The Kill Riff (3 page)

    "The nightmares?" She was interested. In more ways than one.

    "Those, too, Sara. I really think I can do it. And you've done all you can for me here. It's time for me to prove myself to the world." He sensed she was waiting, so he added, "Besides, I can't invite my shrink to dinner while I'm still a patient, can I?" It was a good diversionary wedge.

    "Mmm-hm."

    On her desk was a small stand-up calendar, courtesy of Mission Street Flowers. The next Monday was circled in green felt tip. That was the day Lucas had decided to become normal again.

    "This'll be the acid test of your ministrations," he opined lightly. "Technically, how am I?"

    "Good. Not self-destructive. Not suicidal. The extreme fits of depression are no more. There's just the nightmares to worry about. This place focuses your attention on them. I think you just need to get back to work." In a more conversational, personal tone, she said, "I'll have you know I've pored over your files for hours coming up with this brilliant summary, sir. And I think this place has done all it can for you."

    "And I've managed to develop a good healthy lech for my doctor, as well."

    Lucas did not know how important a factor that had been in his progress. His death wish, the product of the suicide of his wife and the death of his daughter, had finally been elbowed aside by something more life embracing.

    Sara had felt the attraction, too, a reciprocal force that manifested itself in a thousand little flirtatious gestures. One reason she wanted to get Lucas back in the world had nothing to do with his files and charts.

    "Like, I had this other dream. I was getting gobbled up by a big green iguana with a name tag that read 'Sara' on it. Mean anything, doctor?"

    "Ho, ho, ho," she said, deadpan. "That does not deserve the satisfaction of a retort."

    "Is it time for lunch yet?" It seemed Sara had been satisfied. Or adroitly misdirected. It was all the same to him.

    Papers rustled at the desk. The orange coal of the cigarette swooped from mouth level to light on the edge of a clunky geode ashtray.

    "We're done. You've given me everything you can on the dream. It fits with all preceding. Hie yourself hence."

    Lucas smiled to himself in the dark. It was time to stop dreaming. And start doing, at last.

    

    

    THE NORTH HOLLYWOOD OFFICES OF Kroeger Concepts, Limited, had maintained an unchanged facade since the completion of its construction, some seven years past. On Vineland Avenue, a stone's lob from the Black Tower of Universal Studios, Kroeger had flourished with Lucas Ellington on their squad. Without him for the past year, it had fared comfortably enough. Or that was how it seemed. The facade leaked no secrets.

    Lucas stood on the curb of the Vineland crosswalk through four changes of the traffic light, watching the building. Nothing had altered unduly here. At least nothing obvious enough to hurt him.

    Kroeger Concepts had been born in 1970 as Burton Kroeger's ticket to the movie industry. Burt was a film buff, mesmerized, like many, by the idea of actually dipping into the filmmaking mainstream. Then he discovered the truth about his fourth favorite thing (after sex, spicy food, and sports cars). By daylight, the industry was a fetid cesspool of graft and lowball deals, a sausage factory run by soulless accountants and bankers who chewed and spit out creative talent like old chaw. In Burt's deathless, impassioned words, the business "spent all its time whoring with starlets and snorting dream dust and fellating the unions and bending over for the Mafia." Upon acknowledging this Great Truth, Burt had opted to make the giants approach him, rather than go begging to people he despised. He founded his own company, a publicity and promotional outfit, and things were bone lean through 1974, when two fundamental changes were implemented. The company got mixed up with three promising movies, Burt hit the technical journals hard, with a series of creative advertisements that built on reader familiarity with the previous ad. The spots were aimed not at the public, but at the professionals. Kroeger's ads for film stocks and new camera lenses tripled the company's revenue in eight months. How to induce executives to seriously consider recruitment drives from other studios? How to prove that saving the imbibition Technicolor process could be made cost-effective, so current color films would not fade to red within the decade? Then the promising movies carted off a number of minor Academy Awards. All that was the first thing that happened to the company. The second thing was Lucas Ellington.

    By 1978, Lucas' drafting table served more for strategizing and less for drawing.

    By 1978, Kroeger Concepts commanded industry respect in the only way that counts in Hollywood-they were making money fist over pocket with high-quality, deftly targeted promotions.

    By 1978, Burt Kroeger was telling the studios how to go about their business, and he was happy. Disillusioned, but gruffly happy. Lucas remembered a sweltering August afternoon when he and Burt had bellowed laughter at a trade article detailing Kroeger's "meteoric rise" to prosperity.

    "I thought meteors fell down, not up." Burt clinked his glass with Lucas'. Perrier-Jouet.

    "Yeah, and they flame out on the way." Kroeger had founded its reputation on beheading cliches like "meteoric rise."

    Lucas took time off to function as an independent contractor, redesigning Kroeger's offices for renovation. On a boulevard of eyesores, the new Kroeger building caught the eye the way a snappy commercial is intended to. It rose from a man-made hummock of real greenery that was landscaped to blend with the planes of the structure. The reflectorized wall of windows was either ahead of its time or still a mistake. The structure was flat and efficient without being a crackerbox. The rectangular, high-tech, soft-lit sign had anticipated the new billboard ordinances. Kroeger's self-proclamation did not despoil what remained of the city's skyline. It was mounted on a sandstone planter base next to the redbrick front walk and was modest enough to hint quietly at the company's true level of success. It prompted a tiny pang in Lucas now.

    The receptionist's switchboard rig was new, too, and no larger than an electric typewriter had been in the olden days. The office decor had been logically reconsidered. In the beginning it had been a riot of paneling and hanging plants. There seemed to be an unspoken office pact around Hollywood that required the maintenance of a lush indoor jungle in every building. Maybe it was to counteract the smog level in the valley. The jungle wearied Burt quickly. It too readily reminded him of the jungle of paperwork cluttering up his office. In sober tones the employees later recited as a sort of company punch line, Burt bustled into the foyer one afternoon and made his pronouncement.

    "The Black Lagoon has got to go."

    Today there were still decorative plants to be seen. But each one drew the eye to it. They were more individualized. Burt's instinct for arrangement and subtle dramatics had prevailed. Now, the reception area left on visitors the impression that here was a compan lacking even an ounce of fat.

    Burt himself left a similar impression. He was a compact, honed man topping off at a neat five feet eight. His eyes were hawklike and direct, oiled ball bearings o intensity, a soft gray that accommodated a variety o moods and complemented the iron-colored thunder cloud of fluffy hair that seemed to float around, rather than issue from, his head. Around the office, his voice always preceded his entrance. It was his advance guard now, booming from the corridor leading back to the office maze. Lucas knew he did not need to be announced.

    "Emma, is he here yet? It's ten after, and the son of a bitch hasn't-''

    "The son of a bitch beat you to the punch, Burt," called Lucas, feeling light-headed and happy.

    Burton Kroeger burst into the reception area just behind his own pleased blurt of laughter. He was wearing a big, stupid country grin, and his eyes were alight with welcome. "Lucas! Goddamn my eyeballs, son, it's great to see you!"

    Lucas executed a modest bow. He couldn't chase the smile off his own face.

    "Emma, Lucas and I are out to lunch for the rest of the day." He clapped his hands around Lucas's shoulders; big, facile hands that could smother a grapefruit. "This is one of them extravagant business lunches you've heard so much about, Lucas." He was genuinely charged up by getting his cohort back.

    "You mean you're going to spring for real food?" Lucas asked this with arched eyebrows, mostly for Emma's benefit. She was still trying to puzzle him out. She was new, and he was an unknown sum to her. All she would have heard was that this was the guy who'd spent time in the psychiatric hospital. Her expression was unruffled, amused, interested. Lucas trusted that she was sharp. After all, she had to put up with Burt on a day-to-day basis.

    "Real food?" said Burt. "Hell, no! It's Dos Equis and Mexican chow from Ernie's for you!"

    "Should I alert the police?" Emma put in. Lucas snickered while Burt flushed a brief red.

    "The touch is yours," Burt allowed her grandly. After a precise beat, he continued: "That proves people who work here are touched. Touche."

    "Gasp." Emma rolled her eyes. They were brown, heavy-lidded, sensual. "It was nice meeting you, Mr. Ellington."

    "Oh, yeah," Burt said. "Emma, this here is Mr. Lucas Ellington, my partner. Lucas, Emma. Now can we dispense with this amenities crap and please haul ass outta here? I need to discover some food! God damn, it's good to see you!" Another hearty whack on the shoulder staggered Lucas. Then Burt had his aviator shades on and was out the tinted-glass doors.

    Lucas tossed Emma a little salute and chased the whirlwind.

    Every third booth at Ernie's Taco House was occupied with fallout from the lunch-special crowd. Burt steered Lucas as far away from the jabbering TV sets at the bar as was feasible. The first uncapped round of beers with salted glasses came, and it took no time for Burt to boil their conversation down to a lean series of questions and answers. Lucas was prepared for it.

    "Hope you understand about the… visits." For this, Burt had toned down the volume of his usually brash public persona.

    "Don't think about that." Lucas tilted his glass and watched the dark beer form a thin diagonal head. "There aren't many pleasant, euphemistic ways you can tell people you're visiting a friend in the psycho school."

    For Burt, one or two such visits to Olive Grove would be all his sense of loyalty and friendship could stand. Burt hated situations he lacked the power to grab in both hands and amend. Lucas had decided long ago that Burt did not need to be slapped in the face or hammerlocked into unproductive guilt. The choice of Olive Grove, over a hundred miles north of Los Angeles, had neatly abetted his decision to absolve most of the people he knew. The drive was just far enough to be inconvenient. This guaranteed a measure of privacy, without an overt edict demanding that no one was to see him. Lucas had not committed himself so that his friends could see him in a stimulating new environment.

    "I'd prefer that everybody just continue with the gentle fantasy that I was on an unspecified, extended leave of absence," he said, "not squirreled away for my own good because a lot of bad publicity and bad events had inspired me to do myself in." He spoke calmly, rationally. Now it was Burt who had to be convinced, won over. He had to see that the topic was not taboo. Discussion would upset no fragile latticework of sanity. There was no insanity here. That was something all the folks in smocks had insisted upon. Even Sara, bless her heart.

    Burt surfaced from his Dos Equis. It had always been his contention that conventional beer bottles were not designed to hold enough. The food came too fast; it always did at Ernie's. The mustachioed waiter bade them to enjoy. Burt's eyes bored into the man's back as he zipped away. The waiter stiffened, as if stung by a bolt of psychic energy, then returned with two more beers.

    "Do I have to be nice to you?"

    Lucas was slightly taken aback by this. "No, Burt, of course not. Fire away."

    "Just between you and me. As buddies and vets and partners. If it was me, my daughter, I'd've blown that fucker away." He dug into a mess of green chile enchiladas and rellenos stuffed with beef as he spoke. His grave delivery had no perceptible influence on his appetite.

    "Those times I did see you, I was afraid to talk about stuff like that. Or mention how the papers seemed to ignore everything that happened. Let some homo actor croak from AIDS, or some director get caught dipping a kindergartner, and it's page one, lots of embarrassing tape on
Hollywood Weekend Wrapup
. Thirteen kids dead at that concert, and they treat it like a plane crash. One mention, and onward to the happy news." He bolted a vast gulp of beer, to clear his pipes. "Ridiculous. No investigation. No nothing."

    "I heard the band broke up," Lucas said. His voice was very quiet, without irony.

    "Hm. And I repeat-if it'd been me at that courthouse, I'd have blown the fucker away. I don't think I could've controlled myself the way you did."

    A ghost of a smile made a brief visitation on Lucas's face. He sawed into one side of a deep-fried chimichanga, and steam perked out. "What would that have accomplished? It would have made me the heavy. Big bad distraught daddy blows away rock star in fit of passion. Very sordid, Burt. Unclean. I had the effect I wanted, I think."

    He chewed food as his mind chewed memory, and he saw it all happen again: Gabriel Stannard, Whip Hand's top gun, was striding down the steps of the Beverly Hills Courthouse, flanked by his attorneys, gofers, munchkins, and teeny-boppers. He was wearing a severely cut European suit with a plain shirt and tie, all business. But his vest was a metallic LSD paisley, and on his feet were bright red cowboy boots with wiggly gray snakes stitched across the tops. The snakes had emerald eyes.