by Susan Dunlap
“Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. Dolly sent me.” She was gilding the lily invoking Dolly’s name. Nothing in Bleeker’s voice suggested he had the authority to refuse anyone. Even the guard hadn’t bothered to call and warn him.
And when he opened the door, he stood slumped in defeat. His black shirt showed signs of a long day in the sun. Deep horizontal wrinkles across the hip joint of his black jeans told of hours spent sitting in sticky-hot chairs. Inside his fringe of dark, sweat-damp hair his bald dome shone an uncomfortable sunburned pink. Clearly he had been too preoccupied to remember a hat. For a man whose pate indicated years of baldness, that was a notable oversight. “What does Dolly need now?” He squinted at
Kiernan; his hand tightened on the door. “Wait a minute. Last night you were the union rep.”
So Dolly hadn’t contacted him. Not even a courtesy call. “Private investigator, working with Dolly.” She flipped open the pass.
A groan escaped Bleeker’s lips. If he was making any attempt to hide his reaction, it was a failure. He might as well have had a ticker tape running across his forehead: Why did Dolly hire a private eye? Why didn’t she tell me? What does she know that I don’t? Whatever, she’s getting ready to stick it to me. “Just what does Dolly Uberhazy’s private eye want?”
“I need a few answers,” Kiernan said, offering nothing but fuel for his paranoia. “Easy answers, preferably inside in the air conditioning.” Air conditioning was the last thing she needed, but that was no reason to miss whatever the production trailer might reveal. He eased back, and she moved past him to settle in one of two leather swivel chairs. The trailer, more of an office than a mobile womb, looked like any too-busy office. There was nothing personal in it.
Bleeker flopped in the remaining swivel and took a last swallow from a Sierra Nevada bottle.
“Dolly said you made her an offer she couldn’t refuse with Lark Sondervoil. How did you find Lark?”
“She called me.”
“She herself?”
“Right. She called me cold.”
That didn’t fit with the picture Talbot had painted of Lark Sondervoil at the High Country gym—not a girl who would stride into L.A., know who to call, and have the chutzpah to do it. But Bleeker no longer seemed capable of making it up. The man looked like a collection of leaderless parts. His brown eyes were tense, his lids awkwardly half-closed, and his body was slumped in the chair as if someone had let the air out. “A cold call, Cary? Isn’t that pretty unusual, particularly for a nineteen-year-old novice?”
“Trying’s not rare. Succeeding is.”
“Just how did she manage that success?”
“I don’t remember.”
Despite the air conditioning, the trailer was muggy, and as she looked at the papers scattered atop the desk, she could make out a thin coating of white powder that could have been powdered sugar from a morning’s doughnut, talcum, or the result of a more expensive mishap. Given Bleeker’s state, if she let him slip out of one question, he’d be lost to her. “Cary, you’re exhausted. I have a job to do. Don’t make every question a tug-of-war. Why did you see Lark Sondervoil?”
“The Gaige Move.” He shook his head. “Like I never learn. You’d think that would have been one action sequence I never wanted to set eyes on again.”
“You hired Greg Gaige for Bad Companions, right?” She leaned forward in anticipation.
“Right.”
“For the Move?”
“Then? No. I just needed to cut expenses. The Move was gravy. Shit, I thought I’d made the deal of the century. I was a hot commodity.”
Kiernan felt her face flush. Her face never betrayed her like that. But cut expenses as a rationale for hiring the best acrobatic stunt double of his time? She’d heard it from Dolly, but this offhand comment from a marginal second unit director ... By the time Bleeker contacted him, Greg must have been clinging to the crane arm with both hands and both legs. “Yarrow had a contract. How could you fire him?”
Bleeker shrugged. Clearly, it was not a question that ignited his waning bit of curiosity.
“Cary!”
“Look, you want an education on film financing, get your friend Dolly to give it to you. But take it from me, contracts can be changed or broken, and when they do, it’s not the studio that loses money.”
“And Yarrow had no viable recourse?”
“Not unless he wanted to mortgage the farm for court costs. And never work again.”
“Is that kind of double-dealing standard in this business?” The Greg Gaige she knew wouldn’t have been prepared for that. He’d grown up doing the required number of release moves on the bars, honing floor exercises so he stayed inside a forty-foot square. The most duplicitous thing he’d encountered had been the random bias or provincialism of judges, and everyone on his gymnastic team would have been complaining about that. But to be hit like an old croquet ball, used to knock another off the field … She squeezed her eyes shut against the picture. When she opened them, it was to face an even more depressing question: How bad had things gotten with Greg that he accepted the offer? “Why did they even assume Greg Gaige would accept that kind of offer?”
Bleeker laughed limply. “Why? Because he made the offer.”
“Greg solicited Yarrow’s job?” she asked, so stunned that her words seemed to flow out of a stranger’s mouth. “Why?”
“Gaige was too old. He’d lost a step. He was living in the past.”
“But he could still do the Move so you wanted him, right?” It wasn’t a question but a demand.
Nodding in acquiescence, Bleeker shrank back into his chair.
Her chest went cold. She could still see Greg Gaige that time in San Francisco, striding across the set with the lightness and surety of a cougar. It had been twenty years then since he’d posed for the poster photo. The years had begun to line his face, push back his hair, but that didn’t matter. He had still been the same eager, excited, sure-he-could-do-it guy. But Bad Companions hadn’t come long after that. In San Francisco he must have known how precarious things were with him—even then, when he refused to acknowledge her questions about the future. She pushed the picture away and stared back at Cary Bleeker. Tell me Greg Gaige didn’t sink to the level where he was begging for work, stealing jobs from his friends! She forced out the words, “Angling for a job that someone else is already on—is that unusual?”
“Not unheard of. If it were the studio doing the double-dealing, no one would bat a lash. Look, there’s nothing in this business that can’t change like that.” He snapped his thumb off his little finger, making only a dull thud for a snap. Momentarily he stared, surprised, at his hand. “On the Bad Companions location, things were changing all the time. I’d come back from lunch and find the studio had hired a new actor I’d never heard of. Or they’d need one of the stars back in L.A., so they’d move up the shooting time of their scene that used the same set as my scene, so mine got shifted backward. Did they tell me, a lowly second unit director? Fat chance. Got so I didn’t even bother complaining.”
“But the stunt community—?” she prompted.
“That’s a little different. It’s small, and the guys who’ve been around awhile have a little more honor among themselves.” He lifted the Sierra Nevada to his mouth. It was empty. “You want a beer?”
“Yes.”
He reached over to the fridge, pulled two bottles from the door, and handed her one.
She opened it and drank, but her throat was so taut, it was hard to swallow. “And Greg, didn’t he have honor?”
Bleeker stared at the green bottle. “Yeah, he did. But he had only a few more good years left, anyone with any sense could see that. It was like the shorter the time, the more desperate he got. When he died, I thought …” Bleeker leaned back and took a long swallow of his beer. His eyelids shut. He took another drink. Kiernan was just about to prompt him when he spoke. “It was lucky he died before he lost the Move.”
Kiernan picked up her beer, but
it was a moment before she could make herself drink. “I saw a still of Greg in the middle of the Move—smiling.”
“I know the one you mean.” A spark of enthusiasm flickered and died, like a match beneath thick green logs. Bleeker’s voice was without inflection. “It was from his first movie, the other time he did the Move. When I saw it, I was blown away. I mean, it was the most important publicity shot of his career, and he was enjoying it, as if he’d missed the line between work and play. I mean, I love directing, but I know it’s work.”
“Right. But it’s a fine line. And you’ve probably enjoyed it less since the bad luck incidents,” she said, aware that she had built a bond between them and now was snapping it back at him with an ease that was almost automatic. “They started on that set, Bad Companions, didn’t they?”
He reached for his beer, then let his hand drop. “Christ, does the entire world know about me? Or did Dolly inform you? Dolly, hell—she’s probably the only exec in Hollywood who’ll still take a chance on me.”
“Why did she?”
“Who knows? Maybe it was the Gaige Move. Hell, maybe it was something as quirky as my finding the polenta rolls she’s so crazy about.”
“The menu was in the contract?” Kiernan asked skeptically.
“I sent a box of them with my agent to spice up the deal,” he said with a wan smile.
“Or to remind Dolly that you recalled her eating them last time—on the same set she had an affair on?” Kiernan wanted his reaction to that affair.
“Listen, if I sent food to commemorate every affair on a set, I could feed Bangladesh.”
“Who was the guy?”
“If I could remember every guy—”
“Right,” she said giving up on that. “Dolly did tell me about Greg’s brother having to be barred from the set. And about Dratz. Do you think one of them is behind your ‘bad luck’?”
“Pedora? The guy was a nutcase, a paranoid would-be screenwriter who figured all Hollywood was united in one great campaign against him. Sure I figured it could be him. Or Dratz. Or Yarrow. Or anyone else on the set. Who knows? Don’t waste your time trying to figure it out. I’ve spent ten years. There’s no rationale. I’ve checked payroll logs, but there’s no one person who’s been on every set. I’ve turned my mind to mush thinking about motives. Was Yarrow pissed off at being fired? The guy was operating on a bum leg. He should have seen that coming. And Pedora, did he lose his mind because his meal ticket was killed? Like I said, the guy’s a nutcase.”
“But you’re not sure he’s your nutcase?”
“I only wish. If I could prove it was Pedora, or Dratz, or anyone else, I’d take out a full-page ad in the trades. My career would be reborn. Do you know what it’s like working my ass off year after year, directing second unit after second unit, never getting to work with a star? And waiting, always waiting for the disaster that’s coming?” His voice rang with emotion.
“Does it happen on every picture?”
“No. It’s almost worse that way. Intermittent reinforcement.”
“What kind of things do you mean when you talk about ‘disasters’?”
“Short-circuit in the wiring burns out a couple of banks of lights.”
“Couldn’t that just be an accident?”
“Of course.” He sat up straight. “But it had never happened before. And then, suddenly, two banks. One we could have done without. Two cost us a couple nights’ shooting.”
“What else?” Kiernan said, her shoulders tightening with excitement.
“Malicious pranks. Look, when you’re a second unit director, in charge of a lot of technical and mechanical devices, there’s a myriad of stuff that can go wrong.”
“Give me another example. What happened in your last picture?”
He started to protest, then shrugged. “Flowers. I don’t remember what they were called. They were some kind of delicate pastel things flown in from the end of the earth. The greensmen stuck them in the ground the day before the shooting. Next morning they were gone, the whole damned lot of them. Nothing but singed leaves. And you know what that means.”
“You have to wait to shoot till you can fly in another batch. In the meantime you pay people to stand around?”
“Exactly. Producer was so furious, I’m lucky to be sitting here with my balls in place. And my wallet. He threatened to take the overrun out of my check. I should have been making so much.” He shrugged. “Nothing wrecks a career like going over budget.”
“Singed leaves.” She leaned forward. “The plants were burned?”
“Yeah. Somebody threw a roll of paper towels over them and lit it.”
“These incidents, did they all use fire?”
“Yeah. Every one.”
She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her thighs. She’d been so sure that moving the marker was the latest of the pranks, a prank that had gotten out of hand. But whoever spent years intermittently harassing Bleeker had been obsessed enough to include fire in every incident. Obsessives don’t suddenly drop their MO and opt for the easiest means. “Cary, the fires in these pranks, were they always central to the result?”
He shrugged noncommittally.
“Yesterday there was a fire in a trash can by the trailers, remember?”
Slowly, Bleeker nodded.
“And right after that,” she said, “the marker was moved.”
CHAPTER 21
THE BEER CAN FELL from Cary Bleeker’s hand. Bleeker leaned forward in his chair and clutched his head. Normally, Kiernan would have classified the reaction as theatrical. But now she, who’d been known to remind people of her lack of bedside manner, had the urge to scoop Bleeker onto her lap like a small child and hold him safe till the pain went away. Victims fell apart, but perpetrators carried on, too. She wasn’t sure in which category Bleeker belonged.
Either way, a wound like this one could throb for the rest of his life, and no amount of comforting would provide an opiate. If he was innocent, the most she could do was to give him time to let the initial shock pass. But if he had moved the cordon posts, she had to take advantage of his unguarded state. The truth came first. “Cary, maybe moving the marker doesn’t fit with the other pranks?”
Bleeker pushed himself up. Momentarily, his dark eyes brightened, then he shook his head and slumped into the leather chair. “No, it fits his MO.”
“Have there been injuries in the other pranks?”
“No.” He clutched his head again, but he didn’t sink forward, and in a moment he gave up the awkward position and let his hands drop. “This is it. He wins. I’m out of the business. I’ll never direct again. I quit.” An ironic smile flashed on his swollen features and was gone. “Who am I kidding? I won’t have the chance to quit—no one will ever hire me. Bad enough I’ve cost hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, but now I’m responsible for killing people.”
“Cary, there isn’t time for self-pity.”
His head snapped up. “What kind of woman are you?”
Bleeker was angry, but at least he was alert. “Let’s look at this practically,” Kiernan said. “Who have we got as suspects? The pranks started on the Bad Companions set—”
“Christ! Carlton Dratz—someone spotted him on the set! How fucking fitting. Lark’s death has the earmarks of Dratz. He moves the marker—because he isn’t thinking, because it’s in his way, because he wants to see what will happen, who knows?—and ends up with a killing, for which someone else suffers.”
“By ‘someone else,’ you mean you as opposed to Lark?” So much for jolting him out of self-pity. “Where is Dratz these days?”
“Who knows?”
“Where did he go after Bad Companions?”
“Off with one of the extras—the girl he was so busy screwing in the honeywagon.”
“Her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Cary, we’re talking about the man who might be ruining your life, and you haven’t even bothered to track down th
e woman he went off with?”
He jolted up. “Look, the guy wasn’t the center of my life. He was like a cold sore on your lip, you know? When it’s blooming, it’s all you can think about, but when it goes, you forget about it, and one morning you realize it’s been gone for days. When Dratz left, I was just relieved to have him gone. It wasn’t until three or four pictures later that there were enough incidents to form a pattern, and I began to think about Dratz. But by that time, no one remembered who Companions’ star was, much less who all the extras were.”
“Wasn’t there a crew list?”
“Sure, but it didn’t include local hires; it wasn’t updated. It’s useless.”
“There has to be some way we can find out,” she insisted.
“I haven’t found one, not in ten years.”
“Bleeker, you are not an investigator. There have to be records from that set, contracts signed, salaries paid.”
Bleeker’s face brightened. “Yeah, of course. Hey, this is going to be easier than you thought.”
Kiernan scowled. If there was one thing she hated, it was civilians telling her her work was going to be a snap.
“Here’s why it’s going to be so easy for you to find out about Dratz. The accountant from Bad Companions is here.” Bleeker beamed at her. When she didn’t respond, he nudged: “He can get the payroll records from Companions.”
“After ten years? You don’t even save tax forms that long.”
“Yeah, but see, accounting is so boring. It was a thrill for this guy to be on a movie location. All the hassles and changes, it was Hollywood with a capital H, and he loved it.”
“And that accountant was Liam McCafferty, the city media liaison, right? I talked to him on the set yesterday.”
Bleeker beamed brighter. “See, I told you he loved it.”
CHAPTER 22
JASON PEDORA STOOD NEXT to the little food trailer, panting from the double-time run in from Torrey Pines Boulevard. He wasn’t meant for that. Nobody’d asked Isherwood or Fitzgerald to jog.
