Seeing Red, page 5
From behind Riff, there came a sound like a green tree branch being twisted in half, followed by nothing except the patter of the new rain. One of the tent pegs popped loose and the tarp sagged into the hole.
Bunny's face was a livid crimson-black with rage. The knowledge he had been outdrawn, however, did not stop him from trying to preserve his image by saying, "I'll kill your ass for this, you know," in his quiet, bad-pimp's hiss.
"What it is, Bunny," said Riff, gesturing with the gun "is you need to climb down into this hole."
"Tango!" Bunny screeched, trying to crawl backward.
Riff frowned and shot Bunny once, in the left leg just below the kneecap. Blood mingled with the mud and gore, spoiling his nine-hundred-dollar suit. "This isn't a movie, Bunny; just get in the hole."
Hiding his pain behind clenched teeth, Bunny began to drag himself toward the pit. When he backed down into it, on top of the tarp, his hands going wrist-deep in the muck, he looked up at Riff and in his best snake-charming voice said. "Why?" mostly to buy a couple of seconds more. It was extra seconds that always counted in rescue time.
"Because I gotta change my life, Bunny," he said, looming over him with the gull.
Buy more seconds. "I'll let you," said Bunny, gasping now. "Anything you want, man, Partners. We'll—"
Riff was about to tell Bunny not to bullshit a bullshitter when the ruglike tarp heaved mightily up, splitting in the middle. The first thing that came out was yellow light. The second thing that came out was a black, velvet-clad arm that captured Bunny's wounded leg in its trash-compacter grip very nicely. Bunny slid three more feet with a loud cry of pain.
One thing about those limos, Riff thought as he turned away and walked back up the slope. He'd noticed it during the ride out in Bunny's own chariot. They sure had a lot of room inside.
Behind him, Bunny's pocket pistol went off four, five times then stopped. No slugs came Riff's way.
Riff pawed around under the limousine's bumper for the magnetic case containing the spare keys, and when he got behind the wheel he involuntarily glanced at the car's sunroof. The two cars were probably a lot alike.
He did not stick around to hear the tiny whirring noise coming from Plot #60. Nor did he ever see the ridiculously fat diamond left at the edge of the grave, as payment. A Forest Lawn worker, finding it later in the day and assuming it to be a cheap crystal because of its large size, took it to his Pasadena apartment and hung it in the kitchen windows where it threw the setting sun's rainbow colors against his breakfast nook for the next fifteen years.
INCIDENT ON A RAINY NIGHT IN BEVERLY HILLS
Jonathan Brill was thinking: The last time I saw Haskell Hammer, he was dead set on becoming a famous writer of screenplays in Hollywood.
The siren song of Southern California has always been the Big Break—a litany everyone babbles and no one truly believes. The Big Break. According to myth, you stumble across it by accident . . . or it mows you down on purpose. The thing in which people believe is the tease, the promise of the litany.
Rain droplets crawled down the windowpanes and blurred the view from the den. Jonathan permitted his gaze to defocus. Across his west lawn was his cul-de-sac; in it was parked his Mercedes. Sensible businessman's gray had been his choice of car color. The driveway beyond meandered down Carla Ridge and insulated him from the old Trousdale Estates branch of Beverly Hills.
Among his home's fourteen rooms, Jonathan Brill's favorite was his den. He inventoried it in terms of material: wood, glass, paper, fiber, canvas, metal.
Teak was for the paneling, mahogany for the sprawling three-quarter administrator's desk, thick oak planks for the pegged library shelving that dominated half the wall space. The narrow, tinted windows through which he watched the rain were Nadia Charas commission work featuring her characteristic lozenge-shaped leaded panes. Floor to ceiling, in ordered ranks, stood the books. Behind the desk was a long, low buffet groaning with reference and overpriced showoff volumes; near the windows was a sideboard with sliding glass doors entombing a matched complement of leatherbound first editions. The carpet was a lush pile in a sober dark brown, directionally combed. Jonathan had been dramatic about arranging the few paintings he liked beneath pinlight spots. The originals included a Picasso ink wash and a Franz von Stuck from the turn of the century—one of the German Symbolist's terrifically popular Sin series, mostly forgotten now. It depicted a voluptuary encoiled by a giant, malevolent snake, the sort of thing Freud would have a field day with. As with the Bruckner aluminum sculpture brooding down from its special nook, to Jonathan the acquisition held meaning beyond art. When admirers mentioned worth, he thought price, and had long ago chosen to make the best of this unfortunate incapacity. The edition of Moby Dick he held cradled to his chest as he stood by the windows had cost one thousand dollars in 1979. It was a miracle of thoughtful bookbindery. It was a thousand-dollar book, an investment, more stable than the messier forms of human transaction that had left Jonathan with his fourteen-room home all to himself this year. Any journeyman shrink could point his or her pipe at Jonathan's overdone den and quack "compensatory surrogate," and they'd be right, but Jonathan found he relished the feeling of control he got from rattling around his house all by himself after the hired help had come and gone. He already knew most of the punchlines that his colleagues would apply to his life—his new life—and dismissed them. They were just envious. His divorce from Janice was history, and now he was free of her forever.
And the last time Haskell Hammer saw me, I was going to grow up to be a successful analyst. He held his thousand-dollar book in one hand and a slug of Grand Marnier in the other, holding his contemplative pose by the rainspattered windows. Shrink to the brats of the stars, he had kidded me. Elbow to the ribs. Ha-ha, sho'nuff.
The pleasant music of his door chimes soured when cycled over and over. The help had clocked out for the day; Jonathan had finally answered the door himself, prepared to dispense with some lunatic Jehovah's Witness or door-to-door Scientologist. Instead he found his old buddy Haskell Hammer crutched against the glowing button, looking as though a bus had mistakenly dropped him off in Hell and he had hoofed it through miles of brimstone just to get back to Hollywood.
Haskell's opening dialogue had seemed depressingly melodramatic. This was the only place I could come . . . you're the only person who'll understand . . . they've choked off my escape avenues . . . they're AFTER me . . .
After a beat of honest shock, Jonathan's professional face slid into position. The personal, the emotional, the reactionary aspects of his anima retreated behind the shield of persona. Ego beats id. Diploma wraps stone.
Haskell had nearly swooned into his arms. Then followed, like a bad movie cliché, the restorative pop of cognac and the sudden clearing of Haskell's eyes that denoted a return to the universe of the rational. He would, of course, have a story to tell. This narrative was to be revealed as soon as he emerged from the shower in Jonathan's guest bathroom, where he had been holed up for nearly half an hour.
Far to the south, lightning belabored Century City. A shudder of thunder freed speckles of water to roll earthward along the panes. Jonathan considered his own reflection, the professional at ease, a still life of sober erudition with his leatherbound tome and balloon glass full of overpriced joy juice. All day the sky had retained the ominous hue of old newsprint; now it was as black and dense as the leaded ornamentation sectioning the glass panes.
He added half an inch to his snifter and slipped the special Arion edition of Moby Dick into its precise vacancy on the oak bookshelf. Melville was just the sort of intimidating bulwark of literature—pronounced lich-ri-cha—that no person of style or means would ever browse idly. The public schools had propagandized against Melville, poor bastard. Even Jonathan would only pick up the book to hold his grand in his hand. It would remain undisturbed on the shelf.
Lightning tines, closer this time, colored the sky again. In the window Jonathan saw the reflection of a silhouette filling the den doorway, behind him. Haskell's hair was slicked blackly back in a wet pompadour and the smell of a fresh cleansing radiated from him. Jonathan dashed a few fingers of cognac into a new glass.
"Can we close the curtains?"
The talk barrier had been broken. Good. Jonathan already knew the window was not visible from the road, but kept it to himself He drew a thin cord and the burgundy drapes swished grandly together, compressing the den, making it a bit more claustrophobic. This was to be a backstage interview.
"Not paranoia, Jon, I swear," he said. Yet his movements seemed nervous and furtive. He accepted the brandy snifter, then jumped away like a suspicious dog. When he moved to the cluster of sofa and chairs near the window, he immediately selected a corner seat that kept his back to the bookshelves and left him in a position to keep a jumpy watch on both the windows and the entrance to the den. "Not paranoia. I'm not crazy, either. Just cautious."
Jonathan stopped down a wince of disappointment. Oh, christ, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, gimme a break!
Sensing this, Haskell perked up. "God, don't I know what that sounds like. When people babble under stress, their dialog would offend the worst B-movie hack. Ever wonder if you were a mouthpiece for some keyboard-basher's rotten cosmic screenplay? You work in Hollywood long enough, you realize that what life needs is pacing, better camera angles, less exposition, and a crack editor to re-order the whole mess into something interesting. And dénouements."
"Stay in my neighborhood long enough," said Jonathan, "And you begin analyzing reflex conversation, plumbing the sordid, crazed, anal retentive depths of have a nice day." He felt a flush of guilt—Haskell had been his friend. After a rush of years he had come to him for help out of the night, obviously as a barrel-bottom last resort. If Jonathan could not fix things, what in hell was his purpose on the planet? "Don't start at the beginning," he said. "Start with whatever is of the most importance."
"Simplicity," said Haskell, uttering a harsh little laugh. "The Conclave."
"Which is?"
"A phalanx of men and women you've never read about in Variety. Consummate business folk. A tiny, elite federation. Compressed, efficient. Mother, are they ever efficient."
"Movers and shakers. What are they into?"
"Movies, what else?" said Haskell as though it was obvious to a child. "They 'make' movies, by helping movies make money. They make reputations. They deal in success, not excess. It's the only game in this town."
"You mean they're a production group?"
"No." Haskell struggled against a vast and insubstantial void, realizing the futility of wrestling with a ghost. He used up dead time by looking from the curtains to the door to Jonathan. He sipped his cognac. With a sigh of frustration—the sound of a drowning man who sees that rescuers do not notice him—lie fought to find a way to encapsulate the ideas in his head and push them out into the light for examination. Jonathan could see the ideas were massy and unwieldy, involving an obvious danger that was easily overlooked, like a hostile gray bull elephant lurking against a gray building. When Jonathan considered that simile, he noticed that Haskell himself had grayed quite a lot in the years since they'd last talked. The black hair was interrupted by frequent striations of dead marble whiteness, where composure had seemingly been bleached away. Where Haskell's hip self-confidence had been bartered away in some devil's pact that left ashes in the soul and a red rime of fear crusting the eyes.
"Jon" he said finally. "Did you ever notice those white vans all over Los Angeles, the ones with the microwave dishes on the roof, and the high beam transmitters that look like someone made a science fiction prop out of two oversized shotgun microphones? Sometimes you see them on residential streets, just sitting there, or parked next to the newspaper machines outside a restaurant. Ever wonder what they're for?"
Jonathan hoped his smile was encouraging. "I've always shrugged them off as TV news, or CIA, or cable-service trucks. Always unmarked. No panel windows, and what glass there is is heavily reflectorized." Two words nattered in his brain, and they were conspiracy paranoia.
"And sometimes with no external gear at all. Just another faceless white van. But in your gut you know they're all kin."
"Right." Jonathan remained casual. It would not do for Haskell to think he was being humored.
"Ever see the film Gimme Shelter?" Haskell was deadpan.
Non sequitur? Jonathan raced to make identification while he kept his face relaxed and friendly. "Yes. A long while ago. The Rolling Stones documentary of the Altamont Speedway concert. Lots of narrative by Melvin Belli, the attorney. Raw, spontaneous footage of a man getting knifed right in front of the stage."
"You remember the story they used to tell about Ben-Hur, the industry story for stuntmen?"
"That's one I'm not familiar with."
"Rumor had it that during the film's climactic chariot race, a stuntman was run over by his own chariot after a muffed fall. Killed. For years, people insisted that if you looked closely enough at the finished footage, you'd actually see the poor son of a bitch getting crushed in living color."
"Just like the stabbing at Altamont."
"Or the riot footage from the Chicago Democratic Convention in Wexler's Medium Cool. Real head bashings; blood you knew wasn't Karo Syrup and food dye. When a truncheon bounces off a head in that film, you feel it pulverizing bone and tissue." He was rolling now, albeit with queasy uncertainty, the kind that treads softly in the psyche. He did not want Jonathan to dismiss him before he reached the crux. His job had always been to make such stories palatable, whether they were true or not, to live creatively through a typewriter. It would be an absurd shame if he botched it with the truth. "Let's escalate now, shall we? Snuff. You've heard of it, I'm sure. Purports to be an actual filmed record of torture and murder. The people you see being killed actually were killed—or so the myth goes. Tell me, Jon, just offhand, what's the current moneymaker playing all over Hollywood and Westwood?"
"Having not made it out to the movies in about three weeks, I'd say that movie The Nam, because it's been on the news so much."
"Uh-huh. Why?"
"Well, because—" Jonathan stopped and sought Haskell's eyes, his glass hesitating midway to his mouth. "Because of that TV actor who was killed during filming. Supposedly you can see him getting blown to smithereens. It got a lot of media. Three-ring coverage."
"Supposedly you can also see the guy's blood on the camera lens. But the only reality you can be sure of is that because of that scene, the film is now minting money fist over asshole, as my little brother used to say." He finished his drink.
"But did that actor—did he . . ."
"His name was Pepperdine," said Haskell.
"Did he really die, or not?"
"There you go, Jon, off down the slide. In your eyes, right now, I can see the thing that's making The Nani such a hit. The lust to know, coupled with the proximity of death, the most undeniable thing there is. Yes, Pepperdine died. What you see in the movies is real. But no accident."
"You're suggesting that this man's death was arranged, premeditated in order that a motion picture could pull in more bucks at the box office?" He was flustered and incredulous. "For god's sake . . ."
"Not only was it arranged," said Haskell, motioning for more cognac. "But it's a perfect example of how I've been making my living for going on five years now."
The Grand Marnier bottle sat on the table between them like an obscenely large salad cruet. The cognac's pleasant orange taste went flat and tacky in Jonathan's mouth.
He rediscovered his voice. "You can't be serious," he said to the curtains as lightning flared outside. Dramatic sting.
"Now you sound like one of those bad B-movie characters." For the first time, a phantom smile wisped past Haskell's lips.
"Backtrack, Haskell. You're going to confess to me that spectacular fluke deaths connected to the movie industry are being engineered for the sole purpose of profit?" He tried to juggle the concept in his head and chanced across a good example. "That, say, the disaster at Three Mile Island was set up so that The China Syndrome would be a hit film?"
"Wait, Jon, just a second. I never asked you to believe me, or anything I'm about to tell you. I've got one reason for coming here."
"Shoot." Ha-ha, another cinematic pun.
Haskell seemed anything but crazy now. Ragged, and harried, and on the brink of some inner breakdown of spirit, yes, but not bereft of sanity. "You predate my involvement with the Conclave by years," he said, fingers laced, contemplating the floor. "We were friends back in our idealistic youth. This whole Conclave thing weighs on my brain; I want to get it out of my head and push it away from me. Because I might not have a whole lot of time left, and like a character in a shabby B-movie—one with simple, easily encapsulated motives—I want to clear my conscience in whatever cheap, shabby way I can. I lucked across your name. I'll get to that later. But I lucked across it, and remembered you'd made a go of your aspiration to psychiatry—shrink to the stars' kids, remember?—so I decided to despoil your doorstep in the dead of night."
"No problem for a friend. And I am a professional ear. It would look like you chose correctly. So let's have it."
"Thank God. I'd hoped you'd cut around the bullshit and deal with the core." He rose, refilled his snifter, and drank down another thunderbolt of liquor. "Cigarettes anywhere?"
Jonathan lit Haskell's and decided against one for himself. Haskell inhaled strength and urgency; expelled psychic cinders and decay. Another guarded glance at the window, and he spoke.
"They propositioned me right after Maureen died. I was ripe with ideas for films, stories, articles, projects all with no takers. Maureen had a stroke. I blamed it on the hours her own career hustling imposed on her—the tryouts, the auditions, the commercial shoots. When she died, I was reactionary and bitter—cannon fodder for any good scheme. The Conclave recognized a good vengeance motive and exploited mine. I wanted to make 'the Industry' pay for my loss of Maureen. After nine months I began to wonder if the Conclave had somehow set up her death in the first place, just because they had a slot on the table of Scripters that needed filling. But by then it didn't matter—that was how my thinking had changed."
