the Devil's Workshop (1999) (27 page)

Then Iverson aimed again at Consuelo. Before the crazed doctor could pull the trigger, Buddy cringed and flinched. Because of the Colt's hair trigger, he inadvertently squeezed off a round. The shot shattered the living-room window near where Gary was standing. The slug bounced off the pavement and whined away into the Malibu night, splashing harmlessly in the ocean a hundred yards beyond the surf line.

"Fuck! Oh fuck, oh fuck!" Buddy screamed, as Gary turned and faced him through the now glassless opening. Buddy had never seen such confusion, terror, or craziness in another man's eyes. It was even worse than when Jack Nicholson, zooted on uppers, had taken a fire ax to Buddy's desk at Warners after he'd seen the re
-
cut on Dead Before Dawn.

Gary's eyes were terrifying.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck," Buddy kept saying, the laser sight on the forgotten Colt Commander burning a red dot in the carpet.

Gary Iverson aimed the Charter Arms Mark II at Buddy. He was yelling something. Buddy strained to make out the words, but couldn't.

Then Buddy was moving, screaming in terror as he went, with no idea where he was going. Gary had him in his sights; he would never escape.

Gary fired just as Buddy tripped over the marble coffee table. The bullet whined past his right ear, missing him.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Buddy screamed at nobody. Then he got up and ran into the kitchen. "Help! Help me! Please!" The Colt Commander was still at his side, as he was fumbling for the phone to dial 911. Then his heart froze. Gary was clawing at the back door. Buddy turned and screamed at the door, "Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Why are you doing this?"

A shot shattered the lock, and then Gary kicked the door open.

Buddy had both hands out in front of him to ward off the certain killshot. He knew he was scant seconds from death.

"Don't shoot! Please, Gary... please! I'm your friend, man! I love you!" Then he saw a strange red dot between and slightly above Gary Iverson's eyes. It was sitting there like the ruby on Cleopatra's forehead. Buddy wasn't sure what it was.

Then Gary cocked his pistol.

Buddy spasmed in fear. The Colt Commander kicked unexpectedly in his hands and Iverson flew backward, out the kitchen door, landing on his back on the pavement. The new transplant plugs that Buddy had paid for, and half of Gary's forehead, were now missing.

"Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck," Buddy mantraed, still in the kitchen, not sure exactly what had happened. Then he saw the gun in his outstretched hand, and realized that he had again pulled the hair trigger. He moved on weak, unsteady legs out the back door, where Gary now lay dead. He looked down at the doctor, who had written the prescriptions that had kept them both in a drugstore daze for the last two years.

Buddy's teeth were chattering; his bare ass felt cold from a panic sweat that was drying on his cheeks in the chilly air. A clammy sweet-sour aftertaste lingered in his mouth like the memory of rotten chocolate bread.

''Muchas gracias, senor,'' Consuelo was blubbering from ten yards away. She was still on the pool deck, holding her bleeding arm.

Buddy's knees wouldn't stop shaking. He didn't think he would be able to keep standing, so he walked over and sat on a nearby pool chair, never taking his eyes off Gary Iverson's body. He tried to steady himself. He was trembling uncontrollably, but euphoric to be alive. He took several deep breaths to calm down. For a long time, he just looked down at the lifeless doctor.

"Transgress me, you motherfucker," he finally growled at the dead body.

Chapter
25

How and why this shooting took place are still pretty much a mystery, Steve," field reporter Shannon Morrison said. She was standing in front of the gate of Buddy Brazil's multimillion-dollar Malibu Colony home. "The body was wheeled out at about six A
. M
., and the police left a few minutes ago. The way the bizarre story pieces together: Dr. Gary Iverson, a Long Beach pediatrician, who had been living in famous 'bad boy' producer Buddy Brazil's pool house, apparently went crazy around midnight last night and tried to kill Mr. Brazil's maid"--she glanced at her notes--"Consuelo Gutierrez. The Oscar-winning producer heard gunshots and Miss Gutierrez's screams, then got a pistol from his gun cabinet and apparently saved Miss Gutierrez's life, shooting the doctor out by his pool. This strange incident occurred just hours after Buddy Brazil's son's body was inexplicably stolen from the Santa Monica morgue."

The TV shot switched to Steve Edwards, seated at his in-studio desk at KTTV in Los Angeles. Steve shook his head in dismay.

"Any idea if those two events are connected, Shannon? It would seem they must be."

"Again, Steve, it's all very tentative right now, so we'll have to wait until the police issue their statement. Possibly, one connection, according to neighbors, was that Dr. Iverson had been heavily involved in drugs, and had recently been to Windsong Ranch in Montana to take the cure. Michael Brazil also had a history of drug arrests when he lived here with his father two summers ago. But for right now, people out here in this secluded Malibu beach community are calling Buddy Brazil a hero for saving Consuelo Gutierrez's life, and it would certainly seem that's exactly what he is."

Similar reports were on every local channel and all the network news shows. There were "file" shots of Buddy with famous actresses smiling at premiers, waving at the press, showing his tanned, surgically enhanced face and white-capped teeth. They spewed out lists of his hit movies, along with opening weekend grosses. He was called a hero, a handsome hero, the bad-boy producer with the golden touch, a romantic outlaw. And on and on it went....

Upstairs in his bedroom, Buddy was watching it all from his bed, with the covers pulled up around his chin. He had been forced to endure the police for almost three hours. Thank God, he thought, that dumb bitch, Consuelo, got it right, or I would probably have been arrested for killing Iverson in cold blood.

The body had been taken out two hours ago, and after the cops left, Buddy locked the front door, wearily climbed up to his bedroom, then stripped and flopped. He turned on the TV and watched, deadpan, as his legend grew right before his eyes. He was on every channel. This sort of heroic notoriety was something he had struggled to achieve for twenty years. It was suddenly happening on a level far beyond his wildest dreams, but he felt corrupted by it. He could still feel the fearHe knew now that beyond any doubt
,
he was a coward. He had always styled himself as a bad-boy outlaw who played by his own rules, kicked ass, and was afraid of nothing. Ironically, now that the world was finally embracing that image, he wanted to run from the lie.

He stared at the TV in dead-eyed stupor, feeling nothing but a low-level dread about his future.

Consuelo knocked on the bedroom door. "Senor Brazil... ?"

"Yes, what is it?" he snapped, and struggled to see over his barrel chest to the bedroom door. She was standing there, her fresh paramedic bandage covering her right arm, which was in a sling.

"Senor, dere ees mans downstair..." she said in her broken English.

"I don't wanna see anybody."

"Dey heff dis por jew."

"That's you, Consuelo, not Jew. Jews are agents, Sephardic ten
-
percent assholes."

"No. Por favor, dey give dis por jew." She was holding out something in her hand.

He sat up in bed, exposing his furry chest, and nodded. She came to him on tiptoes and handed him a gold ring.

Buddy had never had a particularly good personal relationship with Consuelo. He used to shout at her and tell her she was an idiot. Consuelo had told her sister in Cuemavaca that he was a pendejo, a gringo malo, who used bad drugs and took advantage of women and had kinky sex with prostitutes. She had called him el diablo pequeno, the little devil.

Now that he had saved her from the mad doctor, she didn't know how to treat him or what to think.

"Thank you! Leave me alone," he snapped coldly, and she quickly left, quietly closing the door behind her.

The ring in his hand looked familiar. He had seen it before ... a gold band with two snakes entwined. Then he remembered. It had been a gift to him from the head of the studio, when Snake
Dancer went over one hundred million in domestic grosses. That was back in the seventies. Now when that happened, they gave you a fucking Mercedes. He hadn't liked the ring. He preferred bigger jewelry with diamond settings, but what the fuck had he done with it? Who could have taken it? Why wasn't it somewhere in the back of his jewelry box?

Then it hit him. He had given the ring to Michael when his son moved into the pool house after being thrown out of Pepperdine. A sort of "welcome home/bury the hatchet" present. He had lied and told Michael he'd had it designed especially for him.

Now, as he sat holding his dead son's ring, the taste of sour chocolate unexpectedly filled his mouth, startling him. He rolled over and hit the intercom.

"Jes?" Consuelo's voice came over the speaker into his bedroom.

"Tell them to wait out by the pool house. No... no, hold it, fuck the pool house, I'm never going in there again. Tell them to wait in the den."

And then Buddy Brazil got out of bed and put on a pair of new black jeans and a black silk shirt, his patented "Outlaw Buddy" attire. He slipped into a pair of custom-made black rhino cowboy boots that gave him an extra three inches in the heel. After inspecting his bloated face in the bathroom mirror, he gargled some Listerine and went downstairs.

There were three of them waiting, not in the den as he'd instructed, but in the living room, which was a mess, filled with shattered glass, empty Coke cans, and police cigarette butts. There was a slender, underweight man with a shaved head, and a rumpled, gray-haired porpoise with a bow tie. Last, but hardly least, a drop-dead gorgeous blonde of exquisite proportions, with aqua
-
blue eyes and a world-class bumper kit. Buddy focused on her, ignoring the two men. He slipped easily back into his old outlaw persona.

"How may I help you?" he said, trying to sound tired, but heroically resolute, like Alan Ladd after the big gunfight in Shane, his favorite movie, growing up.

"I'm Stacy Richardson. This is Dr. Wendell Kinney and Cris Cunningham," she said.

He looked over at the skinny, bald-headed man. "Cris Cunningham? There used to be a guy with that name who played quarterback for UCLA. They called him Lucky Cunningham 'cause he'd always complete some bullshit Hail Mary pass with seconds left on the clock. A real gamer. Not a bad player for a Bruin. Livin' in L
. A
., I bet you hear about him a lot," Buddy said, never for a minute suspecting that this underweight, bald, unhealthy-looking character in front of him was, in fact, that same man.

"Yeah," Cris said, "now and again." And that was all he said, so Stacy let it go.

"Sir, we've come to ask you a few questions about your son."

Again, it was the beautiful blonde doing the talking. Buddy would have truly liked to fuck her, but he hadn't had sex with a non-pro in almost five years. Now that Heidi Fleiss was out of the business and standing trial again, he was just using the few remnants from her old stable, who were still flat-backing around Hollywood. He preferred hookers. He had always been afraid of rejection. Prostitutes never rejected you. If you pre-ejaculated, or couldn't sustain an erection because of drugs, or whatever, they never said anything. Hookers always made you feel like your tool was a diamond cutter and you were the blue-vein prince of the city. He looked at this girl and desired her, but knew he would posture and strut, then probably never get up the nerve to take a cut at her.

"First, maybe you should tell me where you got this ring," Buddy said, holding it up between his thumb and forefinger.

"I got it off Mike when he died," the underweight young man said.

Buddy moved farther into the room, coming closer. He could see now that Cris Cunningham was surprisingly tall, at least six
-
three. Even in his custom boots, Buddy was a few inches shorter. "Why don't we go in here," he said, leading them into the den, which contained all of his showbiz trophies and pictures of him with celebrities, including shots with three different U
. S
. Presidents. "I'm sort of played out, so if we can make it fast," he said, going for a heroic pose by the bar, making it sound like his fabulous gunfight was nothing to really talk about, but maybe had tired him slightly.

"Sir," the beautiful blonde said.

"Buddy," he corrected her.

She rewarded him with a smile and went on, "Mr. Cunningham was with your son for several weeks just before he died ..."

"And where was that? I heard he was hoboing up in Texas, for God's sake. Why Mike would be riding the rails, hanging with a buncha bums, sure beats the shit outta me."

"He was searching for himself," the tall, head-shaved man said. Buddy showed him to a seat on the sofa, while taking a high stool by the bar for himself. Buddy never let his head be lower than another alpha male's if they were both in the vicinity of prime pussy. From this angle, Buddy could now see a stitched wound in the back of the man's head.