The Player (16 page)

The Australian blushed. He was confused. Civella took charge.

“Listen, I can get away with this because basically I'm rock and roll.”

Levison and his wife came in with Ted Turner's lawyer and took the table behind Griffin's. Levison understood that Griffin's dinner was business, so he skipped the usual two-minute chat.

The Australian wanted the studio to help finance five movies over two years, and the studio was interested. It was Griffin's job to talk about stories and casting, to make sure that the Australian wanted to make movies that a lot of people would like, that his characters were big enough for movie stars, that they would triumph absolutely,
that there would be no ambiguity. Griffin thought about Larry Levy, who was coming back to a shop he was sure was waiting for him, and decided that he had to commit, now, to the Australian, and then, tomorrow, to Civella. He knew that Larry Levy expected Griffin to stop work until the dust had settled before starting new projects, and he also knew that the Australian would set up house somewhere else if Griffin didn't start a deal with him. Did it matter if the deal never went through? Negotiations would likely take three months. The thing was to unsettle Levy.

When they shook hands in the parking lot, the Australian knew he was in business. Griffin watched him drive away in his rented car, and then went home, thinking now only of his answering service and if June Mercator had called.

She had called a little after nine, and the message from her was to call whenever he got in. So he had alarmed her. This made him think about the Writer, the next association after a quick stop on David Kahane, but he let the intrusive thought slide into the same memory chute that he'd put some random image of a building he hadn't seen in twenty years, or a particular day at school, one of those pictures that come back sometimes in idle moments and then disappear.

It was now ten-thirty. He began to dial her number, then put the phone down. He took a shower, started to shave before he realized it was night instead of morning, but finished the job, anyway, got in bed, turned on the television, watched a few minutes of news, and then, a little after eleven, he called her. She answered the phone knowing it was him, there was no panic about a late-night call. Maybe she stayed up late, maybe she and her friends called each other at midnight all the time. He doubted it.

“I was out all day,” she said. “Some friends took me to the museum and then dinner. Do you have news?”

He was ready for this. “No, I'm sorry. I was wondering if you had heard anything.”

“No.”

He had to move quickly, he had to fight feeling like an ugly fifteen-year-old calling the prettiest girl in the class. “I just wanted to tell you that whenever you feel like it, give me a call, just to talk.” If he said any more, he'd sound nervous. Until she gave him a clear signal, he would ask for nothing more. It was strange enough what he was doing, from her point of view. Was he a leech taking advantage of her tragedy? Or did she think that this was dangerous and thrilling? With an undeniable current between them, could she give in to it now, with David Kahane only recently dead, and open up a new territory of desire and permission?

“I will. Thank you.”

He went in for the kill.

“Where did you go, the County or the Contemporary?”

“Just the regular collection at the County. They have some nice paintings from the Hudson River school.”

It was time to show off. “I don't know if it's politically correct, but I'm a real sucker for nineteenth-century landscape.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” she said.

It was time to probe. “Have you been back to work?”

“Yes, I couldn't stay away. It's been good. Everyone's been incredibly nice to me.”

Griffin put the phone on the pillow and rested his head on it. He was sleepy. “What are your plans?”

“I don't have any.”

“Look, I'd like to see you. I don't know if that's possible, I don't know you, I don't know what your life is like, I'm sure you've got good friends who can help you through this a lot better than I can,
but I think there's a connection between us and—” He stopped, to give her a chance, to let her finish his sentence.

“It's difficult. I don't know exactly how I feel right now. But there is a connection, and I would like to see you. The night you called, to speak to David, I had a feeling about you, that I'd hear from you again. I suppose that's awful to admit, but I've learned a lot from this”—she meant the brutal murder of her lover—“and it's important to say what you feel. You can't find out what you really feel until you just start admitting all your feelings. And those feelings change. Oh, God, I'm running at the mouth, aren't I? Well, I'm not going to apologize.”

He thought he should turn the tables on himself, make himself a victim of this situation, try to say that it would have been easier calling her behind David Kahane's back than over his dead body. He tried it this way: “It would have been easier calling you if he was alive.”

“Yes.”

“But I called you, anyway.”

“I'm glad you did.”

“It's easy talking to you. Is it easy talking to me?”

“Yes.”

“There's a lot we aren't saying. But I'm proud of our restraint.”

“It has a certain elegance, doesn't it?”

He didn't want to go any farther yet. “Good night,” he said.

“You too.”

Whose move was it now? He would call her in a few days and make a date for the next weekend. He had forgotten what she looked like. He would know her if he saw her, but he could not describe her. Dark hair, sad eyes. He turned off the light, and out of the pulsing darkness of his room he tried, but failed, to create a picture of June Mercator. All he could conjure of her was a shape,
arms reaching out to hold him. He closed his eyes, and in his own darkness the shape defined itself a little more; now it had long hair. It hovered, waiting for him. He could stroke her thighs. The shape would not come closer. Maybe I'm just blind with desire, he thought. I can touch but I can't see. He knew that in her room June Mercator was playing with a projection of him. He rolled onto his stomach to tease the shape closer; he didn't want to stare at it and frighten it away.

He expected to find a postcard with his newspaper in the morning, but there was nothing. He had breakfast at the Bel Air Hotel with a director.

As soon as Griffin settled into his office, Larry Levy knocked on the door with a hard cast on his wrist. The sun- and windburn on his face stopped around the shape of his goggles. Griffin knew Levy wanted to talk about the broken arm, how he'd hurt himself, what the doctors had been like, so he didn't ask about it when he invited him to take a seat.

“Welcome back,” he said. “Your office is finished?”

“They did a beautiful job. I'm very happy.” He took an emery board from his pocket and scratched inside his cast. “It's time to get to work. Levison is giving me a few projects. A couple of books they've bought, and a few ideas for remakes. He showed me his writers list, and I told him I didn't like it. I don't want to be confined to the writers he trusts.”

“If you like someone, you can always argue his case.”

“And directors, too. We need more interesting people. We shouldn't do business with anyone who's ever directed a Neil Simon movie, for example, and there's three of them on the directors list.”

“Who do you want to put on it?”

“Well, that's the point,” said Levy. “We have to find them. Young directors, hip directors.”

“You mean, we should go to the film schools,” said Griffin dryly.

“Exactly. And to the festivals, too. And I know what you're thinking, everyone does that, but the point is, we have to be smarter about talent. And I think I have a good eye for talent.”

“You've said all this to Levison?”

“Of course.”

“And he bought it?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever it sounds like.”

Griffin had to pick a fight now, had to keep Levy nervous. “You mean, we shouldn't find talented new directors who have a new approach to movies?”

“I mean, the audience doesn't care, really. It's true there's lots of hacks, but even the hacks can turn in a hit if the script is right.”

Griffin didn't know if he believed what he was saying, and he could just as easily argue against himself. He needed to voice the slightly perverse opinion, even if it was the easy critique of the self-declared outsider. Since Larry Levy had Levison's blessing, whatever he'd say would be the company line, and Griffin knew that unless he was different, and strong, he was out. Maybe he'd be out, anyway, but he couldn't parrot Levy. The obvious course was to put on a grin and agree with the new executive. Maybe he could shake him up in private and agree with him in public. Anything, so long as Levy couldn't predict Griffin's next move, his next thought. If Levy came to hesitate whenever Griffin was nearby, Griffin would quickly crush him.

Levy scratched inside his cast again. Something itched him fiercely, and still Griffin refused to ask what had happened, how he had fallen on the slopes. He sensed that Levy knew Griffin was purposefully ignoring the cast, waiting for Levy to offer the explanation, which would, because it was volunteered, carry the unmistakable
whine of the victim. The urge to tell the story of how he broke his arm was a second itch. “Look, Griffin, I think we're getting off to a bad start here.”

“I'm just trying to see where you stand. We have different philosophies, and I think it shows good judgment on Levison's part to bring you in. If each of us is right just once this year, and we manage to get a couple of movies made with our own strategies, then we both win.”

“They have to be hits.”

“Yes, that, too.”

Larry Levy scratched again. “Gee, this itches. Do you ski?”

“Don't have the time anymore.”

“Some guy ran into me on a steep slope, and I did an eggbeater down the hill, and along the way I snapped my wrist.”

“Well,” said Griffin, not asking him to explain an eggbeater, trying to be as unsympathetic as possible, “you'll be too busy for sports for quite a while.”

Levy stood up from the uncomfortable chair. “Let's work together, Griffin. Life's too short.” He held out his left hand, since his right was in the cast.

“Of course,” said Griffin, thinking of David Kahane. He took the offered hand and pressed it. If Levy said anything else that was conciliatory and emotional, Griffin was going to come back at him with a crack about not making a habit of ending every meeting like the last song at a campfire. Levy didn't say anything, which was just as well. Bury the sarcasm, save the impulse for moments of real cruelty, if not intentional cruelty, at least an action developed from such intense self-interest, or corporate interest, that no one would quarrel with the need for the attack on whoever is taken as a threat, only with the heat of the response. From now on he should pick on Levy in meetings. He needed witnesses. They should envy the cruelty.
Griffin wasn't sure whose envy he meant, those below him or those above him. An act of distinct cruelty should make those below jealous, or even sick of the business; it didn't matter which, so long as they understood that in that recognition of their lack of stomach for the job, they admitted their acceptance of a limit to their own ambition. As for those above, well, of course they should recognize a member of the club.

Jan called him and said that Susan Avery was on the line. “Who?” he asked. From Jan's tone he knew she expected him to recognize the name. She said the name coldly, she must have been important, but why?

“Detective Susan Avery, Pasadena Police. Remember?”

“Of course.” It was time to draw up a list of all the names he had to keep track of. Really? No, it was the sort of scrap that becomes evidence.

“Should I tell her you're not in?”

“Put her through.”

There was a pause, and then Griffin said, “Is it Officer or Detective Avery?” Would she say, You can call me Susan?

“Lieutenant, actually. Detective's all right.”

“How can I help you?”

“Well, I was wondering if you could come to the station.”

Griffin couldn't tell if this was a trap, and if so, should he tell her he needed to speak to his lawyer, or was she asking him to come down to look at mug shots, in which case mentioning a lawyer might tip her to his panic, and so far he had been so calm with her. Or would she expect him, in his role as important executive, to demand his right to a lawyer? In her eyes he was hardly a common citizen. How far was his free cooperation expected to go?

“Have you caught the killer?”

“We'd just like to ask you a few more questions.”

He had to go. He knew he had to hesitate a little. If he was innocent, how would he act? Annoyed at the intrusion, or curious about police procedure? Would he make a mild joke, or would that be in bad taste, or would the detective appreciate it? After all, he had no connection to the dead man, and the police weren't in perpetual mourning for every corpse whose death they tried to solve.

“You understand, I've got a studio to run.” He looked at his calendar. He could skip dailies. “I can come down in an hour, for about half an hour, or not until the day after tomorrow.”

“An hour?” Now it was her schedule that needed juggling. “We'll see you then.” She gave him directions.

He called Dick Mellen. What does an entertainment attorney know about the police?

“What's up?”

“We're having a debate on a point of law. Actually, it's not a point of law, it's a point of police procedure. If the police suspect someone of murder, but they don't want to tip their hand and they ask to interview the suspect, do they have to tell him his rights so he can bring in a lawyer?”