Beneath a Bloodshot Moon

by Sam Roskoe

  “You could have said that in the first place, couldn’t you? Why’d you have to go and—“ She blinked away the tears before they could arrive. She straightened her back and looked me in the eye. “What can I do for you Mr…?”

  “My name is Elliot Finch, but I called myself Grayson when I was here last. Don’t you remember my voice?”

  “Hundreds of people come through here every day. If I have time I might remember a name, but I rarely have the time to remember voice. Today is different, but you already know that don’t’ you, Mr. Finch?”

  She said my name like it was made of barbed wire.

  “Know what?”

  “That Mr. Jones is leaving us. I assume that’s why you need to see him, in relation to his leaving for New York?”

  “Yes.”

  She rolled her eyes at me.

  “And you wasted how long on your silly game instead of asking me for the information? You men and your silly games.” She reached for a book on her desk and tapped the surface. “I have Mr. Jones’ itinerary for the day in this book,” she said.

  “And lunch, where will he be at lunch?”

  “Most days he takes his lunch in his office.”

  “But not today?”

  “Today he went off the lot for his lunch. A restaurant just off Rodeo Drive called Peggio.”

  She was right, I had wasted a lot of time trying to get information she’d have willingly given me with little hassle. Me and my assumptions. Now I was looking at another wasted morning, and twenty bucks down the drain.

  “Thanks, Denise,” I said, “and even though I am a louse, I promise I’ll take you out on that date.”

  “If promises were horses, Mr. Finch.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I’d own my own stables by now,” she said.

  “I suppose a simple sorry wouldn’t help?”

  “It might,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “And you still owe me a date, Mr. Finch.” She reached down and scribbled her name and phone number on a piece of paper. “Here, just in case you’re the type of man who doesn’t make empty promises.”

  I saluted her.

  “Thanks.”

  I turned on my heel and headed for the door when Denise shouted me.

  “Listen,” she said. “I don’t want to be responsible for you going on any wild goose chase. Mr. Jones isn’t at Peggio’s today. He had his lunch early and then headed over to Stage Six.”

  “Stage Six?”

  It couldn’t be so simple, could it? Was the note in Charlie Jones’ diary nothing more than a direction to Stage Six on the Omniverse lot? It was as good a lead as any I’d had.

  “Way over on the other side of the lot,” Denise said. “You can’t miss it, it’s the biggest stage we have here. Where they shot ‘The Deadly Moon’ as if you didn’t already know.”

  I gave Denise a smile that was all gratitude and not a hint of make believe.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” I said.

  “And maybe I won’t add another horse to the stable,” Denise said, her voice full of disbelief.

  Chapter 18

  It took me around ten minutes and several eons in history to make it to the other side of the lot and Stage Six.

  I passed Medieval Knights and Roman guards, a Sheik leading a camel troupe and ten or so Nazi soldiers taking a break from evil to eat wrapped sandwiches and smoke cigarettes. A few cowboys, their spurs click-clacking on the concrete walked side by side with what I assumed was a creature from another planet.

  I paid them no mind as my mind was in another place altogether. Making connections.

  Charlie Jones was connected to Elsnick in a way that wasn’t so obvious to any outsider, but then again, why would it be? I’d only unveiled that little tidbit through the annoyance of a few angry guards looking for some payback before Jones left the lot. And I couldn’t blame them, Jones had come off as arrogant and a know-it-all with just a little too much lip on him for my liking. He’d called those guards on me too, but I didn’t hold that against him, I’d been thrown out of plenty of places before and more than likely I would again in the future.

  It was the story he’d told me that I was questioning as I headed over to Stage Six to find him.

  He wouldn’t have had any trouble getting into any party anywhere on the Omniverse lot, not with his connections. What did they say, blood was thicker than water? Well in Hollywood it was thicker than talent too. Charlie Jones had taken his position in the pigpen through some good old fashioned nepotism, which was second only to the Mob when it came to weight in Hollywood.

  He was throwing a lot of that weight around, according to the guards, but not for much longer. Soon he’d be on a flight out of Hollywood and on his way to New York.

  But why?

  Why all of a sudden was Charlie Jones out on his ear? What had he done to bring down the wrath of Elsnick (and it could only be Elsnick behind the sudden shift of position)? Was he connected more deeply with the death of Marla Donovan than I’d originally thought? Was Elsnick sending him off to New York for protection?

  And what about the script?

  Did he know about this ‘Beneath a Bloodshot Moon’ and who’d written the damn thing? What was in that script that was damaging enough for a million dollar payoff? Had Kay Martin been behind the ransacking of his office or was it just last day revenge on the part of a disgruntled lot worker?

  I felt closer than ever to an answer, and yet just as far away as when I began, as I reached Stage Six and stood outside the door.

  Above the door a single red light bulb buzzed. To the right was a sign.

  SILENCE WHEN RED LIGHT ON.

  I was about to break that silence when a stretch limousine pulled up beside me. The driver’s door opened and the tall, capped behemoth of a chauffeur got out. The same one who’d walked me to a darkened alleyway days before.

  “No, not this time, pal,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “I got business with somebody else before I got business with you and—“

  The door opened at the rear without any help from the Chauffeur.

  Elsnick waited inside, sans grapes and the reclining position I’d found him in the last time we’d met. He was a changed man or at least a man not so soft around the edges. He wore a sharp black suit that was tailored in such a way to hide the more obvious roundness of his figure. He propped himself up on a white cane and gestured for me to come inside with a pudgy white finger.

  “Mr. Finch, I would like a word or two in your ear,” he said.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the door to Stage Six. God knows what was going on inside, or what Charlie Jones needed to be ‘prepared’ for, but I had a hunch it wasn’t anything good. And nothing that would wait for me.

  “And I’d like, just once, to get my way too. But that’s not what’s going to happen today. Speak your piece and speak it quick, I’ve got other places I mean to be,” I said.

  About three feet behind me, I thought.

  “You’re on my lot, Mr. Finch. I could easily have you thrown out on your ear.”

  “You could, but you haven’t. So I’m guessing it’s more important you talk to me than it is kick me out. Right?”

  He gripped the edge of the cane. A new color came to his cheeks. I wanted to call it raspberry, but it was almost blueberry. Either way it was the color of his anger.

  “You try my patience, Mr. Finch. Do you know how many men would get away with your kind of disobedience in my presence?”

  “Eighty five, or is it three, or maybe it’s a million, tell me why I should care, and make it snappy will ya.”

  “I’d rather we do this in private,” he said, waving at me to get inside with him.

  “No deal, speak your mind or don’t speak at all, I don’t have time to play your silly games.”

  He pursed his lips in my direction. I don’t think he’d ever been this powerless in front of someone else and he didn’t like it one bit.

 
I enjoyed it, but only for a brief moment.

  My mind was still on Stage Six and what might be happening inside.

  “Okay, have it your way, Mr. Finch. But in the end this attitude of yours will only see you in strife and nothing more. You may take that as friendly advice and nothing more.”

  “Yeah, and I really should floss more regularly too. Spill it, Elsnick.”

  He leaned as far toward the open door of the limousine as his girth, and the strength of his cane would allow.

  “I believe you’ve been offered a not inconsiderable sum for a certain object. Is this correct?”

  “You could say that,” I said.

  “And you were offered this money by a woman, shall we say, a woman with certain ties to the recently deceased Marla Donovan?”

  “Stop running the bases, Elsnick, you know it was Kay Martin and you know she offered me a million for the script.”

  He licked at his lips.

  “And if I were to offer you, say, double that amount? What would you say to that?”

  “I’d probably say that I had the greatest script ever written.”

  “Indeed, but we both know it’s not the quality of the script that counts but what was written upon that script that makes it such a valuable asset, do we not?.”

  I couldn’t be sure if he was trying to trip me up. I hadn’t seen the script, I didn’t know what was on the damned thing, only that it had surfaced as a piece in this maddening puzzle that I couldn’t quite fit put together no matter how I tried. Not that I’d managed to fit any of the other pieces. I was damned if I could find any pieces to begin with.

  All my doubts and worries I kept close to my chest as I responded.

  “Listen, I’m going to tell you what I told Kay Martin, and that’s this. Friday. You can have it Friday, once I’ve sorted out some details. I need to make sure that none of you get a notion to disappear me once you have the script in your possession.”

  He looked worried.

  “Are you promising that we both may have it? Have you made copies, is that what you’re telling me, Mr. Finch?”

  “I’m telling you this. Now I have a bidding war on my hands, I’m going to start calling the shots. Whatever happens you’ll have me out of your hair come Friday whether you win or not. Then you can all squabble amongst yourselves over who has what and where and when. Me, I’m going to be somewhere warm and tropical. Somewhere I can lie under a palm tree and watch the sunset.”

  He smiled.

  “I’m beginning to understand you a little more, Mr. Finch. We’re not unalike you and I. We can both see the value in the things we have in our possession.”

  “Sure, we’re like twins separated at birth. Two peas in a pod. Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Makes me feel all warm inside.”

  “Yes, well then, Friday it is. Shall I call you or will you—“

  “I’ll call you.”

  “I shall look forward to doing business with you. Let’s hope my bid will outshine Miss Martin’s.”

  “Sure.”

  I waved him off and waited until the Limousine was out of sight before I turned to Stage Six and whatever waited for me inside.

  Chapter 19

  A darkness deeper than night stretched out in all directions. I felt like I’d dropped to the bottom of a bottomless well and no matter how much noise I made, nobody would hear me. Then came the cold winds.

  I couldn’t figure where they came from in that dark, but they had the bite of a foggy January morning walking the pier back in my beloved San Francisco. Only there was no sting in the coldness, no grit. It was all too pure and without texture.

  Air conditioning, I realized all too quickly. But something big enough to put the chill on a hangar, something monstrous that lived in the darkness that I couldn’t see and that would put my own A/C in the Mermaid Café to shame.

  I stood there for a moment in that dark and cold wondering if I should shout out Charlie Jones’ name, and thinking if I did, all I would hear would be my own voice thrown back at me from the empty dark. Looked like all that hassle about getting onto the lot meant nothing. I’d come out the way I came in and down twenty bucks for my troubles.

  Shorty and Long and Tall would give me a few sour looks too after I’d gone back on my Christmas promise.

  But I didn’t have a chance to open my mouth.

  Someone else opened theirs.

  “It’s just like it was, nothing has changed, not a damnable thing. Another fantasy in a line of fantasies we conjure and hope that the public in their ignorance will line up to see. We sell, do we not, the illusion that death will spare us? That tomorrow we live another day and just maybe the happy endings will be ours. We sell the windmills for those poor saps out there to tilt towards.”

  Tarquin Meriwether!

  His voice was unmistakable. That exaggerated pronunciation with just a hint of liquor slurring every other word.

  I tensed at the sound of his voice. Who was he talking to? Why was here? How had he reached this place without being caught, without attracting attention?

  A series of lights burst to life in the rafters above me.

  “Lights! Camera! Action!” Tarquin shouted.

  Where the light fell, it illuminated something so similar to the nightmare I’d had hours earlier that I took a quick breath.

  And held it as I stared in disbelief.

  The stone walls of a castle filled the back of the lot. A fake window as large as any that festooned a Cathedral, looked out upon a painted moon in the painted night sky behind. A moon painted the color of blood. Below, in the center of a courtyard was a fountain.

  This is where they’d filmed ‘The Deadly Moon’ alright. I didn’t need Denise to tell me what I could see with my own eyes.

  “My life has been nothing but a dream within a dream, you know who said that don’t’ you? Mr. Poe said that. A man tortured by his own desperate vision. A man so involved in the world he’d created that the world around him became pale and without color. A world he could no longer stand without some form of narcotic or another.” Tarquin’s voice remained in the darkness, speaking as if addressing a captive audience. An audience who I couldn’t make out in the deep dark shadows that swallowed four fifths of the interior. “I have spent so many years at the bottom of a bottle or staring at a page that I forgot what life was like out there. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine living a life where everything around you is unreal, where death never comes and if so, you barely notice him as he passes by? No, I don’t suppose you do, do you? I don’t suppose you’ve ever had to face such problems. Daddy pulls the strings and the puppets do dance.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding and crept forward. My hand instinctively went for the .38 and brought it out in front, the snub nose sniffing at the darkness around me.

  I could have called out Tarquin’s name, but not without knowing who else was in that darkness with him. And I was sure now that someone had to be there. He couldn’t be talking to himself, no matter how drunk he was. This was a speech meant to be listened to, for somebody else’s benefit.

  Somebody like Charlie Jones.

  Too many things fit for it not to be him as the audience.

  Maybe Tarquin had him hostage? Maybe Jones was keeping mum because it would be hard to respond to such ravings. I didn’t know, but I knew I would find out soon enough.

  And I did.

  Tarquin confirmed my suspicions.

  “Life is a series of unhappy endings, Mr. Jones. It’s a bad script written by amateurs who don’t know correct structure, who have no idea that every story must rise to a crescendo and then dip shortly after if it is to be satisfying. In a story the status quo must be restored, the hero returns in victory and everybody lives happily ever after!”

  There was a muffled sound in the darkness, but I couldn’t figure which direction it was coming from or who’d made it.

  Worry tickled the space between my shoulder blades. I felt my muscles stiffen as if waiting
for something to come at me from the darkness.

  Was there someone other than Tarquin and Charlie Jones? What about Johnny Jackson? Would this be the moment he decided to make his big comeback?

  But nothing came, just that cold, air-conditioned wind as it whirled around Stage Six.

  I realized just then that I couldn’t keep skulking in the darkness. I would have to let myself be known sooner rather than later.

  Not at that moment, though. I couldn’t risk spooking Tarquin into action. Did he have a gun? Would my voice make him squeeze the trigger when he didn’t mean to? I wasn’t going to risk it in any case. I would bide my time, wait for the both of them to come out into the light before I made a move.

  “No happy endings in life. Not a one. Just an ending. Abrupt for some, lingering for others. But it was mercifully quick for her. She didn’t know and didn’t feel the knife as it went into her body again and again and again. One moment she was laughing and joking, the next face down in a fountain, the last of her life ebbing away into the waters around her. I remember, you see. I remember some of what happened that night, and I’m beginning to remember more and more as time passes.”

  Tarquin exited the darkness with Charlie Jones out in front of him. He had a gun, like I’d suspected, and he had that gun jammed into the small of Jones’ back.

  “Take this story of ours, this beautiful mess we’ve written ourselves into. A story of one-upmanship and bravado. A story of age and the follies of that age. But most of all, a story of an innocent caught up in a game that she never understood, a story without a real hero.” Tarquin pulled Charlie Jones to a stop. “Until now. Turn around Mr. Jones.”

  A terrified Charlie Jones spun around. A gash marked the right side of his face. Fresh blood trickled down his cheek. A dirty rag stopped any words.

  “Do you know what I mean to do to you, Mr. Jones? Do you know what I have become in the days since I fled this rotten town?”

  Charlie Jones wagged his terrified head in a ‘no’.

  “I found the answer, that’s all. An answer so simple that I wondered why I never found it before.”