Six Passengers, Five Parachutes

by Ian Bull

  Paul clears his throat. “I’ll be at my desk,” he says, then pushes out the glass doors. He’s really going to the lobby to meet my unexpected guest who’s coming soon.

  It’s showtime. I turn to the man at the head of the table. “David, I apologize for all this trouble I’ve caused.”

  He waves his hand at me. “Please. Saul and I handle bigger problems than this.”

  Saul hits a button on the telephone console in the middle of the table. Two small cameras rise out of the middle of the console, facing each side.

  “We are in the conference room of The Griffin Agency, and we will be recording this deposition on three cameras,” Saul says, and points at the two cameras on the table, and then a small one above the flat screen TV on the wall behind David. “Before we begin, would you like to see how the cameras are framed?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Howard Balog says.

  Saul hits another button and red lights come on the cameras. We’re rolling.

  Saul launches into a legalese explanation of the particulars of the meeting—that it’s an attempt to settle a personal injury civil case…blah blah blah…this meeting is independent of any assault and battery criminal case the DA may be considering, but if an agreement is reached, the plaintiff would request that the DA drop all criminal charges…la de da de da…for which there may be agreed settlements…yadda da da da…and signed non-disclosure agreements.

  During this preamble, I catch David’s eye and he shrugs. He doesn’t care. I’m the one who will ultimately pay for these theatrics. Saul will bill me, and the agency will still make money. Yet, if this lasts too long, David will resent me. A lawsuit is work, and I’m supposed to earn him money by acting in movies. I glance at Le Clerq and he smiles. He’s making money off me, too. Either I pay him to go away or we go to court, which he’ll turn into an endless and lucrative media circus, generating stories for the tabloids that are probably paying him, as long as he keeps the circus going.

  “Thank you for that summary,” Howard says as Saul finishes.

  “We suggest you settle this here. I think we’d all rather avoid court,” Saul says.

  “We don’t mind going to court. We’d win,” Balog says, calling his bluff. Le Clerq snorts out a laugh, and a piece muffin flies from his mouth. He turns his nose up at me and grins.

  “Maybe not. And we’d also countersue.”

  “Claiming what?” Balog says. “We have a dozen witnesses who say that Julia Travers assaulted and battered my client, causing irreparable physical damage. Even with surgery and rehabilitation, he won’t walk the same again.”

  “Why wasn’t Julia arrested on the spot, then?” Saul asks. “Because none of the witnesses, all of them Los Angeles police or firefighters, felt she committed a crime. It’s Simon Le Clerq who is guilty of stalking, harassment, and lying in wait. We have eighteen months of evidence to prove it. Julia Travers finally reacted in self-defense when he cornered her at the accident site.”

  “Julia Travers has an anger issue, and what she did to my client is part of an ongoing problem she exhibits when she’s in public,” Balog says. “We can prove that in a criminal case.”

  Saul Berlin and Howard Balog each sip coffee and drum their pencils, mirroring each other.

  “Well? Do you have a number in mind?” Saul asks.

  “We were expecting you to make an offer,” Howard says, pretending to be insulted.

  “Come on, Howard. It’s your job to ask for compensation before you can even sue.”

  Howard Balog smirks and opens his manila folder. “This is our official demand letter.” He slides a legal-size envelope across the table toward Saul—but I grab it in mid-slide across the mahogany and slip it under my purse.

  “I’m willing to pay it,” I say.

  “You haven’t even looked at it,” Howard laughs.

  “Julia, you should let me handle this,” Saul says, putting a firm hand on my wrist.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket. That’s Paul texting me that my guest is here.

  “This meeting is still confidential, right?” I ask. “Otherwise, all agreements are off?”

  “Yes,” Saul says, with paternal condescension. “But let us handle the legal work.”

  Paul pushes open the big glass doors. Saul spins around in surprise.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Paul says, and he hands me a remote and gestures toward the flat screen on the wall. “The IT department loaded the photos. Just hit play.”

  All four men stare at me like I just insulted their mothers. I hold up the remote and look at each of them, my eyes landing last on Le Clerq. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

  “May I?” I ask, and hit play, without waiting for his answer.

  A montage of photos begins, set to classical music. Le Clerq emerges from a car, his face clearly visible. He’s not wearing a leg brace, nor is he using crutches. He walks easily across the street and approaches a woman standing under a street lamp and smoking a cigarette.

  “This is Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, one block west of Highland,” I say. “These photos were taken eight hours ago, and that is you, Simon Le Clerq, and you’re not using crutches or wearing a brace. Are you sure you really need total knee replacement surgery?”

  Le Clerq’s eyes turn to slits as water pools on his forehead. Howard shakes his head like he just lost a winning lottery ticket. In the next photos, Le Clerq talks to a tall, attractive black woman with fake boobs and a bouffant blonde wig. She sports thigh-high boots, a half t-shirt, and a red miniskirt. He pulls out a wallet.

  “Simon Le Clerq is talking to Brazen Belladonna, a transvestite prostitute, and they’re negotiating a price for oral sex in his car. I also have the audio, if anyone cares to hear it,” I say, which makes Le Clerq growl like an angry badger. The next photos show Brazen and Le Clerq crossing to his car, climbing into the backseat, and his legs and arms up against the backseat window. “Simon Le Clerq is not as injured as he claims to be—”

  “You fucking bitch!”

  Le Clerq launches himself out of his chair and across the table. He grabs the lapels of my Chanel jacket. The other three men gasp and roll back in their chairs like scared grandmothers. Le Clerq lifts me out of my shoes as he pulls me onto the table, but I pop my knees up onto the wood and under me, so I’m kneeling. That gives me time to slip my right hand up between his two arms. I twist his left hand away and bend his wrist back in a jiu-jitsu lock. I push hard on his wrist and he freezes.

  “Let go or I’ll break your wrist,” I say. He releases his right hand, but I don’t let go of him. He stares at the ceiling with his eyes rolled back and his left arm straight, gurgling and moaning. I’m still kneeling in the middle of the mahogany table, and Howard Balog now stares straight up my blue Chanel skirt. I’m wearing white underwear with tiny red hearts—a free Valentine’s giveaway from Victoria’s Secret last month.

  “Howard, my eyes are up here,” I say, and Howard looks at me like he’s been caught in a strip club. His mouth drops open as his skin blushes deep red. “Tell your client to calm down.”

  “Calm down, Simon.”

  Le Clerq deflates like a bouncy house losing all its air, turning to soft rubber. I let him go and he falls back in his chair. He nurses his wrist and stares at the ceiling.

  “Can we stop these cameras?” I ask, then climb off the table and sit back in my chair. My underwear is halfway up one butt cheek, but I can’t reach up and do an adjustment right now.

  Saul mutters some legalese, hits a button, and all the red lights go off. David Griffin stares at me like he’s seeing me for the first time in ten years. Maybe he is.

  “I’m just an actress, but did Mr. Le Clerq just assault me?” I ask, making eye contact with Howard and Saul. “And did we just videotape it?”

  “No comment,” Howard says.

  “Let me give this back to you,” I say to Howard Balog, and slide his envelope across his table to him. “Now, I have something to present
to you.”

  On cue, Paul pushes open the glass doors behind Saul and me—and Steven walks into the room. David and Le Clerq push back in their chairs again, as if being pulled by magnets.

  “What? Is that you?” Le Clerq asks.

  “Where did you come from?” Saul asks as Steven sits down next to me.

  “Hello, Steven. Good to see you,” David says, smiling.

  “Who is this guy?” Balog asks.

  Le Clerq stares at him with jealous amazement, like his rival just rose from the dead. I pat Steven’s back and feel his ropy muscles under his shoulder blades. “This is Steven Quintana. In Simon Le Clerq’s photos from last week, he and Rikki Lassen appear to be dead. But he is alive, and only a few people know. For his safety, we’d like to keep it that way for four more days.”

  “This is the strangest deposition I’ve ever attended,” Saul announces.

  “It’s about to get stranger, because I have a counteroffer,” I say. “I want to offer Mr. Le Clerq $30,000 for his pain and suffering. I’d like to give him $10,000 of that right now.”

  Le Clerq tilts his head as if pondering the offer, when in fact he has no real choice.

  “However, we want you to work for us. There’s a reality TV show going into production right now. It’s a secret show, under the radar, but with your connections to the reality TV world, we think you can find out where it’s being produced, who’s being hired, and help get Steven on the show.”

  “What if I just take the $10,000?” Le Clerq asks.

  “You can’t. We want you to sit here and roll phone calls until you find something,” I say.

  “And if I refuse?’

  “We release our new photos and audio of you to the tabloids.”

  David swivels in his chair and smiles. Saul chews the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Howard Balog throws up his hands. “We’re done here, Simon. Just agree.”

  Steven leans forward across the table and offers to shake Le Clerq’s hand, but Le Clerq stares at Steven’s fingers like he’d rather bite them off.

  “Simon, we drank a lot of martinis at Musso and Frank’s. Remember?”

  “I remember. Then you changed.”

  “I almost got killed in the Bahamas. That changes you. And before that, I was an Army reconnaissance photographer, and that changed me, too. And when I started hanging out with Julia, you fucked with us and ruined our lives. Remember that? That changed me, too.”

  Le Clerq shrugs and rolls his tongue against the inside of his mouth and looks down his nose at Steven, refusing to answer. He still hurts from the failed bromance, I guess.

  “Clean slate. You get $10,000 today. Get me on that show, and you get $20,000 more. It’s a good deal, and my arm’s getting sore holding my hand out in midair. Come on.”

  Le Clerq stares at Steven’s outstretched hand, and he shakes it. Both men laugh and look at their hands. They almost seem like friends again…almost.

  “You still know everyone who works in reality TV?” Steven asks.

  Le Clerq nods.

  “Let’s get you a phone and get started.”

  David, Saul, and Howard, powerful men who usually swagger, sneak stunned glances at each other and then at Steven, the new dominant male in the room. Steven seems calm, even energized. This is his comfort zone, and I realize that may not be such a good thing.

  A clammy sweat of regret hits me. Steven’s plan is working. My lawsuit is gone, and he’s got a solid strategy and four days to make his dream come true. I was hoping Carl would come back, or Mendoza and Taylor would find out enough in time to stop him, but that might not happen now. The deal I made now feels too dangerous.

  Chapter 32

  * * *

  Robert Snow

  Day 11: Tuesday Morning

  Tucson, Arizona

  Hire one more person than you need, in every department. That’s how I usually staff a production, but not this one. Instead, I’m hiring one less, and working them harder but giving them more money, just like Boss Man does with me. Fewer are better on this production.

  “The terrain maps are here!” a voice yells. I walk to the mezzanine railing and look down at the empty warehouse floor. Young Jim Hardwick, the production assistant, pushes a cart full of long mailing tubes.

  “Unroll four and pin them to that corkboard against the wall,” I shout down at him.

  “We have no push pins.”

  Jim is a Marine vet with a less than honorable discharge. After two tours in Afghanistan, he was back at Camp Pendleton and self-medicating his PTSD with bong hits on the beach every night. After three warnings, he finally sucker punched the MP who arrested him. Now, he can’t get VA benefits or a job, and I’m the first person to hire him in eight months.

  I take out my Costco card and credit card and fling them like tiny ninja weapons at him. He catches them in mid-air. “Take these and go to Costco, and then to Office Supply Warehouse. Get everything you think a hungry and empty office needs.”

  “What if they ask for ID?” he asks.

  “Then call me.”

  “How do I know what to get?”

  Fill your cart, text me everything that’s in it, and I’ll check your list. If I have to add less than ten more items, you get a $100 bonus today. If I have to add less than five, $200.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he says, heading out the roll up doors.

  “And forget the rest!” I shout at him.

  He gives me a Marine “Ooh Rah” as he exits.

  We’re in the anonymous South Gate Business Park in Tucson, right off Highway 10, a stone’s throw from Office Supply Warehouse, five minutes from the Holiday Inn Hotel and Suites, and ten minutes from Ryan Airfield. We’re renting 3,000 square feet of warehouse space with a metal staircase that leads up to a 1,500-square-foot office mezzanine. I told our landlord our cover story about updating terrain maps of the Sonoran Desert, but he didn’t care.

  I run my “shit list” through my mind. My overwhelming tasks are one: get the transmitters and cameras working; two: hire a qualified crew to rig them; three: get Hachiro and his team to finalize the game design, get it approved, and buy what they need for the buildout; four: get a crazy but qualified pilot to fly my DC-9; five: find an American contestant. All in four days. It seems impossible, but I’m already handling one through four, while Tina is handling number five, along with finishing the graphics package. We’ve done it before, and when you accomplish the impossible once, it’s your new normal. That is my mantra.

  I stare down at the warehouse’s open space below me. Jim has arranged folding tables and chairs into four sections. One quadrant is for the engineer, Lionel Bachman, who arrives tonight with all his gear. He’s in charge of Impossible Task Number One—getting the cameras and transmitter working. He must prep twenty dome cameras, then hardwire them to a NASA transmitter that will zing twenty separate HD video feeds (each with two channels of audio) across 500 miles of desert and the Sea of Cortez to the receiving antennae at the TV station in La Paz, where Boss Man and his crew will download and turn it all into a TV show.

  Lionel worked on the Mars missions at Cal Tech in Pasadena for years until he was passed over for a promotion to project manager one too many times, then made terrorist threats against his boss and was fired. This is his first job in sixteen months, so he’s happy to achieve the impossible. My next challenge is finding him a qualified crew to rig all the gear on the plane.

  It’s time to pace. I walk back between the production desks of the carpeted mezzanine office area, which is suspended on steel girders above the back half of the warehouse.

  “More ripper phones are coming in,” Kat says, hanging up her phone as I walk past. Kat and her twin sister Sydney are the only ones at desks so far. The other four desks are empty.

  “What about better cable lines? We need faster Internet,” I say.

  “The landlord will install them tonight,” Sydney answers, pointing at me with her pencil.

  Kat and S
ydney are sisters in their thirties, ex-strippers with black hair, olive skin, and tattoos of roses and thorns all over their arms. They made a fortune off fetish porn DVDs in their small Arizona home until neighbors shut them down. Their former “business partners” insist the sisters owe them money, so they went underground with their mountain of cash. But now they’re running out. They know TV production and how to save a buck. So far, they’ve scored office space, the rental cars, and the Holiday Inn Suites where we’re staying, all paid in cash.

  Their “to-do list” is written in marker on erasable whiteboards mounted on the wall: SUVS, PER DIEM, FOOD, PHONES, GAS, BORDER CROSSING, MAPS, MOBILE OFFICES. Most have red checks by them. These sisters rock it.

  I found Jim, Lionel, Kat, and Sydney months ago, and all of them passed Tina’s strict security test. Nowadays, it’s easy to find qualified production people who are out of work and feel screwed over. It’s a perfect fit; we pay them great, no questions asked, and they don’t care if the show breaks the law. But we also have enough dirt on them to destroy them if they fuck with us.

  I reach the back, where there are two private offices with large glass windows—one for Tina and me, and the other for Hachiro and his design crew. Hachiro has hired one man, Katashi, and two women, Yoshi and Yuko, for his think tank. They all hover around the big artist’s drawings of the interior of a DC-9 airplane that they’ve mounted on the wall. They point at sketches of overhead bins and the airline seats, arguing in Japanese. They catch me watching them and freeze, so I open the door.

  “You want to come in? See what we’ve done so far?” Hachiro asks.

  Hachiro is dressed in the same leather jacket, gelled purple hair, and spiked wristbands. Katashi is dressed the same, only with a red plaid jacket and spiked red hair. Yoshi and Yuko wear tight black jeans tucked into Doc Marten boots and torn tank tops over sport bras. They look like a Tokyo punk rock band.

  “Just peeking in,” I say. Now’s not the time to get involved. They’re handling Impossible Task Number Three—finishing the game and getting it approved—and they need to solidify their first pass before I rip it apart.