Playing Dead

Chapter 4

Alberto, the youngest son of Constantine Barolli, received the news when he went to collect Layla, his stepmother Annie’s bright and adorable five-year-old from her first marriage, from his Aunt Gina’s that afternoon.

Layla ran to him; she loved her big brother Alberto. He swept the giggling child up into his arms while Gina looked on sourly. She was putting the phone back on the cradle and she looked as if someone had just told her something really, really bad.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Alberto in concern.

‘Your father’s wife,’ said Gina, her mouth pursing even as she uttered the words.

Alberto knew that Gina despised Annie. Gina would have despised any woman who came close to her brother. She had hated Alberto’s own mother, Maria – and after Maria’s death, he knew very well that Gina had hoped there would be no more women; but then along had come Annie Carter with her ‘whore’s tricks’, bewitching his father – according to Aunt Gina.

Privately, Alberto believed that his aunt was too possessive, clinging to Constantine in a way that was both selfish and faintly perverted. He for one was delighted that his father had found happiness with his second wife.

‘Annie? What about her?’ Alberto glanced at Layla.

‘Your father tells me she’s expecting a child,’ said Gina. She didn’t look overjoyed about it.

Alberto’s attention sharpened. ‘And it’s fine? She’s fine?’

Gina nodded tensely.

‘Well, that’s good news.’

‘Good? How can it be good?’

Alberto stifled a sigh. He knew Gina would never soften towards Annie, and he knew she thought him a fool for liking his father’s second wife so much. But, to him, Annie was family now. He could be the hard man, the tough caporegime when it was required of him, but at heart he was a family man, and both more reserved and more reflective than his elder brother Lucco.

Sometimes, he had to do bad things, difficult things, for the family good. Quiet and polite though he was, he had been responsible for many deaths while carrying out his father’s orders. But he could never delight in the pain and suffering of others, as Lucco did.

‘You hear that, Layla?’ Alberto bounced the little girl in his arms, smiled into her dark eyes. ‘You’re going to have a new little brother or sister to spoil, how about that?’

‘Yay!’ said Layla.

Gina watched her nephew with a glacial eye. Alberto was a good boy, but he was too amiable, too soft. Couldn’t he see how this would affect his own standing in the family; how it could affect them all? Constantine’s English wife had up until this point been an unwanted, isolated interloper with little say in the running of things. Now her status would radically change. She would be the mother of the Don’s baby; her position would be assured.

‘Are we going to go home and see Mommy now?’ asked Layla, watching her big stepbrother’s handsome face and not seeing the expression on Gina’s.

Alberto smiled. Mommy. Layla was sounding more American every day. ‘We sure are. And we’ll stop off on the way and get her some flowers, okay?’

Gina watched them, her expression surly. Flowers, for the love of God. She turned away, irritated. Personally, she would rather see flowers laid on the Englishwoman’s grave.

Chapter 5

‘Well,’ said Rocco Mancini reluctantly, signalling to the waitress for the check, ‘I must go.’

‘So soon?’ his dining companion pouted. They were tucked into a corner table beside the window at a seedy little diner on Lexington and Third, where neither of them would be known. It was a cheap place, tacky, charmless; full of losers and fat, contented mothers with shrieking infants. It wasn’t what either of them would have chosen, but that was simply the way it had to be. Snatched moments in random places.

‘Yeah, Cara’s got plans for this evening.’

Cara always had plans for the evening. Dinner with the Vanderbilts; the Nixons’ charity ball in aid of the Third World; the invitation – which had filled Cara with wild-eyed joy – to fly to Washington for the September opening of the Kennedy Arts Center, with the premiere of Bernstein’s mass for the late president.

There was always something – some silly social engagement they just had to be seen at. Rocco was not interested in any of it, but still he had to go.

The waitress came over, chewing gum and wearing a grubby white apron. Rocco paid, his aesthetic face pinched with distaste. The waitress withdrew. Rocco stood up, shrugging into his jacket. He was tall and very thin, with dark curly hair, bright lime-green eyes and a big sensuous mouth. He looked at his dining companion’s expression and sat down again, sharply.

‘Look, you know it has to be this way,’ he said, grasping the pale hand on the table.

‘I hate her,’ said his companion. ‘Cara has you all the time, at her beck and call. And what do I have? Just the dregs.’

There was nothing Rocco could say to this. It was true. But he knew he couldn’t afford to make waves. He had the lifestyle he had always craved, the cars, the apartments, everything. He summered in the Hamptons, wintered in Aspen, lived a life of ease and plenty. And that was all thanks to his marriage to Cara Barolli. If he tried for separation, or – God forbid – divorce, then all that would be over.

And he had no wish to make so powerful an enemy as the Don. Would Constantine Barolli just accept his daughter being dumped like so much excess baggage? Rocco didn’t think so. Already, Rocco was aware that he had been tested and found wanting by the Don. He wasn’t a made man, he wasn’t even a capo in his father-in-law’s organization yet, and he resented that. But he knew he had a lot still to prove.

And what about his own father, Enrico? He would be exceedingly angry if Rocco made waves. Constantine and Enrico Mancini went way back. There would be hell to pay.

‘My darling,’ said Rocco, ‘you know it’s you I love.’

‘But you’re with her.’

Rocco stood up. They’d had this same conversation many times; it never got them anywhere. ‘I’ll see you here on Friday. We’ll take the boat out on the Sound, how’s that?’ he said hopefully.

His companion was hard-eyed for a moment. ‘What, and you’ll screw me again in the cabin, where no one can see?’ Then the look faded to a faint smile, remembering . . . ‘Ah, all right. You got me, you know you have.’

Smiling, Rocco moved out of the booth. He looked around and then dropped a quick kiss onto Frances Ducane’s almost effeminately smooth cheek.

‘It’s you I love,’ Rocco repeated, against Frances’s skin. ‘Goodbye, my darling.’

And then he was gone, leaving the young man sitting alone at the table, wondering why he always, always had to play second fiddle in life. Now it was to his lover’s wife, but before that he had lived in the long shadow cast by his father, Rick Ducane.

Chapter 6

1938

Before Rick Ducane became a big Hollywood star and household name, he’d been Lionel Driver, a struggling British actor. Frances had inherited his russet hair; he had the identical penetrating grey eyes. Lionel had looked like an aristocrat. He had his own father to thank for that, a good-looking chancer who had married and then cheerfully abandoned his mother with her bad nerves and her whining little voice.

Lionel’s voice was the first obstacle of many he had to overcome. Born within the sound of Bow bells, he had a pronounced Cockney accent, and it was a bugger to lose. But lose it he did, practising his vowel sounds hour upon hour in the stone-cold and stinking privy in the backyard behind their tenement building.

‘Fuckin’ toff,’ his schoolmates snarled at him.

They’d shoved him against a wall, kicked him, then stolen his meagre pocket money.

Lionel didn’t care.

He had plans.

He worked in a series of dead-end jobs until his twenties, then, without regret, he left his mum and the slums of the East End to go to Stratford-upon-Avon and start trying his luck in auditions. He worked hard, even if it was mostly unrewarded, painting backgrounds, helping with props. But then he got a small break, and started treading the boards in walk-on parts, and was approached by an agent.

On the advice of his new agent, he then abandoned the stage and went to try to make his name in Hollywood. Once or twice he even hung out hopefully around the constellation of bright stars that haunted every party. Lana Turner, Spencer Tracey, Clark Gable – they were all there, and all far too high-powered to acknowledge the existence of a handsome starstruck stranger from quaint little England.

‘What we need here is an angle,’ said his agent.

Or for you to get me some fucking work, thought Lionel. But he asked, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you’ve been a Shakespearean actor. A real thespian.’

‘Only in walk-on parts though.’

‘Who cares?’

So Lionel’s résumé now stated that he’d played the lead in King Lear to rave reviews. But even that didn’t get him off the breadline. Nobody wanted an English hero right then, and he was too good-looking to play the part of the hero’s chubby best friend.

One day he was waiting with around twenty other hopefuls at yet another audition, this time for a small part – a destitute man – in a Warner Brothers movie. It was only a walk-on, but he was desperate and bloody near destitution himself.

As usual, his bowels turned to liquid at precisely the wrong moment – he was next but one up – and he had to go off to find the toilet. He passed two men fiddling with one of the new smoke machines. A crowd of people hurried past. Was that brilliantly stylish blonde at the centre of them Barbara Stanwyck . . .? He walked on, looking back, entranced by the allure of stardom, the way that cluster of people stuck to her like iron filings around a powerful magnet. He wanted that. But was he going to get it?

He was starting to seriously doubt himself. Maybe these endless rejections were a sign that he was never going to make it. And Warners were a bunch of slave-drivers anyway. Everyone in the building called the place San Quentin after the notorious prison. Did he want to work for people who drove their staff – even their stars – so hard?

Well . . . yes. He did. Anything they wanted, he’d do. He had to get there. But this was getting to be the last-chance saloon now. This was his last audition, he’d promised himself. If he didn’t succeed today, then he was going home. Not to his old mum in the East End, sod that; but back to England, to try his luck again there.

He missed England. There’d been trouble there, he knew, rumblings from Europe over a jumped-up little German leader – Führer, he called himself – Adolf Hitler. But now Chamberlain had the new Anglo-German accord in his hand, everyone was relieved and peace was guaranteed.

But maybe – just this once – he’d break the mould, get the part . . .?

‘No fucking chance,’ he muttered, and found the john, did what he had to do, and then emerged. He might have missed his place, but if he hurried . . .

‘I don’t care what you say, a deal’s a deal,’ said a tearful female voice from further down the corridor.

Lionel hesitated and peered into the dimness. A vivid blonde was standing there with a man, and for a moment he thought it was Stanwyck herself, but he quickly realized it wasn’t; this was a red-nosed, teary-eyed kid, no shining star.

‘And I don’t care what you say.’ The man leaning over her was a big bruiser, dark-haired and red with fury, shouting into her upturned face. ‘There’s no job. There never was.’

‘You said there was,’ she insisted.

‘You got proof of that?’ He let out a bark of laughter. ‘No? Thought not. So why don’t you just fuck off, sweetheart. Don’t come around my place of work making accusations again or you’ll be sorry.’

‘You bastard,’ she sobbed. ‘You promised . . .’

‘I promised nothing.’ Now he was grinning down at her. He slipped one hand inside her blouse and roughly squeezed her tit. The girl let out a yelp of pain. ‘But if you want to try and read through again, be my guest. The last reading was shit, but baby, you were hot.’

Lionel stepped out from the dimness of the corridor. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he asked loudly.

Stupid question. It was clear as day what was happening.

‘What’s it to you?’ asked the man, instantly pushing the girl away from him.

Lionel found himself going forward, even while his brain was saying: The audition, you’ll miss the audition . . .

Are you all right?’ he asked the girl.

‘She’s fine,’ said the man bullishly. ‘Just sore ’cos she didn’t get the part.’

‘He promised me a part,’ said the girl. She was pretty, Lionel saw. Her tears had dried and now she just looked furious. ‘If I . . . you know.’ She went red and stopped speaking.

‘What we have here is a little misunderstanding,’ said the man. ‘We had some fun together and the lady thought that meant—’

He didn’t even finish the sentence before Lionel hit him, hard. He went crashing back against the wall, and slid to the floor.

‘Come on,’ said Lionel, grabbing the girl’s hand.

‘Is he going to be all right . . .?’ They were walking away, but she was glancing back, worried.

‘Do you care?’ asked Lionel, hurrying away.

‘No.’ A smile appeared briefly on her face.

‘I’m Lionel Driver, by the way,’ he said.

‘Vivienne Bell.’

‘And I think I’ve probably missed my audition . . .’

Having failed spectacularly at the Hollywood dream, Lionel took Vivienne home to England with him and married her there. She was a chatty bottle-blonde and tired of being pawed over by fat old producers on the casting couch, tired of being wild at heart while presenting a carefully virginal image to the outside world, tired of the coke-fuelled merry-go-round that Hollywood truly was.

Vivienne was charmed by his English gentility, thinking that here was a real gentleman. He’d played at Stratford, for Chrissakes. He quoted the Bard’s love poems to her, and she melted. Accustomed to encounters like the one Lionel had interrupted, lifting her skirts for quick, sweaty couplings in draughty backstage corridors on the promise of a part – after which the part always failed to materialize – Vivienne was entranced by his old-fashioned charm and amazed that he actually took the trouble to woo her. Before a year was out, she was pregnant with Frances.

It was such a touching story, such a happy tale, it should have ended with bliss everlasting. Lionel and the lovely Vivienne waltzing off into the sunset together. But Vivienne quickly got bored with daily life in England. She was a good-time girl; she loved the bright lights. And Chamberlain’s famed ‘piece of paper’ had been proved worthless. War was declared on Germany, so Lionel went off to fight.

Feeling lucky to be alive and not maimed when so many of his comrades had died or had their lives altered forever at the hands of the Nazis, Lionel returned home when it was all over and thought, What the hell? He would give the acting dream one last shot.

He ditched his old agent and acquired a new thrusting one called LaLa LaBon, who was bursting with energy and unscrupulously single-minded in the pursuit of a deal. LaLa was a rampaging, cheroot-puffing dyke with black bobbed hair and a vulpine, predatory face. She appreciated beauty in her male clients and was now pushing him westwards with manic enthusiasm.

‘Think of it! Hollywood! You heard of an actor called Archie Leach?’ she asked him one rainy day in her poky little London office.

‘No,’ he said, feeling dubious but finding her enthusiasm infectious. He’d already told her he’d tried Hollywood before, but LaLa was not to be deterred. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘And you fucking well won’t,’ she said, busily puffing on her cheroot. She stabbed the air with it, making her point. Her eyes gleamed diabolically through the smoke-haze. ‘You know why? Because he changed his name to Cary Grant and look what happened to him. He’s English, he’s charming, he’s handsome. And so, Lionel my pet, are you – and your time is now.’

So he went back to Hollywood not as Lionel Driver (‘My God – so dull!’ said LaLa) but as Rick Ducane.

He was back on the party circuit again in no time. LaLa went with him and worked long and hard to get him into the best places. He was rubbing shoulders with people like Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner now, and the dirt was they were having a hot affair, with Sinatra singing and shooting out streetlights as he walked her home.

As for Rick’s affairs – well, he had taken Vivienne and sulky little baby Frances with him; he owed them that much, surely? The gloss had already gone off the marriage thanks to Viv’s drinking, but he couldn’t just abandon them, now could he? LaLa insisted he could. Rick insisted he couldn’t.

Finally, LaLa won the vote. And she laid down the ground rules. Rick rented a modest house in the hills and Vivienne had to stay there with her little boy. To the outside world, to Hollywood, Rick Ducane must be a single man. There must be no mention of any marriage, none at all – not unless he wanted to fuck up his career before it had even started. He needed to be free to escort older ladies, the fading stars who needed ‘walkers’ and could thereby get him into the most desirable parties.

‘Jesus,’ complained Vivienne. ‘That fucking woman dictates our whole life. What, are you ashamed of me? Ashamed of your son?’

Vivienne took a lot of placating, but she agreed in principle to just keep her head down and later, much later, when he’d made it, LaLa promised that the announcement would be made and wife and son could begin to appear in public.

He’d be paid to schmooze the movers and shakers, an opportunity that many a struggling actor would kill for. What more could LaLa do for him? she demanded. Hold his fuckwit little hand?

So Rick Ducane started schmoozing. He schmoozed so hard he felt as if his head was coming off. He chatted with directors, producers, gofers and lighting men; he attended so many auditions that he became bewildered about which part he was reading for.

He resented it. He was back here again, chasing bit parts and walking old female farts who usually got falling-down drunk or hopped to the eyeballs on drugs, and groped him. After a year of exhausting failure and domestic discord he was all but ready to call it a day.

‘You’re never going to make it,’ Viv told him in one of her drunken rages. She was hitting the bottle harder than ever. ‘You’re a loser.’

But the war had taught him endurance in the face of adversity and so he went on, sparkling, entertaining, handsome, until one night he exerted his charm on the right person and then . . . well, next day on his dressing-room door they hung a star. They really did.

Chapter 7

1971

Saul Jury watched Rocco Mancini and Frances Ducane from his car, which was parked across the street. Idiots, he thought. They were sitting there in a window seat in the diner, thinking themselves unobserved. Touching hands all the time – Jesus, he hated faggots.

A woman’s instinct, he thought grimly. Hadn’t his own mother told him it was lethally accurate, whenever he’d tried her out with some scam or other? Didn’t his own wife tell him it was infallible, when he tried to get away with his own little minor indiscretions?

And look at this; they were both right. And so was Cara Barolli Mancini. Only she was right in a way that was unexpected; probably it was going to shock her. However, he took the pictures, particularly pleased with the one that clearly showed Rocco Mancini kissing his little fag friend Frances Ducane’s cheek as he left. If Mrs Mancini was going to snoop on her ever-loving husband, then she had to accept that the consequences might not be pleasant.

The private detective knew the identity of Frances Ducane because he’d already trailed him twice, once to Rocco’s cruiser out in New York Sound, and had even given Mrs Mancini his name. She was paying him plenty for all this work; he was a happy man. Frances was a good-looking kid, an actor – and, like ninety-five per cent of all actors, he was spending a lot of time ‘resting’. His father Rick had been a big noise in Hollywood in the Fifties, before a spectacular fall from grace. Saul hoped little Frances wasn’t going to go the same way, but the way things were shaping up, it didn’t look so good for him.

Rocco had married a whole heap of money – apparently the Barolli family were huge importers of wine, olive oil and fruit from all around the world – and Frances was reaping the benefits, happily accepting not only Rocco’s manhood in places where Saul didn’t even like to think about, but accepting expensive presents too.

Of course it was the presents that had given him away. Woman’s instinct.

Yeah, his mother and his wife were right. If a woman got a feeling about something, probably there were some grounds to it. Cara had been going through Rocco’s pockets for weeks, looking for evidence to back up her theory that he was playing away from home; finally, Rocco got careless and she found receipts. Incriminating stuff. And then she had hired Saul. And Saul had done his work, and now . . . now he was going to spin this out just a little longer, bump up the tab. She could afford it.

Rocco got back to the apartment at six. He’d wasted as much time as he could, walking around, just kicking his heels, but finally he had to go home.

‘Where have you been?’ Cara called from the bedroom the instant he walked through the door.

‘I had some business to attend to,’ said Rocco, coming to stand in the open doorway. His expression was closed-off, guarded. She was sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair, wearing a raspberry-pink silk negligee and matching peignoir.

‘Oh.’ Cara stared at him in the mirror until he looked away.

Did she suspect anything? No, he was sure she didn’t. She turned away, yanking the brush through her long blonde hair and Rocco took the opportunity to stare at his wife. Her hair was beautiful; she was beautiful. But there was an unsatisfied pout to her mouth, and an avaricious look to her dreamy blue eyes that said, Whatever it is, I want it. Right now. Her body was splendid: tall, statuesque. He ought to be a happy man. But he wasn’t.