Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories, Volume 3

BUMP

Hat in hand.

There was no other way to describe it.

Aside from the flashy secretary, the middle-aged man in jeans and a sports coat was alone, surveying the glassy waiting room, which overlooked Century City’s Avenue of the Stars. No, not that one, with the footprints in concrete (that was Hollywood Boulevard, about five miles from here). This street was an ordinary office park of hotels and high-rises, near an okay shopping center and a pretty-good TV network.

Checking out the flowers (fresh), the art (originals), the secretary (a wannabe, like nine-tenths of the other help in L.A.).

How many waiting rooms had he been in just like this, over his thirty-some years in the industry? Mike O’Connor wondered.

He couldn’t even begin to guess.

O’Connor was now examining a purple orchid, trying to shake the thought: Here I am begging, hat in hand.

But he couldn’t.

Nor could he ditch the adjunct thought: This is your last goddamn chance.

A faint buzz from somewhere on the woman’s desk. She was blond and O’Connor, who tended to judge women by a very high standard, his wife, thought she was attractive enough. Though, this being Hollywood, attractive enough for what? was a legitimate question and sadly the answer to that was: not enough for leading roles. A pretty character actress, walk-ons. We’re in the toughest business on the face of the earth, baby, he thought to her.

She put down the phone. “He’ll see you now, Mr. O’Connor.” She rose to get the door for him.

“That’s okay. I’ll get it…Good luck.” He’d seen her reading a script.

She didn’t know what he meant.

O’Connor closed the door behind him and Aaron Felter, a fit man in his early thirties, wearing expensive slacks and a dark gray shirt without a tie, rose to greet him.

“Mike. My God, it’s been two years.”

“Your dad’s funeral.”

“Right.”

“How’s your mom doing?”

“Scandal. She’s dating! A production designer over on the Universal lot. At least he’s only five years younger. But he wears an earring.”

“Give her my best.”

“Will do.”

Felter’s father had been a director of photography for a time on O’Connor’s TV show in the eighties. He’d been a talented man and wily…and a voice of reason in the chaotic world of weekly television.

They carried on a bit of conversation about their own families — neither particularly interested, but such was the protocol of business throughout the world.

Then because this wasn’t just business, it was Hollywood, the moment soon arrived when it was okay to cut to the chase.

Felter tapped the packet of material O’Connor had sent. “I read it, Mike. It’s a real interesting concept. Tell me a little more.”

O’Connor knew the difference between “it’s interesting” and “I’m interested.” But he continued to describe the proposal for a new TV series in more depth.

Michael O’Connor had been hot in the late seventies and eighties. He’d starred in several prime-time dramas — featuring a law firm, an EMT facility and, most successfully, the famous Homicide Detail. The show lasted for seven seasons, which was a huge success.

It had been a great time. O’Connor, a UCLA film grad, had always been serious about acting and Homicide Detail was cutting-edge TV. It was gritty, was shot with handheld cameras and the writers (O’Connor cowrote scripts from time to time) weren’t afraid to blow away a main character occasionally or let the bad guy get off. An LAPD detective, who became a good friend of O’Connor’s, was the show consultant and he worked them hard to get the details right. The shows dealt with religion, abortion, race, terrorism, sex, anything. “Cutting-edge storytelling, creativity on steroids” was the New York Times’s assessment of the show and those few words meant more to O’Connor than the Emmy nomination (he lost to an actor from Law & Order, a thoroughly noble defeat).

But then the series folded and it was drought time.

He couldn’t get work — not the kind of work that was inspired and challenging. His agent sent him scripts with absurd premises or that were hackneyed rip-offs of his own show or sitcoms, which he had no patience or talent for. And O’Connor collected his residual checks (and signed most of them over to the Ivy League schools his daughters attended) and kept trying to survive in a town where he’d actually heard someone say of Richard III, “You mean it was a play, too?”

But O’Connor was interested in more than acting. He had a vision. There’s a joke in Hollywood that, when looking for a project to turn into a film or series, producers want something that’s completely original and yet has been wildly successful in the past. There is, however, some truth to that irony. And for years O’Connor had it in mind to do a project that was fresh but still was rooted in television history: each week a different story, with new characters. Like TV from the 1950s and ’60s: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Playhouse 90, The Twilight Zone. Sometimes drama, sometimes comedy, sometimes science fiction.

He’d written a proposal and the pilot script and then shopped Stories all over Hollywood and to the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 in England, as well — but everyone passed. The only major producer he hadn’t contacted was Aaron Felter, since the man’s dad and O’Connor had been friends and he hadn’t wanted to unfairly pressure him. Besides, Felter wasn’t exactly in the stratosphere himself. His various production companies had backed some losing TV and film projects recently and he couldn’t afford to take any risks.

Still, O’Connor was desperate.

Hence, hat in hand.

Felter nodded, listening attentively as O’Connor pitched his idea. He was good; he’d done it many times in the past year.

There was a knock and a large man, dressed similarly to Felter, walked into the office without being formally admitted. His youth and the reverential look he gave to Felter told O’Connor immediately he was a production assistant — the backbone of most TV and film companies. The man, with an effeminate manner, gave a pleasant smile to O’Connor, long enough of a gaze to make him want to say, I’m straight, but thanks for the compliment.

The PA said to Felter, “He passed.”

“He what?”

“Yep. I was beside myself.”

“He said he was in.”

“He’s not in. He’s out.”

The elliptical conversation — probably about an actor who’d agreed to do something but backed out at the last minute because of a better offer — continued for a few minutes.

As they dealt with the emergency, O’Connor tuned out and glanced at the walls of the man’s office. Like many producers’ it was covered with posters. Some were of the shows that Felter had created. Others were of recent films — those starring Mark Wahlberg, Kate Winslet, Ethan Hawke, Tobey Maguire, Keira Knightley. And, curiously, some were of films that O’Connor remembered fondly from his childhood, the great classics like The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt.

The actor remembered that he and Felter’s dad would sometimes hang out for a beer after the week’s shooting for Homicide Detail had wrapped. Of course, they’d gossip about the shenanigans on the set but they’d also talk about their shared passion: feature films. O’Connor recalled that often young Aaron would join them, their conversations helping to plant the seeds of the boy’s future career.

Felter and the bodybuilder of a production assistant concluded their discussion of the actor crisis. The producer shook his head. “Okay, find somebody else. But I’m talking one day, tops.”

“I’m on it.”

Felter grimaced. “People make a commitment, you’d think they’d stick to it. Was it different back then?”

“Back then?”

“The Homicide Detail days?”

“Not really. There were good people and bad people.”

“The bad ones, fuck ’em,” Felter summarized. “Anyway, sorry for the interruption.”

O’Connor nodded.

The producer rocked back in a sumptuous leather chair. “I’ve got to be honest with you, Mike.”

Ah, one of the more-often-used rejections. O’Connor at least gave him credit for meeting with him in person to deliver the bad news; Felter had a staff of assistants, like Mr. America, who could’ve called and left a message. He could even just have mailed back the materials. O’Connor had included a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

“We just couldn’t sell episodic TV like this nowadays. We have to go with what’s hot. People want reality, sitcoms, traditional drama. Look at Arrested Development. Brilliant. But they couldn’t keep it afloat.” Another tap of O’Connor’s proposal for Stories. “This is groundbreaking. But to the industry now, that word scares ’em. It’s like it’s literal: an earthquake. Natural disaster. Everybody wants formula. Syndicators want formula, stations want formula, the audience, too. They want a familiar team, predictable conflicts. White guy, black guy, hot chick, Asian guy who knows computers. The way of the world, Mike.”

“So you’re saying that Entourage is just The Honeymooners with the F word.”

“Naw, I’d say more Leave It to Beaver. A family, you know. But, yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Hell, Mike, I wish I could help you out. My dad, rest his soul, loved working on your show. He said you were a genius. But we’ve gotta go with the trends.”

“Trends change. Wouldn’t you like to be part of a new one?”

“Not really.” Felter laughed. “And you know why? Because I’m a coward. We’re all cowards, Mike.”

O’Connor couldn’t help but smile himself.

On his show, O’Connor had played a Columbo kind of cop. Sharp, nothing got by him. Mike Olson the cop on Homicide Detail wasn’t a lot different from Mike O’Connor the actor. He looked Felter over carefully. “What else?”

Felter placed his hands on his massive glass desk. “What can I say? Come on, Mike. You’re not a kid anymore.”

“This is no industry for old men,” he’d say, paraphrasing William Butler Yeats’s line from “Sailing to Byzantium.”

In general men have a longer shelf life than women in TV and films, but there are limits. Mike O’Connor was fifty-eight years old.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t want to star. I’ll play character from time to time, just for the fun of it. We’ll have a new lead every week. We could get Damon or DiCaprio, Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett. People like that.”

“Oh, you can?” Felter wryly responded to the enviable wish list.

“Or the youngster of the month. Up-and-coming talent.”

“It’s brilliant, Mike. It’s just not salable.”

“Well, Aaron, I’ve taken up enough of your time. Thanks for seeing me. I mean that. A lot of people wouldn’t have.”

They chatted a bit more about family and local sports teams and then O’Connor could see that it was time to go. Something in Felter’s body language said he had another meeting to take.

They shook hands. O’Connor respected the fact that Felter didn’t end the conversation with “Let’s get together sometime.” When people in his position said that to people in O’Connor’s, the lunch dates were invariably canceled at the last minute.

O’Connor was at the door when he heard Felter say, “Hey, Mike. Hold on a minute.”

The actor turned and noted the producer was looking at him closely with furrowed brows: O’Connor’s flop of graying blond hair, the broad shoulders, trim hips. Like most professional actors — whether working or not — Mike O’Connor stayed in shape.

“Something just occurred to me. Take a pew again.” Nodding at the chair.

O’Connor sat and observed a curious smile on Felter’s face. His eyes were sparkling.

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Which is?”

“You might not like it at first. But there’s a method to my madness.”

“Sanity hasn’t worked for me, Aaron. I’ll listen to madness.”

“You play poker?”

“Of course I play poker.”

O’Connor and Diane were sitting on the patio of their house in the hills off Beverly Glen, the winding road connecting West Hollywood and Beverly Hills to the San Fernando Valley. It was a pleasant house, but modest. They’d lived here for years and he couldn’t imagine another abode.

He sipped the wine he’d brought them both out from the kitchen.

“Thanks, lover,” she said. Diane, petite, feisty and wry, was a real estate broker and she and O’Connor had been together for thirty years, with never an affair between them, a testament to the fact that not all Hollywood marriages are doomed.

She poured more wine.

The patio overlooked a pleasant valley — now tinted blue at dusk. Directly beneath them was a gorgeous house. Occasionally film crews would disappear inside, the shades would be drawn, then the crews would emerge five hours later. This part of California was the number-one producer of pornography in the world.

“So, here’s what Felter’s proposing,” he told her. “Celebrity poker.”

“Okay,” Diane said dubiously. “Go on.” Her voice was yawning.

“No, no. I was skeptical at first, too. But listen to this. It’s apparently a big deal. For one thing it airs during Sweeps Week.”

The week during which the networks presented the shows with the biggest draw to suck up the viewership rating points.

“Really?”

“And it’s live.”

“Live TV?”

“Yep.” O’Connor went on to explain the premise of Go For Broke.

“So it’s live, sleazy reality TV. What makes it any different?”

“Have some more wine” was O’Connor’s answer.

“Uh-oh.”

O’Connor explained that what set Go For Broke apart from typical celebrity poker shows was that on this one the contestants would be playing with their own money. Real money. Not for charity contributions, like the usual celeb gambling programs.

“What?”

“Aaron’s view is that reality TV isn’t real at all. Nobody’s got anything to lose. Survivor, Fear Factor…there’s really no risk. The people who climb walls or walk on girders’re tethered and they’ve got spotters everywhere. And eating worms isn’t going to kill you.”

Savvy businesswoman Diane O’Connor said, “Get back to the ‘our own money’ part.”

“The stakes are a quarter million. We come in with that.”

“Bullshit.”

“Nope. It’s true. And we play with cash on the table. No chips. Like riverboat gamblers.”

“And the networks’re behind it?”

“Huge. The ad budget alone’s twenty-five million. National print, TV, radio, transit ads…everything. The time slot for the first show is after Central Park West and on Thursday it’s right after Hostage.”

CPW was the hottest comedy since Friends, and Hostage was the season’s biggest crime drama, a 24-kind of action show.

“Okay, it’s big. And we can probably get our hands on the money but we can’t afford for you to lose it, Mike. And even if you win, okay, you make a million dollars. We could do that in a couple of years in the real estate market. So, what’s in it for you?”

“Oh, it’s not about the money. It has nothing to do with that.”

“Then what’s it about?”

“The bump.”

“The bump? What is that? A Hollywoodism?”

“Of course,” he said. “Why use a dozen words to express yourself exactly when you can use a buzzword?”

He explained to his wife, in a slightly censored fashion, what Aaron Felter had told him earlier: “Mike, buddy, a bump is a leg up. It’s getting recognized on the media radar. It’s grabbing the limelight. A bump means you’re fuckable. A bump gets your name in the trades and Entertainment Tonight. You haven’t had a bump for years. You need one.”

O’Connor had asked Felter, “So you’re saying that if I’m in this game, I get a bump?”

“No, I’m saying if you win the game, you get a bump. Will it get you a housekeeping deal at a studio? I don’t know. But it’ll open doors. And I’ll tell you if you win, I promise I’ll take your proposal for Stories to the people I’ve got deals with. Again, am I promising they’ll green-light it? No, but it’ll get me in the front door.”

He now said to Diane, “All the contestants’re like me. At a certain level, but not where we want to be. They’re from a cross section of entertainment industries, music, acting, stand-up comedy.”

The woman considered this for a long time, looking over the blue hills, the porn house, the pale evening stars. “This is really your last chance to get Stories on, isn’t it?”

“I’d say that’s right.”

Then, to his disappointment, Diane was shaking her head and rising. Without a word she walked into the kitchen. O’Connor was upset. He loved her. And, more important, he trusted her. Mike O’Connor might’ve played the tough, blunt Detective Mike Olson on TV, but emotionally he was the antithesis of the cop. He’d never do anything to hurt his wife. And he resolved that, seeing Diane’s negative reaction, he’d call Felter immediately and back out.

She returned a moment later with a new bottle of Sonoma chardonnay.

“You don’t want me to do it, do you?” he asked.

“I’ll answer that with one question.”

He speculated: Where would they get the money, what about the girls’ tuition, would they have to hit their retirement funds?

But, it turned out, she was curious about something else: She asked, “Does a full house beat a flush?”

“Uhm, well…” He frowned.

Diane withdrew from her pocket something she’d apparently collected when she’d gone into the kitchen for the wine: a deck of Bicycle playing cards. “I can see you need some practice, son.”

And cracked the wrapper on the deck.

The bar was on Melrose, one of those streets in West Hollywood where you can see celebs and people who want to be celebs and people who, whether they’re celebs or not, are just absolutely fucking beautiful.

Sammy Ralston was checking some of them out now — the women at least — and looking for starlets. He watched a lot of TV. He watched now in his small place in Glendale. And he’d watched a lot Inside, too, though the Chicano inmates dictated what you saw, which during the day was mostly Spanish-language soaps, which weren’t so bad, ’cause you got a lot of tits, but at night they watched weird shows he couldn’t figure out. (Though everybody watched CSI, which he had a soft spot for, seeing as how it was physical evidence — from one of his cigarettes — that landed him Inside in the first place after the B and E at a Best Buy warehouse.)

He looked up and saw Jake walk through the door, shaved head, inked forearms. Huge. A biker. He wore a leather jacket with Oakland on the back. Say no more. He stood above Ralston. Way above. “Why’d you get a table?”

“I don’t know. I just did.”

“Because you wanted some faggot chicken wings, or what?”

“I don’t know. I just did.” The repetition was edgy. Ralston was small but he didn’t put up with much shit.

Jake shrugged. They moved to the bar. Jake ordered a whiskey, double, which meant he’d been here before and knew they were small pours.

He drank half the glass down, looked around and said in a soft voice, “Normally I wouldn’t fuck around with a stranger but I’m in a bind. I’ve got a thing going down and my man — nigger out of Bakersfield — had to get the fuck out of state. Now, here’s the story. Joey Fadden—”

“Sure, I know Joey.”

“I know you know Joey. Why I’m here. Lemme finish. Jesus. Joey said you were solid. And I need somebody solid, from your line of work.”

“Windows?”

“Your other line of fucking work.”

Ralston actually had two. One was washing windows. The other was breaking into houses and offices and walking off with anything salable. People thought that people who boosted merch went for valuable things. They didn’t. They went for salable things. Big difference. You have to know your distribution pipeline, a fence had once told him.

“And you understand that if we can’t come to an agreement here and anything goes bad later, me or one of my buddies from up north’ll come visit you.”

The threat was like the fine print in a car contract. It had to be included but nobody paid it much mind.

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. Go ahead.”

“So. What it is. I heard from Joey about a month ago this TV crew did a story at Lompoc. Life in prison, some shit like that, I don’t know. And the crew got this hard-on to hang with the prisoners.”

“Macho shit, sure.” Ralston’d seen this before. People from the Outside feeling this connection with people Inside.

“So Joey heard them talking about this TV poker show some asshole producer is doing. It’s planned for Vegas, but in a hotel, not a real casino. And they don’t use chips. They use real cash. The buy-in’s supposedly two-fifty K.”

“Shit. Cash? What’s the game?” Ralston loved poker.

“Fuck, I don’t know. Old Maid. Or Go Fish. I don’t fucking lose my money at cards. So I’m thinking, if it’s not a casino, security won’t be so tight. Might be something to think about.” Jake ordered another whiskey. “Okay. So I check out the prison show and get some names. And one of the gaffers—”

“Yeah, what is that? I’ve heard of them.”

“Electrician. Can I finish? He’s a biker, too, from Culver City. And he’s a little loose in the mouth when he’s had a few and so I get the details. First of all, this’s a live show.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Live? They don’t record it ahead of time.”

“They do that?” Ralston thought everything was recorded.

“So it’s a big surprise who wins.”

“That’s not a bad idea for a show. I mean, I’d watch it.” Ralston peeled the label off his beer. It was a nervous habit. Jake noticed him and he stopped.

“Well, you can tell ’em you fucking approve, or you can shut up and listen. My point is that they’ll have a mil and a half in small bills on the set. And we’ll know exactly when and exactly where. So Joey speaks for you and I thought you might be interested. You want in, you get twenty points.”

“It’s not a casino’s money, but there’ll still be armed guards.”

“Last time I looked 7-Elevens don’t have that kind of money in their fucking cash registers.”

“Guns involved, I’d be more interested for thirty.”

“I could go twenty-five.”

Sammy Ralston said he’d have to think about it.

Which meant only one thing: getting a call through to Lompoc. After he and Jake adjourned he managed to get Joey Fadden, doing three to five for GTA, hard because a weapon was involved. By virtue of the circumstances, their conversation was convoluted, but the most important sentence was a soft, “Yeah, I know Jake. He’s okay.”

Which was all Ralston needed.

And they proceeded to talk about the sports teams and how much they both lamented the name change of the San Francisco 49ers’ home to “Monster Park.”

The site of the game was the Elysium Fields Resort and Spa on the outskirts of Vegas.

On Wednesday morning, the day of the show, the contestants assembled in one of the hotel’s conference rooms. It was a curious atmosphere — the typical camaraderie of fellow performers, with the added element that each one wanted to take a quarter-million dollars away from the others. The mix was eclectic:

Stone T, a hip-hop artist, whose real name, O’Connor learned from the bio that Felter had prepared for the press, was Emmanuel Evan Jackson. He had been a choirboy in Bethany Baptist Church in South Central, had put himself through Cal State, performing at night, and then got into the L.A. rap, ska and hip-hop scene. Stone was decked out like a homie from Compton or Inglewood — drooping JNCO jeans, Nikes, a vast sweatshirt and bling. All of which made it jarring to hear him say things like, “It’s a true pleasure to meet you. I’ve admired your work for a long time.” And: “My wife is my muse, my Aphrodite. She’s the one whom I dedicate all my songs to.”

O’Connor was surprised to see Brad Kresge was one of the contestants. He was a bad boy of West Hollywood. The lean, intense-eyed kid was a pretty good actor in small roles — never with a major lead — but it was his personal life that had made the headlines. He’d been thrown out of clubs for fighting, had several DUI arrests and he’d done short time in L.A. County for busting up a hotel room, as well as the two security guards who’d come to see what the fuss was about. He seemed cheerful enough at the moment, though, and was attentive to the emaciated blonde hanging on his arm — despite the fact that Aaron Felter had asked that the contestants attend this preliminary meeting alone, without partners or spouses.

Kresge was unfocused and O’Connor wondered if he was stoned. He wore his hat backward and the sleeves of his wrinkled shirt rolled up, revealing a tat that started with a Gothic letter F. The rest of the word disappeared underneath the sleeve but nobody doubted what the remaining letters were.

Sandra Glickman was the only woman in the game. She was a stand-up comic originally from New York but who lived out here now. She worked the Laugh Factory and Caroline’s and appeared occasionally on Comedy Central on TV. O’Connor had seen her once or twice on TV. Her routines were crude and funny (“Hey, you guys out there’ll be interested to know I’m bisexual; buy me something and I’ll have sex with you.”). O’Connor had learned that she’d gone to Harvard on a full scholarship and had a master’s degree in advanced math. She’d started doing the comedy thing as a lark before she settled down to teach math or science. That had been six years ago and comedy had won over academia.

Charles Bingham was a familiar face from TV and movies, though few people knew his name. Extremely tanned, fit, in his early sixties, he wore a blue blazer and tan slacks, dress shirt and tie. His dyed blond hair was parted perfectly down the side and it was a fifty-fifty chance that the coif was a piece, O’Connor estimated. Bingham was a solid character player and that character was almost always the same: the older ex-husband of the leading lady, the coworker or brother of the leading man, a petty officer in a war movie — and usually one of the first to get killed in battle.

He’d been born Charles Brzezinski, the rumor was. But so what? O’Connor’s own first name was still legally Maurice.

The big surprise in the crowd was Dillon McKennah. The handsome thirtysomething was a big-screen actor. He’d be the one real star at the table. He’d been nominated for an Oscar for his role in a Spielberg film and everybody was surprised he’d lost. He’d been called the New James Dean. But his career had faltered. He’d made some bad choices recently: lackluster teen comedies and a truly terrible horror film — in which gore and a crashing soundtrack substituted, poorly, for suspense. Even on his most depressed days, O’Connor could look at himself in the mirror and say that he’d never taken on a script he didn’t respect. McKennah mentioned that he was working on a new project, though he gave no details. But every actor in Hollywood was engaged in a “new project,” just like every writer had a script “in development.”

They drank coffee, ate from the luxurious spread of breakfast delicacies and chatted, generally playing type: Stone T was hip. Sandra cracked jokes. Bingham smiled vacantly, stiff and polite. Kresge was loud. McKennah was Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. And O’Connor was the strong silent sort.

As the conversation continued, O’Connor was surprised to find how lucky he was to be here. Apparently, when word went out about Go For Broke, close to five thousand people had contacted Aaron Felter’s office, either directly or through their agents.

Everybody wanted the bump.

Now, the door of the conference room swung open and Aaron Felter entered.

“Okay, all, how you doing?…Hey, Sandy, caught your act on Sunset this weekend.”

The woman comic gave him a thumbs-up. “Were you that fucking heckler?”

“Like I’d spar against you? Am I nuts?”

“Yo, Aaron, can we drink?” asked Brad Kresge. “On the set, I mean. I play better that way.”

“You can do whatever you want,” Felter told him. “But you break any cameras — or any heads — you pay for ’em.”

“Fucking funny.”

When coffee cups were refilled and the bagel table raided again, Felter sat on the edge of the table in the front of the room. “Now, folks. Today’s the day. I want to run through the plan. First, let’s talk about the game itself.” He asked a young man into the room. The slim guy was the professional dealer Felter had flown in from Atlantic City. He sat down at the table and — after awing them with his incredible dexterity — went through protocol and rules of the game they’d be playing, Texas Hold ’Em.

This was one of the simplest of all poker games (selected, O’Connor guessed, not because of the contestants, but because of the audience, so they could follow the play). There was no ante; the players to the dealer’s left would place blind bets before the deal — a small blind from the player to the immediate left and then a large blind, twice that amount, from the player on his left to create a pot. Each player then was dealt two hole cards, which nobody else could see, and then placed bets or folded, based on those cards. The amount of the blinds would be set ahead of time.

Then came the flop: three community cards dealt faceup in the middle of the table. Betting commenced again and two more community cards were dealt faceup, making five. Traditional rules of poker applied to the betting process: checking — choosing not to bet — as well as seeing, raising or calling someone at the showdown.

When that occurred, players used their two hole cards plus any three of the five face-up board cards to make the best hand they could.

“Now, one thing we’re not doing,” Felter announced. “No hidden cameras.”

Most televised poker shows featured small cameras that allowed the audience and commentators to see each player’s hole cards. The systems were tightly controlled and the games usually recorded ahead of time so there was no risk of using that information to cheat in real time, but that wasn’t Felter’s concern. A born showman, he wanted the tension of live drama: “What’s the excitement if the audience knows what everybody’s hand is? I want people at home to be on the edge of their seats. Hell, I want them to fall off their seats.

“Now remember, you’re live. Don’t pick your nose or grab your crotch.”

“Can I grab somebody else’s crotch?” Glickman asked.

McKennah and, despite the blonde on his arm, Kresge raised their hands.

Everyone laughed.

“And,” Felter continued, “you’ll be miked, so if you whisper, ‘Fuck me,’ we’ll bleep it but your mother’s going to know you said something naughty. Now, I want laughs and sighs and banter. We’ll have three cameras on close-ups and medium angles and one camera on top showing the board. No sunglasses.” This was directed to Brad Kresge, who was always wearing them. “I want expression. Cry, look exasperated, laugh, get pissed off. This is a poker game but first and foremost it’s TV! I want the audience engaged…Any questions?”

There were none and the contestants dispersed.

On his way to join Diane for a swim before the show, Mike O’Connor was trying to recall what was familiar about Felter’s speech.

Then he remembered: It was out of some gladiator film, when the man who was in charge gave his before-the-games pep talk, reminding the warriors that though most of them were about to die, they should go out and put on the best show they could.

Sammy Ralston and Jake were in a bar up the street from Elysium Fields Spa.

Jesus, it was hot.

“Why Nevada?” Ralston asked. “Why the desert? They oughta put casinos where the weather’s nicer.” Ralston was sweating like crazy. Jake wasn’t. Big guy like that and he wasn’t sweating. What was that about?

The biker said, “If the weather’s nice people stay outside and don’t gamble. If the weather’s shitty, they stay inside and do. That’s not rocket science.”

Oh. Made sense.

Ralston fed a quarter into the minislot at the end of the bar and Jake looked at him like, you want to throw your money away, go ahead. He lost. He fed another quarter in and lost again.

The two men had spent the last few days checking out the Elysium Fields. It was one of those places that dated from the fifties and was pretty nice, but also sort of shabby. It reminded Ralston of his grandmother’s apartment’s décor in Paramus, New Jersey. A lot of yellows, a lot of mirrors that looked like they had bad skin conditions, a lot of fading white statuettes.

Jake, with his tats and biker physique, stood out big-time, so he’d done most of the behind-the-scenes information gathering, from press releases and a few discreet calls to his union contact on the studio back lot. He’d learned that the TV show would be shot in the grand ballroom. At the beginning of the show, armed guards would give each player a suitcase containing his buy-in, which would sit on a table behind his chair. He’d take what he needed from it to play.

“Gotta be a big suitcase, I’d guess.”

“No. Two fifty takes up shit. If it’s in twenties or bigger.”

“Oh.” Ralston supposed Jake would know this. The most he himself had ever boosted in cash was about $2,000. But that was in quarters and he pulled his back out, schlepping it from the arcade to his car.

After the initial episode tonight was over, the money went back in the suitcases of the players who hadn’t gone bust. The guards would take it to the hotel’s safe for the night.

As for the surveillance of the Elysium Fields, Ralston had done most of that. He had his window-washing truck and his gear here, so he was virtually invisible. All contractors were. He’d learned that the ballroom was in a separate building. The guards would have to wheel the money down a service walk about sixty feet or so to get to the safe. Ralston had found that the walk was lined with tall plants, a perfect place to hide to jump out and surprise the guards. They’d overpower, cuff and duct tape them, grab the suitcases and flee to the opposite lot.

He and Jake discussed it and they decided to act tonight, after the first round of games; tomorrow, after the finale, there’d be more people around and they couldn’t be sure if the money would be returned to the safe.

The plan sounded okay to both men, but Jake said, “I think we need some kind of, you know, distraction. These security people around here. They’re pros. They’re going to be looking everywhere.”

Ralston suggested setting off some explosion on the grounds. Blow up a car or pull the fire alarm.

But Jake didn’t like that. “Fuck, as soon as anybody hears that they’ll know something’s going down, the money’ll have guards all over it.” Then the biker blinked and nodded. “Hey, you noticed people getting married around here a lot?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And everybody getting their pictures taken?”

Ralston caught on. “All those flashes, yeah. You mean, blind ’em somehow with a camera?”

Jake nodded. “But we walk up with a camera, the guards’d freak.”

“How about we get one of those flashes you see at weddings. The remote ones.”

“Yeah. On tripods.”

“We get one of those, set it up about halfway along the walk. When they’re nearby we flash it. They’ll be totally fucking blinded. We come up behind. They won’t fucking know what hit them. I like it. Think we can find something like that around here?”

“Probably.”

The men paid for their beers and stepped out into the heat.

“Oh, one thing?”

“Yeah?” Jake grunted.

“What about…you know.”

“No, I don’t fucking know until you tell me.”

“A piece. I don’t have a piece.”

Jake laughed. “I’m curious. You ever used one?”

“Fuck, yes.” In fact, no, he’d never fired a gun, not on a job. But he was pissed that Jake seemed to be laughing at him about it.

When they were in the window-washing truck, Jake grabbed his canvas backpack from behind the seat. He opened it up for Ralston to see. There were three pistols inside.

“Take your pick.”

Ralston chose the revolver. It had fewer moving parts and levers and things on the side. With this one he wouldn’t have to ask Jake how it worked.

The banquet hall where Go For Broke was being shot was huge and it was completely packed.

The place was also decked out like every TV set that Mike O’Connor had ever been on: A very small portion — what the camera saw — was sleek and fashionably decorated. The rest was a mess: scaffolding, bleachers, cameras, wires, lights. It looked like a factory.

The contestants had finished with hair and makeup (except Kresge: “You get me the way I am, leave me the fuck alone”) and the sound man had wired them — mikes to their chests and plugs to their ears. They were presently in the greenroom, making small talk. O’Connor noted the costumes. Sandra Glickman was low-cut and glittery; Kresge was still in his hat-backward, show-the-tats mode. Stone T was subdued South Central and had gotten Felter’s okay to wear Ali G goggles, not nearly as dark as sunglasses; you could get a good look at his eyes (for the “drama” when he won a big pot or ended up busted, presumably). Charles Bingham was in another blazer and razor-creased gray slacks. He wore a tie but an ascot wouldn’t’ve been out of place. Dillon McKennah wore the de rigueur costume of youthful West Hollywood, an untucked striped blue-and-white shirt over a black T-shirt and tan chinos. His hair was spiked up in a fringe above his handsome face.

O’Connor had been dressed by Diane in “older man sexy.” Black sports coat, white T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” she’d whispered and kissed him for luck. “Go break a thumb.”

The production assistant — not the big gay fellow from L.A., but a young nervous brunette — stood in the greenroom’s doorway, clutching a clipboard, a massive radio on her hip. She listened to the voice of the director from the control room and kept glancing at her watch.

Television was timed to the tenth of a second.

Suddenly she stiffened. “All right, everybody, please. We’re on in three.” She then rounded them up like cattle and headed them to the assembly point.

There, O’Connor looked at the monitor, showing what the viewers around the country would be seeing: splashy graphics and some brash music. Then the camera settled on a handsome young man — dressed similarly to Dillon McKennah — sitting at a desk, like a sports commentator. Beside him were an African-American in a suit and a skinny white guy in a cowboy outfit.

“Good evening, I’m Lyle Westerbrook, your host for Go For Broke. Two exciting days of no-holds-barred poker. And joining me here are Andy Brock, three times winner of the World Championship of Poker in Atlantic City. Welcome, Andy.”

“Good to see you, Lyle.”

“And Pete Bronsky, a professional gambler from Dallas and the man who wrote Making a Living at Cards. Hi, Pete.”

“Back at you, Lyle.”

“This is reality TV at its most real. You are watching live, on location, six individuals who aren’t playing for prestige, they aren’t playing for a charity of their choice. They’re playing with their own hard cash. Somebody’s going to lose big — a quarter of a million dollars. And somebody’s going to win — maybe as much as six times that. One and a half million dollars is going to be at play tonight. You gentlemen must know the excitement of what our contestants are feeling.”

“Oh, you bet I do, Lyle…”

O’Connor tuned out of the banter, realizing that this was, in fact, the big time. Millions of people would be watching them and, more important, dozens of network and studio execs would be watching the ratings.

The bump…

“And now, let’s meet our contestants.”

They went out in alphabetical order, as the announcer made a few comments about them and their careers. O’Connor caught Diane’s eye — she was in the front row — when the applause erupted at the mention of Homicide Detail and the character of Detective Mike Olson. Though when, like the rest of the players, he said a few words to Lyle and mentioned the phrase “Save it for the judge,” one of his signature lines from the series, not many people laughed, which told him that the APPLAUSE sign had prompted people to cheer when the name of his show was mentioned.

Welcome to the world of TV.

When they were all seated around the table security guards brought in the cash, which had been wire transferred to a local bank yesterday. The audience murmured when the guards, rather dramatically, opened the cases and set them behind each player on a low table. (Was there an illuminated sign that urged, “SOUND AWED”?) The guards stood back, hands near their guns, scanning the audience from behind sunglasses.

O’Connor tried not to laugh.

The dealer explained the rules again — for the audience — then with cameras hovering, sweat already dripping, the room went utterly silent. The dealer nodded to O’Connor, to his immediate left. In Texas Hold ’Em, this was the button position, which signified the initial player, since unlike in informal games the players would not be dealing; a pro would be handling that job. O’Connor pushed the small blind out onto the table, the agreed-upon $1000.

For the big blind, Kresge, to O’Connor’s left, splashed the table, tossing his $2000 out carelessly — very bad form. Chugging a beer, he grinned as the dealer straightened it.

The hole cards were dealt, the top card burned — discarded — and the flop cards spun elegantly into the center of the table.

The game proceeded with nobody winning or losing big, no dramatic hands. Kresge bet hard and took some losses but then pulled back. Sandy Glickman, with the quick mind of a natural comedian (and mathematician), seemed to be calculating the odds before each bet. She increased her winnings slowly. Stone T was a middle-of-the-road player, suffering some losses and catching some wins, as did McKennah. Neither seemed like natural players. O’Connor played conservatively and continually reminded himself of the basic poker strategy he’d picked up over the years — and that Diane had helped drill into him in the last few weeks:

It’s all right to fold up front. You don’t have to play every hand.

Bluff rarely, if at all. Bluffing should be used appropriately and only against certain players in limited circumstances. Many professional players go for months at a time without bluffing.

Fold if you think you’re going to lose no matter how much you’ve already put into the pot.

Always watch the cards. Texas Hold ’Em is played with a single fifty-two-card deck and only seven cards are known to any one player: his two and the five community cards. Unlike counting cards at blackjack or baccarat, knowing those seven won’t give you great insights into what the others have. But knowing the board, you can roughly calculate the odds of whether someone else has a hand that beats yours.

Most important in poker, of course, is to watch the people playing against you. Some gamblers believe in tells — gestures or expressions that suggest what people have as their hole cards. O’Connor didn’t believe that there were obvious tells, like scratching your eye when you had a high pair in the hole. But he did know that people respond consistently to stimuli — he’d learned this not from his limited experience as a card player but as an empathic actor. For instance he’d noticed that Stone T’s face grew still when he had a good, though not necessarily a winning, hand. File those facts away and be aware of them.

The game progressed, with Glickman and McKennah up slightly, Kresge, Stone and O’Connor down a bit. Bingham was the big loser so far. On the whole O’Connor was pleased with his performance. He was playing a solid game.

They took a commercial break and Felter walked out, dispensing water and telling everybody how pleased he was — and how favorable the initial responses were. He walked off stage and they heard the voice of God.

“Now, back to the million-dollar action,” the commentator said. Then silence. O’Connor and the others couldn’t hear anything else from the host or the pros in the control booth; he wondered how they were critiquing the performances.

A new deal. The blinds were now increased: five thousand and ten. The button player pushed out the small blind, the one to his left the big. Then the hole cards were dealt.

Shit.

O’Connor hoped he hadn’t muttered that out loud. (His mother was watching.) He had a hammer. These were the worst hole cards dealt anyone could have, an unsuited two and a seven. You can’t make a straight — you’re allowed only three cards from the board — and there was no chance of a flush. There was a miraculous possibility for a full house but at best it would be sevens and twos. Not terrible, but still a long shot.

He stayed in for one round of betting but Bingham and Glickman started raising each other. Kresge folded, spitting out a word that O’Connor knew the standards and practices people would bleep.

McKennah folded and then O’Connor did, too. He was mentally counting the money he had left — about $220,000—when he realized that something was going on at the table. Bingham, Glickman and Stone were engaged in battle. He sensed that Stone didn’t have great cards but was already in for close to a hundred thousand. Glickman was less raucous than earlier, which told him that she might have a solid hand, and Bingham tried to appear neutral. He fondled the lapel of his blazer.

The flop cards were the jack of spades, king of diamonds, three of clubs, seven of clubs, six of hearts.

“Ma’am?” the dealer asked Glickman.

“Seventy-five thousand,” she raised, sighing, “Think of all the eyeliner that’d buy.”

The audience laughed. In her routines she was known for excessive makeup.

Stone sighed, too. And folded.

Bingham snuck a peek at his cards again. This was a bad tell. It meant that you were double-checking to verify that you had one of the better hands, like a straight or flush. Then he looked over his money. His suitcase was empty and he had only about sixty thousand on the table.

“All in,” he said. Under standard rules of poker he could call with less than the raise, but couldn’t win more than what he’d put into the pot.

O’Connor saw the older man’s hands descend to his slacks; he wiped his sweaty palms. His face was still.

All eyes were on the cards.

O’Connor was sitting forward. Who won? What were the cards?

And the announcer said, “And we’ll be right back, folks, for the conclusion of this exciting day in Las Vegas.”

Agony. The next five minutes were agony.

The cards remained facedown on the table, the contestants chatted, sipped water. Kresge told a filthy joke to Glickman, who was subdued for a change and she smiled distantly. If she lost this hand she wouldn’t go bust but she’d be way behind. If Bingham lost he’d be heading home.

No money, no bump.

Both Glickman and Bingham kept smiles on their faces, but you could see the tension they felt. Their overturned cards sat in front of them. The waiting was torture for O’Connor — and he had nothing to lose.

After an interminable few minutes during which beer, cars and consulting services were hawked to millions of people around the country, the action returned to the table.

The dealer said, “Ma’am, you’ve been called. Would you please show your cards?”

She turned her two over and revealed the full house.

Bingham smiled stoically. “Ah.” He displayed the ace-high flush. She’d beaten him with one hand better than his.

He rose and gave her a kiss. Then shook the others’ hands.

The protocol, Aaron Felter had told them, was that anyone who went bust had to rise and leave.

Head off down the Walk of Shame, O’Connor dubbed it.

Departing this way seemed a bit ignominious, but this wasn’t just poker, of course; it was the hybrid of poker on television.

I want drama…

The security guard displayed his empty suitcase to the table and the camera — more drama — and then deposited it in a specially built trash can.

The audience applauded furiously as Sandy raked in her cash.

After a commercial break and the ceremonial opening of a fresh deck of cards, the play continued. The remaining players were warmed up now and the betting grew more furious. On the sixth hand of this segment, Glickman, O’Connor and McKennah all folded and Stone T went one-on-one with Kresge.

Then the rapper made a bad mistake. He tried to bluff. O’Connor knew you couldn’t bluff against people like Kresge — in poker or in real life. People who trash hotel rooms and smack their girlfriends don’t have anything to lose. They kept raising hard and O’Connor could see that Stone was breaking the rule he had been reciting to himself all night: Don’t stay in, just because you’ve already spent money.

Stone pushed in all his remaining stake — nearly eighty thousand — a cool smile on his lips, terror in his eyes, through Da Ali G lenses.

Kresge took his time finishing a light beer and then, with a sour smile, called the rapper.

Stone’s two-pair hand was annihilated by an ace-high full house.

One more contestant was gone.

There was time on tonight’s show for one more hand and it was during this round that divine retribution, in the form of Mike O’Connor, was visited upon Brad Kresge.

It was really too bad, O’Connor reflected from the vantage point of someone who happened to have the best hand he’d ever had in poker: a straight flush, jack high. As the betting progressed and Glickman and McKennah dropped out, O’Connor assumed the same mannerisms he’d witnessed in Stone T when the rapper was bluffing.

You’re an actor, he told himself; so act.

Kresge was buzzed from the beer and kept raising, intent on bankrupting the old guy. The odds were minuscule that Kresge had a better hand than this, so it seemed almost unfair to drive him out of the game so easily. But O’Connor had always treated acting as a serious profession and was offended by Kresge’s ego and his childish behavior, which demeaned the business. Especially after seeing the sneer on his face when he knocked Stone T out of the game, O’Connor wanted the punk gone.

Which happened all of ten seconds later.

Kresge went all in and O’Connor turned the hole cards, his eyes boring into Kresge’s, as if saying: When I stay in a hotel, kid, I clean it up before I leave.

The audience applauded, as if the good gunslinger had just nailed the bad one.

Kresge grinned, finished his beer and took O’Connor’s hand, trying for a vise grip, which didn’t work, given O’Connor’s workout regimen. The kid then sauntered off, down the Walk of Shame, as if he could actually set fire to a quarter-million dollars and have more fun.

Then the theme music came up and the host announced the winnings for the night: McKennah had $490,000. Glickman had $505,000. Mike O’Connor was the night’s big winner with $515,000. Now, the control room mike went live to them and the poker experts took the stage to talk a bit about how the game had gone. The three remaining contestants chatted with them and Lyle for a few minutes.

Then, the theme once again and the red eyes on the cameras went dark.

The show was over for the night.

Exhausted and sweating, O’Connor said good night to the other players, the host and the experts. Aaron Felter joined them. He was excited about the initial ratings, which were apparently even better than he’d hoped. Diane joined them. They all made plans to have dinner together in the resort’s dining room. O’Connor suggested that those who’d lost join them, too, but Felter said they were being taken out to the best restaurant in the city by an assistant.

O’Connor understood. It was important to keep the buzz going. And losers don’t figure in that.

Diane said she’d meet them in the bar in twenty minutes; she wanted to call the girls. She headed off to the room and Felter went to talk to the line producer, while O’Connor and McKennah signed some autographs.

“Hey, buy you a beer?” McKennah asked.

O’Connor said sure and they started through the huge hall as the assistants took care of the equipment. TV and movies are as much about lights and electronics and computers as they are about acting. The two security guards were assembling the suitcases of money.

He didn’t have his bump, not yet.

On the other hand, he was a quarter-million dollars richer.

Nothing wrong with that.

“Where’s the bar?”

McKennah looked around. “The main building. I think that’s a shortcut. There’s a walkway there.”

“Let’s do it. I need a drink. Man, do I need a drink.”

Sammy Ralston felt the pistol, hot and heavy, in his back waistband. He was standing in the bushes in dark coveralls spearing trash and slipping it into a garbage bag.

On the other side of the walkway, behind other bushes, waited big Jake. The plan was that when the guards wheeling the money from the ballroom to the motel safe were halfway down the walkway, Ralston would hit the switch and flash the powerful photographer’s light, which was set up at eye level. They’d tried it earlier. The flash was so bright it had blinded him, even in the well-lit hotel room, for a good ten, twenty seconds.

After the burst of light, Ralston and Jake would race up behind them, cuff the guards, then wrap duct tape around their mouths. With the suitcases of money, the men would return to the stolen van, parked thirty feet away, around the corner of the banquet facility. They’d drive a few miles away to Ralston’s window-washing truck, then head back to California.

Ralston looked at his watch. The show was over and the guards would be packing up the money now.

But where were they? It seemed to be taking a lot of time. Were they coming this way, after all?

He glanced toward the door, then he saw it open.

Except that, no, it wasn’t the guards at all. It was just a couple of men. A younger one in a striped shirt and an older one in a T-shirt, jeans and sports coat. They were walking along the path slowly, talking and laughing.

What the fuck were they doing here?

Oh, no. Behind them the door opened again and the guards — two of them, big and armed, of course — were wheeling the cart containing the cash suitcases along the path.

Shit. The two men in front were screwing everything up.

How was he going to handle it?

He crouched in the bushes, pulling the pistol from his pocket.

“Gotta say, man. I loved your show.”

“Homicide Detail? Thanks.”

“Classic TV. Righteous.”

“We had fun making it. That’s the important thing. You interested in television?”

“Probably features for now.”

Meaning, O’Connor supposed, after a successful career he could “retire” to the small screen. Well, some people had done it. Others, like O’Connor, thought TV was a medium totally separate from feature films, but just as valid.

“I saw Town House,” O’Connor offered.

“That piece of crap?”

O’Connor shrugged. He said sincerely, “You did a good job. It was a tough role. The writing wasn’t so hot.”

McKennah laughed. “Most of the script was like: ‘SFX: Groaning as if the house itself is trying to cry for help.’ And ‘FX: blood pouring down the stairs, slippery mess. Stacey falls and is swept away.’ I thought it would be more like traditional horror. The Exorcist. The Omen. Don’t Look Now. Or Howard Hawks’ The Thing. Nineteen fifty-one and it still scares the piss out of me. Brilliant.”

They both agreed the recent British zombie movie, 28 Days Later, was one of the creepiest things ever filmed.

“You mentioned a new project. What’s it about?” O’Connor asked.

“A caper. Sort of The Italian Job meets Ocean’s Eleven. Wahlberg kind of thing. Pulling the money together now. You know how that goes…How ’bout you?”

“TV probably. A new series.”

If I get my bump, O’Connor thought.

McKennah nodded behind him. “That was pretty bizarre. Celebrity poker.”

“Beats Survivor. I don’t dive off any platforms or eat anything too low on the food chain.”

“That Sandy, she’s one hot chick. I’m glad she’s still with us.”

McKennah wore no wedding ring; nor did Sandra Glickman. O’Connor wished them the best, though he knew that two-career relationships in Hollywood were sort of like the hammer at Texas Hold ’Em — not impossible to win with; you needed luck and lots of careful forethought.

“Oh, watch it there.” McKennah pointed to a thick wire on the sidewalk. It was curled and O’Connor had nearly caught his foot. The young actor paused and squinted at it.

O’Connor glanced at him.

McKennah explained that he was concerned about paparazzi. How they’d stalk you, even lay booby traps to catch you in embarrassing situations.

O’Connor laughed. “Not a problem I’ve had for a while.”

“Damn, look.” McKennah gave a sour laugh. He walked to what the wire was attached to, a photographer’s light, set up on a short tripod halfway along the path. Angrily he unplugged it and looked around. “Some goddamn photog’s around here somewhere.”

“Maybe it’s part of the show.”

“Then Aaron should’ve told us.”

“True.”

“Oh, there’re some guards.” He nodded at the security detail with the money, behind them. “I’ll tell them. Sometimes I get a little paranoid, I have to admit. But there are some crazy fucking people out there, you know.”

“Tell me about it.”

Ralston had to do something fast.

The two men had spotted the photoflash and, it seemed, had unplugged it.

And the guards were only about fifty feet behind.

What the hell could he do?

Without the flash there was no way they’d surprise the guards.

He glanced toward Jake but the biker was hiding behind thick bushes and seemed not to have seen. And the two men were just standing beside the light, talking and now — fuck it — waiting for the guards. Assholes.

This was their last chance. Only seconds remained. Then an idea occurred to Ralston.

Hostage.

He’d grab one of the men at gunpoint and draw the guards’ attention while Jake came up behind them.

No, better than that, he’d grab one and wound the other — leg or shoulder. That would show he meant business. The security guards’d drop their guns. Jake could cuff and tape them and the two men would flee. Everybody would be so busy caring for the wounded man, he and Jake could get to their truck before anybody realized which way they’d gone.

He pulled on the ski mask and, taking a deep breath, stepped fast out of the bushes, lifting the barrel toward the older of the two men, the one in the T-shirt and jacket, who gazed at him in astonishment. He aimed at the man’s knee and started to pull the trigger.

O’Connor gasped, seeing the small man materialize from the bushes and aim a gun at him.

He’d never had a real gun pointed toward him — only fake ones on the set of the TV shows — and his initial reaction was to cringe and raise a protective hand.

As if that would do any good.

“No, wait!” he shouted involuntarily.

But just as the man was about to shoot, there came a flash of motion from his right, accompanied by a grunting gasp.

Dillon McKennah leapt forward and, with his left hand, expertly twisted away the pistol. With his right he delivered a stunning blow to the assailant, sending him staggering back, cradling his wrist. McKennah then moved in again and flipped the man to his belly and knelt on his back, calling for the guards. The gesture seemed a perfect karate move from an action-adventure film.

O’Connor, still too stunned to feel afraid, glanced back at the sound of footsteps running toward the parking lot. “There’s another one, too! That way!”

But the guards remained on the sidewalk, drawing their guns. One stayed with the money, looking around. The other ran forward, calling into his microphone. In less than ten seconds the walkway was filled with security guards and Las Vegas cops, too, who were apparently stationed in the hotel for the show.

Two officers jogged in the direction O’Connor indicated he’d heard fleeing footsteps.

The assailant’s ski mask was off, revealing an emaciated little man in his forties, eyes wide with fear and dismay.

O’Connor watched a phalanx of guards, surrounding the money from Go For Broke, wheeling the cart fast into the hotel. Yet more guards arrived.

The officers who’d gone after the footsteps reported that they’d seen no one, though a couple reported a big man had jumped into a van and sped off. “Dark, that’s about all they could tell. You gentlemen all right?”

O’Connor nodded. McKennah was ashen faced. “Fine, yeah. But oh, man, I can’t believe that. I just reacted.”

“You’ve got your moves down,” O’Connor told him.

“Tae kwon do. I just do it for a sport. I never thought I’d actually use it.”

“I’m glad you did. All I could see was that guy’s eyes and I think he was about to pull the trigger.”

Diane came running out — word had spread quickly — and she hugged her husband and asked how he was.

“Fine. I’m fine. Just…I’m not even shaken. Not yet. It all happened so fast.”

A police captain arrived and supervised the arrest. When he was apprised of the circumstances the somber man shook his head. “Gives a new meaning to the term ‘reality TV,’ wouldn’t you say? Now, let’s get your statements taken.”

Shaken, Aaron Felter walked into the bar and found O’Connor and Diane, McKennah and Glickman. He ordered a club soda.

“Jesus. How are you all?”

For a man who’d almost been shot, O’Connor admitted he was doing pretty well.

“It was my idea to use cash. I thought it’d play better. Man, this’s my fault.”

“You can hardly blame yourself for some wacko, Aaron. Who was he?”

“Some punk from L.A., apparently. Got a history of petty theft, the captain tells me. He had a partner but he got away.”

They talked about the incident and O’Connor recounted McKennah’s martial arts skills. The young actor seemed embarrassed. He repeated, “I just reacted.”

Felter said, “I’ve got to say. I’m sure this fucked you up some, pardon my French,” he said, glancing at the women.

“I’m so offended,” Sandra Glickman said, frowning, “you motherfucking cocksucker.”

They all laughed.

Felter continued, “Are you cool going ahead with the show?”

McKennah and Glickman said they were. O’Connor said, “Of course,” but then he caught something in the producer’s eyes. “That’s not really what you’re asking, is it, Aaron?”

A laugh. “Okay. What I want to know is: If we go ahead with the show tomorrow, how are people going to react? I want your honest opinions. Should we give it some time to calm down? The dust to settle?”

“Which people?” McKennah asked. “The audience?”

“Exactly. Are they going to think it’s in bad taste. I mean somebody could’ve gotten hurt bad.”

O’Connor laughed. “Excuse me, Aaron, but when have you ever known a TV show to fail because it’s in poor taste?”

Aaron Felter pointed his finger at the man.

“Score one for the old guy” was the message in his eyes.

The Thursday finale of Go For Broke began with a description of the events of last night. But since Entertainment Tonight and every other quasi news program in the universe had covered the story, it made little sense to rehash the facts.

Besides, there was poker to be played.

With the same fanfare as yesterday — and five sunglass-clad guards nearby — the play among the last three contestants began.

They played for some time without any significant changes in their positions. Then O’Connor got his first good hole cards of the night. An ace and jack, both spades.

The betting began. O’Connor played it cautious, though, checking at first then matching the other bets or raising slightly.

The flop cards were another ace, a jack and a two, all varied suits.

Not bad, he thought…

Betting continued, with both Glickman and McKennah now raising significantly. Though he was uneasy, O’Connor kept a faint smile on his face as he matched the hundred thousand bet by McKennah.

The fourth card, the turn, went faceup smoothly onto the table under the dealer’s skillful hands. It was another two.

Glickman eyed both of her opponents’ piles of cash. But then she held back, checking. Which could mean a weak hand or was a brilliant strategy if she had a really strong one.

When the bet came to McKennah he slid out fifty thousand.

O’Connor raised another fifty. Glickman hesitated and then matched the hundred with a brassy laugh.

The final card went down, the river. It was an eight. This meant nothing to O’Connor. His hand was set. Two pair, aces and jacks. It was a fair hand for Texas Hold ’Em, but hardly a guaranteed winner.

But they’d be thinking he had a full house, aces and twos, or maybe even a four of a kind — in twos.

They, of course, could have powerful hands as well.

Then Glickman made her move. She pushed everything she had left into the middle of the table.

After a moment of debate McKennah folded.

O’Connor glanced into the brash comedian’s eyes, took a deep breath and called her, counting out the money to match the bet.

If he lost he’d have about fifty thousand to call his own and his time on Go For Broke would be over.

Sandy Glickman gave a wry smile. She slid her cards facedown into the mush — the pile of discards. She said, for the microphone, “Not many people know when I’m bluffing. You’ve got a good eye.” The brassy woman delivered another message to him when she leaned forward to embrace him, whispering: “You fucked me and you didn’t even buy me dinner.”

It was quiet enough that the censors didn’t need to hit their magic button.

But she gave him a warm kiss and a wink before she headed off down the Walk of Shame.

About twenty minutes remained for the confrontation between the last two players, O’Connor with $623,000, McKennah with $877,000.

The young actor was in the button spot, to the dealer’s left. He slid in the agreed-on small blind, ten thousand, and O’Connor counted out the big, twenty.

As the dealer shuffled expertly the two men glanced at each other. O’Connor’s eyes conveyed a message. You’re an okay kid and you saved my hide yesterday, but this is poker and I wouldn’t be honest to myself, to you or the game if I pulled back.

The faint glistening in McKennah’s eyes said that he acknowledged the message. And said much the same in return.

It’s showdown time.

Let’s go for the bump.

The deals continued for a time, with neither of them winning or losing big. McKennah tried a bluff and lost. O’Connor tried a big move with three of a kind and got knocked out by a flush, which he should’ve seen coming.

A commercial break and then, with minutes enough for only one hand, the game resumed. A new deck of cards was shuffled. McKennah put in the small blind bet. The rules now dictated twenty-five thousand at this point and O’Connor himself put in fifty.

Then the deal began.

O’Connor kept his surprise off his face as he glanced at the hole cards — cowboys, a pair of kings.

Okay, not bad. Let’s see where we go from here.

McKennah glanced at his own cards without emotion. And his preflop bet was modest under the circumstances, fifty thousand.

Keeping the great stone face, O’Connor pushed in the same amount. He was tempted to raise, but decided not to. He had a good chance to win but it was still early and he didn’t want to move too fast.

The dealer burned the top card and dealt the flop. First, a two of hearts, then the four of hearts and then the king of spades.

Suddenly O’Connor had three of a kind, with the other two board cards yet to come.

McKennah bet fifty thousand. At this point, because he himself had upped the bet, it wouldn’t frighten the younger player off for O’Connor to raise him. He saw the fifty and raised by another fifty.

Murmurs from the crowd.

McKennah hesitated and saw the older actor.

The turn card, the fourth one, wasn’t helpful to O’Connor, the six of hearts. Perhaps it was useless to McKennah as well. He checked.

O’Connor noted the hesitation of the man’s betting and concluded he had a fair, but unspectacular hand. Afraid to drive him to fold, he bet only fifty thousand again, which McKennah saw.

They looked at each other over the sea of money as the fifth card, the river, slid out.

It was a king.

As delighted as O’Connor was, he regretted that this amazing hand — four of a kind — hadn’t hit the table when more people were in the game. It was likely that McKennah had a functional hand at best and that there’d be a limit to how much O’Connor could raise before his opponent folded.

As the next round of betting progressed, they goosed the pot up a bit — another hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Finally, concerned that McKennah would sense his overconfidence, O’Connor decided to buy time. “Check.” He tapped the table with his knuckles.

A ripple through the audience. Why was he doing that?

McKennah looked him over closely. Then said, “Five hundred K.”

And pushed the bet out.

The crowd gasped.

It was a bluff, O’Connor thought instantly. The only thing McKennah could have that would beat O’Connor was a straight flush. But, as Diane had made him learn over the past several weeks, the odds of that were very small.

And, damn it, he wanted his bump.

O’Connor said in a matter-of-fact voice, “All in,” pushing every penny of his into the huge pile of cash on the table, nearly a million and a half dollars.

“Gentlemen, please show your cards.”

O’Connor turned over his kings. The crowd erupted in applause.

And they then fell completely silent when McKennah turned over the modest three and five of hearts to reveal his inside straight flush.

O’Connor let out a slow breath, closed his eyes momentarily and smiled.

He stood and, before taking the Walk of Shame, shook the hand of the man who’d just won himself one hell of a bump, not to mention more than a million dollars.

The weeks that followed the airing of Go For Broke were not the best of Mike O’Connor’s life.

The loss of a quarter-million dollars hurt more than he wanted to admit.

More troubling, he thought he’d get some publicity. But in fact there was virtually none whatsoever. Oh, he got some phone calls. But they were mostly about the foiled robbery attempt and Dillon McKennah’s rescue. He finally stopped returning the reporters’ calls.

His pilot for Stories was now completely dead and nobody was the least interested in hiring him for anything other than things like Viagra or Cialis commercials.

“I can’t do it, honey,” he said to Diane.

And she’d laughed, saying, “It wouldn’t be truth-in-advertising anyway, not with you.”

And so he puttered around the house, painted the guest room. Played a little golf.

He even considered helping Diane sell real estate. He sat around the house and watched TV and movies from Netflix and On Demand.

And then one day, several weeks after the poker show, he happened to be playing couch potato and watching a World War II adventure film from the sixties. Mike O’Connor had seen it when it first came out, when he was just a boy. He’d loved it then and he’d loved it the times he’d seen it in the intervening years.

But now he realized there was something about it he’d missed. He sat up and remained riveted throughout the film.

Fascinating.

Long after the movie was over he continued to sit and think about it. He realized that he could identify with the people in the movie. They were driven and they were desperate.

He remembered a line from Homicide Detail. It had stuck with him all these years. His character, tough, rule-bending Detective Olson, had said to his sergeant, “The man’s desperate. And you know what desperation does — it turns you into a hero or it turns you into a villain. Don’t ever forget that.”

Mike O’Connor rose from the couch and headed to his closet.

“Hey, Mike. How you doing? I’m sorry it didn’t work out. That last hand. Phew. That was a cliff-hanger.”

“I saw the ratings,” O’Connor said to Aaron Felter.

“They weren’t bad.”

Not bad? No, O’Connor thought, they were over-the-top amazing. They were close to OJ confessing on Oprah, with Dr. Phil pitching in the psychobabble.

“So.” Silence rolled along for a moment. “What’re you up to next?”

Felter was pleased to see him but his attitude said that a deal was a deal. This was true in Hollywood just as much as on Wall Street. O’Connor had taken a chance and lost and the rules of business meant that his and the producer’s arrangement was now concluded.

“Taking some time off. Rewriting a bit of Stories.”

“Ah. Good. You know what goes around comes around.”

O’Connor wasn’t sure that it did. Or even what the hell the phrase meant. But he smiled and nodded.

Silence, during which the producer was, of course, wondering what exactly O’Connor was doing here.

So the actor got right down to it.

“Let me ask you a question, Aaron. You like old movies, right? Like your dad and I used to talk about.”

Another pause. Felter glanced at the spotless glass frames of his posters covering the walls. “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

A lot of people didn’t, O’Connor was thinking; they liked modern films. Oh, there was nothing wrong with that. In fifty years people would be treasuring some of today’s movies the way O’Connor treasured films like Bonnie and Clyde, M*A*S*H or Shane.

Every generation ought to like its own darlings best.

“You know, I was thinking about Go For Broke. And guess what it reminded me of?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“A movie I just saw on TV.”

“Really? About a poker showdown? An old Western?”

“No. The Guns of Navarone.” He nodded at the poster to O’Connor’s right.

“Go For Broke reminded you of that?”

“And that’s not all. It also reminded me of The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch, The Dirty Dozen, Top Gun, Saving Private Ryan, Alien…In fact, a lot of films. Action films.”

“I don’t follow, Mike.”

“Well, think about…what was the word you used when we were talking about Stories? ‘Formula.’ You start with a group of diverse heroes and send ’em on a mission. One by one they’re eliminated before the big third-act scene. Like The Guns of Navarone. It’s a great film, by the way.”

“One of the best,” Felter agreed uncertainly.

“Group of intrepid commandos. Eliminated one by one…But in a certain order, of course: sort of in reverse order of their youth or sex appeal. The stiff white guy’s one of the first to go — say, Anthony Quayle in Navarone. Or Robert Vaughn in The Magnificent Seven. Next we lose the minorities. Yaphet Kotto in Alien. Then the hotheaded young kid is bound to go. James Darren. Shouldn’t he have ducked when he was facing down the Nazi with the machine gun? I would have. But, no, he just kept going till he was dead.

“That brings us to women. If they’re not the leads, they better be careful, Tyne Daly in one of the Dirty Harry films. And even if they survive, it’s usually so they can hang on the arm of the man who wins the showdown. And who does that bring us to finally? The main opponents? The older white guy versus the enthusiastic young white guy. Tom Cruise versus Nicholson. Denzel versus Gene Hackman. Clint Eastwood versus Lee Van Cleef. DiCaprio versus all the first-class passengers on Titanic.

“Kind of like the contestants on the show. Stodgy white guy, minority, hot-headed youth, the woman…Bingham, Stone, Kresge, Sandy. And after they were gone, who was left? Old me versus young Dillon McKennah.”

“I think you’re pissed off about something, Mike. Why don’t you just tell me?”

“The game was rigged, Aaron. I know it. You wrote your quote ‘reality’ show like it was a classic Hollywood Western or war movie. You knew how it was going to come out from the beginning. You followed the formula perfectly.”

“And why the fuck would I do that?”

“Because I think you’re trying to get a movie financing package moving with Dillon McKennah. That caper film he was talking about. He’d shot himself in the foot with Town House and that other crap he appeared in. He needed a bump — for both of you.”

Felter was speechless for a moment. Then he looked down. “We talked about a few things, that’s all, Dillon and me. Hell, you and I talked about Stories. That’s my business. Oh, come on, Mike. Don’t embarrass yourself. It was a fucking pissant reality show. There was no guarantee of a bump.”

“But it did get Dillon a bump. A big one. And you know why? Because of the robbery. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that was a classic Act Two reversal — according to the formula of scriptwriting. You know how that works. Big plot twist three-quarters of the way through. Guns of Navarone? The young Greek girl, Gia Scala, the supposed patriot, turns out to be the traitor. She destroys the detonators. How’re the commandos going to blow up the German guns now? We’re sitting on the edge of our seats, wondering.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“The robbery, Aaron. The attempted robbery. It was all set up, too. You arranged the whole thing. That’s what made it more than boring reality TV. My God, you even added a dash of COPS. You got the attempt and Dillon’s Steven Seagal karate moves on security camera and that night it was on YouTube and every network in the country. TV at its best. You think there wasn’t a human being in the country who wasn’t going to turn on the second episode of Go For Broke and watch Dillon and me slug it out?”

“I don’t know what—”

O’Connor held up a hand. “Now, don’t embarrass yourself, Aaron. On the set of Homicide Detail, we had an advisor, a real cop in the LAPD. He’s retired now but we’re still good buddies. I talked to him and told him I had a problem. I needed to know some facts about the case. He made some calls. First of all, the gun that Sammy Ralston had? It was a fake gun. From a studio property department. The sort they use on TV sets, the sort I carried for seven years. Second, turns out that his phone records show Ralston called a prisoner, Joey Fadden, in Lompoc prison a few weeks ago. The same prisoner that you interviewed as part of that series you shot on California prisons last year. I think you paid Joey to get Ralston’s name…Ah, ah, ah, let me finish. Gets better. Third, Ralston keeps talking about this mysterious biker named Jake who put the whole thing together and nobody knows about.”

“Jake.”

“I dug up my fake shield from the TV show and went to the bar on Melrose where Ralston said he met with Jake. I had a mug shot with me.”

“A—”

“From Variety. It was a picture of you and your assistant. The big one. The bartender recognized him. You got him to play the role of Jake, costume, fake tats, the whole thing…I just walked past his office, by the way. There’re posters on his wall, too. One of them’s Brokeback Mountain. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Jake. Think about it.”

Felter said nothing but his expression was essentially: Shit.

“Dillon knew about the setup. He knew about the fake gun. That’s why he took on a guy who was armed. He wasn’t in any danger. It was all planned. All planned for the bump.”

O’Connor shook his head. “I should’ve guessed before. I mean, the final hand, Aaron? You know how most poker games end: Two guys half-comatose from lack of sleep and one beats the other with three sixes over a pair of threes. A four-of-a-kind versus a straight flush? That only happens in the movies. That’s not real life.”

“How could I rig the game?”

“Because you hired a sleight-of-hand artist as the dealer. You saw his card tricks when we met him…I ran him down. And I checked the tapes. There were no close-ups of his hands. I’ve got his name and address. Oh, and I also got the phone number of the gaming commission in Nevada.”

The man closed his eyes. Maybe he was thinking of excuses and explanations.

O’Connor almost hoped he’d say something. Which would give the actor a chance to throw out his famous tag line from the old TV series. Save it for the judge.

But Felter didn’t try to excuse himself. He looked across the desk, as if it were a poker table, and he said, “So where do we go from here?”

“To put it in terms of television, Aaron,” Mike O’Connor said, pulling several thick envelopes out of his briefcase, “let’s make a deal.”