KW 09:Shot on Location Read online

  What he had before him was infuriating but it painted no clear picture. By almost any measure, his and Jacqueline’s strategy of portraying what had happened to Donna as possibly an abortive attempt on the life of Candace McBride had been a definite success. Candace had sold the story brilliantly and the press had bought it wholesale. She’d done nearly a dozen on-air interviews; her portrait graced the covers of several mass-market magazines; her name was all over the tabloids. And yet the ratings had actually gone down. Gone down, it’s true, by the tiniest of increments, maybe just a statistical blip. Then again, it was by tiny increments, defections by a tiny fraction of the audience, that TV shows lost their cachet and eventually their time slot. What the hell was going on?

  The driven producer whose future was glued to the success of the program wracked his brains over the conundrum, and the best answer he could come up with was only another question: Was it possible that the public had become more interested in the melodrama surrounding the show than in the show itself? That the hype, on its own, had become more compelling than the product being touted? A fine irony that would be for a spinner of fictions-within-fictions, a creator of stories with stories of their own to tell.

  Dole switched off the desk light, poured himself a scotch and popped a sleeping pill. His last thought before slipping off into a sporadic and uneasy sleep was that perhaps Candace McBride had rather suddenly become too big for her role, had gone from being his greatest asset to becoming a distraction and a liability. She was on the cusp of becoming bigger than the show, and this was not allowable. No one, with the possible exception of Quentin Dole himself, could be bigger than the show.

  ---

  Also awake at that late hour was the strange blonde woman who’d arrived in Key West by speedboat and had set about trailing and tormenting the faithless, selfish actress who’d betrayed and destroyed her brother.

  The blonde, whose true name was Marguerite Bouchard, was lying chastely in her bed at Hannah’s Hideaway, reading. The big amber shades she wore by day had been replaced by a pair of simple reading glasses. The glasses, together with the felt-tip marker she held in her hand and the rather careless way her hair spread out on the pillow beneath her, gave her an aspect that was more scholarly than dangerous. She was reading not from a book but from a looseleaf binder such as people use at school; she might almost have been a grad student in literature, studying for exams. She read awhile, then stopped to underline or highlight or scribble notes in the margin. When she wrote, her tongue moved to the corner of her mouth in concentration.

  After a while she put the notebook aside and got up out of bed. She pulled on her snug pants that buttoned just below the knee and strapped on her gladiator sandals. She squeezed into her tight leather jacket and grabbed the ignition key to her speedboat. It was an odd time to go for a boat ride, but the obsessed blonde woman had an errand to run that could only be accomplished while most of the world was sleeping. From the small fridge in her hotel room she took a glass jar with air holes punched in its dull metal top and headed for the marina.

  32.

  In the roughly five minutes it took Ace to regain consciousness, Bryce had gathered up the scattered flowers, arranging them into a rather rustic yet artful bouquet. He hummed softly as he did so, like a clerk in a fancy florist’s shop.

  When the big man finally came to, he didn’t wake up all at once. His bound ankles gave a twitch then were motionless again. His tied hands attempted to move away from the small of his back and seemed surprised that they could not accomplish this. He briefly raised his head but its weight was too much to support just yet and it fell back to the floor. At last he opened his eyes, blinking and squinting. His pupils were pinwheeling and his focus was smeared so that images were ghosted at the edges. Through the haze and glare he saw Jake sitting in a chair above him. “Who the fuck are you?” he slurred.

  “Friend of Donna’s. Live next door.”

  Ace considered this quite calmly. “Wha’d you hit me for?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Bryce got up from the sofa and came around where Ace could see him. Without malice but with a sort of bashful pride, he said, “I did.”

  Craning his neck, Ace said, “You scrawny little bastard. Just because I threw you in the pool?”

  Bryce looked to Jake, who was trying to gather his thoughts. It was very late. He was exhausted, flummoxed by the flowers, and his certainty had begun to fade. Groping for a tone that suited the moment, he said gruffly, “Because you ran Donna over with a speedboat.”

  “I what?”

  Hoping to sound confident and prosecutorial, Jake said, “Don’t deny it. She dumped you and you ran her over.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  The simplicity of the denial stymied Jake and he stalled in his interrogation.

  Ace went on. “You guys have this totally ass backwards wrong.”

  Bryce jumped in and tried to help. “You took her script. I saw you take it.”

  The big man on the floor said, “Yeah, I took the script. What of it?”

  Jake said, “You took it because it had the schedule so you’d know when she’d be in the water.”

  For the first time in the conversation the bound man seemed agitated. He kicked at the leg ropes, strained at the ones around his wrists. Miserably, he said, “I didn’t know it had the schedule. I didn’t know what would happen. If I knew what was gonna happen I never woulda took it.”

  “Why’d you take it then?” asked Bryce.

  “That’s none of your business. Come on, untie me.”

  “Why’d you take the script?” Jake pressed.

  “It was a job, okay? Someone paid me.”

  “Who? Charlie Ponte?”

  At the mention of the name, Ace stiffened as if tased. “How the fuck you know Ponte?”

  “Never mind how. It was his speedboat you were driving, right?”

  “Just to come down here and grab the notebook. Ponte didn’t even know.”

  “Go on.”

  “Go on, what?”

  “Then who’d you take the script for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Warming to the cross-examination, Jake said, “Bullshit, you don’t know. How could you not know?”

  “Look, I got the job through a middle man. Said it was for some rich wacko fan. I didn’t ask questions. What did I care? I got paid five grand and it was easy. Plus I was mad at Donna. That much I admit. But that was then, not now. Now lemme up off the fucking floor. My head hurts like a bastard.”

  “Who’s the middle man?” Jake asked.

  “What?”

  “The guy who hired you to grab the script.”

  Ace shook his head as well as he could manage. “Don’t go there. That’s the kind of thing that gets people whacked. Leave it the fuck alone and let me up.”

  Jake looked at Bryce. Bryce looked at Jake. They were softening but they were still afraid to let the big man loose. “One more question first,” Jake said. “The flowers.”

  “What about ’em?”

  “Why you carrying flowers in the middle of the night?”

  “Are you guys stupid or what? Why’m I carrying flowers. I’m carrying flowers ’cause Donna gets home tomorrow. I called the hospital.”

  “She won’t want to see you,” said Jake.

  With surprising wistfulness, Ace said, “That’s possible. I was a real jerk before. But I want her to have flowers to come home to. And I wanna take care of her. If she’ll let me. Can’t you understand that? Ain’t you guys ever been in love?”

  Ashamed, Jake and Bryce glanced over at the extravagant if slightly past its peak bouquet. In a conciliatory way, Bryce said, “That’s a lot of flowers. Where you get ’em all, this hour?”

  “The cemetery. Where else? Spent like three hours finding them in the fucking dark. Now will you assholes please untie me?”

  33.

  For the cast and crew of Adrift, there was a five a.m. call for a scene schedule
d to be shot at sunrise.

  When the vans and limos, headlights sweeping, gathered on Big Sandy Key, the western sky was still a mystic purple pocked with stars, while in the east the seam between sea and heaven was just becoming visible, a tissue of dim haze shimmering between them like the dancing steam above a pot of heating water. Crickets rasped, frogs croaked, abrupt and fleeting splashes were faintly heard as the rays and crabs and fishes went about their secret pre-dawn business. The air was at its coolest and most damp; it seemed made of tiny droplets that burst and yielded up their moisture like bubbles in a drink to tickle skin and noses.

  On the far side of the barge crossing, muttering and yawning, the crew began setting up the shot. It was to be filmed on a pretty arc of beach where wavelets sizzled softly through the knobs of coral and a single, perfect palm, iconic in its wind-bent posture and the serene but melancholy droop of its fronds, provided a perfect spot for rest and contemplation. Beneath this palm, Candace McBride would be sitting as the sun lifted from the sea. A male character named Beau — another hopeful suitor for the difficult and irresistible Lulu — would approach, and they would share a few lines of dialogue. It was a very simple scene, mainly a pretext to show Candace in a string bikini top, sitting barelegged and languorous as the slow, red, and fleshy light of dawn licked across her skin.

  The eastern sky showed bruised green, then pale yellow, and the actors took their places, some dozen feet apart. The director waited for the sun to lift its shoulders from the ocean, then called for action.

  BEAU

  (raptly watching the sunrise, then noticing Lulu)

  My very favorite place. Yours too?

  She just nods dreamily. He looks at her with longing.

  BEAU

  What are you thinking?

  LULU

  Oh, nothing.

  (a pause)

  No, actually, what I was thinking … What I was thinking on such a gorgeous morning, is that if we never got rescued, if we were out here forever …

  A longer pause, as she looks flirtatiously at Beau and leans back against the palm.

  LULU

  … maybe it wouldn’t really be so …

  “BAD!” screamed Candace as she broke the scene and rocketed to her feet, jumping and stamping and reaching futilely around to slap at her bare back, from which a large brown scorpion, roughly the length and girth of a human index finger, was dangling and bobbing, still rooted in her flesh by the barbed and pulsing stinger squeezing out its venom. She howled, she cursed, she spun, and after a long, frozen moment Beau ran over and awkwardly swatted at the wriggling beast. The stinger pulled out with an almost audible pop from the hole it had made in the diva’s perfect skin, and the scorpion fell to the ground, dying but not dead, curling spasmodically, flailing its nightmarish pincers. Candace looked down at the horrible creature, felt its venom spreading fire between her shoulder blades and behind her heart, and passed out on the coral.

  ---

  Jake and Bryce had spent the balance of the night babysitting Ace, still not quite comfortable at the thought of leaving him in Donna’s place without a chaperon. They took turns napping; now and then they chatted, small talk mostly. At daybreak Bryce had made coffee and scavenged some bread from the freezer. The cottage filled with the companionable smell of toast and the three men sat there almost like old friends preparing to head out for an early shift of work.

  They’d been waiting many hours for Donna to appear, but when she finally arrived at the compound — unannounced, delivered from the hospital by taxi--they were oddly unprepared. The dishes were undone, toast crumbs dotting the plates. The straggles of rope with which Ace had been tied sat guiltily on a coffee table; the shattered and skeletal Dustbuster leaned against a wall. The men had made no plan for how to welcome Donna home, and her entrance was entirely undramatic.

  The doorknob turned and she stood there in the doorway. She was wearing a loose-fitting dress but even so it could be seen that her somewhat swaggering athletic posture was compromised and tilted by the tugging stitches in her healing wound. She was pale from three days in a hospital bed and her right arm was in a sling. She seemed to notice the vast bouquet of pilfered, fading flowers before she noticed the three men. Then her eyes flicked past Jake and Bryce and settled on her former lover, and the two of them just stared.

  After a moment Ace said very gently, “Hello, baby.”

  Donna said nothing. Her mouth twitched in what might have been a false start toward a tentative smile.

  Looking at her arm, the cautious way she stood, Ace said, “You been hurt.” As he said it his hard black eyes welled up; the flinty pupils smeared and the rims instantly grew red and puffy.

  By way of answer, Donna said only, “It wasn’t you?”

  “Tell me you never thought that, baby.”

  “I did think it, Ace. Why wouldn’t I? You used to scare me.”

  He looked down at the floor. “I’m so, so sorry for that. I never will again. These last few days, worrying about you, I’ve learned some things. I’m a different guy. I swear.”

  She considered that a moment, waited to see if the heartfelt sound of it would last or leak away into the intervening silence.

  Ace went on, “Can I stay with you a while? Few days, at least?”

  Donna said nothing.

  “You’re gonna need some help,” he said. “Groceries and stuff. Cooking. Driving you around.”

  Donna took as deep a breath as her bandages allowed, pushed her lips out as she weighed the offer, then finally gave in to a slightly twisted smile into which she poured her gradually returning high spirits and ribaldry. “No sex, Ace. No way. I still got stitches. You know that, right?”

  He nodded, almost shyly, and she moved slowly toward him, her good arm outstretched to circle him as she laid her cheek against his chest.

  Jake and Bryce took the opportunity to slip out of the cottage. Near the pool, in the quickly mounting sunshine, they shared a sleepy and understated high-five then parted company and went off to get some sleep.

  34.

  Jake didn’t get to rest for long. Around ten o’clock his cell phone rang and woke him. It was Claire, telling him there’d been another mishap on the set. They needed to talk. Could he meet her up at Smathers Beach, somewhere between the shave ice stand and the pizza wagon?

  He dragged himself out of bed and into a cool shower. He pulled on a bathing suit, rolled the purple bicycle out of the rack by the compound gate, and headed for the ocean. He rode shakily along the busy promenade, dodging skaters, joggers, people walking dogs that were frantically intoxicated with the wealth of salty smells.

  He found Claire perched on a blanket that she’d laid out over the trucked-in sand. She was lying on her stomach, lifted up on her elbows so she could spot him and wave. The arc of her back was graceful and lithe. There was both strength and something poignant, breakable, in the way her shoulders pinched together beneath her glistening skin. She wore a one-piece bathing suit, chaste but elegant, black and snug. She shielded her eyes with her hand and said hello.

  “I get to see you in your play clothes again,” he said.

  “Shooting’s cancelled for the day. Thank God. I really need some time to myself.”

  “But I’m here,” Jake observed.

  “Yeah, but that’s different. That’s a good thing.”

  Still standing above her, he said, “So what happened on the set?”

  She patted the empty space next to her. “Come share the blanket.”

  He lay down, not too close but close enough that he could feel the borrowed sunshine radiating from her side and legs and warming him. He smelled her sunscreen, that endlessly nostalgic sweet and coconutty smell that was a summary of so many perfect days and brought back muddled memories of every momentary crush he’d ever had on a woman at the beach. Settled beside her, he said, “We aren’t on a date, right?”

  She said, “We aren’t on a date.”

  “Just making sure. S
o tell me what happened this morning.”

  She lowered her head, rested her cheek on the back of her hand, and sighed. “Well, it was Candace.”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course,” Claire echoed. “But, you know, just because she’s a narcissist and a paranoid, that doesn’t mean she’s wrong. She was badly stung by a scorpion.”

  Jake couldn’t help wincing at the thought. “Nasty piece of luck,” he said.

  “Except it wasn’t. Someone set it up.”

  “Set up a scorpion sting?”

  She didn’t answer, just reached into her beach bag and came out with a sheet of paper — half a sheet of paper, actually, hand-torn on a jagged diagonal. Handing it to Jake, she said, “I found this in the mangroves just a few feet from where it happened.”

  It was a page from the script. Not just any page. The page that had Candace on that beach and leaning back against the tree.

  “So you think —”

  “I googled scorpions,” she said. “Amazing what you can learn in thirty seconds. They’re nocturnal and photophobic. Hiding under foliage or loose tree bark where it’s nice and dark and cool is one of their favorite things. Contrary to their reputation, they’re not aggressive. They only sting if something threatens them. Like by leaning back and caving in the bark.”

  Jake considered and gradually, dimly noticed that his usual sense of what was possible was being altered, stretched, perhaps suspended altogether. This was Key West. If a speedboat could be used as a weapon, why not a scorpion? After a moment he said, “Careless, though, leaving the page behind.”

  Claire disagreed. “I don’t think it was careless at all. I think it was left there on purpose. To freak out Candace even more. And I have a pretty good guess for who might have done it.”

  Jake made no effort to mask his surprise. “You do?”

  “The sister of Candace’s old boyfriend.”

  “Wait a second. The sister--?”