Not the End of the World (3 page)

There was a light scaffold being erected, creating what looked like a platform, even a stage, plus more chipboards, perhaps for concession stands. White sheets were being draped around the wire fence that separated the place from the messy back lots of First Avenue, and horizontal banners were being laid out on the ground in preparation for being hung up someplace. He couldn’t make out what they said.

More legibly, vertical banners bearing the AFFM legend and this year’s dates flapped gently from flagpoles along the horseshoe driveway, as they did from streetlights all around Santa M. This event was a big deal. Larry thought again about Bannon’s assurances, weighing them up in the context of the growing ferment around him. He estimated that the trouble factor was indeed low, but the embarrassment and repercussion factors were in the ionosphere, given the high profile any fuck‐
ups would certainly receive. He figured that if shit met fan or demolition charge – he should remember to be a politician before he was a cop.

‘Sergeant Freeman?’

He turned around to find a short white guy with a real bad perm, big and shaggy yet somehow rigidly neat, like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be in Mötley Crüe or the Osmonds. When he smiled, he definitely had Osmonds teeth.

‘I’m Paul Silver,’ he said, extending a demonstratively confident hand. He was faking it. The little guy was shitting himself, and unusually it was nothing to do with Larry’s presence, size or colour.

‘Larry Freeman. You the man in charge of this show?’

‘Yes sir, that I am. I’m Chief Co‐
ordinator of Logistical On‐
site Market Activities for the American Feature Film Market nineteen ninety‐
nine.’ Larry could hear the capital letters.

‘First time in charge?’

‘That too. How did you know?’

‘Because you’re shitting in your shorts.’

The smile switched off. Pauly clearly feared We were about to have a Problem.

Larry grinned to defuse the situation. ‘Don’t worry, me too,’ he said, gripping the now less certainly offered hand.

‘First time, or, er …’

‘Shitting in my shorts, yeah. But hey, everybody assures me there’s never been a problem before.’

The little guy rolled his eyes. ‘They keep telling me that too.’

Silver led Larry inside, through the vast lobby with its diamondoid canopy. The orchestral music being pumped through the place was fighting to be heard amid the clamour of hammers, power‐
screwdrivers, staple‐
guns, raised voices and the chiming of mobile phones. Stalls and stands were being erected, or finished off with promotional material, posters and cardboard cut‐
outs advertising company names and movies. Many of the flicks looked like the kind of stuff that always filled the lower shelves at the video store, past the New Releases and All‐
time Classics: Titles for the Undiscerning Viewer. Musclebound White Guy with a Big Gun II: Hank Steroid’s Revenge. Kickboxing Vigilante with Serious Unresolved Personal Conflicts IV: Showdown in a Burbank Parking Lot.

The shimmering light of the sun through the rooftop pool painted its own changing shades on every surface. Even the widespread tackiness of the market’s paraphernalia couldn’t detract from the elegance of the effect. Larry had to hand the architect that one. Still nobody swimming in the damn thing, though.

Larry followed Silver through the doors at the far end, out on to a wide terrace that overlooked the beach and the ocean at the rear (or did that make it the front?) of the hotel. Silver pulled up a chair for him and sat down opposite. A waitress arrived with a pitcher and two glasses. This time the fruit punch was aqua blue. Larry laughed, declining his drink, but took up the little guy’s offer of a club sandwich and a Seven‐
Up.

Silver listened to Larry’s assurances about police visibility, more officers on the beat and other half‐
inspired bullshit with sage nodding. He clearly didn’t care. He was too wired about the market itself being a success to have any head‐
time left for worrying about what was happening to the delegates when they weren’t engaged in On‐
Site Market Participatory Activities.

‘Well, I guess it ain’t me who should be doing the worrying,’ Larry said, popping a stray piece of cooked chicken back between two levels of his impressively towering sandwich. ‘Looks like you got a bigger operation running across Santa M than we do.’

Silver smiled, but there was an Oh‐
Christ‐
don’t‐
remind‐
me wince in the middle of it. ‘Biggest one for years,’ he said. ‘These events kind of shrank after the video boom of the eighties died off, but with new end‐
users taking up the slack – satellites, digital delivery, fibre‐
optics – the worldwide appetite for product is growing year‐
on‐
year. AFFM ninety‐
nine will have more accredited participants than any of its predecessors since the event moved to Santa Monica.’

Larry tucked heartily into his sandwich. He’d correctly anticipated that the right stimulus remark would precipitate little Pauly’s prepared PR response, thus buying him time to eat.

‘Almost every room in the Pacific Vista will function as an office for one of our participant companies, while all of the cinemas in downtown Santa Monica are screening scheduled programmes of market product, from eight in the morning through to six at night. That’s a total of almost fifty screens, showing an average of five feature titles per day. Plus, as a new development this year, two of the hotel’s function suites have been designated Video Galleries, with a total of thirty‐
eight booths where delegates can view tapes of non‐
premiering product – that’s titles already screened at previous markets but with certain rights still available – on wide screen format monitors with digital‐
quality sound channelled through headphones. We’ve also installed a product‐
and‐
rights database with access terminals on every corridor so that delegates can find out what territories and formats are still available on a particular …’

It was a mighty sandwich, but Larry still managed to finish before Silver did. He took a big gulp of Seven‐
Up and wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘Plus you got all that stuff across the street in the parking lot, too,’ he said. ‘What’s that about? Promotional events? Stunts? Star appearances?’

Silver’s brow furrowed and his head shook. It was weird watching all that hair move as one. This guy didn’t have a stylist, he had a topiarist.

‘Oh, that’s nothing to do with us, Sergeant Freeman,’ he said. ‘It’s a real headache, actually. We normally annex that lot exclusively for participants’ parking, and this year we’ve had to rent a place half a mile down the beach and organise a free‐
and‐
frequent shuttle‐
bus service. The lot changed hands recently and the new proprietor said he already had the whole place rented out for the market’s dates.’

‘So what have they got planned there?’

‘We didn’t ask. But unless it’s the world’s first outdoor film market it’s unlikely to give us much concern.’

‘Guess not,’ Larry said, thinking he’d better check it out when he was through here.

It was much the same deal as across at the Pacific Vista. Guys in matching T-shirts, chipboard screens, electrical cables, laminates, mobiles. Except these T-shirts said, ‘Festival of Light – Santa Monica 1999’; and it wasn’t just the material that was uniformly white. The focus of the lot’s layout was a stage at one end, facing north. Workers were assembling an elevated aluminum structure around it, a construction Larry wasn’t too old to recognise as a frame for a lighting rig. There was a big truck backed up to one side of the stage, and through its open rear doors he could make out some black boxes that he figured for a PA system.

Larry walked through the gap in the low fence where cars usually went in and out, ducking under the ticket‐
activated barrier. He made it half a dozen yards into the lot before two shirts made their hasty way from the stage to challenge him.

‘Excuse me, sir, but I don’t believe you have a personnel pass.’

Neither of them looked more than twenty. It was the smaller one who spoke, shiny straight white teeth probably enjoying their freedom after years behind bars. He didn’t look like he’d be getting his hands dirty on any of the heavy lifting work. That – and associated tasks – seemed the remit of his high‐
school linebacker buddy.

Odd thing to say, even as polite intimidation. Not ‘Can I see your personnel pass?’ or ‘Do you have a personnel pass?’, but ‘I don’t believe you have a personnel pass’. Pretty confident about who does, then. Either there weren’t too many of them or there was something about Larry’s appearance that made it unlikely he’d be carrying one. What could that be, now?

‘It’s okay, kids, I got access all areas,’ he said, producing his badge.

‘I don’t understand, has there been some kind of complaint?’

‘No, I’m just takin’ a look around. Wonderin’ what you’ve got in mind with all this stuff.’

‘What do you mean? We’ve already cleared everything with the police and the mayor’s office,’ the kid said, folding his arms. ‘We’ve got the fire department coming down tomorrow for safety checks, and we’ve got an official police liaison officer dropping by to—’

The kid was cut off by a hand on his arm. An older man, maybe mid‐
thirties, had appeared behind them from a partially constructed stall nearby. He was dressed identically to his junior companions – sneakers, jeans, T-shirt, teeth – but his laminate was a loudly important red.

‘Who’s our guest, Bradley?’ he asked, smiling widely at Larry in practised PR mode as he spoke.

‘Sergeant Larry Freeman,’ Larry said, showing him his ID. ‘I’d just like a quick look around.’

‘Well, we weren’t expecting the police department until tomorrow afternoon, Sergeant, and yours wasn’t the name we were given, but long as you’re here, why don’t I give you the tour? I’m Gary Crane. Festival construction supervisor.’

He put a hand on Larry’s back and began walking him away towards the stage. The welcoming committee retreated, shrugging.

‘What’s the party for?’

‘Party? Oh I see. Well, I guess you could call it that. I’m right in assuming you’re not involved with the Festival liaison?’

‘I’m involved with a different liaison, ’cross the street. Just want to see what the other star attractions are in the neighbourhood this week.’

‘Certainly nothing as big and impressive as the AFFM, Sergeant.’

‘So what is this …’ Larry indicated the man’s T-shirt, ‘… Festival of Light, Mr Crane?’

‘It’s a celebration. A youth and family event. We’re having music, singing, speakers – hence the stage. There’s going to be bleachers that end. We’re putting them in that big space behind the sound desk, which will be in that booth there. There’ll be cooking, concession stands, face‐
painting,’ he continued, indicating the stalls taking shape around the lot.

Smily Gary was being persistently vague around the point of interest. Larry listened to him describe a few more things his eyes had done a pretty good job of noticing for themselves, then interrupted. ‘Yeah, but what are we celebrating?’

Crane stopped, looking Larry pityingly in the eye, as if he couldn’t believe he didn’t understand, then smiled again. ‘The light of Christ. What other light is there?’

He felt relief flow through him like a flushed cistern. Terrifying visions of biker conventions and Klan rallies dispersed from his thoughts, washed away in that glib piety emanating from Crane.

Larry looked back at the lot from the sidewalk on Pacific Drive as he waited for the WALK sign on his way to retrieving his car. One of the horizontal banners that had been laid out face down in the lot was being raised towards supports above the stage; there were similar brackets all around the concourse. The banner, folded lengthways, was being hauled up by some of the T-shirts and secured in place at either end. Then it dropped open to reveal its slogan.

‘Festival of Light – Santa Monica ’99.’

Larry had a little smile to himself. In an ideal world this would still be the AFFM’s parking lot, but Happy Clappies he could live with.

He was about to look away again when he noticed another fold of the banner doubled up behind what already faced out, with T-shirts untying the strings that would let the last section drop down. It unfurled with a slap against the frame.

‘American Legion of Decency’.

Uh‐
oh.

This wasn’t a movement or an organisation Larry had specifically heard of, but he suddenly didn’t feel quite so comfortable any more.

Something about that last word had always scared the shit out of him.

He was committing an act of heresy. This was, in the words of that great Welsh cheeseball, not unusual. What was unusual was that this morning’s was a cultural heresy, undertaken innocently through necessity rather than in gleeful protest at the absurdity of the taboo he was supposedly breaking. There were lots of other people breaking it too, quite openly, but their standing in the local social hierarchy meant they had little respect to lose in the eyes of their fellow citizens.

Steff Kennedy was taking a walk along Hollywood Boulevard. It was five thirty on a February morning.

The sky was a lazy blue, like a clear afternoon sky back home in the winter, but without the attendant threat of testicular cryogesis. There was a hint of cool in the breeze, loitering, even trespassing, before the strengthening sun and the heat from cars and bodies chased it out of town. Steff reckoned the air was about as crisp and clear as it probably got around here. Last night it had been an enveloping, acrid haze that you could smell, even taste on your breath, and that you could feel precipitated on the skin of your face. The pavements, the roads, the shop doorways were engulfed by a pervading volatility, like the whole boulevard was a student party in a flat with a low ceiling, entrapping the fumes and vapours of the fast food, the sweat, the piss and, of course, the cars.

They cruised up and down all evening (or at least until Steff crashed out, which was hardly the witching hour), the Latino boys in elevated flat bed pickups with inexplicably swollen wheels; the white girls in Beamie convertibles; and the moneyed unseen in stretch limos and blacked‐
out windows.