Fall Out

by M. N. Grenside

  (Picks up bottled water)

  Aqua Regia.

  (Reading label)

  Guarantee of purity.

  (He smells it, takes a swig)

  Does it cleanse your soul?

  * * *

  KENNY

  Yeah. Helps me cut more corners, shave safety margins while you smooth the paperwork and certificates. It’s a Jerry-rigged shack.

  * * *

  FRANK

  It’s fucking Panama. Jerry-rigged is a design triumph down there.

  Don’t get all moral on me. You take the money.

  Every time.

  * * *

  KENNY

  Which is why this is the last one.

  * * *

  FRANK

  I’ll pull some strings, get you some of that new building work up by Gracie Mansion.

  You can flex your true artistic muscle.

  * * *

  KENNY

  The demolition process seems fine but the construction schedule makes no sense. It’s impossible to work around. These criteria are...

  * * *

  FRANK

  Written in stone, shall we say? Schedule stays. Kenny. We go back in five weeks.

  You can make it work. You always have. Those revised plans, budgeted, on my desk, as agreed, a week today.

  (Pause)

  And I said off the booze.

  Here’s something to keep you going.

  (Reaches into pocket).

  * * *

  KENNY

  I don’t need your money.

  * * *

  Frank tosses him a bag of coke.

  * * *

  FRANK

  (turns and leaves)

  Nor I your delays. This will stop any down times.

  * * *

  SCENE 16 EXT. STREET-CONTINUOUS.

  * * *

  FRANK reaches for cell phone. Hits speed-dial, JOE NISTEN’S name comes up.

  * * *

  FRANK

  He hasn’t a clue.

  (Pause)

  He’s a fuckin’ drug addict with delusions of the scope of his talent. No one’ll hire him ‘cept me.

  But he knows how to dress this up.

  (listens)

  Says this is the last time.

  He’s right. When this job is over, Pffft he just disappears.

  * * *

  When Kelso had sent McConnell a copy of his script with handwritten notes in the margin, the Agent had noticed right away that scenes were different. Just like with Cara. Louis knew exactly why Sam had inserted references Kelso might understand and wanted to see his reaction.

  There were some heavy pointers. Kenny was obviously Kelso. The screenplay pointed out the architect’s schedule difficulties that were a mirror of the shooting schedule issues of THE LAST COMPANY. There was Kenny’s/Robert’s drug abuse. When mentioning the park in New York, Sam was referencing a studio, nicknamed The Playground in Vancouver where Kelso shot interiors for POLE-AXED; a piss-ant job for Louis that had indeed turned into a ‘ton of change’. The reference to POLE-AXED was underscored by quoting the strap line from the movie, ‘God help the kids’.

  Most surprising to Louis had been Sam’s understanding about the significance of Aqua Regia.

  What Sam was saying was blindingly obvious, certainly to Louis.

  “Kelso, you were being used,” the pages shouted. “Louis duped you, made a lot of money from you and then wanted you out of the way. Be afraid.”

  The waiter returned with the salad and caviar.

  “You mean in the architect scene?” Robert said after a long pause.

  Here it comes, Louis thought to himself. “Sam being funny, I suppose.”

  Louis checked himself.

  “The strap-line from POLE-AXED.… ‘God help the kids’. I thought maybe it was a coincidence, or Sam having a joke. We can take it out. It’s hardly a big deal.”

  Louis felt a sense of relief. Perhaps Kelso really hadn’t noticed, but he still needed to be on guard.

  “You’re right. Minor stuff. It’s a great script, but like I said, we need to make it, not Riley. You must direct it, it’ll be a hell of a comeback, but we have to squeeze him out. Quietly.”

  “I want that movie” said Robert.

  “Riley doesn’t have the clout to pull it off. We do. And I don’t want him interfering with you creatively.” Louis spooned nearly half the caviar onto one piece of Melba toast and wolfed it down. “He’s not going to be part of our movie. Forget him.” Another mouthful and the caviar was gone.

  “Play it cool. You’ve agreed to see him in Cannes next month at the festival. I got you an apartment. ’Til then he can sweat.”

  “But how did you get him to leave and stop bashing my door in, like he did with Sam?”

  “I have friends in low places. Now let’s eat.”

  When the meal ended, the two men shook hands on an agreement neither had any intention of honoring.

  21

  BELGRAVIA, LONDON

  At least Stefan de Turris’ mind was still free, floating. He looked down on the pitiful scene, his own limp body being attended to by a small army of starched white worker bees.

  More like parasites, he thought to himself. All this cost and money for what? Now reduced to this helpless, paralyzed state, his physical presence was just an outer shell that was broken, lying motionless on the bed.

  A prisoner confined to a room thrumming with machinery, an eternal annoyance that only perpetuated the purgatory that was now his world. This was not the image he had created for himself or his home to project. He would never have allowed this state to continue had he been able to pull those plugs and end it all. All he could do now was watch and think.

  There was a problem. His daughter Melinda; he would never address her by that nickname the staff used. The olive branch that he had held out before the accident was as broken and twisted as the wreckage of his car. He would never have the chance to perform one more sleight of hand, one more mental acrobatic pirouette and bring her back into the fold that was his way of life.

  Melinda’s mother had rejected it and left him. It all started with that damned Buddha head. The bust had been in the house for years, seemingly just another of his prized possessions until one day his wife had been examining it and its significance had dawned on her. She wanted to know where it had come from.

  By her revealing its secret, it had forced Stefan to the truth; what really bound him to McConnell and Haribon Guinto. He told her the whole story, what the three of them had done and why. He had got the pitch badly wrong. When he finished, he had expected her to understand the significance of the legacy he had so carefully built. Instead she was horrified. His wife looked at him like he was a stranger. She left him. Instantly. Stefan had to call Louis. Meanwhile his wife sent a brief note to their daughter who was traveling in the wilds of Hunan Province. Her father had betrayed them. She would explain, but Melinda was to come home immediately. It took more than a week for Melinda to make the journey from the wilds of China to London. She never had a chance to find out exactly what her mother meant as the woman died of an embolism a day before she landed at Heathrow. The doctors believed it was a fatal mix of stress and her high blood pressure. To Mako it was a broken heart.

  After a brief and furious exchange with her father where she would not let him try to explain, she turned her back on him too; but for all the wrong reasons.

  His daughter had got it all wrong. Melinda was under the illusion her mother had turned on her heels and stormed out over another woman, for chrissakes! That wasn’t it at all.

  In the years since she had stopped all contact with her father, Stefan had practiced what he needed to say to his daughter, every nuance, each quip—if he ever got a second chance.

  He wanted to explain to her that what her mother had discovered and why the Buddha head protected their future. The Buddha head was the ultimate get-out-of–jail-free card, an insurance policy against all that he’d done.
All that mattered was his daughter inherit his legacy of power and wealth. He needed her to buy into that; he burned with hope that Melinda would see and understand what his wife had not.

  * * *

  Just in case he never got that chance to explain, his last hope was that someday his daughter might decipher the clues he had hidden in the house in their family home in the mountains; left there for her to discover. He wanted to shake her. There was danger. Certainly, he was the root cause, but she was going to reap the whirlwind. People were coming after her, dangerous people. He had to see her, warn her, prepare her… the beeping from the heart rate monitor suddenly became a monotone note. It grew louder. It cocooned him. Then, nothing.

  * * *

  The people in the room crowded around his figure.

  “I’m sorry. It’s probably for the best, at least his pain is over,” said the doctor who had rushed over from the nearby Lister Hospital. Her eyes moist, Mary crossed herself then as agreed went off to inform the family lawyer, Mr. Robin Vallings of the death of Stefan de Turris.

  * * *

  An hour later Mako whispered a thank you to Robin and turned off her cell phone. The noise of the nightclub she’d left still rocked in her ears. Her father was gone and now they would never be able to confront their demons. Damn him.

  22

  SOHO, LONDON

  “… Let it go, Marcus. For me… screw Immigration. That’s bullshit.” Cara wasn’t budging an inch. “I think you know the story Sam is telling, why he sent it to us,” she continued in a softer tone. “He wanted you to read it. I don’t think he wanted to make it as a movie. Maybe he just wanted to see everyone’s reaction… if it’s a fantasy, let it stay that.”

  “No. If he is right, he wants us to expose everyone… and make the movie.”

  “If he was right, it killed him. Don’t stir it up. Some of us want to live.” She paused. Her tone hardened. “You looked up those names? The ‘best boy’?”

  Marcus was impressed she still remembered such arcane movie terminology. The best boy wasn’t a boy at all, but the nickname given to the first assistant to the chief electrician, or gaffer.

  “Mike Garland,” said Marcus.

  “Drowned in a boating accident. Then Rory Carmichael and Don Wallis.” These were the names from Louis’ list.

  “Rory suddenly keels over with a suspected heart attack at his local Starbucks, Don killed by a hit and run. “They were all on that movie… They all died prematurely,” she said gravely.

  Marcus had really been very disturbed by those names and the group they represented. That was fuel to Cara’s fire, and he decided not to tell her.

  “Cara, 130 people were in the crew. It was twenty years ago. People die. Sam sent that screenplay to me because he wanted me to make it,” Marcus said trying to push those names to the back of his mind and concentrate on his more immediate problem of impending financial ruin.

  “Marcus, please. No one wants to dig this up. Can you even raise the money anyway?”

  “It’ll be tough, but I’ve been working the phones. McConnell’s not interested, told me to forget it. Said I was damaged goods. No one would do a deal with me.”

  No surprise there, thought Cara to herself. Old friends from her LA days heard that McConnell had been discreetly badmouthing her English friend.

  “A chink of light. I sent Kelso a couple of emails to see if this could tempt him out of retirement. I have to believe that’s why Sam sent it to him. To help him and get the old team together. I eventually got a reply asking for a meeting in Cannes. I really need to get him on board… So far, he’s my only meeting. I seem to be toxic.”

  “Let it go, Marcus. Is it really worth it,” Cara pleaded? “To me it is. And I think it was to Sam.”

  Despite initially being sure she could get him to drop it, Cara knew she wasn’t getting through. “Just be careful,” she said resignedly and hung up.

  She immediately called McConnell. “You were right. He’s in London. Some visa issues. I tried to put him off. Maybe he just needs the money or just has something to prove. My guess is he won’t budge. He’s on a mission,” Cara said flatly. “As far as I can tell his hopes rest on a meeting with Kelso in Cannes.”

  Louis smiled to himself and hung up. “Riley is history,” he grinned to himself.

  23

  SOHO, LONDON

  Marcus collapsed on the sofa and stared into the fire. On a nearby table was the framed photo of himself with the crew on the set of THE LAST COMPANY. It was taken the first week, about fifty miles southeast of Manila. Yet it took hours of hard driving to get there. The whole crew was based in a lush valley under the gaze of a large rock, with a slow-moving river snaking its way along the valley floor and out into the jungle.

  It did not surprise Marcus that this wild and beautiful location had been used more than once for the setting of a film. They were effectively on a huge open back lot, their own private outdoor studio. The day of the photo the production company had thrown a party outside under the stars.

  Marcus picked up from the sofa his copy of FALL OUT and re-read a familiar scene; one Sam had taken from real life and twisted. The main protagonists, Frank the American and the local Panamanian Aguinaldo are throwing a party in a bar, having successfully set up a distribution pipeline via Joe Nisten for the sale of the weapons. Everything looks set to go and the two crews meet and throw a few back, before starting their work in earnest.

  The real-life party on the set of THE LAST COMPANY had been replaced by a party in a Central American city. The names had changed but what Sam had his characters go through mirrored what had happened in the jungle outside Pagsanjan.

  * * *

  FALL OUT PAGE 40

  SCENE 20

  NIGHT. PANAMA CITY. INT. BAR.

  * * *

  Both crews present. Over in one corner is FRANK KIDDO, holding court to a circle of admiring young women. Frank’s gang are whooping it up, exulting in the free alcohol. Relaxed... getting looser by the second...

  In another corner is AGUINALDO SOSA, surrounded by his small entourage of tough men, looking out of place, even though this is their home turf. TENSION. AGUINALDO rubs his forearm, an old wound and a sign he is uneasy.

  * * *

  FRANK

  (Calling over to AGUINALDO, hinting at fake camaraderie)

  C’mon, join the party. Grab a drink. We pulled it off, got the permit to start work.

  * * *

  One of Frank’s crew, JONAS, tall, thickset, approaches one of AGUINALDO’s men, TIKO, short, thin, offering him a shot glass of Tequila. JONAS deliberately drops it as the man reaches out.

  * * *

  JONAS

  Whoops. Butterfingers.

  In response to the laughter directed at him TIKO pulls out a balisong knife and performs a meticulous number of hand moves, the blade whirling in his hands.

  * * *

  AGUINALDO

  (Yells to Frank on other side)

  Tell that Mr. Jonas to be careful. Tiko kills for less.

  * * *

  Nearby stands FRANK’s burly enforcer STAN. He is enjoying the booze and watches the macho display. He looks over at AGUINALDO, then at his own boss. He smiles as an idea hits him and he picks up a discarded champagne cork that had rolled across the floor and stopped at his boot heel.

  He pulls a few large coins from his pocket and forces them under the metal cap at the top of the cork, twisting the wire still attached around it to secure them in place. Reaches into his shirt pocket... pulls out a small detonator, about the size and length of a cigarette. He rams that down into the other end of the cork...

  Into the eye at the top of the detonator cap he knots a piece of nylon fishing line. Grinning to himself, he drops the cork, coins and detonator into the top of a full barrel of Tequila on the bar next to him, so it’s barely floating on the surface, the weight of the coins pulling the cork into the liquid. The top of the string he winds around the plug on top of the barrel.


  Once the keg’s lid is closed only the detonator top is floating in the clear spirit, its detonator pin attached by the string to the top of the barrel...

  * * *

  STAN

  Okay, guys, fuck that, you want to see something’ that can REALLY screw people up?