Good Sister, The

by Diana Diamond

  Padraig was flattered. “That’s what I do, boy. It’s magic.”

  Peter joined Catherine, Padraig, and some of the crew in an evening trip to the pub where Padraig took particular delight in holding court. “Drink up, my boy,” he ordered each time he carried a bottle to Peter’s table.

  “I hope none of your helicopter pilots is here,” Peter told Catherine, indicating the crowd of loose tongues at the bar.

  “Do you want to go up again for the real shooting?” she asked.

  “Not on your life. This business is a lot more dangerous than launching satellites.”

  “Peter?” she had to ask. “You don’t still suspect Padraig of … hiring that thug?”

  He answered as if he had been expecting the question. “Doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what you think. And you seem to feel that you’re perfectly safe.”

  “I am. I know I am.”

  Peter took her hand. “Good! Then the only thing I have to worry about is the budget. How badly are we over?”

  She began itemizing expenses. They were way over on props and special effects. Lots of the shots required dollies and cranes, and of course there were several that would use helicopters. But, on the other hand, they were a day ahead of schedule, and if they could hold to that …

  Peter cut her off with a gesture. “A figure?” he asked. “Or a percentage?”

  She pursed her lips. “Peter, this is a totally new kind of business for us. It’s not as precise as the cost of building a satellite or outfitting an earth station.”

  “And never in your life have you not known how much you were spending,” he answered. “So where are we?”

  “Twenty million over. Maybe twenty-five. I really don’t have the exact figures.”

  “Maybe thirty-three?” he asked, quoting Jennifer’s best estimation.

  Catherine slammed down her drink. “Okay, maybe thirty-three. As I said, I’m not a bean counter. And if that’s more than you can handle, then Padraig and I will buy you out. You can stick with a business you understand and leave the more adventurous stuff to me.”

  He nodded slowly. “Okay. If that’s your best answer. But I don’t think Jennifer is in any mood to finance a Padraig-and-Catherine production. So your funding will be cut off.”

  Catherine swallowed hard. Her eyes blinked as she calculated the equations. So that was it. Jennifer and Peter were going to put Padraig out of business.

  They started early in the morning, before the usual mammoth clouds could blow in from the sea. The morning also gave them a low sun, so the shadows of the helicopters would fall well away from the action.

  “We’re only going to do this once,” Padraig warned his team. “What we get is what we’ll have to go with. There’s no money for reshoots.”

  Catherine looked around for Peter, hoping that he would hear evidence of her concern for the budget. But he wasn’t in the gathering. True to his word, he had no intention of flying through a war zone—even a simulated one—in a helicopter.

  They made a final check. Cameras loaded and powered. Buried charges connected to the sequencer that would fire them in a precise pattern. Blank rounds ready at all the cannons. Communications systems working. Padraig was satisfied. He gave the signal for takeoff.

  The copters lifted, circled briefly, and then formed up. At the director’s command, the artillery pieces began firing. Then the stuntman raced out of the house and started across the field. The helicopters swooped in around him.

  The stuntman ran up a slope. Ahead, a charge exploded, simulating the hit of a cannon round. He darted right, leaping over the edge of the still smoldering crater, the dog yapping at his heels. Another simulated shell hit, this time closer to his right. The stuntman, who really did look like the boy he was standing in for, launched himself into the air, landed on his side, and rolled down the hill. Instantly, he scampered to his feet, looked around quickly, and then ran back onto his heading.

  There were random-looking explosions in the distance, each supposedly a stray shell from the cannons that were firing and belching smoke. Then another landed in front of the boy, knocking him backward. Again he picked himself up and darted ahead, mud and turf raining down on top of him.

  In the helicopters, all the cameras were rolling, one panning the landscape, another flying above the action and shooting down. The director’s chopper, with Padraig aboard, was down at treetop level, ahead of the stuntman and shooting back into the action. It paused, hovering, to get the sense of the boy running toward the lens, then darted in from behind to see the dog pull up next to its fallen master. It peeled away from the action and flew to the edge of the meadow, going for a rising shot that would start close on the boy, spin around, and gradually envelop the whole countryside. When it reached height, the running boy would be simply a dot, insignificant in a landscape of devastation.

  Suddenly, the helicopter shuddered. A puff of dark smoke billowed out from its turbine exhaust. The rhythmic popping of its rotors against the air turned into a steely whine. The body of the helicopter began to spin, then the craft spiraled down toward the ground.

  Aboard, the pilot battled the controls, trying to get the aircraft to respond. The cameraman let go of the camera and grabbed the open door frame to keep from being thrown out. The ashen director screamed into the microphone. Padraig, pinned into the corner of the backseat, rushed into the recitation of a Hail Mary.

  Catherine, watching from the ground, wasn’t aware of what was happening. There were clouds of smoke puffing out from the cannons, detonations across the field, and the hellish crack of shellfire. She couldn’t separate the smoke and whine of the sinking chopper from the planned catastrophe it was filming. Nor did the fact that it was falling register. It had been in the process of swooping all over the sky. All she knew was that the director was screaming into her earphones. Something terrible was happening. Maybe a camera had lost power and was missing the shot. Worse, maybe the stuntman had run too close to one of the charges. Was someone hurt? Why was the director suddenly out of control? She put her full attention to the babble of voices ringing in her ears. She didn’t notice Padraig’s helicopter crash into the trees.

  The crews manning the cannons were closest. Most were too involved in the firing to register that the aircraft was in trouble. The few who did see it stayed frozen at their positions, too stunned to act. They watched the fuselage smash into the trees, followed by the rotors, which cut through the branches like a giant lawn mower. Then the rotors splintered and threw down a shower of shattered metal.

  On the headsets a voice was screaming to stop the filming. Within seconds, a ghostly peace settled over the battlefield. The shell bursts stopped and the cannons were suddenly quiet. The two helicopters still in the air veered away. The gun crews broke from their positions and rushed to the broken body of the chopper resting gently in the trees. Catherine heard scraps of the commotion. “It’s down in the trees!” Another voice, “What happened? What hit it?” Still another, “I’m at the crash site. I see the plane. I don’t see anyone.” Then a voice with more authority ordered, “Get a cherry picker over there. Some ladders. And someone call the hospital.”

  Padraig was still praying when he opened his eyes. He found himself in a tree house, with branches broken against his window. One branch had cut through the floor and looked like a houseplant standing just inches from his face. The cameraman had fallen into his lap. There was a deep scratch on his forehead and a tuft of leaves growing out of his shirt collar. Behind the houseplant, he got a glimpse of the director, who was sobbing with his face buried in his hands. The pilot was sitting upright, rapidly throwing switches on the control console. It was as if he didn’t know that his mount had crashed.

  What had saved them, they reasoned when they were brought down from the tree, was the superb skill of the pilot. When he had seen that he couldn’t recover from the spin and that his helicopter was doomed, he had switched instantly to crash-survival mode. He had killed the engine and
shut down the fuel lines, which had kept the wreckage from bursting into flames. The trees had cushioned the fuselage and harmlessly dismantled the rotors. The impact had been abrupt and had broken the helicopter into pieces, but the cabin space had remained intact.

  What no one could figure was what had caused the accident. “Something hit the engine,” the pilot ventured. “At least that’s the way it felt.” But he had no idea what it was. No one had seen any birds, but there was still the chance that one had been sucked into the air intake. They hadn’t felt that they were being hit by any of the debris from the explosions, but it was nevertheless possible that a rock, blasted into the air, had pierced the skin and gone into the engine compressor. Or perhaps the engine had destroyed itself. Gas turbines were known to throw compressor blades right through the side of the craft they were powering.

  Padraig thought of another possibility when he saw Peter Barnes’s car pull into the parking area. “Could a rifle shot have done it?” he asked.

  The pilot looked confused. “No one was firing rifles, were they?”

  “None of our people,” Padraig said. “But could you bring down a helicopter with a rifle?”

  “Sure! A shot into the rotor control mechanism might cut one of the linkages. Or a bullet into the compressor could cause all kinds of damage.”

  Catherine saw Padraig’s eyes on Peter, who was walking up the hill, gradually showing awareness that something must have gone wrong. “Padraig, don’t even think about it. Peter wouldn’t know how to fire a rifle. I don’t think he even owns one.”

  “There better be someone who knows where he’s been all morning.”

  “How could he hit a moving target? He’s not a marksman. He probably doesn’t even know how to aim.”

  “Well, he could hire a marksman, damn it. He’s already hired an auto mechanic and an intruder. The man is a psychopath.”

  Peter came close enough to understand the gist of what had happened. “Is everything all right?” he asked to no one in particular. Then he focused in on Catherine. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “One of the cameramen,” she answered. “But it’s not serious.”

  “Padraig, are you all right?” Peter asked when he noticed O’Connell’s torn and stained clothes.

  “Peachy,” the actor answered. “Couldn’t be better. My heart is flooded with gratitude that no one was killed. I’m not even thinking of the millions lost in the shoot and the price of the helicopter.”

  Peter sat down next to Catherine, across from Padraig. “What caused it? Does anyone know?”

  “Just what we were discussing,” Padraig said.

  “Something hit the engine,” the pilot filled in. “The investigators will tear the wreck apart and put it back together again. They’ll have some answers.”

  “Perhaps it was a bullet,” Padraig interjected, “fired from over there on the hillside by one of my enemies. You haven’t noticed anyone around here who isn’t particularly fond of me, have you?”

  Peter grinned. “No one besides me. And I couldn’t hit that helicopter from twenty feet away, much less than from up there on the hill.”

  “And I suppose you spent the entire morning in the quiet of your room?”

  “Not at all,” Peter answered cheerfully, knowing exactly where Padraig was leading. “I drove down to New Ross to see about chartering a boat.”

  Padraig, too, was enjoying the game of cat and mouse. “And did you find a suitable craft?”

  “Sadly, no. I looked around the harbor, but there was nothing that I would enjoy. So I think I’ll just call it a vacation and get myself back to New York.”

  Padraig had to cancel the rest of the day’s shooting schedule and thought that they might lose as much as a week. His director was still in shock, unable to speak, much less create, and there were police and government officials all over the place. The crash of any commercial aircraft required a scrupulous investigation. The cast of extras had been recruited by the authorities to walk shoulder to shoulder over the entire field, retrieving even the most minute pieces of the helicopter. The manufacturer had set up a large tent where the parts would be reassembled. Policemen were pulling members of Padraig’s staff aside for questioning.

  That night, in his and Catherine’s tower bedroom, Padraig broke even more bad news. They hadn’t gotten all the footage they needed of the boy running through the field. The panorama was fine, but all the angles shot from the downed helicopter had been lost when it hit the tree; the camera had fallen out and broken open on the ground.

  “What are we going to do?” Catherine asked, stopped cold in the middle of dressing for bed.

  “Restage it and reshoot it,” he answered grimly. Then he went on with a litany of problems. It would take several days to get back to their shooting schedule, and they would lose more than $100,000 each day in fixed costs. Some of the cast members had deadlines before other commitments. He would pay dearly for the privilege of holding the actors and actresses over. “We’re going to need at least another five million,” he calculated, “maybe as much as ten.”

  Catherine’s eyes widened and breath escaped from her lips. “My God, that much,” was the best she could manage.

  “We won’t need it until the end of the month,” he allowed, “but you might want to prepare your associates for the shock.”

  “Padraig, they might not go along with this. What do you think Peter was doing here? He came to tell me in no uncertain terms that enough was enough.”

  “Dammit, girl, it’s your company. Who the hell is Peter to tell you that enough is enough?”

  Catherine sat down on the edge of the bed. “Peter is nothing. But Peter and Jennifer together are a voting majority. I can’t fire him if Jennifer doesn’t go along, and I can’t get any more money from him if he and Jennifer don’t agree.”

  He bounded out of the bed and stormed in circles around the medieval room like an ancient prince whose will had been thwarted. “So what does he want me to do? Shut down the production? They’ve got fifty million sunk into our company, and they won’t get ten cents on the dollar unless we finish this picture. There’s nothing to discuss. Either they put up more money or they lose everything. It’s just good business.”

  Softly, Catherine reminded him that it might not be just a business decision. “Peter won’t lift a finger to save you, and Jennifer has good reason to get even with the both of us.”

  “Damn them!” he shouted. “What do they want to do? Destroy us just because we hurt their feelings? This is a great film that they’ll be throwing into the trash bin.”

  He vented his rage for another half hour, calling on all the saints in heaven to rescue him from his enemies. He compared Peter and Jennifer to religious fundamentalists who thought nothing of smashing works of art. Most chilling, he stoked up his case for charging Peter with attempted murder. “It was me he was after. Probably hired some sharpshooter to put a few rounds in the engine.”

  “Padraig, please,” Catherine begged.

  “Where do you think he was this morning? Looking for a boat, my arse! He had a boat. He was off hiring his assassins.”

  Even after calming a bit, Padraig insisted that Peter had brought him down. “He’d do anything to keep me from moving in on his turf. Arrange Jennifer’s accident. Hire a second-story man to take care of you. And now this! A gunshot through the engine. Do you know that the pilot told me there are usually no survivors in a helicopter crash?”

  Catherine reminded him that charging Peter with murder was hardly the way to win his support for a $10 million advance. “Peter wouldn’t do that,” she insisted. “You’re blaming the wrong person. The crash was an accident and nothing more. Now, will you stop screaming bloody murder and help me figure out how to get the money.”

  It was then Padraig suggested offhandedly that she might tap in to her own funds. An added interest in this one picture, or perhaps a straight loan that would earn her a fast return at good interest.

  “It’s not
that easy,” she said.

  “Catherine, darlin’, with all the money you have in your mattress, we’re talking about pocket change.”

  “My own money, right now, is paying for a huge exhibition at the Met, and an air-freight service that’s flying food to East Africa. I also have a batch of loans out to dance companies and orchestras. I don’t keep my spare millions in a bank.”

  “You’re … broke?” His voice cracked at the absurdity of the idea.

  “Of course not. But I don’t have an idle five million to lend to a project that my sister might throttle. Without their go-ahead, I wouldn’t even borrow the money.”

  He winced in pain.

  “Face it, Padraig, either Jennifer agrees to back us or Peter can shut us down. We’re past the point where we can just walk away and do the movie on our own.”

  He was ashen. In the yellow light of the torches, it seemed almost as if he were laid out at his funeral.

  THIRTEEN

  CATHERINE AND Peter flew back from Ireland together, with drinks between them. As the plane climbed to altitude, Catherine described the scope of the film and gushed over its artistic content. “Setbacks happen,” she said of the helicopter crash, “and cost overruns are part of the business.” Staying within a fixed budget might please the accountants and some of the inexperienced investors. But it robbed the director of his artistic insight. “You could shoot the whole thing on a soundstage,” she said in a tone that dismissed the idea even as she offered it. “But it would die on a big screen.”

  She praised the realism of the work. “We show the daily rushes to the townspeople, and some of them have actually cried. They tell us they’re seeing the countryside they knew in their childhood. The village we’ve created is so authentic, one woman remembered exactly what was in the bakery window when she was a little girl.” And the story line! “These people had won. They got their country back. And then they took to fighting among themselves.”