High Fall (21 page)

“What about their union?”

“There were no reps on the sets. And the grips thought I
was
union.”

“Good work.” She eased off the brake a bit, balancing it against the gas on the slight upgrade. Ahead, the Corvette driver was lathering his neck. “And so you found … ?”

“I cocked an ear when the cops were around. They’re still real comfortable with the drug theory. They didn’t react when Pete, the sort of middling grip, mentioned the markers on the bluff. They didn’t ask about them being moved.”

“But you did?”

“Right. Pete’s sharp; he’s been a grip on four films, but he’s not the key grip. So if something wasn’t up to snuff, it’s no skin off his nose.”

“Gentlemanly mixing of metaphors there. So Pete said?”

“Anyone could have moved the markers. There were so many people rushing around that nobody would remember where they were when or who else was with them. There’d been a flood of reporters earlier, then the last line of trailers had to be moved forward to accommodate the city; everyone was jumpy. The scene right before Lark’s ran to seven takes. They were scurrying to get hers in while there was enough light.”

“What was his impression of Lark? Savvy? Naive? Competent? Careless?”

“Well, he found her physically desirable—”

“Euphemistically put?”

“Believe it! His take was, she was good, but she was getting a helluva chance in
Edge
and she didn’t seem appreciative. Driven was the word he used. Like she was on a mission. Like it would all bloom at her press conference.”

“What kind of flowers was Pete expecting to bloom there? Something Dolly or Bleeker didn’t want revealed?”

“That was his guess, but it was only a guess. He was halfway across the set when she was talking to the city press liaison. What Pete did say was that with all the media fuss and the waiting, Lark was edgier than he’d ever seen her. Her and everyone on the set. Makes sense.”

The traffic began to move. Kiernan eased on the gas, wedging the phone against her shoulder and poising her hand on the gear stick to shift into second. The Corvette shot forward. She shifted and hit the gas just as a stretch limo cut in front of her and screeched to a halt. Simultaneously, she hit the horn and the brake. The phone banged to the floor.

“What was that?” a small voice yelled up from the rubber mat.

She scooped up the receiver. “Traffic.” Before Tchernak could reiterate his cellular phone axiom, she said, “Have you gotten the backgrounds from BakDat?”

“Persis promises she’ll have them to me before you get home.” The panting was louder, faster, more insistent.

“Well, Persis is in luck. I’ve got to catch Cary Bleeker first. So she’s got about four more hours. Do you have any idea where Bleeker is now, or will be by the time I get to La Jolla?”

“In his trailer on the set. At least, that’s what he told the cops.”

“Okay. I’m going directly there. I’ll be home for dinner afterward.”

“Uh, Kiernan … ?” Tchernak began in an uneasy tone, entirely too hesitant for a man used to butting into defensive linemen.

“Yes?”

“As long as you’re going to be there anyway, do me—do
us
a favor.”

“What can I do for
us?”

“Well, see, I tried a couple of the spiced garlic rolls. They’re great, and there’s something in the herbs and spices that takes them to a new realm. The chef should forget this movie nonsense and market them nationally. But that’s his lookout. I just want the recipe, so I know what those spices are. And I couldn’t get the cook out of his kitchen to tell me.”

“Tchernak, you want
me
to ask for a recipe?”

“They don’t know your history; they won’t laugh at you.”

Kiernan chuckled. “And I was worried you’d get so involved in the investigation, you’d forget your job at home.”

“You laugh, but the next time you want a lasagna before you meet a client, you’ll be sorry I don’t know those herbs and spices.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Now, let me speak to
him.”

“Geez, Kiernan, you’re not going to do
that.
You know you’re using a cellular phone; anyone could hear.”

“Tchernak!”

“Okay, okay. It’s your funeral. It’ll serve you right if the Corvette’s listening. Here
he
is.”

Ignoring Tchernak’s familiar plaint, she listened for the happy slurp on the receiver and said into the mouthpiece, “Ezzzzraaaaaa, what a fine dog.”

Ezra gave a little bark.

“Such a good dog. Ezzzzz …”

The sun was lurking low on the water by the time Kiernan pulled up—rumpled and grumpy—at Gliderport. The sea wind had tossed over one of the black reflectors, leaving the panel balanced precariously against a trailer, its dark shadow snaking beneath the trailer bed. Her jacket, which had been too hot for Los Angeles and the car trip, was inadequate now, and the wind ran icy fingers down her sweaty back. Her face felt gummy, her legs rubbery from the drive, and she would have given her right arm—well, no, not a whole limb, but a carpal digit—for a bourbon on the rocks.

Had Dolly called to warn Bleeker? She would have had ample time. She stopped by the Summit-Arts security guard and flipped open the pass she’d gotten from Uberhazy. “Which trailer is Cary’s?”

“Last one on the right.”

The set, which yesterday had looked like an over-deadline construction site—with people racing back and forth, hauling equipment, driving equipment, and yelling about equipment and lack of equipment—now seemed like a still photo. The giant crane was gone, no longer daring ambitious stunt doubles to climb up its slick arm, all the hundred feet to the top, to balance there high above the earth, and there feel the wind in their hair, know the decelerator wire was hooked onto their backs, and step off into nothingness. The giant catering truck was gone, probably back at the local production offices for the night. The canteen wagon-size hitch trailer in which Tchernak’s coveted garlic polenta rolls were fried was still there but closed, its metal awning fastened. She felt a pang of regret about the recipe. She would have enjoyed giving Tchernak something. Their unspoken agreement was give and take; it worked for both of them, and it didn’t work for either. She put in as much as Tchernak, but her offerings were the easy ones—money—or an okay for an abrupt week off to work out with a specialist in Arizona. Tchernak had pulled a psoas muscle the day he’d arrived in Tucson and limped painfully home. It had taken more than she’d thought she had to ease the pain that stretched from his spine to his thigh, from anger to frustration, and hovered just above the scalding surface of fear. Giving up gymnastics had been wrenching, but she’d been stepping off the giant crane into a net of promise. And there’d been college. She’d offered Tchernak her knowledge of the pain and terror—silently, the only way she could, the only way he could accept it. But stepping off the crane was one thing; being shoved off, and without any net, was another. It might be that nothing would keep him from crashing to the ground.

Not a good role for a woman with no bedside manner.

Two rows of silver trailers formed a sort of picket fence, demarcating the hard sand set from the hard sand beyond. Bleeker’s trailer was in the far row—an indication of low rank, Kiernan figured. The more valued “names” did not have windows at the edge of the parking lot into which an adoring fan might peer.

“Who?” Bleeker demanded wearily in response to her knock. He sounded as if he’d spent the day being rolled under every piece of equipment he’d yelled about the day before. And now, his tone indicated, he was going to have to face one more bulldozer.

“Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. Dolly sent me.” She was gilding the lily invoking Dolly’s name. Nothing in Bleeker’s voice suggested he had the authority to refuse anyone. Even the guard hadn’t bothered to call and warn him.

And when he opened the door, he stood slumped in defeat. His black shirt showed signs of a long day in the sun. Deep horizontal wrinkles across the hip joint of his black jeans told of hours spent sitting in sticky-hot chairs. Inside his fringe of dark, sweat-damp hair his bald dome shone an uncomfortable sunburned pink. Clearly he had been too preoccupied to remember a hat. For a man whose pate indicated years of baldness, that was a notable oversight. “What does Dolly need now?” He squinted at

Kiernan; his hand tightened on the door. “Wait a minute. Last night you were the union rep.”

So Dolly hadn’t contacted him. Not even a courtesy call. “Private investigator, working with Dolly.” She flipped open the pass.

A groan escaped Bleeker’s lips. If he was making any attempt to hide his reaction, it was a failure. He might as well have had a ticker tape running across his forehead:
Why did Dolly hire a private eye? Why didn’t she tell me? What does she know that I don’t? Whatever, she’s getting ready to stick it to me.
“Just what does Dolly Uberhazy’s private eye want?”

“I need a few answers,” Kiernan said, offering nothing but fuel for his paranoia. “Easy answers, preferably inside in the air conditioning.” Air conditioning was the last thing she needed, but that was no reason to miss whatever the production trailer might reveal. He eased back, and she moved past him to settle in one of two leather swivel chairs. The trailer, more of an office than a mobile womb, looked like any too-busy office. There was nothing personal in it.

Bleeker flopped in the remaining swivel and took a last swallow from a Sierra Nevada bottle.

“Dolly said you made her an offer she couldn’t refuse with Lark Sondervoil. How did you find Lark?”

“She called me.”

“She herself?”

“Right. She called me cold.”

That didn’t fit with the picture Talbot had painted of Lark Sondervoil at the High Country gym—not a girl who would stride into L.A., know who to call, and have the chutzpah to do it. But Bleeker no longer seemed capable of making it up. The man looked like a collection of leaderless parts. His brown eyes were tense, his lids awkwardly half-closed, and his body was slumped in the chair as if someone had let the air out. “A cold call, Cary? Isn’t that pretty unusual, particularly for a nineteen-year-old novice?”

“Trying’s not rare. Succeeding is.”

“Just how did she manage that success?”

“I don’t remember.”

Despite the air conditioning, the trailer was muggy, and as she looked at the papers scattered atop the desk, she could make out a thin coating of white powder that could have been powdered sugar from a morning’s doughnut, talcum, or the result of a more expensive mishap. Given Bleeker’s state, if she let him slip out of one question, he’d be lost to her. “Cary, you’re exhausted. I have a job to do. Don’t make every question a tug-of-war. Why did you see Lark Sondervoil?”

“The Gaige Move.” He shook his head. “Like I never learn. You’d think that would have been one action sequence I never wanted to set eyes on again.”

“You hired Greg Gaige for
Bad Companions,
right?” She leaned forward in anticipation.

“Right.”

“For the Move?”

“Then? No. I just needed to cut expenses. The Move was gravy. Shit, I thought I’d made the deal of the century. I was a hot commodity.”

Kiernan felt her face flush. Her face never betrayed her like that. But
cut expenses
as a rationale for hiring the best acrobatic stunt double of his time? She’d heard it from Dolly, but this offhand comment from a marginal second unit director ... By the time Bleeker contacted him, Greg must have been clinging to the crane arm with both hands and both legs. “Yarrow had a contract. How could you fire him?”

Bleeker shrugged. Clearly, it was not a question that ignited his waning bit of curiosity.

“Cary!”

“Look, you want an education on film financing, get your friend Dolly to give it to you. But take it from me, contracts can be changed or broken, and when they do, it’s not the studio that loses money.”

“And Yarrow had no viable recourse?”

“Not unless he wanted to mortgage the farm for court costs. And never work again.”

“Is that kind of double-dealing standard in this business?” The Greg Gaige she knew wouldn’t have been prepared for that. He’d grown up doing the required number of release moves on the bars, honing floor exercises so he stayed inside a forty-foot square. The most duplicitous thing he’d encountered had been the random bias or provincialism of judges, and everyone on his gymnastic team would have been complaining about that. But to be hit like an old croquet ball, used to knock another off the field … She squeezed her eyes shut against the picture. When she opened them, it was to face an even more depressing question: How bad had things gotten with Greg that he accepted the offer? “Why did they even assume Greg Gaige would accept that kind of offer?”

Bleeker laughed limply. “Why? Because he
made
the offer.”

“Greg solicited Yarrow’s job?” she asked, so stunned that her words seemed to flow out of a stranger’s mouth. “Why?”

“Gaige was too old. He’d lost a step. He was living in the past.”

“But he could still do the Move so you wanted him, right?” It wasn’t a question but a demand.

Nodding in acquiescence, Bleeker shrank back into his chair.

Her chest went cold. She could still see Greg Gaige that time in San Francisco, striding across the set with the lightness and surety of a cougar. It had been twenty years then since he’d posed for the poster photo. The years had begun to line his face, push back his hair, but that didn’t matter. He had still been the same eager, excited, sure-he-could-do-it guy. But
Bad Companions
hadn’t come long after that. In San Francisco he must have known how precarious things were with him—even then, when he refused to acknowledge her questions about the future. She pushed the picture away and stared back at Cary Bleeker.
Tell me Greg Gaige didn’t sink to the level where he was begging for work, stealing jobs from his friends!
She forced out the words, “Angling for a job that someone else is already on—is that unusual?”

“Not unheard of. If it were the studio doing the double-dealing, no one would bat a lash. Look, there’s nothing in this business that can’t change like that.” He snapped his thumb off his little finger, making only a dull thud for a snap. Momentarily he stared, surprised, at his hand. “On the
Bad Companions
location, things were changing all the time. I’d come back from lunch and find the studio had hired a new actor I’d never heard of. Or they’d need one of the stars back in L.A., so they’d move up the shooting time of their scene that used the same set as my scene, so mine got shifted backward. Did they tell me, a lowly second unit director? Fat chance. Got so I didn’t even bother complaining.”