The Player (12 page)

“All that on a blank card?” asked Oakley.

“We understand each other.”

“You see,” said Oakley, “this proves what I've believed for a long time, that karma is really just coincidence. We're hanging around the hotel with no parties to go to, bored, looking for mischief. You come into the hotel with a purpose. Your friend makes one small change in his night's plans, and now a movie is going to get made, and we're all going to be rich.”

“I'm already rich,” said Civella.

“And the agent of all this happiness is …” said Oakley.

“Griffin's friend?” asked Civella.

“No. The woman he's in bed with.”

Griffin felt himself light-years away from the men at his table. “I have to be up early. Call me at the studio.”

“Is this real?” Oakley asked.

“Yes,” said Griffin, and he dropped two twenties on the table. “Buy yourselves another round.”

“You don't want the receipt?” asked Civella.

“You keep it.”

On the way out, he asked the maître d' if he'd recognized the person who gave him the postcard.

“I did not see him. I'm sorry, Mr. Mill. One of the bellboys gave me the card. Do you want to speak to him?”

The bellboy would describe someone who could be anybody. “No,” said Griffin, “I know who it is. Thanks.” He wasn't sure why, but he slipped five dollars into the maître d's hand. How much money did the Writer give the bellboy? Two dollars?

Griffin gave away another two dollars when the valet brought his car to the front. The Writer was watching him, he knew it. He was either in the lobby, which Griffin couldn't see because of a crowd waiting for their cars, or he was down the driveway, in the darkness, standing in the cover of the hotel's jungle, or he was parked in his car, waiting to follow. Maybe he'll kill me now, Griffin thought. Maybe he has a gun and he'll pull alongside me at a stoplight and shoot me. Maybe he'll force me to go faster and faster up the canyon, trying to spin me out of control, into a tree.

Instead of turning west on Sunset, toward Beverly Glen, Griffin drove south toward Beverly Hills. There were headlights in the rearview mirror, one set that left the hotel at the same time he did, and a few more that joined him at the signal. At the next cross street, in a block of large houses, he made a left without warning, and then drove halfway down the block, to the alley and made another left, into the alley, back toward Sunset.

There were lights behind him. Would the police follow a Mercedes if it turned up an alley? These houses didn't have garage entrances in the back anymore. If he drove quickly, and the car following was the police, he would be stopped. He knew he was shaky. If the police started asking him routine questions, they'd smell the two drinks he'd had and he didn't want to risk an arrest. He dimmed the dashboard light so the glow wouldn't betray his outline to the driver. No reason to be an even better target. He drove at what he thought was a safe shortcut speed, not so slow that he'd be mistaken
for someone looking for unlocked gates. Sunset Boulevard was ahead, the traffic at a lull between two red lights. The tail car slowed down, two houses back, and Griffin checked his own speed, so as not to fall into the police's trap.

The two cars stayed at this crawl for the rest of the alley; the traffic on Sunset surged again when the lights turned green. Griffin couldn't burst into the flow, he needed a gap. Now, closer to the brightness of the boulevard, he saw the outline of the car behind him. It was not a police car. The driver reached out, and Griffin saw the gun as it went off. The back window of his car exploded, and there was an interesting delay before the windshield blew out, a section of time in which the bullet was in the car with him, a passenger. Small chunks of broken glass fell from the back of Griffin's head into his collar and annoyed his neck.

For a few seconds neither car moved. Griffin knew that the Writer, frightened by what he had done, was waiting to see if Griffin had been hit. Griffin leaned forward, imagined that he might pass for dead. He pressed the gas pedal to the floor and entered the traffic on Sunset, thinking clearly, proud of that focus. He had been shot at, and instead of collapsing in fear, he had acted quickly; he was now free of a man with a gun, a man who had shot at him, who had tried to kill him. If Kahane had been this strong, thought Griffin, he would have defended himself, he would have beaten me up, or escaped from me and perhaps have run to the police and had me arrested.

The Writer did not follow. Was he crying? Was he blowing his own brains out? Griffin hoped so, but then realized that the Writer's apartment would be searched if he killed himself, and would yield a treasure of unsent postcards, drafts of completed cards, and a diary with lurid entries about Griffin Mill. The Beverly Hills police would visit him, and if no one else put it together, Walter Stuckel would see the parallel between the writer murdered after Griffin had
seen him, and the writer who killed himself after a secret correspondence with Griffin.

And here they were, two police cars and a private security company car coming from the east on Sunset. There were more driving north on Rexford, sirens hysterical. Griffin drove east and made a U-turn back toward the alley. He needed to see if they'd caught the Writer. That would be horrible, too, the Writer alive, with a recently fired gun in his car, and an alley filled with broken glass. What would he say? None of your business? They'd put the Writer under psychiatric observation for a few days if he didn't tell them who he was shooting at, and if he did, they'd lock him up and provide Griffin with a guard in case a sharp lawyer got him released. Until the arrest they'd alert all hospitals and emergency rooms to watch for gunshot wounds.

Griffin drove slowly past the alley. The police were out of their cars; a helicopter circled overhead, throwing a hot, white beacon on the scene, as bright as a klieg light at a premiere. The Writer was gone. A man in a dressing gown, the owner of one of the houses, talked to a cop who held a notebook. No one had seen anything, of course, and even with the evidence of the broken glass, there was nothing any one official could do. They'll say it was a mob fight and wait for a body to show up at an airport parking lot in the trunk of a stolen Chevrolet. Or would they know that the glass belonged to a Mercedes?

Griffin turned up Benedict Canyon, in case a police car saw his shattered windows, and headed for home through the back roads between Beverly Hills and Bel Air. He was glad the Writer was free. It was better to live with the threat of assassination than with the Writer in jail and his obsession with Griffin exposed.

The wind inside the car was pleasant, like an island vacation, the ride at night in the jeep from the humid airport to the resort,
passing the soldiers with machine guns, when an easy vacation has the feel of adventure. He was away from the Writer, and he turned on the radio. He scanned the dial for an electric guitar. The Eagles were almost right; “Hotel California” reminded him of why he'd moved to Los Angeles, and his early years in town, parties in the hills, drugs, the poignant consciousness of the speed of his success reflected in the self-pity of slower friends. He didn't want the sound of the past. Then he found Van Halen in the middle of the dial. Music to fill an arena, party music for sixty thousand losers. The guitar kept rising higher; was it only an illusion of mastery, a cheap vaudeville, or was it real virtuosity, did it need to be loud to be good? He turned up the volume, and the wind sucked the music out the empty space behind him. He liked taunting the mansions with his noisy wake. If only he could be a guy who makes eighteen thousand dollars a year and lives in someplace unspecific, a town that was like a lot of other towns, where he could be an auto-parts supply-house manager, with a big belly and a truck, dirty ashtrays on the coffee table, a girlfriend with a rose tattoo on her left breast, friends who break into empty summer houses, a long-haired prole who knows that all the power of the universe is here now, because God manifests himself in electric guitars. He wished he could remember riding a bike down a steep hill, arms outstretched, the rush of air, the potential for disaster.

He'd bring the car to a body shop and have the glass replaced tomorrow. With both windows blown out, they'd know what happened. Griffin would tell them a convincing lie.

Not a rose tattoo. Maybe a little map of Texas, or a snake, or a jungle animal. A jet fighter attacking (protecting?) her nipple. The unexpected.

He had been shot at, almost killed, but after his windows were fixed, he couldn't believe that the Writer had ever stalked him. One day he thought he was being followed again, and he took a taxi home from work, but he had to take three cabs that night, to dinner, to a screening, and then home, and another to the studio in the morning. He went back to driving his car the next day.

Danny Ross called at around five the day after Griffin had been shot at. Jan told him that Ross was on the line, and she said his name doubtfully; he must have told her he was returning Griffin's call, but she knew better than to let someone through using that line, it was an obvious trick. Griffin told her to put the writer through.

“Danny Ross!” said Griffin cheerfully.

“Yes, you called?” Ross sounded hesitant.

“When can you come in?”

“For what?”

“I've been thinking about you. You're a talented guy. I'm sorry we couldn't work on that last idea, and I want to hear what else you've got. Or read whatever you've got.”

“What idea?”

“The idea you pitched last October.”

“I never pitched to you.”

“I'm usually the one who forgets.” What was Ross talking about?

“No. We were supposed to have a meeting, but you canceled in the morning, I think you had to go to New York. Something like that. And then you never rescheduled.”

Griffin looked at Jan's calendar. Ross was right. He had flown to New York to see a play that Levison was interested in, and Jan hadn't crossed out Ross's appointment in the book. Ross's appointment had been on a Friday, Griffin was in the office again on Monday. Just keep plowing on, thought Griffin.

“Well, Danny,” he said, “you've got a good reputation, people talk about you. I heard your name recently, and I remembered it, and I guess I just got confused. When can you come in?”

“What's your schedule like?”

“It's been so long since I stood you up. Why don't you come in tomorrow? You want to have lunch?” Griffin wanted to be as nice as possible. What was Danny Ross thinking?

“Sure.”

“The Grill? One o'clock?”

“Sure,” said the bewildered writer.

Griffin was supposed to have lunch with two producers. He told Jan to have them come to the office at the end of the week. They were friends, it wouldn't matter.

Griffin worried that Ross would spread the word that he was losing his mind, but it was such a confusing little story, and he was probably overjoyed to get the meeting, get the lunch!, that he'd forget the circumstances. And it was a good time for Griffin to seek peace with the postcard Writer.

The studio was quiet. Larry Levy was skiing for the week in Deer Valley, and Griffin watched the painters working on his office. Old bamboo wallpaper was scraped away, the gray industrial carpet was taken out. Griffin stopped by the day that the color was put on,
a dusty peach. One of the painters held a pillowcase next to the wall. The pillowcase was almost the same color. He studied it carefully.

“What do you think?” the painter asked Griffin.

“About what?” Griffin didn't understand the question.

“It's the guy's pillowcase, he wanted us to match it. How did we do?”

“Looks good. What's going on the floor?”

“I hear he wants something red.”

Later Griffin told Jan about the pillowcase, and the next day, at breakfast in the Polo Lounge, Levison told Griffin.

“It took me a long time to put my own things in an office,” said Levison. “I was always scared of bringing on the evil eye. I wanted an efficient room, nothing too personal or optimistic. You know what I mean? Even if I'd never have a poster on my walls at home, and I could bring in a nice painting or two, I go with posters in the office.”

“So Larry Levy has a different style. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle.”

“Well, you like that Southwestern stuff. It's a little precious, but you're a cool guy, you can pull it off.”

“And you're saying Larry Levy can't?”

“What I'm saying is, it's a pillowcase. You can be as individual as you want. He asked me if he could make over the office, and I told him if one of his pictures did well, I'd build him the Taj MahLevy. Griffin, if he liked the color, he could have cut a piece of the material and brought it in. But the whole pillowcase. This boy is getting off to a bad start.”

“He didn't want to ruin the pillowcase.”

“Don't do this to me.”

“You can't have it both ways,” said Griffin.

“Yes I can.”

“If you want Larry Levy to shake things up, you have to go with his style. I think he's being smart. Everything is gray now, or pastel. He wants red, and whether it's strategic or really aesthetic, he's not embarrassed.”

“He should be.” Griffin watched Levison look at him, and he imagined that his thought was complicated. Now Griffin sounded like the true team player; maybe his deference to Levy's eccentricities signaled his willingness to stay with Levy if Levison was forced out of his job. Griffin saw that Levison regretted an annoyance that was an obvious cover for his own fear of the new kid on the block.

This is all so subtle, thought Griffin. Again he hated the Writer, who must think that we just sit around patting each other on the back, or that when we stab each other, there's a ritual joy to the slaughter, an agreement with the victim. Griffin wanted to push the Writer around, scrape his face against rough concrete walls. How dare you, he wanted to say, try to scare me with your feeble murder attempt when you are dealing with a killer. He wanted to see the Writer dying in the bottom of an elevator shaft, he wanted to stand over the Writer with a big gun and ask him if he knew the difference, at this level of the game, between strategy and taste. Did the Writer understand that for Larry Levy, taste was just one arena to play out strategy?