Margin of Error

by Edna Buchanan

  I raised my eyebrows. I could have told him, but didn’t.

  “Can’t stop them from finishing what they started in our building.” The publisher paced the office, running his hand impatiently through thinning hair. “Or can we?” he glanced hopefully at Seybold.

  “I wouldn’t,” the lawyer said. “We had an agreement. If they sued, we could be held liable for the costs of reshooting what they’ve already done. But we can certainly encourage them to finish up here as quickly as possible, then distance ourselves from the entire situation.”

  “When they are in the building,” the publisher instructed, rocking back and forth on his heels, “I want them monitored and security strictly maintained. The first time they violate the agreement, they’re out.”

  Janowitz and I worked on the story together. Lottie, who regularly monitors fire channels, had shot spectacular pictures from a chopper before dawn.

  People were streaming into doctors’ offices and hospital emergency rooms by early afternoon, with allergies, asthma, and chronic upper respiratory ailments aggravated by the smoke.

  By late afternoon, the Long Pine Key and the Chekika Recreation Areas were closed, and the boardwalk at the Anhinga Trail, totally rebuilt after the storm, had burned.

  The News’s lead editorial in the early edition questioned how filmmakers had won permission to build in the ‘Glades. Had they circumvented the entire permit process and in doing so despoiled a precious and sensitive Florida resource in the pursuit of profit?

  Then McDonald called. “Thought you’d want to know,” he said. “We’re scheduling a press conference in a couple of hours. That stuntman, Trent Talon. His death was no accident. It looks like a homicide.”

  16

  The control panel had apparently been tampered with, wires reversed, to prematurely detonate the blast. Search warrants had been served at two locations. Detectives and crime scene technicians were at the trailer, where the panel had been stored from late Friday until the morning of the explosion, and at the production’s downtown office. There had apparently been a break-in. The only items missing from an unlocked file cabinet were a blueprint for the warehouse stunt and the schematics for the control panel.

  “But who? Why?” After the fire I had wondered whether we had stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong moment, as the set was about to be torched by an arsonist, or whether we were the targets. The answer seemed chillingly clear.

  “Somebody wants to kill Lance,” I blurted.

  “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion,” McDonald said. “There are easier ways to do that.” He shrugged. “Just wait outside Planet Hollywood and shoot him in the head. Nobody has to blow up a building or set fire to the whole goddam county to whack him. From what we understand, the chances of his actually performing that warehouse stunt were remote from the start. Why risk it when you know you’re probably gonna take down the wrong man?

  “We’re looking into Talon’s background, his personal life, working relationships, who profits from his death. The usual.”

  “But what about the fire? Isn’t that too much of a coincidence? We almost get killed out in the ‘Glades the same night? Twice in one day?”

  “We’ve talked to Metro fire. Their theory at this point is that careless smoking probably sparked it.”

  “Not true. I swear, McDonald. What about Stephanie?”

  “We’ll talk to her, when we find her. And we are looking into her background. But how realistic is it to think that she could steal the plans and rewire the panel? We have no shortage of crazies, like the lady with the love potion—who is free on bond, by the way. But common sense says: not realistic.”

  “Don’t underestimate Stephanie,” I warned. “She has a talent for slipping past security, in and out of houses, hotel rooms, the newspaper. She’s capable of anything, and she’s dangerous.”

  “I said we’ll talk to her, but at this point we don’t even know if the woman is still in Miami.”

  “Oh, she’s here,” I said. “She’s here. I can feel it.”

  The feeding frenzy grew even more manic after the police press conference. Headlines read DISASTER STALKS MOVIE MAKERS. Writers for the tabloids and crews from Inside Edition, Hard Copy, and Entertainment Tonight swarmed into town like locusts. TV newscasts reporting that Lance was present when the ‘Glades fire ignited kept playing and replaying a clip from The Last Gunfighter, one in which Lance takes a last drag on a cigarette, tosses it aside with reckless abandon, draws his gun, and swaggers down a dusty street. From that, they cut directly to flaming acreage.

  The honeymoon was over.

  And the fire continued to rage. The Krome Detention Center, a holding facility for illegal aliens located on the fringe of the ‘Glades, was evacuated at dusk. Nearly a thousand inmates were loaded onto buses. Visibility was zero, due to the smoke, and a chain-reaction rear-end collision resulted. One hundred and seventy-four illegals—Haitians, Cubans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, three men from Bangladesh, a child molester from Berlin, and a con man from Canada—escaped in the confusion.

  Hospital ERs now overflowed with patients suffering from smoke-related conditions. Environmentalists were enraged. Politicians saw which way the smoke was blowing and joined the fray, demanding answers. In the capital, the governor was ducking the press until the matter could be thoroughly researched, which meant until his advisers decided which of them would be sacrificed and thrown under the bus.

  I got back from covering the escape of the aliens, who had vanished into the smoky haze, and found messages from Angel Oliver, Sam Bliss, and a familiar caller who wanted to massage my feet.

  Now, I thought, irritated, Angel wants to talk, when I’m as backed up as a cheap toilet. Her timing was lousy. Please call, her message said. Bliss’s said urgent.

  “Britt,” he said, “we need your help.”

  “Swell,” I said, wishing my sinuses would open. “I can’t even help myself right now.”

  “You’re in tight with the movie crew. You could do us a favor and open the door. Keep it to yourself,” he said, lowering his voice, “but there’s a hit out on Angel Oliver.”

  “That’s not exactly a bulletin. I was there, remember?” What did that have to do with the movie crew? I wondered. “Did you find out who wants to kill her?”

  “Probably a lotta people, but the one who put out the hit was Darnell.” He sounded sheepish. “Her ex-husband.”

  “She was right! The guy you said was such a nice fellow! How’d you find out? Are you sure? Did he really have somebody shoot at his kids?”

  Bliss filled me in. Turned out, police knew about the murder attempt before the shooting, but not the right police, and as we all know, in this age of communication, cops often have trouble communicating with each other.

  A PLO member, a kid named Omar, had been shipped out of Miami by his parents and a judge, to save him from the influence of the bad-asses he hung out with. Sent to live with out-of-town family members, he was put to work on a construction crew in Orlando, the same construction crew foremanned by Darnell Oliver. Soon he and Darnell were chatting about how Darnell would like to get rid of his ex-wife down in Miami. Omar said he had buddies who could do the job and made a few calls. Then he bragged to a cousin, who told another cousin, who happened to be a snitch.

  The snitch told an Orlando detective that gang members were coming up from Miami for a business meeting at a hotel on the Orange Blossom Trail. The detective and his partner staked out the Orange Blossom Trail Econo Lodge, between a McDonald’s and an ABC Liquor store. Sure enough, a carload arrived and there was much exchanging of gang handshakes with Omar in the parking lot. The detectives shot surveillance photos as what appeared to be pictures, information, and a cash down payment changed hands. Darnell was clever enough not to show his face.

  The Orlando detectives were gung ho to pursue it, but their supervisor refused to authorize the overtime. He said it was Miami’s problem. So they pa
ssed the intelligence to a Miami gang unit detective. The car’s tag came back as stolen. All they really knew was that “a dude who works construction in Orlando” had put out a hit with teen gang members on “a broad who lives near the Orange Bowl in Miami.”

  After bullets flew the next day, the Miami detective put two and two together and called his Orlando counterparts. They took their film to a one-hour photo service, then to the airport, where they gave the pictures to the Delta pilot on the next Miami flight. A detective met the plane.

  Local gang detectives recognized the PLO members and the car. It was the Bonneville. Bliss and the gang detective flew to Orlando to put the squeeze on Omar at his cousin’s house. They needed his cooperation to nail Darnell.

  Omar was recalcitrant, but detectives had brought along his probation officer, who threatened to revoke him on the spot. That was when Omar spilled the gruesome details. Darnell was pissed, he said, not only because the clumsy attempt had failed but because the hit men had not followed his carefully formulated plan.

  The deal was to abduct Angel and leave her body in a not-too-remote area. He wanted her found. His instructions were explicit. He wanted her heart cut out, so police would attribute the murder to the unidentified serial killer responsible for four similar cases. That way he would never be considered a suspect.

  Yuck, I thought. This from the man who wanted only to raise his kids to study hard and be good God-fearing Christians.

  During the drive back to Miami, the gang decided that Darnell’s plan was too gross for even them to carry out. Dead was dead. However they accomplished the mission, they decided, Darnell would be satisfied. They reverted to their usual method, a drive-by shooting.

  Though pissed, Darnell still wanted it done, Omar said. He wanted the killers to take a camera along this time. Before he paid the $1,500 balance, he wanted to see proof that the job had been done his way.

  “We need to accommodate him,” Bliss said. “Much as I’d like to do the world a real favor, we can’t actually remove Angel’s internal organs. We’ll have to fake it. That’s where you and your Hollywood pals come in. There’s gotta be somebody on that crew who can help us make Angel look dead, so we can take pictures. Then we can put a wire on Omar and have him deliver them to Darnell. We need to be convincing enough that he hands over the money. Then we bust his ass.”

  “You want her to look like her heart’s been cut out?”

  “And her throat slashed, right.”

  “I know the perfect guy. But why don’t you just call them?”

  “It’s awkward for us to approach them right now with the stuntman’s murder investigation in progress. You have better access, Britt; you’re on better terms with them.”

  “McDonald know about this?”

  “He’s the one who told me to call you.”

  So much for McDonald’s thoughtful advance tip on the press conference and old times’ sake. He wanted to use me, as the press and the police so often use each other.

  “Maybe you could even write a story,” Bliss said hopefully. “You know, that Angel was killed by the heart taker. Omar could show him the newspaper along with the picture.”

  “Forget it. No way would we print a phony story. But the special effects expert and the pictures, that’s doable. On one condition. When you guys bust Darnell, I wanna be there.”

  “What for, Britt?”

  “Hell, Sam, I almost got killed. Those little SOBs he sent to waste Angel shot at me too.”

  The movie company was shooting a scene at a small motel down on the river. Security was tight. When Rad Johnson spotted me, he whispered in Wendy’s ear. I assumed she would have me launched into the street like the rest of the media. Instead, she and Van Ness trotted over like old friends, eager to know what I had learned about the murder investigation.

  They had been “terribly hurt” by the “unfair” News editorial. Back in LA, even Alan Cappleman, the head of the studio, was upset, they said.

  “We lost our reactor,” Van Ness said plaintively. “And we can’t rebuild in that burned-out area. It’s a mess. Now we have to find a new location for it.”

  “In the state of Florida?” I asked skeptically.

  “You think that’d be a problem?”

  “Why would it be?” Wendy whined.

  In response, I rolled my bloodshot eyes toward the western horizon, obscured by a pall of smoke that made it difficult to breathe at the moment.

  “You heard about the escaped aliens?” I said, “and the incident during the evacuation of the animals at the Metrozoo?” During the confusion, a collection of tropical birds had escaped from the aviary. A number had landed on the small manmade island where tigers run free in their natural habitat.

  A zoo handler, trying to save Lulu, the crested Amazon parrot famous for speaking in three languages, fired a tranquilizer gun at one of the big cats. Snowflake, the rare white tiger, was hit, staggered, fell into the moat, and drowned before they could save him.

  A TV news crew shooting the evacuation caught the carnage. The piece picked up by the network ended in a poignant freeze frame, feathers afloat on the water.

  The producers looked puzzled. “We didn’t tell them to build a zoo way out there,” Van Ness said righteously.

  “But you promised that when you finished the movie you would put things back the way they were.”

  Lance had emerged from the motel room where they were shooting.

  “Knew you couldn’t stay away.” He still sounded hoarse but looked buff in a faded blue denim shirt and jeans. This was the first time we had seen each other since the night the fire ignited. Our eyes caught.

  “Actually, I’m here to see Ziff.”

  Ziff was busy fashioning a severed arm for a sequence in which one of the villains would lose a bout with a helicopter blade. He was thrilled that the police wanted his help.

  “Painted faces for a PBA picnic? A training film? I’ve done dismembered corpses, alien autopsies, vampire hookers, and the walking dead.” He smiled expectantly.

  “Remember the news stories about Angel Oliver, the woman accused of starving her baby?”

  “Personally,” he confessed, removing his apron, “I’m sort of a news idiot. I try to stay away from it. It’s such a messy world. I don’t really want to know all that much. I tend to make my own little world and ignore the rest. You know, it’s frustrating, a real downer, because what can you do about it?”

  He had a point.

  But he couldn’t wait to meet Angel, especially after he heard she’d been accused of murder. And he adored the assignment.

  “I think I’ve done that very thing,” he said, an index finger to his lips, black polish gleaming. “Did you see Grim Reaper II?”

  “No,” I confessed, “I tend to stay away from the world of horror flicks. It’s so messy, a real downer.”

  The caterer had set up a lavish buffet with a river view, under the cypress trees behind the motel, and Lance invited me to stay for lunch. I waited at a shady table while he talked to his agent on long distance. One of the crew, Norman, the Best Boy, loaded his plate with shrimp and sliced steak and sat next to me. Hardly a boy, in his late fifties, he wore work clothes and an assortment of screwdrivers in his belt. He always seemed to be the busiest man on the set.

  “So.” I dropped my voice. “Are you really as good as they say?”

  He nearly spit up a shrimp.

  “Well, given your title. I always wonder what Best Boy means when I see it in movie credits.”

  “I don’t go for coffee,” he said indignantly. “That’s what some people think.” He blotted his mouth with his napkin, eager to explain. No reporter had ever asked him the question.

  “My responsibilities are varied,” he said, and put down his fork. “I make sure that all the electrical and lighting equipment works. If it doesn’t, I fix it. I make sure that the gaffer, the chief set electrician, and the lighting director have the equ
ipment they need when they need it. The lights take a lot of juice, and we usually use portable generators. I run the power cables from the generator to the set and deliver the right amount of electricity. And I provide the power for the wind and rain machines.”

  “Wish you could make it rain now,” I said wistfully.

  “Oh, we will. Tomorrow. But only on our set.” He squinted at the horizon. “Wish we could put it out. It’s messing up all the outdoor shots.”

  “Tell me about it. So where did the name Best Boy come from?”

  “Don’t know,” he said, “but I’ve got no quarrel with it. I am the best.”

  “What do you think happened with Trent’s stunt? What went wrong?”

  Norman’s smile faded, and he sipped his iced tea before answering. “The cops are right. Whatever it was, it was no accident. Don’t say I said it, but it had to be deliberate.”

  “Did it take an electronics genius, an engineer, to do it?”

  “Not at all, especially with the schematics. It would’ve been simple. Anybody who can change a light bulb could’ve switched those wires.”

  “You think Trent had any real enemies—” What sounded like chanting nearly drowned us out. The noise came from the front of the building.

  The door to Lance’s trailer opened. His big frame dwarfed the entrance. “What’s that?” He looked apprehensive.

  “Must be some extras rehearsing,” I said.

  It wasn’t.

  An earsplitting blast from an air horn sounded, and the chants resumed even louder.

  “What are they saying?” Norman stopped chewing and listened.

  “Ex-tremers?” I tried to make out each syllable.

  “Oh, no!” Lance jumped down to the ground. He looked pale. “It can’t be.”

  At least seventy-five men, women, and children surrounded the front of the motel. They wore green ribbons and waved picket signs and horns. think before you croak said one sign, bearing a picture of frogs on a lily pad. Others said HOLLYWOOD GO HOME!, HANDS OFF THE ‘GLADES, SMOKE AT OUR OWN RISK, illustrated by a drawing of flame-threatened wild animals, and DON’T DESTROY TOMORROW TODAY! Two attractive children, young teenagers, a boy and a girl, held a huge green banner, EARTH SCREAMERS.