She stared at him. His gaunt, troubled face.
“Look … why don’t we try and find the guy doing this? That’s the most constructive thing we can do. Here … take a look: we’re also wondering about this guy.”
She handed Alan a photo of a guy who looked like a malefic Dick Clark. His skin had a strange, wrinkle-free, stay-pressed look. It shone, looked imported.
“Doctor Adam Steinberg. Plastic surgeon. Re-did his wife. Re-did himself. Earns big bucks, sanding and shaping. Went to prison for tightening a woman’s eyelids a little too far. All she can see is her forehead.”
“Looks like he’s been Turtle-Waxed.”
“Should see Mrs. Steinberg. Did a hundred grand of lasar carpentry on her. I’ve interviewed her. Right out of the Barbie Dream Kitchen. Apparently he’d been her doctor and after her face-lift, he married her.”
“Love by Mattel.”
“So, on the honeymoon, they decide her nose is too big and her ears are a little LBJ.”
He smiled, liking her objective humor with the horrors of humanity; the survival mechanism that sought the ludicrous in the grotesque. It had a reassuring effect on him.
“So, as a wedding gift, he trimmed her head. She got hooked, went the whole way. Higher brows, cheeks shaped, pert mouth, sleek chin, flatter tummy, smooth hips, slimmer thighs, smaller knees …”
“… knees? She had big knees?”
“She said they were so big, people thought she was wearing knee pads.”
“Big knees. That’s weird.” His stomach felt empty but he couldn’t eat any more of the pretzel and tossed it to a pelican that looked like Jay Leno.
“So, she tells me she’s totally restored like a beautiful, old Victorian. But Dr. Adam goes a little ‘enthusiastic’ and starts jig-sawing people who don’t really look so bad to begin with and the AMA is getting a little embarrassed. He gets sued and before you can say ‘my tits are infected,’ he’s in for six years.”
Alan looked at that taut, plasticized face and then up at Camille, who was licking salt off the pretzel’s mulatto elbow. She looked very appealing and he told her so.
“Are you flirting with me? I thought this was professional.”
“Well, I meant as a professional you look appealing.”
“You want to know who else we have?” She liked that he was interested but didn’t comment.
“No. This whole thing is giving me a stomachache. I have to get into the studio; we have a read-through. Why do you think Steinberg did it?”
“He’s good with a knife. Whoever pinned up Linda Crain and blinded Richard Frank knew what they were doing. Cut-work was top-notch. It might’ve been him. Too early to be sure. We’re just starting. And we have almost nothing to go on. No prints on the bodies. Anywhere around them.”
Alan blanked out, feeling guilty, anew.
He could clearly see himself sitting at his word processor, writing the fourth “Mercenary” script, several months back. Describing the sounds and smells of a murder. How superb Barek was with a knife. Trying to imagine the slaughter in extreme close-up. Trying with horrid adjectives and helpless terror to be in that pink satinized suite, in Vegas, with the honeymooning couple who were Colombian drug dealers as Barek killed them; sought revenge.
They’d killed Barek’s best friend; hung him upside down in a basement, by the ankles, naked, and removed the skin, over a period of hours. Trying to extract information about a competitor’s hidden jungle labs where cocoa paste was moving up the profit chain like diamond toothpaste. They’d skinned him alive because Barek’s friend was a cop who’d been trying to bust the couple. As Alan had written the episode, he’d tried to envison the couple’s Bogotá skin slashed into nightmare fabric by Barek.
Tried to envision their meticulously sliced remains, dead in the heart-shaped tub, steeping in Type-O tea. Alan remembered feeling ill, he’d captured it so perfectly. It had made his shirt soak with sweat. But there had been a sense of justice in what Barek had to do. No matter how brutal the character became, he was always just. Alan always insisted Barek’s violence be almost biblically fair. It redeemed everything. Created a moral updraft.
Some said it merely excused sadism.
But for Alan, at the moment of writing the scene, he remembered finding it hard to distinguish the scene as false or true experience. It had felt that real to him; he’d made it real in his mind. It may as well have existed. Existence and experience, more often than not, for him, were merging.
“Who else you have?” He leaned on the pier railing; weak.
“Few repeat felons. But none of them really have the chops for this level of …” She could see him waiting for her description; knew the wrong words would plunge him into deeper guilt. “I just think we should keep looking.”
Alan looked up from a mob of gulls, debating atop sleepy currents. She stood, leaned against the pier railing, with him, swallowed the last of her coffee. Alan couldn’t decode what her silence expressed. The wind blew her hair, momentarily veiling her features with its delicate storm.
Fog began to mourn at the horizon and Alan decided to say nothing more. He was starting to like Camille in a way he’d never felt about Erica. Liking her too much to start slyly excavating. To start making familiar, teasing allusions designed to draw her out. She would come out with her hands up when she was ready. It was enough she’d come here today to talk.
He knew she could’ve insisted it be done in some official place that had deafening phones, bad coffee burning; cardiac faces crashing into bad news. He knew she could’ve done it the “formal” way. But she didn’t.
She’d suggested Malibu, saying she was returning from an investigation on the navy base at Port Hueneme, midway to Santa Barbara. Malibu was on her way.
“Besides, I wanted to see you,” she said when she called at eight-twenty this morning and suggested they meet at the pier for a talk. She’d said it was official.
She also said she’d been thinking about him.
She’d read the novel portion he’d sent her and found its layers and concerns different from his usual conversation; the edgy banter and testing humor. The entertaining avoidances; amusing contortions of thought that moated off real feelings; revealing truths. Passions forbidden by charming armament.
But he knew his personality had always buried the fuse; hidden the explosion. It was his gift. It was his curse. And though this strangely charming woman, who was a detective and looked at dead bodies and could shoot people, was nothing like anyone he’d ever dated, he wanted her to come closer.
He wanted to peel back his skin and let her see bones and emotions; fears that moved through him like vicious gangs. But he didn’t know how to open up to her. To admit the expanding sense of terror without sounding like a rambling fucking idiot. A Hollywood flake with big success and repugnant immaturity, interchangeable with fifty other self-contaminated “names.”
He’d given her the novel portion as an emotional offering; a kind of child’s drawing of what it felt like to be him. Like the finger semaphore cards mutes hand out in public places to connect with those who can speak. He wanted to be understood for more than his furious show and his guilt. He didn’t just want her there because people had died. He didn’t want tragedy to be the connection.
He wanted a loving, tender mother, again. A mother he never got for long. One who would hold him and tell him everything would be all right. Tell him with soothing tones and warm touches. Protect him in harboring arms. Sing softly until he slept.
Camille kept staring and watching. Smiling at strange times, her interest in him, beyond the ghastly investigation, evident. Deeper thoughts impossible to gauge.
“You’re sure you don’t have the flu?”
When he got into his Aston Martin and tilted down the mirror, he noticed it, too. Something was wrong with him. And it was getting worse.
advice
Alan needed to see a doctor who’d keep everything confidential. The press would jump all over
his life if they knew something was wrong with him, and he wanted a pro. Someone who didn’t sell tips to tabloids.
He called Jordan, got shot through the Agenda Temple and Jordan’s assistant, Traci, told Alan about the guy they all used: a former Harvard Medical School professor who’d moved to LA. because of allergies.
Alan met Dr. Stuart Wessler at eleven sharp at UCLA Medical and as the doctor ran warm, inquisitive fingers over Alan’s shoulders and torso, he wanted to talk “Mercenary.”
“… it’s daring, Alan. Iconoclastic.”
The big word sounded like ectoplasm, stretching its way out of Dr. Stu, who had a Hippocratic-gigolo look; like one of those daytime soap-opera erection-types and a Corvette, gene-spliced into an upbeat dildo.
“Taking chances. That’s where it’s at.” Dr. Stu was now at the sink, lathering furry fingers with decanter soap, looking over his shoulder; a smocked pinup. “Especially for creative people.”
“Yeah,” said Alan, too tired to think; doing a shoddy retread on the same thought, “… risks.” He yawned. A decent night’s sleep would feel like a heart transplant.
“So, let’s see what’s going on in there …”
Dr. Stu pulled chrome devices from his drawer and was now leaning in close, staring into Alan’s nose; Carl Sagan exploring Martian tunnels.
“Tell you, I sure love show business people though,” he said, in response to nothing. “I grew up around it. My father managed a movie theater in Panorama City. I get all kinds of interesting cases in here.”
He wanted to drop names. It was all over his barely mowed monkey face. Alan revved a wan, half-curious smile. Let it slowly idle.
“Yeah … I consulted on a flu case for one of the Bee Gees. I forget which one.”
Alan tried to contribute, though Dr. Stu had the skinny searchlight up his left nostril, hunting for bad guys.
“Well, they’re brothers,” Alan suggested.
Dr. Stu nodded, meaningfully; two men sharing truth.
“The Gibbs. They’re the best. I also did work for one of those Italian movie stars. You’d know who I’m talking about. Whole family acts. Major substance abuse problem. Wife problems. Mistress problems. Kid problems. Tax problems …”
The examples just kept coming.
He was starting to drive Alan crazy.
“Yeah … wouldn’t want to be this guy for ten minutes … but he’s a genius. Is it fair?” He looked at Alan, thought it over. “Don’t ask me. I’m no philosopher.”
His conversation was a cranial mallet.
“Alan, be honest with you. I leave philosophy to the gossip columnists.” He winked, went on, lost in nasal canyons, eyeball lakes.
Dr. Stu was inches away and Alan began to notice his curly hair was a wig. His mustache freefell under designed nostrils and his collagen lips docked under the suspicious vents.
A fiberglass man.
Alan figured it added to Dr. Stu’s popularity. The doctor who sort of looked like a doll. It was a nightmare. He told Alan he was soon expanding his practice into plastic surgery and in the next couple of months had to take his certification for liposuction.
“… been cramming for the ‘suck quiz.’ Have to be careful. Once you have them in the vaccuum bag, can’t get them out.”
Dr. Stu droned on like childhood polio, parked the tongue depressor in Alan’s mouth, and told him to say, “Ahhh.” Alan’s gag-reflex was thrown ten feet back, then rushed forward.
Dr. Stu smiled. “Nice.”
Alan cleared his molested throat. Dr. Stu wrote something on his clipboard, then began to ball-peen knees. As he gently hammered, he told Alan he’d also worked as a part-time actor, whenever a patient in the business needed him. He said he’d done background atmosphere on a “21 Jump Street” as a strung-out cockroach and had a two-liner as Clifford, Barbi Benton’s ex, in a Movie of the Week about infidelity and breasts.
On the set of “Jump Street,” Dr. Stu said he’d gotten a personal moment with Johnny Depp and that he was “real.” Dr. Stu also said Johnny had very nice skin.
“… smokes too much,” added Dr. Stu, inflicting Everett Koop omniscience. “Keeps it up, he’ll sound like a Harley.” He thumped on Alan’s flour chest, listening for telling echoes. “Good. Sounds nice in there.”
As he checked Alan’s fingernail moons for size, Dr. Stu brought up a film treatment he’d written, two summers back, that was optioned by Warners. He said it went into turnaround when the producer, who was attached, died. The guy had smoked five packs a day for thirty years and shovelled a million acres of Marlboro Country on his lungs.
“Medical thriller,” said Dr. Stu. “Too bad. Would’ve made a great film. Sort of like Hunt for Red October but it all takes place in a medical clinic.” He considered. “Johnny coulda done it, though. I probably should’ve shown it to him.”
Alan shrugged. “Maybe just shown it to his skin.”
Dr. Stu looked at him, not really hearing. “Anyway, you gotta really be careful with smoking.”
“How we doing?” Alan asked, knowing he had to get back to the studio for a scoring session.
“Almost done.” He tapped Alan’s sternum, lightly. “Yeah, real nicotine nursery. Be careful what you pour in. Might not like what starts growing.” He nodded, seriously, pleased with the botanical simile.
“Uh-huh …” Alan was beginning to wonder if Dr. Stu was like the pleasant guy in The Stepfather; ready to pop, amid the inanity.
Dr. Stu paused, removed the plastic stethoscope fingers sticking in his ears. Patted Alan’s back. “Well, everything looks okay. We’ll wait for the tests, but so far … you’re doing fine.”
“Really?”
“Surprised?”
“It’s just … a few people have told me I don’t look so good.”
“You’re underweight for your age and frame. Makes you look a bit drawn. Easy to fix.”
Alan gestured without detail. “Truth is, I really don’t feel very good.” He was confused. “… I don’t exactly feel bad either. Just weak.” He realized it sounded hypochondriacal. “Probably just overwork. Nerves. Am I whining?”
Dr. Stu grinned. “Listen, most of my patients are burning both ends. I tell them, you lose sleep, you try to catch up with yourself, you can’t. Can’t rip off your own body. It knows.” Alan was listening, wanting to believe it. “All that REM stuff keeps stacking up. You don’t dream it out, it’ll drive you nuts. What kind of sleep you getting?”
“Sleep? How do you spell it?” He tried to make it sound funny. It missed.
“That’s not enough. Eating right?”
“Imported coffee.”
“Alan, I treat a lot of people in the industry. It’s my practice. I know the hours and demands. But be good to yourself. You get one you.”
It sounded like a ballad.
“I’m really okay?”
“I’m not going to lie to you. You’re very worn down. But you’re basically okay.” He smiled, warmly; a hairy den mother. “I’d like to see you in two weeks. We’ll get you on a higher protein diet. Supplements. Maybe a shot or two of B-12. And Alan … they’re called pajamas: introduce yourself, huh?” He chuckled like Marcus Welby always did; the call-me-in-the-morning Gandhi.
Alan was starting to feel Dr. Stu’s calm voice sink in, soothe his chapped brain. He shook Dr. Stu’s hand; the new, best pal he never wanted to be without.
When the test results came back, three days later, Dr. Stu called and a set of cutlery scattered in Alan’s stomach. He was in the editing room, at the studio, working on the new episode. Dr. Stu told him the test results were highly unusual; that he’d never seen anything like it before, except in cases of extreme starvation. Metabolism so utterly strip-mined. Vital minerals reduced significantly.
“I’ve gone over your last physical. Eight months ago, you were fine. Now—” he paused, unnerved, “it’s like somebody broke into your body and stole half of everything.”
Alan clutched the phone. Felt n
othing, stricken. Imagined his innards being burgled while he slept; awakening to find an empty house beneath his skin. He responded; a vacant irony.
“I wonder if they left fingerprints …”
Dr. Stu told Alan he didn’t know what was happening, but that he wanted to step up the supplements and get him in for more tests. He told Alan to try and not worry, it was some explainable depletion they’d turn around. As long as Alan was basically feeling all right, Dr. Stu advised against immediate hospitalization.
“We’ll take it one step at a time …”
Alan listened, saying nothing, looking down at himself. Wondering if the burglars would return; break in to his body for more. He imagined faceless prowlers inside his skin, with flashlights, ransacking tissue. Ripping blood cells off walls. Bagging priceless fluids. Rifling organs for mineral content that could be fenced later.
Shredding. Searching.
Taking him apart, piece by piece.
horror
The yacht rocked in still sea.
Infinite fish silently steeplechased beneath currents and inside bloody fingertips had left a mischievous trail on teak.
Sea Major moored half a mile off Redondo Beach, twenty miles south of Malibu, and the man was at rest in his own red liquids, eyes dead Waterford.
He was tied to the bed, and had been stabbed over fifty times. There was so much blood on the sheets, the effect was a cardiac operation the surgeon had walked out on to have a smoke. A bucket of champagne was at the bedside, opened and undisturbed.
Romantic music played on the stereo and a woman was frantically dialing the cellular phone, shaking so badly she dropped it several times, whimpering in terror.
Her face had been attacked; cut apart into an unrecognizable Picasso. Multiple gashes went to bone. Her nose had been crudely slashed off and it left her face nearly flat. She couldn’t breathe right and inhaled blood; choking on it.
Blood guttered into her mouth and eyes, and she grabbed for a paper napkin from the wedding reception they’d had that afternoon, on the yacht. It soaked up blood that oozed from her ruined face and tore in her hands, soaking wet. In seconds, the gold-lettered ROBB AND ERICA was unreadable.
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