Each room downstairs—living room, dining room, and den—was similar. Multiples of objects filled every surface. Jane noticed in the den that six towers were built floor-to-ceiling with See’s candy boxes. Jane went over and carefully extracted one of the boxes from the middle. It was light, no candy. Jane was relieved somehow that Heck had eaten the chocolates. It made her think Heck had at least experienced some sensual pleasures. She shook the box and heard the swish of paper. He must have left the wrappers. Jane lifted the lid.
Jane needn’t have worried about Heck enjoying sensual pleasures. The ten photographs in the box were of a naked woman. Although the woman, more a girl, really, had a game smile, she seemed sad and uncomfortable. The pictures were taken in Heck’s living room. The same coffee table was in front of the couch. For some inane reason, Jane noticed that there were only two ashtrays when the photo was taken. Jane thought perhaps she would be able to put the boxes of photos—she was sure now that’s what all of these boxes held—in some type of chronological order by the number of objects visible in the pictures. Jane opened a few other boxes and found the same types of photos, all with different women. The oldest couldn’t have been more than twenty-one.
There were no names written on the photos, although written in marker on the inside lids of the candy boxes was the word audition with a letter and number code next to it.
Jane wondered if there were any Hollywood actresses who had gone on to stardom who had fallen for Heck’s “auditions” and come into this living room, scared and embarrassed. Were they desperate? Did he offer them money? Jane looked at the towers of boxes. There must be two hundred of them. She felt sick and at the same time, relieved that Louise hadn’t come in with her. Louise would know about this soon enough, they all would have to know, but Jane hoped Louise wouldn’t have to see it for herself.
There was that chime again. Still holding one of the candy boxes, Jane headed for the stairs. In the upstairs hall, she searched for a light switch. When she flicked it on, she saw that although the downstairs held evidence of a manic, frenzied writer, it was upstairs where Heck truly became the mayor of crazy town.
Every inch of wall space in the hall was filled with notes pasted on the walls. Some of them looked like actual notes on scripts. Jane noted some Southpaw and Lefty scripts that were marked with red pen, then the notes were answered again in black pen. Heck had given notes on his own notes?
There were three small bedrooms that radiated from the center hall, all filled with paper. Stacks and stacks and boxes upon boxes. If the place burned down, it would be a forest fire, thought Jane. In the middle room, Heck had gotten crafty. Southpaw and Lefty scripts, many still bound in folders, were stacked along the window wall. The ones that had been unbound had loose pages that were scattered around a small table and chair in the middle of the room. Most of the loose pages had been recycyled, however, shaped and folded into swans…hundreds and hundreds of origami swans. Jeez, Patrick not only couldn’t do his own writing, he didn’t even do his own folding. Jane pictured Heck downstairs at one of his desks, writing, writing, flinging the pages into a pile, then coming up here to unwind by transforming all the old writing into something else entirely. This man must have been unable to ever still his hands. His mind and his body had to be in constant motion.
Jane’s phone rang and she got it out of her pocket and flipped it open before the second ring. A record. “Tim?”
“He’s with you, hon. We’re on our way.”
“Jeb?” Jane said into the already dead phone.
Jane had seen enough scary movies to know that the hero—that was her—should not be in a house alone when the possible villain/murderer—that was Jeb—was on his way. Jane looked out the window and saw Louise’s car but still no Louise. She said she lived only a few blocks away—she probably went home and called Jeb herself. Jane dialed Oh’s number, but the phone was off. Of course, he was at the hospital, and phones needed to be turned off. She left the message for him to come to the house and decided she’d better get outside herself. Not only did she know enough not to get caught inside, she knew that it would really be stupid to get caught upstairs with no escape.
That damn cell phone chime. Where was it coming from? Jane moved into the next, much smaller bedroom. This one, no surprise, was filled with more paper. At first, in the dimly lit, dusty room, Jane thought it might be stacks of newspapers lining the walls underneath the windows, climbing straight up toward the ceiling in places, but when she went closer to inspect them, she saw they were more typewritten pages. Stacks and stacks of manuscript pages. This house was both a writer’s dream and a writer’s nightmare. H. Rule was typed in the corner of each sheet Jane picked up, with a number and letter code following the name. She tried to read two consecutive pages from a stack to see if she could understand what she was reading, but the two sheets were not from the same manuscript. The corner codes were different.
The chime again. From behind some messy stacks in the opposite corner. Jane walked over, carefully stepping around the paper that had drifted from the piles against the walls.
Jane expected to find, what else, more pages behind pages. She did not expect to find Tim Lowry, unconscious, fully dressed, yet scantily covered in random pages of sitcom dialogue. His cell phone chimed. He had a message.
“Tim, wake up, we’ve got to get out of here,” said Jane. Her friend was breathing, and to Jane’s untrained ear, it seemed normal and regular. She started to take his pulse, then realized she wasn’t wearing a watch and for some reason nurses always looked at their watches when they laid their fingers on your wrist, and even if Jane could feel anything, she had no idea what she was supposed to count, for how long, or what the final number would mean.
“Damn it, Tim, just wake up.”
She heard a car in the driveway. Three blocks away and the damn B Room drives over. Well, California, what would you expect? Jane had been there, what? Three days now? Long enough to stereotype and generalize and denigrate. “Timmy,” said Jane, unbuttoning his collar. She rushed into the bathroom, where there were no towels, and took off the linen shirt she had worn over her tank top. “You will buy me a new shirt, Lowry,” she said out loud, soaking the sleeves in cold water. She ran back and placed the wet cloth on Tim’s neck and face. “Wake up!”
Jane tried to dial 911 on her cell phone while she was patting Tim down. If he ever did wake up, she knew he was going to kill her for the water marks on his silk shirt.
“Tim!”
“Phone down, Jane,” said Jeb, who had climbed the stairs silently. Either that or her own heart had been making enough noise to drown out his footsteps. “You don’t understand what’s going on. This is just a meeting.”
“No,” said Jane. “I won’t.”
“He’s okay, he’s just drugged, and I am not giving you an option,” said Jeb, grabbing her wrist and squeezing until she dropped the phone. It slid under a manuscript cover sheet. Plan B: When Life Happens, a one-hour comedy drama.
“Have you stolen that one already and pitched it, Jeb?” Jane asked.
“Not one of Henry’s best, but it has a great female character. Spunky, determined two-time loser who rises from the ashes to become a success in her second career,” said Jeb.
“Drivel,” said Jane.
“Yeah, who cares?” said Jeb.
Bix and Skye walked in, shaking their heads at all the pages everywhere. Bix knelt down next to Tim and held a vial up to his nose, which roused him and made him sneeze.
“This is frightening, Jeb. Like being inside Heck’s brain,” said Bix. “Let’s go back to your house.”
“You’ve been here before,” said Jeb, pulling Jane up, kicking her cell phone across the room, and still holding on to her wrist.
Bix shook her head. “Never came in. I used to bring food and movies over once in a while, but Heck always met me at the door. Said he was in the middle of something.”
“And he was,” said Jeb. “Let’s go downstairs
. We can clear some chairs in the living room and have our meeting. Rick and Greg are on their way. Louise’s car is here, but I haven’t talked to her. Did she drop you off, Jane, then walk to her house?”
Jane watched Tim blink and try to place where he was.
“Why’s my shirt wet?” asked Tim.
“I was saving your life,” said Jane.
“Do you have any idea what this cost? It’s custom.”
Since Tim seemed to be recovering, Jane turned her attention to the threesome in front of her. Bix and Jeb were calm, talking to each other about various projects. Skye had opened a closet and was looking through the stacks and boxes crammed into the tiny space. Jeb let go of Jane and helped Tim to his feet. Jeb patted Tim’s shoulder and apologized.
“You’re going to have more of a headache than you started with,” said Jeb to Tim, who looked totally perplexed. “Now, we just can’t have you both talking about all of this for the next few days. After that, none of it will matter,” said Jeb. He sounded upbeat.
When Tim stood up, he immediately put his hand in his pockets and reeled. He leaned against the door to steady himself.
“Pretty dizzy,” he said.
“It will fade,” said Skye. “You’ll actually feel pretty refreshed. It’s a deep-sleep drug—don’t know its name, but when I had that awful insomnia in ‘96—remember, Bix?—I went to a herbalist who said if you could deeply rest your body, I mean put it out, the actual time mattered less than the quality if—”
“Please,” said Jeb, looking at Bix. “Make her stop.”
“Okay, hotshot, I’ll stop, but after the meeting today, I think you’ll be happy to be allowed to listen. The tables are going to turn, my friend—” Skye stopped when Bix put her hand on her arm.
“Honey, save it for the meeting, okay?”
Skye nodded, smiling.
The group made their way downstairs and Jeb began shoving pages off chairs.
“Are we prisoners here?” asked Jane. “Can I just walk out that door?”
“No and no,” said Jeb.
He finished setting up the room and smiled at the sound of another car in the driveway. “You want to know what this is all about and I want to tell you. After our deal goes through tomorrow, none of this will matter. It might not even matter now, but I want all the paperwork finished before we say good-bye,” said Jeb.
“You’re as crazy as Heck,” said Jane. “Do you think you can get away with murder?”
Jeb laughed and greeted Rick and Greg, who arrived together. Jeb asked Bix to call Louise again.
“We’re going to start. I talked to Louise this morning and filled her in, so she’s up to date anyway.” Jeb took a deep breath and stood tall. “As of tomorrow, when the final papers are signed, I will be the new president and CEO of Bix Flix, which has signed a gigantic deal with a major studio. We will also be going public, which is why all of this has to stay hush-hush for the next few days. We are all set, my friends. Job security, complete creative control, and corner offices. Whatever your hearts desire. I promised you ten years ago if we stuck together, we’d own this town. And, of course, I was wrong, but we own our corner of it now.”
“How can you possibly get Pix out of Bix Flix this fast?” said Jane. “You haven’t even had Lou Piccolo’s memorial service yet.”
“Lou signed off on this months ago. He wanted out for the past two years. Just recently he told me he had finally cracked the code on what he wanted out of life,” said Bix. “I figured he was moving permanently to Ojai.”
“Did he actually say ‘crack the code’?” asked Jane.
Bix nodded.
“Don’t you see? He learned how to put all this stuff together,” said Jane. “He cracked Heck’s code. Or rather, Patrick Dryer did and Lou somehow got the information out of him. Lou planned to become the new you, didn’t he, Jeb?”
Jeb smiled so cordially that Jane thought he must have lost his mind. She looked around and finally locked eyes with Tim. Here they were, in the crazy house of a crazy man with a bunch of crazy people, and they were having a pleasant little meeting with the crazy town citizens.
“Jane, I didn’t care what Lou had or hadn’t discovered. I knew Lou was getting this stuff from Dryer and Dryer squeezed the crazy-ass filing system out of Heck before he died. I wanted you to come out here because I thought you might find something on Dryer so that we could get an order of protection or something. These pranks were driving us nuts. And in the case of Bix’s arm, they were getting scary. Doesn’t matter anymore. The B Room has developed enough projects to keep us all busy for the rest of our lives. We’re done with Heck’s work. Time to let that poor man rest.”
Skye snorted.
“So why’d you have to kill Patrick if you were done with all of this?”
The B Room turned as one and looked at Jane.
“Man, you are good,” said Rick. “You solve the Black Dahlia yet?”
Jeb looked horrified. If he was acting, this was a much better performance than she had ever seen him or any of this group give.
“You think I killed Dryer?” asked Jeb. “Haven’t you been paying attention? Lou Piccolo killed Patrick. He didn’t want to share all this, so once he got Patrick to give him Heck’s system, he got rid of him.”
“With a Kalo letter opener?”
“I admit that was strange, but Lou probably just bought that one at the market, then saw Dryer, who, incidentally, had been following him all over town, making scenes,” said Jeb.
“You remember the yelling at the office during our first meeting?” asked Bix. “That was Patrick.”
“Yes, I know. I also know that someone took the Kalo letter opener from the collection off Lou’s desk.”
Jeb and Bix looked at each other. Tim shook his head at Jane. She could tell that he was worried she was talking too much. He might be right. She wasn’t sure she knew anybody in any cavalry that would be riding in to save them. She hadn’t been able to reach Oh, she hadn’t called the police.
“I did do that,” said Jeb. “When we ran back to the office after the explosion, which was clearly a Patrick trick, I saw those openers and noticed the Kalo. After I saw Dryer at the flea market, stabbed with what looked like Lou’s opener, I went to the office to see if his was still there. When I saw it still in place, I took it. I figured he did it with one he bought there, but just in case the police couldn’t prove it, I’d help by making his own disappear.”
“So why did you put it back?” asked Jane.
Jeb looked blank.
“I put it back,” said Bix. “I saw it on your desk last night, Jeb. I took it and put it back in Lou’s office this morning. The poor man’s dead. No reason to point the police in his direction any more than they will be anyway. It’s over. I didn’t want you involved in it, Jeb,” Bix said.
Jane realized that they were telling the truth as they saw it. They believed that Lou killed Patrick and that he then died of a heart attack by the pool. They had all been television writers so long that they accepted this without question. Three acts and a conclusion. Time for a twist.
“So Lou killed Patrick?” Jane asked.
Bix and Jeb nodded. Greg and Rick shrugged. They were bored and clearly wanted to be doing their own work or, judging from their leafing through the pages on the floor by their chairs, diving into their own decoding of some of Heck’s work.
“Who cares? He was a prick and he’s gone,” said Rick, patting his pocket, looking for a cigarette. “Damn it. Didn’t Heck used to smoke?” Rick began opening desk drawers. “Jesus, there are pages of dialogue all over the damn house. Poor bastard. How many voices in his head did he have to listen to all day?”
“Yeah, poor Heck,” said Skye. “Let’s all feel sorry for the bastard.”
Bix walked over to Skye and tried to put her arm around her, but Skye shook her off.
Rick was going through a built-in corner cupboard in the adjoining dining room, muttering to himself, when Jeb got a cal
l from Louise. “Yeah, we’re right here in the house. Why? Bring it in. Yeah, they’re all in here. Okay, in a minute.”
Jeb told Greg to go help Louise out in the garage. “She’s got something out there and it’s too heavy for her to bring into the house. Can you see what’s up?”
“Eureka,” said Rick, bringing out a cigar box.
“Don’t open it,” said Jane.
“Why? Yo u think Patrick rigged them all up to explode?” said Rick.
“In a way,” she said. Without thinking, Jane had carried the See’s candy box upstairs, put it down when she found Tim, but picked it up and brought it downstairs with her. She still had it tucked under her arm. The last thing that box contained was cigars. It, too, was probably full of the sickening “audition” photos.
“Boom,” said Rick, flipping open the lid. “Wow. These are great. Here’s a note—Heck, I know you used to like a good cigar. These are from my private stash. Enjoy. Lou. The note is dated…hey, when did Heck jump?”
Jeb took the note and read it. “It’s dated the day Heck killed himself.”
Skye began to make noise. Jane thought she was crying until she looked over at her. She definitely wasn’t crying—whatever she was doing was closer to nervous giggling.
“Can I ask a question before this goes any further?” asked Tim.
He was sitting next to Jane, rubbing his temples, the fog beginning to clear.
“If everything is all worked out and we’re just here for your little love-fest meeting, how come I had a gun held on me and was made to drink that shit? How did I even get here?”
“He must be hallucinating,” said Jeb.
“No,” said Skye. “I caught him snooping around in the pantry and I thought he was stealing stuff. I wanted us to have the meeting here, remember, so we could see Heck’s stuff before the house got sold? Worked out great, too,” Skye said. She looked at Tim. “You were loopy after you drank my special potion, but I got you over here, you were walking. You just don’t remember.”
Hollywood Stuff Page 24
