1
DINO TOMASSO BRAKED BEFORE THE HIGH, FAMILIAR gates with the coupling snakes woven into the wrought iron. It was not necessary for him to show a pass, but he had to wait, drumming his three-fingered left hand against the steering wheel, while the armed, black-uniformed guard threw the lever that opened the gates and waved Tomasso’s AC Cobra 427 through. Tomasso turned into the winding, cypress-lined driveway, whistling happily until he spotted Laughton sitting by the poolside.
Laughton, one of several doctors attached to the Star Maker’s medical unit, was drinking with Gail, a pretty nurse in a bikini. “Time for a quick snort?” he asked.
“No. Sorry,” Tomasso said, his voice wobbly.
“How you keeping?”
“Lousy. Honestly.”
“Hold on a minute.” With a wink for Gail, Laughton whipped out an eye chart from under his towel and pointed a swizzle stick at the fifth line: U F J Z B H Q A. “Let’s go,” he said.
Tomasso reached for a tissue and wiped his forehead and the back of his thick, pleated neck. He squinted. “I’ll try my best. J,” he said, “T Y Z B … um … S … N … How am I doing?”
“You’re faking, you bastard.”
“You mean,” Tomasso said, radiating innocence, “I may need glasses?”
Gail shrieked with laughter.
“You’re a card, Dino,” Laughton said, “you really are.”
Tomasso laughed too, but ingratiatingly, without smiling. “How’s tricks?” he asked.
Laughton indicated the blinking red light and locked doors of the mobile operating theater. The Star Maker’s defrocked priest stood alongside, commiserating with one of the spare-parts men.
“Oh, no,” Tomasso said.
“Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s all because of the new nurse.”
“Miss McInnes?”
“Bitch hadn’t been told about the deep-freeze.”
“She defrosted,” Gail squealed.
“Holy shit!”
With trembling hand, Tomasso flicked the AC Cobra 427 into gear and sped toward the big house, pursued by their laughter. My God, my God, he thought, sliding out of the car, favoring his right leg, which was artificial.
The ageless, undying Star Maker reclined in his customary wheelchair. Behind, sending a shiver through Tomasso yet again, there loomed the familiar portrait of the pernicious Chevalier d’Éon, at once the Star Maker’s hero and heroine.
“Do you know why I sent for you, Dino?”
When Tomasso was summoned from Hollywood to the Star Maker’s mansion in Las Vegas, he calculated, not unreasonably, that he was at last to be designated crown prince of the empire. After all these years of sacrifice, he thought, unstinting labor and operations, he would be officially recognized heir apparent.
“No,” Tomasso lied hopefully.
“We hope to acquire a publishing house and a film studio in England. I want you to go to London and look after my interests there.”
Oh, no, this wasn’t making him crown prince. This was even worse than a demotion. It was banishment.
Tomasso, who had been raised in the motion picture business, knew that London was not where you sent an heir apparent to be tested – it was the place whereto you shipped schlemiels to make son-in-law movies.
Son-in-law movies were produced by a studio chief’s cousins, uncles, and sons-in-law, who had to be given something more than their fingers to twiddle: otherwise it wouldn’t look nice for the family. Once, Tomasso remembered, these retarded relations were put in charge of the popcorn concession or distribution to ozoners, but that became too big; then they were allowed to sell rerun rights to TV, but then that became too big too; and so finally they were sent to England with blessings. A new breed of remittance men. In London, making zero pictures with zero actors, they still cost the family money, but the losses were negligible.
“I’m not going,” Tomasso said defiantly.
“In twenty-five years, Dino, you have never said no to me before.”
Tomasso looked at the floor, steadying himself.
“I have no heir. You are my son, Dino.”
How many times had he heard that before? Raising his head, astonished at his own courage, Tomasso said, “Go fuck yourself.”
Slowly, slowly, the Star Maker raised hands to face, shielding the bad eye. In the pause that ensued Tomasso dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands, making them bleed.
“Go … Why, you’re committing suicide, Dino.”
Tomasso fell to his knees. “Forgive me, Star Maker.”
The Star Maker’s face creased. It was, Tomasso supposed, a smile. “But why, Dino?”
“Oh, Star Maker, please, it’s just that I dared to dream of bigger things when you sent for me. The words leaped out. I didn’t mean it.”
The Star Maker pressed a button, summoning his private secretary, Miss Mott. The Star Maker pressed another button and they were joined by two black-uniformed motorcycle riders.
“Say it again, Dino.”
“I’d cut my tongue out first, Star Maker.”
“No, no. Miss Mott, get this down. I’ll want eight copies, witnessed and signed by Mr. Tomasso.”
“But it was a slip of the tongue, so help me. We don’t need witnesses.”
“It’s for your own protection, Dino.”
“Is it?”
“You said it to me first.”
“I’ve given you the best years of my life, Star Maker. Anything you asked, I did.”
“We’ll take it from the top. I said, quote, I want you to go to London and look after my interests there, unquote. You said, quote, I’m not going, unquote. I said, quote, I have no heir. You are my son, Dino, unquote. Then you said, quote …?”
“I said … I said … Maybe you heard me wrong, Star Maker?”
“Come on, Dino. Then you said, quote?”
Trembling, Tomasso repeated what he had said.
“Can you beat that?” the Star Maker asked, actually laughing.
Miss Mott’s eyes widened.
“I’m unwell,” Tomasso said, sobbing. “I was possessed.”
“To think that you’ve been with me all these years and I never suspected your true –”
Tomasso seized the smaller of the Star Maker’s hands and kissed it.
“Tell me, Dino, have you ever thought this before?”
“Never!”
“Keeping it to yourself all these years?”
“No!”
There was another pause, before the Star Maker chuckled and asked, “Say it once more, Dino.”
The black-uniformed riders stepped closer to Tomasso. So he obliged, but in the smallest possible voice.
“It’s amazing,” the Star Maker said. “Coming from you. How I’ve underestimated you all these years.…”
“What happens to me now, Star Maker?”
But the Star Maker seemed to be lost in a reverie. “Amazing.”
“What happens to me?”
“To you? Why, I want you to go to London, as I said. If, after six months there, you feel the same way about England, you can come back and pick up any job you want here.”
“You mean,” Tomasso said incredulously, “you’re giving me a second chance?”
“As long as I have no heir, you are my son, Dino. Will you go?”
“Will I go? Oh, Star Maker.”
“Take this file with you, then. Study it.”
“Oh, thank you,” Tomasso said, fleeing.
The younger of the two black-uniformed riders unstrapped his gun. “I’ll see to it,” he said.
“No,” the other rider protested, “it’s my turn.”
“Neither of you,” the Star Maker said, “will do any harm to Dino.”
“After what he said to you?”
“Because of what he said to me. Now beat it.”
Tomasso, slumped behind the wheel of his Cobra 427, lit one cigarette off another, waiting for his heart to quiet. It was simply unknown for the Star Maker to give anyone a second chance, to forgive; therefore it must be true – the Star Maker, Blessed Be His Name, has not been mocking me all these years: I am like a son to him.
Whistling happily once more, Tomasso wheeled off the driveway, taking the left fork, a road which led to the villas by the lake where the favored stars were kept. He swept past the low-lying, windowless laboratory, turning left again when he came to the end of the humming fence; and, three miles down the road, he pulled in opposite the most elegant villa. The villa where Star Maker Productions’ most valuable property, its greatest, all-time favorite box-office Star, lived.
Might as well look in and say hello, Tomasso thought, as the Star’s next picture, a multimillion-dollar production, was to be made in England. In England. Maybe things are changing, Tomasso thought, his spirits rising still higher. Maybe a British production doesn’t have to be small beans any more.
“Hi,” Tomasso said, waving at the guard on duty. “Where’s the big fella?”
“Resting,” he said, puffing on his pipe.
“Still?”
“Yeah.”
Tomasso stopped short when he came upon two used starlets lying on the living-room rug. They were nude. “God damn it,” he said, turning indignantly on the guard, “how long have you been with us?”
“All of thirty years.”
“Remember Goy-Boy II then, don’t you?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Then you certainly ought to know better. A pipe,” he hissed, “in here? Live ashes!” And he yanked the pipe out of the guard’s mouth, flinging it through the open window.
“Please don’t report me, sir.”
Tomasso, the contrite guard following after, entered the Star’s bedroom without knocking and walked to the cupboard, where the Star was hanging. Tomasso pondered the Star for a long time, poking, pinching, looking him up and down. Finally, satisfied, he shut the cupboard door softly. “He looks great.”
“He is great.”
“You said it. What’s the script like?”
“Great.”
“Great,” Tomasso said. “Now you be careful, will you?” he added, stepping over the starlets.
“Yes, sir.”
Not until he had boarded the Star Maker’s Lear jet did Tomasso have time to consider the London file. The publishing firm the Star Maker was after was called Oriole; it was run by a lord. There were two senior editors, Hyman Rosen and Mortimer Griffin. Studying Griffin’s photograph, at twenty thousand feet, Tomasso decided he was going to be trouble. He felt it in his bones.