Hollywood Stuff (11 page)

“How do we know the shakers belong to Bix? The first editions are Lou’s. In his office, he had paperweights and letter openers. He was a pack rat. We assumed the glass was Bix’s, but why? Men collect Depression glass, don’t they?”

“Of course,” said Tim. “A client of mine, this guy Sheldon who used to be a dealer? He and his wife have the most extensive collection of green glass I’ve ever seen.”

Jane took a deep breath. She had been viewing all of this through only one lens. She had made the assumption that Bix was a target, but what if it was Lou all along? Jeb’s reaction upon confronting the late Lou Piccolo was hardly that of a grief-stricken friend. Perhaps the whole B Room cabal wanted Lou dead for some reason and Bix was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Jane hoped they would get to see Bix before everyone else arrived. She didn’t relish being the one to tell her about Lou Piccolo, but that would be a small trade-off for getting the answers to a few questions without the entire B Room as the audience and bodyguards. And if Bix was still groggy, Jane would talk to Skye. It was clear to Jane that Skye’s loyalty was to Bix more than to the group. And if she had been pacing all morning in the family waiting room, she would be ready for some company.

Jane and Tim stopped outside Bix’s room and listened. There were voices, low and solicitous. Of course the group would be there. They had probably raced over directly from the flea market. Jane tapped lightly on the door and opened it. Skye looked up from where she was sitting in the chair next to the empty bed. She had a knitting project sitting in her lap, something loopy and soft in lavender and pale yellow. The person to whom she had been speaking was just behind the door. Jane turned and saw a man with black curly hair wearing a Yankees baseball cap. He looked from Skye to Jane to Tim, who had walked in behind her, and then back to Skye.

“It’s Jane Wheel and Tim Lowry, so you can put that silly thing away now,” said Skye, shaking her blond hair and wagging a finger at the man.

Jane looked back and saw that the man, who was now looking back and forth from Jane to Tim, looked even more nervous. His hands were shaking. Particularly the one that was holding the gun pointed first at Jane, then at Tim.

“I told you to put that thing away. Jane’s going to help all of us, so you don’t have to shoot your foot off proving you’re a macho guy who can protect us all.”

“Shut up, Skye, I know how to use this if I have to,” said the man in a low raspy whisper.

“Oh, Lou, you couldn’t shoot your way out of a Gucci shopping bag,” said Skye, with that ringing laugh that was her trademark as Celie on
Southpaw and Lefty.

“Who?” asked Jane and Tim at the same time.

“Meet Lou Piccolo.The man who wants to buy your story rights,” said Skye. Looking at the gun and once again laughing, she added,” Or else.”

“Okay, I’m officially confused,” said Tim. “I thought you told me that Lou Piccolo—”

“Had red hair? I don’t know where I got that idea,” Jane said, laughing her best okay-I’m-confused-too-but-I’m-trying-something-here-don’t-ask-questions-old-pal sort of laugh. Jane stuck her hand out to shake Lou’s hand, then dropped it when she remembered that people holding guns don’t usually extend themselves for the meet-and-greet.

“Put it away, Lou,” said Skye,” and talk to Jane. She isn’t going to help a crazy man. And you are definitely acting like a crazy man.”

Or a frightened one. Jane could see that his hands, with gun and without, were still trembling. “Maybe I can help, but like all those cliché private eyes in mystery novels, I think a lot better when there isn’t a gun pointed at me.”

Lou put the gun on the floor next to his leather briefcase and took a deep breath. He almost smiled.

“That’s a cliché? I must have used that line a hundred times in
He’s for Hire
and nobody ever told me that.”

Lou took off his cap and rubbed his head. He looked like someone who hadn’t been sleeping. “Hell of a way to meet someone,” he said, looking at both Tim and Jane. “Sorry. I heard some news that scared the…that scared me…and I guess, according to Skye, getting hold of a gun was an overreaction.”

“The news you heard,” said Jane. “Was it about Bix getting hurt?”

“No,” said Lou. “I mean, that’s terrible, but that was an accident, right?”

Bix must still be in surgery. Or the recovery room. Although Jane didn’t know what kind of personal relationship Bix had with Lou, she felt that he couldn’t have seen her yet. Even if he wasn’t part of the B Room, Bix couldn’t have hidden her own fears about the prop department incident. She looked too vulnerable lying in that hospital.

“Wasn’t it?” Lou looked at Skye. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh heavens, Lou, you come in here like a cowboy, showing off your new toy and acting like you’re Clint Eastwood or something—when am I supposed to tell you what’s really going on?” Skye tossed her head and used her hands to accent the question, and Jane realized a real dilemma for successful television actresses. Everything Skye did was a gesture she had perfected in front of the camera. Every pout and laugh and smile and flip of her hair reminded Jane of Celie on
Southpaw and Lefty.
It was bad enough that an actress probably couldn’t get away from a popular character she had played in order to get more work; what about finding some kind of real balance in her personal life? Because everything about her was associated with a fictional character, how could she ever appear genuine?

“Where is Bix?” asked Tim. “It’s after three. Shouldn’t she be back from surgery?”

Skye shook her head. “Late start,” she said. “I got a different surgeon to come in. Did they really think they were going to get away with any old cutter on Bix?”

Lou patted Skye on the shoulder and nodded, clearly grateful to her that she had taken care of business.

“De Niro’s?” asked Tim.

“Better,” said Skye. “I found the guy who—”

Before she could elaborate on the doctor she had brought in, one of the floor nurses entered and motioned for Skye to come with her.

Lou watched her go, waited for the door to close, then moved closer to Jane and Tim.

“I got to talk fast, Jane, and I’m sorry to lay all of this on you. I just don’t want Skye to hear it. Bix is practically a mom to her. You know about the B Room stuff? The one-for-all-and-all-for-one crap?”

“They obviously take care of each other,” said Jane.

“More than that,” said Lou. “First show Bix and I did together, she could never work late on Tuesdays because it was the night the B Room met—like a frigging secret society or something. Jeb ran meetings and they all kept each other in business. If one of them was on a show that went down, somebody else folded them in, partnered up with them on a script until they got work again. I mean, in some ways it was cool, you know? In this town, you’re as good as your last project, and since we’re all getting older…I mean, we’re of the age that

we’re priced right out of the business. Young guys come into town every day willing to start at minimum and we’re all in a different bracket, so we don’t get hired. We’re like ballplayers, you know? Rookies are ready and willing to come in and take our spots. We’re the creaky old-timers.”

“How did you and Bix team up?” asked Tim.

“Did you ever have a job on
S and L
?” asked Jane.

“I was kicking around town as a stuntman, believe it or not, and my uncle was one of the directors on the last season of
S and L.
I banged up my knees pretty bad and needed to find something else to do. At an
S and L
party, I hit it off with Bix and we ended up writing a couple things together and one of our scripts made it into development. Bix and I had a thing for a while, but then we realized we were much better friends than we were parts of a couple,” Lou said, looking toward the door.

He leaned forward to continue. “Listen, bottom line here. I’m a hack. Bix gets the ideas, I pound things out with her, and I do a hell of a pitch, but she’s the story person. But even story people, good story people, get dry, you know? A year ago, we start getting letters with story ideas in them. Whoever’s sending us the letters says we can write them up as treatments, have them for free, do what we want with them. Someday he might want to get into the business, but not now. Maybe we’ll help when he’s ready. In the meantime, anything we like, we can use. Crazy, right? We’re throwing the letters away, but they keep coming, and one day we’re desperate to come up with something for this actress we got a deal with. Bix fishes out the last letter and reads the thing. It’s got everything—a whole pitch for a series, pages of character descriptions, story ideas for two seasons. Incredible. I mean, it’s a lot of work. And it’s great.”

“So you pitched it,” said Jane,” as your own.”

“Yes and no,” said Lou. “Bix thought we were going into the meeting with the one lame idea we had, and after we pitched it and the exec shook her head and said, ‘Got anything else?,’

Bix started to say no and I shushed her and brought out the mystery pages. I gave the pitch of my life on this show. It was easy because it was all laid out for me. I put our names on it with a Mr. X as the third writer. I told Bix that the guy’d come out of the woodwork if the thing sold, so we better be prepared.”

“You sold it?” asked Tim.

“Yup, went into development. Two other series, too. Then we started getting other kinds of letters. Crazy stuff the person wanted to get on the air. Wanted us to support certain causes, just random stuff, but oddball. Letters started getting more and more threatening. Bix wanted to go to Jeb and that B Room coven with it and I said no. Told her she didn’t need to give them one more thing to tie her to them. She didn’t like that and we had a big fight. She went to Jeb, of course, and I went to the Tuesday meeting, too, and I could see how this was going to go down. Jeb started saying that it was clear that I was the dead weight in the partnership, I had insisted that we
borrow
these story ideas and pass them off as our own. He was planning for me to bow out of Bix Pix, taking a kind of artistic dive and allowing Bix to keep her golden reputation.

“And you know what? That was fine with me. I’d land on my feet. I didn’t care one way or another about my
writerly integrity
or any of that crap. This was television, for Christ’s sake. Then we got a letter that said it was time to give credit where credit was due. And I was okay with that, too. But the writer started accusing us of not wanting to have anything to do with him. We wrote back to this post office box all the time and I started trying to watch it, you know, see if I could put a real face on the guy.”

“How do you know it’s a guy?” asked Jane. “You keep saying it’s a man, but the writer never gave a name or an identity, right?”

“Referred to himself as a guy in one of the early letters, so we just started picturing a him. Never saw anybody at the post office box, but I only went a couple of times. Anyway, the guy said he was tired of giving us everything and it was time for payback. We offered to pay, hell, we had set aside a third of the money on everything for him. My agent thought we were nuts—he had an account for what he called the phantom writer. We told him we’d take him on as a partner, anything…but it was like he was arguing with somebody who we didn’t know—his own voices. We sure as hell weren’t arguing, but the last letter said somebody was going to have to be killed off if the series were to continue.”

“And you don’t have a series on air right now….” “I was almost back when I got a phone message that somebody was found murdered at the Pasadena Flea Market today and Jeb told the B Room that I must have found my ghostwriter and killed him.”

“How would Jeb know who the guy was or that you had—” “There was this guy who did accuse me of stealing a story…he came around the office all the time. Everybody knew him, knew about his claim. Novelist. Different thing altogether. His novel came out around the same time I sold a script…first one I had written on my own. Not that good, but you know…good for me. Stories were similar, but because mine was out there, nobody wanted to touch movie rights for his novel. There was no way I knew his book. I collect
first editions,
for God’s sake, I don’t read
books.
Besides, my script was written way ahead of his book and it wasn’t all that original to begin with. Two brothers have a fight and one murders the other. Hello? Genesis anyone? Bible was way ahead of both of us on that one. He keeps coming into the office and demanding credit for my script. Hell, there isn’t even a movie yet.”

“Lou Piccolo’s back from Ojai…” said Jane, recalling the words that Jeb had whispered. That was what had made her think she was looking at the murdered Lou Piccolo.

“So Skye doesn’t know any of this?” asked Tim, peeking out the door. Jane and Lou both looked toward Tim and the door. “Don’t worry, she’s still at the nurses’ station. Looks like they have a bunch of people who want her autograph. Apparently everyone wants a picture, too, and every cell phone is also a camera out there…poor kid.”

“She’s a sport. Skye’s not really a part of those B Room drones. She just hangs with Bix. Good kid. She’d do anything for Bix and Bix has helped her plenty. She started acting when she was eight or something and her family tried to take all her money…just squeezed her dry. I think Bix is the only person who ever gave a damn about her.”

“I’ve got three quick questions,” said Jane.

Lou nodded.

“Were you in Ojai?”

“Yeah, I got a place there,” said Lou.

“Were you alone there? When did you get back, and can anyone vouch for your whereabouts this morning?”

“I was alone. Hung out at a used bookstore yesterday and maybe the guy’d remember me, but I don’t know. When I go there to work, I kind of tune out. I was supposed to be back for the meeting with you guys yesterday, but when Bix and I talked, she said to stay and work out the kinks in this other script, she could handle the initial meeting. Tell you the truth, I think she thinks I come on too strong. I’m impatient in meetings and sometimes I sound angry or something. She said you’d take some convincing and it might be better if she worked alone on this. I’m the pitch guy for networks, but not necessarily for people who are skittish about this business.”