Harry Paynter, the novelist-screenwriter with whom I was supposed to form a literary alliance, was a plump young man with a baby face and sad, weary eyes that gave him the look of a debauched choirboy. He seemed surprised, but not impressed, that a pop-music star like Fitzpatrick had unlocked the gate and escorted him to my digs. Harry would probably not have been impressed to find Prince doing my laundry.
“So Billy,” he said, when we were seated in the guesthouse living room, “don’t suppose you’ve got any Diet Mountain Dew?”
“Doubtful, but I’ll check.” I walked to the small kitchen, looked in the fridge, and reported back to Harry, “No to the Mountain Dew. Thanks to somebody—the realtor, I guess—there’s tomato juice, carrot juice, and bottled water.”
“Pass,” he said.
“I’ll add Mountain Dew to my list.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “Here’s the thing, Billy. My time is fucking valuable. I’ve got two scripts due next week—a contemporary remake of The Pit and the Pendulum for Sony and a musical thriller that’ll star The Peezy Weezies, we all hope. I can’t afford the time it takes for me to drive out here. I spent five minutes just waiting for the security guys at the gate to find my name on their list. There’s no reason we have to be in the same room to collaborate. We can use the phone, text, Skype, whatever. Right?”
“Sounds right to me,” I said, though I had no working knowledge of Skype. As for The Peezy Weezies, well … the only Weezy I knew had the last name of Jefferson.
“Okay, that’s how we’ll handle it. But I’m here now, so let’s get to work,” he said, sliding a laptop from a leather shoulder bag. “I can give you ninety minutes. And I’ll try the fucking carrot juice.”
I returned to the kitchen, poured two glasses of the thick, bright-orange liquid, and returned to the living room.
Harry had the laptop open and balanced on his knees, ready for action. He took a gulp of juice, shuddered, and said, “Yuk.”
“Fresh-squeezed,” I said.
“That’s the problem. I can’t stand fresh. Tastes like medicine. Okay, let’s get going on this bad boy. We need a title. How about TV Can Be Murder?”
“A little jaunty, don’t you think? What about The Morning Show Murders?”
“Too on-the-nose. Murder on Camera? Blood on the Camera?”
I winced.
“High-Def Death?”
“Too hard to pronounce,” I said.
“Why don’t we follow Raymond Chandler’s lead?” he asked. “Good Morning, Murder.”
“What’s that got to do with Chandler?”
“Farewell, My Lovely. Good Morning, Murder.”
And so it went for the next ninety minutes, at which time, as promised, my collaborator departed. Without a decision being made on the title.
Having picked up on Harry’s anxiety, I strolled over to the villa, where I found Des, Fitz, and a newcomer—short, soft, with a pug nose, tiny ears, and a shock of jet-black hair—in what appeared to be a big-boy’s playroom, complete with dartboards, pinball machines, and the like. Fitz was playing pinball, while the other two men were stretched out on leather chairs and ottomans in front of a giant flat TV screen, engrossed in a videogame called Brütal Legend.
“Yo, Billy,” Fitz said, by way of welcome.
“That you, Billy?” Des said, not taking his eyes from the TV screen. “Say hello to Gibby Lewis, head writer on our little show.”
Gibby, evidently not quite as committed to the big-screen competition, turned a peeved baby face toward me. He broke it with a brief forced smile, a nod, and then it was back to Brütal Legend.
“Des,” I said, trying to talk over the noise, “a friend is throwing a dinner party a few houses down. Around eight, if you’re interested.”
“Can’t make it,” Des replied, keeping his eyes on the screen, where a buffed and bearded character resembling both Jack Black and Popeye’s nemesis, Bluto, was using his odd-looking guitar to thwart evil. “That feckin’ little twerp who was here earlier called to say Slaughter’s hostin’ a hooley for me with a bunch of doxies.”
The twerp was our associate producer Trey Halstead. Slaughter was, as mentioned previously, Trey’s boss, producer of the new show. A hooley was a party. The doxies were, well, doxies.
“Max didn’t mention any party to me,” Gibby said. His delivery was as peevish as his mug. “Not that I coulda gone. I’ve gotta spend the evening with my lovely sister and her adorable kids. Unless I can think up an excuse. Like a hernia. Then I’ll go find my own doxy.”
“Pull up a chair, Billy. This game’s a gallery. That’s Jack Black with the gizmo, doin’ the arse-kickin’. Ozzy Osbourne’s in it, too.”
Regardless of those attractions, Brütal Legend seemed to be a combination of unrelenting violence and headbanger music, two of my least favorite things. “I’d better get myself in gear for tonight,” I said.
“Your call,” he said.
According to my watch, it was ten after seven. Ten after ten in Manhattan. I’d already searched and found nothing remotely snack-able at the guesthouse. “Mind if I raid your kitchen?” I yelled over the sounds of Jack Black’s arse-kickin’.
“What’s that?”
I repeated the question, and he told me to help myself to whatever.
In the large, brightly tiled gourmet country kitchen capable of feeding a tribe, I discovered the perfect dinner foreplay—a wedge of Jarlsberg cheese, saltines, and green seedless grapes. And to wash it down, a brisk, melony Chimney Rock Napa Valley Elevage Blanc.
Feeling considerably refreshed, I returned to the guesthouse and put in a call to my restaurant’s manager-hostess, Cassandra Shaw.
“Oh, Billy,” she said, heavy on the sarcasm. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten us, out there in lotusland.”
“The time difference threw me off,” I said.
“No problem,” she said. “We had an excellent night. Near capacity. Service was smooth. Morale high. Don’t worry about us, Billy. We always seem to prosper when you’re not around.”
Cassandra is a tall, relentlessly beautiful blonde and, more crucial to the success of Blessing’s Bistro, an extremely self-reliant, smart, and dedicated second-in-command. But as long as I’ve known her, nearly seven years, she has carried a chip on her shoulder the size of the Manhattan phone book. Our customers not only accept her snarky attitude, they seem to be amused and even enchanted by it. I have to admit, there are times I’m amused by it myself. This wasn’t one of them.
“Well,” I said, “if, by some miracle, you do need me, you know how to reach me.”
“I seem to have misplaced the phone number of your beach cabana.”
“I’m working here, Cassandra. No beach cabana.”
“How sad for you,” she said. “Billy, to be serious for a moment, the women out there are as self-obsessed and predatory as they are beautiful. Please try not to disgrace yourself or the Bistro. Keep it zipped.”
I told her I’d do my best. I didn’t tell her I was wearing breakaway pants.
In any case, her advice, sincere or not, went in one ear and out the other.
Only an hour later, at Stew’s dinner party, overdressed in a sport coat in L.A., I found myself sharing personal space with one of the most attractive females present, pretending to be enthralled by her explanation of why she’d had to take Balthazar, her Pomeranian, to “doggie rehab.”
I’d spied her the moment I stepped through the door. Stew had welcomed me, expressed regret that Des had been unable to make it, and was about to lead me to a group of pleasant-looking, affluent, middle-aged couples when I asked if he’d mind introducing me instead to the beautiful lady who, like myself, disproved Herman Mankiewicz’s quip about Malibu racial intolerance.
Now she and I were standing poolside with a couple dozen other guests, enjoying a mariachi band and margaritas and appreciating the way the patio heaters kept the night balmy in spite of a chilly breeze off the ocean. So fascinated was I by the way her no doubt enhanced sea-green eyes contrasted with her dark brown skin, I was able to keep a straight face while she told me about “poor Balthy” nibbling on a marijuana plant in the garden behind her house. I assumed Balthy was one of those accessory quasi-dogs so popular in L.A., and, in fairness, NYC.
“It got so I just couldn’t keep him away from it,” she said. “I decided I had to … Why is that fool gawking at us?”
It took me a second to realize she’d not only changed the subject, she’d asked me a question.
Reluctantly, I turned from her to observe the fool.
He was a big, arrogantly handsome guy in his early fifties. Salt-and-pepper hair cut close to his balding scalp. Black leather jacket. Several days’ growth of beard on his chiseled chin. He was standing with Stew’s daughter, Dani.
“Do you know him, Billy?”
Oh, yeah. I knew him.
The last time I’d seen Roger Charbonnet, he’d threatened to kill me. Twenty-two years may have passed, but, judging by the expression on his face, he still remembered me, and it was not a fond memory.