it interesting, and then I raised a hand, gently, in a stop motion. “I’m not from the Teamsters, Mr. Stockwell. You are Mr. Stockwell?”
“I am.”
I took several steps forward, closing the distance between us. He remained seated. The round table, about the size of the one we used for poker back at Paradise Lake, was littered with paperwork. Much of it was crude cartoonish drawings, on sideways sheets of typing paper, spread out in front of him. Just glancing, my guess was that they were camera angles for scenes he had yet to shoot. A cigarette and a cigar were going in an ashtray and the tobacco smell was fairly thick, though there was no haze.
“Mr. Stockwell, my name is John Reynolds. I understand my request is unusual, and it’s certainly a pain in the ass being bothered this late, particularly when you’re so busy.”
“No argument, Mr. Reynolds.”
I risked a small smile. Very small. “I don’t mean to sound mysterious, but we have a business matter to attend to. This is not a shakedown or a scam. But it is important, private, and pertains to this production. But I have to request that we speak alone.”
Kaufmann stepped up beside me and, before his director could respond, said to me, “If it pertains to the production, then I need to be here.” He smiled at me, almost in my face; nothing friendly about it. “Production, producer, Mr. Reynolds? Understand the connection?”
I did not look at him. Instead I gave Stockwell my most earnest gaze. And I’ve got a pretty good one, when needed.
“Mr. Stockwell,” I said, “if you have business with Mr. Kaufmann that needs immediate attention, I can wait in my room here in the hotel for as long as necessary…”
“Mr. Reynolds,” the director began, looking pained.
“…but we do need to talk. In private. If after we’ve spoken, you want to add Mr. Kaufmann in, that’s your call. I can only stress that this is personal as well as business and possesses a definite urgency.”
Kaufmann had started shaking his head halfway through that, but to his credit he waited for me to hit a stopping place before leaning in with a hand on the table to lock eyes with his director.
“Artie,” the producer said, “this is crazy.” He jerked a thumb at me. “We have no idea who this joker is. You’ve got another hour, easy, going over those storyboards before you can crawl in bed for your pitiful allotment of rest. Give me a fucking break.”
The last seemed a little desperate. I had an idea, though, that this moviemaking business was fairly desperate all the time. They were constantly under the gun. So to speak.
Stockwell smiled up at his producer. “Jimbo, you and I are done for tonight. This storyboard stuff is my concern. You go get some rest yourself-you’ve got another big day ahead of you, putting out fires.”
“Artie, please…”
“No. You’ve run yourself ragged all day, buddy-get some sack time. Meanwhile, I’ll give Mr. Reynolds here five minutes, and if what he says is of any concern to me… to us…I’ll fill you in first chance I get, tomorrow.”
Kaufmann sighed, said, “All right, Bubba. But if this turns out to be something real, something pressing? Go ahead and call me. I’m just one floor down, remember.”
Stockwell nodded and grinned and pushed the air with his palms. “Scoot, Mother. Get some rest.”
“Okay, Artie,” Kaufmann said, and the rumpled smile he gave the director was a friend’s, not a co-worker’s. Then he re-assumed his producer’s role by claiming the cigar from the ashtray, and went quickly out. Fast as a jump cut.
The director stood and stretched-bones popped and he made noise deep in his throat. “Mr. Reynolds, this chair is killing me. You mind if I take the bed while we talk?”
“Not at all.”
“Just grab one of these chairs and haul it over.”
The room was a near clone of mine but with the layout reversed. Where my bed was on the right, his was on the left, and so on. And there was no balcony. His round worktable took the place of my room’s little corner reading area with comfy chair and lamp.
Without comment, he slipped into the bathroom. Leaving the door open, he stood at the sink and shook several pills out of a little medicine bottle and filled a water glass from the tap to take them.
“Percodan,” he said with a shudder, after swallowing them. “I hurt my back skiing fifteen years ago, and now it haunts me. When we’re young we think we can do anything.”
He went over and stretched out on the bed, without using a pillow. He lay there staring at the ceiling. I pulled a chair over from the round table and sat at the foot of his bed, feeling a little like a psychiatrist.
“Make your pitch, Mr. Reynolds,” he said, not looking at me. “I’ll give you five minutes.”
“Do you know anyone who might want you dead?”
Now he looked at me. Just a lift of his head. “Is this a joke?”
“No. Do you? I heard you mention Louis Licata. He’s tied to the remnants of the old Dragna outfit, right? Loansharking, I believe.”
“You’re a cop.”
“Not even close, Mr. Stockwell.”
“This isn’t going to take five minutes.” With some effort, he sat up and used the headboard of the bed for support. He pointed toward the door. “You need to leave.”
“If I told you that someone had been hired to kill you, would that seem incredible to you?”
When his leading-man face frowned, he looked petulant. “You need to leave now.”
“Would it seem unlikely? Impossible? Improbable? Or are your ties to organized crime such that you can easily wrap your brain around the concept?”
He reached for the bedstand phone.
I got out the nine millimeter. “Don’t.”
Now his face turned pale, or anyway as pale as possible under that deep a tan. He withdrew his hand, and tried to sit straighter. He was shaking a little. You can start shaking real fast when somebody points a gun at you.
“Is that…that why you’re here? To kill me?”
“No.”
He smiled but it was awful; the kind of smile that sometimes precedes tears. “Who sent you? Licata, right? He knows, right? Look, I have money, too…I can-”
I raised my free hand. I wanted to lower the nine millimeter but couldn’t just yet. “I said ‘no,’ Mr. Stockwell. You need to settle down.”
“Said the stranger with the gun.”
“Call me Jack-and I’ll call you Art, or do you prefer Artie?”
He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at the nine millimeter-specifically into its barrel, the small darkness there that promised a much bigger one. “How…how can you be so cold about this?”
“I prefer to think of it as cool. You aren’t in any danger at this moment unless you do something stupid. Scream, for example, or throw that ashtray at me.”
He was breathing hard. “If you’re not here to…why are you here?”
“I’m here to offer you a service. It’s a genuine service-like I said before, not a shakedown, not a scam. It happens I am in a position to know that a pair of contract killers has been hired…has been sent…to kill you. I am also in a position to do something about it.”
His eyes were wild. Understandably. “This doesn’t make sense…it’s crazy…”
I lowered the nine millimeter until my hand was draped across my lap-the weapon still a presence, but I hoped not as much a distracting threat.
I said, “It doesn’t matter how I came upon the information. I don’t know who hired the killers. I just know they were sent here. One of them has been keeping you under surveillance for weeks. He’s a back-up man, strictly support. The other is planning to kill you, probably in the next several days, and to do so by staging your death as an accident. What kind of accident, I don’t know yet.”
He was shaking his head. The rest of him was motionless, as if he were otherwise paralyzed. “This is insane…You need to leave…you need help…”
“Is your movie financed by mob money?”
