Last Long Drop

by Mike Safe

  ‘You know that Mike’s character dies at the end of the movie script that had caused so much drama,’ she said to him in one of these calls.

  ‘Yeah, he told me that on the beach the night before. He seemed pretty satisfied for that to be the way it ended.’

  Dutton had agreed to stay on at the Noosa property until the media frenzy died down and the risk of intruders, media or otherwise, had passed. ‘The woman’s got a will of steel,’ he said to Harcourt about Poppy in one of their phone moments. ‘I’m starting to go stir crazy stuck here, but she’s just biting down and handling it.’

  A special report filed by the Fijian and Australian forensic pathologists who had examined Vargas’s body at Nadi, and a later full autopsy in Sydney, attributed his death to major trauma to the back of his head where it had impacted on the reef during a surfing accident. His skull was fractured and his brain damaged. He was most probably dead by the time Dutton had managed to reach him.

  A discreet funeral service was held. It took place early in the evening at a secluded chapel in the hinterland behind Noosa, Poppy and Dutton having been smuggled out of the house grounds in the back of a delivery van to attend. Afterwards, the body was taken to be cremated. As the first rays of sun cleared the eastern horizon the next morning, Vargas’s ashes, having been forwarded from the crematorium overnight, were scattered across a gentle surf at Tea Tree where Vargas had first seen Poppy surfing not so many months before.

  Harcourt was invited to attend but declined. ‘It’s for those who knew him, who really knew him. Dexter, Vinnie and, most of all, you,’ he told Poppy in one of their phone conversations. ‘I’m just a last minute add on, although it was a pretty big last minute. It’s going to be small and private and I’d feel like an interloper. But I’ll be thinking of you, Poppy, believe me.’

  The day after, they had another conversation. ‘It was nice, if that’s the right word,’ she said of scattering the ashes. ‘A step along the way.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Vinnie says there are now literally hundreds of requests for interviews, TV and magazines from all over the place … Every network here and in the States, all those American talk and news shows, 60 Minutes, over there as well as here.’ She paused again. ‘I’m thinking of doing something.’

  Harcourt said she should if that’s how she felt.

  ‘Some of them are offering ridiculous amounts of money, but that’s hardly the issue,’ she said. ‘I feel I can talk about it now, but need someone I can trust, someone who lets me be me and who won’t turn it into some sort of weepy melodrama. But I don’t think those American talk shows could help themselves. They get off on that stuff.’

  Now it was Harcourt’s turn to pause. ‘Okay then … how about something or someone a bit left field? Someone close to home? Like my daughter?’

  He told her how Kirsten was one of the front people on the new national prime time current affairs and interview program that would be launching within a couple of weeks. Poppy’s story would be ideal for its first outing, probably taking up the whole program and involving Dutton if he was willing. He gave her a rundown of Kirsten’s background in newspapers, then as a magazine editor and now also fronting the TV show. How the network executives’ interest in her had been sparked by her headline-grabbing fling, topless and all, with Edmund Harrison.

  ‘That was your daughter?’ asked Poppy. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I saw some of that on the web. She’s got some spunk to her, pretty too.’ She paused and giggled, the first time Harcourt had heard a reaction like that from her since coming home. ‘And she had this thing with an older man, right? I can relate to that. I like her already. Get her to call me.’

  The deal was hammered out within a couple of days – a full hour prime time, with Dutton participating for some of it. It would be shot at the Noosa house and in and around the holiday town and its beaches, if the press pack, which was beginning to thin because of lack of access, could be shaken off. The network would own the product but Poppy and Dutton would each receive a ‘seven figure upfront payment’ with her cut bigger than his, apparently, as well as a ‘commensurate percentage payment’ – whatever that meant – from the overseas sales, which were expected to reap tens of millions, the program having been sold immediately into thirty overseas markets and counting.

  Vinnie grumbled to Harcourt on the phone that he could have scored even more if they’d gone with one of the American networks. ‘They can’t believe they’ve been knocked back. They were all totally mad for it. But, I dunno, Poppy and your daughter, within a couple of days they’re like new best friends, thick as thieves. Dexter’s just going along for the ride. He wants to get out of that house up there and back home to Los Angeles as soon as it’s over.’

  Meanwhile, Kirsten couldn’t have been happier with her father. ‘Dad, I take back everything bad, or even half bad, I’ve ever said about you. This is the biggest TV interview of the year anywhere … thank you, thank you!’

  ‘Well, Poppy kind of reminds me a bit of you,’ he said. ‘Or is it the other way around, seeing that she’s older and therefore came first?’

  ‘Well, I came first as far as you’re concerned, didn’t I?’

  ‘Of course you did. Remember, she’s a smart woman and I know you’ll treat her as such when you come face to face. Don’t try to take advantage of her. None of that tear-jerk stuff. She won’t buy it.’

  ‘Don’t worry – she’s told me that already.’

  The high-spirited Kirsten didn’t seem to have suffered any sort of hangover from the breakups with Silas Korg, from whom she had heard nothing since he’d already left for London, nor was she pining for Edmund Harrison, who had become engaged to Meryl McCann, the bestselling author who he’d been photographed with in New York.

  ‘He at least phoned and told me,’ Kirsten informed her father. ‘He said it was only fair I heard it from him and didn’t read it in some gossip column. I’d just learned about the Poppy interview so I wasn’t too fazed, I’ve got to confess.’ She laughed. ‘Maybe I can ask him and Meryl for a face to face interview after the thing with Poppy is done.’

  As far as Harcourt was concerned one point was bleedingly obvious – his daughter had no shame. Oh, well, somewhere along life’s winding road she’d learn. But by now he knew it best to keep that thought to himself.

  The next day he’d received a phone call and follow-up email from Vanity Fair magazine in New York offering him a six-figure sum to write an eye-witness account of what had happened on Lailai Atoll on the day that Vargas had died. It was huge money but it was a huge story and not even the upcoming TV interviews with Poppy and Dutton, no matter their emotional impact, could give the depth and insight of 10,000 considered words. For a writer, one who had been on the spot and not only seen the tragedy unfold but partaken in it, this was a dream but also an imposing assignment. He talked to Poppy and Dutton and they agreed he should do it.

  ‘After all,’ said Dutton, his tone not bitter but somewhat dry, ‘we’re all making a buck out of Mike now, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yeah, we are,’ said Harcourt. He thought about it for a moment. ‘But Mike was always out there, he was bigger than life, he was about as big a star as there was. Would he have wanted it any other way? That we’re all still here, talking about him, thinking about him? Yes, and making money off of him.’

  Dutton let out an ironic laugh. ‘I guess it’s his final performance.’ He went on to say how he had scores of photographs he’d taken with his smart phone of Vargas and Poppy together on the island – swimming, walking on the beach, cooking with the two Johns, on the pontoon with the Beaver float plane, with their surfboards, just posing together inside and outside the main house. ‘And, as you know, those two could not end up in a dud photo if they tried. Tell Vanity Fair they can have a selection of those, including for the cover, if the right price is right, of course.’

  ‘Of course. It’s not like they’re going to find them anywhere else is it?’

  And so another de
al was done.

  The television special went to air, capturing the biggest audience of the year as it out-rated even the various football code grand finals. Poppy and Kirsten came across like a couple of long separated sisters, one golden haired and coolly casual, the other dark haired and sympathetically questioning, as the story unfolded. To her credit, Kirsten held back and let Poppy describe her and Mike’s romance and what happened that day in her considered way. There were a couple of near teary moments, but never a descent into pathos. Dutton was involved in a couple of segments and there was no doubt he remained sorely troubled by his inability to save Vargas. ‘I should have done more,’ he offered and it was one of the program’s most poignant moments.

  The biggest revelation was that Vargas and Poppy had married before the trip to Lailai Atoll. She explained it thoughtfully, almost affably – she was a television natural and even Kirsten looked teary eyed for a moment. And so the interview, plus a bit of background they’d managed to film on the Noosa beaches as well as at the house, went around the world, scoring tens of millions of viewers from Manhattan to Moscow, Barcelona to Beijing.

  There was a new book proposal. This came from Tess, who was buoyed by their daughter’s TV scoop and the relief that Billy Duane had at last been dispatched back to America and retirement. Her plan was that Harcourt should ghost a book about Dutton’s life and times with Vargas. ‘You seem to have struck up a rapport with the guy,’ she said. ‘The money for both of you will be good, very good – and it will piss off Amanda Peers and Montacue Publishing no end. You don’t owe them anything. After all, they wanted one of their hacks to do Mike’s book, not you.’

  Harcourt already knew his wife was a persuasive force when it came to cutting a deal. Her company had no doubt such a book would be a massive bestseller. ‘The Americans are crazy for it and, getting personal, it will put me totally back in their good books after the Harrison craziness. Dutton spent twenty-five years with Vargas, seeing the good, the bad, the ugly, the famous, the desperates …we’ve even got the title for it – My Life With Mike.’

  The deal was put to Dutton before he headed home to Los Angeles and after some consideration he decided to go along with it. ‘Like you Australians say … in for a penny, in for a pound,’ he said to Harcourt during one of their phone chats. ‘For me it’s more like in for a dime, in for a dollar.’

  It turned out Harcourt’s job was going to be made markedly easier because Dutton, as was his meticulous way, had kept a weekly journal throughout his adult life, including his incident-packed two and a half decades with Vargas. ‘If you come to LA we can go through them and you can bring what you need back here. Mike had some get up and go in him and with what I wrote he didn’t get off lightly, that’s the truth.’

  Harcourt told Tess about the journals and she was intrigued. ‘Maybe we can work that into the book. Anyway, all that immediate information and detail will help pull it together quickly while the whole drama is still front and centre.’ She paused for a moment and gave him a wry look. ‘But, it’s kind of weird though, isn’t it? The guy’s dead and a lot of people, our family included, have been given a chance to look at that death close up and suddenly we’re standing to make a lot of money out of it.’

  ‘Dexter and I already talked about that,’ he replied. ‘But it’s the way of the world, Tess. One loses, another wins. It’s a story as old as time. What are we supposed to do … Turn our backs and walk away?’

  ‘No, of course not. But it’s still weird.’

  He returned her look, but couldn’t disagree. ‘We’re in the media business – and that’s always been weird, creepy, voyeuristic … Delving into the lives of anyone, letting the pieces fall all over the place and then moving on to the next big thing while some poor sod is left behind to clean up the mess.’

  NINETEEN

  Harcourt spent almost a month with Dutton at Vargas’s Malibu home as they worked their way through the journals. Tess assigned a researcher to the project whose task was to track down other bits and pieces of memorabilia – contracts, annotated scripts, correspondence, feature articles, scuttlebutt and asides, anything good or bad, just as long as it added to the narrative.

  They tended to rise early – Dutton to go through his daily routine of hard-core exercise and weights then a long run on the beach and swim back out beyond the surfline; Harcourt to walk down from the beachfront house to the lagoon at the famous, some would prefer infamous, First Point surf break where Californian surfing mythology had been born.

  If it was worth surfing, Harcourt would take out one of the boards from yet another of Vargas’s collections and ride what waves he could for an hour or so – along with the inevitable hordes, his new best friends as he paradoxically liked to think of them. There was the occasional head-high day but mostly it was small, waist high or thereabouts, but he was content to be lost among the crowd, anonymous while scrabbling about for a ride.

  Then they’d work throughout the day, reading the journals, Dutton’s precise prose and seemingly photographic memory bringing back moments that otherwise might have been forgotten. Vargas had been on his second marriage when Dutton left the service to be his ever-present eyes and ears. It was all there and Harcourt decided that Tess’s idea of incorporating at least some of the journals’ content into the book could work.

  There had been a lot more to Vargas than he’d ever let show through his public face. ‘He was driven, that’s for sure,’ said Dutton. ‘But he was vulnerable too – the busted marriages, the affairs, too many not so good movies that made piles of cash but brought him little respect among those higher echelon types. He wanted so much for it to work with Poppy. She’d touched him like no other woman in all the time I was with him, her ability to ground him, to make him appreciate the moment, to live in it, even if he could still be out there with all his surfing bravado and risk-taking, putting so much on the line with that last movie … But now that’s gone.’

  Harcourt asked Dutton if Vargas had ever mentioned Tommy Woodrell’s death from all those years ago. ‘Maybe once or twice,’ he replied. ‘I guess there must have been some sort of guilt there, but I don’t remember him ever telling me the whole detail or making a big deal of it around me, Sure, there were issues from back when he was a kid, with his mother dying, his father being a hard head about his business, trying to get Mike into that when it was the furthermost thing from his mind.’ Dutton smiled to himself. ‘But, hey, we’ve all got a past and a few regrets to go with it.’

  Harcourt told Dutton of his conversation on the night before Vargas’s death where they had shaken hands to confirm the writing of the autobiography and agreed that Tommy Woodrell’s death, and Vargas’s part in the drowning, would be covered in it. Now that the autobiography was no more would Dutton have any concern if the Woodrell death from all those years ago was covered in his book, seeing Vargas had mentioned it to him?

  ‘No, not at all,’ Dutton shrugged. ‘Like I say, Mike could be as susceptible as any person, even if he wasn’t one to show it too often. The fact that he remembered that kid, talked to me about what happened, showed that side of him.’ He paused. ‘It’s part of his story and if you think it’s important … You’re the writer, right?’

  Harcourt had laughed at that one. ‘Right on, I’m the writer.’

  Now all Harcourt had to do was sit down and write. Tess was smart enough to leave him to it and over the next couple of months he made good headway, more or less keeping his focus and sticking to the tough schedule.

  During all this, Vanity Fair with Vargas and Poppy on the cover came out. They were pictured walking along the Lailai Atoll beach, surfboards under their arms, she in a violet bikini, he in faded blue boardshorts, lit like bronze statues by the dipping afternoon sun, smiles on their faces, love in their eyes. It might have been shot all so casually by Dutton on his phone, but it caught the moment and place. The headline read ‘Mike’s Last Ride’ followed by the tagline and credit, ‘What happened on the sunny Sou
th Pacific day that Hollywood legend Mike Vargas was taken by a killer wave while his new love watched in vain. Writer and surfer JOHN HARCOURT’S eye-witness world exclusive.’

  Harcourt had written the story, slightly longer than the 10,000 words he was assigned, in the week before going to LA to work with Dutton. It hadn’t been difficult, being pretty much a narrative of the day and what had happened, but it conjured the place and states of mind of those involved. And now, as he sat there reading it on the page, he decided he’d overused the surf lingo and mythology, but the story rattled along with more than enough colour, action and drama – kind of like a Mike Vargas movie set at the beach.

  ‘I’m happy enough with it, but hindsight is a wonderful thing,’ he said on the phone to Poppy, who was now fully ensconsed in Vargas’s Noosa house. ‘The deadline was super tight and so it was all a bit of a rush.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘At least you didn’t have me ending up like some sort of blubbering damsel in distress.’

  Offers were continuing to pour in to her from all directions – more interviews, speaking tours, books, movie and TV roles, endorsements, even a fashion line featuring bikinis – but at last she was able to get about the town and down to the surf more or less as she pleased. ‘A ten-year-old stopped me in the street the other day and asked for an autograph,’ she said. ‘She’s one of the local little surf girls and she said, “I want to be just like you when I grow up.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but, yeah, it was nice.’

  Vargas’s estate was settled without apparent rancour. Poppy inherited the Noosa and Lailai Atoll properties, a mass of stocks, bonds and cash, while Dutton ended up with the Malibu beachfront house and his own wad of cash. The three apartments – New York, London and the Amalfi Coast – went to the trio of ex-wives who had long ago remarried into Californian power and privilege, meaning money. Word was Vinnie Vincenso had been the beneficiary of various offshore accounts that neither United States nor Australian authorities had any hope of accessing.