The Player

by Michael Tolkin

  Kahane tried to throw Griffin off with a few thrusts of his legs, but Griffin had never felt such focus before. Nothing could move him. Kahane was gagging, throwing spit on Griffin’s pants, but it was too late for him to yell. The surprise of the attack had taken his breath away. He died with his eyes closed.

  Griffin took Kahane’s wallet and watch. He considered putting the body in the car and driving it away from the lot, but then he would have to take a taxi back to his own car. He would just leave him and walk away. He rolled the body under the car. No one would see it at night. He put the cap back on the valve; the action of threading it was a comfort, he was sorry when he let it go. He crawled away, hiding below window level of three cars before standing up. He went the long way around the parking lot to the street.

  When he got to the main boulevard, he looked behind him. Nothing. No one. As he drove past the theater on the way to the freeway, the audience was leaving the final show.

  All right, he said to himself, suppose you’re in court and they’re asking you how you felt, what would you say? Honestly? Detached, maybe. There was a sensation of terrific exhaustion, but that was from the physical strain of wrestling. It was not impossible to kill.

  He pulled off the freeway in Hollywood and dropped the wallet and watch in a gas station dumpster. At the next red light, on Sunset Boulevard, his right foot started to shake on the brake pedal. He asked himself if this was fear or guilt, and he couldn’t answer. He took Sunset to Beverly Glen and drove into the canyon.

  His house was quiet and fresh, pleasantly unfamiliar, the way it was when he came home from long trips. Night-blooming jasmine cast its scent into his bedroom.

  After a shower he took a bottle of tranquilizers from his medicine cabinet. He tapped two pills into his hand but thought, no, and threw the two pills into the toilet. He dropped the rest of the pills in the water and flushed them away. It had been two years since he had taken any, his system was clean, he didn’t really drink more than a few beers or glasses of wine a week, no drugs anymore, this was no time to start. As he watched them drown, he knew he had made the right decision, even the brave decision. He didn’t think of it as a protective maneuver, against a sudden urge to kill himself, but instead it was a renunciation, an exercise in discipline. Sedation inhibits dreaming. If he was going to suffer nightmares, better to let them come as they wanted, as they needed, and not try to scare them away with little pills; all the small, bad dreams would collect in an ugly hive, waiting for him, and he couldn’t keep them away forever, not even with addiction. What else would he suffer? He expected the name David to bother him. He hoped it wouldn’t show up in scripts. Yes, and for a while he would be nervous every time he saw a cop, but this, too, would pass.

  He slipped into bed and felt high excitement. He was tempted to get up and drink a glass of chamomile tea, but the thought of all that effort—get up, turn on lights, walk downstairs, step on the cold tile, open up cabinet, open up box of tea, remove tea bag, turn on flame, lean against counter, wait for water to boil, wait for tea to steep, look at clock, come back upstairs—was overwhelming. He lowered himself into his exhaustion, which welcomed him. He looked through the darkness to the Writer and searched his heart for all the sincerity he could squeeze from it and tried to adjust for the interference of pride. He said aloud, “I hope you understand what I’ve done.” Then he fell asleep.

  In the morning he found a postcard attached to his newspaper. It was the kind of all-occasion card that little gift shops sell, an airbrush collage of a slice of cherry pie, a 1957 Buick, red lips, fried eggs, bacon, and a half of a kiwifruit. All of these images floated over a Rocky Mountain backdrop, a forest receding to a snowcapped range. He turned it over. The writing was dense, almost impenetrable.

  Griffin—

  You said you’d get back to me.

  Griffin looked at the card: IMAGES WITH AN APPETIZING DIFFERENCE. How many stores in Los Angeles sold this card? The card reminded him of a Betty Boop cartoon in which Earth is for sale and is auctioned off to the planets. The lowest bidder, Saturn, wins. Somehow Earth’s magnetic core, a horseshoe magnet on a string, is removed and put in Saturn’s pocket. Gravity is reversed. Everything floats from the land. Finally the magnet is returned and order is restored.

  Now he had killed a man, and what good had it done him? He looked through the newspaper. The body would have been found too late for the morning edition. There was nothing about it yet. The death would probably catch some attention, but was it brutal or ugly enough to be really newsworthy? What would the police think? A simple mugging. No one would know it was a sacrifice.

  How long would it take this gesture of appeasement carried on the scent of that bloodless death to reach the Writer? Stuffing a body under a car in Pasadena to convince someone to leave you alone is a complicated message. The Writer was having fun with Griffin, so why should he stop and kill him?

  Griffin drove to the studio, hoping he had addressed this message correctly. He had sent something by slow mail, but he was certain it would arrive. He was positive.

  Four

  Nobody leaves my office until we agree on fifteen reasons for why we go to the movies.” Levison looked around the room. “Alison, when was the last time you bought a ticket to see a movie?”

  Alison Kelly, his story editor, covered her face with her hands. “I am so embarrassed,” she said. “But I just hate to stand in lines. I think it’s been two months. What can I say, I go to screenings.”

  Levison stood up. “From now on, everyone in this room has to go to a movie theater and pay to see a movie, sneak previews don’t count, at least once a month.” He turned to Griffin. “Griffin, when was the last time you bought a ticket to see a movie?”

  “The Bicycle Thief, last night.” As soon as he said it, he realized what he had done. He had confessed.

  “Okay,” said Levison, “why did you go?”

  “Because it’s a classic and I’ve never seen it.”

  “And why didn’t you have it screened?”

  “I wanted to feel the audience reaction.”

  “What was the reaction?”

  “They loved it.”

  “Who were they?”

  “People who hate the movies we make.” Better to go on the attack. Maybe not.

  “Did you like it?”

  “It’s great. Of course.”

  “No remake potential?”

  “We’d have to give it a happy ending.”

  “What if we set it in space, another planet. The Rocket Thief?” He was grinning. This was a joke.

  “A poor planet?”

  “There you go,” said Levison. “Right away we’re talking about something we’ve never seen in a science-fiction film, and that’s a poor planet. How come space is always rich?”

  “Luke Skywalker’s farm in Star Wars was pretty run-down.”

  “Fine,” said Levison. “And it worked, and what I’m saying is, that’s why we have these meetings, to come up with images, to come up with characters and story ideas, so we’re not at the mercy of whoever comes through the door. So we can contribute, so our own ideas can get made. Now. Let’s start at the beginning. Why do we go to the movies? Give me some reasons.”

  Hands were raised. Levison ran to the always ready easel with its large tablet of clean poster paper and, with a marking pen, quickly scribbled one through fifteen.

  “One,” he said. “Griffin went to see a classic. This list should not be in any special order of priority. You’ll notice I don’t want to start with the clichés, like escape or entertainment. So we’ll say—and this is a legitimate reason to go to the movies—we’ll say, ‘We go to see classics.’” He wrote CLASSICS on the paper. Then he wrote next to two, ENTERTAINMENT, and next to three, ESCAPE.

  “Mysteries,” someone said. MYSTERIES was added.

  “Doesn’t anyone go to the movies for sex?” asked Levison. “Don’t guys choose movies that they hope will turn on their girlfriends?” Levison grinned
and wrote SEXUAL PROVOCATION.

  “New fashions?”

  STYLE.

  “I like driving fast after a James Bond film.”

  ENERGY.

  “What about movie stars?”

  STARS.

  “I’m always happy looking at Paris.”

  TRAVEL.

  “Comedy.”

  LAUGHS.

  “Horror films.”

  SCREAMS.

  “Songs.”

  SONGS.

  “Love stories.”

  LOVE STORIES.

  “Are we talking about types of movies or reasons that we go?” Drew asked.

  “Whatever gets you to the theater,” said Levison.

  “I like the crowd,” said Drew. “I like other people.”

  COMMUNITY.

  Griffin pressed back into the green couch. He thought about excuses. First he would have to say something to the people in the room. Once the body was discovered, and it was already in a morgue, he knew that someone would say, “This writer was killed outside that theater you went to last night, Griffin, did you know that?” And he would answer, “That’s the last time I go out in public.” Some kind of light remark to get away from the specific murder into the territory of a world gone mad.

  “Sometimes,” said Drew Posner, “I have to admit I go to the movies not so much for escape—well, I guess it’s a kind of escape, but it’s more—it’s for comfort. It’s sort of everything, it doesn’t matter what kind of film, just as long as it’s a movie.”

  COMFORT.

  “I know they’re not popular now,” said Mary, “but I’ve always liked big costume epics.”

  PERIOD.

  “Fair enough,” said Levison. “The point of this exercise is to think about what we like, not what we think we should like, or what we think the public will like or what we think the public already likes. And that’s fifteen. Let’s get sixteen. Who’s going for it?”

  Griffin raised his hand. “Usually I go to the movies to see what everyone else is seeing, so I can talk about it, so I don’t feel left out. When I was in the fourth grade, all the cool kids in my class had seen The Great Escape, I hadn’t. But I acted like I had.”

  Levison held the chalk to the board, trying to find the one word.

  “Try lemmings,” said Drew.

  PEER PRESSURE.

  “Now that we know why we go to the movies, the next step will be to look for projects that engage us on these basic levels. Class dismissed.”

  Griffin wanted the day to stop until the afternoon edition of the Herald came out. He returned to his office and closed the door. He called the studio store and asked if the afternoon papers were in. They were.

  Jan looked up from her script as he left. He marched to the store, picked up the paper, dropped his quarter, and marched back to his office. He was gone for five minutes. He passed Jan and closed the door. He put the paper on the desk. He felt the same anticipation for the news as he did when the first reviews of one of the company’s films came out. It was on the ninth page.

  MAN FOUND DEAD IN THEATER PARKING LOT

  A theater projectionist leaving his job after midnight discovered the body of David Kahane, 29, in the parking lot of the Rialto Theater in Pasadena. A spokesman for the Pasadena Police said that Kahane had been dead at least two hours before the body was discovered. The cause of death has not been identified. Kahane, a part-time writer, was a resident of Hollywood.

  Would the Writer read this and get the message? Griffin wasn’t sure. Why did they call him a part-time writer? Griffin felt sorry for Kahane. Probably the reporter had a screenplay in his desk, or ideas for a script, and a friend or two in the entertainment department of the paper, so he had a mean sense of the fringes of the business. Poor June Mercator, who probably loved Kahane, would she stay with him if she hadn’t loved his writing? That was too hard a question. Blinded by love, she might have thought he was Melville. Would she spend the next few days reading Kahane’s unpublished stories and un-produced scripts? Here was a sentence Griffin wished he could say: I have killed exactly the right man.

  Griffin looked at his messages. A call from an agent. A call from the Marketing department. A call from Business Affairs. A call from a writer. A call from an agent. A call from an agent. A call from Levison. A call from his lawyer. A call from London. Had Kahane ever been this busy? Was the Writer ever this busy?

  Jan called him on the intercom. Walter Stuckel was in the outer office. Griffin told Jan to tell him to wait a minute. He got off the phone. He counted to ten, then to twenty, then to twenty-seven. He went to the door, better to meet Stuckel more than halfway.

  “Hello, Walter.” Stuckel was on his feet, reading memos faced away from him on Jan’s desk. When Griffin extended his hand, Stuckel looked up slowly, and this refusal to play along, which in anyone else would have provoked annoyance, scared Griffin.

  Stuckel took his hand. He was about fifty-five, with thick white hair brushed forcefully away from a severe part; anyone in a corporation would recognize that he was not an administrative executive. He wore a turquoise blazer and black pants and brown Florsheim loafers. He had mottled pink-and-white skin. He squinted, just a little, not to avoid the sun but to focus his examination. “We should talk,” he said.

  Griffin brought him into his office. Instead of taking a seat by the couch, he sat behind his desk, forcing Stuckel to take a hard-backed chair. He offered coffee. Stuckel refused it, politely.

  “Okay, Walter,” said Griffin, “don’t tell me you’ve come to pitch a story.”

  “I’ve got a few.”

  “I bet you do, Walter.”

  “But I’m not a writer.”

  “If the stories are good, we can always hire someone to make them work.” Griffin didn’t like the subject. His heart was pounding.

  “Did you ever have a meeting with David Kahane?”

  “Yes. Quite a while ago.”

  “Did you know he’s dead?”

  “Good Lord, he was younger than me, what happened?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Griffin wanted to stop time. “Walter, tell me everything you’re thinking about, right now.”

  “Did you know I used to be a cop?”

  “FBI, right?”

  “That, too. I got a call from Pasadena homicide today. David Kahane was murdered last night.”

  “No.”

  “And you called his house around seven o’clock. His girlfriend told you he was going to see a movie in Pasadena.”

  “I don’t even remember the name of the movie.”

  “The Bicycle Thief. You went.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You went. You met Kahane at the theater, you got drunk with him in a Japanese restaurant, and he left before you did. Then he went to a McDonald’s. That was the last time anyone saw him alive. Griffin, why do you deny it?”

  “What do the police think happened?” It was a Burger King, not a McDonald’s. Already the story was getting lost. This cheered Griffin and gave him hope.

  “They think he was murdered for his wallet and his watch. It happens every day. I can tell the police you’re acting like you’ve got something to hide, and they’ll haul you into the station for questioning. Or I can let you speak to them over the phone. Or they can come here. Or they can drop this altogether. I don’t think they’ll do that.”

  “Of course, I’d want to cooperate any way I can.”

  “There was a party in Malibu a few years back, music people. A lot of drugs. A lot of rum.”

  Griffin supposed this was Stuckel’s way of saying that this story was about black people.

  “And there was a security guard, to keep gate-crashers away. He had a gun. One of the guests wanted to play with it. The guard gave him the gun. A few minutes later the guard was dead. The police were the second call. And the matter was taken care of.”

  “Who did they call first?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you if I knew.
I have to say, though, that I admire your tactics. Stonewall. Deny everything, it’s your word against theirs. As long as nobody saw you actually kill the man, and as long as you have nothing to connect you, except for, well, how many meetings did you have?”

  “I only met him once.”

  “Not counting last night.”

  “Okay,” said Griffin, “you’re right. I saw him last night. And I did know he’s dead, I saw the paper.”

  “Then why didn’t you say so?”

  “Good God, Walter, I don’t want to get involved.”

  “Very good. I’ll tell that to the police.”

  “I’ll call them myself. I’ll say I met him at the theater, we got drunk together at a Japanese bar, he had to go home, I didn’t feel sober enough to drive, he left, that was the end of it. I’ll tell them, when they ask, that I went to see him because he’d pitched me an idea. I loved it so much, I wanted to buy it, and I didn’t want to wait until he was home to tell him. I was that happy for him, and for me. That’s the truth. That’s what I’ll tell them. I’ll go there right now.” How could anyone, how could Walter Stuckel, not believe this? It was so simple. And if they didn’t believe it, Griffin would stick to this line, because it was easy to tell and easy to remember. It made sense.

  “No. We’ll have them come here.”

  “I don’t want to inconvenience them.”

  “You’re talking like someone who’s guilty. You’re not guilty, are you?”

  “The usual neurotic guilt.”

  “That’s a joke. This is murder. I was a cop. You’re behaving like you killed him. If you act this way with the police, they’ll be suspicious.”