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Suddenly the door opened behind them and David Giles walked in. He hadn’t knocked, of course. David played bass and had taken over as lead singer when Mason left. He was larger than life with an outsize ego and the mistaken belief that he was irresistible.
It looked as if David had drawn a line in the sand, daring age forty to touch him. His shoulder-length blond hair was highlighted, teased and sprayed to cover the fact that he had passed “thinning” and was well on the way to “bald up top.” His fake tan was more Sunkist than sun kissed and, while his skinny jeans were probably the same size he’d worn in his twenties, considerably more of David Giles’s middle spilled over the waistband than seemed comfortable.
“Anna!” He came up behind her and rubbed her shoulders, more irritation than massage. “How’s my beautiful director today?”
Jake answered, “I’m great. Thanks for asking.”
“Oh. Ha. Ha. You wish you were as good-looking as your sister here. Look at this hair—it’s just begging to be touched.”
Anna’s curly brown hair had been exasperating her for the past thirty years. The way David obsessed over it and felt free to touch it was making her crazy. He was pushing her closer than she’d ever been to breaking Blue Maverick rule number 18, Don’t Punch the Client. She shifted and rolled the chair to the left, temporarily out of punching distance.
“Going over the film?” David’s high, excited voice grated even when he wasn’t singing. “Does it look as good as it sounds?”
Jake crossed his arms and said, “Yep.”
Anna lifted her shoulder and turned her head, hiding her mouth in her sleeve so David wouldn’t see her smile. “We’re jazzed about the stuff we have down,” David went on. “It’s gelling. Organic, you know?”
Anna kept her eyes on David—if she looked at Jake she’d laugh. The music was organic in the same way half-cured compost was organic. “We’re glad you’re feeling good.”
David shifted, touching his hair with his fingertips, a habit she’d noticed shortly after meeting him. It was as if he was reassuring himself the hair was still there, while making sure not to move it even slightly. It was a tic so delicate and unconscious and heartbreakingly desperate she might have found it sympathetic in a person she liked even the littlest bit. In David it made her clamp her jaws shut so she wouldn’t tell him to get over himself.
“You want to run through some of the stuff you shot of that last session? We were really working that one.”
Jake bent deliberately to tie his shoe.
“We don’t show raw tape to anyone, David. We’ve discussed this before.”
“But this is me. Let’s see a bit, sweetheart, huh?”
She was saved from having to answer when the closet/office door banged open and Nick Kane, the Five Star drummer, pushed his way in followed shortly by a furious Chet Giles, the guitarist.
“You’re not seriously thinking about changing the name of the band, David. Even you can’t be that stupid,” Nick yelled.
Anna instinctively reached for her camera and swung it to her shoulder, adjusting the wide-angle lens so she could see all three bandmates. Jake stepped back out of David’s light. He quietly adjusted the shade on the desk lamp to erase the shadows on Nick’s face.
Chet stepped up to Nick. “That was a private conversation. You weren’t supposed to hear it,” he said.
David held up his hand. “Okay, Nick. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way, but yeah. I brought up a name change to management and they agree. There’s four of us, not five. Mason’s not around but we’re still using his name. Five? Star? None of it fits anymore.”
“The G-Men?” Nick sputtered.
David looked irritated. “It was just an idea.”
“What about this idea? We’re Five Star. Besides, Mason’s coming back. You got in touch with him. You said he’s got new songs. Right?”
Only years of practice at keeping still and silent during shoots kept Anna from reacting. Mason Star was comingout of hibernation? She wanted to look at Jake, be sure he was hearing the same things she was, but she didn’t dare look away.
“We need a plan B,” David said. “He might not say yes.”
Nick looked startled. “Mason was crushed when we kicked him out. He had no idea what happened. Of course he’ll say yes. You said he was working on stuff already.”
“I told you not to worry about this, Nick. You need to back off and let David do what needs to be done,” Chet said. He reached out and poked Nick’s chest. “Got it?”
Nick was the oldest member of the band; he’d turned forty-seven earlier that year. Right now with his dark eyes narrowed and his heavy jaw set, he looked dangerous. And pissed. “You did not just poke me,” Nick growled.
“I certainly just did,” Chet growled back.
Anna focused in on Nick’s face as it tightened and colored. He stared in furious disbelief from Chet to David. Anna mentally scoped out the desk behind her, ready to do what she could to protect the equipment if the brawl brewing in front of her bubbled over in the small space.
“You know what? Go to hell. I should have walked out the day you cut Mason loose. That was wrong then and this is wrong now. If he comes back tell him to call me.” Nick spun on his heel and left the room.
Chet turned on her. “Turn off the camera.” Then he walked out.
David put his hand up as if he was going to run it through his hair, but he stopped himself, fluttering his fingers off the crown instead. “Drama, huh?” he said. “He’ll be back. Nick’ll be back, you’ll see.” He moved toward the door. “We’re not definitely changing the name. G-Men was just an idea. When Nick comes back we’ll straighten this out.”
Anna and Jake nodded.
BUT DAVID WAS WRONG. A week later he came into the office where Anna was at the desk wolfing down a container of leftover risotto she’d brought from home. David said he was shutting down the studio and the movie. Nick was holed up on the farm he owned outside Princeton and he showed no signs of returning to the studio. The album was on hold until the rest of the band figured out what they wanted to do, either find a new drummer or wait for Nick to come back.
Anna’s mouth dried up and she put her fork down. She struggled to keep her voice even as she spoke. “David, we have a schedule. You committed to the movie. How can we—”
“Music doesn’t have a schedule, Anna,” David interrupted her. “You gotta let it flow. Organic, you know?”
Anna thought fast. She couldn’t let him go. She hadn’t gotten what she needed yet. “If you’re taking time out of the studio that’s perfect for the movie. We can do more interviews. Get the historical and background pieces down.”
“Listen, sweetheart, as much as we love spending time together, we’re closing down. If you want to meet up, there’s a club on Sixty-fourth—”
“No,” she snapped, the thought so repulsive she couldn’t even keep her client manners in place.
Obviously irritated by her quick refusal, he said, “We’re out of here at the end of the day. Take anything you need.”
She reached desperately for something to keep him talking. “Have you heard from Mason? Is he coming back?”
“He has our offer. That’s all I can say.”
“What did Nick mean when he said it was wrong to let him go—”
“I told you, we’re shutting the movie down,” David said, cutting her off. “No point in answering questions right now.” Abruptly he turned and left.
It took her seven seconds to go from stunned to furious.
She dumped everything out of the desk into her work duffel. Let them shut down the studio. This wasn’t their movie anyway. Never had been. So what if she hadn’t had the guts to pursue it on her own at first? She did now.
She was through wasting time. Finished waiting for someone to hand her Terri’s story. Blue Maverick was better than that. Anna was better than that.
She was already working on her to-do list as she locked the door behind her. Number-one priority? Track down Mason Star and make him talk.
CHAPTER THREE
LESS THAN A WEEK after Mason was blindsided by David Giles’s e-mail, he got knocked on his ass again by his friends and neighbors from the Lakeland Neighborhood Association.
There was a reason Mason would never be a politician. Actually, there was more than one reason, and the fact that he definitely had inhaled wasn’t even in the top twenty. The primary problem was he just couldn’t understand why so-called normal people had this need to ban anything and anyone the slightest bit different than themselves. It was yet another rule he hadn’t learned growing up the way he did, where the only thing that mattered was if you had the rent or most of it come the first of the month. Maybe if he’d grown up middle class he’d get these people better. Because the fact was, Mason just didn’t get them.
Take this zoning hearing.
Take Roxanne Curtis.
Take her to the top of the Empire State Building and drop kick her off.
Roxanne had been rubbing him the wrong way ever since Christian was the only kid left off her daughter’s birthday-party guest list in second grade. The reason his kid wasn’t on her kid’s list? At the Mulligans Opening Day ceremony right before school started, Roxanne confessed her teenage crush on Mason’s teenage self and suggested they re-create the sex-on-the-hood-of-the-Firebird scene from Five Star’s Dirty Sweet video. Mason turned her down flat—wrong time, wrong place, wrong memory. And definitely wrong person.
A month later, Christian had come home from school crying, crushed by social disgrace. Using a seven-year-old kid as a pawn in revenge for a sexual rebuff was every kind of wrong.
Now Roxanne was after his other baby. Maybe it was the hearing so close on the heels of David Giles’s e-mail, but he was having serious dеj? vu. When he’d bought his property, refurbished the buildings and built the community center, it had been next to impossible to give away real estate in Lakeland. But the real estate boom had pushed even the upper middle class out into formerly scorned suburbs. Home prices in Lakeland, a twenty-minute train ride to New York, had skyrocketed and suddenly Mulligans was an unsavory, unwelcome neighbor in a town on the way up.
When Five Star, the band he’d helped build, had kicked him out he’d been a kid. He’d been so hurt and lost he hadn’t fought back. He’d made a mess of things back then and the consequences came down on him hard. This was different. He wasn’t letting Mulligans and all the people living here and taking their first vulnerable, fragile steps into rehabilitation get kicked out without a fight. The point of Mulligans was to make a community that would support everyone to get back on their feet. Everyone who lived here contributed what they could to help the others make it through the next step. He was ready to fight every one of the wannabe real estate moguls in this room before he let them touch his place.
Roxanne was standing in the aisle, one hand on the back of the chair in front of her. She was one of the native Lakeland “ladies” who were determined to ride the current wave of real estate money into a whole new set of friends and circumstances. She’d learned quickly, he’d give her that. She’d replaced her wardrobe of Kohl’s bargains with designer knockoffs of just high enough quality to help her pass for upper middle class. She’d cut out her bad perm and tinted her hair that particular shade of blond that meant high-end shop job, not a drugstore box on the bathroom sink. And then, in her final coup, she’d remarried, a banker or broker or some money guy who worked in the city and rode the train home every night. Roxanne was on her way up and she was not taking no for an answer.
Tonight her crisp blue shirt was casually and calculatedly untucked over soft, narrow black pants. She was dressed to impress the zoning board with her values and citizenship.
Of course, he’d done the same thing. He understood that costuming supported image and that’s why he was in a gray suit with an understated blue stripe, a dark blue dress shirt and a low-key tie. His clothes said serious, upstanding and smart. Respectable but not desperate.
Mason leaned toward his lawyer, Stephanie Colarusso, who was sitting straight-backed in the chair to his left, her angular face a picture of polite attention. An athlete her whole life, Stephanie’s body language was always carefully controlled; she didn’t make accidental gestures. Right now her stillness and slight forward lean looked polite and professional to the other people in the room. He’d been friends with her long enough, though, to read irritation in the tension of her jaw muscles and stubbornness in the uptilt of her chin. “I need a crossbow, not a lawyer,” he whispered.
Stephanie didn’t look away from Roxanne as she whispered back, “She’s going down, Mason. Make no mistake.”
“In the ten years since this facility opened, our neighborhood has put up with more than enough,” Roxanne said. Mason’s hands twitched as he considered strangling her with the strap of her imitation-leather messenger bag.
“My neighbors and I have been more than generous,” she went on, “letting these people live among us, letting their children go to our schools. We, the tax-paying citizens of the Lakeland Neighborhood Association, ask you to consider our needs. This facility should never have been allowed under our existing zoning codes. Now that the ten-year waiver has expired, we’re asking the zoning board to withdraw the permits for Mulligans. It’s time to admit what’s been going on behind the fences. Specific objections are outlined in the document you have before you. Thank you.”
Mason clasped the sides of his plastic chair so hard he was surprised it didn’t crack. How dare she sit there saying “these people” and “expose” and “burden” about Mulligans? Social-climbing suck-up.
“Mr. Star?” Larry Williams, the zoning board chair was looking his way. “We’re ready for your statement.”
Stephanie gave him a quick nod. They’d agreed that he would do the talking. After all, this was supposed to be a neighborhood issue and he was the neighbor.
Mason stood and nervously crossed his arms. He shouldn’t be this worried. This was only Hearing Room A in the Lakeland Town Hall. But the room was packed. How many years had it been since he’d been in front of a crowd of strangers? He used to know how to do this, but he realized now he’d forgotten the tricks. Besides, he knew what people saw when they looked at him. He knew what Roxanne meant when she said “these people.” People like him, who’d made bad choices and couldn’t be trusted not to make them again.
When he noticed no one at the zoning board table was smiling, he dropped his arms to his sides and forced himself to relax. Focus, Mason.
“I’m at a loss how to respond to Roxanne’s statements,” he said with a wry smile as he hefted the twenty-page document she’d passed out. He made eye contact with Roger Nelson, an overweight board member with a comb-over, who’d rolled his eyes when Roxanne passed out her “notes.” Roger rolled his eyes again and winked at Mason. One, he thought. Maybe he could do this.
“Despite living near us for the past ten years, I think Roxanne may have a wrong idea about what Mulligans is, who we are. She mentioned ‘facility,’ but Mulligans is a community. Everyone who lives there does so voluntarily. We’re all regular people with regular lives. We’ve chosen to live together to try to make things easier on all of us, but in every other respect we’re just like the rest of you.”
He gestured to the round table in the front of the room where he’d put up his table display about Mulligans. The three-panel poster included shots of the ninety-eight people—kids, adults, seniors—who’d been part of Mulligans over the years. He loved that display. Brian Price, his manager, used it in presentations to social service agencies. The faces of so many friends who’d managed to get on their feet and move on gave him confidence. How could anyone feel threatened by those people?
Roxanne Curtis now had her arms crossed and her mouth was compressed to a thin, irritated line. She didn’t look appealing or charming, Mason was pleased to see.
If she thought she could win this by tossing out insults about Mason and his friends and making sour faces—and typing up pages of innuendo—well, she had another think coming. He started to get into it. Roxanne had never been on the cover of Rolling Stone. She’d never had an entire stadium howling for her to give them more. She had no idea the depth of charm Mason could pull out when the occasion required. So what if it had been fifteen years since he’d last entertained a crowd? He’d start with the board. There were only nine of them.
Ducking his head, he looked up at the board table with a glint in his eye and the you-love-my-delinquent-self smile that he knew made women wish he’d throw them down on the closest bed, Firebird or zoning hearing room table. Two of the women at the table uncrossed their legs, one recrossed hers, and the last one fiddled with the second button on her shirt. Two, three, four, five.
“Mulligans provides low-fee housing and community support to a wide array of people. Everyone who lives there has been down on their luck, but with help, most of them make it back on their feet and go on to lead independent lives. We do provide financial assistance, but the main goal is to provide for the material and physical needs to help our residents reclaim their dignity and sense of purpose. For some people, that’s safe, affordable child care. For some of our seniors, it’s transportation and a feeling of safety during transitional times.”
A neighbor, Dan Brown, was on his feet. “That’s all very sweet, but the fact is, Mulligans is a flophouse. It’s full of addicts and alcoholics. It’s a magnet for crime and trash and a drain on our community’s resources.”
Mason realized he’d clenched his hands into fists. He knew for a fact that Dan Brown used his leaf blower to relocate leaves from his lawn into his neighbors’ yards, called the police when people left their recycling bins out overnight and gave out apples, not candy, at Halloween. Being mean as spit apparently qualified him as a spokesman for the newly gentrified neighborhood.
“Mulligans is an intentional cohousing community, not a halfway house, Dan,” Mason explained. “And you know it. You know who lives at Mulligans. Normal folks with normal lives. Like me. People who wanted to live in Lakeland when a lot of other people were calling it undesirable.”
The woman sitting next to Roxanne stood up. “I’m new to Lakeland so I don’t know anything about this stuff you’re talking about. All I know is, I’m living on the same block as an institution with a ten foot fence and no financials on public record.”
Mason hadn’t met this woman before, but he was determined to placate her. “Mulligans is privately funded. We don’t have to publish our financials.”
“Privately funded by whom?” she asked.
“Me.” Before he could add anything else, she’d turned to the board.
“Which is exactly my point. The information I know about Mr. Star is far from encouraging. He’s doing God knows what behind that fence.”
Mason was stunned. Did this lady really think his money was tainted? By what? His reputation? Gossip? The history he’d never been able to shake?
Stephanie cleared her throat. He kept his mouth shut.
A voice from the crowd called out, “Property values are low because of Mulligans. Lakeland needs higher standards.”
Mason wasn’t sure who’d said that. Comments were coming rapid fire from all around now. He sat down abruptly when Stephanie tugged on his wrist. His head spun and for one second he was back in that hotel room in Chicago listening as David, Nick, Chet—even his own mother—yelled and threatened and finally told him to get out. He bit down on the inside of his cheek, using the pain to center back on this room, this crowd, which was all that mattered now.
Larry banged on the table, trying to settle people. Mason stared straight ahead, wishing he couldn’t hear the insults and lies coming at him from all sides. What the hell had happened?
Of the four board members who’d wanted to screw him five minutes ago, three wouldn’t meet his eyes. Three of the men were glaring at him. Roger, his comb-over askew, was shouting at someone in the audience, and Larry wouldn’t stop banging long enough for Mason to get a read on him.
Stephanie pushed past him and went up the aisle to bend down next to Larry Williams. She whispered in his ear and Larry looked relieved.
The chairman hollered over the din in the room, “I move that we table the discussion of Mulligans until our next meeting!”
The one woman who still wanted to screw Mason seconded and then looked quickly at him. He managed a grateful nod. Stephanie gathered the poster display and followed him outside.
“I apologize, Mason,” she said. “I had no idea this was going to be out of control. I should have anticipated it.”
“There’s no way you could have known. I live next door to them and I didn’t know. It’s been an underground revolution.” He shook his head. It was the same as Five Star—he hadn’t seen that coming, either. “I had no idea they thought we were running a flophouse.”
“That hearing wasn’t about what Mulligans is or isn’t. That was about people and their money—flat-out greed.”
Mason ran his hand over his short-cropped hair. “I don’t know. Some of it sounded pretty personal.”
“Not everyone’s going to be your fan.”
