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It was time to get noticed, to get himself on the fast track and into middle management. Maybe run an operation that would get him noticed higher up. He started sending out some feelers a few weeks ago, but all he got was more of the same, doubleheaders and groups. Sure, killing paid the bills, but it didn't tap his real potential.
He jogged into the cement parking structure and scaled the stairs to the third level, where his car was parked in a dark corner. As soon as he was inside, the cellular phone in the glove box began to trill. He picked it up.
It was his travel agent. His trip to Baltimore was being cancelled, and there would be a new ticket waiting for him at the airport.
"Where am I going?" he asked her.
"Los Angeles."
"What am I going to do?" he asked.
"Produce."
He didn't know what that meant, but he had a feeling it was what he had been waiting for.
CHAPTER THREE
The three-bedroom house on a quiet, tree-lined street in Reseda did not impress Alice Doss. Neither did Charlie's 1992 Camaro.
It was bad enough when he picked her up in a late-model, American car. She had been expecting something sleek and European. That was the first surprise. When Charlie cruised off the Reseda boulevard off-ramp, she was clearly stunned when he turned right, heading north, rather than left, heading south and across Ventura, the wide thoroughfare that cut across the valley at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains. She was expecting some stunning hillside mansion. Everyone who was anybody lived south of the boulevard.
Now came surprise number three.
He lived in a typical valley neighborhood, north of the boulevard, that is. Dozens of small, boxy houses that were hurriedly snapped together in the deafening reverberations of the baby boom.
The boom had long since ebbed. In its wake, crickets fought to be heard over the sounds of MTV, barking dogs, and people fighting over the bathroom. Each house had only one.
"This your house?" she asked.
Charlie pulled up to the curb and glanced out at the overgrown grass, peeling picket fence, and the clump of weeds strangling his juniper hedge. He couldn't bring himself to hire another gardener. This one might run off with his dog.
"Home sweet home," Charlie replied, pocketing the keys and getting out. Always the gentleman, he walked around the Camaro and opened her door. For a moment, she seemed reluctant to get out, but then she forced a smile and politely took his hand.
"It's so ..." She searched for the right word as Charlie negotiated a path for them through the weeds to the front door. "Refreshing. I mean, you haven't let stardom get to you."
Charlie unlocked the door. "Maybe it just hasn't caught up to me yet. When it does, I won't put up a fight." He opened the door to find McGarrett, his Husky, lying on the floor, his tail thumping against the dull hardwood.
"Down, boy," Charlie said, turning on the lights. The dog thumped some more, glad to be noticed, but not enough to get off the floor.
Alice followed Charlie inside, slowly taking in his spartan abode, the Ikea snap-together furniture and halogen lamps, the bare walls, the meticulously clean emptiness. Connie had cleaned him out. He was in no hurry to clutter his life up again.
It wasn't that he couldn't afford it. But every cent Charlie was making was going straight into the bank. The way he figured it, his show could be history after thirteen episodes, and it could be a long time until his next paycheck. If he was smart, he'd have $200,000 in the bank to live on until he figured out what to do with his life.
Charlie tossed his keys on the coffee table, where they clattered to a stop against the clear acrylic paperweight that held a bullet in suspended animation.
Charlie turned to see Alice framed in the doorway, the glare from the streetlight shining right through her thin white blouse. How long had it been since ... too long.
"Is that the bullet?" She picked up the paperweight and held it in front of her eyes. Charlie closed the door and looked at her from the back. Her jeans hugged her so tight he wondered if it would be possible to slip his hands inside without breaking his fingers. He hadn't had a thought like that for ... too long. Suddenly, he wasn't sure if it was his heart he heard thumping or McGarrett's tail.
"That's the one." Charlie came up slowly, deliberately, behind her. "It burnt through my flesh and scorched my heart." Where did this shit come from? But she liked it. He could tell by the way she caught her breath, the way she stood very still, as if listening to a far-off sound.
He slipped his arms around her waist and she leaned into him, warm and soft. "You're holding a piece of my soul in your hands," he whispered.
She arched her head to one side, inviting him to kiss her neck. He did, hungrily, his hands rising up from her waist to her unfettered breasts, rubbing, squeezing, mashing. Revelling in the smell, the feel, the taste of a woman.
Alice moaned, dropping the paperweight on his foot. He didn't feel it. He was feeling too many other things. She rubbed against him, her hands stroking his hips, reaching for his ass, arching her breasts into his hands. He reached under her shirt and pinched her nipples, gently tugging them into stiff points. Alice took in a sharp breath, grinding against him, making him so hard it hurt.
She twisted out of his grasp and pushed him onto the couch. She straddled his waist, unpopped his jeans, and gripped his hard-on like a joystick. Charlie felt the heat radiating between her legs and throbbed in her tight grasp. She stroked him in her fist until he felt like a pillar of cement.
Out of nowhere, she produced a condom, tearing open the packet with her teeth. She slipped the tight latex slowly, achingly over his pulsing erection, and before he knew it, he was coming in sharp, almost painful spasms, his eyes closed against the sudden, explosive pleasure. When Charlie opened his eyes, he saw Alice staring down at him. The condom drooped off his penis like a floppy hat.
Surprise number four, the least welcome of all.
He couldn't tell whether she was confused or frustrated. This night obviously wasn't going the way she planned. It certainly wasn't his idea of a dream date. He hadn't come this fast since high school, when all it took was a slow dance and he was spent.
"My gun had bullets," he said. She laughed, not very convincingly. She was a lousy actress. Charlie went to the bathroom and cleaned himself up; when he returned, she had put one of his Junior Wells CDs on the stereo and helped herself to a drink. He listened to her talk about acting class, about her aspirations for stardom, about all the meaty roles she knew she could play. And twenty minutes later, when he was sure his gun was reloaded, he took her to bed.
The edge was gone, the urgency, and with it much of his passion. She thrashed around for the audience, but he doubted it was any better for her than it was for him. He wanted sex, but perhaps he needed more. It was the first time another woman had been in his bed since Connie and, despite himself, he found he missed her, perhaps for the first time. This was their bed. For six years, this was where they'd made love, argued, cuddled, whispered, and kicked off the dog. Alice was a stranger in this bed and, oddly enough, Charlie felt like one, too. He resolved to go to lkea first thing tomorrow and buy a new one.
When Charlie Willis woke up the next morning, Alice Doss was gone. But she had left him something to remember her by—a picture, a resume, and a tape.
# # #
Boyd Hartnell tooled down the Ventura Freeway to the studio in his Mercedes convertible, automobile exhaust blowing through his hair plugs. He loved the feeling of the wind whipping his hair—it was one of the few joys he had these days and a subtle reminder of the constant terror he lived under.
His hairline had started receding at a steady rate when he was seventeen, a rate that increased tenfold when he became president of Pinnacle Studios, a hundredfold when he met Esther Radcliffe. Meeting her was like being exposed to radioactive waste. His hair came out in clumps.
The old crone was vital to Pinnacle Studios and, by extension, his career. Although the studio had
dozens of series shooting on the lot, only three of them were their own; the rest just used the facilities. Pinnacle's laughless comedy Bonjour, Buddy Bipp, was doomed. My Gun Has Bullets was on the ropes. But Miss Agatha was an insanely profitable hit that allowed the Japanese owners of Pinnacle Studios to forgive him for a string of expensive failures.
His one and only mandate was to keep Esther happy.
When she shot the cop Charlie Willis, Boyd nearly went bald with anxiety. Aftersaving her withered butt, he had to schedule two dozen emergency sessions with Dr. Desi for radical hair triage.
Even with all the stress, he still looked better than Burt Reynolds or William Shatner. Hell, he was paying more per strand of hair than even they were. Dr. Desi only accepted a lucky few for his experimental, and highly expensive, procedure.
In the 1970's, Boyd had proudly worn his shirt open, his chest hair fluffing out in vibrant manliness, more than compensating for his ever widening brow. But those days were gone. Nowadays, collars were buttoned all the way up. Boyd was left with nothing to distract from his retreating hairline.
Then along came Dr. Desi and his brilliant innovation. Why should all that bountiful, hairy machismo go to waste, hidden under Boyd's shirt? These days, when people looked at Boyd Hartnell, they still saw a man with a hairy chest. Only now it was on his head.
Now everything was as it should be. Esther was hard at work on a new butt-kicking season of Miss Agatha. He had a full head of hair and had even managed to get a new series out of the catastrophe. All told, Boyd considered himself pretty damn remarkable.
He zipped past the stalled lane of cars waiting to turn into the Pinnacle Studios tour and took the next left, cruising under the shadow of the marble Pinnacle Pictures office tower to the executive gate. The guard stepped out of his knockoff Frank Lloyd Wright shack and waved him through. Boyd gave him the grandiose smile of the powerful and sailed toward his coveted private parking spot. He came to a sudden halt.
There was a car in his spot. Not just any car. A 1959 Cadillac convertible, all fins and chrome and attitude. UBC chief Don DeBono was into vintage cars. The bigger and more ostentatious, the better. He wanted to take up lanes, parking spots, entire neighborhoods with the girth of his automobiles. And now the corpulent sack of shit had commandeered Boyd's spot.
Boyd parked in the handicapped spot, got out, and carefully ran a hand through his head of chest hair before heading into the thirty-two story wedge of steel.
The Italian furniture in Boyd's thirty-second-floor corner office had such sharp lines Boyd ran the danger of disembowelling himself every time he slid his chair up to his desk. Don DeBono had unfortunately managed to take a seat behind Boyd's desk without injury.
DeBono was thumbing intently through a TV Guide as Boyd came in, no doubt reading every single listing and committing it to memory. DeBono was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of television, his utter devotion to the medium. Not one single iota of trivia escaped his attention. In his own mind, DeBono had programmed every network since he was old enough to spell TV.
DeBono knew what was up against Bonanza on every night of itsfourteen-year run. He could tell you the ratings for each episode of Mannix. He had even memorized Lucy Ricardo's license number.
But it paid off. Ten years ago, when DeBono was a twenty-year-old NYU student, he sent UBC president Guy Chapin a letter. DeBono tore him apart for concocting an insipid primetime schedule and told him how Chapin should have done it, assuming Chapin had any imagination at all.
Fact was, Chapin didn't. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he took DeBono's suggestions, and propelled the third-place network into first. Don DeBono became a junior program executive overnight, stepping right over another, capable executive named Boyd Hartnell, who had been strenuously working his way up the ladder for years. Boyd had even married Chapin's homely daughter in his quest for network glory.
Boyd watched with amazement and loathing as the little shit wormed his way up whilehis own career reached an inertia matched only by his sex life. Boyd dumped Chapin's hag daughter and took the first studio job he could find.
Now Boyd ran Pinnacle, and wonderboy DeBono made enough money to keep his complete collection of TV Guides in a massive mahogany display case. As if they were copies of the Gutenberg Bible.
"Make yourself at home," Boyd said. "Fuck my secretary, while you're at it."
DeBono glanced up from the TV Guide and gave Boyd a wicked grin. "I would, but I've decided to fuck you instead."
"Am I going to like it?"
"Do I care?" DeBono tossed the TV Guide onto a pile of scripts and swivelled around in the chair to face Boyd, who was sauntering up to admire his unobstructed view of the valley.
"Have you seen the demographics on Miss Agatha?"
"You came all the way down here to ask me that?"
"It was a rhetorical question, butthead," DeBono said. "That is butt hair on your
head, isn't it? Or did Dr. Desi harvest your arm pits?"
The muscles in Boyd's cheeks tightened. Maybe if he gritted his teeth, he wouldn't throw the guy out the window. He turned very slowly to face DeBono.
''The show is a hit. That's all that's important."
"The demographics skew so fucking old, the entire audience of the show could be dead by next season," DeBono said. "DBC's Red Highway is snagging everyone who isn't on social security yet."
"Red Highway is in forty-eighth place," Boyd said.
"Last season it was seventieth," DeBono replied. "You see a trend here? Of course you don't. That's why you're here and I'm running the network. The right show, with the right demographics, can take Sunday night."
"We are already taking the night."
"We are sitting ducks." DeBono got up from behind the desk. "So we're going to youthify Miss Agatha. She's going to get a niece who wears black leather, drives a sports car, and can do more Ninja shit than Steven Seagal."
Boyd couldn't believe what he was hearing. He had just saved Esther's ass, not to mention his own, rescued the network and the show, and even managed to restore his hairline. And now this jerk was recklessly putting it all at risk again.
"Are you insane?" Boyd marched up to him, practically stammering in disbelief. "You don't fuck around with a hit. You leave it alone and count your money."
"Scrap the episode you're shooting and shut down for a week," DeBono said casually.
"You realize what I had to go through to save the show for you?" Boyd exclaimed.
"You saved your own hairless ass and got a new series out of the fucking deal, so don't give me that shit." DeBono picked up the TV Guide and admired the picture of Rappy Scrappy on the cover. "I want the new character in the next episode, and I want to air it during sweeps."
"Esther Radcliffe won't stand for this."
"Then tell Esther Radcliffe you either shoot the episode I want, or you shoot the series finale."
"You'd cancel a hit?" Boyd asked incredulously. Now he knew for certain that DeBono had actually lost his mind.
DeBono shrugged. "It's been done before."
"We'll take the show to another network." Boyd paced defiantly in front of him. "Let's see how those demos look to you when your ass is getting kicked."
DeBono shook his head. "Check out the contract. You can't shop new episodes anywhere for a year after cancellation." DeBono watched with amusement as the color drained from Boyd's face. "Snuck it into the contract a few seasons back."
Boyd slowly settled into his desk chair and contemplated impaling himself on the edge of the desk. DeBono watched the man wilt.
"If Miss Agatha is off the air for a year, most of her audience will be dead when she comes back. You either do it my way, or you don't do it at all."
Boyd could feel his hair losing its footing in his scalp. Another painful session with Dr. Desi was inevitable.
"You have someone in mind for the part?" Boyd asked, resigned to defeat.
"Sabrina Bishop," DeBono said. "You know her?"
"I've heard of her." Boyd hoped he'd disguised his excitement. At least he was glad he was sitting down. "You realize the risk, don't you?"
"Miss Agatha has to go sometime," DeBono said. "Worse thing that happens, you'll get your fucking fortune in rerun money sooner rather than later."
"That's not the worst thing," Boyd said. "She's already shot a cop. You think she'd think twice about killing Sabrina Bishop?"
CHAPTER FOUR
There was no way Esther Radcliffe was setting foot in a Winnebago. Even though the studio called it a dressing room, as far as she was concerned it was still a mobile home. Economy-size coffins for the living dead. Tin cans for the sardines of humanity. There wasn't a more heinous pairing of words in the English language.
Mobile home. The words immediately evoked images of TV dinners and Barcaloungers. Wink Martindale and Kmart. Fast food and slow death. Trailer parks with names like Sunny Acres, Paradise Pines, and Valley Vista collecting like weeds along the freeways of America. The white-trash Beverly Hills.
She hadn't worked all her life to set herself apart from them just to end up in a mobile home herself. That would have been the ultimate indignity.
So she made the studio fork out half a million dollars on her dressing room—a Greyhound bus converted into an estate that just happened to be on wheels. Pity the losers retreating to their Formica and vinyl boxes. Between scenes she retired to opulence that rivalled her own home. With her brass fixtures and marble countertops, Persian rugs and mahogany paneling, no one would mistake her dressing room for a mobile home.
But right now the most noticeable feature of her dressing room was not the Hockney on the wall or the crystal chandelier on the ceiling. It was the plain manila envelope propped up in a chair like a bored guest.