Jove Brand is Near Death

by J. A. Crawford

  “Only one way to find out,” I said. “The same way Layne Lackey did.”

  “Are you sure?” Missy asked. When she grabbed the counter, everything from her shoulders down tightened.

  I could sit around with my fingers crossed in hopes the police investigation cleared me. Spend as much time in public as possible. Hope someone else got their throat crushed, preferably while I was in a different zip code. The dossiers on Layne Lackey’s flash drive might as well have been a hit list. If I followed his lead, I was almost certainly putting myself at future crime scenes. And who did I think I was? I wasn’t a detective. I didn’t even play one on television.

  But someone was out there, hanging corpses on me. And I had to know what Layne Lackey had discovered about Near Death.

  “My schedule has opened up recently.”

  “Whatever is happening, I want it exposed. They need to pay.” Missy was a tremor short of desperate. A tremble shy of pleading. “Kit was murdered, Ken. Prove it. For me.”

  5

  The last five years, the internet had roasted me on a daily basis for my horrendous portrayal of a spy. Pretending to be a detective wasn’t starting off much better. Sitting at Missy’s driftwood slab table, I listed the names I could remember from the flash drive. I was going to need Missy’s help with some of them.

  “Can your people get me a sit-down with Bryce Crisp?” I asked.

  “Maybe. I had lunch with him once, with Kit,” Missy replied.

  “When?”

  Missy got quiet. “When Near Death was in pre-production.”

  Near Death continued to be the common thread. “Tell Bryce it’s a matter of life and death.”

  “Who will you start with?”

  “Ray Ford. He’s the only one I’m on speaking terms with. Then the Shensei brothers, if Yuen can broker a meet.”

  Missy left the table to fire up the teapot. “The Hong Kong producers? What reason would you have to meet with them?”

  “The Shensei brothers are the closest thing the Calabrias have ever had to a partner. They financed Near Death and distribute Jove Brand in China.”

  Missy’s back was to me again. “I still don’t see what they could tell you.”

  I was as keen to get off the subject of the Shensei brothers as Missy appeared to be. “Neither do I, but they had a dossier on Layne’s flash drive. Those meets should give you time to set up the others. Schedule Dina Calabria last. When I sit down with her, I want to have as complete a picture as possible.”

  “Okay.” Missy sucked on her lip to keep it from vibrating.

  “Dina needs to know what’s going on. She’ll thank you, if this turns out to be anything.”

  Missy exhaled from her stomach, the way I taught her. “You’re right.”

  I took a breath myself before telling Missy the next part. “The two people on this list I got close to were murdered. You had a dossier on Layne’s flash drive too.”

  Missy’s eyes flickered.

  “You need to get somewhere safe, and fast,” I said.

  “I don’t want to run, Ken. I want to help.”

  “There’s nothing you can’t do from, say, Europe.”

  “My Ashland place is secure,” Missy countered. “I had it tightened after a break-in last year. And I need to get the flash drive anyway.”

  From Missy’s posture, I knew to surrender. “Okay, but don’t let anyone know where you are.”

  “I won’t.”

  I decided not to mention I also had a dossier on the flash drive. Missy was worried enough as it was.

  Missy went to the bank, withdrew too much money, and tried to give it all to me.

  “I’d take maybe a quarter of this,” I said. “You’re paying for my lawyer.”

  “Detectives incur expenses. What do you charge to train someone, per month?”

  I told her.

  “For eight hours of instruction?”

  “Closer to twenty, counting drive time.”

  Missy cut a stack of bills from the sheaf. “Sign me up for a year then. Paid in full now.”

  “A month,” I countered.

  “Six months.”

  “Three.”

  “Deal,” Missy said. If the stack of cash were a script, she passed me the first act.

  I didn’t like taking her money but also had no idea what this sort of thing would cost. Living on the road added up. Missy’s down payment joined my Friday take in my pocket as I headed into town to gear up.

  I bought a few changes of clothes, keeping it simple: linen pants and plain short-sleeved shirts with no breast pocket. You wouldn’t think a breast pocket would get caught on things but endless hours in the gym taught me otherwise. I fished my Otomix boxing shoes out of my gear bag and laced them tight. They looked ridiculous, but they also stayed on from bell to bell.

  I wandered the aisles of the local stores, trying to decide what a detective would need. Going by my film collection, the essentials were a revolver, a pack of cigarettes and a fifth of rye. I ended up with a pocket notebook, a pack of pens, and a multi-tool. My last stop was a grocery store for a few bags of pecans, beef jerky, and a case of water.

  Locked and loaded.

  The drive north was as painless as it got. People who drove for fun, made a hobby of it, mystified me. I resented all the time wasted behind the wheel. The whole point of driving was getting to your destination. My blender and slow cooker were sorely missed. Road food leaned heavily toward carbs. A man could only eat so many omelets. There were a lot of nuts and slabs of jerky in my foreseeable future. I should have bought dental floss.

  The lanes didn’t clog up until I was in the Bay Area, where the roads were permanently jammed. For a center of peace, love, and happiness, the residents sure drove angry. I maintained a bored expression and ignored the honking and screaming, which only got people madder.

  Ray Ford built his compound cheap back in the seventies, when it was still in a bad neighborhood. He was looking for plenty of room and neighbors who didn’t mind gunfire and explosions. Forty years later, the lot alone could have fetched eight figures easy, but Ray wasn’t ever selling. With the cost of moving everything to a different site, he would be lucky to break even.

  Ray’s lot was bordered by a twenty-foot-high fence and patrolled by a squadron of drones that somehow avoided collision with each other despite their airspeed. A graveyard of discarded sets haunted by junked vehicles turned the space between the fence and the warehouse into a labyrinth laced with tetanus. The fence was not only topped with but also woven from razor wire. Sparks snapped and popped down its length. A sign on the gate read: Trespassers Will be Disintegrated.

  There was no buzzer or call box, so I got out of the car and waved toward the warehouse. One of the drones strafed toward me, stopping on a dime a foot short of the wire. A modulated voice sounded from it.

  “Say cheese.”

  I automatically fell into a head shot pose, tilting towards my good side.

  Auto-tuned Muzak issued from the hovering drone. I took another look around and laughed at what the locals must have thought of this place. Ray Ford’s voice, sans modulation, issued from the drone.

  “Ken Allen, is that you?”

  “Yep,” I said, sketching a salute.

  “Well get in here, you old so-and-so.”

  The gate dragged open, crackling and squealing, as if Ray couldn’t have made it slide as smooth as butter if he wanted. The drone guided me through stripped and repurposed vehicles of every type, including the remains of an Apache helicopter. My old beater blended right in. I parked in a spot by the roll-up doors. Not having any latinum or galactic standard credits, I ignored the parking meter.

  The exterior door had no handle, but when I was close enough, a plate slid open to reveal a small submarine-style wheel. When I gave it a spin, the door let go with a pressurized hiss. There was no telling how much of this was functional and how much was for show.

  I stepped into an airlock. The outer door clo
sed behind me and something that wasn’t steam washed over me before the inner door opened. The hallway beyond was reclaimed from a familiar spaceship. A line of green track lights flowed along the base of the wall, guiding my way toward the third door on the left. The door snapped open to disappear into the wall when I was a step away.

  I was expecting a workshop but found myself in a comfortable den with wood-paneled walls and a natural stone floor. A roaring fire burned in a hearth big enough to do jumping-jacks inside. Two chairs, each with their own side table, sat in front of it. The heads of a dozen fantastical creatures were mounted on the paneling, the fictional weapon that dealt the fatal blow displayed under them. The door slid shut behind me, joining seamlessly into the wall.

  Though I felt the heat, heard the crackling logs, and smelled the fragrant wood, Ray walked through the blaze without so much as a singe. He looked like the cat who ate the canary.

  “Well hey there, Ken.”

  “Looking good, Ray.”

  I wasn’t lying. Since losing the weight, Ray looked like a jockey in a fitted racing suit with reinforced panels on his thighs and forearms. His skin shone like polished walnut. He still kept his head and face closely shaved. These weren’t style choices. Loose clothing and static electricity were serious hazards in his line of work.

  In an act of retributive deterrence, the big studios blacklisted almost everyone who worked on a Jove Brand film. Missy Cazale beat the blacklist on pure talent, seasoned perhaps with a small measure of sympathy following Kit’s death. Ray beat it because, as one of the best effects guys in the world, he was indispensable.

  “I owe it all to you,” Ray said. “I still do those workouts you showed me in Hong Kong.”

  “I’ll send you my new ones. I didn’t know what I was doing back then.”

  “Bodies still have two arms and legs, last time I checked. You want a coffee?”

  I could tell Ray was dying to show off. “I would love one.”

  Ray turned back to the hearth and swung one of the stone corners open to reveal a built-in brew station. Cups were shelved in the door. He set one on a pad under a brass nozzle and the java began to flow.

  “Sweeten or lighten her up?” Ray asked.

  “No thanks. I blend butter into it these days. Smooths the caffeine out.”

  “You don’t say.” The gears in Ray’s head were turning.

  He handed me my cup and started brewing one of his own while gesturing for me to take a seat. The chair fit like a glove, the coffee was a breath away from scalding, and the faux fire toasty.

  “Now what brings you here, after years of ignoring my Christmas cards?” Ray asked.

  “Hey, I kept those. They’re probably worth something.”

  Ray pafawed as if he weren’t a living legend, the Magician of Make-Believe himself. If you had a tricky stunt, Ray had been the go-to guy to pull it off for forty years. If you were shooting an effects-driven film and could afford the best, you paid Ray whatever price he demanded.

  “I came about Layne Lackey,” I said.

  “Layne Lackey?” Ray sat down. “I made the mistake of meeting with him last fall.”

  “How’d Layne rope you into that?”

  “Little peckerwood had dug up some behind-the-scenes effects footage I didn’t want public. His price was an interview.”

  It wasn’t much of a shock to learn Layne was willing to resort to blackmail. “What did he want to talk about?”

  “What didn’t he? He questioned me for hours. Even tried to stay the night. Would have moved in if I let him.”

  If Lackey was looking for a safe haven, it was hard to beat Ray’s compound. “Did he ask about any of the Jove Brand movies?”

  Ray stirred his coffee with a finger. “He tried to play twenty questions with each of them. Like he didn’t know what I’m about.”

  “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

  “Damn straight,” Ray replied. He stopped to take a drink. “Butter, eh?”

  “Grass-fed. Layne ask any questions not related to special effects?”

  Ray thought about it for a minute. “I can go check the recording. “

  “You taped Layne’s visit?”

  “Wanted him to admit he was squeezing me on camera. You think Layne was pulling smoke and mirrors?”

  “He wouldn’t have been direct. He was onto something big and didn’t want anyone knowing. It’s what got him killed.”

  Ray set down his cup, his squint intensifying. “Layne Lackey is dead?”

  “A few days ago. I was there when it happened, same as Sir Collin.”

  “Collin Prestor is dead?”

  I looked around at the doorless, windowless room cached in a warehouse, surrounded by an electrified fence patrolled by drones. “You don’t get out much, do you Ray?”

  Ray stifled a laugh. “All right, point taken. Why don’t you catch me up?”

  I started at the beginning. Ray made for a good audience, leaning on the edge of his seat and exclaiming in all the right places. When I was done, he let out a long whistle.

  “Boy, someone is setting you up but good.”

  My coffee was still piping hot. I hoped whatever Ray did to the mug didn’t cause cancer. “I’m walking Layne’s trail, but I’m also warning everyone on his list.”

  This time Ray didn’t hold back his amusement, adding in a knee slap for good measure. “Ain’t no one getting in here. Hell, you think I’m in this chair right now?”

  Unable to resist, I reached out and poked a finger into his shoulder.

  “Watch it, I’m ticklish.”

  “Let’s keep that one between us,” I laughed. “Now, about Layne Lackey.”

  “Yeah, I’ll go pull his tapes,” Ray said, standing up.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Oh no you don’t. I like you Ken, but ain’t no one getting a peek backstage.”

  As much as I wanted to see the footage for myself, I let it go. Ray wasn’t the sort of person you could argue with. Five seconds after he disappeared through the hearth, I heard his voice.

  “Over here. Turn your chair this way.”

  The chair didn’t swivel before, but it did now. I turned ninety degrees to find Ray’s face on a screen integrated into the paneled wall.

  “The right arm on the chair opens up. Find a picture to suit you.”

  The lack of pronouns clued me in I was watching a recording. There was a built-in remote under the armrest. Every movie Ray had ever worked on was available for perusal. I picked Open Season, Bryce Crisp’s debut as Jove Brand. Of the Brand films, I had watched the three transition ones the most, which technically included Near Death.

  Open Season started with the death of the first Brand, Connor Shaw. A tricky affair. How did you kill off the beloved original and keep the audience from turning on you? Give him a noble, self-sacrificing death. Shaw’s Brand went out in a hail of arrows, saving the lives of Bryce Crisp and another squire—the treacherous Huntington Smythe—when their training exercise turned deadly.

  Bryce Crisp and Connor Shaw being friends helped the transition. Shaw was done with the franchise and passed the mantle to Crisp during media promotion. Neither I nor Sir Collin had that advantage. Niles Endsworth wouldn’t either. With my luck they’d end up calling it the Ken Allen Curse.

  The third act was starting when Ray came back, where Bryce as Brand was infiltrating the big-game preserve, only to discover the animals were actually animatronic death traps.

  “Still holds up,” I said.

  “That’s because it wasn’t crapped out by a hundred underpaid kids slaving away on computers,” Ray replied. “I went through my Layne Lackey footage. We talked about the different Brand gadgets I mocked up.”

  “He didn’t ask about the production side of things?”

  “Only to do with budget. How I built props, did they really work, the stuff reporters always ask.”

  It didn’t track. Layne came here for a reason. “Did he ask about
Near Death?”

  Ray went quiet while he recalled. At least I had a movie to pass the time.

  “You know, he did.” Ray finally announced. “But I didn’t have much to tell him. I barely touched your picture. Not enough money or time.”

  Among many other tropes, every Brand film had a scene where he met with Viviane Lake, who outfitted him with all the latest gadgets. Her exposition was always heavy with innuendo and double entendre. Viviane circled but never ended up in bed with Brand. Whether they should or should not was hotly debated among the fans.

  I didn’t get my scene with Viviane Lake. In Near Death, I stared into my video watch intensely—intense was one of the expressions I thought I had down, but I came off as constipated—as she explained that since this assignment was off the books, they couldn’t provide support, only the location of a weapons cache I might find useful. Viviane signed off by promising me a proper fitting, should I ever get back to England, so she could find out how I measured up to my predecessors.

  Ray must have noticed my disappointment. Eager to give me something, he got personal. “You know, Kit Calabria and I had it out over that movie. If he had lived, I never would have worked for him again.”

  This was news to me. “Why?”

  Ray couldn’t believe my question. “Why? Because you almost died about ten times during shooting! It was like someone was out to get you.”

  Ray wasn’t lying. If you saw a scene in Near Death and wondered how we did it, the answer was we actually did it. Still, the desire to defend Kit was too strong to let it go. “We had no budget. Kit was desperate, and I thought I was invincible. We were both young.”

  “What you were was naive and eager to please. You ever grow out of that?”

  I developed a sudden interest in my coffee. We had passed the conversational limit I had when it came to talking about myself. “Missy still has my video watch. It made it about a day past filming before breaking.”

  “That’s how long it was supposed to last.” Ray could get loud when he wanted. For example, when he was feeling attacked. He leaned in and waited for me to fire back.