Stardust

Chapter 1

WHEN you walk across the Common from the Beacon Street side, coming up from Charles Street and angling toward Park Street, you are walking up one of those low urban hills that no one notices, unless they are running. At the top, with the State House at about ten o’clock and the Park Street Church straight ahead at twelve o’clock high, you look down toward the Park Street Station. Which is what Susan and I were doing on an early winter day, with maybe three inches of old snow on the ground, and the temperature about seventeen. Below us, at the corner of Park and Tremont, the big subway kiosk was surrounded by trailers and trucks and mysterious equipment. Thick cables ran into the subway entrance, maybe two hundred people bustled about in various kinds of arctic wear. There were big yellow trucks with Hertz-Penske lettered on the sides. There were long trailers with many small doors.

“It looks like Hertz-Penske is invading Park Street Under,” I said.

Susan nodded. Her nose was slightly red from the cold and her gloved hand was firm in mine. “Show business,” she said. “Can you smell the grease paint?”

“That’s my shaving lotion,” I said. “Besides, I don’t think they use grease paint in television.”

“It’s just an expression,” Susan said. “Have you no feeling for the romance of the theater?”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure I do.”

We walked down the hill toward the film site. The snow was crisp, and dry as sand in the cold. The trees around the Common were black and angular with hard snow in the places where the big limbs branched out. The fountain, where in summer the bums reclined, glaring at the tourists, was still and icy, and people cutting across the Common for a late breakfast meeting at the Ritz or the Four Seasons were hunch-shouldered, high-collared, hurrying stiffly through the chill. I had on a black Navy watch cap and a leather jacket with the fleece lining zipped in, and my gun in a shoulder holster under my left arm, to keep the bullets warm.

Inside the kiosk the stairs ran down steeply to the station. An escalator ran parallel to the stairs and the hot industrial smell of the subway system rose to meet us as we went through the door. The camera and light cables ran down along the sides of the stairs and a couple of MBTA cops were there to steer the subway customers past them. The station was still fully functioning, and the filming worked around that fact. Mixed among the customers was a squadron of technicians, each a mismatched ode to Eddie Bauer in down parka and insulated moon boots.

“Used to have those in Korea,” I said to Susan. “Called them Mickey Mouse boots. They were a little less colorful, but just as ugly.”

At the foot of the stairs to the left of the turnstiles, a small area was brightly lit with the big movie lights that you always see in ads. A couple of high-backed black canvas chairs stood just outside the lighted circle. On the back in white script was written, Fifty Minutes. There were cameramen and lighting men and sound men with earphones. There were assistant directors to herd the civilians around the shooting area, and a first assistant with the script in a big leather holster. A guy wearing a hat that looked like a World War I aviator’s helmet, with the straps undone and the earpieces flapping, was setting up the shot; and there in the middle of the bright area wearing a tight red dress and a black mink coat thrown over her shoulders was Jill Joyce, America’s honeybun.

Susan nudged me. I nodded.

Jill Joyce said, “Harry, for crissake, how long are you going to fuck around with this shot?”

“Pretty soon, Jilly,” the guy with the earflaps said. “I want you to look just about perfect, Jilly.” Harry was looking through a lens he wore on a string around his neck and he spoke to Jill Joyce the way you speak to your puppy, in a kind of remote coddling tone that expects neither comprehension nor response. Jill Joyce waggled one of her hands toward a production assistant. He put a lighted cigarette in her hand. She took it without looking, dragged in a big lungful of smoke, and let it out in two streams through her nose.

Harry backed away a little, gazing through his lens, then he straightened and nodded. The first assistant director spoke into a bullhorn, “Quiet, please… rolling for picture.” A red-haired woman with a thick sheaf of script open on a clipboard stepped in And took Jill’s cigarette. Jill stared into the camera; her face got prettier. A little guy with a straggly beard and an orange down vest jumped into the shot with a claclcer and clacked. Behind Jill the subway train that had been idling there patiently began to creep forward. “… and action,” Harry yelled. Jill looked off camera right and called out, “Rick? It’s all right, Rick, I’m here.” Her eyes scanned past the camera, looking for Rick. The train pulled on through behind her and moved on down the tunnel. The camera panned after it as it went and held on, its taillights disappearing, and Harry said, “Cut. It’s a keeper.”

Jill put her hand out again in the general direction of the script person and waggled it. The script woman handed her the lighted cigarette and she took another big drag, dropped it on the floor, shrugged deeper into her mink, and headed toward the escalator. A uniformed Boston cop named Ray Morrissey walked ahead of Jill and moved people out of her way.

“Wow,” I said. “Was that magic, or what?”

Susan grinned. “God save me, I could watch it all day.”

“Really?” I said.

“You think I’m deeply disturbed?” Susan said.

“Yes,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I think you’re right.” Then she smiled her smile that made Jill Joyce look like a cow flap and nodded her head toward a group standing beyond the escalator.

“There’s Sandy,” she said.

Sandy was state-of-the-art Eddie Bauer. He had on a full-length gold-colored down-lined jumpsuit, with black fur-topped thermal boots half zipped and a black knit ski cap with a large golden tassel. He was short and probably wiry but who could tell in the down jumpsuit. He had a goatee. With him was a hatless man with a lot of black curly hair, a strong nose, and dark skin. As we moved through the crowd toward them, the crew was packing up equipment, folding light stands, coiling cable, dismantling the cameras, packing up the sound gear. Everyone seemed to know what he was doing, which made this a unique enterprise in my experience.

Susan said, “Sandy.”

Sandy turned and smiled at her. His glance took me in too, but it didn’t harm the smile.

“Susan,” Sandy said. “And this has got to be Mr. Spenser.” Beyond Sandy and the guy with the black curly hair was a youngish guy with a round face and rimless glasses. He looked at both of us without expression.

Susan introduced me. “This is Sandy Salzman,” she said. “He’s the line producer.” Susan had been consulting on the show for less than a month now and already she spoke a language as arcane as the psychological tech talk of which I’d but recently cured her. We shook hands.

“This is Milo Nogarian,” Susan said, gesturing toward the guy with the curls, “the executive producer, and Marty Riggs, from Zenith.” We shook hands.

“Susan is the consultant we hired, Marty,” Sandy said. “And Mr. Spenser is a, ah, private security consultant, that maybe is going to give us a hand with Jill.”

Marty Riggs gazed at me with his gray expressionless eyes, enlarged a bit by the rimless glasses. He was wearing a tweed cap and a cable-stitched white wool sweater under a thick Donegal tweed jacket with a long scarf wrapped around his neck. The loose ends of the scarf reached to his knees. He gave me a small stiff nod. I smiled warmly.

“Susan actually is a psychotherapist, Marty,” Nogarian said. “Sees to it that we don’t get our complexes mixed up.” Susan smiled even more warmly than I had.

“I’m sure,” Marty said. “Milo, just remember what I said. I don’t want to have to go in to the network again and defend a piece of shit that you people have labeled script and sent over, capice?”

“Time, Marty,” Nogarian said, “you know what the time pressures are like.”

“And you know what cancellation is like, Milo. You have the top television star on the planet and you haven’t broken the top ten yet, you know why? Script is why. Jill’s been raising hell about them and she’s right. I want something better, and I want to start seeing it tomorrow.”

“How come your scarf’s so long?” I said. Susan put her hand on my arm.

Riggs turned and looked at me. “What?” he said.

“Your scarf,” I said, “is dangerously long. You might step on it and strangle yourself.”

Susan dug her fingers into my arm.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Riggs said.

“Your scarf. I may have to make a citizen’s arrest here, your scarf is a safety hazard.”

Riggs looked at Nogarian and Salzman. “Who the fuck is this guy, Milo?”

Nogarian looked as if he’d eaten something awful. Salzman seemed to be struggling with laughter. Susan’s grip on my arm was so hard now that if I weren’t tougher than six roofing nails it might have hurt.

“Looks dandy though,” I said.

Whoever Riggs was he was used to getting more respect than I was giving him, and he couldn’t quite figure out what to do about me.

“If you want to work around here, buddy,” he said, “you better watch your step.” Then he glared at all of us and turned and walked away. In a moment he was on the ascending escalator, and soon he had risen from sight.

Nogarian said, “Jesus Christ.”

Salzman let out the laughter he’d been suppressing. “Wonderful,” he said as he laughed, “a citizen’s arrest. You gotta love it.”

“Who is he, anyway?” I said.

“Senior VeePee,” Salzman said, “Creative Affairs, One Hour, Zenith Meridien Television.”

“Why’d you lean on him?” Nogarian said.

“He seemed something of a dork,” I said.

Salzman laughed again. “You start leaning on every dork in the television business, you’re going to be a busy man.”

“So many dorks,” I said, “so little time.”

“It’s not going to help us with the studio,” Nogarian said.

“Milo, it was worth it,” Salzman said, “watching Marty try to figure out who Spenser was so he could figure out if he should take shit from him or fire him.” Salzman snorted with laughter. “You ready for some lunch?”

“Since breakfast,” I said.

“Come on,” Salzman said, and we followed him up the escalator. The subway station was empty of film crew. The equipment was gone, the cables had been stowed. It was as if they’d never been there.

As we went up the escalator Susan put her arm through mine. “I know why you needled Marty Riggs,” she said.

“Sworn duty,” I said, “as a member of the dork patrol.”

“You needled him because he ignored me.”

“That’s one of the defining characteristics of a dork.”

“Probably,” Susan said.

We rode the rest of the way to the top, where the light, filtered through the glass, looked warmer than it was, and went out into the cold behind Salzman and Nogarian.