The Martini Shot (25 page)

“Leave her alone,” I said, pointedly.

“The money,” said Wayne.

I un-slung my book bag and dropped it at his feet. He picked the bag up, unzipped it, and reached inside.

“You,” he said, sharply tossing the bag aside.

“Wayne?” said Cody.

“It's empty,” said Wayne.

In the corner of my eye I saw Cody furtively touching a pad on his cell. Momentarily, a phone rang in the back bedroom.

“You stay right where you are, slick,” said Wayne. “I gotta get that.”

I knew where he was going and what he was about to do. I looked at Barry with apology. He looked back at me, both angry and juiced. But he was a professional, and kept up his end. Barry had draped his arm over the back of the couch, behind Cody's shoulder.

When Wayne returned there was a gun pressed against the leg of his jeans.

As he walked into the room, Barry moved quickly, clamping down on Cody's neck in a choke hold and pulling him across the couch.

Wayne pointed the gun at my chest.

“Looks like we got a problem,” I said.

Wayne's head swiveled toward the couch, where Barry had Cody's neck in the channel-lock of his massive forearm. Cody was already losing color. He was beginning to kick his feet.

“Pull that piece out your dip and drop it,” said Wayne, panic in his voice.

I did it slowly. It fell with barely a sound to the hardwood floor.

“It ain't even real,” said Wayne, with wonder.

“Your brother's not gonna make it,” I said. “You might get us, but Cody will be dead, too. Think fast, Wayne. You don't have much time.”

My knees were weak, and I'd felt the blood drain from my face. I looked at the gun in his hand, a snub-nosed revolver. It was why I came, and all I needed.

“I'll kill him, Wayne,” said Barry, with great calm. “He damn near gone already.”

“
Don't
kill him,” said Wayne.

“Break the cylinder on that gun and let the shells fall.”

Wayne emptied the revolver. Barry released his grip on Cody's neck and pushed on his back. Cody rolled off the couch and struggled for breath. I moved forward and kicked the rounds out of Wayne's reach. They skittered across the floor.

Barry got up off the couch. I picked up my empty book bag and the prop gun.

“Fuck,”
said Wayne, to no one in particular.

“Leave the girl alone,” I said.

Barry and I backed out of the house. We crossed the yard quickly and got into the Mercury. Wayne had not followed.

“Drive,” I said to Kenny. “You can take it slow.”

But Kenny slammed the console shifter into low and pinned the gas. The big Mercury lifted and growled as I was thrown back against the bench seat. Kenny left rubber on the street as we came out of a fishtail and finally straightened. He upshifted to drive and slowed as he neared the turn ahead. In the rearview I saw his eyes, bright and alive as a seventeen-year-old boy's.

Barry turned to me from the bucket. He was not pleased. “I oughta kick your monkey ass. Bringin a toy gun to a situation like that. You shoulda told me…
shit,
you could've got me killed.”

“I needed Wayne to pull that revolver. I had to provoke him.”

“You did
that.
”

“I handled it,” I said, defensively. “Told him to break that cylinder and let the shells fall. Right?”

“
I
said it.
I
told that cracker to unload his pistol. You was so scared, you couldn't say shit.” Barry looked down at the crotch of my jeans and smiled. “Boy, you even pissed your
got
damn pants.”

I looked down. There was a wet spot there.

Barry began to laugh, and Kenny joined him. They were laughing still as we passed through the tollbooth and rolled onto the river bridge.

I stared out the window at the shining lights strewn on the bridge suspenders, and through the rails at the black water below. The plastic pistol was still in my shaking hand.

I woke up in the bed of my suite alone the next morning. I had called Annette when I got home, but she was out or didn't pick up.

After I'd dressed, showered, and had breakfast, I phoned Detective Joe Gittens. He was not happy to hear from me. It was Sunday, and he was about to go to church.

“I've got something for you on the Branson murder,” I said.

“Oh. You've
got
something.”

“Do you have a pen?”

“For God's sakes.”

“Listen carefully: twin brothers, two white boys who go by Wayne and Cody, were responsible for Skylar's death.”

After a silence, he said, “You happen to have a last name on these twins?”

“No. But I have their address and the tag number of their vehicle.”

I gave Gittens the information, along with the make and model of the car.

“I'm guessing they're renting the house. But you can find the landlord by going to the database search on properties. The owner can give you their full names.”

“For real? I didn't know that.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you gonna tell me why I should do this?”

“You said there weren't any shell casings found at the crime scene. Okay, the weapon could have been an automatic, and the killer might have picked up the casings after they'd been ejected, but I doubt it. There wasn't time. That means the murder gun was a revolver.”

“Okay…”

“I saw the gun, Detective. They still have it.”

“Why
would
they?”

“Because they're stupid. Because it was their daddy's gun and it has sentimental value. I don't know. But I
saw
it. I'm not certain of the caliber, but I'd say it was a thirty-eight.”

“
You'd
say. I don't suppose you're gonna tell me why you suspect them, or how you came to see this gun.”

“No, sir. You're gonna need to treat this as an anonymous tip.”

“You should have called the Crime Solvers line if you wanted to stay anonymous.”

“I called you.”

“I'm your man, huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Boy, do I feel special.” More dead air filled the line. “It's not much to go on. Sure not enough to get me a warrant.”

“You'll figure it out. Trust me, those are your guys.”

I heard a female voice call Gittens by his Christian name.

“I gotta go,” said Gittens. “My wife doesn't like to be late for service.”

“Stay in touch.”

“You don't have to worry about that, Ohanion. You and me are gonna talk again.”

I worked on the script for episode 114 for the rest of the day. I skipped lunch and drank hotel coffee, and as the afternoon sun blasted through my windows, the page count mounted. Usually, it wasn't this uncomplicated, but now I had only to sit there at my desk and type. It was easy.

That night, I walked up to Gino's, a bar and grill that was a half block from my hotel. It was Steak Night. I ordered a New York strip, medium rare, a wedge salad with bacon and blue cheese dressing, and a glass of California red. I sat at the stick and ate my dinner alone.

When I returned to my room, the message light on my phone was blinking. Annette had called. She wanted to know if she could come upstairs.

We sat on my couch and drank Merlot, listened to music and talked. I told Annette to lie back. I removed her shoes and put her feet up on my lap and massaged them. This relaxed her completely. Soon we were making love there, and on the carpeted floor, and on the bed. We came powerfully, almost at the same time, atop the sheets.

Afterward we stayed in bed and drank more wine in the candlelight. She asked me what I'd done the night before, and I told her everything. I couldn't lie to her. I couldn't even stretch the truth.

“Are you mad at me?” I said.

“No. And I'm not surprised.”

“Anyway, no one got hurt. It's over.”

“Is it?”

“I think so,” I said, but I knew she wasn't speaking of the event. She was telling me that she knew my nature.

“What was it like?” she said. “Was it a movie?”

“In a way. I don't even know what I said or didn't say when I went into that house. It's like I imagined half the shit that went down.” I had a sip of wine and placed the short glass on the nightstand. “I was scared, Annette.”

“I bet you liked that, too.”

“Maybe. But Barry wasn't afraid.”

“Barry's a gangster. You're just a guy.”

“You think so?”

“Just a stupid guy.”

There was no humor or affection in her tone.

We were combustible lovers, and we'd be together until the end of the shoot. But I'd lost her, I knew.

“Tonight was really beautiful,” I said.

She turned into me. “It was perfect.”

Call, as it always was on Mondays, was very early. I was up at four thirty a.m., due to be on set at six.

The long van ride to the first location was strange without Skylar. Gandy was with us, and though he was a good guy, we were still getting used to his taking our friend's place. Van Cummings made it more palatable by playing most of Danny O'Keefe's classic
Breezy Stories,
through a cable from his iPhone. Van had introduced the record to Skylar, and it had become one of his favorites. As “Portrait in Black Velvet” came forward, all of us listened with contemplation and regret.

We arrived on set and I received my sides. First scene up was in a bar that catered to females (INT: DOLLY DAGGER'S, DOWNTOWN—NIGHT) and had Meaghan O'Toole (as Mackenzie Hart) interviewing a “friend” of the victim who'd been murdered by the shoe fetishist. The network liked the idea of setting the scene in a gay bar where the women were attractive and could be shown in provocative outfits (“lipstick lesbians,” it said, so artfully, in the script). At the same time, the suits were keenly aware that they had to portray the culture with sensitivity and correctness, if only because that was the way the country's winds were blowing.

Meaghan arrived on set wearing an outfit that was unusually feminine for her, probably because she wanted to avoid any suggestion that she herself was butch in any way. The truth was, no one knew or cared about her sexual proclivities. Most of us assumed she abstained, which had earned her many colorful nicknames—Corncob, Sahara, and the like. Or, as our rigging gaffer so indelicately put it, “That woman has cobwebs in her snatch.”

Bar scenes required many extras, props, fake beer and wine, fake ice, and fake cigarettes, and they created matching issues with crossings and background. We were also shooting day-for-night. Everyone was working very hard. The scene was rehearsed, blocked, lit, and slated. We rolled the first take.

“More shmoke!” shouted Eagle to the effects guy, whose sole job was to work the smoke machine and blow it into the room. Scandi DPs loved smoke for some reason, and in the monitor the shot looked like a scene from
Backdraft
or something out of an Adrian Lyne film. But bars did get smoky, and the look of the master could be corrected in post.

I was more concerned with the acting and the tone of the scene. The day player cast as the “friend” was very good, too good in fact for Meaghan, who didn't care to be upstaged. Meaghan was very clever, and she turned her head in profile, even when she was supposed to be looking directly at her fellow actress, so that her face would be visible in every shot, thereby making herself the focal point of the scene, something we would not be able to fix in the editing room.

Lomax caught it and said to me, “Should we say something?”

“Let it go. Just get a couple of clean close-ups on the friend.”

I didn't have it in me that day to pick a fight.

During lunch, served in the auditorium of a Masonic temple near set, Barry approached me at my table and asked if he could see me outside. Beside me was Kenny, who ate his fried chicken and pretended not to hear our conversation. I followed Barry out to the street, to a blind corner where he handed me a plain brown envelope.

“There's your money,” he said. “My nephew coughed it up. Too late, but still.”

“Forget about this,” I said. “And thanks.”

Barry said, “Right.”

Indeed, neither he nor Kenny mentioned the incident at the house again.

An office PA came to set with a large FedEx envelope at my request late in the afternoon. I went to my trailer and wrote a note to Skylar's connect in California, telling him that this took care of the debt and that his business with Skylar was concluded. I added that I would consider any further contact from him or any of his agents a breach of etiquette, and if they did so, I would contact the law. I put the money in the envelope, used the Los Angeles address that Laura Flanagan had given me, and sent the package back to the office with the PA, with instructions to overnight it immediately.

Walking back to set, I saw Laura, sitting on the steps of the costume trailer, smoking a Marlboro. She pitched the smoke aside and stood to meet me as I approached.

“Victor.”

“Hey.”

“I'm glad I caught you. I'm leaving in a few days.”

“Where you headed?”

“I took a job up in Brooklyn. A friend hooked me up. It's an HBO show; they shoot mostly at the Steiner Studios.”

“A period thing, right?”

“Yeah, it's set in the twenties.”

“That'll be fun for you. Creative. With the costumes, and all.”

“I hope so. I should get out of here, don't you think?”

“It's best.”

Laura slipped off her aviators and placed them atop her head, so she could look me in the eyes. “Thank you for putting me up in the hotel, Vic. And for everything. You've been a good friend.”

“Don't forget me on your rise to the top.”