Stress (12 page)

The lunch was a waste of time. Abner, brooding over a portfolio of sketches for a new Tigers logo, barely touched his salmon mousse and grunted in response when Caryn recounted the details of the Gryphon meeting. His tiny eyes, set close above a nose that had been broken the one time he had actually tried to play baseball, showed a flicker of interest only when she mentioned the movie being shot downtown.

“Casting anybody local?”

“I don’t know. Why? Are you considering a career in show business?”

“Maybe there’s a cameo in it for Kaline. It might be good for attendance.”

“I’m sure someone in Dallas is going to hop a plane east and buy a season ticket because Al Kaline ordered a cup of coffee in a movie.”

“It worked with Alex Karras, and the damn Lions haven’t won anything since 1957. What do you think of this one?” He held up a sixteen-by-twenty sketch in pastels of a cartoon tiger in a baseball cap winding up to pitch.

“It looks like Snagglepuss. Abner, give it a rest. Spring training doesn’t start for two months.”

“Six weeks. Anyway the season’s just the tip of the iceberg. A big win in September starts in January. How’s my niece?”

“Coming down with a cold. I almost canceled the meeting so I could stay home with her.”

“That’s great. She’s a cute kid.” He was looking at Snagglepuss.

Caryn sat back and ordered another highball.

Driving home, floating a little, she decided that if it weren’t for Cornelia she would never see her brother except at family events. The old lady sitting in her big empty mansion placed a lot of store in blood relationships, possibly because she could never bear children of her own. Caryn hadn’t discussed with Abner what they would do with the house once their mother passed on. She didn’t care to live there herself, and she didn’t think even Abner could fill it with trophies and autographed baseballs. The paintings, tapestries, and statuary that decorated it would bring a fortune at auction even by Crownover standards, but she doubted the house itself would attract a private buyer. When it was built, the enormous staff required to maintain it had cost only pennies a day, but in recent years adequate help for a reasonable wage had become scarce—
good
help, as perceived by the vanishing members of Cornelia’s class and generation, was close to nonexistent—and brass went unpolished and cobwebs laced the crystals of Catherine the Great’s chandelier in the front hall. It was simply too much house even for a billionaire, and billionaires no longer even changed planes in Detroit on their way between coasts. Probably the family would donate the building and its six acres to the City of Grosse Pointe to beat the taxes, and probably the city would tear down the building and sell the lot to a developer. The materials and fixtures alone would fund another war memorial.

Ted’s Eldorado was parked in the garage when she pulled in and cut the Corvette’s motor. When she got out he was leaning through the connecting doorway to the kitchen. He was in his shirtsleeves, but his necktie was done up, which meant he hadn’t been there long. His curly hair needed combing. It usually did. It was a weave, and he thought if he left it a little disheveled, no one would notice. It was one of several areas where his and Caryn’s opinions differed. He looked anxious.

“I expected you home earlier,” he said.

“I didn’t expect you at all. Is Opal all right?” A fist in a nice glove closed on her heart.

“She’s running a fever. Netta called me at the office when she couldn’t reach you. I called Doctor Farhat. He doesn’t think it’s serious, but he’s sending an ambulance.”

She was sure she’d given the governess the number at Sinbad’s, but she didn’t stand there arguing. At the mention of
fever
she pushed through the doorway, nearly colliding with her husband. He followed her into the living room and up the stairs to Opal’s bedroom, saying something reassuring. But she heard the concern in his tone. Whether it was over their daughter or because Caryn hadn’t been on hand when the situation changed, she couldn’t tell.

Opal’s voice was small—“I’m hot, Mommy”—and her forehead was burning up. Caryn stretched out next to her on the bed, holding her, and got off only when the paramedics came and strapped her daughter to a board. They were kind, warmer and more genuine-sounding in their reassurances than Dr. Farhat, Opal’s pediatrician, whose bedside manner Caryn had always thought oily. She kept her hand on her daughter’s as they carried the stretcher down the stairs and out the front door to where the ambulance was parked with its doors open and its lights twinkling. They didn’t even wait for Caryn to ask if she could ride along. One of them stood aside and held the door for her to climb in. When the doors were secured and his partner in back, the driver strapped himself in and swung the boxlike vehicle out of the drive and into the private road, expertly avoiding the blue Duster parked on the other side, which pulled out behind and stayed there all the way to the hospital.

H
OLLYWOOD PEOPLE WERE PUSSIES
.

Kubicek had suspected as much for some time—a couple of Christmases ago his wife had dragged him into a theater for the first time in fifteen years to see
A Clockwork Orange,
whose faggy British accents and phoney liberal worldview had almost made him puke up a twelve-dollar prime rib dinner—but his first exposure to the talent behind
Detroit P.D.
, an independent production starring somebody Kubicek vaguely remembered as one of the mobsters wiped out in the climax of
The Godfather
, confirmed the suspicion.

The director, whose name was Corky, came up to about Kubicek’s sternum in platform boots with a beaded Indian band around his forehead, black hair to his shoulders, and an untrimmed beard spilling down the front of his tie-dyed sweatshirt. It had taken the sergeant the better part of the morning to sort the honcho from the rest of the crew, none of whom looked to be a minute past thirty. Most of them were clearly freezing despite their heavy quilted coats, big fuzzy earmuffs, and mittens. Mittens, for chrissake; he kept looking to see if they were tied to their sleeves. He himself was comfortable on this moderate day in mid-January in a belted topcoat with a zip-out pile lining and black Cossack hat. An old-fashioned Alberta Clipper of the kind that closed schools and brought out the county plows would probably send these California feebs squealing back to their topless beaches and hot tubs. There wasn’t a Pappy Ford or a John Huston in the bunch.

They all appeared to know what they were doing, he gave them that. While the actors and extras stood around pounding their shoulders and gulping steaming coffee and tea from Styrofoam cups provided by a catering truck, young men and women in baseball caps with film titles stenciled on the fronts unwound miles of cable from portable reels, pulled out the telescoping legs of tripods, erected big silver umbrella reflectors, swung booms, plugged cords into the backs of control panels, trundled cameras, switch-started a gas-powered generator the size of a city bus, laid out hand props on a folding table, and just generally screwed tight, spread out, clamped down, snapped shut, winched up, rolled, pounded, dug, tested, taped, chalked, wired, strapped, wheeled, pushed, tugged, slapped, cursed, replaced, and shouldered equipment both familiar and alien to the sergeant from 7:00
A.M
. until noon, at which point everything shut down for lunch.

This was beef Wellington and baked potatoes served in the Motor Bar at the old Book-Cadillac Hotel, closed to the public that day. Shamefacedly, Kubicek asked the production’s leading lady, recruited from one of his wife’s favorite soap operas, for her autograph, which she gracefully granted on a paper napkin over her vegetarian plate. While he was waiting, an assistant director even smaller than Corky shoved him aside to deliver a message to the actress, then manhandled him again on his way out. Kubicek resisted the urge to break the little turd in half.

With an hour to go before they lost the light, the company was ready to shoot its first scene, a shrieking, arm-flinging argument between the soap girl and the
Godfather
guy in front of the statue of the Spirit of Detroit outside the entrance to the City-County Building. Of the three, Kubicek thought the great sculpture, a muscular giant holding a man, woman, and child in one hand and a sunburst symbolizing Industrial

Progress in the other, was the best actor; but he supposed they did something back at the studio to improve the scene. After two takes, Corky stopped the cameras and asked three of the uniformed city officers working Crowd Control if they would mind being in the background.

“Doing what?” This from Horace Hyde, a Traffic Bureau cop Kubicek knew slightly. He had silver temples and a horseshoe moustache just this side of regulation.

“Just walking through. The scene needs a note of realism.”

“Well, we’re on duty.”

“It’ll just take a few minutes. Your commissioner offered us the complete cooperation of the police department. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll see you get tickets to the premiere. Think how proud your wife will be to see you up on the screen.”

“I’m divorced.”

“Your girlfriend, then. Don’t tell me a big strapping hunk like you doesn’t have to beat them off with your baton.”

“I guess it’s okay.”

“Great. This is Grace, our wardrobe supervisor. She’ll put you in a nice suit.”

“What’s wrong with my uniform?”

“You’ve got plainclothesman all over you. Surely your boss sees that. A forty-four long, I think, Grace. Make sure there’s room for a shoulder holster.”

This was Kubicek’s job. “Corky, the department doesn’t much use shoulder holsters any more. They’re uncomfortable as hell and it’s a bitch to get your gun out in a hurry when you have to. This is standard.” He unclipped the belt rig from behind his right kidney and showed the director his standard issue .38 in its shiny black sheath. (Imitation alligator, $29.95 from the
Police Times
catalogue plus $1.95postage and handling.)

Corky laid a hand on Kubicek’s upper arm. “Thanks, Paul. It is Paul?” The sergeant nodded. “Paul, I’ve got the same hard-on for realism as you. I’m shooting for mean and gritty. I mean, this ain’t
Adam 12:
‘Take the license out of your wallet, please, lady. By the way, Jim, how’s your hemorrhoids?’ But the studio’s competing with double-oh-seven. Art?”

The assistant director, always close, moved in tighter, and Corky rested his free arm across the little man’s shoulders, creating a huddle with Kubicek in the center. “Fetch me one of those shoulder harnesses from Props, okay? And a gun. That’s the ticket.” Art bustled off with a pat on the butt. “I see what I’m doing here as a kind of
Satyricon
of crime pictures: Real backgrounds, genuine cops and crooks in the cast—hey, my second lead did seven months at Q for uttering and publishing—none of that glitzy Hollywood shit. But the studio doesn’t see it that way. Burt fucking Reynolds takes on a team of hit men with flamethrowers and the next thing you know fifty percent of the budget on every film in production is set aside for fire suits for the stunt crew.

“I could piss and moan,” he went on. “I could throw up my hands and say if it’s shit they want, I’ll give ’em shit. Only I’ve been around a long time. Did you know I directed an episode of
Leave It to Beaver?
Got an Emmy nomination. Point is I know the game: Give ’em something small so they think you’re playing by the rules, then while they’re busy congratulating themselves and kissing each other’s asses, kick ’em in the nuts. Ah.”

He took the shoulder holster Art had brought, brown suede with a torso strap, the kind of rig Kubicek hadn’t seen since he was a rookie. “Sure, it’s old-fashioned, but it’s got romance. That thing you use looks like a bicycle clip.”

“It’s got me this far alive. The underarm setup I wear when I’m off duty is a speed release. If I’d been wearing this thing New Year’s Eve I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you now. Also we got a regulation against magnums. That hogleg could get a cop busted.”

“You got to admit it’s photogenic.” Corky worked the big .44 out of the holster, nickel-plated with a mother-of-pearl grip, as big as a T-square. “The boys in Special Effects goose up the charge for night scenes. Powder flare’s brighter. We’ve got a firefight on page twenty-three that’s going to make you forget every fireworks show you ever saw.” He socked the revolver back into its sheath and thrust the tangle of straps into Art’s hands. “Thanks for the information, Paul. Just keep on calling ’em as you see ’em. Okay, let’s try to get one decent take in before Mr. Sun goes down.”

The actors stood on their marks and began the scene for the cameras.
The Godfather
guy tripped over his lines halfway through and they went back to the beginning. On the next try the soap queen started giggling and they took it again from the last cue. Technical problems spoiled the next two takes. By then tension was high and Corky called a five minute break while a woman from makeup fixed the actress’s eye shadow and the sound crew checked their equipment. A lighting technician with a walrus moustache peered at the lowering sun, shook his head, and spat a wad of pink gum at the base of a streetlamp.

Kubicek wondered when the glamor kicked in.

Everything went well right up to the end of Take Seven. The actors were wrapping up the scene when an ear-splitting screech turned every head on the street in the direction of the police barricades. A gold Chevy Nova pitted with rust slammed through the brightly painted sawhorses, scattering uniformed officers and spectators from its path. Kubicek’s .38 was in his hand before the car came to a grinding halt just short of the curb where the two actors were standing transfixed. The pale, confused face of a girl not much older than sixteen showed behind the windshield.

In the silence that slammed down after the smoking tires stopped rolling, the clatter of something metallic striking the pavement swung heads back the other way, where Officer Horace Hyde had dropped his service piece trying to claw it out of his prop shoulder holster. One of the other cops-turned-extras, younger and childish looking in a suit from Wardrobe that hung on him like an awning, had snagged the hammer of his own .38 in the lining of the coat and he was still struggling to extricate it.