Show Business is Murder

On the Bubble by ROBERT LOPRESTI

THE PHONE RANG and Mitch Renadine jumped a foot. Running across his living room-how had the phone gotten way over there?-he felt as if he were moving in slow motion.

It was his mother calling. “I can’t talk long, Ma. I’m on the bubble.”

“On the bubble? And what does that mean?”

Mitch sighed, not in the mood for a long explanation. “The network is setting up its fall schedule. Some shows have been cancelled. Some have been renewed. But they haven’t decided on Muldoon yet. We’re waiting to hear, one way or the other. Out here that’s called being on the bubble.”

She was outraged. “But your show is in the top twenty, Mickey! How could they think of canceling it?”

Good old Mom. She was the only person in the world who still called him Mickey. Also, the only person who thought Muldoon was a hit.

Yes, the show reached the top twenty-sometimes. But it followed a program that usually made the top ten. That meant millions of people hit the remote control as soon as they saw Mitch’s smiling face. The network assumed that Muldoon was doing as well as it was only because of the strength of its lead-in.

“I love you, Mom. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.” He hung up and checked for messages. No one else had called. Damn.

Mitch stepped out onto the deck and took a deep breath. There was a beautiful view and he had paid dearly for it. Maybe he shouldn’t have spent so much on a house up here in the hills above Laurel Canyon, living like he was already an established star, instead of a near-unknown fronting a rookie TV show.

But damn it, he had paid his dues. He had parked cars, painted houses, done a thousand auditions for a thousand bit parts. And now that he had a starring role-as a tough but caring police lieutenant-why shouldn’t he live like a star?

Like Lou Garlyle, for instance. Mitch looked down the mountain at his neighbor’s estate. Lou lived down the hill, yes, but his home had a pool. And Lou had a live-in servant.

They were stars on the same network, but at opposite ends of their careers. Lou had come to TV after twenty years as a movie star when a string of high-budget bombs left his career flailing. For Mitch, TV was a first chance, for Lou it was a last one.

Now they were both on the bubble, waiting to see if their shows would be renewed. Who would sink when the bubble burst, and who would float.

He wondered where Lou was now. Most days when his neighbor wasn’t working he sat by his pool, drinking.

“I’m so glad these little fellas are back in style,” he had told Mitch one night as he poured another martini. It was the tail-end of one of Lou’s many parties and they were sitting beside the pool. “A few years ago if you ordered anything but wine or spring water in this town they pegged you for a drunk.”

Lou was a drunk, of course, getting smashed almost every night. But to his credit, it had never affected his work. Some critics suggested that that had to do with the quality of his work at the best of times, but you couldn’t argue with good box office and Lou had always had it. Always, that was, until a few years ago, and then he had flawlessly made the jump to television.

“That’s the thing about styles, Mitch,” he had continued. “They can change overnight. Take you and me, for instance.”

“What about us?”

“We’re actors of a certain style.” Lou waved a hand. “I don’t mean a school of acting or anything fancy like that. I mean that you and I are both born to play action heroes. Nobody is ever going to ask jokers who look like us to play Hamlet.” He bent over and picked up a big knife, one of at least a dozen of the ugly things he kept lying around his house.

Lou’s show was called Cutting Edge and he played a bodyguard whose favorite weapon was a throwing knife. He swore he kept them around the house for practice, to look more natural in front of the camera, but Mitch thought it was mostly a publicity gimmick. The photographers loved to show him sitting by the pool, flashing that famous smile and dangling one of those lethal-looking blades like a toy. Mitch had also noticed that at the end of the evening when Lou wanted his guests to leave he could always start tossing blades around.

“How does that relate to style?” Mitch had asked.

“Sometimes action heroes are fashionable. Sometimes sensitive weepy guys are more popular. Four years ago my show went on the air and caught the tail end of the last macho revival. Now your show is fighting against the tide.”

Lou had sipped at his drink. “The big trend today is the so-called reality programming-quiz shows, talk shows, lock-ten-people-in-a-room-and-see-who-cracks shows. That’s what we’re up against, Mitch. You have to know your enemy. And know who your friends are, too.”

“Who has friends?” Mitch retorted. “This is Hollywood.”

The older man laughed. “Touché. Let’s say, at least, that you can have allies. People who share a common goal.” He tossed his knife casually in the air and it came down a few inches from Mitch’s sandaled foot. Mitch made a point of not moving his leg. “Damn. Sorry.”

If we’re such good allies, Mitch thought, why don’t you retire and get the hell out of my way?

THAT HAD BEEN back in December, not long after Muldoon was picked up for the second half of the season. Now it was April and Mitch was still waiting to hear if the show would be stay on for another year. And Lou was in the same boat.

His agent called to announce every new blip on the radar. “They cancelled Lucky Day, Mitch.”

“That’s great, Si.”

“Maybe. Not if they’re gonna reshuffle the whole Monday schedule. And they renewed Puppet Wars.”

“That’s bad.”

“Not necessarily. It’s an 8 P.M. show, so it’s not likely to push us out of our slot.”

Slots. Twenty-two hours of prime time. The most expensive real estate on the planet. Muldoon owned one hour of Monday night on one network-if they could hold on to it. A show like his employed almost one hundred people. Not just the actors the audience saw, but the writers, the producers, and hell, even the caterers and floorsweepers had a reason to want this show to keep going.

But nobody needed it more than Mitch. When the network stars you in a drama they are resting a million bucks or so on your shoulders. If you drop it down the tubes you needn’t hold your breath waiting for them to offer a second chance.

The next day Si called back. “They renewed Brain Trust, and Money for Nothing. And they’re moving Ike and Alice to Wednesday.”

“My head is swimming. Who’s left on the bubble?”

“A couple of comedies, plus Muldoon and Cutting Edge. I gotta tell you, Mitch, I think there’s only one slot left for a drama.”

Mitch stood on his mortgaged deck and looked down the mountain at his neighbor. A washed-up movie star, floating around his pool without a care in the world.

“The Veep says we’ll hear by the end of the week. You hang in there, Mitch. It ain’t over yet.”

AND NOW IT was the end of the week and Mitch was still hanging in there, waiting to hear whether he was going to spend the next year collecting paychecks or unemployment. Driving his Lexus or driving a taxi. He thought about calling Lou to see if he had heard anything, but something made him hesitate.

And suddenly he could see Lou, back from wherever he had been. He was out by the pool in his swimming trunks, shouting instructions to Marta, his maid. Mitch watched as Lou stood at the shallow end of the pool, carefully settling himself into his float-not a raft so much as a blow-up chair, complete with indented spaces for a cell phone and a shaker of martinis-and paddling out into the center of the pool to bask in the sun.

What did his neighbor have to look so cheerful about?

The cell phone rang. Mitch yanked it to his ear and heard a familiar Latino accent. “Mr. Renadine? This is Marta. Mr. Garlyle wanted me to invite you to a party tomorrow night.”

Mitch felt a cold fist cramping his guts. But, in spite of what some of the critics said, he was an actor. His voice came out as cheerful as a talk-show host. “Terrific, Maria. What’s the occasion?”

“The network just renewed his show for another year. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Wonderful,” Mitch agreed. “I’ll be there. Tell him to have plenty of champagne.”

Then he hung up and began to plan a murder.

WHEN MITCH WAS a kid he had always felt he was destined for something. Not being a TV star necessarily, but something that would take him out of suburban New Jersey. When they studied Julius Caesar in high school and the teacher talked about the concept of fate he felt as if he was at last being introduced properly to someone he had known for years.

Fate, yes. The destiny that shapes our ends.

Until that phone call from Marta homicide had never crossed his mind. He was certain that was true. And yet he had prepared himself for it so perfectly. Or had fate done the preparing?

Mitch was not what Hollywood called a spiritual person but, hell, when ten thousand handsome faces apply for the same acting job there must be someone or something spinning the wheel and deciding who wins and who loses. And that force had given him the tools he needed to win now.

Look at what he needed to know-and did know. That Lou would be drunk and probably asleep on his float all afternoon. That Marta would be preparing dinner. That she couldn’t see the pool from the kitchen.

And if you argued that he only knew these things because, at some level, he had been preparing for a murder all these months, well, what about buying this house in the first place? Surely that had been fate, preparing him for this day, when he had to climb off the bubble before it burst.

Mitch opened the cabinet under his sink and pulled out a box of disposable latex gloves. He had worn them several times on the show when Lieutenant Muldoon was investigating a crime scene and, having seen how useful they were, he had brought home a box for cleaning up messes.

Was that preparation again? Or fate? He wondered about that as he tucked a pair into his jacket.

The trail through the brush between his yard and Lou’s had been worn long before he moved in. Mitch had taken it a dozen times when his neighbor invited him for a drink, so he knew that no one could see him as he moved through the thick brush. At the bottom of the hill he carefully pushed the vines out of his way and looked out at the pool.

Lou was lying on the big red float, his head tilted a little to the side. He snored softly. The martini shaker was in place but the cell phone was not. That was perfectly reasonable. After all, he had already gotten the phone call he cared about, the call Mitch had waited for in vain.

The inflatable float drifted slowly clockwise. Soon Lou would be facing away from him.

Mitch knew that no one could see the pool from the neighbor’s houses. Except from his, of course. He put on the disposable gloves.

It was easy to open the gate in the fence and step quickly onto the cement surface around the pool. The pool skimmer-a long pole with a hoop and net on the end-hung on the fence not far away.

Mitch was a strong man, built to play an action hero, as Lou had pointed out. It only took a moment for him to pick up the pole, bend over, and tuck the hoop end under the edge of the float and drag it slowly toward the edge of the pool.

Good ol’ Lou didn’t even stop snoring.

When the back of the float was almost against the edge of the pool, Mitch put the skimmer back in its place on the fence. A knife lay on the nearest table; one of the throwing knives Lou so loved to show off with.

Mitch picked it up in a gloved hand. He took one last look around and saw only the beautifully cared-for estate and the back of Lou’s house. No one in sight.

The idea was simple: make it look as if Lou had thrown the knife in the air and it had landed in the float. What was so odd if a drunk, known for tossing knives around, and not a good swimmer, sank his own float and drowned?

Sure, it might have raised a few eyebrows back in Plainfield, New Jersey, where Mitch grew up. But this was Los Angeles where the coroner heard stranger stories practically every day, most of them having to do with the show biz crowd.

Detective Carl Chaney, the cop who served as technical adviser on Muldoon, had told Mitch they even had a name for it: HRD-Hollywood-Related Death.

Mitch studied the float carefully. A knife coming down from the air would only make one cut, so he had to get it right the first time.

Kneeling at the pool’s edge Mitch took a deep breath. My career or your life, he thought. It was an easy choice. He raised his arm and brought it down hard, cutting through the fabric near the left edge of the float.

His one fear had been that the float might burst, making enough noise to wake Lou, but the fabric tore instead, letting water slide in gently. The float had several compartments so it would take a while to sink, but sink it would.

Mitch smiled and dropped the knife. It slipped, shimmering, to the bottom tiles. He gave the back of the float a gentle push, nudging it toward the deepest part of the pool.

Moving quickly now, he slipped back through the gate and up into the brush. When he reached his own property he risked a look behind him. The big red float was in the middle of the pool, listing badly to the left.

Mitch walked over to the compost bin at the far end of his yard. A few months ago the president of his studio had gotten a bee in her bonnet about organic food and suddenly everyone who worked for the studio had to install one of these damned smelly rat hotels on their property. Now this one was finally earning back its cost. He reached in, still wearing his lab gloves, and shifted the organic muck around.

If by any chance the police suspected him of being involved in Lou’s death they would look for evidence that he had taken the trail down to Lou’s property. And that brought up something else Detective Chaney had told him about: The Law of Contact.

The Law of Contact was the basic rule of crime-scene technicians. You go somewhere, you leave something behind. You touch something, you take part of it with you. If the techies started looking for signs of him beside Lou’s pool they might find them, but could they prove they were from today and not from his last visit, a week ago? Mitch didn’t think so.

And if the found Mitch’s lab gloves in his own trash, well, the compost easily explained their use, and he figured the organic waste would make it harder to find a trace of chlorine. As a bonus, turning the compost over would explain any vegetation from the trail that stuck to his clothes.

A year of playing Lieutenant Muldoon had taught him well. Prepared him well.

Once he had disposed of the gloves, Mitch went back into the house. He forced himself to walk at his usual pace, acting the part of a man without a care in the world.

Only after he poured himself a Scotch did he walk out onto the deck and casually glance down toward his neighbor’s property. The float had upended and he saw Lou’s arm come out of the water, flailing. He was trying to hold onto the float, but the thing was slippery and unstable and Lou was far too drunk to control it.

Goodbye, old man. You should have retired.

He strolled back into the house. The message light was blinking on the answering machine. No doubt it would be Si calling with the bad news. Well, the network was going to have to rethink their schedule now, wouldn’t they? All of a sudden they had a big hole to fill. He touched a button.

“Hey, Mitch baby, this is Si. I just met with the network guys. Most amazing thing. Turns out we calculated wrong. They had decided to cancel Muldoon and Cutting Edge. That’s right, both of them. Make more room for those damned reality shows.

“But hold onto your hat, kid. Your neighbor changed their minds. He convinced them that what they needed to do was run the shows together. He said you’re a better lead-in for him than that doctor show they have on now. The network decided he might be right. They’re gonna move Muldoon to Saturday night, run it between Private License and Cutting Edge. Call it “Men of Action Night.” Maybe do some crossover episodes.

“You better buy ol’ Lou some champagne. He’s keeping your show alive. Bye bye, babe. We’ll talk later.”

Mitch could hear something down the hill. He knew it must be the wail of a distant siren, but to him it sounded more like the bursting of an enormous bubble.