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Lincoln Road where Jennifer Aniston was innocently sharing California rolls with Robert Downey, Jr. A waiter had called to tip off Bang Abbott and, for an extra hundred bucks, offer exclusive access through a fire exit.
    Although the Jen shot would have been a slam dunk, Bang Abbott had blown it off in favor of a fading, no-talent pop bimbo who was one bumbling overdose or drunken car wreck away from Slab City. The paparazzo was convinced that when Cherry Pye finally bought the farm—either by gagging on her own puke or wrapping her Beemer around a utility pole—it would be chronicled as an American tragedy, the death of a beautiful and ruined innocence.
    Marilyn redux.
    Bang Abbott wanted to be the one who documented this tawdry decline in photographs, which he grandiosely imagined as one day hanging in some museum of hip modern art, next to those of Avedon or Annie Leibovitz. And of course he wanted the body-bag shot.
    Now a black SUV appeared in the distance, and Bang Abbott used his binoculars to verify the make. It was a GMC Yukon, not a Suburban, but that brainless bellman could easily have confused the two wagons. Bang Abbott waited until it pulled to the curb and then lurched from his rental car, aiming a camera with the motor drive whirring.
    Cherry Pye did not emerge from the SUV, but her bodyguard did.
    “Hello, douche nozzle,” he said to Bang Abbott.
    “Give me five seconds, Lev, that’s all I need,” the photographer pleaded, gesturing at the tinted windows. “One pretty smile for all her fans.”
    “She’s not in there,” Lev said.
    “Come on. Just one picture.”
    “See for yourself.” Lev stepped away from the door.
    Bang Abbott squeezed past the bodyguard and stuck his lumpy head inside the Yukon, which indeed was empty. “Goddammit!” he brayed. “Where is she?”
    “Don’t know. Don’t care.” Lev lifted his garment bag off the seat. “Jesus, man, when’s the last time you took a shower?”
    “I’ll give you five hundred bucks,” Bang Abbott declared. “Just tell me where she’s at.”
    “Why not,” Lev said. “But make it fast.” He held out an open palm.
    Bang Abbott warily counted out the bills. “How come you never let me pay you off before?”
    “Because Cherry paid me more.”
    “Screw you, Lev. Where the hell can I find her?”
    The bodyguard looked at his wristwatch. “My guess is thirty-six thousand feet, somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico.”
    “You’re hilarious. You could be the Jewish Chris Rock, you’re so damn funny.”
    “Seriously. Cherry’s mother fired me,” Lev said without rancor. He pointed to a Lear warming up on the tarmac. “That’s my ride, numbnuts. It’s been real.”
    Eyeing the waiting jet, Bang Abbott groped in his camera bag for a longer lens. “You’re fucking with me again, right? My lady is on that plane.”
    Lev laughed. “Try Stevie Van Zandt. He’s giving me a lift to Teterboro—we go way back.”
    Bang Abbott made a clumsy lunge for his misspent cash, but the bodyguard flattened him with a head butt.
    “One more hot tip,” Lev said, looking down at him, “just so you get your money’s worth: That girl you shot at the hotel this morning, it wasn’t Cherry.”
    “No shit,” Bang Abbott wheezed.
    “They totally faked out your fat ass.”
    “Like I care.”
    “And it wasn’t the first time, either.”
    “What?” cried Bang Abbott.
    Lev said, “I hope you get cancer of the schlong. I hope it falls off in your hand.” He stepped over the sprawled photographer and disappeared through the doors of the terminal.

3
    Janet Bunterman phoned the hotel room and said, “Take a few days off, Annie.”
    Ann DeLusia knew what that meant: Cherry Pye was heading back to rehab.
    “With pay, right?” she asked Cherry’s mother.
    “Oh, I suppose.”
    “’Cause I’m sure you want me on standby.”
    “Just in case,” said Janet Bunterman. Her daughter often fled rehab—or, as Janet Bunterman insisted on calling it,