Dead Last (29 page)

“Hialeah, same thing, a quickie, no sweat; and that sheriff in the motel along the Miami River, that’s like a hop skip and a jump from the soundstage. Swing by there, take some batting practice. Home in time for the late news.”

“Same for any of us, Gus. Flynn, you, Dee Dee. Hop skip jump.”

“So where you claim you were last night, Sawyer, time of the murder? What’d you tell that nice lady agent?”

“I went for a jog out on the Rickenbacker.”

“And she bought that?”

“She seemed to.”

“Seemed to? Oh, man, you are so fucked.”

“Where’d you claim you were, Gus?”

“Where I always am when I’m not working my ass off. Out on this baby. Blowing the television dust out of my lungs.”

“You can’t prove that any more than I can prove I was running the Rickenbacker.”

“Beside the point, son. The actual issue is, you’re about to go for a long swim in a cesspool of publicity. Maybe the Feds got evidence to hold you, take you downtown, maybe not. I’m not talking about any of that. Good chance you’ll skate. Maybe they buy the Captiva receipts. But guys like Murray Danson, that’s who you got to worry about.”

“Danson?”

“Murray, the asswipes he works for, I know these people, I been around them all my life. Let me tell you how it works. Two strikes, you’re done. You, my boy, got your first strike writing
Miami Ops,
which at this moment is dead last in its slot, a serious stinker. Throw in another strike, like even a hint of you being a suspect in a string of murders—shit, boy, you’ll never blow your nose near a TV script again.”

“And you?”

“Same for me. I got better alibis working than you, but as far as the Hollywood gang is concerned, unless the killer steps forward and takes credit, we’re all going down. Guilty, not guilty, that’s irrelevant.”

“Where’s Dee Dee in all this?”

Dollimore tapped the throttle levers, and
Pretty Boy
responded smoothly. Pinching the yin yang pendant he wore around his neck, Gus slid it back and forth along the chain and looked out at the Atlantic’s blue dazzle.

“Dee Dee, I’m worried about that girl.”

“Worried?”

“The way she’s not around sometimes. Just up and goes off. Weekends especially.”

“I see her on the weekends.”

“You see her at night. At dinner at some restaurant.”

“What’re you driving at, Gus?”

“My girl, Dee Dee. She ever show you her hidey-hole?”

“Her what?”

“Her safe, her lockbox. Where it is, the floor, the wall, behind the bookcase, wherever the fuck she hid the thing.”

“What’re you asking me?”

“She has something stored away, son. Something that belongs to me. I want it back and she won’t hand it over.”

Sawyer asked him again what he was talking about.

“You know where her hidey-hole is or not?”

“I’ve never seen a safe.”

“You’ve never seen a safe in her condo, nowhere else?”

“You should talk to her about this.”

“I’m talking to you, hotshot. That’s what we’re doing. We’re talking about some materials my daughter has in her possession.”

“This is none of my business. I’m not getting into this.”

“But son, you’re already up to your fucking nose hairs in it. I’m trying to get you out of it.”

“What’s this have to do with the FBI?”

“It’s all interconnected, my man. All one big web.”

Gus scanned the waters, doing a slow circle in every direction. The closest boat was miles away.

“Let’s come at this from another angle. You think Dee Dee is good at what she does? You think the girl can act?”

“She’s okay. She’s got the looks.”

“Okay, sure, she’s got a body, your basic, dime-a-dozen fox. But is there talent? Does she have acting ability, does she radiate? Aside from the fact that you’re banging her three times a day, your dick is on fire, separating that out, in your objective opinion does she have talent?”

“I don’t like the way you’re talking.”

“Sawyer, my boy, Dee Dee’s killed the show. On her own, all by herself, she’s taken us down. It’s not your scripts, not Flynn, or the others. It’s Dee Dee. She murdered the shit out of that show. Reviewers say it, focus groups, the drill-down Nielsens. Single-handed, that daughter of mine has done us in.”

Sawyer was silent. Trying to defend Dee Dee’s acting ability was futile. Maybe the show’s failure wasn’t completely due to her, but some of it was, maybe more than some.

“You ever wonder why a man like me, a guy the last twenty years he’s scratched his way up the sheer canyon walls of the entertainment business, why this guy would hire a woman so manifestly unsuited for the role she’s holding? Do I strike you as a guy who willfully and purposefully shoots himself in the scrotum?”

“Yeah, okay. Dee Dee is a weak link. I grant you that.”

“You think she got that starring part because I’m her old man? Some kind of nepotism bullshit? Am I a fucking softie?”

Sawyer didn’t reply.

“Back when we started the show,” Gus said, “I thought, Okay, maybe I could raise the level of her game. I actually thought I had that ability. But the girl’s uncoachable. The girl’s beyond my power to fix.”

“I’m losing the thread, Gus.”

“Dee Dee’s got something precious of mine, which is the sole reason she is where she is today, and we’re where we are. This material is in her hidey-hole. Until I have it in my hands, she’s my albatross. She’s everybody’s albatross.”

“She’s blackmailing you.”

“Blackmail, extortion, whatever name you want.”

“What does she have on you?”

“Hell, we made some films. I’m not proud of it, but it was a long way back. I was young, stupid.”

Sawyer drew a slow breath. Staring out to sea at the rippling silver light, the gulls circling over a school of bait fish, diving for them, squealing.

“Porn,” Sawyer said. “You made porn.”

“I was just getting started in the business. I had like a cheap Kodak XL55, a shaky tripod, used a white sheet to bounce the light. Primitive as shit. But I learned a lot. It laid the groundwork. My apprenticeship.”

“You put Dee Dee in porn movies. How old was she?”

“Too young. Illegal. But contrary to what people say, girls that age, some of them can have a fully operational sexual side. Seven, eight. Dee Dee sure did. She was totally into it. Never cried, never protested. Hugging and kissing, had some cute little fake orgasms too. Once I showed her how it was done.”

“You and her together.”

“Some of that.”

“You…”

Dollimore held up his hand.

“You want to rip my head off, shit down my throat. I understand that. What I did was disgusting and immoral. I agree, I agree a hundred percent. But you attack me, how’s that going to play in front of the media, me with broken teeth, black eye, my jaw hanging loose?”

“You fucking asshole.”

“What? You thought Dee Dee was a virgin? Like maybe she learned her moves in a nunnery? Come on, kid, we’re all adults here. Men of the world.

“I told you this was going to hurt. I warned you. This isn’t pleasant. But it’s like right at the center of why we’re where we are right now. It’s the linchpin in this whole shitty mess you and me find ourselves in.

“Was I a lousy dad? Hell, yes. I tried to be gentle with her, but it was a dirty business, I admit it. We got busted, had our day in court, just like you had yours. Got a clean bill of health. Walked away, never did any more movies of that kind. Just the same way you walked away from your little brush.”

“What brush?”

“Hey, sonny, we got no secrets, you and me. You may think we do, but no, you’d be wrong. Getting a court record expunged, that’s like trying to wipe clean the memory on your hard drive. There’s always traces. Back when I hired you, I had a look at your history. I like to know the story behind the story. Everybody’s got a skeleton. I like to know about those skeletons, people who work for me, people I need to trust. I like to have the goods.

“You knocked that Matheson kid around, put him in the hospital, almost killed his ass. Young boy, beat him so bad he’s never quite right afterward. What is he, like brain damaged or whatever? Jesus, something like that comes out at this stage of your career, you’re majorly fucked. That’s a third strike and like I said, in this business it only takes two.”

“Who told you that? Jeff? Flynn? Who?”

“I got my ways of finding things out,” Gus said.

“So you’re threatening me? You’d give that to the press?”

“You sure you don’t know about her hidey-hole? Nothing comes to mind, where these films might be stored away?”

“Screw you.”

“Maybe she’s been lying to me. I destroyed the master copies. I held on to a couple, don’t ask me why, but I know where those are. Maybe the girl’s lying. Maybe she doesn’t have any movies after all. What do you think, Sawyer? You know her pretty good. Is she smart enough to lie?”

“If she says she has something, she probably has it.”

“So you agree. She’s not smart enough to lie.”

“What is it you’re asking me?”

“’Cause see, if I go forward with what I’m thinking, there’s one danger lying out there. Dee Dee says if any harm ever comes to her, the movies get FedExed to the cops. Along with a note. A dead man’s switch. You know that old chestnut. I’m wondering if she set something like that up for real. You got a feel for that, Sawyer? You’re there between her legs half of every day, you think she’s capable of setting up a dead man’s switch?”

Sawyer grabbed the front of Gus’s white tunic and walked him backward to the chrome rail that surrounded the flybridge. Jammed him up against it, bent him back. Sawyer got his face up into Dollimore’s. Bent him farther. The man was strong for his age, not an ounce of fat. He groaned, his spine grinding against the rail.

“I’m in a position to fuck you over,” Gus said. “You’re in a position to fuck me over. Mutually assured fucking. We can blow each other up, or we can dial it back.”

“What do you want?”

“What I want is for you and me to do what’s right. And if doing what’s right gets the news cameras swinging back our way, so much the better.”

Sawyer pressed him harder against the rail. Gus groaning.

“By doing what?”

“Do the right thing, hard as it may be.”

“And what’s that, Gus? What’s the right thing?”

“Put this on Dee Dee. Where it belongs.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“My own daughter, it pains me to say it, she’s a monster.”

Gus’s feet were off the deck, and he was close to toppling backward over the rail. It was only Sawyer’s hip pinning him in place. He could step aside and the old guy would sail away. That would be that. Gus knew it too, felt the physics of it. Looking into Sawyer’s eyes without worry, a sly smile, as if he knew Sawyer could never go through with it. Or if he did, hey, what the fuck, it was as good a way to go as any.

“Dee Dee?”

“Forget it, kid. Never mind. Forget the whole thing. I got to piss. Let me go, you made your point. You’re strong. You’re moral. You love the girl, all that good shit. I get it. I’ll go this alone. Now I truly got to piss.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t trust me, come below, hold my dick while I pee.”

“What do you have on Dee Dee?”

“What do I have? Okay. You serious? You want to hear this?”

“What do you have?”

“Take the weekend you were in Dallas. Where’s Dee Dee? I don’t know. She evaporates. Didn’t answer her cell two days straight, not in her condo. I asked Maury, the bell guy downstairs, if he’d seen her coming and going, he said right after you left, she cabbed it to the airport.”

“You’re lying.”

“Check with Maury.”

“I’ll go ask her. She’ll have an explanation.”

“The weekend you were in Sanibel, same thing. No Dee Dee. This morning when the Feds were done with us, I start going over it in my head, I go out front, ask Maury if he saw her Saturday, the tenth, the Atlanta murder. Maury checks his book, and it’s ditto. Cab to MIA. You’re out of town, she flies off.”

“There’s got to be some reason.”

“You keep me jammed up here much longer, I’m gonna wet both of us.”

Sawyer dragged him off the rail and stepped back.

Gus winked at him as if it had all been in good fun. Dusted himself off, straightened his commodore’s hat.

“And how she’s been acting lately. Hitting the sauce, smoking a ton of pot. Things she’s said, making hints, suggestions.”

“What things?”

“The part you wrote for her, Valerie. How much she’s learned from being inside a killer’s head. How fucking liberating it is.”

“Christ, that proves nothing.”

“Hey, she’s my daughter. You think I like saying this?”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“I think we got to give her up, son.”

“I’ll talk to her. Find out what’s what.”

“Honest truth, I was thinking it was the two of you pulling this off together. Like you took me seriously that day I asked what you were willing to do to keep the show going. Get your hands dirty, make a splash. I thought you took me literally. You and Dee Dee murdering all these people.”

“Dee Dee has a Zentai suit.”

It startled Sawyer, coming out impulsively. But Gus was unfazed.

“She was wearing it this morning,” Sawyer said.

“Well, there you go.”

“She had me close the blinds. She’s never done that before.”

“See what I’m saying. More you think about it, the evidence piles up.”

“The way she’s reacting to the murders,” Sawyer said. “It’s all wrong. She’s excited. No empathy for the victims. How a sociopath acts.”

“Is that conclusive?” Gus shrugged. “I don’t know. How many people have Zentai suits? Well, I got to say, nobody I know. Before you wrote that into the script, I never heard of the things. So what do you think, Sawyer? What do we do? We put this out there, give it to the press, the Feds, what? I’m thinking if we sit on it, it’ll come back to bite us. We’re aiding and abetting.”

“We talk to her first. We hear her out.”

“I already did that, son. I told her what I just told you. I confronted her while you were busy with the lines, casting off, I said to her the stuff I just said to you. I asked her straight out if she’d done it.”