Show Business is Murder

moved through the thick brush. At the bottom of the hill he carefully pushed the vines out of his way and looked out at the pool.

Lou was lying on the big red float, his head tilted a little to the side. He snored softly. The martini shaker was in place but the cell phone was not. That was perfectly reasonable. After all, he had already gotten the phone call he cared about, the call Mitch had waited for in vain.

The inflatable float drifted slowly clockwise. Soon Lou would be facing away from him.

Mitch knew that no one could see the pool from the neighbor’s houses. Except from his, of course. He put on the disposable gloves.

It was easy to open the gate in the fence and step quickly onto the cement surface around the pool. The pool skimmer-a long pole with a hoop and net on the end-hung on the fence not far away.

Mitch was a strong man, built to play an action hero, as Lou had pointed out. It only took a moment for him to pick up the pole, bend over, and tuck the hoop end under the edge of the float and drag it slowly toward the edge of the pool.

Good ol’ Lou didn’t even stop snoring.

When the back of the float was almost against the edge of the pool, Mitch put the skimmer back in its place on the fence. A knife lay on the nearest table; one of the throwing knives Lou so loved to show off with.

Mitch picked it up in a gloved hand. He took one last look around and saw only the beautifully cared-for estate and the back of Lou’s house. No one in sight.

The idea was simple: make it look as if Lou had thrown the knife in the air and it had landed in the float. What was so odd if a drunk, known for tossing knives around, and not a good swimmer, sank his own float and drowned?

Sure, it might have raised a few eyebrows back in Plainfield, New Jersey, where Mitch grew up. But this was Los Angeles where the coroner heard stranger stories practically every day, most of them having to do with the show biz crowd.

Detective Carl Chaney, the cop who served as technical adviser on Muldoon, had told Mitch they even had a name for it: HRD-Hollywood-Related Death.

Mitch studied the float carefully. A knife coming down from the air would only make one cut, so he had to get it right the first time.

Kneeling at the pool’s edge Mitch took a deep breath. My career or your life, he thought. It was an easy choice. He raised his arm and brought it down hard, cutting through the fabric near the left edge of the float.

His one fear had been that the float might burst, making enough noise to wake Lou, but the fabric tore instead, letting water slide in gently. The float had several compartments so it would take a while to sink, but sink it would.

Mitch smiled and dropped the knife. It slipped, shimmering, to the bottom tiles. He gave the back of the float a gentle push, nudging it toward the deepest part of the pool.

Moving quickly now, he slipped back through the gate and up into the brush. When he reached his own property he risked a look behind him. The big red float was in the middle of the pool, listing badly to the left.

Mitch walked over to the compost bin at the far end of his yard. A few months ago the president of his studio had gotten a bee in her bonnet about organic food and suddenly everyone who worked for the studio had to install one of these damned smelly rat hotels on their property. Now this one was finally earning back its cost. He reached in, still wearing his lab gloves, and shifted the organic muck around.

If by any chance the police suspected him of being involved in Lou’s death they would look for evidence that he had taken the trail down to Lou’s property. And that brought up something else Detective Chaney had told him about: The Law of Contact.

The Law of Contact was the basic rule of crime-scene technicians. You go somewhere, you leave something behind. You touch something, you take part of it with you. If the techies started looking for signs of him beside Lou’s pool they might find them, but could they prove they were from today and not from his last visit, a week ago? Mitch didn’t think so.

And if the found Mitch’s lab gloves in his own trash, well, the compost easily explained their use, and he figured the organic waste would make it harder to find a trace of chlorine. As a bonus, turning the compost over would explain any vegetation from the trail that stuck to his clothes.

A year of playing Lieutenant Muldoon had taught him well. Prepared him well.

Once he had disposed of the gloves, Mitch went back into the house. He forced himself to walk at his usual pace, acting the part of a man without a care in the world.

Only after he poured himself a Scotch did he walk out onto the deck and casually glance down toward his neighbor’s property. The float had upended and he saw Lou’s arm come out of the water, flailing. He was trying to hold onto the float, but the thing was slippery and unstable and Lou was far too drunk to control it.

Goodbye, old man. You should have retired.

He strolled back into the house. The message light was blinking on the answering machine. No doubt it would be Si calling with the bad news. Well, the network was going to have to rethink their schedule now, wouldn’t they? All of a sudden they had a big hole to fill. He touched a button.

“Hey, Mitch baby, this is Si. I just met with the network guys. Most amazing thing. Turns out we calculated wrong. They had decided to cancel Muldoon and Cutting Edge. That’s right, both of them. Make more room for those damned reality shows.

“But hold onto your hat, kid. Your neighbor changed their minds. He convinced them that what they needed to do was run the shows together. He said you’re a better lead-in for him than that doctor show they have on now. The network decided he might be right. They’re gonna move Muldoon to Saturday night, run it between Private License and Cutting Edge. Call it “Men of Action Night.” Maybe do some crossover episodes.

“You better buy ol’ Lou some champagne. He’s keeping your show alive. Bye bye, babe. We’ll talk later.”

Mitch could hear something down the hill. He knew it must be the wail of a distant siren, but to him it sounded more like the bursting of an enormous bubble.

Slap by MAT COWARD

I USED TO rob women, which is how I got into acting. I don’t do it any more because it is morally indefensible (I’m talking about robbing women), but it was a good living for a while. I could easily make five hundred pounds in a day, if it was a good day.

Women in the UK spend twelve million pounds a year on anti-cellulite treatments. There is no such thing as an anti-cellulite treatment, it is a scientific impossibility, but British women spend twelve million quid a year on them. And that is only the tip of the icebird. If you factor in the billions spent on women’s magazines, makeup, slimming pills, and so on, you begin to get a picture. I’m not saying all women are stupid, but enough are stupid that robbing them is never hard.

For my targets, I would choose women who were not attractive. I didn’t choose out-and-out hounds, because they have nothing to lose-no dignity, no delusions-and so they might possess confidence. I chose women who were just sufficiently the right side of ugly so that they’d spend every minute of their lives in a preoccupying torment of hope. I picked them up on the pavements outside busy shops in the West End. I knew the location of every CCTV camera in Oxford Street, believe me.

I would approach them smiling. This in itself is confusing. Do they know me? I’m a good-looking young man, quite tall, slim… I’m smiling at them, but if they knew someone like me surely they’d remember? I’d walk right up to them, my smile not crazy, just confident, and then when I got up close enough to smell their breath, still smiling, I’d slap them across the face with my open hand. Right hand. Big swing. Exactly the way a woman slaps a man when he tries to kiss her in an old film.

Her hands go to her face. Naturally-instinct. She can’t help it. If she’s carrying anything, she drops it. If her bag is still on her arm, I take hold of her wrist and slide the bag off. Then I run, and I can run fast. Along the way I dump the bag; I only ever take cash. Cash is safest.