Merryll Manning Is Dead Lucky

by Johm Howard Reid

  But despite the lack of excitement and the foregone result, the spectators cheered themselves into a frenzy while Sedge was congratulating the winner. People were standing up, whistling, clapping, hurrahing, and stamping their feet. The camera had moved into a tight two-shot of toothy Sedge and the cool cat jazzman and was now pulling back for the final thank you to all the runners-up – good sports all, who will each receive a free travel discount voucher worth $200 for any Totally Tempting Travel Tour of their choice – when it happened.

  One of the towers supporting a bank of twelve arc lights at the back of the set, suddenly came crashing down. A loud explosion, splintering of glass, red and blue flames. Half the set blacked out.

  Switched off in mid-cheer, none of us moved for five or six seconds. Then a woman screamed and the panic was on. Clambering over seats, pushing, elbowing, shoving each other aside, people fought their way to the narrow exit.

  Jumping nimbly on to the set, I wrestled the mike from Sedge (who’d frozen like a pillar of ice), and shouted: “I’m a security officer. Stay calm, please! The fire is out. No reason to panic. Nobody’s hurt.” But no-one listened. I tried again. But the mike had short-circuited. It was dead. So the flight continued. An old man was knocked back over a row of chairs. His glasses went spinning, who knows where. A middle-aged lady was slammed against a wall. I shouted, “Calm!” Nobody wanted to hear me.

  9

  Well I did my best to stop the panic, and somebody must have noticed. Early the next morning, the producer, Monty Fairmont, was on the phone in his best soprano voice, inviting me to a conference “right here in Mr. Kent’s office” that very afternoon.

  “Who’s Mr. Kent, when he’s in his office?” I asked.

  “Art Kent? Big Boss Kent? He owns the whole studio. Junior partner is Mr. Varnie. That’s why the whole studio is called Keovarnie’s.”

  “Doesn’t sound very logical. Why not Kentvarnie’s?”

  “I’ll give you a little tip, Mr. Manning. Don’t even think of looking for logic in the entertainment business. Don’t even give it a thought!”

  Boy, oh boy, if ever a place was top-heavy with staff! And Keovarnie’s was only a so-called “minor studio” in Gower Street, Hollywood!

  All the same, I wasn’t too eager to accept the invitation and what with mentally cogitating “for” and “against”, I arrived at Kent’s office a little late.

  To my surprise, there was only the one receptionist and the office itself seemed somewhat small. No super-sized executive suite for Big Boss Kent!

  Producer Monty Fairmont, his director, Ace Jellis, and sponsor Peter Tunning were already seated in a tight semicircle in front of Kent’s desk. Miss Spookie Williams occupied a smaller chair halfway behind Jellis and Tunning. Further down the room, just a pace from the door, Sedge was sitting on a stool against the wall. No-one, least of all, big Boss Kent, took any notice of my late arrival. No more chairs were on offer, so I leaned myself against the wall alongside Spookie Williams. Although I did my best to attract her attention, she didn’t give me so much as a glance.

  “We’re not about to throw in any towels,” Boss Kent was declaring. “The show goes on! Is that readily understood? Understood? I want to see a big slice of enthusiasm here!”

  “I want to see no more people hurt. It turns them against the station. It sours them against the advertiser,” argued Tunning. “I say we cancel.”

  “Who asked you? Did I ask you? Nobody asked you. You’re only the cash sponsor.”

  “I sponsor no longer. I am threatened too. Along with Monty and Ace. I want to cancel.”

  “That’s okay with me. Real okay! But I refer you to the cancellation clause in your contract, Peter. Pay me $50,000 and I’ll be only too happy to accommodate you. You got 50,000 smackers handy?”

  “I want no more people hurt!”

  “So who was hurt? Go on, tell me! Who was hurt?”

  “A lady with broken glasses, an old man hurt his knee, a younger man – ”

  “Broken glasses, hurt knee, lost shoe, stopped watch – I’ve heard that recital ten times before! So we paid them all off! That’s what we did, we paid them all off. I paid them all off! The station paid them all off. Not you, Peter! Am I whining? Are they whining? You bet they’re not! What’s your beef, Peter? Did I ask you to contribute? Was it your money I paid out?”

  “So just what in the name of oligarchy are you intending to do? Ace and I particularly want to know!” exclaimed Monty Fairmont in his best lardy-dah voice

  Boss Kent abruptly decided to include me in the discussion. “Hire a policeman!” he announced.

  “Please don’t ask me,” I countered. “As you yourself would say, it’s against the rules.”

  “I’m not forgetting. Station owners never forget! You can keep the money you just won. Just make sure you don’t win any more! In the Grand Final, you come up empty.”

  “Empty? Who’s kidding who? I’m in line for eighty thousand,” I reminded him. “Eighty thousand! I should throw it away?”

  “You hear what the man say!” declared Peter Tunning. “From now on, you work for us!”

  “You won’t lose a nickel by it!” Kent threw in a sweetener.

  “That’s all right then,” I agreed. “If you’re willing to guarantee me an eighty thousand fee, I’ll gladly pass up the opportunity to win another eighty in the Grand Final. I’m not greedy!”

  “At two thousand a month – ” Kent began, but I was too quick for him: “I’d clear eighty thousand in only forty months. Forty months! Think of that? Thanks, but no thanks! I want ten thousand a month.”

  “No way!”

  “Okay, to keep this haggling short, I’ll settle for a measly five thousand a month – and that’s my best and last offer!”

  “Half that?”

  “No way!”

  “Three thousand a month – and that’s my last offer!”

  “Okay! But I want bonuses.”

  “For what?”

  “For missions accomplished! Is it a deal?”

  “Within reason.”

  “So what exactly do you want me to do?” I asked. “Where do I begin?”

  Boss Kent stared at me in amazement. “What in hell are we talking about here?”

  “I’ve already seen Dune-Harrigan. He won’t be fooling around with any more poison cards, that’s for sure!”

  “Who gives a damn about some old fruitcake sending a few poison cards? God damn it! We want you to put a stop to whoever’s trying to sabotage our show!”

  “Hear, hear!” cried Monty Fairmont.

  “I’m ready and able,” I assured Kent and the rest of them. “I’m merely telling you we can cross Dune-Harrigan off the list.”

  “He wasn’t even on it! For your information, Dune-Harrigan wasn’t here the night the tower fell.”

  “That tower with all the lights didn’t fall all by itself. It was pushed! Pushed, I tell you! Pushed!” Monty insisted.

  “No accident!” agreed “Ace” Jellis, coming to the support of his pal. “No accident at all!”

  “Take a bit of force?” I asked.

  “Considerable!” Kent readily agreed. “And you’d need to know where the fulcrum was and how you could maneuver yourself against it.”

  “Rubbish! That tower should never have been there in the first place. I told you at the time that position was all wrong. I wanted you to take out some of the seats. I warned you that tower was potentially unstable. I warned you! I warned you again and again! And so did Monty!” Director “Ace” Jellis had evidently decided not to leave all the running to his producer pal, Monty Fairmont, and was finally hitting his stride.

  It was time to pour a gallon of oil on these troubled waters, but Boss Kent got in ahead of me. “Unstable, be damned!” he cried. “Some maniac hooked a loose cable around one of the tower’s legs!”

  “Now it all comes out!” screamed Monty Fairmont. “What other bits of information have you still got up your sleeve?”
<
br />   “Let’s not argue amongst ourselves!” I shouted. “The hows and the whys are unimportant. It’s sure to be one of the ex-contestants, still smarting over the fact that he was dropped out. Naturally he’s convinced himself that happy event was everybody’s fault but his own. He’s dead certain he was cheated out of the eighty thousand, therefore nobody gets the eighty thousand!”

  “Now someone is finally making sense,” Kent agreed. “Give Manning the drop-out list!”

  Miss Spookie Williams – fair-haired, impeccably groomed and self-consciously super-cool as usual – handed me two closely typed pages. “Not even a smile or a cool-as-cucumber hello?” I whispered.

  “Get lost!” she whispered back.

  “I’m here at Mr. Kent’s invitation, remember.”

  “You’re here because you want to get your paws on $80,000, and this way is a sure bet.”

  I was about to tell her where I really wanted to get my paws, but she was too quick for me. I was forced to make eye contact with Boss Kent instead.

  “Suspects unlimited – our dropout list of beaten and dismissed contestants,” Kent explained. “Everyone eliminated from the first six shows. Thirty-six names, with ages, addresses, phone numbers, occupations, hobbies and areas of expertise.”

  I wasn’t at all sure that Kent was on the right track, but he was paying the piper!

  “I’ll need to look at the tapes of these six shows,” I said, playing along. “Put faces to all these names before I chase them up.”

  “No problem. Monty, tee that up, will you?”

  “No can do! Tapes wiped clean.”

  “That’s dead right! Wiped clean. Standard industry practice.” Director Ace Jellis speedily backed up his producer.

  “What the hell do you mean? Wiped clean! What about our library copy?”

  “Library copy? Who’s kidding who? We never make one.”

  “That’s right. Never make! Ask Oscar! His orders.”

  “You’re damn right, I’ll ask Oscar!”

  “Don’t waste your time!” I said. “If these boys say the station has no tapes, then the station has no tapes. What we’ll do is advertise. Think of all those devoted viewers out there. We’ll end up with dozens of offers.”

  “Advertise? Are you bloody crazy?” cried Kent. “You want we should advertise our own embarrassment? The free-to-air world just chock-a-block full of spies, all just waiting to take pot shots at us?”

  “Private ads in the big newspapers. Be discreet. Use my name. No-one will question it. I want to get hold of the tapes so I’ll know who I’m up against in the Grand Final.”

  “Good! Good! Very good indeed! For once, Manning, you’ve made a sensible suggestion. I was beginning to doubt my haste in signing you on. Yes, essential we get hold of those mothers! Anything else?”

  “We’ll offer fifty dollars a tape,” I urged.

  “Whoa! Five – not fifty – is plenty. We’re after just one tape of each show, not a hundred and one.”

  “Plus a credit in the acknowledgements,” urged “Ace” Jellis.

  “The acknowledgements?” I asked.

  “Those credits that speed by at the end of the show, Mr. Manning. The producers also wish to thank – ”

  “God help us!”

  “Some people will do anything for a credit in the credits.” For once, director “Ace” Jellis was on sure ground.

  “Anything else?” urged chairman, chief executive Art Kent.

  “I want to vet future audiences in advance,” I insisted.

  “Another admirable suggestion: Two strikes in a row! You’re improving, Manning. Spookie?”

  “It’s not possible, sir.”

  “What do you mean not possible? Why not? You distribute the fly-blown tickets. Don’t you keep some record of who you give them to?”

  “People do phone and write in. And sometimes call personally. But mainly we give out blocks of tickets to social and sporting clubs and the like.”

  “You hand out tickets to every comer? Anyone who asks for a ticket, gets one?”

  “Yes. Even then, we often run short.”

  “You run short of tickets? Well, at least that’s good!”

  “It’s the other way around, Mr. Kent. I often have more tickets than people. I often have to go out into the street and cajole passers by.”

  “You’re begging on street corners and handing out tickets to every comer?”

  “If they seem respectable, yes!”

  “Bloody hell! Doesn’t anyone keep records in this goddamned place?”

  Miss Spookie Williams blushed. I tried to cover her embarrassment. “Could I have at least four security officers on the set?”

  “How many we got now?”

  “As far as I can make out, none!” I answered.

  “One!” spoke up Spookie. “Chuck Johansen.”

  “Who’s Chuck Johansen when he’s in the studio?” Kent wanted to know.

  I made a wild guess: “Don’t tell me! He’s the old guy who checks the tickets at the door.”

  “For god’s sake! Check, check, check! Do I have to check everything in this god-damned place personally? Now you know what I’m up against, Manning! Welcome to the team!”

  “I’ll handle it,” I told him. “I know at least three or four ex-coppers who’ll be glad of the extra pay. I intend to secure the whole set. What I say, goes!”

  “Monty?”

  The producer looked unhappy. I could see his bantam mouth working up some shrill objections.

  “I’m prepared to co-operate with Monty so far as the technicians are concerned.”

  “You two get together! Anything else?”

  “Who’s writing the script for the show?” I asked.

  No-one replied.

  “Well, someone must be writing the god-damned thing!” Kent declared with his customary lack of tact. I was sorry I asked – particularly as Kent was not a man to take silence for discretion. “Who in hell’s writing the damn script?” he shouted.

  Finally, Sedge, who was sitting alone right at the back of the room, pointed to himself. “Me.”

  I looked at Sedge in amazement. “You write your own script?”

  He nodded. He seemed anxious not to acknowledge it. Maybe he realized how second-rate it was.

  “How about the questions?” I asked.

  “I do them too,” he answered. I felt he was trying to keep all emotion out of his voice. He didn’t want us to see how nervous he was. He seemed to have taken the whole thing hard. Perhaps he blamed himself. If he hadn’t gone on and the show had been cancelled… But no severe injuries had been inflicted, and despite the damage done – notwithstanding the yelling and screaming and bawling out that Czar Kent had doubtless inflicted on everyone within reach – not a word had penetrated to the media. Doubtless Kenovarnie’s had paid out real money to keep everything cozy.

  Why was Sedge so reticent then? Did he think that he himself was somehow to blame?

  “All of the questions?” I insisted. “Egyptian mummies? Planets in the Milky Way? Pesticides for daffodils? The great-uncles of Genghis Khan?”

  “Quizzes have always been my particular hobby. And I’ve a decent library of my own to back me up.”

  “Sometimes Spookie helps Sedge on research,” grinned director, “Ace” Jellis.

  I assumed Kent would take that opportunity for another put-employees-in-their-place remark. He did! But instead of aiming his smear at Spookie or Sedge, he put the skids under Jellis instead. “What Spookie does with her own time is her own business, ‘Ace’, not yours or mine. Now if no-one has anything else of importance to raise, I’ll declare this meeting closed.”

  “Just a personal matter,” I said. “Unofficially, I’m out of the contest. But officially, I’m still in it. How do I get out of it? We can hardly send out a press release. Do I plead sick?”

  “You die!” Tunning suggested. “That’s what you do. You die!”

  Producer Monty Fairmont was at a loss. Even
a hurried consultation with his fellow-in-arms, director “Ace” Jellis, failed to produce an answer. Sedge was appealed to. And all this time, Kent was growing mighty impatient. He was already standing by the door, waiting for us to leave his office. Finally, he walked over to me, draped his arm on my shoulder: “Tell you what we do, Merryll: You just follow through, same as normal. And as we agreed when you walked in this door just a mere half-hour or so ago, when you get up there on that final night, you just take care of one goddamned thing: You make bloody sure, you lose!”

  “I don’t want it to look like I’m taking a dive,” I murmured.

  “For God’s sake, Merryll, must I do all the thinking around here? You’re an ex-copper. You’ve been before the bloody courts, God knows how many times. Are you trying to tell me you don’t know how to put on a good act for the judge and jury?”

  “Somebody might guess that I’m putting on an act,” I argued.

  “So what? Who in hell cares?” Kent shouted.

  “That’s dead right!” nodded producer Monty Fairmont. “Nobody but nobody gives a damn about the losers.”

  “Sure thing! Only winners get their photos in the papers!” agreed his lieutenant, director “Ace” Jellis.

  “If Sedge lets me see some of the questions beforehand, I’ll make sure I get them wrong.”

  “No way!” Sedge responded.

  “You’re making things mighty hard for yourself, Manning!”

  “Okay, okay, Mr. Kent. I’ll do it your way!”

  “Good boy!”

  10

  Most men would find production secretary, Spookie Williams, super-attractive. Not me! Too cool, too detached, too self-consciously demure. I knew the type. Her claws were cunningly sheathed, waiting for a victim to fall into her heart, hypnotized by those seemingly innocent blue eyes, blinded by the Medusa curls of her blonded hair. She knew – or rather, she thought she knew – that every man alive, sooner or later, would succumb to her spell. But not me! I attack. “How do I collect my eight thousand?” I asked straight out, with no preliminary skirmishing or polite compliments.