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by Lee Goldberg

  That stopped Bruce in his tracks. He didn't know whether to be insulted or flattered. Charlie kept on going, hoping to make it out the door and into his trailer before Bruce came to a decision.

  A harried assistant director, fiddling with the walkie-talkie on his belt, came up alongside Charlie, handing him palm-size copies of the script pages for the next scene. "We're in the cop shop next, scene 47D, interrogation of the Hasidic Jew. You got a half-hour to change into the gray suit."

  Charlie nodded and headed out the door, momentarily blinded by the harsh glare of the morning sun over Pinnacle Studios, nestled in the far corner of the smog-choked San Fernando Valley. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the screams of several tram loads of tourists as they were attacked by a giant squid made famous in the movie Terror Tentacles, its three sequels, and the Broadway musical.

  He squinted against the glare and made his way toward one of the mobile homes that lined the alleys between the soundstages. That meant passing the row of extras, the day-players with non-speaking parts waiting to be called to populate the crowded precinct scenes. He tried to ignore them, because like the actors he worked with, they made him feel uncomfortable.

  The extras were lazing in the shade of the soundstage, sitting in folding chairs, leaning against the wall, lying on the asphalt, doing whatever they could to ease the crushing boredom between scenes. They were taking naps, playing solitaire, practicing acting class roles, reading dog-eared paperbacks, or writing their million dollar spec scripts. They were waiting for their $50 a day and two square meals and paying their dues, something Charlie Willis never had to do.

  He got gut-shot by the star of a hit TV series instead.

  Esther Radcliffe was known and loved by millions of viewers as kindly Miss Agatha, the deceptively mild-mannered widow who solved perplexing murders and still found time to bake chocolate chip cookies for all the suspects. Only the people Esther worked with, and the cop she gunned down, knew her for the bitter, paranoid, utterly self-absorbed hell bitch that she really was.

  Miss Agatha was going into its fifth smash year, the unshakable foundation of the United Broadcasting Company's Sunday night schedule. The show attracted the Geritol set in droves. The old codgers were less desirable to advertising agencies than free-spending yuppies, but there was no arguing with Miss Agatha's consistent ranking in the top ten shows. The audience flow from Miss Agatha went right into the UBC movie, making even the most insipid true-life pot-boiler a ratings powerhouse. UBC owned Sunday nights. Retirement homes around the country were glued to UBC from eight p.m. right on through to the local affiliate's evening news.

  In an era of shrinking audience shares and cutthroat primetime warfare, UBC could not afford to have Esther Radcliffe sent to prison for gunning down a Beverly Hills police officer. The adverse publicity would be horrific. The network would be forced to cancel the show, kissing off the night and losing millions of dollars in advertising. And the eighty-eight episodes already in the can, which Pinnacle Studios conservatively figured would bring $200 million in future off-network syndication revenue, wouldn't be worth the celluloid they were captured on.

  Clearly, this catastrophe could not be allowed to happen. Esther's network, her studio, and her talent agency were mobilized in minutes. Deal memos were drawn up, careers were made and ruined, and primetime schedules were juggled over sizzling fax machines and crackling cellular phone lines, culminating in the critical moment when Sergeant Charlie Willis regained consciousness to find two executives standing at his bedside. He was so out of it he actually thought one of them had pubic hair on his head.

  And now he was here. As Detective Lieutenant Derek Thorne, the man behind the catchphrase that was sweeping the country—my gun has bullets.

  An extra who hoped to be the next Demi Moore was sitting against the soundstage just outside his trailer. Her police officer uniform had been discarded and neatly folded beside her so she could sun herself in the scant bikini top she wore underneath. Her eyes were closed, so Charlie made the mistake of glancing at her. Instantly her eyes flashed open and met his. He averted his gaze too late. No backing out now.

  "You were terrific in the bar scene yesterday," she said.

  "Thank you," Charlie replied, turning his back to her as he unlocked the door. "You were terrific, too."

  "I bet you didn't even notice me," she said, a bit too coyly, unable to hide the hope in her voice. It was something about the softness of her voice, more than anything, that made him turn around.

  "You were waitress number three." He shot her one of his Officer Friendly smiles. "You delivered the beer mug I broke over the mobster's head."

  She grinned. ''Thank you for noticing."

  Charlie shrugged. "You're hard to miss, ma'am." Sometimes he couldn't help himself.

  He stepped into his trailer, and would have closed the door behind him, but it was like walking into a warm towel. The air conditioner was on the blink. The air trapped inside the tin box that was his "dressing room" was so hot he figured he could throw a handful of Jolly Time into the air and have a bowl of popcorn when it landed.

  Charlie peeled off his shirt and was reaching for a clean one when she tentatively came in, though there was nothing tentative about her. Everything, Charlie suspected, right down to her bikini top, was premeditated. But what the hell.

  "I'm Alice." She had put on her uniform shirt, but left it open to show off her resume. "Alice Doss."

  "I'm a thorn in the side of organized crime," Charlie replied, offering his hand. "Or, as I'm known to my friends, Charlie."

  "I thought big stars had air-conditioned dressing rooms." She stayed in the doorway, where at least she had some fresh air.

  "That should tell you something." Charlie pulled on the fresh shirt, and faced the mirror. He could see her behind him, admiring his body, which still showed the positive effects of regular workouts. There was only one thing not quite right about his body, though. There was a scar that looked like an extra bellybutton, a lasting memento from the slug that passed through his stomach, miraculously weaved past vital organs and vertebrae and, eight months later, became an attractive acrylic paperweight on his coffee table.

  "Were you really a cop once, or is that just hype?"

  "I was a cop, but I wasn't Derek Thorne." Charlie buttoned up the shirt. It was clear from her expression that that wasn't what she wanted to hear. So she sure as hell wouldn't want to know how he sold out. How he "forgot" who shot him. How he claimed he got the license number wrong. The face wrong. The name wrong. How he agreed to cover the whole thing up in exchange for their generous thirteen-week series commitment and $15,000-an-episode salary.

  Now he really was like the cops on Adam-12. He had become make-believe. At least it beat being shot at.

  "Where did you get the scar?" she asked.

  He thought about that for a long moment. She looked at the pained expression on his face and thought he was reliving a painful experience. It was actually the first acting he had done all day. Perhaps all month.

  "I walked into a burger joint in the middle of a hold-up. I ended up digesting a bullet instead of a hot meal," he said. "The four scumbags sent me to the hospital, I sent them to the morgue."

  That was what she wanted to hear. She looked at him with an appraising grin, the grin of someone admiring something they wished they could own but couldn't afford.

  "Did you ever take an acting class?"

  "To survive undercover, you have to know how to be anyone, anywhere, anytime." Charlie had no idea where this was coming from, or more worrisome, why it came so easily. Perhaps he really was Derek Thorne. Or maybe he simply wished he had been half the cop in reality that he was now.

  "I bet what I've been learning in acting class for the last five years isn't half as valuable as what you learned on the street," she said with forced innocence, proving she needed more acting classes. "I can't imagine what I could learn from you in an hour."

  "Imagine what you could learn i
n an evening. Do you think it would be against department policy for a detective lieutenant to have dinner later with"—he tipped up the badge on her uniform—"a lowly parking enforcement officer?"

  She smiled and he smiled back. As long as he was going to sell out, he should go all the way. He left his trailer without looking in the mirror again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eddie Planet always read the trades on the toilet, which was a good thing, because the headline in Daily Variety scared the shit out of him.

  Boo Boo Fetches Audience; Frankencop D.O.A

  UBC's Boo Boo's Dilemma has proved his bark is as big as his bite, chewing on a 40 share of the Thursday night audience and tossing a big bone to the shows which follow.

  The spin-off Rappy Scrappy is the cat's meow, holding 75% of Boo Boo's lead-in, and leaving DBC's My Wife Next Door and MBC's Johnny Wildlife to fight over the litter box.

  The two sitcoms which follow, Broad Squad and Smart Alec, are performing so strongly, sources say the web's programming whiz, Don DeBono, is considering moving the successful skeins to shore up an ailing night elsewhere in the sked. DBC's Young Hudson Hawk isn't likely to grow much older, while the venerable Dedicated Doctors are on life support after five seasons as MBC's primetime prescription for ratings malaise.

  DBC's Blacke and Whyte, beaten black and blue at 10 p.m., is being pulled and will reportedly return mid-season with a new title and a new format.

  My Gun Has Bullets on UBC is loaded with a strong lead-in, but it's misfiring, dropping off a disturbing 10 share points from Smart Alec. This presents MBC with a real opportunity to blunt UBC's Thursday night dominance, but producer Eddie Planet's Frankencop is lumbering along a distant second, despite improving 25% on its Dedicated Doctors' lead-in. If lightning doesn't strike soon, Frankencop will be dismembered fondly.

  It used to be that Eddie would shrug off a story like this. The vicissitudes of the business. It wasn't as if his life was riding on it.

  That was before he signed with Pinstripe Productions.

  After only six weeks on the air, Frankencop had tallied over a million dollars in deficits and its ratings were eroding. But it wasn't cheap to do a sci-fi action show these days. And going up against UBC's strongest night was a kamikaze mission. All in all, Frankencop wasn't doing badly.

  Figure in that dickhead Flint Westwood, and it was a miracle the show even got made. Flint's real name was Huey Krupp, and he was Crofoot's cousin. His previous acting experience consisted of being a dick double in porno films financed by Crofoot. Luckily, playing a hulking, undead cop stitched together from corpses didn't require a lot of range.

  Flint's unique approach to a scene was to ask himself "What's in it for my dick?" If his dick didn't have a motivation, Flint couldn't move. The same was true for Flint in real life.

  Eddie had his hands full just thinking of reasons for Flint's dick to chase down bank robbers, kidnappers, and terrorists instead of jamming buxom Dr. Francine "Frankie" Stein. Simply telling Flint his dick was dedicated to truth, justice, and the American way wouldn't fly. Coming up with new dick motivations ("You've got a hard-on for the Statue of Liberty, and if the terrorists blow it up, you could become impotent") took more creative energy than thinking up stories.

  So between the powerful competition and Flint Westwood, Eddie should be congratulated for even putting a show on the air. Even Crofoot could understand that. And if he didn't, fuck him.

  The phone jangled. Startled, Eddie reached for the toilet paper instead, unspooling the roll all over his knees. Cool your jets, he told himself. You're the executive producer. You're a powerful man in this town. Remember that. He took a deep breath and picked up the phone, mounted just above the toilet paper rack.

  "Eddie Planet," he said decisively.

  "Have you read the trades, Eddie?" Crofoot's voice poured into his ear.

  "Yeah, but I wouldn't take 'em too seriously," Eddie's knees clacked together nervously.

  "I do," Crofoot said softly.

  "We're in a suicide slot, everybody knows that. Coming in second is a major accomplishment. You should congratulate yourself."

  "I'm not losing three hundred thousand bucks a week to come in second," Crofoot snapped.

  Eddie wanted to say Take it easy, Daddy, have your daily jerk-off and leave me the fuck alone. What he said instead was:

  "You wanted in the television business. No one said it would be cheap, and no one said it would be easy. It's out of our hands."

  "You promised me the show would be a hit, Eddie."

  "It is, it's a terrific show, the concept is fucking brilliant, but I'm not running the network. They put us in a rotten slot—you can't blame me for that."

  There was a long silence on the line. Each nanosecond was torture for Eddie. Had he said the wrong thing? Had he said the right thing? It was enough to make his sphincter twitch. He willed himself to stay calm, to live up to the executive producer card at the end of the show.

  "Every time I read a bad review, you're insulting me. Every cent the show loses, you owe me," Crofoot said. "If the show is cancelled, so are you." Eddie's stomach cramped so severely he almost lurched off the toilet seat. He wanted to whimper but instead he forced himself to laugh, to show he knew Crofoot was just being a funny guy.

  "Don't worry, my shows are never cancelled, they're just put on permanent hiatus." Eddie coughed out a couple of uproarious guffaws, nearly choking. "All kidding aside, Daddy, you know it's not my fault. The networks control everything. It's the way the television business is run."

  "Then it's time it was run differently." Crofoot said it so coldly Eddie's ear went numb. "In my business, you don't wait for someone else to take you out."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Whatever the new co-executive producer tells you to do."

  ''You got it, Daddy." Eddie was actually relieved. Fine, let one of Crofoot's goons take the heat. But there was one big, terrifying drawback. "I'm not gonna share a card, am I? I won't share a card."

  "You'll have your own card," Crofoot said. "And if the show doesn't start winning its time slot, you'll have your own tombstone."

  "That's classic." Eddie laughed, but the tears rolling down his cheeks weren't joyous. "Great stuff. Incidentally, does this guy have any television experience?"

  Crofoot hung up.

  Eddie lost the connection and the control of his sphincter all at once.

  # # #

  He managed to slit Rodrigo Lincoln's pale, thin little throat without getting a single drop of blood on his rubber surgical gloves.

  And when Rodrigo fell on the marble entry hall floor, spilling blood like a dropped carton of milk, not one speck of red landed on Delbert Skaggs's brand-new Nike running shoes. That's because the shoes were sheathed in plastic bags that were cinched to his ankles with rubber bands.

  Delbert had been waiting in Rodrigo's immaculate Cape Cod-style home for only twenty minutes, and it took less than five seconds to do the job, without getting dirty and without leaving a single fiber or particle behind for some forensics specialist to track him with.

  Delbert calmly walked back into the kitchen, rinsed the steak knife carefully, dried it with a paper towel, and returned it inconspicuously to the knife drawer, whistling while he worked, something he'd learned from Snow White and never forgotten.

  He opened another drawer, took one of Rodrigo's ziplock bags, dropped the damp paper towel into it, then pocketed the bag in his sweatsuit for disposal a long distance away from the scene of the crime.

  Delbert sprinkled some Comet in the sink and carefully washed it down. It was his policy to leave a crime scene cleaner than it was when he arrived. Unless, of course, it would call attention to his presence. Then he just wiped away anything that might, even in the most obscure or microscopic way, point to his existence.

  Attention to detail. All the best craftsmen had it. Delbert was no exception.

  He headed for the back door, pausing for a moment to admire a child's
crayon drawings and finger-paint masterpieces taped to the fridge, and the picture of Rodrigo's wife, striking a self-consciously silly pose in a bikini on some Hawaiian beach. Mixed among the pictures were notes, grocery coupons, and postcards, all held in place with plastic fruit magnets. This could have been a fridge in any middle-class household in America. But only the Angel of Death knew the whole picture ... that Mom occasionally "explored her sexuality" with another woman from the car pool, Daughter enjoyed crushing snails while walking home from school, and Daddy laundered money for the mob—when he wasn't shoving it in his own pocket, that is.

  That was. Past tense. Delbert Skaggs had seen to that. He was good at what he did, but he was growing bored. He wanted a new challenge, yet something that took advantage of his unique people skills and his experience in the organization.

  He went into the backyard and took off his rubber gloves. He slipped the bags from his shoes, stuck them all in his pocket, and ran in place for a moment, consciously keeping his gaze averted from the dead Golden Retriever. Nothing pained him more than killing an innocent animal, but there were unpleasant aspects to any line of work.

  Once he worked up a sweat, Delbert hit the street, just another lean, healthy, clean-cut jogger in his mid-thirties. Seattle was full of them, but not many of them killed for a living.

  He jogged down East Laurelhurst, every so often catching a view of Lake Washington between the formal houses fronting the shore, and leisurely making his way the four or five miles to the university, where his rental car was parked. It would rain soon, as it always did in Seattle, and he'd be safely in his Ford Taurus before the first, thick droplets came down. He'd dispose of the bags and the sweatsuit downtown on his way to the airport.

  It fell good to run. It cleared the mind, opened the pores, and gave him a chance to get some perspective, away from the pressures of his workaday world. He was strictly a contract worker now, which suited his need for independence. But he was growing tired of seeing only small pieces of the big picture, tired of being a vital cog in a larger machine.