by Stuart Woods
“And that’s what you told your detective friend?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t see the tape?”
“No.”
“The kid wasn’t flashing around a copy?”
“He didn’t have it with him or he might have. It seemed important to him that we believe him.”
“You better be on the up-and-up about this Ace Vargas.”
“I swear.”
“If you’re not, believe me, I will find you.” Teddy shoved the money into his hands. “Go back, play cards, and forget you ever met me. You get a mulligan on the game. It’s not often you get a do-over on your whole day.”
Teddy figured it was a fifty-fifty chance the guy would tip Ace off, but it didn’t matter. A PI with an agency would have no place to hide.
Teddy went home and went to bed. They were filming the next day, and he had a six AM call.
23
The other players were surprised to see the little man again.
“I thought you went bust,” the snide guy said.
“I went to get cash. I’m buying in again, as soon as I go to the john.”
The little man went in the bathroom and locked the door. He whipped out his cell phone and brought up his contact screen, and he clicked on Ace. There were two numbers listed, his office and his home number. He often got leads after hours and the detective didn’t want to wait.
Of course he didn’t usually call him at two AM.
Ace was groggy and pissed. “Listen, dipshit, this better be good.”
“It’s a hot tip, but it isn’t good. I’m calling to warn you. There’s a guy on your tail. I think he’s private.”
“You think?”
“He showed up at the club posing as a rube. Cleaned me out and confronted me in the parking lot. He’s after the Tessa Tweed video.”
“You gave him my name?”
“He would have killed me. I had no choice. He told me not to warn you, but I am.”
“What does he look like?”
“Long hair, dressed like a hippie, but he’s not. Twenty bucks it’s just for effect.”
“Did you give him my home address?”
“I didn’t give him any address. I said you ran the Ace Detective Agency. He’ll come during business hours, assuming he comes at all.”
“All right. Call me if you hear anything.”
* * *
—
Ace hung up and called Mason Kimble. Ace had done a couple of jobs for Mason and knew he was interested in Centurion Pictures. A scandal involving one of their leading actresses figured to be a juicy tidbit, particularly one involving the wife of the head of the studio. Ace had been right. Mason had paid and paid well. He’d want a heads-up about this new development. And he’d pay for that, too.
Mason was disoriented. “What the hell time is it?”
“It’s two in the morning. Sorry to call you, but it’s important. This is Ace Vargas. There’s a private dick looking for the Tessa Tweed tape.”
Mason was suddenly awake. “Really? Did he talk to you?”
“No, but he’s on his way. Probably tomorrow during working hours. I’ll keep your name out of it, but I’m going to take a pounding, and I may need compensation.”
“Come in to work an hour early, I’ll send you some cash. I don’t want my man to cross paths with this guy.”
“You got it.”
* * *
—
Mason hung up and called Gerard Cardigan. Gerard processed the information with his usual understated aplomb. “That’s unfortunate,” he said.
“It is,” Mason said.
“Would you like me to handle it?”
“I would.”
“Don’t give it another thought.”
“It has to be done early, before this detective gets there.”
“How early?”
“Vargas will be there at eight.”
“So will I,” Gerard said.
24
Teddy had an early call, so there was no chance of swinging by the Ace Detective Agency before work. He went to the studio, got into costume and makeup, and prepared to shoot his scene. While he waited he called the agency to see if Ace Vargas had come in early, but there was no answer. Teddy kept calling every ten minutes or so. Finally, around eight-fifteen, someone answered, “Hello?”
Teddy hung up. He didn’t want to talk to Ace on the phone, he wanted to talk to him in person. Now that he knew Ace was there, he’d run over the first chance he got.
Only he never got a chance. Teddy was tied up on the set all morning. Peter was shooting close-ups and reverse angles for a scene for which he’d already shot the master, so the action was locked, and there was nothing new. Teddy knew Peter needed the footage to cut the scene, but he chafed at the delay.
Teddy was killing a hotel bellboy when Tessa showed up. The bellboy hadn’t done anything except see Teddy come out of the wrong hotel room, but that was his tough luck. He’d be found in a linen closet later on.
Teddy had his hands around the unfortunate man’s throat when Tessa walked in. He continued to kill him until Peter called, “Cut!”
Tessa pulled Teddy aside while Peter reset the scene. Apparently the young bellboy was going to die again.
“You look worried,” Tessa said.
“I’m not.”
Tessa didn’t buy it. “Are you making any progress?”
“Some.”
“You don’t want to tell me?”
“I’ll tell you when it matters.”
“Okay, but can you tell me this? It isn’t Nigel, is it?”
“Nigel’s not the one behind the blackmail, but he was the source of the tape. He sold it to pay off his gambling debts.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“He’s a bad gambler. Some people are, and Nigel’s worse than most.”
“Who did he sell it to?”
“That’s what I’m working on.”
“Any progress?”
Teddy shook his head. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you?”
“I know you haven’t found who sent the video. But you have a lead, don’t you?”
“I have a lead. It isn’t much.”
“How much?”
Teddy sighed. “Pretty damn little. The Ace Detective Agency may have acted as an intermediary. I’m going to shake them down during lunch.”
“They’re in L.A.?”
“Yes.”
“So Nigel’s in L.A.?”
“He’s not in L.A.”
“Are you positive?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How can you be sure?”
Teddy smiled. He had an image of Nigel cowering on the floor of his jet, expecting at any moment to go hurtling out the cabin door.
“Just a hunch.”
25
When Peter broke for lunch, Teddy walked off the lot and got his car. As producer Billy Barnett, he had a parking space, but as stuntman Mark Weldon, he didn’t rate such special treatment, and never would until his name appeared above the title. That’ll be the day, he told himself.
Teddy drove downtown to the Ace Detective Agency. He parked two blocks away and walked to the address.
It was an old office building, with the accent on old. The elevator looked iffy, so Teddy took the stairs up to the third floor and looked for the Ace Detective Agency. It wasn’t hard to find. The door had a frosted glass window with ACE DETECTIVE AGENCY stenciled on it, just like in the movies.
Teddy banged on the door to no avail. He sighed, fished a couple of picks out of his pocket, and jimmied the lock. The door clicked open.
The Ace Detective Agency wasn’t as prosperous as the ones in old films, with an attractive dame manning a switchboard in the outer
office. In fact, it had no outer office at all. It was a small, one-room affair, with overflowing file cabinets, a couple of folding chairs, an ancient computer, and a single metal desk.
Ace Vargas sat behind the desk, but he could be excused for not answering the door. Ace had been shot in the head.
Teddy had few options, none of them good. He could call the police and wait for them to arrive. He could call the police and get the hell out of there. Or he could get the hell out of there and not call the police.
The third option seemed best.
Teddy slipped out the office door and checked the hall. There was a surveillance camera right outside the detective agency. A wire from it ran across the ceiling to the corner, then down and into the floor. The recording equipment was in either a guard station or the basement. Teddy doubted the building had ever been well-to-do enough to merit a guard station, so he took the stairs down to the lobby, pushed through a service door, and found the cellar stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a depressing jumble of steam pipes on which the asbestos covers were flaking off. A storeroom had a relatively new-looking padlock on it. Teddy picked the lock and pulled the string of a hanging bare bulb.
A battered old metal desk held a TV monitor, old and big and bulky with a dozen split-screen images of interior views of the building. Next to the monitor was a VCR of similar vintage, a monstrous affair with slots for twelve VHS tapes. All were recording. The VCR appeared to be set to record for six hours until it reached the end of the tape, then automatically rewind and start recording from the beginning. It was a most inefficient system. Any crime committed more than six hours ago would be gone.
If Ace had been killed within the last six hours, the killer might be on the tapes. Unfortunately, Teddy would be, too.
Teddy had no time to look. He ejected all the tapes, found an old paper bag, and threw them in.
He went out to his car and locked the tapes in the trunk, then retrieved a pair of plastic gloves, went back into the building, and searched the office. He turned it upside down to make sure Ace hadn’t kept a copy of the video. It was the type of thing a private eye of Ace’s ilk would be apt to do, but there was no sign of it.
Teddy found nothing of interest. The office files were all old, and probably left by the previous tenant. The computer had nothing as useful as a Quicken account with labeled deposits or current e-mails of any note.
Teddy figured he’d pressed his luck far enough. He wiped everything down and got out.
Teddy hopped in his car and sped to his house. He popped the trunk, grabbed the bag of tapes, went in and locked it in his floor safe.
He raced back to the car and took off. He was late. He floored it, trying to make up time.
As he approached the studio, he skidded into a turn and hurtled through the Centurion Studios gate onto the back lot.
Teddy checked his watch. Two minutes to go. He pulled into Brad’s parking space, leaped out of the car, and came strolling casually onto the set as if he’d been there all along.
26
Tessa pounced on Teddy as soon as he walked onto the set. “Did you see the detective?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What do you mean?”
Peter was still setting up camera angles. Teddy motioned Tessa away from the set. “Come on. Let’s rehearse our lines.”
“Our lines?”
“Come on.”
Teddy led her over to the coffee urn. He poured them each a cup, then walked her out of earshot as a couple of grips wandered over for coffee.
“Okay,” Teddy said. “We’re going to find out how good an actress you are.”
“What?”
“You’re going to have to go on the set and act like nothing happened.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was unable to meet with Ace Vargas this afternoon because someone went up to his office this morning and shot him in the head.”
“What!”
“The police don’t know it yet, and it’s rather important not to give anyone the impression that you knew it before they do. Hence the acting.”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
“I’m telling you this because you didn’t have a morning call. You just came by the set to pump me for information, because you’re desperate, and desperation leads to bad decisions. I want to make sure you won’t do anything rash. You must trust me. The situation has become deadly, and I need you out of the line of fire. If I’m worrying about you, I can’t focus on solving the problem. Will you promise me to stay out of this? To let me handle it?”
Tessa looked chastened. “You have my word.”
From the direction of the set came the exasperated voice of Brad Hunter. “Hey! Who parked in my spot?”
27
Teddy’s scenes wrapped early. Peter shot the Teddy and Tessa scene first, and the rest of the afternoon was just Tessa and Brad.
He went home and removed the videotapes from the safe. If the surveillance camera was working, they might show the killer, and him.
In order to watch them, Teddy had to buy a VCR, which wasn’t easy. No one used them anymore. He found one in a pawnshop for twenty dollars.
“Do you have a tape I can try?” Teddy asked.
The pawnbroker was exasperated. “Are you shitting me? You’re not buying a home entertainment system. Twenty bucks, as is. I’ll throw in the cables.”
Teddy took it home and hooked it up to his TV. The remote didn’t work, no big surprise. Teddy replaced the batteries, pressed the power button, and the machine clicked on.
The first tape he tried was all static. Teddy couldn’t tell if that was the tape, or if the player didn’t work. He took the tape out and tried another. He rewound slightly and pressed Play, with the same result. A third tape was no better.
Teddy considered running out to one of those mall stores where they had bins of old prerecorded tapes for $2.99 to test the machine. It was a depressing prospect.
The VCR made a clacking sound. It had rewound to the beginning of the tape and shut off.
Teddy pressed Play.
An image filled the screen. It was a hallway in the building, but not the one outside the Ace Detective Agency. Teddy could make out the office number 810.
Teddy held down the fast forward button and the images jumped across the screen. At least they would have, if anything had been happening. The scene was just an empty hallway.
Teddy stopped the tape, hit fast forward again, and wound ahead. After several seconds he stopped the tape and pressed Play. The image was the same.
Teddy kept running the tape forward until static filled the screen. He ejected the tape and saw that it had stopped right about in the middle. It was rewound slightly farther than the other tapes from the machine.
Using the tape as a guide, he rewound another tape slightly past that spot. Another view from the building appeared, this one from a back staircase. Teddy located the spot where the image became static. It was exactly the same place as on the other tape. Teddy tried another tape with the same results.
That confirmed the hypothesis. The killer would not appear on any of the tapes. Nor would he. The killer hadn’t just disabled the camera on the third floor, he’d cut the main feed before going in.
Teddy couldn’t help but feel a grudging admiration.
This guy was good.
28
Mason Kimble leaned back in his desk chair, luxuriating in his power. “Pass me a bubble-wrap mailer, will you?”
Gerard Cardigan got up and went to the short bookshelf that served as the company mail station. He took a mailer off the pile and brought it back for Mason. “Do you have a special delivery for our friend?”
“I do.”
“How much of the video are you going to send her?”
Mason smiled. “I’m
not sending her the video.”
“Oh? What are you sending her?”
“You know perfectly well what I’m sending her. You knew as soon as I asked you to hang on to it.”
“I suspected. I didn’t know for sure.”
“Now you do.”
“She won’t know what it is.”
“It doesn’t matter. It will frighten her.”
“That it will,” Gerard said. “Do you want me to drop it off in the morning?”
Mason smiled. “Why wait?”
29
The doorbell rang at two AM. Tessa heard it and hopped out of bed. She had been tossing and turning all night, keyed up from Teddy’s news and his caution to her.
Ben slept through the bell. It was a single chime, discreet, tasteful, nearly inaudible. Ben had complained about it, saying they’d miss someone because they couldn’t hear the door. Tessa said that would never happen. Ben had pointed out, how would she possibly know?
Tessa peered out the window to see who it was. She prayed it wouldn’t be a man she didn’t know. If it was, she couldn’t let him in, but she was terrified of what would happen if she didn’t.
There was no one there.
Somehow, that was even more frightening.
Tessa eased the door open a crack, prepared to slam it if someone was lurking in the shadows, but no one was. She opened the door wider, hoping against hope there wouldn’t be a padded mailer on her doorstep. There was. She snatched it up and swayed for a moment, afraid to bring it in the house and afraid to leave it out in the open. What could it be this time? Somehow she just knew it would be worse. It was heavier, if that meant anything.
She took it into the kitchen and switched the light on.
Tessa reached into the mailer and pulled out the cold metal object.
It was a gun.
* * *
—
Teddy groped for his cell phone and clicked it on. “Somebody better be dead, or someone will be.”
