KW 09:Shot on Location (20 page)

51.

“The way I see it,” Joey Goldman was saying, “his story was gonna be that the hole got deeper by itself. Ya know, caved in, the way real sinkholes happen or empty swimming pools cave in. Pressure down there. Happens. So it caves in and exposes the old tree trunk and there’s a horrible accident in front of plenty of witnesses. Hard to prove, hard to disprove.”

“Except,” said Ace, “we caught guys digging. Around eleven, when everyone had left. We watched from Joey’s boat. They took the fake beach off, dug some more, planted the spike, put the top back on. Then they got in this dinghy that was stashed in the mangroves and rowed away. Joey put me ashore and I hid down in the hole. Disgusting down there, lemme tell ya. Plus I almost took the spear right up my ass. Who wants more grouper? I got like a whole other batch here.”

It was evening and everyone had gathered at the compound. Placid blue light gleamed above the pool. Seagulls soared above the streetlights and palm fronds rattled softly in the breeze. The mood was almost festive but not quite, tempered by fatigue and a grudging but undeniable sympathy for the death of Quentin Dole; and for the incarcerated future of the tall and crazy blonde, who’d been arrested, without resistance and apparently with relief, the instant she stepped ashore at the Brigantine Marina; for the flash-in-the-pan hit show called
Adrift,
on which work was now suspended and which was nearly certain to be canceled; and even for Candace McBride, who’d been upstaged in her own death scene and was already headed back to California without a show, without a role, the media furious at her, her meteoric career suddenly a cinder. So the gathering wasn’t boisterous, wasn’t gloating, and yet it was celebratory, a happy but muted ceremony by a very tired winning team.

Holding out his plate for more fish, Jake said, “The part I couldn’t figure was why Charlie Ponte was involved. When I saw that bodyguard working in the ditch, the one with the crazy laugh —”

“Tiny,” Ace put in. “His name is Tiny. I saw him this afternoon when I delivered the blonde’s boat to Ponte. Grabbed it before the cops did. Used it to repay a favor and say goodbye forever. Anyway, so Tiny tells me what I already figured, that it wasn’t Ponte that hired those guys to dig the hole. It was Handsome Johnny. He borrowed a crew, just like he borrowed me to steal the script.”

“But why?” Claire asked. “Why would Handsome Johnny be involved at all?”

The question hung for a moment and no one realized what a melancholy question it was. Handsome Johnny had been involved because he very briefly knew a son for whom he would do anything, and who now, abruptly, had vanished from his life as though he’d never been fathered.

Gesturing with his wineglass, Bert the Shirt offered a different theory. “Handsome Johnny was involved because he’s a worthless little pissant who likes to pretend he’s in show business.” He drank some wine then said, almost as an afterthought, “Wonder who he hired to run y’over.”

Donna said, “Excuse me?”

“Wasn’t Ace,” Bert said.

“Wouldn’t’a been the blonde,” the big man put in, “since she had a script and woulda known it wasn’t Candace in the water.”

“Right,” said Bert, “and now we find out Johnny was in cahoots with the producer guy. Bingo. Wonder who he hired to do the dirty work.”

Claire said, “You don’t think he drove the boat himself?”

“Handsome Johnny Burke?” Bert said dismissively. “Take on a risk like that? Take a chance on being the fall guy? Not for love or money.”

In this he underestimated the small-time mobster who’d fled from Hollywood only to make a second mess in Florida.

The platter of fish was passed around. More wine was poured. Donna ate and drank left-handed; her sling was back in place. Claire asked her how her arm was.

“Hurts like a bastard. But it’s worth it. I finally had a speaking part.”

Claire said, “And your performance was dazzling, amazing.”

The former stuntwoman gave a modest and lopsided shrug.

“How’d you do it?” Claire went on. “How’d you just step in like that and get so deep in Lulu’s character, the sadness, the hopelessness?”

Donna nibbled some grouper before she answered. “Little secret? In my mind I wasn’t playing Lulu. I was playing Candace. I was thinking: what’s going on inside this person, or isn’t, to make her such a bitch? That’s where it all came from.”

“Well, it worked,” Jake said.

A little cocky now, Donna said, “Hey, I told you I could do it, right? The very first night we talked. I said I could nail that fucking role if I ever got the chance. I just thought I never would. And I wouldn’t have if Bryce and Bert didn’t pull off the hijacking so well.”

Bryce beamed. “I loved that part. That part was really fun. The hedge clippers —”

“Hedge-clippers,” Ace put in. “Dustbuster. What next, a fucking Vegematic?”

Bryce said, “I’ll improvise, I’ll see what comes to hand. Maybe a gun with no bullets, like Bert.”

The old man shook his head and his huge nose lightly fanned the table. “I’ll tell ya, bullets, no bullets, it felt really lousy to have a gun in my hand again. But what can I say? Ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I’ll tell ya, though, I felt bad for the driver. Nice guy, this is what he gets. What a fucking world … But the blind man shtick, this is what I’m proud of. Pulled that off good. Couldn’t’ve done it without Nacho here. The guide dog. Played his part great. Didn’t ya, Nacho?”

He scratched the chihuahua under the chin and its drooping whiskers tickled his knuckles.

A moment later Joey said, “Nacho. You called him Nacho.”

“What of it? That’s his name, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, but —”

“I know, I know. I used to call him by the other name before. Ya think I didn’t know that? But ya gotta understand. When you’ve had something in your life for a long time, a person, a place, a dog, and then it isn’t there no more, it takes a while to get used to it, to admit that something changed. I wasn’t ready to let go before. Now I am. I’m ready to let go. Salud.”

Epilogue

Late next morning, when the call came in, Jake and Claire were still in bed. Her head was nestled in the crook of his arm, her hair brushed lightly against his cheek. They’d known each other barely a week, but as Claire had once told Jake, television sped up everything, and when they’d made love it had been with an ease and candor usually reserved for longtime partners, for people already shaped to one another in their bodies and their hearts. Being in each other’s arms had felt like sailing someplace never seen but also like sailing home again.

But now Jake’s phone was ringing, and after some seconds Claire, accustomed to being responsible, accountable, said, “Aren’t you going to pick it up?”

“Nah.”

“See who it is, at least?”

Jake looked at the screen. “It’s my agent.”

“In my world,” Claire said, “clients take their agent’s calls, if not always vice versa.”

So Jake shrugged and took the call.

Lou Mermelstein launched right in, as was his custom. “Christ, Jake,” he said, “you landed in a real shitstorm down there. The killing, the suspension of the show, it’s all over the news. You must be a wreck.”

Claire was toying with the whorls of hair along his sternum. He felt the warmth of her leg on top of his. He said, “Actually, I’m okay, I’m fine.”

As if he hadn’t really heard the answer, the agent went on. “It’s a disaster. I mean, there’s obviously no tie-in book if there’s no show to tie into. But, listen, it shouldn’t be a total loss, I just spoke to the publisher. Given the crazy circumstances, they’re willing to pay a kill fee. They offered twenty-five. I’m pushing for fifty. I said you’ve been breaking your ass on this book, it’s like half drafted already. Whaddya think?”

Jake said, “I don’t want a kill fee.”

Mermelstein said, “You don’t seem to understand. If there’s no —”

“I haven’t written a word of the stupid tie-in book and I don’t want a penny for it.”

Rather sternly the agent said, “Jake, I have a reputation to protect. I can’t say no to money.”

“Who’s saying no? I’m saying I want the whole two hundred grand. But I want it for a different book. I want to write about what really happened.”

“What really happened?” echoed Mermelstein. “What happened is that some deranged fan took a pot shot at the creator of the show. End of story. Tabloid stuff. I don’t see a book there.”

“Except that’s not what happened. Not even close.”

“No? Okay, so you tell me. What really happened? Let’s hear the pitch.”

Jake wriggled higher on his pillows, Claire slinking alongside. Trusting to the moment, he improvised a spiel about three speedboats, some Mafia, an impossible diva, a tirelessly profane stuntwoman, an old man with a dog, a suicidal brother, a tough guy with a heart of gold, a slacker with a Dustbuster, a television genius going off the rails, a compound offering peace and mayhem, and an on-location romance between a line producer and a ghostwriter.

The agent said, “Jesus Christ. Is that what really happened?”

“Pretty much,” said Jake.

“Sit tight,” the agent said. “I’ll call the publisher and get back to you.”

---

Jake’s book was called
The Stuntwoman and the Diva
and it caught on in a way his earlier real-name efforts never had. Within days of its release it went viral among the many fans of
Adrift
who were still in mourning for the loss of their favorite show. From that core group of impassioned and in-the-know readers, the audience broadened and the momentum built, until the book became one of those must-read items on the grab-and-go tables of every airport and on the welcome page of every electronic bookstore. A hefty film deal quickly followed.

Jake and Claire were bicoastal in those giddy months, she, as lead producer, based in L.A. to deal with the studio and the actors’ agents; he, as screenwriter, flying in for meetings with the suits then returning to the haven of the compound to soak up local atmosphere and revisit the beaches and bars and islets where the story was set. But once the script had been approved and the shooting was scheduled to begin, the lovers were together nearly every night, either in Jake’s yellow cottage or at Claire’s quite grand suite at The Nest.

The movie was released the following winter, and at Claire’s insistence the world premiere was held not in New York or Los Angeles but in Key West, in a small theater on a narrow street in a miniature town where people sometimes surprised themselves and changed their lives. Reviews were generally excellent, rhapsodizing especially about the debut performance of Donna Alvarez, who appeared seemingly from nowhere to brilliantly carry off the dual roles of the stand-in and the star.

In preparation for the post-premiere party, the red carpet had been unfurled in front of Ace’s Place, a recent arrival on the downtown scene and by all accounts the place to go for seafood. Cameras rolled as the notables stepped out of their limousines and filed in. Inside, champagne flowed, toasts were proposed, cheeks were kissed and backs were patted. In the weeks that followed the nationwide opening, the usual Oscar buzz and rumors gathered steam. But
Stuntwoman
wasn’t destined for an Oscar. It just wasn’t that kind of movie. It didn’t push the envelope or proclaim its own importance. It was neither more nor less than a small, peculiar story that had a few good lines and some characters who might be fun to have a drink with, and that turned out as it should.

Books by Laurence Shames

About the Author

Laurence Shames has been a New York City taxi driver, lounge singer, furniture mover, lifeguard, dishwasher, gym teacher, and shoe salesman. Having failed to distinguish himself in any of those professions, he turned to writing full-time in 1976 and has not done an honest day’s work since.

His basic laziness notwithstanding, Shames has published more than twenty books and hundreds of magazine articles and essays. Best known for his critically acclaimed series of Key West novels, he has also authored non-fiction and enjoyed considerable though largely secret success as a collaborator and ghostwriter. Shames has penned four New York Times bestsellers. These have appeared on four different lists, under four different names, none of them his own. This might be a record.

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, to chain-smoking parents of modest means but flamboyant emotions, Shames did not know Philip Roth, Paul Simon, Queen Latifa, Shaquille O’Neal, or any of the other really cool people who have come from his hometown. He graduated summa cum laude from NYU in 1972 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. As a side note, both his alma mater and honorary society have been extraordinarily adept at tracking his many address changes through the decades, in spite of the fact that he’s never sent them one red cent.

It was on an Italian beach in the summer of 1970 that Shames first heard the sacred call of the writer’s vocation. Lonely and poor, hungry and thirsty, he’d wandered into a seaside trattoria, where he noticed a couple tucking into a big platter of
fritto misto
. The man was nothing much to look at but the woman was really beautiful. She was perfectly tan and had a very fine-gauge gold chain looped around her bare tummy. The couple was sharing a liter of white wine; condensation beaded the carafe. Eye contact was made; the couple turned out to be Americans. The man wiped olive oil from his rather sensual lips and introduced himself as a writer. Shames knew in that moment that he would be one too.

He began writing stories and longer things he thought of as novels. He couldn’t sell them.

By 1979 he’d somehow become a journalist and was soon publishing in top-shelf magazines like Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. (This transition entailed some lucky breaks, but is not as vivid a tale as the
fritto misto
bit, so we’ll just sort of gloss over it.) In 1982, Shames was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and was also made a contributing editor to that magazine.

By 1986 he was writing non-fiction books whose critical, if not commercial, success first established Shames’ credentials as a collaborator/ghostwriter. His 1991 national bestseller, Boss of Bosses, written with two FBI agents, got him thinking about the Mafia. It also bought him a ticket out of New York and a sweet little house in Key West, where he finally got back to Plan A: writing novels.

Given his then-current preoccupations, the novels, beginning with the cult classic, Florida Straits, naturally featured palm trees, high humidity, dogs in sunglasses, and New York mobsters blundering through a town where people were too laid back to be afraid of them. Having found a setting he loved and a loyal readership as well, Shames wrote eight Key West novels during the 1990s, six of which were optioned for feature film.

After a twelve-year detour into writing screenplays and non-fiction, Shames has now made a happy and rollicking return to the Keys with
Shot on Location.

Find him online at
http://www.laurenceshames.com