by Otto Penzler
He remembered a line from Homicide Detail. It had stuck with him all these years. His character, tough, rule-bending Detective Olson, had said to his sergeant, "The man's desperate. And you know what desperation does—it turns you into a hero or it turns you into a villain. Don't ever forget that."
Mike O'Connor rose from the couch and headed to his closet.
"Hey, Mike. How you doing? I'm sorry it didn't work out. That last hand. Phew. That was a cliffhanger."
"I saw the ratings," O'Connor answered Aaron Felter.
"They weren't bad."
Not bad? No, O'Connor thought, they were over-the-top amazing. They were close to O. J. confessing on Oprah, with Dr. Phil pitching in the psychobabble.
"So." Silence rolled along for a moment. "What're you up to next?"
Felter was pleased to see him but his attitude said that a deal was a deal. This was true in Hollywood just as much as on Wall Street. O'Connor had taken a chance and lost, and the rules of business meant that his and the producer's arrangement was now concluded.
"Taking some time off. Rewriting a bit of Stories."
"Ah. Good. You know what goes around comes around."
O'Connor wasn't sure that it did. Or even what the hell the phrase meant. But he smiled and nodded.
Silence, during which the producer was, of course, wondering what exactly O'Connor was doing here.
So the actor got right down to it.
"Let me ask you a question, Aaron. You like old movies, right? Like your dad and I used to talk about."
Another pause. Felter glanced at the spotless glass frames of his posters covering the walls. "Sure. Who doesn't?"
A lot of people didn't, O'Connor was thinking; they liked modern films. Oh, there was nothing wrong with that. In fifty years, people would be treasuring some of today's movies the way O'Connor treasured films like Bonnie and Clyde, M*A*S*H, or Shane.
Every generation ought to like its own darlings best.
"You know, I was thinking about Go for Broke. And guess what it reminded me of?"
"Couldn't tell you."
"A movie I just saw on TV."
"Really? About a poker showdown? An old Western?"
"No. The Guns of Navarone." He nodded at the poster to O'Connor's right.
"Go for Broke reminded you of that?"
"And that's not all. It also reminded me of The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch, Dirty Dozen, Top Gun, Saving Private Ryan, Alien. ... In fact, a lot of films—action films."
"I don't follow, Mike."
"Well, think about ... what was the word you used when we were talking about Stories? 'Formula.' You start with a group of diverse heroes and send 'em on a mission. One by one they're eliminated before the big third-act scene. Like The Guns of Navarone. It's a great film, by the way."
"One of the best," Felter agreed uncertainly.
"Group of intrepid commandos. Eliminated one by one.... But in a certain order, of course: sort of in reverse order of their youth or sex appeal. The stiff white guy's often the first to go—say, Anthony Quayle in Navarone. Or Robert Vaughn in The Magnificent Seven. Next we lose the minorities. Yaphet Kotto in Alien. Then the hotheaded young kid is bound to go. James Darren. Shouldn't he have ducked when he was facing down the Nazi with the machine gun? 7 would have. But no, he just kept going till he was dead.
"That brings us to women. If they're not the leads, they better be careful, Tyne Daly in one of the Dirty Harry films. And even if they survive, it's usually so they can hang on the arm of the man who wins the showdown. And who does that bring us to finally? The main opponents? The older white guy versus the enthusiastic young white guy. Tom Cruise versus Nicholson. Denzel versus Gene Hackman. Clint Eastwood versus Lee Van Cleef. DiCaprio versus all the first-class passengers on Titanic.
"Kind of like the contestants on the show. Stodgy white guy, minority, hotheaded youth, the woman ... Bingham, Stone, Kresge, Sandy. And after they were gone, who was left? Old me versus young Dillon McKennah."
"I think you're pissed off about something, Mike. Why don't you just tell me?"
"The game was rigged, Aaron. I know it. You wrote your quote reality unquote show like it was a classic Hollywood Western or war movie. You knew how it was going to come out from the beginning. You followed the formula perfectly."
"And why the fuck would I do that?"
"Because I think you're trying to get a movie-financing package moving with Dillon McKennah. That caper film he was talking about. He'd shot himself in the foot with Town House and that other crap he appeared in. He needed a bump—for both of you."
Felter was speechless for a moment. Then he looked down. "We talked about a few things, that's all, Dillon and me. Hell, you and I talked about Stories. That's my business. Oh, come on, Mike. Don't embarrass yourself. It was a fucking pissant reality show. There was no guarantee of a bump."
"But it did get Dillon a bump. A big one. And you know why? Because of the robbery. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that was a classic Act Two reversal—according to the formula of scriptwriting. You know how that works. Big plot twist three-quarters of the way through. Guns of Navarone? The young Greek girl, Gia Scala, the supposed patriot, turns out to be the traitor. She destroys the detonators. How're the commandos going to blow up the German guns now? We're sitting on the edge of our seats, wondering."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"The robbery, Aaron. The attempted robbery. It was all set up, too. You arranged the whole thing. That's what made it more than boring reality TV. My God, you even added a dash of COPS. You got the attempt and Dillon's Steven Seagal karate moves on security camera, and that night it was on YouTube and every network in the country. TV at its best. You think there wasn't a human being in the country wasn't going to turn on the second episode of Go for Broke and watch Dillon and me slug it out?"
"I don't know what—"
O'Connor held up a hand. "Now, don't embarrass yourself, Aaron. On the set of Homicide Detail, we had an adviser, a real cop in the LAPD. He's retired now, but we're still good buddies. I talked to him and told him I had a problem. I needed to know some facts about the case. He made some calls. First of all, the gun that Sammy Ralston had? It was a fake. From a studio property department. The sort they use on TV sets, the sort I carried for seven years. Second, turns out that his phone records show Ralston called a prisoner, Joey Fadden, in Lompoc Prison a few weeks ago. The same prisoner that you interviewed as part of that series you shot on California prisons last year. I think you paid Joey to get Ralston's name.... Ah, ah, ah, let me finish. Gets better. Third, Ralston keeps talking about this mysterious biker named Jake who put the whole thing together and nobody knows about."
"Jake."
"I dug up my fake shield from the TV show and went to the bar on Melrose where Ralston said he met with Jake. I had a mug shot with me."
"A—"
"From Variety. It was a picture of you and your assistant. The big one. The bartender recognized him. You got him to play the role of Jake, costume, fake tats, the whole thing.... I just walked past his office, by the way. There're posters on his wall, too. One of them's Brokeback Mountain. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Jake. Think about it."
Felter said nothing, but his expression was essentially: Shit!
"Dillon knew about the setup. He knew about the fake gun. That's why he took on a guy who was armed. He wasn't in any danger. It was all planned. All planned for the bump."
O'Connor shook his head. "I should've guessed before. I mean, the final hand, Aaron? You know how most poker games end: Two guys half-comatose from lack of sleep, and one beats the other with three sixes over a pair of threes. A four-of-a-kind versus a straight flush? That only happens in the movies. That's not real life."
"How could I rig the game?"
"Because you hired a sleight-of-hand artist as the dealer. You saw his card tricks when we met him. I ran him down. And I checked the tapes. There were no close-ups of his hands. I've got his name
and address. Oh, and I also got the phone number of the gaming commission in Nevada."
Felter closed his eyes. Maybe he was thinking of excuses and explanations.
O'Connor almost hoped Felter would say something, which would give the actor a chance to throw out his famous tagline from the old TV series: Save it for the judge.
But Felter didn't try to excuse himself. He looked across the desk, as if it were a poker table and said, "So where do we go from here?"
"To put it in terms of television, Aaron," Mike O'Connor said, pulling several thick envelopes out of his briefcase, "let's make a deal."
In the Eyes of Children
Alexander McCall Smith
"Over there," she said. "Look over there."
The girl standing at the rail on the starboard side of the ship gazed out over the flat water. The sea was so bright, so calm, that it seemed one might dive in and swim the last few miles that separated them from the shore of the island. But distances at sea were deceptive; she knew that, as Miss Hart had told them earlier.
"The problem, boys and girls," she had explained, "is that there are no reference points. The sea is just one big expanse of ... well, expanse, and so you can't really tell how far one point is from another."
"Unless you're a sailor," said one of the boys. "Like that man up on the bridge there. He can tell."
They had glanced up from the deck in which they had been standing and looked at the officer standing just outside the bridge, his binoculars trained on something out to port, something that none of them could see.
"They look so silly in those uniforms," one of the girls whispered. "Those stupid shorts. Their knees must get sunburned."
"Like your shoulders," said a boy. "Look. Disgusting. Your skin's peeling off."
But now, a few days later, there were no boys on deck to make that sort of remark; just Alice, who was fifteen and her slightly older friend, Rachel. They were standing together, shaded by the shadow of the ship's superstructure, watching the island drawing closer. This was Grand Cayman, the third island that the cruise had called at, and the smallest. They would go ashore—there was a turtle farm they would visit, and shops, of course.
It was a school party, consisting of just over twenty children. Apart from one or two younger children who were traveling with their parents, the members of the school party were the only young people on the ship; everybody else, it seemed to the children themselves, seemed to be in their forties or above. "Ancient," said one of the boys. "An ancient ship full of ancient people."
And he was right, or almost right, about the ship, which was coming up for its final cruise and which was already booked in at the shipbreakers. But in spite of the shabbiness of the fittings, the scuffed carpets, and the chipped paint on the railings, the company was making a brave effort. There was a full program of events—dances, talks on the islands, competitions, and the like—and the cabins were clean and reasonably comfortable. Or at least they were comfortable for most of the passengers; the school party had been given a generous discount in return for occupying two large, stuffy cabins which had previously been allocated to crew, and these were distinctly spartan in their atmosphere. The girls occupied the slightly better of the two cabins, where at least there were portholes on one side; the boys' cabin, with its line of bunks stacked three high, was on the inside, with no natural light. It was a bad place to be if one was seasick, which some of the boys were for the first few days out of Southampton as the ship plowed through an oily Atlantic roll.
There were two teachers in charge of the party; one, Miss Hart, who looked after the girls, and her male colleague, Mr. Gordon. Miss Hart was thirty-four, a tall, slim woman with a rather attractive high-cheekboned face. Both she and Mr. Gordon were Scottish, as were the children. Mr. Gordon was a small worried-looking man who taught chemistry, and who had been out of the country only once before, some years earlier, when he had fulfilled a lifelong ambition to go to the Oktoberfest in Munich. He had taken pictures at the beer-festival events and had stuck these into a large photo album he bought on his return to Edinburgh. He was divorced and had not remarried; Miss Hart had never found a husband and, she predicted, never would. "I have had my admirers," she would say, and would look away, as if remembering something precious. But these admirers had come to nothing, and her friends assumed that their admiration had probably been unexpressed and certainly never acted upon.
Both teachers had felt some hesitation in accepting the request to accompany the school cruise. Being responsible for twenty children on a school trip, even for one day, to a museum or gallery, was daunting enough, but to be responsible for twenty children on a three-week cruise to the Caribbean would be enough to destroy all peace of mind. But they had both accepted the duty for good-enough reasons; Miss Hart because she wanted to please the school principal, whom she worshipped and for whom she would do virtually anything; Mr. Gordon because he was bored and wanted to get away from his dingy home in a dull street in Edinburgh. The Caribbean was light; it was music; it was the wider world; and the prospect of these things would compensate for the anxieties of supervising the teenagers. And they were rather nice children anyway—the well-behaved offspring of serious-minded Edinburgh families; not rebels or delinquents; respectable children, if one could use such a term about any teenagers.
It was Alice who first noticed that Miss Hart had attracted the attention of an admirer.
"You know what I saw?" she said to Rachel. "I saw old Hart being chatted up by a man. I swear I did!"
"No! Impossible!"
"I did! I really did."
Rachel's skepticism was replaced by interest. "Where? On deck?"
Alice shook her head. "No, it was in that lounge. You know, the one with the red chairs. She was standing near the door and this man was talking to her, really close, and he took her by the arm, just here, and held her, as if he was pinching her or something."
"Who was he? What sort of man would go for old Hart?"
Alice was able to provide some information. "He plays in the band. He's the one who plays the trombone. The tall one."
Rachel thought about this. She had noticed the trombonist, had noticed his face, which was animated, lively. There was something in his eyes, something bright and mischievous, which made one notice him. He was an unlikely Mend for Miss Hart, she thought; very unlikely.
"And then," Alice continued. "Then something else." She paused, watching with pleasure the growth of her Mend's interest. She liked having information which other people did not have; it gave one power. "Then, when I went back there half an hour later, she was sitting with him and some of his Mends around a table at the end of that room. They had pulled the table out a bit and there were three men there. Three men and Miss H. And guess what they were doing? Go on, guess!"
Rachel shrugged. "Drinking?"
Alice shook her head. "No. Playing cards."
Rachel was not impressed. "So? So what? People play cards. There are all those people who play bridge. Even when we're in port, they still sit there, playing bridge. Haven't you noticed?"
"But this wasn't bridge they were playing," Alice said. "This was poker! And they were betting. I saw it."
Rachel giggled. "No! Betting! Old Hart?"
Miss Hart had not wanted to play poker, at least at the beginning. She had noticed the trombonist when the band had been playing on the upper deck shortly after they had left Nassau. Whenever the ship left a port, the band assembled on deck and played a medley of suitable tunes; in this case, "Yellow Bird," "Jamaica Farewell" (not entirely appropriate, but close enough), and other tunes of a Caribbean nature. The percussionist had replaced his normal drums with steel ones, and Miss Hart had been struck by the infectious nature of the music, by its jauntiness. I am in the Caribbean, she thought. I am far away from home. Anything can happen.
She had noticed the trombonist looking at her, and had blushed when their eyes had met. She had looked away, but when she had looked up again he was staring at
her again, with those bright, amused eyes. She drifted away, confused, and walked to the other end of the deck. There she watched a private yacht sailing behind the ship, its bowsprit pitching with the waves, pointing one moment at the sky, another moment down into the trough of the waves. Why had he been looking at her? She was not used to the gaze of men; she was one of those women who imagined that men she did not know, strangers, would not look at her. Yet although she was surprised, she was not displeased. He was a striking-looking man, about her age, or perhaps slightly older, and there was about him that glamour, that vague whiff of danger that surrounds the jazz musician.
She saw him again the following day, out on deck. He was dressed in one of the colorful open-necked shirts that he wore when he played in the band; it was a sort of uniform, she decided, like the white uniforms that the ship's officers wore. He noticed her, said something to the man he was talking to, and walked across the deck to greet her. She stopped where she was, uncertain what to do. She blushed.
He said, "I'm Geoff. I hope you enjoyed the music yesterday. Bill likes to get going on the steel drums."
"It was very nice." She realized, as she spoke, how trite she sounded. Very nice; as if she had been at a concert at home, in one of those douce concert halls.
"Good," he said. He looked at her quizzically, as if trying to fathom something. "Come and have a drink through there." He nodded in the direction of the bar. "Allow me to buy you one."
She looked about her, almost in panic. There were one or two of the teenagers at the other end of the deck; they were absorbed in themselves, as all adolescents are; they would not see her going into the bar with him. But did she want to?
"Come on," he said. "I'll introduce you to my friends."
There was something disarming in his manner, and she found herself agreeing. And what harm was there anyway? People made new friends on cruises; it was not the normal, quotidian world; it was different at sea.
They went inside, where he introduced her to his two friends. Tom, he said. Bill. Tom was the band's pianist; Bill had played the steel drums the day before. They stood up as she came to the table and shook hands. She saw that Bill looked at Geoff, that he caught his eye, and that something passed between them; a quizzical glance.
