Popcorn (14 page)

NINETEEN

D
id you see that movie
Ordinary Americans
?” the detective, whose name was Crawford, enquired through a cloud of blueberry-muffin crumbs.

“
Please
close your mouth when you’re eating,” his partner, Detective Jay, replied. “It makes me sick to my stomach.”

“You make me laugh, Frank. Most days you get to see the insides of some poor fuckin’ dead guy or a smackhead drowned in his own puke and yet still my spit offends you.”

“Just because we work in a pigsty doesn’t mean we gotta act like pigs.”

“So did you see the movie?” Another deposit of muffin crumbs.

“Yeah, I saw the movie.”

“And?”

“And when they finally blow me away, I hope I look half as good. Look, I don’t care about any movie right now. I’m thinking, OK? Working. Remember work? Or maybe the city pays you to redistribute food.”

“Oh my God, that’s funny. I can’t wait to have grandchildren so I can tell them how funny you are.”

Detective Jay ignored his partner. “These two psychos, they’re in LA, you know that?” He was looking at the map he had made of Wayne and Scout’s most recent atrocities, plotting their course. “Look, they were heading straight down the interstate. Sure they left it after they did the motel murders, but if you plot a path between the caravan park and the 7-11, they are clearly heading for town.”

“Maybe they turned around.”

“Sure they did. They’re in LA, I’m telling you.”

“Like we didn’t have enough psychos in LA already, for Christ’s sake,” Crawford said. “You think they’re looking to go to ground?”

“I doubt it. These wackos are attention-seekers. Serial show-offs. I mean, for Christ’s sake, making out against a Slurpy Pup in front of a bunch of bullet-riddled shoppers! They think they’re some kind of twenty-first-century Bonnie and Clyde. I don’t see them wanting to lose themselves in a big city.”

“Maybe they’re visiting relatives.”

Detective Jay looked again at the crime report on Wayne’s attempted murder of the old storekeeper.

“Bourbon, smokes, pretzels…and a guide to the movie people’s homes.”

On the desk in front of him was a copy of the LA
Times
, the front page cover of which carried a picture of Bruce holding his Oscar, alongside a picture of a corpse-strewn 7-11 and the obligatory piece on violence influencing kids and copycat killings.

“Movie people’s homes,” Detective Jay repeated. “Hey Joe, that picture,
Ordinary Americans
. Who were the stars?”

“Kurt Kidman and Suzanne Schaefer, although there were a lot of cameos. Anyhow, I thought you didn’t care about no movies.”

“Yeah, well, I changed my mind.”

TWENTY

H
ow much time did Bruce have? His was a very big house and the drive was a long one. If Wayne intended to go all the way down to the gates, he would be gone perhaps ten minutes. If he let Karl come up the drive, and met him at the front door, the whole thing would take no more than five. Either way, not really long enough for much delicate negotiation.

“All right, young lady,” Bruce barked, trying to summon up the voice with which he cowed cinematographers and hordes of extras, “this has gone far enough. If you hand over your gun now, it is just possible that I may be able to speak on your behalf at your trial.”

Scout did not look at Bruce but she slid the cushion from her lap, revealing her gun. “I don’t want to have to kill you but I will.” She said it quietly, almost sadly, but she clearly meant it: both that she didn’t want to kill him and that she would.

Bruce was at a loss to know how to proceed. He hadn’t really hoped that schoolmasterly authority would bear much fruit, but it was the only idea he had.

Brooke had completed her programme of breathing. She was centred now, in control and ready to attempt a different approach. She stared at Scout. Her face wore a strange expression; she looked interested but slightly perplexed. She tilted her head one way, then the other, all the time looking at Scout as if trying to get a better angle, trying to work her out. Scout knew she was being studied, and reddened. She stared down at the cushion, which she had now put back in her lap to cover the gun.

“Scout,” Brooke said, “may I do something?” Almost without waiting for an answer, she leant forward, took a lock of Scout’s hair which was hanging down in front of her face, and gently pushed it behind her ear. “You’re a pretty girl, Scout, you know that? Real pretty.”

To Bruce this seemed such a transparent ploy that he expected Scout to shoot them both on the spot, but she didn’t. She just kept on staring at the cushion in her lap and said, “Oh I don’t think so.”

“Oh yes you are, Scout,” Brooke insisted. “A very pretty girl. Except you don’t make as much of yourself as you could. Like, for instance, you have beautiful hair, but you’ve done nothing with it.”

Scout shyly explained that there had been all blood and bits of brain and stuff in it from a regrettable incident which had occurred recently in a 7-11. She had been forced to rinse out her hair in the ladies’ room, which was why it was such a mess.

Brooke knelt on the carpet in front of Scout. “Well, I’ll bet I could help you with that kind of thing, Scout. Maybe we could do a little make-over on you. I have my beauty bag and I’ll bet Bruce’s daughter has left some great clothes in the house — we could pick something out. You could look like a movie star. Don’t you think so, Bruce?”

Bruce was amazed. Scout seemed to be taking Brooke’s interest seriously. At least, she hadn’t shot her.

“Yes, Scout is very pretty,” he answered stiffly.

Scout’s attention still appeared to be riveted to the cushion.

Brooke addressed the top of Scout’s head. “You could have so much going for you. I bet any agent would love to have a cute little girl like you to look after.”

Scout raised her head a little. “You think so?”

“Of course I do. You said yourself how nice you looked in that magazine.”

Bruce was stunned at Brooke’s audacity. Was it possible that this pathological murderess could be taken in by such an obvious ploy? Quietly, he began to pray that it was.

“Why would any agent notice me? I mean, I ain’t saying I ain’t pretty, because I know a lot of men have taken a shine to me from time to time, including my own father. But there’s a heap of pretty girls in this town.”

Bruce’s heart sank. His prayer, scarcely delivered yet, was already being returned to sender, unanswered. He had been foolish to allow himself to hope. Scout was not an imbecile: just because you’re psychotic does not render you moronic. The woman would have to have had her brains sucked out with a bicycle pump to believe that a bit of make-up and a borrowed dress were going to turn her from a sad, sick psycho into a glamorous celebrity.

But Brooke was a lot smarter than Bruce gave her credit for — and braver. She took Scout’s chin and gently but firmly raised her head so that she could look her in the eye.

“OK, Scout, I’ll be straight. You’re right, ordinarily why would anybody notice you? Just one more pretty girl in a town that’s full of them. But you know very well that you’re not just one more pretty girl. You’re a killer’s girl, already famous…”

“I’m a killer too,” said Scout.

Brooke conceded the point. “Well sure, but the world is going to know that he made you do it and meanwhile, if I make you as pretty as can be…who knows? You wouldn’t be the first person to get away with stuff just for being cute.”

Scout had a faraway look in her eyes. Her toes were twitching at the carpet harder than ever. “You really think I could be a star? You mean you’d help me?”

“Of course I’d help you, Scout. I like you and I think you like me. We could be friends.”

Scout finally raised the point that Bruce had been nervously awaiting from the outset. “That’s easy for you to say while Wayne’s threatening to kill you.”

Bruce cursed inwardly. Brooke’s progress thus far had been so astonishing that he had dared to think she might actually win Scout’s trust. This remarkable woman had got from nowhere to serious buddy-talk inside two or three minutes. Now, however, it seemed that Scout had finally spotted the rather obvious point that Brooke’s affection might be influenced by an ulterior motive.

But Brooke was a fighter, and hit back. “Maybe you’re right, Scout, but think about it. Seems to me that Wayne is always going to be threatening to kill somebody or other. So how you ever going to make any friend, huh? Y’ever think ‘bout that, now?”

Not very subtly, Brooke’s voice was going both downmarket and in-country. It had left the upper echelons of West Coast society and was meandering gently along Route 66 towards the Heartland.

“I don’t know,” Scout replied softly. “Sometimes I do wonder about it.”

Brooke took Scout’s hand. “Listen t’me Scout. If ever a person needed friends right now, it’s you. We could help you, but you have to help us. Don’t you want friends?”

“Sure I want friends. ‘Course I want friends. I ain’t a freak, I’m just an ordinary American.”

A loud New York accent intruded on the scene. Instantly Scout’s demeanour hardened. She pulled away from Brooke and her hand tensed under the cushion. For the time being at least, Brooke’s heroic efforts to divide the enemy would have to be suspended.

TWENTY-ONE

T
he unmarked police car pulled up outside the Beverly Hills mansion. The sun was out now, and the automatic sprinklers hidden beneath the perfect lawns had sprung to life. As he looked about him, Detective Jay could see a hundred rainbows shimmering in the spray which hung above the deep green grass. Everything looked so peaceful and so rich.

Jay wondered if inside that glorious colonnaded house unspeakable mayhem had already been perpetrated. It was just a hunch, after all. On the other hand, nobody had cut up a major Hollywood star since Manson.

“You know,” said Crawford as they approached the vast front door, “this guy was a daytime soap star for years, started as a kid. That’s what’s so clever about Delamitri. He makes weird moves, like, you know, doing the unexpected, casting against type. Making uncool cool.”

“What, like murder?”

“You don’t buy that copycat crap, do you? What? Are we all going to have to go and watch Doris Day movies?”

Buzzz. Buzzzzzzz.

At first Kurt didn’t hear it. The pounding of the treadmill and the Van Halen in his headphones blotted out any outside sound. He rarely answered the intercom himself, anyway. The staff arrived by public bus at nine, and nobody ever visited before that.

Except today.

If he hadn’t stopped for a swig of salinating energizer drink and five minutes under the sun-lamp, he’d never have heard it at all.

“LAPD,” said the intercom. “Sorry to call so early, sir.”

In contrast to the characters he played, Kurt Kidman was as dull as old brown paint. Like many people in LA these days, all he ever did was work and exercise. He had certainly never been visited by the police at six fifty in the morning.

“The police?” said Kurt. “But…but why?” The receiver actually shook in his hand.

He had never done anything illegal in his life (although some of his acquaintances considered that squandering his huge wealth and fame on a boring, healthy lifestyle was something of a crime). None the less, Kurt was a nervous sort of fellow and anybody suddenly confronted by the police tends to feel an irrational sense of guilt, particularly at so early an hour. Had he done anything wrong? Was it possible that he’d gone over the speed limit when he drove back from the Oscars on the previous night? Or else maybe, like Dr Jekyll, he had a terrifying subconscious alter ego, who roamed the night committing terrible murders of which his conscious self had no memory in the morning.

“Good morning, officer,” Kurt said, attempting to sound calm, as he answered the door. He had tried to communicate with them only over the intercom, but they had asked him to come down in person. He half expected to be brutally handcuffed the moment the door was open.

“How can I help you?”

Should he have said even that without his lawyer being present? Kurt couldn’t remember the rules. Was saying hullo incriminating? He longed to tell them that his copious sweating was the result of an hour on the treadmill, not because he was desperately attempting to cover up some guilty secret. But would that sound like protesting too much? Probably.

“Just a routine enquiry, sir,” said Detective Jay. “Have you been visited or contacted during the night? Have any strangers attempted to speak to you?”

“No,” said Kurt.

“In that case we won’t bother you further. Sorry to have interrupted your work-out, sir.”

Detective Jay gave Kurt his card and asked him to call if anything out of the ordinary occurred, and then he and his partner departed.

Kurt worried about it all day.

TWENTY-TWO

I
n the doorway to Bruce’s lounge stood Wayne and Karl Brezner, Bruce’s agent. Karl was a tough, hardbitten operator from New York. He had been in the business for thirty years, but judging by his manner it did not seem to have made him happy.

“Here’s your man, Bruce,” said Wayne.

Karl threw a questioning glance at Bruce. Understandably he was wondering who the lowlife might be.

“Hi, Bruce. Sorry to call so early,” he said. “Coupla real important things. So, having a party?”

Karl looked round the room. Brooke was still kneeling on the carpet in front of Scout. Wayne was also taking in the scene. Both he and Karl were surprised to see the two women in this position.

Brooke got up from the rug with what dignity she could muster and returned to her seat on the couch.

“Yeah, a party, kind of,” said Bruce. “This is Brooke Daniels.”

Karl had eyed Brooke appreciatively as she crossed the room. He would have had to have been made of stone not to. She was extremely beautiful at any time and if anything she was even more fascinating now, looking sad and vulnerable in her increasingly absurd evening gown.

“Brooke Daniels!” said Karl with delight. “Well, well, well. Miss February, I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on. Great spread, by the way. I’ll bet the nozzle of that gas pump was cold, am I right? Who’re these two, Bruce?”

Karl spoke as if Wayne and Scout did not exist. He was not actually quite as rude as he appeared. He came from a brusque culture, in which good manners were commonly interpreted as bullshit and prevarication. His style would not have gone down well in Japan or over tea at Buckingham Palace, but in New York show-business circles it had served him well.

Bruce struggled for a reply to his question.

“A couple of…actors. I saw them in an improv’ night out at Malibu…thought I’d talk to them. Might be right for
Killer Angels
.”

Killer Angels
was the project that Bruce and Karl currently had in development. It was again to be about people who killed strangers, but this time for a reason, anti-abortion, the environment, wiping out a sporting rival, whatever; the idea being to show that all murder is in fact arbitrary. Or something like that, anyway. They intended it to duplicate the enormous success of
Ordinary Americans
.

“Seeing actors in the early morning after Oscars night? That is dedication.” Karl turned to Wayne and Scout. “No offence to you guys, but for me talking to actors is only one step up from visiting with the dentist.”

As with most agents, being rude about actors was Karl’s favourite joke. He patronized them behind their backs, calling them childish and mad. He was, of course, just jealous. No matter how rich and powerful an agent gets, he still finds it difficult to jump queues in restaurants.

Bruce pursued his hasty improvisation, in the hope that detail would make it more convincing. “I just thought they had, you know…maybe they had the right look.”

Karl cast a doubtful glance at Wayne and Scout. “Well, I’m just the schmuck who counts the money, but these kids look about as much like psychopaths as my grandmother, God save her soul.”

Bruce was pleased at this response. The less interest Karl showed in Wayne and Scout the better.

“You want a drink, Mr Brezner?” Wayne asked.

This gave Bruce further cause for relief. Wayne appeared to be prepared to play along with the fiction.

“Are you kidding?” said Karl. “A drink? At seven fifteen in the morning? Have you any idea how much my current liver cost me? Body parts do not come cheap, my friend, particularly those of which the donor only had one and was hence reluctant to part with it…Only kidding. Since we’re celebrating, get me a scotch, kid.”

Karl sat down on the couch beside Brooke, taking the opportunity as he sat to cast an appreciative glance down the front of her dress.

His mentioning the time reminded Bruce that Karl had no business being there at all. “That’s right Karl, it’s only seven fifteen. What do you want?”

“Lemme get this drink, then maybe we can talk down in the snooker room.”

“We’ll talk here. I’m busy.” Bruce hadn’t meant to snap. The last thing he wanted was to raise any suspicions in Karl that something was wrong. Wayne caught the wrongness of the tone too and shot a warning look at Bruce from where he was standing at the drinks cabinet. Had there been a musical sting at this point, it would have suggested that Bruce had better be damned careful.

“Well excuuuuse me,” said Karl. Even tough New York agents with skin thicker than an elephant sandwich can be offended. “I forgot for one moment that you just won an Oscar and therefore are professionally obliged to treat with contempt those whom formerly you have loved and respected.”

Bruce knew he must remain very calm. If Karl’s suspicions were even slightly aroused he would never leave the room alive. “Karl, I didn’t sleep yet.” He attempted a weary matter-of-fact tone. “Could we do this another time?”

“Another time? Maybe you didn’t see the papers today.”

“Of course I didn’t see the papers — it’s seven fifteen in the morning.”

Karl took his drink from Wayne without even glancing at him, let alone thanking him.

“Well, I don’t want to be the shit-delivery boy here, Bruce, but yours is not a popular Oscar choice. Frankly, the editorials would be kinder if they’d given it retrospectively to
Attack of the Large-Breasted Women
.”

Bruce shrugged and he meant it. “Who gives a fuck what those parasites think?”

Just a few hours earlier he would have been obsessed with what they thought, but that was a few hours earlier. Things had changed. Changed for ever. Karl, of course, was still living in the old world.

Or at least he thought he was.

“We give a fuck, Bruce,” he said. “It’s the violence thing. It’s the big deal of the moment and it’s getting a little serious. These fucks are talking up
Ordinary Americans
like it was some kind of training manual for psychos. Newt Gingrich was on the
Today Show
this morning—”

“All politicians are scum,” Wayne interjected. “
Ordinary Americans
is a fuckin’ masterpiece.”

Again Karl ignored him. “He says you’re a pornographer and you shouldn’t get honoured for glamorizing murderers.”

Scout was bored. She didn’t like Karl and she didn’t care what Newt Gingrich thought. She had been having a much more interesting conversation before Karl arrived. She turned back to Brooke.

“Brooke, will you put my hair up like you said you would?”

Rather nervously Brooke nodded and, taking her handbag, she crossed over to where Scout was sitting and started to do her hair. Karl was not a little surprised to be interrupted in this way by out-of-work actors, but he let it go. That he should care if this little runt showed him disrespect. In his life she did not even exist.

“I think the Republicans want to turn it into a mid-term election issue. We need to make a plan.”

Again Scout barged in with her own agenda. “You know what I love? I love the way hair mousse comes out of the can. Like, how do they get it all
in
there?”

“It expands, honey,” said Wayne.

“I know it expands, dummy. Because it’s bigger when it gets out. But I don’t know how it happens. It’s the same with cans of whipped cream. How do they
do
that? I mean cream is cream — you can’t crush it up.”

Karl looked at her, astonished. He hadn’t been ignored like this in twenty-five years.

“Excuse me,” he said, “did I become invisible? I’m talking here.”

Scout seemed suitably admonished. “Sorry,” she said.

“You are very far from welcome,” Karl replied with ill grace, before turning back to Bruce. “They’re thinking about reclassifying for over-eighteens. That’s half our box office gone at a stroke, to say nothing of actual bans, particularly in the South. In retrospect, I think the crucifixion scene was a mistake.”

“Awesome scene, man,” said Wayne.

Again Karl ignored the interruption. “It’s these fucking Mall Murderers, Bruce. Those two little punks are in danger of getting our picture pulled, Oscar or no Oscar. Do you know they just shot up a 7-11? Christ, what kind of pointless sickos are these people?”

Brooke and Bruce froze. Karl’s conversation had suddenly taken an unimaginably dangerous turn.

“Well, you know,” Brooke said casually, while teasing at Scout’s hair, “I mean, you have to try to be a little understanding, see things from their point of view.”

Karl was not an understanding type of person. “What, you mean the point of view of a socially inadequate jerk-off?
Please
.”

“I really don’t think you can dismiss them that easily.” Brooke was doing her best but it was a hopeless task.

“Pardon me, miss, for appearing rude, but that I should give a fuck what you think. Wayne Hudson and that weird, scrawny little bitch he drags around with him are screwed up trailer-park white-trash nobodies who have mashed potato instead of brains. The sooner they get burnt, fried, decapitated, castrated, lobotomized, liquidized and generally fucked over, the better. I would gladly take a mallet to the little fucking scumbags myself.”

Bruce and Brooke braced themselves. Surely now the mayhem would begin. Wayne had moved to behind the couch where Scout was sitting. He had only to reach down into the cushions at her back to produce a machine-gun, and this appallingly provocative man would be dead. Scout herself need merely brush aside the cushion on her lap. Surely it was all over for Karl?

“You talk big, Karl, but you’d never do it.” Bruce’s laugh was wooden as a daytime soap. “You always end up on the side of the underdog.”

“Underdog? Those scum?” Karl replied.

Bruce was now convinced that Karl had a death wish.

“Like I would waste my tears on such syphilitic maggots? I would puke on their graves and those of their mothers, who no doubt were whores.”

Shut up! Every fibre of Bruce’s being willed this loudmouthed oaf to shut up. Brooke, too, was desperately trying to reach somehow into his mind and stop this fool from digging all their graves with his violent language.

How often had Brooke spoken in the past about auras and third eyes? While not actually holding a season ticket on the New Age Traveller bandwagon, she had always claimed to have a palpable connection with the mystic. She believed firmly that thought-transference was possible. She was getting a painful crash course in Old Age reality.

Wayne’s voice was cold, although in comparison to his eyes it was positively balmy. “You think the Mall Murders are fucked-up white trash, Mr Brezner?”

“He does not think that!” Bruce almost shouted.

“You can’t just dismiss them.” was Brooke’s desperate plea.

“Weird, scrawny little bitch?” Scout said to herself, a faraway look in her eyes. “That weird scrawny little bitch
he drags around with him
?”

“Karl didn’t mean that!” Bruce forced himself to laugh again; it sounded like a razor-blade cutting through a tin can. “You should hear the way he talks about his wife.”

Karl, oblivious of the terrible agenda swirling around him, was mystified by Bruce’s attitude.

“Excuse me? What is this right now? Oprah? Are we having some kind of
debate
about these fucking filth? Of course they’re fucked-up white trash. What else would they be? I’d like to take that pair of pointless, gutless, no-brain, no-dick, asshole insults to the intelligence of a wet fart and—”

“Karl! What do you want?” Bruce leapt to his feet. “I’m busy here. I have stuff to do and you are getting in my face.”

He had not wanted to confront Karl quite so bluntly. If he acted too strangely, Wayne would know that Karl’s suspicions must inevitably be aroused. On the other hand, he had to shut Karl up and get him out before he talked them all to death.

Karl studied Bruce for a moment, but decided not to rise to him. Karl was, after all, an agent and Bruce was his top client.

“OK, Bruce, OK. You’re the artist. I just negotiate the obscene and disgusting amounts you get paid. Now, like I say, I think we have real trouble here. This is an important moral issue and we can’t be seen to duck it. We have to react to this thing responsibly. What we have to do is get out there immediately, say fuck you, and announce a sequel to
Ordinary Americans
.”

“Everybody died at the end of
Ordinary Americans
,” Bruce replied.

“Bruce, yours is not a pedantic audience. Look, you have to rise above this thing. Get out there today and work the chat shows. You did great on
Coffee Time
yesterday. Tell the world that these killers are not your responsibility and—”

Wayne walked across the room and plucked Karl’s whisky glass from his hand. “OK Bruce. I’m sick of this guy now. We have things to talk about. Get rid of him.”