try, you know, not to eat anything that’s got, like, a spinal cord? Except fish, I guess. They’ve got a spinal cord, don’t they, Tatiana?” She was blushing.

“They do,” Tatiana said, a bit wearily. “But they are too dumb to know they’ve got one, so that makes it okay, wouldn’t you say, Junior?”

“Junior?” Craig-Robert said, looking terrifically interested. “What ghastly secret does that mask?”

“None,” I said. “It’s my name. My father was named Merle and he wanted his son named after him, but he’d had a skinful of being named Merle and he wasn’t about to hang it on me. So he just named me Junior.”

“Mmmmm,” Craig-Robert said. “So what are your qualifications? Aside from the obvious ones, I mean.”

“Got me. I have some history with Trey, I guess. And she seems to think I might be her little trouble-shooter. But to tell you the truth, I’ve got almost no idea why I’m here.”

“The human condition,” Craig-Robert said. “None of us know. You need someone sensitive to explain it all to you.”

Tatiana rapped on the table. “Craig-Robert, if you could put all the fabulous on hold for a few minutes?”

“Certainly,” Craig-Robert said in a deep radio announcer’s voice. He crossed his hands on the table in front of him in a businesslike manner and said, “You’re probably wondering why I called you here tonight.”

“My life is passing before my eyes,” Tatiana said.

“It’s to clear up the age-old question: Why are gay men so fascinating and gay women so grim?”

“Maybe because you’re imitating the interesting sex,” Tatiana said. “We’re stuck with acting like men.”

“We really don’t have a lot of time?” Ellie Wynn said, phrasing it as a question. “We need to eat and get back? Everything, and I mean everything, has to be ready for tomorrow.”

“What’s gone wrong so far?” I asked.

“Little things,” Tatiana said. “But obviously intentional.”

“Costumes,” Craig-Robert said. “Ergo, moi being invited to this confab. Four costumes disappeared. And you may say, so what?, but there was something very interesting about the choice of costumes.”

“And you’re going to make him ask what it is, aren’t you?” Tatiana said.

“What it is,” Craig-Robert said, “is, A, they were all for Thistle, and B, they had all been worn by little Miss Ellie here in second-unit shots.” Ellie blinked at the sound of her name as though someone had thrown a dinner roll at her.

“Which means?” I said.

“Which means they all had to be replaced with identical stuff,” Tatiana said. “Otherwise, you’d see Thistle from behind wearing a gray dress as she pushes open a door and then, when you cut to inside the building and she comes in, she’d be wearing, I don’t know, a pink one for example.”

“Pink doesn’t work for Thistle,” Craig-Robert said.

“Oh, who gives a fuck?” Tatiana said. “I said, for example. It’s not going to endanger your Golden Pecker or whatever they call the adult film Oscar.”

“Le Peqoir d’or,” Craig-Robert said. “And I have a place all ready for it.”

“And those were the only costumes taken,” Ellie said, looking vaguely surprised at the sound of her own voice. “The ones I’d worn on film, pretending to be Thistle. Which meant that we either had to re-shoot, or remake the costumes. Right, Craig-Robert?”

“So you remade them.”

“It wasn’t quite that easy,” Craig-Robert said. “We’re scheduled down to our hineys. It put us back by a full day.”

“Trey said two days,” I said.

“We’d actually be three days behind if people hadn’t busted their butts to catch things up,” Tatiana said. “Tell him, Ellie.”

“Oh.” She took a second to organize her thoughts. “Umm, two days ago, I got a call at seven-forty-five A.M., just as I was about to head for the set. It was a girl, telling me that the location had changed? We weren’t going to be shooting in Hollywood, she said, we’d moved it to a shopping mall in Chatsworth. I should leave immediately, because the crew was on their way there.”

“And?” I said.

“And, um, the crew was right where they were supposed to be. You know, in Hollywood. But by the time they wondered where I was and called me, I was all the way out in the Valley and I’d gone into the mall to find the closed store we were supposed to be shooting in. And then, when I got the call on my cell phone and went back outside, someone had slashed my tires.”

“Cost us a day,” Tatiana said. “Then yesterday, it was Lauren, the camera operator, who got the call. Toted herself halfway down to Torrance before it occurred to her that it might be bogus. And by then she was in total rush hour, just gridlock all the way back up. Just like whoever it was planned it. Half a day gone.”

“Here y’all go,” the young waitress said. She leaned forward with a grunt and put a massive bowl in the middle of the table. Behind her was another girl with five plates. “Will that do it?” the waitress asked.

“Fluids, dear,” Tatiana said. “We would all like to take in some fluids.”

“The Cokes, huh?” the waitress said, crestfallen.

“And one coffee,” Tatiana said brightly. “There’s a good girl.”

“She fancies you,” Craig-Robert said as the waitress retreated.

“She’s straighter than Nebraska,” Tatiana said. Ellie’s eyes went back and forth between them, her mouth half-open as though she wanted to join in but didn’t trust herself to say anything interesting.

“So, not to be boring,” I said, “but whatever’s up, it’s being caused by someone who has access to the costumes, who knows which outfits have been filmed already, who knows where the crew is shooting each day, who has or is able to get everybody’s phone number, and is also capable of slitting four tires in broad daylight in the parking lot of a busy shopping mall. Does that sound right?”

Tatiana thought for a moment and then nodded.

“And,” I asked, “who has that kind of access?”

“Sweetie,” Craig-Robert trilled, “all of us.”

13

Achilles Heel

“I’m looking at this the wrong way,” I said. Craig-Robert had departed in a swirl of psychic drama with Ellie trailing along in his wake like a towed rowboat. That left Tatiana and me facing about twenty-six pounds of avocado-free chef’s salad. Tatiana had been right; Craig-Robert had located, and eaten, every single piece. Ellie had concentrated on lettuce and the anchovies, once Tatiana had told her they were too small to have a spine.

What’s the wrong way?” Tatiana said, making a little lettuce house on her plate.

“Points of access. There are too many of them, and too many people can walk right through them. By the time I checked out everybody, the movie would either be abandoned or in the can.”

She mashed the roof with her fork. “So what’s the right way?”

“Before I get to that, there are two other questions to ask. First, how far is this person willing to go? Are we talking about people being in danger? And second, if we decide people aren’t in danger now, at what point will they be? And then we get to the big question. Since the stuff we’ve seen so far hasn’t worked, and it’s been sort of frittering around the edges-missing costumes, mixed-up crew calls-where’s the real pressure point? Where would damage be fatal to the movie?”

“As far as danger is concerned,” Tatiana said, “The way I understand it, half the crooks in the Valley-nothing personal-want the picture to tank so they can get rid of Trey. I think those people could be considered dangerous. I

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