Gumshoe Gorilla (29 page)

"Late. Sum time aftr 4 thrty. ?Why?"

"TWO OF THE BROTHERS RETURNED TO THE HOTEL AROUND TWO THIRTY. THE OTHER MET UP WITH A MAN AND A WOMAN IN A BLACK CONCORDANCE A LITTLE AFTER TWO. WE WEREN'T SURE IF IT WAS CHARLES OR NOT, BUT BASED ON YOUR OBSERVATIONS OF HIS SCHEDULE..."

"?Do U no who they wer? T- people he met?"

"NOT YET. WE'LL TRACE THE CAR THIS AFTERNOON, SEE WHERE THAT TAKES US. I'LL SEND YOU A PROGRESS REPORT TONIGHT AND LET YOU KNOW WHAT WE FIND."

"Thanks."

Mr. Parker nodded, and turned off the link.

I got up and went back into the room where Charles was sleeping. He looked so sweet lying there. But then, I guess all men look innocent when they're unconscious. The trouble starts when they wake up.

Oh, Charles. What have you gotten yourself into? And why won't you tell me?

Well, there was nothing more I could do about it until the detectives finished their work. I showered and dressed, put on my visor, and gave Charles a kiss on the cheek. And then I went down the hall to the Community Suite to grab some breakfast.

Most of the crew was off on the set by now, but there were still a few stragglers hanging around. Ivanova Jones was sitting at a table by herself with a script and a half eaten sliver of cantaloupe in front of her. Meanwhile, a couple of her body doubles were gnoshing down with a table full of techies. I grabbed a bagel and some whitefish salad --the guy in charge of stocking the suite had recently found a decent deli in this town-- and joined the latter group. I like hanging out with techies. They're the only people in this business who don't spend all their time trying to convince you of their genius.

I lost myself in the idle banter until half past, when I excused myself and took the elevator down to the conference rooms in the hotel basement. The writers' meeting wasn't set to start until eight, but I like to be a few minutes early. I threaded my way through the warren of rooms that we were using to coordinate the various aspects of the show. The writers' den was at the back, behind the production manager's office, and across from the local relations team. I walked in and found that Burke had started the meeting early.

Damn it. I hate it when he does this. Leon Burke, the show's writer-producer, has this incredibly annoying habit of starting meetings whenever he happens to walk into the room, no matter what the schedule says. It's bad enough when he's twenty minutes late, but when he's twenty minutes early... well, let's just say that a lot of really stupid decisions get made because the people who know better haven't gotten there yet.

Right now, Burke was leaning over the conference table, talking with Laurel Cascade, our location scout. One of the junior writers was hovering around the fringes of the conversation, waiting for an opening to throw in some of his own pet ideas.

I dove in head first.

"H- Brk, whats all the Xitemnt?"

He looked up at me.

"OH HI SKYE." The words flashed by on my visor. "WE WERE JUST GOING OVER SOME LOCATIONS FOR THE NEXT SCRIPT."

"Cool. ?What hav u found?"

Laurel smiled, and brought up the pictures on the conference table. Burke chattered on, spinning out free form ideas for some "totally neuron-blowing" scenes that we could shoot in these places. I watched his wild hand gestures and realized that he was on something again. Probably Ondansetron. It's a beta-blocker that's supposed to prevent stage fright and boost self-confidence. Half the actors in Hollywood have prescriptions for the stuff. Unfortunately, in Burke's case it just makes him even less likely to listen to anyone else's advice. This was not going to be a fun meeting.

I dug in my heels and did my best to slow Burke down, making him show me every picture of every single location, and asking every question that I could think of to fill the time.

"Do we know the history on this place?"

"What kind of people hang out there?"

"Which way does the morning sun shine in?"

Luckily, after five minutes of this, Amelia arrived and bailed me out. Don't ask me to repeat this in front of anyone else, but I think that she's the smartest writer we've got on the show. She has this incredible ear for dialog, so she usually gets assigned to writing the G-rated versions of our scenes. Without all the sex and violence, there's just so much more time for characters to
talk
.

Anyway, it took Amelia exactly twenty four words to shunt Burke away from business and into a harmless discussion of local restaurants. And then she managed to keep him hooked, talking about nothing at all for the next fifteen minutes. And making nothing so damned interesting. I was gonna have to play that conversation back later and figure out how she did it.

Once the rest of the group had arrived, Amelia seamlessly funneled Burke's attention back to business, and the meeting was off and running. We started by looking at locations. Laurel had been adding to her list of "cool places in Atlanta", and some of the new stuff she'd found was pretty exciting. Personally, I was all over this replica of an Elizabethan theater that she'd found on the Emory campus. It looked like a great place to have a clandestine meeting-- you know, with people wearing tragedy masks and cloaks and stuff.

Burke, on the other hand, was salivating over the pictures of Underground Atlanta. And I was beginning to catch his excitement. A creepy old half-abandoned underground shopping mall was a great place to stage a suspense scene. I just hoped that our insurance would cover rat bites.

After a while, the location discussion segued into product placement, and our ongoing headache over the
World of Coke Museum.
Coke had offered us a ton of money to feature the place in a significant scene, but we were having trouble coming up with a story that would use it in an organic way. We tossed around a few new ideas, including a food fight and a terrorist bomb threat, but nothing quite came together. In the end, we wound up tabling the matter again, putting it off till the next cluster of scripts. I had the sinking feeling that we were going to keep putting it off until we finally got stuck using it as the setting for the season finale. I could just see it.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Anyway, from there it was on to a long list of other niggly things that people wanted us to work into scripts. Shampoo, painkillers, condoms, frozen food, cars, a couple new movies that were coming out. A Republican PAC that wanted us to insert some jokes about the sexual tastes of a certain Democrat. (You can probably guess which one.) Pretty routine stuff, but you have to plan ahead to fit it all in.

Unfortunately though, that darn joke about the Democrat sort of metastasized into a discussion of Bible Belt politics, which got Burke started on his whole "local color" fixation again.

"COME ON PEOPLE!" he said, for about the 100th time since we came to this burg, "THERE'S NO POINT IN BEING IN ATLANTA IF WE'RE NOT GOING TO USE ATLANTA."

The rest of us looked at each other, and then dug out the local news stories that we'd been saving for this. Kip, the newbie, was the first to chime in.

"WELL THERE WAS A SHOOTING DOWN BY THE AIRPORT," he said, his eyes eager for approval. "THE POLICE THINK THAT A DRUG CARTEL WAS..."

Burke cut the kid off.

"OH YEAH. A DRUG SHOOTING. THAT'S ORIGINAL. NEXT!"

Another junior writer jumped in with a story about a live panda birth at the zoo, and was shot down just as quickly. A third tested the waters with a news item about a Georgia Tech professor accused of trading grades for sexual favors. That one went down to a watery grave as well.

"JESUS CHRIST!" Burke fumed, "ISN'T THERE ANYTHING INTERESTING HAPPENING IN THIS TOWN?"

Kip went for another bite at the apple.

"WELL... WHAT ABOUT THE JUSTIN WEIR MURDER?"

Burke raised an eyebrow. The story was six months old, but it did have a certain sex appeal. Popular Christian singer found dead, nude, and smeared with human fat. Doesn't get much juicier. And that was before everyone found out that a rival televangelist had murdered him and set up the whole thing to make it look like a satanic ritual.

"MAYBE..." Burke mused. "BUT IT'S KIND OF OLD NEWS. HOW WOULD WE USE IT?"

Kip pulled up a newscast on the conference table, showing the courtyard in front of the Liberty Media building.

"THIS WAS ON THE NEWS A FEW NIGHTS AGO. A BUNCH OF WEIR'S FANS HAVE BEEN HOLDING A VIGIL ON THE SITE WHERE HE DIED. MAYBE WE COULD HAVE A CHASE SCENE THERE, WHERE KURT AND MIRANDA ARE PUSHING THEIR WAY THROUGH THE KIDS, TRYING TO GET AWAY FROM ASSASSINS."

Burke looked impressed.

"YEAH. THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF THING I'VE BEEN ASKING FOR. LAUREL, TALK TO THE PROPERTY OWNER AND ASK..."

"I CAN TRY," Laurel interrupted him. "BUT I ALREADY TALKED TO LIBERTY MEDIA LAST WEEK ABOUT USING STONEWALL'S OFFICE. THEY WERE PRETTY ADAMANT ABOUT WANTING STORY APPROVAL FOR ANYTHING SHOT ON THEIR PREMISES."

Burke rolled his eyes and made an exasperated gesture with his hands.

"STORY APPROVAL? FUCK 'EM? WE DON'T NEED THEIR STUPID PLAZA THAT BADLY."

He looked down at the table and thought for a second.

"WHAT ABOUT THOSE TWO CHRISTIAN GUYS WHO ARE ON ALL THE TALK SHOWS?" he asked. "YOU KNOW, THE ONES WHO HATE EACH OTHER?"

Amelia cast a dubious look at him.

"YOU MEAN TRENT REED AND CALVIN THOMAS?"

A spark or recognition came into Burke's eyes.

"YEAH, THOSE GUYS. THAT WHOLE CHRISTIAN VENOM THING THEY DO IS REALLY EXCITING. ANY CHANCE WE COULD GET THEM?"

He snapped his fingers several times.

"OOH! MAYBE KURT AND MIRANDA COULD BE ON THE SET OF A TALK SHOW, WITH AN ASSASSIN LURKING IN THE AUDIENCE, WAITING TO KILL ONE OF THOSE GUYS WHEN..."

Amelia looked even more skeptical.

"WAIT A MINUTE, BURKE. WHICH ONE?"

Burke shrugged.

"WHO CARES? DO YOU THINK THEY'LL DO IT?"

Jeff, our liaison to the production managers office (aka "The Voice of the Budget") leaned forward.

"UH... I CAN HAVE LOCAL RELATIONS TRY AND BOOK THEM. WE'LL HAVE TO..."

"GREAT!" Burke said, "MAKE IT HAPPEN! OH, AND WHAT ABOUT THAT KID WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GET? STONEWALL'S BASTARD SON, THE ONE HE TRIED TO MURDER ON THE AIR? CUTE KID, RECOGNIZABLE FACE. WHEN'S HE AVAILABLE?"

Jeff tugged on his collar.

"ACTUALLY LOCAL RELATIONS TRIED TO GET HIM BUT HE SAID NO."

Burke looked at him in disbelief.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE SAID NO?"

Jeff put his elbows on the table and gestured with his right hand.

"WELL ACTUALLY HIS PARENTS SAID NO. THE ADOPTIVE ONES, THAT IS. APPARENTLY THEY THINK HE'S BEEN IN THE PRESS TOO MUCH AND NEEDS A LITTLE PRIVACY."

"YOU'RE KIDDING."

Jeff folded his hands together in a resigned attitude.

"NO THEY WERE QUITE EMPHATIC ON THE POINT. WORD IS THEY'VE ALSO TURNED DOWN CNN AND THE CHERRY CHANG SHOW."

"HOW MUCH DID WE OFFER THEM?"

"TOO MUCH. THEY STILL WEREN'T INTERESTED."

"WELL KEEP ON IT. THEY'LL CHANGE THEIR MINDS. AND TRY TO GET THROUGH TO THE KID DIRECTLY. MAYBE HE CAN TALK SOME SENSE INTO THEM."

Jeff shrugged, but made a note of it on his palm top. Personally, I was hoping the kid would stay unavailable. Oh, getting him on the show would be a great publicity stunt. But I wasn't thrilled by the idea of having an untrained child actor mangling our dialogue.

Burke folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.

"OK KIDS. PUT YOUR THINKING CAPS ON. THERE'S GOTTA BE SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENING IN THIS TOWN THAT WE CAN USE IN A STORY."

We all looked around the table at each other, wondering who would offer themselves up as the next sacrificial lamb. Finally, Amelia spoke up.

"WHAT ABOUT THE... UM... THE PHANTOM POET?"

"WHO?" Burke asked, sitting up straight.

"HE'S THIS GUY... OR GIRL." Amelia said. "THEY DON'T KNOW. IT WAS ON THE NEWS LAST NIGHT. HE SHUT DOWN THE INTERSTATE THROUGH TOWN BY PROGRAMMING THE SIGNS TO RUN LINES OF..."

"OH YEAH," Burke nodded. "I CAUGHT A BIT OF THAT. DOES HE DO THAT KIND OF THING OFTEN?"