Hollywood Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  “Did you ever have a job on S and L?” asked Jane.

  “I was kicking around town as a stuntman, believe it or not, and my uncle was one of the directors on the last season of S and L. I banged up my knees pretty bad and needed to find something else to do. At an S and L party, I hit it off with Bix and we ended up writing a couple things together and one of our scripts made it into development. Bix and I had a thing for a while, but then we realized we were much better friends than we were parts of a couple,” Lou said, looking toward the door.

  He leaned forward to continue. “Listen, bottom line here. I’m a hack. Bix gets the ideas, I pound things out with her, and I do a hell of a pitch, but she’s the story person. But even story people, good story people, get dry, you know? A year ago, we start getting letters with story ideas in them. Whoever’s sending us the letters says we can write them up as treatments, have them for free, do what we want with them. Someday he might want to get into the business, but not now. Maybe we’ll help when he’s ready. In the meantime, anything we like, we can use. Crazy, right? We’re throwing the letters away, but they keep coming, and one day we’re desperate to come up with something for this actress we got a deal with. Bix fishes out the last letter and reads the thing. It’s got everything—a whole pitch for a series, pages of character descriptions, story ideas for two seasons. Incredible. I mean, it’s a lot of work. And it’s great.”

  “So you pitched it,” said Jane,” as your own.”

  “Yes and no,” said Lou. “Bix thought we were going into the meeting with the one lame idea we had, and after we pitched it and the exec shook her head and said, ‘Got anything else?,’

  Bix started to say no and I shushed her and brought out the mystery pages. I gave the pitch of my life on this show. It was easy because it was all laid out for me. I put our names on it with a Mr. X as the third writer. I told Bix that the guy’d come out of the woodwork if the thing sold, so we better be prepared.”

  “You sold it?” asked Tim.

  “Yup, went into development. Two other series, too. Then we started getting other kinds of letters. Crazy stuff the person wanted to get on the air. Wanted us to support certain causes, just random stuff, but oddball. Letters started getting more and more threatening. Bix wanted to go to Jeb and that B Room coven with it and I said no. Told her she didn’t need to give them one more thing to tie her to them. She didn’t like that and we had a big fight. She went to Jeb, of course, and I went to the Tuesday meeting, too, and I could see how this was going to go down. Jeb started saying that it was clear that I was the dead weight in the partnership, I had insisted that we borrow these story ideas and pass them off as our own. He was planning for me to bow out of Bix Pix, taking a kind of artistic dive and allowing Bix to keep her golden reputation.

  “And you know what? That was fine with me. I’d land on my feet. I didn’t care one way or another about my writerly integrity or any of that crap. This was television, for Christ’s sake. Then we got a letter that said it was time to give credit where credit was due. And I was okay with that, too. But the writer started accusing us of not wanting to have anything to do with him. We wrote back to this post office box all the time and I started trying to watch it, you know, see if I could put a real face on the guy.”

  “How do you know it’s a guy?” asked Jane. “You keep saying it’s a man, but the writer never gave a name or an identity, right?”

  “Referred to himself as a guy in one of the early letters, so we just started picturing a him. Never saw anybody at the post office box, but I only went a couple of times. Anyway, the guy said he was tired of giving us everything and it was time for payback. We offered to pay, hell, we had set aside a third of the money on everything for him. My agent thought we were nuts—he had an account for what he called the phantom writer. We told him we’d take him on as a partner, anything…but it was like he was arguing with somebody who we didn’t know—his own voices. We sure as hell weren’t arguing, but the last letter said somebody was going to have to be killed off if the series were to continue.”

  “And you don’t have a series on air right now….” “I was almost back when I got a phone message that somebody was found murdered at the Pasadena Flea Market today and Jeb told the B Room that I must have found my ghostwriter and killed him.”

  “How would Jeb know who the guy was or that you had—” “There was this guy who did accuse me of stealing a story…he came around the office all the time. Everybody knew him, knew about his claim. Novelist. Different thing altogether. His novel came out around the same time I sold a script…first one I had written on my own. Not that good, but you know…good for me. Stories were similar, but because mine was out there, nobody wanted to touch movie rights for his novel. There was no way I knew his book. I collect first editions, for God’s sake, I don’t read books. Besides, my script was written way ahead of his book and it wasn’t all that original to begin with. Two brothers have a fight and one murders the other. Hello? Genesis anyone? Bible was way ahead of both of us on that one. He keeps coming into the office and demanding credit for my script. Hell, there isn’t even a movie yet.”

  “Lou Piccolo’s back from Ojai…” said Jane, recalling the words that Jeb had whispered. That was what had made her think she was looking at the murdered Lou Piccolo.

  “So Skye doesn’t know any of this?” asked Tim, peeking out the door. Jane and Lou both looked toward Tim and the door. “Don’t worry, she’s still at the nurses’ station. Looks like they have a bunch of people who want her autograph. Apparently everyone wants a picture, too, and every cell phone is also a camera out there…poor kid.”

  “She’s a sport. Skye’s not really a part of those B Room drones. She just hangs with Bix. Good kid. She’d do anything for Bix and Bix has helped her plenty. She started acting when she was eight or something and her family tried to take all her money…just squeezed her dry. I think Bix is the only person who ever gave a damn about her.”

  “I’ve got three quick questions,” said Jane.

  Lou nodded.

  “Were you in Ojai?”

  “Yeah, I got a place there,” said Lou.

  “Were you alone there? When did you get back, and can anyone vouch for your whereabouts this morning?”

  “I was alone. Hung out at a used bookstore yesterday and maybe the guy’d remember me, but I don’t know. When I go there to work, I kind of tune out. I was supposed to be back for the meeting with you guys yesterday, but when Bix and I talked, she said to stay and work out the kinks in this other script, she could handle the initial meeting. Tell you the truth, I think she thinks I come on too strong. I’m impatient in meetings and sometimes I sound angry or something. She said you’d take some convincing and it might be better if she worked alone on this. I’m the pitch guy for networks, but not necessarily for people who are skittish about this business.”

  “I guess I have more than three questions,” said Jane. “One more, at least. Do—”

  “Anything. Look, I love Bix. Somebody’s trying to hurt her because of this stupid thing I did…I’m an idiot. Jeb Gleason’s right about me: I’m an idiot hack. But I didn’t kill anybody. And Bix didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

  “I think the nurses are letting Skye escape,” said Tim. “She’s headed back this way.”

  “Do you collect Depression glass?” asked Jane.

  Skye walked in, still laughing her famous Celie laugh, assuring the LPN who accompanied her that it was no problem to sign autographs, she loved talking about the old days.

  Lou smiled for the first time since Jane had met him. “Yeah, I do. Real men can collect Depression glass, you know,” he said. “My mom was a huge collector and I caught the bug.” Lou looked over at Tim, who had shot a look when he made the “real men” reference. “Hey, no offense, I mean…shit…you see why Bix didn’t want me at the first meeting? I have to grow on people.”

  Tim shook his head. “I’m gay, I’m not thin-skinned. Besides, if y
ou collect Depression glass, well, hell…”

  “What?” asked Lou, anxious again.

  “It’s only a matter of time,” said Tim.

  10

  Out here, East Coast-style flattery will get you in the door, it can get you past one gatekeeper receptionist, it might even get you an invitation to a B-list party, but in order to actually make a Hollywood omelette, you have to crack open the rotten egg of ass-kissing, California style. And you’ll be surprised how quickly you can learn it.

  —FROM Hollywood Diary BY BELINDA ST. GERMAINE

  Jane excused herself after Skye returned. She wanted to find a glass of water and a moment to collect her thoughts. If Lou Piccolo collected Depression glass, he would have been just as likely as Bix to walk down that aisle in the prop warehouse and open the rigged box. And if Lou was as abrasive as he claimed to be, if he had borrowed a few story ideas—freely given or not—he was the half of Bix Pix more likely to have made a few enemies.

  Jane walked down the hospital corridor, stopping to study a framed poster. So much of the art in public spaces was institutional—ordinary and forgettable—but this was different. It was a photograph of a hand holding a yellow No. 2 pencil over what looked like a three-dimensional scribble rising from a blank page.

  Jane leaned toward the print, trying to see what the material was or how the photographic trick, if that’s what it was, had been accomplished.

  “Some kind of wire?” a polite male voice queried from behind her. “Tungsten filament, perhaps?”

  “Tungsten filament certainly,” said a voice behind the voice. “That’s a Shotwell. My client, Dr. Bouchard, wants nothing but eighteenth-century French furniture in his house and nothing but Charles Shotwell photographs on his walls. Strange mix, but I’ve seen—”

  “So it wasn’t a royal we,” said Jane, turning around to face former Evanston police detective Bruce Oh and his wife, Claire.

  Bruce Oh raised an eyebrow slightly, which for him was a thoroughly out-of-character display of expression. Jane did not know, however, whether he was surprised to see her or had no idea what she meant by the reference to the royal we.

  “When we spoke on the phone,” said Jane,” you said when we return from California, but I didn’t know you were in California, so I thought you were just—”

  “I apologize, Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh. “I dislike being unclear.” Bruce Oh turned to his wife, who was standing beside him. “You phoned Mrs. Wheel to tell her we were visiting your relative in California?” Claire, rubbing a piece of dust off the photograph, nodded impatiently. He turned back to Jane. “I thought you had received the message that we, too, were in Los Angeles. My wife’s aunt is ill and we came here to visit. So the royal we you speak of was, in fact, a…” Oh hesitated, searching for the correct word. “A plebeian we, after all.”

  Jane hated that falling-down-the-rabbit-hole feeling she experienced whenever she realized she had forgotten something. Worse was the feeling of not realizing…not remembering the forgetting. When had Claire Oh called her? Charley was supposed to be the absentminded professor in the family. Jane, easily distracted by a piece of pottery or a souvenir tablecloth, was still the one who was supposed to process the information she was told.

  “I called to tell her we were going to California, but there was no one at home and when the answering machine picked up, I decided to phone back later and speak with her in person,” said Claire.

  Should Jane remind Claire that she was standing right here?

  “Ah,” said Oh,” and then you were unable to make the second call?”

  Claire nodded and, with no further explanation or apology, went back to polishing the glass covering the photograph.

  Jane noted that her partner and his wife always did this—spoke to each other directly, no matter how many other people were in the room. Jane liked to think it had something to do with their unique relationship, which she puzzled over every time she watched the two of them interact. Such an odd couple. Claire, tall and imperious, meticulously dressed in designer clothes of the very season they were designed for—unlike Jane’s own clothes, which occasionally carried all the right tags but were purchased just a season or two after their prime—and Bruce Oh, so quiet and still that he became invisible wherever he stood. The only remarkable aspect to his outward appearance was his daily neckwear. Claire found the most fantastic vintage ties and insisted that her husband wear one from the collection daily.

  Were Bruce and Claire Oh odder than any other married couple, though? Jane could remember being twentysomething—she could conjure that mad rush of passion that overtook her back then when Charley smiled at her from across the room. Now did people wonder what Charley saw in his pack rat, almost-detective wife? Growing old with someone, after all, was only one letter away from growing odd with someone, and maybe that’s what they were all in the process of doing.

  Claire explained to Jane that her great-aunt was at death’s door and that she and Bruce came out to be with the family and say their good-byes.

  “She’s a horrid woman, but we’re all grateful to her for her genes. Living to one hundred and six, she gives us all hope, you know, that we’ve got what it takes to become our own antiques.”

  “She’s here in the hospital?” asked Jane, somewhat surprised that someone that age wouldn’t prefer to be taken care of at home.

  “Her son and his wife are in their eighties now, healthy, but not able to care for her, really, so they needed her to come to the hospice here at the hospital. Aunt Violet refuses to go quietly.”

  “You perhaps mean quickly,” said Bruce Oh. “She has been quiet.”

  Claire, to relieve her boredom, had been touring the hospital art. Discovering a Shotwell she hadn’t yet seen was a satisfying distraction from the vigil at her aunt’s bedside. She announced that it was time to go back to the hospice wing and check in with the family. Claire insisted that Bruce remain with Jane.

  “Jane is so good at finding adventure…I think she should catch you up,” said Claire. “Aunt Violet will wait for you to return.”

  Jane proceeded with the catching up.

  “A body at the flea market?” said Oh, shaking his head slightly. “At a house sale, in an antique store, in the midst of his own trash…but a flea market…” He paused. “This would be a first for you?”

  Jane, as quickly and efficiently as possible, explained the events that had let up to the body in Pasadena. She omitted that she’d had a romantic history with Jeb Gleason, just mentioned him as a college friend. It had no bearing on the case, she reasoned, so why bring it up? She did tell Oh, however, that she had felt slightly guilty about playing dumb and not telling the police detective on the scene at the market that the body belonged to Lou Piccolo.

  “But it did not belong to Mr. Piccolo,” said Oh.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know that then,” said Jane. “I mean, it turned out to be okay for me to not say what I thought I maybe should have said, but it might have gotten pretty confusing with the police later if the victim had been Piccolo and we had been questioned again after the investigators checked his office records and found out Tim and I just flew in for a meeting with the man.”

  Oh nodded. “Confusing,” he said.

  “I mean, is it less of a lie if you think you’re lying about something, but it turns out you were telling the truth because you were misinformed?” Jane asked, feeling as if she were performing some kind of corkscrew dance that was driving her to the center of the earth.

  “Whoa, baby, does the ER have an ethicist on call?” said Tim, who had come out of Bix’s room to find Jane. He shook hands with Oh, accepting the fact the man was going to show up wherever Jane happened to be discovering a dead body or two.

  “I’m just saying that if the dead man had been Lou Piccolo, I realize I took a chance when I parsed words over whether I knew the victim,” Jane said, adding under her breath, feeling that whirling dervish thing all over again,” even though it turned out that
I didn’t know him after all.”

  “Sometimes silence is the greater truth,” said Oh.

  “Dumb luck,” Jane agreed.

  Jane was ready for Oh’s next question, since she had been asking it herself after her conversation with Lou Piccolo. She answered Oh the same way she had answered herself.

  “I don’t know why Jeb looked at the dead man and said that Lou Piccolo was back from Ojai. He had to have recognized the victim and known that there was a connection to Lou. Since no one knows who the phantom writer was…” Jane stopped and looked up at Oh, who had the good grace to look pleasantly expectant and puzzled at the same time rather than confused and irritated that Jane Wheel was carrying on an investigative meditation with herself. “I’ll explain all of this, but the most important thing is that Jeb recognized the body as someone Lou had a connection to and, I guess, might have wanted dead.

  “But why that cool acceptance of the fact?” she continued. “I mean, if Jeb really believed that Lou could murder someone, why did the B Room disappear en masse instead of telling the police who the victim was and who they might want to start looking for?”

  “Mrs. Wheel, you of all people should know what can happen if you claim knowledge of a victim,” said Oh. “There are those in law enforcement who are so happy to have information handed to them, it doesn’t matter that the information should have them up and running in a different direction. They will keep the person with something to say talking and retelling what he or she knows until the good citizen begins feeling very much like an ill-used citizen.”

  “Now that everyone is filled in on everything,” said Tim, “can you come back in and help referee between Lou and Skye? They’re in some kind of pissing match over who cares more about Bix and her well-being and who is going to take better care of—”

  “Moot,” said Jane. “Listen.”

  The conversation among the B Room members grew louder as they approached from the elevator. They were arguing over which route they should have taken from some restaurant in Pasadena, where, apparently, they had stopped for brunch even though they had all just encountered a man murdered by someone who at least one of them had believed to be their associate. Rick was insisting that they should have anticipated the traffic jam they encountered. He added that the stops at everyone’s houses and offices had been totally unnecessary. Greg agreed