Beach Town (28 page)

Sasquatch himself was seated in a folded lawn chair at the foot of his driveway, with what she hoped was only a toy BB gun stretched out across his knees.

Across the street and over two houses, crew members milled around, obviously idled by the unwanted concert.

She found Zena standing in the front yard at Edith Rambo's house, talking on the phone, but she disconnected as Greer approached.

“I hope you were calling the cops,” Greer said. “How long has this been going on?”

“For the past forty-five minutes. I've called the cops three times, and they sent a unit over, but they say there's nothing they can do. The guy's on his own property.”

“They don't have a noise ordinance in this burg?”

“They do, but as long as he's not playing loud music and disturbing the peace after ten p.m., they say he's not breaking any laws.”

“I thought you said we'd made peace with the guy. I thought Sasquatch invited you to park in his driveway, and be best friends.”

“What can I say? He's a psycho. Everything was good until this morning. Apparently somebody tipped him to the fact that we're paying the people directly across the street a fee, because the exteriors of their homes are in camera range.”

Greer nodded. “I see where this is going. He wants to be paid too, right?”

“I explained that his house isn't in camera range,” Zena said. “I gave him the last pizza certificates I had. Allie went to the bakery and brought back two dozen doughnuts, but he wouldn't let her on the property.”

Greer was gazing at the neighbor. His dark beard hung down to his chest, and his hair fuzzed out below an orange and blue sun visor, which did nothing to hide the softball-sized bright pink bald spot on top of his head. He was decked out in bright orange polyester basketball shorts, which hung down to his knees, and an extra-extra-extra-large sleeveless blue tank top, which barely covered his huge, distended white belly. He was sucking from a quart-size Slurpee cup and glaring out at the world. An old-school boom box rested on the ground by his feet.

“A guy like that, I can't believe he couldn't be bought off with doughnuts,” Greer mumbled.

“Maybe he's glucose intolerant,” Zena offered.

Greer looked over her shoulder at the idled cast and crew. “What's Bryce saying about the interruption? Did he blow a gasket?”

“The good news is, he left before the concert started. I think he went over to check out the progress on the casino.”

She was studying Sasquatch again. His shoulders were tensed and his chubby white legs were firmly planted two feet apart, while his fingers caressed the stock of the rifle. Greer had seen that look, or variations on the look, before. The man was itching for a fight.

“The police didn't tell him to put the gun away?”

“Nope.”

“Damn.”

“Adelyn's terrified. She's hiding in her RV, and she says she's not coming out until the gun goes away.”

“Where's Kregg?”

“I saw him sneaking down the alley with one of the grips a few minutes ago. I get the feeling his morning buzz is probably wearing off.”

“You know about that?”

“Everybody knows about it,” Zena assured her. “What are we going to do about Sasquatch? We're already behind schedule.”

“What's his real name again?”

Zena consulted a small notebook that she kept in her back pocket. “Steve Woods.”

“How much petty cash do you have?”

“Maybe a couple hundred?” She pulled a worn white business envelope stuffed with twenty-dollar bills. Greer pulled out a similar envelope and did a quick total.

“That's eight hundred twenty dollars.” She looked anxiously over at Steve/Sasquatch, whose eyes were closed while he bobbed his head in time to the music. “You don't think that gun's loaded, do you?”

“The cop told me it's only a BB gun. Anyway, he's not gonna shoot you in broad daylight, in front of all these witnesses. Probably.”

As she and Zena were conferring, Allie Thibadeaux walked up timidly. “I really did try to make friends with him, Greer. But everybody in town knows you don't mess with Mr. Woods.”

“Every neighborhood has a Mr. Woods,” Greer said. “Crazy, cranky, unreasonable whack jobs. But I'm gonna go over there and see if I can reason with him.”

Allie's eyes widened. “For reals? Can I go too?”

“You sure you want to? This could get ugly.”

“I kind of want to see how you handle him,” Allie admitted.

*   *   *

Greer took a moment to gather her thoughts before crossing the street. It was another scorching Florida morning, temperatures hovering in the low nineties, humidity at around the same range.

She took a deep breath and cautiously approached the home of Steve Woods, with a bright, nonthreatening smile on her face and peace in her heart.

He was really getting into the music now, his eyes still closed, and she could see the aluminum chair slowly swaying from side to side.

“Okay, Allie,” she said under her breath. “Think of this as a sort of hostage negotiation. The key to success here is listening, empathizing, more listening, and a willingness to help him decide to help us out.”

“Hi, Mr. Woods,” Greer called out, still standing on the sidewalk, carefully avoiding stepping onto the subject's actual property. She had to shout to make herself heard above the din.

He opened his eyes and stared at her. “What?”

She used her cupped hands as a megaphone. “My name is Greer Hennessy. I'm the location manager for the production company filming here this week. I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute.”

He shrugged. “Talk's free.”

“Could you turn down the music a little? I can hardly hear you.”

He frowned, but then picked up his boom box and fiddled with the volume.

“Okay, talk.”

“My associate seems to think you're pretty upset with us. Is that right?”

“Hell yeah. Your people fucked me over royally. You shut down the street. I can't park my truck out front. Can't get out to go to the store. And then you call the cops on me, for listening to a little music. What about my property rights?”

“It must be a big inconvenience, and I'm sorry about that.”

“You ain't sorry enough to pay me for my trouble, are you?” he sneered. “Try and buy me off with a certificate for a crappy pizza? C'mon.”

“Yeah, that was my fault. Dumb move. I apologize for that. But we'd like to make things right with you, if it's not too late.”

“What kind of rube do you take me for? Send some kid over here with doughnuts? You shut down my life for almost a week and then insult me by offering me food?”

“Again, that was my fault. I hope you won't blame my associates. I take full responsibility for our shortsightedness. In fact, that's why I'm here. I wanted to see if there is any way I could, you know, compensate you for your time and trouble.”

He looked wary. “Compensate, how? I know you paid the Fleishmanns and the Erwins five hundred dollars.” He pointed across the street, at Zena. “That chick over there tried to tell me she couldn't pay me because my house wouldn't be in the movie. Which is bullshit.”

“I totally agree,” Greer said. “This was a major failure to communicate. But I'd like to make amends now, if you'd allow me to.”

He sat the BB gun down on the driveway. “What'd you have in mind?”

*   *   *

They strolled back across the street in blessed silence. “I can't believe you gave that dude eight hundred twenty dollars,” Allie whispered. “You won't really be able to see his house in the movie, right?”

“Right,” Greer said. “But now he's happy. The music is history and we can get on with the show. It's called the cost of doing business.”

“You straight-up lied to him,” Allie said. “That was awesome.”

Greer glanced over at the girl and had a sudden, unfamiliar qualm about the life lesson she'd just imparted to this impressionable teen. And then she shook it off.

It's just business.

 

33

When Greer got back to the production office, she found Friday's call sheet on her desk, which explained why Bryce had left the Manatee set for the casino.

The shooting schedule showed morning calls for Adelyn's character, Danielle, and the sheriff, at the casino. The casino already? She'd assumed construction and set dressing would take another few weeks.

As she approached the pier on her golf cart, she spotted Vanessa Littrell's red Jeep heading in the opposite direction. Vanessa waved, pulled over, and rolled her window down.

“Oh my God! Have you seen what they've done out there?”

“Just headed that way,” Greer said.

“Wait until you see. It looks just like it did in the old pictures in the family scrapbooks. Absolutely uncanny. Hey, when you get a night off, call me and let's go out for drinks, okay?”

“Love to.”

True to Vanessa's word, in just a few days' time, the casino had been transformed—or reborn, she wasn't sure which. Workers were hammering away on a deliberately aged new tin roof, painters on scaffolding were spraying the stucco facade a shade somewhere between nectarine and faded coral, and on the ground, electricians were wiring up a vintage-look rusted neon sign with scripted letters.

SUNSET CASINO
—
DANCE TONIGHT
!

Greer found Bryce inside, seated with the production designer at a round folding table, going over sketches for the space. He seemed oblivious to the whine of power tools and the chunks of plaster raining down around him as workers patched the old ceiling.

“Greer!” He gestured around at the room. “What do you think? Isn't it unbelievable?”

“It's fabulous,” Greer said. “Stephen, I never dreamed you could have it this far along this fast.”

“Overtime,” Stephen said, with a grimace. “Bryce had the vision, I made it happen.”

“But how are you going to get enough done to start shooting tomorrow, Bryce? I thought we were still shooting over on Manatee.”

“I've reshuffled the schedule,” Bryce said. “Terry has been writing like a fiend. He's been up two nights straight, and the pages have literally been flying off the printer. All genius stuff. It gives the story a whole new gravitas.”

“There's a new treatment?” Alarms went off in Greer's mind. “Can I read it? I'm dying to know what he's come up with.”

“It's still in process,” Bryce said. “Anyway, about tomorrow. We're just going to do some exterior tight shots with Danielle and the sheriff, standing right in the doorway here. We won't do the establishing shots until the entire facade is finished.”

“We've rented every potted palm within a hundred mile radius of this place,” Stephen said. “We're going full-tilt Old Florida. The painters should be done this afternoon, and my sign guy says he can have the neon up and working before dark.”

“Okay,” Greer nodded. “But what about security during the shoot? It's getting harder and harder to keep the rubberneckers and the press away. Yesterday, we caught a photographer from
Us Weekly
sneaking around in the backyard over on Manatee with a telephoto lens, trying to get a shot of Adelyn and Kregg together. I think they've cooked up some half-baked story about a set romance. If we're shooting outside here tomorrow, I need to start lining up off-duty cops.”

“Adelyn and Kregg?” Stephen hooted. “Oh please. I hope she has way better taste than that.”

“Kregg doesn't have any scenes tomorrow,” Bryce said. “I want him at home memorizing all the lines for the new scenes Terry's written for him.”

Good luck with that,
Greer thought. She'd spent the past week watching the neophyte actor struggle mightily just to deliver the lines he'd been given months ago.

“I'll still have to get a security detail,” Greer said. “Adelyn's almost as big a draw with the kids who still watch that old Disney series of hers.”

“In the meantime,” Bryce said, “We're going to need a place that looks like a military facility. I don't know what you call that—an ammunition warehouse? Like a place you'd lock up explosives?”

“Is this part of Terry's new treatment?”

“Yeah. Wait until you see the dark place Terry is taking Danielle. Adelyn has read some of the new pages, and she's ecstatic about finally getting to play a character with some real depth and nuance.”

“Bryce, I still don't understand the whole explosive thing. I thought we were shooting a love story—Navy SEAL comes back to his hometown, broken and scarred from a tour in Afghanistan, discovers the marriage he thought was irreparable before his tour is now salvageable. Right? Danielle and Nick get back together. I mean, didn't we just shoot their lovemaking scene over on Manatee this week?”

“All a clever ruse on Danielle's part,” Bryce said, with a faraway look in his eye. “She just wants Nick to think they're getting back together. The reality is, Danielle is a coldhearted, two-timing schemer who's looking to cash in on Nick's inheritance.”

“What inheritance? I thought these were two kids from working-class families. Wasn't Nick's father a fisherman?”

“Not anymore,” Bryce said. “Terry's still working out all the details, but now Nick's father was from an old money New England family—like the Rockefellers—but Nick has long been estranged from them. It's perfect when you think about it. Nick joined the Navy in a deliberate attempt to establish his independence, once and for all. He's turned his back on his elitist family. Same thing for his marriage to Danielle, who seems to be a sweet but dumb blonde. He loves her, but part of her attraction is that she's definitely several notches below Nick's family's social and economic stature.”