Who was getting openly pissed. Couldn’t blame his producer for wanting to protect the director.
“You need to stop by the production office,” Kaufmann said, starting to close the door again, “and make an appointment.”
But my tactic worked-a hoarse second tenor chimed in from within the motel room: “Jimbo, let the guy in. Let me deal with this.”
Kaufmann twitched a frown, then forced something like a smile, opened the door wide, and gestured for me to enter. His bony hand was adorned with a rough goldennugget ring.
I nodded to the producer and said, “Thanks.”
Arthur Stockwell-assuming that’s who this well-tanned guy in the vintage Harley t-shirt and jeans was-did not rise; he swung his body around and frowned up at me. Not angrily, just with quiet frustration.
I put him at about fifty, about my size and weight, with short black hair suspiciously free of gray; his eyes were dark brown and a little puffy in a conventionally handsome oval. He looked like a slightly gone-to-seed leading man.
His voice was firm if ravaged from too much talk: “If this is about that Teamster matter, I can only say we’ve complied. And you need to ask your guys if they are aware of exactly who Louis Licata is. Because among other things, he’s the executive producer of this picture.”
Poised just inside the door with Kaufmann nearby, I let the director go on with that speech, because I found it interesting, and then I raised a hand, gently, in a stop motion. “I’m not from the Teamsters, Mr. Stockwell. You are Mr. Stockwell?”
“I am.”
I took several steps forward, closing the distance between us. He remained seated. The round table, about the size of the one we used for poker back at Paradise Lake, was littered with paperwork. Much of it was crude cartoonish drawings, on sideways sheets of typing paper, spread out in front of him. Just glancing, my guess was that they were camera angles for scenes he had yet to shoot. A cigarette and a cigar were going in an ashtray and the tobacco smell was fairly thick, though there was no haze.
“Mr. Stockwell, my name is John Reynolds. I understand my request is unusual, and it’s certainly a pain in the ass being bothered this late, particularly when you’re so busy.”
“No argument, Mr. Reynolds.”
I risked a small smile. Very small. “I don’t mean to sound mysterious, but we have a business matter to attend to. This is not a shakedown or a scam. But it is important, private, and pertains to this production. But I have to request that we speak alone.”
Kaufmann stepped up beside me and, before his director could respond, said to me, “If it pertains to the production, then I need to be here.” He smiled at me, almost in my face; nothing friendly about it. “Production, producer, Mr. Reynolds? Understand the connection?”
I did not look at him. Instead I gave Stockwell my most earnest gaze. And I’ve got a pretty good one, when needed.
“Mr. Stockwell,” I said, “if you have business with Mr. Kaufmann that needs immediate attention, I can wait in my room here in the hotel for as long as necessary…”
“Mr. Reynolds,” the director began, looking pained.
“…but we do need to talk. In private. If after we’ve spoken, you want to add Mr. Kaufmann in, that’s your call. I can only stress that this is personal as well as business and possesses a definite urgency.”
Kaufmann had started shaking his head halfway through that, but to his credit he waited for me to hit a stopping place before leaning in with a hand on the table to lock eyes with his director.
“Artie,” the producer said, “this is crazy.” He jerked a thumb at me. “We have no idea who this joker is. You’ve got another hour, easy, going over those storyboards before you can crawl in bed for your pitiful allotment of rest. Give me a fucking break.”
The last seemed a little desperate. I had an idea, though, that this moviemaking business was fairly desperate all the time. They were constantly under the gun. So to speak.
Stockwell smiled up at his producer. “Jimbo, you and I are done for tonight. This storyboard stuff is my concern. You go get some rest yourself-you’ve got another big day ahead of you, putting out fires.”
“Artie, please…”
“No. You’ve run yourself ragged all day, buddy-get some sack time. Meanwhile, I’ll give Mr. Reynolds here five minutes, and if what he says is of any concern to me… to us…I’ll fill you in first chance I get, tomorrow.”
Kaufmann sighed, said, “All right, Bubba. But if this turns out to be something real, something pressing? Go ahead and call me. I’m just one floor down, remember.”
Stockwell nodded and grinned and pushed the air with his palms. “Scoot, Mother. Get some rest.”
“Okay, Artie,” Kaufmann said, and the rumpled smile he gave the director was a friend’s, not a co-worker’s. Then he re-assumed his producer’s role by claiming the cigar from the ashtray, and went quickly out. Fast as a jump cut.
The director stood and stretched-bones popped and he made noise deep in his throat. “Mr. Reynolds, this chair is killing me. You mind if I take the bed while we talk?”
“Not at all.”
“Just grab one of these chairs and haul it over.”
The room was a near clone of mine but with the layout reversed. Where my bed was on the right, his was on the left, and so on. And there was no balcony. His round worktable took the place of my room’s little corner reading area with comfy chair and lamp.
Without comment, he slipped into the bathroom. Leaving the door open, he stood at the sink and shook several pills out of a little medicine bottle and filled a water glass from the tap to take them.
“Percodan,” he said with a shudder, after swallowing them. “I hurt my back skiing fifteen years ago, and now it haunts me. When we’re young we think we can do anything.”
He went over and stretched out on the bed, without using a pillow. He lay there staring at the ceiling. I pulled a chair over from the round table and sat at the foot of his bed, feeling a little like a psychiatrist.
“Make your pitch, Mr. Reynolds,” he said, not looking at me. “I’ll give you five minutes.”
“Do you know anyone who might want you dead?”
Now he looked at me. Just a lift of his head. “Is this a joke?”
“No. Do you? I heard you mention Louis Licata. He’s tied to the remnants of the old Dragna outfit, right? Loansharking, I believe.”
“You’re a cop.”
“Not even close, Mr. Stockwell.”
“This isn’t going to take five minutes.” With some effort, he sat up and used the headboard of the bed for support. He pointed toward the door. “You need to leave.”
“If I told you that someone had been hired to kill you, would that seem incredible to you?”
When his leading-man face frowned, he looked petulant. “You need to leave now.”
“Would it seem unlikely? Impossible? Improbable? Or are your ties to organized crime such that you can easily wrap your brain around the concept?”
He reached for the bedstand phone.
I got out the nine millimeter. “Don’t.”
Now his face turned pale, or anyway as pale as possible under that deep a tan. He withdrew his hand, and tried to sit straighter. He was shaking a little. You can start shaking real fast when somebody points a gun at you.
“Is that…that why you’re here? To kill me?”
“No.”
He smiled but it was awful; the kind of smile that sometimes precedes tears. “Who sent you? Licata, right? He knows, right? Look, I have money, too…I can-”
I raised my free hand. I wanted to lower the nine millimeter but couldn’t just yet. “I said ‘no,’ Mr. Stockwell. You need to settle down.”
“Said the stranger with the gun.”
“Call me Jack-and I’ll call you Art, or do you prefer Artie?”
He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at the nine millimeter-specifically into its barrel, the small darkness there that promised a much big
ger one. “How…how can you be so cold about this?”
“I prefer to think of it as cool. You aren’t in any danger at this moment unless you do something stupid. Scream, for example, or throw that ashtray at me.”
He was breathing hard. “If you’re not here to…why are you here?”
“I’m here to offer you a service. It’s a genuine service-like I said before, not a shakedown, not a scam. It happens I am in a position to know that a pair of contract killers has been hired…has been sent…to kill you. I am also in a position to do something about it.”
His eyes were wild. Understandably. “This doesn’t make sense…it’s crazy…”
I lowered the nine millimeter until my hand was draped across my lap-the weapon still a presence, but I hoped not as much a distracting threat.
I said, “It doesn’t matter how I came upon the information. I don’t know who hired the killers. I just know they were sent here. One of them has been keeping you under surveillance for weeks. He’s a back-up man, strictly support. The other is planning to kill you, probably in the next several days, and to do so by staging your death as an accident. What kind of accident, I don’t know yet.”
He was shaking his head. The rest of him was motionless, as if he were otherwise paralyzed. “This is insane…You need to leave…you need help…”
“Is your movie financed by mob money?”
“…are you a cop?”
“I said before-no. If I were, that statement alone would make this entrapment, so please answer my question. Is your movie financed by mob money?”
“…Yes.”
“Licata?”
He nodded.
“Art, that mob involvement alone makes it credible that someone could target you for death. But I admit I can’t see why someone financing this film would want to have you killed. It frankly doesn’t make sense. You’re the director of the picture.”
He had a curdled kind of smile going. “You expect me to just discuss this?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to believe that someone wants to kill me?”
“Yes.”
“And that it would be easy for them to do that.”
I raised the gun, shrugged, then lowered it again.
He swallowed. “I…I see your point. You want to know if Louis Licata might have reason to be unhappy with me.”
“Right.”
“He does.”
“What is it?”
He frowned, cocked his head. “Is that what this is about? Are you Licata’s man? And you’re trying to trick me into admitting it?”
“Admitting what? I am not Licata’s man. Do I look fucking Italian? Sorry. Didn’t mean to raise my voice. Art-Artie?”
He was nodding, nodding, nodding. “Art is fine. You’re Jack. I get that. You do not look fucking Italian, I grant you. Do you know what the relationship between Mr. Licata and Miss Goodwin is?”
“Miss Goodwin-the female star of your film?”
“That’s right. This is her first starring role. And I agreed to do it for Mr. Licata, even though she isn’t much of an actress.”
“Does she have to be? I saw the Playboy layout.”
“Actually, she does. When she first read for me, she was wooden. Really lousy. But to get Louie’s backing, I had to agree to cast her. So I began working with her.”
“Oh. You’re fucking her.”
He blinked, surprised by how fast I’d caught up. Then he shrugged with his eyebrows. Nodded. “Yeah. Or I was. Fucking her, I mean. I broke it off before we started shooting. On the shoot, it would be unprofessional, plus… well, there are other concerns.”
“Such as?”
“I have my wife along. She’s an actress, too, and has a supporting role, and out of respect to her…and knowing that if Louie found out, I’d be in a jam…I broke it off with Tiff.”
“How did ‘Tiff’ take that?”
“Obviously she was pissed. But she’s behaving herself. And the important thing is, her acting has improved, gone from pure shit to barely competent, but improved.”
It was swell that he could grasp what was “the important thing.”
I asked, “Could Miss Goodwin be mad at you for dumping her? Mad enough to spill to her boyfriend that she had an affair with you?”
“I would hardly think so. Lou has a notorious temper, even for a mob guy. I can’t imagine she’d risk it.” He shrugged elaborately. “But…who knows with a crazy cunt like her?”
“Is that what she is? A crazy cunt?”
“Oh yeah. But what a bod…Listen, I could use a smoke.”
A pack of Marlboros and a lighter were on the nightstand and I nodded for him to go ahead.
As he got his cigarette going, I was thinking. Then I asked, “What about your wife? Is she a candidate for wanting you dead?”
“J.J.?” He actually laughed. “No, no, that’s crazy. She’s a grown-up. She knows I’ve fooled around from time to time, but that I always come home to her. She’s just about the most grounded, realistic woman you could ever hope to meet. She’s…like a man that way. I love the shit out of her.”
I wasted little time absorbing that romantic sentiment, and pressed on: “Whoever sent these two to kill your ass, Art, it’s not our immediate problem. We can address that, and should address that…but right now I need to stop the guy who’s planning an imminent fatal accident for you.”
He exhaled smoke; his eyes were wide, his forehead furrowed. “Am I crazy?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“I’m believing this. I’m believing you. Who are you?”
“I used to be in the same business.”
“As me?”
“As the pair sent to kill you.”
“And, what? You came over from the dark side? Now you’re a good guy? This is not a script I would buy, Mr. Reynolds.”
“Good guys and bad guys aren’t the issue.”
“What is?”
“Whether you want to hire me to stop you from dying of an accident.”
His eyes flared and nostrils too and he sat sharply up. “Insurance,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s why Licata could afford to have me killed. There’s insurance on the picture. Completion bond, it’s called. Something happens to me, insurance pays off big-time. They can salvage what I shot, and start over later, but in the meantime, the production gets paid for, top to bottom.”
I was nodding. “Okay. That may make Licata the prime suspect. But just now we don’t want to solve your murder, Art-we want to prevent it.”
Suddenly he changed his position, in a couple of senses, including scooching closer to me and sitting like an Indian on the bed, hunkered over conspiratorially. “How will you do that? Is this something you…something you’ve…”
“I have done it before. I have helped people in your situation. Never lost a patient yet. But there’s something you have to come to grips with, before you can hire me.”
His eyes flared again and he gestured with his cigarette in hand, making a smoke trail that vaguely suggested a question mark. “Haven’t you given me enough already? To come to grips with?”
“No. There’s a bigger bump yet you have to weather. Something major you have to grasp, and endorse.”
“What the fuck are you-”
“The way I can help you, right now, is to stop this.”
“Well, sure…”
“To stop this. Understand? I have to remove the problem. Cut out the cancer. Get it?”
“You mean…you have to kill the…killers.”
“Yes.” I shrugged. “Actually, I’ve already killed one of them. Earlier tonight.”
His jaw dropped. Not a figure of speech-it dropped. “What?”
“The surveillance expert. Back-up guy I mentioned? He’s already turned over the info he’s gathered on you to his partner. And as far as the partner knows, the back-up guy has gone home. Which he has. In a big way.”
His eyes were
tight; his tone tentative. “You…you killed someone tonight…”
“Yes.”
“Without knowing whether I would…without my…”
“Yes. You know what they say-first one’s free.”
“My God.” He seemed about to throw up, but he handled it. Probably didn’t want to waste the Percodan.
“You all right, Art? We cool?”
His smile was terrible. I’d call it curdled. “What’s your fee, Jack? There’s always a fee in these Faustian scenarios.”
“Hey, I’m not the devil. I don’t want you dead, and I sure as hell have zero interest in your soul. It’s twenty-five grand for removing both hitmen. Two-for-one sale. Can you handle that?”
He swallowed thickly. But then he nodded. “I can. Cash?”
“That would be better. But there are ways for you to pay with a check. Various names and accounts I use. Still, there’s less risk for us both if we can stay with cash. Plus I’d have to charge you more, because of the tax issues. Got to stay straight with Uncle Sugar.”
His eyebrows went up. “Oh yeah. You want to be a good citizen.”
“Art, I’m not the bad guy here. Or let’s put it this way-I’m your bad guy. Now let’s move on to part two.”
“There’s a part two?”
“Aren’t you in the sequel business? For another twenty-five K, I will find out if it’s Licata who took out the contract. If so, I’ll take him out. Same deal if it’s someone else-either way, I’ll remove the threat.”
He scooched back to his former position, legs straight out, back against the headboard. “You would just…kill a mob boss?”
“Sure.”
“Really?”
“Art-mob bosses getting killed is not that unusual.”
A grunty thing came out of him that might have been a laugh. “How can you be so goddamn casual?”
“Why, does it matter? Since I will have to do some poking around, I would need an official capacity with your production. I was thinking of a PR role. That would give me access to just about anywhere and anybody.”
“You’d be on set?”
“Some of the time. This ‘accident’ may be rigged to happen on set. Must be lots of equipment there that could fall over on a guy.”
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