Playing Dead. Jessie Keane

endurance in the face of adversity and so he went on, sparkling, entertaining, handsome, until one night he exerted his charm on the right person and then . . . well, next day on his dressing-room door they hung a star. They really did.

      Chapter 7

      1971

      Saul Jury watched Rocco Mancini and Frances Ducane from his car, which was parked across the street. Idiots, he thought. They were sitting there in a window seat in the diner, thinking themselves unobserved. Touching hands all the time – Jesus, he hated faggots.

      A woman’s instinct, he thought grimly. Hadn’t his own mother told him it was lethally accurate, whenever he’d tried her out with some scam or other? Didn’t his own wife tell him it was infallible, when he tried to get away with his own little minor indiscretions?

      And look at this; they were both right. And so was Cara Barolli Mancini. Only she was right in a way that was unexpected; probably it was going to shock her. However, he took the pictures, particularly pleased with the one that clearly showed Rocco Mancini kissing his little fag friend Frances Ducane’s cheek as he left. If Mrs Mancini was going to snoop on her ever-loving husband, then she had to accept that the consequences might not be pleasant.

      The private detective knew the identity of Frances Ducane because he’d already trailed him twice, once to Rocco’s cruiser out in New York Sound, and had even given Mrs Mancini his name. She was paying him plenty for all this work; he was a happy man. Frances was a good-looking kid, an actor – and, like ninety-five per cent of all actors, he was spending a lot of time ‘resting’. His father Rick had been a big noise in Hollywood in the Fifties, before a spectacular fall from grace. Saul hoped little Frances wasn’t going to go the same way, but the way things were shaping up, it didn’t look so good for him.

      Rocco had married a whole heap of money – apparently the Barolli family were huge importers of wine, olive oil and fruit from all around the world – and Frances was reaping the benefits, happily accepting not only Rocco’s manhood in places where Saul didn’t even like to think about, but accepting expensive presents too.

      Of course it was the presents that had given him away. Woman’s instinct.

      Yeah, his mother and his wife were right. If a woman got a feeling about something, probably there were some grounds to it. Cara had been going through Rocco’s pockets for weeks, looking for evidence to back up her theory that he was playing away from home; finally, Rocco got careless and she found receipts. Incriminating stuff. And then she had hired Saul. And Saul had done his work, and now . . . now he was going to spin this out just a little longer, bump up the tab. She could afford it.

      Rocco got back to the apartment at six. He’d wasted as much time as he could, walking around, just kicking his heels, but finally he had to go home.

      ‘Where have you been?’ Cara called from the bedroom the instant he walked through the door.

      ‘I had some business to attend to,’ said Rocco, coming to stand in the open doorway. His expression was closed-off, guarded. She was sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair, wearing a raspberry-pink silk negligee and matching peignoir.

      ‘Oh.’ Cara stared at him in the mirror until he looked away.

      Did she suspect anything? No, he was sure she didn’t. She turned away, yanking the brush through her long blonde hair and Rocco took the opportunity to stare at his wife. Her hair was beautiful; she was beautiful. But there was an unsatisfied pout to her mouth, and an avaricious look to her dreamy blue eyes that said, Whatever it is, I want it. Right now. Her body was splendid: tall, statuesque. He ought to be a happy man. But he wasn’t.

      ‘Annie’s going to have a baby,’ said Cara, her lips growing thin.

      ‘Oh?’ Rocco sat down on the bed. ‘Your father must be pleased.’

      ‘Pleased?’ Cara gave him a disgusted look. ‘Really, I think he must have lost his mind, marrying that foreigner.’

      Rocco said nothing. He was indifferent to his father-in-law’s second wife, but she seemed to make the Don happy, and wasn’t that what counted most?

      Cara put the brush down and stood up with a hiss of silk. She came over to the bed and sat down next to him. ‘My lovely husband,’ she said, smiling, and leaned in and grasped his lightly stubbled chin in one elegantly manicured hand. ‘You need a shave,’ she purred, rubbing her fingers over his chin. ‘We’re going out tonight.’

      As usual, thought Rocco.

      ‘To visit the expectant mama,’ said Cara.

      Rocco looked at Cara in surprise. She shrugged. ‘We have to keep my father sweet.’

      Of course. Rocco knew that the Don’s family hated the Englishwoman, but they had to be seen to fawn over her. Cara’s face was inches from his own. She was beautiful. He leaned forward a little, lightly brushed his lips over hers. Cara gave a smile.

      ‘So you were busy with work?’ she murmured against his mouth. ‘All day?’

      Rocco nodded.

      Liar, thought Cara.

      She’d already taken a call from Saul Jury. Cara knew exactly where Rocco had been today, and with whom. That woman called Frances Ducane again. Hadn’t there been a film star once, Rick Ducane? Maybe some relative, but who cared? What concerned her now was that soon, very soon, Jury would have all the information she needed to hang Rocco out to dry.

      Chapter 8

      1950

      Rick Ducane was the toast of Hollywood, an action hero with a Brylcreemed slick of British smoothness who could hold his own alongside Flynn and Lancaster. The audiences loved him, like they loved to hear about the young Princess Elizabeth having her second child, a daughter named Anne.

      ‘The Yanks love all things English,’ said LaLa. ‘We have to capitalize on that.’

      Rick knew she was right.

      The studio loved him too. He wasn’t beset by women trouble like Flynn, he wasn’t egotistical like Lancaster; he was easy to manage, a workhorse. He arrived promptly for his read-throughs, learning his lines with punctilious care.

      Born in poverty, he adored and quickly became adapted to the high life – the private planes, the twenty-four-hour limos and bodyguards, the great house and the swimming pool high up in the Hollywood hills; he’d earned it.

      The only slight shadow upon his otherwise dazzling life was his wife, Vivienne – and his son, Frances – now installed in a wing of his palatial house in the Hollywood hills. Vivienne drank to while away the time in her comfy Hollywood prison. She had started having drinking buddies in – Christ alone knew where she met them. That disturbed Rick. Suppose Viv got legless and told one of these wasters who she was married to? The studio would string him up by the balls. But Rick was away so much on location that he frequently – and blissfully – forgot that his wife and son were there at all.

      When he did come home he was harangued by Viv for being late, absent, uncaring.

      ‘You’ve got a child,’ she ranted at him, gin bottle swinging from her hand, her bleached-blonde hair showing an inch of black untended roots and her once-pretty eyes slitted and mean with drunken rage. ‘Don’t that mean a thing to you, you cocksucker?’

      Rick cast a look at the child. Nearly ten years old now, and watching them with hunted eyes as they shouted and swore over his head.

      Actually, it didn’t mean much to Rick. He’d been brought up by a chilly, unmaternal woman, and as a consequence he didn’t feel particularly bothered about kids. He’d had her, she’d got pregnant: the luck of the draw.

      Or not, depending on your viewpoint.

      His viewpoint was that he wished he had never met her, wished he had never stuck his dick up her in the first place; then there would be no Viv staggering around