The Player

by Michael Tolkin

  “How should I act?”

  “You tell them everything. They’re trying to solve a murder.”

  “I haven’t killed anyone.”

  “I’ll let you know when they’re coming.”

  Stuckel left. Griffin wasn’t sure what had happened. Was he under suspicion for murder? Or was there only the routine questioning of everyone who might have information about the last hours of a victim? There was no reason for him to have killed Kahane; rather, there was no discoverable reason for the murder. Griffin considered that this might have been the most private event of his life. He could go on a witness stand and describe the hour he’d spent with Kahane, then describe their parting in the restaurant. Why did they leave separately? Griffin wanted to hear more music. Kahane was feeling sick. Kahane wanted to get back to his girlfriend. No one would doubt him.

  Levison called. A director under contract was looking for a romantic comedy. Would Griffin check around for a few scripts? Griffin would. He pushed Kahane and Stuckel from his mind as he dialed the phone himself. He was working.

  Griffin was shocked by how little guilt he felt. It almost made him want to see a therapist. This is probably why I’m not married, why I don’t have a family, he thought. He couldn’t imagine how he could go to someone with this problem. Did the seal of confession apply? What would a therapist say? I can’t help you; your remorse is misplaced.

  When he took Bonnie Sherow to Cabo San Lucas, she had annoyed him by saying how grown-up it was to take that kind of vacation. “I feel like such a grown-up,” she had said when they were alone in the room after the bellboy left.

  “What do you mean, ‘grown-up’?” he’d snapped. “You think we’re just kids and we’re playacting. This is real. I don’t feel like I haven’t earned the right to do what I do.” He didn’t know then what he was really saying, he was just tired of Bonnie, probably, and looking for a fight. Bonnie knew then, when she covered herself and wouldn’t make love to him until later that night, after a lot of tequila, that his little outburst marked the end of it for them. He knew his anger at her was wrong. Bonnie had looked at him with disappointment and sadness. Was he a grown-up now that he had killed a man? Bonnie had meant responsible, contained, independent, capable of decision, capable of spending money. There was also a sense of gravity, the feeling of being centered. He knew twenty-five-year-olds who were given charge of millions of dollars for film budgets. Were they grown-ups? He was thirty-one and sometimes felt exhausted. Was he a grown-up? David Kahane had spent years reaching for a brass ring. What had he learned? Was he a grown-up?

  Griffin wondered if he would have to kill again. He supposed a therapist would tell him that he was waiting to be caught, and if he were caught, then yes, he must have been waiting, but what if he weren’t caught? Let’s suppose I live a long time and die with a smile, thought Griffin, and only I know that I killed. Am I the tree falling silently in the forest because no one hears it? If you get away with murder, is it murder?

  And if he went to an analyst, and he trusted the analyst enough to confess the murder, and the analyst asked him why he killed David Kahane, what would he answer? Because I had to. Because he was there. Because I had hit bottom and there was nowhere left to go. Because I’ve never been to war, and I needed to kill a man.

  Why did you need to kill a man?

  Because he was there.

  What if I take out an ad in Variety, he thought, a small ad, anonymous, telling the postcard writer that I want to meet him? What if I don’t show up, what if I hide, watch him, see him, and then, later, kill him. No witnesses. An alibi. Go to San Francisco for the weekend and fly down under another name on another airline. Kill him, go back to San Francisco, and come home as Griffin Mill.

  Jan was in the room. “Griffin?” She looked at him with doubt. “Are you okay?”

  “Why?” How long had this reverie lasted? Had he missed a ringing phone?

  “Walter Stuckel, what did he want? Was this about the postcards?”

  It was time to take charge. He looked at Jan with an equal blend of impatience, condescension, and affection. “Jan.” It was all he had to say. When she left the room and closed the door, he raised a triumphant fist in the air.

  He wrote, “I said I’d get back to you” on a piece of notepaper. Then he wrote, “It’s time we talked.” He paused. Now what? He crossed out that last line about naming the time and place. The line was weak, a kind of appeasement. It was too familiar. “No more cards. It’s my move now, but I’m giving it to you. Let’s do it soon.” He called Variety and got a price for a small ad. They preferred a check but accepted cash. Cashier’s check? they asked. No, said Griffin, cash.

  On his way home that night he stopped at a bank machine and took out two hundred dollars. When he got home, he put the money and the message in an envelope and addressed it to Variety. He didn’t have any stamps, because he never mailed anything from home. He bought stamps from a post-office machine in the morning.

  June Mercator called him at nine-thirty. Jan told him her name with a stupid innuendo, as though it were an old affair he was trying to stop. He wanted to say “Who?” but he took the call without a word.

  “Hello, June. My God, I just found out about David. How are you?”

  “Oh, I’m not very good, I guess. It hasn’t really hit me yet. It’s very complicated.”

  “I can imagine.” Why was she calling?

  “I’m just watching myself go through the motions of my own life.” Griffin sensed that she didn’t want to talk about this now, that she wanted to control the call, that she wasn’t feeling particularly emotional and wasn’t up to faking it.

  “This is a blow to all of us,” said Griffin. “Have the police … have they made any progress?”

  “No.” Then she didn’t say anything.

  “You know, I went to the theater after I called you.”

  “Yes.” Griffin wished she had said, “I know.” Her “Yes” just hung there, a challenge. He had already talked too much. Of course this is why she’s calling. “Yes, I wanted to talk to David about an idea. I had something he would have been good for.”

  “You were going to give him an assignment?”

  “If I say yes, I’ll be lying. I was going to talk to him about something, to see if he was interested, to see what ideas he might have.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d call me in the morning. He didn’t have his date book with him, but he’d try to fit me in.” Griffin said this with a touch of bemused pity, to let June know he wasn’t fooled by David but didn’t hold the game against him.

  A low sound came from June, a kind of sigh. Griffin heard a little exasperation with this bit of silly diplomacy, as though David were still alive, a little reproach directed at his soul, a little anger at herself for staying with him when it was just this kind of obvious gesture in the direction of pride that had kept her lover so far from success.

  “Poor David,” she said.

  “Did he have parents and stuff, family?”

  “Everything. Parents, a brother, a sister, a grandmother. A niece.”

  “When’s the funeral?”

  “You don’t have to go.” There was a new sound in her voice, she was too quick, he thought; she was embarrassed about something.

  “When is it?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Griffin, have the police spoken to you?”

  “We’ve had contact.”

  “Good. I mean, maybe you saw something. Maybe you don’t even know it, maybe you saw the killer, maybe you saw a car or something that’s been near other murders.”

  “No. I hate to say this, but I didn’t see anything.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  The call ended. Griffin was surprised by the edge of desperation in June Mercator’s voice. When he’d spoken to her the night of the murder, she’d sounded ready to leave Kahane. Now she was crying over small
clues. Griffin wondered if Bonnie Sherow would miss him if he died.

  The next morning, he didn’t wait until the office for Variety, he bought it at a liquor store and ripped the back page as he searched for his small ad. “No more cards. It’s my move now, but I’m giving it to you. Let’s do it soon.” He read it over three times, a dozen times, aware of a surge of pride, authorship, which relented only when a kind of stage fright chewed its way through his satisfaction. It was so naked, no phone number, no box number, something to invite a bit of curiosity from the casual reader. He realized Jan might see the ad and show it to him, so he was glad he hadn’t ordered NO MORE POSTCARDS. If Jan was to bring it to him, he would tell her to get back to work. This led him to consider firing her. On the one hand, he thought, she’s too caught up in the postcards, the next secretary might pass them on to him without comment, but if his plan worked, if the Writer left him alone, whether because he was dead or scared or etherically placated, they would stop. On the other hand, Jan would tell the replacement about the postcards, and if they continued, even for a short time, he would have to tell more lies.

  Five

  Griffin did not want to have lunch with Larry Levy. At eleven he might have been able to cancel, and then Levy would have had to eat alone, or call someone and admit he was suddenly free, and all during that meal Levy would have worried about with whom Griffin’s important meeting was, but the crack about Clint Eastwood had cost him the advantage.

  He forced himself to believe that he was as much of a threat to Levy as Levy was to him, that Levy knew he was being hired as a wild card, not as a king. The restaurant Levy had chosen, a shiny Italian kitchen on Melrose, was not an obvious choice, like Le Dome or The Grill, one of those student dining halls in the campus of Hollywood. This suggested to Griffin a purpose to the lunch, since eating at one of the usual places would have made a public statement. Everyone would know by now that Levy was going to the studio, and they would have been interrupted. So Levy wanted to talk. It hadn’t occurred to Griffin until now that Levy was scared about coming to the studio. Griffin wouldn’t plan a strategy for the lunch, something Levy’s intimidating energy could upset; no, with faith in Levy’s self-doubts he could have fun.

  Levy was already at the restaurant when Griffin arrived. The hostess, a thin woman in black, led Griffin to the table in the restaurant’s second room. Griffin knew her from a restaurant in Beverly Hills where she had also worked the door; on the way to Levy she told Griffin she shared ownership with the chef of this one. Griffin said, “Congratulations,” but recognized a touch of jealousy for the woman. Why? he wondered, and silently answered himself, Because she created this out of nothing.

  Levy started from his chair, and Griffin waved him down. He wore a dark blue suit, too heavy for the day, but it had been cool in the morning. He was almost tall and had the packed look of someone with a personal trainer. Griffin, twenty pounds too heavy, was jealous of that, but somewhere along the way Levy had met a clumsy plastic surgeon, and his nose, though reasonably well shaped, was a size too small for his face, and in combination with his heavy, dark eyebrows and thin hair, his look alternated between sinister and silly.

  “You know you won’t have to wear a suit when you come to the studio. Levison likes sport jackets.” A fair beginning.

  “I’ll keep them in storage until an oil company takes over and asks for a new executive image.”

  “Is that the latest? Is Mobil buying us out?”

  “Who knows? Sometimes I think about going back to business affairs. Production is always doomed after a takeover, but business affairs hang on.”

  “That’s right, you come from business affairs.” Griffin said this with mild surprise, with the implication now floating in the current between them that good production people never came from business affairs, or that business affairs might have spawned a few good production people, but they were always tainted. “Well,” he said, “you weren’t there for very long.” This was certainly obnoxious. Griffin took the lead.

  “For about an hour,” said Levy. “When I was at Warner Brothers, I kept making deals for scripts that I’d never read, and it just got to me after a while, because there were all these writers making seventy grand against three hundred, and I’d never heard of ninety percent of them, they’d never had movies made, and then the scripts would get delivered, and I’d get a notice to release a check, and then I’d get an order to make a deal for a rewrite with a new writer for another ungodly piece of change, and then, when the studio finally did make a movie, it was a script they bought in turnaround from somebody else because Sydney Pollack or Chevy Chase was attached. So after a year of this I started to read the scripts, every script we made a deal on, every rewrite, every draft, and after I’d read three hundred of them, literally three hundred scripts, I told them to bring me into production or I’d quit. And they didn’t, so I quit and went to work at United Artists, and they liked me and I liked them and I made friends and I got a good reputation, and I was lucky and three scripts I developed got made into movies and one of them cost nine and did a hundred and thirty-five million, and Levison made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. That’s my story.”

  “And now you’re here to run the studio.”

  “I hear that Levison put out feelers to two studios saying he was available for the right price. If he goes …” Levy spread his hands. The gesture meant, “I’m ready.”

  The waiter came and took their orders. Levy asked for a salad, and Griffin, buttering a roll, asked for a small pizza. He was glad he hadn’t come to the table with a strategy, because he would have chosen the same tactics, and the same measly lunch as Levy, and now he was calm, while Levy looked forlorn that he was having only a salad and couldn’t break down for a roll or pasta. Somewhere Levy had read a book about power lunching, but he must have skipped the lesson on keeping eye contact with the person across the table, and to avoid staring at his carbohydrates. Griffin knew he showed extreme confidence to order more food than Levy. It was a small battle, but he had won it.

  “Are you ever tempted to leave?” asked Levy, watching Griffin butter another roll.

  “I’m happy where I am.”

  For the rest of the lunch they talked about movie stars and directors. Levy liked to gossip, and Griffin let him. He finished his salad quickly and refused an offer of a slice of Griffin’s small pizza.

  When the waiter asked, Griffin even ordered dessert. It was chocolate cake. He offered a taste to Levy.

  “No thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  Levy waved his hand, brushing aside his tactics, and accepted. Griffin fed him the cake off his fork.

  When Griffin got back to the studio, Jan left her desk and followed him inside his office.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “You got a phone call from the Pasadena Police, and Walter Stuckel came back, and Celia told me that they called Levison, too.” Jan had recommended Celia for the job, and she always told her as much as she could.

  “Do you think she told everyone else?” Griffin wished he had said something like, “Do you know what this is about?” He tried to cover. “It looks like I was one of the last people to see someone before he got murdered. A writer. Someone who pitched to me once.”

  “How awful. Did you know him well?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Don’t worry about Celia. And don’t be silly, there’s no shame in being a witness.”

  “I wasn’t a witness. I didn’t see anything.”

  “I mean, there’s no shame in being the last person to see someone alive.”

  “The problem is that any special attention is bad. I get enough attention. And I told Walter, all I did was see the guy after a movie, that’s it. Get me Levison. I’d better speak to him before I call back the police.”

  Jan picked up the phone on his desk and used the intercom to get Celia. “Hi, is he in? It’s Griffin.” She waited a beat, then handed the phone to him. Levi
son wanted to see him immediately.

  He left his office and walked down the hall, getting angrier with every step at the Pasadena Police and at Stuckel. He wanted to yell at them, find out why they just didn’t call his mother and his homeroom teacher, for God’s sake. Celia told him to go right in.

  Levison left his desk, shut the door behind Griffin, and indicated the couch. There was a crudely drawn graph on the poster paper, a curve divided by three slashes. Underneath the third was written THE MONSTER DIES TWICE. It was an act breakdown for a story. Levison ripped it down when he saw Griffin’s attention drift to the board.

  “So what’s all this?” said Levison. “Did you know this guy? Did we ever hire him for anything?”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “Sometimes I like to give a kid his shot.”

  “Somebody beat you to it.”

  “Why is everybody in on this?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us, as soon as you heard he was dead, that you’d seen him?”

  “Because all I did was see him. Because I have more important things to do than rock the goddamn boat right now.”

  “Meaning you need to cover your flanks while Levy is approaching?”

  “Meaning this job is hard enough without making a spectacle of myself. If I’d thought about it a little more, I would have realized that there was no avoiding it, and I should have just told you as soon as I heard he was dead.”

  “I mean, I’m your friend. Forget boss. Friend. When you’re in trouble, you’re supposed to call me.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “Of course not, no. You didn’t kill him.”

  “So what should I do now?”

  “Let Walter Stuckel take care of this for you. We want to keep your name out of the papers, and he knows how to handle that kind of thing. After the cops see you, Walter’ll give them passes to a screening where they can sit two rows behind Michelle Pfeiffer, and this will all go away.”

  Griffin liked the turn of the conversation, from exasperation to action. Levison stood up, since the meeting was over.