agent. He was a part of this, too. But somehow she thought he didn’t quite know who he was dealing with in Devin Black. Either way, something about the situation was making him sweat. “You look nervous, Jerry. Don’t worry. I didn’t bring my shiv.”
Jerry exhaled a short laugh in a gust of smoke. “I see they haven’t ironed the smart aleck out of you yet, kid.”
Pagan’s legs were wobblier than they should have been. Something beneath her feet was shifting. She didn’t know what it was yet, but it was big. She slid down into the hard chair facing Jerry. “I’m the bad influence here. The others are just thieves and truants, not killers.”
“What happened to you was an accident.” Jerry took the cigarette out of his mouth with his index finger and thumb, smoke trickling from his nose. “You were a child, a girl who lost her mother in an unimaginable way. We all should have seen it coming a lot sooner.”
Pagan had heard those words before. “Instead you gave me a brand-new Corvette for my sixteenth birthday, and I used it to drive Daddy and Ava off a cliff. Thanks a lot, Jerry.”
Jerry looked up sharply, the veneer of concern falling away. “You can’t blame me for what happened. I didn’t stick the bottle of vodka in your hand–”
“Jerry.” Devin’s low voice was a warning.
Jerry shut his mouth, lips tight. He stubbed out the second cigarette next to the first one like he was smashing a cockroach.
Pagan looked back and forth between the two men. Jerry was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Nobody talked to him that way, yet Devin Black had just gotten away with it.
Pagan cocked her head toward Devin. “Who is this character, Jerry? His suit’s nicer than yours, so he can’t be your new assistant.”
Jerry cast a sideways look at Devin and felt for his cigarette case again. “He works for the studio.”
“Nobody from any studio would interrupt Jerry Allenberg like that and still have a job five minutes later.” When Devin shrugged and didn’t reply, she asked, “What have you got on him?”
Devin shoved himself away from the wall, picked up Jerry’s cigarette case off the desk, took out a cigarette, and offered it to Pagan. “What I have on Jerry, Miss Jones, is a deal for you that’s going to make you both a lot of money. He wants you back as a client, because the studio needs you to star in Bennie Wexler’s new comedy.”
Astonishment bloomed through Pagan, followed by relief. Her fears of someone coming to put her in prison weren’t going to happen. At least not yet. This was some Hollywood scam. But why torment her with an impossible scenario?
She ignored the offered cigarette. “Bennie Wexler hates me. Before that he hated my mother. He kicked her off the set of Anne of Green Gables. The man won a statue for Best Director, but you’re saying he’s going to direct his next movie—” she spread her hands wide, taking in all the beige-walled, barred-windowed dreariness around her “—here? Because, in case you forgot, this is my vacation home for the next year and a half.”
“The movie shoots in West Berlin.” Jerry rested one blunt-fingered hand on a pile of paper in front of him. “The judge has agreed to let you out of here, if you sign this contract to do the film and agree to a court-appointed guardian.”
Pagan lowered her lashes to mask her anger. “Jerry, Jerry. It isn’t nice to tease.”
“It’s no joke.” Jerry exhaled noisily, blowing the smoke upward. “The studio really wants you on this project.” He glanced at Devin Black, who nodded, as if in approval. “You’re still under contract to them. I don’t know who pulled the strings, but if you agree to do the movie under the conditions spelled out here, Judge Tennison will grant your parole. It’s a supporting role, but it’s good. It’s funny, and it suits you. Bennie starts rehearsal in Berlin in three days, so be a good girl and say yes now.”
Nothing he was saying allayed her suspicions, and she hadn’t been a good girl for years. “Three days? What happened—did the original actress get killed or something?”
“Worse. Pregnant.” Jerry reached under the contract to pull out about a hundred pages held together with brass fasteners. “You’ll like the script. Bennie’s usual mixture of farce and heart. You’ll play the teenage daughter of an American businessman living in West Berlin who falls in love with a Communist from East Berlin.”
He laid the script in front of her. The cover read Neither Here Nor There. Written by Benjamin Wexler & I. S. Kopelson. Universal Pictures.
Pagan stared at the familiar logo, not blinking. This was actually happening. It made no sense. But it was real.
Jerry coughed, and she realized a long silence had elapsed. She pursed her lips in cool consideration, even though her blood was beating hard through her veins. “So, you’re saying that after the movie is over, I won’t have to come back to Lighthouse?”
Jerry’s chest rattled with another cough. “After the shoot you’ll have to report weekly to a parole officer until you turn eighteen. But you’ll be free.”
Pagan erupted out of her chair with such force that Jerry flinched back and Devin Black straightened from where he was slouching against the wall. She paced to the door and back and halted, then grabbed on to her chair. She didn’t like that she needed something to steady herself, but after so long in confinement, after worrying about Mercedes, and thinking they were going to put her in a real prison, the prospect of imminent freedom was the most terrifying thing of all.
The last time she’d truly been a part of the real world had been the worst time of her life. It made solitary seem like a cozy nest.
“Judge Tennison called me a menace to society in front of every reporter in town.” Her voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat. “He said Hollywood was a festering pit of sin, and he cast me as lead sinner. Why would he give a damn what the studio wants and let me out?”
Jerry shrugged, casting another sideways look at Devin. “Everyone has a price, even a judge. Or maybe he saw the light. We’ll never know for sure.”
“Beyond that,” she went on, “the whole world knows I’m a disgrace. Tabloids make up lurid stories of my exploits behind bars. Why would a studio risk giving a decent role in an award-winning director’s next big movie to me?”
Jerry shook his head. “A young lady accepts that the men in her life know what’s best for her. I’m the closest thing you have to a father—”
He didn’t get to finish because Devin Black cut in, his voice casual. “Haven’t you heard? Bad publicity sells even more movie tickets than good publicity. People are curious. With you in the movie, it’s a guaranteed blockbuster.”
He wasn’t wrong, but she knew better than to trust him. Pagan gave him a cold smile. “And why is it, I ask myself, that Jerry Allenberg is taking orders from a kid in a Savile Row suit who’s young enough to be in college, maybe even high school? I’m sorry, Mister Black. But I’m not signing anything until my lawyer looks it over.”
Devin Black’s eyes danced over her in a way that made her conscious of the uneven neckline of her uniform, of her sagging stockings and scuffed sneakers. “I hear you’re in solitary confinement for two weeks because you and your roommate nearly escaped.”
At
