When they brought Trip in, he was unconscious. They weren’t sure if it was from the head wound or the loss of blood. He wasn’t entirely out of danger, but the hospital kicked Rita and Halle out because of the sheer volume of people who wanted to be there. They promised to call Rita when he woke up.
When Rita was almost done telling me what happened, Halle came in, and mother and daughter clung to each other. I left them to talk and walked down the hall to see what Fritz knew.
He and Flo were watching the video. By their grim expressions, I could tell it wasn’t good.
“Did you find out what happened to Craig and Kent?” I asked.
“No. But I do know I can’t show this to Rita,” Fritz said.
“Show me.”
If I had a way to roll back time, I would have never had Fritz show me the video.
Andy’s bodycam showed men dancing. It was Latin Night at the Pulse. According to the time stamp on the video, it was 2:02 a.m. when the bartenders announced last call. Moments later, there was gunfire. Everyone took a second to figure out that this was real. You could hear screams, and we saw Andy grab for Trip, but Trip bolted for a door.
I watched as Trip was shot. Andy rushed forward to where he lay, grabbed the back of his shirt, and pulled him towards the door. People were literally pushing others down and jumping over them to get out. Andy could be seen pushing Trip under a table and pulling out his phone to hit the panic button and send his two text messages.
While he did that, the shots continued to ring out. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang … I counted at least 20 shots while the video lasted. It was a steady fire rate of about a round every second. You could see people go down with each shot. Then Andy suddenly slumped over, and the camera was pointed at the floor.
“Turn it off,” I said, feeling sick.
“Was that an AR-15?” Flo asked.
“No, it was a SIG Sauer MCX,” Fritz responded.
I just shook my head that he could tell what kind of gun it was from that video.
“The police were there fairly quickly, and the first officer in the door exchanged gunfire with the terrorist. The terrorist then retreated to a bathroom, where he found people hiding and took them as hostages,” Flo explained.
“Around five a.m., they set off a controlled explosion to distract the target. SWAT drove an armored vehicle through a wall of the club, and officers swarmed in from behind. Eleven of them engaged the target and eliminated the threat,” Fritz said.
“Trip was found still under the table, with Andy blocking him from further harm with his body,” Flo said.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told Fritz.
“He did his job,” Fritz said.
I could tell he was starting to get emotional, so I left him alone.
◊◊◊
Frank showed up and wanted to talk.
“They keep harping on the gay bar aspect. That shouldn’t be the focus,” I complained. “They’re all people first. It shouldn’t matter if they’re gay or anything else. People are dead, but that seems to be what the media is latching onto.”
“You’re beating a dead horse with that one,” Frank said with a smirk. “Intellectually, everyone would agree with you, but that isn’t the reality. People want to feel safe. If they can point to something and say, ‘I’m not like them, so it would never happen to me,’ they can go home and not worry about it. Think about it. You see that there’s a bombing in the Middle East; does that affect you?”
“No, I guess not.”
“You can tuck it away and sleep at night because it would never happen here.”
“What you’re saying is that because it did happen here, then people need to explain to themselves why it wouldn’t happen to them?” I asked.
“That’s part of it. Bias also plays a role, whether or not we want to admit it. We want to put it into a neat little box. We want to be able to say, ‘It happened because they were different in some way and the person who did it had a problem with that kind of people.’ Then we can forget about it,” Frank explained.
“It just doesn’t seem right to me,” I complained.
“There’s the other side of the coin. You have to be careful about pushing your agenda for political correctness,” Frank said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Don’t repeat this, because many people get funny when you use a phrase like ‘political correctness.’ In this case, the ‘politically correct’ thing to do would be to treat them just like everyone else. What you’re able to do is to suppress other people because you have the moral high ground. If you had your way, they wouldn’t even mention that it happened at a gay club.”
I just nodded.
“Would this not be an opportunity to talk about the issues the LGBTQ community faces and how they are treated? Wouldn’t it be better to acknowledge that a possible reason was the bigoted attitude of the killer? I know there’s no evidence that the killer held those views, but I don’t think you want to suppress discussion about that,” Frank reasoned.
“I guess I was just worried about how it would affect Craig. He’s worked hard not to let it out that he’s bi. It could really hurt him financially and affect the types of roles he’ll be able to play. I know it’s not fair, but it’s the truth,” I said.
“And that, my friend, is why you pay me the big bucks. Image is everything,” he said with a smile.
“I’m not sure I agree,” I admitted.
“Maybe not in the real world, but you’re in the movies now,” Frank said.
◊◊◊
I ordered pizza, and when there was a knock at the door, I got up to go pay for it. I opened it to find Kent, Craig’s manager.
“Wow, am I glad to see you. Is Craig with you?” I asked.
“I don’t know where he is. He went to the club with Trip, and I’ve had no word from him since. I was hoping you might know something.”
I invited him in. He told me he’d talked to Frank, and Frank had told him where we were. Pizza arrived, Flo got Halle and Rita, and everyone came out to hear Kent’s story. I admit I’d missed pizza while I was in Cuba, but no one complained about my indulgence.
“Craig had been invited to appear at a comic-book convention called Hero Hype. It was being held at the Orange County Convention Center. They’re planning to create a Star Academy-based comic book that will come out around Christmastime,” Kent said.
“Why would Craig want to do a comic-book convention?” I asked.
“Craig isn’t doing as well financially as you would think. He spent most of his money on maintaining his lifestyle,” Kent admitted.
That was code for he bought a mansion, luxury cars, women, drugs … you name it. It would be easy to blow through a ton of money in LA in a short time.
“Even his signing bonus for the Star Academy sequels?” I asked.
Everyone turned and looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“He did get a signing bonus, didn’t he?” I asked.
“No, what did you get?” Kent asked.
I told him, and even Rita looked impressed.
“That reminds me, Saul asked that I have you call him Monday,” I told Rita.
“If he can broker me a deal like that, I will. How did you get them to pay you that much up front?” Rita asked.
“Remember, I waited to sign. I tried to get everyone to wait because I thought we had a hit on our hands, based on what Chubby and the others said at the screening. It also helped that they needed our movie on the books for the board of directors meeting.”
What I didn’t mention was that Saul was against waiting. He was happy with how things turned out, though.
“Craig was pissed when he heard what you were making for the two movies. He’ll have a complete fit when he finds out how much you were paid up front. At the time, I was with you, but Craig didn’t want to be shown up by some kid,” Kent said and then got back on track.
“Craig and I went to the convention, and he did what they asked him to for the day. He was on a panel discussion, and then they set him up in a booth to sign pictures. After we were done, we picked up Trip and Andy on our way to Victoria & Albert’s for dinner. They wanted to go to the dance club after dinner. Some of the people Craig met said they would be there. I decided I didn’t want to go since I’d had too much to drink the night before, so I grabbed a cab back to the hotel. That was the last I saw of them.