Authors: J.D. Rhoades
“Fuck, Roy,” the PM said. “This is bad, man. This is really bad. Look, don’t talk to anybody, okay? Just stay home. Don’t come to the set.” The line went dead.
The room was filling with smoke. Roy applied the lighter flame to the other poster the same way. The fire raced up that one even faster than the first. Roy didn’t look back as he walked out the door.
The house was set well back from the street, landscaped with tall bushes that screened it from sight of passing traffic. It was a single-story 1970s-style structure with a flat roof and many tall picture windows that gave the impression that the house was mostly made of glass.
Keller sat in the drive, his cell phone to his ear. He heard the familiar click and tape hiss on the other end, followed by a woman’s voice. He sighed. He had the message memorized. At the beep, Keller said, “Mr. or Mrs. Marks, this is Jack Keller again. I’m calling about your daughter Laurel. I need to speak with you.” He gave the number and snapped the phone closed. Normally, he would have just shown up at the parents’ house, but when he had checked the address, the place was behind the blank walls of a gated community. He was surprised at that. Knowing what he did about Laurel, he wouldn’t have expected her to come from money. He was obviously getting nowhere by calling, though. He’d have to figure out some way to pay a visit, after he talked to Burke.
Burke answered the door at Keller’s knock. He was tall and stocky, with big arms and a slight paunch that strained at the belly of his black T-shirt. He had a round face and bright blue eyes that peered out from behind his granny glasses. “Hey,” he grunted, then turned and walked back inside.
“As you can see, my husband’s still the soul of grace and charm,” Burke’s wife Gala said in a fondly exasperated voice as Keller followed him into the front hallway. She was almost as tall as Burke, but slender, with thick, curly, light-brown hair that tumbled to the middle of her back. She smiled warmly at Keller, then hugged him. Her smile turned to a look of dismay when Keller hissed with pain. “Jack,” she said, releasing him. “You’re hurt. And your hand! What happened?”
“Nothing bad,” Keller said. “Just some bruised ribs. And I cut my hand when I broke a glass.”
She took him by the uninjured hand. “Come in here and let me see.”
“I’m fine, Gala—,” Keller began, but Burke cut him off.
“Give in, Keller,” he said. “You’re not going to get a second of peace ‘til she’s done with her medicine woman routine.”
“Hush, Peter,” Gala said. She led Keller toward the living room. “Sit on the couch and let me see your hand first.”
“I’ll be in the back when you get done,” Burke said as he walked off.
“He’s working on some medieval epic,” Gala said as she unwrapped the bandage on Keller’s hand. “And the idiot director keeps demanding that Peter change things at the last minute. ‘More blood, more blades, more gore.’” She shook her head. “Jackass.” She studied the cut on Keller’s hand, her brow furrowed. “We can put some aloe vera on this. It’ll heal faster. Now let’s see those ribs.”
“You don’t have to do this, Gala,” Keller said. She made an impatient sound and reached out as if to start unbuttoning his shirt herself. Keller sighed. Burke was right. Gala could be relentless. He unbuttoned his shirt and stripped it off. She clucked disapprovingly at the Ace bandage wrapping him. “That’s not good,” she said. “Too binding.” She unwound the bandage slowly. “Hmmm,” she said as she studied the bruises. “And how did this happen?”
“Got kicked by a horse,” Keller said.
“You’re lying,” she said. “That doesn’t look anything like the bruising you get from a horse kick. I’ve spent enough time around horses to know. If it’s none of my business, say so, Jack.”
“It’s none of your business,” he said.
“See?” Gala said serenely. “Isn’t that better than lying? Much easier on your karma. Now, go on in the back and talk to Peter while I fix you something to put on this.” Keller reached for his shirt. “You might as well leave that off,” she said. There was no use arguing. Shirtless, Keller walked to the back of the house where Burke had his studio.
The room was airy and open, with one of the house’s many floor-to-ceiling windows providing natural light. One wall was lined with bookshelves. Another was hung with a variety of bladed and pointed weapons: swords, mostly, with an occasional vicious-looking axe or spear. Burke sat at an easel on which was propped a huge sketch pad. There was a table next to the easel. A huge book lay open on the
table. Burke was sketching on the pad with a stick of charcoal, his large hands moving with a surprising delicacy. As Keller watched, the lines took shape. Burke drew a long pole, tipped by a wicked-looking spike. Below the spike was a curved axe blade. On the other side of the pole from the blade was a blunt hammer head. Burke paused, looked down at the book, and sighed. He put the charcoal stick down.
“Nasty,” Keller said.
“It’s called a poleax,” Burke muttered. “Slices and dices and cuts three ways. Of course, it’s from the wrong century from the one the movie’s set in and the lead actor can’t even handle a regular sword, so I’m going to spend a few days teaching him to use this and he’s still going to look totally ridiculous. But do these assholes care?” He looked at Keller. “Huh,” he said, noticing the bruises. “What’s the other guy look like?
”Don’t know,” Keller said. “He wasn’t there at the time.”
“Ohhhh … kay,” Burke said slowly. “I don’t suppose you want to explain that.”
“Not really.”
“Whatever,” Burke said. “So what did you want to ask me about?”
“You’ve been out at the studio pretty much since it opened,” Keller said. “So I thought you might have heard of a guy named Roy Randle.”
Burke didn’t say anything for a moment. He picked up the charcoal stick and turned back to the easel. He studied the picture before speaking. “Haven’t heard that name in a while,” he said.
“So you knew him.”
Burke shrugged. “Knew of him. Met him once or twice. You’re after him?”
“No,” Keller said. “But his girlfriend jumped bail. I think they may be living together. I think if I find him, I find her.”
“Ah,” Burke replied. He continued looking at the picture.
“Pete,” Keller said. “What’s going on here?”
Burke sighed. He put the stick back down and turned to Keller. “You find Randle,” he said, “and you might be stirring up some shit that a lot of people want to keep buried, Jack.”
Keller pointed to his chest. “Pete,” he said. “I got this when I went out to Randle’s house. He set a trap-gun in the doorway. It shot me in the chest. If I hadn’t been wearing a Kevlar vest, he’d have killed me.”
Burke looked unhappy. “He always was a little screwy,” he said. “Maybe you should just leave him alone.”
“He’s a means to an end, Pete,” Keller said. “But the girlfriend, the one I’m after, is a little screwy, too.”
Burke gestured to a nearby chair. “Have a seat,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I know about Randle.”
Roy stood at the side of the van and watched the smoke billow from the trailer.
“Roy?” Laurel said. “Roy, we’ve got to get goin’, baby, that smoke’ll bring people runnin’ soon.”
“Why’re you burning the place down, Roy?” Stan said.
Roy turned to him. “Shut up,” he said. “I ain’t gonna tell you again.” Stan opened his mouth, then closed it with an audible snap as he saw the look on Roy’s face. “You send those pictures?” Roy demanded. “The ones we took last night at the diner?”
“I did, baby,” Laurel said. Roy liked the way Stan seemed to flinch slightly whenever Laurel called him that. He had the kid pretty much where he wanted him, but maybe he should take Laurel tonight in front of him, just to remind the little shit who the top dog was. He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the van.
“When the studio opened,” Burke said, “a lot of people wanted to work there. Everybody thought it was going to be Hollywood East. Non-union, decent weather, a lot of different kinds of scenery nearby… it was going to be the next big thing. So the locals flocked to it.”
“Like Randle,” Keller said.
“He wasn’t really local,” Burke said. “He was a farm kid from out in the sticks somewhere. But he was good-looking enough, in pretty good physical shape, so he got some work as an extra. Then he started doing stunts on a couple of Van Damme movies.”
“Martial arts, sci-fi stuff,” Keller said.
Burke nodded. “Right. Van Damme liked Roy. He liked his fight scenes realistic and Randle was willing to take a punch. So Randle got it into his head that he was going to be a lead actor, just like Van Damme.”
“Was he any good?”
Burke shook his head. “He was terrible. He could never lose the accent, for one thing.”
“Neither could Van Damme.”
Burke laughed. “Okay, you got me there. But Randle never really had any screen presence. The camera didn’t love him. It didn’t even like him very much. Plus, like I said, he was kind of weird.”
Keller leaned forward. “Weird how?”
“Well, a lot of people are ambitious. A lot of people in the business suck up. But the ones who succeed at it are at least a little subtle about it. Randle was anything but subtle.”
“He made people uncomfortable.”
“Yeah. And there was also…I don’t know, he just seemed to have a screw loose somewhere.”
“So how’d he keep getting work?”
Burke rubbed his face wearily with both hands. “Look,” he said, “you didn’t hear this from me, okay?”
Keller nodded.
“Okay.” “Randle, could, ah, get things for people.”
“Drugs,” Keller said.
Burke nodded. “Yeah. You’ve gotta remember, Keller, this was before everybody in the business was swapping stories about rehab. It was everywhere, but so long as people showed up for work, it wasn’t a big deal.”
“So what happened? Somebody OD?”
Burke shook his head. “Look, Keller, I’ve still got to work here, okay?”
“Anyone asks, I never heard of you. Now, what happened?”
“You remember hearing about the actor that got shot? On the set?”
Keller nodded. “I read something about it, yeah.”
“The official verdict was that a fragment of prop bullet got stuck in the chamber somehow and when they switched to blanks for the shooting scene, the fragment got blown into the guy’s chest, juuuust perfectly aligned so as to kill him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you believe that shit?”
Keller shrugged. “Can’t say that I ever gave much thought to it. I was overseas at the time.”
“Oh yeah. Right,” Burke said. “Well, that was the studio’s story and they were sticking to it.”
“But they were lying.”
Burke nodded.
“The gun was actually loaded with live ammo?” Keller said. Burke nodded again.
“There weren’t supposed to be any live rounds on the set. That would have meant we’d have had all kinds of permitting problems. But Randle got bored one day during some downtime. He loaded up one of the guns and started potting seagulls.”
“Jesus,” Keller said.
“Told you he had a screw loose. He got thrown off the set. But the armorer…the guy that was supposed to secure all the weapons…was gone for the day. They decided to change the shooting schedule around and film one of the scenes where the hero gets shot. They tried to get the armorer back, but they couldn’t reach him. They were behind schedule and over-budget, so they decided to do the scene anyway.”
“And they picked up the gun Randle had loaded. And a man died.”
“Yeah,” Burke said.
“And Randle got blamed.”
“There was plenty of blame to go around, Jack,” Burke said. “But none of it was, you know, official.”
“Why not?”
“There was a lot of money to spread around, too. And there were careers on the line. The insurance companies settled with the widow, everybody got their stories straight, they recut the movie and reshot some scenes, and…” He spread his hands apart in a what-are-you-gonna-do gesture. “The show must go on. But no one wanted to work with Randle anymore.”
“Why didn’t he blow the whistle?” Keller asked.
“People made it clear that he was the one that most of the blame was going to fall on. I mean, we’re talking possible manslaughter here, not to mention all the trouble he could’ve gotten into over the drugs. And face it, he was nobody.”
“You know, Pete,” Keller said, “for someone who only claims to have met this guy a couple of times, you know an awful lot about him.”
Burke picked up the charcoal stick and started sketching again. “Like you said. I’ve been around for a while.”
“And if I check the credits on that movie, will I find your name? Maybe as armorer?”
Burke never had a chance to answer. Gala entered the room, holding something white in her hands. As she brought it over, Keller saw that it was a bandage. There was a brown liquid coating one side. “What’s that?”
“Oil of comfrey poultice,” Gala said. “I grow the roots myself. It’s an old remedy for bruises and wounds.”
Keller must have looked dubious; Gala got an impatient look on her face. “This will help, I promise. Now raise your arms.” Keller complied and she affixed the soaked bandage across his chest, fastening it back with the Ace bandage. At least it doesn’t smell bad, Keller thought. Some of Gala’s home remedies could be pungent.