Lullaby Town

'Making Peter happy is the most important thing.'

'Right.' Donnie Brewster lowered his voice, like maybe someone else might hear, and leaned toward me. Conspiratorial. 'Tell you the truth, I don't give a rat's ass if you find his ex or not. But if it makes Peter happy to have someone looking, then we'll have someone looking.'

Mr. Sincerity.

He made a little let's-go gesture and started for the door. 'We'll go over to meet him now. Whatever Peter says, just nod and say sure. Whatever he wants, say no problem. He asks how long, say a couple of weeks, max.'

'Make Peter happy.'

'Yeah. Peter being happy is all that matters.'

I looked at Pat Kyle, and then I looked back at Donnie Brewster and shook my head. 'You're asking me to lie to a client. I won't do that. You're also asking me to mislead him. I won't do that, either.'

Donnie stopped with his hand on the knob and looked horrified. 'Hey. Hey, I'm not asking you to do any of that. I love Peter Alan Nelsen like a brother.' He made a nervous glance out the door. Never know who might be listening. 'I'm just saying agree with the guy, that's all, and we'll work out reality later.'

'No.'

'No? What does that mean, no?' He ran back into the room and spread his hands. 'You can't say no to Peter Alan Nelsen!'

'I'm not saying no to Peter Alan Nelsen. I'm saying no to you.'

Confused. 'Hey, you want Peter happy, don't you? Peter's not happy, you won't get hired. You know what a job like this could mean?'

'Ulcers?'

Donnie spread his hands even wider and gave incredulous, like how could I miss it? 'You work for Peter Alan Nelsen, you get on the A list. You get on the A list, you'll be working for the biggest names in the business. You might even get written up in People magazine.'

I said, 'Wow.'

Donnie raised his hands to the ceiling and looked at Pat Kyle. Her face was red and she was making a choking sound. He said, 'What kind of guy is this? What kind of guy did you bring me?'

She turned up her palms. 'Someone with principles?'

Donnie began rubbing at his head again and tugging at his ponytail. He rubbed so hard that I thought I saw hair fall, but that might've been my imagination. He said, 'This isn't going to work. Peter isn't going to go for this.'

Pat said, 'Peter and I spoke about Elvis at length. He sounded agreeable to me.'

Donnie gestured at me. 'But this guy's saying he won't play along. You know how Peter is. He can be a monster.' He made the nervous glance again, checking the door and the windows for ears. 'Hey, I love him like a brother.'

Pat said, 'He's expecting us in five minutes.'

Donnie said, 'Holy shit.' I think he was starting to hyperventilate.

I said, 'Donnie. Relax. Breathe into a bag.'

Donnie said, 'You relax. I got forty million bucks riding on Peter Alan Nelsen and you won't play along. This is Hollywood. Everybody plays along!'

I made a gun out of my hand and shot him.

Donnie slumped into his chair and looked depressed. 'Yeah, yeah, that's just what'll happen, too. In the back.'

Pat said, 'Donnie, Elvis is a professional and he gets results. He has done this before.'

'But not with Peter Alan Nelsen!'

'I told him what Peter is like, and I told Peter what Elvis is like. Peter knows what to expect.'

'Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.'

I said, 'Donnie. Why don't we go see Peter and get it over with? I'm good. I might even find his kid. Think how happy he'll be then.'

Donnie squinted and thought about it. You could see gears moving and lights flashing behind his eyes. 'Yeah, yeah, that's right.'

'Tell him I'm brilliant and gifted. Everybody knows that brilliant and gifted people are difficult.'

Donnie's eyes got big and he slapped his hands on the table again as if he'd just found the Rosetta stone. 'Yeah, yeah. That's it! Brilliant and gifted are difficult.' He jumped up and charged toward the door. 'Let's go see him and get it over with.'

We went to see the monster.

CHAPTER TWO

The monster had both floors of a two-story tropical-style plantation house hidden behind a stand of banana and rubber trees at the back of the studio. It had once been a bungalow like any other bungalow, but now it wasn't. Now, there was a veranda across the front and wide-slat Panamanian shutters and a lot of rough-hewn poles lashed together with coarse shipping rope to make you think you were on a tropical island someplace. Sort of like the Swiss Family Robinson's tree house. The roof was thatched with what looked like palm fronds, and running water trickled along a false stream, and a black skull- amp;-crossbones flag hung from a little pole. I said, 'Do we have to give him an E ticket before he lets us in?'

Donnie Brewster made the nervous frown. 'Stop with the humor, okay? I tell him you're brilliant and gifted, you make with the humor, he's gonna know that you're not.'

Some guys.

Inside, the floors were crude planking and the ceilings were done to match the roof, and Cairo fans hung down and slowly swirled the air. We went down a hall and into a room with two large couches and a little round glass table and posters of the six movies that Peter Alan Nelsen had made. The couches were covered in zebra skin and the posters were framed in what looked like rhino hide and a small, immaculate black man sat at a teak desk. Behind the man was a teak door. Behind the door, someone was yelling. Donnie Brewster rubbed at his scalp again and said, 'Holy Christ, now what?'

The black man nodded brightly when he saw us. Maybe he couldn't hear the yelling. 'Hello, Mr. Brewster. Ms. Kyle. Peter said to go right in when you got here.'

We went right in.

Peter Alan Nelsen's office was as long as a bowling alley and as wide as a check-kiter's smile and done up like the lobby of a Nairobi movie house. Posters from The Wild Bunch and The Asphalt Jungle and The Magnificent Seven hung along one wall and an old Webcor candy machine from the forties sat against the opposite wall between a Wurlitzer Model 800 Bubble-Lite jukebox and a video game called Kill or Be Killed! The Webcor featured M amp;M peanuts and Jujubes and Raisinets and PayDay candy bars. Nothing beats a PayDay! A blond woman with a neck like corded rosewood and shoulders like Alex Karras sat sidesaddle on a sky-blue Harley-Davidson Electra-glide motorcycle parked at the far end of the office. She was wearing black spandex biking pants with a Day-Glo green stripe down the leg and a matching black halter sports top and pale gray Reebok workout shoes. Her thighs were massive and her calves thick and diamond-shaped and her belly looked like cut stonework. She glanced our way, then slid off the Harley and went to sit by a couple of guys who might've been reserve corners for the Dallas Cowboys. They were slouching on another one of the zebra couches, one of them wearing a Stunts Unlimited T-shirt and the other fatigue pants and eelskin cowboy boots. They glanced our way, too, and then they went back to watching Peter Alan Nelsen.

Peter Alan Nelsen was standing on top of a marble-slab desk, waving his arms and screaming so hard that his face was red. He was maybe six foot two, but skinny, with more butt than shoulders and the kind of soft, gawky frame that probably meant he had been a stiff-legged, awkward child. He had a rectangular Fred MacMurray face to go with the body, and he wore black leather pants with a silver concho belt and a blue denim work shirt with the