“You watch too many movies, Allen.”
That’s when it hit me what Niles Endsworth had been doing. During our conversation, he’d spoken exclusively in quotes from the Jove Brand movies. Either he was the biggest Brand fan this side of Layne Lackey, was going next-level method, or was having fun screwing with everyone. Whatever the reason, it made me like him.
“You still there, Allen?”
“Yeah. What were we talking about?”
“If I could trace Layne’s cell phone,” Stern replied. “No go. Location is disabled and no one picks up.”
We both went quiet, following our thoughts.
“Did you call it when we had lunch?” I asked.
“And when I had you in the backseat,” she replied.
“Did you look at that video I sent you with the Black Knight in it?”
Stern stopped to exhale. “I gave it a glance.”
“Believe me yet?”
“Anything else, Allen?”
“Thanks for both your protection and service,” I started, but she hung up on me after protection.
It was a long ride back to This Town, but I didn’t mind it the way I did all of four days ago. Ray had put a Jove Brand playlist on my watch to stream through the Bluetooth. The muffled sounds of the White Stag eating up the highway only added to the ambiance.
I stopped at a sushi place for a bowl of sashimi and a side of avocado that cost the same as an entire roll. I was getting back on the Stag when Ray called me with a suggestion.
“If you’re looking for leads why not search Layne Lackey’s place?” he asked.
Big detective I was. “The cops must have combed through it. Packed up all his devices, collected his papers.”
“Well with them looking out for you, why bother?”
“You’re right,” I admitted. “Don’t know where he lives though.”
“I’ll see what I can do about that.”
“You need to make yourself a robot suit so we can trade places,” I said.
“Who says I haven’t?” Ray replied and hung up.
It was full dark by the time I got to Missy’s Malibu beach house. It was a little place—all her places were—close enough to the studios to take meetings. The guards didn’t look at me after I typed in the gate code.
Inside the gate was a self-contained enclave with a full staff, including a community chef and doctor. The little houses weren’t much more than two-room cabins, with one of those rooms being the lavatory. Each cabin was walled off from the others with a stockade fence.
Once upon a time it had been studio housing, where the old moguls locked up their problem children. This was where they sent actors to dry out and chained up writers to force them to finish scripts. These days it served as a stash for misters and mistresses, a don’t-ask-don’t-tell motel.
I set up the pencil cameras in case someone came calling, scooped up the complimentary swag bag standard on all A-list celebrity doorsteps, and punched in the key code. All my clothing minus the bulletproof blazer went into the hamper for laundry service. After texting in a room-service order I jumped in the shower.
My meal was waiting when I got out, a hearty seafood stew with a side of nothing to sop it up. I stared at my phone while I ate, trying to decide if what I was thinking was a good idea. The problem was, I was running low on ideas, good, bad, or in-between. I picked up my phone and sent a text to Layne Lackey.
Watch your back, Black Knight.
I checked all the locks before sliding into a bed with two layers of blanket and about twenty pillows. Everything but the flannel top sheet went on the floor. I was drifting off when my phone vibrated with a text alert from an unknown caller.
I’m not the Black Knight.
Then who are you, sir? I texted back.
Not sir. Gamesman. Gamesman Brand.
I placed my phone down gently, as if its contents were under pressure. The enclave was gated, but the guard wasn’t the questioning type, not in a getaway reserved for clandestine visits. No way the Black Knight was able to track my phone, right?
I made a body out of pillows on the bed and threw the comforter over it. Then I used the rest of the pillows to make a nest on the floor, on the side of the bed opposite the door. It was a good thing Missy liked big clouds for pillows. I barely felt the Quarreler underneath mine.
I spent my forced day off doing interval sprints on the beach, avoiding what I knew needed to be done. I hoped Dina would finagle me access to Fedorov’s lair or Ray could hunt up Layne Lackey’s address and give me an excuse to procrastinate. The smart watch’s heart rate monitor let me know I was already losing my edge. Between short bursts of terror, the bulk of this gig was driving from place to place and eating crap.
I got plenty of looks from my neighbors and gave plenty back. Looking was fine. Touching wasn’t. The women I recognized were trouble and the ones I didn’t were more. There was a reason harems used to be guarded by eunuchs. The sultans did not tolerate interlopers.
After my too-long shower, I was completely out of excuses. Jaw clenched, I searched every inch of Missy’s beach house. There was no reason to believe any evidence of a secret wedding or forgotten will would be present. This was only one of her many residences, and if her wearing my watch from Near Death that Kit had gifted her was any indication, Missy kept her precious things close.
The combination of the small setting and Missy’s minimalist tendencies made my invasion of privacy relatively painless. The only item of interest was a DVD left in the player labeled Kit. I sat on the edge of the bed, close to the screen, and hit play on the remote.
The first video was brief, with Missy acting through audition pages and Kit behind the camera. The ones that followed were a mix of candid moments and one-scene plays. Most of them were Missy alone, though Kit was in some with the camera on a tripod. He wasn’t much of an actor, but after about thirty seconds of watching him I had to pause the tape. The lens of time had mercifully blurred my memory. Seeing him in sharp resolution cut deep.
There were hours of footage. Kit grew up in the independent film explosion and it showed. It was clear he had ambitions beyond Jove Brand. I kept my eyes peeled for clues, but didn’t spot a secret will or marriage license laid out on a table in the background.
Near the end of the footage, I made a cameo appearance. In the video, Kit and Missy are spitballing character names for whatever project they were dreaming up after Near Death. From off frame, I tap on the door and lie to Kit, telling him I’m going to grab a bite and crash and that I will see him in the morning.
It was a lie of omission. I leave out that his sister will be accompanying me. As far as Kit knew, Dina had left Hong Kong after her surprise set visit and the resulting blowup between them, awkwardly witnessed by the entire crew.
Kit had a lot on his mind and my betrayal went undiscovered. Though you never see me on screen, I sound exactly as naive as I was. Young men never realize when they are being seduced. They always think they’re the seducers.
I remembered the last night we were together in Hong Kong. Dina practically dragged me from the hotel, kept me up all night. My ego was at an all-time high. I really believed her intensity had everything to do with me.
I knew I should watch the DVD again, see if I missed anything, but I didn’t have the energy. I burrowed into the nest I made on the floor and tried measuring my breaths to clear my head. It didn’t work. Hours later, as I was drifting off, in the limbo between waking and dreaming, it came to me that Kit and Missy were not spitballing names for future movie characters.
They were picking baby names.
I woke up to missed calls from Dina and Ray. I called Dina back first.
“I swung an invite to Fedorov’s offshore operation through a friend of a friend,” she said. “You’re on the list as Connor Shaw.”
“Pretty cheeky alias.”
“Had to think of a name on the spot. I’m going to give you some GPS coordinates. If you have to write them down you better eat
them when you’re done.”
“I’ll carve them on these almonds,” I said.
Dina told me where to go and what to do when I got there, then asked, “How are you going to get Fedorov talking? Or even get close to him?”
“Same way I did with you. I can still do those handstand push-ups, if I’m near a wall.”
“Hope you can swim,” Dina said and hung up.
Ray was next.
“I’ve got Layne Lackey’s address,” he said.
“How is it you know computers better than me?”
“That I got a guy for. Layne’s place is less than an hour away,” Ray said. He fed the address directly into my GPS. “You got a good workout in yesterday.”
Ray was monitoring more than my location. “You see my heart rate in real time?”
“Big Brother loves you,” Ray replied.
“Why do I even bother to call you?”
“To maintain an air of propriety.”
“Good-bye Ray.”
Ray sent me a location to gas up on the way to Layne Lackey’s place. My clothes were clean and pressed with a paper band wrapped around them like a ribbon. I got dressed and loaded a yellow quiver into the Quarreler. The gate guard didn’t make eye contact when I left. I almost asked if being a eunuch solved any of his problems.
I wove the White Stag through traffic, laughing in the face of the gridlock while reclaiming hours of my life. With the helmet on you couldn’t tell it was me, which was good because plenty of people were taking pictures of the famous bike. My appearance would probably get written off as a public relations stunt for the next Brand movie.
Judging from his place, Layne Lackey had been doing a hell of a lot better than me. His condo was converted from a local landmark. They kept the veneer but knocked down walls and put in staircases, turning ten rooms into five units. Layne’s was a corner unit. The second-floor turret gave a panoramic view of the boulevard that once defined This Town, though these days the location wasn’t a selling point. Quite the contrary.
I pulled into the spot directly in front of the door on the presumption it was Layne’s. His car was gathering rust in police impound. That was too bad. If I remembered right, it was a nice ride, the same model as Viviane Lake’s in Right of Way, back before every film turned into a product-placement extravaganza. It was a shame, but Dina had to do everything she could to mitigate the series’ progressively inflating budgets.
I set up a few pencil cameras on the Stag, one facing the condo and one facing the road, then made for Layne’s door cool and casual. Just a friend stopping by to feed the fish. There were a lot of cars around, considering the time of day. In This Town, people kept weird hours, if they kept them at all.
I slid the vibrating pick into the deadbolt. Ray’s little gadget set the tumblers in about two seconds, but turning it was awkward. It took two full twists. I hoped no one was watching. Stern was looking for a reason to slap me in cuffs and this was an actual crime.
The bolt popped. Loudly. I let myself in and closed the door behind me. The power was still running, which was good because Layne liked curtains. Opening them for light would have created more witness opportunities. The alarm box staring me in the face read Disarmed. Either Layne forgot to set it or the cops did. Either way I got lucky, because I had no idea what I would have done if it was on.
All the normal house sounds seemed suspicious. I drew the Quarreler. Either this place was empty and no one would catch me being overdramatic, or the Black Knight was hiding around a corner and I was right to be.
I cleared the closet to my left first, learning Layne liked coats and believed in umbrellas. His place had a weird layout, a result of the renovations. The entry led into a combination kitchen-dining room with a half-bath tucked around the corner. A spiral stair in the other corner went up. I decided to finish checking the first floor.
There was a living room past the kitchen, separated from it by a half wall. One long wall was dominated by a huge television and the other shelved movies. A sliding door was set into the short back wall. It looked out into a half-decent atrium. I got the impression the living room didn’t see a lot of use, which was kind of sad. It was the place Layne had designated for company.
I headed upstairs, Quarreler first, and almost shot Sir Collin Prestor. A cardboard stand-up of him, at least. It was from The Gamesman’s Grounds, where Jove Brand—after spending two acts being hounded around the globe—led his pursuers back to his ancestral home, not realizing that was what his foe wanted the entire time . . .
Sir Collin sold the costuming, looking natural in a big-game hunter outfit in which 99 percent of the population would come off as pretentious. He angled his Quarreler low so we could see his desperate but determined expression. He didn’t look like someone who would be caught off guard on a rooftop.
Layne obviously spent his time on the second floor, which was both master suite and Jove Brand fan museum. The walls were lined with vintage posters and signed photos, including one of Kit and I posing on the set of Near Death. How he had gotten his hands on it was beyond me. Blurry and with a slight reflection, it was a poor print. The only other photo with me in it was from my first convention appearance. Layne and I were standing outside a meeting room, having just co-hosted a screening of Near Death.
This was six years ago, right after Near Death leaked online. For the dozen before that, there were whispers about a mythical Jove Brand movie released overseas for a single weekend. A lost Brand film never screened in America or Europe, with no home video run.
Kit might have gotten away with it, protected the brand—pun intended—without hurting its market. Kept the franchise as worldwide blockbusters instead of straight-to-video fodder. But there was no predicting the internet.
Fortunately, by the time Near Death spread through cyberspace, there were already four hugely successful Sir Collin Prestor installments out. Those films created a buffer that transformed Near Death from franchise killer to cult classic. The movie was everywhere inside of a year. Not only the entire film, but edited highlights and countless GIFs.
If there was ever a flick made to be viewed in five-second bursts it was Near Death. Whether it was me executing a twenty-four-punch combination—referred to in the movie as the “full quiver”—or me pulling off the helicopter jump-kick that almost killed Yuen, or me emptying dual Quarrelers point-blank into a squib-vested Tzu Warrior. If you saw one clip, you wondered what the heck you were looking at. If you saw five, you told yourself you had to find the whole thing. Invite your friends over. Make a night of it.
It didn’t hurt that Missy Cazale was in it. Missy, who had played queens and indentured servants and Nobel-winning scientists. Missy, who won an Oscar portraying a mother forced to steal her own embryos for the stem cells to heal her dying child. Now you could see her cowering in a wet tank top.
Poor Missy. The sad truth was the haters were waiting in the shadows, eager to take you down. And the internet was nothing but shadows. If you Googled Missy Cazale, in the first ten results you would find a clip of Missy ripping off her bloody blouse in defiance. In the next ten, you’d see her mouthing “By Jove!,” as all Jove Brand’s lovers must, per contractual requirement.
Half of the problem was Missy acted the hell out of Near Death. You believed her terror or vapidness. The other half was, due to a combination of casting and contractual issues, Missy had to play twins. One of which embodied “an upstanding English girl of breeding” and the other “a trollop who, after a tryst with Brand, must pay the price for her loose morals.”
The first Near Death rips were Thai-dubbed bootlegs sold at comic cons. Then an English print was dumped online, booty for the pirates. Finally, in an If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them move, Dina included Near Death in the Jove Brand fifty-year anniversary boxed set, digitally remastered and sound-corrected in a futile attempt to polish a turd.
To everyone’s surprise and dread, that boxed set sold like hotcakes. To this day, it is the only wa
y to legally own Near Death. Not long after, Layne Lackey contacted me via email. Had I heard of the convention circuit? Would I be willing to make a paid appearance? Did I retain my wardrobe?
I remembered the moment we took this picture. I was shell-shocked. The audience loved Near Death. They roared with laughter and clapped. Every time they couldn’t believe what they thought was about to happen, it happened.
Standing there, in Layne’s little Jove Brand museum, I got a little choked up. In the end, Layne Lackey had done a lot for me, both good and bad. I was going to miss him. Eventually.
Besides the cardboard stand-ups and posters, Layne had a decent collection of Jove Brand memorabilia. Not of the same quality or quantity as Bryce Crisp’s, but respectable. I made my way past his waterbed—someone should have told Layne he was asking for trouble putting it in an upstairs bedroom, or, you know, anywhere —toward where his home office was set up. He had a beautiful reproduction of Tender’s three-fold desk, complete with the Herne the Hunter and stag inlays. I sat in the chair—also a reproduction—and started searching.
The cops had seized the computer and any papers. The drawers were raided, minus the office supplies and an occasional Bowman Fletcher paperback. It was silly of me to think I could find anything law-enforcement professionals had missed. Of course, how many of them were hardcore Jove Brand fans? Did they remember the scene in For Love or Money where Tender fought off an assassination attempt?
I ran my fingers over the carved relief of the long bow, then drew the string back. A latch released and the hidden drawer knocked into my leg.
“I do my best work from here,” I said, quoting Tender as I reached inside. I knew what it was by feel. There was nothing else in the secret cubby. As far as replica Quarrelers went, this was a good one.
But mine was better.
I set the replica down on the desk. Here I thought I was onto something. This shamus stuff sure had its ups and downs. Turning in the chair, I took in the rest of the room. Twin posters for Ungentlemanly Warfare flanked the sliding door out to the terrace.
Jove Brand is Near Death Page 15