by Lee Goldberg
Burley started rattling them off. "Thorne of Justice, .357 Justice, Man of Action—"
"Man of Action, that's a good one," Boyd said. "We put Larry Manetti in there, give the cop a new name, shoot the thing in Hawaii, and finish out the season as if nothing happened. It'll reinvigorate the show."
"As of now, My Gun Has Bullets is on indefinite hiatus, pending the outcome of all this shit." DeBono looked at Charlie. "If I were you, I'd make myself scarce."
And with that pronouncement, DeBono left. Boyd immediately chased after him, urging him to reconsider. Charlie found himself alone with Jackson Burley, who rose to his feet and held out his hand to him. Charlie shook it.
"It's been real," Burley said on his way out the door, "too damn real."
It was the most intelligent thing anyone had said to Charlie in his entire television career.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The suspects were all in the drawing room. The silver-haired patriarch. His greedy daughter. The stepson with the shady past. The adopted daughter with something to hide. The nanny with a rap sheet. The gardener whose green thumb came from counterfeiting currency. One of them had murdered the blackmailing maid, and Miss Agatha was about to reveal the killer's identity when...
Three ninja warriors crashed through the windows, rolled across the floor and came up in fighting stance, ready to dole out death with their swords, silver stars, and lethal hands.
Sweet Miss Agatha's disarming, grandmotherly charm and deductive reasoning wouldn't save her now. But the ninja warriors underestimated the kindly old lady. They didn't know about...
Agatha's niece.
A vision in black leather cart-wheeled into the room, taking out one astonished ninja with a kick in the face. Another ninja charged her, brandishing his sword. Without even looking back, she ducked, flipped over backward, kicked him in the face, caught his fumbled sword in midair, and with one expert swipe, cut the pants off the third ninja exposing...
White boxer shorts decorated with smiling pumpkins.
Miss Agatha whipped the hood off the shocked ninja, revealing that he was none other than the elderly beekeeper. Now the comely maid's enigmatic last words, "smiling pumpkins," made tragic sense.
Miss Agatha had done it again.
Cut together, it looked great. No, it looked spectacular.
Boyd sat behind his desk, remote in his hand, watching the rough assembly of the latest Miss Agatha episode on his big-screen TV. Even in the face of disaster, a man has his priorities. And watching dailies, especially ones with Sabrina in skintight leather, was definitely on the top of the list.
As much as he hated to, Boyd had to admit Don DeBono had been right about one thing—Miss Agatha had never been so exciting. Sabrina brought new life to the show. The TV room at retirement villas nationwide would be hopping on Sunday nights. A lot of old men would be looking at their nurses in a whole new light. And if Boyd's reaction was any measure, men of all ages would be rediscovering the pure joy of a good mystery. Would Sabrina's boobs fall out of her lingerie as she beat up the murderer? Would Sabrina's shirt be tom by that killer's knife? Would Sabrina peel off her sweater before she went into the freezing meat locker in search of clues? These were puzzlers that would keep men glued to the screen.
Whole new arenas of storytelling had opened up since she joined the cast. Sabrina becomes an aerobics instructor to sweat out a murderer at a health club. Sabrina poses as a Victoria's Secret model to trap a killer with a lingerie fetish. Sabrina goes sunbathing to expose a lethal lifeguard. And inevitably Miss Agatha would come along, with her plate of cookies and homespun proverbs, to sift through the clues Sabrina had uncovered and expose the murderer.
Of course, Sabrina would have to slip into black leather, break some heads, trash a few cars, and fire a couple of semiautomatic weapons first.
Boyd no longer had to endure excruciating hours watching the withering harridan Esther Radcliffe having tea with an endless parade of elderly has-been actors, climaxing in a round-up of senior citizens in a dreary drawing room, where Miss Agatha would deduce the identity of the killer using clues withheld from the audience. Not that the show's loyal audience cared; most of them clapped the lights out and fell asleep before the finale anyway.
Miss Agatha dailies, which he used to dread, had become the highlight of Boyd's day. He'd cancel meetings to jam the cassette into the TV and catch up on the previous day's shooting. Sometimes he'd take them home and watch them again in slow motion, particularly on those days when Sabrina was in black leather, kicking the daylights out of some lucky stuntman.
Even now, sitting in his office high above the Pinnacle Studios soundstages, these indelible images provided him with some measure of comfort as the world collapsed around him. In just a matter of hours, he'd had to deal with two deaths, three if you counted the almost certain cancellation of My Gun Has Bullets, and the complete nervous breakdown of a once prolific episodic director. And there was the matter of the demolished trailer, which lay crumpled against soundstage 11 like some giant, discarded beer can.
In an odd sense, Boyd was relieved. He had felt certain that if anyone was going to die on the set, it would he Sabrina Bishop at the withered hands of that insane shrew Esther Radcliffe. In fact, that had been his first, horrified thought when his secretary ran in, frantically blubbering about a shooting on the set. For one terrifying instant, he envisioned Sabrina's perfect body, lifeless on a soundstage floor, passing into the great beyond without once having had the pleasure of Boyd Hartnell.
The thought had been too horrible to bear. He didn't bother waiting for the elevator, but hounded down the stairwell like a man escaping a burning building.
He literally collapsed into the lobby, hyperventilating into a dead faint on the cold marble. In the three minutes of unconsciousness, he imagined himself alone at a windy cemetery, standing over her open grave, hair flying off his head and coating her casket until he was left utterly bald.
Boyd jerked into consciousness, pushed aside the security guards who stood around him, and staggered into the midday sun, grateful to see the ambulance screeching up to soundstage 11, clear across the lot from where Miss Agatha was shooting.
He felt relief so strong he nearly passed out again, until a new reality jolted the dizziness away—it was one of his shows filming in soundstage 11, not one of the dozens of other series shooting on the lot.
That was this afternoon.
Now, the police were gone, the bodies were in the morgue, and Wachtel had been checked in to a Chatsworth sanatorium, but Boyd's troubles were far from over.
The show's "indefinite hiatus," the TV series equivalent of a terminal coma after fewer than thirteen episodes, was a financial disaster. The episodes would be worthless in syndication, which meant there was no possibility of recouping the considerable deficit.
But Boyd admired his ability to think on his feet. In the time it took to walk from Charlie Willis's trailer back to the tower, he'd come up with a couple of brilliant ideas to turn this tragedy in his favor.
As soon as he was back in his office, he ordered the day's My Gun Has Bullets footage, up to and including the killing, edited and prepared for immediate home video release, packaged tastefully as An American Tragedy. It was a guaranteed million seller, and at $29.95 it could be one of the division's biggest hits since Race to Death, a fast and furious ninety minutes of car racing accidents, and the milestone Killings of Convenience, the riveting compilation of closed-circuit camera footage of fatal mini-mart hold-ups.
The My Gun Has Bullets killing was the lead story on every newscast and would undoubtedly be front-page news in every rag from the New York Times to Soldier of Fortune by morning. Naturally, the business affairs department, eager to protect the corporate image, was vehemently refusing all requests for footage of the killing.
So, naturally, the suits were stunned when Boyd marched in and ordered them to give the gruesome shots to anyone who wanted them—but to charge twenty times the usual c
lip fee up front. The media would scream, but they'd pay.
As long as Pinnacle Studios was going to get the negative publicity, Boyd figured they might as well make a few bucks off of it. Still, the Japanese owners would probably shit in their sushi, and behead him to save corporate face.
Yet, amid all this turmoil, two things dominated Boyd Hartnell's thoughts. His hair and Sabrina Bishop which, in reality, weren't mutually exclusive.
For her, he had to have perfect hair. Only moments ago, he'd reflexively run his hand through his wiry locks and was shocked, actually closer to terrified, to see tiny strands between his fingers. Even if, miraculously, the chest hair managed to take hold on his scalp despite the stress this crisis was putting him through, it wouldn't be enough to entice Sabrina Bishop, not when she could have the likes of Thad Paul fondling her glorious orbs and get paid for the pleasure.
No, what he needed on his head was something thicker, richer, manlier—something she couldn't resist petting, smelling, and stroking. More drastic measures were going to be necessary. He'd already put in calls to Dr. Desi and his veterinarian.
In the meantime, nothing wrong with enticing the lass with his wit and charm. He rewound the tape for later viewing at home, and certain inclusion in his growing Sabrina Bishop collection, and headed for his private bathroom for five minutes of delicate combing before meeting her.
# # #
Esther Radcliffe reacted with surprise to a revelation from someone who wasn't there.
She was standing in front of the Panavision camera, reacting to two characters who were not there and who, in fact, Esther wouldn't actually meet face to face until the last day of shooting. The other actors' side of the conversation would be filmed tomorrow, while Esther was enjoying one of her many days off.
Esther was long past the days when she'd stand around feeding lines to other actors getting their close-ups. She had better things to do.
So now she moved from one set to another, filming halves of scenes that would be completed while she was shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue, floating in her heart-shaped pool, or demanding multiple orgasms from her young lover.
The camera trained on her was covered with so many filters and gels, all carefully calculated to melt twenty-five years off Esther's face, it was a wonder any light at all was passing through the lens and getting captured on celluloid. But those tricks, combined with clever lighting and editing, smoothed more wrinkles than her $120,000 worth of plastic surgery.
Just behind the camera, an overweight assistant director sat in a canvas chair, propping Esther's cue cards on his shelf-like girth, while the bored script supervisor read the other actors' parts in her weary, gravelly voice. Esther was long past the days when she'd memorize dialogue.
Out of a seven-day shooting schedule, Esther was only required to be there half the time, and that was before Sabrina Bishop showed up. In previous years, the network tried to scare her by giving her entire episodes off instead, which gave them a chance to try other actors out as potential replacements. Buddy Ebsen, Charo, Bernie Kopell, Jean Stapleton, and even Charlie Callas and his wacky tongue were trotted in and out. But ratings dived when she was gone, and the network quickly went back to letting her have her half weeks.
Now that Sabrina Bishop was in the cast, Don DeBono had made noises about trying it again, but Esther didn't feel threatened. Sabrina Bishop wouldn't be around long enough to be a threat.
Already, Charlie Willis was out of the picture and was probably ruing the day he crossed Esther Radcliffe. Or so she thought as she stood in front of the camera, reading her lines and emoting up a storm. Her only regret was that he wasn't twisted in rigor mortis right now. But she held out hope.
Deaths in Hollywood tend to happen in threes. The way Esther figured it, if someone could get shot on My Gun Has Bullets, why couldn't Sabrina get stabbed with a real knife on Miss Agatha? Two disasters like that might fluster Boyd Hartnell so badly he might accidentally slip on his hairpiece, crash through his office window, and fall to his death. It would serve him right for tampering in her domain.
The thought amused her so much she smiled wickedly in the midst of a scene where she was supposed to be grief-stricken. The smile was not lost on the director, Dag Luthan, but he wasn't going to say anything. This job was too important to him. Ever since Gilligan's Island was cancelled, work had been hard to come by.
Sabrina Bishop noticed the smile, too, especially since Esther was looking at her when she flashed it, but she was too absorbed in what had happened to give it much thought. The idea of Charlie Willis actually killing a man during a scene unsettled her more than she thought it should. Sabrina was dressed in her black leather outfit, the one reserved for action scenes, and she paced around the soundstage, trying to work it out in her mind.
Charlie Willis was just some strange guy who gave her his shirt and told her some wild lies about Esther Radcliffe. Why should she care what happened to him?
Because he called her ma'am.
It was silly, she knew. But in that instant, he won her over. It almost didn't matter what absurd drivel spilled out of his mouth after that, the ma'am was sincere and true. No one had ever been sincere and true to her in Hollywood, and she treasured that moment, even if it was just that ... a moment.
But it was the most resonant moment in her first few weeks on the television treadmill. She had never worked so hard. In the blur of days and nights, of dialogue learned, spoken, and forgotten, she'd had little time to reflect on the experience that was dominating her life.
She was in the makeup trailer by five a.m., on the stage at seven, working straight through for twelve hours, except for the odd moment or two grazing at the craft services table. She finally left the lot for Venice sometime around nine p.m. Once home, she had time for a yogurt and banana, and then a hot bath, where she would memorize her lines for the next morning.
But today, the news about Charlie Willis had intruded into her thoughts as nothing else had since she began Miss Agatha. She actually gave a damn, and she couldn't figure out why. It couldn't be that Charlie called her ma'am, talked to her and not her breasts, gave her his shirt, or had a refreshingly ordinary body.
No, it definitely couldn't have been any of those things. She wouldn't be reacting to anything as dumb as that. There had to be a deeper, more compelling reason why, out of all the things to think about, she couldn't stop thinking about him. And couldn't suppress the urge to give Charlie some comfort in the midst of his tragedy.
His shirt.
She suddenly remembered she had it in her trailer. Neatly washed and ironed. She could take it to him, and if he needed someone to talk to, she could listen. What would be wrong with that?
Her heart suddenly started to pound nervously. She couldn't believe it. Here she was a television star, well, nearly a television star, making $13,500 an episode, with a body most women would kill for, and she was getting all nervous about giving a man back his shirt.
A man she hardly knew. And what she knew about Charlie was that he'd told her a malicious lie about Esther Radcliffe, that he'd tried to tarnish Sabrina's first day on the job. And did she really want to associate herself with someone, at this fragile stage in her budding career, who had just blown away a guy? A man who was going to get thoroughly trashed in the press? Imagine what the media would say about her if she got lumped in with him. She could lose her job.
No way, protect yourself, honey, she told herself sternly. Guys like him are easy to come by.
Then why hadn't she come by any?
So she came to a decision. She'd return the shirt. She just wouldn't be seen with him. First, though, she'd have to find out where he lived. That shouldn't be too hard. She was about to go back to her trailer and get her excuse to see him out of the closet when she got sidetracked by the arrival of Boyd Hartnell. The first thing she noticed was that his hair was combed like Christopher Reeve's in Superman, a curl conspicuously dangling over his forehead.
"Sabrina, I just had
to come down and tell you how fantastic the dailies were," he enthused. "It's your best performance of the season."
"We've only done three episodes," she said, noticing his eyes shift rapidly between her face and her breasts.
"And you're maturing into the role each week," he replied. "The network loves it, and frankly, I think they're going to want to talk spin-off pretty soon." He leaned closer to her, lowering his voice, and using the opportunity to look down her cleavage. "No one is more devastated by the incident on stage eleven today than me, but out of tragedy can come opportunity. The network has an open time period, they have to fill it with something. So ... I think we should be talking spin-off now."
"We?" Sabrina's head was spinning. This was happening too fast. A month ago she was in a warehouse in Valencia, Thad Paul between her legs and a camera between her breasts. Now they were talking about giving her a television series of her own.
"Let's bounce some ideas around," Boyd said, "see if we can find something that fits you, a high concept we can put on the development fast track."
Ideas? No one had ever asked her for ideas before, they just wanted her body, though she had a strong suspicion Boyd wanted that, too. But this was opportunity knocking, albeit panting and drooling, but knocking just the same. If she could play this right, she'd never have to kiss up to the Boyd Hartnells of the world again.
"Sure," she said, taking his arm, "let's talk."
Charlie and his shirt would have to wait.
CHAPTER NINE
Connie was to blame. If she hadn't run off with Atilano the gardener, Charlie Willis would probably have a working sprinkler system. And if he did, he could turn it on right now and soak John Tesh, who was standing on the sidewalk in front of Charlie's house, addressing the millions of Entertainment Tonight viewers, promising them an in-depth look at ''The Rise and Fall of Charlie Willis."
