by Harper Lin
“PIECE OF BLEEP. THAT WAS MY BLEEPING GIRL. I’LL KILL THE BLEEEEP!”
That’s better. Truer to the original while remaining printable.
He rocked his head back and forth.
“Bleep,” he mumbled.
“Don’t be vulgar,” I scolded him.
“Huh?”
His head turned to follow the sound of my voice, but got it wrong so he ended up looking in the opposite direction.
“I’m over here,” I said. I’m helpful that way.
He looked my direction.
“Who the bleep are you?”
“I’m Old Widow Margaret Goode, and I would ask you not to use the word ‘bleep’ in my presence. Don’t use ‘bleep,’ ‘bleep,’ ‘bleep,’ or ‘bleep’ either. It shows a lack of imagination.”
“If I had any bleeping imagination I’d be a scriptwriter or a director instead of working this bleeping job.”
I was getting tired of all the bleeping and felt tempted to give him a karate kick to the face. That would quieten him down. But I had to find out if he was serious about this killing business. If he was, case solved. If not, I still needed an acting coach.
His bleary eyes tried to focus on me.
“I thought you were dead,” he said.
“I’m her replacement.”
“Oh. Don’t die. It’s very inconvenient.”
“I have no intention of dying for quite some time.”
He looked around.
“Have you seen a bottle around here?” he asked.
“No, but I believe they’re serving drinks at Cliff Armstrong’s wake.”
Those bleary eyes lit up like a pair of brake lights.
“The bleeper is finally dead? Thank God! They got it right this time. Poor Bert, dying for a piece of bleep like that. He was a bleeping great guy.”
“Who killed Bert?”
“Huh? How the bleep should I know? Some bleeping idiot, I suppose. Got the wrong bleeping guy.”
I bit my lip. Harvey’s face was wide open and easy to read. This man was too drunk to hide his guilt. He really didn’t know. Just my bleeping luck.
He tried to get up, arms and legs flailing for a moment before he finally got them coordinated. By instinct he went to the steaming coffee pot and drained the rest.
“Eeew.” He made a face. “What the bleep is this?”
“Coffee brewed from coffee instead of water. Guaranteed wakeup call.”
Harvey nodded in appreciation, tried to tuck in his shirt and only managed to tuck it into his belt and not his pants, let out another belch, and looked at me.
“Shall we get to work?”
“Are you up for it?” I asked dubiously.
He started to brew some more coffee. “Sure.”
As he went through the motions I could see a look of despair on his face. Not the usual pained look of your typical hangover, but proper angst. No doubt because of what had led him on the bender in the first place, although I had the impression that it didn’t take much with him.
“Want to talk about it?” I asked.
“Bleeping Cliff Armstrong!” he yelled, then added quietly, “Stole my girl.”
“Your girl?”
“Tavern Wench Number Two. What a babe. Couldn’t believe she fell for me, or at least the bleep pretended to. Just did it so she could get to a party with Cliff Armstrong. As soon as she did, she ditched me and hopped into bed, the bleep.”
“Just because she slept with a movie star doesn’t mean she’s a bleep.”
“A bleep is a bleep. Would you have done that? No, because you’re not a bleep. Of course you’re too old to be a bleep, but even when you were younger I bet you weren’t a bleep.”
“Please stop saying bleep. You’re getting me to say it too.”
“Whatever,” he shrugged. He looked at me suspiciously. “Cliff Armstrong isn’t really dead, is he?”
“No. Should he be?”
Harvey Miller slumped. “Yeah. That bleeping bleeper deserves to get it. Bert was a decent guy. Can’t believe he got it instead.”
“I was there when he got blown up. Such a terrible tragedy.”
Harvey nodded. “That’s Cliff Armstrong for you. He’s like a bulldozer in a china shop, leaving a path of destruction in his wake and keeps on smiling for the cameras.”
“But killing him seems a bit extreme.”
“Ha! You must be new. All the egos in this business? Everyone, simply everyone wants to kill Cliff Armstrong. He’s always stealing people’s women or making people feel small. Thinks he’s God’s gift to acting.”
I remembered how that crewmember had tried to stop him from coming over to greet the crowd. Cliff Armstrong had actually bared his teeth at the man. Was that his true nature? Big egos tended to be fragile egos, and if he was clashing with everyone on the set, I could see how he’d make a lot of enemies.
But enough to blow him up in front of everybody? Surely that would take more than a rude word or a stolen girlfriend.
Considering the state in which I found him, Harvey came around remarkably quickly. He shambled over to the desk, found a master copy of the script, and opened right to my first scene.
“Do you have all this memorized?” I asked.
“Of course. I know every beeping role in this bleeping picture, not that anyone gives me any credit. I’m at the bottom of this steaming bleep pile. Now you look over those lines for a bit. I’ll play the other roles and get you into character.”
As I muttered my lines to myself, trying to memorize them and put some life into the words, Harvey made a phone call. I perked my ears. I’ve always listened in on other people’s conversations. A bad habit, I know, but it’s something you pick up working for the CIA and it’s given me the most interesting life.
I was sure interested in what I heard next.
“Yeah, sure, I’ll get her up to speed. You need her for dress rehearsal at seven tonight? No problem.”
My heart did a little flip flop. It was already two in the afternoon.
When he got off the phone I looked at him. “Did I hear that correctly? I’m supposed to do a dress rehearsal in less than five hours?”
“Yup,” Harvey said, opening the desk drawer that contained all the bottles. He started clanking around looking for one that wasn’t empty. I slammed it shut.
“Ow!” he said, putting his fingers in his mouth. They’d gotten smacked by the drawer.
“Stay sober. I need to do this right,” I told him.
Because if I get fired I’ll never be able to solve this case and keep my favorite actor from being killed, I added silently.
I flipped through my three scenes. One was with the British officer in my house. Another had me sneaking away from my house and into the camp and had no dialog. In the third I was warning Cliff Armstrong in the camp.
“Which one are we rehearsing tonight?” I asked.
“All three.”
“Oh, Lord.”
Then I realized something. All took place at night. All took place around soldiers. It would be dark and there would be guns everywhere.
A perfect combination for murder.
Chapter Six
Despite his potty mouth and his raging alcoholism, Harvey turned out to be quite good at what he did. The little fellow helped me learn the lines, and set to work making me say them in a natural manner. He was brilliant with the other parts, putting on a posh English accent laced with evil when playing the British officer, then giving me a vivid account of the dark forest I had to sneak through to get to the rebel camp. He offered an endless string of useful tips as I practiced my look of nervousness and the movements I had to do to get through the underbrush. Then he came on with an excellent imitation of Cliff Armstrong and played his part while I practiced my big scene.
His calm instruction, albeit peppered with belches and bleeps, calmed my nerves and got me into character. It was really quite a simple character, a stereotype really. Old Widow Margaret Goode had no past, no backstory, no
family, no existence outside this movie. She didn’t need one. She was the salt of the Earth who saw injustice and felt a patriotic stirring flutter in her aged heart. Although fearful of what the evil British officer might do to her, she braves the dark forest to bring a warning about the imminent attack to Cliff Armstrong, or “General John T. Slaughter” as he was known in this movie.
A minor role, but as Harvey explained to me it was an important one.
“You see—BELCH—this movie, like all blockbusters, aims to appeal to everyone. That little bleep in the next trailer is to bring the kids in. There’s a token black actor playing one of Cliff Armstrong’s soldiers to get the blacks in. No mention of slavery, of course. That would be inconvenient. This is Hollywood, not history. Gwendolyn Parker plays the romantic lead. She’s there to draw in the guys to look at her and for the girls to dream of being in her place. Your character draws in the old people.”
“Wouldn’t everyone come to this movie anyway, just because Cliff Armstrong is in it?”
Harvey made a face. “Sure, everyone loves that bleeping bleep. And yeah he’s what gets butts in seats, to use an industry phrase, but if you want to keep people coming back, they have to relate to the picture. They have to put themselves in it somehow. We even worked in a gay angle.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah, Cliff Armstrong is a major attraction for gay guys. So we have this one Minuteman, kind of a pretty boy, but a good fighter. He doesn’t get many lines but he’s an officer so he’s in a lot of scenes with Cliff Armstrong. Looks at him a lot from the background. There’s this one scene where the Minutemen are marching along a country lane and these sexy farm girls come out and wave their handkerchiefs at the guys. Really hot girls. Casting did great with them. Then the camera cuts to the guys marching along. Every one of then is grinning at the girls and waving except for that one officer, who is looking right at Cliff Armstrong.”
“Will anyone even notice?”
“You wouldn’t notice, your friends won’t notice, but the gays sure will notice, and they’ll be cheering that Minuteman until he heroically dies taking a bullet for his studly general.”
“Won’t the gay fans be disappointed?”
“Sure, they’ll be bawling into their tissues, but it’s cathartic. They’ll love every minute of it. And when the next Cliff Armstrong movie comes out, they’ll come back for more.”
“I didn’t realize so much thought went into these things.”
“Oh bleep yeah. It’s all gotten a bit chaotic, though, what with the Casting Director off getting a nip and tuck, and Cliff Armstrong acting like his usual bleeping self, and the original Old Widow Margaret Goode dying on us, and then an attempted murder on the set.”
“Who do you think did it?” I asked. Now that Harvey was more sober, maybe he would have some answers.
To my disappointment, he only shook his head. “Wish I knew, so I could give the guy a bleeping medal. I only hope he’s more successful next time. Oh hey, it’s almost seven. We gotta get you to rehearsal. Now don’t worry, I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
With that he opened the desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of vodka before I could stop him.
“Put that away. You’ve had enough for one night!”
“Not a chance,” he said between gulps. “If some idiot is trying to kill Cliff Armstrong and I gotta stand on the same set as him, I’m going to need some liquid courage. I don’t want to get blown up like Bert, at least not while I’m sober.”
That sobered me up considerably. For a while as I was playing my part and learning my lines I had forgotten the danger, but now the reality of my situation came back to me. Cliff Armstrong was a walking target, and anyone who got near him stood in the crosshairs too. Poor old Bert was proof of that.
Harvey finished off the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, let out a deep-throated belch, and said, “Walk this way” as he stumbled out of the trailer.
“To walk that way I’d have to be as drunk as you are,” I said.
“Har har.”
He weaved his way between the trailers toward a brightly lit set I could see at the end of the road.
“We’re doing the scene with Cliff Armstrong first,” Harvey said, slurring his words. “Remember your lines?”
“Yes.” There weren’t very many of them.
“Good. You’re a quick study. The only way to get ahead in Hollywood is to be smart and pay attention.”
At this point Harvey tripped over an electrical cable and landed flat on his face.
“Oh bleep! What bleeping bleep left that bleeping cord there? BLEEP!”
A couple of teamsters standing nearby held their bellies and laughed.
“Stand up and stop bleeping,” I said. “You’re embarrassing me.”
He managed to get to his feet and not have any further pratfalls before making it to the set, which stood in a small grassy area near the street.
The set was brilliantly illuminated, making the street, which was well-lit itself, seem like the darkest night in comparison.
Several spotlights, backed by big reflective sheets that looked like giant parasols, focused on the front of a tent and a campfire. A few crudely made wooden chairs stood around it, and several extras in Minutemen uniforms milled around drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups, or stood still as makeup artists put the final touches on their faces. As I entered the circle of light, one of the makeup artists swooped in on me.
“Sit down on that stool over there,” the young woman ordered. “You’re not old enough.”
“I’ve never been told that before.”
“Please don’t talk, it will slow down my work.”
So I sat there in silence as she put all sorts of unidentifiable gunk on my face. The only thing I could move was my eyes, and I took in as much of the situation was I could.
During my time as a field operative, I had learned to look at a location and pick out its dangers. It’s something that comes with the job, and if you don’t learn it quick, you’re dead.
What I was seeing here was an ambusher’s paradise.
Sitting here on the set with all of these lights focused on us, we couldn’t see anyone around us. The rest of the world might as well have not existed. Someone could be standing five feet from me with a bazooka and I wouldn’t have spotted them. We were exposed, not only from the street around us but from the rooftops of the buildings on either side of the street. Plus there were so many people bustling around, no one was paying any attention to anyone else. An assassin could easily slip in and do their work.
My nervousness increased when Cliff Armstrong strode onto the set, flanked by a pair of tough guys who I suppose were meant to be bodyguards. The problem was, they stepped into the circle of light and were just as blind to their surroundings as the rest of us.
Amateurs.
Cliff snatched a script from one of the Minutemen who was doing some last-minute practicing with his lines and read through the pages. The Minuteman glared at the movie star’s back for a moment before slinking off.
Just as the makeup person put the finishing touches on me, Cliff Armstrong bawled, “So where’s this old widow chick? Didn’t she die or something?”
“We got a new one, Mr. Armstrong,” Harvey said.
“Oh hey, Harvey, glad to see you upright for a change,” Cliff Armstrong said.
I moved over to where my film hero, and now my coworker, stood. I felt like I was floating on air. Well, floating on air on a malfunctioning hovercraft. I shook so much from nerves that I could barely walk straight.
Cliff Armstrong frowned at me, and then frowned at Harvey.
“You been getting the actors drunk too? Nice going, Harvey.”
“I’m not drunk, just a little nervous. It’s my first time.”
Cliff grinned. The light gleamed off his teeth. “I’ve heard that one before.”
I nearly fell over.
“I mean my first time on camera.”
“I know what you mean,” he said with a dismissive wave. Then he peered at me, trying to see my features under the heavy makeup.
“Heeey, aren’t you one half of that old couple I met yesterday?”
I was shocked he remembered. He must have said hello to a hundred people. “Well, Octavian and I are just dating.”
“So you’re a fan?” he seemed to be both surprised and disappointed. “What are you doing coming over to the Dark Side?”
He definitely said that with capital letters. I tried to remember if he had been in any of the Star Wars movies, but there had been so many of them lately I had lost track.
“You consider acting something evil?” I asked.
Cliff Armstrong grunted. “Take my advice and get out of this lousy career as quick as you can.”
“Quiet on the set!” Vance Randolph’s voice shouted from somewhere in the darkness. “Let’s get this scene done. Actors, take your places.”
Harvey moved me over to the edge of the set, from where I was supposed to hurry over to General John T. Slaughter and his men as they sat around the campfire. Cliff Armstrong and the others took their places, the star sitting in a camp chair in front of the fire, the others arranged around him. A boom mic moved directly over Cliff Armstrong.
“Move that mic up a bit, it’s still in the shot,” one of the cameramen said.
The mic, on the end of a long steel pole, moved up a foot.
“That’s good,” the cameraman said.
“Lights!” the director shouted.
My heart started to pound. Suddenly I forgot every one of my lines.
The lights dimmed and changed color in imitation of flickering firelight. That struck me as odd, since there was a perfectly good real fire right in front of them. I suppose that wasn’t enough to make it look like a real fire on camera.
I stopped thinking about that and wondered how the heck I was going to look like a real actress on camera.
“Camera one, how is your shot?” Vance Randolph asked.
“Good.”
“Camera two?”
“Good.”
“Camera three?”
“Old Widow Margaret Goode needs to move half a step to the left.”