The Player

by Michael Tolkin

  A policeman assigned them numbers and stood them in a line. Then he opened a door, and they were led into a small space with a floor-to-ceiling mirror on one side, and a wall with horizontal stripes to measure their height. They were told to face forward. Beyond the mirror, someone studied them. Susan Avery was there. The room was soundproof; if the witness was talking, he couldn’t hear her. He didn’t know why, but he assumed the witness was a woman.

  Each of the men was told to step forward and then to turn from side to side. Griffin was number two. He took a step forward as he imagined a cop would who was doing a job, with a sure motion, hinting of the military. The real cop was next to him and stepped forward slowly. Was he pretending to be guilty?

  Griffin was singled out again. So was number one, who was taller than him.

  After ten minutes they were brought back to the holding room. They waited there for twenty minutes. Griffin wanted to get a message to the limousine driver, to open the suitcase in the trunk and bring him his toothbrush and razor, but of course they wouldn’t let him keep the razor. He could ask for some clean underwear from the suitcase.

  Susan Avery came into the room and thanked everyone. Jeff Beckett was behind her.

  “That’s it?” asked Griffin.

  “That’s all she wrote,” she said.

  “Did they pick anyone?”

  “They didn’t pick you.”

  “I was thinking, you know, I was on the street when he was killed. And a witness to the murder might have seen me there and, in the lineup, would have remembered my face.”

  “There you go with my defense,” said Beckett.

  Griffin couldn’t believe that it was over. They were joking now, but it seemed that Avery had only followed a lead, because yes, someone had seen the murder, but it was dark, and Griffin had been impossible to identify. Avery never seriously believed that Griffin killed Kahane, she was only doing her job.

  “What do you do now?” asked Griffin.

  “I just have to ask you a few more questions,” she said.

  “With my lawyer in the room.”

  “With your lawyer in the room.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “How long have you known June Mercator?”

  “Since Kahane’s funeral.”

  “You’d never met her before that.”

  “No.”

  “How well did you know Kahane?”

  “I really didn’t. Not at all.”

  “Thank you, Griffin. I’m sorry if we’ve inconvenienced you.”

  “If you catch the killer, let me know.” They shook hands warmly, and Griffin walked with Jeff Beckett into the sunshine.

  “So, Counselor, how much did that cost me?”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Step into my office.” He brought the lawyer to the limousine. He took his traveler’s checks from his wallet. There were four hundreds.

  “Do you have fifty?” asked Griffin. He signed three checks. The lawyer gave him three twenties. Griffin gave him two fives in return. They were even.

  “She thinks you’re guilty,” said Beckett. “I think she thinks you just got away with murder.”

  “That’s her problem,” said Griffin. It was a little lame, but he couldn’t think of anything to say that would make himself look innocent. He supposed it didn’t matter. He knew her suspicion lingered because of his stupid monologue to the cop who followed him in the Beverly Hilton.

  “Say hello to Dick Mellen,” said Beckett.

  Griffin put a finger to his lips, meaning silence. Beckett understood.

  The driver asked Griffin how things had turned out.

  “I settled.”

  “Good,” said the driver. “You want to go back to the office?”

  “No,” said Griffin. “Take me home. Beverly Glen.”

  As the limousine drove through Pasadena, Griffin called Dick Mellen.

  “Yes,” said Griffin. “I’m interested in the job. Set up the meeting.”

  “You won’t regret it.”

  “You can’t say that,” snapped Griffin.

  “Then I won’t,” said Mellen.

  “It’s a big move,” said Griffin.

  “Well, you can have your doubts, and I understand them, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. These people want to back your taste, your vision.”

  Griffin leaned back into the seat. He was smiling. He could feel the smile, the rare, spontaneous, beautiful smile. He was at one with the world around him, and he let the tension leave him, just pack its bags and walk away from him.

  He would call in sick today, and if Levison was angry with him, so what? He didn’t care if he never saw the man again, or his office, or the studio. Let them lock me out, he thought. Why bother with Larry Levy and Oakley and Civella, why put up with that anymore? The chances were slim he’d be head of production; Levy would probably get the job, and Griffin felt, to his core, that now he didn’t want the job anymore. Mellen was right to have found him this new company. He was still young, he was strong, and he welcomed the challenge.

  Epilogue

  Six months passed. He marked the time not from the lineup, or the day he had left the studio, but from the Writer’s last contact with him, the phone call. So much had happened, and so quickly, that days would go by without his giving the Writer a thought.

  Jan had followed him to the new job. He had weighed the problems of keeping her—that she knew him too well, that she was there during the postcards, the first days of Larry Levy and the killing of David Kahane—against the problem of training someone new, and he decided that he didn’t have the time.

  She included the square red envelope with the Seattle postmark with his mail. The word PERSONAL was typed across the bottom. Inside the envelope was a greeting card, with a sentimental photograph of a beach at sunset. Tucked inside was a thousand dollars in cash. And a letter, folded in half and then folded again:

  Dear Griffin,

  As you can see, I’m out of town now, and I plan to stay here for a long time, probably forever. It’s better this way. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel, whether I’d miss Los Angeles, miss the movie business, and hate myself for quitting, but it hasn’t been like that at all. Well, it’s hard for me to see movies if I know the writers, but actually, I knew so few who ever saw their screenplays produced that it’s not a problem. And I had trouble seeing them when I was in town! Anyway, I decided to leave the day a friend of mine, one of the lucky ones, told me this story. It’s not really a story, it’s just a picture, an image. He was working one Sunday afternoon with a producer at the producer’s house in Malibu. The producer’s father is really rich—that’s part of the story. They were working on a script. At the end of the day a movie star, I won’t tell you who—oh, what the hell, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger—came over. He was there to have dinner. My friend wasn’t invited, didn’t expect it, that’s not an issue here, anyway. Schwarzenegger looked great, smoked the stub of a fat cigar and asked some really intelligent questions about the script they were working on. My friend was impressed. I found myself trying to tear everyone down as the story was being told, trying to make them less. For example: When my friend described the house, I said, “Oh, it’s his father’s house,” and my friend said, “No, it’s his.” “His father bought it for him,” I said, and my friend said, “Yeah, so what?” And that really stopped me. “Yeah, so what?” The producer was enjoying his life, he was having fun, he wasn’t confused, he didn’t hate himself. And I thought, Why am I torturing this executive? This is the sickest thing I’ve ever heard of. Why am I jealous of a rich kid whose father bought him a three-million-dollar playpen? My father’s helped me out, and that’s an advantage over someone who’s had to make every dime himself. So I didn’t get a movie made. So what?

  Oh, the money … for the windshields. Sorry.

  So the Writer had quit Hollywood. He had thought about his threats and awakened from his delirium of hatred. Griffin was happy for him. So few
who should, ever leave. He crumpled the envelope and tucked the cash, the card, and the letter into a pocket.

  He wondered what the Writer was doing now. Working in a bookstore? Had he returned to a family business? Was he a professor or a high-school teacher? And was he really so casual about his failure to see his vision on the screen? Would he ever write another script? If he did, would he submit it here? Griffin looked out his window at Century City. The Writer had kept track of Griffin’s career, knew about his new job, knew that Levison was out and that Levy now ran the studio. The Writer couldn’t know that Griffin and Levy were friends now, since Griffin had left the studio before a battle with Levy and there was no reason to quarrel. Would the Writer understand that Griffin loved his new job, loved working in Century City? There he could concentrate on getting movies made, and one was already in production, with another ready to go in a few weeks. It was an exciting time for him.

  Griffin left the office that evening and drove home through Beverly Hills. He had a thousand dollars in his pocket, and he wanted to buy something for his wife. The stores were closed. Tomorrow he would come back and buy her a pearl necklace. Or should he give the money away, hand it to a homeless family camped in a city parking lot?

  As he turned into the driveway, he checked the rearview mirror. No one was following him. He took the cash from his pocket and slipped it inside the glove compartment. If they went out to dinner that night and were stopped for speeding, he would have to produce his registration and proof of insurance, and his wife might see the thousand dollars. He locked the compartment and decided that if they did go out, they would take her car; they would take the Saab.