Hot Shot Read Online Free PDF Page B

called Mann’s Woman, after all. If you’re going to tell the good times, you have to tell the bad times, too. Right?” I was full of more shit than a bag of Bandini.
    Felina opened her cigar case, thinking. She took out a panatela and used a pair of curved silver scissors to behead the cigar. It was a strangely elegant gesture, feminine and masculine at the same time.
    â€œYou don’t eat lard, but you smoke?”
    â€œThese, you don’t inhale. My father taught me how to smoke. He was a cigar roller.” She produced a long wooden match and touched it to the head of the cigar, the flame just kissing the tip. A rich fragrance drifted up, a plume of spice and leather.
    â€œIt smells good.”
    â€œRomeo y Julieta. From Cuba.” She pronounced it Koo-ba, not Kyew-ba. “I taught Dick how to smoke cigars, too.”
    â€œI read that. I liked that detail.”
    â€œI just don’t want it to look like … Cristo… ”
    â€œLook like what?”
    â€œI was a different person back then. I had bought into the L.A. scene. Drugs, parties. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. But living with Vernon Ash changed me. After a while, I knew that I had two choices: leave or die. Dick was the one who convinced me to leave him.”
    â€œThat wasn’t in the book,” I noted.
    She nodded. “Dick was a client of mine for sex and a client of Vernon for drugs.”
    â€œWas that unusual?”
    â€œNo. We had a few people like that. I got ’em coming and Vernon got ’em going.” She laughed nervously, puffing smoke. “That was Vernon’s joke. Can’t you see why I don’t want to—”
    â€œWait a minute. You were working while you were Ash’s girlfriend? He wasn’t jealous?”
    â€œAre you kidding? The agency I worked for catered to movie stars, athletes, Saudi money. Most of them used drugs. I was their connection to Vernon, and I was Vernon’s connection to them.”
    â€œDid Dick Mann use a lot of drugs?”
    â€œNo! A little coke here and there. Once in a while some ’ludes. He told me he’d tried Hot Shot before, but he didn’t like it.”
    â€œAnd Vernon got them for him?”
    â€œOh, yes.”
    I rubbed my eyes, trying to keep my voice steady. “Felina,” I said, “why didn’t you put any of this down in the book?”
    Felina opened her mouth, as if to say something defiant, but nothing came out. I waited. She shrugged. I tried another tack.
    â€œGreat. You’ve got the love story down. Now we just have to add some of the—the background. Okay?”
    Like a little girl: “’Kay.”
    â€œI made a list of questions. Feel up to answering a few?”
    She stared into a corner of the restaurant, where a plaster Madonna stood in an old bathtub, arms outstretched.
    â€œFelina?”
    â€œI guess,” she said.
    *   *   *
    When I got back to the Hotel del Toros, I had two and a half hours of tape in my recorder. I also had a message from Jocelyn. She could barely control the smugness in her voice when I told her about the afternoon.
    â€œDon’t crow,” I told her.
    â€œSo what did she tell you?”
    â€œSome interesting stuff about Vernon Ash. They shared clients. Quite a team. He supplied the drugs and she supplied the—you know.”
    â€œWhat about Betty Bradford Mann? We need some juicy bits on her, Peaches, but nothing litigable.”
    â€œNot a lot yet. Felina never met her. She said that back then Dick was in a career lull. He hadn’t had a good part in five years. Mann of the Family didn’t come along for another year or two. Betty was the TV star. Felina says they were separated then—”
    â€œDick and Betty Mann were separated? I didn’t know that.”
    â€œNot physically. They were still living in the same house, but they weren’t sleeping together. Or so she