Trophy Widow (17 page)

He gave Ozzie a wink and a thumbs-up. “Go for it, dude.”

Ozzie scrabbled across the kitchen floor to the bowl.

Benny went over to the refrigerator and peered into the freezer section. “Whoa! Chunky Monkey
and
Jerry's Jubilee!” He turned to me with his hand on his heart. “Rachel Gold, you are one awesome babe.”

I leaned back with a big sigh. “Thank you, Big Daddy.”

Chapter Eighteen

Pinnacle Productions was in a nondescript building in a nondescript industrial park along a nondescript section of Route 3 in Illinois. I pulled into a parking space near the front of the building. The top half of the Arch was visible in the distance to the east. The building was one of those windowless warehouse tilt-ups that exist somewhere along the design continuum between airport hangar and Home Depot. There was no name on the building—just the street address stenciled in large numerals above the steel door. To the right of the door was a keypad code device and, for the rest of us, a speaker box and a buzzer. I pressed the buzzer.

“Who is it?” a female voice asked over the static.

“Rachel Gold to see Mr. Silver.”

A pause, and then the door buzzed. I pulled it open and stepped into a no-frills reception area. To my left: a metal coat rack. To my right: a wall-mounted fire extinguisher and pay phone. A half-dozen stackable plastic chairs were arranged along each of the side walls. A battered metal magazine rack was at the end of the row of chairs to my left, and a scarred wooden coffee table was in front of the chairs to my right.

Directly ahead was the sole exception to the no-frills decor: a fortysomething receptionist with teased platinum hair and tortoiseshell reading glasses was seated behind a metal desk. She had bright red lipstick, long false eyelashes, a face that had been exposed to far too much sun for far too many years, and a formidable pair of breasts bulging against her royal-blue Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt. She'd apparently been stuffing videotapes, catalogues, and invoices into envelopes when I'd buzzed. Centered on the wall above her head was the company logo in hot-pink script:

PINNACLE PRODUCTIONS
“More Peaks than the Rockies!”

As I approached her desk, she sealed the envelope she was holding and peered at me over her reading glasses.

“Guild, right?” She was chewing gum.

“Gold.”

“Gold.” She smiled. “Hey, Gold for Silver. That's pretty good.”

I smiled politely.

She paused to blow a bubble and pop it. “I'm Jillian Silver, honey. Harry's wife. He had to go to the bank. Oughta be back in a sec. If you don't mind waiting, you can sit out here.”

The phone rang. Jillian answered with a cheerful, “Good morning, Pinnacle Productions!…Oh, hi, Murray. How are you?…Sure, just a sec.” With the phone cradled against her neck, she turned toward the computer on her desk and began typing. “Let me get that account up on the screen.”

I looked around. On the walls over the chairs were posters advertising various Pinnacle Production videos:
Screwing Private Ryan, Anal Affairs, There's Something Inside Mary, American Hair Pie, Jurassic Pussy, Inside Jenni Chambers
.

I took a seat and sorted through the magazines strewn on the coffee table. To say the least, it was a diverse collection. There were several issues of a glossy periodical called
Adult Video News
along with issues of
The Economist, The New Yorker, Hustler, Glamour, Playboy, American Scholar
,
Soap Opera Weekly
, and
Paris Review
. With the exception of the
Hustler
and the
Playboy
, which had no subscription labels, and the
Glamour
and
Soap Opera Weekly
, which had labels for Jillian Silver at the office address, the rest of the magazines were addressed to Harry Silver at a ritzy suburb of St. Louis. The fact that Harry Silver subscribed to
American Scholar, The Economist
, and
Paris Review
was intriguing. That he would put old issues in his waiting room—where aspiring porno starlets and studs awaited their audition calls—was puzzling. Somehow, I couldn't imagine Tyffany Platinum, the featured actress on the
Anal Affairs
poster, settling down with Harold Bloom's
American Scholar
essay on nihilism and mockery in Shakespeare's
Troilus and Cressida
. Nor could I imagine the next Harry Reems scrutinizing the piece entitled “Virtual Orphicality in the Romantic Poets,” in which the author, an assistant professor at Wesleyan University, opines that “once proper recognition is given to the difference-based nature of linguistic meaning that must necessarily be seen as a ‘reaching-beyond' into an incompletely articulated extra-linguistic presence, one realizes that the virtue of gesture is not subsumable under a system of textuality.” Then again, if Harry Silver himself was settling down with these essays, what in God's name was he doing in this business?

The door to the right of the reception desk opened and a skinny guy in his twenties came in pushing a cart piled high with videocassettes, mailers, and various papers. He had a scraggly beard and was wearing baggy jeans and a Black Sabbath T-shirt. Still on the phone, Jillian motioned him toward the side of the desk. He set the cart there and gave me an appraising glance before going back through the inner door. Self-consciously, I tugged at my skirt, realizing that he must have assumed I was here for an audition. I glanced up at the image of Tyffany Platinum, her hands pressed against the sides of her face, her perky mouth formed into an O of surprise as she looked back over her shoulders at the camera, wearing nothing but a silver thong and spiked heels. Platinum and Silver and Gold—oh, my. Platinum and Silver and Gold—oh, my.

I was leafing through the
Glamour
when Jillian got off the phone. “Oh, brother,” she said with a sigh.

I looked up. She was staring at the videocassettes on the cart and shaking her head. She turned to me. “That was a distributor in Maryland. Ever since we put our catalogue on the Internet we've been so busy.”

“Are those all your titles?” I asked.

“Pretty much. Harry's partner has another studio in Arizona. That's where we film a lot of our titles. But we still make some here, and we handle the shipping for everything out of here.”

The phone rang again.

“Good morning, Pinna—Oh, Harry, the girl's here. What's taking so long at the bank?…Well, how much longer?…Okay…No, he hasn't called yet…Okay. See you soon, baby.”

She hung up and gave me sympathetic smile. “Harry's running late. Maybe fifteen minutes.”

“I can wait.”

“You're here about Billy Woodward, right?”

“Did you know him?”

“Naw. Billy was dead before I met Harry.”

“When did you and Harry meet?”

“Five years ago. At the
Adult Video News
Awards. I was living in Vegas back then. They hold the awards out there every year.” She showed me the diamond engagement ring and matching gold wedding band on her ring finger. “We been married almost three years.”

“Billy Woodward was in some of Harry's films, right?”

“I think that's right, but I'm not positive. That was a long time ago.”

“Would those films have been made here?”

“Oh, yes. Harry has a whole studio in back.” She gestured toward the door to the right of her desk. “Soundstages, editing booths, the whole works. They're filming one today. Why not go back there and look around?”

I glanced at that door. “I don't know.”

“You should. Really. We've got other girls back there—besides the actresses, I mean. It'll help give you a sense of what Billy Woodward did on the production side. Let's see where they're shooting this morning.” She checked a schedule on her desk. “Okay, here's what you do. Go through the door and turn left. Follow the corridor around to the right and you'll end up in Control Room A. You can watch from there. I'll send Harry back when he gets here.”

I followed her directions to Control Room A, which was a small room jammed with electronic equipment—recorders, editing machines, and the like. The room smelled of burned coffee and doughnut grease and cigarette smoke and stale perspiration. There were three guys in the room, all in their late twenties, all dressed in jeans and sweatshirts. Two were seated in front of a video monitor screen. The third was leaning back in his chair against the side wall, his arms crossed over his ample stomach, his head resting on his chest. It took me a moment to realize that what I first mistook for a low electronic buzz was the third guy's snores. On a metal table next to the sleeping man was a coffeemaker, a stack of Styrofoam cups, and a nearly empty box of glazed doughnuts.

The front wall of Control Room A was a large picture window that looked onto a dimly lit film set which consisted of a three-sided façade of a bedroom. A queen-sized bed with a brass-rail headboard was against the back wall. There was a window to the right of the bed that appeared to look out onto a country landscape. The pretty view was actually a poster taped to the other side of the window frame—a bit of set design that reminded me, incongruously, of the Jimmy Stewart movie
It's a Wonderful Life
.

From across the control room I peered through the window, trying to make sense out of the six people on the set, all of whom seemed to be waiting for something to begin. There was a heavyset guy in his forties seated with his back to me in a director's chair. His chair actually had the word
Director
stenciled on the back. He had a headset resting on the back of his neck and was talking on a cell phone. Next to him, seated on a plain director's chair, was a much younger guy with a long nose and thinning brown hair. He was scribbling something on a clipboard balanced on his lap. Leaning against the side wall of the bedroom façade was a fat, bald guy with a big video camera on his shoulder. He was talking to a skinny guy with tattooed arms and a big tool belt. Both were smoking cigarettes and occasionally glancing toward the two people at the far end of the set, who appeared to be the actors in the scene about to be filmed. They were certainly dressed for the roles. The man was naked and the woman was in a black teddy and spiked heels. The naked guy was seated on the edge of the bed and the woman was on his lap. The guy had a blond crew cut and the muscular physique of a bodybuilder. The woman had red hair and the finest pair of breasts money could buy. I glanced at the monitor, which was apparently receiving a live feed from the video camera on the fat guy's shoulder. It displayed a tilted and slightly off-center shot of the man and woman on the bed. She was leaning against him, whispering in his ear as her hand moved slowly up and down between his legs.

One of the guys seated in front of the monitor turned around and looked at me with mild surprise. “Who are you?”

“Rachel Gold. I'm a lawyer. I have a meeting with Mr. Silver.”

The second guy glanced back at me and stifled a yawn. Both of them turned toward the monitor, which showed the actors still huddled on the edge of the bed. The naked guy was looking anxiously at something off camera. I shifted my gaze from the monitor toward the window and saw that he was looking at the director, who was still seated but no longer talking on the cell phone.

“Shit,” one of the guys at the monitor grumbled. “This looks bad.”

The third guy awoke with a start. He looked back at me with a frown and then turned toward the monitor. “What's going on?”

“What else? That's Frankie out there.”

“Same as last week,” the second guy said, checking his watch. “Fifteen minutes and we're still waiting for wood.”

“Who's fluffing him?”

“April.”

The third guy squinted toward the monitor and then through the window. “She's getting nowhere, man. It's still a fucking Slinky.”

“We got a stunt dick today?”

“I think Bobby's in this afternoon for one scene, but he's usually good for two.”

Through a speaker came the director's voice. “Okay, Frankie, how ‘bout we try to shoot the scene, huh?” You could hear the impatience in his voice.

Frankie nodded forlornly. The woman in the black teddy stood up and stretched, rubbing her right shoulder as she flexed and unflexed the fingers of her right hand.

The skinny guy with the tool belt went over and flicked on the hot lights. The bedroom set became incandescent.

“Let's back up and start the sequence from the top,” the director was saying as he put his headset on. “Doggie with April. Then we go Cowgirl with April. Lynette comes in. Then Cowgirl with Lynette. Jesus, someone get Lynette on the set already.” The young guy with the long nose jumped up and started to leave the set as the director continued. “Then we go Missionary with Lynette and finish with the money shot on Lynette. Hey, Phil?”

The skinny guy stopped at the edge of the set and turned toward the director.

“Does Lynette do face?”

The skinny guy consulted his clipboard a moment and shook his head.

“Okay, money shot on her tits. You got that, Frankie?” The naked actor nodded glumly.

“How's it coming? Any wood?”

The actor stared down between his legs, his shoulders slumped.

A long pause—everyone but the naked actor watching the director and waiting. Waiting. The director yanked off his headset and stood up, shaking his head with frustration. “Take a break.”

Someone doused the hot lights. The set went dark. Everyone but the naked actor left the set. He sat alone on the bed, head down.

“Rachel?”

I turned. Standing in the doorway to the studio was a wiry guy in his fifties with a high bald forehead and reflecting aviator sunglasses.

“Harry Silver,” he said. He removed the sunglasses and hooked them into the breast pocket of his shirt.

We shook hands.

I'd been expecting a chewed cigar, lots of bristly ear hair, and beady eyes swimming behind glasses big enough to squeegee. I'd been expecting a pasty, pudgy sleazeball. Instead, I was facing what appeared to be the senior partner of a law firm on casual day. Harry Silver stood about my height and had the slender build of an athlete. He was wearing a starched white Oxford-cloth shirt, dress khakis, and polished cordovan loafers. He was tanned and had a neatly trimmed gray goatee and intelligent blue eyes.