Eric talked about himself for five minutes straight, or anyway for five minutes, and his eyes were all over my face like a teenage boy’s fingers under his date’s sweater. When he’d got past his acting classes and early film and TV roles, and up to landing his series, I raised a hand.
“This is great stuff,” I said, “good background. We’ll schedule a full interview and I’ll take notes.”
He said, “Fine,” and stood, and dropped the robe.
He was fully erect. And in this physical aspect, he was not short.
“I heard you tell those clowns you were gay,” he said. “That took strength. You don’t know how I wish I could be more open…Just tell me how you like it, Jack.” He gave me the other half of the dazzling grin. “I’m more versatile an actor than you might think-I can catch, I can pitch. You want me on my knees? I’m on my knees…”
I don’t know exactly what I said next. It had something to do with thanking him (thanking him!) but insisting that I needed to maintain professional boundaries, and anyway, I was in a serious relationship with a wonderful guy (wonderful guy!) and he told me if I changed my mind and wanted to see him that he was staying at the Four Jacks and somehow I got out of there.
And down the steps and walked briskly to my car.
Well, that was one more thing I could add to my list of things I’d learned on the Hard Wheels 2 shoot.
Getting blow job action on a B-movie set did not seem to be that tricky.
I had two problems.
First, I didn’t really have a fix on Nick Varnos. Yes, I knew Nick Varnos was checked in at the Spur, but I didn’t know under what name.
Second, if Varnos followed the usual pattern, for a Broker-bred hit team anyway, the kill would go down either today or tomorrow. Generally within forty-eight hours after the back-up man’s work had been done. And Jerry’s work was done, all right.
After several hours on location, I had pretty much ruled out the film set for where the accident would go down. Despite the wealth of ways a fatal accident could occur on set, there’d been no sign of Varnos there. If he’d planned to infiltrate, as I had, he probably would have done it by now. Still possible, but my gut said no.
After all, Nick Varnos had checked into the Spur, where his target was staying. Why? It’s generally risky to maintain that close a proximity to the mark… unless that proximity is key to how you are planning to take that mark out.
It seemed likely that Varnos would provide the director with an accidental death at the hotel. And that it would almost certainly go down in Stockwell’s hotel room. That gave me an odd, unexpected twinge, knowing Joni was possibly at risk as well. An accident that befell Stockwell- a fire in the room, say-would take her out, too.
Joni was a definite factor in this-that she was bunking in with her hubby on this trip meant that if the kill indeed was scheduled to occur in the motel room itself, it would either have to happen when she was away…did she swim every night? (hadn’t been in Jerry’s notes)…or that she would indeed be collateral damage.
Did I care?
Varnos wouldn’t. Generally collateral damage is frowned upon in the murder business, but sometimes it could make a hit seem more like an accident. Less focused. Also, Varnos was a free agent, wasn’t working through a broker. He might not give a shit who got hurt. Not everybody has scruples.
Anyway, trying to avoid Joni as collateral damage really would limit the accidental death options. How did you fake a guy slipping in the bathroom and cracking open his head on the edge of the toilet bowl with his wife in the room? Or tumbling off his balcony, or getting electrocuted in the tub, or going out a suicide?
But what if Joni herself was behind the contract? What if she was an active participant here? Had hired Varnos directly and was abetting him? I’d already established that Nick and Jerry varied from the standard procedures the Broker had laid down.
With Joni onboard as a collaborator, setting up an accidental death in a hotel room would be a snap.
So I had a lot to think about.
Before driving out to the set this morning, I’d gone down to the Spur’s restaurant for breakfast. I’d been up quite early, despite my long day previous, and had started off with a swim.
Swimming relaxes me. It was my sport as a kid and it’s been my salvation as a grown-up. Helps me think, if that’s what I need. Helps me not think, if that is.
My early morning swim had been as solitary as Joni’s the night before. And swimming in that desert clime is special. It has an entirely different flavor-no humidity gives it at once a crisp reality and a dream-like quality.
During the swim, I had decided there was no reason to go out to the set immediately. That my time initially would be better spent sitting in the restaurant, hoping that Nick Varnos would come down for breakfast and that I could then tail him, and get this thing over with.
Even that was dodgy, though-what if I tailed him, and got him off somewhere and disposed of him… when he’d already put the accident in motion? If he’d rigged something to take Stockwell out, killing Varnos without a conversation first would be a bad idea.
This was fairly distasteful, because I am no fucking sadist. Cutting off somebody’s fingers or shooting them in the kneecap, trying to make them talk, it’s messy and it’s inefficient. And you have to keep them alive, in case the first thing they tell you isn’t true, requiring you to go back and cut off another finger or shoot another kneecap or something.
Torture is a whole different arena. Requires training that I never got. You never know when somebody is going to pass out or even die on you. And then where are you?
On the other hand, part of what I liked about using the Broker’s list to find, and protect, clients was the improvisational, on-the-fly, think-on-your feet nature of it. You can get numb in my line of work, and living alone like I do can sort of lull you into a waking sleep. This work was lively. It had a nice edge. Made me feel alive.
Anyway, I had breakfast and several glasses of iced tea and read various newspapers, sitting in a booth situated to see the rest of the modern-looking restaurant, another example of the Spur not bothering with much if any western-style trappings. A couple of framed desert landscapes was all that separated this from a Ramada Inn in Who Farted, West Virginia.
By nine-thirty, Varnos hadn’t shown, and I went out to the film set for a couple of hours. I’ve told you about that. What I haven’t told you is that when I got back to the Spur, the first thing I did was return to that same restaurant for lunch.
Not that the breakfast had been so fabulous that I felt compelled to come back for more; but on the off chance that somebody like Nick, staying in the motel, might just be lazy enough to take lunch there.
Of course, even so, it was a quarter to one and he may well have already eaten. I’d have to get lucky again.
And I was.
He was just sitting down to a table when I was ushered to a booth.
Nick Varnos was a small man, almost as small as Eric Conrad. He was pale and he had dark, dark eyes, dark eyebrows, medium-length well-barbered dark hair with long sideburns and a Tom Selleck mustache. He wore a gray button-down short-sleeve shirt, no sport coat, and a tie with Necco Wafer-colored stripes. His slacks were a darker, dirty gray, very stylish, his belt western-looking. It was an odd combo of casual and dressy.
He ate light-soup and salad.
I ate even lighter, just soup (a hearty chili, though), because I’d put away a good breakfast on my earlier restaurant stakeout.
The guy seemed quite composed. Cool. He was pleasant with the waitress, who was cute enough for flirting, but he didn’t flirt. He was in a good mood, apparently, but selfcontained.