“Um, where will you find a body of someone who looks like me?” he asked, stopping at a traffic light. “You’ll need a body….”
“I know.” Hal glanced out the passenger window. “It’s a nasty detail we’ve already taken care of, Tom. The less you know about it, the better.” His cellular phone rang. He took it out of the zippered pocket of his designer sweatshirt and answered, “Hal speaking.”
The light changed, and Tom pressed on. They weren’t far from the studio. Soon he’d be on his own.
“Well, where’s Larry?” Hal said into the phone. “Hasn’t anyone heard from him?”
Tom kept hoping against hope that the call was about canceling Dayle Sutton’s assassination. He’d done a prison movie years back, in which a last-minute call from the governor had saved him from the electric chair. Was it too much to ask that this last-minute call be his salvation?
“I want them tracked down,” Hal continued. “Have Larry call me right away…. Well, then keep paging him. Over and out.” He pressed a button, and quickly folded up the phone. “Damn it,” he grumbled.
“We’re still—doing this?” Tom asked, feeling his stomach lurch.
“All systems are go,” Hal said. “Pull over. I’m switching cars.”
Swallowing hard, Tom followed Hal’s orders. In the rearview mirror, he saw the Taurus veer over to the curb and stop behind them.
“Don’t forget,” Hal said, opening the car door. “At the studio gate, your name’s Gordon Swann, and you’re an old friend of Dennis Walsh.”
Dennis was in a good mood this morning. He’d had a particularly amorous evening with Laura last night, then slept over to help her move today. They’d had another go at it about a half hour ago. Now she was in the shower, and he was dressed, fixing them breakfast.
Someone knocked on her door. “Just a sec!” Dennis called. Threading around storage boxes, he checked the peephole. He didn’t recognize the guy; then again, he didn’t know Laura’s neighbors. “Can I help you?” he called.
“Um, I live upstairs,” the man called back from the other side of the door. “Some of Laura’s mail was put in my box by mistake.”
Dennis opened the door. The neighbor was a small guy, about twenty-five, with athletic good looks, and straight blond hair. He handed Dennis an envelope from Pacific Bell. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking when I opened it up. I thought it was mine—until I saw all those calls to Idaho.”
Dennis stared at the man, then at the envelope.
“I don’t know anybody in Opal, Idaho,” the neighbor explained.
Dennis studied the phone bill. One call to Opal after another, and always the same number: 208-555-4266. She’d phoned every day—at all sorts of hours.
Dennis managed to smile at the neighbor, and nodded vaguely. “Um, thank you.” Closing the door, he glanced down the hall toward the bathroom. He could hear the shower’s torrent. In a stupor, he wandered back into the kitchen, picked up the telephone, then dialed the Opal number.
It rang twice before a man picked up. “Hey, there, Laurie Anne,” he said. “How are things with you and fatso?”
Dennis quickly hung up. It took him a moment to realize that the party in Opal had Caller I-D. But who was Laurie Anne?
The phone rang. They were calling her back. Dennis let it ring. Her answering machine came on, and they hung up.
Eyeing the bathroom door, Dennis tried the machine for old messages.
Beep. “Hi, honey—” It was him. He skipped to the next message.
Beep. “This is your mother, Laurie Anne. Pick up. Are you there? Oh, you’re not there. Listen, someone from your old job at the clinic called me last night, asking for a Lauren Schneider. Anyway, this Grace somebody says they owe you over a thousand dollars from some kind of social security withholding mix-up. I gave her your number. She’ll be calling. Maybe now you can pay me back some of that loan, Laurie Anne. Call me, okay? God bless.”
“End of Messages,” announced the prerecorded mechanical voice.
“Laurie Anne” must have erased all the calls from her Opal cohorts. Dennis didn’t want to think it was true. Once again, he picked up the phone and dialed the number in Idaho. It rang once. “Yeah?” the man said warily.
Dennis hesitated. “It’s Ted,” he grunted.
“Ted? What are you doing at Laurie Anne’s? It’s execution day, for God’s sake. Why aren’t you at the studio with the bitch? Ted?”
Dennis hung up on him. In a daze, he wandered down the hall—past all the packed boxes—to the bathroom door. He tried the knob. She hadn’t locked it, trusting soul. Quietly, he opened the door. He saw the figure on the other side of the pink-tinted shower curtain. Dennis ripped the curtain aside.
Laurie Anne swiveled around and automatically covered her breasts. Then she saw him and burst out laughing. “You silly—”
Dennis grabbed her and slammed her against the tiled wall. She struggled helplessly. The shower matted down his hair and drenched his clothes as he held on to her. “I just got off the phone with a friend of yours in Opal, Idaho,” he growled. “I know you set me up. I figured out about Ted too. But tell me this, Laurie Anne. Who’s this Gordon Swann you wanted me to smuggle onto Dayle’s film set?”
Tom didn’t need to mention this Dennis person at the studio gate. All he said was, “My name’s Gordon Swann,” and the guard gave him a pass—along with directions to the administration building and visitors’ parking.
He felt sickly, and couldn’t stop trembling. Within an hour, he would be dead—or riding to the airport in an ambulance.
The thin, pretty Asian girl at the front desk must have seen it in his face. After calling for his escort, she asked if he was feeling all right. She made him sit down, then fetched him a drink of water.
He felt a bit better by the time the studio’s young page pulled up to the building in a golf cart. He reminded Tom of himself—about fifty years ago, a good-looking kid with black, wavy hair. Driving down alleyways past the vast soundstages, the kid started in about how big the studio was, the different movies and TV shows shot there—the standard tour-guide spiel. His words were just background noise, like the prayers the prison chaplain reads for a man led to his execution.
Tom felt another wave of dread when Soundstage 8 came into view. The page dropped him off at a side door, where Tom showed his visitor’s pass to the security guard. He tried to keep his hand over the bulging pocket of his seersucker jacket. The gun felt heavy and awkward.
The security man led him into the building, down a hallway to a door with a green light above it. The guard opened the door for him. Tom was overwhelmed with a million memories as he stepped onto that movie-making soundstage. The McDonald’s ad two years ago had been filmed at a tiny studio. Nothing major league like this. The cameras and lights were different from his heyday, but the feel of it was the same: they created magic here.
He gazed at the movie set: a town hall meeting room. Extras sat in folding chairs facing a podium on a small stage. Some folks had cigarettes going—for the scene obviously, since NO SMOKING signs were plastered on the soundstage walls. Behind the podium stood Dayle Sutton in an unflattering gray wig. She looked bored. No one seemed to pay any attention to her.
Tom touched the gun in his pocket.
“Mr. Swann? Hello, I’m Beverly. Is this your first time on a film set?”
Startled, he managed to smile at the woman with the blond beehive hairdo. She was around sixty, in great shape, carefully made up and decked out in a pink suit. “No, I—I’ve been on a movie set before,” Tom said, carefully taking his hand out of his jacket pocket. “I used to be an actor.”
“Oh, really?”
He shrugged. “Bit parts mostly. That was a long time ago.”
“How interesting,” she said. “Then you must already know, sometimes they’ll ask for ‘quiet on the set…’” Beverly went into a long, elementary explanation of how to behave on a film shoot. The only other visitors on the set were three Japane
se businessmen. Beverly paid more attention to them, which was all right by Tom. He didn’t want her watching his every move.
He glanced over at Dayle Sutton, leaning sluggishly against the podium. “Um, Beverly,” he said. “Would it be all right if I moved a bit further down along the wall? I want to get a better look at Dayle Sutton.”
Beverly grinned. “Certainly, Mr. Swann. But she’s Ms. Sutton’s stand-in. Dayle’s in her trailer right now.” Beverly pointed to the mobile unit against the soundstage wall—past of an array of lights and sound equipment.
Beverly started explaining the various duties of a stand-in. Tom didn’t hear a word. He noticed a lean man with thin blond hair standing by the trailer door. He wore a blue suit. Her bodyguard. Was he really with the organization—as Hal had said?
The bodyguard scanned the set. He checked out the group of Japanese businessmen; then those eyes kept moving along the outer wall until his gaze locked onto Tom’s. They stared at each other for a moment. The bodyguard gave a single nod, and smiled ever so subtly.
“Quiet please!” someone called.
A dozen spotlights switched on, illuminating the set. Somebody held a light meter to the stand-in’s face. Amid all this, Dayle Sutton emerged from her trailer. She looked older and careworn in the dowdy tweed suit, and with her trademark auburn hair hidden beneath a brown-gray wig. She started onto the set, studying her script. The director was talking to her.
Tom felt a little short of breath. He checked his target. He wished the director would move out of the way. Accompanying her up to the podium, he kept stepping into the line of fire. He patted her back and whispered to her.
Tom held on to the semiautomatic in his pocket.
“Quiet on the set!” someone yelled again. The director finally moved away. A mike, hanging from a boom, descended closer to Dayle’s head. Both hands on the podium, Dayle took a deep breath. Tom had a clear shot, but then the man with the clapboard stepped in front of her. “Scene eighty-seven. Take four!” He slapped the clapboard together, then stepped aside.
“Roll cameras,” the director barked.
She stood alone up there. He had her in range. No one was looking. Tom took the gun out of his pocket and brought it up to his chest, burying it in the folds of his jacket. He glanced up toward the podium.
Dayle Sutton seemed to be staring right at him. She had tears in her eyes. “Hello,” she said. “My name is Susan…and I—I’m an alcoholic.”
Tom took a step back, bumping into the wall.
The congregation applauded her and called back, “Hello, Susan!”
The smile she gave them was heartbreaking. For a moment, the dowdy woman had the face of an angel. “Thank you,” she replied in a stage whisper.
Mesmerized, Tom forgot that he was holding a gun—until, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Dayle’s bodyguard coming toward him. The tall, blond man glowered at him and angrily muttered something under his breath.
Tom nodded sheepishly. He raised the gun, and aimed it at Dayle Sutton. Just another Coke bottle on that front porch railing.
“Cut!” the director bellowed. “Does everyone in the meeting have to smoke? Looks like a goddamn Turkish bath! I can hardly see Dayle….”
While the director complained, a woman stepped up on the stage to dab powder on Dayle Sutton’s chin. She blocked the line of fire. Another woman approached Dayle, pointing to the trailer. Tom couldn’t get a clear hit. He watched Dayle retreat back into her trailer, and then he turned to see the bodyguard scowling at him.
Tom looked away. With a shaky hand, he slipped the gun back into his coat pocket.
It would take a while for the fans to blow away the excess smoke. So Dayle headed back toward her trailer to answer an “urgent” phone call from Dennis. She wasn’t anxious to talk with him. Having pushed Ted Kovak on her, Dennis didn’t sit high on her list of trusted friends right now.
She hadn’t slept last night—what with Ted in the next room. By 5:45 this morning, she’d been dressed and anxious to leave. She and Ted had driven to the studio in her limo together. She’d used studying her script as an excuse for not talking with him.
She would figure out later today what to do about Ted Kovak. For now, she wanted him to think everything was status quo. She felt safe—for the time being. He wasn’t about to try anything on a crowded movie set.
On her way to the trailer, Dayle glanced over toward where Beverly corralled the visitors—a handful of Japanese businessmen and an elderly man in a blue seersucker suit. Ignoring Ted, she ducked into her trailer.
She picked up the phone and pressed the blinking red button. “Yes, Dennis?” she said warily.
“Dayle, thank God,” he said in a rush. “Listen, I just found out, they set me up. Laura, she’s one of them. They’ve been getting to you through me and my big mouth. I didn’t know, I swear—”
“Hold on,” Dayle said. “I don’t understand.”
“Ted Kovak is with that hate group. Laura arranged for me to ‘bump into’ Ted at this party. She’s been making calls to Opal, Idaho, for a couple of weeks now. And that old man I told you about, the one visiting the set today, Laura asked me to arrange it and keep her name out of it. I don’t know the guy, Dayle. It’s some old fart, but he’s a good shot, and he’s been hired to kill you. He’s probably there already.”
“Is he wearing a seersucker suit?” Dayle asked. “Glasses?” She glanced down at the phone. Her other line was blinking.
“I’m not sure what he looks like, but Ted’s supposed to waste the guy once you’re hit. Listen, Dayle, stay in your trailer, lock the door. I’ll call security at the studio and the cops. We’ll have a net over these guys within three minutes.”
Someone was knocking on her trailer door. “I’m sorry, Ms. Sutton,” the studio secretary called. “There’s another urgent call for you on line three.”
“What? Who is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s collect, from Opal, Idaho.”
“Thank you!” She got back on the line: “Dennis? Okay, contact the police. I’ll stay put. I have Sean on hold here. I’ve gotta go. Bye.” She clicked off and pressed line three. “Hello, Sean?”
“Yo, don’t keel over or anything. You probably figure I’m toes up.”
“Nick?” she muttered, stunned.
“Yeah. Are you okay? Has anyone taken a potshot at you today?”
“I can’t believe you’re actually alive,” she murmured. Dayle sank down on the sofa. “What happened?”
“Tell you later. Here’s what’s important. Either today or tomorrow, they plan to whack you on your movie set—”
“I know,” Dayle cut in. “The police are on their way. Listen, did you ever meet up with my lawyer friend out there? Sean Olson?”
“Yeah, she got a full confession from one of them on tape.”
“Is she there with you?”
He said nothing for a moment.
“Nick? Where are you anyway?”
“I’m at a police station in Opal. I was arrested. You’re my one call.”
“I’ll have somebody get you out of there. Is Sean with you?”
“Um, no,” he said soberly. “I don’t think she’s going to make it, Dayle.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guy whose confession we taped, he was hiding a gun. He shot her. It was hours before the cops picked us up. They took Sean to the hospital just a while ago. She lost a lot of blood. The paramedic said she didn’t have much of a chance.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Dayle.”
“Oh, God, no….” Tears came to her eyes, and she started to tremble. Dayle took a couple of breaths. “Okay. Find out what you can about Sean and—and let me know. I—I’ll have someone get you out of there, Nick.”
Dayle hung up the phone, and wiped her tears. As if in a trance, she moved to the vanity, pulled off her wig and hair net, then shed the jacket. She went to the trailer door. She was supposed to lock it, stay inside until the police showed up. Inst
ead, she opened the door and came down the trailer steps. The police and studio security hadn’t arrived yet.
Ted Kovak stood beyond the sound equipment—near where Beverly had assembled the visitors. Dayle started toward him. He was scowling at the old man in the seersucker suit. Ted didn’t see Dayle until she was right on him.
“You son of a bitch!” She slapped him hard across the face.
Everyone on the set stopped to gape at them. Ted reeled back, startled. “What the hell—”
She slapped him again. “Murderer…”
He took another step back and put up his hands to defend himself. But she swatted at his arm, then connected again across his face with another forceful slap. “Goddamn you and your hypocrite friends! How many good people have you killed? Tony Katz and Leigh, Maggie, my friend, Sean…”
Ted grew more furious with her every slap. He glared at Tom, who retreated back with the other stunned bystanders on the set. Ted seemed ready to shoot Dayle himself. She clawed at his face, drawing scratch marks above his left eye and down his cheek. Finally, he pushed her away. “You crazy bitch!” he snarled.
“It wasn’t enough for you to kill these people,” she hissed. “You had to shit on their memory too. You made Leigh look like a drug addict, and you dug up those stag films Maggie McGuire did back when she was struggling. Think about their families….”
She lunged at him again, swinging her fist. But Ted dodged her and reached for his gun. He glared at Tom. “Kill her, goddamn it!” he growled. Only a few people might have heard him over the noise and chaos.
Tom was one of those few. Yet the words still echoing in his head had been spoken a moment ago by Dayle Sutton: You dug up those stag films Maggie McGuire did back when she was struggling. Tom wondered how he could have blinded himself to that fact. The group he was working for had—as Dayle put it—shit on the memory of Maggie McGuire.
“What are you going to do, Ted?” Dayle said, gasping for breath. She clinched her fist. “Are you going to shoot me in front of all these people?”
The Next to Die Page 36
