“Don’t forget what the doc said,” I reminded Kylie.
“He’s nosy and likes to talk.”
“I mean the part about him being fragile. Be gentle.”
“You know me, Six. I’m as gentle as a kitten.”
She didn’t mean it to be any kind of a sexual reference, but the male brain doesn’t need innuendo to get it thinking about sex. My mind flashed to our first month in the police academy. Before Spence came back into the picture. Kylie MacDonald was more tigress than kitten.
“You probably have a problem preying on the mentally ill,” she said. “I don’t. Follow my lead.”
She eased toward Freud, then stopped a few feet away, within earshot.
“I thought Gabriel would be here,” she said to me.
“Gabriel who?” I said.
“The film director,” she said. “Are you new here? I thought everyone knew him.”
Freud turned away from the window. “Excuse me,” he said. “You looking for Gabriel?”
Kylie smiled, perky and happy to find a helpful soul.
“Yeah. Hi. I’m Kylie.”
“I’m J.J.,” he said. “What are you looking for Gabriel for?”
“I’m an actress. He’s a director. Duh.”
J.J. laughed. Crazy or not, he was as susceptible to Kylie’s charm as the rest of hetero mankind. “I know him,” J.J. said. “Are you in one of his movies?”
“I wish,” Kylie said. “I’m auditioning. Is there anything you can tell me that would help me nail the part?”
“Let’s sit on the porch,” he said. “We can smoke out there.”
The two of them stepped through a pair of French doors onto a narrow porch with outdoor furniture as run- down as the indoor stuff.
J.J. sat on a wicker rocker and Kylie sat on a bench across from him. I hovered in the background.
J.J. shifted the two cigarettes to his right hand, but made no move to light them. “Gabriel is a difficult director,” he said. “When you audition, never ad-lib. I’m serious. Always do the script as writ. He hates it when somebody tries to rewrite him. Like one night at dinner, we were supposed to have meat loaf, but they gave us fried chicken. He went ballistic, screaming, ‘Who rewrote this scene?’”
“He sounds dedicated.”
“No, Kylie. Scorsese is dedicated. Gabriel is just crazy.”
“I still want to audition,” Kylie said. “Where is he?”
“Gone. Vanished. Poof-just disappeared into thin air. One night he walks into the dayroom-some of us were watching that show with the Japanese robots-do you watch that?”
“No. Is it good?”
“If you like robots, yeah. Anyway, Gabriel, he just walks in and announces that he’s finished shooting all the wacko-people shit in his script. He says we’re all stars, but he can’t promise who’s going to be in the final cut until he edits it. The next morning he was out of here.”
“Did you ever see the script?”
“No. The only ones who were ever allowed to see it were Gabriel and Lexi.”
“Who’s Lexi?”
“His girlfriend.”
“Do you know her last name?”
J.J. shook his head. “No. It’s just the one name, like she’s so famous that she doesn’t need a last name. Like Oprah. Except most people know it’s Winfrey.”
“Is Lexi still here?”
“No. She never lived here. But I bet he’s with her. They go everywhere together. You know what I think?” he said, gesturing with the cigarette hand.
“Tell me.”
“I think Gabriel doesn’t have to be locked up in a place like this. I think he only came here to shoot scenes for his movie.”
“I’m surprised they let him bring a camera in here,” Kylie said.
J.J. looked at her like she was nuts. “There’s no camera,” he said. “It’s all in here.” He tapped his forehead.
“The movie…” Kylie took a second to reprocess the information. “The movie is
J.J. shrugged. “Hey, I told you-the guy is crazy.”
Chapter 49
Lexi had found his hiding place months ago. It was in the desk. His desk-the one piece of furniture he had brought to her apartment.
She had been looking for the stapler, opened the bottom drawer too fast, and pulled it out completely. The drawer was half the length of the others. It had a false back.
And there they were, stashed in his secret space. Letters. Lots of them.
Obviously they had to be from other women. Gabe had girlfriends before he met her. Still, it pissed her off that he had saved them, and worse yet, hid them from her.
She put the drawer back. The letters were none of her business. She made a vow never to read them. That lasted about ten minutes. She came up with a compromise. She’d read two or three just to get the flavor of the other girls. Maybe see how she stacked up. That would be enough. Unless any of them were written after she and Gabe were a couple. Then there would be hell to pay.
She pulled out the drawer and grabbed a handful of envelopes. They weren’t from women. They were business letters. From movie studios, television networks, production companies, directors, actors. She read a half dozen.
They were all the same-thanks but no thanks. Rejection letters. Hundreds of them, some more than ten years old. How sad.
In the months that had passed, she hadn’t said a word. She wished she could talk to him about the letters, maybe make him feel better about himself, but that would mean admitting she had read them.
And now, she had made his life even more miserable. She bungled the robbery scene. She so much wanted to be a part of his movie, and as soon as he said yes, she screwed up.
She had to make it up to him. She
She clicked on Microsoft Word, opened a new document, and began typing.
ALT. SCENE:
Chapter 50
Captain Delia Cates sat in silent meditation with her right elbow digging into the arm of her desk chair, her
