Jane and Tim introduced themselves. Bix, looking more than exhausted, didn’t say a word.
“Why did De Niro need a hand surgeon?” Tim asked.
“Great question,” said Skye. She leaned forward as if sharing a secret. “No one knows because no one’s talking. Not De Niro, not the surgeon, no one.”
“Then how do you know—” Tim started to ask Skye at the same time Jane directed the question to Bix.
“How do you know—” Jane began, wanting to know if, before Skye entered the room, Bix was commenting on life in Hollywood where everyone was trying to kill everyone or whether she had some specific everyones in mind, but Bix interrupted.
“Skye, I’m pretty tired, but I have to finish some business with Jane and Tim. We flew them out here for a meeting and I feel—”
“Where’s Lou, precious?”
“Lou went up to Ojai for a few days, so I—”
“Everybody’s going to be here in a few minutes, so I could step out and wait for them in the hall and you could—”
“Oh no,” said Bix. “The whole B Room? I’m too tired, honey. Get rid of—”
Jane was always amused when a concept, a description from a book came true and happened in her life. So often, a room was described as suddenly full of people, which of course sounds like an exaggeration, but that’s exactly what this was. A before-and-after come to life. The door opened and in the same breathless manner that Skye had arrived, four more people came in, all talking at once, to each other and across each other.
Where there had been quiet conversation, there was now party banter mixed with loud expressions of concern that quickly turned into a contest of who had been the most frightened by the news of Bix’s accident.
Jane was reminded of a children’s story, a kind of Not I, said the cat / Not I, said the goose rhythm, that developed as they all spoke up, introduced themselves, and professed their horror at the news.
“I heard Bix lost her arm,” said Rick Stewart, shaking hands with Jane and Tim. “I was the first story editor hired on S and L.”
“You all wrote for Saturday Night Live?” asked Tim.
Greg Thale, who said he heard Bix had been decapitated, hooted and hollered and high-fived Rick, who nodded and grinned.
“Southpaw and Lefty,” Bix said quietly. “We all worked on Southpaw and Lefty…S and L, not SNL. Rick gets a lot of mileage out of implying the latter instead of admitting the former.”
“And a lot of improv babes,” said Rick, who had to be at least fiftysomething. He was trim and perfectly tanned, but definitely had the look of the godfather of this group. “Those BU conservatory grads who come out here for pilot season…hmm, hmm.”
“Ah, Ricky, you smack your lips like the Big Bad Wolf, but we know you only want to mentor.…I’m Louise Dietz.” She shook Jane’s hand and nodded across the room at Tim. “And we are the B Room.”
“Together again,” said Jeb Gleason from the doorway.
Jane turned around and saw that Jeb still posed when he entered a room. When all eyes had turned to him, he sauntered in. Presenting Bix with a perfectly tied and tissue-wrapped bouquet of long-stemmed roses, he said, with no discernible emotion,” I heard that you died.”
“Decapitated sort of implies the same thing, don’t you think?” asked Greg.
“ We were devastated, babe,” added Rick.
“The B Room,” Louise continued, as if she were used to interruptions from the people in the room,” was the conference room where we all worked on Southpaw. There was Conference Room A and Conference Room B. Sandy Pritikin, the star of the show, took over A with his entourage, so we all hung out in B twelve hours a day.”
“More like twenty hours a day. Someone wanted a snappier joke at the end of a scene, a better line somewhere, he came to the B Room, and we were there. On call,” said Rick.
“ We became very close,” said Skye, who looked from face to face. “Greg and Rick haven’t been apart since Day One. Jeb and Bix wrote screenplays together afterwards. Louise worked with Jeb on Gal Pals for three years—”
“You’re Celie!” said Tim. “It’s been driving me crazy. You played Lefty’s daughter.”
Skye blushed a studied shade of pink and nodded.
“The last season, when Celie was written out of most episodes, away at college, Skye started writing and we did two of her stories,” said Bix.
“Yes, I only had one year in the B Room, but it changed my life,” said Skye. “I’d been around actors since I was four and I didn’t realize there were any good and normal people in the world until I found writers.”
Jeb laughed loudly when Skye pronounced them good and normal. “All relative, baby. Only next to Sandy and those egomaniac actors would we have passed for normal. Next to them, we were the Sunday choir.”
Jane looked at the people crowded into the hospital room. These were the creative minds behind Southpaw and Lefty? She remembered the actors—Sandy Pritikin, Denise DeMill, Larry Diamond, and, of course, Skye Miller, the child actress who had literally grown up in her six seasons as Celie—who made up the regular cast of the show, but except for Jeb’s name, Jane had never paid any attention to the writing credits.
Southpaw and Lefty was a show-within-a-show format about two writers who really didn’t like each other, but each needed the other to produce successful television scripts. They were both left-handed, so one of the stars on the fictional series they wrote had nicknamed them, giving the show its catchy, if meaningless, title. Jane and Charley didn’t watch that much television, but usually caught this one. It was serious drama off the studio lot, but when the writers got together, the comedy was brilliant. No laugh track except when the fictional show-within-a-show was being taped.
“I missed it in your bio…that you wrote for S and L,” Jane said to Bix.
“I don’t list it anymore.” Bix spoke softly and Jane could see that she was bone-tired. Exhausted. Skye noticed, too, and met Jane’s eyes.
“Everybody out for tonight,” said Skye. “Bix has to rest.”
Her visitors gathered around Bix and began fussing with her covers, patting her feet, kissing her cheek. Louise Dietz, the first to give her a quick kiss, left her side and came over to stand in front of Jane.
“You’re the detective who Bix wants to do a movie about,” she said.
“Nothing’s been decided,” said Jane,” and now—”
“Now you’ve got a new case.”
Jane thought about lodging a protest. Not only did she want to keep Bix’s conversation with her private, she also wanted to break her habit of immediately demurring. Detective Oh maintained that silence was strength.
When Jane didn’t say anything, Louise continued.
“Maybe you can find out who wants to knock us all—”
“Louise, I’ll drop at you home,” said Rick. “Greg and I have to go back to the office and it’s on my way.”
Louise nodded.
Jeb was the last to leave Bix’s bedside. He shepherded the crowd of writers out the door, including Jane and Tim in his sweep. “I want you two to stay with me for the weekend. I have a guesthouse that makes the W look like a Holiday Inn Express. Bix asked me to take care of you two for her. If you’ll stay through the weekend, at least until Monday, she’ll be ready to talk business again before you leave.”
“I forgot my bag,” said Jane. It was the oldest trick in the book, but she knew if she was going to get a minute alone with Bix, it would have to be while everyone else was heading for the elevator.
Bix had her eyes closed, but opened them when Jane came in and picked up the bag she had stashed between bed and nightstand so no one would see it and retrieve it for her as they all made their way out.
“Whoever rigged that box tagged it for Bix Pix and knew I would open it,” said Bix. “There have been other accidents.…I said somebody was trying to hurt us, but Jeb thinks I’m being silly. Today I got this.”
Bix had been holding the note she no
w passed to Jane under the covers. It was the size of a phone message sheet.
One little, two little, three little writers, four little, five little, six little writers, seven little, eight little, nine little writers, ten little TV hacks. And then there were nine. You’ve got five days to come up with it. If you don’t give me back what’s mine, you’ll all go to hell. Oops, writing for network. Heck.
“This was with the phone message I got from Jeb when you were in the office. Cynda didn’t know who took it down or where it came from. I was going to ask you, when you got back from lunch, if you’d consider…” Bix hesitated and took a deep breath. “Look, I’ve already had a sleeping pill and a pain pill and maybe that’s why I can talk like this, you know, without the bullshit. I knew you didn’t want to sell your rights. But I thought maybe, if you came out here, maybe you could take this case…maybe Jeb would be okay if it was you doing the detective work…I mean, it was his—”
“What does Jeb have to do with it?” asked Jane. “More important, I guess, what is it? The it that the writer of the note wants?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. If I hadn’t opened that box…but they knew I’d open it, with the tag and…” Bix was fighting to keep her eyes open.
“Bix Pix,” repeated Jane. “Pix. Lou Piccolo might have opened it, too. I should talk to Lou, don’t you think?”
Bix was asleep.
6
Go for producing credit, people. Everyone knows that as soon as studios can figure out how to eliminate writers altogether, they will. Writers will be dead and buried. My prediction? Actors and directors are next.
—FROM Hollywood Diary BY BELINDA ST. GERMAINE
“Okay, pal, I know you are on a case,” said Tim, already comfortable behind the wheel, “but let’s not get our priorities screwed up, okay? Tomorrow morning we are leaving for Pasadena at 5:50 A.M. I checked at the nurses’ station, using my considerable charm with head nurse Ratchet, and found out that Bix is scheduled to go into surgery at seven A.M. to have a few glass fragments removed from her arm. She won’t be able to talk, let alone have any visitors, until at least two P.M. So until that time, you are my partner in T & T Sales and we are on a separate mission. Capiche?”
“It isn’t just Bix who thinks somebody wants to kill her,” said Jane. “Louise thinks somebody is after them, too. She said us…why does someone want to knock us—”
“Are you listening to me? California pottery, midcentury modern furniture, boatloads of costume jewelry, deco out the ass…honey, we’ve arrived at flea market heaven,” said Tim, navigating his way through Los Angeles traffic as if he had been born with a leather-wrapped steering wheel of a café-au-lait Porsche in his hands. Never mind that the rental in which they were speeding toward Westwood was the soccer-mom-special Volvo.
“I could get used to this, Janie, I really could.”
“What? Living out here?” Jane asked. “You’d never leave the good old Midwest, Tim. Four distinct seasons, honest hardworking people, and a sensible time zone where you can watch the news at ten and see Letterman’s first bit before falling asleep.”
“Darling, I am an antique-dealing florist who loathes shoveling snow, hates holier-than-thou hardworking people who act all superior because they graduated from the damn school of hard knocks. And, in case you’ve forgotten, I’m a single gay man who isn’t getting any younger. I may look fabulous next to you, sweetheart, but I’m ready to settle down before these crow’s-feet start wearing boots.”
Jane had no idea what that meant. It did make sense that Tim was enamored of L.A. So many beautiful people, so many who were ready to pay top dollar for the kind of unique objects that Tim knew how to find. For the first time ever, Jane felt no urge to offer up her night-before-sale prayers for all the right stuff. Her silent litany of let-there-be-pottery-Bakelite-beads-and-buttons-ironwork-planters-oak picture frames-Heisey glass-cigar boxes-vintage linen-yardsticks-and-old-sewing-gadgets would not be recited tonight. Jane hoped tomorrow’s flea market would be dull—worse than dull, full of Beanie Babies and tube socks. If Tim found beautiful weather, beautiful people, and beautiful objects all in one place, she could lose him.
“What would Kankakee do without you? You’re the mover and shaker of that place, Tim, and they need your energy and your creativity—”
Jane’s phone, still proclaiming itself by an angelic choir, sang out loud and clear.
Jane smiled in relief when she saw the number.
“Hello, Charley.”
She asked for an update on Nick and their site activities and waited for Charley to ask her if she had found any bodies that week.
“Nope,” she said,” but there was an accident that I’ve been asked—”
Jane stopped, hearing shouting on the other end of the line. Someone, with a thick French accent, was calling Charley, her sweet smart husband, a vile name. It sounded even worse with the vowels drawn and elongated.
“Nothing serious,” said Charley. “There’s another team down here and they think we’re trying to steal all their results and pass them off as ours. They try to pick fights with us when they see us in town, call us thieves and liars. I’ve never seen anything like it. A local paper, I think it was from some school, actually, did a story about the interest in digging here and they got mixed up. When they introduced us at the symposium, the moderator gave our guys credit for excavating this turtle, which was the other group’s big find, and nobody can make them understand that it wasn’t us trying to steal their thunder, just a mistake on paper.”
“Nick? Do they yell at Nick?” Jane asked.
“Nah. You know him. He’s the peacemaker. Friend of the common man and all. He’s over at the town’s only restaurant right now eating rice and beans with half the population of this place. We’re staying here in town for the weekend. We’re fine, Jane. Just one of those academic pissing matches. Always amazes me how petty these things are when there’s no money or power involved.”
Jane gave Charley the details of her movie-deal mystery, at least as much as she knew, mentioning at the end of the story that Jeb Gleason—did Charley remember her ever mentioning her college beau, Jeb Gleason?—had been Bix’s writing partner and that she and Tim had been invited to stay at his place for the weekend. After what seemed to Jane a beat too long, Charley responded with,” Small world.”
Weekly phone calls were killers. Jane thought they might be better off without cell phones. If they were writing letters, they could control the communication so much better. Best of all, they could respond to the words rather than the spaces between them.
“You know I’m crazy about you, Charley,” said Jane.
Another beat, where Jane tried hard to hear whether or not he was smiling.
“I know you’re crazy.”
Back at the hotel, Jane took out her Lucky Five notebook where she kept her picking lists of current objects of desire, and began making notes while Tim ordered room service. He struggled with the fact that the bartender in the lobby was a ringer for Brad Pitt, but ultimately decided that the minibar would be indulgence enough for tonight.
Jane wrote down the names of the B Room. Bix. Greg and Rick. Louise. Jeb. Skye. Lou. Was Lou Piccolo an S and L writer? A member of the B Room? Jane wrote that as her first question. She also noted that no one at the studio had suggested calling the police. Everyone Jane encountered had dramatically re-created the moment of the explosion—at least how the moment had affected them. No one seemed to be interested in having the incident investigated. As far as Jane could tell, no one had even called the fire department. There was a quick response team on the lot that came over and sprayed down the smoking box, cordoned off the area where two aisles of glass vases had been shattered so no one got hurt before the cleanup. Did everyone really accept the explanation that an old chemistry set had exploded? If that were truly the case, all those old boxed Mr. Wizard sets that were prized for their cool graphics and sold on eBay as MIB—mint in box—condition were accident
s waiting to happen. Surely nothing as volatile as what caused this box to go off when opened was normally present in a toy science kit. Jane made a mental note to ask Charley.
If Bix had shown anyone the tag that identified the box as a prop for The Scarecrow Murder—and explained that she hadn’t been the one to tag it—the police would have been called. The box would have been saved and examined. Instead it was cleaned up and swept away by the maintenance staff on the studio lot.
This meant that Bix chose not to get the police involved even though she knew the importance of the tag. If she hadn’t torn it off and looked at it, if she hadn’t put it into her left hand when she opened the box with her right, it probably would have been destroyed along with whatever was in the box. Why bring it to the hospital to show Jane when she could have asked for the police then and there? She was right, thought Jane, and she knew she was right. Someone had certainly rigged the box. But Bix was a producer, so why would…? Jane leafed through her copy of Hollywood Diary that lay open on the bed.
According to Belinda St. Germaine, the producer made the deal. Raised the money. Hired the writer, the director. Producers made the budget, oversaw the operation. Producers were at the top of the food chain. On any given project, there were probably dozens of people who would want to kill the producer, but rigging a box to explode when the producer found it in the prop shop? Producers didn’t scout props.
Hollywood Stuff Page 6
