“Meaning?”
Devin laughed. This whole thing was so overwhelming it was crazy. “Meaning, I need a publicist.”
53
In the Moscow Ice Green Room, movie star Brady Branson smiled his chiseled jaw megawatt smile and gave the camera a little wink. As he did, a little bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, the only sign that Brady Branson, who at 40, was the highest paid actor in Hollywood, was scared shitless. Of course he was scared shitless. That freaky guy with the crew cut who’d been glaring at him and ogling his wife Tasha Bates – equally big movie star, equally sexy and equally formidable in Hollywood circles – that guy was standing two feet away from him with his hand resting kinda twitchily on his holster, already open and ready to have that gun pulled out and aimed and fired at any moment.
Brady looking into the camera and read the lines put in front of him.
“Okay, folks, welcome back. As you know, I’m Brady Branson. I’ve been asked to host the next section of the uh… show. Here.”
Brady got up and walked across the room with the cameraman as he’d been instructed to. Right now, all the celebrities were sitting in a very organized group of three rows all sitting around a couch, almost like they were posing for a school photo.
Brady stopped at a table in the middle of the room. Sitting at the table was the scary guy in control (The uber scary one. The one who shot Sally Bixby). And in front of him was a lie detector machine.
“Folks,” Brady continued. “We want you to be entertained there at home. So we’ve got some… entertainment for you.”
Brady stopped at the table.
“Here we have Gunnar Leise, the man in charge here… Mr. Leise has kindly arranged for a lie detector machine to be placed here and he will be monitoring it.”
Brady let his eyes sweep the celebrities. “First up, we have romantic comedy superstar Tannis Overholt.”
Tannis Overholt blanched and pointed to herself like, ‘me?’
Brady swallowed hard. This was hell. He forced a smile, as he’d been instructed to do. He held his hand out for Tannis. “That’s right, Darlin’… You’re up first.”
Tannis left the group and shakily took Brady’s hand. “There ya go...” he said. As we walked her over to the table, he whispered in her ear. “Be brave, darlin’. We’ll get outta this.”
Tannis looked at him but couldn’t speak. She sat down at the table.
Richard looked at the quivering actress in front of him. Her flaxen hair, the perfect makeup, the purple bruise on her cheek from where he hit her in the face with his gun.
He nodded to two of his guys, who walked over and hooked her up. Attaching the finger clamp on the index finger, looping two plastic tubes across her torso, one across the chest, the other just below her waist, then a blood pressure arm cuff secured too tight for comfort.
Richard pumped up the arm cuff so no doubt her hand would be throbbing just like his head had been having to listen to her voice earlier backstage.
“You see, folks… Richard started casually turning towards the camera, “We’re going to play a little game. And that little game is going to decide who is going to live and who is going to be the next to die. And that game is called Truth or Truth. Also known as Truth or Death. It’s pretty simple. I ask questions, I get answers. The more truthful your favorite movie stars are with me, the more likely they are to live. But if they lie… or if I just don’t like their answers…they’ll be on my list… kinda like a to do list. But more like a ‘To Die’ list.” He looked around. “Everyone got it?”
The celebrities all nodded like bobble head versions of themselves.
He looked at Tannis Overholt. “Okay, we’ll start with some basic questions to get some levels.”
“Is today Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“Is your name Tannis Overholt?”
“Yes.”
The machine beeped.
Tannis blanched. “I MEAN MY STAGE NAME!!! My stage name is Tannis Overholt. My real name is Tannis Marie Kapinsky. I was born on September 7th 1991 in Des Moines, Io--”
“I don’t give a shit. And shut up.”
Tannis nodded.
Richard looked at the levels again. “You’re a big Hollywood movie star, Tannis.”
Tannis looked around, not sure what to do. An answer might be called for. “Yes?”
“America’s sweetheart?”
“Maybe…”
“Girl next door?”
“Kind of…”
“So tell me…” Richard had heard all the rumors about her. “Have you ever done coke?”
“Yes.”
“Lots of coke?”
“Uh huh.”
“And had sex with people you didn’t know?”
“Definitely.”
“Have you ever been so high on coke you didn’t even know the name of the person you were fucking?”
Tannis didn’t even miss a beat. Nothing was worth dying for.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Okay.”
“More than once.”
“Thank you…
She kept going for good measure. “And sometimes couples. Sometimes I had sex with couples and didn’t know who the hell they were. Because I was lonely.”
“I think we have enough-”
“And sometimes I had sex with movie executives. Just for a part. People think that doesn’t happen anymore. But it does.”
Richard looked at her. He was amused.
“Anything else?”
“When I had sex with that one couple who lived in Beverly Hills… in that big house… I was so coked out that when I left I stole a really expensive vase. I have it in my house.”
“Okay…” Richard said.
Tannis looked desperate. “I don’t want to die.”
Richard smirked. “You should have thought of that before you stole that vase.”
54
Sis Warren turned her face away from the monitor where she’d been watching Tannis Overholt sweating profusely.
She should have been enjoying this. She was to an extent but there was something nagging at her. Who was this girl? The cop? Who was Devin Jones and why did she remember her name?
Surely if she had auditioned for her or worked on a film of Sis’s she would have either remembered more, or remembered not at all - Sis knew she saw a shitload of actors for any one role, let alone any film.
But there was something about this girl. Whoever she was. Why did she remember her as a cop? Did she play a cop? That was probably it.
Sis pushed her chair back from the console and stood up. She stretched and looked at the clock on the back wall. 7:15. 10:15 on the east coast. They were an hour into it, and things weren’t going exactly as they’d planned. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Kyp Valentine was a wild card. Sally Bixby should have played along. She really should have. Sis wasn’t happy that had happened, Sally was supposed to be their guide through the whole show. But Richard had done what he thought needed to be done. Although Sis knew that Richard was a rage machine. That was what made him so appealing to carry this out, but it also made him dangerous. Not just to the celebrities in that green room. There was a part of Sis that wondered if he’d try and double cross her somehow.
Which is why she made everything about the money and their escape foolproof. It required both of them. All the accounts. Three in the Cayman Islands, two in Switzerland, required both their fake passports and their fake signatures to access any cash. She made sure that she was required right till the very end. That he couldn’t just shoot her and make his way through the tunnel they’d had those guys dig, out of the theater, down to the subway, where their plan was to go on foot, through the tunnel between the Highland Avenue station and the next one at Vine Street. Which would be well out of the cordoned off police area.
Then from there it would be up to the street where their getaway car was parked in a parking lot just waiting for them. Then off to the Burbank
airport where there was a private plane ready for takeoff.
Sis had thought through everything. She wondered if the plan was too much – leaving everyone behind here when the bombs went off, including the guys who helped carry this off. But then she realized she didn’t give a shit.
By the time anyone noticed they were gone, it would be 8:57 p.m.and the whole place would blow. The detonator was set for 8:56, but the various triggers might take a minute or so to go.
Their plan was brilliant. And as far as everyone knew, Sis Warren had been killed on National Television. And she and Richard would be presumed to be among the unidentifiable in the rubble of the explosion. No one would ever know they’d gotten out ten minutes before it went up.
Suddenly out of nowhere, Sis felt her heart ache. Probably because she was reminded of the why. The why she was doing this in the first place - the why that made every terrible what possible.
“Andy…” she whispered, talking to the dead husband she often talked to, in the hopes that somehow their love could act as a telephone wire from where she was to where he was. When Sis spoke to Andy it was the only time that part of her heart that had loved him so much was alive. Only Andy made her heart warm. Without him, her heart was shrivelled and black. It wasn’t a heart. It wasn’t for love. And now she knew, it was capable of coldness and cruelty like she never could have imagined. All based on this love.
Revenge, she thought at first, wouldn’t fill the space. But revenge filled enough of the space for Sis. It was something. It gave her a jolt of alive.
She shook off the tears that started to drop. She was angry that she could still cry. That the unfairness was still so overwhelming. That the grief was still so black and entire.
She rubbed her eyes. Rubbing the tears away. Rubbing the grief away. Rubbing away everything she saw in front of her today.
Jorge Nunes’s face as the shovel came down on his head.
Kyp Valentine’s eyes bugging out as Sis choked him.
Sally Bixby getting shot in the face.
Glynn Fielding getting her head blown off.
Sis sat down on the couch behind her. She put her head in her hands. Something was overwhelming her. It wasn’t sorrow and it wasn’t regret. But it was something. Something she had to push away.
“No!” She said out loud. “This is right. This is the only way.”
She shook her head.
Sis looked up to the screen and saw Richard unhooking Tannis Overholt from the polygraph machine. She watched the actress as she stumbled away from the table to the group. Richard pointed to Everett Cale who made her way over to the table, sitting down. Keeping her composure.
Sis looked away from the screen again.
She had a flash of herself the night Andy died. She was crumpled and crying, sitting on the floor of her grand foyer. Crying so hard she was a mess of tears and snot. She was broken in half from crushing grief and her legs wouldn’t work. Crumpled and broken as though the stuff that made her strong had all been removed with the news that Andy had killed himself.
Pathetic. So pathetic. And that policewoman who probably thought she was a fucking pathetic loser. Sitting there like they did. For two fucking hours. Didn’t she have anything better to do? Probably went home and kissed her husband and thought, “At least that wasn’t me.”
Fuck that.
Sis wiped away a tear defiantly. She sniffed. She stood up and walked over to the monitors, watching Everett Cale keeping her cool as two burly security guards wrapped the wires around her and clamped her finger and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her arm.
Sis turned the sound back up.
She heard Richard. “Is your name Everett Cale?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said, “That was correct.”
Sis looked at the image on the screen. She was filled with the anger that made her start this in the first place.
She spoke to the screen as if he could hear her.
“Kill them all, Richard. Just fucking kill them all.”
55
Devin slowly opened Kyp Valentine’s dressing room door and peered into the hallway. Empty. She closed the door again and her phone vibrated.
“Lori?”
Devin heard the a little too thrilled voice on the other end of the phone.
“Baby? Are you okay?”
Life threatening crisis or not, Devin remembered how much Lori Plom irritated her. “For fuck’s sake, Lori… Really?”
“Sorry, I’m just happy to hear your voice.”
“Well, I guess that’s something… No more babe or baby. Please. Dear God.”
“Capiche. What do you need, doll?”
Devin looked at the disarray that had been Kyp Valentine’s dressing room. Good Luck flowers knocked over, with the water spilled out. A smashed lamp on the floor with smear of blood on it. Then Devin glanced over at the diamond again – the one with the piece missing from the setting. She’d placed it on the coffee table. What the fuck was Sis Warren up to and why did she kill a gardener?
“I’ll tell you what I need, Lori…”
“Name it.”
Devin gathered her thoughts. “Right… Okay, I - ”
“Anything.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Well-”
“Whatever I can do to-
“CAN YOU LET ME TALK?”
There was silence for a couple of seconds. Followed by a quiet, “10-4.”
Devin imagined Lori at that moment doing the tick a lock gesture.
Devin sighed. “Jesus, Lori. I’m starting to side with that Dinah -”
“Mynah -”
“WHO CARES?”
Devin squeezed her forehead, trying to keep from exploding at Lori Plom. This was not the place and she sure as shit didn’t have the time.
“Okay…Lori. You’re the head of publicity for Zephyr Films or whatever.”
“I am…”
“You have a lot of experience in making people famous… Marketing and all that.”
“That’s true.”
“I need you to help me create a new celebrity.”
“Who’s that?”
Devin shook her head and half smiled. She couldn’t believe what she was about to say. It pretty much ran contrary to everything she believed in.
“Me.”
56
Zack Chevsky stood up from his makeshift desk in his makeshift office in the utility closet.
He stretched his lanky limbs and cracked his neck. He picked up the flattened crinkly package of potato chips that had sustained him the last hour or so. Empty. He scrunched it up and looked for a garbage. Unable to find a basket to sink it in. He tossed it against the wall.
“Chevsky going for three points…”
He flicked his wrist and tossed the crumpled potato chip bag towards the wall as imaginary basket. Unfortunately it not only didn’t make it two feet to the wall, it barely made it three inches forward, then flopped down to the ground with an unceremonious plop.
Zack shook his head. “Fucking shit crap bag.”
Wasn’t his fault. Nothing ever was. And he resented that anyone would think it was. Like it wasn’t his fault his mother had to declare bankruptcy and sell her house. Was it his fault his comic book store failed? No. He had a million dollar idea. His mother believed in him enough to invest. And it tanked because kids today are stupid fuckers staying home and watching video games. They lack imagination.
And he’d learned to forge her signature. Which meant he could write himself a lot of checks. Which meant he was able to drain her account pretty much dry. She had enough though for her Marlboros and her Coors Light. What the fuck else did she need? She had a roof over her head. Oh, wait… Not anymore. But whatever. She could rent.
Besides after tonight he’d pay her back like a zillion times over.
At that moment the door opened. Zack jumped like a mile. He reached for his gun, but then remembered that even though he was dressed like a security guard, Richard would
n’t let him have a gun like the other guys had. Said he’d probably blow his knob off. Which Zack thought was a really rude thing to say in front of the other guys. And yeah, they’d laughed at him. Which made Zack mad. But who’s gonna be laughing now? Zack had found a way to funnel about 14 extra million dollars into his own account he’d set up. That and the 10 million bucks Richard promised him. He was gonna be set for life!
Zack looked at Sis Warren who had just walked into the small room.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hello, Zack.”
Why did she have to have that fucking icy tone with him all the time? Like someone’s pissed off grandmother. Fucking mean old bag.
Zack loped back to his desk and sat down in his crap creaky chair.
“How’s it going?” Sis asked.
“Yeah, good.”
Zack stretched his back like a cat. Back and forth. “’Cept this fuckin’ chair. I asked Richard for one of those ergonomic ones. Told him I was gonna be sitting here all night, I was gonna need a good chair.”
Sis just stared at him.
“You know?”
She totally blanked him on that and went into her own thing. “How are we doing?”
Zack ran the his finger over the mousepad, and brought up the various spreadsheets. “Yeah, good…”
He squinted at the numbers forming on the spreadsheets in front of him. The numbers changing and growing constantly.
“Looks like we’ve got about $150 million so far.”
Sis scowled. That made her look even older and more craggy than she normally did. Zack watched her under chin fat waddle as she scowled. Why couldn’t she get that fixed? It was weird to see. Hollywood women didn’t look like that anymore. No wonder her husband killed himself. Having to look at that craggy old lady face day in day out. Had she never heard of fucking Botox?
Zack had liked her okay in the beginning but now he hated her guts. She was just another judgmental superior snob looking down on him. Such bullshit. Made him really happy he’d ripped her off for fourteen mill.
This is Devin Jones Page 13