The Actor's Guide To Greed

by Rick Copp

  Lunch? This was not the plan. Our mission was to be covert. Not to break bread and share stories with the guy we were supposedly staking out. But Laurette was already pushing her chair back, looking for any excuse to ditch the chatty tourists from outside Little Rock.

  “We’d love to,” she said, before turning back to the Arkansas couple. “Enjoy the rest of your vacation.” The husband was just as glad to be rid of two West Coast show-business radicals as we were to be rid of him. His wife had already secured an autographed napkin to show off back home, so she didn’t care one way or the other. They offered us polite nods and went back to trying to figure out the Greek equivalent of hamburger on their menus.

  Laurette and I cautiously followed Philander over to Mr. Karydes’s table. Apollo and Neptune stood as we approached. Each one pulled out a chair for us. I glanced at both of them, wondering if they recognized either of us from the incident at Super Paradise beach the day before, but if they did, neither one was giving anything away.

  Philander took a seat next to me. Apollo and Neptune remained standing.

  “Thank you for agreeing to join me,” Ulysses Karydes said in a deep, commanding voice. “I’m Ulysses. You have already met Philander, my assistant. These are my bodyguards, Leandro and Khristos.”

  The muscle boys nodded to us, but never cracked a smile.

  Ulysses then turned to me. “I am a huge admirer of your work.”

  This took me by complete surprise. A billionaire Greek shipping tycoon spent his time watching a forgettable sitcom about a precocious kid who was forever trying to pull the wool over the eyes of his parents? Come on. This had to be some kind of a joke.

  Laurette raised an eyebrow. She was thinking the same thing as me.

  “You must understand,” Ulysses said. “I am a businessman through and through, but I have an insatiable appetite for popular American culture. I see every TV show, read every book, buy every movie on DVD. I have an enormous collection of memorabilia. In fact, I own an original shooting script of your show from 1985, signed by you.”

  “How on earth did you get that?” I said.

  “Ebay. Where else?”

  Laurette and I sat there, our mouths opened, still stunned by this disconcerting revelation.

  “I also own a ‘Baby, don’t even go there’ T-shirt, the actual pup tent used in the classic two-part camping episode, and the limited-edition Go to Your Room board game by Mattel.”

  Ulysses smiled proudly.

  “You’re that big a fan of my show?”

  Philander touched my arm with his hand and added, “Not just your show. Mr. Karydes has devoted an entire wing of his home to film and television memorabilia. He has JR Ewing’s Stetson, the Terminator’s sunglasses, and his most prized possession, the original ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Laurette said, letting it just slip out without thinking.

  There was an awkward moment. I gently kicked Laurette under the table. This man may have been a loon, but he was a rich and powerful loon who could probably do with us what he wished.

  As outlandish as this all sounded, pieces of the puzzle were slowly starting to fall into place. If Karydes was such a huge collector of TV and movie artifacts, then it made total sense that he would want to get his hands on Claire Richards’s Oscar.

  “I’d love to know what other famous pieces of history you have or would like to get,” I said.

  “It’s like an obsession. Once you start, you can never stop,” he said. “There is always something else I want to get my hands on, some valuable prop or piece of clothing. It never ends.”

  “What about an Academy Award?”

  Karydes sat back and gave me a considered look. But he wasn’t about to play his hand just yet. “I suppose it depends on who it once belonged to. Katharine Hepburn? Yes. Meryl Streep? Yes. Tatum O’Neal? Not a big priority.” He laughed heartily.

  “What about Claire Richards?” I said, going for it.

  I could feel the tension fill the air. Leandro and Khristos bristled. Philander froze in place. Laurette gasped.

  Ulysses remained calm and unshaken. “That would be a great acquisition. But how would I ever come to possess such a rare piece of history?”

  “I might know of someone who may know how to get it,” I said.

  “Akshay Kapoor?” Ulysses said, his steely eyes locking onto mine.

  “Akshay died yesterday. He was shot.” I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. “Did you know him?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” Ulysses said.

  Philander made a move to interject, to stop his boss before he said too much, but Karydes waved him away.

  Laurette watched the scene as if caught up in the latest episode of her favorite soap opera, One Life to Live.

  “He was a liar and a cheat and the world is a better place without him,” Ulysses said, almost spitting out the words.

  “Come on, Mr. Karydes, what did you really think of him?” I said.

  Karydes laughed. “You must not have been that big of an admirer of Kapoor’s if you’re willing to make jokes so soon after his unfortunate demise.”

  “We weren’t exactly close,” I said.

  “Mr. Kapoor owed me a lot of money. Tens of thousands, in fact. He knew I loved the world of show business and suckered me into investing in a wide range of ill-fated film projects.”

  “You didn’t have to bankroll him.”

  “No. I knew the risks. But he never used the money to make movies. He gambled it away recklessly. And our agreement firmly stated that if he used the funds for any endeavor outside of making films, then he would have to pay it back with interest. Which he never did.”

  “Sure sounds like a motive to knock him off,” I said.

  Laurette’s eyes bulged. She didn’t like me confronting Karydes because both of us could wind up just like Akshay, plugged with a couple of bullets.

  “I may not be mourning his death. But I didn’t kill him.”

  “Then why were your guys Leandro and Khristos meeting him at Super Paradise Beach yesterday just before he was killed?”

  Philander gently placed a hand on my knee and squeezed it as a warning to stop while I was ahead. But I had gone too far down the road to turn back. I had a lot of questions that needed to be answered. And the first one was why was Philander leaving his hand on my knee?

  Karydes chuckled. I was more of a sparring partner than he expected, and he was rather enjoying our exchange. He had no idea I was scared out of my mind but channeling a brash, young, reckless private eye I played in a Rockford Files reunion movie.

  “Akshay came to Mykonos to pay back what he owed me,” Karydes said. “I sent my boys to meet him. Before they even had a chance to retrieve what was rightfully mine, someone shot him.”

  “Was he paying you back in cash or something else?”

  Karydes studied me. He turned to Laurette, whose eyes screamed, “It’s him! Not me! He’s the one pissing you off! Don’t look at me!” But she kept her mouth shut and stayed by my side.

  Philander, meanwhile, finally removed his hand.

  Karydes’ eyes shifted back to mine. “You were obviously there watching. You tell me. Did Akshay have anything of interest on him? And the bigger question is do you now have it?”

  “Maybe. But I didn’t come here to steal off a dead man. I came here looking for someone,” I said.

  “And who might that be?”

  “A man.”

  “We have many men on Mykonos, all of them able and willing. Feel free to indulge all you want.”

  “I’m looking for a specific man. His name is Charlie. He might have been here with Akshay.”

  “Why would I know anything about one of Akshay’s tricks?” Ulysses scoffed.

  “He’s not a trick,” I said, anger rising in my voice. “He’s special. And I need to find him.”

  Ulysses appeared to be debating with himself. There was no formal
offer of a trade on the table. If he did indeed know where Charlie was, he wasn’t going to tell me just yet.

  He casually shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I don’t know who this Charlie is.”

  “Then I guess we’re done here,” I said, standing up. Leandro and Khristos made a move to block my exit, but Ulysses waved them off.

  “Are you sure you won’t stay and have some lunch?” Ulysses said, ever the consummate host.

  “I’m afraid we’re just not hungry,” I said, glancing at Philander, who surreptitiously eyed me up and down.

  I took Laurette’s hand and led her away. She reached down and scooped up a piece of bread from the basket as we walked away.

  “Speak for yourself,” she growled. She popped the bread into her mouth and through her chewing said, “What do we do now?”

  “We have to find out if Karydes has Charlie stashed away somewhere.”

  “And what if he does? How are we going to get him back?”

  “Karydes obviously is drooling over Claire’s Oscar. He’s dying to get his hands on it. So we offer a trade.”

  “God, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

  Chapter 25

  I figured the only shot I had at uncovering some vital information was to somehow charm it out of someone. And my best chance of success was to target Ulysses Karydes’s handsome young assistant, Philander. After all, he was sending me clear signals during my visit with his boss. My challenge was isolating him from Karydes and his two ripped goons, Leandro and Khristos.

  When Laurette and I strolled past the pool inside the Andromeda Residence, I saw Delphina stretched out on a chaise lounge and wearing a bright lime green bikini that accentuated the curvy contours of her supple body. She was a knockout. Laurette took one look at her and sighed, defeated. She was always comparing her own body to other women and was constantly in a state of hopelessness. I had long given up that practice, especially after filming a TV movie with a young, shaggy-haired buck named Brad Pitt. I played his younger brother in the film about a group of teenagers exacting revenge on the town bully, which we shot a few years before Brad’s breakthrough role in Thelma and Louise. I worked out at the gym for three hours every day, hoping to develop at least a fraction of Brad’s sculpted abs. But it was an exercise in futility. You can’t fight what nature gave you. Laurette, however, never learned that lesson.

  “I’ll be in the room sulking,” she said to me and then shuffled off, rifling through her bag for our room key.

  I watched her go, and then turned to Delphina. Her eyes were closed as the sun’s warm rays washed over her lean, deeply tanned form.

  “Delphina?” I said, leaning down. My body cast a shadow over hers, and she opened her eyes, surprised. She shielded her eyes with her hand, and then smiled.

  “Jarrod, did you find Mr. Karydes?”

  “Yes, he was exactly where you said he would be. Turns out he saw the show I was on when I was a kid. He asked us to join him.”

  “That’s wonderful. You’re very lucky to have Mr. Karydes for a friend. He’s a very powerful man. He can give you anything you want.”

  “Well, there’s one thing I want that I’m not sure he’s willing to give me.”

  “What is that?”

  “His assistant.”

  She gave me a knowing wink. “Philander. Isn’t he adorable?”

  “Oh, yes. I think we really hit it off.”

  “Well, I would tread very carefully. He used to be Mr. Karydes’s lover.”

  “Used to be?”

  “Mr. Karydes has what you might call a short attention span. He goes through boyfriends faster than J Lo goes through husbands.”

  We both laughed.

  Delphina reached down, picked up a green-tinted martini glass, and took a sip of her happy hour cosmo. “But Philander was special and Mr. Karydes knew it, so he kept him on as his assistant.”

  “Do you think they still sleep together?” I asked.

  “Maybe every now and then, but like I said, whenever Mr. Karydes is around beautiful boys, his head is like an oscillating fan. Back and forth. Back and forth. Always cruising for his next conquest.”

  “Well, I have it on good authority that Philander might be interested in me.”

  “What good authority?”

  “His hand on my knee.”

  “That’s a very reliable source,” Delphina said with a chuckle.

  “You seem to know a lot about what goes on around here.”

  “You live on Mykonos your whole life, you get plugged into all the gossip.”

  “Tell me, is there a place where I might find Philander when he’s not tending to Mr. Karydes’s every whim?”

  Delphina thought for a moment. “Montparnasse.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A piano bar. About a ten-minute walk from here. Philander goes there every night around eight when Mr. Karydes is having dinner. He has a few cocktails, silently curses his boss, and then scurries back to the compound by eleven to tuck him in for the night.”

  I gave Delphina a peck on the cheek. “Thank you.”

  She gently took my wrist in her hand and squeezed. “Be careful, Jarrod. Mr. Karydes is a very jealous man. It doesn’t matter that he and Philander are no longer involved. Once you belong to Mr. Karydes, you belong to him for life.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  I hurried back to the room. Laurette was curled up in bed underneath the comforter and sleeping soundly. We were both exhausted from our travel adventures, but after taking a long nap myself that stretched into the early evening hours, I had to shower and change and slap on some sweet-smelling cologne if I was going to try and seduce my prey.

  After slipping on some white pants and a beige silk shirt, I kissed the still-slumbering Laurette on the forehead and quietly left the suite. Delphina, the doll she was, had dropped off some written directions to the Montparnasse Piano Bar on her way to dinner. I followed them to the letter up a steep incline to a row of bars and shops facing the vast expanse of the Aegean, which glittered and danced under the bright, blinding moonlight. When I reached the Montparnasse, I unbuttoned the top two buttons of my silk shirt to show off some skin, hoping Philander might be impressed, before opening the door and entering.

  Inside, the festive atmosphere startled me. All the tables were filled with straight couples, gay couples, groups of friends. Everyone sang along as the three-hundred-pound, bitchy English queen at the piano banged out a medley from Hello, Dolly. I felt awkward and self-conscious and didn’t know where to turn. There was an open stool at the bar, so I made a beeline for it. I hopped up on it, ordered a Coca-Cola Light and Vanilla Absolut, and then scanned the room for Philander. There was no sign of him. I checked my watch. 8:10 P.M. If Delphina was right, he should have been here by now. Maybe he was running late. Maybe Ulysses insisted he stay on the grounds tonight.

  I joined the crowd in a rousing rendition of “When the Parade Passes By.” A drunken, red-faced Scot from Edinburgh sidled up and asked me if I was interested in taking a walk along the rocky beach outside, which was code for a sloppy quickie, but I politely declined.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the men’s room door swing open and Philander glide out. He wore a tight-fitting T-shirt and blue jeans. His long, thick hair was matted down by gel and his eyes were downcast. He was walking straight toward me. I suddenly realized his stool was right next to mine. I picked up his half-empty bottle of Amstel Light from the bar and held it out to him as he approached.

  When he looked up to see me grinning at him with his beer in my hand, he stopped in his tracks. His mind worked quickly to process my presence, but I could tell he decided to chalk it up to coincidence, and only then did he offer me a smile.

  “Where’s your girlfriend?” he asked before taking a long sip of his beer.

  “Back at the hotel. Sleepin
g. And she’s not my girlfriend.”

  “How fortunate.”

  “For whom?”

  “For both of us.”

  Philander leaned up against the bar and kept stealing glances at me. The piano player had segued into A Chorus Line and most of the crowd had draped their arms around each other to sway in unison to his dramatic rendition of “What I Did for Love.”

  I turned to the bartender and ordered us another round.

  “Are you trying to get me drunk?” Philander asked, caressing my shoulder with the back of his hand.

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “No. But if I have too much, I’m not responsible for my actions.”

  “That’s the plan,” I said, reaching around behind him and squeezing his right butt cheek.

  From the bulge in Philander’s pants, I knew my little seduction dance was working. He spun my stool around so I was facing him and cupped my face in his hands.

  “Do you know what ‘Philander’ means in Greek?”

  I shrugged, not having the faintest idea.

  “Lover of man.”

  Perfect.

  He guzzled his Amstel Light within two minutes, and I signaled the bartender to bring him another one. Meanwhile, I excused myself three times to go to the bathroom, taking my drink with me and pouring it down the sink each time.

  After two hours of flirting and touching and singing, Philander was slurring his words, swaying back and forth, and raising his voice well into the red zone on the obnoxious meter. I had to work fast.

  “Want to get out of here?” I said, slipping my arm around his waist.

  “Yes. But where can we go? Your hotel?”

  “Can’t. My friend is there. Where do you live?”

  “In a guesthouse on the Karydes compound.” He laughed. “Forget going there.”

  “Why not? You live alone in the guesthouse, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but there are cameras everywhere. Uli watches my every move.”

  I remembered the friendly, red-faced Scot from earlier in the night who had his own suggestion. “How about we take a stroll along the rocky beach outside. Plenty of little hiding places there, I bet.”