Sympathy for the Devil Read online

  “Hi, Madeline. Did you find everything you need?”

  “Of course she has!” Bruno answered her, gruffly. “But what’s your problem, huh? Why haven’t you gotten your son dressed? And look at you! You look like hell. Where are the costumes? For nine grand I want to see them on you!”

  “We’re getting there, dearest,” she answered in a little-girl voice, smiling sweetly at him.

  Bruno unloaded the child into his mother’s arms. “And as for you, little buckeroo…” Bruno smiled and winked at Lewis. He seemed calm now after the violent storm.

  “Yes, Daddy?”

  The father drew back and spat hard into the boy’s face. “Funny, huh kid?”

  I heard a gasp and a cry coming from my startled crew. Lewis began to wail. And Lily, followed by the nanny, left the room quickly, cooing loving words into her son’s ear.

  During the fracas, Wesley had moved out into the butler’s pantry, a small service room connecting the kitchen to the formal dining room beyond. I joined him.

  “That man.” Wesley was truly angry. It’s less than ideal working conditions when one of the caterers hates the client. If Wes didn’t walk out, it was only to make me happy. “So, you going to defend him? Again?”

  It was complicated. At his worst, Bruno could be a monster. Every nasty thing people said about him was probably true. But he and I had our own odd history, which had to be factored in.

  “I owe him,” I remarked. “He gave us our first important job.”

  “Yeah. Right. You’re probably the finest chef who’s willing to do crew lunches. And for the first few years, what Huntley paid us was a joke. I think, my dear, what you ‘owe him’ is a bill.”

  The door to the butler’s pantry was on a swing-hinge, and our privacy was interrupted by three young women balancing trays with dozens of tiny, lit candles destined for outdoors. The candles would illuminate hundreds of miniature pumpkins along the walkways.

  Right behind them came Bruno.

  “There you are! You guys need anything? Hey, Wesley, how’s it going, guy? Madeline!” His voice, booming in its loud hearty way, was much too big for the small room. “It looks great outside. I love it.” Our efforts had transformed the expansive grounds of his estate into an eerie, haunted landscape.

  “You need anything, just let me know, huh?” He grinned at the kids holding their trays of candles. “Hey, did you gals know I discovered Madeline slaving away at a stove at some hole-in-the-wall bistro seven years ago and made her a star?”

  He stood there, master of the tiny room, beaming. He clearly thought he was charming.

  Bruno turned to me. “Say, what’s up with that fellow of yours—he gonna marry you, or what? You’ve got to nail that son-of-a-bitch down and set the date! You hear? I want to buy you a big, fat wedding present!”

  Bruno grinned at my workers. “Hey! Am I right?”

  They giggled.

  “Thanks for the romantic advice, Bruno.”

  The thing is, my relationship with Arlo Zar is on the complicated side. Arlo is a writer for that popular sitcom, “Woman’s Work,” the one about a feisty lady lawyer. Writing for prime time means he works sixteen-hour days. What with my nights and weekends schedule, finding time together is a challenge.

  Bruno was having a great old time, probing for a possible sore spot. “Listen to me, girl! You’ve got to hog-tie that runaway dogie and bring him back to the fold. Beautiful girl like you, no husband, that’s alarming! Am I right, Wes?”

  I held my breath at how Wesley might react. Would he kid around with the now playful Bruno? The pause was long.

  “I’m alarmed,” Wes said, with no inflection at all.

  We had gotten past a bad spot. I sent Wes a grateful look as I endured more of Bruno’s legendary “wit.”

  “What are you now? Thirty-three?”

  He was doing this on purpose, deliberately adding a few years.

  “Not yet.”

  “See there? She can’t even admit her age in public!” Bruno chuckled and gave me a fond look. This is the way he treats the people he likes. “So what can I do for you? Any problems?”

  “We’re fine, Bruno, thanks,” I said.

  “What about Holly leaving? Wasn’t she going to be the soothsayer tonight?” asked a cobweb girl. Bruno had wanted a fortune teller at the party and Holly volunteered for the part. Now that she was returning worms, we were short one soothsayer.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said quickly. Too late.

  “Leave it to me.” Bruno loved to take charge. “There’s a gal I know who is a terrific little actress. She’ll fill in for us.”

  Bruno pushed on the swinging door into the kitchen and held it open. There, making a grand show of his largesse to all the kitchen staff, he yelled back, “I’ll take care of everything.”

  I was all set to turn him down when Wes said, “Thanks.”

  “That’s what I’m here for, pal,” Bruno said, beaming, “to help my friends!”

  The fact that not one person laughed at the insanity of that statement was proof of just how adept in the ways of Hollywood my young staff had quickly become.

  Chapter 3

  You haven’t seen upscale real estate until you’ve gazed at the enormous hacienda-style mansion at 32 Winding Oaks Drive. The house, perched on forty expensive acres, is located in Los Feliz, an old L.A. neighborhood rich in film-land history. Movie idols and studio moguls from the golden age of the silver screen built their posh mansions here. The charming twisted streets of Los Feliz are studded with these residential jewels, the brick and stone rewards to Hollywood’s first superstars for inventing themselves.

  The magnificent Los Feliz estates, as befitted the giant egos that had them built, seem more the product of set designers than architects. As the building boom spread from the 1920s into the 1930s, impossible Tudor castles elbowed aside giant Mediterranean villas until they ran out of space on the Hollywood Hills.

  Los Feliz (which the natives pronounce “Fee-liss,” blissfully bludgeoning its proper Spanish pronunciation) is one of my favorite areas of the city. I cater a lot of parties here, since new Hollywood has moved in where old Hollywood moved out, and, as befitting their own egos, remodeled big time.

  I stood at the top of the driveway, in front of the ten-foot-tall arched mahogany door that was set into the main entrance of Bruno Huntley’s estate. The cars for tonight’s party would never be brought up here. The driveway was built in 1928, like the rest of the house, and it was too steep to provide safe passage for all the modern exotic cars that were expected. From where I was standing, I could look down the pitched hillside to the narrow street below where the valet action was taking place in the winding streets of Los Feliz. In the still night, a wind gusted against my white dress, and although it wasn’t cold, I shivered.

  It was 8:35, and guests were arriving in serious numbers. It’s a perverse law in Hollywood: No matter how unlikeable an important host might be, it never seems to affect his popularity. Men like Bruno can be so dangerously important to one’s prospects, so routinely ruthless, that it seems wisest not to cross them. They are the ones, after all, who get their pictures made and their series renewed. And everyone in this town needs work.

  So everyone comes to Bruno’s parties, to drink his champagne, to eat his food, to admire his latest Rookwood vase or latest wife, and maybe even do a deal with the bastard himself.

  New Ferraris and lovingly detailed Mercedes were pulling up at the foot of the drive down on the street. I watched as the owner of a mint-green BMW850csi disembarked from his hundred thousand dollars worth of imported metal and shrunk back against his car as a valet parking attendant moved towards him. With Bruno’s sense of twisted humor, he’d thought it would be tremendous fun to costume the valets as the “homeless.” They were dressed in dirty rags and carried signs that read, “Will Park for Food.” The concept was having its effect.

  “Homeless” Jason left his “prop” shopping cart and opened the door f
or Mr. 850’s leggy date and then moved around to the driver’s side and Jason tried to slide behind the wheel. Mr. 850 looked horrified. Only when he caught the startled looks on the faces of Mr. Testarossa and Mr. 600slc as their “homeless” valets took off did he get the joke. Yeah, Bruno could be funny. At someone else’s expense.

  After leaving their cars, the guests ascended the wide stone steps that staggered up the short hill to the front of the house. They followed a trail of hundreds of tiny jack-o-lantern faces that flickered their loony smiles and daggerlike frowns all the way up from the street to where I was standing. The effect in the dark night was mesmerizing, like each pumpkin face was in on some evil secret.

  Mr. 850csi was dressed as Captain Hook, with a terrific black satin cape, a patch over one eye, and an expensive-looking long curled wig. I noticed that he couldn’t stop fiddling with his hook. His companion was dressed as Peter Pan, all in green. And the tights revealed very shapely legs.

  “John Parmentor and Drew Barrymore,” said Mr. 850. The guard at the security table took the proffered invitation and checked off their names on his master list.

  “You may pass,” Rudy told them and he handed them each an appointment card printed with the time they’d be expected at the soothsayer’s cottage for a personal reading. Then Rudy pushed a hidden button that lifted an artfully creaky iron gate, and they were able to cross a humped bridge and move on back to where the party was taking place behind the main house.

  Rudy was dressed as a giant, menacingly ugly troll. He stood at his post shirtless, so that his overdeveloped pecs and delts, smeared with black soot, were clearly visible under the gray cape flung back over his shoulders. He wore black tights and knee-high boots and his face was disguised by a wart-covered rubber mask.

  A large sign was posted at the medieval table at the entrance that read: “No invitation or no costume and absolutely no admittance!” These had been Bruno’s orders.

  It was pretty difficult to throw guests out at the door when they were actually holding an invitation to the party. Not to mention impolitic when the guy you’re tossing owns a movie studio. Virtually all of my bouncers, including Rudy, were “the next Stallone,” and they worked my parties to make a little money while they were waiting for their Rocky. At my parties, they might even be discovered. However, it doesn’t take someone with the genius of a Schwartzenegger to realize it’s more difficult to make that important contact when you’re humiliating the very man you need to make you a star.

  It had been decided that the only way our bouncers could turn away important guests would be to do it incognito—hence the warty masks. It was still early yet, but so far no one had arrived without proper paper and cloth and things had been going smoothly.

  “Halt! Who goes there?!” Those were Rudy’s lines and he spoke them as if he were at an audition.

  After a small exchange, Regis and Joy Philbin were admitted, looking like a rather compact Batman and Cat-woman.

  “Nice work,” I whispered to Rudy. “Keep it up.” Then I turned after the Philbins and followed them back toward the party.

  I met Wes on the pathway next to a lush hillside covered with ivy. We eyed each other’s costumes and chose not to comment. The Wizard of Oz and Glinda the Good Witch. Bruno had taken his own pleasure in selecting what the staff was to wear.

  “Your hair is perfect,” he said. Good old Wes, straining to find something nice to say.

  I dragged my fingers through the nest of light reddish-goldish hair that I almost always wear pulled back, just to keep the weight of it off my face. Tonight, the mass of heavy curls had been left down, sprayed with silver glitter.

  I made a face and Wesley laughed.

  The party had started and, as usual, I was beginning to enjoy myself. Just then, I felt something lightly touch my ankle and I absentmindedly rubbed my other shoe against the spot out of reflex. Looking down, I watched a rat with a foot-long tail streak across the garden path and out of sight in the darkness.

  “Ugh! Oh my God! Where’d it come from?”

  “Don’t you know what lives in the ivy on these hills?”

  “Rats?”

  “Rats, snakes, lizards, spiders…”

  The hillside was blanketed with fluttering, dark green, heart-shaped leaves. I controlled a shudder. “But ivy is so pretty.”

  “Looks nice, sure. But underneath? You don’t want to know!”

  Wesley turned to go check on the cooking and I quickly made for the patio in order to survey the party scene.

  The staff was in motion—trays of hors d’oeuvres swirling through the clusters of arriving guests. And I was jolted from any inward ratty concerns by the startling sight of the waiters. The sixty men and women were dressed in their costumes for the night: they were all Madonna. Identical blonde wigs, red lips, black moles, and all those crosses on earrings, chokers, and chains. Only in L.A. could you find trained waiters nonchalant enough to serve gravlax and dim sum while dressed in bustiers and fishnet hose.

  Holly was back from her last-minute run to the airport and she was working her way through the crowd toward me. Since Bruno had replaced her as our fortune teller, she made a very tall and very buxom Madonna. She actually looked quite pleased with her costume. The outrageous clothes were, after all, pretty close to what one would find in Holly’s own closet.

  Holly is our only full-time employee. She had helped with prep and cleanup at our very first party. She had been such a help, so efficient and so funny, that we ended up using her every chance we got. And by our first anniversary, we gifted ourselves by putting her on staff permanently. She answers the phones, whips up cookies, and fills in perfectly wherever she is needed.

  Holly is a big girl, towering over me by more than half a foot. She’s got pale, stick-straight hair that she gets chopped off above her ears while what’s left underneath is shaved to the quick, giving her the effect that someone put a bowl on her head and just started trimming. She pays a stylist fifty bucks to get it to look that way.

  “Madeline! There you are!” She puffed as she came up to me. “I kinda liked looking at all the arrivals.”

  Holly is starstruck, and if Bill Murray ever showed up, I was going to have my hands full trying to keep a six-foot-tall Madonna off of him.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Hey,” Holly whispered loudly down to me, “is that Don Johnson?”

  “He’s just what you need.” The star had had his ups and downs. I marveled at Holly’s inevitable choice in men.

  One of our regular servers approached in full Madonna regalia.

  “Alan?”

  “The Material Girl himself.”

  He had brought me a Diet Coke, my addiction. Just give me caffeine and a half-dozen unpronounceable chemicals and I’m happy. And I don’t want to hear about how bad it is for me.

  I took a sip and watched Alan swivel slowly towards the guests, his tray laden with champagne flutes, his backside in full view.

  Holly turned to me, concerned. “Do you think he looks better in that outfit than I do?”

  Just then, my old friend Captain Hook walked up to take a glass from Alan’s tray. He was talking to a short balding cowboy and an older man in a really marvelous Dracula getup.

  “You won’t believe what she said to me!” Captain Hook was saying to his buddies. “She said, ‘Get rid of the BMW, it will bring you pain!’ So how’d that fortune teller know I own a BMW?”

  Short Cowboy had a laugh like a cough. “Do you know how many guys here must drive a beemer? Lucky guess!”

  “No! No! Listen to this! She specifically said 850!”

  “Lucky guess,” agreed Marvelous Dracula. “You look rich, John!”

  “I’m telling you, she said ‘Mint green is an unlucky color. It means death!’ So how’d she know the color? I’m the only guy in this town with that color. It’s special order for Christ’s sake!”

  Short Cowboy was smiling broadly. He said, “Every son-of-a-bitch in this tow
n knows you drive that piss-green beemer. So the gal’s done her homework!”

  Marvelous Dracula said, “Actually, I got one of those appointment cards to get my fortune read. Maybe I’ll go see her. Who knows? Maybe she can tell me if I’m gonna get a friggin’ wide release on Blue-Eyed Black Belt!”

  The small group broke up.

  Holly suppressed a giggle. I shared her thought. Bruno said he’d take care of it. It looked like Bruno’s friend was doing a rip-roaring job of telling fortunes. But how did she know Captain Hook’s car? And “mint green means death”? What was that about?

  Holly joined me on my final walk around the property to make sure everything was as it should be. As we crossed the path that bordered the garden, I heard a rustling and caught sight of ivy leaves trembling on the hill next to us at just about shoulder height. I stared hard, but only saw the surface of dark green leaves so thick that the hillside beneath them was not visible.

  Holly noticed my body stiffen, and thinking to explain the noise, she said, “It’s just the rats and stuff.”

  I swallowed and said, “Let’s go check the buffet tables.”

  I guess you have to be born in Los Angeles to take the rats for granted.

  Chapter 4

  To give the grounds of the estate the proper Halloween atmosphere, we had spent quite a lot on the decorations: on simulated death and dying, wrecks and rotting, skulls and skeletons.

  The branches of the handsome old trees on the property had been blown with “cobwebs.” Baby spotlights were positioned to pick out the witches and goblins lurking behind boulders and hedges.

  The estate was wired so that miniature speakers emitted moans and groans as guests walked by, tripping the infrared beams that activated holographic images of ghosts projected into the night sky. Just then, Holly and I could hear a trail of moans coming up around the corner of the house towards us.

  Lily Huntley was dressed as Rapunzel. She was accompanied by someone who was totally done up as a frog. I did some mental measurements, dismissed the idea that the frog could possibly be Bruno, and relaxed a little.