The Kill Riff (49 page)

    In Tucson, Arizona, the machines monitoring the life functions of Jackal Reichmann went steady and shrill. Eldon Quantrill lost his entertainment value and went to trial for triple homicide.

    In San Francisco, Ralph "Sandjock" Trope, manager of the Rockhound nightspot, bagged himself another headline by positively identifying a photograph of Lucas Ellington as the mystery roadie with the diamond eyepatch he'd spoken with on the day guitarist Jackson Knox died. Ralph could not actually match the roadie's face with Lucas', but he could read the papers and knew a promotional opportunity when he saw one.

    Since no positive proof against Lucas Ellington had been unearthed in the Denver murder of keyboardist Brion Hardin, he was blamed anyway. He had become convenient.

    The news media gained a full nelson on the legend of Lucas Ellington, the rockstar assassin. The police earnestly plugged their forthright protection of innocent bystanders in Dos Piedras. It would be irrelevant to point out that the two men who died were the only ones who would have died under any circumstances.

    Now, sitting in her darkened office, toying with desk knickknacks and staring at televisual snow, Sara realized that Lucas had forced her to do nothing. It had been his plan. Her only part had been to play yet another surrogate Kristen in the presence of Stannard, to complete

    Lucas' reenactment of his nightmare.

    She had not thought herself a killer, yet she had picked up the pistol and certainly would have shot Stannard in the head had the police not bashed through her door at that moment. She was not a killer, yet hadn't she killed Lucas by failing him, by not seeing the gun in Stannard's pants? She had surely spent aeons watching the singer draw and fire.

    The ways in which normal people were compelled to kill was a mainstay of her field of study. The yellow legal pad was on the desk in the pool of dim light, mostly doodles.

    Would Lucas have killed her?

    Would she have killed?

    And if so, what was the difference between them?

    Lucas represented what could almost be termed another evolutionary step-Psychopathic Man, possessing the mechanisms to cope with what living has become, to survive in this world. That capacity was present in everyone. The difference was that the mechanisms finally turned on him and consumed him. But those mechanisms could not be scoured out of the human psyche; they were part of our genetic makeup. And despite the nasty implications of being surrounded by a sidewalk full of latent killers, Sara thought, we'd better be thankful for those mechanisms. Someday, they might mean our survival.

    Nevertheless, she would go to her grave thinking that she had created a monster. In a way she had, but the monster was not Lucas Ellington, who was dead and gone. The monster was her.

    And now there were so many new graves…

    Sara toed off her shoes and left them on the carpeted floor. Eventually she dozed off on the narrow sofa she kept in her office for the purpose, pulling a knit afghan around herself as her body temperature dropped. The candle burned down and extinguished, sending aromatic smoke curling into the air and flavoring away the harsher smell of the dead Salem 100s butted in the ashtray. Outside, the rain poured down with a vengeance, as though trying to drown the whole state.

    When she was fast asleep, she had a nightmare about Stannard, and Lucas, and the events she might have changed. It was the first.

    

    

    GABRIEL STANNARD POISED THE MUZZLE of the automatic riot shotgun on a thick cable brown with rust and fired round after round until the magazine was exhausted. His laugh was victorious and slightly mad. Strong sea winds knocked his hair about and rippled his clothing. Beyond his perch on the high steel, the night was shot through with stars like sharply defined gem-stones. Snaky golden reflections from the water far below writhed across his face. He reached around to a back pocket. No more ammo.

    Slugs panged off the cables and girders around him, and he flinched. High-velocity death was throwing itself at him. The shooters below had him targeted now. This high up, it was difficult to spring from one perch to another. He was trapped, and he knew it. Imminent death showed in the tension in his jaws, the bulge of his muscles, the glaze in his eyes. He hoisted his shotgun aloft like a bannerless standard and shouted that rock'n'roll would never die.

    In response, a hot slug ripped through his shoulder, spattering the ironwork behind him with blood.

    "Cut, cut, cut, cut!" shouted Logan McCabe from the stage floor. His expression was designed to inform his crew he was forcing himself to be tolerant. The special effects honcho, Jake Morrison of Firepower Unlimited, ambled over to pow-wow. The charges designed to scratch white ricochet trails off the simulated metal behind Stannard's head were so brilliant that they lit up the sky cyclorama behind him and cast shadows, revealing that the backdrop of sea and starry sky was fake. McCabe cocked back his baseball cap. Since the advent of Spielberg, all directors who desired success made sure to wear their baseball caps. McCabe's bore a Dr. Pepper logo. He decided to deemphasize the background by adding more fog-this was supposed to be San Francisco, after all, and every time McCabe had seen the Golden Gate Bridge for real at night it had been shrouded in thick mist.

    McCabe's first AD, Louis Katz, called for new setups in twenty minutes. Time was burning up too fast to track.

    Stannard rode a cherry-picker arm twenty feet down to the stage floor, where a grip handed him his cane. It was a dark hickory walking stick with a gold lion's head. By now, he had gotten pretty good with it. His limp was obvious but not overt, and he attracted no gratuitous notice as he moved to his slingback chair, the one with which McCabe had gifted him during the Maneater shoot. This where the star enthroned himself. The golden words on the canvas chairback said so.

    A cold glass of Sweetouchnee tea found its way into his hand, and Stannard looked up into the eyes of Aki Blair.

    She bent at the waist to peck him on the cheek. Her passage across the set attracted much more notice than Stannard's. Aki was lately notorious for a series of Levi's jeans ads. She was leggy, curvy, almond-eyed, with very long, straight, glossy black hair. Her attentions to Stannard were designed to be seen. She was being well paid to pretend to be his lady.

    The oil-based special effects fog was acrid and tended to settle in the back of the throat with a taste like cigarette ashes. Stannard drank half the tea and plucked out a pulpy-wet lime wedge to suck on. His icy-blue eyes assessed Aki. Quite a piece. Look but don't touch.

    He decided not to be kind. He was in no mood.

    "I'd appreciate it, love, if you weren't so fucking obvious," he said just as she turned to wave at one of the gaffers, a beefy dude Stannard knew as Blackie.

    She jerked around as if on a leash, eyebrows up. "Just flirting," she said innocently.

    "That's not what I'm talking about. I mean you and McCabe."

    "Hm?" Her face, her manner, were so smooth and plastic that he suddenly wanted to smash her skull in.

    Lowering his voice, he rasped, "You were fucking McCabe last night. You can't."

    A shot of pain, like internal gas, bit him inside and made him grimace. His pipework was intact, but tender, delicate, and heavily scarred. A lot of healing had occurred since the debacle on Claremont Street, and none of it had gone fast or easily. The Teflon bullets from Lucas Ellington's M-16 had caused a hairy blood-poisoning problem. Then came massive trauma, blood loss, heavy shock. The artificial kneecap would allow him to regain about 50 percent of his right leg's flexibility. Of the five slugs he had stopped, one had lodged deep in his pelvis. One had punctured his left lung after splintering through a rib strut. One had chewed a four-ounce hunk out of his left triceps, near the armpit. The skin graft to replace it had been sliced from his once cute ass. Another bullet had skinned his neck, biting the tissue hard and opening up a lot of capillaries. The blood had flown. And the remaining bullet, the first one to hit… number one with a bullet, as they proclaimed on KAFC's venerable Heavy Metal Hour of Power…

    He watched Aki, head to toe, as she pretended to register indignation at his accusation. Jesus, he thought, every move she makes, she pretends there's a goddamn camera right there, eating up her image. Like McCabe had been eating her up last night. He imagined her hooking her slim, graceful hands around her knees and spreading wide so McCabe could gobble her. Her clitoris was large and medium sensitive; it was a lot of worthwhile work to bring her off. Stannard's tongue had done some time at that post, and although she could be played like a violin orally, those skills alone would not suffice, so she had assumed a variety of fascinating and not-very-photogenic positions for Logan McCabe, now the driving creative force behind Shakedown, coming soon to a theater near you. Stannard knew about the positions because Joshua Knopf, ace detective for hire, had done a bit of filmmaking himself. What it lacked in style it made up for in content, and Josh had supplied glossies faster than any commercial lab.

    Aki continued to smile at him. They watched the crew swarm over the mocked-up portion of the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, working their antlike tasks and preparing for a second take of the climactic shootout scene. Stannard's contract specified that his scenes were to be completed first. He was no longer capable of doing the rock'n'roll stage acrobatics himself. Gymnasts would be used for long shots in the concert scenes, to be filmed later. Two physical doubles had been hired, and good makeup rendered them into acceptable matches. All Stannard got were the close-ups. From the waist up he could still fake being formidable.

    Stannard sighed and tried a stab at honesty. ''Aki-fucking this director at this particular time is not going to advance your career one degree. You're already doing well; why keep adding stuff? You'll overload."

    "So?" Clearly she was another one who thought she could handle too much.

    "So… we need a little discretion, love. I can't have the crew laughing at me behind my back."

    At last, in her eyes, he saw the flash of flame he wanted to see. "Are you telling me who I can and cannot sleep with?" She held the sweet bogus smile firmly in place. She had learned to be extremely camera conscious. She could hold that smile even if a flaming arrow thunked into the back of her head. She possessed a skill, if not a talent.

    In that moment he knew Horus would have to be instructed to audition a new girl, a new arm doily for the public Gabriel Stannard. Aki was not going to work out. If she was simply cashiered, she might shoot off to anyone who would listen, to the film crew, to the magazines. No good. Perhaps she could be cornered into signing some sort of document.

    
Documents,
he thought.
Coverage.
Endless contingencies, ceaseless paranoia. A suffocation of clauses and conditions. This was not Gabriel Stannard's way of doing things. His anger and frustration slammed into high heat, a bubbling pot of rage finally boiling over. The cobra kill sheen settled into his gaze, and he returned her so-sweet smile sweetly.

    "Aki, my dear…" he said. Then he whacked her as hard as he could in the temple with the butt of his cane.

    With a cry more of surprise than pain, she flailed backward and swept clean a metal tray of coffee and doughnuts, landing on her taut butt with a wet smack. Her hand clutched at her forehead, and when she saw blood she began to howl. The stage fell silent, and after a shock lull workers jumped to assist her. She made small squeaking noises as she imagined the damage to her photogenic features. Then she started shrieking. The cameramen and munchkins crawling around the bridge set continued their work with smiles of indulgence. Hollywood could be so weird.

    In an hour, her eye would be satisfyingly hollow and black. Let the makeup guys try to conceal that little brand, Stannard thought.

    "You son of a bitch!" she wailed, struggling ungracefully to stand up, wobbling and crying when she did. "Fucking eunuch'." Her tiny fist hauled back to paste the singer, and a huge, dark hand enclosed it fully and arrested its swing.

    "That's enough," Horus said in a tone low enough to silence her. It was a guarantee of no bullshit.

    "Escort her out," said Stannard. "Explain some fiscal realities to her."

    Horus nodded and complied, his eyes half closing in his usual subtle and dignified way. The problem would be resolved. Aki had to be made aware that in this age of drug testing for employees, her lucrative Levi's deal could be made to evaporate with one strategic mention of her childlike propensity for controlled substances.

    "Christ on a hose, Gabe, gimme a fucking break." McCabe appeared at his shoulder, watching without interest as Aki was led outside. "You two kids have a tiff? This sorta shit ain't good for crew morale, man, especially when we're behind the shooting schedule. It's too early in the film to have personality problems."

    "Yeah. Right." Stannard nodded civilly, swigging his thick tea. "Logan? One item, between you and me as friends and buddies; director to actor. Jam your wick in some other hidey-hole, or I'll have my black Fury rip it off and hand it back to you in a hot-dog bun with extra onions."

    Whatever instruction was headed out of McCabe's mouth dissolved into an incoherent mush noise.
Hhwwaaahh.
His complexion went the color of mozzarella cheese, and he cleared his throat without needing to.

    
Don't alienate McCabe, too,
Stannard's new imp of conscience cautioned. "Logan-people in the throes of passion can be dangerously free with embarrassing information."

    "Uh." He pulled the visor of his Dr. Pepper ballcap low over his eyes. "Uh, yeah, absolutely. Uh… we'll, er, be ready for you in five. Jake needs to wire up your blood squib again." To be honest, McCabe recovered admirably. Stannard sensed that he might. Aki would be dismissed from the director's cognizance since she no longer had anything to do with getting footage into the can this afternoon.