The Martini Shot (26 page)

She laughed and hugged me spontaneously, then broke away. “Don't forget
me.
”

“I better get back,” I said.

“See you.”

She had a rough road ahead of her. The series she was going to was a meat grinder, eight months of sixteen-hour days. She was on the frail side, not a fighter, and quiet. In our business that was seen as a weakness.

I walked back to set.

The next day we shot out by a marina on the lake, which was wide as a bay, where in our story the father of one of our young police officers owned a shrimp boat. There were several scenes set on the boat in this script, and the plan was to knock them all out in one day. It was pleasant to work outside, and I was enjoying it, but halfway to lunch I got a call from Ellen on my cell, asking me to return to the writers' offices. Detective Joe Gittens wanted to speak with me in person.

Gittens was waiting for me in my office. He was on my couch, his legs spread wide, wearing a nice brown suit with thin chalk stripes. A fedora with a red-and-gold feather in the band was beside him.

“You look clean today,” I said, shaking his hand before I took a seat behind my desk.

“I got all gussied up for you.”

“Where's your partner? Getting a facial?”

“Dennis is just a little aggressive, is all. I left him in the office today.”

“So what'd I do now?”

“Your tip paid off, Ohanion.”

“Oh?”

“Couldn't get a search warrant on Wayne and Cody's house, so we waited for them to leave their place of residence. They were driving that Mexican-looking Toyota you described. 'Bout a mile from their place, they stopped at a red light…”

“Let me guess. The front tires of the Supra were over the white line of the intersection.”

“How'd you know?”

“Police officers in my hometown used to pull kids up for that all the time. Then they'd toss the car.”

Gittens snapped his fingers theatrically. “That's exactly what we did!”

“And you found what?”

“Marijuana and paraphernalia, of course. And, oh yeah, a gun.”

“A revolver, I bet.”

“S&W thirty-eight.”

“You ran tests?”

“Gonna take a couple of days to do the ballistic fingerprinting. That's where we match the striations on the slugs to the barrel of the gun it came from.”

“I know the process.”

“Course you do. You're a crime writer.”

“I'm betting it's a match.”

“We'll see. But here's the thing. We already struck gold.”

A week later, Bruce Kaplan called me into his office. He and Ellen had been talking quietly, grimly all that morning. I'd been around long enough to know what was coming, and I wasn't surprised.

Behind his closed door, I sat before Bruce's desk. Memorabilia of his past successes and near successes crowded the room. He'd drawn the blinds, as a doctor does when he's about to give a patient bad news. Bruce looked heavy and tired.

“We've been cancelled, Victor. I'm sorry.”

“It's nobody's fault. We did our best.”

“The numbers weren't there. They're dropping in fact, week to week. The suits considered reconfiguring the cast, but ultimately they felt it best to pull the plug and move on.”

“It's just business.”

“We'll tell the crew after we wrap. I don't like to do that, but people will jump ship. There's only two weeks left on the shoot, and Ellen and I want to finish strong and under budget. It's a point of pride with us.”

“The crew will find work. They always do.”

“As will you,” said Bruce, and he picked up my script for 114 off his desk. “This is really good. Did I tell you?”

“Yes, you did. Thank you.”

Bruce opened the script to a page he had dog-eared. “
‘My man got his self snipped.'
Snipped. Where did that come from?”

“It means murdered.”

“And,
‘he rotted him.'
That's some authentic shit.”

“I've been keeping my ear to the street.”

“It shows. I'm going to submit this one for a WGA award.”

“Great,” I said, with little enthusiasm.

“You'll be fine, Vic.”

My agent had been fielding offers as of late. I'd find work, if I wanted it. Hundreds of cable channels, original content, streaming…there was always work for a whore like me.

“I don't have to tell you,” said Bruce, “you need to keep the cancellation a secret.”

“I understand,” I said.

Soon as I left his office, I phoned Annette and told her that she needed to start looking for a new job.

The day after the wrap party, we had a service for Skylar Branson in the city's largest park. We met around a weeping cherry tree the production had planted in his name. His parents had flown back in from Galveston, and there was a woman in vestments who said some vague, nondenominational words about Skylar's spirit, and many crew members, some of whom I'd see on other productions, some I'd never see again. Annette was there, looking stylish in black with a touch of flair, and Laura, who'd returned for the day from Brooklyn and would leave that afternoon. Some local musicians, neo-folkies Skylar hung with, played a couple of traditional songs on acoustic instruments, and then the ceremony broke up. That's what's left of you, I thought. A tree.

I walked back to my rental car with Jerome Hilts, our dolly grip, who was wearing a clean polo shirt and cargo shorts for the occasion.

“What do you think, Victor? What's it all mean?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn't be writing television scripts. I'd be writing my manifesto.”

“Nobody's gonna remember us.”

“You're probably right.”

“But we gotta keep working. I'm headed up to Baltimore, for a Netflix show. You?”

“Raleigh. I'll be running the writers' room for a Cinemax thing.”

I was due there in a week. I hadn't even read the pilot. Something about a hit man in Nixon-era America. I would read the script and the bible on the flight back to Delaware, where I planned to visit my mother. I hadn't seen her for a long while.

“We're the circus,” said Jerome. “We just pull up our tents and move from town to town.”

“That's right.” I squinted bitterly against the sun. “We've got sawdust in our veins.”

The next morning, I stood outside my hotel and helped Annette load the last of her trunks into her Grand Cherokee. She was headed back to her home in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she and her husband had bought a house just before his death. But she would only be there for a few days.

“I guess that's it,” she said, as she closed the hatchback and brushed an errant strand of hair away from her face. We'd been up all night making love, and still, she looked lovely. I ran my hand down her bare arm.

“You don't have to do this,” I said.

“I took a job, Victor.”

“In Hawaii. You might as well be going to China. I could get you on this thing I'm doing in Raleigh. I could talk to the EP.”

“We went over this many times last night.
I took the job.
We'll see each other again.”

“When?”

Annette put her hand behind my neck, pulled me into her, and kissed my mouth.

Many thanks to my longtime editor, Reagan Arthur, of Little, Brown, and my literary agent, Sloan Harris, of ICM. Thanks go out as well to James Grady, Otto Penzler, Johnny Temple, Dennis McMillan, and John Harvey, who were the original editors of several of these stories. This collection is dedicated to Charles C. Mish and Estelle Petrulakis. Charles Mish taught a class in crime fiction, which I took as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland in 1979. He turned me on to novels and convinced me that all good writing, regardless of subject, has worth. It is not an exaggeration to say that Mr. Mish changed the course of my life. Estelle Petrulakis taught Sunday school with my mother at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral for more than twenty-five years and was an elementary school teacher in some of D.C.'s most impoverished neighborhoods. Mrs. Petrulakis gave me books throughout my childhood and always encouraged me to reach for something greater than I thought I could achieve. There is usually one teacher who makes a difference in a person's life. I had two.

About the Author

George Pelecanos is the author of several highly praised and bestselling novels, including
The Double, The Cut, What It Was, The Way Home, The Turnaround,
and
The Night Gardener
. He is also an independent-film producer, an essayist, and a producer and Emmy-nominated writer for the HBO series
The Wire
and
Treme
. He lives in Maryland.

hachettebookgroup.com/features/georgepelecanos/

The Double

The Cut

What It Was

The Way Home

The Turnaround

The Night Gardener

Drama City

Hard Revolution

Soul Circus

Hell to Pay

Right as Rain

Shame the Devil

The Sweet Forever

King Suckerman

The Big Blowdown

Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

Shoedog

Nick's Trip

A Firing Offense

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