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by Lee Goldberg

  Eddie turned the memo back towards him so he could read from it. "`The appeal of Beyond the Beyond is the characters, not the actors who play them. The biggest mistake we can make is bringing back the original cast. Time has not been kind to any of them, particularly bovine Guy Goddard, a flatulent, incontinent has-been who—"

  Before he could get out another word, Guy burst out of the house and jammed the gun against Eddie's forehead, cocking the trigger.

  "I'm on your side," Eddie stammered, looking cross-eyed at the gun. "As far as I'm concerned, you're Captain Pierce. Anyone else is just a bad imitation."

  The Captain narrowed his eyes at Eddie. "So you know about the evil doubles."

  Guy Goddard was further gone than Eddie even imagined. Eddie took a deep breath. "Oh yes."

  Guy was relieved to know there was at least one other person beside himself left in the Confederation who saw what was happening. He lowered the gun.

  "How many others in the Confederation high command know what's going on?"

  Eddie assumed Guy meant the studio.

  "No one," Eddie said as gravely as he could. "But it's not too late to save the show. You have to convince the fans to rise up against Stipe and what he's doing. If you don't, the show will be ruined forever."

  "You're suggesting that I lead a rebellion against the Confederation."

  "No, Captain, I'm asking you to save it."

  Eddie knew that if he kept talking, he ran the danger of saying the wrong thing and getting himself shot. He also knew he couldn't top that line. It was the perfect act ending. So he abruptly turned on his heels and marched back to his car, feeling Guy Goddard's insane eyes on him the whole way.

  * * * * *

  Charlie Willis didn't know much about Southern California history, but he figured when Canoga Park was founded, it at least resembled its name. At one time, it must have been a community of grassy slopes and gentle streams, not the cement and asphalt wasteland of bleak warehouses it was now.

  Canoga Park was smack on the industrial, western boundary of the San Fernando Valley, in the flat, smoggy pocket between the hillside, gated estates of Encino and Tarzana, and the housing developments spreading over the San Gabriel Mountains.

  He steered his rented Ford Contour down a boulevard lined with junk yards, lumber yards, masonry yards, everything but green yards. The only people who lived here, in the run-down apartment buildings tucked between the warehouses, were poor, predominantly Hispanic workers who milled around on the street corners, hoping to be hired as day-laborers.

  And Charlie Willis.

  He took a left onto the sidestreet beside Home Depot hardware and parked at the curb in front of Canoga Stor-All, a prison camp for memories and life's unwanted clutter.

  A tall, wrought-iron fence surrounded six, long, gray, cinder-block buildings containing about 30 storage units with orange-painted, corrugated metal, roll-up, garage doors. Each storage unit was secured by one, or more, padlocks and an occasional chain. At the front of the complex, beside the code-key gate, was the main office, a cinder-block building with mini-blinds on the windows and a flat, tar-paper roof. A golf cart was parked out front.

  It wasn't an establishment that would be on the cover of Architectural Digest any time soon. But it was home, ever since the Northridge quake flattened his house in Reseda. His uninsured house.

  Hours after the quake, Charlie rented a U-Haul, took what was left of his belongings and put them in storage at Canoga Stor-All. He arrived just as the resident managers, terrified by the aftershocks, were leaving to catch the next plane back to Israel.

  So he, and his belongings, stayed. Canoga Stor-All became his home, and his job, until Pinnacle Studios offered him a job as their "trouble shooter."

  Charlie popped the trunk, unloaded his suitcase, and trudged towards the front office, pausing on his way to watch two guys lug a garden statuary version of Michaelangelo's David from their Toyota into one of the units. In the next row, a weary looking fellow was trying to cram a crib into his Volvo, while his two kids threw french fries at each other in the back seat.

  The place was hopping.

  He threw open the screen door and stepped up to the scratched, wood-grain Formica counter. There was nobody at the old IBM PC, which had been left on so long, the image of the Stor-All lease was burned into the amber computer screen.

  "If you're a vicious gang member with an automatic weapon, help yourself to the computer 'cause we got no cash," called out Lou LeDoux through the half-open door that separated the office from Charlie's apartment. "You can also have the half-eaten sugar cookie on the counter."

  Charlie squeezed around the counter and nudged open the door to his apartment with the toe of his shoe.

  "Glad to see you're watching out for the place," Charlie said to his brother-in-law. "I feel so secure knowing it's safe in your hands while I'm gone."

  Lou sat in Charlie's recliner in a yellow tank top and purple sweats, the latest issue of Big Hooters open on his lap, a beer in his hand, and a football game on the television. He didn't look much like an LAPD detective.

  "What you got here, Charlie, is a slice of heaven."

  "Is that so?"

  Charlie stole a beer from the six-pack beside Lou, pushed his dog McGarrett over on the couch, and sat down, dropping the suitcase at his feet and using it as an ottoman.

  "After a long night of crime fighting, I can relax with a cool beverage, interesting literature, and cable TV," Lou said. "Sometimes I got to fill out a lease and show somebody a unit, but I don't mind that. It's not like, say, your sister coming at me, her hair in curlers, nagging me to fix that, clean this, every five fucking minutes."

  "So you could say I'm doing you a favor, letting you moonlight as my manager, read my magazines, drink my beer and enjoy the company of my dog." McGarrett put his head on Charlie's lap and licked the beer can in his hand.

  "If you're thinking about not paying me, think again, I ain't doing this out of kindness." Lou burped loudly, enjoying it. "Speaking of which, why are you doing this."

  "Doing what?"

  Lou shook his head. "Living in this dump."

  "This slice of heaven," Charlie corrected, pointing at him with a tip of his beer can.

  "You got a job that pays pretty good, you travel, what's the point of keeping this gig? I know you aren't doing it to make my life better."

  Charlie thought about it as he got up and poured some beer in McGarrett's plastic dish. The dog rolled off the couch and lapped up the beer, finishing with a belch to rival Lou's.

  He was a cop once, and that didn't work out. Then he became an actor playing a cop, and that didn't work out, either. Now he was something in between the two, and wasn't sure how it was going to end up.

  "You can't trust Hollywood, Lou," Charlie said. "Nothing about it is real."

  "If the check clears, it's real."

  "Let's just say I feel better knowing I have something real to fall back on."

  Lou looked at him for a minute, then held up the Big Hooters magazine and waved it to make a point. "There's a guy rents a unit here, thin, eyes dart around like a squirrel. He has every single issue in storage."

  "Gharlane."

  "Yeah, Gharlane. You can show him any tit and he can identify the woman," Lou shook his head, impressed. "I couldn't do that, could you?"

  "Nope."

  "That's real."

  Charlie held his hand out to Lou. "Let me see that magazine." Lou gave it to him and he looked at the cover. There was a subscription sticker on the front, addressed to Charlie.

  "How long have I been getting this?"

  "A couple weeks. One of the perks of my job. Yours too, I guess."

  "I guess," Charlie handed the magazine back to him. "I'm taking a shower." He shuffled off towards the bedroom.

  "I know what you mean," Lou opened the magazine to the centerfold. "The magazine has the same effect on me."

  Before he got to the bathroom door, the phone rang. He was go
ing to let the machine take it, but then he heard Alison's voice.

  "Don't unpack yet, Charlie," she said. "We've got trouble."

  Chapter Four

  Looking out from the 33rd floor of the Pinnacle Studios office tower, Charlie could actually see the hills that ringed the valley, and the snow-topped peaks to the East.

  It was a clear, crisp day in the San Fernando Valley. A rainstorm had flushed all the gunk out of the air and onto the streets, where it washed into the drains and poured into Santa Monica Bay, poisoning the water and prompting the closing of ten miles of prime beach front.

  Days in LA didn't come any nicer than this.

  But the view had its price. Until recently, the building was known as Litigation Center, after its original reflective surface blinded drivers on the freeway below, causing a bloody 40 car pile-up. The tragedy had a happy ending. Pinnacle remodeled the exterior, bought the film rights to the victims' stories, and made a very successful mini-series starring Stevie Wonder and Jose Feliciano.

  "Is this an office, or what?"

  At the sound of Alison Sweeney's voice, Charlie turned and once again was assaulted by Milo Kinoy's distinctive decor. His desk was a glass table-top with only a sheet of white paper on a black tablet, a black pen, and a slim, black telephone. His chair was black leather, and faced the matching black leather sofa. At the center of the room, and right between Charlie and Alison, was a large, gold bust of a woman's enormous bust.

  "I'm dizzy," Charlie said, looking at Alison. She had the smooth, even tan of a native Californian, and a swimmer's lean body, which she unsuccessfully hid beneath a baggy man's shirt. She managed to be sexy and adorable at the same time.

  "Is it the office or the jet lag?" Just seeing him made Alison smile, yet they rarely saw each other face to face. She often felt like the guy who left those tape recordings for Mr. Phelps and the Impossible Mission Force.

  "The office doesn't thrill me," he replied. "And there's no time difference between Canada and Los Angeles."

  "Then it must be me," she stepped into the office, a Daily Variety under her arm.

  "I can't see you," Charlie said. "The breasts are blocking my view."

  "There's more to me than my bosom, Charlie."

  "I'm sure there is," he replied, stepping around the statue and motioning to it with a tilt of his head. "But I was talking about hers."

  She stood beside him, crossed her arms under her chest, and studied the well-endowed statue.

  "She doesn't have a head," Alison noted. "What do you think that means?"

  Before Charlie could answer, someone else did. "With breasts like that, she doesn't need one."

  They turned to see Milo Kinoy striding into the room, a jacket slung over his arm. "How was your trip to Vancouver?"

  "The usual," Charlie replied.

  Milo's agenda was as clear as his desk, and as straight-forward as the titles of his magazines. It wasn't about pornography, it was all about making money. And he wanted to make more of it. Charlie understood Milo, and was pretty certain Milo understood him.

  Milo hung his jacket on one of the statue's erect nipples and settled into the leather chair behind his transparent, empty desk. "I'm very impressed with you, Charlie. You get things done, I appreciate that."

  "Then I suppose I have you to thank for the subscription to Big Hooters."

  "Just a small token of my appreciation." Milo smiled. "Have you seen you seen Daily Variety?"

  "Not since I started getting your magazine."

  Alison swatted Charlie in the chest with the paper, a little too hard, in his opinion. "Page three," she said, holding it out to him.

  He snatched the paper and opened it to a full-page advertisement, a blow-up of a letter, typewritten on Nick Alamogordo's personal stationary, X'd out corrections and all.

  It was a long, rambling, single-spaced, miss-spelled diatribe about tortured creativity, about the threats and intimidation writers have faced over the centuries, about being willing to risk your life for your vision and your art.

  "So he's a tortured artist," Charlie said, "making $2 million a script."

  "Go to the bottom," Alison tapped the page. "Where he says he'll never eat fish again."

  Charlie read the last paragraph and looked up, surprised. "He says Clive Odett threatened to kill him if he left The Company."

  "He left Odett a few months ago and signed with Mitch Stein," Alison explained.

  "So why wait until today to take out this ad?" Charlie asked.

  "Because today we started filming Cop A Feel in Hawaii," Milo said. "Nick thinks Odett may try something."

  "'I don't eat pasta' doesn't sound like much of a threat to me."

  "What can I tell you, Charlie?" Milo's fingers tapped the table. "The man is terrified. This ad is his cry for help."

  "And you want me to help him."

  "Obviously he's in no danger at all. But it will make him feel better if you're there for a while. Think of it as a paid vacation."

  He speared the Daily Variety on a golden nipple.

  "Aloha," Charlie said.

  * * * * * *

  The darkened theater at The Company had several hundred seats, the latest digital, Dolby, and THX sound systems, and a cellular phone recharger in the arm-rest of every leather-upholstered seat.

  Sitting in those seats were Odett's 122 agents, each sitting ramrod straight, cell phones and beepers switched off, all eyes on their imperious leader, who stood in front of the theater, a single light from the floor shining up into his face. Behind Odett, on the giant curtain that covered the screen, was The Company's ubiquitous logo, a giant "C," its upper and lower cusps so sharp, the letter resembled a snarling, fanged mouth of a particularly vicious creature.

  As mesmerizing as the sight was, a few eyes couldn't help but stray to Chick Lansing, who sat in the far corner of the theater, hunched low in his seat, a ball of gauze on his face where his nose should be.

  "The prevailing wisdom the last few years is that the future of television is in cable," Odett said, "and that the days when the three broadcast networks dominated viewership are nearing an end."

  "While I believe that cable television is an exciting frontier, the dollars aren't there yet. Broadcast television still reaches more homes, and more viewers, than basic or pay cable. Therefore, I view the emergence of a new television network, the first in forty years, as a significant and important event."

  Odett was still upset that he hadn't brokered the sale of Pinnacle Studios to Milo Kinoy. But that didn't mean he couldn't control the network anyway, or there would be no network at all.

  "I think the Big Network, by aiming solely at the young demographic, could radically transform the network landscape," Odett said, gradually lowering his voice as he spoke. "We want to be a part of that. Starting with Beyond the Beyond."

  He paused. There was an audible swish as 122 bodies leaned forward to hear more.

  "The talent behind thirty-five percent of the programming on network television today is represented by The Company," Odett said. "I don't see why we can't represent all of the programming on The Big Network. Any and all talent not already represented by The Company should be pursued aggressively."

  A collective murmur swept through the room and, in Chick's case, one snortle, as agents immediately began devising scenarios and hatching plots, checking their pockets for brass knuckles and thumb screws, silencers and stilettos.

  "I expect results immediately," Odett said. "This kind of opportunity doesn't come around twice."

  The light beneath Odett switched off, and he took one step back into the darkness, completely disappearing. Instantly, the sound of a hundred flip-phones being whipped open reverberated in the darkness like a horde of bats taking flight.

  Chick Lansing slid out of his seat, hoping to slink quietly out of the theater before the lights came up. He turned towards the aisle, and was shocked to see Zita, Odett's Euro-bitch assistant, standing there, staring right at him.


  Fifteen minutes later, Chick was standing in Clive Odett's pagoda, trying to act nonchalant, resisting the urge to scratch at the big gob of gauze on his face.

  He was fairly certain that Odett had no idea what happened to him. When Chick got off the plane, he went straight to the terminal bathroom to hide from The Company's driver. After two hours in the stall, he paid a custodian $200 to claim his luggage and bring it back. Now, somewhere there was a big black man in a too-tight Cerruti suit having a good laugh at Chick's expense.

  Chick waited angrily until dark, so his soiled, stinging crotch wouldn't be so noticeable, hailed a taxi, and went back to his apartment on Doheny to shower for a couple hours and work on the clever story he'd tell Odett.

  He told him he was mugged by a gang of vicious Canadians thugs, and after he left then broken and whimpering, he went to see Spike, their blood still on his hands. His intimidating presence was all it took to get Spike to see the wisdom of leaving William Morris.

  "I think he got my message," Chick said.

  Odett circled him, the ginsu knife in his hand. Chick kept his eyes on Zita and, to stay calm, concentrated on imagining her writhing in his bed.

  "And what message would that be, Chick?" Odett whispered into his ear.

  "You don't fuck with The Company," Chick threw a smile Zita's way. She didn't lob one back. Euro-bitch. A night in his sack-a-roo of delight and she'd never stop smiling.

  "Why do you think people don't fuck with us, Chick?" Odett whispered into his other ear.

  "Because we're the agency that makes things happen," he replied. "Or they don't happen at all."

  Odett stopped in front of Chick. "Do you think we got that reputation by wetting our pants every time we faced a studio security guard?"

  Chick nearly wet his pants again. How the hell did he find out? "No," he sputtered, looking past Odett to see a thin smile on Zita's face.