Last Call (30 page)
pensive.Twenty grand. But she’ll bend over backward—literally—
if I ask her to. Rosa gets about half that.”
Theo glanced toward the happy guy in the middle. “What about him?”
“Five hundred bucks. And a free blood test.”
The director rose from his chair and shouted “Cut!”
Booker said,“You want to meet the girls?”
They were gorgeous, fit, and probably a couple of soap opera re-jects.They climbed off the pool table, completely comfortable in their nakedness, and wiped each other clean. It took more than one towel.
Theo said,“Not this time.”
Booker removed his cigarette and cupped his other hand like a megaphone.“All right—girls and Tony.The nurse is here. I need two vials from each of you.”
They groaned, but not very much. AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases were the porn industry’s biggest threat, and nobody in their right mind worked for a filmmaker who didn’t do blood tests.
Theo knew that much about the business of sex, and he also knew how surprisingly tight-knit the porn industry was because of it. Someone like Mel Booker knew everyone.
“So, what brings you here?” said Booker.
“A guy named Lance Gilford.”
Booker walked to the coffee machine and poured half a cup, black. Theo declined.
“What about him?” said Booker.
“You know him?”
“Not well, but I know of him. Big-time investor. Mostly edgy stuff.”
“How do you mean ‘edgy’?”
“He joint-ventures with Reality Bitches, companies like that.
It’s the kind of stuff I just don’t do. Mostly amateur photography.
Guys on videotape beating the shit out of their girlfriends. Five 260
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punks from a Hialeah gang raping a teenage girl. It’s all very low budget but high profit.You put the label ‘real’ on anything with sex and violence, you get pervs paying through the nose.”
Theo reconsidered on the coffee and took a cup. “We talking about the same Lance Gilford? The one I’m after owns a studio called Memories in the Gables.”
“Same guy,” said Booker. “All his porn is done through off-shore banks and some Costa Rican companies.The studio is a total front.”
“Money laundering?”
“It’s more complicated than that. He married a minister’s daughter, so he would shoot a few weddings and bar mitzvahs to convince his family and friends he’s legit.”
“A man with two lives,” said Theo.
“Yeah,” said Booker, chuckling. “But it finally caught up with him. His wife moved out and took off for Europe about six weeks ago. Hiding from the media before the scandal hits, I’m sure.This is gonna be one nasty divorce. Anyway, what’s your angle? You looking to do some business with him?”
“Business?” said Theo, giving the word careful thought.“Yeah.
You could say that. Him and me got
unfinished
business.”
Lance Gilford canceled his two o’clock appointment. He’d played it pretty cool with Swyteck, but he still had plenty to think about. Pretending to care about some bridezilla’s $300,000 wedding from hell was the last thing he felt like doing. He went to his computer and pulled up the Portia Knight rape film.
How could he have missed his own image in the mirror?
Perhaps there was some validity to the notion that he had been so careful to protect his friends that he’d failed to protect himself.
He’d been so concerned, in fact, that he even paid off the frat boys to destroy the 1972 composite in the chapter room, just in case.
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The real explanation for his oversight, however, was far less heroic.
He’d made the mistake of editing the film at home. The old sixteen-millimeter footage wasn’t digital technology, of course, so it took fairly sophisticated equipment to do the equivalent of digital frame-by-frame analysis. His equipment here in the studio rivaled anything the FBI used.The same could not be said about his two-year-old stuff at home.
“Idiot!” he said through clenched teeth.
There it was, his mug and the Greek letters of his old Pi Alpha Delta jersey right on-screen—his momentary reflection in the mirror, visible only with the kind of frame-by-frame advancement that he could never have accomplished at home.
With an angry click of the mouse, Gilford exited the computer program. The LCD screen went blue and turquoise with Carib-bean Sea wallpaper, far too calming and relaxed for his present mood.
He drew a deep breath and let it out. No doubt about it: He had trouble on his hands. He hadn’t completely lied to Swyteck.
Although it wasn’t true that his wife had taken ill, the part about dragging out the old film for badly needed cash was no lie. In hindsight, he should have edited out the faces of the drunk hecklers, even if they weren’t Pi Alpha Delta fraternity brothers. But the angry expressions of those young men added a certain realism to the overall effect from an artist’s point of view—and he was an artist, no matter what people thought about his films. In terms of CYA strategy, however, it was a big mistake.
Gilford picked up the telephone. He dreaded making this call, but he forced himself to punch out the numbers. He reached a secretary and gave his name. She had no idea who he was and asked him to hold.Two minutes later, the voice of an old friend was on the line.
“What is it this time, Lance?”
It was the firm and confident voice of a man of power and 262
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position, but it was also the distinctly agitated tone of an old friend who was still ticked off about the release of the Portia Knight rape film.
Gilford cleared his throat to speak. “We have a problem,” he said.“Knight and his lawyer got the movie.”
“So do a hundred thousand Internet perverts around the globe.”
“But Jack Swyteck came to see me today. He knows I filmed it.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No. Not at first. But he had . . . proof.”
“So you admitted it was yours?”
“Well, you know, it was kind of—”
“Stop blubbering! Just tell me how he knows it’s your film.”
Gilford started to explain, but he was suddenly afraid. He didn’t want to come across as stupid and careless.“I think the FBI helped them.”
“That’s great, Lance. Just great.What the hell were you thinking when you put that thing out on the market?”
“I lost my ass on that gambling website. I’m sorry, but some of the folks I borrow money from don’t fully grasp the legal niceties of a nonrecourse loan. So the movie is out there. Knight and his lawyer know I was the cameraman, and even worse, they’ve tied it to the PAD house in Miami.”
There was stone silence on the line.
Gilford said,“You still there?”
“My face is in that movie,” he said in a slow, deep voice.
“I understand that.”
“I was angry that you left me in there, but I didn’t freak. So long as the film wasn’t linked to Miami, I figured there was little to no chance that anyone would recognize me thirty-something years after the fact.”
“That was my thinking, too.”
“But you thought wrong. So now I’m angry.
Really
angry.”
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Few things were more chilling than the flat, even voice of someone who was
really
angry.The room suddenly felt hotter. Gilford was starting to sweat. “I—I don’t know how many ways to apologize. But we have to stay together on this, right? We need to stay focused. And the question is, Now what?”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“How?”
“My way,” he said, and the line clicked in Gilford’s ear.
I t was a big night for Theo’s future, and he was trying hard not to let the past spoil his dream of a true jazz bar in Coconut Grove.
Theo had negotiated the business terms of the five-year lease on his own, but he was smart enough to enlist the services of a lawyer, especially since Jack came free of charge. The final lease agreement was in hand and ready for signature in the morning.
Theo and his uncle met Jack at the property around 9:00 p.m. for one final walk-through inspection.
Jack looked a little frazzled. He had a trial starting in the morning, and somehow fifteen years of courtroom experience and ump-teen successful jury verdicts didn’t eliminate the night-before jit-ters.The mega-cup of coffee probably wasn’t helping.
Theo pried the extra-large double latte from Jack’s hands and placed it on the bar.“If my well was stocked, I’d give you a drink,”
he said.
“Do I seem nervous?” said Jack.
“As a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers,” said Uncle Cy.
Theo and Jack started in the kitchen, and Cy stayed behind in the bar area.The landlord had the propane line reconnected, so this was their first check on the stove and grill, the only major appliance included in the lease. One of the burners didn’t light.The room started to smell like gas.Theo pulled a matchbook from his pocket.
“Don’t!” Jack shouted.
“I was kidding, okay? You’re way too uptight.What’s going on, man?”
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Jack looked around like a junkie, as if in need of another hit of caffeine.“I need your opinion on something.”
“Shoot.”
“What do you honestly think of Andie?” said Jack.
Theo looked up from the stove.“Why do you ask?”
“Can you turn that unlit burner off before this place explodes?”
“Relax. It’s not like the deal is sealed and we assumed the risk of loss yet.”
Jack narrowed his eyes with curiosity.“How does a guy with a rapper’s vocabulary spit out legal terms like Clarence Darrow?”
“Prison library. But don’t change the subject. What’s up with you and Andie?”
Jack offered a schoolboy’s shrug. “I’m thinking about, you know, maybe giving her a call.”
“You mean for a date?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“Let me get this straight.You’re gonna pick up the telephone and ask Andie Henning out on a date?”
“Why is that so incredible?”
Theo said nothing.
“Theo?”
“Sorry, dude. My mind just flashed with the image of pigs flying over a frozen hell.”
“Very funny.”
“What about Rene?”
“I haven’t heard boo from her since she went back to Africa.”
Theo tried the faulty burner again.This time it lit right up. He waved his hand, as if it were a sign.“Call her.”
“You don’t think Andie and I are more like putting a match to a gas leak?”
“Definitely. But what a way to go, huh?”
They finished the kitchen in twenty minutes, and Jack’s punch 266
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list in progress had only a few small items on it—low water pressure on one of the sinks, some cracks in the tile floor. At that point, Theo hit him with the lease addendum that the landlord had faxed over that afternoon. Jack remained in the kitchen to read it, where the lighting was better.Theo and his uncle handled the bar inspection.
“Tell me somethin’,” said Cy.
Theo was on his belly with a flashlight, checking out the beer tap connections. His car keys and cell phone were digging into his groin like a well-aimed jousting lance, so he emptied his pockets and placed them on the shelf.“What?” said Theo, groaning.
“What is it you’re trying to find out?” his uncle said.
Theo knew the old man wasn’t talking about the inspection, but he played dumb.“What do you mean?”
“What were you runnin’ over to South Beach for, talkin’ to a guy like Mel Booker?”
He climbed from under the bar and looked at his uncle.“How’d you know I was talking to Mel today?”
“Trina told me.”
Theo couldn’t really be angry. He hadn’t told her
not
to tell Uncle Cy.“Just following leads, that’s all.”
“Is it all about finding the guy who shot you from that red car?
Or who killed your momma?”
“Both.”
“See, that’s the problem.”
“Why?”
“Bad enough someone’s trying to kill you. Don’t understand why you gotta go looking for a way to kill yourself.”
“I’m not gonna get myself killed.”
“I didn’t say
get
killed. I said kill yourself.”
“You aren’t seriously afraid I might commit suicide, are you?”
“No, no.That ain’t it.” He struggled for the right words.“What I’m saying is this. Right now you got your detective hat on, sniff-LAST CALL
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ing around like a bloodhound for clues, following this lead and that lead wherever it takes you. I’m telling you to stop for a minute.
Stop and think.”
“About what?”
“If you want to go looking into who killed your momma, that’s your business. But you better prepare yourself to live with whatever you find out.”
“Some frat boy filmed her getting raped, and she ended up a drug-addicted hooker who got her throat slit. How much worse can it get?”
“That’s a really good question, Theo. All I’m saying is there’s gonna be more to the story.”
“You know something I should know?”
Cy didn’t answer right away.Theo wasn’t sure what to make of the silence.“This ain’t no time to be keepin’ secrets, old man.”
“I just knew your momma better than anyone else did. So I can say this without no doubts in my mind: this ain’t a story with a happy ending.”
“I appreciate that.”
He took a step closer, his expression very serious.“I don’t think you do. Not entirely. And that’s what really worries me.”
Theo looked at him carefully, trying to discern his full meaning. His uncle looked right back at him, as if trying to convey something without words. Had Trina been there, she would have kicked both of them in the ass and screamed,“Just spit it out!” But she wasn’t there, which left too few X chromosomes in the room for a meaningful conversation.
The old man walked away from the bar and went back to the kitchen to wrangle up a ride home.
Jack gave Uncle Cy a lift, and Theo stayed behind. There was more work to do on site, but the old man was tired and Jack still 268
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had to outline his opening statement for tomorrow’s trial. They were sitting at a red light three blocks away when Cy realized his mistake.
“I don’t have my house key.”