by Stuart Woods
Tessa’s face appeared through the haze. “You’re awake! Thank God!”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was worried about you.”
“Why aren’t you on the set?”
“I’m done. Peter’s shooting your scenes now.”
“What?”
“When Peter found out you were going to make it, he called the stunt double, and he’s shooting him.”
“Is it working?”
“It’s working fine. Peter caught your fall on film—it was perfect, by the way—and so all he needs to shoot is the low beam. Peter knows camera angles, and he’s doing it with a stunt double.”
“Does he need me to shoot close-ups?”
“You couldn’t, even if he wanted you to. Your leg is broken, you were shot, and you have a concussion. Your head is wrapped in bandages. You look like a mummy.”
Teddy reached up and felt the bandage.
Tessa shook her head. “I begged you to use a double for the stunt.”
A nurse bustled in. “Well, well, look who joined the party. All right, miss. You’ve seen he’s alive, and the doctor’s coming. Don’t get me in trouble now.”
Tessa went out. Teddy closed his eyes. When he opened them again the doctor was examining him.
“Ah, there we are,” the doctor said. “How are you feeling?”
“I thought you were supposed to tell me.”
“My pleasure. You have a concussion, a broken leg, and a cracked rib from where the bullet grazed your side. The good news is your leg was not broken clean through. You have a fractured fibula. I operated and put a pin in it. Stay off it for three months and you’ll be good as new. They’ll teach you how to use the crutches in physical therapy.”
“When can I get out of here?”
“Oh, sometime next week.”
“That won’t do.”
“It will have to. You have a concussion. We have to monitor you to see if you’re impaired.”
“Give me a test.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“Then get me out of the damn mummy costume and check out my head. I bet the swelling’s gone down, or whatever the hell else is bothering you.”
“Leave your bandages on or I’ll put you in ICU. It was a fifty-fifty call whether you went there to begin with.”
Teddy sank back in the bed in helpless frustration.
82
Mason Kimble and Gerard Cardigan watched the coverage on TV. Several spectators had caught Mark Weldon’s fall on video, and all the news outlets were running them.
“Well,” Gerard said, “it appears someone hates Ben Bacchetti as much as you do.”
“Did the movie stop filming?”
“Not according to the Hollywood Reporter. Peter Barrington went ahead and filmed the rest of the scene with a stunt double.”
“Resourceful boy. You think we should keep him on?”
Gerard laughed. “Yeah, right. As if he’d work for us.”
“As if we’d want him,” Mason said. “So who did this?”
“I have no idea.”
“Clearly someone obsessed with the picture. First they burn the producer’s house down, then they sabotage filming.”
“Barnett wasn’t working on this film,” Gerard pointed out.
“So not the film. The studio. Someone was trying to fuck up the studio.”
“Yes,” Gerard said. “I don’t know why, but I wish him Godspeed. By the time of the stockholders’ meeting, they’ll be eager to sell.”
Mason looked at him sharply. “Are you sure you’re not orchestrating this?”
“Would I lie to you?”
“How could I possibly know? You’re so good at what you do, how could anyone possibly know?”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Really? Because it sounds like you. It’s brilliant. It’s elaborate. It gives us several degrees of separation, so much so that I don’t even know if we did it.”
“I take your point.”
“If it’s not you, who the hell is it?”
“Damned if I know.”
83
Marsha Quickly wasn’t happy. She’d been doing so well, and just like that it had all gone south. The pit boss blamed her for losing the high roller. She’d been out on the town, living the high life, drinking champagne, and right in the middle of the meal the guy got up to go to the bathroom and never came back.
It had taken her a while to realize it. She sat there at her table, sipping her drink and feeling like a queen, till finally, even in her tipsy state, she noticed that the gentleman had been gone an awfully long while. Now, how was that her fault?
As far as the pit boss was concerned, it was an unpardonable sin, and whether she was too standoffish or whether she’d had too much to drink, or whether she’d actually slapped the guy’s face for being fresh, it didn’t matter. He’d entrusted her with a precious jewel, and she’d tossed it away.
Immediately after that she found herself demoted. Not officially, she just started getting assigned the worst shifts, the worst tables. In short, she was working longer hours for less money. And there was no way of getting off the shit list. She couldn’t appeal to Pete Genaro. Pete never bothered with the bar girls, except to cop a feel, and he wasn’t going to offend his pit boss, not with everybody defecting to Sammy Candelosi.
Ginger, one of the girls she worked with, mentioned she was going to check out the rival casino. Marsha’s loyalty to Pete Genaro extended only so far, and that was as far as it benefited her—there was no point in staying without the plum shifts. And rumor had it that Genaro wasn’t going to be running the place for much longer anyway. If Pete was going down, Marsha wanted out from under him.
When Marsha got off her shift, instead of changing and going home, she slipped out quietly in her bar girl uniform and made her way next door to the Promised Land, Sammy Candelosi’s casino.
She came in and walked the floor, hoping to see a pit boss she knew or a bar girl who’d give her a tip. Of course, she saw no one.
And then, miracle of miracles, there was Sammy Candelosi himself, weaving his way through the slot machines and out onto the floor. What a stroke of luck. A chance to impress him as an attractive woman with a winning personality.
Marsha was working her way across the floor in his direction when she noticed the man with him.
Her mouth fell open. She grabbed a passing bar girl with a tray of empties. “Hey, sister, do me a favor. Who’s that guy with Sammy Candelosi?”
The bar girl chuckled. “Him? Scary son of a bitch, isn’t he? I’d stay away from him. That’s Slythe, Sammy Candelosi’s personal bodyguard.”
84
Teddy was lucky the doctor had made him leave his head bandaged. The homicide cop was Sergeant O’Reilly. Teddy wondered how he was doing on the Ace Vargas case. Of course, he couldn’t ask.
“This is a first for me,” O’Reilly said. “I must say, I’ve never had someone shot on a five-story-high construction girder before.”
“Did you figure out where the sniper was hiding?”
“Sniper? Mr. Weldon, there was no sniper. You were shot at point-blank range by the stuntman on the beam.”
“What?”
“Yes. George Perkins. He’s been questioned thoroughly, and it appears he was an unwitting accomplice. He fired a gun he thought contained blanks. The perpetrator appears to be a man who gave his name as Tim Dale and posed as a weapons expert. We’d like to question him as a suspect, but he slipped away during the confusion after your fall. But there is some rather strong corroborating evidence. The man whose place he took, prop man Fred Russell, was found dead in his foyer with his throat cut. The man posing as Tim Dale took his place.”
Teddy frowned.
“Did you ever get a good look at him?”
/>
“Frankly, no. There were too many other things going on. And he was always peripheral. Jackson rigged me with the squib, and he just checked it. Jackson is probably the one who had the most contact with him.”
“He’s been questioned, but he wasn’t very helpful. He basically described the baseball cap the man was wearing.”
“Too bad.”
“You’re lucky the fall didn’t kill you. This guy slashed your landing balloon so it deflated on impact.”
Teddy frowned again.
“Now then,” Sergeant O’Reilly said, “that is an awful lot of work to kill one person. Can you think of anyone who would want you dead that badly?”
“It makes no sense to me,” Teddy said. “I’m a bit player. Now, Brad Hunter is another story. He’s a star, and a more likely target for some nut job. Or maybe someone just wanted to stop filming to harm the picture, or the studio.”
“You’re working awfully hard to convince me that the target wasn’t you.”
“Because it makes no sense. It’s flattering, but I just can’t see it.”
“Are you up to looking at some pictures?”
“Do you have them?”
“We’re putting them together. We’ll run them through this prop man first, but, like I say, he’s not very observant. Do you think you’d know the man if you saw him again?”
“It’s possible, but if the guy’s any good, he won’t look anything like the man I saw. And he has to be good to pull off a bluff like that. He shouldn’t have even been able to get on the lot.”
“I know. The guard is taking a bit of heat, and so is the head of the props department for not checking him out with the union.”
“Of course, in hindsight you know to do that. In the normal course of events when you’re making a picture, it’s rush, rush, rush, and if something goes wrong you deal with the practical part of the problem instead of the official details. It’s an emergency, can the guy do the job, if so who cares where he came from.”
“Can you think of anything else that could help us?”
“Not a thing.”
“Okay,” O’Reilly said. “Just hang in there. I’ll be back.”
“Don’t rush.”
* * *
—
Slythe didn’t like to leave things half done. The initial report that stuntman Mark Weldon had been critically injured in a fall on a movie set had been satisfactory enough to send him back to Las Vegas with the feeling of accomplishment.
When further reports from the hospital indicated that while Mark Weldon’s leg was indeed broken, he was not in critical condition and was expected to make a full recovery, Slythe headed back to L.A.
85
The nurse had just gone out after taking Teddy’s vitals when the phone rang in his room.
He scooped it up. “Yes?”
“Billy?”
“I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”
“I’m sorry. It’s me, Marsha Quickly. I’m an actress. I worked with you on the film.”
“Oh?”
“Just one scene, it’s not important. But I knew you from before. My name is Bambi, I was a friend of Charmaine’s. I work for Pete Genaro at the New Desert Inn and Casino.”
“Give me a reason not to hang up the phone.”
“I heard what happened to you and I’m afraid it might be my fault. I’m back in Vegas, working for Pete like I said, and I told him I saw you. He’s in the middle of a casino war with a mobster out of New Jersey named Sammy Candelosi. I mentioned you’d be just the guy to handle that.”
“Oh, you did, did you?”
“Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it. We were just shooting the shit. Anyway, I think Sammy Candelosi heard somehow that I mentioned your name. At least that’s how I dope it out, because of what happened.”
“What happened?”
“After your house burned down and you escaped, everyone wanted to know where producer Billy Barnett was, only to be told he’s on vacation and can’t be reached. And that made a lot of people very nervous.
“The next thing I know this high roller is taking me out to dinner and plying me with wine and drinks, and before the son of a bitch ran out on me, he started talking about motion pictures, asking what work I’ve done lately, and somehow or other the conversation got around to me running into you on the set of that movie, and before the guy took off I think I may have mentioned you were working under the name Mark Weldon.”
“Oh, did you now?” Teddy said with wry irritation.
“Yeah, but that’s not the worst of it.”
“What happened?”
“I just found out the high roller who took me out is a hit man for Sammy Candelosi.”
86
Slythe had no problem finding the room. Billy Barnett was checked into the hospital under the name Mark Weldon, and the nurse at admitting was very helpful. She told Slythe that he had no visitors, but she looked up his room number to find that out, and she made no secret of it. Mark Weldon was in room 608.
Slythe went out, walked around the hospital, and came in another entrance. He walked up to the desk and said, “Outpatient surgery?”
“Third floor.”
Slythe nodded his thanks and walked onto the elevator. He didn’t get off on three, however, but went up to six and located the patients’ wing. He walked down the hall toward 608, looking for an unlocked supply closet. He found one right off the bat. He slipped in, closed the door, and locked it.
He couldn’t find a doctor’s coat, but there were sets of scrubs folded on a shelf. He shrugged off his clothes, stashed them behind a hamper in the corner, and put on some scrubs.
He looked around and found a surgical cap. He put it on and tucked his hair into it. It wouldn’t fool Billy Barnett, who would no doubt recognize him as the phony prop man, but it should work on anyone else.
He grabbed a clipboard as a useful prop. Somehow it made him feel more official.
He didn’t bother looking for a scalpel. He had his razor. He retrieved it from his pile of clothes and slid it into the pants pocket of his scrubs.
He peeked out the door to make sure no one was coming, and slipped out into the hallway.
* * *
—
Teddy got off the phone, thinking hard. He had to reassess the situation. What Marsha had told him completely changed the game. A guy—a mobster—named Sammy Candelosi thought Pete Genaro had hired Teddy to take him out.
That was just what Teddy was looking for: someone else with a reason to kill him.
So Sammy Candelosi knew Pete Genaro had called him, but not from Marsha. Candelosi’s goon had pumped her for information because he already knew Genaro had tried to hire him. Which meant Pete Genaro had a leak in his organization. It didn’t matter who it was. As long as there was a traitor, Teddy could exploit it for his own purposes. Which included taking out Sammy Candelosi. Ironically, by trying to eliminate a threat, Sammy Candelosi had merely activated one.
The pieces were falling into place. The fire could have been set by anyone, but the attack at the construction site had been Sammy Candelosi’s doing. It was carried out by someone who knew that Billy Barnett and Mark Weldon were one and the same person. Sammy Candelosi had just learned that.
Teddy sucked in his breath. That brought up another real possibility. Sammy Candelosi had tried to kill Mark Weldon because he found out Mark Weldon was Billy Barnett. Sammy believed Billy Barnett had been hired to kill him, and would have even more reason to do it now. And Teddy was checked into the hospital under the name Mark Weldon. There was nothing to stop Sammy Candelosi from having him killed in his bed as he lay there helplessly with his leg in traction.
Teddy needed a gun. He didn’t want to alarm Peter, but he didn’t want to die in his bed either. The thing was, aside from the Barringtons and the Bacchettis, T
eddy was hard-pressed to think of anyone who knew the situation and could provide him with one.
The answer was Mike Freeman. Teddy hated to bother him without being able to produce Nigel Hightower, but this was a special situation. Teddy reached for the phone.
The door opened and a man in scrubs with a clipboard came in. Even in his drugged state, Teddy was suddenly on high alert. There was nothing he could put his finger on, but from his years of experience at the CIA, Teddy knew instinctively that something was wrong. This man was not a doctor.
Teddy braced himself for the attack.
The man had the upper hand, but Teddy had the element of surprise. The hit man wouldn’t be expecting any resistance. Not from a cripple in bed who had no idea an attack was coming.
The man in scrubs set down the clipboard and approached the bed.
Teddy had his hand on the bedpan. It was unused, but it was under the sheets. The nurse had left it there so he would have easy access. Under the cover of the sheet, he slid it off the bed so that it hung down the side, firmly gripped in his left hand.
The man stepped back and smiled. “You planning to hit me with that bedpan? I’d rather you didn’t. Mike Freeman sent me. Peter Barrington’s concerned for your safety and hired Strategic Services for security. If someone wants to kill you, they’ll have to go through me.”
Teddy grinned and handed him the bedpan. “You want to set this over there? I’m tired of looking at the damn thing.”
87
Mike Freeman’s agent’s name was Rick. He was a good man, but a little too by-the-book for Teddy’s taste. He would not approve of what Teddy was about to do.
Teddy sent him to change out of his scrubs and back into his suit, and station himself outside the door—he’d be of more use there where he could intimidate troublemakers, rather than in the room pretending to be a doctor anyway.
