11:26 A.M., PST
The young man stood by the front door of the house off North Foothill Drive, talking into his cell phone. “Yeah, I knocked, but no one answered.”
“Did you ring the bell?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s broken.”
“Did you consider knocking loudly?” Sam asked him.
“If I knock any louder, I’ll, like, wake people up.”
“That’s the whole point, Monty,” she said with exaggerated patience. “If you don’t wake her up, she won’t know you’re there. Which means that you’re like a tree falling in the forest with no one to notice that you’ve fallen. Which means that you don’t actually exist. Which leads directly to an existential black hole. And we don’t want to go there when the New Year is only eleven hours old, do we?”
“Sure don’t,” Monty agreed.
“Great. So knock hard and call me back.”
“Gotcha.” Monty Pinelli put away his cell, pounded hard on the front door, kicked it a few times, and then pounded it again for good measure. Whatever Sam Sharpe told him to do, he’d do, because Sam Sharpe was his ticket.
The fact that Monty and his older brother, Parker, even knew Sam Sharpe was due to their mother, Patti Pinelli, who made sure that whatever piece of shit apartment they were living in hung on to the tattered fringes of the Beverly Hills 90210 zip code. “No one has to know exactly where you live,” she always said. “Let them think you’re one of them and make the contacts you need. That’s how I did it.”
Contacts were how Monty and Parker’s mom had gotten her first—and only—film role, in an R-rated piece of crap called Posers, about two young models and what they did for love. The other actress had gone on to fame, fortune, and the Hollywood A-list. Patti had never gotten within flirting distance of it. She had, however, flirted heavily with Bruno Pinelli, who owned the club where she’d worked as an exotic dancer. Bruno had promised he’d use his “Hollywood connections” to help further her career. Four years and two kids later she divorced his ass, which was why Monty only knew his father by legend as “that sonofabitch.”
It was right around that time, Monty was pretty sure, when his mom had first been diagnosed with clinical manic depression, a diagnosis she considered to be utter crap. The way she looked at it—she was poor, broke, had two kids, and her looks were going—there would be something wrong with her if she wasn’t depressed.
Monty knew that he and Parker had something their mother lacked: game. Whereas she reeked of working class, desperation, and sales at JC Penney, Monty and Parker had perfected the art of the blend. They were chameleons who could change their striations to match their background. Yep, the Pinelli boys could hang with, even thrive amongst, the rich and the famous.
This was key because Monty’s mom never kept them in one place for very long. Every so often his mom would stop taking her meds. Then she’d get a sudden insight: The neighbors and/or her former Posers costar had hired a hit man to kill her; life was a dark hole and they’d all be better off dead. That would lead her to conclude that the only way to bring herself out of this funk would be to go on an immediate shopping spree, preferably at Neiman Marcus.
She’d head for the nearest upscale mall, where she’d lift some rich bitch’s wallet and use the credit cards to buy anything her heart desired. Accomplished grifter that she was, Monty’s mom would then move her kids to a new place with a good school system, always one step ahead of the law.
But now Patti had told her sons that she was determined her boys would stay in Beverly Hills, no matter what it took. Parker believed her. Monty didn’t. But then, Monty hardly ever agreed with his brother about anything.
Parker, who had been so named because he’d been conceived atop a Monopoly board, was a high school senior. He’d been such a cute baby that people would stop to try and lift him from his stroller in order to get a closer look. At age almost eighteen, he bore a striking resemblance to James Dean, except he was nearly six feet tall. He cultivated this resemblance to the max. Like Dean, he planned to become a movie star at a very young age. Unlike Dean, he planned to live long enough to enjoy it.
Parker had already acquired an agent, albeit one in the San Fernando Valley. While Parker had James Dean’s looks, Monty knew the truth: His big bro had zero talent. His acting deeply sucked. But he had so much personal charisma that people (read: women and gay men and the dried-up prune who taught drama at Beverly Hills High, who kept casting Parker in the leads of the school plays) often overlooked that fact.
Parker’s “agent” was a lascivious older gentleman who liked Parker to do odd jobs around his ranch in Santa Barbara. The old geezer never touched Parker. But just the way he looked at Parker—it was enough to make Monty sick. So he’d never gone again.
Monty (Montana, actually; Patti had been certain that the next generation of movie stars would be named for states of the Union) was a year younger than his brother. Unfortunately, he’d inherited the short, swarthy, large-beaked looks of his long-gone father. He figured out early on that looks were definitely not going to be his ticket; he’d have to find another reason to make A-list kids want to hang with him. Being the kind of guy who wanted to cover all his bases, Monty came up with three: He was willing to be their toadie. He was full of boundless energy and was always up for anything. He had a wicked sense of humor.
In other words, he would do their shit work, crack them up, and keep them up all night having fun. It was a winning combination. That Monty, only a junior, was smarter than the brightest of the A-list seniors was something he kept under wraps. He knew he was much better off having them underestimate him. He had to be particularly careful around Sam, because Sammikins was almost as smart as she was insecure. Monty did not want her to feel threatened. Yet. So for now, he played the affable chump.
Today, Samantha Sharpe’s flunky. Tomorrow, his own production company. One day—the world. Then all of these Beverly Hills brats could kiss his olive-skinned ass. One day, when his big brother Parker was old, ugly, and gumming his food in the William Shatner Home for the Aged, Monty might send him a nice care package of adult diapers and denture adhesive.
Sweet.
For a long time Anna thought the pounding was coming from inside her head. When she finally half opened her eyes, she realized that someone outside was banging on the front door. Evidently her father slept with earplugs, because no one was answering. The clock radio read eleven-thirty.
The banging continued; Anna rose wearily, wrapped herself in her Burberry cashmere bathrobe, and padded downstairs. She peered through the peephole of the front door and got a fish-eye view of a short guy in a baseball cap, with dark hair and a nose too large for his narrow face.
The guy stopped his knocking for a moment and listened. When he heard nothing, he started banging on the door again. Whoever he was, he wasn’t giving up. But Anna was a New Yorker; she wasn’t about to open the front door to a total stranger. “Can I help you?” she shouted.
“If you’re Anna Percy, I have a message for you.”
Anna’s first thought: Ben! She swung open the door. “Yes?”
“You’re Anna Percy?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the meaning of life?”
Anna blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Just wondered if you knew.”
“Did Ben Birnbaum send you?”
“Nope.” Monty handed her his cell.
Anna took it and held it to her ear. “Well?” came an impatient female voice from the other end.
“Who is this?” Anna asked, her voice still smoky from sleep.
“It’s me. Sam.”
Anna’s mind was still only half functioning. “Sam who?”
“Hel-lo? You were a last-minute uninvited guest at my father’s wedding? You got your dress ripped in half? I invited you to a party at Warner Brothers?”
Sam Sharpe? Why would Sam Sharpe send this guy to wake her up? Anna cleared her throat. “Right. Sam. What can I do for you?”
“Is there a short guy with dark hair and a honker the size of J.Lo’s ass with you right now?”
“Um … yes.”
“His name is Monty. I sent him to pick you up. Don’t thank me; that’s just the kind of bitch I am.”
Anna wasn’t processing. Nor did she want to process. “I’m sorry, Sam, but I just woke up. If you could call later—”
“Late night with Ben, huh?”
Ben. It all came flooding back to her. He was the last person Anna wanted to talk about or even think about. And she certainly wasn’t about to talk about him to Sam.
“If we could talk later, Sam—”
“Fine. But I didn’t think you were like that.”
“Like what?”
“You said you’d come. To Venice Beach, to help feed the homeless?” Sam reminded her.
Now Anna remembered. “I’m so sorry, Sam. I completely forgot—”
“Yuh, that’s fairly obvious. Too much Ben on the brain.”
“It’s not that. I just got to bed really late—”
“Fine, blow me off. I’ll send your regards to the little people.”
“Sam, would you stop? I have a splitting headache. But I’ll come.”
“How magnanimous of you.”
“What I mean is, I want to come,” Anna insisted, rubbing the pounding spot between her eyebrows. “Where do I—”
“Good, see ya.” The cell went dead. Nonplussed, Anna handed it back to the guy, who was waiting with a cheerful look on his face.
“So, what’s up?” he asked her.
“I guess we’re going … wherever Sam is. Just give me five minutes to get dressed.”