Show Business is Murder

Now they were both on the bubble, waiting to see if their shows would be renewed. Who would sink when the bubble burst, and who would float.

He wondered where Lou was now. Most days when his neighbor wasn’t working he sat by his pool, drinking.

“I’m so glad these little fellas are back in style,” he had told Mitch one night as he poured another martini. It was the tail-end of one of Lou’s many parties and they were sitting beside the pool. “A few years ago if you ordered anything but wine or spring water in this town they pegged you for a drunk.”

Lou was a drunk, of course, getting smashed almost every night. But to his credit, it had never affected his work. Some critics suggested that that had to do with the quality of his work at the best of times, but you couldn’t argue with good box office and Lou had always had it. Always, that was, until a few years ago, and then he had flawlessly made the jump to television.

“That’s the thing about styles, Mitch,” he had continued. “They can change overnight. Take you and me, for instance.”

“What about us?”

“We’re actors of a certain style.” Lou waved a hand. “I don’t mean a school of acting or anything fancy like that. I mean that you and I are both born to play action heroes. Nobody is ever going to ask jokers who look like us to play Hamlet.” He bent over and picked up a big knife, one of at least a dozen of the ugly things he kept lying around his house.

Lou’s show was called Cutting Edge and he played a bodyguard whose favorite weapon was a throwing knife. He swore he kept them around the house for practice, to look more natural in front of the camera, but Mitch thought it was mostly a publicity gimmick. The photographers loved to show him sitting by the pool, flashing that famous smile and dangling one of those lethal-looking blades like a toy. Mitch had also noticed that at the end of the evening when Lou wanted his guests to leave he could always start tossing blades around.

“How does that relate to style?” Mitch had asked.

“Sometimes action heroes are fashionable. Sometimes sensitive weepy guys are more popular. Four years ago my show went on the air and caught the tail end of the last macho revival. Now your show is fighting against the tide.”

Lou had sipped at his drink. “The big trend today is the so-called reality programming-quiz shows, talk shows, lock-ten-people-in-a-room-and-see-who-cracks shows. That’s what we’re up against, Mitch. You have to know your enemy. And know who your friends are, too.”

“Who has friends?” Mitch retorted. “This is Hollywood.”

The older man laughed. “Touche. Let’s say, at least, that you can have allies. People who share a common goal.” He tossed his knife casually in the air and it came down a few inches from Mitch’s sandaled foot. Mitch made a point of not moving his leg. “Damn. Sorry.”

If we’re such good allies, Mitch thought, why don’t you retire and get the hell out of my way?

THAT HAD BEEN back in December, not long after Muldoon was picked up for the second half of the season. Now it was April and Mitch was still waiting to hear if the show would be stay on for another year. And Lou was in the same boat.

His agent called to announce every new blip on the radar. “They cancelled Lucky Day, Mitch.”

“That’s great, Si.”

“Maybe. Not if they’re gonna reshuffle the whole Monday schedule. And they renewed Puppet Wars.”

“That’s bad.”

“Not necessarily. It’s an 8 P.M. show, so it’s not likely to push us out of our slot.”

Slots. Twenty-two hours of prime time. The most expensive real estate on the planet. Muldoon owned one hour of Monday night on one network-if they could hold on to it. A show like his employed almost one hundred people. Not just the actors the audience saw, but the writers, the producers, and hell, even the caterers and floorsweepers had a reason to want this show to keep going.

But nobody needed it more than Mitch. When the network stars you in a drama they are resting a million bucks or so on your shoulders. If you drop it down the tubes you needn’t hold your breath waiting for them to offer a second chance.

The next day Si called back. “They renewed Brain Trust, and Money for Nothing. And they’re moving Ike and Alice to Wednesday.”

“My head is swimming. Who’s left on the bubble?”

“A couple of comedies, plus Muldoon and Cutting Edge. I gotta tell you, Mitch, I think there’s only one slot left for a drama.”

Mitch stood on his mortgaged deck and looked down the mountain at his neighbor. A washed-up movie star, floating around his pool without a care in the world.

“The Veep says we’ll hear by the end of the week. You hang in there, Mitch. It ain’t over yet.”

AND NOW IT was the end of the week and Mitch was still hanging in there, waiting to hear whether he was going to spend the next year collecting paychecks or unemployment. Driving his Lexus or driving a taxi. He thought about calling Lou to see if he had heard anything, but something made him hesitate.

And suddenly he could see Lou, back from wherever he had been. He was out by the pool in his swimming trunks, shouting instructions to Marta, his maid. Mitch watched as Lou stood at the shallow end of the pool, carefully settling himself into his float-not a raft so much as a blow-up chair, complete with indented spaces for a cell phone and a shaker of martinis-and paddling out into the center of the pool to bask in the sun.

What did his neighbor have to look so cheerful about?

The cell phone rang. Mitch yanked it to his ear and heard a familiar Latino accent. “Mr. Renadine? This is Marta. Mr. Garlyle wanted me to invite you to a party tomorrow night.”

Mitch felt a cold fist cramping his guts. But, in spite of what some of the critics said, he was an actor. His voice came out as cheerful as a talk-show host. “Terrific, Maria. What’s the occasion?”

“The network just renewed his show for another year. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Wonderful,” Mitch agreed. “I’ll be there. Tell him to have plenty of champagne.”

Then he hung up and began to plan a murder.

WHEN MITCH WAS a kid he had always felt he was destined for something. Not being a TV star necessarily, but something that would take him out of suburban New Jersey. When they studied Julius Caesar in high school and the teacher talked about the concept of fate he felt as if he was at last being introduced properly to someone he had known for years.

Fate, yes. The destiny that shapes our ends.

Until that phone call from Marta homicide had never crossed his mind. He was certain that was true. And yet he had prepared himself for it so perfectly. Or had fate done the preparing?

Mitch was not what Hollywood called a spiritual person but, hell, when ten thousand handsome faces apply for the same acting job there must be someone or something spinning the wheel and deciding who wins and who loses. And that force had given him the tools he needed to win now.

Look at what he needed to know-and did know. That Lou would be drunk and probably asleep on his float all afternoon. That Marta would be preparing dinner. That she couldn’t see the pool from the kitchen.

And if you argued that he only knew these things because, at some level, he had been preparing for a murder all these months, well, what about buying this house in the first place? Surely that had been fate, preparing him for this day, when he had to climb off the bubble before it burst.

Mitch opened the cabinet under his sink and pulled out a box of disposable latex gloves. He had worn them several times on the show when Lieutenant Muldoon was investigating a crime scene and, having seen how useful they were, he had brought home a box for cleaning up messes.

Was that preparation again? Or fate? He wondered about that as he tucked a pair into his jacket.

The trail through the brush between his yard and Lou’s had been worn long before he moved in. Mitch had taken it a dozen times when his neighbor invited him for a drink, so he knew that no one could see him as he