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by Lee Goldberg

  "Reprising Dr. Kelvin," she said. "It's my character, Eddie."

  "You can't," he said.

  "Why not?" She let go of him. "You're the show-runner, aren't you?"

  "Yes, but someone else already has the part."

  "Fire her," she demanded.

  "You'll always be the original, classic Dr. Kelvin," he said, pleadingly. "But Spring Dano is the right demographic for the show."

  She couldn't believe this. For twenty five years, people only saw her as Dr. Kelvin. She couldn't get any other part.

  You'd make a great Dr. Quinn, but the show is a western, and everyone thinks of your breasts as 25th century computers...

  You can't play Amelia Earhart. It'll pull audiences out of the story. They'll be thinking the whole time, 'what the fuck does she care about a plane trip, she's been to Mars...'

  Sure, you'd make a wonderful cop. In outer space. This show takes place on the mean streets of urban America...

  And now that there was finally another opportunity to play Dr. Kelvin, her one and only role, suddenly she wasn't right for it.

  You'll always be Dr. Kelvin, but you aren't the right demographic for the show.

  It wasn't fair.

  Eddie, seeing the rage on her face and the prospect of a thorough handjob evaporating, knew he had to make good fast.

  "Don't worry, baby, Eddie's gonna take care of you," Eddie gave her a smile, his pajama pants bunched around his feet. "You can be the voice of the ship's computer."

  She shoved him against the refrigerator, which shot another stream of ice water at his ass. He yelped and jumped away from the offensive appliance.

  "The computer is going to be a major character," Eddie said. "Sexy, spunky and opinionated."

  She plucked her pop tart out of the toaster and walked out of the kitchen. Their marriage just ended. If he couldn't even get her a part on his own show, what good was he? She decided to divorce him before the first merchandising dollar came in. She'd kill him, but if two husbands turned up dead in one week, it was sure to draw some attention.

  "What about me?" he whined. "I've got some husbandly needs here."

  "Stick it in your computer," she replied. "I hear it's very sexy."

  * * * * * *

  Eddie's first act as executive producer was to issue a memo that all the trash from the Beyond the Beyond writing and production offices was to be collected and brought to him for "security purposes." He had Brougham pack up all of Stipe's notes, memos, and rough drafts, which he was having shrink-wrapped for sale at the big "BeyondCon" convention next week. Now that Stipe was dead, even a post-it note reminding him to have a boil lanced was worth fifty bucks.

  His second act as executive producer was to take Stipe's Beyond the Beyond premiere script with him to the executive bathroom for a thorough read. In his opinion the episode, The Terror Trout of Talos-10, wasn't bad, your typical fish-people-kidnapping-women- for-breeding-experiments story. What it needed was a few more battles, a sexy computer voice, and a recurring character for Jackson Burley to play.

  Eddie was still sitting on the toilet, the script open on his lap, when the bathroom fax chirped and spit out William Katt's resume. The Beyond the Beyond cast wasn't even buried yet, and already agents were hitting Eddie up with potential replacements.

  The bathroom phone rang. Eddie snatched it up.

  "If that's Billy Katt's agent," Eddie said, "tell him we found someone younger looking who has more female appeal. Tell him we cast Ernest Borgnine."

  "It's Clive Odett calling for you," his secretary said.

  Eddie shit when he heard the news. Literally. But it was a good thing, he'd been sitting on the toilet constipated for the last 45 minutes.

  "Put him on hold," Eddie said, "I'm in a meeting."

  He hung up the phone, giggled and stamped his feet. Only a few days ago, Clive Odett dismissed him as the car detail guy. Now he was calling to sign him.

  God, Eddie loved the TV business.

  Now he knew, without a doubt, that all his stars were in alignment. He could feel, in the very marrow of his bones, that this show was going to be his second coming. Watch your back, Aaron Spelling. Eddie Planet is coming at you.

  Eddie picked up the phone. "Clive, it's so good to hear from you. It's been too long." They'd never actually met, except for the car-detailing thing, but Clive Odett wouldn't know that. Agents in Odett's league thought they knew everybody, and when they genuinely did know you, then you had it made.

  "Yes, it has, Eddie," Clive replied. "I wonder if you're free for lunch today."

  "Let me check," Eddie flipped loudly through his script. His current agent, Stumpy Leftcowitz, had offices coast-to-coast. Unfortunately, they were all Kinko's copy centers. Stumpy was the one guy in America who took Kinko's "we're your branch office!" ads at their word. Stumpy's biggest client was the decapitated head of a celebrity dog, which was attached to a malfunctioning robot in the hilarious UBC sitcom Boo Boo's New Dilemma.

  "I guess I can move some players around, open up a space for you on the board."

  "I'm so very glad to hear it," Clive said, his voice flicking out of the phone like a serpent's tongue. "I have a meeting with Alf's people at Celebrity Galaxy. We'll meet afterwards." Click.

  Eddie slammed down the receiver and stood up, so preoccupied with the surprising turn of events, he didn't even notice that he wiped himself with William Katt's resume instead of the toilet paper.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gharlane was inside his storage unit, scrutinizing an old issue of Big Hooters with a jeweler's loupe, when Charlie Willis scooted by in his golf cart on routine patrol of the facility. After so many months away from home, it felt good to do something routine for a change.

  "How's it going?" Charlie asked. Gharlane sat on a stool in the center of his unit, directly under the single bulb that hung from the ceiling. The unit was crammed full of boxes bulging with decades' worth of men's magazines.

  "I'm getting closer to discovering the truth," Gharlane dragged his loupe slowly over the centerfold, his body curled over the magazine so far, the bumps of his vertebrae poked through his Grateful Dead T-shirt.

  "The truth?" Charlie asked.

  Gharlane raised his head. "Last night I saw a movie with Julia Roberts that had a love scene. They showed her breasts, but not her face. Well, those were definitely not her breasts. Wrong shape entirely. They belonged to a body double, and I'm tracking those breasts down."

  "Why?"

  Gharlane stared at him and scratched his bony knee, which stuck out through the hole in his faded jeans. "I thought you were a police officer once."

  "I was."

  "Then you should be outraged. The producers perpetrated a fraud on the American public," Gharlane said. "A lot of people paid seven bucks to see Julia Roberts, not a body double. I think the public has a right to know just whose breasts they were looking at."

  "I never thought of it that way," Charlie said, an idea occurring to him. He'd have to talk to Lou about it. "You gonna be around the next couple days? I may need a favor."

  Gharlane nodded. "Sure."

  Charlie had to get to the studio, but first he had to finish his security check. He steered the cart down the row of storage units, checking to make sure all the corrugated, sliding doors were secured with padlocks and that nothing was amiss.

  * * * * * *

  Alison Sweeney sat in her jelly bean blue Miata outside Canoga Stor-All, a map book open on her lap, checking it against the address she'd written on a slip of paper. No mistake about it. This was the place.

  Maybe she wrote the address down wrong. There was an easy way to check. She got out, walked up to the front office, and went inside. There was no one behind the counter.

  "Hello?" she said.

  No one replied. Just a few feet away, and to one side, was a half-open door. She leaned over the counter to peer inside, but all she saw was part of a TV set, the edge of a recliner, and the leg of a coffee table. She might have
seen more, but that's when a snarling dog hidden on the other side of the counter leaped up, snapping at her pony tail.

  She screamed, staggering back into a man's arms. Reflexively, she jammed her elbow into his stomach and stomped on his foot. He yelped and released her, freeing her to spin around and poke her fingers into his eyes, just like she was taught in her self-defense class.

  He lost his footing and slammed against the wall, sliding down in a heap on the floor, one hand over his watering eyes, the other on his sore belly.

  "Wow," she said.

  Alison was proud of herself. It was the first time she'd ever put her self-defense skills into practice, and she'd easily felled a man. But pride quickly turned to panic, because now she recognized her attacker.

  "Charlie?"

  He nodded and struggled to his feet, still gripping his stomach. "Hell of an elbow you've got there, Alison."

  "I'm sorry," she said, helping him to his feet. "I didn't mean to do that."

  Charlie grimaced and staggered to the counter, mainly so he could lean on it without being too obvious.

  "I really did do that, didn't I?" she asked. "You didn't fake all that just to make me feel good."

  Charlie wiped the tears out of his stinging eyes and tried to bring her into focus. "I'm not that eager to please and I'm certainly no match for a woman of your physical prowess."

  A few years ago, back when he was a Beverly Hills cop, he was shot in the gut by the crazed old, TV star Esther Radcliffe, who was late for a sale at Neiman Marcus. The bullet they dug out of him made a nice paperweight. The wound hadn't bothered him in months, but then again, nobody had elbowed him in the stomach lately. Now the pain was back, along with a few painful memories.

  "I took a couple self-defense classes at Pepperdine," Alison rolled up her sleeves another notch or two. "Now I've got the killer instinct."

  Charlie looked down at McGarrett, his tail thumping proudly on the floor. Apparently, he had the killer instinct too. Everyone was pretty happy with themselves around here, except for him.

  "So, are we still working together?" she asked.

  "Is that why you came down here?"

  "After you walked out yesterday, I wasn't sure you were coming back."

  Truth was, neither was Charlie.

  Someone once told him the key to the movie industry was getting the audience to suspend their disbelief long enough to get sucked into the story. But Charlie learned it was also the key to working in the industry. He was able to suspend his disbelief, to fool himself into believing that the people he was working for deserved his help. Until now. Until Eddie Planet.

  After Esther Radcliffe shot him, Pinnacle bought Charlie's silence by making him the star of My Gun Has Bullets. The show was pitted against Eddie Planet's Frankencop, which was financed entirely by the mob, who tried to make it a success by actually killing the competition. Charlie survived, but was never able to pin anything on Eddie.

  "Eddie Planet is a liar, a conman and a coward," Charlie said. "He'll do anything to get a show on the air and keep it there. Anything."

  "So will most of the producers on the Pinnacle lot."

  Charlie smiled at her. "Except none of them nearly got me killed."

  "Give them time," she smiled back.

  He had been giving the situation a lot of thought during his patrol of the storage unit. Could he protect Eddie Planet? What made Eddie different from everyone else he was asked to look out for? Was Eddie any worse than Nick?

  The only difference between them was that Eddie was a threat Charlie already knew, just as Nick would now be. If Charlie continued as a studio trouble shooter, there would be a lot more Eddies and Nicks in his future. Shortly before Alison elbowed him in the gut, Charlie had made up his mind.

  "Regardless of what I think of Eddie Planet, the fact is someone is killing people involved with Beyond the Beyond," he said. "I can't walk away from that."

  She sighed, relieved. "You're going to stay."

  "I never left," Charlie said.

  "So, what's the plan now?"

  "Put the new cast and crew under constant guard, but it's a short-term strategy. I have to find out who is behind this," Charlie said. "What I haven't figured out is how."

  Alison gave it some thought, pursing her lips and wrinkling her brow. She looked so adorable, he had the sudden urge to kiss her, but he held it back.

  "It's a shame there isn't some way to make them come to you," she said, "besides waiting for them to try and kill another actor."

  Charlie looked at her. She just showed him the way.

  "What?" she looking back at him.

  The solution was so obvious, it was invisible.

  Before he knew it, he was giving her the kiss he was resisting only seconds before. The instant their lips parted, she melded against him, returning the kiss, her hands sliding up his back and drawing him to her.

  The screen door banged, startling them both. They pulled back from one another, and Charlie saw Lou LeDoux standing at the door. Lou was showing up for his shift.

  "Should I come back later?" Lou asked.

  Charlie and Alison let go of each other, both feeling a bit awkward.

  "No," Charlie said. "I'm glad you're here. I need you to do me a favor, but give me a second."

  "Only a second?" Lou said. "No wonder your wife ran off with the gardener."

  Lou disappeared into the apartment. Charlie looked at Alison, who's face was flushed. He wasn't sure whether it was embarrassment or passion, but finding out which would have to wait.

  "Can you find Eddie Planet for me?" he asked. "It's urgent that I see him right away."

  "You know how to find them, don't you?"

  "No," he replied. "I know how they'll find me."

  * * * * * *

  Before tourists entered the Pinnacle Studios tour, they were funneled down a money-sucking gauntlet of neon storefronts known collectively as Pinnacle City, "the Capitol of the State of Hollywood."

  Pinnacle City was downtown, urban America as envisioned by the Brady Bunch, where The Happy Homeless danced with rap-singing members of the Goodtime Gang, and the Smile Police gave out chocolate tickets to all the nice girls and boys. The kids usually had the tasty tickets jammed in their mouths before their parents realized they cost $10 a pop.

  Shopping and dining in Pinnacle City was a multi-media entertainment experience designed to drive children into a state of frenzy and bludgeon their parents senseless, willing to spend anything to shut their kids up and have some peace.

  All their senses assaulted, most people cracked, gladly forking over $3.50 for a water-downed coke, $50 for Pinnacle t-shirt or $75 for a stuffed Muck Thing toy.

  By the time the shell-shocked tourists staggered, ears ringing and eyes watering, to the front gates to pay $30-a-head for the studio tour, they'd already been soaked for twice that much on the walk from the parking lot.

  Of course, the Los Angeles Planning Commission saw this as a model of urban planning, and were adopting it into their long-term strategy for reinvigorating the city.

  This was one of Thrack's favorite places.

  He could come here, in full Confederation uniform, and not feel out of place. Tourists even asked to have their pictures taken with him.

  But mostly he liked it because of the Celebrity Galaxy, the scifi restaurant. Each booth was a space capsule and the food was served on flying saucers. It was the fancy restaurant he took lucky space gals for special occasions.

  Thrack sat outside with Melvah behind the restaurant on a bench shaped like a rocket, watching the two, space-suited Astrovalets parking cars for people who came to Celebrity Galaxy for lunch. There were quite a few, even though the food was lousy.

  Celebrity Galaxy was another vanity tax shelter for over-paid Hollywood movie stars, this one jointly owned by actors who made it big in scifi. Kurt Russell, Sigourney Weaver, James Cameron and Alf all had money in the restaurant.

  People didn't come for the food, they came too
see the underwear Sigourney wore in Alien, Kurt's eye-patch from Escape from NY, and other framed, jarred and stuffed props from movies.

  Melvah impaled an empty, Styrofoam cup on Thrack's hard-on so people would think he had a drink in his lap. No sense drawing any unwanted attention. Thrack noted with pride that it was a Big Gulp cup.

  A few hours earlier, Zita called Melvah at the office and let her know Odett was taking a meeting with Eddie Planet, and that it would be a good opportunity to nab the super-agent.

  Melvah agreed. She also thought it would be a good idea to kill Eddie Planet as soon as possible, but Zita argued against it, saying it would be easier to sign him.

  Melvah tried to talk to her about taking over the show herself, but Zita had a meeting with Tom Arnold that couldn't wait. Melvah would bring it up again tonight, she wanted to see the issue resolved before BeyondCon this weekend.

  Thrack nudged Melvah with his elbow and motioned to his cup. "Want a drink?"

  He snortled hysterically. Melvah couldn't help but smile, even though she was watching the two Astrovalets closely. One of them drove off in a Mercedes, leaving the other behind.

  Melvah saw Clive Odett's Hummer turn into the parking lot. The eager Astrovalet stepped forward to greet him. She jammed a taser in his back, jolting him with a couple hundred volts, and dragged him back to the bench. Thrack got up to greet Odett instead.

  Unfortunately, Thrack forgot to take the cup off his crotch before he stood up. That would have been a serious problem if not for the fact that Clive Odett was completely oblivious to anyone who wasn't someone. Odett was too busy talking on his cell phone to notice the cup, or even Thrack.

  Thrack opened the driver's side door and was awed by what he saw. The Hummer was the greatest piece of machinery Thrack had ever seen. In dash TVs. Fax machine. Phone. Leather seats. There was even a satellite dish on the roof. Thrack didn't just want to have it, he wanted to live in it.

  Clive Odett started to climb out of the Hummer, flipping the phone shut with one hand and holding out the keys with the other.

  In Los Angeles, rich people lived in private neighborhoods, safe behind gates, burly guards, security cameras, and laser-light sensors, but gladly handed over their cars to anyone standing outside a restaurant. It was, in Thrack's mind, one of the things that made this city great.