Ten Dead Comedians

by Fred Van Lente

  Yeah, that Leviathan™ is gonna do some serious damage to our plasma screen when I chuck it at it like a spear. Yup. My girlfriend is gonna be super-pissed.

  But c’mon, honey. What was I supposed to do?

  Bones chick said, “We need to talk.”

  —Ruby Ng

  Meltdown Comics, Los Angeles, CA

  October 3, 2016

  I

  The idea to kill TJ Martinez entered Zoe Schwartz’s mind not long after dawn.

  She awoke well before Steve Gordon. He lay on his back with his mouth open and occasionally made sounds that threatened to become snoring, but then went right back to breathing regularly again.

  Murder popped into her head as she turned away to face the door. She was having these thoughts not for the first time since Martinez had frightened and humiliated her in the dressing room at 2nite, but this time she did not immediately discard them as she had every time before. Instead she considered killing him in an academic, practical sense, as opposed to the idle cathartic fantasy it otherwise had always been. For the first time, the thought occurred in a place where she could commit the crime—one murder amid many—and theoretically get away with it. TJ was too megalomaniacal and stupid to be threatened by her, either physically or mentally, by her threats of exposure. It was that same smug feeling of invincibility that let him do what he did to women. It might even be worth it, risking jail, distracting herself from her own survival, not to mention costing her her own soul, just to see the look on his face when he realized she was about to end him. It might be the only time in TJ Martinez’s life that he would be capable of experiencing something resembling remorse.

  But a thought of murder was an uninspiring thought nevertheless. And after a few minutes of cursory examination, when the logistical absurdity of doing it without a weapon (push him off a cliff) in such a way that didn’t tip off the others (after midnight) and get her blamed for all the other murders (they would all support you because they hate him, too), became plain, she put the thought away. Besides, she fancied herself a good person. She could no more kill another human being in cold blood, even a human being with so few upsides as TJ Martinez, than she could, well, cum on somebody’s shoe when they weren’t asking for it.

  Steve stirred and nuzzled the back of her head:

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  II

  The idea to kill Zoe Schwartz began as an offhanded aside in TJ Martinez’s mind, easily batted away: no, don’t be ridiculous.

  He wasn’t really aware of sleeping or wakefulness, dreaming or conscious thought. Before murder had occurred to him, his mind had been transfixed by the panic room in the wine cellar, with its steel vault door and keypad lock. Any idiot could see it was not only the safest room in the house, it was also the likeliest hiding place for whoever was knocking them off one by one.

  Well, if you were going to kill her, this would be the best place to do it, right, because it would just get blamed on Dusty Walker.

  Shut up! his mind roared. I can’t worry about this. Dusty is trying to kill me and her.

  But what if he’s not? What if this is all just an elaborate scheme to get at you?

  That’s loco.

  You are trapped on a tropical island by a man who said he was going to kill you. Traditional standards of “loco” do not apply.

  TJ thought, I can’t worry about Zoe fucking Schwartz and whether she may or may not have the balls to tank my career. I’ve got to worry about keeping my own ass alive. Concentrate on the matter at hand:

  Ollie Rees said that the code to open the panic room was six digits, but he also said there was no indication, in his binder at least, of what the combination might be. TJ tried to remember back to the early ’90s, when he and Dusty would be wingmanning each other in the clubs, how they identified the girls they wanted, the girls they wanted at the same time, the girls they let each other have, but nothing came to mind that could be reduced to a numerical code.

  Would Ollie let him see the binder? Noooooo, of course not. “I’m sorry, Mr. Martinez, but this is something private between me and Mr. Walker,” he’d said. “I know his ghost may be trying to kill us, but I am a strong believer in comic/potential backer confidentiality.” That tub of guts was the biggest comedy criminal of all of them, about this TJ had no doubt. He charged for childlike wonder by the hour, plus overtime on weekends and bank holidays.

  That was the problem with losers, really. They never get what made winners different. They assumed it was some trick, some conspiracy, a blow job to the right person. So full of resentment and envy, they never realized that the only difference between winners and losers was that winners won. That was it.

  Exactly. So you are going to get out of here. But what if Zoe gets out of here, too? Then it’ll be too late.

  I thought I told you to shut up.

  What are the chances Dusty actually kills all of you?

  He’s doing a pretty damn good job so far.

  Bullshit. An old lady and a snob with his head up his butt he caught by surprise. But now you’re forewarned. Now you know better.

  Exactly. And if I get caught trying to do in Zoe, I’ll be blamed for all the others.

  So don’t get caught, genius.

  TJ willed the thought away, tried to think about something else, some other clue what the combination to the panic room might be. Ollie said it was originally the date his album Can’t Help Myself dropped, so had it been changed to some other significant date? The date What Just Happened? went on the air—or, more likely, the date it went off? The date he met his wife…but which one of the three? The date his kids were born? If he had any kids? TJ couldn’t remember.

  Maybe you could sneak into her room.

  No, it’ll be locked. Besides, we have no weapons. I’d have to smother her with a pillow. Can I do that? Physically, I mean? She looks like she works out.

  Steal the shotgun from Meredith Ladipo? Even if I could, it’s not loaded.

  Push her down the stairs? No, too good a chance she survives.

  Lure her to the cliffs and push her off? Now, we’re talking. But (a) how could I get her to come out alone with me, and (b) out in the open it’s pretty likely I’ll get spotted.

  Unless you did it late at night.

  TJ lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. The mahogany fan in the center of the white-painted slats listed slightly on its axis, so it sounded like it kept muttering “rutabaga rutabaga rutabaga” as it wobbled in place.

  Unless I did it late at night, he thought.

  III

  Dante Dupree did not wake so much as come very slowly back online. He was fully dressed, crumpled in a heap over the still-made comforter on the bed in his room.

  He rolled onto one side and, for a brief, glorious moment, was grateful how hungover he wasn’t; but then he sat up and the pain dropped on his head like a cartoon piano. He felt exhausted and empty, like his body had been drained of some vital fluid. Invisible cobwebs extended from him to the rest of the world, and they kept his movements slow and sluggish.

  As he rose to check that his door and shutters were locked, his stomach did a Chinese acrobat routine. He had thoroughly examined the seal on the cap of the whiskey bottle rediscovered on his end table when he came upstairs to go to bed, seeing no puncture anywhere, and decided it couldn’t have been poisoned. He swore he’d only try a taste, but a taste became a cup, and a cup became a third, and a third became fuck it. Now he was awake and convinced that someone had tried to murder him overnight with witchcraft, his head was so compressed and his body so abused.

  Why did tasty beverages have to be so tasty?

  Why couldn’t he have just one? Why was booze going to force him to give up booze altogether? Didn’t booze understand that he loved booze with the fire of a billion blazing suns? He and moderation were not very well acquainted. It�
��s all or nothing with this drinking thing, Dante, in both drinking and not drinking. You’re kidding yourself to think you can ease up on the throttle. You just got to sell the whole damn car.

  Except it had yet to hurt him so badly that he felt he absolutely needed to get help. He was aware of the bottom’s existence without having reached it yet. He could find it on the map, he had met people who had been there, he had seen pictures of it, he had read about it in school, but he had never actually been there. He was aware he was drifting toward it, but until he landed, he could still persuade himself it was just a mirage, a rumor, and he could continue falling weightless forever without consequence.

  Dear baby Jesus, if you’re really there, I swear, if you help me get off this island, I will join the hundreds of comics already in the program. I will take the thirty-nine steps, or whatever they call it. I will stand up in a church basement and use a fake name and tell strangers a credible lie about how long it’s been since my last drink. I promise to never shut the fuck up about how many days or months or years I have been sober, just like every other tired old comic I ever met.

  Unless Dustin Walker kills me, in which case, screw you. I’m getting hammered in heaven every goddamn day.

  He shuffled back to the bed from his morning pee and accidentally kicked the empty Scotch bottle, sending it bolting across the floor and bouncing off the dresser. It rattled harshly as it rolled, and when Dante picked it up, saw something he hadn’t noticed in his binge the night before:

  A small key on a wire-thin ring was lying inside.

  He upended the bottle and with purposeful jiggling managed to drop the key into his palm.

  Now what the hell does this open? he wondered.

  IV

  By seven-thirty the birds beyond the closed hurricane shutters were dueling songs in earnest, so Zoe Schwartz decided it was safe to return to her room. She reasoned it was too late in the morning for anyone to be murdered without alerting the others, which made sense to Steve, too, allowing for the fact that making sense was not the primary quality of the situation in which they found themselves.

  Steve stayed in bed while she put on her gym shorts and the I POOPED TODAY! T-shirt.

  “You know, if we get out of here alive, this would be a good project to pitch Apatow,” he said.

  “You’re from Canada, huh?”

  “You read my Wikipedia page?”

  “Didn’t need to. You pronounce project ‘proh-ject.’ ”

  “Yeah. You ever heard of Kitchener, Ontario?”

  “Has anyone ever heard of Kitchener, Ontario?”

  “No. It was just me and my parents. Three-person town. We elected our cat mayor every year.”

  Zoe laughed.

  “Anyway, that’s where I’m from. Came to the States to go to Northwestern and ended up at Second City. Though I guess the more accurate way of putting it is that I wanted to go to Second City, and Northwestern was the excuse to have my parents pay for me to leave the country.”

  “Big SNL fan, huh?”

  “I have lived my whole life by Lorne Michaels’s teachings. He’s Canadian, too, you know.”

  “Really. I’ve never met a Canadian in comedy who’s mentioned that.”

  “Are these also Canadians in comedy you’ve slept with or…?”

  “Yo, don’t slut-shame me, bro.”

  “I’m Canadian. I’m far too polite to slut-shame anyone.”

  “You know, Canadians and the word ‘polite,’ this is like Americans and the word ‘freedom.’ It’s a buzzword you like to repeat over and over to puff yourselves up but that you don’t actually like living up to. Most of the time when we say ‘freedom,’ we mean ‘do it my way or I’ll shoot you.’ Most of the time when you say ‘polite,’ you mean ‘passive-aggressive.’ ”

  He laughed. “Think what it’s like growing up there.”

  “I bet I would have liked it better than Long Island. There people are aggressive-aggressive.”

  She went to the door, put her hand on the knob, but otherwise didn’t move.

  “You think we’re going to get out of this okay?” Zoe asked.

  “I wish I knew, Zoe,” Steve said, looking at the ceiling. “I hope so.”

  “I mean,” she said with a nervous chuckle, “we’re the pretty white people. We always come out ahead.”

  Steve didn’t laugh. He looked at her and said:

  “I don’t know. I don’t think that applies here. It’s not like this is a job interview or anything.”

  Zoe didn’t know what to say to that, so she just stepped into the belvedere gallery and closed his door as quietly as she could.

  Immediately she had the sense that she wasn’t alone, even though, looking up and down the hallway, she saw no one.

  Her own door was still closed, but she just realized that she had no way of locking it from the outside, so someone could have slipped in there during the night.

  And was in there now.

  Waiting for her return.

  It was then that she saw the shadow retreat down the stairs.

  “Hey! Hey there! Who is that?” she called down.

  The shadow froze for just a second, then instantly receded.

  “Stop! Stop, you fucker! Stop!” Without considering if this plan was smart one way or the other, Zoe sprinted barefoot to the top of the stairs then ran down them two at a time. “I see you, fucker! Steve! Everybody! Come on! I’ve got him! I see him!”

  When she reached ground level she saw the shadow retreat outside through the front gallery. She ran after it, braking outside by the fountain. Looking right, through a line of bamboo, she saw a robed figure loping up the slope to the cabana.

  Zoe Schwartz had been a cheerleader and a member of the track team in high school. Just a few months ago she had hired a personal trainer to help her drop her usual twenty-five before the press tour for her Netflix special, and she hadn’t yet had the opportunity to stuff it all back into her mouth in the form of cheesy-crust Domino’s and vats of Neapolitan ice cream—a common postpartum aftereffect to fill the void left when she wrapped up a major project like an hourlong.

  So she bounded like a gazelle over the water element extending from the fountain and through the curtain of bamboo and up the hill after the bobbing silk robe, yelling “Stop, fucker, stop!” the whole time. And when she hurled herself at his torso, he went down with a crash like a lumpy mattress.

  “Ow! Ow! Stop it! Gross! Get off of me!” cried Oliver Rees, rolling out from under her. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m sorry! Just leave me alone!”

  “What? Are? You? Doing? You? Fat? Fuck?” Zoe gasped, more winded from her sprint than she anticipated.

  “Don’t call me an eff, you bee!” Ollie said, rising on his knees. “My doctor says binge-eating is triggered by stress. And I don’t know if you noticed but this is a very stressful situation we’re in, Zoe!”

  “If you don’t start making sense right now, I’m going to murder you myself, then blame it on Walker,” Zoe said, getting back to her feet. “What were you thinking, creeping around like that?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Ollie whined. “And when I’m upset, I eat. I wanted to get back to my room before anyone caught me.”

  The others started to arrive. Steve was in just his boxers; Dante in the clothes he had on the night before. TJ had on a 2nite-branded tank top and pajama bottoms. Meredith Ladipo slipped on a taffeta robe over some kind of one-piece nighty thing and carried the empty shotgun in both hands.

  “How much did you eat?” Steve said.

  “I’m not sure,” Ollie said. “I fell asleep in the middle of the night at the kitchen table, and when I woke up I forgot how much I ate so I ate the rest of it, just to be sure.”

  “How much?” Zoe said.

  “A-all of it, I think…” Ollie said, and then flinched as Zoe cocked a fist to hit him. She pulled back at the last minute.

  “I should hit you just for scaring the crap out of me,” she said.

/>   “Sorry,” he said.

  “That was all of the food we had,” Meredith groaned, shaking her head.

  “What in God’s name are you wearing?” Dante couldn’t take his eyes off Ollie’s orange silk robe with gold trim. “You look like the Pillsbury Pimp-Boy.”

  “It’s from my boxing sketch. Have none of you seen my act?”

  “I prefer comedy,” Dante said.

  TJ Martinez looked at all of them, then back at the house:

  “What happened to the podcasting chick? She’s the only one who didn’t come down.”

  V

  “Ruby?” Zoe called as they reentered the gallery. “Ruby?”

  Steve sighed, gesturing at the wall with the headshots:

  “Save your breath.”

  Meredith, Zoe, Ollie, TJ, and Dante gathered around them, too. There were five photos remaining on the wall.

  Not one of them was Ruby’s.

  Dante Dupree roared:

  “Fuck this fucking shit!”

  He yanked the frames off the wall and piled them in his arms and marched outside.

  “Should you—?” Ollie started to say while running after him, but TJ stopped him by touching his arm.

  “What did I tell you about this guy?” he said to Ollie under his breath.

  Ollie just looked at him before running after the others.

  Meredith followed Dante outside, calling for him to stop, followed by Zoe and Steve. He just kept yelling some variation of “Fuck this fucking shit” over and over.

  “Can you see this, Dusty? Huh? From out there?” he called up to the sky, then, looking to the ground: “Or down there? Your act? It sucks. It’s not funny, dude. Not funny. And I’m not gonna sit here all polite and shit in the audience while you do it, neither! No way! You’re not gonna ignore me! I’m gonna make you break!”

  When Dante reached the cliff edge overlooking the rocks and surging surf he took one frame and hurled it, discus-style, into the sea.

  “Gonna get you off your game, baby! You ain’t seen no heckle like a Dante Dupree heckle!”