Lullaby Town

by Robert Crais

  Donnie squinted and thought about it. You could see gears moving and lights flashing behind his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, that's right."

  "Tell him I'm brilliant and gifted. Everybody knows that brilliant and gifted people are difficult."

  Donnie's eyes got big and he slapped his hands on the table again as if he'd just found the Rosetta stone. "Yeah, yeah. That's it! Brilliant and gifted are difficult." He jumped up and charged toward the door. "Let's go see him and get it over with."

  We went to see the monster.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The monster had both floors of a two-story tropical-style plantation house hidden behind a stand of banana and rubber trees at the back of the studio. It had once been a bungalow like any other bungalow, but now it wasn't. Now, there was a veranda across the front and wide-slat Panamanian shutters and a lot of rough-hewn poles lashed together with coarse shipping rope to make you think you were on a tropical island someplace. Sort of like the Swiss Family Robinson's tree house. The roof was thatched with what looked like palm fronds, and running water trickled along a false stream, and a black skull-&-crossbones flag hung from a little pole. I said, "Do we have to give him an E ticket before he lets us in?"

  Donnie Brewster made the nervous frown. "Stop with the humor, okay? I tell him you're brilliant and gifted, you make with the humor, he's gonna know that you're not."

  Some guys.

  Inside, the floors were crude planking and the ceilings were done to match the roof, and Cairo fans hung down and slowly swirled the air. We went down a hall and into a room with two large couches and a little round glass table and posters of the six movies that Peter Alan Nelsen had made. The couches were covered in zebra skin and the posters were framed in what looked like rhino hide and a small, immaculate black man sat at a teak desk. Behind the man was a teak door. Behind the door, someone was yelling. Donnie Brewster rubbed at his scalp again and said, "Holy Christ, now what?"

  The black man nodded brightly when he saw us. Maybe he couldn't hear the yelling. "Hello, Mr. Brewster. Ms. Kyle. Peter said to go right in when you got here."

  We went right in.

  Peter Alan Nelsen's office was as long as a bowling alley and as wide as a check-kiter's smile and done up like the lobby of a Nairobi movie house. Posters from The Wild Bunch and The Asphalt Jungle and The Magnificent Seven hung along one wall and an old Webcor candy machine from the forties sat against the opposite wall between a Wurlitzer Model 800 Bubble-Lite jukebox and a video game called Kill or Be Killed! The Webcor featured M&M peanuts and Jujubes and Raisinets and PayDay candy bars. Nothing beats a PayDay! A blond woman with a neck like corded rosewood and shoulders like Alex Karras sat sidesaddle on a sky-blue Harley-Davidson Electra-glide motorcycle parked at the far end of the office. She was wearing black spandex biking pants with a Day-Glo green stripe down the leg and a matching black halter sports top and pale gray Reebok workout shoes. Her thighs were massive and her calves thick and diamond-shaped and her belly looked like cut stonework. She glanced our way, then slid off the Harley and went to sit by a couple of guys who might've been reserve corners for the Dallas Cowboys. They were slouching on another one of the zebra couches, one of them wearing a Stunts Unlimited T-shirt and the other fatigue pants and eelskin cowboy boots. They glanced our way, too, and then they went back to watching Peter Alan Nelsen.

  Peter Alan Nelsen was standing on top of a marble-slab desk, waving his arms and screaming so hard that his face was red. He was maybe six foot two, but skinny, with more butt than shoulders and the kind of soft, gawky frame that probably meant he had been a stiff-legged, awkward child. He had a rectangular Fred MacMurray face to go with the body, and he wore black leather pants with a silver concho belt and a blue denim work shirt with the cuffs rolled over his forearms. The forearms were thin. It was a style and a look that had faded away in the mid-seventies, but if you were the King of Adventure, I guess you could dress any way you wanted. The King yelled, "Stop the tape! I don't want to see this crap! Jesus H. Christ, are you people out of your minds?!"

  Peter Alan Nelsen was yelling at a neatly dressed woman and a man with a face like a rabbit's who were standing near a 30-inch Mitsubishi television. The man was scrabbling at a videotape machine, trying to eject a cassette, but his fingers weren't doing a good job and the woman had to help him.

  Donnie ran forward, rubbing at his hair. "Peter, Peter, what's going on? Hey, there's a problem here, that's what I'm for!"

  The woman at the big Mitsubishi said, "We showed him a tape of work by the new production designer. He liked it fine until I told him that the designer had worked in television."

  Peter made a loud, moaning sound, then jumped off the desk, raced forward, grabbed the tape from the rabbit-faced man, and threw it out the window. When Peter rushed toward them, the man jerked back but the woman didn't. Peter yelled, "His quality is all wrong! Don't you people understand texture? Don't you understand image density? Tee-vee is small. Movies are large. I make movies, not television!"

  Donnie spread his hands, like how could they do this. "Jesus, Peter, I'm sorry. I can't believe they'd waste your time with a TV guy. What can I do to make it right?" I think he was trying to show me how to make Peter happy.

  Peter screamed, "You can kiss my ass on Hollywood Boulevard

  , you wanna make it right!" Peter didn't look any happier to me, but Donnie was the expert.

  The neatly dressed woman said, "You're out of your fucking mind." Then she turned and stalked out, dragging the rabbit-faced man with her. When they passed, I hummed a little bit of "There's No Business Like Show Business." Pat Kyle gave me an elbow.

  Donnie gave the big smile, telling everybody that he and his old pal Peter were in solid on this one. "No, hey, Pete-man, I mean it." Pete-man. "You want a new production designer, you got one. I mean, we're making film here, am I right?"

  Peter Alan Nelsen screamed, "Shit!" as loud as he could, stalked back to the Harley-Davidson, and kicked it over. Hard. There were gouges in the floor where it had fallen before. The blond woman waited until Peter was through, then went over and righted it, her cut muscles straining against the weight. Peter paid no attention. He stood in the center of the floor, breathing hard, hands down at his sides like there was a terrible anger bubbling within him that he didn't know if he could control, but he would give it a game try. Drama. I said, "I'm Elvis Cole. Is there a problem you want to discuss with me, or should I leave now during the intermission?"

  Donnie Brewster said, "Oh, shit," and made more of the how-to-keep-Peter-happy hand moves. "Hey, what a kidder, huh, Pete-man? This guy is the private cop we were talking about. He's–"

  Peter said, "I heard him," and came toward me. He put out his hand and we shook. He squeezed harder than he had to and stood closer than you stand to someone you don't know. "I'm sorry you had to see this," he said. "These guys give me the weight of making a major motion picture, then do everything they can to screw me up. It gets a little crazy."

  "Sure."

  He jerked his head toward the woman. 'That's Dani." He gestured toward the two guys. "That's Nick and that's T.J. They work for me." Nick was the guy in the Stunts Unlimited T-shirt. T.J. had the eelskin boots. Each of them outweighed him by maybe sixty pounds.

  Peter said, "You see my movies?"

  "I saw Chainsaw and Hard Point."

  "What did you think?"

  "Pretty good. Chainsaw reminded me of The Searchers.'"

  He smiled a little bit at that and nodded. "I was a twenty-six-year-old film-school flunk-out when I made Chainsaw. I didn't know my ass from a hole in the round and I ripped off The Searchers every way I could."

  Donnie looked up from where he had gone to a phone. "We were talking about Chainsaw before we came over. A dynamite film. Just dynamite. Tremendous gross."

  Peter went to the candy machine, slammed it with the heel of his hand, pulled a lever, and got a bag of M&M peanuts without putting in money. He tore open the bag with his teeth, dropped the paper on
the floor, and poured half the bag of candy into his mouth. He didn't offer to share. Dani drifted over and picked up the paper.

  Peter went to the big marble desk and sat on it, cross-legged. "You look about my age. How old are you?"

  "Thirty-eight."

  "I'm thirty-nine. We talked to some cop who said you were in the Nam. That true?" He leaned forward and said the Nam like they do on television, full of excitement and appeal and unreality. The way Bart Simpson would say it.

  "Uh-huh."

  He slurped up more of the M&M's. "The cop said you racked ass over there and got a fistful of medals."

  "What do cops know?"

  "I tried to join up, but they wouldn't take me. I got this bone thing in my hips." He was looking at a poster of John Wayne in Blood Alley. It showed the Duke firing a machine gun at some Commies. More shoulders than hips. "The Nickster was in the Nam, too." The Nickster.

  The Nickster nodded. "Airmobile."

  Peter said, "Man, I wanted airmobile bad. Ride the skies. Ace a few Cong. I wasn't so old, I'd'a signed up for Saudi."

  The Nickster said, "You woulda been a natural, buddy. I'd'a rather had you than half the turds in my unit."

  T.J. said, "Fuckin' A."

  Peter nodded, regretting the lost opportunity to ride the friendly skies of Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.

  Donnie put down the phone and turned back to us, making the big smile and the there's-no-problem-here hand gestures. "Hey, Pete-man, you wanted that TV putz off the picture, he's yesterday. Gone. A memory. So tell me what you wanna do about a production designer? We've gotta make a decision and start building the rest of the sets."

  Peter said, "Forget about it, Donnie. I'm into something now."

  Donnie's face pinched and he looked nervous. "But, hey, Peter. We got a movie to make, man. We gotta get with it. These things won't wait."

  Peter didn't look at him. "Donnie?"

  "Yeah, Pete-man?"

  Peter spit a chewed M&M at him. It hit Donnie's right pants leg, hung there a second, then fell. It left a green smear. "Hit the road."

  Pat Kyle made a hissing sound. Donnie's face went white and his body stiffened as if the M&M had been a turd pie, and for just a moment, his face was clenched and hard and angry. Then, a little bit at a time, the anger was stored away as if little men inside of Donnie were disassembling it block by block. When enough of the blocks were gone, the little men built a smile. It wasn't a very good smile, but the little men were probably tired from all the overtime they put in. Donnie said, "Sure, Pete-man. Whatever you say. I'll call later. Hey, I'm really sorry you got stuck with those TV clips." His voice was tight. Trainee in the voice-box crew, no doubt.

  Donnie Brewster turned and walked out without looking at me or at Pat Kyle or at Nick or T.J. or Dani. Peter poured the rest of the M&Ms into his mouth, crumpled the wrapper, then laid a hook shot toward a square wastebasket and missed. Dani picked it up.

  The Nickster made a whiny voice. "Sure, Pete-man, whatever you say."

  Peter and T.J. and the Nickster laughed. Dani didn't.

  I looked at Pat Kyle. Her eyes were hard and her jaw was tight and she was staring at the floor. What, and give up show business? I looked back at Peter Alan Nelsen. Nick and T.J. were rolling around on the zebra couch, laughing and goosing each other and slapping hands. I said, "Peter. I didn't come here for Pee-Wee's playhouse."

  The laughter stopped.

  "I have come because my friend Pat Kyle asked me to come, and I have answered questions about myself because that's the way most people beat around the bush before they get down to business, but now we are at the end of the road. Unless you knock off the bullshit and get to the point, I will walk out of here and you can get someone else to do the job."

  Peter Alan Nelsen blinked at me through surprised, little-boy eyes. T.J. got up from the couch and put his hands on his hips and grinned at me. The Nickster said, "Oh, man, Peter, this guy wants a piece."

  Dani uncrossed the big arms and came forward until her right hip was pressed against the desk, very close to Peter. Her left quadricep flexed like a beating heart. Peter stared at me for a long time, sort of smiling, but mostly looking like a little boy who'd been caught eating worms and knew it was wrong. He looked ashamed. Peter said, "Nick, T.J., you guys go grab a beer or something, okay?"

  Nick and T.J. glanced at Peter, then walked out, the Nickster making a big deal out of coming very close to me. When they were gone, Peter slid off the desk, dug out his wallet, took out a small color snapshot, and handed it to me. It was creased cleanly once, and yellowed the way old photos are yellowed when they have lain untouched between papers in a box for many years. It was Peter. Much younger and even thinner, with long frizzy hair and a dark maroon T-shirt that said USC FILM. He was sitting on an ugly cloth couch in a plain student's apartment and he was holding a tiny baby. Neither Peter nor the baby looked happy. He said, "I've got an ex-wife and a son. The last time I saw my son, he was maybe a year old. His name is Toby. We named him Toby after Toby Tyler, or, Ten Weeks with the Circus. He's gotta be about twelve now, but I don't know if he's dead or if he's alive or if he's a crip in a ward somewhere. I don't know if he likes pizza. I don't know if he likes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You see?"

  I nodded. "Your ex-wife never came to you for child support?"

  "No."

  "Or alimony?"

  He spread his hands. "For all I know she's on the moon."

  I said, "Peter, you ever think maybe the woman doesn't want to be found?"

  He stared at me.

  "It's been ten years and you don't exactly lead a low-profile life. If she wanted to find you, she could've. I've done jobs like this before, and what happens is that everyone ends up wishing well enough had been left alone. The kids end up confused and scared and the parents end up fighting the old fights. You see?"

  Peter took a deep breath and shook his head and looked around the office. With T.J. and the Nickster and Donnie Brewster gone, the office felt empty and he looked alone. He said, "I'm worth, what? Maybe two hundred million, something like that? If I've got a kid, part of that's his, right?" Trying to convince me. "What if he needs a car? What if he can't afford college?"

  I said, "You want to be a father."

  He took back the snapshot of the very much younger Peter Alan Nelsen and his baby son. Toby. Toby Tyler and the circus. "Unless the kid's dead, I'm a father whether I want to be or not. That oughta mean something, right?"

  I said, "Yes. It should."

  "So Karen's mad. So I schmucked out back then and I blew it. Does that mean that I have to pay for it the rest of my life?"

  "No."

  He shook his head and went over behind the marble desk and sat down the way a very old man would sit and he looked at the little picture again. He said, "You know what's weird? It's like there's a piece of me out there that I don't know and have never seen. It's like I can feel him, like there's this other self, you see?"

  I nodded. "The boy may not feel that way. Your ex-wife almost certainly won't."

  He got up and walked over to the pinball machine and then to the video game and then to the Wurlitzer. He would stand, then move, then stand again, as if he didn't quite know what to do with himself or where he should be or how to say what he wanted to say.

  I said, "Just say it."

  He turned and his face seemed faraway and lost and hurt. "I just want to say hello to my kid."

  I nodded. "I don't blame you," I said. "I'll help you find him."

  The world's third most successful director took a deep breath, then said, "Good. Good." He came across the room and shook my hand. "Good."

  CHAPTER THREE

  The black secretary stuck his head in the door and told Peter that someone named Langston needed to see him on the stage right away.

  We trooped down out of his office and back into the real world of aliens and oil barons and people who looked suspiciously like studio executives. Patricia Kyle and Peter Alan Nelsen and I
walked together, with Dani sort of drifting behind. Somewhere between Peter's office and the soundstage, Nick and T.J. reappeared, Nick giving me tough whenever I looked at him. Had me shaking, that guy. Make you turn in your license, a guy like that. I looked at Peter Alan Nelsen, instead. "What was your ex-wife's name?"

  "Karen Nelsen."

  "Not her married name. What was her maiden name?"

  "Karen Shipley. That cop we talked to, Ito, he said you're big with the martial arts. He said you took out some killer from Japan."

  I said, "What's your son's name?"

  "Toby Samuel Nelsen. I got the Sam from Sam Fuller. Great director. You ever been shot?"

  "I caught some frag once."

  "What did it feel like?"

  "Peter, let's stick to the information about your ex-wife, okay?"

  "Yeah, sure. What do you want to know?"

  We walked along the little studio back streets and people stopped what they were doing and looked at him. They saw celebrities every day, so they wouldn't look at Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford or Jane Fonda, but they looked at Peter Alan Nelsen, and Peter seemed to enjoy it. He stood tall and when he spoke he made broad, exaggerated gestures as if what was happening had been scripted and he was acting the scene and the lookers were his audience. Maybe the lookers thought so, too. Maybe, since Peter was the King of Adventure, they figured that a Stearman biplane would suddenly appear and begin a strafing run. Maybe they thought a Lamborghini Countach driven by Daryl Hannah would suddenly screech around the corner, chased by psychopaths in souped-up Fords, and Peter would have to save the day and it would really be something to see. If Daryl Hannah was driving the Countach, Peter would have to move pretty fast. I was planning to get there first.

  I said, "Okay. Do you have any idea where Karen might be living?"

  "No."

  "You think she's still here in Los Angeles?"

  "I don't know."

  "Did she ever talk about someplace in particular, like, 'I'd really like to live in Palmdale one day,' or, 'Los Angeles is the greatest city in the world. I'll never leave it,' something like that?"