Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun (2 page)

"The
first thirty minutes work beautifully," she said of my screenplay, her
hand stroking my inner thigh. "Then there's that moment when he suddenly
sees her alone for the first time, and he wants her so badly"—her
lubricated fingers, slick with coconut oil, slid gently into the pathway she'd
created—"so badly that he literally slams himself into her," and
Barrett entered me with an unexpected force that was both frightening and
exciting. She retreated slowly. "It sets up a nice character arc for him
later that pays off in the last scene. Very smart, very sexy." I moaned,
and she slid on top of me, but for Barrett, the person beneath her was no longer
me, it was the screenplay. She was making love to the words I'd written. She
knew the dialogue and the silent act breaks and the characters. I felt as if I
were merely the stage on which she'd chosen to perform her soliloquy. I told
myself that I didn't care that she didn't care. She was technical perfection
and my heart pounded, almost out of my chest, in testament to her skill. I
perspired and pulsated in her hands in streaming applause. I was so emotionally
high from her artful combinations of touch and taste and sound that my body
could no longer take the intensity. It had to end.

"What
would you say the climax of the movie is, Teague?"

"Tell
me," I whispered, my mouth open, my head back, and my body screaming.

"It's
your movie, you tell me," she said provocatively.

"It's
your movie," I panted, giving up my screenplay, and in one explosive wave,
giving up myself.

"The
climax is when Colette lets go, really lets go." It was Barrett climaxing
now, with no further assistance from me, just flailing and screaming and sobbing
and all the while in me, finally falling forward on me and whispering, "I
want to make your movie."

I
had no idea that this show in bungalow 42 had been playing for so many years it
could have gone on tour, that Friday night at the Beverly had been a rite of
passage for women writers for a decade, a drama replayed time and again with
Amanda and the masseuse, and that Barrett's Friday-at-four, sex-at-seven
appointments with unsuspecting screenwriters were legend. I thought I was the
star, because that's how naivete works, when in fact, I was just an extra. New
to Hollywood, I had not yet heard the cocktail party joke, "Barrett
Silvers first makes you, and
then
she makes your movie."

After
Sveltiana
was green-lighted, I was no longer a struggling writer. I
could finally say I was making a living in the business. How much of that was
due to Barrett, and not me, remained the gnawing question. Did Barrett only
sleep with real talent, or was my real talent that I had slept with Barrett? I
was determined now to write a script that would forever set me apart from that
sea of writers who would happily sleep with Barrett if someone would just give
them her address.

The
maitre d' at Orca's interrupted my reverie to ask if I was meeting someone.
Barrett had sent him to retrieve me. He escorted me past the bar and through
the double doors where Barrett's boyish figure rose to give me a Hollywood air
kiss. She still epitomized the studio power broker: tall, fit, trim. Sort of a
Jewish All-Star. With pants creased, shirt starched, shoes buffed, and jewelry
gleaming, she made me feel like I'd gotten dressed in the dark.

"You
look fabulous!" I surveyed her top to bottom. "You've lost weight."

"If
you're ten pounds too heavy, the rumor is you've gone to seed. Ten pounds too
thin, and the rumor is you're dying. There's this very narrow five-pound window
you have to hit."

"Well,
you're there." I flashed her an appreciative grin. There was still a small
electrical current that pulsated between our lower extremities, vibrating now
like a plucked guitar string. I had to remind myself that age and power are
seductive, but in this day of STDs, I didn't need a relationship with a woman
who slept with everyone in town.

"Got
any more high-concept scripts?" she asked, looking deep into my eyes.

"Like
Arnold Schwarzenegger is pregnant? Or
Pretty Woman?
Prince Charming
marries his hooker."

"Made
millions."

"I'm
tired of movies conceived out of men's sexual fantasies."

"I
prefer a good female fantasy myself." She shot me a smile.
"Unfortunately, the studio likes women in jeopardy."

"I
brought you
Haunted,
and it went nowhere. How much more in jeopardy can
you get than a woman whose husband had her raped, beaten, poisoned, and then
tried to shoot her?"

"Too
much jeopardy."

The
berries from an overhanging tree plopped into my salad nicoise, threatening to
poison me, as Barrett recounted the latest list of ridiculous movies that had
been green-lighted. She summarized the current buying trend with, "Find me
a good true crime story, and I'll get it up for you," which bore an
appropriate double entendre, albeit accidental I was sure.

"I've
got a lead on a story. I'll let you know," I said, thinking of the Frank
Anthony murder.

I
told her I'd just seen the latest Marathon hype in the trade rags about Lee
Talbot, Marathon's tall, vibrant, silver-haired septuagenarian CEO who had done
the impossible, turning around a studio that, only six months earlier, had
Credit Lebanc breathing down its back, threatening to close the studio's doors.
To complicate matters, there was that nasty rumor about someone skimming money
off the top, studio books that didn't reconcile, and nervous accounting types
scurrying about trying to explain where the money was going.

"So
what's really going on over there?" I asked, wanting the insider scoop.

"People
are nervous. I'm nervous. My job puts me in a lot of... odd places at odd
hours." Barrett shifted her weight as if getting more comfortable in her
chair, but I noticed she was also checking out the room to see who was
listening. She settled back down and ran her long, slender fingers around the
rim of her coffee cup, in an unintentionally seductive moment of contemplation,
before deciding to share what was bothering her.

"Talbot's
success with Marathon makes good PR—silverback-CEO-still-has-what-it-takes kind
of rhetoric—but it's Robert Isaacs, the motion picture division's president,
who's the real brains behind Marathon's resurrection. He's working barter deals
with Hollywood's A-list, getting them everything from desert islands to
permanent police protection in exchange for signing with Marathon."
Barrett swallowed her pronouns as she tried to talk and eat simultaneously.

"Not
talking about stuff like 'keep the wardrobe.' Isaacs got Lola Landon's
kid—straight-F moron—into the best prep school in New England. Built the school
a new gymnasium in exchange for one scholarship per year. Guess who gets the
scholarship? The cost of the gym was less than the cash Premiere Studios
offered Lola for a three-picture deal. She chose Marathon over the cash. Isaacs
tapped into the fact that, while Lola's a big star, she's also a mother.
Getting the best for her son is what she wanted and what Marathon gave her.
It's all about delivering that one thing a person wants more than anything in
the world. Talbot was so happy he gave Isaacs a corner office the size of the
Hollywood Bowl."

"And
you?"

"I'm
his new executive vice president of talent acquisition worldwide."

"Congratulations!
And what do you do?"

"Whatever
needs doing. I wrangle the big talent and keep them happy. I've delivered a
birthday yacht to a mooring in Malibu for a big producer, kept drug charges off
the record of a prominent director, smuggled prostitutes into the bungalow of a
well-known actor every night of the shoot without his wife's knowledge."

"So
you've taken a job as a studio pimp?" I asked.

My
remark seemed to curb her appetite as she put her fork down, placed her hands
against the edge of the table, and pushed herself back slightly in the chair,
her gold-embossed cuff links winking at me from under her designer jacket.
Barrett had always looked like an ad for a gentlemen's quarterly, but the cuff
links looked more expensive than I remembered.

"You
know, if I disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice for days." She spoke
cautiously, as if she were working up to something. "I don't have anyone..."

"Because
you have everyone." I realized it was an uncalled-for jab.

"You're
smart, Teague. That's what I've always liked about you." She paused to
smile at me.

"Not
smart enough to stay the hell away from you."

She
waved me off, indicating that what she had to say was more important than
rehashing old hurts.

"Suppose
you knew that a studio was sending a messenger around to its top producer with,
let's say, a kilo of coke and ..."

"Did
that happen?" I asked, and she ignored my question.

"...no
one at the studio reports it, because if the agents, directors, and stars are
happy, better deals get made. But if you knew it was happening, would you.. .do
anything, say anything?"

"Depends
on if they're going to knock me off," I replied flippantly, trying to
chalk this increasingly worrisome conversation up to Barrett's predilection for
good plot.

"Suppose
your boss calls you in the middle of the night to—let's just say for
discussion's sake—go help out a big superstar, and you get there, and there's a
body."

"A
dead body?" I put my fork down and gave Barrett my full attention. It was
evident from her tone that this wasn't just for discussion's sake.

"Almost
dead, but you do CPR on the body and you get him breathing."

Barrett
was leaning over the table now, whispering, "And you realize this was a
fucking big near miss and that you could just as easily have been on a murder
scene."

"You
gotta tell the police right away. Listen to me"—I found myself leaning in—"No
job is worth this shit. You've got to report it."

"I
have reported it, to someone I trust on the Marathon board. But now I'm
convinced the phone was tapped. These are big players, Teague. You don't think
they can muzzle the police? They can muzzle anybody!"

"Who's
involved in this?"

"You
don't want to know that. I don't even know. To know is to be in some real
fuckin' danger."

A
dark, muscular Latin man leaning against the wall as if he were waiting for
someone suddenly approached our table. His head was strangely shaped, wide and
round at the cheeks, narrow and flat at the top with a dark blemish by his left
eye.

"Barrett
Silvers?" The thick Latin accent sliced through Barrett's sentence.

When
Barrett nodded, the man locked eyes with her, laid his fist on the table next
to her hand, and deposited a one-by-two-inch stone with petroglyphs on it.
Barrett apparently recognized the object and began shaking uncontrollably. The
man reached over to retrieve the stone, but Barrett quickly covered it with the
palm of her hand, knocking over a coffee cup and sending a wave of cappuccino
across the layers of pink and white tablecloths. The man grabbed Barrett
forcefully by the shirtfront and pulled her up from her seat, giving her a
rough kiss on the side of her face. I jumped up from my chair, realizing she
was in danger.

When
he let go, Barrett teetered back and forth on her heels for a moment, her face
paralyzed in an expression of surprise. I grabbed her by both arms, trying to
steady her. Her hand banged awkwardly against my jacket as her mouth opened
grotesquely in an attempt to tell me something, but only moans came out. She
sagged to the floor like a rag doll, excrement seeping down her pant leg, her
eyes frozen open like a carp's in a fish case. The dark man had disappeared,
and I felt my insides turning to putty. My hands shaking, I reflexively rolled
Barrett onto her side so vomit wouldn't get into her lungs and shouted for
someone to call 911, thinking all the while that it was too late to save her. A
young male waiter hurried over, knelt down beside her, and began CPR. Despite
being grief stricken, I could still appreciate the irony of Barrett Silvers
leaving this world with her lips on a man.

The
paramedics were there in only minutes. They took Barrett by ambulance to Cedars
Sinai a few blocks from the restaurant. I followed in my car.

Twenty
minutes later, still shaken, I scurried through the ER and located a nurse who
told me Barrett was alive. If she could be stabilized, they would take her to
intensive care. No visitors allowed. I expressed shock that Barrett could even
be breathing at this point.

"Your
friend's lucky the paramedics got oxygen on her right away. That's probably
what saved her," the nurse said.

"What
could cause something like that?" I asked.

"An
overdose of muscle relaxants, a severe allergic reaction. Could be a lot of
things," she said before disappearing in a blur of white.

A
patient's advocate approached me, a young woman trained to deal with the
confused and the frightened. She introduced herself, patted me on the arm
reassuringly, and said she had Barrett's notebook and would notify her family
and the studio. Barrett had been assimilated into the great medical machine,
and there was nothing for me to do now but go home.