“I’m speechless.”
“So do you see where I’m going?”
“To the bank, probably.” I drained the rest of my coffee and held the cup out. Eleanor poured part of hers into it.
“The format’s already in the can. Three contestants, Velez as hostess, of course, footage from some true-life crime with clues planted here and there, three suspects. One of them is the real-life crook.”
I drank the coffee and grimaced. Eleanor, despite her New Age convictions, put enough sugar in her coffee to rot a tyrannosaurus’s teeth.
“The home audience sees one or two clues the contestants don’t see, just to make them feel smart,” Stillman said rhapsodically. “The audience always has to feel smarter than the contestants,” he added, reciting the time-honored dictum of game-show producers all over the world. “The jerks should always be sitting at home slapping their foreheads and swearing over how much money they’d be winning if they were in the studio.”
“And the winner gets a date with the crook.”
“That’s what’s so brilliant,” Stillman said. “The winner gets a reward that’s posted at the beginning of the show. Remember Wanted posters?”
I looked at my watch. If I was going to quit the case, now was the time to do it. “Look,” I said, “you can’t imagine how exciting this is, being on the inside like this. It’s almost as good as having a subscription to Broadcasting. But what’s it got to do with me?”
“Advisers,” he said, a bit petulantly. “We’ll need advisers. Somebody to help us reconstruct the crime scenes, plant the clues, guide Velez in her prompts to the contestants. So whaddya say?”
“I’d say it’s a lot of work for a penny.”
“Twenty-five hundred a week,” he said.
I began to whistle again. Eleanor winced. I can’t whistle on key.
“Three if you work out,” Stillman said, a bit too hastily. “Maybe thirty-five if the show goes.”
“ If the show goes? Norman, have you got a show or not?”
“I told you,” he said, sounding huffy, “the format’s in the can, plus we’ve got Velez. Come on, it’s a certified check. There’s just a few little wrinkles to work out.”
“Like selling it?” I asked.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “We still have to sell it, of course.”
I waited. He waited, too. While I was waiting, I polished the phone with my shirt. I was working on the earpiece when I realized he was talking, so I put it back to my ear.
“… only exploratory, of course, just to see if you’re interested. You’re at the top of my list.”
“Norman,” I said. “The sun is approaching its zenith. I have a beautiful woman with me. It’s Sunday, for Christ’s sake. Why in God’s name are you calling?”
He put a lot of work into a manly chuckle. “That’s why I thought of you,” he said. “ ‘Sharp,’ I said, ‘the boy’s sharp.’”
“Well, now that we’ve settled that I’m sharp,” I said, “what do you really want?”
There was the kind of silence that liars loathe.
“Ah,” Stillman said reluctantly, “there was one other thing.”
“I thought there might be.”
“First,” he said.
“What do you mean, first? If there’s only one other thing, how can what you’re about to say be first?”
“See?” he said. “See why I called you? ‘Sharp,’ I said. ‘The boy’s sharp.’”
“See?” I echoed. “See how sharp I am? See why I’m going to hang up?”
“Okay, there’s two things. About this dinkus with the lighter fluid.”
“Ah. As a great man once said-Jesus, I think it might have been you, Norman-‘The old penny drops.’”
“You’ll be great on the air. Will you do Velez’s show tomorrow? It’s about the people who track serial murderers. The title is ‘In Death’s Footsteps.’ Or maybe it’s ‘Footprints.’ Whaddya think? A thousand, cash.”
“No. I’m not going on Velez’s show.”
“I knew you’d say that,” Stillman said promptly. “I told Velez you’d say that. What about two thousand?”
“No. And second?”
“Um,” he said. I visualized him shining the buttons on his nautical blazer. Norman owned a yacht solely as an excuse for his taste in clothes and interior decorators. “Has any other producer called you?”
“Norman,” I said unctuously, “is there any other producer?”
“Not who’s worth talking to.”
“So talk.”
“If you get this dinkus,” he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “you hold back a couple of things for me. There’s nobody who can handle this kind of thing like Norman Stillman Productions. You play ball, we’ll do ninety minutes live on network the night after the dinkus gets jugged. We already got the title.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“‘The Fire Within,’” he said obliviously. “Or something like that. Bring me the right stuff, we’re talking six figures.”
“As in three comma three figures?” Eleanor arched her eyebrows.
“You got it.”
“What’s the first figure?” I asked, just out of curiosity.
“Ahhh,” Norman Stillman said, “that’s a detail. That’s for the bookkeepers.”
“Have your bookkeeper call me,” I said.
“Hey,” Stillman said apprehensively. He was working up to something better, but I didn’t hear it because I hung up.
“Who would have thought it?” I asked. “I get hired to find someone who’s torching the homeless, and people start throwing money at me. Come on, I’ve had cases that began and ended in Beverly Hills, and no one’s ever mentioned six figures before.”
“Six figures sounds good to me,” she said. “You’ve never had this kind of media attention before, either.”
“Public television hasn’t gotten to us yet,” I said, feeling momentarily optimistic.
“It’s their pledge week,” she said. “They’re on documentaries about baby pandas and the giant sea slug. They’re concentrating on endangered species. And Yanni.”
“I’m an endangered species,” I said, taking an emotional nosedive. “I’m in danger of being put out of business.”
“You can still carry out point two. You can quit. I don’t care about the nice man who got set on fire, I care about you. That Baby or whatever her name is had no right to call a press conference without telling you she was going to do it. How do you know this crazy won’t come after you?”
“I’m not his type,” I said, with more conviction than I felt.
“It even says where you live. In Topanga. Suppose-”
“He’s been burning the homeless.”
She looked around the shack, much the worse for wear since she’d left. “You almost qualify.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said, watching her. We hadn’t been talking much lately, since she’d begun to date someone else. Jealousy worked two ways.
“Well, she shouldn’t,” Eleanor began, then stopped, catching my eyes. “She shouldn’t have held that press conference, even if she does have all the money in the world. That guy…” She trailed off. “This is complicated, you know?” she asked, looking at Bravo. “I mean, I still love you. In a way.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said. I didn’t have the courage to say anything else.
Hand in hand, something we did out of habit, we went down the driveway, as she accompanied me on the first phase of the journey that would take me to the Bel Air Hotel to tender my resignation. Bravo Corrigan trotted along next to us, sniffing professionally at the bushes, a big, longhaired, raffish canine bum. At the bottom of the driveway, I noticed something unusual for a Sunday: The red flag on the mailbox was vertical, and there was a piece of paper wedged between the hinged door of the mailbox and the mailbox proper. And with Eleanor standing behind me and looking nosily over my shoulder, I opened and read the letter from the Crisper.
“Darling,” I said, calling Eleanor something I hadn’t called her in more than a year, “all the rules just got
