Bel-Air Dead (25 page)

There were several with Centurion’s biggest pre-Vance star, Clete Barrow, who had died at Dunkirk, in World War II, and a dozen or more were of Vance Calder, in various costumes: business suit, western gear, on horseback, driving a vintage racing car, and one in the rigging of a pirate ship, with a sword in his teeth. They made their way slowly down the path, turned a couple of corners, and emerged into a dimly lit, cavernous space.

Suddenly, a spotlight came on and found Arrington, and from the darkness beyond, a roar of shouting and applause welcomed her. She stopped and waved, as if she had just walked onto a stage. It struck Stone that the noise was being made by more than forty or fifty people, but when the lights came up a bit, that was as many as he saw.

Stone, Mike, and Dino followed in Arrington’s wake as she proceeded down the center aisle, where Rick Barron awaited to seat her party in the fourth row.

Stone spotted Jim Long, in a wheelchair, seated next to Mrs. Charles Grosvenor, in the first row left. Seated across the aisle from them was Terry Prince, his back to Stone.

Rick walked up a couple of steps to a raised platform and took a seat in an arced row of a dozen people, presumably the Centurion board of directors.

Lined up across the edge of the platform were larger replicas of the Oscar, several dozen of them.

Stone was impressed.

54

Stone expected Rick Barron to call the meeting to order, but that did not happen. Instead, the lights went down, and in the darkness a screen must have been lowered, because suddenly a large, wide-screen image of the Centurion main gates, filmed from above, appeared, and the music of a full symphony orchestra welled up.

The camera was in either a blimp or a stabilized helicopter, and it rose and began to move slowly over the studio grounds, past the administration building and over the soundstages. Various standing stages, like the New York street and the small town square with its courthouse passed beneath. Then the camera moved over the lake, where an eighteenth-century sailing vessel was anchored.

In the distance could be seen the main street of a western town, with its Boot Hill at one end. From the opposite end of the street a man on horseback was at full gallop in the direction of the camera, which descended to ground level to meet him. As he approached the camera he reined in the horse, which skidded to a halt in a small cloud of dust, as its rider jumped gracefully to the ground. The man was Vance Calder.

Tall in his heeled boots, wearing a buckskin shirt with fringed sleeves and the Stetson he had worn in many westerns, Vance looked wonderfully handsome, Stone thought.

Vance slapped his horse on its ass, and it galloped off-screen, while he walked to the side of the street, outside the saloon, swept off his hat and tossed it a few feet to where it landed on one end of the hitching post. He leaned against the rail and contemplated the camera for a moment, allowing the audience to take in his lean figure, his graying hair, and his deeply tanned, finely cut face. He smiled, revealing a beautiful set of teeth.

“Hello,” Vance said, in his beautifully modulated baritone. “I believe we’ve met before.”

The audience of film people went nuts, and it was as if the dead man on the screen had anticipated this, because he paused until the noise subsided, before continuing. “Welcome to my home for the past half-century,” he said, waving an arm around him. He pushed off the rail and began to move with the camera up the street, past the sheriff’s office, the general store, and the undertaker’s parlor, continuing to speak as he strolled.

“I’ve made seventy-five films at Centurion, from westerns … to comedies … to romances … to war films … to police procedurals and just about every other kind of picture…”

And as Vance strolled and talked, something magical happened. Without his so much as pausing for a breath, the actor’s image dissolved as he continued to speak, through a series of shots of him in different costumes, on different sets around the lot. It was completely seamless, something that could only have been accomplished by a ghost—or a superb film editor.

Finally he reached the town square, and dressed in a brassbuttoned blue blazer and gray flannel trousers, and an opennecked white silk shirt with a colorful scarf tied at the neck, he took a seat on a park bench in front of the courthouse, crossed his legs, and continued.

“Centurion has survived, intact, over all these decades, because of the management of people who wanted more than to rake in big grosses, who wanted to make fine motion pictures, films that will still move audiences a hundred years hence, and beyond. The more than seven hundred films made on this lot since the late thirties have won more than a hundred and fifty Oscars, for everything from costumes, makeup, and production design to scoring, producing, directing, and acting. Six of those came to me—not just because I did a good job, but because from their inception, each of those pictures had invested in it the brains and creativity and skill of a group of extraordinary people, working together to craft some of the best entertainment this industry has ever seen.

“The board of directors, of which I am glad to be a member, has always followed a policy of offering ownership of the studio to a wide variety of the people who work here, in the belief that this practice will maintain the structure of our business in such a way that will allow the excellence of the work done here to continue for decades into the future.

“Technical advances will come along, and Centurion will embrace them, but it is the talent and creativity and hard work of the people who make our films that will always be at the heart of the work we produce, and that will enable us to keep this studio in the forefront of the motion picture business.

“You are all part of that, and I am very proud to be one of you.” Vance paused, then stood and said, “I’ll see you in the movies.” Then as the music swelled again, he turned and strolled off down the street, until, with a little wave, he disappeared around a corner.

The audience were on their feet again, applauding and shouting, many of them in tears.

Slowly, the lights came up, first on the row of Oscars, then on the people seated at the table onstage.

Rick Barron adjusted the microphone in front of him and spoke. “Now we will vote on a motion to sell forty percent of our property to Prince Enterprises.”

55

Stone turned and looked at Arrington. She was still staring at where the screen had been, and tears were running down her cheeks. He gave her his linen handkerchief.

“That was wonderful!” she said, trying not to sob.

“And showing it was brilliant,” Stone replied.

Rick began calling names of shareholders: “Gladys Hemmings, Wardrobe,” he said. “Fifty shares.”

“I vote with Centurion!” a woman shouted from the rear, and applause broke out again.

“Harry Bland, Maintenance, sixty-five shares.”

“You’ve got my vote, Rick,” a man shouted.

“Martin Manulis, Production, twenty thousand shares.”

A man in the front row stood. “I vote with Centurion!” he shouted.

The roll call continued, and fifteen or twenty names had been called before someone voted his ten thousand shares with Prince. A low rumble of disapproval began.

Stone had his notebook out and was keeping score. The studio was ahead about sixty-forty, he reckoned, then someone voted twenty-five thousand shares with Prince, and the developer edged ahead.

“We know where this is going, don’t we?” Arrington asked.

“Not yet we don’t,” Stone replied, busy with his pen. He looked around for a moment at the faces near him. They were tense, worried, and some had tears on their cheeks. Not a one seemed uncaring. He continued to tot up the totals.

“Where are we?” Arrington asked.

“Behind,” Stone said. And then something happened that stunned him.

“The estate of Jennifer Harris,” Rick called out. “I’m sorry, those shares have changed hands.” He looked carefully at the page before him. “Strategic Services, twenty thousand shares.”

Mike Freeman stood up. “Strategic Services votes with the studio!” he shouted, then sat down. He turned toward Stone, whose mouth was open. “It seemed like a good investment,” he said.

Arrington threw her arms around him.

“And that makes it worth every penny,” Mike said.

Rick made a note and continued. “James Long, Production, twenty thousand shares.”

Jim Long struggled to his feet from his wheelchair, assisted by Eleanor Grosvenor. “Every share voted with Centurion!” he said, raising his voice as much as he could, then he collapsed into the wheelchair.

But Mrs. Charles Grosvenor was still on her feet. She turned and shouted at Terry Prince, just across the aisle, “Take that, you son of a bitch!” then sat down.

The other shareholders laughed and applauded.

Rick continued to call the roll, and Stone continued to track the count. “Jack Schmeltzer, Production, twenty thousand shares.”

Schmeltzer stood up. “I vote with the studio,” he said quietly.

“That concludes the voting,” Rick said. “We’ll have a final count in a few minutes.” Several board members gathered around him, comparing notes. A couple of them had calculators.

“Tell me, Stone,” Arrington said.

“I must have it wrong,” Stone replied. “Let’s let Rick tell us.”

“You know,” she said, “I don’t think I understood how much this would mean to me until this moment.”

“I understand how you feel,” Stone replied.

Finally, Rick Barron got to his feet and plucked the microphone off its stand. “Quiet please,” he said. “We have a final count.”

The crowd became hushed.

“Centurion Studios has received seventy-two percent of the shares voted. The motion to sell our land is defeated.”

Pandemonium reigned. People embraced or shook hands, and music was rising. Somewhere in the ether, a brass band was playing “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

Dino grabbed Stone’s elbow. “I told you it was going to be a good day,” he shouted. “My bones are never wrong, and it’s not over yet.” He walked away from the crowd, pulling out his cell phone.

It seemed that every person in the crowd wanted to hug Arrington or shake her hand. She stood, tears still streaming down her face, and received every one.

Finally, Rick Barron, still shaking hands and kissing women, made his way through the crowd to her side with Glenna in tow. The three of them embraced wordlessly.

Then a studio policeman made his way to Rick. “Something’s wrong outside in the street,” he said. “I can’t make any sense of it on the radio. There’s too much noise from out there.”

Most of the crowd was out of the soundstage by now. Stone fell in step beside Rick. “That film was brilliant; where did it come from?”

“We shot the footage for the stockholders’ meeting the year Vance died,” he said, “but in the hubbub that followed, it just got shunted aside. I found the stock last Friday and edited it, put the opticals in, and got it scored over the weekend.”

“I think it turned the tide,” Stone said.

“I know it did. I watched Jack Schmeltzer’s face at the end, and I knew he was going to vote with us.”

“Did you know about Strategic Services buying Jennifer Harris’s stock?”

“Not until this morning, and the name didn’t mean anything to me until Glenna explained who they were.”

“Then it’s time you met your new shareholder,” Stone said, and introduced him to Mike Freeman.

They continued out of the building, and as soon as they were on the street Stone saw what was going on. A big to-do was raging a few yards away. Terrence Prince’s Bentley Mulsanne was on fire, and he could hear the studio fire engine’s siren approaching.

Stone looked around and saw Jack Schmeltzer standing across the street, a broad smile on his face.

Then Stone was surprised again. He saw Sergeant Rivera of the LAPD and two uniformed officers approach Prince, say a few words to him, then handcuff him and lead him away, him protesting the whole time.

Stone turned to Dino. “What was that?”

Dino smiled. “Rivera and I brought Carter back from Mexico yesterday. In return for immunity, he’s agreed to testify against Prince for the attempted murder of Jim Long.” He laughed. “Is this a good day, or what?”

Stone began laughing. “It’s a very, very good day, Dino,” he said.

“I told you about my bones,” Dino said.

“And I’ll never doubt your bones again,” Stone said.

56

They watched as a police car drove Terry Prince away.

Rick Barron chuckled. “I was going to have studio security escort him off the lot,” he said. “I’ll give them instructions that he not be allowed to set a cloven hoof on these grounds again.”

Everybody laughed.

“The exhilaration is wearing off, now, and I’m tired,” Rick said. “Will you excuse Glenna and me?”

“Of course,” Arrington replied.

Rick’s car pulled up and they were driven away.

Stone led his party to the Bentley and everyone got in.

“I know how Rick feels,” Arrington said. “I’m tired, too.”

“Suspense is wearing,” Stone said.

“I’m sorry to have added to it,” Mike said from the rear seat.

“No, you stood up at just the right moment in the proceedings,” Arrington said.

They had been back at the house for only a few minutes when Stone’s cell buzzed. “Hello?”

“It’s Carolyn Blaine. I’d like to see you for a few minutes, if you can manage the time.”

“Come over,” Stone said, then hung up. He buzzed Manolo and told him to expect a guest.

“Who was that?” Dino asked.

“Carolyn Blaine.”

“She’s coming over? She’s a big loser in all this, isn’t she?”

“Maybe not,” Stone said. “I’m interested to hear what she has to say.”

Manolo escorted Carolyn out to the patio.

“You’ve met Dino Bacchetti, haven’t you?” Stone said.

“Yes, nice to see you again.”