His smile was terrible. I’d call it curdled. “What’s your fee, Jack? There’s always a fee in these Faustian scenarios.”
“Hey, I’m not the devil. I don’t want you dead, and I sure as hell have zero interest in your soul. It’s twenty- five grand for removing both hitmen. Two-for-one sale. Can you handle that?”
He swallowed thickly. But then he nodded. “I can. Cash?”
“That would be better. But there are ways for you to pay with a check. Various names and accounts I use. Still, there’s less risk for us both if we can stay with cash. Plus I’d have to charge you more, because of the tax issues. Got to stay straight with Uncle Sugar.”
His eyebrows went up. “Oh yeah. You want to be a good citizen.”
“Art, I’m not the bad guy here. Or let’s put it this way-I’m your bad guy. Now let’s move on to part two.”
“There’s a part two?”
“Aren’t you in the sequel business? For another twenty-five K, I will find out if it’s Licata who took out the contract. If so, I’ll take him out. Same deal if it’s someone else-either way, I’ll remove the threat.”
He scooched back to his former position, legs straight out, back against the headboard. “You would just…kill a mob boss?”
“Sure.”
“Really?”
“Art-mob bosses getting killed is not that unusual.”
A grunty thing came out of him that might have been a laugh. “How can you be so goddamn casual?”
“Why, does it matter? Since I will have to do some poking around, I would need an official capacity with your production. I was thinking of a PR role. That would give me access to just about anywhere and anybody.”
“You’d be on set?”
“Some of the time. This ‘accident’ may be rigged to happen on set. Must be lots of equipment there that could fall over on a guy.”
“…That would work. We don’t have a unit press manager. You could be a PR person I brought in. That would give you an excuse to interview people. I can even make Kaufmann buy into that.”
“Perfect.”
Stockwell was staring past me. “Am I dreaming this? Am I hallucinating?”
“Why, how much Percodan did you take?”
He shook his head. “You have no idea how hard I work, how many hours I put in…”
Actually, thanks to Jerry, I did.
“…how many decisions, small, medium and large, I make in a single long day on set. Right now I am tired beyond imagining and zoned on painkillers and I am talking to a stranger about things that are just… unbelievable. Unreal. Surreal.”
“You have other options.”
“Really?”
“I can leave. I would request you do me the courtesy of waiting till morning, but then you could call the police. You could say you have reason to believe that you are the target of a contract killer. They might be able to help.”
“In this jerkwater?”
“It’s a casino town. You already have a good relationship with the local law-you shot a scene at the sheriff’s office, right? You might get cooperation. You could go to Vegas and talk to the cops there. It’s all Clark County. You do have options.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m not the fucking devil. This is your decision. I don’t do high-pressure sales. It’s undignified.”
He sat there against the headboard, motionless, like a ventriloquist’s dummy that had been propped up. A long time went by. A full minute, maybe. Which is a longer time than you might imagine. Watch the second hand that long and see.
“Is it a trick?” he asked. He sounded like a kid. “If I say no, will you just kill me and go? To cover your tracks?”
“What tracks? You have a phony name on me. Look at me, Art-how distinctive are my looks, would you say?”
“Joe Average.”
“Right. You can say no. You might do okay with the cops.”
His frown was so wrinkly and deep it turned his leading man looks into a kind of monkey face. “What do you really think would happen if I went with the cops and not you?”
“You’ll be dead in forty-eight hours. Let’s just say, I wouldn’t sweat the storyboards.”
He began nodding. He did this for perhaps fifteen seconds (also a long time), then he said, “Do you need any money down?”
“No. But I will report to you what I’ve done, and it won’t be pleasant. You’ll need to know, because people, including the authorities, may throw it at you. You understand? This is harsh shit about to go down.”
He swallowed thickly. “Okay. You passed the audition, Jack. Keep me alive. And…the whole boat.”
“Whoever’s behind it, too?”
“Whoever’s behind it, too.”
He got up to walk me out, giving me some information along the way, including where they’d be shooting tomorrow. We were standing near the door going over that when it opened and a nearly naked beautiful woman entered.
“Oh, I’m interrupting,” she said.
It was the lovely vision in the bikini that I’d seen earlier, coming up from the pool, still in that skimpy bikini, a towel over her arm, her hair damp and ponytailed back. Close up, she looked even more like my ex-wife.
Because she was my ex-wife.
“J.J.,” he said to her, “this is Jack Reynolds. He’s coming on as our unit publicity manager.”
She didn’t miss a beat. She shook my hand and said something pleasant and polite-exactly what, I couldn’t tell you as I was in momentary cranial gridlock. But my eyes and a tiny head shake sent her a signal that said, Don’t say anything.
Joni smiled just a little and nodded and her eyes held mine, saying, All right. As if to say, I guess I owe you that much.
Then I shook hands with her husband and told him what my room number was, knowing that she’d heard it, too.
FIVE
Hard Wheels 2 was shooting at a location that at first gave me a start-it was outside Boot Heel, going south, which was the direction I’d taken Jerry. In several senses.
But the film company was only a few miles outside town, just enough to put desert everywhere the eye could see, except for the shabby little garage/truck stop they’d taken over for shooting purposes.
I got there about ten a.m., which was well into their work day. Under a fairly relentless sun, a group of maybe a dozen technicians (mostly guys but a few females) in baseball caps, sunglasses, casual shirts (mostly tees) and jeans were moving lights and stands and shiny reflective boards around while others were getting a big wheelmounted movie camera into place.
The vibe was blue-collar and the pace steady, neither laid-back nor frantic. It was all focusing around the gas pumps where two college student types seemed the center of attention. Stand-ins, I figured.
A few real employees were hanging around on the fringes, grease monkeys for the service station half of the place. Whether they were just gawking or were on tap as extras, I couldn’t tell. Nor did I give a shit.
All I cared about was whether I saw a familiar face, either among the crew or the onlookers.
There weren’t many of the latter, because the place was controlled, the evocatively named GAS amp; EATS
