Scavenger hunt

by Robert Ferrigno

  "Jews don't move to the desert," said the bottle blonde.

  "Moses led the children of Israel into the desert for forty years," said Kool Light, watching the bottle blonde add the bill. "My hearts of palm was three ninety-nine, not four ninety-nine."

  "My second husband was a Jew," the bottle blonde said, "so don't go telling me about the children of Israel."

  "Your Christmas cards?" Jimmy reminded the henna redhead. "Will you see if you have Stephanie's address?"

  "You're sure you're not from a collection agency?" asked the henna redhead.

  "Yeah, like he'd tell you the truth if he was," said the bottle blonde. "You need to stop trusting everything in pants. Okay, your share, with tax and tip, make it eight twenty-five."

  "I'm a reporter," said Jimmy. "I'm writing a story on April McCoy. I just want to talk to Stephanie-"

  "Let me see the bill," the henna redhead said to the bottle blonde.

  "What, you think I'm cheating you?" asked the bottle blonde.

  "I had a small wheatgrass surprise," said the henna redhead.

  Jimmy plucked the check from the bottle blonde and pulled out his wallet.

  "Look girls, we got a real strongman here," said the henna redhead. "He picked that check up like it was nothing."

  The women laughed so hard that people at the other tables turned to see what had happened.

  Chapter 36

  An emerald tree boa and a brown-and-red-striped Burmese reticulated python placidly watched Jimmy as he walked into Santa Monica Exotics. The snakes were piled in the front windows, draped across fake tree limbs, ten and twelve and fourteen footers, their wide flat heads draped across their coiled bulk. Two black-clad goth kids stood outside, holding hands as they stared at the snakes. The girl, draped in silver ankhs and crucifixes, eyes blackened like a raccoon, flicked her tongue stud at the python.

  A two-toned colobus monkey screeched, its black and white fur looking like formal attire, but Jimmy ignored it, looking for Samantha Packard. A caged red-green macaw followed his progress as he passed the gekkos and iguanas. A West African dwarf crocodile, an ugly beast no larger than a dachshund, opened wide its mouth as Jimmy walked past, its teeth like sharpened dice. A small boy pressed his face against a glass front, and the tarantulas inside waved back. A nearby cluster of black Mexican scorpions clicked their claws against the glass. The sound gave Jimmy the creeps.

  Samantha Packard had called him at the office this morning, sounding out of breath, her voice little more than a whisper. "Santa Monica Exotics-do you know it? Three o'clock."

  The store was a collection of nooks and crannies, narrow aisles leading into large open areas like clearings in the jungle. A sales-woman in black leather pants was showing a gold chinchilla to a middle-aged couple, brushing out its fur before handing it over to the wife, who cuddled it like a child. The chinchilla had tiny black eyes, a silky yellow pelt, and the face of a sewer rat.

  Jimmy turned the corner and saw Samantha Packard at the end of the aisle, staring into one of the cages, her shoulders slumped. She was wearing a lively orchid-colored dress and her hair was coifed, but her posture gave her an air of fatigue and defeat. He came up behind her, moving so quietly that she jumped when he spoke her name.

  Samantha pressed her back against the glass wall of the cage, terrified. In the dim recesses a ring-tailed lemur dangled from a tree limb, sleeping.

  "It's okay," said Jimmy.

  "You're-you're a little early."

  Jimmy could see a small bruise on the side of her jaw, barely covered by makeup. "I'm glad you called me. Does he know?"

  Samantha blinked. "Know what?"

  "About the letter?"

  Samantha glanced away, then back. "I'm sorry."

  "It wasn't you, it was me. Walsh tried to tell, but I didn't believe him."

  Samantha acted like she hadn't heard him, turning back to the cage, watching the lemur snooze, a silvery marsupial with bony humanoid hands. "They sleep sixteen hours a day, eighteen hours sometimes, dreaming their life away. They're very intelligent. They're so much smarter than us-" She jerked as Jimmy touched her shoulder, flinging off his hand, still watching the lemur, her dull eyes reflected in the glass.

  Jimmy heard something behind him.

  Mick Packard acted startled that he had been caught, his surprise turning to anger. "I told you to stop bothering my wife." He was a lousy actor.

  Jimmy glanced at Samantha, who maintained her vigil on the lemur cage.

  Packard advanced, looking tough in black turtleneck and black pants, hands poised in martial arts readiness. "You picked the wrong woman to harass."

  "I think there's been a mistake."

  "I'm not the one who made a mistake."

  "You gave me the idea when we met at Garrett Walsh's funeral. I'm doing a profile on action stars and their wives. I wanted to interview Mrs. Packard first-"

  Packard did one of his signature spin-turns, and Jimmy dodged, the kick just grazing his head. Packard looked surprised again. He had slowed down since he was a top box-office draw, but even the near miss almost tore Jimmy's ear off.

  Jimmy backed away, fists cocked, watching Packard's eyes as the man closed in.

  "Running away?" Packard was talking too loudly.

  Jimmy glanced around and saw a video cameraman shooting from the far end of the aisle. The sight distracted him for a moment, long enough for Packard to attack again, his roundhouse kick slamming into the wall next to his head. Jimmy grabbed his outstretched foot and twisted, sending him to the ground bellowing.

  Packard got quickly to his feet, limping slightly. "You've had training."

  "I told you, this is a mistake." Jimmy backed up, looking for an exit.

  "Hey, don't you want to play?" The question had been the oft-repeated tagline of Packard's last box-office hit.

  Jimmy edged into the main corridor. Halfway down the middle-aged wife nuzzled the golden chinchilla. The cameraman stepped into the aisle from behind her, still filming. Jimmy feinted, then threw a punch at Packard, a hard left hook.

  Packard swatted the blow aside, hit Jimmy twice on the side of the head, and knocked him down. Packard mugged for the camera, beckoning Jimmy to rise to his feet.

  Samantha Packard faced the lemur cage, her hands clenched at her sides.

  Jimmy got up, his ears ringing as he rocked on the balls of his feet. He never saw the blow coming.

  Packard moved in, low-kicked, then drove the heel of his left hand into Jimmy's chest and sent him stumbling back against a wall of glass cages.

  Jimmy heard the scorpions scuttling behind him but kept his eyes on Packard. It hurt to breathe. He was scared.

  Packard bounced forward, dodging and weaving, a smug little smile on his face. He was right where he wanted to be: in a big-screen moment.

  Jimmy kept trying to box him, but Packard slipped past his punches, smacked him and retreated, then smacked him again. Jimmy was fast, faster than Packard, but Packard's timing was perfect.

  Packard hit Jimmy again and again, hit him in the exact same place each time, smiling broader now as Jimmy got angrier and more desperate. Packard stuck his head forward, daring Jimmy to take a shot.

  Jimmy lashed out, and his fist grazed Packard's chin before he got nailed again. The side of his head was numb now, and blood trickled from his ear. He backed up, gasping for breath. The middle-aged wife was right behind him now, asking her husband if they were filming a movie, her voice echoing, sounding like she was speaking from inside a seashell.

  Packard grinned at him, easing forward.

  Jimmy grabbed the golden chinchilla from the wife and tossed it to Packard.

  Packard deftly caught the squealing chinchilla, then, confused, looked at the camera.

  Jimmy punched him in the face, catching him good. The chinchilla clawed its way free and scampered down his leg. Jimmy hit him again, just below the nose this time, a pressure point where all the facial nerves gathered-right where Jane had taught him. Pa
ckard grunted, and Jimmy tripped him, drove him to the ground.

  Packard got halfway up, cursing.

  Jimmy kicked him, sending him sprawling. Packard tried to stand, but Jimmy didn't give him a chance. No marquess of Queensbury bullshit, no time-outs, no Geneva Convention, no director calling "CUT!" Jimmy kicked Packard's knee out from under him, kicked him when he struggled up, and punched him in the throat when he tried to explain. When Packard stopped trying to get up, Jimmy stopped hitting him.

  The cameraman caught every moment of it.

  Samantha Packard hadn't moved. She was still slumped against the glass, watching the sleeping lemur.

  "Samantha?" Jimmy's voice was raspy.

  Samantha pressed her hands against the thick glass, moaning, but the lemur didn't move, lost in some solitary rain-forest reverie where the light was cool and deep and green and the trees were heavy with fruit. If the lemur heard Samantha's soft cries in his dream, he didn't respond.

  "Turn around, buddy."

  Jimmy ignored the cameraman.

  "You a stuntman or something, buddy?"

  Jimmy shook his head. "Samantha, you have to get away from him."

  Samantha Packard didn't move. "I'm sorry."

  "This was for real then?" The cameraman zoomed in. "So could you please tell us why you're stalking Mick Packard's wife?"

  Packard coughed and curled up on the floor. The macaw screamed at them, fluttering its bright wings.

  Jimmy stared at Samantha Packard. He felt sick. "You're not the good wife, are you?"

  Samantha Packard hung her head. "I've tried-I've tried to be."

  Chapter 37

  The footage from Santa Monica Exotics led every local newscast that evening, with endless replays of Mick Packard getting punched out, the chinchilla clawing at his turtleneck. It was a great TV moment. Now Jimmy understood why Samantha had picked three P.M. for the meeting: Mick Packard wanted to make sure they were able to make the broadcast deadline. He just hadn't counted on getting his ass kicked.

  Jimmy had been standing around for the last half-hour at Napitano's monthly scavenger hunt party watching the action on the wide-screen in the media room. Everyone was having a good time, cheering and hooting. Rollo did a perfect Howard Cosell impression, and Nino danced around in his peacock-blue pajamas throwing mock punches with his tiny fists. Jimmy felt nothing but disappointment.

  He had cast Mick Packard as the angry husband from the moment he saw him at Walsh's funeral. Cast Samantha as the good wife too. It had been more than a leap of faith; Samantha had admitted having an affair with Walsh, and Packard was a jealous control freak, rumored to be ex-CIA, with the cunning to orchestrate a setup. Jimmy had been wrong. Samantha's affair with Walsh hadn't made her special. When he had asked her about being the good wife in the pet shop, she hadn't understood-she had taken him literally. If Mick Packard had been the husband Jimmy was looking for, he would never have pulled the stunt in the pet shop. The man who had framed Walsh would have been more subtle; Jimmy would have a fatal accident or just disappear.

  "Jimmy!"

  Jimmy felt arms around him and a sweet-smelling woman kissing him, the pain stabbing through his face from where Packard had hit him. He pulled away and saw Chase Gooding in gold lame hiphuggers and a belly shirt, blond hair cascading across her bare shoulders, cold as granite and pink to the bone.

  Rollo's eyes were bugging out of his head looking at her.

  "Jimmy!" Chase kissed him again, the tip of her tongue banging against his teeth. "You got me on the guest list, just like you said you would! I didn't think anybody kept a promise anymore, but you did."

  Jimmy disengaged himself from her. "You meet any Scientologists yet?"

  "Mission accomplished. Me and Zed somebody are partnered up for the scavenger hunt," Chase said. "Zed goes to the downtown temple or church or whatever they call it. He doesn't know Tom Cruise personally, but I tell you, Jimmy, Zed's so clear and connected, it's scary." Chase's miniskirt showed off the striated muscles of her inner thighs. "Are you with anybody?"

  "Aren't you going to introduce me to your little friend, Jimmy?" asked Napitano.

  "Nino, this is Chase Gooding, an actress. Chase, this-"

  "I know who Mr. Napitano is, silly," said Chase, air-kissing the publisher.

  "A pleasure to meet you," Nino said solemnly. "Good luck in the scavenger hunt."

  "Gosh," said Chase, flustered now. "I gotta go, or I'm going to blow it for the team. Ciao!" She winked at Jimmy and dashed off.

  "What lovely breasts," said Napitano, watching her run across the marble floor, high heels clippity-clopping. "I hope she wins."

  "You really got a thing with scavenger hunts, huh, Nino?" said Rollo.

  "The scavenger hunt is uniquely American-dynamic, creative, forceful," said Nino, blue silk pajamas rippling with every gesture. "It is Manifest Destiny writ in the search for treasure real or imagined, the cultural detritus begged, borrowed, or stolen. You and Jimmy played the game magnificently, as I knew you would."

  "Thanks, man," said Rollo. He glanced around and tapped his coat. "I got it."

  "Wonderful." Napitano nodded at the current rerun of the fight at the pet store. "I've seen enough of our brave gladiator's exploits. Let us adjourn to my study for a screening, molto privato."

  "Walsh's rough cut?" said Jimmy.

  "Fucking-A Hammerlock, dude," confirmed Rollo.

  Napitano led Jimmy and Rollo through the house, parting the crowd with an imperious flick of his hand. Purchased from a child actor whose brilliant career had flamed out a few years after puberty, the mansion was thirty-six thousand square feet of fun and offered two swimming pools, a poker room, an ice cream parlor, a full gym, a batting cage, and a video game center. Nino used almost none of the sports facilities, considering physical exercise a waste of time, but the ice cream parlor was fully utilized, the chocolate syrup flown in weekly from Switzerland. The study was in the farthest wing, where sounds from the party still echoed. Napitano punched in his entry code, shielding the numbers from view, then looked into an aperture on the wall. Retina scan complete, the door clicked open. "Please make yourself at home," he said as they followed him inside, the gimbaled door closing after them with a slight hiss.

  Napitano waved to the red leather sofas facing a flat-screen television and the one-kilo tin of black Iranian caviar within its nest of crushed ice. He poured champagne for all of them.

  Rollo slipped a DVD out of his jacket and into the player.

  "This movie should be a most useful addition to this article on the late Garrett Walsh that you've been spending so much time on, Jimmy." Napitano sipped his champagne. "I trust it will be finished sometime in the foreseeable future?"

  "Depends on how far you can see."

  Rollo ignored the champagne Napitano had poured and pulled a can of Mountain Dew out of the small refrigerator built into the wall. "Hammerlock's not finished, but I think you guys are really going to like it. I've watched it about twelve times, and I still don't know where Walsh was going. I was supposed to get a copy of his script notes today from my source at the archives, but B.K. is paranoid."

  Jimmy sat down on the couch. He really was interested, not just in seeing a rough cut by a master filmmaker but because Walsh had been having an affair with the good wife while he was making the movie. Maybe there was something in the footage that would give him a sense of who she was.

  "Here we go," said Rollo as the movie started, no titles, no credits at all, just a close-up of Mick Packard's face, blood trickling from his nose. He looked almost the same as he did on tonight's newscast. "Packard is really good in this, Jimmy. I was surprised."

  Hammerlock was the story of a clinically depressed, tough cop, played by Mick Packard, who is manipulated by a shy, seemingly ineffectual killer, sent down blind alleys, chasing his tail in pursuit. The rough cut had major continuity problems-the transitions between scenes were often jumpy and awkward-but Packard was utterly convincing as the desperat
e cop, gobbling pills, slapping around suspects, a strong man unraveling, trying to cover his fear with bravado, talking out his troubles only with his sister.

  The cop's best lead was a beautiful woman, a waitress who had heard the killer's gloating voice after he killed his fourth victim, even saw his retreating back when she looked out her window. The waitress and the cop had real chemistry-the actress was Victoria Lanois, and like Walsh, she never did such good work again, but she was the perfect mixture of strength and vulnerability in Hammerlock, the attraction between her and Packard's character made even more powerful by never being consummated. An hour and a half into the movie, drunk and desperate, the cop stops by her house with a droopy bouquet of flowers and finds her dead in the kitchen, the TV blaring.

  The scene didn't work; it was too graphic, particularly for a character the viewer had come to love. Multiple shotgun blasts had blown her head to pieces. Walsh let the camera drift across the blood-sprayed walls, finally coming to rest on her shattered skull.

  Jimmy shook his head. Walsh had an ugly imagination.

  "Oh my," said Napitano as the screen went to gray.

  "That's it?" said Jimmy.

  "That's it," said Rollo. "The last act was never shot. I checked three earlier versions of the screenplay, but they're completely different. The cop is more of a straight-arrow type, and the waitress doesn't die-the cop uses her for bait."

  "Was there much of a change in the waitress character from the earlier drafts?" said Jimmy, wondering if Walsh's deepening affair with the good wife during filming had been reflected in the female lead.

  "Not really." Rollo got up, ejected the DVD, and slipped the case into his jacket. "She was a blonde up until the second rewrite, but that's-"

  "You're sure about that? She wasn't a brunette in the first draft?" said Jimmy.

  "I'm sure. I remember thinking it was a weird decision. Blondes usually get a rise from the suits, and the-"

  "I want to look at every version of the screenplay you've got," said Jimmy.