The Big Hit

by James Neal Harvey

  “Don’t repeat this, but I’d go after Pitt. No problem there, he needs the money. Even though Angelina is the highest-paid actress in the business.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Isn’t it? But then, everything costs more nowadays,” Zarkov said, grinning.

  He looks like a shark when he does that, Barker thought. Zark the shark.

  There was a knock at the door. It opened and a man stuck his head in. “You wanted me, Len?”

  “Yeah, come in and say hello to Bart Hopkins. Bart, this is Tyler Sturgis. Tyler’s my lawyer.”

  Hopkins put out his hand without getting up, and Sturgis shook it. The lawyer then looked at Barker and frowned. “Who are you?”

  “This is Jeb,” Hopkins said. “He’s with me.”

  Sturgis nodded, but the dour expression stayed in place.

  “Bart is interested in making an investment in one of my movies,” Zarkov said to him. “Specifically, The Betrayal. I want you to draw up a letter of agreement based on a share of ten percent of the cost of producing and promoting the picture, which I’m estimating at a total of a hundred fifty million. Profit to Bart would be the same proportion, ten percent of the net.”

  “You want the letter to include a breakdown of the costs?”

  “Yes. Ed Conforti will be line producer. He has a copy of Gault’s script. Ed and Norman here will get together and break down a tentative set of numbers. Director, crew, sets, the locations, transportation, and so on. They’ll give you what they come up with.”

  “What about the cast?” Klein asked.

  “Figure twenty-five million, depending on who I settle on. But no more than that, because I want to stick to the hundred fifty million total.”

  Sturgis said, “Timing of the agreement?”

  “Give Bart a week after he receives it to decide whether he wants the deal,” Zarkov said. “If he does, he’s to provide my company, Zarstar, with a bank draft for fifteen million. If he doesn’t, no hard feelings. That okay with you, Bart?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  Zarkov said to Sturgis, “Have the letter on my desk soon as you can.”

  “Will do.” Sturgis backed out of the room.

  “Where should I send the letter?” Zarkov asked Hopkins.

  “Send it to my home.” Hopkins took out his wallet, extracted a card, and handed it to the producer.

  Zarkov rose to his feet and dropped the card onto his desk. “Hey, this calls for a celebration. Let’s go out and get a drink.”

  24.

  When they rejoined the crowd, it seemed to Barker there were even more revelers than before. And with recorded rock pounding above the babbling voices, the sound level had gone up several decibels. He took a glass of champagne from a waiter and raised it in a salute to Hopkins before downing the contents.

  Next he moved to the table where the food was. After glancing over the lavish assortment of dishes, he loaded a plate with stuffed mushroom caps and crab fingers and oysters Rockefeller. A waiter refilled his glass, and he looked for a less raucous place to enjoy it all. A small room off the large one seemed promising, and he went in there.

  This was apparently a reading nook; there was an long gray leather sofa and matching chairs and bookcases and a TV. On the sofa, a man was locking lips with a young woman and fondling her. They seemed unaware of Barker’s presence. Or of anything else.

  Barker put his glass down on a bookshelf and began eating.

  “So what’d you think?” The speaker was Bart Hopkins, who’d followed him into the room.

  Around a mouthful of crabmeat, Barker said, “More or less what I anticipated.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he wants to con you out of fifteen million bucks.”

  Hopkins also had a glass of champagne. He drank some of it and said, “That might be. Although I have to tell you, everything he said made sense to me. And he’s putting the deal in writing. I could take it or leave it.”

  Barker did not reply. Instead he tried one of the oysters. The spinach and the butter sauce gave it a wonderful flavor, he thought.

  He also thought Hopkins might be losing his mind. Or at least his money, if he wasn’t careful. Zarkov had done a pretty good job on him.

  “The guy does have quite a track record,” Bart went on.

  “Yeah, he does that.”

  “I’m just mulling it over.”

  “Of course.”

  “I want to say hello to some people,” Hopkins said. He left the room.

  Barker took his time, savoring the food and drinking sips of champagne. He had to smile, thinking back to all the deli sandwiches and the cartons of coffee he and Spinelli had consumed. Once again, this was better.

  When he finished, he walked out of the room. On the way he noticed that the man on the sofa now had his hand under the young woman’s skirt. Making progress, Barker thought.

  A waiter relieved him of the plate and glass, and another waiter offered a fresh flute of chilled champagne. Barker took it and wandered slowly through the crowd, keeping an eye out for Dana Laramie and wondering whether she’d actually made it here.

  He was about to conclude she hadn’t when he spotted her standing near the bar and talking to some guy. He kept watching her until he caught her eye, and when he did she tapped a finger against her ear. Okay, that meant he should call her. But he would have done that anyway.

  A few minutes later Hopkins approached him and said, “I’m ready to go, okay?”

  “Whatever you say, Bart.”

  As they made their way toward the front door, Barker noticed a very large man who was talking to a woman. He was so large, in fact, that he seemed about to burst his jacket. Barker recognized him at once, although he hadn’t seen him since the day he’d gone to the Sherry-Netherland Hotel. It was Chuck Diggs.

  The big man obviously recognized Barker as well. His eyebrows shot up, and then hunkered down again. He turned away.

  I’ll be damned, Barker thought. All kinds of surprises tonight. He followed Hopkins out the door, and an attendant took the card that identified the Rolls. The attendant sprinted off to fetch it.

  Hopkins’s mood was expansive. He waved an arm toward the lights below them and said, “We don’t often get it this good. Not in the summertime, anyway. That’s when the smog is usually the worst.”

  The Rolls came up alongside them, and attendants held the doors open. Hopkins tipped them, and the two men got into the car.

  The trip back down to Sunset was as pleasant as coming up had been. Better, in fact, because in LA’s desert climate the nights were much cooler than the days. Nothing like New York, Barker thought, where the humidity kept you sweating around the clock. Even the Rolls’s headlight beams seemed cool.

  When they reached Barker’s hotel, Hopkins said, “Hope this was helpful to you. Although I don’t think Zarkov was what you expected.”

  Barker didn’t respond to that. Zarkov was exactly what he’d expected. And he now understood why Catherine Delure was issuing warnings that the producer was somebody to stay away from.

  “Thanks for taking me along,” Barker said. “And good luck with your investment.”

  Hopkins laughed. “Hey, all I said was, it sounded interesting. Tell you what. As soon as I get that letter I’ll call you, and we can look it over together. Okay?”

  “Yeah, that’d be fine.” He shut the door, and the Rolls disappeared into the night.

  When he reached his room, Barker took a leak and washed his hands and face and brushed his teeth. Next he turned on the TV and tuned in to a cable news station, which was showing damage sustained by a small town in Oklahoma that had been hit by a tornado. The announcer said the town had been battered by twisters many times, but residents had shown great courage by sticking it out.

  Courage? Yeah, Barker thought,
they sure had plenty of that. But he wondered if they also had rocks in their heads. From time to time they got blown away by a twister, so wouldn’t it make sense to move? Instead, they stayed put, waiting to get hit again.

  The thought brought to mind Bart Hopkins, and his fascination with the film business. Barker turned off the TV and glanced at his watch. Would Dana be home by now? He had only the number of her landline at her apartment. Should have gotten her cell number as well, but he hadn’t. He picked up a phone and called the number she’d given him.

  She answered on the second ring.

  “Hi,” he said. “Didn’t know whether I’d catch you or not.”

  “I saw you leave with Hopkins, and I left right after that. How did it go?”

  “Couple of surprises.”

  “Will you come over and tell me about them?”

  “I sure will. Be there in a few minutes.”

  He put the phone down, thinking his luck was not only holding, it was going strong.

  25.

  When Barker walked in, Dana was eager to hear what had gone on at Zarkov’s house. He told her about the pitch Zarkov had made, and about Hopkins’s reaction.

  She said, “You mean he might go for it?”

  “He claimed he was just mulling it over, but he sure sounded intrigued to me.”

  “How did they leave it?”

  “Zarkov told his lawyer to write up a letter of agreement he could send to Hopkins. Bart would then have a week to decide whether it would be a good idea to piss away fifteen million bucks.”

  “My God. No wonder Catherine warned him. Although apparently it didn’t do much good.”

  “What about you? Did Zarkov ask you about Catherine’s papers again?”

  “Yes, the minute I arrived. I told him I didn’t run across anything that would be a problem, and that he was welcome to look through the papers himself. Or have his lawyer do it, if that’s what he wanted.”

  “How’d he react?”

  “He said he’d have the lawyer get in touch with me. His name is Tyler Sturgis.”

  “Yeah, I saw Sturgis there tonight. Did Zarkov mention the job he offered you?”

  “Yes. I told him it sounded attractive, but that I had to give it more thought.”

  “Good, you handled it well,” Barker said.

  “Did you get the impression Catherine was right about her husband’s involvement?”

  “Yeah, I did. Apperson’s the one who first told Hopkins he could arrange an introduction to Zarkov. Recommended he invest in one of Zarkov’s movies, in fact. And in the meeting tonight, Zarkov piled it on. By the time he finished, he had Hopkins’s tongue hanging out.”

  “I thought Bart was smarter than that.”

  “Looks to me as though smart doesn’t have much to do with it. When somebody like him wants to get into the movie business, he checks his brain at the door.”

  “So it seems,” Dana said. “And you know something? Zarkov probably does this often. Uses Apperson to send him people who have a lot of money.”

  She was wide-eyed again, and Barker saw that the eyes were not only blue, they were almost violet.

  “That would explain something else,” she said. “When you saw me at the party, did you notice the guy I was talking with?”

  “Not really. I saw him, but that’s about all.”

  “His name is Tony Carpenter. He’s from Texas, where his father made it big by speculating in oil. The old man died recently and left Tony a huge amount of money. Now he’s in LA and guess what?”

  “He wants to get into the movie business.”

  “In the worst way.”

  “And did he tell you who put him in touch with Zarkov and got him invited to the party tonight?”

  “No, but I’ll bet it was Apperson.”

  “So you’re probably right, the scam is set up to haul in as many fish as possible. Although here’s something I don’t get. Suppose, just suppose, somebody like Bart Hopkins buys in and the movie does just what Zarkov says it will do. So the guy makes money and everybody’s happy, right?”

  “Sure, if it ever turned out like that.”

  Her eyes are definitely violet, he thought.

  “Here’s something I learned while I was working for Catherine,” she said. “Zarkov and the studios work the same way. Each of their films is incorporated as a stand-alone venture. All kinds of expenses are charged off against it, not just the actual costs of talent and production. The result is that the movie does not make a profit. That way the actors and the director and the writer and anyone else who has a share never see anything but a loss. But that loss is based only on the income from box office receipts. Meanwhile the studio, or Zarkov, gets all the money from DVDs and foreign distribution and licensing.”

  She also smells good, he thought. Maybe she’d put on a touch of perfume when she knew he’d be coming here.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “The point is that if somebody like Hopkins or this guy from Texas or anyone else puts in money and the picture fails, so what? Happens all the time, right?”

  She also looked adorable when she was worked up, he thought. As she was now.

  “And to fail,” she went on, “the movie doesn’t even have to be finished and released. It can fail at any time along the way. Production gets held up for some unforeseen reason or other, the talent balks at what they’re being paid, the director goes nuts and spends so much unauthorized money he busts the budget, or all of those. Then the so-called investor is informed that Zarstar Productions is terribly sorry, but they ran out of funds and had to shut the project down. And his money? Forgive the pun, but it’s gone with the wind. One consolation, he can list it as a loss when he computes his income tax.”

  Barker smiled. “Sounds as if you’ve got it pretty well tied down.”

  She paused. “Yeah, except for one thing. Catherine blowing the whistle wouldn’t be enough to put her in danger, would it? To the point that somebody would kill her to shut her up?”

  “You don’t think that’s possible? Let’s say it’s true that Apperson and Zarkov are running the scam as often as they can, at around fifteen million a pop. You’re asking whether they might go to great lengths to protect that kind of money?”

  “Um. I guess they might, huh?”

  “The first homicide I worked on as a rookie,” Barker said, “the victim was a woman in Washington Square Park. A guy tried to mug her but she resisted, so he stabbed her. He grabbed her purse and ran, but we tracked him down the next day and arrested him. The murder netted him eleven dollars and twenty cents.”

  “Okay, I understand. So it’s possible Catherine stumbled onto what they were doing, and they had somebody go after her. I don’t know that much about Apperson, but I do have an impression of Zarkov. People are leery of him, and you can see why.”

  What he saw was that this was his main chance. “Want to know what I think?”

  “Of course.”

  He put his hands on her hips. “I think you’re wonderful.”

  She didn’t seem at all surprised. Nor did she move away. He drew her tight against him and brought his lips to hers. She didn’t resist, instead opening her mouth and wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her body even closer.

  When she finally came up for air, she took his hand and led him into the bedroom.

  26.

  In the morning Barker opened his eyes and stretched and found that he was alone in the bed. The sun’s rays were streaming through the window.

  Last night had been great, he thought. Dana was not only beautiful, she was also extremely warm and responsive. Their lovemaking had gone on for a long time, and just thinking about it now made him feel good all over again.

  He got up and went into the bathroom, where he conducted his usual morning routine. He took a long hot shower a
nd then brushed his teeth. He didn’t have a toothbrush, however, so he borrowed hers. He hoped she wouldn’t mind, but what the hell, he’d had his mouth all over her, so why should she?

  There was also a lady’s razor in the cabinet, and some sweet-smelling shaving cream. He used those as well.

  When he came out, he became aware of the smell of coffee. And then the aroma of bacon and eggs.

  Dana called from the kitchen, “Hey, sleepyhead. Come and eat breakfast.”

  “Be right there.”

  He didn’t have a robe, either, so his shirt would have to do. He pulled it on and went into the kitchen, where Dana was looking fresh and radiant in a lemon-colored silk wrapper. He put his arms around her and kissed her good morning, and then at her bidding he sat down at the table.

  She put plates of bacon and fried eggs at both their places, and from the first bite it seemed to him he’d never tasted better. There was also buttered toast and blackberry jam and coffee that was so strong a spoon would have stood straight up in it, and all that was delicious too.

  He ate ravenously, and when he finished, she poured more coffee for him. He sat back and said, “What a breakfast. Thank you.”

  “Glad you liked it.”

  She put her hand on his. “You must be pretty happy this morning.”

  He smiled. “I am. You were sensational.”

  She returned the smile. “So were you. But not just because of that. I meant because you’ve figured it out. You know what Zarkov and Apperson are doing, and that Catherine may have been in danger, or was even killed, because she knew it too. You’ve practically got it solved, Jeb.”

  This time he laughed out loud.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Just that nothing’s solved. There’s only a theory. It might be on target, might not. But even if it is, it’s still a theory and nothing more.”

  She looked crestfallen. “But—”

  “Don’t misunderstand. You’ve been a lot of help to me, and I really appreciate it. The problem is I don’t have so much as a scrap of evidence to back up what we’ve been conjecturing.”