Jimmy looked out the side window. They hadn’t passed a house since the turnoff—no lights, no mailboxes, no safety rails.
Rollo gasped as the van skidded toward the edge, fighting to regain control. The road narrowed still further, not even gravel now, just dead grass and hardpack.
Tamra caressed Rollo’s neck. “Is Walsh working on a new project?”
“How’s my makeup?” Tonya asked her sister. “Heather Grimm. The photo of her in
Entertainment Weekly—
her hair was in a French braid. Walsh must like that.”
“Yeah, he was so turned on by her hairstyle that he raped her, then stove her head in with one of his two Oscars,” said Jimmy. “That’s a sincere compliment.”
“I don’t get your point,” said Tonya.
“Mr. Walsh paid his debt, Jimmy,” said Rollo.
“No, he didn’t.”
“Yeah, well . . .” said Rollo. “Anyway, now he’s just trying to get his life back together.”
The VW crested the hill. Jimmy could see a large house above the ridge, and a trailer nearby, dimly lit, a beat-up Honda parked beside it. The road abruptly ended, and as Rollo hit the brakes, the van skidded to a stop. The engine idled roughly, and the headlights illuminated the landscaped slope, lit the arrangement of boulders behind a large pool of water that had white lilies floating on the surface. At the center of the pool, balanced precariously on some rocks, a man stood with his back to them, jeans hanging loosely around his hips, barefoot and bare-chested, caught in the headlights’ glare as he pissed merrily into the koi pond.
Tamra giggled.
The man turned his head toward them, blinking, as he casually shook his penis, a cigarette jutting from his mouth, sunglasses pushed back on his forehead. The black water seemed to be boiling, fish churning around his toes, their gold scales flashing in the light.
“Oh yeah,” said Jimmy, “he’s putting his life back together. He’s almost got the puzzle complete now.”
Chapter 2
Walsh plucked the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it into the koi pond as Jimmy and Rollo approached. The sizzle was loud in the stillness. He started toward them, slipped on the rocks, and went into the dirty water up to his knees, staggering closer now, bringing the stink of booze and dirty water with him.
Jimmy held his ground, but Rollo took a step back. The twins were still in the van, working on their hair and makeup, preparing for their big entrance.
Seven years in prison, and Walsh still had the same insolent mouth and sleepy eyes, the same Wayfarers perched high on his head, and three days of stubble. The bags under his eyes were bigger now, his face puffier and more dissipated, but it was still the same bad-boy mug that
Newsweek
had put on the cover twice, once when he won the Oscars and again when he was convicted of murder. The tattoo on his right shoulder was a jailhouse-issue devil with a pitchfork, the tattoo as sloppy as his sunburned torso, a shim of gut drooping over the waistband of his jeans. He looked a lot better than Heather Grimm did.
“Mr. Walsh—it’s me, Rollo. Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember you,” growled Walsh, slouching, his thumbs hooked into the back pockets of his jeans. His eyes shifted from one to the other like he was trying to decide something. He settled on Jimmy. “The tough guy here looks familiar too.”
“Hope you don’t mind us dropping by,” said Rollo. “We’re playing a game.”
“You already played me, kid,” Walsh said to Rollo, still keeping watch on Jimmy. “You fooled me good with all that yakkety-yak about movies, and you being a fellow filmmaker. Well, I have only myself to blame.”
“I’m not sure I understand, Mr. Walsh.”
“Shut up, Rollo,” said Jimmy, who
did
understand.
“Yeah, shut up, Rollo,” Walsh said evenly. “You did your job, you don’t have to pretend anymore.” He smiled at Jimmy, his teeth uneven and nicotine-stained. “I know what you’re here to do, tough guy, but don’t worry, I’m not going to make you sweat for your paycheck. I just want a few minutes to make my peace.”
Jimmy saw Walsh doing something with his right hand behind his back.
Walsh bowed his head. “Now I lay me down to sleep,” he said, inching closer, “I pray the Lord, my soul to—” He whipped the linoleum knife out from behind his back, the curved blade catching the moonlight as he swept it low, going for Jimmy’s belly. “Making spaghetti,” that’s what the disemboweling stroke was called in prison, intestines spilling out in a red sauce of blood.
Jimmy had been waiting for the Chef-Boyardee move ever since he saw Walsh slip his hands in his back pockets. He pivoted to his left, barely avoiding the blade, then punched Walsh in the face, caught him just under the nose, and knocked him backward. The knife spun off into the night. A linoleum knife was a smart choice for an ex-con. Anything with more than a four-and-a-half-inch blade was considered a deadly weapon, but a linoleum knife, equally deadly in the right hands, was just a tool.
“
Thanks,
Jimmy,” said Rollo, rushing over toward where Walsh lay sprawled on the ground, groaning. “That’s really mature.”
Jimmy smiled as he rubbed the throbbing knuckles of his right hand. Moonlight shimmered on a small gold ring through Walsh’s right nipple.
“Mr. Walsh is sure to help us now,” Rollo muttered. “What do you care if we win the scavenger hunt?” He sat Walsh up, then picked the Wayfarers off the ground and tenderly fitted them back into place on his forehead. “You’re always settling scores that aren’t any of your business, Jimmy. Mr. Walsh did his time. Why is it
your
job to decide what he had coming?”
Jimmy watched the blood trickle from Walsh’s nose. “It’s not my job,” he confided to Walsh. “It’s more of a hobby.”
“You hit—you hit like a girl,” Walsh said to Jimmy.
“Stand up. I’ll try to do better this time,” Jimmy said softly.
Walsh stayed where he was, thinking. “Rollo called you Jimmy.”
“That’s my name.”
“
You’re
Jimmy Gage?” Walsh squinted at him in the dim light. “Rollo told me about you. The magazine writer . . .” He spit blood. “You’re not here to kill me.”
“I
tried
to tell you.” Rollo looked around. “
Is
there somebody trying to kill you?”
Walsh looked at Jimmy. “You cold-cocked me just for the
fun
of it?” He dabbed at his nose with his fingertips, winced, then wiped the blood on his jeans. He stood up, still wobbly. “I’ve gotten bad reviews before, but this is the first time I got punched out by a critic.” He grinned at Jimmy, but there was no humor in it. “I owe you one, tough guy.”
“Get in line, asshole,” said Jimmy.
Rollo sidled away from Walsh. “Are we in any danger being here with you?”
“Good for you, kid, no sense being a hero.” Walsh rubbed his stubble. “I didn’t think anybody knew where I lived, so anyone dropping by . . .” He spotted the Monelli twins slinking toward him from the van. “Then again,” he said, raking his long hair back, “I could be persuaded to throw out the welcome mat.”
“I’m Tamra.”
“Tonya.”
The sisters giggled as Walsh kissed their hands, his lips lingering. “I learned how to kiss a beautiful woman’s hand when I was at Cannes,” he said, eyes glittering. “There was plenty of hands to kiss in the old days. I won the Palm d’Or, but I guess you know that.”
Tamra stared at Walsh’s dirty fingernails and unwashed jeans, but Tonya didn’t seem to notice.
Jimmy listened for the sound of a car engine or the crunch of gravel, wondering who Walsh was expecting, but heard only the distant hum of traffic. From anywhere in Orange County, at any time of day or night, the sound of wheels on pavement was steady.
“We’re on a scavenger hunt,” said Rollo.
Walsh scratched his belly, checking out the twins. “You girls collecting geniuses?”
“We need an Oscar,” said Jimmy.
“
Everybody
needs an Oscar, tough guy. Me, I got two of them.” Walsh smiled at the twins. “The best things always come in pairs.”
“We just want to borrow one of them,” said Rollo. “We’ll bring it back right after the party.”
Walsh put his fingers to his nose, closed off one nostril, and blew a spray of blood onto the ground. “Why would I do that?” He cleared the other nostril the same way.
“Why don’t we talk about it inside?” Tonya took Walsh’s arm and walked him toward the Spanish-style mansion towering above them through the trees. “Rollo said you’re working on a new project. Do you have a studio commitment yet, or are you riding bareback?”
“I didn’t say anything about a project,” protested Rollo.
“He doesn’t necessarily need studio participation,” Tamra said, turning to Walsh. “You could self-finance the seed money. Even if your house is a tear-down, the lot alone has to be worth at least eight or nine million—”
“Probably
twelve
with the unobstructed view,” said Tonya. “Prices have skyrocketed since you . . . went away, Garrett, so even if you’re carrying a couple of mortgages, you should be able to collateralize.” She rolled her eyes upward, while Walsh stared at her. “Three million, easy. You roll that into a performance bond, then leverage the bond into a ten-million-dollar feature budget, coproduce it with a European consortium—”
“Asian market has more liquidity right now,” said Tamra, tapping her front teeth with a forefinger. “So you lay off a coproduction deal with one of the Hong Kong outfits, and now you’re bumped up to twenty, maybe twenty-five million, and then . . .”
Tonya squeezed Walsh’s arm. “
Then
you start thinking of casting.” “It’s not my house,” Walsh said.
“The Asians are saturated with blondes,” counseled Tamra, “so you should be thinking of female leads with pigmentation.”
“Actresses willing to defer their salary in exchange for profit participation,” said Tonya.
“It’s not my fucking house!” Walsh pointed at the rusting trailer perched on concrete blocks. “
That’s
where I’m camped out. The bastards who own the property are sailing around the world for the next year. They’re letting me stay here because they’re such patrons of the arts. My two biggest fans, that what they said. Not big enough to let me stay in the house, oh no, they got that locked up tight and secure, with their own electronic gate off the main road, but they just
love
—”
“What about all the money from
Firebug
?” Tamra said indignantly. “You couldn’t have spent all that. You didn’t have time.”
“I had plenty of time,” said Walsh. “Took about three months, but then I only retained two percent of the
Firebug
net profits. I had to sell the rest to get the money to finish the movie. I didn’t care. When you want something, you do whatever you have to.”
The twins looked at Walsh, then the trailer, then flipped out their cell phones in tandem.
Walsh watched them stroll back toward the van, chattering into their phones. “Easy come, easy go, story of my life,” he said to Jimmy. “No big deal. I’ve got free room and board, fresh air, and an ocean view”—he gobbed a wad of spit toward the koi pond—“and all I have to do is take care of the goddamned fish.”
“You looked like you were taking care of them when we drove up,” said Jimmy.
Walsh grinned at Jimmy. He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket, tapped one out, and Zippoed it with a practiced flourish, snapping the lighter shut with a distinctive snick.
“I’d really like to borrow one of your Oscars, Mr. Walsh,” hurried Rollo.
Walsh watched the twins get back into the van, smoke trickling from his nostrils. “Women used to find me charming.”
“Tonya and Tamra—they’re high maintenance,” said Rollo.
“They’re
all
high maintenance, kid,” said Walsh.
“Let’s take off, Rollo,” said Jimmy. “The philosopher king here is a train wreck.”
“Nice to be a winner, isn’t it, tough guy?” said Walsh. “Nice to have all the answers and not care who knows it. You never slip, never stumble. Well, enjoy it while it lasts.” He peered at Jimmy, and there was no anger in him anymore, just a vast weariness. “The moment you stepped out of the van, shoulders thrown back, cocky smile—I didn’t know your name, but I knew that look. Scared me too. There’s not much difference between a winner and killer, not as much as you’d think.”
“I just need to borrow one of your Oscars for a few hours,” said Rollo.
“I can’t wait to see what you sound like when it all turns to shit,” Walsh said to Jimmy. “And trust me, sooner or later it
always
turns to shit.”
“Are you going to loan us the Oscar or not?” said Jimmy. “It’s late, and I’m bored.”
“Try living with morons for seven years—you’ll find out what boredom is,” said Walsh, the cigarette bobbing. “Seven years, and I never once met one of those criminal masterminds you see in the movies.” He opened wide the door to the trailer. “Come on in. I could use a little intelligent conversation.”
“No, thanks.”
Walsh blew a stream of smoke past Jimmy’s face. “You think you’re better than me?”
“I think a liver fluke is better than you.”
Walsh smiled.
“Let’s go inside,” Rollo said to Jimmy. “Come on, what’s it going to hurt?”
The trailer was cramped and cluttered, the sink strewn with empty cans of Dinty Moore beef stew and mandarin oranges, the couch sagging, the open windows streaked with grime. It stank of cigarettes and stale beer. “
Mi
casa es su casa,
” Walsh said with a flourish. In the glare of the overhead light, he looked even more dissipated, his eyes bloodshot and watery. He slipped behind a paisley-print sheet strung across the rear of the trailer and walked out a few moments later, pumping the Academy Award over his head.
Eight or nine years ago, Jimmy had watched Walsh make the exact same move, standing in the spotlight at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, already drunk, looking lost and impossibly young as he waved his second Academy Award to the crowd. Jimmy remembered turning up the sound on the television as Walsh launched into a rambling acceptance speech, thanking no one, acknowledging no one but himself. Walsh was no longer the golden boy, but his eyes were still lit by the same arrogance as that night at the Academy Awards so long ago. The same fear too, the awful clarity of knowing that the ground under his feet was already shifting. Jimmy had felt sorry for Walsh then— and even after everything that Walsh had done, he felt sorry for him now.
Walsh hesitated, then handed Rollo the Oscar. “Best director.”
“Whoa,” said Rollo, cradling it in both hands. “The Holy Fucking Grail.”
Jimmy stared at the Oscar and thought of Heather Grimm, wondering if this was the seven-pound statue Walsh had used to crush her skull with. He didn’t feel sorry for Walsh anymore.
“Rollo can borrow the Oscar for your scavenger hunt,” Walsh said to Jimmy. “I just want you to stay and keep me company until he brings it back. I’m offering you a gift, a page-one scoop: a new screenplay I’m working on, my best one yet. The story of a man on top of the world, a man who makes a mistake and falls right through the earth. It’s the oldest story there is, but it’s got some new angles. Some twists.”
“You should be talking to a studio, not me,” said Jimmy.
Walsh shook his head. “I’m colder than an Eskimo’s pecker. That’s why I need you. I want you to write an article about me, about what I’m working on. I even have a title for you: ‘The Most Dangerous Screenplay in Hollywood.’”
“Give me a copy, and I’ll take it home and read it,” said Jimmy.
“No can do,” said Walsh. “There’s only one copy, and it’s not finished yet anyway. Not quite.” He rubbed his jaw, and it sounded like sandpaper. His eyes were locked on Jimmy. “It’s a good script. So good it may even get me killed.” He waited for an answer, then finally stubbed out his cigarette on the white Formica table, the surface glazed with burn marks. “I’m surprised you’re not jumping at the opportunity. What’s the matter, tough guy? You afraid to be alone with me?”
“I’m not a fifteen-year-old girl. What do I have to be scared about?”
Walsh jerked like he had been slapped, the pain genuine. “You’re certain I was guilty?”