Ear to the Ground (13 page)

When Grace returned home, Navaro was sitting on the front steps having a cigarette.

“Smoke?” he asked her, gesturing with his pack.

“I've got my own, thanks.” She shook out a Merit, and accepted his offer of a light.

“I'm surprised you're still around,” he said.

“What about you?”

“All I got's right here.” Navaro waved loosely at the building. “Somebody has to protect it.”

Grace almost laughed. “From who?”

“You watch the news? There's animals out there. Taking what ain't theirs.” His mouth twisted into a snarl, and all of a sudden Grace could imagine what he must have looked like as a young man. It wasn't an altogether unattractive picture, and she found herself starting to get drawn in.

“Anybody tries to fuck with this place, they're gonna get a big surprise.”

He leered at her conspiratorially, before letting his face settle back into a mask of stone. Grace could see him waiting, like a little boy, for her to ask what he had in mind. Give him his thrill, she thought, and smoked for a moment. “Surprise?”

“That's right,” Navaro said. He raised himself up, and became an old man again before Grace's eyes. He put one hand on his chest and with the other fumbled with his jacket, removing something from the pocket that looked like a length of iron pipe. The sun glinted off the metal, and she had to squint. Then she recognized a barrel and a chamber, and she realized with a shock of horror that her landlord had a gun in his hand.

By six-forty-five Thursday evening, Charlie had drilled twenty-three one-inch-diameter holes in an octagonal pattern, all seventeen-and-seven-eights inches deep. Twenty-three detonator pins, one in each hole, had been lowered, and held in place with plastique—soft but heavy—and frightening to the touch. It would be the ultimate irony for Charlie to have come this far, and end up as nothing but a fine red mist.

He tried to work slowly, but he was falling behind. In an hour and nineteen minutes, an energy flow would trigger a spark that, unchecked, would sweep across the Pacific and detonate the San Andreas. Charlie couldn't shake the feeling that things would not be ready in time.

By seven-fifty-one, however, he had finished packing the explosives around the detonator pins and connecting it all to a single fuse. The fuse ran to a digital timer, which—after checking his calculations—Charlie set. By flashlight, he made a final check of his wiring, then stood and admired his work. It was an amazing thing, if you thought about it, that science had brought him here.

Charlie picked up his rucksack and started to run. It was a mile from the jungle back to the harbor. Every few minutes, he checked his watch, but time had become a fluid entity, no longer reliable in any way he could understand. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes like hours. Just a few hours earlier, the reverse had been true, and he wondered if that were also the case in Los Angeles, where the remaining citizens were struggling to prepare for whatever might come their way.

The thought startled him, and he stopped. For the first time, he began to wonder why he had not gone public with the retroshock idea. Los Angeles had been so disrupted—abandoned and dispirited; perhaps and, certainly, hopefully, none of it had been necessary at all. He stood there in the brush, regret palpable on his skin. “Shit,” he said aloud. “I should have told them.” A moment later, the explosives blew.

The blast was like a blitzkrieg. It hit with a percussive thwap that rattled Charlie's knees and a white burst of light that seared him to the spot. A second later, a hot wind came tearing through the jungle and knocked him to the ground. His head glanced off a piece of rock, and when he touched his brow, his fingers came away with blood.

Afterwards, the silence was the deepest Charlie had ever known. He tore a strip off his shirt and bandaged his head, then shouldered his pack and continued. The crystal on his watch was broken, and its hands had been fused into place by the heat. But Charlie knew he had done everything he could.

AND THE EARTH STOOD STILL

ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, SEVENTEEN EARTHQUAKES disrupted the surface of the earth. The largest was a 3.3 that struck the Philippines, near Manila. In Los Angeles, the day looked like any other: hills standing in stark relief against valleys, ocean, and sky.

All afternoon, the city lay paralyzed by anticipation. People found themselves jumping at every rustle of wind, every barking dog, every creak and groan. As night began to fall, lights flickered in what few inhabited buildings remained, candles of faith against the darkness. It was like Christmas, but with utter lawlessness. An elderly man walking along La Cienega threw a brick through the front window of Ed Debevic's. Hoodlums got inside the Bank of America at Sunset and Vine but couldn't figure out where the money was.

In the parking lot outside the Center for Earthquake Studies, Sterling Caruthers sat on a temporary dais, before three hundred journalists, waiting for the ground to move. As the clock crept toward midnight, he found himself reverting to a childhood habit—prayer. Please, he thought, let it come
now.
And when nothing happened, he thought again: Now. Now. Now.

At twelve-oh-three a.m., Caruthers felt compelled to take the microphone. “The earth is an inconsistent conductor of seismic energy,” he said. “Our simulations of the past few days indicated we might be running late.”

“Why didn't you tell us before?” somebody bellowed. Similar questions came from all around him.

Caruthers fired back. “Think this is a
game
?” The crowd grew silent. “You think this is fun? This doom?” He slammed his fist against the podium, playing the outraged elder statesman. Actually, he had been hoping the quake would be delayed, knowing his power would increase exponentially until New Year's. At that point, in the absence of seismic activity, he'd be run out of town on a rail.

From Honolulu, Charlie left a message on Grace's machine—that everything had gone more or less as planned. Knowing he'd be unable to fly into L.A, he booked a flight to Phoenix instead and rented a car. He got home before midnight, and found a bottle of champagne in the fridge, a red rose, and a note:

Meeting going till late. See you after. You're my hero, baby. XO (love) Grace.

The bed had been turned down and sprinkled with rose petals, and Charlie's stomach fluttered at the thought of Grace being there while he was gone. He smelled her on his pillow, and the sense he got was one of home, of a life shared, complete. Her presence was like a bright light illuminating the empty corners of these rooms.

Charlie hopped in the shower. Ten minutes later, he was in his car, headed for CES. At twelve-twenty-nine a.m., he reached the parking lot and found thirty people standing in his space. News of Charlie's presence rippled through the crowd. The reporters turned en masse and barraged him with questions.

“Charlie Richter, ladies and gentlemen,” Caruthers said, and reluctantly yielded the floor.

Charlie had saved the world, or at least part of the world. And he was in love. He knew, like few people ever know, that
he'd reached the proverbial most important moment of his life. For a second, he saw white and heard in his mind's ear a sort of cymbal crash. Then he swallowed, and gripped the sides of the podium tightly. “The earthquake we expected this evening … has been averted,” he mumbled, cotton-mouthed.

Before he had time to cough, the crowd went wild. Charlie cleared his throat and pulled a large sketchpad from his knapsack. “This is called a retroshock …”

Caruthers felt blood throbbing in his neck and suddenly wanted to be sick. “It isn't coming,” Charlie continued, calmly. “The earthquake has been redirected. It's nothing to worry about …”

People finally shut up when Maggie Murphy from the
Los Angeles Reade
r climbed atop a car and began screaming Charlie's name.

“Dr. Richter! Are you asking us to believe you just
stopped
the earthquake?” She seemed to shimmer like an angel, her black hair shiny under the fluorescent lights.

“Yes,” Charlie said.

Then Murphy's eyes narrowed, her voice grew tight, and she wasn't an angel anymore. “You guys should be tarred and feathered,” she said.

Caruthers's mind was whirling. He had only one option—to stand by Charlie. His
genius.
If the earthquake came, fine. If it didn't, at least the retroshock would provide some sort of
out.

He put his arms around Charlie's shoulder, gave him a Hollywood hug, and leaned forward to speak. “We live in a world of science and hope for the future, where great—”

That was all he could get out before the crowd pressed in, sending both him and Charlie inside to the discredited halls of CES.

THE NUMBERS GAME, PART TWO

ETHAN CARSON'S HOUSE ON THE BEACH IN MALIBU HAD been decorated entirely in black, white, and gray. The idea, he'd been told by a designer, was to accentuate the
people
in the rooms. This made perfect sense, because Ethan entertained movie stars who were constantly in need of accentuation. Stockpiles of champagne lay in wait in the garage's auxiliary refrigerator. Whether that champagne would be brought out at all, or bourbon served instead, was a matter of the numbers.

People began dropping by his monochrome palace before noon, as Ethan was busy making calls to theater chains, plugging the data into a computer program called “MOVIEGROSS.” By one o'clock, Henny Rarlin was on the veranda, already drunk.
Ear to the Ground
had made $37 million in its opening week, but it was uncertain whether the film would continue to do business—or, as the industry put it, “had legs.” If, in the second weekend, grosses dropped by more than half, they were in big trouble. But if they dropped by, say, a quarter, they were in business. Big business.

The movie had opened on 2,900 screens on December 29, to mixed reviews. Janet Maslin of
The New York Times
called it a provocative concept with “Escheresque complexity,” but she also said it was “uneven in tone.” Gene Shalit, who loves everything, said it was the “scariest movie ever.” Then again, Peter Travers, from
Rolling Stone,
referred to it as “history's most egregious waste of film stock.” Matters were worsened by that day's
Chicago Tribune,
which ran a feature discussing
the merits of capitalizing on disaster, indirectly accusing Warner Brothers of a bogus collusion with the Center for Earthquake Studies: “How Schlock Science Sells Seats.”

The fact remained that no earthquake had come. And Ethan Carson didn't need MOVIEGROSS to spell it out: It was a crapshoot. In the absence of their “marketing earthquake,” they had little chance of making money. Losing
less
became his mantra, and soon after Bridge Bridges had been made comfortable, Ethan poured his first bourbon.

Having slept until noon without any intention of stopping by Ethan's (he'd been invited out of necessity), Ian Marcus had a hankering for a Big Mac and Shake-'em-Up Shake. Mired in negativity and despair, he hadn't called anyone back for two weeks. His friends, he was certain, were abandoning him. Even his mother had asked him if he'd “copied off that other boy.”

Still, Ian found solace seeing his name on various promotions connected with
Ear to the Ground:
in the newspaper, on billboards, television, and at McDonald's. “Written by Ian Marcus,” it said, and it was true. How hard it was, though, to know where the ideas came from. If Ian thought back to that night at Damiano's, he still couldn't say whether Jon Kravitz had actually invented plot, or had simply led Ian to certain conclusions.

Ian drove to Mann's Chinese, showed the manager his Writers Guild card, and walked into an afternoon screening of
Ear to the Ground.
He watched without bias and, along with a highly excited audience, truly enjoyed the movie. Bridge Bridges was wonderful, he thought. The laughs were in all the right places, and there was even applause as the closing credits rolled.

Ian was hopeful again. He strolled down Hollywood Boulevard, along the Walk of Fame and, as he happened past Pearl Bailey's star, something came to him: “The Lord
giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” Giveth and Taketh. He jumped into his car and raced home.

Funny how an idea comes like a seed. A seedling, an inspiration. By the time Ian reached his desk, he'd developed a protagonist and a story line. How simple it was: the man who'd lost everything. He lit a joint and, four hours later, had fourteen pages of a new screenplay.

At first, Ethan Carson thought the man from Landmark Theaters Dallas had miscalculated. He was certain that, instead of a weekend figure, the man was quoting for the entire week. Ethan immediately called someone in marketing at Warner Brothers and found that, indeed, they were doing serious business in Dallas. Ditto, Boston and Philadelphia, Seattle and Portland. Chicago had been slow Saturday afternoon, but had picked up, selling out its three o'clock matinees. New York held steady. The only competition was a film directed toward black women,
Holding It In.

Ear to the Ground,
it appeared, had legs a mile long. It didn't drop off at all, would do $36 million in its second week, for a “cume” of $73 million, and would likely do $550 million globally. Ethan became graceful and buoyant when he received Bob Semel at the door, and by six o'clock there were two hundred people at the Carson house, drinking enough champagne to float the
Queen Mary.

PLAYING THE ODDS

HENRY GRANT HAD NO INTENTION OF MOVING TO TUCSON. He'd been there once, and it wasn't his kind of town. Emma talked about it like it was the Promised Land, but to Henry it was just a flat, ugly place where the bars closed early. He kept his mouth shut, though, until they reached the intersection of the 10 and the 15, where he took the road to Vegas.

“Think of it like a vacation,” he told Emma, when she protested. “Dorothy'll love it.”

Emma slid away from him, leaning up against her door so hard she had to press down the lock. “I'm sure that's exactly what you have in mind.”

“It'll be fun,” he said, and floored the pickup, trying to make a little time.

That night, after Emma and Dorothy were asleep in their cheap motel room, Henry took a drive down the Strip. The desert sky was dark, but the lights of Vegas sparkled against it like stars come to earth. In the lobby of the Mirage, dolphins swam and trees reached up to an artificial sky, and he thought what a kick Dorothy would get out of the place. Then Henry heard the ching-ching-ching of the casino, and left all sense of family behind.

He started with five dollar blackjack, where he found a seat at the center of the table, next to a postal worker from Kansas
who was in the process of losing his rent. He won his first hand when the dealer went bust on a sixteen, and the second when he drew a twenty-one. Easy. By the time the blonde cocktail waitress—who was wearing a cheerleader's outfit—brought him his third free beer, Henry had seven hundred in winnings. So he decided on a bit of a challenge.

Henry had never really understood craps, but it seemed simple enough. Instead of cards, it was
dice.
Besides, it was where the action was. So he threw down a couple of hundred dollar chips, ordered a bourbon, and set about learning the ropes. A pretty redhead blew three times on the dice before she threw them, her diamond bracelet jangling and catching the light.

The game moved fast. Nickel come; nickel go. Play the field. Hardways. Make the number. Easy as pie. And by three AM, when his education had cost him two thousand dollars, he jumped in the pickup loaded with his family's possessions and went back to his motel room on tip-toes, for a little more tuition money.

He'd learned enough to know the odds were with the house, always with the house. But when he played “Don't Pass,” the house suddenly got cold. Sick of pulling out a hundred here and a hundred there, he bought five grand worth of chips, thinking the stack would bring him confidence and luck. Besides, he would never bet it
all.
That was for suckers. When it was his turn to roll, he bet against himself, and, dumb luck, he rolled beautifully.

An hour later, Henry sat in a men's room stall and counted his money. Ten thousand was gone. He was drunk, his mouth dry. No more craps, he thought. He sat back against the wall. His heart fluttered, and he hoped it would attack him. “Die, Henry, die!” he murmured to himself. No such luck.

But after a while, back out at the bar, Henry had an inspiration. Or rather a conversation, with a middle-aged man, about how the 49ers—who would face the Green
Bay Packers in the playoffs the following day—couldn't lose. “Y'got the best coached organization in the history of professional sports,” the man said. “And they got two other important things. The best offense in the league, and the best defense, too.”

Yeah, Henry thought. The 49ers. The 49ers are a sure thing.

So on his way out of the casino at six-forty-five in the morning, Henry laid his money down. Ten thousand on the San Francisco 49ers. If he won, he'd break even. The spread was ten points, but the Niners always won big in the playoffs. And, points or no points, only a fool would bet Green Bay. He drove back to the motel and crept into bed.

Six hours later, at the end of the first quarter, the score was 14-0, Packers.

“Why do we have to stay here and watch football?” Emma wanted to know.

“Yeah, why?” Dorothy chimed in.

“Go on out if you wanna go out!” Henry snapped.

When Green Bay marched down the field to make it 21-0, and the 49er faithful began booing their team, Henry knew it was too late. He threw the remote control at the television screen, smashing it into a dozen pieces.

“What's wrong with you, Henry?” Emma yelled. “It's only a game!”

And, trying unsuccessfully to clear his throat as her words echoed in his ears, Henry readied himself for a life of desperation and pain.