He cast out another headshot. It arced briefly skyward before plummeting seaward, disappearing from view before even hitting the waves.
“Sick of this unfunny shit! You hear me? Sick of it!”
He twisted his waist as far as he could before pitching the remaining three photos over the edge.
“We’re not gonna play by your script, motherfucker! Try doing the act with no props, huh? Who’s the hack? You’re the hack! You are! You are! Yeah! That’s right!”
By this point Dante was just yelling and pointing at the water. When he finished, he was out of breath. He turned back panting to his audience of three.
“Feel better now?” Zoe said.
He thought about it, then grinned.
“You know, actually I do.”
Ollie came running over, breathless. “Hey, hey, wait, you guys! Dante! I just realized! If we put someone or hid a camera or iPhone pointed at the photos, we could catch whoever’s taking them away red-handed!”
Dante looked down at the surf and its distinct lack of photos.
“Now I feel worse,” he said.
VI
As soon as Oliver Rees left the courtyard, TJ Martinez dashed upstairs, two steps at a time, until he reached Ollie’s door, whose location he had noted when they went to bed the night before.
Although Ollie had stayed in the room for less than twenty-four hours, it looked like a toddler had been locked inside for a week. Clothes were strewn everywhere. However, the traffic-cone-colored binder was impossible to miss, lying atop the spectacularly unmade bed, its sheets tangled into knotty cords as if the occupant had been trying to make rope in his sleep.
Through the window TJ could see the others at the edge of the cliff, counted all five of them, then snatched up the binder and flipped through to learn what advantages it had given Ollie.
The graphics were nigh-incomprehensible blueprints for elaborately staged prop gags, among them the shotgun-in-the-patio bit that took out Janet and a schematic for some kind of hatch underneath the bouncy castle. After flipping past these he discovered a precise architectural drawing of the panic room, with columns of dense text describing…
TJ groaned and closed his eyes.
The text said:
Egg keeky dipshuh bliddle little bey unt ten
u glib gamma mamma pama boo blpp blpp glx
The whole book was written in BabyRap®, the cloying Pig Latin babbled by Rees’s Orange Baby Man character onstage. And apparently it was…an actual language? That someone could replicate in letters and characters? That Rees could read? Or was he just trying to put one over on him?
TJ found it hard to believe that Ollie had the cranial capacity to deceive him like this, but who knew? Maybe there was some animal cunning going on in that perfectly round gumball of a head.
He noticed the others returning from the cliff’s edge, so TJ tossed the binder back on the bed and hurriedly left Ollie’s room to get downstairs before they arrived.
But they were quicker than he anticipated. “Where’d Martinez go?” he heard someone say just as he was closing the door.
Inspiration struck instantaneously.
“Up here!” he called. “Look what I found!”
He opened and closed doors until he found a room with a still-made bed. He left it open and stepped inside. Ruby Ng’s driver’s license lay inside her Hothead Paisan duct-tape wallet, which was inside the metal Wonder Woman faux-vintage lunchbox she used as a purse.
“You wanna see this!” he yelled through the open door, and soon the others joined him in Ruby’s room.
“Thought I’d do something useful while you were acting out,” TJ said.
“Fuck you, man,” Dante said.
“See, Ruby’s bed hasn’t been slept in. At least that’s what it looks like.”
They all looked at the bed.
“Search the house?” Steve said.
“Again?” Ollie groaned.
“We haven’t searched this floor yet,” Meredith said. “We were interrupted by…Ms. Ng sneaking away. And Ms. Kahn dying.”
Zoe said, “Why bother? You’re the one who keeps saying there’s no one else on the island.”
“There isn’t,” Meredith said. “But now Ms. Ng is unaccounted for.”
“It’s more likely one of us killed her than the other way around,” TJ said. “Shit she’s talked about all of us, she’s the most hated comic on this island.”
“She was definitely the most hated woman,” Zoe said, looking pointedly at TJ.
“Fuck you, too,” he said merrily.
“Enough of that,” Steve said. “Let’s start looking and get this over with. Same pairs as before? Sorry, Ollie, you go with Meredith.”
“Okay,” Ollie muttered.
“No one is looking in my room,” Zoe said. “Sorry. But no.”
“Zoe…” Steve frowned. “We have to.”
“No way.” Zoe shook her head. “I’m not letting you.”
Dante said, “Babe, I think you got to file this under ‘tough shit.’ ”
“No, ‘babe,’ ” Zoe said, “forget it.”
Meredith Ladipo said, “Doxy this rank right frogger,” walked out of the room, and turned the knob of the room next door.
“What’d she say?” TJ said.
Zoe let out a cry of protest and rushed past Meredith down the belvedere gallery. This, and the fact that the bed in the room also hadn’t been slept in, indicated to Meredith that this wasn’t Zoe’s room.
She turned to leave when her brain processed an image her eyes had registered on the bedside table.
Meredith stepped back into the room, closing the door almost all the way. A Dior handbag was thrown in an armchair, suggesting that, by process of elimination, this had been Janet Kahn’s room.
What caught Meredith’s eye was a squarish box on the end table.
It was full of shotgun shells.
She could hear the others arguing outside. Stepping out of sight of the landing, she loaded a pair of shells into the gun, then slipped the box into her robe pocket.
She rejoined the others outside, saying, “There’s nothing in Janet’s room,” but no one was listening. The four men were arguing with Zoe, who stood in her doorway, refusing entry in an ever-higher octave.
Meredith Ladipo elbowed past Dante Dupree and Steve Gordon and hit Zoe in the stomach as hard as she could with the butt of the shotgun.
When Zoe doubled over, wheezing “Bitch!” Meredith reached past her, opened the door, and went inside.
“Now we’re even,” she said.
Zoe’s bed hadn’t been slept in either, though a few clothes from her carry-on had been tossed about. Meredith wondered what the big fuss was when suddenly something small and gray darted around the side of the bed, unleashing a cascade of barking much louder than one would have thought possible from such a tiny animal.
“Holy shit, Jesus,” Meredith cried and leapt back, shotgun raised. Fortunately she had the wherewithal not to pull the trigger at what looked like a large rat that had survived multiple attempts to drown it.
“Asshole! Asshole!” Zoe cried, muscling past the others and putting herself between the barrel of the shotgun and the tiny dog.
“Why you calling me names, bitch?” TJ said. “I didn’t lay a hand on you.”
“Asshole is the dog’s name,” Dante said.
“How’d you know that?”
“Netflix,” Dante said.
Meredith said, “You brought a dog? Here? In clear violation of your contract?”
“I never could bear to be separated from my baby,” Zoe said, lifting the dog in both arms. Asshole bathed her cheek with kisses from his microscopic lizard tongue. “He’s basically a service dog. He helps with my anxiety. I’m between therapists right now or I would have made them write you a note.”
“Did you think we were going to eat him or something?” Dante said. “Why all the secrecy?”
“And how did you keep him so quiet w
hile smuggling him onto the island?” Steve said.
“I gave him Puppy Ambien® right before we got on the plane,” she said. “It knocks him out for hours and hours. But once I got here and I saw the house was open to the rest of the island, with the sea and the cliffs and everything, I kept him in here and fed him and petted him. He’s very well trained. He pee-peed on this copy of the New York Post, and I’ve been carefully disposing of his doo-doos.”
Ollie covered his mouth and giggled at “doo-doos.”
“I wish you had told us sooner,” Steve said.
“I didn’t want the murderer knowing he was here! That’s why I ran back from the cabana to check on him. You said the pets always die first!”
“I meant they always die first in horror movies,” Steve said. “And they’re usually killed by ghosts, not stepped on by accident, which is probably how that pathetic mutt is going to check out.”
“Did you find that thing stuck in the hair-catcher in your tub?” Dante said.
“Is that a dog, or did one of your pubes get hit by lighting and come to life?” TJ said.
“Don’t listen to them, Asshole,” Zoe whispered to the dog. “They’re just a bunch of real jerkie jerk-face comics, yes they are, aren’t they?” Then she licked the dog’s face while he licked hers.
“Eeyyughh,” Meredith Ladipo said.
VII
Ultimately Steve’s splitting-up-and-searching plan was shouted down by the unlikely alliance of Dante Dupree and TJ Martinez. Since the last attempt was a spectacular failure, they decided to look for Ruby as a group, never letting one another out of their sight.
A wan and shuffling mass, they looked in all eight guest rooms, Meredith’s room, the unslept-in master bedroom, the clown lounge, the faux library, the pool patio, the kitchen, the writers’ room, the dining room, the playroom, the wine cellar, the bouncy house, the cabana, the elevator hut, and the dock, uncovering the following details:
The master bedroom, Dustin Walker’s room, was spartan and anonymous and covered in dust. A plasma screen and PC tower sat on a desk, lying dormant in sleep mode. When Zoe hit the space bar to bring it back to life, the group was challenged for a password that no one had the energy to puzzle out.
Meredith Ladipo’s room had a Basquiat print on one wall and a laptop (with no internet access) on the makeup table. They made her wait in the hallway, fidgeting with the shotgun, while they searched her room and bathroom.
It was nigh impossible for anyone to be in the writers’ room for longer than a few seconds because the two corpses had begun to reek.
The only food left on the island appeared to be the half dozen packets of gourmet dog food Zoe had smuggled inside Asshole’s carrier.
And no trace of Ruby Ng was found.
VIII
When the search concluded and the group returned to the front gallery, Meredith said, “I am going to wait for Captain Harry. He’s about an hour late, but that’s not unusual.”
“His boat runs on CPT,” Dante said. When she frowned at him he added, “Colored people’s time.”
Meredith wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds offensive.”
“It’s an American thing. Also an ironic thing—you not understanding what I say for once.”
As Meredith walked toward the fountain, Steve stepped in front of her.
“We can’t separate,” he said. “Not anymore. We have to stick together at all times. It’s the only way to be sure we don’t keep getting picked off one by one…and to make sure we aren’t the ones doing the picking. Strength in numbers, et cetera.”
“Fine,” Meredith said. “We are all going to the dock, then, to pray for Captain Harry’s cromulent return.”
She brushed past him and headed for the stairs; the others looked at each other before following in a loose pack a few steps behind.
“Should we really let her have that gun?” TJ said to no one in particular.
“Where’s the harm,” Dante said, “if it’s not loaded?”
“Can you be sure it’s not loaded?”
“Why don’t you grab it from her and find out?”
“I bet you’d like that.”
Dante sighed. “Honestly, dude? I’m pretty sick and tired of lugging around dead bodies.”
IX
To the surprise of exactly no one, Captain Harry’s boat never showed up on the horizon, nor did anyone else’s boat either.
At noon, something resembling a commercial airliner appeared in the sky far away, but it shortly disappeared behind the clouds.
When it vanished, the group agreed to leave the dock. They loaded on to the surprisingly huge and excruciatingly slow elevator and returned to the estate.
The Red Skelton Memorial Clown Lounge seemed the most defensible and comfortable room in which to hunker down, with its lockable doors and comfy divans, not to mention a bathroom just outside. They could take turns sleeping on the couches while others kept watch. They had no spoken plan and no endgame, except for the vague notion that if they held out long enough, somebody associated with one of their various businesses would become sufficiently disturbed by their absence to attempt a rescue.
Steve and Zoe sat side-by-side on one sofa in the sunken fireplace pit, smiling at each other and whispering and holding hands.
TJ sat near Ollie at the bar across the room. There was still a pittance of booze to be had, but after what had happened to Billy the Contractor, nobody wanted to risk the chance that it might be poisoned.
After making a disgusted snort in Steve and Zoe’s direction, TJ turned to Ollie, who was poring over the Orange Baby Man binder in his lap. “What are you getting out of your magic book there?”
“Well, I’m working my way through it and translating—it really shows that whoever wrote this really gets me, really gets the worldwide revolution in positivity I’m trying to spark with my art—”
“There’s a pretty high profit margin on that, from what I hear.”
“You see, TJ, it’s that kind of cynicism that makes me not want to trust you. There are secrets in here, secrets of how the house was built and when many of the gags—well, he calls them gags in the same way as, you know, stuntmen call them gags—”
“Yeah, from what I’ve seen so far, they’re hilarious.”
“—but I don’t feel comfortable sharing them with someone like yourself, who hasn’t embraced the Radical Yes.”
“Right. I haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid. Or, in your case, the Tang.”
Ollie shook his head. “Do you remember the exact moment all hope inside your soul died?”
“Yeah, the first moment the priest passed around the collection plate in Mass. These people who insist you have a soul, they always want you to pay for the privilege of cleaning it. And I’m sorry but I like being dirty. Most people like being dirty. I’m just not afraid to admit it.”
“There’s good in you, TJ Martinez. I’m just not sure how to draw it out.”
“Take a number. Listen, I think we need—well, we need a code of our own.”
“I’m not going to teach you BabyRap®. That’s proprietary.”
“God no, please don’t. I can already feel myself losing what little’s left of my marbles. No, I mean more like—” He looked around to make sure they weren’t being observed. “In case I need you to help me out with, like, a diversion.”
“A diversion?”
“Yeah, you zig when I zag, that sort of thing.”
“I like it, I like it.”
“Like when I call out a code word, you go for it. You draw them away.”
“Like what? What were you thinking?”
“Like…how about…Tang.”
“Tang?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with Tang?”
Ollie shook his head. “Nothing. I like Tang. Tang is good.”
X
Meredith Ladipo felt a hand on her shoulder. She sat up in the clown lounge armchair she had kicked her feet back in, hands
fumbling for the shotgun at her side.
“Chill, girl, chill. You fell asleep.” Dante Dupree stood over her.
She groaned and rubbed her eyes, the weariness of the past twenty-four hours making her thin frame feel a thousand pounds heavier. “What time is it?”
“Little past five.”
“Bloody hell.” She’d been out for over four hours. “Boat’s not coming, is it?”
“Who, Captain Harry? No, he came and dropped off stuff at three. You just missed him.”
“What? Really?”
“No, of course not, dummy.”
“Oh.” She chuckled uneasily.
Dante peered at her with a crooked grin. “You know, no offense, girl, but for a stand-up you’re the most gullible person I’ve ever met.”
“That just means I’m a breath of fresh air,” she said.
He pulled up a nearby footstool and sat next to her. “You get to do any actual gigs yet or…?”
“Just some open mics, mostly back in London. A couple after I moved to L.A.”
“You kill? I bet you killed.”
“I…I wouldn’t say I killed. I…lightly wounded. Once.” She smiled bashfully and looked away. “All the other times, I bombed, to be honest.”
“But you still went out, though, right? That takes guts. You should be proud of yourself.”
“Then I met Dustin and I went to work for him, and I just haven’t had time to get back on stage.”
“For real?” Dante frowned. “If Dustin’s mentoring you, he should be encouraging you to get on stage more, not less.”
“No, of course. He is mentoring—he—he was mentoring me, but…I had certain…issues he was helping me get over, in my performance. And the job was a lot more involved than either of us had anticipated. I mean, organizing this weekend, it took quite a lot of time.”
“His little murder party, you mean.”
“I had no idea that’s what it was—”
“I know, it’s okay, I just…” He squinted. “How’d you meet him, you say? He see you perform across the pond or what?”
For a while Meredith looked like she was going to answer, but instead she said, “You are asking a lot of questions, Mr. Dupree.”
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