The Last Deep Breath

14

Next door was an empty bedroom. Jesus, there was a guy in a little booth out front but nobody around the house to keep assholes out of your closets. The hell kind of town was this?

Harvey sat on the bed. With his crank covered over he looked a little pathetic, like a child held after class. Grey was worried he might start crying. For this he’d been carrying Monty’s .32?

“Tell me more about Ellie’s manager.”

“There’s nothing to tell, man. After we decided to split up I got new representation with Monty Stobbs. You heard of him?”

“Yeah, I have.”

“He didn’t want anything to do with Ellie. She was already getting a bad rep in the business. Once your reputation goes like that everybody in the industry knows. No one wants to work with you, nobody wants to hire you.” Harvey started to get a little animated again, talking with his hands, mauling the air. “Our agent dumped us because we were a package team. I had my career to think about. So we broke up and I went with Monty and she found this other guy, John Raymond. Said he was more than an agent, said he was a manager. Was going to get her parts in straight movies. Was going to have her do TV. He thought she should start over in New York, doing bits on the crime shows. Last time I saw her, that’s where she was headed.”

“You let her go?” Grey asked. “Knowing she was using heroin? How could anybody get her a job on network television if she’d already been drummed out of porn?”

“I don’t know. He said it and she believed it. I told her it was crazy but she wouldn’t listen to me. You must know what she’s like.”

If only that were true. “You ever hear of this John Raymond before? He the real deal or just a-” Grey almost said pimp. “-manipulator.”

“All agents are manipulators. But no, I never heard of him before, but he seemed no better or worse than the other bastards.”

“No phone number or contact info or anything?”

“She said New York, that’s all I know.”

“How long were you two together?”

“Over a year. We were thinking of getting married.”

Grey wondered if it was a good thing she’d gotten out of being wed to this guy. Or if somehow that might’ve helped to stabilize her, even if the day job was fucking on top of a dining room table. “What got her strung out?”

“She was always strung out, man. She was an explosive personality. Anxious, always on edge. It made her interesting, made her exciting, but she could wear you out. Wore herself out too. She’d try this and try that. She just liked the H better than the other shit.”

Grey wanted to hate the guy. He felt the righteous need to beat and choke someone for not taking care of Ellie, for not watching over her. But he’d failed at that himself. She’d slipped out of his bed with a knife wound in her side, so how could he expect this punk to have done any better?

Without another word Grey turned and left the bedroom, went back downstairs to where they were breaking down the set and putting away all the cameras and lights and equipment and dinner plates. Kendra was in the same spot except she was holding court with five or six guys now. Maybe they all knew her from the movies. Maybe they were making pitches on how she could break wide into porn.

Grey stood outside the circle and waited. He decided to call Monty and ask about John Raymond but he couldn’t get past the secretary, who kept saying Monty was in a conference and couldn’t be disturbed. Grey was now persona non grata unless he offed Monty’s wife for him. He hung up and Kendra said her farewells and slid in beside him.

She met his eyes, looked deep in his face as if searching for some intrinsic change in him. She didn’t see it and gave him a vapid grin. She seemed a little disappointed that he hadn’t snuffed Harvey or anybody else yet.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s still plenty of time.”

“Time for what?” she asked.