The Basement

by Stephen Leather

  I've written eighteen screenplays, and no, not one has been made into a movie. It's not that they're not good enough, it's just that they haven't been read by the right people. I've spent hundreds of dollars on postage but so far I haven't reached the ones who can give a movie the green light and cut through all the studio bullshit. It's just a matter of time. The scripts are all registered with the Writer's Guild so that no one else can rip off the ideas, all I have to do is to keep trying.

  It's the secretaries that are the problem. They open all the mail, and they get thousands of screenplays a month, most of them written by talentless no-hopers. They don't know that mine are different, that I have the gift, that I can write, but they're just secretaries so they put me on the stack with all the rest. The stack gets higher and higher, a few get read, but most of them are thrown away. It's the fault of the secretaries. It doesn't matter whose name you put on the envelope, it has to go through the secretary.

  There's only one way to bypass the studio secretaries and that's to get an agent because an agent can deal with the studio executives direct. If an agent sends a screenplay to a studio exec, it gets read. That doesn't mean it's a sure-fire sell, but at least it's going to be read. They might only get through a few pages, because these people have the attention spans of three-year-olds, but at least you've got over the first hurdle.

  So, do I have an agent? No, I don't. And why don't I have an agent? Because to get an agent to read your stuff you have to get by - a secretary. I've written to dozens of agents, sent them countless copies of my work, and not one of them has had the decency to send me anything more than the standard letter of rejection. Not that I blame the agents. I don't think they even get to see the letters, let alone the screenplays. It's the secretaries, their primary function in life seems to be to block anyone who shows the least bit of creative talent from making it to the top. It's like there's a conspiracy, a conspiracy of talentless nobodies who resent those with ability and who are determined to do all they can to keep them down. Well, they're not going to keep me down. No way. There's nothing they can do to stop me. Nothing.

  I catch a cab over to East 89th Street. It's a pleasant enough day but a bit chilly so I'm wearing a heavy wool suit and brown loafers and a dark brown tie. Plain and simple. Nondescript. It's the camouflage that lets me get in close. A guy in a suit doesn't look like a threat. He looks clean, wholesome and middle class. Hang around outside a building looking like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver is just asking for trouble, right? So I put on a suit and I put the screenplay in a black leather briefcase and I'm all set. It's a comedy set in Arthurian England. Knights in armour, fire-breathing dragons and a gay Merlin. I've sent it off to half a dozen studios but I couldn't breach the secretarial wall so I'm going to go right to the source. I read in Variety that Woody Allen is in town and I know he's got an apartment at 930 Fifth Avenue so I figured I'll hang about outside until I catch him going in or out.

  It's an impressive building, all right, I've been there before. I don't stand right outside the entrance because that'd be a dead giveaway. I spend my time walking up and down slowly. Pacing. I don't mind waiting. Most people think that time spent waiting is wasted time, but for a writer it can be a Godsend. It gives you that most precious resource - thinking time. I've worked out some of my best plots waiting outside New York apartment blocks.

  Woody Allen has one of the best comedy minds in the business, and I know he'd be just perfect to direct my movie. Chain Male, it's called. And there's a part in it that's tailor-made for him. In fact, I wrote it with him in mind. I know that if he reads it, he'll love it. And with his name attached to the script, it'd be a sure-fire sell.

  The doorman appears in front of me, looming over me like a storm cloud about to break. ‘Can I help you?’ he asks. His voice is the sound of grating metal.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Are you waiting for someone?’ he says.

  ‘No. Is there a problem?’

  He sneers and I get a glimpse of nicotine-stained teeth. ‘Yeah, there's a problem. You're pacing up and down outside my building.’

  ‘Your building?’

  ‘Yeah, my building.’

  ‘You don't look like a man who owns a hundred million dollar building.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘This is a public street, I'm within my rights to walk here.’

  He snarls. ‘You ain't walking. You're waiting.’ He looks at the briefcase. ‘You serving something?’

  ‘What? Like lunch?’

  ‘Like legal papers.’

  I shake my head. ‘No. I'm not here to serve legal papers.’

  ‘So maybe you'd do us both a favour and move on.’

  ‘I don't think so.’

  He stares at me in silence and I see his hands clench and unclench like he wants to take a swing at me. He won't, I know, because it'd be more than his job's worth. A doorman brawling in the street isn't good for a building's image. No, he isn't going to hit me, but I can see he's annoyed. I smile. The boyish smile, the smile that says I'm a good guy, that I haven't a bad bone in my body. It seems to enrage him even more, which is just what I'd intended.

  A Federal Express van drives up and the driver gets out with a parcel. The doorman's head swivels as if it's on castors. He has no choice. He has to go and take the package.

  ‘Off you go,’ I say to him, my smile widening.

  ‘I'll be back,’ he says.

  You can't help laughing at the line. That's the best he can do? That's so typical, the little people learn all their lines from the movies. They're not capable of original thought. That's why they're little people and I'm a writer. He strides over to the delivery man and practically snatches the parcel out of his hands. He looks over his shoulder at me as he walks inside the building. I can see that he's going to be trouble so I decide to try again later.

  I walk across Central Park, deep in thought. One of the screenplays I'm working on is a thriller, and as I walk, head down, I run it through my mind, like playing a video. That's how I write, I play the images again and again until they feel right and then I put them down on paper. This one is called 1-900. I've only just started it. The opening shot is of an office, and we hear a woman's voice. The voice is deep and sexy, and she is talking dirty to a man on the phone. She is telling him what she wants to do to him as the camera pans slowly to her legs. She has great legs, and we hear the woman describe herself: blond, busty, soft lips etc, as the camera pans up. Then we see that she's not pretty at all, more a Kathy Bates type middle-aged woman, slightly overweight with mousy hair and plain features. Her name is Betty and she is a telephone sex operator, talking dirty on the phone to paying customers. Her sexy voice, and an ability to tell men what they want to hear, has made her one of the most successful operators in New York. The camera pulls back and we see the office is full of women, some young and pretty, others old and plain, all of them talking dirty on the phone. It's an efficient, highly-profitable operation, and Betty is one of the company's biggest earners. She has a stable of regular customers, and handles many new callers. The woman who runs the business knows that once a caller has heard Betty, he tends to be hooked. Callers usually want to meet her, but Betty always refuses, knowing that her looks don't match up to her voice.

  A new caller, who gives his name as Frank, begins to talk about hurting her, and she plays along, knowing that that's how some men get their kicks. She isn't worried, she knows that it's only fantasy, but gradually Frank begins to sound more psychotic, until he describes to her how he'd like to torture and kill a woman. She hangs up on him, earning a reprimand from her boss who tells her that she's supposed to keep them on the line as long as possible: the longer they stay on, the more they pay. A few days later, Betty reads of a sex killing in the paper, and to her horror she realizes that it's exactly as Frank described. Later that day, Frank calls her and says that he did it for her. Betty calls the police, who refuse to believe her. Frank calls her again, and tells her h
e plans to kill another girl. The victims he selects are just as Betty describes herself: busty, blond and pretty.

  After the second killing, Betty speaks to a young Homicide detective investigating the murders. He's fascinated by her sexy voice and arranges to meet her that evening. Of course, he doesn't recognize the frumpy woman who turns up, he is expecting a sexy young girl. You can picture him approaching a pretty girl he thinks is Betty, and then how his face would fall when he actually meets her. He cuts the meeting short, and asks her to keep in touch if Frank calls again.

  Frank does call Betty again, and she tells him that she wants him to go to the police. He gets angry and says he'll kill her next. In a bid to calm him down, she has verbal sex with him, but when she's finished he insists that he still wants to kill her. Betty calls the detective, who finds himself turned on again by her voice, even though he knows what she looks like. He finds himself flirting with her on the phone. There are two Bettys: the real life one and the fantasy Betty on the phone. The detective is confused about his feelings, but Betty isn't - she is strongly attracted to him.

  Frank waits outside the office where Betty works. One of the girls who works there looks just like Betty describes herself and Frank follows her home and rapes and kills her. The following day he rings up to speak to another girl, but finds that Betty is still alive. He threatens her, and she calls the detective. Realizing that she's now a potential victim, he offers to protect her. He is even more turned on by her voice, but when he meets her again later that night his ardour cools. Betty realizes she isn't going to get anywhere with him, until she turns off the light and they're in darkness. They talk, he is turned on by her voice, and they end up in bed. She, not surprisingly, is very vocal, and the sex is great. In the cold light of the morning, the detective is totally confused: he is turned on by her voice and her personality, but not by her appearance. Meanwhile, he must protect her from the killer who has found out her home address.

  It's a cracker of a story, but I'm not sure where to take it, whether the killer gets to Betty, whether Frank is really the killer, who lives or who dies. Being a writer is a bit like being God. I can do what I want with the characters, I have absolute power over them.

  I look up from the grass and find myself staring at the Dakota building, One West 72nd Street. It's where John Lennon used to live. It's star heaven, practically. Maury Povich and Connie Chung used to live there before they moved to New Jersey, Rudolph Nureyev had an apartment there before he died of Aids, Roberta Flak sleeps there and I even saw Lauren Bacall going in once. That's one of the reasons that I decided to live in New York and not Los Angeles, the people here are so accessible. The showbiz people, I mean. The movers and shakers. In LA they all hide behind sheer walls and alarm systems and they have armed guards ready to jump on any strangers who get too close. But New York is too crowded for that sort of privacy. Sure, they're safe inside their fortress-like apartment blocks, but they have to come out and they always have to walk across the sidewalk to their cars and that's when you can get to them. Look at what happened to Lennon, right? A guy stands outside the Dakota with a gun in his pocket and before long he's as famous as the man he killed.

  New York, huh? It's a lousy place to live, but a great place to kill. The ultimate hunting ground. I mean, close by the Dakota building is 145 Central Park West, the San Remo. Living there, when they're not under armed guard in LA, are Dustin Hoffman, Barry Manilow and Mary Tyler Moore. All in the one place. A stalker's paradise. You want to get close to Steven Spielberg in LA? Forget it. But when he's in the Big Apple, all you've got to do is stand outside 721 Fifth Avenue. He'll come out eventually. Francis Ford Coppola? Just up the road at 781. Robert Altman? 502 Park Avenue. Woody Allen is at 930. There are more movie directors living in Fifth Avenue than you can shake a stick at.

  I stand outside the Dakota building, and as always I find myself instinctively looking for bloodstains. There aren't any, of course. Blood on the sidewalk is even worse for a building's image than a brawling doorman so it was cleaned up even before Lennon was declared dead. That's one of the few good things about the city. It's so bloody efficient.

  * * *

  Her name is Sarah, Sarah Hall. According to the drivers licence in her purse she's twenty-eight years old, but she looks younger. Her skin is smooth, unmarked by lines or blemishes and her hair is soft and silky. Her drivers licence is upstairs on the kitchen table along with the rest of the contents of her purse: a gold Visa card, a Hechts charge card, a pale pink lipstick, a small pack of menthol-scented tissues, a pack of chewing gum and forty dollars in bills. There was some change, too: three quarters, two dimes and four pennies. You wonder about the chewing gum. She looks like the sort of woman who wouldn't want her daughters chewing gum so perhaps she does it because she's trying to give up smoking.

  You lean forward and sniff her mouth. Her breath is minty fresh and warm, no trace of tobacco. You run your hand down her arm, your fingers scratching quietly against the blue silky material. She's wearing a gold bracelet on her left wrist and the metal is warm to the touch. Next to it on her wrist is the steel chain which binds her hand to the frame of the bed, and at the base of her thumb is the padlock, like a charm on a bracelet. You examine her long, elegant fingers, looking for nicotine stains, but you find none. Perhaps she gave up smoking some time ago but still feels the urge from time to time, a distant longing. You know all about longings. And desire.

  Her nails are painted a deep, glossy pink, and they are a perfect shape. They're short enough to be functional - she has two children to take care of - but long enough to scratch if necessary. You imagine her nails raking down your back, hard enough to make you gasp, intensifying your pleasure until it crosses the border and becomes pain. You wonder if she scratches her husband when he makes love to her, whether she bites him with her strong teeth as she grasps him between her soft thighs. John, her husband is called. John Hall. He's in real estate. Hands out business cards with his home telephone number on it to anyone who'll take it. He asks people to call him at home, drop around and shoot the breeze anytime, because he's so eager to make a deal. He has a wife and two daughters to support, after all.

  She pulls against the restraining chains and they jangle against the brass bed frame. She groans and her eyelids flicker. Her eyes open but she has trouble focusing and they close again and she shakes her head from side to side slowly, like a child having a nightmare. She licks her lips and they glisten. As her mouth opens a thin thread of spittle is drawn between her lips. It pulls thinner and thinner and then snaps silently, the saliva disappearing back into the darkness of her soft mouth. She murmurs something which could be the name of her husband. She frowns, still with her eyes closed, and you know that her head is probably hurting. They always complain of headaches, and they always ask for a drink of water. Once they've stopped screaming.

  Her right arm moves again, pulling harder this time, and then she tries to bring both arms down from above her head. She pulls down hard and as the chains rattleand bite into her wrists she opens her eyes fully and sees you. She screams then, not words, just a yell of surprise and fear like she'd just turned a corner and seen you standing there with a gun in your hand. She screams so hard that you can see right down her mouth to the small fleshy bit at the back, contracting like it's trying to get away from you. She looks older when she screams, deep lines appearing either side of her mouth and wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Her wide open mouth makes the flesh bunch up under her chin and makes her nose look bigger. As she gives voice to her terror you sit quietly on the edge of the bed and wait for her to finish. They never scream for more than two minutes, and usually they grow quiet after just sixty seconds or so. They can't scream and breathe and it doesn't take long for them to realise that they're in no immediate danger. You smile as you watch her, knowing that the room you are in is totally soundproofed. The walls, ceiling and floor are tiled and beneath the tiles are layers of glass fibre and beneath the fibre is a double layer
of concrete blocks. Soon after you'd soundproofed the basement you put in a 100 watt stereo system and played rock music at full volume while you walked around the outside of the house, listening carefully. Nothing, just the territorial chirping of sparrows and the occasional drone of an airliner high overhead. The stereo is back upstairs now, and you know that no matter how hard or how long the woman screams no one is going to hear her. Except you.

  * * *

  I wake up like a jolt of electricity has been passed through my body and for a few minutes I lie still, staring up at the ceiling, my mind racing. I've got a complete plot in my head, my subconscious has been working overtime and all I have to do is remember it, to run the scenes through my head so that they're imprinted on my subconscious. It's good, it's really good, and when I get up I rush to the typewriter and bash out a synopsis. When I've finished I pace around the room, reading it aloud. It's better than good. It's great.

  I even had the title. The Bestseller. My blood starts to race as I read it through for the second time. This is going to be the one. This is the one that's going to net me a million dollars and a first class ticket to the west coast. It starts with a frustrated writer enrolling on a university creative writing course, determined to write a best-selling book which will make him rich and famous. It's not autobiographical, this guy is a psychopath. No, more of a sociopath. Most of the people on the course are writer wannabees, low on talent but high on enthusiasm, and he is contemptuous of them. The writer is asked by the lecturer to read from his work in progress. His opening sentence is ‘I'd kill to write a bestseller....’ and it rapidly becomes clear that his book is a first person account of a murderer looking for a victim. The lecturer and students realise with horror that he is writing about them. The would-be murderer is planning to kill somebody, dismember the body and bury it in several locations. The book will provide clues to the identity of the victim and the location of the body parts. It will be the ultimate treasure hunt, and the prize will be the writer going to the gas chamber. Or the electric chair. Whatever.