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  The only sound in the room was Bernie chomping M&M’s from a canister on Herzog’s coffee table. AJ responded with weighty consideration. But since his goal going into the meeting had only been three hundred thousand, his performance was pure sham. “I’ll make three-fifty work.”

  Herzog nodded and prepared to dismiss AJ.

  “One more point. We’ve got to do something about my client’s motor home. Steve can’t live with the ‘toilet’—that’s his word—that you guys provide. He’s purchased a new Condor, which he’ll rent to Paramount for his use during filming.”

  “What kind of money are you talking about?” Marcus asked cautiously.

  The Condor cost ten thousand dollars—including the faux-marble bath in which the actor planned to couple with his leading ladies—so AJ had suggested to Steve that two thousand for the length of the shoot was aggressive but fair. McQueen had objected. He detested executives for not having recognized his talent earlier in his career and couldn’t resist humiliating them. “Seven grand,” AJ offered with more bravado than belief.

  “Are you fucking nuts?” Marcus spouted like a whale. “A trailer costs us five hundred bucks. He’ll be in profits on the Condor after two movies.”

  “I could close for six thousand.”

  AJ dodged Bernie’s charge—but not fast enough—and wound up backed against a poster for Sunset Boulevard. “I’ll close you, you little shit!” Marcus bounced his stomach into AJ to punctuate each threat. “Do you expect us to spread our legs while you rape like a Cossack? This business has gone to hell when a monosyllabic TV star can hold a gun to our heads.”

  “I’ll handle this.” Herzog wrestled his colleague away. “Paramount considers we have a deal with you on all points but this. You’ve overreached, young man. But we’re not going to discuss it further. I want you off the premises and don’t return unless you’re invited.”

  In the parking lot AJ grimaced at the knife in his side. Suffering a bruised rib and getting thrown off the lot were a high price for a knockout in his first main event, but Tubby’s blood pressure must be 200/150 and the old man was probably rocking on the floor to unslip his disc. He did a shuffle dance around his Pontiac GTO, which drew the attention of a young woman wheeling a rack of evening gowns. “ ‘I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,’ ” he proclaimed. She detoured to his left. Okay, maybe he wasn’t Muhammad Ali, but he couldn’t wait to tell everyone back at the office that he’d just booked his salary by bluffing McQueen’s deal down Paramount’s throat.

  Ricky Jastrow dipped his hand into the back pocket of his khakis and removed a gold Zippo lighter that his dad had given Mommy for Valentine’s Day. The wick was worn, but after a few snaps it flicked into flame. Crouched behind the oak card catalog of the Edgewood Elementary School library, the first grader glanced down the stacks to his classmates, who listened to Miss Zelinka explain how to borrow books. He had ducked the tour after she’d yelled at him for not paying attention. What difference did it make, since he could barely read a sentence? If there were no more books, Ricky reasoned, he wouldn’t seem like such an idiot and the teachers would stop talking about leaving him back, which was the worst thing that could happen to anyone.

  First, he made sure no snitches were spying on him. Standing on his tiptoes, he saw Melanie Broyden’s pigtails headed his way. Her stupid Mary Janes passed inches to his left, but she was hurrying to the girls’ room and didn’t notice. Then he pulled out the drawer marked “Pi–Re” and set fire to the first entry. The flames singed the cards then spread. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. The blaze could hurt people instead of just destroying the library. He tried to put it out by slamming the drawer, but a blister puckered his fingertips. Smoke wafted and the metal handles became branding irons. “Fire! Fire! Miss Zelinka! Somebody started a fire.”

  The librarian aimed the extinguisher while Ricky’s teacher shepherded him and the class outside. Kids thanked him for saving their lives, and he was enjoying being hailed a hero for the first time when a fifth grader appeared with the principal and accused him of lighting the fire. Ricky tried to run. Despite his twisting and kicking, Mr. Shulman searched his pants and found the Zippo. He forced Ricky to take a seat between two steel filing cabinets outside his office while he called his mother. That didn’t worry Ricky because all she was going to do was cry and call his dad.

  Stephanie was baking Toll House cookies with her four-year-old daughter, Jessica, in the kitchen of their Westwood home when the school notified her that Ricky was a budding arsonist. After years of irate calls from parents of other children, nursery school teachers, day-camp counselors, and neighbors, she skipped the “That can’t be,” “You have the wrong boy,” and “Someone must have provoked him” and took down the details with the air of a toughened precinct cop.

  None of her friends could baby-sit on short notice, which forced her to phone her mother-in-law, who was always available. But the quid pro quo was listening to Maggie criticize the school for not managing her spirited grandson. Steph immediately phoned AJ, to have him join her at school. He was headed to lunch with his co-agents Joe Wizan and David Geffen to celebrate his triumph at Paramount, and Steph cringed overhearing him alibi that he had to go home because Ricky was sick. AJ lived in such a competitive world that his son’s disgrace was a chink in his armor. So why did his lie make her feel ashamed?

  Stripping off her Bermudas, Steph rummaged for an outfit suitable for a court appearance. Her closet was a slum because she never discarded anything, even the size four slacks she’d bought before Ricky was born with the intent of fitting into them by Christmas. They still carried the price tag.

  The first year of her son’s life had been the strangest of Steph’s. Her ambivalence about having a baby had ceased the moment she’d heard her son cry hello to the world. While she’d cradled him, AJ had hastily suggested names, because they’d been sure he was going to be a girl. They chose Ricky because Ricky Nelson was the cutest guy Steph knew. After a week in the hospital she’d headed home with a son who seemed so special, so endlessly alert that her husband had joked that he was already making lists of who had pissed him off. Maybe motherhood would be its own adventure, Steph had told herself.

  Then, only two weeks later, she’d buckled like a bridge with a defective foundation.

  Don’t retreat. Don’t retreat. Don’t retreat.

  She was late. Her hair was a fright wig. She couldn’t find the car keys. Think. Right, the keys were exactly where Jess had put them—in the cookie batter.

  AJ had spent years denying that his son was a problem child. Yes he was moody. And he had smacked a few kids in the sandbox. Maybe they’d deserved it. Ricky was prone to tantrums, but so were a lot of the successful stars AJ serviced. And in fairness, he had never pulled the wings off insects or tortured their cat. AJ had argued to Steph—and anyone who challenged him—that the boy would eventually grow out of whatever was bothering him and become a solid citizen. Then came first grade.

  His son was like a sprinter nailed to the starting block. While his classmates gushed with the newly discovered power to read stories, signs, even milk cartons, Ricky struggled to decipher the alphabet. And forget arithmetic—the boy couldn’t add a column of single-digit numbers. Every night AJ or Steph tutored him, but the sessions proved ugly and unproductive. Ricky’s frustration made him meaner. A month ago he’d thrown a book that had almost decapitated a teacher. Then he’d bloodied the nose of a kid who’d answered a question he couldn’t.

  AJ didn’t have a clue how to help, since the only subject he’d ever struggled with was Hebrew and his most heinous crime had been the theft of a package of Topps baseball cards. The vultures with Ph.D.s picked Ricky over, but half recommended stronger discipline, the other half more love and attention. AJ had dismissed the implication that they weren’t good parents, but it drove Steph to distraction. She emerged from family sessions guilt-ridden, raw, her nails bitten to the cuticle, her psyche slipping back to the pas
t.

  One day Steph had been an upbeat, supportive woman, the next a quivering shell. He traced her descent to the first time they’d made love following Ricky’s birth. After they’d cuddled each other to sleep, his wife had suffered a terrifying nightmare but wouldn’t say what it was about. Instead, the next morning Steph had pleaded with him not to go to work. He should have called in sick, but Kamen had a crazy schedule. When AJ trooped home late, she was staring at their wedding pictures while Ricky whimpered in his soiled diaper.

  His mother claimed it was a case of the “baby blues,” but within six months Steph had gained thirty pounds, and she slept almost round the clock. AJ shopped and vacuumed till he developed the hollow eyes and slumped-over gait of a guy with a second job. Their fights grew illogical, ending only when Ricky cried like a banshee. As for sex, they didn’t sleep together again until Ricky’s first birthday.

  Then, as if a tropical fever had run its course, Steph rallied. Her fears faded to doubts, her fourteen hours of sleep became eight, and life returned to a version of normal. And despite his trepidation, after Jessica was born, everything was Dr. Spock perfect.

  “I didn’t do it!” Ricky protested upon seeing his father enter the outer office.

  AJ inspected his boy’s hand, which was wrapped in gauze. “Are you okay?”

  “It hurts something fierce.”

  “We’ll put butter on it.”

  “Butter?”

  “The oil in the butter reduces the burning. Maybe we’ll bandage it with rye bread and have a Ricky finger sandwich.” His son managed a tiny giggle, which was cut short when the principal beckoned AJ into his office.

  As Shulman reconstructed the crime, waving the lighter like the sword of Damocles, AJ took his wife’s trembling hand. “I’ll pay for any damage.” Shulman’s estimate seemed high enough to finance the public library, but AJ resisted bargaining him down.

  “This could easily have been a tragedy.”

  “We’re doing our best to find out what’s bothering Ricky,” Steph apologized.

  “Whatever you’re doing isn’t working. The next time a crime occurs, I’ll insist you withdraw Ricky from school. Perhaps he would do better in an institution that takes an active parental role.”

  “Ricky doesn’t need more parenting,” AJ replied guardedly. “He’s a good boy at heart. After all, he sounded the alarm, which shows his remorse.”

  While Steph picked up Jessica at Maggie’s, AJ drove his son home. “You still expect me to believe you weren’t responsible?”

  “I hate that school! I hate everyone in it!”

  “Why?”

  “Are you and Mom going to punish me?”

  “The next time you’re allowed to watch TV, Opie will be my age and Lassie will have puppies. But this isn’t about punishing you, it’s about finding out why you do these things. Do the other kids pick on you or call you names?”

  “They wouldn’t dare.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “Nothing.”

  Nothing meant everything. AJ made his living reading people’s needs, manipulating their sensitivities, and sensing their bottom lines, but his son was a black box. “We’re going to take you to a doctor who can help.” Shulman had given them the name of a psychologist in Beverly Hills who treated the children of movie stars and industry heavyweights.

  “Another shrink?” Ricky crossed his arms and stared straight through the windshield. “I’m not going.”

  “You’ve got to try.”

  “You can’t make me!”

  AJ drove home wondering how his life had turned into one testing negotiation.

  Turning thirty had troubled him for weeks. AJ assumed it was the passing of his youth, the disappearance forever of the “boy wonder.” But with May 22 approaching he dreamed for the first time about dying and called his mother to ask if it were true, as Grandma Esther had once claimed, that every male in the Jastrow line had died before fifty. Maggie brushed off his fear, noting acidly that his grandmother couldn’t count to ten, so how would she know? But when AJ checked with relatives, they verified the dying-young phenomenon. If his forefathers had lived abbreviated lives, then his might be more than half over.

  Steph interrupted his reverie, halting her station wagon in front of an old oak gate. “We’ll have a quick drink with Steve and Neile, then a romantic dinner.” The wooden barrier swung open, creaking on its hinges.

  That’s weird, AJ thought. Steve was nuts about security.

  Steph drove up the private road to “the Castle,” McQueen’s nickname for his eighteen-room mansion. “Is he happy with the deal you made on Nevada Smith?”

  “It’s still not finished, so I didn’t tell him.”

  “He ought to be happy—and grateful. Without you and Stan, he’d have a bus ticket out of town instead of a chance for a star on Hollywood Boulevard.”

  Where had that hostility come from? Before he could ask, he noticed that the front door was also wide open. AJ rang the bell three times. Not a single light was on inside. “Are you sure they said drinks tonight?”

  “Maybe they’re . . . you know . . . doing it upstairs.”

  “You stay here.” AJ entered, tripping over a step and landing in the sunken living room. The air was thick enough with grass to give him a contact high. He was sure someone—or something—was watching. Getting up, AJ banged his head on an object suspended from the ceiling. He half-expected to find a body but stared instead at a garish piñata. Whatever McQueen was into, he didn’t want to know.

  “Surprise! Surprise!”

  Spotlights flashed, blinding him and distorting the faces of fifty friends. Steve leaped from behind the sofa and whirled him around. On the second turn AJ caught Steph wearing the smile of the Cheshire Cat.

  “Happy birthday, honey. I wasn’t going to let you ride into your golden years without one last blowout.”

  People milled around, wishing him well. His mother, looking forty rather than fifty-two, kissed his cheek, while her companion, Leon Ginsberg, offered an enthusiastic “Mazel tov.” Ray Stark patted his back. AJ had no idea why his mentor was arm in arm with Romy Schneider, an actress touted as the next European superstar, but he had to admire the man’s taste.

  McQueen shouted for quiet. “I’ve decided that we all need to know the birthday boy better than we do. He plays it a little too close to the vest. So I’ve written down some questions that AJ’s close friends and family are going to answer.” He closed his eyes and reached into a scarred Nazi infantry helmet and extracted a wadded ball of paper. “What was AJ’s biggest adventure?” He paused. “Wandering through the Mojave frying on Teddy Bear acid with me last fall.”

  “Shit.” AJ didn’t fancy the world sharing his drug trials, even if mind-altering substances were increasingly common among their crowd. Steve’s game felt too dangerous for a Hollywood party, whose success depended on maximum contact and minimum intimacy.

  Steph rescued him. “My husband’s a lot cooler than I thought.”

  McQueen whistled. “Since I can’t describe that trip, I’ll relate another. Back in sixty-two, I arrived on the set of The Great Escape and caused so much trouble that John Sturges fired my ass. When my agents arrived in Bavaria, Kamen begged the director to give me another chance, while AJ calmed me down—or tried to. The instant he walked into my chalet, I blasted him with complaints, the topper being that the fucking producers had given Jim Garner, who’s one of my best friends, a white turtleneck as his wardrobe. ‘So what?’ AJ said. ‘So what?’ I said. ‘So the audience is going to watch him, not me.’ ‘Can’t they come up with something for you?’ Wake up, AJ: there’s not a goddamned thing in Germany for me to wear.

  “While I screamed, he untied his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and took off his undershirt, which stunk because he’d been wearing it for forty-eight hours, and threw it to me. ‘I will not have my client go naked.’ I didn’t know what to do, so I started to laugh. When Stan returned, I agreed to meet with S
turges and we fixed the part, which sucked, and came up with the baseball mitt and ball as my props. Ask anyone—they don’t know what the hell Garner wore.” Steve hugged AJ. “That’s my agent and friend—a guy who will give you the shirt off his back and keep you sane.”

  Barring a thank-you at the Academy Awards, it was the highest praise a representative could ask from his client.

  His mother picked next. “ ‘What’s my son’s greatest need?’ So many choices, but how about . . . a haircut.”

  AJ instinctively ran his hands through the longest hair at the party.

  “ ‘What’s AJ’s secret desire?’ ” Steph smiled. “Few of you think of my husband as religious.”

  “He hasn’t set foot in a synagogue since I bar mitzvahed him,” Ginsberg yelled.

  “No, Leon, he attends a different temple—Temple Riviera. Every Saturday and Sunday morning he tees off with his buddies. Don’t hide, guys, I see you.” The dentist, developer, and lawyer who formed AJ’s foursome hid their faces like felons. “But no matter how well he plays, one triumph has eluded him: a hole in one. He’ll mumble about it in his sleep. It’s perfection, he tells me. But if you never get a hole in one, you’re still perfect for me.”

  “ ‘Which historical figure does AJ admire most?’ ” While AJ was thinking Lincoln, Ray smiled. “That’s easy: Harry Jastrow.”

  The last person to reach into the helmet was Joe Wizan, his next-door neighbor at William Morris. Joe looked like a beach boy but was sharp as coral. “ ‘What quality does AJ need more of?’ ” Wizan waited a beat. “Patience. My friend does not suffer fools, so in this town, he’s always steaming.”

  Enough—AJ took the floor. “Other than my eighteenth birthday, when I aced my calculus final, bought my first jalopy, and got laid, this is the most thrilling. I have a premonition that my fourth decade is going to be a hell of a ride, so I’m going to need all the help you can give.”

  “Let’s get ripped.” At McQueen’s suggestion people poured out the French doors to the pool area. AJ’s favorite band, the Rolling Stones, blasted from megawatt speakers. He rocked with Steph, but within minutes, Steve cut in and stole her away. Just like old times. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ray dancing Romy Schneider in his direction.