Caruso said good-bye to the family, suspecting there would be more discussion of the events between husband and wife on the way home. He thought about lowering the bill yet more, but decided against it. After all, he’d done the job, and the case had had more or less a happy ending.
Even if it was entirely unexpected.
But that’s another thing about Game, maybe what really defines a person or event as Game or not: You never know ahead of time how it’s going to turn out.
Speaking of which…
Eddie Caruso propped up his iPad and typed on the keyboard. He was just in time to see Tottenham versus Everton. Fantastic.
You could never lose with Premier League football.
Well, soccer.
BUMP
Hat in hand.
There was no other way to describe it.
Aside from the flashy secretary, the middle-aged man in jeans and a sports coat was alone, surveying the glassy waiting room, which overlooked Century City’s Avenue of the Stars. No, not that one, with the footprints in concrete (that was Hollywood Boulevard, about five miles from here). This street was an ordinary office park of hotels and high-rises, near an okay shopping center and a pretty-good TV network.
Checking out the flowers (fresh), the art (originals), the secretary (a wannabe, like nine-tenths of the other help in L.A.).
How many waiting rooms had he been in just like this, over his thirty-some years in the industry? Mike O’Connor wondered.
He couldn’t even begin to guess.
O’Connor was now examining a purple orchid, trying to shake the thought: Here I am begging, hat in hand.
But he couldn’t.
Nor could he ditch the adjunct thought: This is your last goddamn chance.
A faint buzz from somewhere on the woman’s desk. She was blond and O’Connor, who tended to judge women by a very high standard, his wife, thought she was attractive enough. Though, this being Hollywood, attractive enough for what? was a legitimate question and sadly the answer to that was: not enough for leading roles. A pretty character actress, walk-ons. We’re in the toughest business on the face of the earth, baby, he thought to her.
She put down the phone. “He’ll see you now, Mr. O’Connor.” She rose to get the door for him.
“That’s okay. I’ll get it…Good luck.” He’d seen her reading a script.
She didn’t know what he meant.
O’Connor closed the door behind him and Aaron Felter, a fit man in his early thirties, wearing expensive slacks and a dark gray shirt without a tie, rose to greet him.
“Mike. My God, it’s been two years.”
“Your dad’s funeral.”
“Right.”
“How’s your mom doing?”
“Scandal. She’s dating! A production designer over on the Universal lot. At least he’s only five years younger. But he wears an earring.”
“Give her my best.”
“Will do.”
Felter’s father had been a director of photography for a time on O’Connor’s TV show in the eighties. He’d been a talented man and wily…and a voice of reason in the chaotic world of weekly television.
They carried on a bit of conversation about their own families — neither particularly interested, but such was the protocol of business throughout the world.
Then because this wasn’t just business, it was Hollywood, the moment soon arrived when it was okay to cut to the chase.
Felter tapped the packet of material O’Connor had sent. “I read it, Mike. It’s a real interesting concept. Tell me a little more.”
O’Connor knew the difference between “it’s interesting” and “I’m interested.” But he continued to describe the proposal for a new TV series in more depth.
Michael O’Connor had been hot in the late seventies and eighties. He’d starred in several prime-time dramas — featuring a law firm, an EMT facility and, most successfully, the famous Homicide Detail. The show lasted for seven seasons, which was a huge success.
It had been a great time. O’Connor, a UCLA film grad, had always been serious about acting and Homicide Detail was cutting-edge TV. It was gritty, was shot with handheld cameras and the writers (O’Connor cowrote scripts from time to time) weren’t afraid to blow away a main character occasionally or let the bad guy get off. An LAPD detective, who became a good friend of O’Connor’s, was the show consultant and he worked them hard to get the details right. The shows dealt with religion, abortion, race, terrorism, sex, anything. “Cutting-edge storytelling, creativity on steroids” was the New York Times’s assessment of the show and those few words meant more to O’Connor than the Emmy nomination (he lost to an actor from Law & Order, a thoroughly noble defeat).
But then the series folded and it was drought time.
He couldn’t get work — not the kind of work that was inspired and challenging. His agent sent him scripts with absurd premises or that were hackneyed rip-offs of his own show or sitcoms, which he had no patience or talent for. And O’Connor collected his residual checks (and signed most of them over to the Ivy League schools his daughters attended) and kept trying to survive in a town where he’d actually heard someone say of Richard III, “You mean it was a play, too?”
But O’Connor was interested in more than acting. He had a vision. There’s a joke in Hollywood that, when looking for a project to turn into a film or series, producers want something that’s completely original and yet has been wildly successful in the past. There is, however, some truth to that irony. And for years O’Connor had it in mind to do a project that was fresh but still was rooted in television history: each week a different story, with new characters. Like TV from the 1950s and ’60s: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Playhouse 90, The Twilight Zone. Sometimes drama, sometimes comedy, sometimes science fiction.
He’d written a proposal and the pilot script and then shopped Stories all over Hollywood and to the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 in England, as well — but everyone passed. The only major producer he hadn’t contacted was Aaron Felter, since the man’s dad and O’Connor had been friends and he hadn’t wanted to unfairly pressure him. Besides, Felter wasn’t exactly in the stratosphere himself. His various production companies had backed some losing TV and film projects recently and he couldn’t afford to take any risks.
Still, O’Connor was desperate.
Hence, hat in hand.
Felter nodded, listening attentively as O’Connor pitched his idea. He was good; he’d done it many times in the past year.
There was a knock and a large man, dressed similarly to Felter, walked into the office without being formally admitted. His youth and the reverential look he gave to Felter told O’Connor immediately he was a production assistant — the backbone of most TV and film companies. The man, with an effeminate manner, gave a pleasant smile to O’Connor, long enough of a gaze to make him want to say, I’m straight, but thanks for the compliment.
The PA said to Felter, “He passed.”
“He what?”
“Yep. I was beside myself.”
“He said he was in.”
“He’s not in. He’s out.”
The elliptical conversation — probably about an actor who’d agreed to do something but backed out at the last minute because of a better offer — continued for a few minutes.
As they dealt with the emergency, O’Connor tuned out and glanced at the walls of the man’s office. Like many producers’ it was covered with posters. Some were of the shows that Felter had created. Others were of recent films — those starring Mark Wahlberg, Kate Winslet, Ethan Hawke, Tobey Maguire, Keira Knightley. And, curiously, some were of films that O’Connor remembered fondly from his childhood, the great classics like The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt.