Private Screening (33 page)

Steinberg was waiting in front of the executive offices. When the limousine stopped, he opened the door.

“Hi,” he said. “Where's Damone?”

“I haven't called John in three or four days. Was I supposed to?”

“He wanted to see this.”

Stacy grimaced. “If he's smart he changed his mind.”

He glanced at his watch; Steinberg was the only man Stacy knew who could pace standing still. “We'll give him ten more minutes.”

He led her past an oak reception desk, down a hall lined with modern art, to the private screening room.

No one went inside without permission; Stacy had never seen it. When Steinberg unlocked the door and flicked on some overhead lights, it seemed like a bunker, simply furnished and still dark. There were red plush carpeting, white walls, four rows of executive chairs; the room looked empty, as only a stage or a courtroom can look empty. Its floor slanted upward from the screen to a back wall whose upper third was the window to a raised projection room. A dim form stood at the projector, the sole technician given access.

“I feel like a political prisoner,” Stacy said.

Steinberg began walking in circles. He wore blue jeans, Adidas, and a Disneyland T-shirt; beard, rimless glasses, and bright anarchist's eyes made him look like a grad student who never slept. As always, he chewed gum with such absentminded fury that Stacy, who had come to like him, wondered if he'd been chewing the same piece since UCLA film school.

She sat, watching him. “How's your metabolic rate this morning?”

Still pacing, he grinned. “Like a python—I could eat forty-two Snickers bars and never know it.”

“What's this about, anyhow? You didn't want me to see dailies—I'd get self-conscious, remember?”

“I thought by now you deserved to.” He shoved both hands in his pockets. “I've never seen a novice work this hard.”

Stacy shrugged. “I did it to get sane, Mark.”

His smile turned quizzical. “Like needlepoint.”

“Something like that.”

He gave a half-shake of the head and continued his circles. “You're making me nervous,” she said.

“Where's Damone, anyhow?”

“You really think I'm hiding him?” When Steinberg did not answer, she angled her head at the projector. “Is it that bad?”

He stopped to look at her a moment. “Okay,” he said, and turned toward the window. When the technician saw him, he nodded, then switched off the lights.

A stream of light hit the screen. Stacy remembered watching the film of Carson, and then her face appeared.

It was the final scene, filmed out of sequence. Stacy's character was preparing to send her daughter to live with her former husband. Their dialogue was deliberately underkeyed—matters of brushing teeth and packing a lunch—so that its effect depended on nuance. Stacy had cut her mannerisms to the bone: now she saw that this restraint allowed the moment to speak for itself. With concentrated ordinariness, she buttoned the top of the child's coat. Then she looked into her face; gently, Stacy brushed back the girl's bangs with two fingers of her hand.

Watching, the gesture hit her with a physical shock; she did not remember having done this. She felt an ache in her throat, and then some second part of her saw that she was made for the camera. When the screen went black, she realized Steinberg was next to her.

He didn't look at her or switch on the lights.

“You're going to be a film star,” he said finally. “It's time you knew.”

She turned from him.

“It's going to happen, Stacy. The studio people started watching dailies weeks ago. They saw what I did.”

Standing, she walked to a corner. “It's too close to Jamie.”

“You couldn't help that, in your state of mind.”

“I should have tried.”

“Even if you had, this thing would have followed you.” He hesitated. “That film of you and Kilcannon—it's like being Jackie Kennedy. People will see whatever you do in terms of that.”

She turned. “That's being an icon, not an actress.”

“You make it worse by hiding out.” His voice became more passionate than she had heard it. “Do another picture, then another and another, until you
are
an actress.”

Stacy could not sort out the reasons she felt ashamed. “You know,” she said finally, “I can't even
have
children.”

Rising, Steinberg switched on the lights. “Look, Stacy, why don't you tell your chauffeur to circle the block. We can take in brunch somewhere, drink a little champagne, and maybe kick this around. It's past time.”

It was a measure of what had happened, Stacy thought, that she wondered what he wanted before she felt his good intentions. “Thanks, Mark. But I'd be bad company for you—I've got too much to think about.” When Steinberg looked obliquely hurt, she added gently, “Anyhow, I'd better wait for John.”

He shrugged. “Another time.”

As Stacy wondered what else to say, there was a knock on the door, and then a security guard leaned in. “Miss Tarrant?”

“Yes?”

“Two men from the FBI want to see you.” The man sounded bemused. “It's something about Mr. Damone. They asked me if we have a television.…”

“Stacy?” A tentative hand on her shoulder.

Her eyes flew open; it was Jack Harris, the associate producer.

“The security guard just called,” he told her. “Lord's here.”

At the end of the maze of false building fronts, her driver let Lord out beside a sprawling concrete sound stage from the thirties. It was barnlike inside, with extension cords strewn on wooden floors, bare walls covered with insulation, props and catwalks dangling overhead. Behind a metal reception desk there were more guards, blocking a passway through some partitions erected to hide the sets. Giving his slip to the receptionist, Lord watched her place another call.

“You're Anthony Lord,” someone said.

It was not a question. Lord turned to see an ascetic-looking man in a work shirt and chinos, standing between the guards. “That's right.”

“I'm Jack Harris.” He paused, frowning at Lord. “Stacy's four takes into the final scene. It may be a while—she's having trouble.”

“I'm not surprised.” When Harris scowled at the floor, half-turning, Lord asked, “Mind if I go in with you?”

Harris looked up, silent. “She asked you here,” he said finally.

Lord followed him through the partition, past a series of partial interiors: the sterile lobby of an apartment building, one corner of a day-care center, a bar with stained glass chandeliers, a kitchen with a butcher-block table, an off-white living room with track lighting and abstract prints. Only voices from deeper within told Lord they were nearing the actors.

Rounding half an office cubicle, Lord saw Stacy Tarrant.

She sat with her eyes closed as a woman applied makeup to traces of sleeplessness. Uncertain, Lord stopped ten feet back. But as the woman finished, she opened her eyes, and saw him.

Her cool expression did not change; had her gaze not lasted so long, Lord would have thought himself invisible. Then she turned to the makeup woman and murmured thanks.

A buzzer sounded, twice. Without speaking to Lord, Stacy walked toward a restaurant with Russian decor and half a ceiling. The other half was canvas, casting indirect light.

“It's the Russian Tea Room,” Harris explained, and entered the set.

Perhaps twenty people were there. A black woman paged someone on a walkie-talkie; a cameraman focused his lens; three others adjusted the shutters of lights at various angles; two more held microphones on long poles. At one table, a blond man and a slender woman close to Stacy's height sat for someone with a light meter. Next to them, Lord picked out Mark Steinberg, talking to Stacy and her costar. No one smiled.

Listening to Steinberg, Stacy nodded. Then someone put glasses of wine on the table, and the two leads replaced their stand-ins. Voices dropped; the camera lowered; lights focused on the couple; booms hovered over them. The atmosphere reminded Lord of an operating room. Stacy was quite still.

The buzzer sounded.

There was silence, and then she began speaking.

Lord could follow the scene. Stacy and her leading man disliked each other but were meeting out of some need she had. It was tense enough that Lord guessed why Steinberg had saved it for last; she spoke to the table, a woman under pressure who had rehearsed an emotionless speech, finger tracing the rim of her wineglass. Impatient, the costar asked questions. Her voice became taut, her responses more controlled and rehearsed. Lord was not sure she was acting.

Then her costar asked one question too many.

Her eyes rose from the glass, direct and quite luminous. “Damn it.” Each word was low, succinct, angry. “I need you.”

“Print it,” Steinberg said crisply. “That's a wrap.”

Stacy's costar clasped her hand. Someone began clapping; it spread until Stacy looked up in confusion. Then Steinberg called out, “Super,” and grinned at her.

Managing a smile, she got up from the table and hugged him. “I'll call you,” he said.

“Okay.”

She turned to the others. One by one, she took their hands, kissing the makeup lady and two or three more. Most would never see her again; Lord sensed they had come to admire her, and felt for her now. As she walked toward him, head down but still smiling a little, he felt the vacuum she was entering.

She stopped smiling when she reached him. “I'm ready,” she said.

“You were good,” Lord said.

Nodding, Stacy watched darkness fall, charcoal through the tinted windows of her limousine. She did not know how long they had driven without speaking.

Moments passed like this.

“Why did you call me?” he asked.

She turned, examining him. His face was older; that the last year might have cost him something seemed right.

“Yesterday morning,” she finally answered, “while I was still in shock, suddenly there were all these people telling me what I should do. The FBI, poor Mr. Parnell—even Ralph DiPalma called.” She turned from him again, speaking in a lower voice. “I want John back. I'll need someone independent to advise me how to do that, period. I don't have to like them.”

“It might help.”

Stacy clasped the armrest on the door. “You
know
John,” she responded coolly. “
And
the Parnells, the SNI people, and the authorities in San Francisco who are handling it all. For
this
, you make sense. Let's leave it at that.”

Narrow-eyed, Lord glanced at the soundproof glass between them and the driver. At length, he asked, “Why does Phoenix think you'll agree to a ‘unique act of selflessness' to save Damone?”

“We've been together since I started.” She flicked back her bangs, uncomfortable. “John's a loner—I'm probably his closest friend.”

“Any family?”

“Once, in New York City. John was a career foster child—that's how he ended up in the Army.” Fear welled inside her. “To go through that …”

“He's no use to Phoenix dead,” Lord said, “Not yet.”

She turned, angry at his prescience. “You
owe
him, dammit.…”

“Look, how did the FBI say he'd been taken?”

She had to stop this, Stacy realized; hatred was a luxury until Damone was safe. “Someone broke in,” she finally answered. “The house was torn up, and his car was still there.”

“Anything else?”

“I was too rattled to remember it all.” She stared past him at the lights of Malibu. “
You
saw Alexis.…”

“I'm just trying to imagine who could take him, and how.”

But Stacy felt the film of Alexis washing over her again. “What does it matter now?” she murmured.

Lord was silent. “That depends,” he told her finally. “On exactly what it is he really wants you to do.”

Stacy realized how tightly she gripped the armrest.

Her watch showed 7:20.

2

I
T
was 7:37.

Back against the shed, Phoenix watched the clouds change colors. Vanishing in the Pacific, the sun tinged them a deepening pink. Then pink shaded into gray, and he knew that search planes could no longer see him. Turning, he opened both doors.

Behind them, two satellite dishes were aimed at the sky. Four feet high, four feet across, the fiberglass webs were smaller but more powerful than those used at the Carson trial. Cables ran from their antennae to his replica of a satellite control room: monitor screen, tape cassette, color controls, sound equipment. Checking his watch again, the low thrum of the generator made him restless.

It was 7:40.

Twenty minutes, a nation waiting, and still he did not know if this would work.

To calm himself, Phoenix thought of his good fortune since the morning he had captured Alexis Parnell.

It had begun shortly before dawn, at the bottom of a deserted limestone quarry, an hour north of where he would take her.

The three men had been waiting there since dusk, with the white van. They had bought it for cash in Rhode Island, filed off the serial numbers, stolen its New York plates from a junkyard. Each man was as anonymous. Two years before, in Boston, they had asked Phoenix to finance a drug deal; in return, he had dangled the future prospect of a multi-million-dollar kidnapping. Now his plan had sucked them in. The men had driven west from Massachusetts without knowing his targets, encountered no trouble on the way, had no connection to California. Like Phoenix, they wore gloves.

As one held a flashlight, they began switching tires from his black van to their white one. Then, silently, they got inside the back. Their keys were waiting for him on the seat.

In night's last darkness, he left the black van, climbing the steep road from the quarry.

The white van stopped again at an abandoned campsite, forty miles from the Parnells'. They waited there for five more hours, hot, reviewing his plan. No one saw them.