The Martini Shot

by George Pelecanos

  I parked my four-banger rental and walked across a dirt-and-asbestos lot, past Teamsters who had shuttled in crew and brought the trucks, and our security people, a freelance outfit of fathers, tight friends, cousins, uncles, daughters, and sons, all of them black and local. Security was run by a man named Toomer who had built his business rapidly after the state’s film production tax credit was enacted, and he now serviced the majority of the shows and features that came through town. His staff were all physically imposing, the women included, which was helpful in defusing a situation before it progressed into something violent. They had nicknames like Manimal, She Girl, Creep, and Seminole Joe, and they were family men and women who rode motorcycles on weekends, and owned homes, and barbecued, and tended to their lawns. Some had been straight-up gangsters. One of them, Barry, aka Black Barry, a very large man with a bulbous nose and ridiculous guns, said “Sir” to me but cut his eyes away as I passed.

  In the warehouse, I got my sides and watched the first rehearsal, a three-page scene in the Homicide offices (INT: HOMICIDE BULL PEN, POLICE HQ—DAY) between Tanner and his team. Brad Slaughter was there, ready as usual, along with the multiethnic cast of young actors who played his detectives. It was six a.m., and they had all been in the hair and makeup trailer since four. Despite the early hour, they looked fresh and groomed. Our hair and makeup department was aces.

  Watching the rehearsal, it was clear to me that I had over-written the scene, and I noticed some spots where I could make some trims. It was a delicate thing to do. Actors, especially the ones who were trying to get noticed, didn’t like to lose their lines. They were like the rest of the crew, always working on getting their next gig. As a courtesy, I conferred with Alan Lomax and told him what I thought we should do.

  “I want to cut Alicia’s line,” I said. “What she’s saying, about the suspect having priors? We’ve mentioned that twice before in this ep. The information has already been conveyed.”

  “It’ll save me a little time in coverage,” said Lomax. “You want to tell her or should I?”

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  After the rehearsal, I caught up with Alicia Nichols, who played Detective Angie Antonelli (the “earthy” Italian-American detective on the squad), on the way to her trailer. She was an actress who always knew her lines, hit her marks, and was unfailingly polite to the staff, from production assistants on up. Alicia Nichols was well liked, but that didn’t stop some of the male crew from calling her Alicia Nipples, or just Bullets, due to the fact that her bumps, long as fingertips, were visible through the fabric of her shirt and bra in every shot. In the old days, the network would have had to cover her up, but no more. Her “points” were considered a ratings booster.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve gotta cut your only line.”

  “It wasn’t a very good line, anyway, Victor,” she said, and my face must have dropped, because she laughed and said, “I’m joking.”

  “Right,” I said. She wasn’t really joking. The line I’d written for her, He’s got a rap sheet as long as my arm, was completely generic. Annette and I could have composed it while drunk in bed.

  “You’ll still be prominent in the shot.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ll make it up to you,” I said, and I would. She was a nice kid, someone’s daughter who was out here trying to make it like everyone else. I’d give her some choice lines in one-fourteen. A soliloquy about a dog she once owned as a kid, and how she’d had to put it down. Something heartwarming like that.

  I went back to the set as the stand-ins arrived, the grips set up the sticks and removed walls to accommodate the camera, and the electrics brought in lights. Ellen was talking to Gandy, one of Skylar’s people, informing him that he was being promoted to gaffer. Gandy was mature, in his forties, a good lighting man who could handle the mechanics of the job. But, through no fault of his own, he had an interior personality and would make a poor manager. By the end of the shoot, Ellen would bring in someone from out of town to fill Skylar’s position. Gandy would be a stopgap measure for now.

  Brandon, our tall, bearded prop master, rolled the cart into Village and began to unfold the chairs.

  “Here you go, boss,” he said, as he placed my chair beside me.

  “How do you know that chair’s mine?”

  “It’s got your name on it, sir.” It was our usual routine, but he didn’t smile or look my way.

  I had been thinking about Brandon just a few hours earlier, when I was lying awake in bed.

  “You got a few minutes to talk to me later on?” I said.

  “Sure thing,” he said.

  He proceeded to unfold the director’s chair, Lillie’s, Ellen’s, Eagle’s, and the cast chairs for the lead and supporting actors. Brandon said nothing else and never once looked me in the eye.

  The long day went slowly. Lunch, under a tent outside the warehouse, was a bit of a treat, as our caterer, Mike Perez, grilled filets and lobster tails (Surf and Turf Day) on a grate set over hot coals in halved oil drums. It was the last shooting day of the week, and the mood ordinarily would have been upbeat, but Skylar’s death had thrown a cloud over the set. I sat with the hair and makeup department, pretended to study the family photographs on their phones; listened to the stories about their boyfriends, husbands, and children; and quietly ate my food. I looked around for Annette, but she was not in the tent. She had not been to the stages as of yet. I missed her.

  We shot into the night. In the late hours, I had a minor bump in the road with an actress named Susan Pine, a lovely, petite young woman who played Constance Browning, written as an Ivy League–bred blonde who had ditched the plan to work for her father (he was, naturally, a buttoned-down, “cold and distant” industrialist, rich white men being the last allowable villains on television) after her graduation from Harvard Business School. Instead she had entered the police academy, where she thought she could “make a difference.”

  In the scene as written, Constance was in the Homicide offices, talking to Cobb McCord about a case, after hours. She was sitting, of course, on the edge of his desk, and he was seated in his chair, looking up at her with “male intent” (apparently McCord had yet to wake up one morning and “think” he was gay). McCord asked Constance if she’d like to discuss the case over a beer at Hawk’s, the squad’s local watering hole.

  CONSTANCE

  I don’t like Hawk’s. Their jukebox plays country.

  MCCORD

  How about Bennie’s? They’ve got a rockin jukebox.

  CONSTANCE

  Too crowded.

  MCCORD

  Where do you want to go, then?

  CONSTANCE

  (amorously)

  I have beer at my place.

  Susan didn’t want to say that last line. We did many takes, and she said something different every time, but not those words. Lillie had tried to get her to do it, and so had Lomax, but to no avail.

  “Will you go in?” said an exasperated Lomax, turning to me in the Village.

  I walked onto the set and got up close to Susan, keeping my voice low, keeping our conversation private. The crew and Andre Robbins, the young actor who played McCord, instinctively stepped out of range.

  “Uh-oh,” said Susan. “They sent in the heavy artillery.”

  “What’s the problem, Sue?”

  “That line, ‘I have beer at my place.’ Why is she being so sexually aggressive with this guy? I mean, she’s supposed to be repressed, isn’t she? That’s how you guys defined her in the bible. The emotionally stunted daughter of a cool, distant father, Constance has trouble with romantic relationships, blah blah blah. I just don’t think I would say that.”

  “You’re not saying it. Your character is saying it.”

  “Okay. I don’t think my caricature would say that.”

  Despite my growing impatience, I smiled. She always called her character her “caricature,” and she was correct. Her character was not a recogn
izable human being, but a type. Susan was a smart young woman with good instincts and a keen sense of humor. But I had to do my job.

  “Well, we’ve done it several ways now, Sue. Do me a favor and give it to me the way it’s written, so we can have a take or two that way as well.”

  “But if I say the line as written, that’s the take you’ll use when you cut it together. I know how you all do.”

  “True,” I admitted.

  “I don’t want to say that line,” said Susan Pine. “That’s my position.”

  “So, in other words, that’s the Sue Pine position.”

  “The Supine position,” she said, crossing her arms and giving me a charitable smirk. “I’ve never heard that before.”

  “I’m quite the wit.”

  “I’m still not saying the line, Vic.”

  We stood there and tried to stare each other down. I knew she wasn’t going to budge, and we had to get through the day. I gave in to move things along. Plus, she was right.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll give that line to Andre. He’ll say to you, ‘I have beer at my place.’ And then your caricature can fork him.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Let’s get back to work.”

  “Vic?” She touched my arm. “How come you never asked me out for a beer?”

  “I’m not supposed to fraternize with the talent,” I said. “Matter of fact, I think it’s in my contract. But thank you for that. You made my night, Sue.”

  The truth was, she wasn’t my type. And anyway, I only had eyes for one woman.

  I was spoken for.

  Later, as were shooting the singles of the last scene, I went over to the prop truck, backed against one of the warehouse bays, and walked through its open gate. Brandon was inside, doing some paperwork back in the office, called the Gold Room, probably because it held a safe. In the safe were real, operable guns.

  I moved past bins and totes labeled with character names. Tanner’s bin held his badge, cuffs, rings, watches, and his plastic Glock, while Hart’s held her reading glasses, her favorite pens, and the jewelry she wore in every ep. There were entire bins devoted to sunglasses, and jewel cases of wedding bands and fake diamond rings. Steel shelves held multiple jugs of grape juice and apple juice, which doubled for red and white wine, and bottles of nonalcoholic beer to be poured into bottles of Bud and Heineken for our bar scenes. One drink cart, now folded and up against a wall, could service hundreds of extras. All of the non-effect illusions we sold to the public emanated from this relatively small truck. Brandon had a boss, who worked from the office, dealt with our EPs, and attended tone meetings, and he had an assistant and an on-set dresser as well. But he was the main man who placed the props in front of the camera from call to wrap.

  “Sir.”

  “Brandon.”

  He had been seated at a desk, but stood to meet me. Behind him, on the wall, was a bulletin board showing cards of the current day’s scenes, detailing the props that would be needed for each.

  We shook hands.

  “Just Vic tonight,” I said. “Okay?”

  “Sure. You want a drink?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  The prop truck doubled as the unofficial bar for the crew who were so inclined. Especially on stage days, when there were no moves, select crew members began to control-drink late in the day and continued to drink until wrap. I knew it, and it was understood that I knew and wouldn’t rat anyone out. As long as everyone did their jobs and made sound decisions, I was good with it. We were all adults.

  Brandon was tall, blue-eyed, and fully bearded. He looked like a dude who drives a windowless van from the woods and steps out of it with bong smoke and a teenaged girl trailing behind him. But he wasn’t a stoner, or not much more of one than anyone else on the crew. He had a master’s in English lit and was better read than I would ever be. Not that he was destined to be a professor or a writer. He was born and bred to do the job he had now.

  How Brandon had gotten here was a common story in prop departments: it was a family business. His father had been a prop master for thirty years, and Brandon had grown up working on his old man’s truck. Further, Brandon was mentally suited for the job. He had the kind of mind that could recall a watch worn by a day player four seasons back, or the exact type of weapon a tender kept hidden beneath the bar in an episode long since forgotten by the rest of our crew.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  I took a chair and pulled it over to his desk. We stared at each other for a while. He looked away, then looked back at me.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I think you know what this is about. Let’s not waste too much time on this, Brandon.”

  “You here as a producer?”

  “I’m here as Skylar’s friend. If you’re straight with me, you and I don’t have a problem.”

  “Ask me anything.”

  “You gave him some prop money, didn’t you.”

  Brandon nodded.

  “Why?”

  “He was my friend, too,” said Brandon. “He was in trouble, and I helped him out.”

  “That was pretty stupid.”

  “I know it was, and I told him so. But I couldn’t change his mind, and I couldn’t say no. I guess I should have been stronger.”

  “Laura told me that he had mixed the counterfeit with the real. How did he expect to pull it off?”

  “He put real bills over fake, for starters. It’s called a Jamaican roll.”

  I made a mental note of the term. “Okay, but…”

  “Right. Whoever he was dealing with, they were gonna find out eventually. He said he only needed a couple of days. He’d tell them he was unaware the money was counterfeit, that he’d been tricked, too. Then he’d pay them in full, with actual money, soon as he got flush.”

  This checked out with what Laura had told me. I nodded and said, “But how did he expect to fool them from the get-go?”

  “I do good work, Victor.”

  “How did you do it? Doesn’t it say, right on the bills, ‘for motion picture use only’ ?”

  “It’s in the same small font as the type on a real bill, so it’s not too noticeable. But, yeah. There’s the other kind that switches the president’s face with the denomination; they put Ben Franklin’s mug on a twenty, like that. I use the first kind.”

  “Prop money looks fine on camera, but when you hold it in your hand, you know it’s not right.”

  “I age it. Some guys use nicotine spray. I use tea dye. Steep tea bags in water, then soak the prop money in it and let the money dry.”

  “Wardrobe does the same thing with clothing, don’t they?”

  “Same process. It adds a yellow-brown tone to the paper and it softens it up, makes it feel real.”

  “So at first glance, and touch, you can get away with it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Until someone tries to spend it.”

  “I told Skylar that, too.” Brandon fished a cigarette from the breast pocket of his Western-style shirt, but he didn’t light it. “Do you know who he was dealing with?”

  “A couple of collection guys. That’s about it.”

  “The police talked to me. Apparently my initials were in Skylar’s ledger book.”

  “Did you tell them about any of this? Did you talk about what kind of mess he was in?”

  “I didn’t tell them a thing.”

  “Neither did I.”

  We stared at each other again. This time, Brandon held my eyes.

  “Skylar fronted a pound of weed to a guy on our crew,” I said, “and the guy didn’t pay him for it.”

  “Yeah. The guy rotted him.”

  Rotted. That was a new expression to me. I made note of that, too.

  “Who was it?” I said.

  “Barry in security,” said Brandon, without hesitation.

  “Black Barry?”

  “Yes.” He struck a match and lit his cigarette. He wasn’t supposed to smoke on the truck, but h
e had been jonesing for it and I made no comment. His eyes had filled with tears.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Brandon. You were just trying to get him out of a jam.”

  “I shouldn’t be thinking of me, anyway. I’m here, alive and working. I’m going home to my wife and baby tonight. It’s him who’s dead.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wish I could do something.”

  “You can,” I said. “You could lend me a gun.”

  “Fuck no, sir. You know I can’t open that safe for you. I’d be looking at time if one of my guns had a body attached to it and got traced back to me.”

  “I’m not talking about a real gun. I’m talking about one of those fake-ass plastic guns you give Brad Slaughter.”

  “What would you do with it?”

  “Will you give me one?”

  He nodded slowly and dragged on his cigarette. “Vic?”

  “What?”

  “You think those guys murdered Skylar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But I knew I was going to find out.

  After we wrapped, Annette came up to my suite. I had lit some candles, put on some music, and opened a bottle of Rodney Strong. I was ready for her as she came through the door. She was dressed in sweats and had a large leather satchel swung over one shoulder.

  “Hi,” she said, and smiled sweetly.

  “Hi.” I kissed her, and nodded at her bag. “Are you staying for the weekend?”

  “I need to use your bathroom. Pour me a glass of wine, handsome.”

  She closed the door behind her as I retrieved two short glasses from the kitchen cabinet. I poured Merlot for the two of us and waited. It seemed to me that she was taking a long time. Maybe I was anxious. We’d skipped a night of intimacy, which was unusual for us. Since we’d been together, we’d rarely gone a day without making love.

  Annette emerged from the bathroom, shutting the light behind her. She’d changed her clothing. She was now wearing a low-cup black bra, lace black panties, garters, black fishnet stockings, and simple black evening shoes—ankle straps with small rhinestones across the bridge. She walked toward me, languorously, with a feline sway. Her breasts heaved bountifully in her bra, and her thigh muscles rippled as she moved.