“So your friend Sean is good at finding things.”
“The best. Or maybe things find him.”
“Where’s his boat?”
Nick motioned to the left with his head. “Right next to mine.” Nick cocked his head, curious. “Why you want to know about my pal. Sean? You sound like that dude I met in the bar last night. He wanted to know about Sean. First I thought it was because the fella wanted to charter Sean’s boat, but now…maybe not.”
“Did he have an accent?”
“Yeah, British. How do you know?”
“Lucky guess. Lots of Brits in Florida this time of the year on holiday. Maybe he did want to do a fishing charter. Maybe you’ll never see him again.”
Nick snorted. “We got a hellava neighborhood watch here in the marina. Laid back, but we know who’s supposed to be here and who’s not.”
“Is that right?” She smiled and placed one hand on Nick’s knee. “You probably don’t even have to lock the doors on your boats when you leave.”
“Used to be that way. Now the marina gets too many tourists. This is supposed to be for boat owners and their guests only, but people like hangin’ at the marina, and they come down the docks like ducks waddling to a lake. I have a key to Dave’s boat, Sean’s boat, and they have keys to my boat.”
“I’m looking for a key. Never found it, though. Maybe one day.”
“What key are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for the key to my heart, or more specifically, the man who can unlock the passion in my heart.”
Nick grinned. “I’m a locksmith, but not a thief of hearts. It’s not a single key — the key to the soul, it’s a combination of respect, honor, love, and protection that might open your heart.” Nick leaned in to kiss her. She responded, moaning slightly.
Nick suddenly felt tired, his arms and legs heavy. He blinked hard, Malina’s face beginning to blur. He felt sweat on his brow, perspiration trickling down his ribcage. Malina’s hot breath in his ear, her hands on his chest, moving to his genitals. She whispered, “Where is the key to Sean’s boat?”
Nick stared at her face, his eyes trying to focus, his penis numb to her touch, his mind disoriented. She hiked up her dress and straddled his lap, leaned down and held his face in both her hands. “Nicky, listen to me…Sean needs help. Where did you put his keys?”
Nick grunted, his voice just above a whisper. “Hangin’ from a mermaid in the galley.” Nick saw the woman’s face come closer, could smell the wine on her breath, his lips numb to her kiss. She jumped, Jack-in-the box style, from his lap to the floor. She smoothed out her dress and walked to the galley.
Malina found three sets of keys hanging from a figurine of a bare-breasted mermaid magnet stuck to the door of the refrigerator. She took all three keys, walked back to the salon, picked her hat off the barstool, turned to Nick and blew him a kiss.
Nick watched the woman walk out the door, the sunlight becoming narrow, black edges, the light at the end of a dark tunnel, coming straight ahead at his body. He was unable to move, to scream, to close his eyes. All that moved were his disoriented thoughts and a single tear that rolled down his cheek.
FIFTY-FIVE
O’Brien followed a college-aged man with a pizza delivery. He walked quickly through the Hilton Hotel parking lot, two large pizza boxes in his hands, and keys on a ring attached to his belt and rattling as he stepped across the lobby and into the elevator. O’Brien slipped in before the doors closed and said, “Smells great. Those for the film editors?”
“Yep. You an editor?”
“Not yet. I do what they tell me.”
“I know how that goes.”
“I’ll pay for the pizzas now and take them in. What do we owe you?”
“Twenty-one even.”
O’Brien handed the man three ten-dollar bills. “Keep the change.”
“Cool. Thanks dude.”
The elevator doors opened and O’Brien stepped out. He walked down the hall to the penthouse suites. The sign on one door read:
BLACK RIVER
Post-production. No admittance.
O’Brien knocked, opened the door and said, “Pizza delivery.”
“Come on in,” came a voice from somewhere in the back.
O’Brien entered and walked around tables set up with monitors, cables, computers, keyboards. The door was open to an adjoining room, which had even more equipment. O’Brien could hear the voices of actors, the fast stopping and starting of the same scene. One man stood from the long table and said, “You can set the pizzas down there. What’d the bill come to?”
“No charge. It’s on me. A small price to pay for an introduction into the world of editing. I’m Sean O’Brien. Are you Oscar?”
“Yes, named for the golden and elusive statue. My dad was a movie buff. Come on in, Sean, and sit down. You got here fast.”
“I was sort of in the neighborhood.”
Oscar Roth’s gray hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. His hazel eyes were playful. A diamond earring in one ear. He wore a white, button-down oxford shirt outside his jeans. Soft loafers. No socks. He said, “Sean, this is Chris Goddard.” Roth gestured toward a slender man in a black T-shirt with a sharp face sitting in front of two large, sixty-inch monitors, light from the screens reflecting off his glasses. He glanced up and said, “Nice to meet you. Thanks for lunch.”
“You’re welcome. I appreciate you guys giving me the opportunity to sit in and watch. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a career internship, even if it’s only for a couple of hours. I’ll know if I’m having a creative mid-life crisis or a career change.”
Roth said to Goddard, “Sean’s a friend of my old pal, Shelia Winters. He’s a charter boat captain out of Ponce Marina.”
“Cool.”
O’Brien said, “What you guys do is what’s really cool. Catching fish is mostly luck.”
“Let’s eat and chat,” said Roth, opening a pizza box and lifting two slices to a paper plate.
As the men ate, O’Brien asked questions about the editing process, skillfully leading the conversation closer to the day Jack Jordan was killed on set. O’Brien smiled and said, “I’m fascinated by the whole filmmaking process from script to screen. Do you have any behind-the-scenes footage you can share, something that might show how a stunt was done?”
Roth swallowed a bit of peperoni pizza and said, “We have more BTS footage than movie footage.”
“I was recently at the old antebellum home, Wind ‘n Willows, the crew is using for some interior and exterior scenes. Do you have any BTS from there?”
“We do have some.” Roth used a paper towel to wipe the pepperoni grease from his lips and gestured toward an entire table filled with external hard drives. “Chris, look that up. Mark was cutting that BTS for the studio’s marketing department yesterday. We had a young publicist, all legs and ass, in here yesterday from the studio. She was putting together a social marketing campaign for the film and was pulling some of the BTS from that plantation. This girl was batting around phrases like, not since Gone with the Wind has there been an epic film like Black River, blah, blah, blah. Cue it up, Chris.”
Chris Goddard nodded and played scenes shot in and around the Wind ‘n Willows. O’Brien recognized some of the actors, most out of costume and make-up, going over the script with the director. Other shots captured crew moving lights and equipment into the mansion. The camera shot panned to the left as a black limousine was pulling up in front of the stately white columns. Two men dressed in dark Armani suits and darker glasses got out of the car. A silver-haired man in a light pink polo shirt, gray slacks and wrap-around sunglasses followed them. Another man with a bad comb-over on a scallion-shaped bald head, wearing a navy-blue sports coat, white T-shirt, pair of five-hundred-dollar washed-denim jeans, led the man in the pink shirt into the great house.