The Far Side (11 page)

“Don’t be a smart ass!” she riposted.

“I am not going to interfere with what you do,” he told her.  “Kit you can use any way you want, but he’s there to be my eyes and ears -- not my mouth.  As I said, there’s a trust component that you can’t avoid if you want to be trusted yourself.”

“It’s like that on big budget movies,” Kris told him.  “You’ve told me about that a million times.”

“And it bears repeating -- you start spending other people’s money, and they have a right to know what’s going on.  Not all the nitty-gritty details, but enough for them to have confidence in you and what you’re doing.  That’s all I’m asking.  Well -- almost all.”

“Almost?” Kris said, stiffening slightly.

“Confidence, Kris!  Come on!  Use your head!  I’m not trying to interfere with you.  This is something you and Andie are going to do, okay?  I’m here in my world-famous producer role -- I make things appear when they’re needed.  You told me you knew you were going to upset a lot of financial apple carts with this and I agree.  As a result, I’m going to talk to a security guy tomorrow, and if I like him, I’ll send him to you and Andie to look over.”

Kris spent a moment thinking.  It wasn’t the first time in her life she’d spent a few moments thinking about something, but never for stakes like this.  “We don’t have to hire him?”

“For right now, the only person I send you that you have to keep is Kit.  Give me a better reason than ‘he ratted us out’ to let him go and I’ll consider it.  I do want an observer, and you’re nuts if you don’t start thinking security as soon as possible.  Further, I think security is a priority, so this one, at least, is a freebie.  I’ll pay him whatever we settle on.  I swear to you, he’s not there as an extra set of eyes.”

Kris continued thinking, and then she met her father’s eyes.  “Dad, I know you live in a world where mistrust is part of the cost of doing business.”

He grimaced, but nodded.

“I know I’m young, foolish and naive -- but I can’t live like that...  so please, do me a favor.  You want notice in advance of when we do things.  Fine, I’ll try to make sure you know about everything important in plenty of time.  But please, please, please, don’t you be the one to shatter my naiveté about trust.”

“Do you recall that first film of mine?  The opening credits?”

It had been a movie called “Lying in the Sun” and had been about California surfers.  The opening credits ran over a picture of an African lion, sleeping in the sun.  “Sure, why?”

“Did you ever wonder how I got that shot?”

“Stock?”

“Nope.  I was wandering through Europe, bumming around, trying to find my inner muse.  I was in Berlin, at the Tiergarten, their zoo, when I saw that lion on a hot summer day, snoozing.  It was like what Paul saw on the road to Damascus -- a blinding vision.  I knew the movie I wanted to make, and that shot was so perfect, I had to have it.

“I had my camera with me and so I focused... except that was before the days of inexpensive zoom lenses.  It looked more like a kitten.  I looked around.  The area the lion was in was a small island-thing, with a moat area surrounding it, except the moat was empty -- there wasn’t any water in it.  It was maybe fifteen or sixteen feet deep, and I saw a ladder lying on the ground, up against the wall.  I jumped down, put that ladder up, climbed into the pen with the lion, walked up to about six feet away and got the shot.  About six or eight minutes, before the cops and zookeepers arrived.”

He laughed.  “They had a shit fit, but I don’t think that lion woke up, even for that.  I slipped the girl I was with my camera and no one seemed to notice or care.  At the police station they couldn’t think of anything to charge me with, so they finally took me to the airport and booted me out of the country.

“Would I have done it if the lion was awake and had a lean and hungry look?  Probably not.  But I do remember the incident clearly, even now.  I never once thought about anything except how to get that shot.  It was the only thing that mattered to me.

“I can’t look myself in the face in the mornings if I deny my daughter the chance to live like I did.  And I make no bones about it -- that wasn’t anywhere near the riskiest thing I’ve done to get a shot.”

Kris nodded, even if his explanation wasn’t exactly what she wanted.

* * *

The evening sped past with Andie and Kris exchanging emails.  About nine o’clock, Kris went to see her dad again.  He was reading on the couch, her mother sitting next to him, her feet curled up in his lap.  Kris was used to her mother’s strangeness and simply ignored her.  “Dad, I was wondering if I could get an older, used pickup to run around in this summer, instead of the Mini.”

“Sure, Kris.  No problem. If you like, we can go look at some the first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t you have things to do at the studio?” Kris asked, curious.

“It’s Friday,” he told her.  “They have a mess of set changes and camera setups to get ready for tomorrow afternoon.  The script supe and the set dressers can deal with it.”

Kris nodded and went back to let Andie know that the truck would be available soon.  Andie went back to her lists, while Kris spent time on her computer writing up a project plan.  Around eleven she emailed it to Andie, who was busy ordering stuff.

Kris fell asleep and for the first time since the accident she remembered the sound of the belt coming undone, even if she hadn’t known what it was at the time.  Yeah, you could drown in the bathtub, electrocute yourself with your blow dryer or fall off a step ladder.  Or get cut off who knows where, with no way back because the super glue your best friend used wasn’t the best in the world.  It was sobering.  Yet, when she looked deep inside herself, it wasn’t a deal breaker or even close to it.  Something to be wary of, something to take into account -- but wasn’t a good enough reason to quit.

She laughed and got up and turned on her desk lamp and woke her computer up.  She made a little note: “Send lots of food and water through in case of need” before she went back to bed.  She fell asleep with a smile on her face.

She and her dad were ready to go early.  It still seemed a little weird that she was cutting classes, something she’d never done before.

He took her to a used car lot near Hollywood and they looked over their pickup trucks.  She didn’t want one of the great huge ones, but at the same time her father suggested that it might be a good idea to have a crew cab so that she could have more than one other person along.  So the truck she ended up was larger than she’d envisioned, one that would seat four people inside and could hold a thousand or so pounds in the bed.  She really had no idea how much stuff she was going to need to haul for Andie, and she didn’t think it was all that heavy, but she didn’t know for sure.

Her father, unless you knew who he was, wasn’t exactly imposing, and the salesman obviously had never heard of him.  The salesman wanted to wait a day to deliver the truck, until the check cleared.  Her dad picked up the phone and asked the bank to courier over a certified check.  They were still gassing up the truck when the bank messenger arrived.  When the sales manager heard who had sent for the check, he at least knew who Oliver Boyle was and made profuse apologies.  Her dad just waved a dismissive hand, saying if he was a salesman, he wouldn’t trust anyone he didn’t know for that kind of money either, even if it was a couple of thousand dollars.

She followed him to the studio and he had her pull it into the motor pool there.  He talked to one of his people and told him to check out the truck and make sure it was okay.  Then he headed for the production company offices.

Kris had realized something, and as soon as they were alone in his car for the short drive to the offices, she asked him.  “Why did you get us space at Crenshaw Studios and not here?”

“Well, I don’t have three free sound stages, for one thing.  Secondly, do you really want to have me just across the lot?”

Kris nodded.  No, not really.  He was being surprisingly cooperative, and while he sounded reasonable, she was still not sure why.  Three miles wasn’t all that far, not really, but psychologically, it would seem farther.

There was a young man waiting in her father’s outer office.  “Ezra Lawson, sir,” the young man told him.  “Kurt sent me, saying you might have some work for me.”

“Certainly.  Do you want to sit in on this, Kris, or wait for the fullness of time?”

Kris was startled, but nodded.  “I’ll sit in, if you don’t mind.”  Andie had told her not to show up until noon, which meant she’d probably spent all night working.

They went into her father’s office, and Ezra sat in one of the upholstered chairs, where her father waved Kris into his chair, while he sat down on the front edge of the desk.  After the introductions, her father nodded at the young man.  “Kurt said you were in the Army, Ezra.”

“Yes, sir.  I had six years in, and frankly, I was already thinking of bailing.  It just wasn’t my cup of tea.  Then I got dinged and the army made the decision for me.”

“Dinged how?” Oliver asked.

“It was a night HALO jump.  I was fine, right up until I realized I was coming down on a hillside of straggly pine trees instead of the scattered brush the intel people said to expect.  I didn’t want a straggly pine tree up my,” he hesitated, glanced at Kris and said, “backside.  So I swerved.  Then I was in the rocks.”  He shrugged as if that said it all.

He was about thirty, Kris thought, sandy blonde hair, cut short, but not the extreme crew cut a lot of soldiers wore.  He was about six feet tall and well built.

Ezra went on.  “You understand that I was in special ops and can’t talk about where the jump was or what I was doing?”

“Yes, I do.  How is your back?”

“Well,” Ezra said dryly, “I’ve got all the pieces in the right places now.  I can go two, three weeks at a time without back spasms.  And those are manageable, sir.  A muscle relaxer and an Advil.  Piece of cake.

“I’m out of formal physical therapy, but I have a raft of exercises to do that aren’t part of my normal regimen.  I’m also not supposed to run more than a mile or so at a time, and to keep it down when I do run.  I’ve been swimming, instead.”

“Let me be frank, Ezra.  My daughter has a friend who is a certified genius.  I’m not going to go into detail just now, but she’s found something that’s going to be worth a lot of money and she and Kris are in the process of developing the idea.  I know it sounds more like a movie plot, but this is the real thing.  The girls stand to gore a lot of oxen.  There is no definite threat, but now and then people can make some unfortunate decisions in the heat of the moment.”

The young man nodded.

“Your task would be to make sure my daughter and her friend are as safe as reasonably possible, given the utter impossibility of protecting someone from a really determined assassin.  There are some other issues that involve personal risk as well, but before we get into those, you’ll need to sign the industry standard nondisclosure agreement and the usual waivers.”

“But this isn’t stunt work?”

“No, it’s straight security.  I don’t anticipate any problems for some weeks, and as I told Kurt, I’d like to give the girls a chance to get acclimated to the sort of thinking that has to go into keeping secure.”

“I can do that,” Ezra said seriously.

“Your paycheck would be coming from me,” Oliver told him, “but you would be working for the girls.  Trust me, don’t try to force them to do what you want unless the bullets are flying or there is a demonstrable risk.  Your continued employment would be up to them -- all I’ll be doing is signing your paycheck.  Can you work for a pair of young women?”

“I managed well enough with the little old ladies who inhabit the Pentagon.  I imagine so,” he said with more than a trace of sarcasm and bitterness.

“Could you teach them to shoot?  Maybe a little self defense?” Oliver pressed.

Ezra smiled.  “Sir, the best self defense is to shoot the other guy first.  I had a hand-to-hand combat instructor who told us on the first day that we were to shoot our enemies as far away as we could.  Shoot them, if they got close, with a pistol.  Stick them with a bayonet, or hit them with a rifle butt.  He laughed and added his kicker: ‘I’m here to teach you how to die like a man if you’ve fucked up so bad you have nothing left but your bare hands.’

“But yes, sir.  I can teach them to shoot and give them a few pointers in self defense beyond ‘shoot ‘em!’”

“Kris, any questions?”

“Are you afraid of the dark?  Tight places?”

“I spent a lot of time in the ‘Stan -- that’s Afghanistan for you civilians.  They’ve been beavering away at the landscape for a couple of thousand years.  I’m not one of those crazy cavers, but I’ve been down a tunnel or two.”

“Why do you say ‘crazy?’” Kris asked.

“Miss, tunnels are pitch dark.  Yeah, there are a few guys who sneak around in the dark, but you do that and things can still happen.  Mostly you go down a tunnel, your flashlight in hand, making you an easy target for anyone hiding in the dark.  That’s not counting booby traps and the other things they save up for us.”

He looked at Oliver.  “I’ll be frank, sir.  Most of my experience did not come from shooting people -- mostly I blew them up.  I can shoot and shoot well.  I have a general knowledge of security principles, but I’ve never had any formal instruction.”