Shocking True Story (6 page)

"Ann,"
I corrected him.

"Huh?"

"Ann. Not Jan."

"Yeah, right. Ann."

"Something over-the-top! Run-of-the mill cases just can't compete."

When I was ready, when it was all laid out, I would spring it on the pointy-nosed New Yorker whose yea or nay had hung my life out like a row of diapers on a saggy clothesline. I promised my wife, like a losing gambler who can't give up the craps table or the fat person who can't stop at one dish of ice cream, I would make one more stab at the genre.

"Valerie," I said, "this is our chance out of the middle class!"

My wife let out a sigh of exasperation. "When you used to say that I thought you meant
up
from the middle class," she said. "I didn't think we'd be dropping below it."

"Just one more, Val, and then I'll quit. Then I'll get a real job."

I had said that so often, even I thought the words were hollow. I was almost forty.
Four-oh
. I had held more part-time jobs than an alcoholic, yet drinking was never my problem. I had two beautiful and bright little girls who could do a crime scene analysis as good as any criminal science major—or at least I thought so. I had a wonderful wife who could no longer feign excitement over the free samples I brought home from my latest job. We still had a freezer full of chicken taquitos that I had been given in lieu of cash from my stint as a supermarket food-demo person. I had flipped burgers. I had sold RVs. I had done it all, and I only did so to get food on the table.

"When you said, 'Food on the table,'" I could hear Valerie saying, "'I thought you meant
groceries
, as in a variety of foodstuffs, not twenty-five
pounds
of taquitos.'"

"God, Val, how would I know old man Martinez was a scammer? His first name was
Jesus
!"

We had a lovely home in a wooded country setting with neighbors we cared about. We had fled the city for greener pastures because we wanted to and because we could. Just barely. Valerie commuted to call on clients for the artists she represented. Approaching twelve, our daughters, Taylor and Hayley, were making what every father considers the nightmarish but impossible-to-stop leap from girls to young women.

Even though I felt like I had not achieved much in the career I chose, I knew that as far as the Jetts of the world were concerned, I lived like a king. I had two vehicles, a computer, and a purebred dog that went to the groomer every single month. I even had a plasma TV. We went on vacations, though mostly to places where I could research a book. We lived a life that wasn't anybody's dream but our own.

Hedda underfoot, I took the last blue Mr. Freeze pop from its hiding place under a frozen pillow of tater tots and sat down at my Mac to type the title that would set the tone for the story that I would try to shape into a book. I tried several ideas, different titles and the subtitles that reminded the reader of what they were going to read, "Tell them and tell them what you told them," I heard over and over. I sucked the last bit of blue from the plastic tube and dropped it into the waste can. Hedda worked on a flea that was giving her grief at the base of her hot-dog-cropped tail.

It wasn't too bad. At least I felt it gave the editors what they were clamoring for:

Love You to Death:
The Positively Shocking True Story of Murder,
Obsession and a Wedding in Vegas.

By Kevin Ryan

I studied the title further, wondering if
Love You to Death
should be punctuated with an exclamation mark. Maybe the subtitle was a little off-the-wall, but I felt it truly fit the absurd nature of the story. It was ridiculous. Besides, if my editor didn't like it, he'd change the whole damn thing. He always did, anyway. I'd leave that decision in his hands. I just wanted to get on with it.

♦

I FOUGHT THE URGE TO TURN ON
The Rita Adams Show
. To start watching was to see an hour whirlpool into a black hole of wasted time. Instead, I made myself a pot of coffee and waited for the kitchen clock to hit three in the afternoon. I knew that Monica Maleng's masseuse finished working her over by 2:30 and Monica would be settled back into the sumptuous hunter green leather of her office chair at Green Light Pictures off Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

Before I tackled any project, I talked with Monica. She was a TV producer and also my ears and eyes to what television networks and cable companies were optioning. Monica had worked for seven years as
Rita
executive producer when Rita, rich with a five-year multimillion-dollar contract, spun her off to Green Light Pictures. I met Monica when I was on Rita's show promoting
Dead No More
, the true story of a Baltimore man who faked his own death so he and his wife could collect on life insurance benefits. The twist was that the wife had a lover and the two of them killed the supposedly already dead husband.

Green Light optioned the book as its first or second property. It looked good for
Dead No More.
I was certain it was going to be produced. I told Valerie to start picking out carpet samples (and upgrading the pad) for the living room. It went through four rewrites before it finally came together. Eddie Cibrian was slated to play the hapless husband; LeAnn Rimes, the murderous wife. Then rival Slash TV Network beat Green Light to the punch and did its own movie about a similar case that took place in Florida. Slash TV did the story without the rights to a book. Without paying a dime to the sources whose story they were telling.

They did it "public domain."

I loathed the very concept of public domain. Public domain meant that producers could send a screenwriter to the local library and courthouse, and cobble together a story based on what was in the public record—newspaper accounts, court documents, trial transcripts. It didn't matter how true it was, for they were always able to use the
Inspired by a True Story
tag line.
Inspired by
was a cannonball dive below
Based on
.

If TV people were the worst, than worst among them was Adena King. Years later, even typing her name gives me the creeps. She claimed to be a former series actress (actually, she appeared on
Law & Order SVU
in a courtroom scene and in
Home Improvement
as an audience member on
Tool Time
). She telephoned me out of the blue one afternoon to say she had read a copy of
Murder Cruise
before it had even been typeset.

"Kevin, don't get mad at me!" she said during the first call. "I love your work and I want
Murder Cruise
!"

"It isn't ready, and when it is my agent will send it to you."

"
Murder Cruise
is mine!"

"Not ready, sorry."

"Don't get angry, but I got a copy this morning!"

I thought I must have misheard her. The book wasn't available for months. "How?"

"It's done all the time, Kevin. It's called a 'slip it.' I had someone at your publisher's slip it to me."

"For money?"

"Guilty!" She laughed. It was an obnoxious, horsey laugh that sounded almost unearthly. I tried to imagine the face that went with the awful laugh.

I dialed my agent immediately after I hung up. She promised to look into it. The next day she called back with the bad news. Adena King had already shopped the book to everyone in town as if she already optioned it. I was stuck. I was ruined. No one wanted to work with Adena; no one wanted
Murder Cruise
.

I loathed the woman. She had burned my best chance for a TV movie before the book even hit grocery store racks. The topper was when a T-Mobile operator called to inform me that my "friend" Adena King had put me in her "calling circle" as a member of her Colleagues and Confidants Group.

"Take me out or I'm going to Verizon," I told the phone company solicitor. "I want out of her damn circle!"

Monica Maleng, on the other hand, had integrity. I trusted her. She was someone whose advice I sought when I considered taking on a new book project. She knew what the networks and cable companies were salivating for, and we had actually developed a couple of projects together.

At three on the dot, I called her.

It turned out there had been no time for a massage that afternoon. She had come back from a meeting at Lifetime that she said didn't go particularly well. The network that still reveled in true crime was feeling a bit of the backlash churned up by a family rights group calling for a kinder and gentler type of TV fare.

Monica was dejected. "Nobody wants any more stories on family members killing each other," she said. "It seems so unfair. The numbers for movies based on true stories are still solid. America is as bloodthirsty as ever. These network people go whichever way the wind blows."

"So I've heard," I stammered, before I launched into my pitch. "Two different guys plot murder for the love of a girl. She promises that she'll marry each one in Las Vegas. One guy shoots the other boyfriend, the boyfriend tells the police he was not only a victim but he was also an accomplice to the murder plot of the girl's ex-husband."

"Strong female characters?" Monica sounded very interested.

"Tougher than Charlize Theron in an ugly suit," I said. "The girl's mother is now in prison for plotting to kill her daughter's ex-husband. The daughter is in prison for attempted murder of her boyfriend and the conspiracy to kill her ex-husband."

"Good. Good. CAA is looking for something for Misty," Monica said.

I knew she was referring to Misty Wexler, the surgically augmented actress from
Texas Hold 'Em,
whose mega-producer father had helped turn her into a surprisingly formidable force in the crime-of-the-week television movie genre. She had played every side of the coin. She was a murderous cheerleader in
All for Sandi, Stand Up and Die!
She starred most recently as the victim of a stalker in
She's Being Watched
for Lifetime. She was arguably the worst actress in Hollywood. I couldn't stand her.

"She'd be perfect," I said. "She'd make a great Janet Lee Kerr."

"The mother? Who for the mother?"

"Megan Mullally," I suggested. "I read in
Entertainment Weekly
she's looking for a part where she can play bad."

"Never believe
EW
."

"Right."

"You know what I like best about your story?" Monica didn't let a beat pass for an answer. "It has the quality to it like the Texas cheerleading murdering mom that HBO produced before it got hung up on overhyped prestige pictures. It is ridiculous like the cheerleader movie. Imagine, a fellow gets shot, testifies against his girlfriend, sends her to prison, sends her mother to prison, and then becomes engaged to the girl, and to top it all off, he recants."

Her quick-draw words wore me out. The woman never came up for air.

"Is it what they're looking for?" I asked, mentally catching her breath for her.

"Tailor-made. Kevin. I'm talking mini here."

Mini to me always meant
many
, as in
more
bucks.

"No kidding. A miniseries?"

"Sure. The fact that no one was killed could be a major plus. It falls right into the networks' new philosophy for television movies. They want bloodless murder or something approximating that. They want the unbelievable, the sublimely ridiculous. No more mothers killing babies! No more children killing their parents. No more families killing each other. It's a new approach and I like it. Keep me posted and if you get something, promise me the first look, all right?"

I promised. We planned to talk later after a few weeks or so of additional research.

In my mind, Monica's words rang like a symphony of musical cash registers. Sweet, melodic, rich.

"I'm talking mini here."

Monday, July 21

VALERIE WAS PAYING THE BILLS when I returned home from a meeting with Connie Carter and the Community Relations staff at the Riverstone prison. I asked for more time with Connie, and the Powers That Be didn't feel I should have any. I also wanted another interview request sent to Connie's daughter, Janet. It was clear that these prison people regarded me as small potatoes. I was an annoyance to them. I sunk even lower as I realized I had no bragging value like
Maury.