by Davis Bunn
Shari watched as a woman made her way back across the tarmac carrying a pair of Styrofoam cups. “You believe this place? They don’t even have a Starbucks.”
The guy accepted the cup with, “I asked for this?”
“Hey, a gentleman never lets a lady drink alone.” The newcomer peeled off the top, blew, and sipped. “I go half an hour with no caffeine, I’m ready for rehab.”
“It’s hot as a hair dryer out here and you want me to drink coffee?”
“Just hold it for me, then. I’ll get to you momentarily.” Her Ray-Bans glinted as she shifted her gaze to Shari. “Who’s this?”
“She hasn’t said. My money’s on the mystery lady we’ve been hearing about.”
“The new kid Steen’s taken on board?”
“The same.” The guy called over, “What, you’re the latest Menzes flame?”
Shari bit back her angry retort. She walked up and said, “If that’s his motive, he’s about to be seriously disappointed.”
“Ooh, character. That’s a new slant.”
The woman elbowed the guy. “Be nice. We might even be in the presence of a lady.”
“Nah, Border Patrol stops those kind in Van Nuys.” But he shifted the cup and offered his hand. “Leo Patillo.”
“Nice to meet you, Leo. I’m Shari Khan.”
“This is Emily Arsene.”
Shari cocked her head and studied the woman who appeared about a decade older than herself. “I’ve heard of you. Wait, sure, you’re Sam’s chief reader.”
A simple adage of Hollywood was that producers didn’t read anything longer than the zeros on their paychecks. Some, in fact, were almost illiterate. All, however, were deluged with pitches and stories and scripts and books and magazine articles. All this fodder was desperately shoveled their way by agents and writers and directors, who frantically searched for the next green light. A reader was someone whose taste the producer trusted. They were the funnel. Or in the case of some producers, the locked door. The reader studied the material, distilled it down to a few terse sentences, and gave a verdict. The closest most would-be screenwriters ever came to Hollywood credit was a pass from a major producer’s reader.
The simple act of turning his head accented the cords of muscles on Leo’s tanned neck. “What do you know, Emily. A fan.”
“Don’t mind Leo. He overdosed on Muscle Beach steroids when he was eleven.”
“Sharr-ee …” Leo exaggerated the unusual pronunciation. “That’s what kinda name, Mexican?”
“Persian,” Shari said.
Leo shrugged. “Same thing.”
“Leo. Please,” Emily said. “Your ignorance muscle is bulging again.”
Shari asked, “So what brings you out here in the heat?”
“Leo is Sam’s minder. I’m here to make sure Leo behaves.”
“Like you could stop me, I get on a tear.”
“Leo used to be a cop,” Emily explained. “Sometimes he gets carried away, thinks he can still hide behind his badge.”
He did a fair imitation of a famous action star. “I never hit nobody who didn’t ask for it.”
“See what I mean?” Emily finished her coffee, looked for a wastebasket.
“Here, I’ll take care of that.” Shari took the cup and carried it to the trash bin by the nearest hangar. Crossing the concrete was like walking on a superheated mirror. Leo and Emily watched her intently as she returned.
Emily said, “You believe that?”
“No wonder Menzes is after putting her in his private corral,” Leo said.
“I told you,” Shari said. “That is not happening.”
“Stop with the trash talk,” Emily said. “We’re in the presence of class as well as smarts.”
Shari said, “I’m still not clear on what Menzes thinks needs minding here.”
Emily Arsene pointed to where a jet whined its way toward them. “Maybe nothing.”
Leo had to shout to be heard. “Oh. Right. Like anything ever went smooth in this town.”
The PR cartel was moving before the jet braked and the engines whined down. By the time the pilot opened the door and unfolded the stairs, they were clustered in an expectant semicircle.
But nothing, no advance notice of any kind, could have prepared Shari for what happened next.
Raul Solish, who had managed to win Oscars both for screenwriting and directing, the man Variety called an understated genius on both page and screen, appeared in the jet’s doorway wearing a flight attendant’s jacket replete with silver flying wings. He also wore leather chaps, riding boots, spurs, and a sombrero. He held a half-gallon magnum of Dom Perignon in one hand and a neon-green giraffe in the other. His sunglasses were missing one lens, but Shari doubted the director noticed. He was kept from tumbling headlong down the stairs by a hand that reached out from behind and gripped the flight attendant’s jacket, which fit Solish like the undersized uniform of a dancing monkey. Solish tried to shrug off the hand and managed to drop his giraffe.
He stared down at where the stuffed animal lay on the tarmac and wailed a note of utter bereavement.
“Is that actually a sombrero?” Leo asked nobody in particular. “They came from Budapest by way of Cancun?”
Emily said, “Maybe the pilot had a touch too much of Solish’s lunch and got lost.”
A second head appeared by the director. Shari recognized Colin Chapman, a true Hollywood legend, a child star who had managed to not only hold on to fame as he grew, but become a bigger star in the process. Lasting power was the rarest of talents in the Hollywood spectrum.
But Shari doubted that Colin Chapman’s millions of fans would recognize the actor just then.
Chapman wore what Shari assumed was a sozzled version of the national Hungarian costume. A round leather hat hung from his neck by a braid. An embroidered white shirt the size of a sail. And a gypsy vest of rainbow hues.
It was good that the shirt was so large, because the star wore no pants.
Raul’s grief over the lost giraffe was cut off by the former child star saying, “We can’t disappoint our fans.”
“We can’t?”
Chapman remained upright because of the two-armed lock he had taken of the director’s shoulders. “Nooooo! They want an encore!”
The two men then launched into what Shari could only describe as a unique rendition of “Cabaret.”
Leo crossed the tarmac, pushed aside the gaping PR clones, and called up, “Gentlemen! Mr. Menzes sends you his regards.” The studio boss’s name had a calming effect. “You can come quiet or you can come loud. It’s your call.”
Emily and Shari watched as Leo ushered the pair into two separate limos and confiscated a camera being surreptitiously wielded by a PR flunky. Only when the parade pulled away did Emily say, “That’s our cue.”
Emily and Shari climbed into the plane. The co-pilot greeted them with the stone silence of a man seriously in need of another dose of patience. Emily took a look around the demolished interior and said to him, “Mr. Menzes says for you gentlemen to add the appropriate sum to your bill.”
“Don’t worry, we will.”
“Where’s Billie?”
The pilot pointed to the back of the jet. “She locked herself in at takeoff and hasn’t come out.”
“Can you get the door?”
“No problem.” The pilot led them to the back. He knocked on the burl walnut, tried the handle, said, “Ms. Rondelle?” When there was no answer he fished a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, knocked again, then opened it and stepped away. “All yours.”
Emily stepped inside. “Billie?”
The impossibly beautiful young woman who had fed the dreams of a billion young men pushed aside the yellow silk sheets, peeled off her eye mask, and said plaintively, “They stole my giraffe.”
“Sam worked out a five-picture deal with the Hungarian government,” Emily told her. “It was a typical Menzes move. He flew over with Steen and an accountant. No creative types
to mess up the works. Menzes told the prime minister he could guarantee years of work, tons of good publicity, hundreds of new jobs, yada, yada.”
Shari tried to concentrate on what Emily was telling her, but the scene beyond the smoked glass cried out for her attention. She had driven down this very stretch of road a hundred times and more. But never in the back of a limo. The tourists crowding the sidewalks stood out like they had been backlit, because only a visitor from the sticks would give a stretch limo in Hollywood a second glance. If the passengers were anybody worth watching, a local knew the windows would be as dark as their Ray-Bans.
Emily went on, “When Menzes had the minister and his staff ready to break out the brandy or whatever it is they drink, he left. Derek stayed.” Emily glanced over. “You’ve met Derek.”
“Twice.”
“Then you know. Derek and the accountant lock the minister and his staff in a double vise and squeeze. They get everything they want. Cash, hotels, caterers, free location shoots, even time inside the prime minister’s office for a story they haven’t written yet.”
They passed the fire escape where Julia Roberts had climbed away from her landlord in Pretty Woman. They turned onto Hollywood Boulevard and passed the Egyptian Theatre, which premiered the original Robin Hood in 1922. Next came the much more famous Chinese Theatre, which Sid Grauman completed in 1927. As usual, the buses blocked Shari’s view of the tourists shooting pictures of their favorite stars’ handprints. Next came the Roosevelt Hotel, where the first Academy Awards were held—the ceremony took a grand total of sixteen minutes.
“The downside is obvious,” Emily went on. “For this current frontier project, they found a section of Transylvania that defines primeval wilderness. But the only place for the cast and crew to sleep is a state-owned castle. Half the showers don’t work, and there’s never enough hot water. There are no paved roads in the entire province. The nearest decent restaurant is in Budapest. They’re basically locked in at night. Wolves. Or maybe vampires, I forget.”
Elizabeth Rondelle, renamed Billie by the studio marketing gurus, had until now been happy to alternate between braiding her green giraffe’s forelock and staring out the side window. Now she turned and whined, “Hello! Am I, like, invisible here?”
“Sorry, Billie,” Emily soothed.
“I’m a person too, you know.”
“Of course you are.”
Shari leaned forward, not because she had the slightest interest in what the star had to say. Rather, she wanted another glimpse of the woman’s astonishing beauty. Billie Rondelle defined physical perfection. Her face was flawless. Her eyes huge and emerald.
Billie whined, “I’ve got feelings too.”
“You certainly do.” Emily fished in her voluminous purse and came up with a plastic folder. “I have some lines for you to study.”
“We’re doing a Boone scene in West Hollywood?”
“It’s for tonight’s event, Billie. You’ll be talking to the press, remember?”
“Oh. Right. Okay.”
Billie Rondelle shifted the giraffe so the green animal could read the lines with her. Shari wondered what it was like, possessing a viscerally magnetic beauty and the mind of a nine-year-old.
Billie said to the folder, “I hope you told Charles to come do my hair.”
“He’s waiting for you in your suite.”
“It better not be one of his little peons either. Only Charles knows what to do with my hair. Nobody else cares.”
“I care, Billie.”
“Yeah, sure, okay. But you tell Sam everything.”
“Not all of it. You know that. Only the good bits.” She patted the woman-child’s knee. “We’re here.”
The hotel’s security guard had the barrier up in advance of their arrival. The limo swept through the mob of photo journalists clustered by the front gates. Tucked into a lush enclave overlooking the Sunset Strip was the Chateau Marmont. The hotel had been famously decadent for eighty years. The staff was professionally adept at handling trouble. Harry Cohn, the founder of Columbia Pictures, had often warned his stars that if they were going to seriously misbehave, they were to make sure they did it at the Marmont. For Oscar week, the castle was booked five years in advance. Marilyn Monroe partied there between husbands. John Belushi died there. Jean Harlow cheated with Clark Gable there—while on her honeymoon. Chateau Marmont was where the bodies and secrets came to be buried.
One of the PR types Shari had last seen at the airport scurried down the front stairs, shooed away the valet, and waved frantically for them to stop. When the window rolled down, he had to pause for breath before gasping, “Take her round back.”
Emily leaned over Shari and said, “Trouble?”
He wrung his hands. “The press are already doing a live feed!”
Emily leaned back in her seat. “Driver, you know what to do?”
“On my way.”
As they pulled toward the rear loading dock, Emily retrieved the script from Billie’s hands. The ingenue complained, “But I haven’t learned the lines yet.”
Emily shared a smile with Shari. “Something tells me it won’t matter a whole lot.”
16
Bobby Dupree told himself he was not going to be overwhelmed. About ten thousand times. He also said it to his wife that morning. His wife just smiled at him and said, “Oh, go ahead and let yourself be twelve years old again.”
“I’m a big boy now.”
“Sure you are, honey.”
“I’m president of companies.”
“You say frog and people croak.”
“Hey, you’re not helping things here.”
Darlene kissed him. “You just run along and remember everything so you can tell me about it tonight.”
“Huh. Like I’m gonna forget meeting Celia Breach.” Bobby fished his keys from the bowl on the front table, then fitted his cell phone into the belt holster and the remote into his ear. “Why don’t you come with me?”
“This is your fantasy, not mine.”
“I thought I was doing this for God.”
Darlene no longer bothered to hide her smile. “Last I checked, God never said you couldn’t have a good time.”
Bobby kissed her a second time, then said, “Some wives would be worried, their husband going off to meet a Hollywood star.”
She laughed out loud. “Call me when it’s done.”
Bobby did what he did every morning as he left the home life behind and settled into his game face. He checked his watch, climbed into the Escalade, turned on his phone, hit the speed dial, backed from the drive, and said to Fiona, “The office building burn down?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
“The banks call about that overdue loan?”
“You don’t have any.”
“Guess I managed to slip one by you as well. Okay, what’s up?”
“You know what’s up. Their plane is on time.”
“Whose plane would that be?”
Fiona’s laugh sounded remarkably like his wife’s. “Yeah, right.”
“Who do I need to talk to now?”
Fiona went through a customary list of urgents and finished with, “Jerry Orbain phoned last night after you left.”
“Put him through first.”
“He didn’t say it was urgent, and it’s two hours earlier there.”
“I know. But let’s get him done now.”
Jerry was up and running, as Bobby knew he would be. “Jerry, do you ever actually lay down and sleep?”
“Sure. Sometime last year. I remember it distinctly. My Evereadies went flat.”
Jerry’s ability to go without sleep was one of the reasons Bobby had decided to give him a try. It was good to hear the younger man not sounding morose. “What’s up with you?”
“Brent Stark arrived back last night.”
“He tell you how it went?”
“He said it was the hardest thing he ever did in his entire life.” Jerry paused, then ad
ded, “He also told me I’ve done a good job.”
“See? All that worry over nothing.”
“How did you know?”
“Because I trust the man. Just like you should. What are you guys up to today?”
“We’re meeting with actors the casting agent has rounded up.
Trevor Wright, our director of photography, has lined up his crew. I’m flying back to Wilmington with them tonight. We start rehearsals tomorrow. Brent’s spending tomorrow going over the storyboards and the shooting schedule with Trevor. They come in two days—the same day Celia arrives.”
Bobby smiled at the little zing he got over hearing the star’s name. His star. In his film. He had to work hard to keep the lilt from his voice. “How are things going on the sets?”
“Trevor checked them before he flew out. He says the crews are doing great things. I’ve been busy out here for the past five days, so I can’t—”
“If Brent says we should trust the man, that’s good enough for me.”
There was a pause, and Bobby shook his head over the hesitation. Jerry was doing his mental routine again, as in, if you trust Brent why can’t you trust me? The guy had a serious load of shoulder chips. But hey, not even God found twelve perfect men, and He had His Son on the hunt. “Jerry, you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Have Brent call me when he’s conscious.” Bobby cut the connection, which put him immediately back to his secretary. Her office console resembled NASA’s control system, and his cell phone bill rivaled the space shuttle for altitude. Bobby said, “Find me somebody who’s got a remedy for bad attitude. I want to buy their company.”
“There’s nothing the matter with Jerry Orbain that a little success won’t heal.” Fiona considered Jerry one of her personal favorites. “Ready for the next round?”
By the time he made it downtown, Bobby had worked through most of the overnight problems. He stopped by the fourth floor and had a word with his music video staff, the only group in his entire company that rivaled him for energy. Bobby had taken bids for this new work from four different groups. The music video team had done what he had hoped, which was slave over the challenge night and day until they had a concept that knocked his socks off. He stopped by that morning to tell them so.