The Cutting Room (4 page)

At last, the train came to a halt. A river of sweat crashed from my face down the length of my body. All I had to do now was claw my way to the doors and maybe, just maybe, I could get out.

But the doors didn’t open. The train just sat there.

The cop was now only two people away. I thought of explaining, of saying that Gus was really the one he wanted, that I was innocent. But I had recently been interrogated, and it wouldn’t have looked good. Besides, I might have had to mention
The Magnificent Ambersons
.

Then the bell sounded. The doors flew open. And the stampede of people swept me out onto the platform with them. From the corner of my eye, I could see the cop flailing, his hand above the pressing mob, as I got away.

On the platform, there was a clearing in the multitude, right before a staircase. I took it, ran, and rose to the top of the stairs, never looking back. Behind me, I heard the train take off, carrying Gus, and carrying his treasure.

PRINT IT!

Direct from my L.A. rodents . . . guess which Hollywood subparstar is secretly thinking of starring in—wait for it!—Orson Welles’s life story! This lame-o who creates suffering is also planning to direct a remake of
Citizen Kane
! He’s been quietly buying up rights to all bios and articles about the big boy and noodling around for rights to Orson’s movies! Be afraid, be very afraid. Or, should I say, Hold your breath, Mama.

I scrolled down the story with excitement—and relief. It was a week later, and my wounds were only now beginning to heal. What hurt the most was the thought of having Gus right where I wanted him, and then letting him slip—or, to be more exact, hulk—out of my grasp. Without the money to go to L.A.—or any idea of where Gus had gone there—I was stymied, paralyzed, and more frustrated than if this whole thing had never begun.

Alan’s murder was covered only cursorily, as a comic curiosity by the tabloids (
MOVIE FAN’S FADE-OUT . . . TV ODDBALL KILLED FOR DRUGS
), and in two paragraphs in the Metro section of the
Times
, with a picture of the accused female crackhead, who just looked baffled.

All I could do was halfheartedly return to
Trivial Man
and my typesetting gigs, and wait bitterly for someone else to announce the existence of—and to see!—the complete
Ambersons
before me.

The story in PRINT IT! was my first ray of light.

PRINTIT!.com was a grassroots phenomenon of the trivial community, and the envy of all who toiled there. From his parents’ house on Long Island, Abner Cooley had started a Web site devoted to gossip about the movie business. The name, of course, was a film reference but also an ironic take on paper trails versus computer communications.

Soon, through secret sources in movie companies in Hollywood—anyone who copied memos, answered phones, coddled egos, and took crap—Abner had developed the best underground network in the country. He obtained top-secret scripts and downloaded them, ran classified preview screening reactions, even divulged medical and financial truths about the stars.

Though barely twenty-eight, remarkably overweight and diabetic, with only a high school education, Abner was feared and—more than respected—loathed by multimillionaires all over L.A. To neutralize him, they offered him high-paying consultant jobs, even development deals. But Abner wanted to stay in his parents’ basement, play with his computer, and know what he knew.

Now he knew something of importance to me.

I don’t know how to drive. As I rode the train out to Long Island—far out, more than an hour, to a nondescript middle-class suburb—I rehearsed what I would say to Abner.

I could tell that his typically unsubtle blind item was really about Ben Williams: “creates suffering” meant Cause Pain, his action movie series, and “Hold your breath, Mama” was “Don’t even breathe, baby,” Ben’s catchphrase. I was too obsessed by my own quest to even register disgust over Williams’s hubris—imagine remaking
Citizen Kane
! I only knew that I needed what Abner never gave out: his contacts. And I couldn’t even tell him why: because Gus Ziegler may have gone to L.A. to call on Ben Williams.

Abner and I were nodding acquaintances, and nod was what he did when he saw me. He sat, full as Falstaff, in his little swivel chair in his parents’ rec room, a thin, blond beard trying to lend shape to his babyfat face. Orson Welles had played Falstaff in his own film,
Chimes at Midnight,
also sometimes simply called
Falstaff
.

“Well, Roy,” he said, “what brings you all the way out here?”

“I was just in the neighborhood.”

Abner laughed. He knew that there was no reason to ever come to Saddleview, Long Island. “Yeah, right.”

I came as clean as I could. “You hear about Alan Gilbert?”

Abner only shrugged, indifferently. His trivial influence had become so great now that he placed himself above such public-access trash as Alan. When the time came, there would be no mere Metro section mentions for Abner. So I didn’t go down that road.

I said, “I want to know more about Ben Williams and Orson Welles.”

Abner nodded, his young jowels wagging. “I was that subtle, ay?”

“You know you never are.”

“That’s true. Well, what do you want to know?”

“I’m interested in doing some kind of subversion. Screw up his computer systems. I’m talking to a hacker right now.”

Abner seemed impressed—not by me, by himself. I knew if I could play on his vanity, his own sense of his colossal impact on the film business—on the world in general—I might get somewhere. I was right. If it were possible, he puffed up further, appreciating his power, a little king.

“I see,” he nearly whispered. “Is this why we couldn’t talk about this on the phone?”

“Right.”

“This seems pretty extreme for you.” Abner lit up one of the cigarettes he sneaked while his parents were at work. “I didn’t take you for the anarchist type.”

“You don’t have to be an anarchist to not want Ben Williams to remake
Citizen Kane
. What’s the sled going to say, ‘Rosie’?”

Rosie Bryant was Ben Williams’s movie star wife, a Southern-fried no-talent with implanted breasts, on whom he constantly cheated and with whom he shared three children.

“Right.” Abner laughed. “She could play Marion Davies.”

Kane
, of course, was based on the life of publisher William Randolph Hearst, whose mistress had been the silent film star Marion Davies. She was far more talented than her screen counterpart rather unfairly portrayed her.

“Well, I like the idea,” Abner said seriously. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you with it. I need to keep my contacts over there.”

“But they wouldn’t be involved. I’d make sure to keep them out of it. All I would need to know is who they are.”

“Sorry. I appreciate your rage. But if I acted out every time I reported some trashing of film culture, I’d do nothing else.”

You mean you wouldn’t still be in bed with Hollywood, as you essentially are now, I thought. Abner’s disobedience had become his way of being connected to the powers-that-be, just as he smoked in his parents’ house but never moved away.

“Look,” I said, as if desperate. “I’ll offer you something else.”

“What’s that?” Abner was starting to lose interest.

“My
Revenge
poster.”

Abner twirled away from the computer to which he had returned. Greed shone in his bloodshot eyes.

“This is for real?”

“Absolutely.”

The original name of
Return of the Jedi
, the third in the Star Wars trilogy, had been
Revenge of the Jedi
. Feeling it was too warlike, the producers changed
Revenge
to
Return
. Some posters with the original name had been printed, however, some of which remained in some people’s possession. Through my own sources, I was one of those people, and anyone who had ever visited my apartment knew it.

Abner had been there once, years ago.

“That’s a different story,” he said.

I was glad to see that Abner’s connection to the trivial community—or at least to their salable collectibles—was, in the end, greater than his allegiance to executives.

Still, understandably, he was suspicious.

“You feel
that
strongly about this?”

“Yes.” I paused for effect. “And I
would
like to know one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You just posted the Ben Williams thing today. Tell me how Gus Ziegler might have known about it a week ago.”

To my surprise and dismay, Abner’s jolly face seemed to harden. His eyes squinted; even his nostrils flared. Then he just growled at me, “Get the hell out of my parents’ house.”

A few minutes later, I stood unceremoniously outside the Cooleys’ house. I had walked there from the train station and had no way to get back.

What was up with Abner Cooley?

Because of the simple utterance of Gus’s name, I had come away empty-handed. The trail, gone cold, was now tantalizingly lit by new secrets.

“Need a lift to the train?”

I turned at the sound of a female voice. Standing behind me was Jeanine Blount.

Jeanine was one of the aforementioned few female members of the trivial world. She was thirty, small, just five feet, with very long black hair, and glasses. There was a Morticia Addams quality about her—crossed with a bit of E.T.—and this was bolstered by her interest in the occult and astrology, which she pursued via Internet chat rooms, conferences, and the like. What she was doing at Abner Cooley’s house was another unknown. But I was happy to see her.

“I work here now,” she told me. “I lost my job at the Museum of the Moving Image, so Abner took pity on me. I do his bidding.”

“I see. And that includes chauffering services?”

“No. If he knew I was doing this, he’d kill me. So—let’s go, okay?”

Jeanine drove me in her huge, slow, 1976 Ford, a legacy from an elderly relative. As always, she spoke with the authority of someone old herself, though her frightening driving style seemed a leftover from her high school days.

“I couldn’t help but overhear,” she said. “And you said the magic words.”

“Revenge of the Jedi
?
”

“No. Gus Ziegler.”

I gripped the door handle as Jeanine took a turn that nearly spun us on two wheels. I couldn’t tell if I was growing excited awaiting her information or because I feared for my life, or both.

“What’s the deal with that?” I asked faintly.

“You don’t think I’m going to tell you just like that, do you?” For her, Jeanine was being almost coquettish.

“I don’t know why you’re telling me anything at all.”

“Abner has gotten too big for his pants—in all ways, I might add. Besides, I’m sort of intrigued. I mean, what’s a big star like Ben Williams got to do with Alan Gilbert’s murder?”

As we came to a sudden halt at a stop sign, I debated whether to tell her. Jeanine was volunteering knowledge, so I was meant to reciprocate. Besides, the proximity of a woman—even one as peculiar as Jeanine Blount—was melting me a little. As I had mentioned, we don’t get many around these parts.

I decided to take it slow. “I don’t believe Alan was killed by that crackhead. A neighbor told me that Gus Ziegler had left his place that night. And so had a woman.”

“A woman?” Jeanine was as flabbergasted as I was, and even more grossed out.

“Yes.”

“Wow. Well, what did they want there, do you think?”

She wasn’t making this easy. Neither was the smell of her perfume, which was unpleasant and medicinal, but still, one that only a woman would wear.

“Alan had
The Magnificent Ambersons
.”

There was a pause as Jeanine cut around a corner. I could see the train station looming in the near distance.

“A new print?” she asked coyly.

“No,” I said. “And you know it. The whole thing.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Jeanine buzzed right past the station. Before I could point this out, she said, “Screw it. I’ll drive you back to town.”

“Well,” she said as we hit the expressway, after a few minutes of silence, “I don’t know why Abner hates Gus Ziegler.”

“Great!” I said, feeling swindled. “So that was just your sneaky way of—”

“But I
do
know that the two of them were, you know, like, involved.”

A faint blush came over Jeanine’s pale cheeks. I turned to her, amazed.

“Abner and Gus—you mean—”

“Right.”

“Jesus. I didn’t even know they were gay.”

“They don’t know what they are, to be honest. But, apparently, one night, at the Rhinebeck Film Fair”—an annual gathering of trivia people at a tacky but amiable hotel upstate—“the two of them . . . well, whatever.”

A vision of the two huge men together—one so soft, one so hard—made me smile, fondly.

“They’d make a kind of sweet couple, actually. But you say it ended badly?”

“I don’t know what happened. But, one day, Abner said to me, ‘Guys like that give freakish misfit losers a bad name.’ Then he just said, ‘Herman,’ and looked disgusted.”

I whistled, slightly, through my teeth, remembering Gus’s strange tattoo. Was it the name of another lover? With Jeanine driving, we were getting to the city in no time. Yet now there seemed so much more to find out.

“So that would explain how Gus knew about Ben Williams’s Welles movie?” I asked quickly. “Before Abner put it in PRINT IT!?”

“Right. Maybe Abner talks in his sleep. Either way, I’ve done their charts, and I could have told them it would be a big mistake.”

Jeanine cut off a truck, while I tried to put it together.

“So if Gus killed Alan for
Ambersons
—and that’s just a hypothesis,” I said, “he’s now in L.A., trying to peddle it to Ben Williams? Through the contacts he got—or simply stole—from Abner?”

“Maybe so. But don’t forget the woman.” Jeanine shook her head in sympathy for the poor creature.

“Right, the woman.”

Her mentioning this made me glance down at Jeanine’s legs, heavily covered in black tights, as she stomped on the brakes at the tunnel. It wasn’t only desire. Suddenly, I felt that I couldn’t do this alone. There was too much that I didn’t know.