Read Online The Devil You Know by Louise Bagshawe - Free Book Online
Authors: Louise Bagshawe
Tags: Romance, Contemporary
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Manager position at a Pathmark store on Third Avenue, a decent job. It pafd.less money, and it was taxable, and it wasn’t his own business, lose knew that every day he put the uniform on, he felt humiliated. But her father never complained, and the job carried health benefits. Her mother got to go to the doctor’s more often, and did her best to make the new apartment feel like home.
But her father was a man with a broken spirit, and Rose became obsessed with putting it back together again.
Her grades went to pot. All the subjects she’d loved at school suddenly seemed like a big waste of time. English - who cared? History was the past. Geography … even Math …. Rose just did not care. She was never likely to travel abroad, and as for Math, today there were calculators and computers. None of this rubbish mattered.
What mattered was money.
William Rothstein had taught her that.
Rose thought about him every day. And not just him; about the soft carpets, the rich woods, the blonde, twenty-something secretary. The toys that money bought him and his firm. And the power. The ability to take twenty years of someone’s hard work, expertise in their field, and a loyal customer-base, and just throw it away.
Money had paid for that lawyers’ letter. Money had bought off the
43
NYPD. Mon(‘y greased the wheels at City Hall and got the press off yonr back. W hen P,.othstein had said that to her, she had believed it.
Fuck school, Rose thought bitterly, using language in her head her father would have belted her for if she’d ever said it aloud. What she needed was money. She wanted a place her father could not be thrown out of, and a home they owned themselves. A place with a garden in the back, where her father could grow his tomatoes.
Well, she was going to get it. And she was going to get it from real estate.
If that snivelling little shit lothstein could do it, so could she.
44
Chapter 5
Poppy turned into the guesthouse’s drive and parked the car. She thanked all the rock ‘n’ roll gods her parents owned this place, near Sunset, keeping it for their maid, somewhere she could stash her ride and not worry it would get stolen. Nobody was home except the housekeeper; she could see Conchita’s Mercedes station wagon in the garage, the one she sometimes got picked up from school in. Quickly she got out, before she could be seen, and ducked out into the base of the Hollywood Hills. Conchita probably wouldn’t rat her out, but why take the chance?
The guest house was a spacious bungalow without muck of a view, but with a fantastic little garden instead - Daddy had installed a small fountain, imported from Italy, to go with the bougainvillea ad thick climbing roses over the fence. The scent of flowers was intense there that it almost muffled the smell of gasoline fuel and smog. Of course, the best thing about the guesthouse from Poppy’s point of view was that it was close enough to the Strip to walk.
Poppy clip-clipped her way two blocks south to where the Hyatt stood, tall and boringly functional. There were always cabs parked out front. She got into one and told him to take her down to the lLainbow.
‘But that’s only-‘
Poppy flung ten bucks at him. ‘I know, but I don’t wanna walk.’ ‘You got it,’ the guy said, pulling out.
Poppy grinned. Like they said in Spinal .Tap, money talked and bullshit walked.
Excitement crackled through her. She’d made it. The late summer sun was sinking behind the glossy towers of Sunset Strip, and sloe could see a few hookers right over there, too close to the chichi hotels for the doormen to feel comfortable - the cops would be along in a second - and over there, the first knot of metal-heads, dudes in jeans and black leather jackets with mullets, or long straight
45
hair down to their asses, and a few Motley Crue-style glamsters - the guys with lipstick had to travel in packs, or they’d get beaten up. The girls kicked ass, too. You had
But her father was a man with a broken spirit, and Rose became obsessed with putting it back together again.
Her grades went to pot. All the subjects she’d loved at school suddenly seemed like a big waste of time. English - who cared? History was the past. Geography … even Math …. Rose just did not care. She was never likely to travel abroad, and as for Math, today there were calculators and computers. None of this rubbish mattered.
What mattered was money.
William Rothstein had taught her that.
Rose thought about him every day. And not just him; about the soft carpets, the rich woods, the blonde, twenty-something secretary. The toys that money bought him and his firm. And the power. The ability to take twenty years of someone’s hard work, expertise in their field, and a loyal customer-base, and just throw it away.
Money had paid for that lawyers’ letter. Money had bought off the
43
NYPD. Mon(‘y greased the wheels at City Hall and got the press off yonr back. W hen P,.othstein had said that to her, she had believed it.
Fuck school, Rose thought bitterly, using language in her head her father would have belted her for if she’d ever said it aloud. What she needed was money. She wanted a place her father could not be thrown out of, and a home they owned themselves. A place with a garden in the back, where her father could grow his tomatoes.
Well, she was going to get it. And she was going to get it from real estate.
If that snivelling little shit lothstein could do it, so could she.
44
Chapter 5
Poppy turned into the guesthouse’s drive and parked the car. She thanked all the rock ‘n’ roll gods her parents owned this place, near Sunset, keeping it for their maid, somewhere she could stash her ride and not worry it would get stolen. Nobody was home except the housekeeper; she could see Conchita’s Mercedes station wagon in the garage, the one she sometimes got picked up from school in. Quickly she got out, before she could be seen, and ducked out into the base of the Hollywood Hills. Conchita probably wouldn’t rat her out, but why take the chance?
The guest house was a spacious bungalow without muck of a view, but with a fantastic little garden instead - Daddy had installed a small fountain, imported from Italy, to go with the bougainvillea ad thick climbing roses over the fence. The scent of flowers was intense there that it almost muffled the smell of gasoline fuel and smog. Of course, the best thing about the guesthouse from Poppy’s point of view was that it was close enough to the Strip to walk.
Poppy clip-clipped her way two blocks south to where the Hyatt stood, tall and boringly functional. There were always cabs parked out front. She got into one and told him to take her down to the lLainbow.
‘But that’s only-‘
Poppy flung ten bucks at him. ‘I know, but I don’t wanna walk.’ ‘You got it,’ the guy said, pulling out.
Poppy grinned. Like they said in Spinal .Tap, money talked and bullshit walked.
Excitement crackled through her. She’d made it. The late summer sun was sinking behind the glossy towers of Sunset Strip, and sloe could see a few hookers right over there, too close to the chichi hotels for the doormen to feel comfortable - the cops would be along in a second - and over there, the first knot of metal-heads, dudes in jeans and black leather jackets with mullets, or long straight
45
hair down to their asses, and a few Motley Crue-style glamsters - the guys with lipstick had to travel in packs, or they’d get beaten up. The girls kicked ass, too. You had
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