d also learned that Jonell was the prima donna of the group, the irrational, quick-tempered, aggressive pain in the ass who found fault with everything and let everyone know he wasn’t happy.

  She’d discovered that Lincoln and D’Arby had been a couple for years and were already planning to move to Europe when the band was over. They reckoned they had another five years at the top, max, before the next big thing shuffled in wearing matching outfits and moving in choreographed synchronicity.

  But it was the stuff she’d discovered about Logan that had puzzled her most. That red bag never left his side, other than when he was at a stadium or on stage, when he’d give it to Eli, who’d then plant it somewhere until after the show. It was driving her crazy and she needed to know what was in it. She’d considered everything from stealing it to setting it on fire. The enigmatic Eli was puzzling her too. Most afternoons at some point, he’d disappear, and when he returned, a look would pass between him and Logan, a question asked, answered, an exhalation of relief.

  There was a knock before Ashika popped her head round the dressing-room door. ‘Half an hour, Logan. You all good?’

  ‘All good,’ Logan replied, spitting the words out in time to the bicep curls he was doing in front of the mirror. Sarah had realized it wasn’t through vanity. He was a switched-on cookie, this guy. He understood that the way he looked was part of his job and he worked at it. A five-mile run every day. Weights in the morning. A top-up session to pump him up before he went on stage.

  On the sofa, Sarah lay tapping on her MacBook. Since that night on the plane, Logan had been happy for her to hang with him before and after the shows. In truth, Sarah could see the irony of fame. The bigger you got, and they didn’t get much bigger than South City, the more you were given. The boys each had their own dressing rooms at every arena; they travelled separately in their own cars; they had their own assistants and bodyguards. But the flip side of that was that they didn’t spend much off-stage time with the only other people who understood the lives they were leading.

  A text pinged in on her phone. Mirren.

  ‘All OK? No sign?’

  ‘None. Don’t worry.’

  In the first couple of days, she’d sent long, chatty texts back, but she’d soon realized that all Mirren really needed to know was that Logan was safe, especially now they’d established that Marilyn was in the country.

  Thank God tonight was the last night before a week-long break that would take them back to LA. With every day that passed without the investigators locating Marilyn, Sarah felt more uneasy about Davie. Mike Feechan, Davie’s head of security, had been updating her daily on the situation and there had been no more sec
urity breaches. Somehow that felt like the calm before the storm. Or maybe she’d just been watching too many episodes of 24 to pass the time she spent hanging out in dressing rooms.

  ‘Looking forward to getting back to LA?’ she asked Logan as he finished the set.

  ‘I can’t even tell you how much,’ he whistled, dropping the 10-kilogram barbells to the floor. ‘I’ll miss ya, though,’ he said with a wink.

  ‘Understandable. I’m the best dressing-room ornament ever.’

  A dressing-room ornament that still hadn’t found anything out. Nearly two weeks of her life wasted. For what? Nothing. Sure, it was another chapter in the book, but it wasn’t anything that would set the world on fire. There had to be more. But if she didn’t find out what it was tonight, she was done. Epic fail.

  ‘I’m just gonna hit the shower and get suited,’ Logan told her. It was her cue to go. Usually she’d head out to the side of the stage, find a good position to watch from, chat to the wardrobe staff, who were already up there, setting up the costume changes.

  A thought struck her. She knew what she did for the next half-hour, but what did Logan do? The decision was made before she even got to her feet.

  It was risky. Stupid. If he found out, it would destroy every shred of trust between them. But she never got a story by considering the ‘what if?’s.

  As soon as she heard the shower go on, she flicked her phone to silent, clicked through to the video function, pressed ‘record’, then slipped it behind a cushion on the sofa, so that only the tiny pinhole of the camera peeked out.

  Heart thudding, she got up and left the room. Fifty yards down the corridor, though, she changed her mind, turned, started running. Almost there. He’d still be in the shower. He’d never know. Ten yards. Just about there. Bugger, why did Logan’s dressing room need to be the very last one in the corridor? Five yards. Four. She was aware of someone coming round the corner in front of her from the other direction, moving towards her.

  Three.

  Two.

  But it didn’t matter. Because the person in front of her was Eli, and he now had his hand on the door of Logan’s dressing room and was looking at her quizzically. ‘You OK?’ he asked.