Scavenger hunt

Chapter 37

The footage from Santa Monica Exotics led every local newscast that evening, with endless replays of Mick Packard getting punched out, the chinchilla clawing at his turtleneck. It was a great TV moment. Now Jimmy understood why Samantha had picked three P.M. for the meeting: Mick Packard wanted to make sure they were able to make the broadcast deadline. He just hadn't counted on getting his ass kicked.

Jimmy had been standing around for the last half-hour at Napitano's monthly scavenger hunt party watching the action on the wide-screen in the media room. Everyone was having a good time, cheering and hooting. Rollo did a perfect Howard Cosell impression, and Nino danced around in his peacock-blue pajamas throwing mock punches with his tiny fists. Jimmy felt nothing but disappointment.

He had cast Mick Packard as the angry husband from the moment he saw him at Walsh's funeral. Cast Samantha as the good wife too. It had been more than a leap of faith; Samantha had admitted having an affair with Walsh, and Packard was a jealous control freak, rumored to be ex-CIA, with the cunning to orchestrate a setup. Jimmy had been wrong. Samantha's affair with Walsh hadn't made her special. When he had asked her about being the good wife in the pet shop, she hadn't understood-she had taken him literally. If Mick Packard had been the husband Jimmy was looking for, he would never have pulled the stunt in the pet shop. The man who had framed Walsh would have been more subtle; Jimmy would have a fatal accident or just disappear.

"Jimmy!"

Jimmy felt arms around him and a sweet-smelling woman kissing him, the pain stabbing through his face from where Packard had hit him. He pulled away and saw Chase Gooding in gold lame hiphuggers and a belly shirt, blond hair cascading across her bare shoulders, cold as granite and pink to the bone.

Rollo's eyes were bugging out of his head looking at her.

"Jimmy!" Chase kissed him again, the tip of her tongue banging against his teeth. "You got me on the guest list, just like you said you would! I didn't think anybody kept a promise anymore, but you did."

Jimmy disengaged himself from her. "You meet any Scientologists yet?"

"Mission accomplished. Me and Zed somebody are partnered up for the scavenger hunt," Chase said. "Zed goes to the downtown temple or church or whatever they call it. He doesn't know Tom Cruise personally, but I tell you, Jimmy, Zed's so clear and connected, it's scary." Chase's miniskirt showed off the striated muscles of her inner thighs. "Are you with anybody?"

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your little friend, Jimmy?" asked Napitano.

"Nino, this is Chase Gooding, an actress. Chase, this-"

"I know who Mr. Napitano is, silly," said Chase, air-kissing the publisher.

"A pleasure to meet you," Nino said solemnly. "Good luck in the scavenger hunt."

"Gosh," said Chase, flustered now. "I gotta go, or I'm going to blow it for the team. Ciao!" She winked at Jimmy and dashed off.

"What lovely breasts," said Napitano, watching her run across the marble floor, high heels clippity-clopping. "I hope she wins."

"You really got a thing with scavenger hunts, huh, Nino?" said Rollo.

"The scavenger hunt is uniquely American-dynamic, creative, forceful," said Nino, blue silk pajamas rippling with every gesture. "It is Manifest Destiny writ in the search for treasure real or imagined, the cultural detritus begged, borrowed, or stolen. You and Jimmy played the game magnificently, as I knew you would."

"Thanks, man," said Rollo. He glanced around and tapped his coat. "I got it."

"Wonderful." Napitano nodded at the current rerun of the fight at the pet store. "I've seen enough of our brave gladiator's exploits. Let us adjourn to my study for a screening, molto privato."

"Walsh's rough cut?" said Jimmy.

"Fucking-A Hammerlock, dude," confirmed Rollo.

Napitano led Jimmy and Rollo through the house, parting the crowd with an imperious flick of his hand. Purchased from a child actor whose brilliant career had flamed out a few years after puberty, the mansion was thirty-six thousand square feet of fun and offered two swimming pools, a poker room, an ice cream parlor, a full gym, a batting cage, and a video game center. Nino used almost none of the sports facilities, considering physical exercise a waste of time, but the ice cream parlor was fully utilized, the chocolate syrup flown in weekly from Switzerland. The study was in the farthest wing, where sounds from the party still echoed. Napitano punched in his entry code, shielding the numbers from view, then looked into an aperture on the wall. Retina scan complete, the door clicked open. "Please make yourself at home," he said as they followed him inside, the gimbaled door closing after them with a slight hiss.

Napitano waved to the red leather sofas facing a flat-screen television and the one-kilo tin of black Iranian caviar within its nest of crushed ice. He poured champagne for all of them.

Rollo slipped a DVD out of his jacket and into the player.

"This movie should be a most useful addition to this article on the late Garrett Walsh that you've been spending so much time on, Jimmy." Napitano sipped his champagne. "I trust it will be finished sometime in the foreseeable future?"

"Depends on how far you can see."

Rollo ignored the champagne Napitano had poured and pulled a can of Mountain Dew out of the small refrigerator built into the wall. "Hammerlock's not finished, but I think you guys are really going to like it. I've watched it about twelve times, and I still don't know where Walsh was going. I was supposed to get a copy of his script notes today from my source at the archives, but B.K. is paranoid."

Jimmy sat down on the couch. He really was interested, not just in seeing a rough cut by a master filmmaker but because Walsh had been having an affair with the good wife while he was making the movie. Maybe there was something in the footage that would give him a sense of who she was.

"Here we go," said Rollo as the movie started, no titles, no credits at all, just a close-up of Mick Packard's face, blood trickling from his nose. He looked almost the same as he did on tonight's newscast. "Packard is really good in this, Jimmy. I was surprised."

Hammerlock was the story of a clinically depressed, tough cop, played by Mick Packard, who is manipulated by a shy, seemingly ineffectual killer, sent down blind alleys, chasing his tail in pursuit. The rough cut had major continuity problems-the transitions between scenes were often jumpy and awkward-but Packard was utterly convincing as the desperate cop, gobbling pills, slapping around suspects, a strong man unraveling, trying to cover his fear with bravado, talking out his troubles only with his sister.

The cop's best lead was a beautiful woman, a waitress who had heard the killer's gloating voice after he killed his fourth victim, even saw his retreating back when she looked out her window. The waitress and the cop had real chemistry-the actress was Victoria Lanois, and like Walsh, she never did such good work again, but she was the perfect mixture of strength and vulnerability in Hammerlock, the attraction between her and Packard's character made even more powerful by never being consummated. An hour and a half into the movie, drunk and desperate, the cop stops by her house with a droopy bouquet of flowers and finds her dead in the kitchen, the TV blaring.

The scene didn't work; it was too graphic, particularly for a character the viewer had come to love. Multiple shotgun blasts had blown her head to pieces. Walsh let the camera drift across the blood-sprayed walls, finally coming to rest on her shattered skull.

Jimmy shook his head. Walsh had an ugly imagination.

"Oh my," said Napitano as the screen went to gray.

"That's it?" said Jimmy.

"That's it," said Rollo. "The last act was never shot. I checked three earlier versions of the screenplay, but they're completely different. The cop is more of a straight-arrow type, and the waitress doesn't die-the cop uses her for bait."

"Was there much of a change in the waitress character from the earlier drafts?" said Jimmy, wondering if Walsh's deepening affair with the good wife during filming had been reflected in the female lead.

"Not really." Rollo got up, ejected the DVD, and slipped the case into his jacket. "She was a blonde up until the second rewrite, but that's-"

"You're sure about that? She wasn't a brunette in the first draft?" said Jimmy.

"I'm sure. I remember thinking it was a weird decision. Blondes usually get a rise from the suits, and the-"

"I want to look at every version of the screenplay you've got," said Jimmy.

"The scene of the waitress taking a shower-that was new too," said Rollo, thinking. "I checked the production notes. It was one of the last things Walsh shot. Gratuitous, maybe, but that blue tile with the mermaids looking over her shoulder as she's washing her hair-it was kind of hot."

Jimmy nodded. The scene was hot, but it was more than that: It was loving and appreciative too, almost too intimate. He was sorry that Sugar Brimley hadn't been able to get them into Walsh's old beach house. If the new owners hadn't remodeled, Jimmy was certain, absolutely certain, that the bathroom would have had a blue tile shower with decorative mermaids.