Scavenger hunt

Chapter 3

"Cocktail?" Walsh held up two prescription bottles and gave them a shake.

"Pass."

"Your loss." Walsh shook out a couple of Percocets, added a Vicodin, and tossed them into his mouth, washing them down with a swallow of screwtop brandy. He faced Jimmy across the card table and defiantly drew out a long pungent belch. A dented, manual typewriter rested on the card table, an old Underwood, heavy enough to bring down a charging rhino. Stacked beside the typewriter was a manuscript, yellow Post-it Notes sticking out from between the pages. An accordion-style file folder lay open on the floor, next to a wastebasket filled with balled-up paper and empty pint bottles.

They had moved into the rear of the trailer after Rollo drove away with the twins, Walsh pulling aside the paisley-print sheet as though he were ushering Jimmy into Valhalla. While the main room was shabby and strewn with clothes and debris, this back area was neat and clean, furnished with only the card table, two chairs, and the typewriter. One wall was lined with books. Walsh's remaining Oscar looked lonely all by itself on the top shelf. A narrow piece of foam served for a bed, the white cotton sheet taut, the pillow shaped and flattened. The room was probably the exact size and configuration of the cell Walsh had spent the last seven years in.

"You ever been in love?" Walsh held the a bottle of brandy like a scepter. "The real thing, not just slamming the meat around."

Jimmy straddled the other chair, elbows resting on the wooden back. "You said you wanted to tell me about your new screenplay. Let's get to it."

"If you've never been in love, you're never going to understand the screenplay. I'd just be wasting my time." Walsh leaned back in his chair until the two front legs came off the floor, precariously balanced, but he was unconcerned. From the knees down his jeans were a darker blue where he had slipped in the koi pond, but he didn't seem to care about that either. "So have you or haven't you?"

"Yeah," said Jimmy, feeling like he had surrendered something, "I've been in love."

"Lucky us, huh?" Walsh brought the chair back down, picked up the sheaf of paper, and waved it in Jimmy's face. Every page had corrections written on it. "It's called Fall Guy." He tossed it back onto the desk. "That's all I told the studios when I shopped it around a few weeks ago. The title and my track record should have been enough. Selling the sizzle-that was all it should have taken to get an offer. Instead, all I got was thanks but no thanks, fuck you very much."

Jimmy could see Walsh's gold nipple ring tremble with every raspy breath he took.

Walsh whipped his thumb across the bottle. The cap flew off, and he batted it away with the other hand; it was one of those showy, jailhouse bits of business perfected by men with nothing but time. Jimmy had seen cons roll a cigarette with two fingers, seen them dance a quarter across their knuckles, move it back and forth across the bones. It didn't impress him. Walsh took a swallow of no-name brandy. "I once paid a thousand dollars for a bottle of cognac-"

"Did you kill the girl?"

Walsh scratched at the red devil on his shoulder-it was an ugly tattoo, the pitchfork crooked, the horns on its head uneven. "I wish I knew."

Jimmy watched Walsh pop open a prescription bottle. He wanted to believe that Walsh was lying to him, stringing him along, but the man's confusion and frustration were real.

Walsh tossed a couple more Percocets down his throat and chased them with another belt of brandy. "Best news since getting sprung was finding all the new legal dope out there. Just tell the doctor you hurt your back mowing the crabgrass, they write you a scrip."

"Let me read the screenplay. Then you can pass out in peace."

"Tough guy-yeah, I can spot them a mile away." Walsh waved the manuscript. "Well, I'm a certified fucking genius. I'm in the history books. What about you?"

Jimmy glanced at his watch.

"It's a good half-hour drive to Napitano's from here, so relax." Walsh took another pull on the bottle. "That little prick has quite a place: three or four acres it looked like, swimming pools, fountains, tennis courts, statues everywhere." He belched again. "I tried to crash Napitano's party last month. Spent ten minutes arguing with one of the security guards. Punk had never even heard of Firebug. Two fucking Oscars-I might as well be Shelley Winters for all the good they're doing me."

Jimmy laughed, and Walsh laughed too, shaking his head, and Jimmy almost liked him.

"How many times did you see Firebug?" asked Walsh. "Come on, 'fess up."

"Four times."

Walsh grinned, and it wasn't the phony leer he had turned on the twins. This one was honest, almost shy. "It was a good movie, wasn't it?" He banged the bottle down. "All those film school brats flocking to Sundance-I used to feel intimidated. While they were getting hands on with Coppola and Redford, I was cleaning sinks and buffing floors. I worked graveyard as a janitor when I wrote Firebug, did you know that?"

Jimmy nodded.

"That's how I met Harold Fong, the software geek who put up the money for Firebug. He was always pulling all-nighters at DataSurge, and I'd stop by on my breaks, and we'd shoot the shit about movies. It didn't matter that he owned the company and I took out the trash, we both loved the Coen brothers. Him and me used to do bits from The Big Lebowski and Fargo that went on for ten minutes. Harold fucked me on the profit participation for Firebug, but he backed me when no one else would. Now I can't even get past his secretary's secretary." His eyes were red-rimmed. "You ever been in love?"

"You already asked me that."

"Right." Walsh blinked, clutched the screenplay. "You can't read Fall Guy, not yet anyway. I name names, the real names too, nothing changed to protect the innocent-or the guilty." He looked up. "I'll tell you the story, though. We'll make it a pitch meeting, and you can smile and pretend you understand, just like a real studio exec." He pushed his hair back, and there was something about that long sullen face, something that peeked through the abuse and squandered talent, that touched Jimmy. Walsh stood up, the chair falling over behind him.

"The opening shot is of our hero in prison, staring at a letter," said Walsh, pacing, sketching the scene with his hands. "He hasn't opened it. He's almost afraid to open it. He just lies there on the lower bunk, tracing the feminine handwriting of the address with the tip of his finger. It's night, the cell lit only by the dim security light overhead. We can hear his cellie snoring, and the usual noises in the background, men crying in their sleep, somebody grunting out push-ups, but our guy is in a world of his own. He's waited all day for this moment. He takes a tentative sniff of the envelope and closes his eyes, savoring the memory. Then, very slowly, very carefully, he slides his pinkie under the envelope flap, and we hear the sound of paper tearing on the soundtrack. Fadeout." Walsh glanced at Jimmy, trying to gauge his reaction.

Jimmy looked back at him. Walsh had his complete attention.

"Flashback to our hero before he was in prison-a young filmmaker, so fucking hot, the sidewalk smokes under his feet. Studio executives are calling him, putting the calls in themselves, and the women-the pussy comes out of the woodwork when you're famous. You could be Quasimodo, and they'd still want to fuck you, and it definitely goes to our hero's head, but he keeps working harder than ever, burning the candle at both ends, taking a blowtorch to it, scared that he's going to wake up one morning and be back pulling Kotex out of clogged toilets. His second film is much more ambitious-instead of a million-dollar budget, it's slated at seventy million, and he's got real actors to work with this time, and a real crew, and gofers bringing him espresso.

"Then one day, right out of the blue, he meets her. The girl. Every good story has to have a girl, and here she is, smart and funny and so beautiful, the kind of girl he's jacked off to his whole life. Only one problem-she's married. She's signed a till-death-do-us-part contract with a powerful man, a dangerous man. But our hero doesn't care, he's used to getting what he wants, and what he wants is her. And because this is a Hollywood story, the girl feels the same way about him. Love, Jimmy, the real thing, ocean deep and mountain high, the kind you risk your first-class life for, the kind you have to grab for when you see it, because it may never come again. That kind of love."

Walsh sat down, their knees almost touching. "If this was a real pitch meeting, Jimmy, you'd ask me on what page do they fuck, and I'd say, without even looking at my notes, I'd say page fourteen, and you'd like that, because the audience doesn't like to wait more than fourteen minutes to see the hero and the girl fuck. You've got to feed the beast, Jimmy, and fuck they do, our hero and the good wife- that's what he calls her, their private joke. They scorch the sheets, our hero and the good wife, they tear each other apart and put themselves back together again, and what they have is so sweet, it's worth every lie, every excuse, every broken promise." He squeezed Jimmy's leg. "It's worth the risk. And it is a risk. For her. For him."

Jimmy was hooked.

"Our hero has made enemies on the ride to the top. Boy wonders are easy targets, and our hero, he's left himself open. He's a little afraid of the husband, if truth be told, but that only makes the loving sweeter, and besides, our hero is clever-his scripts are intricate, devious thrillers, full of twists and reversals. He's a man who knows how to get away with anything. Our hero gets off on the danger, but the wife, the good wife, is more… practical. She backs off a little bit. Not much. It's not over, she assures him, she just needs a little room, a little space, because she's having a hard time faking it at home, and she's worried that the husband is going to wise up-and maybe, just maybe, she needs a break from the boy wonder."

They were so close that Jimmy could count the broken blood vessels in the whites of Walsh's eyes.

"The little break turns into a week, and then another," said Walsh, his face shiny with sweat, "and our hero is dying inside. He leaves messages on her machine, their private call-me code, two short beeps and one long, but she doesn't respond, and he's getting mad now, angry at her for leaving him hanging, angry at himself for missing her. One afternoon he's sitting on the back porch of his beach house, working on the shooting script. This second movie, Hammerlock, is weeks behind schedule, and the suits are getting jumpy, and though he would never admit it, he is too. All those stolen afternoons with the wife have come with a price, and there's rumbling in the trades, anonymous, of course, that our hero is a one-hit wonder.

"So this particular day, he's sitting out in the hot sun, when who should appear but a beautiful girl in a pink bikini. Her name is Heather, a gorgeous blonde who has stepped on a piece of broken glass and cut her foot. Blood on the sand. Can you see it? Our hero is a creature of images, and the sight of the lovely Heather with blood dripping off the sole of her foot-you should have been there, tough guy. You should have been there instead of me.

"The director invites her in to clean up while he gets bandages. It's not a bad cut, but it hurts, and the pain in her face arouses him more than it should. The blonde has no idea who he is. She's young, nineteen she tells him, a college girl majoring in nothing in particular. She sees his two Oscars on the mantelpiece and asks him where he bought them, and she's serious. She lies back on the floor, her foot in his lap while he cleans the wound, blowing on her toes when he applies the antiseptic, and her eyes go right through him. She goes back to the beach for her blanket and towel and coconut suntan oil, and when she comes back, our hero has a couple lines of coke waiting, and one thing leads to another, and he's aware of the good wife, knows that he's cheating on her, but she's cheating on him with her husband, and then the college girl shrugs off her bikini, and that's all, Jimmy, that is all."

Jimmy saw Walsh fight off the shakes, but he made no move to help him.

"Our hero and Heather spend the afternoon fucking and doing coke and fucking some more. He's making up for lost time now, and he's switched to smoking heroin, the better to take the edge off, my dear, the better to push away the image of the good wife." Walsh balled his hands so tightly, his knuckles were white. "No smack for the girl though. She was curious, but he wouldn't give her any, not even a taste. He was a stone junkie, but he knew enough not to let her get started. He didn't want that on his conscience." He looked at Jimmy. "That counts for something, doesn't it?"

Jimmy nodded.

"Well sir, they fuck all afternoon, and into the evening, and the last thing our hero remembers is nodding off with his face against her soft skin. When he wakes up-when he wakes, he's on his feet, sleepwalking, and this big policeman is holding on to him, saying, What have you done, buddy? Our hero can barely hear the cop, his attention focused on the blonde lying at his feet with her head caved in, that soft skin ruined, and one of his Oscars is beside her, slick with blood. The policeman keeps repeating, What have you done, buddy? and our hero… he doesn't know what to say.

"The trial doesn't take long. It's not that kind of movie. The hero's team of five-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorneys suggest that he paint Heather Grimm as a coke whore, a desperate Lolita eager to fuck her way into the movies who attacked him when he put her off. Instead, our hero takes the DA's plea bargain. He's an arrogant bastard, but he remembers what Heather's face used to look like, he remembers her laugh."

"He knows that any jury in their right mind is going to hand him a life-without-parole ticket," said Jimmy. "He knows with the plea bargain and good behavior he can walk in seven. What about the good wife? What does she do?"

Walsh looked away. "Our hero never hears from her. She doesn't call him, he doesn't call her. What's he going to say? 'Sorry, I missed you so bad I fucked a stranger, than beat her skull in because she wasn't you.' No, our hero keeps quiet. Talking isn't going to help, it's only going to drag her into the mess, and our hero would do anything to avoid hurting her." He cleared his throat. "Did I mention that he loves her?"

Jimmy watched him.

"The prison sequences go fast, because the audience has already seen all the prison movies they want to see. Now we replay that opening scene, where about a month before he's due to hit the street, our hero gets a letter-a letter from her." Walsh closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the memory. "All that time without any contact…" His voice trailed off, and it took him a while to find it. "He lies on his bunk for an hour, staring at the envelope, enjoying the curves and valleys of her handwriting. The things that run through his head. He actually thinks she's going to say she has divorced her husband, that she'll be waiting outside the gate, her hair smelling like fresh-cut flowers.

"That's not what the letter says, though. I bet you figured that out. The wife wrote to tell him that she just found out that her husband knew about them. He had known almost from the beginning. He had known and never let on, never said a word to her. He kept quiet for the whole seven years our hero was inside. When our hero's name came up in conversation at a party, the husband never reacted. He kept the secret."

"Just like our hero."

Walsh glared at Jimmy. "Our hero kept quiet to protect her. Maybe the husband kept quiet to protect himself."

Jimmy turned that one over for a while. "You think he set you up?"

"I don't know. I don't remember killing Heather, but there was plenty of evidence. All I'm saying is that if the husband knew about the affair, maybe he did something about it. I know I would."

Jimmy had heard crazier stories. Once or twice anyway. "How did the wife find out?"

Walsh looked at him, the sunglasses on his forehead like a second pair of dead eyes. "She… heard us."

"What does that mean?"

"She heard us. You deaf?" Walsh was angry again, shifting emotional gears more often than a Grand Prix racer. "She takes pills sometimes to help her sleep, but a few months ago she woke up, and her husband wasn't beside her, which is no big deal, because he often works all night. So she gets up to get some water, and she hears… voices downstairs, and she's curious. She goes down and listens at the door where he works, and the voices are fainter now, so faint that if it wasn't her voice coming from inside the room, she wouldn't have recognized it. There's my voice too and now she's got her ear pressed against the door, listening. The two of us are inside that room, the sound of us making love, so clear that she actually remembers the afternoon that we said those things. I'm a talker, Jimmy, I got things to say when we're going at it, and so does she. Her husband has a tape of that afternoon-he probably has a tape of all the other afternoons, all the other evenings and mornings. Tell me that's not sick. This was the first time she had caught him listening to the tapes. Maybe it's a special occasion, or maybe the fact that I'm going to get out soon has made him want to take another listen, to remind himself what I did to him. That's the first two acts, Jimmy. What do you think so far?"

"Good pitch, but it's a big stretch from knowing your wife is fooling around to orchestrating a homicide. That's why there are more divorce lawyers than hitmen."

"This guy knew for months that his wife was cheating on him, and he never said a thing," said Walsh. "The man who could pull that off, kissing her on her way to an exercise class, knowing she's really going to see me, but letting her go, sleeping beside her night after night, and never giving it away-a man who could do that, he could do anything."

"What does the wife think? Is she still living with him? If she is, that has to tell you something."

"It tells me she doesn't know what to think. She still loves me, that's all she knows for sure. Those seven years that I spent thinking of her, she was thinking about me too."

"What's her name?"

"Not yet." Walsh patted the manuscript. "I got it all down here: names, places, dates. I just don't have the third act finished yet, the part where the hero nails the husband and wins the girl back." He thumped the table, then tried to stand, but his legs were rubbery. "I'm going to need proof," he puffed. "Then you'll see it. I'll give you an exclusive."

"You can't even find your balance. How are you going to find out what really happened at the beach house all that time ago?"

Walsh nudged the bulging file folder beside the table with his big toe. "My legal team hired a private detective to investigate Heather Grimm. The plea bargain short-circuited things, but I got their raw notes here. Some interesting possibilities too." He glanced out the window, shivering now, hearing voices in the wind, screams in the trees. "The husband's not done with me."

"You're overselling it, Walsh."

Walsh's smile caved in, his confidence as fake as the rest of him. "I made phone calls. The studios don't know what the screenplay is about, but I told them it was based on a true story. The husband-he has to have heard what I'm working on. I need you to tell my story, Jimmy. He wouldn't have the balls to do anything to me then."

Jimmy shook his head.

"This scavenger hunt of yours-I played that game when I was a kid. Knocking on doors, asking for treasure and trash, and it's all the same. Well, open your eyes, tough guy, you stumbled on to something big here." Walsh clawed at Jimmy's arm. "Put me on the cover of SLAP, play it up big."

Jimmy shook him off. "I've been hustled by the best, Walsh, and this ancient mariner routine of yours is stale. Hire a press agent if you want publicity." He saw Walsh shudder, and Jimmy eased up on him. "Look, finish the script, and I'll read it."

"I don't have time. All those years in the joint, I can tell when shit's coming down. You need to write about me now."

Jimmy's phone beeped. He listened to Rollo shouting that they had won, that they were going to be famous, all of them. He heard the twins crowding around the phone, laughing, and the sound of glasses clinking.

"You're killing me." Walsh stared out the window, his face slack. "You're killing me, and you don't even know it."