Rogues

by George R. R. Martin

  In which case, I’d be out of work and broke.

  I lean back in the sofa and try not to snivel. “We’re fucked.”

  “Hadley’s on the verge of shooting himself,” Tom says.

  “Better if he shot Mrs. Trevanian.”

  “Well,” Tom says, “we can always hope for a last-minute backer with a big check.”

  I reach for my phone. “I’ll call Bruce.”

  Bruce’s phone goes straight to voice mail. It’s annoying that he has other clients and a personal life, but I suppose it’s only to be expected.

  I put the phone away. “I’ll try again later.”

  Tom is looking back out the door, where one of my guards is pacing around.

  “Where did the guards come from?” he asks.

  “You’re paying for them,” I tell him. “It’s your due diligence. Even Mrs. Trevanian would agree.”

  “Fuck!” he yells. But that’s the only objection he makes.

  I go over my lines one more time, and then I hear a shotgun boom out as another tabloid drone makes a run at the hotel. I give up. No one’s come to console me in a long time, thank God, and so I decide it’s time to stroll over to my bar and open a bottle of reposado. A couple shots down, and I realize how to raise the money to make the movie as it ought to be made.

  I knock on Ossley’s door and receive a muffled, paranoid query in response. I tell him it’s me, and he cracks the door open to make sure I’m not lying. When he sees my two bodyguards, he assumes they’re assassins and panics, but I jam my shoe into the door, lean close, and speak in a low voice.

  “Look,” I say, “I can get you off the hook.”

  He lets me into the room. My guards take up stations outside, on either side of the door. Emeline isn’t there, and without her the place has a look of despair, its only light a laptop computer running its screen saver, and a forsaken room-service meal slowly composting on the dresser.

  I take the room’s single chair, leaving Ossley to sit on the bed, where I had sat that morning.

  “I see that your curtains are still drawn,” I say.

  “Be careful walking in front of them,” he says. “You might get silhouetted.”

  I look at the curtains with more respect. “I’ll do that,” I say. And then I look at him.

  “Look,” I say, “they found people from the Tricolor Cartel working on the production.” He winces. “They’re going to keep coming after you,” I assure him, “so what we need to do is make you harmless.”

  I’m hoping for a glimmer of hope to shine in his eyes, but what I get instead is a glimmer of suspicion.

  “How do you plan to pull that off?” he says.

  “We sell your process to the cartel.”

  He considers this with what seems to be impatience. His lips curls. You cretin, is what the lip seems to say.

  “I see two problems,” he says. “First, what stops them from just killing me instead of giving me money?”

  “You need to have insurance. You need to have the process documented, and in the hands of people you can trust to release it if anything should happen to you.”

  His sneer grows. “People like you?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t want anything to do with it. I wouldn’t understand it anyway.”

  “You sure don’t,” he says. “Because you didn’t even get what I told you earlier—there is no process. I haven’t printed any drugs, all I’ve done is theory. And all my theories are available right on the Internet, in forums devoted to additive manufacturing. There’s nothing to sell!”

  I give this some consideration. “Well,” I tell him, “we could say that you’ve got a complete process. And then get money for not telling anyone about it.”

  Ossley jumps off the bed and paces about, waving his arms. “Tell a bunch of violent criminals I have a process that doesn’t exist? And expect them to pay me to suppress it?”

  “Well,” I say, “yeah.”

  “That’s crazy!” he says.

  I’m on the verge of agreeing with him: yeah, it’s not my most brilliant idea. But then he goes on.

  “You don’t know me at all!” he proclaims. “If there’s one thing I believe in, it’s freedom!”

  I’m not sure what any of this has to do with freedom, but then Ossley goes on to tell me.

  “I’m not interested in making money from my ideas!” he says. “I’m not interested in patents and copyrights and trademarks!” He practically spits the words. “All that gets in the way of freedom to use the technology, and the technology’s what’s important! The tech’s gotta be free—free to all the people who want to use it, without some asswipe standing there with his hand out collecting the toll!”

  “Even if it kills you?” I ask.

  A gleam of absolute certainty shimmers through Ossley’s thick glasses. “If I die,” he says, “the technology’s going to happen anyway! Someone will figure out how to do it! People are going to print drugs in their homes! It’s as inevitable as people connecting their computers to phone lines and creating the Internet!”

  “Yeah,” I say, “and whoever figures out the answer is going to get a ton of money.”

  He looks down at me from the absolute heights of moral superiority. “This information needs to be free,” he says. “And I’m the one to free it.”

  It occurs to me that the last thing I need tonight is put up with a lecture from some sneering, megalomaniac geek. I remind myself that I’m very tall and that I look like a Klingon and that I’m a murderer, and that I could just stand up right now, pick up Ossley, throw him down on the ground, and tell him that he’s going to do what I tell him, or I’ll kick his stupid fucking head in.

  But I don’t do that. I’m not really that guy.

  Instead I leave, pick up my bodyguards, and return to my cabana, where I study my lines until it’s time to go to bed. I get a call from Tracee, the sound tech, but I tell her that I’m too upset to see her.

  Have sex with someone three times, it’s dangerously near a relationship. So I decide not to see her again.

  “I want it bigger,” Hadley tells me. “I need you to fucking act, here, Sean.”

  When Hadley is actually being a director—when he’s in his little shed or tent, surrounded by video monitors, and communicating with his minions through a headset or a loudspeaker—he’s not the grimacing, twitching, half-hysterical character he is the rest of the time. When he’s directing, Hadley is in his element. He’s authoritative, decisive, and he tells you what he wants.

  Though of course he’s still a prat.

  Still, I could use some direction about now. I’d rather it come from a director who’s actually on the set, and knows how to talk to actors, instead of some Jehovah-wannabe off in a little room by himself with his barista, a macchiato, and a Napoleon complex, but I’ll take what I can get.

  Fact is, I’m beyond depressed. Mrs. Trevanian has killed the movie, the movie will kill my career, and the point of finishing the film at all has begun to elude me.

  I know that I should be the living embodiment of the Three Ps (Prompt, Perky, and Professional, if you want to know) and that I should give the part everything I’ve got because I should be happy simply to be working; but now I’m wondering what the reward for any of that will be. I’ve been a hardworking professional all my life—I’ve even killed people—and annoying characters like Mrs. Trevanian and anonymous Tricolor snipers still won’t let my happy place alone.

  Suddenly I’m wondering why I’m even bothering trying to play the lead in a feature. I’ve never been played the hero in a movie. And working in movies and television requires different styles of acting.

  TV stars are cool. Even if their characters are less than admirable, they come across as somehow sympathetic, maybe even neighborly. They are, after all, people you invite into your home every week. If you don’t like them, you won’t watch them.

  Movie stars, by contrast, are hot. They have to blaze so fiercely that they fill a scre
en forty feet high and demand the attention of a crowded theater.

  That’s why very few TV stars have graduated successfully to features. It requires not only different skills but a different personality. You have to go from amiable to commanding.

  Likewise, some movie stars are simply too big for television. Jack Nicholson is riveting on-screen, but you wouldn’t want him in your living room week after week. The television simply couldn’t contain his personality.

  I think I’m doing well in the feature. Everyone tells me I’m great—but then they would whether I was any good or not. I’m could sit through the dailies and find out for myself, but I’ve always been too insecure to watch dailies.

  But now I’m having a hard time seeing the point.

  I get through it somehow, and Hadley pronounces himself satisfied with whatever energy I’ve been able to summon. I go back to my cabana for a shower and supper, and then—thank God—my guards tell me that the prop master Yunakov is at the door.

  He’s inviting me to a party in his suite by way of consoling me for my loss. I’m so eager to get out of the depressing flower-filled environment that I jump at the chance.

  It’s much the same as the party the other night, except that Ossley is in hiding and there’s no sign of cannabis, not least because a pair of Mexican police have joined the fun. These are uniformed state police who are here to guard us and to keep order, as opposed to the plainclothes PFM who are actually investigating Loni’s murder. I assume the two police are off duty, because they’re slamming down cognac as if they’ve never had expensive, imported Napoleon brandy before. Both of them are Mayans around five feet tall.

  I look at the pistols they’re carrying on their belts—and the two Heckler & Koch submachine guns they’ve propped in a corner, along with a shotgun for shooting at drones—and a scheme begins to drift across my brain on featherlight feet.

  I decide that the cops are going to be my friends.

  I top up their glasses. I talk to them both, and ask them about their lives. Hector has the better English skills, but Octavio is far more expressive, communicating through expansive gestures, tone of voice, and a natural talent for mimicry. I ask if he’s ever thought of being an actor.

  They’re pretty flattered that a big Hollywood star is taking an interest in them. They tell big exciting police stories which, though they may be true, I suspect didn’t happen to them but to someone else.

  When the party breaks up, I take Hector and Octavio for a walk, me swaying along with a couple tipsy guys shouldering automatic weapons nearly as long as they are. They let me march along with the shotgun. I take them to the little hotel annex where Ossley is holed up, and I carefully count the number of sliding-glass patio doors until I come to Ossley’s room.

  I offer to pay them a thousand dollars apiece if they’ll shoot at that door sometime tomorrow afternoon, when I’m scheduled to be on the set. I tell them I want them to aim high, so no one will be hurt.

  They’re sufficiently hammered that they don’t see anything terribly wrong in my request, and a thousand dollars is, after all, about three times their monthly salary. Though Hector is a little puzzled. “But why?” he asks.

  “Publicity,” I tell them with a wink, and that seems to satisfy him.

  “Okay,” Hector says. “But we need another five hundred.”

  “What for?”

  “To pay the sergeant to make the evidence disappear.”

  I’m hardly sober during this conversation, but next morning I remember enough of what I’d said to stock up on some cash. We are in a part of Quintana Roo filled with Americans and American dollars, and getting a few thousand from the bank is no problem. After which I head off to my makeup call.

  We’re shooting another underwater scene. I’m scheduled to be on the set for six hours, but there are a raft of technical problems, more than the usual amount of chaos, a distinct lack of cooperation on the part of the ocean, the sun, and the clouds, and so many retakes that I’m working for nearly twelve long hours, much of it in the ocean. It’s nearly ten o’clock by the time I’m out of makeup and back at the cabana.

  My guards go into my cabana ahead of me to make certain there are no assassins lurking therein, and to their surprise discovered Ossley and Emeline hiding in my spare bedroom. I affect more astonishment than I actually feel and ask Ossley what they’re doing here.

  “Umm,” he says. “Can we talk privately?”

  My guards make sure he’s not carrying anything pointy, then slip out to guard the gardens.

  I sit in a chair beneath a vase filled with fading mourning blossoms. “What can I do for you?” I ask.

  Ossley doesn’t look good. He’s unshaven, he’s shambling, and his hands keep roaming over his body as if to make sure it’s all still there.

  “They took another shot at him today!” Emeline says in complete outrage.

  I look at Ossley. “I ran for it before the police got there,” he says.

  I conceal my inner dance of delight. “Sorry about all that,” I tell him, “but you can’t hide here, you know. I don’t want anyone in my place who will be draw fire.”

  Emeline looks at Ossley. “Tell him,” she says. “Tell him what you’re thinking.”

  He gives a little twitch. “I’ve been thinking about what we talked about the other night.”

  I put on my Klingon mien and look at him seriously. “Maybe you’d better remind me. Because what I most remember is you lecturing me about freedom.”

  It’s Emeline who’s responsible for his change of heart, Emeline and of course the bullets Hector fired through his patio door. When all is said and done, I’ve won. And I see no damn reason why I shouldn’t rub his superior little nose in it.

  After I finish talking to Ossley and Emeline, I decide to let him stay in the spare room overnight, then hide him somewhere else the next day. After which I take a little walk, find Hector and Octavio, and make them and their unknown sergeant as happy as I am.

  Hollywood stardom opens a lot of doors. Which is why it doesn’t take nearly as much effort to get an interview with Juan Germán Contreras as you might think. I go through his brother, who owns the trucking company, and when I finally get the word that he’ll see me, I bring presents. A very expensive bottle of small-batch bourbon, plus Ossley’s 3D printer, the beaker he’d shown me at the party, and a container of Ossley’s rotgut cabernet.

  The actual meeting is all very last-second. I get some GPS coordinates texted to me and drive to the location with my bodyguards. This turns out to be a half-completed Burger King overlooking the ocean, with the waves breaking white over the reef, and waiting for me there is the brother, Antonio. We’re required to put our cell phones in a plastic bag hidden on the construction site because cops can follow our phones’ GPS. We follow Germán’s Chevy Tahoe off into the jungle, where we go through several gates guarded by some very large, well-armed Mexicans, and then to a modest-sized bungalow with a tile roof, a house identical to about a million homes in California.

  My guards aren’t happy about any of this, but I’m the boss, and they sort of have to do what I tell them. They’re warned to stay in the car. Germán’s guards help me carry my gear into the house, and there I meet the man of the hour.

  I’m all dressed up like the Pope of Greenwich Village. Grey tropical suit, red tie, wingtips. My goatee has been trimmed, and my head reshaved. I’m hoping I look like a Klingon mafioso.

  I suppose I should ask forgiveness for pointing out again that I happen to look sinister in a very freakish way. I terrify small children. I scare room-service waiters I meet by chance, at night.

  Plus during my wilderness years, when I was struggling, if I worked at all, I played a heavy. I’m very good at projecting menace when I need to.

  Germán is so menacing in real life that he doesn’t have to act scary. He also didn’t put on a tie. He’s a trim man of around forty, dressed casually in a cotton peasant shirt, drawstring pants, and sandals. I’ve done my
research, and I know that the most wanted man in Mexico is a former high-ranking officer in the PFM who went over to the Dark Side. He maintains what can only be described as a paramilitary bearing, and he seems to bear a reserved curiosity about what brings me here.

  He smiles whitely and shakes my hand. I present him with the bourbon, and he offers me a seat on a chair so grandly carved and painted with Mesoamerican designs that it should really be sitting in a museum of folk art.

  He and his brother Antonio take their seats. “I understand there has been violence on your production,” Germán says.

  “I’m afraid so,” I tell him.

  “I regret to say that I can’t help you,” he says. “The police have surrounded your company with their own people, and they and I—” He waves a hand ambiguously. “We do not work together.”

  He thinks I’ve come to him for protection. Instead I plan to take his money—but first, I think, a little flattery.

  “I’m impressed,” I say. “You speak extremely good English.”

  He lets the compliment pass without changing expression. “I used to work with your Drug Enforcement Agency,” he says. “When I was with the police.”

  I think about asking him if he knows Special Agent Sellers, and then decide against it.

  “My children and I enjoyed Escape to Earth,” he says. “We watched it together.”

  My heart warmed as I pictured this charming domestic scene, Germán and his children absorbed in the drama while the chieftain’s followers went about on their murderous errands, smuggling, stabbing, shooting, and cutting off heads.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Those projects were very special.”

  We chat a bit about the picture business, and the current production here in Mexico. He expresses condolences on Loni’s death. He seems to know all about Desperation Reef, and appears moderately amused by the story line. I’m pleased that he doesn’t seem to want to cut my head off.