KW 09:Shot on Location

by Laurence Shames

  “Plus it’s totally legit,” Johnny added.

  Which was true if you chose to overlook a couple of inconvenient facts, such as that the money that Ponte channeled into movie projects had originally been obtained through theft, extortion, and occasionally murder. Still, by the time the profits had been filtered through a fancy L.A. law firm and the experienced bookkeepers at Handsome Johnny’s Crab Joint, the money had been scrubbed quite clean. But again, on the less savory side of the ledger, Ponte seemed to regard the funds he tendered as either investments or loans, depending entirely on his own advantage. If a movie succeeded, the Miami boss counted himself as a savvy investor and took a goodly cut of the box office. If it tanked, he regarded his stake as a loan that needed to be paid back anyway. The lawyers and accountants tried tactfully to point out the illogic of this position, but to Ponte it made perfect sense, and it was Ponte’s money, after all.

  With the payoff piled right there on the desk between them, Handsome Johnny seized an opportunity to remind the other man of his value to him. “My West Coast connections,” he said. “Been working pretty sweet.”

  Not wanting his sometime business partner to feel too good about himself, Ponte said, “Course, you’ve brought me some real duds, too.”

  His toothsome smile tightening just slightly, Johnny said once again, “Nature of the business.”

  “Like that fucking genius who killed himself. Why’d you have me invest in a suicidal lunatic? Total loss on that one.”

  Suddenly solemn, Johnny said, “A tragedy.”

  “For who?” said Ponte. “Him or me? Schmuck blows his brains out, I’m out half a million bucks.” The boss wagged his head sadly then grew philosophical. “Besides, what kind of asshole kills himself at thirty? Unless he gets whacked he’s got his whole life in front of him. The beach. Pussy. Food. Beautiful things. Okay, he’s got some problems. Who doesn’t? But what a fucking cop-out. Play your hand, man! You lose, you lose. Am I right or am I right?”

  “You’re right,” said Johnny.

  Getting back to business, Ponte said, “And I don’t really buy this crap that we can’t collect just because the fucking guy is dead.”

  Handsome Johnny shrugged. “He spent the money. Legitimately. On the movie. The accountants have a record of it. Location scouting. Promos. Guarantees to actors. He spent it. It’s gone.”

  The notion of his money being gone, the seeming finality of it, offended Ponte and he suddenly went from being philosophical to starting to get angry. Earlier in the conversation he really hadn’t been. Thorny, maybe, but not yet angry. But that’s how anger was with him; it came on without much warning, like gas pains, and he himself could not control it or even say exactly why it had been triggered at a certain juncture and not another. Now he twined his fingers, turned his palms away, and pressed outward till the knuckles cracked. “There’s gotta be a way to get that money back. Some of it, at least.”

  “Sorry, but I just don’t think there is. Let it go. You’ll more than make it up on this other movie.”

  That did not satisfy Ponte. “Ain’t there someone we can squeeze?”

  “Who? This director, this Bouchard, he took the money on his own. It was his loan, his deal. There was no one else involved.”

  “There’s gotta somebody who’ll make good. Family? Wife? Girlfriend?”

  Handsome Johnny didn’t want to go there. “Charlie, please, it isn’t worth the bother.”

  “Getting paid is always worth the bother.”

  “Even from a dead guy?”

  “Not everybody’s dead. Find me someone we can squeeze.”

  “But Charlie —”

  Ponte cut him off. He’d made up his mind. It was his money and someone had to pay it back. “There’s gotta be somebody. There always is.”

  28.

  The small bar at The Nest was called Nellie’s and it was very different from most of Key West’s other bars. It was quiet; it was decorous. There was no live music, no stale beer smell, no Jimmy Buffett songs playing on the soundtrack. At Nellie’s you could have a peaceful drink without hearing the loud life story of someone who’d moved down years before from Michigan and how it was the best thing that he ever did, and on and on and on.

  Nellie’s was where Candace McBride had most of her dinners. Sometimes another cast member joined her, seldom the same cast member more than once, but usually she ate alone, sipping Chardonnay, picking at shrimp. The bartenders handled her perfectly. They made it clear that they recognized her as a star and then they backed off, waiting for clues as to what she needed from them at a given moment. If she needed to be fussed over, they fussed. If she needed to be left alone, they polished glasses and acted like she wasn’t there. Candace badly needed a place like that, a place that suited her many moods and in fact adjusted itself, like lighting on a stage, in accordance with them.

  But now that she was being stalked, she feared that even this cozy and inviolate hiding place might be spoiled for her. What if the weird blonde woman suddenly came walking in to stare at her? To see her in a way that no one else seemed able to, to look right past the artifice and the willed impressions to who and what she really was. That sense of truly being seen was what she found so supremely unsettling in the woman’s unremitting gaze; the mere thought of it put a jumpy feeling in her legs, made her hands feel tight and clammy. Sitting at a corner of the bar where no one could move up behind her, her eyes darted left and right, searching for an enemy.

  When Claire came in to find her, she was on her third glass of wine and was rather listlessly pushing some lettuce leaves around a plate. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Please,” said the actress. “I’d love some company.”

  Climbing onto the barstool next to her, Claire ordered a gin and tonic and asked how she was feeling. A hint of a wistful smile in gratitude for being asked was quickly followed by a narrowing of her violet eyes to convey that she was still troubled. “Not having my easiest day.”

  “Well, I have some excellent news for you. The woman who’s been bothering you has checked out.”

  Candace dropped her fork and grabbed Claire’s forearm. “Oh, that’s great. I’m so relieved. She’s left town?”

  Claire hesitated, hedged. “I guess so.”

  Brightening as though a spotlight was being ratcheted up in front of her, Candace said, “So tell me. How’d you find out? Who is she? What do we know about her?”

  “I talked to a buddy at the desk. We don’t know much. No real name or anything like that. But it doesn’t matter. She’s gone. And she’s just a nut.”

  Candace couldn’t quite accept such a blithe dismissal. “I don’t know. The way she looked at me …”

  Trying to keep things light, trying to ease the diva’s mind, Claire said, “Just a nut, believe me. The desk guy thought so too. A harmless wacko. Who knows, maybe some kind of nymphomaniac or something. She used the most ridiculous fake name. Sorda Randy.”

  Claire said it with a laugh but it was clear at once that the joke fell flat.

  “Randy?”

  Awkwardly now, Claire said, “You know, old-fashioned word for horny. Sort of randy. Get it?”

  “I used to date a guy named Randy,” Candace said. “Randy Bouchard. Lived with him in fact.”

  Making one more attempt at leavening the moment, Claire said, “And did he live up to the billing?”

  “He killed himself.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” Claire said. Then, her memory jogged, she thought she recalled seeing, perhaps six months before, a brief item from the L.A. Times about the death. The usual paragraph about wasted promise, next to a slick publicity photo of someone talented, beautiful, and gone.

  “I wasn’t,” said Candace. “I left him and he killed himself and I wasn’t even sorry. Terrible, right? I was glad to have him out of the way. It would make things easier for me. That’s what I thought at the time. Join me in another drink?”

  A slight lift of her head was enough to summon t
he bartender from the soft shadows of his post. He took their order and slid away again.

  “He loved me,” Candace went on. “That was the problem. He said he loved me and he meant it. He wanted us to do great things together, make movies together. He was an upcoming writer and director. He started working on a new script as soon as we started dating. A love story, of course, for me to star in. Passionate. Sizzling. So intense it hurt. He worked on it for a year, then started showing it to the studios. No takers. It was too strange, too raw. But by then he was obsessed with it. He turned down other work, couldn’t think of anything else. Finally he decided to make the movie on his own. He started borrowing money. I don’t know where he got it, but we’re not talking about the corner bank, okay? And it was money he’d never be able to pay back unless the film got made and was a hit.”

  The bartender brought the fresh drinks over then moved away as quietly as a geisha.

  Claire said, “So then what happened?”

  Candace sipped some Chardonnay before resuming. “I bailed.”

  “On him? On the movie?”

  “Both. But in his mind they were the same thing. The movie was about our love affair. The love affair was about the movie. It was all tied up together. Exciting for a while. Probably fucked up too — this young genius making me his Muse. But meanwhile my career was going nowhere. I started losing faith. I started getting sick of waiting.

  “Then, one night, I was at a party in Santa Monica and I heard about this new TV show being cast. They were looking for a fresh face, a relative unknown that they could make a star. And I thought: This is my chance. Mine. Not being anybody’s Muse. Not being the other half of someone else’s dream. So I auditioned and I got the part and I packed a bag and I walked out on Randy and his movie.”

  “He didn’t see it coming?”

  “Why would he? We hadn’t fought. We still shared a bedroom. Most days we were happy. I just changed my mind. Made a different plan.”

  “Did you love him?”

  Candace tried to smile but her neck sinews fluttered and the effect was more of a wince. “That’s the thing,” she said. “The awful thing. I don’t know. I didn’t know what it should feel like. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now.”

  Claire found nothing to say to that. She dropped her eyes, stirred her drink and fiddled with her slice of lime. In the quiet bar random noises filtered through the awkward pause — the squeak of a chair leg, the clink of glasses, a muffled laugh. Her mind started to wander, linking things that hadn’t seemed related until then. A face that both looked familiar, and didn’t. A preposterous pseudonym. Sorda Randy. Possibly as in soeur de Randy? Finally she said, “Your former boyfriend — he have a sister?”

  29.

  It was after eleven when Jake and Bert and the dog made it back to town. They’d called Joey from the road, asked him to stake out the compound and let them know if Ace showed up. They’d heard nothing so they headed straight to Duval Street to search for him. Given the rush and tumult of the previous few days, Jake had not yet managed to get down there. Seeing the famously raucous and libidinous boulevard for the first time at eleven-thirty on a night in high season was somewhere between a tease, a tickle, and a full-scale madhouse assault.

  Transvestite hookers vamped in red high heels with vertiginous platforms, fishnet stockings tracing out their lean and freshly shaven legs. Drunk young ladies from Southern colleges teetered by in wet sorority T-shirts, their hairdos wrecked and their nipples taut and finely crinkled like the pits of apricots. Biker guys lumbered past, their sleeveless leather vests festooned with studs and club regalia. Stirred in among the more colorful characters was an array of average-looking tourists, regular folks, some seeming amazed at what a good time they were having, some clinging to each other and looking meekly down as if they feared that too frank a gaze would turn them into pillars of salt. From a dozen doorways and patios blared bursts of competing music and manic laughter.

  Bert led the way to Sloppy Joe’s, with its big glassless windows and famous logo of Hemingway in a bulky turtleneck in which he must have sweltered. Inside the place, there were guys dressed up like pirates, with do-rags on their heads and gold hoops in their ears; there were guys tattooed in lavish colors and guys tattooed in basic indigo. There was a guy with a cockatiel, a guy with a monkey, a woman with a ferret that calmly nestled between her breasts. But there was no one who looked like a two hundred-fifty pound enforcer. Jake and Bert had one beer and left.

  At Captain Tony’s the crowd was slightly more sedate but also more leathery and cranky. Serious drinkers, sunshine etched deep into their corrugated hides. Maybe a neighborhood bully or two, but no goombahs.

  Hog’s Breath presented a row of silver ponytails and wizened backsides that seemed to have melted into their customary barstools. Rick’s was full of kids firing down bizarre drinks made of things like jello and oyster juice; Margaritaville was populated mainly by women of a certain age pretending to be girls again, waiting for a pickup attempt if only for the nearly forgotten satisfaction of being asked and saying no. There was no sign of their quarry, and at one-thirty or so, with Bert sporadically nodding out and the tiny chihuahua yawning as widely as a hippopotamus, they gave up.

  Jake drove Bert home, then went to the compound, where he found Joey lightly dozing in a poolside lounge. He’d seen no sign of Ace. Jake thanked him for the use of the car and handed him the keys. Joey wished him luck and left.

  For a few moments the writer stood there alone by the pool. The night was very still, so quiet that he could hear insect wings spanking against nearby streetlights. The moon had set and the stars were softened in their twinkling by a gauze of humidity that was like the merest memory of a cloud. It was extraordinarily peaceful, and Jake, for the moment, felt peaceful too; in part at least because he knew there was more to be done and he had somehow become serene in the rather reckless belief that he could do it. He savored this fragile conviction for a few more fragrant breaths, then stepped around the pool to the shed where Bryce lived.

  There was a line of pallid light beneath the ill-fitting door. Jake knocked very softly and Bryce immediately said, “Come in.” He was lying on his bed beneath a fraying sheet, his elbows splayed across his pillows and his lightly laced fingers cradling his head.

  Straddling the threshold of the shed, Jake said, “You’re a trusting guy. You don’t even ask who’s there?”

  Bryce said, “It’s two o’clock in the morning, who’s it gonna be?”

  Jake said, “I thought you might be sleeping.”

  “I don’t sleep that much at night,” said Bryce. “Little catnaps now and then. Nights I mostly think.”

  “What about?”

  “Stuff I might do sometime. Accomplishments. Adventures. Stuff like that.”

  “Ah,” said Jake, and glanced at the random calendars tacked to the wall.

  He said nothing more and after a moment Bryce asked, “Is there some particular reason you’re stopping by?”

  Jake hesitated. “I don’t know if it’s really fair to ask you.”

  Bryce sat up in bed. “Ask me, ask me.”

  “Okay,” said Jake. “Remember when you said that if I was going to play detective, maybe you could be my helper?”

  By way of answer, Bryce sat up higher and clawed at the confining sheet.

  “Well here’s your chance,” Jake said.

  30.

  Perhaps an hour of quiet waiting had gone by when Jake and Bryce first heard the pick scratching at the keyhole of Donna’s cottage. Metal pressed metal deep in the works of the flimsy lock, then the doorknob turned with a small but grating squeak. There was a brief pause, a tiny rustling. A heartbeat later Ace’s bulk was glutting up the doorway and he stepped heavily across the threshold.

  From behind the open door, standing in near perfect darkness, Jake called out his name.

  The big man swiveled toward the sound. Bryce sprang up from his hiding place behind the sofa and brained
him with a Dustbuster. The blow caught Ace just aft of the crown of his head and was delivered with such force that the plastic casing of the small appliance shattered and flew off, leaving the suction motor and dirt bag exposed. Ace hovered for a moment, swaying in a lazy circle. Then he abruptly dropped to his knees and lingered briefly as though praying before pitching forward flat on his face at Jake’s feet.

  As he fell, something flew from his hands. Jake felt a tickle of almost weightless objects falling against his legs and insteps.

  Bryce switched on a light and the two allies regarded their prostrate foe with the mute fascination that might greet the appearance of a dead shark washed up on a beach. His giant legs were folded at a restful angle. His bunched shoulders were lifted in a bewildered shrug. A small smudge of blood was visible through his hair at the point of impact. And what had fallen from his hands, and now lay spread across the floorboards and over Jake’s sneakers, was a huge bouquet of assorted flowers. There were slightly wilted roses, curling lilies, irises that sagged. There were crinkly mums and sunflowers missing petals here and there.

  Jake looked down at the incongruous and inexplicable array and felt a moment’s doubt and remorse. He gingerly nudged Ace with his toe to see if he would move. He didn’t. He said to Bryce, “Maybe you didn’t need to hit him quite so hard.”

  Bryce still had the ruined Dustbuster in his hand. Absently, he plucked some lint from its filter. “Better too hard than not hard enough. What’s up with the flowers?”

  Jake said, “I have no idea.” Very carefully, backing and sidling, he moved away from the scattered bouquet and the unconscious giant. “I guess we better tie him up.”

  Part 3

  31.

  In Los Angeles it was only midnight, and Quentin Dole was still working. Sitting in his Santa Monica apartment, the damp light off the Pacific mingling with the designer halogen above his desk, he was sorting through a pile of ratings reports, magazine clippings, and media summaries, parsing the data in a dizzy-making effort to understand the tendencies and fickle desires of the viewing public.