L a connections, p.1
L. A. Connections, page 1
Praise for Jackie Collins
‘Sex, power and intrigue – no one does it better than Jackie’
heat
‘A tantalising novel packed with power struggles, greed and sex. This is Collins at her finest.’
Closer
‘Bold, brash, whiplash fast – with a cast of venal rich kids, this is classic Jackie Collins’
Marie Claire
‘Sex, money, power, murder, betrayal, true love – it’s all here in vintage Collins style. Collins’s plots are always a fabulously involved, intricate affair, and this does not disappoint’
Daily Mail
‘Her style is pure escapism, her heroine’s strong and ambitious and her men, well, like the book, they’ll keep you up all night!’
Company
‘A generation of women have learnt more about how to handle their men from Jackie’s books than from any kind of manual . . . Jackie is very much her own person: a total one off’
Daily Mail
‘Jackie is still the queen of sexy stories. Perfect’
OK!
‘Cancel all engagements, take the phone off the hook and indulge yourself’
Mirror
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Introduction
I should begin by saying that I have never been to LA. Never circled the smog over LAX, never taken a tour bus to the mansions of the stars, never seen the sun come up on any of the famous boulevards – or go down on the Hollywood Sign.
But, come on, we all know LA, don’t we? LA is Elton John singing ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ at the Hollywood Bowl and Jim Morrison getting wasted at the Chateau Marmont. It’s Julia Roberts in a fancy Rodeo Drive store telling the assistant she’s made a huge mistake and Norman Maine at the Oscars sabotaging Vicki Lester’s acceptance speech. Fine, so not all of those people are real, but that’s the whole point of LA, the blurring of reality and myth. As Kristin tells Jake in an early chapter of LA Connections: ‘Real humans? Here? You do know you’re in LA?’
Seen through Jackie’s eyes – and I challenge you to name a better guide – LA is an electric, compulsive, brutal place, where life is cheap and beauty cheaper. (Lord only knows what befalls you if you’re ugly). For the winners, it’s a land of opportunity like no other, and yet it quickly shrinks in the loser’s gaze to its bland components of ‘sunshine, palm trees, fast food’.
And crime, of course. The novel opens with a man called Mr X climaxing into a swimming pool while drowning a hooker, and though common sense suggests this can’t be a typical occurrence, a quick google tells you the number of homicides in the City of Angels in 1997, the year before the novel was first published, was 575 (LAPD figures). The date is important: Jackie was writing in the aftermath of the 1994 trial of OJ Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman and her dismay at this ‘debacle’ casts its mood over the story: ‘Two murders. Two blondes. Another normal Sunday in LA.’ This was her most pitiless portrait to date of her adopted hometown and the envied, sun-kissed power players who get away with murder.
From Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays to LA Confidential (the movie of James Ellroy’s novel came out in 1997), the more novels you read about LA, the more clearly you see that Jackie’s story of LA is the only story of LA. It’s about reinvention, rags to riches, obscurity to fame. If you’re one of the lucky ones, that is, because this gilded LA version of the American Dream has a rotten core. It’s all here in LA Connections. First published in four parts, the titles are our stepping stones: Power, Obsession, Murder, Revenge. The connections are so seamless you hardly need the dividers: power mutates into obsession, obsession into murder. Revenge is the only satisfying response, and we are confident we’ll get it because Jackie reliably dispenses justice. Just as she maintained her British accent and love of M&S food, so she kept a strict cultural – and critical – distance from her freewheeling villains. For all her trademark sass, there is a moralist at work here, and she lets us know in the first few pages who our guides are for the trip.
First up, Madison Castelli. Distinct from but very much in the gunslinging tradition of Lucky Santangelo, she’s a magazine journalist with a nose for a story, reminding us every step of the way that fame is a red herring, the real story hidden. Oh, and the star you’ve just interviewed might be dead by the time you come to write up the piece. Joining Madison is Kristin Carr, the tart with the heart of stone, thanks to a private tragedy and its financial legacy. ‘I sell my body for the almighty dollar,’ Kristin says, aged twenty-three and already jaded enough for love to feel like a ‘punishment’.
Both women are much too young to be doing battle with the (mainly, but not exclusively) male enemy on parade here, including super-agent Freddie Leon and his second-in-command Max Steele; violent ex to at least two female stars, Eddie Stoner; and playboy scumbag Howie Powers. Any one or none of them might be the chilling psychopath Mr X. In interviews, Jackie often used the word ‘bizarre’ to characterize the people she met in LA and she created composites of them for her books. On the one hand, arrogant, dangerous, even lawless, on the other, sexy, charismatic, and wise-cracking, the men of LA Connections could have their origins in any number of famous names.
What is sometimes overlooked amid those gasp-inducing depictions of egomania, is the truly excellent plotting. Here, developments are teased and withdrawn. Self-contained planets orbit the central crimes and, inevitably, collide. I was certain I knew who Mr X was, but turned out to be mistaken. Even my second guess was wrong!
As the web is woven in symmetrical quarters, a map emerges of the city’s freeways, boulevards, hills and beaches; its stores, clubs, bars and restaurants. From the fictional status homes (Freddie and Diana Leon’s mansion in Bel Air, Salli T’s in Pacific Palisades) to the real-life palatial hotels (the Beverly Hills Hotel and Beverly Wilshire Hotel feature, as ever), from Farmers Market in Fairfax to the cemetery in Westwood, and from the running track at UCLA to the Malibu beach where a young woman’s body washes up, we speed and loop, getting dizzier by the mile.
I have never been to LA, but having accessed all areas courtesy of Jackie, I’m not sure I need to.
I’m not sure I dare.
Louise Candlish
Book One
*
Power
Los Angeles, 1997
It was near midnight when the gleaming blue Mercedes limousine pulled up outside the closed book store in Farmer’s Market, on Fairfax. A uniformed chauffeur – dressed all in black, including leather gloves and impenetrable sunglasses – stepped out of the car and glanced around.
Nearby, a pretty girl sitting in her parked Camaro hurriedly said goodbye to her girlfriend, with whom she had been chatting on her cellphone, and left her car, locking it behind her.
‘Hi,’ she said, approaching the weird-looking chauffeur. ‘I’m Kimberly. Are you here for Mr X?’
He nodded and opened the rear door for her. She climbed in. He closed the door and got in the front seat.
‘Mr X requires you to put on a blindfold,’ he said without turning around. ‘You will find it on the seat beside you.’
Okay, Kimberly thought. A kinky one. But that’s nothing new. Kimberly (real name Mary Ann Jones, formerly of Detroit) had been a Hollywood call-girl for eighteen months, and during that time she’d seen plenty. Wearing a blindfold in the back of a limousine was nothing compared to some of the things she’d been asked to do.
She put on the soft velvet blindfold and settled back, almost falling asleep as the limo sped to its destination.
Twenty minutes later the car slowed, and she heard the clanking sound of heavy gates opening.
‘Can I take the blindfold off now?’ she asked, leaning forward.
‘Kindly wait,’ the chauffeur replied.
A few moments later the limo pulled to a stop. Kimberly adjusted her dress, a skimpy designer number she’d picked up at Barney’s warehouse sale. Then she fluffed out her hair, blonde and curly.
The chauffeur opened the door. ‘Get out,’ he commanded.
She removed the blindfold without asking, and followed him to the entrance of a large mansion. He opened the door with a key and ushered her inside the dark entry hall.
‘Wow!’ Kimberly said, squinting at an enormous chandelier hanging above them. ‘Wouldn’t want to be under that in an earthquake!’
‘Here’s your fee,’ the chauffeur said, handing her an envelope bulging with cash.
She took the envelope and stuffed it in her brown leather shoulderbag – a Coach original she’d purchased in Century City that same day. ‘Where’s Mr X?’ she asked. ‘In the bedroom?’
‘No,’ the chauffeur replied. ‘Outside.’
‘Whatever,’ she said, thrusting out her size 36C-cup breasts – purchased shortly after she’d first come to Hollywood, on the heels of winning a beauty contest back home.
‘Whatever,’ the chauffeur mimicked, taking her arm and leading her through an ornate living room to French windows that took them out to a black-bottomed swimming pool.
The man had a firm grip on her arm – too firm for her liking. And how dare he mimic me? she thought. Where the hell w
‘Mr X would like to know if you can swim?’ the chauffeur said, stopping beside the pool.
‘Nope,’ she replied, wondering why he didn’t put on some lights – the place was downright gloomy. ‘Although I’m thinking of taking lessons.’
‘You’d better start now,’ the chauffeur said. And before she was aware of what was happening he had shoved her violently into the deep end of the pool.
She sank to the bottom, rising to the surface seconds later spluttering and choking, her arms flailing wildly in the air. ‘Help!’ she screamed, gasping for air. ‘I told you – I . . . can’t . . . swim.’
The chauffeur stood by the edge of the pool, his member out, right hand working hard.
‘Help me!’ Kimberly yelled, struggling desperately before vanishing under the water for the second time.
The man climaxed over the girl’s head as she surfaced again.
‘You’re crazy!’ she screamed, before going down for the third time.
And after that, everything went black.
Chapter One
One Year Later
Madison Castelli did not particularly enjoy covering Hollywood stories. The lifestyle of the rich and decadent was not her thing, which is exactly why her editor, Victor Simons, had insisted she was the right person for the assignment. ‘You’re not into all that Hollywood bullshit,’ he’d said. ‘You don’t want anything from the so-called power élite, which makes you the perfect journalist to get me the real inside story on Mr Super-Power, Freddie Leon. Besides, you’re beautiful, so he’ll pay attention.’
Ha! Madison thought ruefully as she boarded an American Airlines flight to L.A. I’m so beautiful that three months ago David went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back.
What her live-in lover of two years did do was leave her a cowardly note all about how he couldn’t deal with commitment and would never be able to make her happy. Five weeks later she’d found out he’d married his childhood sweetheart – a vapid blonde with huge boobs and a serious overbite.
So much for avoiding commitment.
Madison was twenty-nine years old and extremely attractive, although she played her good looks down by wearing functional clothes and barely any makeup. But try as she might, nothing could disguise her almond-shaped eyes, sharply defined cheekbones, seductive lips, smooth olive skin, and black unruly hair, which she usually wore pulled back in a severe ponytail. Not to mention her lithe, five-foot-eight-inch body, with full breasts, narrow waist and long legs.
Madison did not consider herself beautiful. Her idea of good looks was her mother, Stella – a statuesque blonde whose dreamy eyes and quivering lips reminded most people of Marilyn Monroe.
Looks-wise, Madison took after her father, Michael, the best-looking fifty-eight-year-old in Connecticut. She’d also inherited his steely determination and undeniable charm – two admirable qualities that had not hindered her rise to success as a well-respected writer of revealing profiles of the rich, notorious and powerful.
Madison loved what she did – going for the right angle, discovering the hidden secrets of people in the public eye. Politicians and super-rich business tycoons were her favourites. Movie stars, sports personalities and Hollywood moguls were low on her list. She didn’t regard herself as a killer, although she did write with searing honesty, sometimes upsetting her subjects, who were usually sheltered in an all-enveloping cocoon of protective PR.
Too bad if they didn’t like it; she was merely telling the truth.
Settling into her first-class window-seat, she glanced around the cabin, spotting Bo Deacon, a well-known TV host with an equally well-known drug habit. Bo did not look good; puffy-faced and slack-jawed, it was amazing how he still managed to come to life when the cameras rolled on his popular late-night talk-show.
Madison hoped that the seat next to her would remain vacant, but it was not to be. At the last moment a breathy, busty blonde in a black leather micro dress was escorted aboard by two star-struck airline reps, who practically carried her to her seat. Madison recognized the girl as Salli T. Turner, the current darling of the tabloids. Salli was the star of Teach!, a half-hour weekly TV sitcom in which she played a comely swimming teacher who visited a different glamorous mansion every week, causing havoc and saving lives – all the while dressed in a minuscule one-piece black rubber swimsuit, which served only to enhance her pneumatic breasts, twenty-inch waist and endless legs.
‘Wow!’ Salli exclaimed, collapsing into her seat and fluffing out her mane of blonde curls. ‘Just made it!’
‘Are you okay, Miss Turner?’ asked anxious airline rep number one.
‘What can I get you?’ asked over-eager airline rep number two.
Both men were bug-eyed, peering down Salli’s ample cleavage as if they’d never seen anything like it before. And they probably haven’t, Madison thought.
‘Everything’s hunky-dory, guys,’ Salli said, favouring them with a toothy grin. ‘My husband’s meeting me in L.A. If I’d missed the flight he would’ve been blue-assed pissed!’
‘I can believe that,’ said airline rep number one, eyes still bugging.
‘Me, too!’ agreed the other man.
Madison buried her head in Newsweek – the last thing she needed was a conversation with this airhead. She vaguely heard the flight attendant asking the men to leave so they could prepare for take-off; then shortly after that, the big plane began taxiing down the runway.
Without warning, Salli suddenly clutched Madison’s arm, causing her to almost drop her magazine.
‘I hate flying,’ Salli squeaked, big blue eyes blinking rapidly. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly flying I hate, more like crashing.’
Carefully Madison prised the girl’s fingers off her arm. ‘Close your eyes, take a deep breath and slowly count to a hundred,’ she advised. ‘I’ll let you know when we’re airborne.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ Salli said gratefully. ‘Didn’t think of doing that.’
Madison frowned. Clearly this was going to be a long flight. Why couldn’t she be stuck next to someone more interesting?
She folded her magazine and gazed out of the window as the plane took off. Unlike Salli, she loved flying. The sudden rush of speed, that exhilarating feeling of excitement when the wheels left the ground, the initial ascent – it always gave her a thrill, however many times she’d done it.
Salli sat silently beside her, eyes squeezed tightly shut, pouty lips slowly mouthing numbers.
By the time she opened her eyes they were in the air. ‘Radical shit!’ Salli exclaimed, turning to Madison. ‘You’re amazing!’
‘Nothing to it,’ Madison murmured.
‘No, really,’ Salli insisted. ‘Your advice actually worked!’
‘I’m glad,’ Madison said, wishing Miss Rubber Suit (she’d seen the show once – it was titillating trash) would keep her eyes closed for the entire trip.
Rescue arrived in the form of Bo Deacon, who came ambling over holding a glass of Scotch. ‘Salli, my darling!’ he exclaimed. ‘You look absolutely edible.’
‘Oh, hi, Bo,’ Salli said guilelessly. ‘Are you on this plane?’
Smart question, Madison thought wryly. It’s so nice to be travelling with intellectuals.
‘Yeah, honey, I’m sitting over there,’ he said, gesturing across the aisle. ‘Got some old bag next to me. Whyn’t we try getting her to trade places?’
Salli fluttered her long fake eyelashes. ‘How are your ratings going?’ she asked, as if that would be the deciding factor on whether she changed seats or not.
‘Hardly as hot as yours, babe,’ he leered. ‘Whyn’t I go back and ask the old bag to move?’
‘I’m kinda comfortable where I am,’ Salli demurred.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Bo said. ‘We should sit together, that way we can talk about your next appearance on my show. Last time you were on we got better ratings than Howard.’
Salli giggled, pleased with the compliment. ‘I did Howard’s E cable show in New York,’ she said, small pink tongue licking her jammy lips. ‘He’s sooo rude, but cute with it.’
