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“You created ‘The Mercenary’?”

He nodded and the “Entertainment Tonight” cameras caught it all, moving from her face to his. It would be the perfect way to start their on-location piece. A kiss for
the warrior, before sending him into fuel-injected battle. But as the camera zoomed in on her face, her features began to tremble; grow ugly.

“You
son of a bitch!”
she hissed, before throwing the hot coffee in his face, causing him to cry out in pain.

“What the hell are you doing?!” He was yelling, wriggling out of the car’s kayak opening. A crew member got him a towel. Another grabbed her and she struggled.

“What’s the problem, here?” asked Mary Hart.

The woman spit at Alan. Mouth stretching furiously. “He
wrote
it! What I just did … he
wrote
it! It was on his vulgar show and the boy next door did it to my little girl!” She was screaming. “She’s in the hospital!
He wrote it!
”

Alan could feel blisters rising on his eyelids. Everything was out of focus.

“I’m going to sue you for her medical expenses you
bastard!”
She stared into Mary Hart’s camera, half-insane, spit running down her chin. “… and I’m starting a letter-writing campaign to the sponsors who permit your
hateful
garbage to be aired!”

More network cameras were sniffing around; scoop ghouls. In seconds, everyone knew Alan was the guy who’d created “The Mercenary” and that the screaming lady’s daughter had been hurt by something identical to what he’d written. They waited to see what would happen next. Alan felt like he was in a nightmare; scores of eyes watching, in beer hazes, wondering if it were true.

“You and your show are evil!”
she screamed, pig eyes unblinking. “My church is going to
stop you!
”

“What’s your name, ma’am?” asked a reporter from
People.

But she just kept yelling for everyone to join her in her letter-writing campaign and for them all to help ban the show. She said she was a member of a fundamentalist church in Arizona and kept shrieking about Alan being godless. She managed to pull free of the guys holding her and ranted, out of control.

She held up a color photograph of a little girl with a burned face. Everyone wanted to see her daughter’s flesh, the thick gauze that collected weeping infection.

“She’s only six years old!” the
woman screamed.

Alan tried to escape the glaring faces which leered, out of focus, all around him. They were disturbed by the graphic photo and some began to push him a little, drunk and stupid. His vision was smeared and he fell over something, trying to push through the choking crowd.

He was on the ground, bleeding, chin and palms cut. A Boschian jury stared down, eyes filled with question. Rising hatred. Over engine roar, Alan could hear voices yelling for Security, others for the track doctor. Cameras zoomed in on everything with stoic predation.

She twisted furiously, pulling away from people who tried to calm her. Another reporter pressed and she finally admitted she was from Tucson and her name was Linda Crain. She’d read Alan was going to be at this race and driven all night. Driven all night to make him hurt the way her daughter was hurting.

One of Alan’s pit crew guys grabbed her again as she lunged for Alan and kicked him hard in the ribs. She
pointed an accusing finger at him, pulled through the crowd.

“He hurts innocent children!” She
was bright red.
“Alan White hurts innocent children with his show!
”

“Entertainment Tonight” broadcast the footage which included him holding his bruised ribs and her calling him a monster two days later.

P
inks was one of those L.A. fester palaces built to resemble a huge hotdog. It slung in the sky, fiberglass buns and all, off Beverly; a phallocentric totem of breathtakingly bad taste.

Alan and Erica had just made out in her Honda Accord at a drive-in by LAX and sat on outdoor stools chomping chilidogs; urban wolves. The drive-in had featured a film-noir festival and 747s descending over actors faces.

“Colorization … end of fucking life. Those movies were perfect in black and white. Fucking Ted Turner. Why did he do that to all those films?” He pointed a chili-capped finger. “Who ever thought it was a good idea?”

“Just color, honey. Color won’t kill you.”

Chili sledded down his chin.

“Speaking of color,” she said, “I had an orgasm,
that’s the key piece in this exchange, wouldn’t you agree?”

She looked up at the erectile hugeness of the diner. “Is it just me, or are we eating under the shade of an immense genital?”

“Define immense.”

“Over two stories.”

“You haven’t lived. Thought you said you’d been to Europe.” More chili in magma freefall.

A flirtatious whisper. “I like being with you.”

She watched him for a reaction. No reply. Then, wordlessly, he poured ketchup on his plate. Spelled out: DITTO in wet, red script.

She squealed in delight.

T
he Oasis rose, fifteen stories, above the neurotic Nile of Wilshire Boulevard like a marble beanstalk. Its designer condos were filled with washed-up tales who’d saved their money, aside current darlings who wanted a class address and a roof-pool.

Some wanted anonymity. Some safety. They were all here; the distant and the dysfunctional, locked behind doormen and paranoia cameras. Performers. Real-estate smoothies. Actresses. Ex-wives of the powerful, who’d ruined their spouse’s savings accounts and moved on. Gigolos and mistresses, living in gilded invisibility; perfectly maintained thoroughbreds, grooming in penthouse stalls, awaiting whatever sexual gallop expected of them.

The women were beautiful and call-girl perfect, with the edgy sensitivity of bonsai; needing just enough sun, water, and costly soil, or they would wilt and sulk. The men
were sleek and bronze, living in chaise stupors until their owner got home, demanding attention.

As the night guard sat at his post in the lobby, beneath multisecurity camera monitors, he didn’t feel the incursion. The almost immeasurable BTU warmth; a frequency. Like what silently roars along boulevards of nerves as we sleep. The exact moment a match head does a tiny Hiroshima when scratching along its sandy runway. The movement in the lash that precedes a blink.

It went by the guard like a momentary sunburn; an unseen sensation of fever beneath his guard suit. His brow began to sweat and his stomach sledded. He opened his thermos, poured clam chowder, and tossed back two Excedrins; round, white head-warriors.

He checked back into Clive Barker’s latest polonaise of suffering, looking up when the French couple from the fourteenth floor, who were in the jewelry business, exited the marbled elevator, taking their
Elle
faces out for a walk. They said hello; Truffaut dialogue.

Their matching white sweaters were amputated snowman torsos. Their shoes made costly clicks on the travertine lobby and they commented to one another that they’d felt an unsettling wave of heat enter the elevator when the doors opened. Like unscented exhaust.

But the lobby wasn’t hot and the paradox intrigued them. The wave seemed a separate region, a satellite climate, roaming. Its equatorial presence eluded description yet created sensation. A wave.
Oui, un rouli
, agreed the wife, adjusting a pearcut earring. As they left the Oasis, they both felt ill, their insides cornered by some firing squad they couldn’t name.

They had their 560 SEC brought up from the underground
garage, tipped the valet. They began to pull out, from under an awning, to go to dinner. But as they opened the sunroof, they heard a faraway scream. They stopped and stared at one another, in confusion. It must be the people playing in the third-floor balcony pool, they said.

But it was too late.

A soft boulder had fallen fifteen stories and dropped onto the coupe, buckling the roof, turning it into a stepped-on can. A bloody face hung above the terrified couple, trapped in the crumpled sunroof opening, like some ghastly chandelier.

The man’s limp features retained a frozen, macabre curiosity as he stared with bloodied eyes. Every bone in the upper half of his body had been turned to pointless dowel by the fall and his ulna had pressed through the flesh of his forearm, from the force of the drop. It protruded like a dripping beam, meant to support skin, now resembling a butcher’s special.

Distant sirens began to choir and the night guard felt the heat and nausea pass over him again, as it sifted through the lobby. Then it left, moving beneath the glass door and away, past the gathered crowd. The people tried to help the well-dressed couple in the fancy car who were screaming and trapped, beautiful sweaters covered with Richard Frank’s warm blood.

A
lan was struck by how numbing a real police station was. He’d spent years trying to write scripts which filled the places with colorful, irreverent exchanges; unexpected moments. But the actuality was a dreary vending machine. Paperwork and tired faces. Phones ringing. Clothes from Sears. No one looked like an actor; everyone needed to lose weight, gain some, or buy a wig.

As he sat in the waiting area in Homicide, a woman with full lips and dark hair came out.

“Mr. White?” Her nametag said DET. CAMILLE JARRE. She was pretty; sensual. Her eyes were hazel, voice calm.

Alan took her hand and when they looked at each other, there were feelings of wanting to know more. A feeling that something deep, on their ocean floors, was moving; coming to life.

They went into an office and a tall husky man leaned against the wall, on the phone, gestured them in. He had a beard to hide an extra chin and didn’t smile when he hung up.

“Detective Lichtman. Sit down, please.”

Lichtman hitched up his pants a bit. He wore Frye boots with big heels and they looked out of place under creased, saggy slacks. A chunky, gold bracelet noosed his wrist and the buttons of his shirt strained. He wanted to talk about Richard Frank’s tragic accident. But first he wanted to go back a few months and talk about what happened to Hector.

“Whatever you can remember, Mr. White. Probably no connection. Just want to be thorough.”

Alan ran through it and Lichtman jotted notes. As he talked, Lichtman would look up now and then and glare. He talked more and Lichtman pressed big thumbs hard against a pen, bending it.

Camille reacted with that soothing voice. “It must have been terrible, Alan.”

Not “Mr. White.” “Alan.” He preferred it. The personal approach felt good when you’d been called down to the big, badge hive. He looked over at Lichtman who wasn’t smiling.

“He was directing the pilot for your show?” The arsenic way he said “show” … there was something gnawing on the guy.

“I had to finish up the work after he … killed himself.”

“I see,” said Lichtman. “Quite an ironic opportunity for you. His death.”

The room fell silent. It was a fucked thing to say.
Lichtman seemed to know it but wasn’t interested in revising the comment. Camille caught Alan’s eye and he saw she couldn’t believe Lichtman was being like this.

“Suicide is a tragedy, Neil. Not an opportunity,” she said.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Lichtman. “Anyway, let’s talk about Richard Frank. Anything you can tell us would be helpful to our investigation.”

Alan didn’t like Lichtman. And it was obvious Lichtman felt the same. It had happened the minute Alan walked into the room. Maybe it just drove him crazy Alan’s pants fit better than his. Or maybe he hated television. Maybe he had a faulty prostate and it made him leak nasty things. Or maybe he had a thing for Camille and saw something was happening between her and Alan.

Then again, maybe he was just a big, towering fuckhead who hated everybody who had only one chin. As Alan told them Richard Frank was a controversial guy a lot of people in television had it out for, he kept feeling that hatred from Detective Lichtman. The asphalt chunk the guy used for a personality just sat there taking notes, cold as ice.

“It’s interesting his blinding came a couple weeks after one of your episodes had the same thing.”

Alan just looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“You tell me.”

“You’re the detective.”

“You’re the one who broadcast a vicious way to blind someone.”

“That’s absurd. He fell from a window.”

“His eyes were destroyed. Maybe he jumped out of
the window from the pain. He certainly couldn’t see where he was going. He was blind. Or did I mention that?”

Alan’s lips tightened. No one had told him. It wasn’t in the papers. He was completely shocked.

“I’m not accusing you, Mr. White. I only said it was an interesting coincidence.” He jotted more notes. “You’re pretty sensitive for a guy who writes such tough stuff.” He sipped coffee. “He reviewed your show awhile back, didn’t he?” Then, a casual assault. “How’d he like it?”

Alan stared at him. “He didn’t.”

“Really …” Lichtman acted like he didn’t know, nodding a little.

Fuck you, thought Alan. Fuck you and your dingy, shitty little office and your boring, shitty little job and your fucking clown pants. Fuck your ugly neck and your saggy face. And mostly, fuck you for not telling me, the minute I walked in, what really happened to Richard Frank. For ambushing me like that to get a reaction.

But he just grinned at Lichtman like it didn’t bother him. Like he thought Lichtman was a trivial washer in a dull machine.

Lichtman smiled back. “Guess it’s gonna be kinda hard for Mr. Frank to do much reviewing in the future, don’t you think? He won’t be able to hurt any more shows.”

Alan didn’t answer, smiling at Camille, trying to act like he didn’t care what Lichtman’s problem was.

Even though he knew he had a point.

S
ilence. A confession.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you. I didn’t feel ready … I’m sorry …”

Hand on eyes.

“… my mother committed suicide when I was fourteen. On the QE II, New Year’s Eve. I was at boarding school in Virginia. We talked that night. I remember the call verbatim.”