From the foot of the bed comes the sound of hollow metal lightly clicking against teeth… the gun being cocked again. Low moan…
Christ, more drama, Corey thought. A finger twitched again-felt something like a tickle at his wrist, a thickening in his throat and the sensation of wanting to swallow… still couldn’t see.
Another booming roar!
Alright with the goddamn gunshots, Corey thought, wishing he could show his disdain for the tiresome little charade he’d been forced to hear. Goddamn day players.
– sound of yet another body crumpling to the floor… Corey was really sick of the whole thing by now.
From downstairs came the sound of movement as the wife apparently crossed the tile foyer, high heels clicking, front door being opened, hinges squawking, followed by thechirping sound of a cell phone being powered up. “Police?-I want to report an intruder in my house, there’s been gunsho-”
Her words cut off-sound of the slammed door dully reverberating throughout the house-the noise caused a full-body involuntary spasm, the movement causing Corey’s numbed head to loll to one side, vision partially clearing, but blotched with dark spots, bursting little stars before his eyes. But in that moment he could see…
Oh God, that looks like real blood!-could see in a tight close-up, staring at the gaping gunshot wound in-
It wasn’t Margo! It was his costar, Jennifer Diaz!
“CUT!”
Sounds of people getting to their feet, a lot of sudden noises, the familiar sounds of a movie set. “Okay, people, that’s a wrap-let’s re-light for the overhead shots. Matt, you and Jenny can take a break but leave the bloody clothes on. And Jenny, try not to screw up the wound, please.”
Corey recognized the director’s voice. Young guy with the talent of a Spielberg-real comer. Shaven head, intense eyes. Smiled when he was pissed.
Thank God! This isn’t real-they’re just shooting a scene!
– a movement next to him in the bed caused his body to roll a little to his left from a sudden change in mattress support. Jennifer Diaz getting up.
So those sounds of footsteps on the stairs, the gunshots, door slamming-had all been effects.
– tsunami of memories flooded Corey’s mind, apparently blocked until now by the drug… wait a minute, what drug? This was a movie scene-but if he wasn’t drugged, why had he forgotten about Margo’s production?
– remembering now how Margo’d gotten the idea from them getting cheap thrills doing the break-ins and such; she’d put it into development and her staff came up with a movie treatment: about a disillusioned movie star taking small chances in order to feel alive, then everything going wrong-Adam Schaffer had penned a great screenplay, ended up with a high-concept thriller… and Corey remembered coming to the sound stage that morning, he and Jennifer doing the death scene on the bed…
– he’d noticed Garry Howard, the ruined producer, coming onto the set at about their seventh take, lot-pass hanging from his wrinkled suit coat pocket, smirking as he huddled in the shadows behind the floor lights; dumbass must’ve thought he was hidden. During a break Corey’d taken a nap in his trailer, woke up with an itching on his arm, thought it was a spider bite.
“Hey, superstar?” Margo said, voice coming out of darkness, the feeling of a hand on his shoulder… no, the pressure was just in his mind, still couldn’t feel a thing. And it was dark again-his sight had faded.
“Matt?” Margo said, concern in her voice.
The spider bite?-had it actually been an injection, Howard creeping into the trailer while he napped, giving him a drug to put him in a coma and ultimately kill him?
“Something’s wrong with Matt!” Margo shrieked.
Sounds of people rushing toward the bed. Voices urgent and scared-virtual chorus of screams, angry shouts and finally a few moans.
He could envision Howard standing back behind a set piece-maybe the demented ex-producer had found out about them breaking into his house last summer, thought Corey was mocking him-and the guy had snapped, little loose in the brain pan anyway from all reports-and so then the inevitable plot twist would have to be ol’ Garry Howard deciding to kill the actor he blamed for ruining his career.
The set lights had been shut down; he could hear them ticking as they cooled-cast and crew had moved off to wait for the medical services team. He sensed a deep cold spreading through his body and he knew it was the last act. Final Curtain.
With imminent death comes a compensatory indifference, borne not of resignation but of humor… couldn’t remember where he’d read that but it was true; his present circumstance seemed somehow funny. Even whimsical.
– and here’s Margo, weeping, probably standing vigil next to him, his body still bloodied with that special goop the young director insists on-looks so real it turns your stomach-Corey imagined her there, head bowed, alone on the darkened set. Sobbing.
As for his killer, would justice prevail? Probably. Howard will more than likely brag about it, tell the story to some producer who’ll drop a dime. Or the autopsy will reveal the lethal injection of drugs, cops’ll get a list of enemies. Something…
Everyone knows you can’t get away with murder in Hollywood.
The Search for Robert Rich by BOB SHAYNE
I’D COME FROM a land called Brooklyn where everybody was Jewish and poor. Now I was going to a land called Hollywood where everybody was Jewish and rich. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration on both ends, but it seemed that way.
It was 1957 and I was twenty-five. I may or may not have been the youngest licensed private detective in the New York phone book, but I was certainly the femalest. My name’s Naomi Weinstein. The second syllable rhymes with the first.
We pulled into Los Angeles Union Station at 1:32 P.M. on a late April afternoon. I’d slept well and long to the rock and sway and the clicking wheels, and I was looking forward to seeing my dear friend David. He’d moved to Hollywood four years earlier, after a slight problem wherein he’d been charged with murder. I had a hand in getting him off, but then I’d had a hand in getting him accused, so it seemed only right.
“Naomi!” he shouted as I stepped off the train in the bowels of Union Station. We ran to each other and embraced. He picked me up and swung me around in a circle. I wriggled out of his arms to avoid throwing up on him, stepped back, and took a look.
He was just as tall and skinny as always, the ever-present gold modernistic mezuzah resting just under his Adam’s apple, his long pointy nose angled slightly to the right, hazel eyes, enough of that thick, wavy, dirty-blond hair for two or three guys, and that great crooked smile that always made me smile to see.
He was studying me, too, all five foot three, fuzzy reddish-brown hair, and a few too many pounds of me. I stuck out my breasts and sucked in my tummy as his eyes passed various portions of my anatomy. If I could have added a few inches to my calves I would have done that, too.
“How was your trip?” he asked as he grabbed my bags and we walked toward the Moorish-Aztec style lobby. I doubt that the Moors ever met the Aztecs, but apparently the architect had.
David took me for lunch on a nearby block called Olvera Street. It’s supposed to be a 150-year-old section of old Los Angeles, but it looked more like Coney Island to me. A block of souvenir shops and taco stands. (Okay, in Coney they’d be hotdogs stands instead.) I bought three things that were advertised as Mexican jumping beans. Later in my motel room I opened one; it turned out to be a soft capsule, and inside was a ball-bearing, so that when you dropped it the little bearing would roll to one end then the other making the capsule jump. How authentic can you get! I didn’t know then it was the perfect metaphor for Hollywood.