by Peter Corris
‘I don’t drink before six these days.’ As I said it I was thinking that today might be an exception.
‘So I’ve heard, that’s good. Can we talk business?’
What could I do? He looked, smelt and moved like money, and a flash company car would only get vandalised in my street, anyway. Still, I nearly reverted to my previous decision when I found out that he was in the movie business. He leaned forward and rested his elbows in the dust on my desk, laced his fingers under his chin and talked. It sounds uncomfortable but it’s actually not a bad talking posture; it gave him a forward-thrusting, determined look.
‘My company starts shooting today, this afternoon. That’s Boston Picture, we . . .’
‘Boston?’
‘Just a name, we’re making . . .’
‘Why not Brisbane Pictures, Mr Boston?’
He sighed. ‘I was told you had a sense of humour. I suppose this is it. My name is Fuller, Richard Fuller. I’m the executive producer of a movie called Death Feast.’
‘I haven’t read the book.’
‘It’s not that sort of picture, there hasn’t been a book, there never will be a book—not even a novelisation. Trouble is, there mightn’t be a picture unless I can get this wrinkle ironed out.’
I like a good command of metaphor; I nodded and shut up and let Fuller smoke his cigarettes in a tar-guard-holder and tell it the way he wanted to.
‘Death Feast is an action picture, sort of cops’n robbers thing set in Sydney, Kurt Butler’s the star. The script is better than average, we’ve got great locations and a terrific crew.’ He drew deeply on his low tar, filtered, tar-guarded cigarette and filled his lungs luxuriously. ‘We’ve also got a TV pre-sale. Big one. You know what that means?’
‘I suppose the picture has a chance of coming out ahead.’
‘Has to. Can’t help it.’ He expelled the smoke and took in some more. ‘If the bloody thing ever gets shot. Some crank’s threatened Kurt’s wife; he wanted to pull out, take her to Acapulco or some damned place. I promised I’d handle it, make him happy. You’re the solution we came up with.’
‘Why not delay the thing? Check on the crank, grab him or wait till he stops?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ve got non-completion clauses, other people are tied up later, weather problems—it’s now or never.’
‘How long’s the shooting last?’
‘Six weeks.’
‘I charge a hundred and twenty-five dollars a day—you’re looking at five thousand bucks.’
‘We’ve got a 2.3 million budget, as a below the line cost it’s a piddle in the bay.’
‘Where’s the wife going to be? There’ll be a big expense sheet if I have to hang around Palm Beach renting speedboats.’
‘She’ll be on the set every day, she always is. Kurt doesn’t comb his hair without asking her first.’
‘Is that why the crank’s working on her—to get at him?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it.’
‘Who’s handling the crank angle—looking into that?’
‘No one, that’s another problem. I’ll pay you a hundred and fifty a day; no, let’s say a hundred and seventy-five.’
‘What for?’
He looked nervous for the first time, maybe for the first time in his life. ‘You won’t like it. Kurt plays a private eye in the film. He thinks it will help his performance if he can sort of assist you in your investigation of the crank calls.’
‘I’m investigating them, am I? Not just guarding the wife?’
‘Hell, the set’ll be bristling with security men, she’ll be as safe as houses.’
I squinted against a ball of light that came in the window and bounced off the metal filing cabinet behind Fuller.
‘You didn’t exactly play that very straight, did you?’
He grinned. ‘Sort of sideways.’
‘I expected a better metaphor.’ He looked puzzled and I slammed down the front legs of the chair I’d been leaning back in. ‘Skip it. Write me a below-the-line cheque, show me how generous you are.’
It was generous enough to make me forget about guitar teachers and rent and Roger Wallace.
I followed Fuller’s new Commodore in my old Falcon to Leichhardt where the interior scenes of the movie were to be shot. He stopped in front of a terrace house in one of the narrower streets and a plane roared overhead as we stood outside the place. He spoke but the jet noise drowned him out and I leaned my head towards him.
‘Hear that?’ he said. ‘That’s what we wanted—great dramatic effect.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’ll cut down on the dialogue.’
‘Always a plus. Come and meet the mad house.’
I followed him into the house which looked as if a giant metal arm had ripped out all the walls and half the ceiling. The rooms seemed to have been dismembered, and the floor crawled with black power leads. There were forests of light stands and boom microphones and clusters of cameras that looked to be talking to each other. There wasn’t a canvas-backed chair in sight, but a group of people were squatting on a few uncluttered square inches of floor and one had a rolled up manuscript in his hand and was thumping the boards with it. If he wasn’t the director the film was in trouble already.
‘Scene conference,’ Fuller whispered. ‘Better not disturb them. Coffee?’
I shook my head; drinking coffee in the morning makes me want to drink wine in the afternoon. ‘Fill me in on the people.’
‘Okay. Kurt you’ll know; the guy with the script is Iain McLeish, he’s directing it; the little man with the hair is Bob Space, the writer; the other guy is Josh Wild, he’s an actor, and the blonde is Jardie, Kurt’s wife.’
‘I bet her Mum never called her Jardie.’
‘Her Mum would’ve called her Boss, like everyone else. Look at her now!’
The small blonde woman with the tight curls and the tight pants was laying down the law to McLeish. Butler watched her indulgently: I’d seen him on television in one of his tough guy roles in which he’d spent a lot of time naked or nearly so; if you needed an actor with shoulders you couldn’t go past him. Space, who couldn’t have stood much above five foot but had another four inches of woolly hair on top of that, was nodding at Jardie Butler’s every word. He wore sloppy old trousers and a faded army shirt and his feet were bare; as he nodded he scribbled notes in a reporter’s pad. Wild just looked straight ahead of him and McLeish looked down at the floor, perhaps at Space’s feet. Butler clapped his hands and his actor’s voice boomed out across the technology-crammed room.
‘Let’s do it that way, sounds good. Let’s get going!’
McLeish unsquatted and wandered off towards the back of the house. I heard his voice lift in a quick, angry Scots-accented shout.
Fuller and I picked our way across the snake pit.
‘Kurt, this is Hardy, the guy we talked about.’
Butler shook my hand in a powerful grip that must’ve started in the shoulders.
‘You agreeable?’ he rumbled.
‘We’ll give it a try.’
‘Good. C’mon Josh, let’s get fixed up. Should have some time to talk to you this afternoon. Is that right, love?’
Mrs Butler looked up a foot or so; she had a small, pointed face that looked even sharper when inclined.
‘Should be if that Scots twit is half as good as he thinks he is. I’ll give Mr Hardy the details.’
Butler nodded and he and Wild disappeared behind some cameras. Fuller was looking relieved that Jardie Butler hadn’t said I was too tall or the wrong colour. He slapped Bob Space on the shoulder and laughed.
‘Know what this guy said, Bob, when I told him about the picture? He’d said he hadn’t read the book! Good?’
Space blinked two or three times quickly and clenched his fists; for a moment he was sixty inches of pure aggression. Then he relaxed and let go a grin that showed his stained teeth.
‘Hah, hah,’ he said. ‘The laconic Aussie wit we’re famous for. D’you think you ca
n get Kurt to be a bit warmer, Jardie, love—touch less craggy? We’re supposed to like him.’
‘How craggy should a private eye be, Mr Hardy?’ She turned on me a pair of grey eyes that shone hard and cold, like a slate roof in the rain.
‘It depends how smart he is,’ I said. ‘If you need some extra cragginess you can always hire it.’
She nodded. ‘After Richard shows you the set-up I’ll tell you about our problem.’ She swung back to Space and moved him away with body language. ‘Changes, sure,’ she said. ‘But not just for the sake of change, Bob. Constructive . . .’
I broke down and accepted a cup of coffee while Fuller gave me the tour. The company had taken over three adjoining houses and gutted the middle one. There were generators, refrigerators and fans all over the place. I counted fifteen telephones in the three houses. There were caravans in the biggest of the backyards and another couple in the laneway behind the houses.
‘They’re for the cast and some of the crew. I’ve got an office in one. Bob Space has a writing room in one.’
‘Hasn’t he finished the script?’
‘There’re always changes, sometimes it’s handy to have the writer on deck. Space says he sees his script as fluid.’
‘Piss!’ McLeish was suddenly standing beside us. He seemed to have a higher colour than when I’d first seen him and he was sucking some kind of sweet. ‘Script started off just fine, just fine, but between them the Butlers and Space are re-writing it by the hour. It’s getting worse.’
‘Shoot it your way, Iain, that’s your job.’
‘Aye,’ McLeish said vaguely.
Butler and Wild were deep in conversation over a table covered with bottles and the crew was all packed around them, each man and woman performing some small, essential task. When Jardie Butler was satisfied with the look of things she beckoned me to go out back with her. She cocked one leg in skin-tight red satin pants over a low brick wall, took a deep breath of the Leichhardt air and gave me one of her Boss looks. She was strongly built, with wide shoulders and a flattish chest; her sex appeal was in her strength and she seemed to know it.
‘You’re no oil painting,’ she said. ‘How old are you?’
‘Around forty.’
‘You look it. Kurt’s twenty-five and looks thirty, I wonder what he’ll look like at forty.’
‘It’ll depend on the lighting. Tell me about these crank calls.’
‘They started about two weeks ago, no, three. Really weird stuff—like he said he’d throw acid in my face, or cut me. Said how would I look after I’d gone through a windscreen—stuff like that.’
‘Anything actually happen?’
‘No, but I’ve had a creepy feeling—like I’m being watched. It really got to Kurt.’
‘Was that the idea d’you think? I mean, I suppose you could have enemies . . .’
She laughed. ‘You mean I’m a domineering bitch. You’re right, I am. I haven’t got any talent you see, and a girl’s got to make her way somehow.’
‘I guess so. Well, I’ll hang around. I suppose I can go for a drive with Kurt, talk to a few people where you live, check a few things out. I don’t really think I can give him the flavour of the work though.’
‘Humour him. It’s just another macho fantasy.’
‘I can’t work out what you really think of him.’
She grinned and a little warmth showed in the slate eyes. ‘Neither can I.’
They got through working, if that’s what you’d call it, by 7 o’clock. I heard McLeish say they might get two minutes out of it and that that wasn’t too bad. Butler was too tired to do any sleuthing and I wound up my day by talking to the three security guards who’d be on duty all night. They weren’t bright but they seemed to be able to grasp that they should pay special attention to the Butler caravan. The happy young couple lived at Whale Beach, so they were in temporary residence on the set.
There was a small drinking party in progress when I left. In one of the undeveloped kitchens Space, McLeish, two actresses and a crewman were working their way through some wine and whisky. They didn’t invite me to join them so I went to where I keep my modest supplies of the same items.
The next day was one of the most boring I recall; I hung around the set while they ground out another two minutes. A copy of the script was lying around and I picked it up as a keepsake—from what I could see it was unlikely that I’d ever want to read it. I talked to Butler after he finished shooting and told him I’d check on whether there’d been any attempts to learn his unlisted number and invited him to go with me to do some snooping in Whale Beach.
‘No way, man, I’d like to but I just can’t make it. Bob’s done these new scenes and I’ve got to look ‘em over tonight. Tell you what, I’m going for a run tomorrow, early. What say you come with me—6 o’clock say. You can tell me how it went.’
I thought it’d give me a chance to see how the security boys were shaping up at first light and maybe Butler would have a few more ideas in his head at that time. I agreed to meet him on the street at six. There were three messages waiting for me at home—all prospective clients. I rang two of them and made appointments. I couldn’t see myself spinning out the Death Feast job for six weeks and it seemed smart to take advantage of the sudden easing of my personal recession.
We had the run, and Butler couldn’t resist keeping ahead of me and being more agile over the gutters. Leichhardt woke up around us; dogs yapped, and trucks delivered to shops and the cooking smells in the street suggested better breakfasts than tea and toast. I did a fair bit of panting as Butler showcased: we didn’t talk much. The action started at around eleven when Jardie Butler knocked over a camera and punched a cameraman who swore at her. I moved in fast to break it up, and eased her away from the broken glass and the fuming technician.
‘Easy, easy,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I got another one of those bloody calls! Right here, on the set!’
‘Where’s Kurt?’
‘In the other house, getting made up. I didn’t want him to hear about it until I’d seen you. Then I knocked over the stupid camera.’
‘Same voice?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Describe it while it’s fresh—what did he say?’
She shook slightly and I helped her to sit down on the steps of one of the caravans. ‘He said, he said “. . . I’ll wash your face for you, I’ll wash it right off.” Ugh. it’s a sort of thin, reedy voice, high . . .’
I got some brandy for her, and then she showed me the phone in the end house where she’d taken the call. One of the daytime security men had called Jardie to the phone but he couldn’t recall anything special about the voice. He scratched his ear under his aggressively cropped hair.
‘Funny thing though, that’s a closed line.’
‘What d’you mean?’ I snapped.
‘You can only get that to ring by using one of the other phones on the set. Why, what’s up?’
Jardie Butler’s hands flew to her face and she covered it like a little girl playing hidey. ‘Jesus!’
‘Who else’d know about the closed line?’
‘I dunno. Other security blokes; the bloke that installed them, and . . . ah, a couple of the . . . what d’you call them? Assistants.’
‘Okay, could you do a job for me? Just keep a watch and make a note of anyone who leaves this morning. Don’t stop them—just get the name and the time. Right?’
Like me, he looked glad to be relieved of the boredom and he hurried off. I helped Jardie up and made her finish the brandy.
‘We’ve got to do a quick tour, get to know everyone here. You know most of the names?’
‘Most, not all.’
‘Descriptions or jobs for the rest. Let’s go.’
We prowled the three houses looking in doors and checking in toilets; when we finished we had a list of twenty-two names and eight physical and eleven job descriptions. All the principals were there: Butler, McLeish, S
pace, Wild and a gaggle of supporting players—there were technicians of various sorts, and other functionaries down to a kid who controlled car movement in the street and a cook. Jardie and I went through the list crossing out names of people who couldn’t have made the call because they were definitely otherwise engaged at the time or because she could see them at the time of the call. Butler, McLeish and a big swag of the technicians went out; I removed myself from the list and the security man who’d told us about the phone. I was about to cross out the wardrobe woman when Jardie stopped me.
‘What’re you doing? Where was she?’
‘She’s a she—you said it was a man’s voice.’
‘I’m not sure now, it could have been disguised.’
‘Christ, that opens it up.’
‘What d’we do now? I’m impressed so far, by the way.’
‘Thanks.’
She was wearing her tight pants in white today, with a singlet cut low under the arms. She had very nice slim arms with long muscles; it looked as if she exercised as much as Kurt. She moved with a dancer-like graceful confidence and she wouldn’t normally have knocked over a camera. I was convinced that the phone call had been truly unpleasant.
‘The person who made the call wouldn’t have known that it was an internal-calls-only phone. He or she wouldn’t be worried about anything and there’s no reason to think they’d act any different from normal. I guess I’ll just have to check on all the obvious people—the ones who might have a reason to sabotage the film.’
‘That’s no one,’ Jardie muttered. ‘Haven’t you heard how things are in this business? Work’s work.’
‘Someone’s got a reason, unless . . .’
‘Unless what?’
‘Someone who’s not here who does have a reason hired someone who is here who doesn’t.’
‘Oh, great.’
From the other house Butler’s voice rose in a shout that lifted the dust.
‘I cannot work with that crazy bastard! What is the matter with him?’
It was a red alert to Jardie; she took off, scooting through the gap in the fence like a startled rabbit. I followed sedately and stepped into a madhouse: Butler, McLeish and Space were all shouting at each other simultaneously. Butler looked to be ready to use his fists on someone and McLeish had a bad, high colour with veins throbbing in his forehead. Space had more control and looked to be more excited than angry. Jardie pushed Space aside and he shut up and watched her go to work on Butler. Her technique was a combination of stick and carrot. She whacked him in the ribs to cut his breath and then stroked his arm like a vet with a frightened animal. Her touch seemed to calm him and he touched her in return. Maybe they’d done an advanced course in feelie therapy, because the touching seemed to do them both a lot of good.
