by Susan Dunlap
Though the group here looked familiar, Kiernan couldn’t say for sure whether she had actually seen them on the set or not.
And she didn’t have time to think about it. She had only a few steps until she would face Bleeker at the door. She’d planned on employing the truth—not always her first choice—but the silent tableau behind Bleeker screamed wariness. The last thing these people were likely to do was invite in a stranger—a stranger with a PI’s license.
So on to Plan B, the result of a couple of calls and a little luck.
In the lobby a man leaned over and whispered to the woman next to him. Kiernan almost smiled in recognition. His face had none of the fervent, guilt-free conspiring that centuries of Celtic wakes had imbued, but there was no mistaking that look of machination.
She rapped on the door.
Bleeker’s forehead wrinkled. “This is a private affair.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Who are you?”
“Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. SAG,” she said. Screen Actors Guild—union—the last word anyone in management wants to hear. She flashed her PI’s license, knowing that Bleeker was not about to peruse it, not at a time like this. “So how long do you expect the rushes to take?”
“What? You know we don’t let reps in to see the rushes.”
Oh, shit! What you don’t know—it will kill you every time. “Normally, sure,” she said, “but we’re not talking everyday event here. We’re talking accident, fatal accident to one of our members.”
“No way. I’ve got enough problems without you.” Probably he hadn’t realized he’d groaned out loud.
“Look, one of our members died on the set, going over a bluff for chrissake. We’re going to have a shitload of questions to answer. We’re in this together. We all want the same thing, right? Make it easy on yourself.”
Behind him, the quintet edged toward the screening room door. The gray-carpeted, gray-walled, half-lighted lobby looked too sterile to be real. The darkened candy counter sported not cascades of soda pop but bottles of designer juices. Too California to be real! The odds were only fifty-fifty that she would manage to slither into the screening room; best to hit the other questions while she had the opportunity. She waited until the screening-room door closed behind the five, then said to Bleeker, “You’re the stunt coordinator. What went wrong with this gag?”
Bleeker swallowed, bobbing an Adam’s apple large enough to choke him. The black fringe of hair, goatee, and twill-and-denim ensemble accented the sudden movement in his pale neck. He looked like a second-story man caught with his glass cutter out. “Nothing, except at the end. She had no business going right into the high fall.”
Kiernan put a hand on his arm. “Cary, baby, I’m going to need an answer a bit more incisive than that.”
“Look, can we talk about this later? Show a little respect. Lark’s only been dead a couple of hours.”
She patted his arm. “You know I’d take that plea more seriously if you weren’t here ready to go over the rushes. So, Cary, you coordinated the gag?”
He glanced behind him, but there was no one there to save him. “I sketched it, but you know how it is. Nothing in this business is one person.”
“Yeah, unless it’s a credit on the trailer.”
“Well, credit’s not the operative word when you’ve got a girl dead. Look, I spent the last couple hours with the police asking me ten questions for every one answer they thought they needed. I’m already a week behind schedule, and if I have to do this gag over, I’m going to be so far over budget that I might as well have jumped over the cliff with Lark Sondervoil, so can we talk about this after the rushes?”
She wasn’t about to be put off. “Let’s get it over with now. Just tell me what part of the gag you routined.”
“The concept. Over the bluff. It was a helluva high fall gag. Dammit, it could have been a helluva gag. All I needed was a competent stunt woman to go flying over the cliff.” He shook his head. “I got her the best catcher built. The supports are drilled ten feet into the bluff wall. Do you have any idea what I had to go through with the city to get a permit to drive metal beams into their sandstone bluff? You’d think I wanted to climb up Mount Rushmore and sink two-by-fours in Lincoln’s nose! Damned negotiations with the city took so long, it threw the whole location schedule off, even though we’d allowed double the time we thought we’d need. McCafferty wouldn’t give us the okay until two weeks ago.”
McCafferty? Liam McCafferty, the wolfhound lover? “Well, why didn’t you just use a mock-up in the studio?”
“Verisimilitude.” He shrugged. “We could’ve shot it against a blue screen and dropped in the background later, but there were things we’d have lost. Look, everyone discussed this ages ago. Lark herself was all for it.” He shrugged again. “Okay, so her real reason was the notoriety of doing the Gaige Move, then going over a bluff. I’m no innocent; I knew she was using us. But that’s the business. But no way did I realize she’d use it as a gimmick to draw the press.”
“Did she tell them she was going off without the wire?”
“Who knows? The first I heard of the goddamned press conference was when a reporter banged on my trailer door this morning. By then, it was too late to cancel it. Left us with enough gawkers to watch the parting of the Dead Sea. Security was snowed under. So if you’re asking what went wrong with the gag, I’ll tell you. Lark screwed it up with that crowd. She got ’em here, the pressure got to her, and she freaked.”
“All her fault, right? And tell me, Cary, just why would she do that? If she called the press on her own, if she created a security nightmare—and mind you, I’m not copping to that—then why? People never work again for lots less, right? A girl like Lark, she didn’t need to be grandstanding. She was headed straight for the top.” Kiernan was getting into her role. “So why risk it all? What could have been so important for her to say?”
He shook his head. “No idea. Nobody knows. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone.”
Bleeker tossed in qualifiers with the instinctive defensiveness of the perpetual goat, Kiernan noted. “You’re saying she took fatal risks for a little publicity? Come on. Our members are careful. We remind them their lives depend on checking their equipment themselves. Special Effects screws up a wire; they’re sorry. The stunt double is dead.”
“Look, if you’re thinking it was me who suggested no net or wires, you’re crazy. I had a decelerator. Wardrobe made her outfit so it would conceal the harness. The wire would have come out her ankle. If she’d been hooked on to the decelerator, she’d have braked all the way down the bluff. By the time she got to the beach, she’d have been going slow enough to pick daisies off the wall.”
“So?”
“She couldn’t do the Gaige Move with a wire on. But she was supposed to be on a wire for the fall. I insisted on it.” He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “I’m going to be straight with you. Lark Sondervoil was not the best woman for the high fall, nowhere near it. But she came in under budget. And she was the only one who could do the Gaige Move. And she was happy doing it at the edge. With this film as far over budget as it is, and the studio brass chewing on me like I was lunch, I couldn’t pass that up.”
Kiernan shook loose of the hand. “Come on, you’re the director. You’re telling me that a second-rate stunt woman forced you to forget about safety? Our members will be delighted to hear they’ve got such power.”
“Okay, not forced—she didn’t force me. I could have insisted she do the Gaige Move back from the edge. She was wired every time she tested the catcher. She must have jumped off that bluff five times a day every day this week. If I hadn’t seen her go over today ... if someone had just told me she’d bought the farm, I would have guessed she’d slammed into the catcher so often, she broke the supports.”
Kiernan shook her head theatrically.
He flung up his hands. “So I got greedy. No greed, no lead in this business. I knew we’d get a better
shot the way she wanted it. I’d seen her do the Gaige Move. Done her way, it would be a show-stopper. Maybe a saint would have turned that down, but lady, I’m just a man, and I’m not about to give up a lead. And I trusted her judgment. Who could imagine she’d just go on over? I didn’t think she was a daredevil,” he said, spitting out the last words like a slur.
“Hey, Cary, we don’t have all night!” a bushy-haired man in work shirt and bandanna called from the theater.
“Look—”
“It’s okay,” Kiernan said, starting toward the theater.
“SAG—just for Lark’s gag,” Bleeker said to the quintet as he and Kiernan entered. It was more of a warning than an explanation, Kiernan could tell. He motioned her to a seat on the far side of the aisle from them. Rejecting that, she slipped into one at the back of their section. Bleeker shrugged and moved to the front and was no sooner in a seat than the lights went out.
In the darkened room, the air seemed raw with anticipation and dread. And she had the feeling that the finger of fate pressed across each pair of lips. No comment was worth prolonging the suspense.
The door opened; the lobby light smacked Kiernan’s eyes. As the lobby door swung shut, Kiernan could make out the form of a small, sturdily built woman in what was probably a business suit. She was eating a bar of something that smelled of garlic.
“Dolly!” Bleeker exclaimed, “I didn’t expect—”
“You didn’t expect me here when we could get slapped with a wrongful death? When I was down here anyway?” She flopped into a seat in the front and plopped the rest of the food into her mouth.
“We’re not liable,” Bleeker insisted in a voice so unsure of itself that it halfway belied his words.
“Sweetie, we’re always liable if they can prove negligence.”
“Dolly, the scene was scripted to end at the bluff. The girl did the fall on her own. We took every precaution possible. We had a catcher strong enough to stop a meteor, with a Porta Pit deep enough for her to have smothered in. She tested everything.”
“Cary, Cary, such an innocent boy. Now let’s see that footage.”
“Tom, cue up the fall sequence,” Bleeker called.
The room remained dark; no introductions were made. Kiernan wished she knew whether it was because they all knew each other or because Dolly Whoever was so important no one else mattered. Whatever the reason, she was relieved.
The film started. It moved at normal speed, but the room seemed to have slipped into slow motion. Kiernan felt as if she could see the breaks between the frames of film.
Lark Sondervoil stood, the lights shining on her long blond hair, on that blue leotard that would soon be the focus of the ambulance crew and Life Flight medics on the beach. Nineteen years old! Kiernan thought. When I was nineteen, I was planning for medical school, sure that I had the Answers by the tail, just waiting for me to learn enough to reel them in. It never occurred to me I wouldn’t Know, much less that I could die.
The camera was behind Lark, not beside her where the onlookers had been. It showed her racing straight forward over the warning rope. The explosion seemed disconnected from the action. But the double flip of the Gaige Move was perfect. The second explosion was off too.
Kiernan’s chest went cold. The Move was perfect. It could have been done by Greg Gaige! Her fingers dug into the armrests; her whole body was icy. She was the Baltimore teenager again, watching film of Greg over and over again, alive with adoration, with dreams of emulating him that she couldn’t admit were built on nightmares of failure.
Lark staggered back—for the first time the camera caught her face. The focus was cloudy, but Lark’s expression of panic was clear enough to be almost real. Could they use that? With the cloudy focus, Lark might look enough like the actress she was doubling. With all the publicity they’d get, would they care?
Lark took another step back. The edge of the bluff was less than a yard behind her. How could she have done anything so dangerous? The instant the thought was words, Kiernan knew the answer. It was the same answer she would have given twenty-five years ago: “I know what I’m doing.” She’d have tossed her head defiantly. “If I die it will be worth it; I’ll be as good as Greg Gaige!”
Another step. Lark wavered. Her arms jutted out to the sides. She was off-balance. The expression of phony panic vanished, replaced by all-too-real concentration. Her head jerked forward. Braking the back-motion. Her foot slipped. She thrust both arms forward. Save it! Save it! She jolted down a foot. Her concentration vanished. Terror filled her eyes. She clawed at the air. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She slipped over the edge.
The film stopped.
No one spoke. Only Dolly groaned. “Christ, half of it’s out of focus.”
The film started. “Same scene. Crane shot.” Bleeker’s voice was shaking.
When that take ended, Dolly cleared her throat. “She’s running parallel to the inner cordon. Was that the way it was planned?” There was no hesitancy in her voice.
“Yeah,” Bleeker said. “Now C camera three, on the platform over the bluff.”
“Over the bluff? Why was that one running at all on this scene, if she wasn’t expected to go over?” a male voice asked.
“The light would be failing fast. We decided not to take time between the Gaige Move and the high fall to lower the camera crew down there. So we got them there before. And since they were there, why not? I figured I might get a cover shot out of it. Roll it, Tom.”
The camera focused on the beach. Dots moved. People. It panned up the side of the bluff. Wind fluttered the small, scrappy leaves of whatever it was that survived there. Hard brown stems moved grudgingly. A spray of dirt spat from one rough promontory. Spears of sandstone thrust up like stalagmites, only to be topped by the ever-climbing hard, dry wall. The ascent seemed endless.
The picture shook, as if an earthquake were jolting the camera platform. Kiernan’s breath caught. The camera jerked upward, catching Lark feet first as she plunged over the edge of the bluff, arms flailing uselessly, head bobbing forward in vain. She fell straight down. The big white cocoon blocked her from view. She hit the wall and bounced out into nothingness. The camera lost her, momentarily focusing on the spot where she had been, then jerked down to catch the electric-blue leotard as it dropped and hit and scraped down the sandstone, bounced and dropped again and again, to a spot hidden by an outcropping on the beach.
No one spoke. It wasn’t until she heard breath let out ahead that Kiernan realized they’d all been too tense to breathe.
“Omigod,” Bleeker said slowly, his voice was barely discernible. “Surely, she wasn’t conscious …”
“If we’d known she was going to go over ten feet from the catcher, we could have saved a bundle and had a great shot to boot.” It sounded like the bushy-haired guy. No one laughed.
It was a full minute before Dolly said, “The whole damned thing’s out of focus. How … wait, she went off the wrong rise, didn’t she! How the hell—”
“It’s not like she hadn’t run through the whole routine ten times,” Bleeker insisted.
The room was still dark. Kiernan hesitated, balancing her advantage of eavesdropping against demanding an answer. But it was the woman next to Bleeker who voiced her question for her: “I heard a rumor that someone had moved the marker, so she went for the wrong pick point—her point, not the camera markers.”
“Who?” Dolly and Bleeker demanded.
“I don’t know. I can’t even remember who told me. There was so much going on by then. But she ran straight down by the cordon. The cordon had to be the mark she was using, right?”
Bleeker groaned.
“Well, who the hell would move a marker?” Dolly asked. “A—we’d better hope that rumor doesn’t spread. Well, fat chance, right? In this business, rumor is truth. So then, B—we’d better hope if there was a mover, it wasn’t one of our grips. It wasn’t, was it, Cary?”
“No,” Bleeker forced out. “No, of cour
se not,” he added with surprising conviction. Kiernan discounted that hard-hatched assurance as she was sure everyone else did. Confronting Dolly with corporate culpability now would require the steadfastness of an oak. Bleeker was more akin to a willow.
“C,” Dolly continued, “we continue to tell the press when they ask—and we’re damned lucky they’re not outside already—”
“I got use of this place through a friend,” Bleeker put in quickly.
“C—we tell the press we are distressed and horrified. ‘Of course, we’re cooperating with any investigation,’ blah blah blah. Nothing more. Got that?”
The murmurs of agreement seemed hesitant.
The actual markers that the camera crew had placed on the ground wouldn’t be on the film, of course, Kiernan realized. So if you didn’t realize why the focus was off, you wouldn’t see the evidence here.
It was a moment before the bushy-haired one said, “And the studio does—?”
In the semidark Dolly stood up. She turned to the group and took a deep breath, and Kiernan waited for her to explain.
“Cary,” she said, “where are the fucking lights?”
Kiernan moved next to the door, ready to bolt before they had time to remember she was here. Bleeker started for the door and stopped halfway, clearly unwilling to miss the vital bit of information. “Tom,” he called loudly, “get the lights on.”
Kiernan reached for the door.
“What we will do …” Dolly said softly.
Kiernan stayed put.