CHAPTER 19

They got to the studio about twenty minutes later. The same young actor was working the gate and he let them in again with no problem.

It must have been union coffee-break time. The whole lot was swarming with people in jeans. They were lounging all over the place, leaning against cars, sitting on the pavement.

At the door to the soundstage a pair of Nazi storm troopers were yakking with a bearded Basque shepherd and a long-legged woman in a flamenco outfit. A guy in baggy pantaloons and a fez wandered by singing a Guns N’ Roses tune.

R.J. and Portillo pushed through and into the hangar. The set this time was a basement room, steam pipes dripping onto ratty-looking crates. A dingy bed stood under a high window.

Maggie DeSoto was sitting on the bed under the lights, this time completely topless. Her breasts stood out unnaturally, an obvious silicone job. She had her legs crossed and was kicking the upper foot and smoking a cigarette. She looked bored, as if she was waiting for a bus to take her to the library. Except there were damned few people in the library dressed like that. Even in Los Angeles.

Once again there was a tense knot of people beside the camera. As R.J. approached them he could hear Trevor, the elfin director, speaking.

“—don’t care if she pulls his balls off and dusts the room with them, I’ll have him out of that great bloody Winnebago in five minutes or I’ll bloody well sue his fucking agent!”

Casey was standing beside the elf, trying to calm him down. It wasn’t working. He pushed her away and R.J. felt his blood coming to a boil, but Casey turned and saw him.

“R.J.!” she said with an actual smile. It was quick and strained, but it was a smile.

“Hi, Casey,” he said. “Would you like this guy in six pieces or a full dozen?” The elf looked alarmed and quickly backed away.

Casey put a hand on R.J.’s arm. It felt good. “He’s not the problem,” she said, nodding at the rapidly retreating elf. “It’s Alec.”

“The no-shirt guy? What’s his problem?”

Casey giggled. It was a sound so completely unlike her that R.J. just stared. “Apparently,” she said, the giggle still just a half breath away, “Maggie DeSoto put her hand inside his pants during the love scene.”

R.J. shook his head. “And?”

“And then she laughed and said something nobody else heard, and Alec stormed off the set and locked himself into his trailer. He says he won’t come out again until Maggie is fired and replaced with somebody decent.”

“Well then, great,” R.J. said. “Let’s take advantage and have some lunch. I need to talk to you.”

Casey frowned and shook her head. “Do you know how much it’s costing us for every hour this crew stands around doing nothing?”

“Well, hell, why throw good money after bad? Cancel the picture and let’s get something to eat.”

She ignored him, her eyes already roaming around the room, looking for something. “I can’t leave the set until this is cleared up, R.J.” Her eyes darted over to a bearded guy with a clipboard. “In fact, until Alec comes out of his trailer I’m going to be too busy to—Just a second, Bill,” she said as the bearded guy walked past. She fell in step with him and they walked off, already deep in conversation.

R.J. fumed. So the guy got his crotch grabbed, and because of that, now Casey was too busy to talk. And because this was Hollywood, they would solve it by telephone, if at all, and it would take three days. Time he didn’t have. He had a plane to catch.

It made him furious. He had to talk to Casey, let her know what was going on. Persuade her to keep a low profile and cooperate with the guys Henry Portillo would assign to her. And nobody was doing anything beyond high-powered fretting. Well, hell, there must be something he could do. He was from this town, from this life. He should be able to think of something.

But what? They sure as hell hadn’t had this kind of problem when he was a kid. If anything like this had ever happened on the set of one of his father’s pictures—not that it ever could have—his father probably would have—

It came to him just like that. He looked around the room. Casey was already on the cellular telephone, talking away a mile a minute. Portillo was talking to a cop over beside the food tables. The cop was practically at attention.

And on a chair beside Portillo, R.J. saw it.

Somebody had dumped a battered raincoat and a fedora on the chair. Wardrobe. Probably Alec Harris’s costume. Based on the one R.J.’s dad had made famous.

R.J. stepped casually over and picked up the hat and coat. Portillo glanced at him. “R.J.,” he said. It was part warning and part question.

R.J. ducked it with a reassuring smile. “I’ll be right back, Uncle Hank,” he said, and headed for the door.

Outside he shrugged into the coat as he walked toward the two big trailers. They had signs on the door. The one on the left said “ALEC HARRIS” and had a couple of gold stars around it. Just in case the poor slob forgot what he was supposed to be.

R.J. put on the fedora. It was a little tight but he jammed it down onto his head anyway. Let the pinhead son-of-a-bitch get it tightened again later.

The door was locked, so R.J. wrapped his fist in the hem of the raincoat and punched through the window set in the trailer’s small door. He reached through, unlocked the door, and stepped up into the trailer, snapping up the collar of the raincoat.

“Jesus Christ,” said a pained, delicate voice, “you can’t come in here.”

R.J. turned and saw Harris lounging on the king-size bed. R.J. tugged on the brim of the fedora. “Is this the trailer reserved for the male lead?” he asked, and he heard the star gasp.

“Oh, my God,” Harris panted. “What are you doing here?”

“The question is,” R.J. said, “what are you doing here? In the star’s trailer?”

“Jesus, you look just like him!”

R.J. grinned at the stricken lifeguard. “I guess that’s why they called me. They were having some problems with that other guy.” R.J. sat in the big easy chair and put his feet up on the coffee table. “Who are you, pal?”

Harris was standing now, visibly trembling. “You even sound like him!” he moaned.

“I had a lot of practice. Say, I need some privacy before we start shooting.” He nodded at the door. “Would you mind?”

Harris stumbled for the door, muttering to himself. “They can’t do this. My agent said they wouldn’t dare,” he whimpered.

“Your agent steered you wrong,” R.J. told him. “Maybe if you talked to the director—”

Harris snapped his fingers. “That’s it! That’s right, Trevor’s got too much in the can already, he’ll fight for me!” And he fell out the door and hurried away toward the set.

R.J. stood up and watched him go, grinning. “I’m a ba-a-a-a-ad boy,” he said to himself.

R.J. gave it five minutes, just to be sure. Then he dropped the hat and coat on the bed and strolled back onto the set.

Alec Harris was already back in place, stretched out in fake passion with a still-bored Maggie DeSoto. She was looking across the set to the cop with Portillo and absentmindedly stroking Harris’s butt as a gang of technicians bustled around them.

R.J. grinned. All was right with the world.

Casey was standing behind the camera. R.J. came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Casey,” he said softly. “Now how about some lunch?”