Dead Last (6 page)

She had winter-gray eyes, hard cheekbones, a juicy mouth. Best abs he’d ever seen. You could roll marbles down the grooves. Ripped arms. Skinny frame with those tight one-scoop breasts. She didn’t bother with a bra. Her feisty nipples always poking the thin material of her white schoolgirl shirts.

She was right about April sending negative vibes. Sawyer’s mother hadn’t warmed to Dee Dee. Even had trouble speaking her name. Some visceral girl-girl thing going on. Maybe it was her schoolgirl outfits, maybe something else entirely. Who could tell with mothers? Especially his.

Dee Dee climbed out. Sawyer stayed put, taking out his phone.

“Look at you. Now you’re pissed.”

“I need to answer some e-mail.”

“You’re sulking.”

“I’m fine. You’re right about the scripts.”

“Story should move as fast as this freaking car.”

“Got it.”

“And hey, while you’re rewriting, give me some better lines, would you?”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder. Some reviewer in Chicago said I was dumber than a blond rock. Make me smart, Sawyer. Rescue me quick, baby.”

Dee Dee twiddled her fingers, blew a kiss. She sidled over to the catering truck, high-fiving a couple of grips, all the guys and a couple of the girls sneaking looks at her supple backside.

She saw Gus, went over, started talking to him. Gus nodded, nodded again, listening to her while his eyes homed in on Sawyer.

Sawyer totally dug this woman. Since the moment she walked up to him in the Gansevoort Hotel bar, where he was having a martini during the
Miami Ops
get-acquainted bash. He and one of the stunt girls were cozied up, working through the preliminaries.

Dee Dee stood between them silently, and when the bartender came, she said, “Whatever this young man’s having. And keep them coming. I’m taking this one home tonight.”

After a while, the stunt girl drifted off. Sawyer and Dee Dee kept drinking. Back at her condo in the Grove, the next twenty-four hours was a red flashing strobe. They clawed, sucked, chewed, and wrestled. All that hot Friday night and all day Saturday and into Sunday afternoon, no rest. Half a year later, it was still hot. Sawyer’s libido cranking. Always some new kink pushing Sawyer way beyond his comfort zone. The woman was a sexual mastermind.

Which was the exact opposite of her role on the show. Playing against type, Sawyer wrote Madeline Braun as an all-work, no-play professional. A lady with major sex appeal, but when guys hit on her, they got total frostbite. Sawyer’s idea was to play up the sexual tension between Madeline and Janus, building toward a season-ending romp between the two.

Miami Ops
was
Dirty Harry
redux. With two vigilante cops working in secret—their boss, chief of Miami PD. Sick of coddling evildoers, contemptuous of the laws that hamstrung his department, Chief Levine gave the two supercops free rein. He funded their work, covered their tracks. Left them free to kick down doors, take out thugs or whoever got in the way, extort confessions—no court orders, no Miranda, no apologies. Just get it done even if the occasional innocent citizen was sacrificed. It being Miami, the crimes were outlandish, collateral damage high.

Both agents had nasty skill sets. Madeline Braun was a former officer in Shabak, Israeli intelligence, gorgeous in a brittle fashionista way. She could bewitch the baddest baddie, slip past the burly guys with a flutter of her eyes, and if some bozo didn’t fall for her charms, she dispatched him with razor blade implanted in her fingernail or used an old-school scrotum kick.

Janus was part magician, part cutthroat who could transform himself into any character the script called for, male, female, dangerous, wimpy. He had a hair-trigger temper, zero respect for the law, and a black belt in every martial art known to man. Week after week he crushed the bad guys’ bones, and with reluctant witnesses, he used his sandpaper and power drill with abandon.

So far the duo had brought down Nicaraguan white slavers, a group of cyberscammers from Ukraine, Iranian counterfeiters, a ruthless gang of Koreans smuggling endangered parrots, Haitian loan sharks, Columbian child-smut peddlers, and other exotic barbarians. Without the vigilance of the Ops team, it seemed Miami would be drowned in a tsunami of evil.

Gus sold the Exposure Channel on that broad outline and on the show’s tricky tone. One minute it was tropical noir with gritty violence, demonic bad guys, and back-alley crime, then it swung to flashy beaches and bikinis, tongue-in-cheek one-liners. That was the test for Sawyer, tight-roping that line between dark thrills and goofs.

Gus was strolling over, phone to his ear, watching Sawyer.

Sawyer got out and waited for him in the shade of a banyan tree.

Gus came close, still listening to the voice on the phone.

Face empty, eyes locked on Sawyer.

No good-bye, just snapped the phone shut, slid it into his jeans pocket. Gus doing black today. The jeans, a silky T-shirt, black loafers, glossy black wraparounds cocked up on his forehead.

“Understand you were in Dallas.”

“I was.”

“Dee Dee says you went to see Danson.”

“He was going to be there on business, invited me for a sit-down.”

“There on business. That’s your story?”

“It’s not my story, it’s what happened.”

“He invited you, what, like called you on the phone, said, Hey, Sawyer, come out to Dallas, I’d like to play footsie?”

“His secretary called. Didn’t say what it was about.”

“So behind my back you decide to go see the studio’s top money guy.”

“Come on, Gus. It wasn’t like that. He called me. I thought I could work the generation thing. Shoot the shit, get Danson on our wavelength. I went on my own nickel. It didn’t work out.”

“And for some reason you didn’t tell me about this meeting?”

“Secretary suggested I should keep it hush-hush.”

“And you took that to mean you should keep me in the dark.”

“I’m sorry, Gus. That was wrong. I should’ve alerted you. My bad.”

“Funny,” Gus said. “On the phone just now Danson said none of this happened, there was no meeting.”

“That was him you were talking to?”

“Him, yeah. Dee told me your story. So I rang him, asked him what the fuck was going on, he said I’m mistaken, there was no appointment with you or anyone else on Saturday. Not on his schedule; he hasn’t been in Dallas in years. Has no reason to call you.”

“Then something’s fucked up,” Sawyer said. “His secretary, Millie, she said two
P.M.
in the Ritz-Carlton lobby, Danson wanted to discuss the show. I waited two hours, no Danson. Called his office, nobody there on Saturday afternoon. I’ve called half a dozen times, they put me on hold, don’t come back. I’ve e-mailed, left messages. The guy stood me up.”

“Somebody’s played a trick on you, son. Somebody conned your ass. People like Danson don’t call writers. I’m the show runner here. Danson talks to me, then I talk to you, the cast, and the rest of the crew. That’s how the food chain works, babe. You don’t go having clandestine meetings with a studio guy. It doesn’t happen.”

“Who would con me into something like that?”

“Unless, of course,” Gus said, “you got some whole other thing working in Dallas you don’t want anybody to know about. Is that it, Sawyer? You got a piece of ass stashed out west?”

“Danson stood me up. We had a meeting at the Ritz for two, he didn’t show. That’s the truth.”

Gus rubbed his chin and glanced off.

“If you say so, kid. You keep telling that story. See where it gets you.”

FOUR

THURSDAY AFTERNOON, WHEN SUGARMAN PULLED
his Honda into the crushed seashell drive, Thorn was down by his boat basin prying loose a small boulder from the seawall. He carried the limestone chunk to a patch of lawn twenty yards from his house, dropped it at his feet, glanced toward Sugar, then turned and walked back to the seawall.

It was coming up on two weeks since Rusty’s death. Everywhere he looked he still heard traces of her voice or caught hints of her sun-baked scent.

Sugar shut his car door and came over and stood waiting by the rock.

Same age as Thorn. Swedish mother, Jamaican father. Former sheriff’s deputy, now a private investigator. As tall and fine-looking as an A-list Hollywood charmer. His chiseled bone structure had been polished smooth by the years. Steadfast as anyone Thorn had ever known, Sugarman was first in line when the hard chores were assigned. Thorn’s trusty wingman. But always ready to get in Thorn’s face when required. Faithful Sugar. Loving, strong, bull-headed Sugarman. A rock.

Exactly the last person Thorn wanted to see just then.

“You need help?”

Thorn grunted and marched back to the seawall. Sugar tagged along to the water’s edge.

“Nice to see you’re finally out of the hammock, up and doing.”

As Thorn squatted and jimmied loose another boulder from the muddy embankment, Sugarman crouched and started prying free the one adjacent to it. Pitching in, uncomplaining. He followed Thorn back to the open lawn, lugging his own jagged stone. He dropped it a few feet away from where Thorn stood.

“Not there,” Thorn said.

“Okay, where?”

“It’s going to be a circle.”

“All right, good. A circle. How big?”

“Big,” Thorn said.

“We gonna make a campfire? Get drunk, sing manly songs of yore. ‘Give me some men who are stouthearted men who will march…’”

Thorn turned away and headed back to the rocky seawall.

They toted rocks in silence for half an hour, Sugarman respecting Thorn’s black mood. They made a few dozen trips, carrying forty or fifty stones. By the time they were done, the southern end of the seawall was dismantled, and the circle in the grass had a ten-foot radius.

“Next high tide, your yard’s going to flood. But I guess you knew that.”

Thorn didn’t reply.

“Am I invading your privacy? Wink your right eye for yes.”

Thorn stared at him and said nothing.

He and Sugar had been buddies since the schoolyard days. Thorn, a loner by choice; Sugar, an outsider by blood. The oddball kid who was half black, half white with a face too pretty for his own good. A bully attractor. At six years old Sugar learned to fight, a necessary skill for a cute kid with his racial mix. Too many times to count, when the tough boys ganged up on him, Thorn jumped in. Their friendship was forged in those kunckle-busting brawls.

Lifelong friends, Sugar and Thorn had survived the usual traumas and tragedies. They’d also endured some traumas not so usual, episodes of bloodshed and savagery that teetered on the edge of illegal. They had, more than once, been forced to extreme and messy forms of justice. Those were episodes they never rehashed, the side of their bond that stayed in shadow.

Once the circle of rocks was done, Thorn stepped back and eyed it.

“Now what?” Sugar said.

Thorn shrugged, so dazed by the thrum of his racing blood that at that moment he couldn’t recall why he’d wanted to construct the circle.

“Well, okay then,” Sugar said. “On another matter entirely, just in case you’re interested, I took care of that business in Sarasota. You’re now totally cashed out of your controlling interest in Bates International, which, I have to admit, involved some dollar figures so big I can’t bring myself to say them out loud. So many zeroes, my throat constricts. Suffice it to say, you’re no longer a corporate mogul. Bates is broken up, pieces sold off; all profits owed to you have been transferred to seventeen different charities. Mainly greenies, but a few others, early education, homeless shelters, battered women, abused kids. I followed Rusty’s outline. You guys made a lot of good souls very happy. I got the list right here.”

Sugarman dug a folded paper from his jeans pocket and held it out.

Thorn took the sheet, balled it up, and tossed it into the circle of stones.

Sugarman looked at the paper and said, “I thought cutting you loose from Bates was going to be complicated, but it wasn’t. Turns out Rusty began the process before she got sick, did the paperwork to divest you of all the titles, rewriting charters, scrubbing your name from the minutes of board meetings. So you’re out of the picture entirely. It’s like all that never happened. And best of all, Thorn, you’re penniless again.”

“Good.”

“I mean, dirt poor, destitute. Insolvent. Don’t have a pot to piss in.”

Sugarman was devoted to his thesaurus.

“You’re also safely back below the sweep of radar. Records expunged, history obliterated. You’re nobody. Less than nobody. Far as the world of capitalistic free enterprise is concerned, Thorn never existed.”

“It’s a happy day,” Thorn said.

“I don’t know if you saw the obituary in the
Herald
.”

Thorn was staring out at the lagoon.

“That woman, April Moss, did some excellent research. There’s stuff in there I didn’t know about Rusty. About the marine studies program getting started. How rough it was for Rusty as a guide. April went above and beyond. It was very generous of her.”

Thorn stood his ground, weathering the moment.

“I called her after it came out and thanked her. She said to tell you hello. Tell you how sorry she was for your loss. We talked for a while. She’s a good lady. Smart, sensitive. I didn’t realize you two knew each other. How come I never heard of her before?”

“It was a long time ago. Very brief.”

“Back in your one-night-stand days?”

Thorn didn’t reply.

“Well, she’s nice. And she’s single.”

Thorn turned and squinted at him.

“Rusty’s not gone two weeks, and you’re trying to set me up?”

“Hell, no. I liked her. I was thinking of asking her out myself.”

Thorn was silent, looking at the circle of stones.

“I brought you a copy of the obit in case you didn’t see it.”

Sugar drew the clipping from his shirt pocket and held it out to Thorn.

“I saw it.” Thorn turned and walked back to his house.