My Gun Has Bullets (10 page)

When he went into his trailer, he wasn't surprised to see Boyd Hartnell and Jackson Burley waiting for him. He was surprised, however, that Boyd wasn't completely bald by now. Boyd was pacing, while Burley sat in a swivel chair, spinning slowly around, lost in thought.

"Hope you're happy." Boyd hurled his words at Charlie like big balls of spit. "First
Miss Agatha,
now this. You're a one-man plague on the television industry."

Charlie stuck his hands in his pockets. They were empty. A fact of life he figured he'd have to get used to. "I guess there isn't enough room on the network schedule to give all those cops their own television series."

Boyd wasn't amused. This had been a very hard month on him. He was undergoing an extremely delicate procedure on the cutting edge of hair technology. Esther Radcliffe, his leading lady on his only hit series, was undoubtedly plotting to kill Sabrina Bishop, a woman he desperately wanted to fuck. The panicked producers of the doomed sitcom
Bonjour Buddy Bipp
actually wanted to retool the show for Dick Van Patten. And now Charlie Willis had gunned down a guest star, a legendary prop man was dead, and a hack director was having a nervous breakdown that had reduced a $50,000 mobile home to scrap metal.

"What the fuck are we gonna do?" Boyd asked the heavens. "We're half a million dollars in deficit on this show. This is no time for people to be killed on the set. It's not in the fucking budget."

"Shit happens," Burley observed. It sounded to Charlie like an action hero catch-phrase in the making.

"This is a major fucking catastrophe," Boyd said.

"It may not be as bad as it seems," Burley said, eerily serene as he spun. "A killing on the set can reinvigorate a show."

"We've only been on the air six weeks—there's nothing to reinvigorate," Boyd snapped.

"Venom
was in its fourth episode when Luke Driscoll was supposed to dive outta the way of a hitman's speeding car," Burley said. "Course, he ended up a $30,000-an-episode hood ornament on a $1,500 Nova. Driscoll never could do action. Hell, we needed a stunt double just to shoot him walking briskly. Everyone figured we were gonna be cancelled."

The publicity had been enormous. A grand jury indicted the stuntman and the director on involuntary manslaughter charges. The network immediately commissioned a docudrama TV movie on the accident. Meanwhile, Burley and his writers retooled
Venom
to accommodate the tragedy. In the new version, the secret agent, codenamed Venom, was hit by the car and had to go to the hospital for reconstructive surgery. Who would he be when the bandages were taken off? The shrewdly manipulated mystery created a publicity bonanza all its own. All of America, which had largely ignored the show before Driscoll was mowed down, tuned in two weeks later to see Chad Everett emerge from under the bandages.

''Turned out to be a blessing in disguise," Burley said. "Driscoll was no Chad Everett."

"So few are," observed Boyd, momentarily distracted from his woes. But reality abruptly intruded in the form of Don DeBono barging in the door.

"Goddammit, Boyd, can't you keep your stars from shooting people?" DeBono apparently either didn't notice Charlie or didn't care. "I can't mop up the blood with any more pilot deals."

Charlie settled into a seat and popped open a Snapple, content to be unnoticed, which only reinforced his sense of detachment from what was happening. Which, all things considered, was better than having to face the enormity of what he had done.

"Let's not overreact—it's not like the dead guy was anybody. Maybe this could work for us." Boyd was vamping now, trying to luck onto a solution. "In the show, Derek Thorne was supposed to blow away a terrorist and what happened? A guy
really
got blown away. Doesn't matter who he was. Now when people watch the show, they'll never know if the blood is gonna be real or not. It'll give the show an edge, it'll give it—"

"Verisimilitude," Charlie said.

Everyone turned around, shocked, as if he'd just appeared out of thin air.

"I'm told I reek of it," he added, taking a swig of Snapple.

Boyd could feel his hair plugs coming loose from their tenuous moorings, but be turned his attention back to DeBono and forced himself to go on anyway. There had to be a way out of this, short of cancellation. "The point is, let's not panic. We can make this work."

"Sure. What's Chad Everett up to these days?" Charlie asked, his way of showing what a positive attitude he had.

If Boyd had a gun, there would have been a third death on the lot that day. As it was, the only thing dying at that moment were the follicles on Boyd's head.

DeBono ignored Charlie and turned to Boyd. "While you've been harvesting your chest hair, I've been over a spit in front of the FCC. They think TV violence is to blame for every idiot who holds up a liquor store. I got 'em believing it's all make-believe, no harm done—and you're telling me you wanna create a show where the murders are real?"

"Only one," Boyd offered meekly. "It doesn't have to happen again."

"Oh, that's a big relief," DeBono said. "Have you tried asking Dr. Desi if he'd implant a brain in your fucking head? Frog, newt, cheetah, any old thing would do."

Boyd seethed, but couldn't risk pissing off DeBono at this critical juncture. It still wasn't too late to salvage the situation.

DeBono knew what Boyd was thinking, and it just made the studio chief look even more pathetic. But as bad as the situation was, he couldn't bring himself to think badly of Charlie Willis. Somehow, despite the trouble Charlie had caused, DeBono pitied the poor schlub. When all this was over, Charlie Willis would be forgotten, remembered only as the answer to a trivia question in some meaningless game show.

"I got no idea if this is your fault or not," DeBono told him, "but you're gonna be hung for it anyway, because let's face it, you did kill the guy."

"No way around that," Charlie admitted.

"And by tonight, the phrase
My Gun Has Bullets
is gonna be a sick national joke," DeBono said. "If I keep the show on my network, we'll be a joke, too."

"So we change the name." Boyd desperately turned to Burley and swatted him on the shoulder. "You got lots of 'em, right?"

Burley started rattling them off.
"Thorne of Justice,
.357
Justice, Man of Action—"

"Man of Action,
that's a good one," Boyd said. "We put Larry Manetti in there, give the cop a new name, shoot the thing in Hawaii, and finish out the season as if nothing happened. It'll reinvigorate the show."

"As of now,
My Gun Has Bullets
is on indefinite hiatus, pending the outcome of all this shit." DeBono looked at Charlie. "If I were you, I'd make myself scarce."

And with that pronouncement, DeBono left. Boyd immediately chased after him, urging him to reconsider. Charlie found himself alone with Jackson Burley, who rose to his feet and held out his hand to him. Charlie shook it.

"It's been real," Burley said on his way out the door, "too damn real."

It was the most intelligent thing anyone had said to Charlie in his entire television career.

T
he suspects were all in the drawing room. The silver-haired patriarch. His greedy daughter. The stepson with the shady past. The adopted daughter with something to hide. The nanny with a rap sheet. The gardener whose green thumb came from counterfeiting currency. One of them had murdered the blackmailing maid, and Miss Agatha was about to reveal the killer's identity when...

Three ninja warriors crashed through the windows, rolled across the floor and came up in fighting stance, ready to dole out death with their swords, silver stars, and lethal hands.

Sweet Miss Agatha's disarming, grandmotherly charm and deductive reasoning wouldn't save her now. But the ninja warriors underestimated the kindly old lady. They didn't know about...

Agatha's niece.

A vision in black leather cart-wheeled into the room, taking out one astonished ninja with a kick in the face. Another ninja charged her, brandishing his sword. Without even looking back, she ducked, flipped over backward, kicked him in the face, caught his fumbled sword in midair, and with one expert swipe, cut the pants off the third ninja exposing..
.

White boxer shorts decorated with smiling pumpkins.

Miss Agatha whipped the hood off the shocked ninja, revealing that he was none other than the elderly beekeeper. Now the comely maid's enigmatic last words, "smiling pumpkins," made tragic sense.

Miss Agatha had done it again.

Cut together, it looked great. No, it looked spectacular.

Boyd sat behind his desk, remote in his hand, watching the rough assembly of the latest
Miss Agatha
episode on his big-screen TV. Even in the face of disaster, a man has his priorities. And watching dailies, especially ones with Sabrina in skintight leather, was definitely on the top of the list.

As much as he hated to, Boyd had to admit Don DeBono had been right about one thing—Miss
Agatha
had never been so exciting. Sabrina brought new life to the show. The TV room at retirement villas nationwide would be hopping on Sunday nights. A lot of old men would be looking at their nurses in a whole new light. And if Boyd's reaction was any measure, men of all ages would be rediscovering the pure joy of a good mystery. Would Sabrina's boobs fall out of her lingerie as she beat up the murderer? Would Sabrina's shirt be tom by that killer's knife? Would Sabrina peel off her sweater before she went into the freezing meat locker in search of clues? These were puzzlers that would keep men glued to the screen.

Whole new arenas of storytelling had opened up since she joined the cast. Sabrina becomes an aerobics instructor to sweat out a murderer at a health club. Sabrina poses as a Victoria's Secret model to trap a killer with a lingerie fetish. Sabrina goes sunbathing to expose a lethal lifeguard. And inevitably Miss Agatha would come along, with her plate of cookies and homespun proverbs, to sift through the clues Sabrina had uncovered and expose the murderer.

Of course, Sabrina would have to slip into black leather, break some heads, trash a few cars, and fire a couple of semiautomatic weapons first.

Boyd no longer had to endure excruciating hours watching the withering harridan Esther Radcliffe having tea with an endless parade of elderly has-been actors, climaxing in a round-up of senior citizens in a dreary drawing room, where Miss Agatha would deduce the identity of the killer using clues withheld from the audience. Not that the show's loyal audience cared; most of them clapped the lights out and fell asleep before the finale anyway.

Miss Agatha
dailies, which he used to dread, had become the highlight of Boyd's day. He'd cancel meetings to jam the cassette into the TV and catch up on the previous day's shooting. Sometimes he'd take them home and watch them again in slow motion, particularly on those days when Sabrina was in black leather, kicking the daylights out of some lucky stuntman.

Even now, sitting in his office high above the Pinnacle Studios soundstages, these indelible images provided him with some measure of comfort as the world collapsed around him. In just a matter of hours, he'd had to deal with two deaths, three if you counted the almost certain cancellation of
My Gun Has Bullets,
and the complete nervous breakdown of a once prolific episodic director. And there was the matter of the demolished trailer, which lay crumpled against soundstage 11 like some giant, discarded beer can.

In an odd sense, Boyd was relieved. He had felt certain that if anyone was going to die on the set, it would he Sabrina Bishop at the withered hands of that insane shrew Esther Radcliffe. In fact, that had been his first, horrified thought when his secretary ran in, frantically blubbering about a shooting on the set. For one terrifying instant, he envisioned Sabrina's perfect body, lifeless on a soundstage floor, passing into the great beyond without once having had the pleasure of Boyd Hartnell.

The thought had been too horrible to bear. He didn't bother waiting for the elevator, but hounded down the stairwell like a man escaping a burning building.

He literally collapsed into the lobby, hyperventilating into a dead faint on the cold marble. In the three minutes of unconsciousness, he imagined himself alone at a windy cemetery, standing over her open grave, hair flying off his head and coating her casket until he was left utterly bald.

Boyd jerked into consciousness, pushed aside the security guards who stood around him, and staggered into the midday sun, grateful to see the ambulance screeching up to soundstage 11, clear across the lot from where
Miss Agatha
was shooting.

He felt relief so strong he nearly passed out again, until a new reality jolted the dizziness away—it was one of
his
shows filming in soundstage 11, not one of the dozens of other series shooting on the lot.

That was this afternoon.

Now, the police were gone, the bodies were in the morgue, and Wachtel had been checked in to a Chatsworth sanatorium, but Boyd's troubles were far from over.

The show's "indefinite hiatus," the TV series equivalent of a terminal coma after fewer than thirteen episodes, was a financial disaster. The episodes would be worthless in syndication, which meant there was no possibility of recouping the considerable deficit.

But Boyd admired his ability to think on his feet. In the time it took to walk from Charlie Willis's trailer back to the tower, he'd come up with a couple of brilliant ideas to turn this tragedy in his favor.

As soon as he was back in his office, he ordered the day's
My Gun Has Bullets
footage, up to and including the killing, edited and prepared for immediate home video release, packaged tastefully as
An American Tragedy.
It was a guaranteed million seller, and at $29.95 it could be one of the division's biggest hits since
Race to Death,
a fast and furious ninety minutes of car racing accidents, and the milestone
Killings of Convenience,
the riveting compilation of closed-circuit camera footage of fatal mini-mart hold-ups.