Hadley is bearded and blond and twitchy, with a full range of nervous tics probably acquired during the course of helming a series of huge, complex films, where a single mistake on his part, or on the part of practically anyone else connected with the production, could result in a couple hundred million dollars disappearing just as surely as if it had been doused with gasoline and set on fire. He’s devoted to his films with a formidable single-mindedness that’s just slightly inhuman.
“We’ve still got Loni’s two big scenes,” he says. “Completion-bond company thinks we can just cut them and nobody will notice.”
A completion bond is the film’s insurance, who guarantee that in the event of some catastrophe that threatens the production, either the film will be completed or the backers will be repaid their investment. On a big production like this, specialists from the completion-bond company are on the set a lot, mostly auditing the various departments. But though they’d obviously prefer that the film be made and they don’t have to pay anyone back, they don’t guarantee that the film will be any good—and they might well be within their rights to insist that the film do without an important subplot and two important scenes. All they care about is whether the movie’s in the can, preferably on time and under budget.
You can imagine my delight in the prospect of my first big feature being a hacked-up, incoherent mess.
“I’ve got to argue them out of it,” Hadley says. He’s pulled a pineapple out of the fruit basket and is absently tugging on the leaves at the top. But he’s too weak to actually yank any of them out, so he loses his patience and slams the pineapple back into the basket.
“Somebody made me a casserole,” I said. “It’s in the fridge. Why don’t you beat that up instead?”
Hadley looks at me. “You’ve got to help, mate.”
“Damn right I will.” I lead with my ace. “I’ll call Bruce Kravitz.”
He puts a finger to his nose. “Brilliant.”
Hadley isn’t a Kravitz client—all PanCosmos directors capable of handling such a big, complicated production are off on other projects—so he doesn’t have access to the biggest cannon in the industry. But I do.
I call Bruce right then, and he understands the equation right away: crappy film => declining careers for PanCosmos clients.
“I’ll start calling around,” he says.
I’m telling the good news to Hadley when Tom King, the line producer, strides in.
“Thought you’d better know,” he tells Hadley. “The cops have been running background checks on everyone connected with the production, and they’ve come across a problem.”
I feel my shoulders tense as I anticipate the news that Ossley is about to be arrested, but that isn’t what Tom is telling us.
“It’s the trucking company we’ve hired to move our gear around on location. It’s a cartel front.”
Hadley and I both stare.
“It really is the fucking narcos?” Hadley says.
“The trucking company’s owned by one Antonio Germán Contreras. His brother Juan Germán Contreras is one of the leaders of the Tricolor Cartel, which controls narcotics trafficking in the Gulf Coast.”
“Fuck me all standing!” Hadley says.
Tom’s blue eyes are relentless. “The Tricolors are badasses,” he says, “even as cartels go. They’ve killed thousands of people to get where they are.”
Hadley clutches his head and looks at me. “What the fuck do we do? If we fire them, they’ll kill us. If we don’t fire them, they’ll kill us anyway.”
Tom turns to me. “Sean,” he says, “do you have any idea why the cartel and Loni are connected?”
“I don’t think they are,” I say, truthfully enough. I give the subject some desperate consideration. “Does the cartel have rivals?” I ask. “Maybe it was a warning to the Tricolors from some other cartel.”
Tom sees the implications of this immediately. He turns to Hadley. “That’s our excuse to fire them. We’ll say that their presence is making the production more likely to be attacked.”
“And then they’ll kill us!” Hadley says. He paces around in a frantic little circle. He is literally gnashing his teeth.
Tom gives this some more thought. “Maybe we’ll have to pay them anyway.”
“Completion-bond company isn’t going to go for that!” Hadley says.
“We’ll talk about it.” Tom turns to me. His blue eyes grow concerned. “Sean,” he says, “how are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess.” An honest self-evaluation would be something like, “I’m really tired of having to pretend to be this grieving lover,” but I don’t think that’s in the cards.
“Because we’re all going to be under pressure to finish the film,” Tom says. “I want you to know that you can take as long as you think necessary to return to the set.” There is a groan from Hadley at this idea. Tom’s eyes flick to the director, then back to me. “But it would be a good thing to know—”
“I’m ready to work,” I say.
I can sense deep relief behind the concerned blue eyes. “Are you sure? Because—”
“Yes,” I say. “I really want to get out of here and get back on location. It’s the best thing for me.”
This makes them very happy. They leave together to assemble a revised shooting schedule, leaving me alone in my cabana amid the smell of fruit baskets and flower arrangements.
Two seconds after they roll the sliding door shut, my phone rings. I look at it and see that it’s Dagmar.
Oh damn. More trouble.
“I’m on vacation,” Dagmar says. “I’m in the Virgin Islands with my husband and my daughter. My first vacation in years that wasn’t marked by riots, murder, and the collapse of society. And you couldn’t stay out of trouble for two lousy weeks, could you?”
“I’m not in trouble,” I point out. “I had nothing to do with this one.”
“You’ve lied to me before,” she says, “when people were trying to kill you.”
Well, I admit to myself, that’s fair.
It has to be conceded that my relationship with Dagmar Shaw is imperfect. She’s the woman who rescued me from obscurity and made me a star by casting me in Escape to Earth and its sequel, and for that I’m grateful—but on the other hand she’s controlling and devious and driven and far too smart, and she’s got an agenda that’s far beyond mine.
I want to be a big star and have millions of people love me. This strikes me as a modest and understandable ambition.
Dagmar, by contrast, is basically a genius supervillain who wants to take over the world.
“I’m sending you bodyguards,” she tells me. “You need looking after.”
I have a hard time summoning up the moral courage to resist Dagmar. The fact is that she knows a lot more about me than I’d like. She knows where the bodies are buried—or actually body, singular, not that this makes it any better from my perspective.
“Yeah, okay,” I say. I’ve lived in a circle of bodyguards before—at times it was annoying, but most of the time it was like having servants with guns. They have to do what you tell them, and there’s the extra bonus in that they keep the bad people away.
“One more thing,” she says. “It’s your job to make sure the guards are charged to your production. Not to my company.”
I consider this.
“I can probably manage that.” Hiring bodyguards for me would probably count as due diligence, considering both the shooting and my own past.
“And by the way,” she says, “I’m very sorry about Loni Rowe.”
“Most people would have led with that,” I point out.
“Most people,” she says, “don’t know she wasn’t your real girlfriend.”