Seventeen

Max returned to Los Angeles buzzing with a solid treatment, the script in progress, and two perfect shooting locations. Besides that, the passenger seat was blissfully empty, as he'd left Dorothy at her house in Big Bear Lake to finish the script without him. He entered Sherman Oaks in triumph.

And discovered a police cruiser in his driveway.

"What the hell now?" Max stormed into his house.

Officer McDaniel greeted him with a nasty grin. "What are you into, Maurey?"

The place was a mess.

Someone had broken in and ransacked it. In the living room, the invader had toppled furniture and gutted the couch of its cushions. In the kitchen, every cupboard stood open, and cans and pasta boxes littered the floor.

Mariel went on yelling a litany of complaints in her native Spanish. No doubt filling in the LAPD on her employer's dark artistic appetites, crass houseguest, one dead dog, and a starlet's panties.

"Care to explain all this?" the cop pressed.

Max stared at him. "Are you serious?"

"They were in every room," Mariel said. "They took your teak box."

That left only one candidate for who'd done the breaking and entering. He nodded with sympathy, as if it were her home that had been invaded.

"Thank you, Mariel. You can go. Take the day off. I'll handle all this."

The housekeeper left muttering, relieved to be free of the house and its owner.

"It's just you and me now, Maurey," said McDaniel. "Where were you, exactly? Anything you'd like to share? What's in the box?"

"Share? Jeez, I don't know, officer. My house was broken into and you should find and arrest the guy who did it?"

"It's not enough for you to corrupt the minds of America's kids. Turn the whole country into the Class of 1984, a bunch of effeminate entitled pussies—"

Max grunted. "Another interesting film."

"The point is I don't like you, Maurey. I don't like your movies or your ghoul face. And I know you're into something. I'm taking you to the station."

"You're arresting me? For what?"

"That's what I'm going to find out by asking you some questions."

"You were spying on my house every night for the past week," Max shouted back. "Where the hell were you while I was being robbed?"

The nasty grin evaporated.

"Um, no, I wasn't—"

"I'm pretty sure that was you parked down the road."

The cop scowled, refusing to budge.

"I saw you." Max kept at it. "With a pair of binoculars."

"You went out of town," McDaniel mumbled. "So I took a few nights off."

"Okay, I'm ready to make a confession."

"Good—"

"I'm going to tell the chief how you've been stalking me like a psychotic fan."

The cop blanched. "We don't need to do that."

"Then how about instead you go do your job and solve the crime of who broke into my house. If you want a lead, I'd look into a guy named Dan Womack. He's an actor who's obsessed with me. A real freak. A very violent guy. Dangerous."

"Womack? What's his beef with you?"

"You'd have to ask him."

Another smile crossed the cop's face, one far more calculating.

"I'll do that," he said.

"He broke into my house," Max reminded him. "Which is a crime."

"I'll see you around, Maurey. We'll be in touch."

Grinning again, Officer McDaniel stomped out, and Max wondered if he'd made a mistake connecting his archnemeses.

Finally alone, he sighed with relief. He'd take care of the mess later. Wheeling, he rushed to the sliding door at the rear of the house. It was unlocked, a bad sign.

He yanked it open.

His backyard appeared the same as it always did, manicured to perfection by professional gardeners. The door to the toolshed remained shut. The burial plot in the rosebushes didn't seem to be disturbed.

Getting down on his knees, Max pressed his ear to the dirt.

Nothing.

He was sweating now. He'd chosen not to use the camera, but the idea of not having the choice panicked him. Maybe he should dig it up and check on it. He should definitely move it to a safer place.

If he did that, however, he knew he might never bury it again.

As if sensing his presence, the Arriflex stirred to life in its grave to welcome him with its fuzzy babbling.

"Yes," Max hissed. The camera was safe.

Like a father who knows his baby's cries, Max could tell it was hungry. Furious at the home invasion, he was feeling fairly hungry himself. Womack might be a larger problem than he'd first surmised. Max wondered if Raphael would mind if he sent a washed-up actor his way instead of Ashlee Gibson.

But first, he had to deliver a script treatment to his producer.

Max stormed back inside to his office, now a bona fide disaster zone between Womack's frantic ransacking and the detritus of Dorothy's writing marathon. Ignoring the mess, he stuffed the three-page treatment for If Wishes Could Kill into his fax machine. He punched Jordan's number and waited.

With painstaking slowness, the device sucked the pages and digested their contents into electronic signals. After, Max stared at the phone on his desk and willed it to ring. He had so many things to do and not enough time to do them, but whether they needed to be done hinged on a final green light from the producer.

The phone remained silent. After a while, Max spent his nervous energy on restoring his house to proper condition, fuming the whole time.

A few hours later, he called Jordan. His secretary answered.

"Mr. Lyman isn't available," she said. "He went to his club."

Max ground his teeth. "Did he receive my treatment?"

"He read it right before he left. Shall I have him call—?"

"Thanks!" He hung up and hustled back to his roadster.

One last yes, a real yes, and he'd have everything.

Back behind the wheel of his MG, he followed Bellagio Road's serpentine circuit to Jordan's country club. Another palace in the producer's world that reminded Max how badly he was being ripped off.

The course consisted of eighteen holes among canyons overlooked by modern mansions, some of the holes so separated in topography that golfers accessed them via tunnels and elevators. The key to all this magnificence was the posh clubhouse. After parking, however, he found entering it more difficult than barging onto a studio set to yell Hi, Mom into the camera lens.

He finally gained approval after Jordan agreed by phone to treat Max as a guest, though they made him wear his Dead Kennedys T-shirt inside out and tuck it into his pants. A giant in golf shirt and khakis walked him to the twenty-tee driving range, where he deposited Max with a final glare warning him to behave himself.

Walking past the rich and powerful practicing their drives, Max found Jordan stretching his quads and hamstrings in knickers and a red plaid sweater vest.

He eyed the producer. "You look like an over-the-hill Scotsman limbering up for his next big porn scene."

Jordan shot a baleful glance back at him.

"And you look like an undertaker who ran out of bodies."

"So, this is where you moguls do all your deals," said Max. "Out there on the links."

His warm-up over, the producer selected his favorite driver and tested its feel and weight with a little swing.

"Not really," he said. "But you can learn a lot about somebody. His temperament, whether you want to do business with him."

"Then I don't have to learn the game." Max had never understood its appeal.

"Listen, babe. I came here to blow off steam. I have a tee time at three to play a round with Jack Nicholson. This can wait until tomorrow, yes? I'm sure it can."

"I was hoping to—wait. Jack Nicholson? Seriously?"

"I'd ask you to join us, but I think all the sun and fresh air might physically harm you."

Max ignored the barb, though he now thought maybe he should learn to golf at some point.

"Give me a few minutes to talk about If Wishes Could Kill."

Jordan plucked a ball from the bucket and set it on the tee. "Yup."

"The script is coming along."

"Uh-huh."

"The short story writer is putting it together for me."

"Right."

Max started to sweat.

"We're really subverting expectations on this one," he said.

"You sure are." Jordan ran a few practice swings toward the ball. "I'm flushing your postmodern turd."

Max exploded. "You promised me you wouldn't meddle!"

"I did." Jordan swung the club, which connected with a satisfying click and sent the ball zooming downrange. "I did not promise to stand idly by while you light half a million on fire."

"But the core idea is to do something original—"

"It baffles me that you persist in seeing me as some kind of art-house incubator. You want to subvert genre, that's awesome. You want to throw the entire rulebook out the window, that's not awesome. Awesome being defined as earning the highest return on capital for our investors. Being a moviemaker today means serving the market. The auteur years are over, and good riddance."

"People can't buy into something new if we never—"

"Sure, you've still got your Martin Scorseses out there, but they're holdouts from a dead era. And no offense, babe, but you're no Scorsese."

"If we never—ouch."

Jordan snorted. "Hell, you're not even—"

"I get it," Max growled. "You don't have to rub my face in it."

"I'm glad we understand each other."

He glared at the producer. "You think I'm a pretentious hack, don't you?"

"I think you're a very fine director, Max."

In Max's ears, Jack the Knife III's audience burst into laughter.

"A hack," he said. "The real director is some pimply teen haunting a small-town cineplex. He's the one calling all the shots. You should hire him to make your movies."

"Welcome to the industry," Jordan said. "Where as long as seats are filled and profit is maximized, everything is as it should be."

Max watched him line up his next drive and knock it flying into the greenery. He didn't know what to say. He was a motion picture director. An artist. This simple descriptor was how he defined himself. It had always been both his identity and his aspiration.

If all this time he'd been a hack, a second-rate imitator of better directors and films—then he wasn't just a hack. He was nothing.

Jordan resumed a driving stance.

"Your project is red-lighted," he said. "You know, I'm glad you came by. This has been a productive meeting. Was there anything else on your mind?"

On my mind, Max thought.

Where something snapped, so clear he actually heard it.

It was the sound of his self-image fracturing like a mirror in a jump scare. The sound of whatever relationship he had with the producer finally breaking.

The sound of an idea. Hearing it brought him a strange, dark relief.

"You're right, Jordan," he heard himself say.

"Yeah?" The next ball clicked and disappeared. "About what?"

"Everything. All of it. In the end, art has to serve business or it can't stand on its own. I admit I got sucked into the writer's vision instead of making it mine. It could be more commercial."

"Well. That's very mature of you."

"So, can I have another crack at it?"

Jordan swung again. The ball sailed away in a white blur.

"Show me what you've got, baby."

"I'll do right by you." Swallowing what little pride he had left.

"Now I know you want it bad. You're actually being humble. It's even more impressive than crazy eyes." Jordan paused from his practice shots to lean on his club and regard Max with a cool stare. "I've got goose bumps over here. Go forth and create."

Max's eyes narrowed to serpent slits. "Oh, I will."

He already had a new plan.