The Lioness(57)

“Reggie: are you there?” Her voice had become a whimper that she didn’t recognize, a little girl’s plaintive cry to her father or mother. And, still, nothing.

She grabbed one of the tendon-like protrusions of bark on the trunk with her left hand and the branch above her head with her right. Then she leaned over and peered at the base of the tree where Reggie had been a few hours ago.

And she saw he was gone.

Still, she said his name once more, this time adding, Please.

But he wasn’t there. There was no question about it, none at all.

And, she understood, she was alone. She was absolutely and completely alone.





CHAPTER TWENTY


    Terrance Dutton





But Sammy Davis Jr. and his spanking new wife, the Swedish actress May Britt (“War and Peace,” “The Hunters”), weren’t the only interracial couple that caused heads to turn at the studio’s Christmas party. Terrance Dutton may not have been flouting “the norm”—this is Hollywood, after all, not Dutton’s “native” Memphis—but some guests were uncomfortable that his date was the Parisian ingenue Juliette Fournier, known for her alabaster skin.

—Movie Star Confidential, January 1961



It had happened fast. Incredibly fast. He’d killed a man. He was breathing hard at the idea.

One minute he’d been zipping up his fly and then he’d been tackling the creep who was guarding him, wrestling the gun from his hands. And then he’d heard another one of these bastards with another rifle—there were those clicks he supposed he would remember forever—and he turned, but instead of dropping the gun, he’d just done it. Rammed the barrel of the rifle he was holding into the gut of the Russian who’d come up behind him, their driver, because he was that close, spearing him in the abdomen with the muzzle and knocking him down. When the other one, the guard who’d first brought him out here, managed to stagger to his feet and charge him, Terrance had fired, a reflex, just squeezed the trigger, the bullet hitting the son of a bitch in the chest. When he understood that the fellow was going to die slowly over the next few minutes and his partner was still on the ground on all fours, winded, he’d put a second bullet into the wounded Russian’s head at point-blank range to put him out of his misery.

God, they’d christened themselves the lions of Hollywood at the wedding, and raised champagne to the idea. The seven of them, minus Katie and David, who were already in Paris, had greeted each other that way, half kidding but also a little smug, when they’d rendezvoused at the airport in L.A. a week later. The movie mags even called them that when they wrote about the safari: the lions of Hollywood. Well, he’d taken a life, but he was no lion. He was just…

He couldn’t say. He did not feel remorse, but neither did he feel pride. He was focused only on survival.

Now he was walking his captor, the roles reversed, back toward the huts. He’d begin with Katie Barstow. They were getting out—they were all getting out and they were getting away—and he supposed they were taking this Russian bastard with them.



* * *



.?.?.

“You’re Terrance Dutton.”

The fellow had dirty blond hair and cheekbones sculpted with a detailing chisel. He stood six feet and change, was probably about thirty, and his safari jacket was well worn. They were standing near a fountain in the lobby of the hotel in Nairobi after breakfast as Terrance waited for the rest of Katie Barstow’s entourage to arrive. Already Charlie Patton’s porters were starting to load the first suitcases and valises into the lorry that was going to haul everything southwest into Tanganyika and the Serengeti.

“You must be Charlie Patton,” Terrance said, though the moment he spoke, he realized he was mistaken. The man was too young to have helped Hemingway stockpile his dead things.

The other fellow laughed, shook his head, and extinguished his cigarette in the pedestal ashtray made from an elephant foot. “Far from it,” he said. “I doubt I’m half his age.” He had a pile of gear beside him, which looked to be mostly cameras and lenses. Then he extended his hand and Terrance shook it. “Phillip Tiegs,” he said, and Terrance thought the accent might have been Main Line Philadelphia. He was definitely American.

“Are you part of the safari?” he asked. “Do you work for Charlie?” Terrance had considered asking how this Phillip Tiegs had recognized him, but he still supposed the fellow was a member of Patton’s team. He’d sounded almost deferential when he’d said, Far from it. Or, just maybe, he was a movie buff. Terrance was recognized frequently back home in America.

“No, I don’t work for Charlie. But some of the folks in this hotel, who don’t normally get starstruck, were a little starstruck when they realized last night that you and Katie Barstow had checked in. This is quite some little honeymoon she planned.”

“It is. I agree.”

“You’re in for a treat.”

“You’re a photographer, I gather,” Terrance said.

“I am. I’m heading out today, too, but separate from all of you.”

“Newspaper assignment? Magazine?”

“No.”

Terrance considered pressing, but didn’t. Instead he said, “I’m guessing this is not your first time.”