by Lee Goldberg
“I get it,” Mei said.
“Get what?” Ian asked.
“The series is a metaphor for what is happening in the world today,” she said. “There are governments out there trying to create their own reality by controlling the media and censoring speech. It’s amazing how many subversive political statements you can sneak into this show.”
“It certainly is,” Ian said, his eyes on Ronnie Mancuso and his costar, Jeff Dallas, who’d spent three years playing the goofy dad on a Disney Channel sitcom after the first run of Hollywood & the Vine ended and Ronnie went off to his bunker in the Nevada desert.
Now Jeff had to have his wardrobe tailored to hide his beer belly, but Ronnie had never looked better. It wasn’t because the green makeup covered the creases on Ronnie’s brow or the gray in his buzz cut. He stayed physically fit so he could survive the zombie apocalypse, which Ian was certain the actor still believed was coming any day now.
Ronnie spotted Ian, strode over, and pulled him into a bear hug. “Where have you been, stranger?”
“I’ve been busy saving the world,” Ian said.
“I believe it.” Ronnie let him go and smiled at Mei. “I saw the two of you on Edney talking about your escape from China. I’d love to hear what really happened.”
“What makes you think you don’t already know it?” she asked coyly.
“Because, honey, nobody tells the truth on TV and . . .” Ronnie pulled a mike off his shirt, removed the transmitter clipped to his belt on his lower back, and tossed the devices on an empty director’s chair. “I know Ian’s deep, dark secret.”
“What’s that?” Mei asked.
Ronnie put his arm around her and led her out of anybody’s earshot except Ian’s. “He is Clint Straker.”
“What about you? Are you Charlie Vine?”
“Hell yes, baby. I can pollinate a rose garden with my smile,” Ronnie said, flashing it at her. “Some women, too.”
He walked them over to his trailer, which had three push-outs and a dozen antennae of different shapes and sizes along the roof. Once they were inside, Ronnie locked the door and faced them.
“It’s safe to talk in here. All those antennas are creating a white-noise shield. They can’t hear a word we say.”
Mei looked up, though Ian wasn’t sure what she expected to see besides the ceiling. “Who are they?”
“For starters, the people you ran away from. Every piece of electronic equipment made in China is a surveillance, data-mining, and tracking device, whether it’s a TV set or a kid’s talking dog toy.”
Mei raised an eyebrow, expressing her skepticism, but Ian knew that what Ronnie said was absolutely true, though in her defense, it was hard to take someone seriously who was painted green.
“Uncle Sam also has his ear pressed against my wall,” Ronnie added, opening the refrigerator and getting out some bottles of fruit-flavored waters for himself and his guests. “And so do a few Hollywood talent agencies, too.”
“Why would they want to listen to you?” she asked.
Ronnie handed her a water. “Because they are out to get me. I fought shoulder to shoulder with Ian against the New World Order’s attempted overthrow of our government and there are powerful people living in the shadows who still carry a grudge.”
“You mean they’re still upset about the hidden political messages you two snuck into the first run of this series?”
Ian spoke up before Ronnie could answer. “That’s right. Every episode of this show is a blow against tyranny.”
Ronnie shot Ian a look and read something in his expression that told him she didn’t know about their battle against Blackthorn Global Security and their assassins.
“This show is more than a cop show about a plant,” Ronnie said, following Ian’s lead. “It’s a political weapon.”
“Believe me, I know it,” Mei said.
“She’s a big fan of yours, Ronnie,” Ian said. “She’d love to work with you.”
“Likewise,” Ronnie said, pointing a finger at Mei. “I’ve seen every movie you’ve made. In fact, I think you’re the perfect actress to play my archnemesis.”
“I would love that,” she said. “Tell me about her.”
“Her name is Jade. She’s half-woman, half–Venus flytrap.”
“She’s what?” Ian asked, opening his water bottle. “How would that work?”
“I don’t know. You tell me,” Ronnie said. “You’re the one writing it.”
It was a good thing Ian hadn’t started drinking the water yet, or he might have choked on it. “No, no, no, no. I left TV a long time ago.”
“Nobody writes this show better than you do,” Ronnie said. “Don’t you want Mei to have the best?”
Ronnie and Mei looked at him imploringly and Ian decided that he’d have to be certifiably insane to choose writing a Hollywood & the Vine over a life of constant sex.
“Okay,” Ian said. “I’ll do it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
San Diego, California. November 6. 10:11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Over the last few days, Gustavo Reynoso had thought a lot about the switchblade angel with a private jet for wings, especially when he fantasized about the beautiful women in the Pilates studio. The instant he got hard, he’d feel the angel’s blade under his scrotum and the desire would pass. That was how he knew it wasn’t a coincidence that the angel had dropped him off in front of that window. She was giving him a choice. Deliverance or damnation.
He wasn’t a religious man and the experience hadn’t turned him toward God, but it did make him think seriously about not repeating past mistakes. It was time for him to focus on making some money and finding a way of relating to women that didn’t involve knives, strangulation, or blows to the head, though he had difficulty imagining what it might be.
The search for work had taken him to an industrial neighborhood in the north end of the city, east of the 805 freeway, and to a boulevard lined with stores selling tile, paint, hardwood flooring, kitchen cabinets, plumbing supplies, landscaping materials, and other businesses that were likely to attract contractors and do-it-yourselfers in immediate need of cheap manual labor.
He stood in a cul-de-sac off the boulevard, adjacent to some warehouses and auto repair garages, a spot where illegals like himself could mill around in denim and work boots, waiting for a job to come along, without getting in anybody’s way or attracting too much attention. Most of the day laborers had already found gigs, leaving him almost by himself. There was something about Gustavo, an aura or smell, that made people leery about inviting him into their cars, their work sites, or their homes. Nobody had hired him yet.
There were a couple of food trucks parked in the cul-de-sac. Most of their customers were “foodies” and students from nearby University of California San Diego rather than hungry day laborers like Gustavo, who couldn’t afford artisan shrimp tacos. The customers seemed to him to be more excited about taking pictures of their food than eating it.
A black Escalade pulled up beside Gustavo and the driver rolled down his window and leaned his head out. He was a white guy in his thirties wearing work gloves, a polo shirt, and a gold watch studded with diamonds. His face was pockmarked and his teeth as white as piano keys.
“I need someone to help me build a tree house for my kids,” the guy said in lousy Spanish. “A hundred bucks for the day. Are you up for it?”
“Yes,” Gustavo said, though he knew it meant that he’d be building the tree house by himself while the guy did something else.
“I’m Ted,” the driver said. “What’s your name?”
“Gustavo.”
“As in mucho gusto?”
“Yes,” he said, beginning to dislike this rich, lazy American. “Mucho gusto.”
“Energy and enthusiasm, that’s exactly what I’m looking for. Climb in.”
Gustavo walked around to the passenger side, got into the huge car, and they drove off in silence. They headed west under the 805 freewa
y and into University City, where everything became a lot more upscale, a mix of gleaming office buildings, luxury hotels, and expensive condos. Ted pulled into a side street, beside a condo complex of several two-story buildings in a parklike setting of green grass and palm trees, and parked at the curb.
“I’ve got to run inside and pick up some things,” he said. “Wait here.”
The driver got out, leaving the keys in the ignition and the motor running, and disappeared among the condo buildings.
Gustavo sat there for a moment, enjoying the smell of the leather upholstery and marveling at how stupid the guy was to leave him alone with the keys to an $80,000 car. That was when he noticed that the key chain had an array of barcoded membership cards on it, including one with the logo of the Pilates studio Gustavo had seen his first night in town. It was an eerie and unsettling coincidence, coming right when he was thinking about stealing the car. It was like the angel was back, sticking a knife under his ball sack, reminding him of the consequences of bad decisions.
He opened the storage compartment under the central console armrest, just for the hell of it, and found a tube of women’s skin moisturizer, hair ties, ChapStick, an eye shadow palette, a hairbrush, a makeup brush, breath mints, loose change, a nail file, a bottle of Purell, and a wrapped tampon.
The discovery made Gustavo pleasurably aware that he was in a woman’s private space. The Escalade obviously belonged to the guy’s wife and that made being there arousing, as if Gustavo had broken into her bedroom. He picked up the tampon, sniffed it like it was a fine cigar, and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
Gustavo opened the glove box, hoping for more feminine goodies, and was astonished to find a gun inside. He picked it up, just to make sure it was real, which it was, and then he wasn’t sure what to do with it.
Put it back? Steal it?
While wrestling with the decision, he looked over his shoulder to see if anybody was around and noticed for the first time that the back seats were folded flat and that there were two shovels and a tarp over something. Curious now about what other secrets the car might hold, he reached back and lifted up the corner of the tarp.
Two women in leotards stared up at him with wide, dead eyes, a bullet hole in the center of each of their foreheads. He jerked away, choking back a little scream, and reached for the latch on his door to get out of the car.
But that was when he saw a reflection in the side-view mirror that stopped him: a black-and-white police car rolling up behind the Escalade. He looked over his shoulder to prove to himself that the police car wasn’t an illusion created by his fear.
It wasn’t.
Gustavo looked down at the tarp and the shovels, and then at the gun in his hand, and knew how it would go if he was caught with these bodies. There was only one thing he could possibly do.
Run.
He dropped the gun, jumped out of the car, and bolted into the condo complex. As he ran between buildings, around the pool, and across the parking lot, he wondered how the police happened to show up when they did.
Was the car parked in a red zone? Were they just planning on writing a ticket?
Gustavo risked a look over his shoulder and was relieved that he didn’t see any officers on his tail yet. He kept on running, charging out into a street. And as he did, a Dodge Ram pickup truck came speeding around the corner in front of him. There was a woman at the wheel.
It was the switchblade angel and she was smiling.
He froze, convinced he was imagining it. He didn’t get a chance to change his mind before the truck ran over him and kept on going.
Beth Wheeler left the stolen pickup truck, with its front grille smashed and blood spattered, in the same Walmart parking lot she stole it from two days earlier. Magar Orlov, the driver of the Escalade, drove up in a stolen Camry. She got inside and he sped off.
“How long did it take the police to respond to my anonymous tip?” Magar asked her in Russian. He’d left Gustavo and used a throwaway phone to call 911 and report that he’d seen a Mexican man covered in blood sitting in an Escalade. What Magar didn’t tell the operator was that the Escalade belonged to one of the two women whom Magar and Beth abducted the previous night outside the Pilates studio and later executed.
“Two minutes,” she replied. “But you cheated. You parked the Escalade a half mile away from the police station.”
“I didn’t want to leave anything to chance,” Magar said. He wasn’t an American sleeper agent like her. He was an experienced GRU operative who spoke multiple languages and traveled extensively doing covert work. But on this job, he was under her command.
“Neither do I,” she said. “So we have some cleanup to do.”
“Mucho Gusto survived?”
She’d heard the wet crunch of Gustavo’s head under her thirty-seven-inch BFGoodrich Mud-Terrain tires and knew he wouldn’t be talking to anyone.
“No,” she said. “He’s dead.”
But she’d been at the cul-de-sac when Magar picked up Gustavo and she’d followed them until they parked to see if anybody noticed them along the way. Nobody did, but there was a chance that could change. That chance had to be removed.
“But you have more killing to do,” Beth said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ian Ludlow’s House. Malibu, California. November 6. 10:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Ian walked naked into his kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and idly scratched his belly while he surveyed the slim pickings for breakfast. He was about to reach for a slice of leftover Domino’s pizza when he heard someone come in behind him.
“I thought only Jewish men were circumcised,” Margo said.
Ian took cover behind the open refrigerator door and saw Margo standing in the doorway. “How did you get in here?”
“I’m a crack CIA agent, remember? And this isn’t exactly the White House,” she said, strolling in. “You don’t have to hide. Naked men don’t interest me.”
Ian wished he could walk confidently around his kitchen naked, but he couldn’t. He closed the refrigerator, turned his back to her, showing her his bare butt, and went through several drawers until he found an apron, draped it over his head, and tied it around his waist. He turned again to face her, hiding his naked backside against the counter. There was an enormous pig on the apron and the words God, Country, and BBQ.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Something to do,” she said. “An assignment that gets me out of LA and into the field.”
She’d been renting an Airbnb apartment in West LA since they’d returned from New York. He wondered if she still had her apartment in Seattle or if she was living out of a suitcase now.
“You don’t work for me,” Ian said. “Talk to Healy.”
“I did. That’s why I’m here. He reminded me that I’m an off-the-books agent.”
“What does that mean?”
“Only a few people at the CIA know I exist,” Margo said, taking a seat on a stool at the kitchen island, the countertop and stove now between them. “I’m a secret secret agent.”
“That sounds cool.”
“It’s not. It’s a fucking bore. My job is to go where your stories take us, but you haven’t written anything lately, so I’m stuck binge-watching TV shows, picking up girls at the gym, and going to the shooting range to stay sharp.”
“Rough life,” Ian said.
“You need to write something,” she said. “If not for me, or for your country, then for your readers.”
“No, I don’t.”
She gestured to the kitchen around them. “This house cost a fortune to rebuild.”
“The insurance covered most of it.”
“Not your deductible and all the extras.”
The comment surprised Ian. The blueprints he’d submitted to the city for approval and permits didn’t actually include all of his additions. He wondered how she knew about them or if she was just guessing, based on their past experiences together.
“I’ve got money coming in,” Ian said. “I’m writing an episode of Hollywood & the Vine.”
She stared at him, more angry than incredulous. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“For me,” Mei said as she came in, wearing only her silk bathrobe tied very loosely around her naked body. Ian couldn’t remember if Mei knew that Margo was gay and if she was using that knowledge to toy with her now. “I’m guest starring on the show.”
Ian looked back at Margo. “Ronnie says hello, by the way.”
Margo ignored the comment. “What’s the part?”
“A woman who is half-human, half–Venus flytrap,” Mei said.
“You’re perfect for it,” Margo said.
“How can you say that without knowing anything about the character?” Mei took a tea kettle off the stove in front of Margo, gave Ian’s exposed butt an affectionate pinch to get him to move, and went past him to the sink. The pinch didn’t go unnoticed by Margo.
“Because I’m sure that she lures men into her clutches and eats them alive,” she said. “You probably have lots of experience with that.”
“Certainly more than you do,” Mei said and started filling the kettle with water.
Margo looked at Ian. “Is she living here now?”
“Until she gets settled,” Ian said, looking for a place to stand that kept his butt out of view of both women. He chose the end of the kitchen island.
Mei set the kettle on the stove, turned up the gas under it, then opened a cupboard to get a coffee mug while Ian and Margo watched her.
