Who Stole the Funny? : A Novel of Hollywood (26 page)

giddy. A pleased, opportunistic look took control of his sour features. “He’s got a gun, J.T.!” he said, bouncing with excitement.

“I heard,” J.T. responded to his boss without looking at him.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Marcus asked.

“I don’t think that is
ever
the case,” J.T. said.

Marcus tugged on J.T.’s arm. “J.T.—go to the stage and grab a

camera. This is going to be priceless footage!” he said. “The Best Ever . . .
Easter.
No! A Reality Show!
Pervs
!” I dunno. Something!

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We can work it into something! Just go grab a camera! Hey, did

I ever tell you my idea: “Going to War with the Stars? Can you

imagine? Celebrities on the front line? Whattaya think?” Marcus babbled. “Come on—grab a fucking camera!”

“No,
” J.T. said firmly, pulling his arm away.

“Look. I’ll make you a partner on whatever comes of the foot-

age. Sixty-forty.”

“Quiet.”

“All right, fifty-five–forty-five. I’m not going any lower. I hired the perv and this is my equipment we’re gonna use. Deal?”

“Fuck off.”

“Well, fuck off to you too. I’ll go grab one of the guys and I’ll get this on film and it’ll be mine. All
mine
.”

J.T. finally looked Marcus in the eye, which made the show-

runner take a step back. “You don’t use film, Mr. Showrunner, Executive Producer, Creator of All That Is
the Best Ever,
” J.T. hissed.

“You shoot on
tape
! At least learn your own fucking format. And by the way, there is a man in that schoolroom with a
sawed-off
shotgun
. This
isn’t
a Reality Show. What is the
matter
with you?”

“Oh, Goody Two-shoes. Like you didn’t think of filming it,

too,” Marcus shot back, and he turned and ran toward the stage to fetch a camera and a cameraman.

J.T. stared at Marcus’s retreating back, his gut like lead. He
had
thought of filming it. J.T. thought of filming everything. But now he felt mortified as hell about it. He had actually had the same thought as Marcus Pooley. Jeremy was right. He felt contaminated.

“Leo Thacker, this is Agent Tiffy with the FBI,” Tiffy called out.

“I would like to ask you a few questions. Drop your weapon and

come outside.”

“Go to hell!” said the voice from inside the schoolroom.

“Leo Thacker, we have this schoolroom surrounded. Please

don’t make a scene,” Agent Tiffy said, appropriately.

“Make a scene! Make a scene! Please, oh, make a scene!” Mar-

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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

cus Pooley hollered as he came running back in front of a hand-

held 24P camera that was tethered to a cable snaking out from the stage door. “Hurry up! Get closer! Hurry!” he yelled at the camera operator.

“I’m
working
on it!” The young camera operator was struggling with the tangled cables and the delicate, expensive camera he had been taught to respect and treat with great care.

“Don’t
work
on it—fucking
do it
!”

Inside the schoolroom, Leo Thacker paced slowly back and

forth. He hated who he was. He couldn’t control his urges, his instincts. He had asked for help, but no one ever cared, not really.

And now this. Tempting him with a job where he was surrounded

by little children twelve hours a day.
My father was right. I’m diseased. I have no business being on this planet.

Leo took the sawed-off shotgun and placed the barrel in his

mouth.

A gasp erupted just outside. One of the agents had made it to

the window and was peeking in. “Shit!” he burped. “He just put the shotgun in his mouth!”

“You mean he can fit the entire barrel in there? Yes! We got

ourselves a degenerate Deep Throat!” Marcus Pooley exclaimed.

“Give me that fucking camera!”

“No, put the camera away! Let me speak to Leo,” J.T. yelled

out.

J.T. ran past Agent Tiffy and up the few stairs, and was opening the little schoolroom’s door before anyone could stop him.

“Sir!—Come back!—DO NOT GO IN THERE!” Agent Tiffy

shouted.

“Are we rolling? Are we rolling or what?” Marcus Pooley

shrieked at the camera operator.

“We don’t have enough cable, Mr. Pooley,” the young man

mumbled as he fumbled with the cable that had reached its limit.

“We WHAT?! Are you shitting me?! You’re the cameraman, for

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fuck’s sake! Make the camera work!”

“Well, sir, it doesn’t happen to work that way . . . Also, if I knew we were going to be—”

“If you knew that a perv was going to blow his brains out, you

would’ve had more cable? You’re fucking fired!”

“Thank you,” the young man said. “Thank you so damn

much.”

“What are you waiting for? Get the fuck out of here. Drop my

fucking camera and get the fuck off this lot!”

“Anything you say, sir.”

The young cameraman dropped the $100,000 camera—which,

to Marcus’s surprise, did not break.

Marcus ran to the camera and tried to pull it closer to the little schoolroom, but the cable was stretched to its limit. He looked at the cable, did a quick analysis of the situation, and unhooked the camera from the cable, leaving the camera free to go wherever he went.

“Done! Ha! See, you moron?! All you had to do was unhook

this shit!”

“Jesus! Why didn’t I think of that?” the young man yelled back

as he kept walking farther and farther away.

J.T. eased into the schoolroom and gently closed the door be-

hind him.

“Don’t come any closer or I’ll pull the trigger,” Leo mumbled

with his mouth full of metal.

J.T. stayed where he was. “Leo,” he said, “it doesn’t have to be like this. No one is accusing you of anything.”

Leo pulled the gun out far enough to say, “I know what I’ve

done. What I’m doing. They’ll put me away forever. And do you

know what they do to guys like me in prison?”

Note to self,
J.T. thought:
They really do say that in real life
. “Leo, think about all of the options open to you if you’ll just put that gun down.”

“I’m sick. I know I’m sick.”

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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

“I’m sure Agent Tiffy can get you help.”

Tears poured from Leo’s eyes. “I’m a criminal. I’ve broken laws.

I’ve done . . . unthinkable things, and . . .”

“I’m getting all of this, J.T.,” Marcus Pooley whispered from an open window, pointing the camera at the action. “Get closer! J.T., this shot is too wide. Get in closer!”

Leo jerked straight. “Stay where you are. I’m warning you!” He

shoved the gun back in his mouth.

“This is good! This is good!” Marcus bleated.

Leo’s sad eyes moved slowly to J.T. Without saying a word, he

was asking for forgiveness. At the same time, the back door to the stage—the door no one thought of covering with an FBI agent—

slowly opened. Standing in the doorway was six-year-old Ange-

lina, who played the guest part of Amy on the “Buddies, Best Ever Christmas” episode. She was holding a crayon and a photocopied

worksheet of leaves falling from a tree that she had colored.

“Mr. Thacker? Wanna see what I just colored?” And then she

looked up—and froze. So did Leo. So did J.T.

“Perfect,” Marcus Pooley directed. “Great stuff!”

J.T. ran for the young girl—but it was too late.

BOOM!

Everyone on the scene processed the bang with confusion. It

hadn’t come from the schoolroom, but from another direction.

Leo was still standing; there was no blood.

Oh!

The players who surrounded the double-wide suddenly felt a

great deal of tension leave their bodies. The sound had come from an exterior big-budget Spielberg movie that was shooting on the lot. Distant bells and applause from the crew were heard signaling that the take was over on the movie set and that the explosion had gone well.

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Spielberg. Thank you, God,” J.T. mur-

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mured as he reached Angelina and held her in his arms, shielding her with his body; protecting her from the possibility of violence and potential nightmares. But not to worry, Leo had not pulled

the trigger.

POP.

Leo pulled the trigger and his head was no more.

Skull and brains splattered the wall behind him, looking like a school art project. His headless body recoiled, stayed upright for a count of three, and then just collapsed.

“I got it!” Pooley yelled. “I got it all!”

Little Angelina, covered in blood and chunks of skull and

brain, screamed a continuous, high-pitched, shrill sound of terror that J.T. knew would stay with her for the rest of her life. He held her tightly while the FBI agents poured into the schoolroom.

“Excellent!” Marcus Pooley said to himself. “Cut, print—

mooooving
on!”

J.T. removed Angelina from the scene. He carried the little girl, who was clearly in shock, to her mother.

Mom was sitting outside the stage door on the other side of the lot, having a cigarette. As J.T. walked toward her, his brain couldn’t shut off.
The sound. The sound from the movie set was far more . . .

authentic . . . than the real sound of the gun. Gotta remember that.

Shit—I hate myself.

“Good morning, Mr. Baker,” Angelina’s mom said, caught off

guard. “We worked on our lines all of last night. Didn’t we, Angie?

She’s not having trouble with the ‘K’ scene, is she? We worked especially hard on that one, didn’t we, Angelina?” The child’s mother continued to prattle as she took Angelina’s limp body from J.T.

“Angelina! What—why are we so messy? Did we finger-paint? Re-

member what I told you, I don’t know how many times? Mommy

told you we should never finger-paint in our wardrobe! Now look what we’ve done! We’re a mess!”

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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

J.T. tried to interject, but the mother was performing for

the benefit of the director and out of fear that her child might lose such a coveted job, not to mention the financial bonanza of guesting on
I Love My Urban Buddies
that was mailed to her P.O.

box.

“Mrs. . . . I’m sorry, I’m still learning names,” J.T. said, not knowing what else to say. “Your daughter’s very likely in shock—”

“Miss
—I’m divorced,” Angelina’s mom said, turning on the charm. “Miss Jacobi. But you can call me Wilma,” she said, not

paying a bit of attention to the fact that her daughter was motionless. “If Angelina is tired, it’s because we worked on that ‘K’ scene until well past midnight. But we know our lines and our business.

Don’t we, Angie?”

Angie didn’t respond. J.T. shepherded the mother and child

back onto the stage and gathered all of the children. “William!” he shouted for his A.D.

“Here, ready, and waiting, boss!” William responded, sincerely.

“William, what is the situation with . . . how much does every-

one know about . . . what just happened?”

“I’d say everyone knows everything, sir,” William reported, sincerely. “Mr. Pooley is trying to play back the footage as we speak.

After sex.”

“How can you make a joke when—please inform the studio le-

gal department immediately. Find out what kind of trauma treat-

ment they have in place, and send all of the children home.”

“Send all of the children home?
” William asked, sincerely confused.

“Send all of the fucking children home?
” Marcus Pooley shouted from across the stage. “Are you kidding? You have no authority to do that! We have scenes to shoot!”

“All of the children
will
go home. Immediately. And I will walk them to their cars if you insist on giving me any trouble.

And . . . I’ll have each and every one of my colleagues here”—J.T.

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gestured to all of the grips and electricians—“hold you down as the children leave the premises. Have it your way—or my way.

You tell me.”

Silently, deliberately, the crew members stopped what they

were doing and stared at Marcus. “You think you are such hot

shit!” he sputtered. “So you have the schmucks on your side. Well, you don’t have the people who can green-light an eight o’clock

Thursday night blockbuster hit:
Pervs!
And you could’ve been a partner on it. Fine. Send the children home.” Then he spun on the crew. “And as for all of you, if any of you side with this trouble-maker, I’ll not only have you fired, but I will personally see to it that each and every one of you never works for me or this network or this studio ever again!”

To a man, to a woman, the crew formed a group behind J.T.

Except William. He just waffled back and forth, never committing his body language to one side or the other.

“Oh, oh, oh, you are all going to resent—I mean,
regret
this moment!” Marcus Pooley seethed. “Now, somebody show me why

I’m not getting any playback on the footage I shot!”

“You didn’t shoot any footage, Pooley,” J.T. quietly said. “You unhooked the cable. It’s not a home video camera . . .
sir
.”

For once, Marcus Pooley was speechless.

J.T. walked the children out of the oppressive atmosphere of the cave and into the bright Southern California sunshine. Today of all days, the haze had cleared and the sky was impossibly blue.

“Take care,” he said to the parents. “I really am unqualified to give advice, but I’m sure the studio will have trained personnel that the children can talk to. Go home. We’ll call you and tell you what is going on . . . At the moment, I’m as unsure as anyone.” He kept listening out for the EMTs. Surely the FBI had called them.