SEX AND DEATH: THE MOVIE
ALSO BY J.J. HENDERSON
The Lucy Ripken Series
Murder on Naked Beach
Mexican Booty
The X-Dames
Lucy’s Money
Lost in New York
Utah
SEX AND DEATH: THE MOVIE
J.J. Henderson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 J.J. Henderson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Sarah Caley LLC, Seattle
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
A MOVIE ABOUT DEATH AND SEX
“A movie about sex and death?” Lucy said. She sat at her desk, fingers drumming as she watched the world over the edge of her laptop. “Sounds like fun.” She could see the semi-famous, trust-funded actor in the window across Broadway, doing Pilates in his ten thousand square foot loft, performing for her benefit although he never looked her way.
Trucks blared, five stories down, while the construction groans of the new luxury hotel high-rising a block to the south, in the former five-dollar-a-day parking lot at Broadway and Grand, served as constant reminder of the death of her neighborhood. Death and rebirth. To the north, across Broome Street, in a spare and immaculate fifth floor aerie within the clean, white, perfectly-preserved six-story cast iron building, three men clad in black and white displayed Egyptian cotton sheets to a pair of well-dressed dames under glittery little lights. Once upon a time, not so long ago, the building had lurked, a haunted black hulk; on hers and every other level, immigrant Chinese women did piecework in grime-windowed sweatshops, filling the coffers of Tommy, Diddy, and Calvin. Then they’d outsourced the work to Nam and the Marianas, and Macydale’s moved in. The hard-working immigrant drones had been supplanted by ladies who lunched, swarming the shops of once-funky lower Broadway in search of the perfect sheet. Shirt. Shoes. Shit. Lucy took it all in with her ironic eye. One of these days she was out of here. But not just yet.
“Yeah,” Paul said. “Old men, young women. Sex and death. Or death and sex, depending.”
“And you want me to…”
“Help me rewrite the screenplay. Or give me ideas, or coverage at least. Something useful. I’ve got the sex and I’ve got the death and I’ve cast some cute girls and simpatico old men to bridge the gap, but I can’t seem to make it work.”
Lucy drummed up the distant past. “So do a Rockefeller.”
“Do a Rockefeller?”
“Do you recall how the late great Nelson R went to his bittersweet end? This was before my time but I remember hearing all about it from my dad, who put it in less certain terms but it was obvious what happened. The woman—Megan something or other—was like 27, he was in his seventies, they were doing the two-back bop, he expired. They said it was a heart attack.”
“This was pre-Viagra?”
“By decades, and much more interesting than the late great Anna Nicole Smith humping that billionaire ‘til he dropped. Rockefeller had some significance. Some prestige. He wasn’t just a dim old geezer rodded up on a blue diamond.”
“Well, fucking someone to death may be a bit too literal for my story but this is what I’m talking about, Lucy. And it’s all over your work. You’ve got attitude. Point of view. You know where you stand, so you know when to cut to the chase. I can’t seem to get to the point, or even bring home the second act, of this script.”
“You’ve got your fabulous low budget cast and your seasoned low budget crew and a more or less committed producer…”
“With a dotcom million he’s itching to spend on my movie—the only book he loves more than your last was my first, hon, you know, the one about the old time baymen of Long Island—but I have got to finish this rewrite or the romance is over. The first guy we hired, this so-called professional screenwriter name of Jimmy Waxman— handed me a piece of shit so I tried to rewrite it, but so far I can’t make it work. Hey, what can I say, I’m stuck. I should have hired you to do the first draft but according to the rules, you lacked credentials. Screen credits anyway. But if producerman likes my rewrite—our rewrite—we’re back on honeymoon. Look, the guy thinks he’s a genius because he sold Infospace and Amazon at the top instead of down in the pits like the rest of us, back in the day—and I’ve convinced him you’re the writer we need. Lucy, you handled those scary, complicated stories in Jamaica and Mexico with aplomb. At least on paper.”
“Exactly. On paper. In reality I was peeing in my itsy-bitsy bug-infested tropical panties half the time. Now that I’ve seen death for real, I’m not sure I want to play at making it up.”
“Look, let’s have lunch and we’ll talk death. Sex and death. I’ll buy you a nice bagel. You want lox? I’ll get you lox from Russ and Daughters, they’re the best. I’ll show you pages, we can walk the location, and if you’ve got time we’ll screen some footage, you’ll love it. Glamorous it isn’t but it is definitely old school cool. We’re shooting some secondary street scenes on Ludlow and Norfolk this week. Between the brassiere shop that’s been there since 1914 and has Playtex living bras on sale since 1956, and the French bistro that opened next door last month and serves forty dollar filet of sole, you’ll get an idea of how my movie’s going to look. Goodbye Loisaida, and with it, the last vestiges of Bohemian downtown.”
“Is that your title? Goodbye Loisaida?”
“It’s a major motif for sure. But no, I think it’s going to be called A Movie About Sex and Death.”
“That’s rather dry. Or is ‘ironic’ a better word?”
“You’ll see. And wait’ll you meet Manny. He’s…”
“That the old wanker from the cable show?”
“Yeah. The addled mafioso. But in real life Manfredo Carapini is sharp, cool, and watch your ass. Or he’ll more than watch it for you.”
“Sounds like a load of fun, Paulie.”
“Does five grand a week sound like fun?”
“You’ve got that kind of writer budget?”
“Well, maybe for two weeks.” He laughed.
“For ten grand I’ll give you two weeks, buster. After that I don’t know.”
“After that there won’t be any more writer money. Unless my sugardaddy wants to sink a second million into this masterpiece.”
Lucy took a deep breath. Saved again, and a viable job it would appear. “Can you front me? As usual the landlord’s barking for his money and I’m short.”
“So you’ve got some time on your hands?”
“Time yes, cash no. My last royalty check failed to cover my rent, Paul, and you know my rent is cheap. Stephen King I’m not.”
“I’ll buy you lunch and front you a thousand bucks if you’ll take on this project.”
“Make it two and I’m good to go. Monsieur Claud needs a hairc
ut and they can be very pricey, those downtown dog salons.”
“I should try to beat you down to fifteen hundred but since I do love your dog and it isn’t my money I won’t. See you in three hours?”
“The Dairy Café, one-ish.” She closed her phone and sighed, happy to have the work but wishing she felt more excited about Paulie’s movie.
After the X Dames project Lucy couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm for the wonderful world of the moving image.
On the other hand, this was independent cinema, not Hollyweird, and Paul Wittgenstein—no relation to the late great Ludwig, Paul said, although their mutual friend Mickey swore the renowned intellectual was Paul’s uncle’s third cousin on his grandfather’s side—would surely be a gas to work with. Paul was a photographer and a filmmaker, but more importantly, he came from an older, cooler New York in a time when characters from that disappearing downtown world grew increasingly scarce.
Lucy stopped outside the Dairy Café’s ancient, steam-blurred windows for a recon. Gazing through a dim but satisfying reflection of herself in her usual downscale, funky-but-chic black jeans and T-shirt, with a spiffy little red jacket, still looking slim and good, she spotted Paul, and with him Grace, his blonde wife who hailed from Wisconsin and looked so very pink-cheeked and wholesome she made Lucy feel like Lucyfer. Previously Paul had been married to a serious exotic, a half-Chinese, half-Nigerian would-be model with whom he’d had two sons, Raku and Paul Junior. Raku was now in a kick-your-bad-ass-into-shape military school somewhere upstate while Junior blithely blew the minds of every teacher at Julliard with his astonishing natural piano skills. The boys had been raised exactly the same and things being what they are, the good kid/bad kid mystery had driven Paul and Angwine, pronounced Anjuweenay, first insane and then apart. Angwine moved to Philadelphia where her Nigerian mother ran a bakery; there Angwine walked into a go-see on a lark, landed a role on a cable network cop show and never looked back in the rearview mirror of her Escalade. Now she was a minor TV star with a major rep for effortlessly evoking the urban nitty-gritty. Paul went to Milwaukee to shoot a beer commercial in his signature black-and-white retro style and ended up in the arms of the married art buyer. That would be Grace, or “Grace of God” as he called her, acknowledging her profound influence on his life. Six weeks later they were divorced from their first spousies, a month after that Paul and Grace were married, three weeks later she was pregnant, and now they had a baby girl named Antoinette Graciela Wittgenstein. What Lucy had heard, not from Paul but from their mutual friend Angel, was that Grace had gotten Paul into some kind of weird Midwestern-wholesome married version of hardcore S&M, “stuff you don’t want to hear the details,” as Angel, a fairly well-worn drag queen him/herself, put it.
Grace got up to head out. Opting out of five dutiful minutes with her—it had been clear from day one that they had nothing to say to each other—Lucy slipped into the next door store, where a three hundred-pound powder-faced white lady in an orange flower-print dress and an almost-matching orange wig glared suspiciously from behind the counter as Lucy inspected the stacks of knock-off Vuitton luggage piled from floor to ceiling, flanked by bundles of mops and brooms, stacks of trash cans and bundled umbrellas, boxes of instant ramen lunch noodles, heaped displays of fake Rolexes, playing cards, dominoes, fuzzy dice, plastic superheroes, bundled bungee cords, velvet day-glo Jesus plaques, beer in six-packs, soda pop in supersize plastic bottles, half-pound candy bars, a rack of pornographic dvds screened by a piece of cardboard with adults only handscrawled across it, and a full wall display of tube socks, t-shirts, and underwear. The brass Vuitton plaques gleamed in the fluorescence.
She gave it a minute then slipped out and into the damp warmth of the Dairy Café, where she had a good hard surreptitious look at Paul, happily married with a new kid and a fabulous, funded project in gear. In that unguarded moment, clutching his coffee cup, he looked utterly miserable.
But then that was maybe how he saw the world. After all as far as Lucy could tell his bed of roses had grown quite thorny. He had two families and several houses and a movie to tend to, plus this dotcom boy millionaire backing the movie no doubt required serious massaging.
She went up to him. “Luce,” he said, rising halfway with a genuinely happy smile on his face. They loved each other dearly, did Paul and Lucy.
“Paulie,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. They sat, exchanged their knowing glances. “You look tired.”
“Tired?! I am the living dead. I used to think having a young wife would be cool, you know, but I’m 45 and Grace is 29 and damn, the girl just never…”
“Spare me, sexyback.”
“Thank God ambition does not require Viagra. Between her and trying to get this movie done I’d be comatose if it did.”
“But fame still beckons?”
“Fortune anyways. That military school is killing Raku and me both. Twenty-three grand a year I pay for him to be told what a shithead he is, several times a day, by men with brains infinitely smaller than his. His mother’s making twice what I do and won’t pay nickel one of his tuition. Sometimes I think I liked him better as a teenage junkie. And fame too. This movie is going to…”
“Get you on what? YouTube? HBO? The Oscars?” She looked up at a waitress. “Coffee, a raisin bagel lightly toasted, light schmear of plain cream cheese, side of marmalade.” Back to Paulie. “Face it, amigo, these days whatever you do you’re just a splinter anyway you cut it, unless you zeitgeist your ass into some new realm of reality, or unreality, as yet unbeknownst to the rest of us.”
“Hey, it’s just a cool little movie is all, Lucy. Or will be, especially if you help me, so stop with the negativity. I know this is New York and we’re all profoundly suffering this year just like last year and next year but also I know this movie might turn out really great. So I desperately need to get the story into shape. That’s where you come in.” He slid a check across the table at her. She looked at it. Two grand, drawn on an account in the name of Istopher Crisherwood Films, LLC.
“Istopher Crisherwood?”
“The producer’s named Chris and it’s his little joke. He loves the Berlin Stories, you know, that whole decadent Cabaret thing.”
“He’s gay?”
“Does it matter?”
“Only if he’s in love with you.”
“He has good taste. Of course he’s in love with me.” He smiled. She looked at his rounded hound dog face, his jowls getting started, his shaved balding head, and, in the middle, his deep, guileless and entirely soulful dark brown eyes. He’d almost gotten her naked, once or twice, two cosmos south of sensible, with those eyes.
“Aren’t we all? Well anyway thanks, Paulie.” She pocketed the check. “For the work and the money. So tell me things.”
“You want me first or the movie?”
“You I know. Let’s do the movie. That’s what you’re paying me for, right?”
“OK, OK, it’s just that me and Grace have had some interesting stuff happening lately. Stuff you might want to…”
“Paulie, the movie. Come on.”
“Right, right.” He sipped his coffee. “God I wish I could still smoke in a damn café sometimes. I miss my one cig a day. This would be the time.”
“Yeah, yeah, but…”
“OK, OK. This is why I need you, Lucy. I’m so good at avoiding this,” he said, reaching into a leather satchel to haul out a well-thumbed screenplay with yellow and pink sticky notes poking up out of nearly every page. The cover was green plastic, and the title read, “So Long Lower East Side.”
“That’s your title?” Lucy said. “Damn, Paulie, that title is dead in the water. I thought you said…”
“Working title, Luce. Today’s title. I told you the thing would probably be called A Movie About Sex and Death.”
“You did say that. And that I like.” He shoved it over and she opened it for a look. “At least a little.” A CD fell out. “What’s this?”
“The computer ver
sion. Just plug it in, it’s all formatted. Listen, here’s the deal. You read what I’ve got after I run the plot by you and see if you can find the hot spots—or should I call them cold spots?—where the thing just dies on me. The main issues I’ll explain, the rest I need to know if they stick out as sorely as I think they do. To me they’re obvious, and unfortunately I’m not alone in this. I did what I could with what Waxman gave me but frankly it sucked so bad I couldn’t entirely unsuck it. And then there’s the actors. Granted, these guys are pretty sharp and they can tell when something’s not working. But they’re also a bunch of whinging primadonnas who hate working for scale which is what they get. They claim they’re doing it for the art but then resent not getting treated like Brandos, every last one of them. So they’ve come up with a few problems in here”—he rapped on the screenplay—“and I don’t know if they’re fucking with me or not. Have a look and maybe you can see a way to make it work.”
“OK. But what’s the story? Get me started.”
He leaned forward. “Here’s the basic narrative—which I spoonfed to that idiot Waxman, by the way. Our hero is this classic New York character, maybe seventy but still a vital old guy. Once upon a time he was a serious lefty, old school Wobblie type, and while he still thinks that way, in real life he sold insurance for forty years because he had to support a family. So he made some typical compromises and his American dream came true. But maybe he’s not so happy about it, you know?”
“Sounds like...”
“I know, I know, my dad. My sour old dad.” Paul’s father was a former communist—a Trotskyite and no Stalinist, he insisted—who had clawed his way into the lower echelons of the upper middle class selling insurance. “Move him from Queens to Brooklyn, change me to a daughter and there you have my main character—except that my mom is going to live forever, while in the story his wife has just passed away. Now our hero has decided he’s going to patch it up with his estranged brother who’s been living down in South Beach for about three centuries. Long enough anyways. He owns a huge beachfront art deco condo in the hippest town in Florida. The joint’s worth millions he bought it for a few grand when South Beach was a slum. But these two brothers haven’t spoken in decades. Nothing between them, not even a phone call or a postcard. But they do know of each other’s whereabouts because of their sister, who lives in Beverly Hills, married to a retired film director—I thought I’d throw them in in case we wanted to do anything like, you know, with Hollywood. Plus I needed to emotionally triangulate somehow or other. Hey, we got a South Beach location, why not do LA too, get some more sun?
Sex and Death: The Movie: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 6) Page 1