“Oh, um,
I recognize her now, even though she’s wearing grownup clothes. Her name is Lissa. We went to high school together. She always looked great in black, which is all she wore, because, back then, she was like our class’s Goth chick poet. Wrote about sea gulls contemplating suicide a lot.
“We need to ask you a few questions,” Ceepak says to Jimbo.
“Cool.”
“Um, can I take my break now?” asks Lissa.
“Yes, ma’am,” says Ceepak. “That might be a good idea.”
“Five minutes, sweetheart!” says Jimbo. “And you did good with the script. Keep it up, you’ll be a star.”
“Ha,” snarls Jenny. “Fat fucking chance.”
Lissa ignores Jenny and breezes past Ceepak and me. I realize she still smells like patchouli oil and pot. I hear a locker bang open and shut in the storeroom. Probably where she stashes her bong or bowl. I guess she wants to stash her weed some place better so we don’t find it.
“Hey-I’m fucking hungry, here, Jimbo,” says Jenny, painting lip-gloss on her puckered puss.
“New Guy?” Jimbo says to one of the crew guys in khaki shorts and hipster ski cap.
“Yeah?”
“Fix Miss Mortadella a plate at the craft services table.”
The new guy nods. Poor kid. He looks to be my age. Probably what they call a P.A., or production assistant. Lowest man on the TV-crew totem pole. Layla told me that was how she got started in the business.
“And grab me a half-apple,” says Jimbo.
New Guy looks confused. “You don’t want the whole thing?”
Jimbo rolls his eyes. “Where’d Marty find you, kid? The New Jersey Film School For Idiots?”
The other crew guys kind of drop their eyes. I get the sense that Jimbo, despite his peace-loving hippy hairdo, is a first-class buttwipe.
But nobody says anything.
New Guy stands there. Stoic. No emotion at all. But inside, I’ll bet he’s wondering about that fifty thousand dollars he still owes on his college loan so he could attend NYU film school and get a job stepping and fetching.
Ceepak steps forward.
“Apple boxes,” he states with great confidence, because I’m sure that, as soon as
“Well done, Officer,” says Jimbo. “You want a job on my crew?”
“No, thank you.”
New Guy nods thanks to Ceepak, tugs down on his knit cap, heads for the door.
“Half-apples are on the grip truck,” says the man holding the microphone boom like a broomstick. “Round back.”
“Craft services table is back there, too,” adds the spotlight toter.
Guess these two both remember their first days on the job, working for a jerk like Jimbo.
“And, New Guy?” shouts the big man, Jimbo, so his crew will remember who’s the boss.
The kid turns around.
“Hustle, baby. Hustle.”
Out he goes.
Jimbo struts over to Ceepak. “We need to have Jenny stand on something. She’s disappearing, ruining my shot.”
“I heard that,” snaps Jenny as she jabs out her hip, anchors her hand on it.
“I’m just trying to make you look good, babe.”
“Why do I need to wear fucking black?”
“’Cause it’s a fucking funeral,” Jimbo answers. “We’re back in five. Everybody chill. I need to chat with the police officers here.”
“Back in five,” yells the clipboard man.
Ceepak holds open the door. “Bring your camera,” he says.
Jimbo does as he’s told.
The three of us cluster around the front of our parked vehicle.
“What’s up, bro?” Jimbo asks, giving his ponytail an artful flick.
“Last night,” says Ceepak, “you followed Paul Braciole out of the Big Kahuna dance club?”
“That’s right. Me, Chuck, and Rich. We peeled off from the pack. Rutger sent us after Paulie and his hot date. Very attractive local lady in an extremely tight skirt. Her butt shimmered, man. I wish we could’ve hosed down the streets, got that slick surface going, like we do in car commercials. But this is reality TV. No time to light right.”
“Chuck and Rich?” says Ceepak.
Jimbo jabs his thumb toward the dress shop. “My sound and light guys.”
“Where did Mr. Braciole and his date go?”
“A couple blocks north. 136 Red Snapper Street.”
Ceepak makes a face to let Jimbo know he’s impressed. “You’re certain about the address?”
“Yeah. We were camped out in the front yard till like three in the morning.”
Ceepak has his notepad and pencil out. “How so?”
Jimbo flicks his ponytail again. Maybe he’s like a horse, uses it to swat flies. “Like I said, me and my boys, we tailed Paulie and his hot little honey out of the dance club, hoping to catch some hot and heavy action. Now, if they had headed back to the Fun House, we would have, you know, been able to follow them inside, tailed ’em all the way into the bedroom, might have even hung around to catch a little nookie action.”
Ceepak’s left eye twitches. “Go on,” he says.
While he talks, Jimbo monkeys with buttons on his camera, peers into the viewfinder.
“This house on Red Snapper being the girl’s abode,” he says, while squinting into that little rubber-cupped box, “we can’t go in without an invitation, which, you know, wasn’t exactly forthcoming. In fact, yeah … here we go.” He holds up the camera so Ceepak can peek at the playback. “Check it out.”
Ceepak does.
“I see,” he says after a few seconds. He pulls back from the camera.
“You see Paulie give me the finger?”
Ceepak just nods.
“I hope Marty cuts it into the show, seeing how I got the last fucking shot of Paulie before, you know, he got whacked by the stalker or whatever. But they probably won’t use it. Paulie flipping me off doesn’t fit in with this week’s narrative. That ‘Funeral for a Friend’ jive Marty pitched the network. Ratings will be through the roof. Just like Princess Diana.”
Ceepak reaches for the radio clipped to his utility belt.
“Excuse me,” he says to Jimbo. “We need to send a unit over to the house on Red Snapper. Interview the woman.”
“Cool. Can we roll with you dudes? We’re pretty unobtrusive. We’d shoot you grilling the chick, catch it all guerilla gonzo style.”
“Not gonna happen,” I say as Ceepak radios in a request for the first available unit to respond to 136 Red Snapper Street, to hold a “blonde female, approximately five feet, two inches tall, one hundred pounds, with a mole on her left cheek” for questioning.
Ceepak. While watching a video of a drunken girl in a skimpy skirt bopping up a dark street, he keeps his eye on the distinguishing characteristics.
“Hey, if it helps,” says Jimbo, “the chick’s name is Mandy.”
Ceepak, gripping his radio mic in one hand, cocks an eyebrow.
“She was wearing that T-shirt over her sausage dress,” Jimbo explains. “You know-the one that says ‘Remember my name. You’ll be screaming it later.’ So Paulie, he’s such a joker, he says ‘What am I gonna
