DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels (30 page)

Georgie cleared his throat. He liked handling the camera; he wasn't all that fond of being the centerpiece in a group this way. He tugged on his jeans in an "aw shucks" way, felt stupid as a shit-eating puppy, and finally grinned. "We've bought the patent to a new film process. This will be the first major film of its kind, at least for distribution to theater. Have any of you been to Vegas, seen the 3-D wraparound shots at the Mirage? Or checked out the virtual reality rides at Disney World?"

A few heads bobbed, a few "Yeahs" were muttered.

"Have any of you been to a theater where there's a dome with semi-reclining seats?"

Olivia interrupted, "It's going to be 3-D? Without the glasses? Good God. A gimmick film."

"No gimmick. The story carries this one," Cambridge said, dismissing Georgie with a slight jerk of his head. Georgie moved out of the limelight, relieved to drift to the edge of the group.

Cam continued, "3-D, yeah, in a manner of speaking. But without the aid of those dumb-ass red and green cardboard glasses. And it won't be shown at just the one theater. At least one theater in every metropolitan city in this country is already being outfitted with hydraulic platforms and seat-belted seats for the audiences. Two years ago they tried out interactive films on laser discs in seventy theaters nationwide. We all know how those tickets sold like gangbusters. Those same theaters, plus the new ones built since then, will show this film. I've got studio backing on this. It's . . . needless to say, a big outlay of investment monies." He glanced over at Robyn and back again. "Screens are being expanded to wrap around the peripheral vision and heightened for overhead projected images. This film will be the first of its kind to reach mass audiences. The studio thinks it'll pay off. Robyn's partners think it will, too."

Georgie saw Olivia move past Cam to the metal folding chair. She looked tightly controlled, all erect shoulders, stone-faced with determination. She picked up one of the scripts bound in a green metallic folder and flipped over the cover.

Uh oh, Georgie thought. Here it comes, turn on the fan. Turn on a big industrial-size monster fan.

Olivia looked up at Cambridge. She spoke with a furious edge to her voice. "Pure and Uncut? Are you kidding me? This is a joke, I take it. Sounds like a film about cocaine." Cam just grinned.

Jackie Landry followed suit, taking up one of the scripts and looking at the title. He frowned, which only made him look even more handsome. He had been called the younger version of Redford and Georgie saw the resemblance. He had the same blond, wholesome, sexy good looks women swooned over. "Pure and Uncut. I like it," he said. Behind him Marilyn and Jerry snatched up copies.

"You want me to play a killer, am I getting this straight, Cam?"

Cambridge ignored Olivia and began handing out the nondisclosure forms to the film crew. "Pens are in my office if you don't have one on you."

"Cam! Talk to me, goddamn it. This is about a woman named Krystal and she's a killer? Have I got this story line scoped?"

"You got it, baby." He continued handing around the papers.

"You're gonna waste a new 3-D process on a slasher movie?" Olivia couldn't raise her voice any higher without hitting a screech.

"It's not a slasher movie. It's a suspense film. Ten leagues and a hundred million dollars beyond slasher junk, Olivia. The lead's a stalker. Think Basic Instinct, but hotter and better."

"Now I know you've sincerely lost your mind. I never thought I'd see the day. You've made films that rocked this town on its ear. But now you come up with this tripe? I'm not believing it."

It was as if a fire had been lit under Cam. Georgie saw it happening. He'd seen it before and every time it never failed to make his blood sizzle and zing. Cam whirled and suddenly he was no longer the reasonable, intelligent director or the clowning Pacino imitator. He was a ten-story flame and smoke disaster.

"Look, you stupid bitch, I can hire you or I can send you packing, but I will not keep taking shit from you all fucking night, you got that?" From the rage in his tone the people nearest him cringed back in fear.

"I'm not going to direct a Jurassic Park, hell no! I'm not going to do a sci-fi flick for special effects; that's what everyone would expect. I'm going to do this thing my way and this script is going to put me right over the top and anyone who acts in it is going over with me. I had the best screenwriters. I worked on the script myself. This has more chills than the last ten suspense films put together. You think Hitchcock made a mark? Wait until this gets finished.

"People are going to be locked into their seats, you understand that? They're going to be bolted down and swung up and down and sideways, they're going to lurch and spin forward and get jerked the hell back. They are going to live this movie. They're not going to watch it. They're going to stalk someone with Krystal. If there's a car wreck, the audience will be inside the car. If there's a sudden object flying through the air at you, the audience will see it coming straight for their faces.

"What sells in this country? I'll tell you what! Violence. It's lapped up like mother's milk. We fucking thrive on it. We've become the entertainment capital of the world, don't you know that? Not Hollywood, but our violent society. It's all the hell this country has to offer anymore. Our crime, our guns, our drugs, our sex, our music. We're into death here, that's what we're all about and if you think any differently, you're sadly mistaken.

"This film is going to give the moviegoer the chance to participate and he won't have to go to jail for it. No prison time. You think your typical movie fan wants to see another dinosaur? Another Freddy Kruger with the knife glove? Another Star Wars fight? They're sick of the buddy movies and the la-goddamn-de-da romantic comedies.

"No! I know what they want because I want it too, and you want it." He turned, jabbing a finger at Marilyn, at Robyn, at Georgie, at Jackie, and then at Olivia. "We all want it and we don't want to admit it, but it's there, that craving. We're connected to it on CNN, we export it with our troops overseas, we send it out over the airwaves. And we want it to be real. We want to feel it and wallow in it and be it."

He stopped talking abruptly and to Georgie it seemed as if at that moment the frightening truth of what Cam had just said had hit him somewhere deep where he hadn't truly understood it before.

Cam coughed, blinked, glanced around at the staring faces and he saw the same truth reflected back to him.

"Sign the contracts," he said softly, beginning to hand the papers out again. "You won't be sorry. I promise you that. If you'll trust me, you'll be a part of something so big no one will ever forget it. Just sign the goddamn contracts."

Georgie held his breath again while Olivia took the offered pages and walked slowly toward Cam's lighted office for a pen. On the way she lit a cigarette. From the back, with her squared shoulders, she might have been Joan Crawford, one of her idols. She had the screen presence of one of the old stars, the real stars. Georgie admired the hell out of her for that. It was something you couldn't buy, learn from acting classes, or imitate. You had to be born with it.

All the others, upon seeing her give in, brought pens out of pockets and purses and began to sign. Georgie borrowed Jerry Line's pen when he'd finished, then he signed too. He'd been on all Cam's films. He would have signed in blood and sold his soul to the devil to work with him again, no debate.

Cambridge laughed and lumbered over to Robyn. Georgie saw him hug her so hard she lost her footing and he had to steady her as he let go. "This is gonna be beautiful," he said, laughing.

Georgie moved closer, the nondisclosure drooping in his hands. People just mostly ignored Georgie and that helped him drift about anonymously. He might as well be a stage prop for all the attention his movements caused. Whenever Cam needed to know something, he always came to Georgie to find out the scuttlebutt. Georgie the Sponge, he called him kiddingly. Georgie, my man, my friend, the finest cameraman in the business.

And Georgie was that. He was the finest. He just happened to have the personality of a metal folding chair. Good thing he'd never had aspirations to act.

"This better be beautiful," Robyn was saying, her eyebrow quirked up in mock fierceness. "It's costing me enough. It flops, I go bankrupt."

"We have investors, don't be a prima donna."

"No one bigger than me," she said.

"No, baby, no one bigger than you, you fucking shrimp."

Robyn smiled coolly and gave him a peck on the cheek. "I love you, too, you gonorrhea goofball. Want to take me for drinks after? To celebrate?"

"I got an appointment."

"In those dives you hang out in?"

"Yeah."

"You're going to get more than gonorrhea you keep that kind of company."

"I'll watch my dick and you watch yours," he said, slapping her on the rump.

"If I had a dick," she said.

"You don't?"

Robyn smiled again, but this time with more warmth. She began to collect the signed nondisclosure forms, taking Georgie's first, giving him a little noncommittal smile. Now Cam and the production company possessed all the power over the entire crew for the duration of the filming.

Georgie had a job to do.

The movie was a go.

2

"Hollywood is a place that attracts people with massive holes in their souls."

Julia Phillips, The Times, London

In the silent dark of the room, in the center of the womb place, in this darkness thicker than any moonless, starless night, deeper than any cave or dungeon, The Body reclined.

The chair, specially built, cost a princely sum. It was made of supple leather shaped to The Body's dimensions and natural curves. When in the reclining position it held The Body's feet raised, but not so far as to make the blood rush to the brain. The arms of the chair were exactly the length of The Body's arms so that the hands reached just to the end where the fingers, from the second knuckles down, lay over the edge.

In this dark and comfortable place which The Body required, came the dreams of glory and the fantasies of retribution. In this room, it thought of itself as The Body for it was the body that dictated all responses from others, all future events and outcomes. Not a name. Not a gender. Just the shell, The Body.

It seemed now The Body had been gifted with a perfect plan for redeeming itself in the blood of one who had done it such great, irreparable harm. That was why it lay now, giving in to the darkness and taking something back from it.

Cambridge Hill had given them the script. The one script that turned itself into a plan. Had it been years, already? And it had, it had been years, without redemption, without surcease of pain. Before this there was no sure method of extracting revenge without fear, without reaping the proper benefits.

So The Body waited. Closed in the dark, soundproof, lightless room. Lying in the specially made chair. Often, when the control slipped, weeping inconsolably over loss, gripped with sorrow, wracked with frustration.

Now there was a way. A Way. To take the offender away. Away.

Into the ultimate darkness without exit.

But an exit after tremendous suffering, thought The Body. No exit before the plays are made, the scenes wrapped, the work put into the can.

A beeper sounded, reminding The Body to return to the world at hand. Without that auditory intrusion, the sensory deprivation might carry The Body off into some other dimension of madness from which it could not withdraw.

That would be unjust, to embrace true lunacy right at the moment justice appeared within reach. The Body had been tempted. Before acquiring the timer that beeped after three hours, there'd been times in the room that lasted longer than hours and longer than days, perhaps for lifetimes. And The Body lost itself, forgetting the chair, the house where the room was located, the city where the house stood, the state that held the city, the planet that twirled in the solar system.

Right on the mouth of madness The Body teetered willingly, staring down into the throat leading to eternal damnation. Many times. Tempted like an angel promised the right-hand throne next to God. Tempted as heartily as was the great Lucifer, the most beauteous of all.

I have been there and come back, The Body thought, pulling itself upright and to its feet, moving now away through the darkness, hands outstretched to grope for the door latch, the only one set into the four walls, knowing approximately where the latch might be and searching for it with fingertips that trailed along the tufted, buttoned, padded surface.

I have come back from the precipice and if I am good, if I am strong, I will not visit again until this is done.

Until my worst enemy is dead, finally, released from life, dead and done.

3

"Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God."

Erica Jong, How To Save Your Own Life

Cambridge Hill sat on a barstool between a rummy who worked as a dock loader for a concrete company and a young slut who was doing a pretty good job of putting the moves on him. Cam had drunk five beers and was feeling more maudlin than raunchy. He turned away from the slut girl, knowing that would offend her and ensure he'd go home alone, alas. But never mind, never mind.

He faced the dock loader. "Jim? That your name, right? Jim?"

"That's it. And you're Cam!"

"Stands for camera."

Jim eyed him suspiciously. "You're kidding."

Cam grinned, showing the full smile with the spaces between his teeth. "Yeah, I'm kidding. It stands for Cambridge. My parents had high hopes."

"So you disappointed them, huh?"

"You could say that. I make movies."

"Sure you do." Jim polished off his whiskey neat and gestured to the bartender for another. "Everybody in fucking L.A.'s making movies. Even my barber's writing a screenplay."

"Gonna make a stalker movie. Just signed up the actors and crew tonight."