“. . . watching the detectives. . .”
It was Sam calling from Dave Hackel’s office. Dave was one of the festival directors in charge of tonight’s premiere, and he was fully cooperating with the investigation. According to his records, Monica wasn’t slated to volunteer that night, and there was no credit card record of her having purchased a ticket. Of course, she might have slept outside on the sidewalk like Sebastian and paid cash, but Nola thought it was highly unlikely. Sidewalk sleeping wasn’t for girls who walked in La Perla like the night.
It occurred to her that if Monica wasn’t going to be inside the theater, maybe the attack wasn’t either. The trust-fund anarchists could be planning to red-carpet-bomb the forecourt while the celebrities were doing interviews. When she broached the idea with Sam on the phone, he jumped at the suggestion. “Makes sense, there’ll be a lot more press outside than in.”
“Yes, but anything they release in the air would diffuse quicker,” Nola said. “There’s no way to be sure what they’re planning. It’s like packing for a spring vacation. One bikini, two heavy sweaters . . . we have to be ready for anything.”
Across town in Isla Vista, Tony’s team had found Malcolm and Ian’s apartment as deserted as Monica’s guest house. It was teenage-boy filthy, but the only thing that could be considered deadly was some rancid bean dip in the fridge. Kyle’s apartment was similarly deserted, and Marisela confirmed he hadn’t shown up for work today.
Sebastian had been trying to track all four kids via a GPS trace, but ROTC70 was maintaining electrical silence, systems shut down, batteries removed. Malcolm, Ian, Monica, and Kyle all being AWOL and maintaining a cell-phone blackout pretty much confirmed that something was up.
The clock was running out. In a few hours, people would start arriving at the Arlington for the premiere. Sam called in every available officer to cover the doors in and out of the theater and to man watch patrols on the surrounding streets. The ventilation system was inspected, and metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs swept the Arlington from top to bottom.
Nola was en route from Larry’s ranch to the theater when Sebastian called her in the car. The lab had been able to boost the audio from the publicity video. The lyrics to Charley’s song about Gus and Monica’s fight were just what she suspected.
“Thanks, Baz. Why don’t you come down and meet us at the theater?”
“Seriously, dude? I get to see the movie?”
“Let’s hope everyone does.”
Juan was rushing Larry’s gun to ballistics. If it came back a match, combined with Charley’s damning song, they’d have a hell of a circumstantial case. But circumstantial cases, especially when it came to the rich and famous, had a tendency to fall apart in front of autograph-hungry juries. They needed more solid evidence. And that’s when it hit her.
Her next call went straight to Tony’s voicemail, so she pulled over and texted him instead. “I no R Killer! J”
Fifty-Two
After Nola texted Tony from the car, she called Sam with her killer good news. The evidence she’d need to prove her case was still being processed in the lab and might not pan out, so they tentatively whispered, “Whoopee!” and agreed to postpone any showdowns until tomorrow. This time they were in full agreement: The Euclidian Variation premiere was top priority.
When she arrived at the Arlington Theater, it was bustling with police and pre-premiere activity. She found Sam and Tony at Sam’s makeshift command center behind the concessions stand in the lobby. His plan was basically to have every possible spot in the theater monitored by plainclothes cops who’d memorized Malcolm, Ian, Monica, and Kyle’s recent mug shots. Plainclothes officers would be taking tickets, searching bags, and monitoring the restrooms. Even the guys selling bonbons had Berettas. Step away from the popcorn and no one will get fat, Nola thought as Sam filled her in.
Without a doubt, Sam’s most creative use of under-cover personnel was the twelve cops he’d had costumed up for the occasion. The Euclidian Variation’s production costs fell somewhere between you gotta be kidding me! and no, seriously, you’re kidding, right? Anxious to recoup their sizable investment, the studio publicity department had gone all out for the premiere. Not only would the director and stars be on hand, but they’d hired a dozen extras to dress as Davilloyds and Cyducanes, the battling forces that made up the crux of the story. The Cyducanes wore dark cloaks and Klingon-esque makeup; the Davilloyds were basically snake-scaled humanoids in long silver robes with hoods. In less time than it took a disgraced politician to “find God” and run again, Sam had the extras out of their costumes and a dozen of Santa Barbara’s finest in them. The costumed cops were currently patrolling the theater armed with neon tridents and hover swords.
The cops in costume were Bluetooth-equipped and tagged with reflective Xs in case ROTC70 had stumbled upon the same idea. Anyone in costume without an X would be immediately culled from the crowd and questioned.
As it got closer to show time, Nola and Tony circulated in and around the perimeter of the theater, checking and positioning personnel and keeping their eyes open for trouble, but as night fell and the klieg lights lit up the sky, none had materialized.
The crowd arrived, the press arrived, the movie stars arrived, tickets were taken, bags were scrutinized, a thousand handshakes, a thousand photos . . . there was tinsel and glamour and plenty of excitement to go around. The only thing missing were the spoilers.
Standing watch outside the theater, Nola was starting to wonder if they’d guessed wrong, and the kids had chosen another target altogether. Either way, it was going to be a tense night.
Fifty-Three
The inside of the Arlington Theater was magical. Trompe l’oeil painting, elegant balconies, and a thousand little stars shimmering in the ceiling created the impression of a lovely Spanish paseo at sunset.
The movie stars, VIPs, and average movie fans lucky enough to have tickets were sitting comfortably in their seats under the stars when Tony and Nola met up by a velvet-draped side door to compare notes. Nola was grateful for the calm but a little afraid of being branded as the cop who cried wolf. “How bad is Sam gonna kill me if I’m wrong about the hidden meaning in the website post and nothing goes down tonight?” She asked, only half kidding.
“You’ll probably get off with just a small garroting,” Tony said, scanning the well-behaved crowd. “I’m choosing to think of us as a law enforcement condom, better safe than sorry. You’re sure the word ‘tonight’ is in that song?”
“Positive. Maybe it’s happening tonight, but we guessed the wrong target.”
“Come on, you think they’re gonna hit the Dunkin’ Donuts on Milpas and ignore a star-studded gala full of press?”
There was a burst of applause as the festival’s executive director walked up on stage to address the audience. A smart man adept at multitasking, he kept a watchful eye for dangerous activity as he introduced The Euclidian Variation’s two young stars, Christopher Marcil and Laura Solon, and its distinguished director, Jameson Lyons.
Chris, Laura, and Jameson had asked to be seated center aisle in the orchestra section. After the film, they’d be brought up on stage for a question-and-answer session. They were surrounded by VIPs to buffer them from overzealous fans, but seating them so prominently in the center of the crowd was a little too high profile for Nola’s liking. Had the stars known there was a threat, they most likely would have agreed.
Sam and the festival organizers had decided to keep the celebrities in the dark along with the public. The threat was only a guess, the theater was blanketed with cops, and a dozen famous names hopping the next stretch limo back to L.A. would be a public relations disaster. One the beautiful little city could ill afford now that it seemed to be morphing into the murder capital of the world.
Tony nudged Nola and pointed to Sebastian on the other side of the theater. He was gazing at Chris, Laura, and Jameson with mad-fervent sci-fi devotion. “That’s exactly how my mom looks at statues of J
esus,” Tony whispered.
“We’d be smart to keep our eyes on them, too,” Nola whispered back. “As juicy targets go, they’re a terrorist’s wet dream.”
On the surface, Chris, Laura, and Jameson appeared to be delighting in each others’ company, but in E! True Hollywood fashion, things weren’t quite as rosy as they seemed.
The fact that Jameson Lyons was one of the most hated men in Hollywood was a testament to his success. His winning streak equaled that of James Cameron and Martin Scorsese, which put him in that stratum of Hollywood-director nobility so rare that if Spielberg pulled a hammy, they’d have trouble finding a fourth for tennis.
In addition to money and fame, Jameson had stockpiled an extraordinary string of hits, which had earned him the right to choose his leading ladies without studio approval. High on his list of hirable qualities were eye-catching beauty and an enthusiastic willingness to sleep with him on location — an enthusiasm so complete, you’d think the actress’s job depended on it, which of course it did.
For Jameson, bedding rights to the next Keira Knightly or Scarlett Johansson was the only thing that made being on location with a bunch of cranky actors and even crankier screenwriters bearable. He’d chosen Laura over a host of other young starlets, not only because she was beautiful, but also because her wide, blue eyes and cupid-pink lips radiated such sincere innocence that it was easy to believe she was sitting on his face because she was actually in love with him and not just to further her career. It was a choice he had come to regret.
Actors also like to feel loved, and Chris Marcil was no exception. The only way Laura could extract herself from Jameson was if Chris claimed her for himself, and that’s exactly what he did. The male star was top of the pecker order on a movie set, and Jameson had had no choice but to suck it up and make do with various wardrobe women and editing assistants until principal shooting wrapped and he was free to go home.
Chris’s sexual usurpation of Laura had made six months on location in Tunisia and Alberta, Canada, feel like six months on location in Tunisia and Alberta, Canada, and Jameson was burning to get even.
Jameson wasn’t alone in his jealousy of Chris. Most any man in the world would have gladly traded places with him. As an actor, he had everything women and the camera loved: rugged good looks, boyish confidence, and the ability to make any character he played one-hundred-percent believable.
In The Euclidian Variation he played a math savant who discovers an equation that projects him into an alternate universe. The nerd-genius becomes a freedom fighter who battles the forces of evil with the help of a waifish girl warrior and enough awe-inspiring special effects to gloss over about a zillion gaping sinkholes in the plot.
Chris’s sexual allure, killer on film, was even more devastating in person, and there were only two straight women in the theater that night not lusting over his HGH muscles and contacts-enhanced sable-brown eyes. The first was Nola, who was too busy watching for trouble to feel any movie-star contact high. The second was a frumpy redhead who had been inexplicably seated next to Jameson in the VIP section.
When an announcement came over the PA system reminding the audience to mute their cell phones so everyone could enjoy the film, the frumpy redhead bent over and reached under her seat. If Jameson hadn’t been prickling over Laura running her perfect little hand over Chris’s movie-star crotch, he might have noticed Monica Crawford-Wilson activating the timer on one of the aerosol bombs that Malcolm had taped underneath it that morning.
Wearing Monica’s blue volunteer badge, Malcolm had breezed into the theater unnoticed with four of Ian’s improvised devices in his backpack. Weeks before, Monica had slipped into the festival office, left cash for four VIP seats, and assigned fake names to them on the seating chart.
Attaching the bombs under the seats with black tape had been a piece of cake. Malcolm was already comfortably ensconced in a barber’s chair when Kyle posted the cryptic Phil Collins message on the university website using a cell phone he’d lifted off a drunk sorority girl at the James Joyce. “Can’t you feel it coming in the air . . . hold on . . . hold on?” A few fellow travelers who listened to wrinkle-rock would notice the missing “tonight” and realize an attack was imminent. Everyone else would have to be impressed in hindsight when ROTC70 posted again to claim credit for its success.
The plastic distribution devices Ian had created were simple. Flipping a lever triggered a timer that popped a pellet and released the gas. There was no explosive material to alert bomb-sniffing dogs, and the nano wires in the timing mechanisms were too thin to set off any pesky metal detectors. Malcolm, Monica, Ian, and Kyle had less than five minutes to leave the theater once they’d triggered the devices, but the risk only amped up the high.
They’d arrived separately at the theater at staggered intervals and gone straight to their seats. To avoid detection, their hair was either freshly shorn, bleached, or dyed, and they all wore glasses or colored contacts. They’d bought clothes they normally wouldn’t be caught dead in, removed all body piercings, and covered their extensive tattoos with body makeup. Disguised as “normals,” they had easily passed under the wary eyes of the police.
Their cue to trigger their timers was the ubiquitous announcement to please shut off cell phones so everyone could enjoy the film. The announcement had the added advantage of providing an excuse for each of them to get up and go to the lobby under the pretext of needing to send one last text or life-altering tweet.
Malcolm felt a power surge as he triggered his timer.
Thanks to his deviant brilliance, even with their cell phones off, none of the rich and famous would be enjoying the show tonight.
Always a bit twitchy, Kyle was the first to get up from his assigned seat and make his way toward the lobby. To Tony, he looked like just another self-absorbed millennial in a Hugo Boss sportcoat who couldn’t resist taking one more call before the movie began. The short white hair and wire-rim glasses were a far cry from the dark, greasy-haired kid he’d arrested only a few nights before. There was no telltale viper-dripping-blood tattoo on Kyle’s clean-shaven neck or skull-themed jewelry to give him away. All the same, any anomaly like someone getting up just as the title for the movie of the year started flickering on screen was cause for concern. Tony instinctively turned a watchful eye his way and whispered to Nola, “Think I should follow that guy?”
“If you don’t, I will,” she whispered back.
As Tony started up the side aisle to intercept the white-haired preppy, Nola noticed another young guy in a VIP seat standing up. He had a shaved head and a Paramount show jacket, and he also seemed to have gotten a call he couldn’t refuse. He was apologizing to the people around him as he made his way to the outer aisle. One guy walking out just as the movie was starting was odd; two was downright suspicious.
Then a frumpy redhead sitting next to Jameson Lyons got up. The orangy-red hair and oversize cable-knit sweater didn’t ring a bell, but there was something in the way she moved that poked Nola’s memory. Something in the curve of her neck and in the thin, tapered fingers. Oh, Sarah Jessica Parker, it’s Monica! Nola practically shouted it out loud. The shock of recognition was as visceral as running into an ex-boyfriend on the one stupid morning you dared to run a quick errand without makeup. She alerted Tony over her headset as she ran down the aisle. “Tony, it’s them! They’ve gone mainstream to blend in!”
Malcolm and Kyle were halfway to the lobby. Tony radioed for the cops disguised as Davilloyds and Cyducanes to stop them as he ran toward Ian, who had just stood up and was straightening his classic-fit chinos.
“Stop those two guys and anyone else trying to leave the theater,” he shouted into his headset. “And check their empty seats!”
Monica was attempting to push by Jameson and Laura when she spotted Nola charging down the outer aisle to intercept her. She quickly reversed direction, pushing back down the row the way she came.
The credits for the movie were rolling, but the audience wa
s fixated on the excitement in the aisles. The murmuring was gaining steam. Nola prayed they could avoid a stampede.
A Cyducane cop called for Kyle to freeze. When Kyle started running instead, he got slapped with a hover sword and tackled to the ground. Trapped between a Cyducane with a trident and a Davilloyde with a hover sword, Malcolm was running up and down the center aisle like a baseball player caught in a rundown between bases.
Thinking it was a publicity stunt, the audience broke into pockets of laughter and applause. Only Chris, Laura, and Jameson knew the melee must be real. No way would the studio authorize a stunt like this without warning them in advance.
Malcolm darted down a row of people, stomping on feet and springboarding off heads in his attempt to evade capture. When people started screaming, the audience stopped laughing, and the applause turned to confusion.
Tony caught Ian by the collar of his Tommy Hilfiger red, white, and blue polo shirt and drove him to the ground. A Davilloyd swooped in for the assist. Tony passed Ian off, then dropped to his knees to frisk Ian’s vacant seat. When he reached back deep underneath the seat his fingers felt the tape. Wrenching the device lose, he pulled it free and shouted into his headset: “The bombs are taped under the seats. They’re on timers. Shut them off!”
Monica was trying to escape by climbing over seats and people toward the stage. Nola didn’t bother following her — she had to get to the bomb under Monica’s vacated seat. Unfortunately, that meant running by Chris, who’d been fearful of an attack by a deranged fan ever since his neighbor Sandy Bullock found a stalker in her living room. For all he knew, the tall blonde barreling toward him was a crazed misfit like Hinckley or Chapman trying to parlay his death into her fifteen minutes of fame. He could see the headlines. “People’s Sexiest Man of the Year Murdered at Gala Premiere. Millions Mourn. Super Bowl Canceled.”
Marry, Kiss, Kill Page 22