by Lee Goldberg
Selleck joins William Shatner as Guy Goddard, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Melvah, Tea Leoni as Zita, and Treat Williams as superagent Clive Odett in the two-hour MOW, which goes into production next month in Vancouver under director Anson Costo.
Meanwhile, HBO has confirmed that actress Shari Planet will play herself in Bed of Blood, a "tragic, erotic love story" based on her best-selling book.
Bed of Blood will chronicle her doomed affair with Beyond the Beyond creator Conrad Stipe (Sam Sheppard), his accidental death during lovemaking, and her inspirational recovery from nipple reconstruction surgery. Harry Dean Stanton will have a cameo role as Eddie Planet.
'Beyond' Goes Beyond, 'Saddlesore' Rides Again
HOLLYWOOD - As expected, The Big Network has ordered 44 more episodes of Beyond the Beyond, guaranteeing that the sci-fi smash will remain on the network for at least two more seasons.
The renewal of Beyond the Beyond, which virtually created the upstart network, was tied to a full-season commitment to executive producer Eddie Planet for another series, a revival of his classic western Saddlesore.
"Eddie will apply to Saddlesore the same winning formula that made Beyond the Beyond a hit," promised Big president Kimberly Woodrell. "If anyone understands the 90s sensibility, it's Eddie Planet."
Planet says Saddlesore will feature a "hot, dynamic, young cast and an edgy, Tarantino-esque feel" and credited The Company for negotiating "a very creative deal that benefits all concerned."
The entire Beyond the Beyond cast will return, though Jaleel White (Capt. Pierce), Terry Bloss (Mr. Snork), and Spring Dano (Dr. Kelvin) are all considering feature film roles for the spring production hiatus.
President Makes Example of The Company
HOLLYWOOD - The President of the United States wants to make an example of the unusual business practices at The Company, which he called "unlike any work environment I have ever imagined."
"Corporate America needs to examine what's going on here," the President said. "We can all learn a lesson from this."
Specifically, the President cited the agency's "innovative incentive program" that rewards employees with vacation days for each day of community service. Volunteerism among employees is made possible by flexible work hours that allow agents to toil "whenever they feel they can be most productive."
During a tour of the Company's new, San Fernando Valley offices, the President visited the agency's on-site day care center, full-service gymnasium, and enjoyed one of the daily, catered lunches.
"I'm proud, and surprised, that what we're doing here has impressed the President," said Company topper Alison Sweeney. "But what we're doing is really very simple. We're treating our co-workers like people, not just employees. What's the point in going to work each day if it can't be fun and, at the same time, enhance the community we live in?"
* * * * * *
It wasn't easy getting the shot of rock singer Sissy Marshak grieving over her miscarriage. It was like planning an assassination.
Buddy Schlitz bribed a nurse to find out what room Sissy was in. Sixth floor, UCLA Medical Center, south side. There was no way he was gonna get in the hospital, or even in the parking lot. So what he did was, he found a dentist office on the corner of Gayley and Wilshire that had an unobstructed view of her window.
He pretended he had a killer cavity, got an appointment, and when they left him in the chair to develop his x-rays, he barricaded the door, set up his camera with a super telephoto lens, and got a great roll of film of Sissy sobbing in Milton Nero's arms.
Yeah, Milton Nero, the married actor. Who would've guessed he was the father?
That particular picture was worth $200,000 for Buddy Schlitz. There were lots of other big paydays in his career. The morgue photo of River Phoenix. An emaciated Dean Martin in the backseat of a limo. Christopher Reeve in his hospital bed. Marlon Brando weeping after his kid offed herself.
Classic images, all of them.
And now he was getting ready to click another one. Rumor was that Taylor Largo, the best-looking guy on television, the debonair secret agent in Diplomatic Immunity, had the big C and was getting chemo during the season hiatus.
A shot of the glamour boy, looking bald, pasty, and haggard would be worth major green. So Buddy asked around, found out that Largo had rented a house deep in Topanga Canyon, far from any roads or prying eyes, to recuperate. It wasn't hard finding the house. Real estate agents had looser lips than a Hollywood Boulevard hooker. Buddy got some maps, did some figuring, and went on a four mile hike.
He found a tall tree, climbed up top, and trained his lens on Largo's house, about two hundred yards away, across a deep ravine. All he had to do was wait for Largo to walk by a window, or take a sit-down in his hot-tub, and Buddy had another classic.
Buddy had been up in the tree about ten minutes when he was startled by the sound of a chainsaw roaring to life.
Buddy looked down and saw a man at the base of the tree, the chainsaw chewing into the bark and spitting out sawdust.
"Stop!" Buddy yelled in terror.
The man switched off the chainsaw. "Be glad to, Buddy. Just toss your camera into the ravine."
"Fuck you," Buddy said. No way the guy was going to cut the tree down with him in it.
The man yanked the cord on the chainsaw and started cutting into the tree again. Buddy held on tight. The tree groaned and swayed. Buddy screamed and threw his camera into the ravine.
The camera hit a rock and smashed to pieces. The man shut down the chainsaw. "Very good, Buddy. Now take off all your clothes and throw them out of the tree."
"C'mon," Buddy said. "That was a $2000 camera. Isn't that enough?"
"You heard me, strip."
Buddy peeled off his clothes and tossed them down. He clutched the tree like pale, hairless monkey. "Satisfied?"
The man took an Instamatic camera out of his pocket and took a half dozen pictures. "Now I am. Have a nice walk back to the road."
The man left, leaving Buddy in the tree. He'd only walked a short distance when his cell phone rang. The man answered it.
"I saw the whole thing through my binoculars," Taylor Largo said. "He showed up, just like you said he would."
"The key was making it a challenge for him," the man said. "Now you just concentrate on getting better."
"Thank you," the actor said. "My privacy means a lot to me, especially now."
"You don't have to thank me," Charlie Willis replied. "I'm just doing my job."
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lee Goldberg is a two-time Edgar Award nominee whose many TV writing and/or producing credits include Martial Law, SeaQuest, Diagnosis Murder, The Cosby Mysteries, Hunter, Spenser: For Hire, Nero Wolfe, Missing and Monk. He's also the author of The Walk, My Gun Has Bullets, Successful Television Writing, The Man With The Iron-On Badge and the Diagnosis Murder and Monk series of original mystery novels. As a TV development consultant, he's worked for production companies and broadcasters in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America and is the co-founder of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers.
If you enjoyed DEAD SPACE, you might also like Lee Goldberg's widely acclaimed novel
THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE
Here's an excerpt:
Chapter One
I don't know if you've ever read John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books before. McGee is sort of a private eye who lives in Florida on a houseboat he won in a poker game. While solving mysteries, he helps a lot of ladies in distress. The way he helps them is by fucking their brains out and letting them cook his meals, do his laundry, and scrub the deck of his boat for a few weeks. These women, McGee calls them "wounded birds," are always very grateful that he does this for them.
To me, that's a perfect world.
I wanted his life.
This is the story of what I did to get it.
My name is Harvey Mapes. I'm twenty-nine years o
ld, six feet tall, and I'm in fair shape. I suppose I'd be better-looking if I exercised and stopped eating fast-food three times a day, but I won't, so I won't.
I'm a security guard. My job is to sit in a little, Mediterranean-style stucco shack from midnight until eight a.m. six days a week, outside the fountains and gates of Bel Vista Estates, a private community of million-dollar-plus homes in the Spanish Hills area of Camarillo, California.
The homes at Bel Vista Estates are built on a hillside above the farms of Pleasant Valley, the Ventura Freeway, and a really great outlet mall, about a quarter of the way between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. I say that so you can appreciate the kind of drive to work I have to make each night from my one-bedroom apartment in Northridge.
There are worse jobs.
Most of the time, I just sit there looking at my black and white monitor, which is split into quarters and shows me three different views of the gate and a wide angle of an intersection up the hill inside the community. I'm supposed to watch the intersection to see if people run the stop sign, and if they do, I'm supposed to write them a "courtesy ticket" when they come through the gate.
I'd like to meet the asshole who came up with that.
It's no courtesy to give one, and the folks who live here certainly don't think it's a courtesy to take one. Most of the time, they don't even stop to get it from me; they just laugh or flip me off or ignore me altogether.
And why shouldn't they? It's not like I'm going to chase them down to the freeway or put a lien on their homes.
Enforcement really isn't my job anyway. I'm there to give the illusion of security. I don't have a gun, a badge, or even a working stapler. If there's any real trouble, which there never is, I'm supposed to call my supervisor and he'll send a car out.
The guys in the car, guys so inept and violent the police department wouldn't hire them, are the "armed response team" the company advertises. If I were a resident, I'd feel safer taking my chances with the robber, rapist, or ax murderer.
I'm just the guy in the shack. The one who either waves you through and opens the gate, or stops you to see if you've got a pass. If you do, or if I get the homeowner on the phone and he says you're okay, then I jot your name and license number in my ledger, open the gate, and return to my reading.
I do a lot of reading, which is the one big perk of the job and, truthfully, the reason I took it in the first place, back when I was going to community college. Mostly I read paperback mysteries now, cheap stuff I get at used bookstores, and it's probably why I was so susceptible to his offer when it came.
I guess on some level I wanted to be like the tough, self-assured, no-problem-getting-laid guys I read about. I conveniently forgot that in a typical book, those guys usually sustain at least one concussion, get shot at several times, and see a lot of people die.
It was after midnight, but still early enough that I hadn't settled into a book yet, when Cyril Parkus drove up in his white Jaguar XJ8, the one with a forest of wood and a herd's worth of leather inside, and instead of going through the resident lane to wait for me to open the gate, he drove right up to my window.
We're supposed to stand up when they do that, almost at attention, like we're soldiers or something, so I did. The people who live at Bel Vista Estates are quick to report you for the slightest infraction, especially one that might imply you aren't acknowledging their greatness, wealth, and power.
Even just sitting in that car, Parkus exuded the kind of laid-back, relaxed charm that says to me: look how easy-going I am, it's because I'm rich and damn happy about it. He was in his mid-thirties, the kind of tanned, well-built, tennis-playing guy who subscribes to Esquire because he sees himself in every advertisement and it makes him feel good.
In other words, he was the complete opposite of me.
I'd see him leave for work every morning around six thirty or seven a.m., and it wasn't unusual for me to see him coming home so late. But he rarely stopped to talk to me, unless it was to leave a pass or get a package from me that his wife hadn't picked up during the previous shift. I'd only seen his wife, Lauren Parkus, once or twice, and when I did, it was late and she was in the passenger seat of his car, her face hidden in the shadows as he sped by.
"Good evening, Mr. Parkus," I said, adopting the cheerful, respectful, and totally false tone of voice I used with all the residents.
"How are you, Harvey?"
I caught him glancing at my nameplate as he spoke. Each guard slides his nameplate into a slot on the door at the start of his shift for exactly this reason. You can't expect the residents to remember, or care about, the name of the guy in the shack.
"Fine, sir," I replied. "What can I do for you?"
He smiled warmly at me, a smile as false as my cheerful respect and admiration.
"Could I ask you a couple of questions about your work, Harvey?"
"Of course, sir."
I figured there must be a complaint coming, and this was just his wind-up. In the back of my mind, I tried to guess what I could have done to piss him or his wife off, but I knew there wasn't anything.
"What are your hours?" Parkus asked.
I told him. He nodded.
"And then what do you do?" he asked.
That question had nothing to do with work, and I was tempted to tell him it was none of his fucking business, but I wanted to keep my job, and it wasn't like there was anything in my life worth keeping private. Besides, I was curious where all this was going and how I was going to get screwed in the end. At that moment, I had no way of knowing just how bad it would be or how many people would get killed along the way.
"I usually grab something to eat at Denny's, since they serve a decent dinner any time and have good prices, and then I go home."
"You go right to sleep?"
"No, sir, I like to sit by the pool if it's sunny, swim a couple of laps, maybe go to a movie or something. Then I go to bed around three in the afternoon, wake up around nine or ten, have some breakfast, and come back here for another day of work."
"So, you only work this one job and don't go to school or anything."
"That's right, sir."
Parkus nodded, satisfied. Apparently, I told him what he wanted to hear. I confirmed that I was a complete loser and that yes, his life was a lot better than mine.
"Could I meet you at Denny's in the morning and buy you dinner?" he asked. "I'd like to talk over a business proposition with you."
"Sure," I said, too stunned to say anything more.
He drove up to the gate and waited for me to open it. I hit the button, the gate rolled open, and I watched him drive up the hill, wondering what he could possibly want from me.
I kept watching him on the monitor. I couldn't do that with most residents, but Parkus happened to live on one of the corners of the intersection that I'm supposed to watch for those "courtesy tickets," so technically, I wasn't spying, I was just doing my job.
Cyril Parkus lived in a huge, Spanish-style house that had two detached garages out front and a couple of stone lions on either side of the driveway, each with one stone paw resting on a stone ball. I've never understood the point of those lion statues, or why rich people think it's classy to have them. I've thought about buying one and sticking it in front of my apartment door, just to see how my life changes, but I don't know what they're called or where you find them and I probably couldn't afford one anyway.
Once he went inside his house, the excitement was over and I was in for a long, restless night, waiting for daybreak, unaware that with the sunrise, my life would change completely.
Chapter Two
At eight o'clock sharp, Victor Banos showed up for his shift. Excuse me, Sergeant Victor Banos. That Sergeant thing is real important to him, though the only real difference between him and me are two military-type stripes sewn on the shoulders of his uniform, which he earned by being the nephew of the area supervisor for the security company.
The stripes indicate that Victor gets slightly highe
r pay than me because he also serves as a training officer, which means he sometimes shares the shack with new recruits, showing them the complexities of writing license plates down in the log and watching the gate when you're in back on the toilet.
What Victor doesn't tell the newbies is how he takes kickbacks from painters, gardeners, plumbers, handymen, electricians, and other workers that he recommends to the residents, or that as the day-shift guy he always gets the best Christmas presents, because he's the one guard the people who live there actually know.
I really wanted Cyril Parkus to drive up in his Jag, or maybe his Mercedes or Range Rover, and pick me up for that business meeting, just to see the look of jealousy on Sergeant Victor's face, but I knew it wasn't going to happen.
"Anything happen last night?" asked Victor.
He asked me that every morning, and every morning I told him nothing had, even though it wasn't always true.
A year ago, in the street in front of the guard shack, I saw a coyote with a French poodle in its mouth. We stared at each other for a minute or two, then he ran off. Now the coyote shows up every few weeks to stare at me some more. I stare back. That night, just before dawn, he came back. It felt like he stared at me a lot longer this time, before loping off into the darkness.
I'm not sure if a coyote looking at me would qualify as something "happening" to Victor, who claims he once got a blowjob in broad daylight from a teenage girl who lives in the community. While she was giving it to him, her mother happened to drive up to the gate. Victor says he just smiled and waved her through, and neither mother nor daughter was ever the wiser.
I don't know if the story is true, but all of us guards wanted to believe it anyway. It gave us one more thing to fantasize about during those long shifts in that tiny shack.
So, like always, I told Victor nothing happened, and trudged down the street to where my '95 Nissan Sentra was parked, a discreet distance from the million-dollar front gate so as not to bring down the property values. They don't want my car leaking oil on the pressed-concrete cobblestones in front of the gate, but they don't mind the resident who's kept a dead DeLorean rotting in his driveway for years, the tires flat, the car caked in layers of calcified bird crap. If it was a Tercel, or a Sonata, or a Maxima, or any other car with a sticker price under fifty thousand dollars, there'd be an angry mob on his front lawn lobbing rocks, torches, and lawyers at the house.
