My Gun Has Bullets (11 page)

The
My Gun Has Bullets
killing was the lead story on every newscast and would undoubtedly be front-page news in every rag from the
New York Times
to
Soldier of Fortune
by morning. Naturally, the business affairs department, eager to protect the corporate image, was vehemently refusing all requests for footage of the killing.

So, naturally, the suits were stunned when Boyd marched in and ordered them to give the gruesome shots to anyone who wanted them—but to charge twenty times the usual clip fee up front. The media would scream, but they'd pay.

As long as Pinnacle Studios was going to get the negative publicity, Boyd figured they might as well make a few bucks off of it. Still, the Japanese owners would probably shit in their sushi, and behead him to save corporate face.

Yet, amid all this turmoil, two things dominated Boyd Hartnell's thoughts. His hair and Sabrina Bishop which, in reality, weren't mutually exclusive.

For her, he had to have perfect hair. Only moments ago, he'd reflexively run his hand through his wiry locks and was shocked, actually closer to terrified, to see tiny strands between his fingers. Even if, miraculously, the chest hair managed to take hold on his scalp despite the stress this crisis was putting him through, it wouldn't be enough to entice Sabrina Bishop, not when she could have the likes of Thad Paul fondling her glorious orbs
and
get paid for the pleasure.

No, what he needed on his head was something thicker, richer, manlier—something she couldn't resist petting, smelling, and stroking. More drastic measures were going to be necessary. He'd already put in calls to Dr. Desi and his veterinarian.

In the meantime, nothing wrong with enticing the lass with his wit and charm. He rewound the tape for later viewing at home, and certain inclusion in his growing Sabrina Bishop collection, and headed for his private bathroom for five minutes of delicate combing before meeting her.

# # #

Esther Radcliffe reacted with surprise to a revelation from someone who wasn't there.

She was standing in front of the Panavision camera, reacting to two characters who were not there and who, in fact, Esther wouldn't actually meet face to face until the last day of shooting. The other actors' side of the conversation would be filmed tomorrow, while Esther was enjoying one of her many days off.

Esther was long past the days when she'd stand around feeding lines to other actors getting their close-ups. She had better things to do.

So now she moved from one set to another, filming halves of scenes that would be completed while she was shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue, floating in her heart-shaped pool, or demanding multiple orgasms from her young lover.

The camera trained on her was covered with so many filters and gels, all carefully calculated to melt twenty-five years off Esther's face, it was a wonder any light at all was passing through the lens and getting captured on celluloid. But those tricks, combined with clever lighting and editing, smoothed more wrinkles than her $120,000 worth of plastic surgery.

Just behind the camera, an overweight assistant director sat in a canvas chair, propping Esther's cue cards on his shelf-like girth, while the bored script supervisor read the other actors' parts in her weary, gravelly voice. Esther was long past the days when she'd memorize dialogue.

Out of a seven-day shooting schedule, Esther was only required to be there half the time, and that was before Sabrina Bishop showed up. In previous years, the network tried to scare her by giving her entire episodes off instead, which gave them a chance to try other actors out as potential replacements. Buddy Ebsen, Charo, Bernie Kopell, Jean Stapleton, and even Charlie Callas and his wacky tongue were trotted in and out. But ratings dived when she was gone, and the network quickly went back to letting her have her half weeks.

Now that Sabrina Bishop was in the cast, Don DeBono had made noises about trying it again, but Esther didn't feel threatened. Sabrina Bishop wouldn't be around long enough to be a threat.

Already, Charlie Willis was out of the picture and was probably ruing the day he crossed Esther Radcliffe. Or so she thought as she stood in front of the camera, reading her lines and emoting up a storm. Her only regret was that he wasn't twisted in rigor mortis right now. But she held out hope.

Deaths in Hollywood tend to happen in threes. The way Esther figured it, if someone could get shot on
My Gun Has Bullets,
why couldn't Sabrina get stabbed with a real knife on
Miss Agatha?
Two disasters like that might fluster Boyd Hartnell so badly he might accidentally slip on his hairpiece, crash through his office window, and fall to his death. It would serve him right for tampering in her domain.

The thought amused her so much she smiled wickedly in the midst of a scene where she was supposed to be grief-stricken. The smile was not lost on the director, Dag Luthan, but he wasn't going to say anything. This job was too important to him. Ever since
Gilligan's Island
was cancelled, work had been hard to come by.

Sabrina Bishop noticed the smile, too, especially since Esther was looking at her when she flashed it, but she was too absorbed in what had happened to give it much thought. The idea of Charlie Willis actually killing a man during a scene unsettled her more than she thought it should. Sabrina was dressed in her black leather outfit, the one reserved for action scenes, and she paced around the soundstage, trying to work it out in her mind.

Charlie Willis was just some strange guy who gave her his shirt and told her some wild lies about Esther Radcliffe. Why should she care what happened to him?

Because he called her
ma'am.

It was silly, she knew. But in that instant, he won her over. It almost didn't matter what absurd drivel spilled out of his mouth after that, the
ma'am
was sincere and true. No one had ever been sincere and true to her in Hollywood, and she treasured that moment, even if it was just that ... a moment.

But it was the most resonant moment in her first few weeks on the television treadmill. She had never worked so hard. In the blur of days and nights, of dialogue learned, spoken, and forgotten, she'd had little time to reflect on the experience that was dominating her life.

She was in the makeup trailer by five a.m., on the stage at seven, working straight through for twelve hours, except for the odd moment or two grazing at the craft services table. She finally left the lot for Venice sometime around nine p.m. Once home, she had time for a yogurt and banana, and then a hot bath, where she would memorize her lines for the next morning.

But today, the news about Charlie Willis had intruded into her thoughts as nothing else had since she began
Miss Agatha.
She actually gave a damn, and she couldn't figure out why. It couldn't be that Charlie called her
ma'am,
talked to
her
and not her breasts, gave her his shirt, or had a refreshingly ordinary body.

No, it definitely couldn't have been any of those things. She wouldn't be reacting to anything as dumb as that. There had to be a deeper, more compelling reason why, out of all the things to think about, she couldn't stop thinking about him. And couldn't suppress the urge to give Charlie some comfort in the midst of his tragedy.

His shirt.

She suddenly remembered she had it in her trailer. Neatly washed and ironed. She
could
take it to him, and if he needed someone to talk to, she
could
listen. What would be wrong with that?

Her heart suddenly started to pound nervously. She couldn't believe it. Here she was a television star, well, nearly a television star, making $13,500 an episode, with a body most women would kill for, and she was getting all nervous about giving a man back his shirt.

A man she hardly knew. And what she knew about Charlie was that he'd told her a malicious lie about Esther Radcliffe, that he'd tried to tarnish Sabrina's first day on the job. And did she really want to associate herself with someone, at this fragile stage in her budding career, who had just blown away a guy? A man who was going to get thoroughly trashed in the press? Imagine what the media would say about
her
if she got lumped in with him. She could lose her job.

No way, protect yourself, honey, she told herself sternly. Guys like him are easy to come by.

Then why hadn't she come by any?

So she came to a decision. She'd return the shirt. She just wouldn't be seen with him. First, though, she'd have to find out where he lived. That shouldn't be too hard. She was about to go back to her trailer and get her excuse to see him out of the closet when she got sidetracked by the arrival of Boyd Hartnell. The first thing she noticed was that his hair was combed like Christopher Reeve's in
Superman,
a curl conspicuously dangling over his forehead.

"Sabrina, I just had to come down and tell you how fantastic the dailies were," he enthused. "It's your best performance of the season."

"We've only done three episodes," she said, noticing his eyes shift rapidly between her face and her breasts.

"And you're maturing into the role each week," he replied. "The network loves it, and frankly, I think they're going to want to talk spin-off pretty soon." He leaned closer to her, lowering his voice, and using the opportunity to look down her cleavage. "No one is more devastated by the incident on stage eleven today than me, but out of tragedy can come opportunity. The network has an open time period, they have to fill it with something. So ... I think
we
should be talking spin-off
now."

"We?" Sabrina's head was spinning. This was happening too fast. A month ago she was in a warehouse in Valencia, Thad Paul between her legs and a camera between her breasts. Now they were talking about giving her a television series of her own.

"Let's bounce some ideas around," Boyd said, "see if we can find something that fits you, a high concept we can put on the development fast track."

Ideas? No one had ever asked her for ideas before, they just wanted her body, though she had a strong suspicion Boyd wanted that, too. But this was opportunity knocking, albeit panting and drooling, but knocking just the same. If she could play this right, she'd never have to kiss up to the Boyd Hartnells of the world again.

"Sure," she said, taking his arm, "let's talk."

Charlie and his shirt would have to wait.

C
onnie was to blame. If she hadn't run off with Atilano the gardener, Charlie Willis would probably have a working sprinkler system. And if he did, he could turn it on right now and soak John Tesh, who was standing on the sidewalk in front of Charlie's house, addressing the millions of
Entertainment Tonight
viewers, promising them an in-depth look at ''The Rise and Fall of Charlie Willis."

It would be a short segment.

McGarrett had been wandering around the house, whining and mewing, ever since John Tesh showed up. The dog had always preferred Leeza Gibbons. Charlie had been hiding in the dark, stealing glances outside through the slats of his Levolor blinds for a week.

Throughout the night and well into the morning, he watched the reporters jockeying for position.
Hard Copy
duked it out with
A Current Affair
for the opportunity to report from his driveway. A cheeky correspondent for
Inside Edition
tried to rise above it all by straddling the fire hydrant, only to topple into the overgrown grass and McGarrett's droppings.
Nightline
went the classy route—they rented the house across the street, and planted Ted Koppel inside, right smack in front of the living room window, where the press scrambling in Charlie's yard became an exciting backdrop for a special report on "The First Victim of Television Violence."

His window had become a television screen. Nothing he saw through it seemed real. He'd killed a man, and there was a horde of reporters out front vilifying him to a nation. And yet, it was so sudden, so hard to comprehend, so big, that somehow Charlie couldn't help feeling it was all make-believe, and no matter how complicated and bleak it seemed, it would end happily with all the loose ends tied up.

That's the way it had always been on
Adam-12.
No matter how much disorder and mayhem there was in his life growing up, no matter how cruel the men were his mother married, no matter how loud his sister sobbed, no matter how powerless he felt, he could always find order on television. There, if nowhere else, he could control his environment. He could be certain good would prevail over evil, and everything would, eventually, make perfect sense.

As much as he wanted it to be that way in real life, it wasn't. He'd certainly found that out in his twelve years on the Beverly Hills police force. Which was one reason why, when given the chance, he gave up on reality and took a day job in the land of make-believe. Where Charlie Willis became Detective Lieutenant Derek Thorne, man of action, a hero capable of bringing justice to a world beset with danger, solving the most perplexing, complicated and impossible mysteries, reducing them to simple problems with one simple solution.

My Gun Has Bullets.

It couldn't be any clearer, or more orderly, than that.

But at the end of the day, Charlie had to return to reality, which had become, since Connie left him, as empty and joyless as the Ikea showroom he had unconsciously recreated in his home. His place in Reseda had become little more than a rest stop on his commute between real life and reel life.

Charlie picked up the acrylic paperweight and stared at the bullet, his ticket from L.A. to Oz, that Iay suspended inside it. He remembered Alice, the extra he'd brought home from the set. He remembered her holding it in front of her eyes, staring at it as if it had magical powers, desperately wanting to be transported with it to the make-believe land Charlie inhabited. What fantasy had he seduced her with? Something about getting shot while single-handedly taking down some robbers.