Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories - 3

by Jeffery Deaver

  Still, O'Connor was desperate.

  Hence, hat in hand.

  Felter nodded, listening attentively as O'Connor pitched his idea. He was good; he'd done it many times in the past year.

  There was a knock and a large man, dressed similarly to Felter, walked into the office without being formally admitted. His youth and the reverential look he gave to Felter told O'Connor immediately he was a production assistant--the backbone of most TV and film companies. The man, with an effeminate manner, gave a pleasant smile to O'Connor, long enough of a gaze to make him want to say, I'm straight, but thanks for the compliment.

  The PA said to Felter, "He passed."

  "He what?"

  "Yep. I was beside myself."

  "He said he was in."

  "He's not in. He's out."

  The elliptical conversation--probably about an actor who'd agreed to do something but backed out at the last minute because of a better offer--continued for a few minutes.

  As they dealt with the emergency, O'Connor tuned out and glanced at the walls of the man's office. Like many producers' it was covered with posters. Some were of the shows that Felter had created. Others were of recent films--those starring Mark Wahlberg, Kate Winslet, Ethan Hawke, Tobey Maguire, Keira Knightley. And, curiously, some were of films that O'Connor remembered fondly from his childhood, the great classics like The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt.

  The actor remembered that he and Felter's dad would sometimes hang out for a beer after the week's shooting for Homicide Detail had wrapped. Of course, they'd gossip about the shenanigans on the set but they'd also talk about their shared passion: feature films. O'Connor recalled that often young Aaron would join them, their conversations helping to plant the seeds of the boy's future career.

  Felter and the bodybuilder of a production assistant concluded their discussion of the actor crisis. The producer shook his head. "Okay, find somebody else. But I'm talking one day, tops."

  "I'm on it."

  Felter grimaced. "People make a commitment, you'd think they'd stick to it. Was it different back then?"

  "Back then?"

  "The Homicide Detail days?"

  "Not really. There were good people and bad people."

  "The bad ones, fuck 'em," Felter summarized. "Anyway, sorry for the interruption."

  O'Connor nodded.

  The producer rocked back in a sumptuous leather chair. "I've got to be honest with you, Mike."

  Ah, one of the more-often-used rejections. O'Connor at least gave him credit for meeting with him in person to deliver the bad news; Felter had a staff of assistants, like Mr. America, who could've called and left a message. He could even just have mailed back the materials. O'Connor had included a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

  "We just couldn't sell episodic TV like this nowadays. We have to go with what's hot. People want reality, sitcoms, traditional drama. Look at Arrested Development. Brilliant. But they couldn't keep it afloat." Another tap of O'Connor's proposal for Stories. "This is groundbreaking. But to the industry now, that word scares 'em. It's like it's literal: an earthquake. Natural disaster. Everybody wants formula. Syndicators want formula, stations want formula, the audience, too. They want a familiar team, predictable conflicts. White guy, black guy, hot chick, Asian guy who knows computers. The way of the world, Mike."

  "So you're saying that Entourage is just The Honeymooners with the F word."

  "Naw, I'd say more Leave It to Beaver. A family, you know. But, yeah, that's exactly what it is. Hell, Mike, I wish I could help you out. My dad, rest his soul, loved working on your show. He said you were a genius. But we've gotta go with the trends."

  "Trends change. Wouldn't you like to be part of a new one?"

  "Not really." Felter laughed. "And you know why? Because I'm a coward. We're all cowards, Mike."

  O'Connor couldn't help but smile himself.

  On his show, O'Connor had played a Columbo kind of cop. Sharp, nothing got by him. Mike Olson the cop on Homicide Detail wasn't a lot different from Mike O'Connor the actor. He looked Felter over carefully. "What else?"

  Felter placed his hands on his massive glass desk. "What can I say? Come on, Mike. You're not a kid anymore."

  "This is no industry for old men," he'd say, paraphrasing William Butler Yeats's line from "Sailing to Byzantium."

  In general men have a longer shelf life than women in TV and films, but there are limits. Mike O'Connor was fifty-eight years old.

  "Exactly."

  "I don't want to star. I'll play character from time to time, just for the fun of it. We'll have a new lead every week. We could get Damon or DiCaprio, Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett. People like that."

  "Oh, you can?" Felter wryly responded to the enviable wish list.

  "Or the youngster of the month. Up-and-coming talent."

  "It's brilliant, Mike. It's just not salable."

  "Well, Aaron, I've taken up enough of your time. Thanks for seeing me. I mean that. A lot of people wouldn't have."

  They chatted a bit more about family and local sports teams and then O'Connor could see that it was time to go. Something in Felter's body language said he had another meeting to take.

  They shook hands. O'Connor respected the fact that Felter didn't end the conversation with "Let's get together sometime." When people in his position said that to people in O'Connor's, the lunch dates were invariably canceled at the last minute.

  O'Connor was at the door when he heard Felter say, "Hey, Mike. Hold on a minute."

  The actor turned and noted the producer was looking at him closely with furrowed brows: O'Connor's flop of graying blond hair, the broad shoulders, trim hips. Like most professional actors--whether working or not--Mike O'Connor stayed in shape.

  "Something just occurred to me. Take a pew again." Nodding at the chair.

  O'Connor sat and observed a curious smile on Felter's face. His eyes were sparkling.

  "I've got an idea."

  "Which is?"

  "You might not like it at first. But there's a method to my madness."

  "Sanity hasn't worked for me, Aaron. I'll listen to madness."

  "You play poker?"

  "Of course I play poker."

  *

  O'CONNOR AND DIANE were sitting on the patio of their house in the hills off Beverly Glen, the winding road connecting West Hollywood and Beverly Hills to the San Fernando Valley. It was a pleasant house, but modest. They'd lived here for years and he couldn't imagine another abode.

  He sipped the wine he'd brought them both out from the kitchen.

  "Thanks, lover," she said. Diane, petite, feisty and wry, was a real estate broker and she and O'Connor had been together for thirty years, with never an affair between them, a testament to the fact that not all Hollywood marriages are doomed.

  She poured more wine.

  The patio overlooked a pleasant valley--now tinted blue at dusk. Directly beneath them was a gorgeous house. Occasionally film crews would disappear inside, the shades would be drawn, then the crews would emerge five hours later. This part of California was the number-one producer of pornography in the world.

  "So, here's what Felter's proposing," he told her. "Celebrity poker."

  "Okay," Diane said dubiously. "Go on." Her voice was yawning.

  "No, no. I was skeptical at first, too. But listen to this. It's apparently a big deal. For one thing it airs during Sweeps Week."

  The week during which the networks presented the shows with the biggest draw to suck up the viewership rating points.

  "Really?"

  "And it's live."

  "Live TV?"

  "Yep." O'Connor went on to explain the premise of Go For Broke.

  "So it's live, sleazy reality TV. What makes it any different?"

  "Have some more wine" was O'Connor's answer.

  "Uh-oh."

  O'Connor explained that what set Go For Broke apart from typical celebrity poker shows was that on t
his one the contestants would be playing with their own money. Real money. Not for charity contributions, like the usual celeb gambling programs.

  "What?"

  "Aaron's view is that reality TV isn't real at all. Nobody's got anything to lose. Survivor, Fear Factor...there's really no risk. The people who climb walls or walk on girders're tethered and they've got spotters everywhere. And eating worms isn't going to kill you."

  Savvy businesswoman Diane O'Connor said, "Get back to the 'our own money' part."

  "The stakes are a quarter million. We come in with that."

  "Bullshit."

  "Nope. It's true. And we play with cash on the table. No chips. Like riverboat gamblers."

  "And the networks're behind it?"

  "Huge. The ad budget alone's twenty-five million. National print, TV, radio, transit ads...everything. The time slot for the first show is after Central Park West and on Thursday it's right after Hostage."

  CPW was the hottest comedy since Friends, and Hostage was the season's biggest crime drama, a 24-kind of action show.

  "Okay, it's big. And we can probably get our hands on the money but we can't afford for you to lose it, Mike. And even if you win, okay, you make a million dollars. We could do that in a couple of years in the real estate market. So, what's in it for you?"

  "Oh, it's not about the money. It has nothing to do with that."

  "Then what's it about?"

  "The bump."

  "The bump? What is that? A Hollywoodism?"

  "Of course," he said. "Why use a dozen words to express yourself exactly when you can use a buzzword?"

  He explained to his wife, in a slightly censored fashion, what Aaron Felter had told him earlier: "Mike, buddy, a bump is a leg up. It's getting recognized on the media radar. It's grabbing the limelight. A bump means you're fuckable. A bump gets your name in the trades and Entertainment Tonight. You haven't had a bump for years. You need one."

  O'Connor had asked Felter, "So you're saying that if I'm in this game, I get a bump?"

  "No, I'm saying if you win the game, you get a bump. Will it get you a housekeeping deal at a studio? I don't know. But it'll open doors. And I'll tell you if you win, I promise I'll take your proposal for Stories to the people I've got deals with. Again, am I promising they'll green-light it? No, but it'll get me in the front door."

  He now said to Diane, "All the contestants're like me. At a certain level, but not where we want to be. They're from a cross section of entertainment industries, music, acting, stand-up comedy."

  The woman considered this for a long time, looking over the blue hills, the porn house, the pale evening stars. "This is really your last chance to get Stories on, isn't it?"

  "I'd say that's right."

  Then, to his disappointment, Diane was shaking her head and rising. Without a word she walked into the kitchen. O'Connor was upset. He loved her. And, more important, he trusted her. Mike O'Connor might've played the tough, blunt Detective Mike Olson on TV, but emotionally he was the antithesis of the cop. He'd never do anything to hurt his wife. And he resolved that, seeing Diane's negative reaction, he'd call Felter immediately and back out.

  She returned a moment later with a new bottle of Sonoma chardonnay.

  "You don't want me to do it, do you?" he asked.

  "I'll answer that with one question."

  He speculated: Where would they get the money, what about the girls' tuition, would they have to hit their retirement funds?

  But, it turned out, she was curious about something else: She asked, "Does a full house beat a flush?"

  "Uhm, well..." He frowned.

  Diane withdrew from her pocket something she'd apparently collected when she'd gone into the kitchen for the wine: a deck of Bicycle playing cards. "I can see you need some practice, son."

  And cracked the wrapper on the deck.

  *

  THE BAR WAS ON MELROSE, one of those streets in West Hollywood where you can see celebs and people who want to be celebs and people who, whether they're celebs or not, are just absolutely fucking beautiful.

  Sammy Ralston was checking some of them out now--the women at least--and looking for starlets. He watched a lot of TV. He watched now in his small place in Glendale. And he'd watched a lot Inside, too, though the Chicano inmates dictated what you saw, which during the day was mostly Spanish-language soaps, which weren't so bad, 'cause you got a lot of tits, but at night they watched weird shows he couldn't figure out. (Though everybody watched CSI, which he had a soft spot for, seeing as how it was physical evidence--from one of his cigarettes--that landed him Inside in the first place after the B and E at a Best Buy warehouse.)

  He looked up and saw Jake walk through the door, shaved head, inked forearms. Huge. A biker. He wore a leather jacket with Oakland on the back. Say no more. He stood above Ralston. Way above. "Why'd you get a table?"

  "I don't know. I just did."

  "Because you wanted some faggot chicken wings, or what?"

  "I don't know. I just did." The repetition was edgy. Ralston was small but he didn't put up with much shit.

  Jake shrugged. They moved to the bar. Jake ordered a whiskey, double, which meant he'd been here before and knew they were small pours.

  He drank half the glass down, looked around and said in a soft voice, "Normally I wouldn't fuck around with a stranger but I'm in a bind. I've got a thing going down and my man--nigger out of Bakersfield--had to get the fuck out of state. Now, here's the story. Joey Fadden--"

  "Sure, I know Joey."

  "I know you know Joey. Why I'm here. Lemme finish. Jesus. Joey said you were solid. And I need somebody solid, from your line of work."

  "Windows?"

  "Your other line of fucking work."

  Ralston actually had two. One was washing windows. The other was breaking into houses and offices and walking off with anything salable. People thought that people who boosted merch went for valuable things. They didn't. They went for salable things. Big difference. You have to know your distribution pipeline, a fence had once told him.

  "And you understand that if we can't come to an agreement here and anything goes bad later, me or one of my buddies from up north'll come visit you."

  The threat was like the fine print in a car contract. It had to be included but nobody paid it much mind.

  "Yeah, yeah. Fine. Go ahead."

  "So. What it is. I heard from Joey about a month ago this TV crew did a story at Lompoc. Life in prison, some shit like that, I don't know. And the crew got this hard-on to hang with the prisoners."

  "Macho shit, sure." Ralston'd seen this before. People from the Outside feeling this connection with people Inside.

  "So Joey heard them talking about this TV poker show some asshole producer is doing. It's planned for Vegas, but in a hotel, not a real casino. And they don't use chips. They use real cash. The buy-in's supposedly two-fifty K."

  "Shit. Cash? What's the game?" Ralston loved poker.

  "Fuck, I don't know. Old Maid. Or Go Fish. I don't fucking lose my money at cards. So I'm thinking, if it's not a casino, security won't be so tight. Might be something to think about." Jake ordered another whiskey. "Okay. So I check out the prison show and get some names. And one of the gaffers--"

  "Yeah, what is that? I've heard of them."

  "Electrician. Can I finish? He's a biker, too, from Culver City. And he's a little loose in the mouth when he's had a few and so I get the details. First of all, this's a live show."

  "What's that mean?"

  "Live? They don't record it ahead of time."

  "They do that?" Ralston thought everything was recorded.

  "So it's a big surprise who wins."

  "That's not a bad idea for a show. I mean, I'd watch it." Ralston peeled the label off his beer. It was a nervous habit. Jake noticed him and he stopped.

  "Well, you can tell 'em you fucking approve, or you can shut up and listen. My point is that they'll have a mil and a half in small bills on the set. And we'll know
exactly when and exactly where. So Joey speaks for you and I thought you might be interested. You want in, you get twenty points."

  "It's not a casino's money, but there'll still be armed guards."

  "Last time I looked 7-Elevens don't have that kind of money in their fucking cash registers."

  "Guns involved, I'd be more interested for thirty."

  "I could go twenty-five."

  Sammy Ralston said he'd have to think about it.

  Which meant only one thing: getting a call through to Lompoc. After he and Jake adjourned he managed to get Joey Fadden, doing three to five for GTA, hard because a weapon was involved. By virtue of the circumstances, their conversation was convoluted, but the most important sentence was a soft, "Yeah, I know Jake. He's okay."

  Which was all Ralston needed.

  And they proceeded to talk about the sports teams and how much they both lamented the name change of the San Francisco 49ers' home to "Monster Park."

  *

  THE SITE OF THE GAME was the Elysium Fields Resort and Spa on the outskirts of Vegas.

  On Wednesday morning, the day of the show, the contestants assembled in one of the hotel's conference rooms. It was a curious atmosphere--the typical camaraderie of fellow performers, with the added element that each one wanted to take a quarter-million dollars away from the others. The mix was eclectic:

  Stone T, a hip-hop artist, whose real name, O'Connor learned from the bio that Felter had prepared for the press, was Emmanuel Evan Jackson. He had been a choirboy in Bethany Baptist Church in South Central, had put himself through Cal State, performing at night, and then got into the L.A. rap, ska and hip-hop scene. Stone was decked out like a homie from Compton or Inglewood--drooping JNCO jeans, Nikes, a vast sweatshirt and bling. All of which made it jarring to hear him say things like, "It's a true pleasure to meet you. I've admired your work for a long time." And: "My wife is my muse, my Aphrodite. She's the one whom I dedicate all my songs to."

  O'Connor was surprised to see Brad Kresge was one of the contestants. He was a bad boy of West Hollywood. The lean, intense-eyed kid was a pretty good actor in small roles--never with a major lead--but it was his personal life that had made the headlines. He'd been thrown out of clubs for fighting, had several DUI arrests and he'd done short time in L.A. County for busting up a hotel room, as well as the two security guards who'd come to see what the fuss was about. He seemed cheerful enough at the moment, though, and was attentive to the emaciated blonde hanging on his arm--despite the fact that Aaron Felter had asked that the contestants attend this preliminary meeting alone, without partners or spouses.