Wicked Ambition

‘He likes you,’ encouraged Madam Babydoll the following week. Grace had only just recovered from the ache Cosmo had inflicted on her—but she’d never recover from the humiliation. ‘You’re his favourite. He wants you again. He’s requested you personally.’

The other girls were jealous. Cosmo was the biggest catch on the books.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘It’s five grand this time, honey. You keep three and a half. It’s your call.’

The second occasion she went he’d hired a redhead with freakishly large breasts. Grace took charge of the dildo and was instructed to nail Cosmo with it while the redhead sucked him off. The ordeal took hours because Cosmo was so high he couldn’t come. He made Grace call him a bad boy and tell him he needed his ass screwed to teach him a lesson. When finally he was done he was so exhausted that he had them run him a bath and put him in it, relaxing with a joint while he scoped them making out on the floor. Recovered, he took them in turn over the rim of the tub, so many times she lost count, and when Grace left the mansion at five a.m. she was sorer and more bruised than she’d ever been.

After that he asked for her every time. Madam Babydoll tried to switch her appointments to accommodate before realising that Cosmo would pay more and more for whatever it was he couldn’t have. Soon a night with Grace reached ten thousand dollars.

‘I said I was through with that,’ she told Madam Babydoll. But in truth she had almost enough saved to get her own place, try going it alone in LA and getting out of this sordid game once and for all. One last night with Cosmo Angelopoulos, that was it; she’d endured it before so she could endure it again, and after that she’d be made. How much worse could it get? The exchange was surely worth it. She’d never need to prostitute her body again. She could meet a guy, fall in love and do it like it was supposed to be done. No one had to ever know what she’d been through or how she’d lived. A fresh start…a clean slate.

Deciding to go to Cosmo’s that night was the worst decision she ever made.

The girl he’d got was young. Grace saw straight away that he’d plied her with drugs—blow, pills, weed, anything he had going—and, judging by the clothes strewn haphazardly across the floor, had already had sex with her. The girl’s eyes were glassy and stoned, she kept giggling and slurring and when Cosmo beckoned her over to attend to his burgeoning hard-on she weaved drunkenly before crashing to the ground.

‘I don’t think she’s well.’

‘Shut it, bitch. Take your clothes off.’

‘She needs a doctor. What have you given her?’

‘What she begged for: a big hard cock.’

‘She’s tripping. We should call someone.’

Brutally Cosmo slapped her. He grabbed her chin in his hand and squeezed. ‘I said, take your fucking clothes off. Now. Or I’m going to make you regret it.’

One night. As Grace removed her stockings she repeated the promise in her head.

One last night and then I’ll be free.

Kneeling, she fondled the girl’s breasts. The girl was out of it, slumped on the floor, her limbs shut down. When the girl arched her back, at first Grace thought it was with pleasure. It wasn’t. She’d started to spasm, her body jumping and seizing. Grace saw a pop of foam at her mouth, the eyes rolling back in her head until only the whites were visible.

‘What the fuck is this?’ Cosmo cried.

‘She’s fitting. Call an ambulance. Right now.’

Grace attempted to hold her down, tilting the girl’s head as best she could to prevent her choking on her tongue.

‘Like hell I am.’

‘Do it. She’s in danger.’

‘So am I if we get the fucking cops round!’

Grace pinned him with a hateful stare. ‘Do you want her to die?’

‘She’ll get over it. It’s a bad trip, that’s all.’

It wasn’t all. The girl’s body surrendered to a series of rapid tremors before suddenly, too quick, impossibly quick, it strained a final time before becoming still. Frantically Grace touched her pulse. Nothing. She felt her heart. Still. Dead still.

No. No, no, no, no, no…

Before she could think twice, Grace was resting the girl’s head back, opening her airways and breathing into her mouth. Cosmo was useless, hanging back and swearing, freaking about the mess on his luxury shag-pile carpet and how the fuck they were going to get out of this. She tried to remember what scant first aid she’d picked up off TV, medical dramas she’d half watched, and began to establish a rhythm. Two breaths, thirty chest compressions; she didn’t even know if that was right but she couldn’t stop. Two more, thirty more, two more, thirty more, two more, desperation building and panic surging and then…

Nothing.

‘Don’t die on me, sweetheart. Come on, not here, not now…’

She didn’t know how long she kept it up for, and only stopped when she saw the girl was grey in the face. She was dead. It was over.

Grace sat back on her knees. Cosmo was clothed, stalking the room. He tossed her belongings and numbly she dressed. ‘Get her the hell out of here,’ he ordered.

The word floated in Grace’s throat before she caught hold of it. ‘What?’

‘You whores stick together, don’t you? Get out and take her with you. Far as you’re concerned she never set foot in this place.’

‘You heartless bastard. I’m taking her nowhere.’

‘You’re in this too, cunt.’

‘I tried to save her.’

‘Or else you killed her. I bet you finished her off right there, thumping her chest like that without a clue what you were doing!’

Grace’s mouth was dry. She didn’t believe him, she couldn’t, but even as he uttered the words she knew they would haunt her as long as she lived.

They folded the body into the trunk of Cosmo’s car. He told her that if she breathed a word to anyone he would kill her, and it had been both their faults because if she’d given him time to think then they might have been able to save the bitch. Grace didn’t speak a word as they drove out to the desert. Cosmo flicked the radio on and smoked manically out of the window. All she would remember of that drive was Bruce Springsteen on the airwaves, ‘Born to Run’, and it seemed that her whole life had been spent doing exactly that.

She shivered in the cold night as Cosmo dug the hole. It took forever. A host of stars observed overhead as the body was thrown in, eliciting a sickening thump. Grace pleaded once more to go to the cops and he hit her so hard she was thrown across the hood of the car.

‘This goes nowhere,’ he told her on the ride back to town. ‘Do you understand? I give you your money; you crawl back to whatever hole you came from and I never want to see you again. That bitch is nothing to me, and neither are you. You claim to know me and you’re a crazy-ass motherfucker off the goddamn street. You even think about telling anyone any of this and you’re more of a corpse than the girl I just buried. Got it? It’s your fingerprints all over her, too. Never forget that.’

Grace Turquoise quit Madam Babydoll’s the next morning. She didn’t leave a note, just the cut she owed. Downtown she rented an apartment and took a job in a bar. One night she was singing as she worked and invited to the stage, where as long-overdue luck would have it a visiting record producer encountered the most astonishing voice he’d ever heard.

A week later she was signed to her first label. Cosmo Angelopoulos soon became a horrifying memory, one that would wake her in the night, bathed in sweat and remembering his words. He couldn’t touch her now…could he?

She wasn’t to know that her flourishing stardom was going to lead her straight back into the ring. And that one day she would have to face her adversary—and then, only then, one of them would be made to pay.

14

Robin’s tour manager had arranged a dance audition in West Hollywood. They needed to select eight principal dancers and twenty backing, and with hundreds queueing round the block from six a.m., they knew they had their work cut out.

‘We’ll see you in groups of thirty, three rows of ten,’ Marc Delgado told them. ‘When I hold my hand up like this, front row goes to the back and the next comes forward. Clear?’

The studio was a kaleidoscopic jumble of leg warmers, slashed T-shirts and hairstyles that rivalled even her own. California-tanned bellies peeked out above hip-hugging slouch pants, and smooth, powerful limbs practised stretch warm-ups with ease. There couldn’t be more than an ounce of fat in the room. Robin didn’t think she’d ever seen so many gorgeous people in the same place: African, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, each was as cute as the next.

‘This is going to be tough,’ she said, grabbing a coffee and taking her place alongside Marc and Barney. Barney was flipping through the dancers’ profiles.

‘Jeez, where do we start?’

‘Stamina,’ Marc advised. ‘These guys need to be able to perform night after night and week after week. Today should give you an idea of how they keep pace. We’ll have the finalists moving for an hour or more, but any sign of flagging, breathlessness or ill-coordination and it’s a no as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Harsh!’ said Robin.

Marc shrugged. ‘But true.’

The routines fired up to Robin’s opening number ‘Told You So’ and an army of bodies slipped into the choreographed routine. Marc had arranged a killer string of steps, jagged one minute, supple the next, and the dancers adhered with poise and precision.

After the first round the panel conferred, starring the names of those they’d call back and striking through any who hadn’t made it. Marc explained it was a rigorous process and the dancers selected would be made to endure several gruelling cycles before decisions were made. He found Robin’s determination to employ a majority of women refreshing, and unlike most stars he’d worked with she was unthreatened by their beauty. ‘If you’re doing me a hot show, Marc, then I want the hottest girls there are.’

Take two surrendered some formidable talent. The competition was brutal. Several dancers quit, short of air or fumbling their steps, and once the momentum was broken it was hard to get back. Robin had taken basic training when her star began its ascent, in how to cover the stage, how to move while holding her voice and how to execute a basic catalogue of struts, but not nearly enough to compete with the professionals. To be dismissing them felt cruel, but as Marc kept pointing out they had to get the numbers down somehow.

It was a thrill to be amassing her troupe. They would be like one big crew on the road, and she wasn’t just picking a bunch of randoms to take the stage, she was picking people with whom she’d be content to spend time, people who might become friends.

‘Like them,’ Barney had counselled on the way over, ‘but trust them more.’

A runner put his head round the door. Marc went to shoo him off but he gestured at Robin with a tentative, ‘Sorry to disturb. Phone call for Ms Ryder.’

Robin looked up. ‘Who is it?’

‘The girl says it’s family. I wouldn’t have interrupted otherwise…’

Robin was puzzled. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘this won’t take long.’

Family?

Outside the corridor was deserted, quiet apart from the shouts of kids passing on the street several storeys below. There was a booth, the phone resting expectantly on a little plastic counter. Robin scooped it up. ‘Hello?’

Nothing.

‘Hello?’ she repeated.

She went to replace the receiver, thinking the line must have been cut off, when she began to detect a very faint breathing, so delicate it was hardly there.

‘Who is it?’ she demanded. ‘Who is this?’

The breathing was quickening, deepening, getting louder. Thickly she remembered the walker at her heels in London. The dodgy fan mail. And then three words, faint and rattling, so muffled that she couldn’t be at all sure but she thought a female voice rasped:

‘I’m watching you…’

Robin slammed the phone down. Her heart was in her throat and her fingers were trembling. I’m closer than you think…

It took minutes for her to gather herself. It’s nothing. It’s nobody. She was knackered, that was all; it was the jet lag. So what if some psycho got off on the sound of her voice? It was common enough in this industry.

Back in the audition, Barney mouthed, ‘Everything OK?’ and Robin nodded, smiling as brightly as she could. There was no point raising it; she’d only get told what she already knew. Besides, since when did she let herself get spooked?

She resolved to brush it off and focus on the job.

As she observed the next group fall into position, one particular dancer caught her eye. Robin checked his picture against the list. Farrell. Twenty-one years old. With his light chocolate skin and bright green eyes, he reminded her of someone.

Leon Sway.

Idiotically she had Googled him the previous night. She’d drunk too much champagne at a launch with Barney, and on returning to her hotel had heard him mentioned on the radio.

Countless sites had sprung up, led by an article beginning Leon Christopher Sway, born 1988 in East Compton, Los Angeles…which she’d meant to open but hadn’t. Instead she had been drawn to the line of thumbnail shots running below and had clicked on Image Results. Most of the snaps saw the Olympian breaking through the finish in London, face to the open sky, arms stretched wide—she could think what she liked of him, but that body…In others he was alongside Jax Jackson, head to head, neck and neck, the man he couldn’t beat, the photos mocked up to present the athletes locked in mortal combat. A glance showed there were hordes of blogs and fan sites devoted to him.

Sexiest man in the world. Ultimate boyfriend. Superhuman. The list went on.

One picture had jumped out. It was Leon with a woman, snapped at LAX. The woman was kissing him, her arms around his neck, and Leon was grinning dizzily through the adulation. Ridiculously, something in Robin had sunk. She’d snapped the laptop shut.

‘I don’t like him,’ she said to Marc now, nodding to Farrell as the routine struck up. ‘Front row, tall, grey sneakers. Let’s not see him again.’

The meet with Puff City took place the following afternoon at Slink Bullion’s mansion on Long Beach—he liked to keep things relaxed, apparently. As Robin’s car cruised through the sweltering grid of LA, reaching the ocean with its silver, glittering harbour and wide straight roads lined with majestic palms, she gathered her nerve. As a rule she didn’t let other people daunt her, but Puff City were a notorious crew. If they agreed on collaboration, not only would it be a personal triumph, it would seal her fate as the one to watch in America. With her Beginnings tour fast approaching, the game was on.

She pulled out her iPhone and checked her emails.

Wait till you see this place. B x

Barney had attended a lunch with record execs and had planned to meet her there, but, while normally she didn’t mind going places alone, on this occasion she was glad he’d made it first. She scrolled through several unread messages before deciding she was too anxious to absorb them properly. Before she closed the account her eye fell on Turquoise da Luca’s name. Robin had contacted her the morning after Friday Later: she’d been surprised at Turquoise’s sudden withdrawal and couldn’t forget the haunted look in her eyes. What was going on?

Sorry to split, Turquoise had mailed back. Run down, that’s all. Let’s do it next time.

The car changed lanes and peeled away from the beach, pulling up moments later at an awesome set of twisting gates. Robin’s driver spoke into the intercom and the entrance swung open, revealing a lush spread of verdant gardens, through the middle of which threaded their path. At its summit was the infamous mansion: it had appeared once on MTV Cribs, inciting alternate waves of marvel and disgust across media forums. Did anyone seriously need sixteen bedrooms and as many en suites? Were a private gym, games room and spa really necessary? Could both an indoor and outdoor Jacuzzi swimming pool be justified when there were people starving in the world? But Slink Bullion lived by his own rules. From the streets of Brooklyn to the castles of LA, Slink had strived for every cent and couldn’t care who knew it.

Seven (she had to count) vehicles were parked out front, ahead of a garage Robin suspected housed yet more: a burnished black Rolls-Royce Phantom; an ice-white Mercedes McLaren SLR with flashing alloys; a two-hundred-thousand-dollar Ferrari 458; a colossal red Hummer Pickup…and the rest. Each boasted a personalised licence plate, which put paid to any doubt that they all belonged to Slink. SL1NK A. SLNKWISE. 5LINKY.

A woman in hot pants and a sparkly bikini top met her at the door.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m Robin.’

‘And?’

‘I’ve got an appointment.’

The woman looked her up and down a tad bitchily: she was Shawnella, Slink’s live-in, long-suffering lover, a gorgeous black girl with legs that went on for miles.

‘Baby!’ she yelled into the hall. ‘You got a visitor.’ She blew a strawberry bubble in Robin’s face and fixed her with a stare.

‘What’s up, Robin Ryder?’ Slink came to greet her, a heavy black guy in a Red Sox sweatshirt, a baseball cap wedged over his cornrows. ‘Good t’ finally meet you.’

‘Likewise.’

‘Come on through.’ He patted Shawnella’s ass. Robin saw how she pouted at having to share his attention, and shot a dark grimace Robin’s way before disappearing inside.

Barney had been right. This was more a palace than a mansion. Slink’s dominion went on for miles. ‘This is my hall of fame right here,’ he informed her as they passed through a gallery covered wall to wall in awards and accolades, not a spare strip to be seen. ‘I should take y’all on a grand tour but y’all be here for a week.’

Eventually they arrived at the living room—one of them. Barney Grant was seated uncomfortably on a leather couch and clutching a fat cigar he didn’t want to smoke.

‘Y’know my main man G.’ Slink gestured to a guy in a checked shirt and cardigan, who grinned and held his hand out: G-Money, he had been part of the City since the start.

‘Hey,’ he said warmly, ‘how’s it going?’

‘An’ this here’s my brother Principal.’

Robin got a cooler vibe off Principal 7. He was a toughened-up white kid with something to prove, lifting his chin in grudging acknowledgement and regarding her with suspicious, mistrustful eyes. ‘Wassup?’ he muttered sullenly.

‘Y’all want somethin’ t’drink?’ asked Slink.

Robin clocked the fully stocked bar, next to which a second girl, this one with slightly more on but still in a state of partial undress, awaited instruction. ‘A beer would be good.’

The girl popped open a bottle of Corona Light and brought it over.

‘What did you think of the tracks?’ asked Barney.

Slink took a seat, ankle on knee, and smiled, exposing a glinting silver tooth. ‘You got it down, girl, an’ I ain’t even lyin’. So word up, we should make music together.’

‘Last record we dropped sold a million in seven days,’ put in G-Money, real name Gordon Rimeaux. Unlike the rest of the crew G-Money was clean-living, educated, had swept his act up after a difficult childhood: Robin respected him. ‘That’s one week, man, and that’s some crazy shit right there. It’s like even after all these years there’s love on the streets for the City.’

‘What’s she bringin’ to the party?’ Principal folded scrawny arms across his oversized T-shirt. ‘I say we stick to the script and no messin’.’

Robin was confused. ‘What script?’

‘There ain’t no script,’ said G-Money, ‘only my man Principal’s not wise enough in the ways of the world to have figured that shit out yet.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘If the City hadn’t taken you in, where’d you be? Slink took a chance, now it’s you who returns the favour. ’S all in the chain, man, you pass that vibe on.’

‘You wanna tell me how to live my life, asshole?’ Principal stepped forward, ready for battle.

‘Chill,’ warned Slink, and Robin got the impression he was used to dispelling friction. ‘We got a philosophy, you feel what I’m sayin’? We ride with the new school, the cool school, the anything that’s true school, and that’s about my girl Robin right here. G, get on down to the studio, dog, we’re gonna lay out some beats.’

Principal backed off. There was a sinister gleam in his eye. As the youngest member of the group he fronted with the best of them, fuelled by anger at the life that had done him wrong. Robin didn’t know his history but she guessed it made her own look like Little House on the Prairie. He’d take a while to warm up, but she was determined to get on his right side.

Slink’s studio was in his basement and rigged with mixing consoles, drum kits, monitors and mics. It was bigger and better equipped than the booth in which she’d recorded her album back in the UK, and as Slink eased into a chair and began wiring up the track she understood this was his empire and the home he’d always had.

‘Don’t worry about my brother upstairs,’ said G-Money. ‘He’s got beef with most people so don’t take it personal.’

‘I haven’t. But thanks.’

‘You just be doin’ your thing.’

Robin smiled at him. ‘Always do.’

‘It’s since hookin’ up with the track team boys, he ain’t too happy about that. Can’t say I am either, but you gotta give it up for a good cause, you feel me?’

‘Jax Jackson’s idea, right?’

‘Dude’s a clown.’

She couldn’t resist asking. ‘What about Leon Sway?’

G-Money’s countenance changed. It was like a cloud passing over the sun.

‘None of us ever met the guy,’ he said flatly. ‘Guess he’d have a reason to get involved with the anti-weapon stand, though, huh?’

Robin frowned. She thought Leon’s involvement with the charity venture was the stupidest, most hypocritical thing she’d ever heard. What would he know about the streets?

‘How do you mean?’

But G-Money was taking a seat alongside Slink at the workstation.

‘You wanna get in the live room?’ Slink suggested. Barney fired her a thumbs-up. ‘Drop some sounds, see what’s up?’

Robin put Leon Sway from her mind. She was playing with the bigger boys now.

‘You bet I do.’

15

Kristin’s home resembled one of her video sets. It was Friday evening, and in the vast mansion grounds an ivory marquee had been erected in the style of a Disney castle, its billowing fabrics and soaring turrets home to the most perfect princess in the land. On her fourteenth birthday, Bunny White was that princess. Bunny was the star of the show—and the show, it went without saying, had been orchestrated to a military agenda by their mother.

‘Those damn caterers, late as usual!’ bitched Ramona, rampaging through the mansion doors and slapping Kristin’s hand away from a platter of salmon tartare.

‘What? I’m hungry.’

‘Guests are arriving any second,’ she complained. ‘We’ve just this minute put the arrangements out and already you’re troughing. I thought you were dieting.’

‘I don’t need to diet.’ Kristin’s waist was miniature in a clinging peach Marchesa gown. Her face stung at the criticism.