Tom Piccirilli

The Last Deep Breath

1

She turned over in bed, ran her fingers through the wet thatch of his chest hair, and said, “I want you to kill my husband.”

Grey wasn’t surprised. It seemed like every third woman he ran into wanted her husband dead.

No divorce. No let’s get him into AA or rehab. No he’s the father of my children, sweet baby Jesus he deserves a second chance. No smack him in the teeth and leave him bleeding in the gutter.

No mercy at all. These ladies played a serious game. He’d thought things in New York were pretty bad, but out here in the desert all remnants of grace and pity evaporated like a mid-morning shower. They wanted their old men dead. The ring apparently made them homicidal.

He knew he’d never get out the door without listening to the rest of it so he lit a cigarette, lay back against the pillows, and said, “Tell me your plan.”

She did. It was stupid. They were all stupid.

Sweet smell of desert sage drifted in on the hot breeze. Grey looked into her face and saw what he always saw. The seething desperation cresting in heavily shadowed eyes. A hint of dust trapped in the crows’ feet and deep frown lines. Thirty years of unanswered pleas and unresolved daddy issues. A gutted rag doll forgotten in the corner. Another delicate moaner in the sisterhood of pain.

He said, “Let me think about it.”

She got up, drew a slash of lipstick across her mouth, and started to get dressed for her shift at the Main Street diner. No shower. Christ, and he’d eaten there. He tried not to pull a face.

“Bo gets out next Wednesday,” she told him. “Can we get everything ready by then?”

“I think so.”

She smiled in a way he hadn’t seen before. It was girlish and almost cruel, but at least it was authentic.

“Bo is mean. Crazy mean. He’ll kill us if we mess this up.”

“We won’t mess up.”

“If you get hungry there’s some leftover chicken in the fridge.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll be home by ten, honey.”

“I’ll be here.”

She leaned over and kissed him, tried to put some real affection into it this time, but she just didn’t know how to do it anymore. The attempt seemed to embarrass her and she practically cantered out the door.

Grey took a shower, shaved, and got his clothes out of the drier. He did about an hour’s worth of work on the Chevelle, tuning it with Bo’s tools, then topped off the fluids. Bo hadn’t been much of a stickup man but he had a well-stocked garage. Grey stole a few tools he might need on his ride and packed them in the trunk.

A coyote barked in the distance. He still hadn’t got used to the sound, it always made him jerk his head up. Made him think of the wild dog packs that roamed Coney Island in the winter, eating what was left of the frozen homeless.

A storm rumbled across the encroaching dusk.

He got in the car and headed west.

The world grew wide and burned with possibility and misgiving. He looked in the rearview and watched as the east was swallowed by the thickening darkness of night rising up behind him. He stood on the pedal and aimed for the plunging sun.

2

The next one was different. She found him in a bar outside of Reno.

She was a little older but a lot prettier and much sharper. She hadn’t yet had all the edges sanded off her yet. Her eyes were clear and alive with intelligence and wit. They still held out a touch of hope and they glittered with a kind of bemusement, like she knew this was only a pit stop on her way to the Gold Mile.

Every guy in the place sat up a little straighter. They got change and played tunes on the jukebox that they thought a woman would want to dance to. She moved around the bar and settled in beside anyone who might buy her a drink. She did it without the bullshit flirting that usually led to brawls or back alley rapes and cherry-topped prowl cars. The men joked with her. Nobody laid a hand on her. She’d throw down her Dewar’s and Coke and then move on to the next one, her conversation lively, killing the afternoon slug by slug.

At least that’s what Grey thought was happening at first. About an hour later he reassessed. She was trying to make him jealous, weaving among the old drunks and the truckers hopped on speed. Grey watched her in the mirror behind the bar and, though their gazes never met, he knew she was enjoying being on stage for him. He was a properly attentive audience.

He eavesdropped, his concentration fine-tuned and perfectly focused. Her name was Kendra. If someone tried to call her anything else, the diminutive Ken or Kennie, she corrected them.

She had an easy way about her, an effortless laugh that sounded just a little too natural. It was the soft melody of every woman you wanted to lie beside, your head resting in her lap while she stroked your forehead. You look up into her eyes and she leans down, gives you the killer grin, her bee-stung lips parting to meet your own.

She was blonde, her hair feathered to frame a heart-shaped face, styled in a way that was popular when he was kid and seemed to be making a comeback. It looked good on her. She had high cheekbones that drew you to her hazel eyes flecked with gold. There was some nice meat and jiggle to her hips. Breasts that had just enough bounce to them beneath her blouse to be real. The teeth weren’t. They were so straight, even, and white that they must’ve run into the mid-five figures.

She knew how to throw her head back far enough so that the light caught her perfectly and lit her like the star of a Broadway show. She had the looks but wasn’t vapid enough to be a model, not even an older one who couldn’t do top magazine cover work anymore. That meant actress.

He thought he might’ve seen her before. He guessed she’d had moderate success but had gone into a bad skid. It had lasted a while but she’d pulled herself out and was going to start phoning her producer and director friends and calling in any favors that might still be owed. Not a lot of them would be but there were probably at least a couple. Enough pull to get her back in the door for a few auditions.

Grey used to be a movie buff. Pax had gotten him a first-rate entertainment system for his shitty little apartment down in the Village. Grey walked in one day and the front door wouldn’t open all the way. It was striking against one of the surround sound speakers, the sucker was two-and-a-half-feet tall. He couldn’t get to his hall closet. Couldn’t get to the fire escape because the sill was stacked with the DVR, the DVD burner, the TIVO, the equalizer, other equipment he didn’t even recognize. You couldn’t watch a movie with the volume cranked over 3 or the windows would rattle so badly you were afraid they’d blow out onto 8th Street.

The manager stopped by once to bitch at Grey about the noise. Pax walked the guy out into the hall and spoke quietly to him for a minute, and that was the last time the manager ever bothered Grey.

He watched the side of Kendra’s face, listened, and kept a steady buzz going on the weak beer while he tried to place her. Thought maybe she’d been in some lowbrow comedy he’d seen a few years back. Guy’s best friend turns out to be gay and a famous drag queen. Guy has issues with it but decides what the hell. Live and let live, Kumbaya. Then the drag queen best friend turns out to actually be an undercover CIA operative who’s been taken captive by the terrorists. Guy teams up with eight other drag queens-Lola May, Verinia La Fleur, Mistress Lucretia-to go bust him out of Libya. Hilarity ensues-look at the queens doing Judo chops in their high heels, using their feather boas to strangle the terrorist leader before he can turn the key on the nuke.

He thought maybe Kendra played the CIA Chief’s secretary that the guy falls in love with. Bossy at first, good with guns-running joke was that every time he put his hands on her he’d come back with a grenade, an assault weapon, a six-inch throwing knife.

She turned again, hit the pose, caught the light.

Grey thought, Yeah, that’s her.

They closed out the bar together and hung back while the last of the locals staggered away. The bartender moved off and started wiping down the tables and turning over chairs.

Perfume the scent of jasmine. He also smelled aloe and a veggie body wash. Kendra slid to Grey’s side, eased in nice and tight, breathed in his ear, and said, “So?”

3

They crossed the parking lot together, shoulder to shoulder, and when they got to his car she spoke with just the right amount of reverence.

“A ’69 Chevelle.”

“Yeah,” Grey said.

“I used to date a stunt driver who owned one. He usually managed to talk the directors into using it on set. He’d drive it onto the lot, just purring along in a couple of background shots. That car saw more screen time than I ever did.”

That’s how she broached the subject, as if it were an accepted fact that he already knew who she was. Could she tell when someone had seen one of her flicks? Did he look at her differently than everybody else did? Could she tell he was a buff? He didn’t think he was starry-eyed, but you could never tell about yourself.

“Pop the hood,” Kendra said.

“What?”

“I want to take a look at the engine.”

“It’s three A.M.,” he said.

“You’re in a rush all of a sudden?”

“I meant it’s dark out here.”

She had a penlight on her key-chain. He popped the hood and she inspected the engine, whistling, asking questions about original parts, when was the last time he’d flushed the transmission. The stunt man had taught her a lot. She knew more than Grey did about cars, that was for sure.

They got in and she said, “Drive.”

It was a loser question to ask where, so he just drove. She fiddled with the radio for a while until she came to an oldies station. He had bad associations with it for reasons he couldn’t name, but that was true about everything from his childhood.

She asked, “What makes a man drive a classic muscle ride like that and not take it to a car wash? It’s a damn shame seeing it with covered in so much grit. When was the last time you waxed it?”

He pressed down on the pedal, let the night flash by, and tried to hold on to his fading buzz. He didn’t like talking about himself but there was something about her that was dredging up the past. He could feel it moving sluggishly inside him again, seeking the surface. He fought to keep it down, or at least shove it aside. He hadn’t had any of the intense dreams for a few months now, but he could tell that they were going to start up again.

“That was too tough a question?” she said. She took off her shoes and curled in the seat, put her bare feet out the open window. “I can see you’re not going to tax my conversational skills.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Grey said.

“You going to tell me you hate talking about yourself?”

“No.”

She held her hand to his upper thigh, squeezed just enough to get the pulse in his neck snapping. “Ah ha, meaning you don’t have to because it’s already implicit in your attitude. Right.”

They kept to it like that for mile after mile. He’d been hanging around Reno for three weeks and knew the lay of the land. He thought she was starting to doze when she cleared her throat and asked, “Okay, so what’s chasing you?”

It wasn’t a perceptive question. She was appealing to his vanity. Every guy liked to think that his demons were meaner and crazier than anybody else’s. He could see her asking the same question of the stuntman as the guy nudged his Chevelle along the back lot, brooding and self-involved as hell.

Grey smiled, turned on the charm by dashboard light. “I’m just drifting.”

“Adrift, huh?” It wasn’t what he meant, but then again, maybe it was. “Me too. When about a million bucks worth of your shit is sold at auction, it gives you a certain Zen clarity about ownership and property. About home and security.”

“Yeah? So what did you learn?”

Her features hardened, the parentheses around her mouth looked like they’d been carved in with jagged glass. “That I’m never going to let it happen again.”

The resolution in her voice was as firm and inflexible as an oath made at the side of a grave. He’d spit out a few of them himself.

They kept heading into the rocky hills. Moonlight jockeyed between the crags. Grey kept his hand on the gearshift and she toyed with his fingers, brushed his knuckles. He cracked the window and let the warm air blow against his sweaty neck. One song ran into the next and bad mood started to take hold of him. The hinges of his jaw tightened, the muscles in his back froze. She noticed the change.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Turn off the music, okay?”

“Sure.”

Now she had her way in. He’d opened the door. Couldn’t even drive for a half hour without the past rising up and hooking his ankle, tugging him back down into its deep motionless waters. He wondered if he’d ever be free of it, or if he should even try. In a minute she would ask a throwaway question, the way they always asked, which would be full of intent and meaning, the answer to which he would never be able to fully give.

She brushed his wrist and plucked at the thick scars there. Some people thought he’d gone wild with a straight razor trying to snuff himself. But the truth was it had happened when he’d gone through the rear window in the car accident that had killed his parents. If he’d been wearing his seatbelt the way his mother always told him to, he would’ve died with them.

“What cut you loose?” she asked. “What did you do?”

“You don’t go in much for chit-chat. Am I reading that right?”

“I’ve done enough party prattle and hot spot club chatter to last a lifetime.”

“And yet you found me in a bar.”

“I told you my story even though it’s boring. Is yours?”

What cut him loose? What did he do?

He wasn’t sure how to answer. The words weren’t there.

She touched his scars again. He heard his mother tell his father, Slow down, Eddie, the roads are icy.

“I made a promise to do something I don’t really want to do,” Grey said.

Kendra didn’t ask what it was that he didn’t want to do, which surprised him. Instead she made a flat statement. “You’ve been in prison.”

“Narrowly avoided.”

“For doing what? Or nearly doing what?”

“Nearly punching an asshole commanding officer in the mouth.” He pressed the lighter in. It still worked after all these years. You get a classic car, renovate and recondition everything about it, and most of the time you still can’t get the damn lighter to heat up. He shook a cigarette from the pack, champed it between his teeth, listened to the pop of the lighter, and lit up. “What movies have you been in?”

She mentioned a few titles. Grey had seen most of them but only remembered her in them after she got really specific about the characters she’d played and what they’d done in the films. “In Flowers of Evil I was the gardener’s wife who finds the bodies under the rose bushes, who’s having the affair with the pool boy, and he turns out to be the killer. I get it with the shears in the neck at about the hour and fifteen mark. They CGIed my head rolling out of the top of the closet.”

A little surprising that she’d been so high profile, that he’d watched her so many times before.

She fondled his scars some more and asked, “So who’d you kill?”

The question made him raise his eyebrows. He hadn’t been expecting it. “What the hell made you ask that?”

“You’ve got the look about you.”

“I do?”

Was that why they were always chasing him? These women who needed their husbands aced? Because he looked like someone who’d already put two in the back of somebody’s head? And if he’d done it before then it wouldn’t be a stretch to do it again?

“It’s not just your eyes, but in the way you stand, how you present yourself.”

“I present myself like someone who’s snuffed somebody?”

“Yes.”

He thought of Pax and everyone else he’d ever met who was a killer and tried to imagine how they held themselves, presented themselves, how they stood. They stood like regular people. He supposed, when you put it like that, he was as likely to have aced someone as anybody else.

“So?”

“Nobody,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “Then who do you want to kill?”

4

Didn’t tell her that night, or the next, or the one after that, though she kept asking. It was a game to her. She’d smile and come in with her nails, scratching and tickling him, start wrestling with him across the bed, and then ask him again.

Okay, so she was serious. Wanted to know so she could put it to use somehow. Put him to use. Maybe send him after her agent or some film critic who’d slapped her silly in the trades. He couldn’t figure out what kind of hold she expected to get on him. Sexual, emotional, financial, or were they just going to be good pals? It didn’t much matter. Somehow he wound up with all her luggage in the trunk and back seat of his car, heading toward L.A.

They floated into East Hollywood about noon. He’d never seen the Pacific and wanted to drive that long winding road with hairpin turns that might land you on the cliffs below. He’d seen it in a hundred movies, mostly black amp; whites, usually in the rain, rising up and up until a tire blows out and the bad guy takes a header onto the reefs below.

But when he mentioned it to her she said, “What road?”

That taught him something right there. He was coming at it all wrong. She knew the reality, he knew the dream. Grey wondered if there would be any middle ground to find.

He pulled up in front of an apartment complex with a large courtyard. A couple of cats were fighting in one of the pomegranate trees. There was a swimming pool with a couple of bikini-clad girls and some bulky guys catching rays, slathered with baby oil and letting their mustaches and spandex briefs do their talking for them.

Kendra told him to sit tight. He parked and hung his legs out the window and smoked a cigarette. Could you really rent an apartment on the spur like this? No credit or background checks? Maybe she knew the manager. At a rest stop a couple hundred miles back, while she used the ladies room, he’d rifled her bags and found a couple ounces of coke. He figured she could always trade it to help keep her off the map. Life ran differently out here in L.A., but a lot of the ground rules were the same as in New York.

He watched her walk with the manager up a staircase to a corner apartment with a nice balcony. Ten minutes later she came down the steps, trotted along the walkway, leaned in the window and kissed him.

“Come see our new place,” she said.

That made his stomach tighten, seeing how easily she got things accomplished. You had to be careful. He carried the bags to the apartment while the mustaches gave him the stink eye. It looked a hell of a lot better than the place he’d had in the Village. There was a lot more sunlight coming through too. He dropped the bags and she threw herself across the bed. He thought she wanted him so he crawled across the mattress on his knees only to find her out cold.

That Hollywood sign, he figured he’d go find it. Took him a couple of hours of prowling the town without asking directions before he found the right mountain, looked up and saw the word there hanging in the sky. He got out and stood at the side of the road, enormous shadows already starting to angle and stretch toward him. Hollywood.

5

In the dream Pax was beating the hell out of old man Wagner. Grey was screaming for him to stop and throwing ineffectual punches at Pax’s heavily muscled back. Blood had already begun to pool and lap toward Grey’s sneakers.

Yellowed dentures lay cracked perfectly in half under the kitchen table, a thin broken red trail leading to them across the kitchen floor. The old lady was in the other room sobbing and digging through the hall closet trying to find the shotgun.

The eleven-gauge wasn’t there anymore, Pax had already packed it into the pickup. Along with some stolen jewelry, about two hundred in cash, some old folks’ medication, a painting of boats that Pax liked, Grey’s small collection of comic books, Ellie’s couple of dolls and her pink backpack of clothes, some dog food and biscuits, and a picture that Pax said was of his mother but looked like it had been ripped out of a magazine.

Grey woke then, but the dream kept unfolding before him. He knew he couldn’t stop it. It would have to run its full length whether he was asleep or not. It wouldn’t end until he got to West 4th . He decided to take a swim and pushed open the gate with the sign NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY, SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK and dove in.

Ellie was huddled in the corner clutching at her dog, a Shepard-Lab mix that whined as she held him but didn’t bark.

This time, Grey aimed for Pax’s kidneys and worked them hard, but even that part of Pax felt covered in armor plating. Pax ignored him and continued to draw his arm back slowly, with great deliberation, gathering all his strength from second to second as he breathed deeply and with all his focus hauled off and punched their foster father, Mr. Wagner, in the face again.

The man was surely dead by now, Grey thought. He’d stopped coughing and spitting and even moaning. The bones in his face were crushed. Lips torn in too many places to count. One eye was gone. The other couldn’t be seen beneath the swelling and bruising. Nose had long ago turned to pulp. And still Pax kept hammering. Even if Wagner lived, he was going to wish that he hadn’t.

Ellie made a noise of great happiness. Grey looked back over his shoulder at her and tried to tell her not to urge Pax on, that it had already gone too far.

Then Mrs. Wagner came running into the kitchen carrying a golf club. She got two solid whacks at Pax’s skull with it before he turned and backhanded her into the sink, where she crumpled.

“It’s enough,” Grey said.

“It’ll never be enough,” Pax responded, but at least he got to his feet and moved off the old man. He kicked the old woman twice and took his time washing his hands. He looked at Grey and said, “Stop crying, it’s over.”

Grey was about to argue that he wasn’t crying, but a stream of tears was dripping off his chin.

“You’re twelve years old now, it’s time to man up.”

That was one of Pax’s favorite expressions. Man up. He was fourteen and had grown more than twelve inches and put on thirty pounds of muscle in the last year, but when they’d first met three summers ago they were about the same size.

Ellie crawled out of the corner and said, “He’s still breathing.”

Pax said, “Yeah.”

“Well, finish it. And her too.”

The three of them lasted on the run almost a month before two cruisers cornered them at a roadside motel almost six hundred miles away. The shotgun was still in the back of the pickup or Pax might’ve tried to use it. He’d been hanging the boat picture over the motel TV when the police kicked in the door. Ellie’s dog didn’t make a move but the cops still tasered it and gave the poor mutt a heart attack.

Mr. Wagner had lived and they were going to try Pax as an adult on a straight-up attempted murder charge. The DA strong-armed Grey and Ellie, hoping to get them to say they’d been kidnapped by Pax. With the dog collar tight in her fist, Ellie told him to get fucked. Grey gave the death glare, manned up and said Pax was his brother and best friend.

The media hung Pax out to dry until Mrs. Wagner burned down her own house when the meth lab in the garage went up. Firemen found child porn, lists of hacked credit card numbers, and evidence of an interstate lottery scam. The DA asked Pax, Grey, and Ellie why they never explained their reasons for running.

Pax just grinned. Grey said he’d been waiting for somebody to ask, which was the truth. Ellie just told the DA to get fucked again.

They shuffled Pax to reform school and let him wait out the four years until he was eighteen. Then he joined the Army. Grey went back into the system and landed with another foster family, sweet folks who went a little heavy on the Jesus loves you shit, but overall very solid citizens. He hung in until he was old enough to join the Army too.

Three years later he was on KP duty in Ramadi, east of Baghdad, on his way out on a dishonorable discharge. Pax walked into the kitchen where Grey had his arms down to the elbows in the grease trap and said, “You learn how to throw a solid punch yet?”

It was better than “Man up,” anyway.

Grey wouldn’t meet up with Ellie for another two years after that, over ten since he’d last seen her, when he turned the corner on West 4th and found her crouched in the doorway of his building, leering at him with red teeth, a four-inch blade half-buried in her side.

6

Kendra’s agent was a short slick hustler named Monty Stobbs who had a classy office with glass walls. A fast-talker who danced forward and back, pecked Kendra and clapped Grey on the shoulder, working the room the way a boxer rope-a-doped in the ring. His suit and shoes were fine Italian but his toupee looked like horse tail.

She only wanted to grab a couple of residual checks she was owed but Monty made a big play, open arms held high, said he was happy to see her, he’d been thinking a lot about her lately, thought she would be perfect for a couple of roles. Kendra’s eyes turned black and hard as shale but she sat, crossed her legs, showed a little knee.

Seated beside her, Grey played man about town, chauffeur, bodyguard, boyfriend, troubleshooter. Monty offered coffee, spring water, virgin daiquiris, but didn’t wait for a response. He pulled five scripts out of his bottom drawer and stacked them on the corner of his desk for her to take home and read. She smiled pleasantly and ignored them.

“You’d be perfect for any one of these,” he said.

Grey took a look. Love Hotel 4: Nightly Delight, Love Hotel 5: Manager’s Heaven, Warrior Woman 3: Return to the Arena, Angela’s Eyes 5: Seeing You Again.

He’d caught a few episodes of the soft-core Love Hotel series on cable as part of the free adult entertainment package you got with the really low class motels. The ones waiting at the edge of dead towns, the dead towns waiting at the edge of forgotten highways.

Monty Stobbs got as far as, “Kenny, love, tell me what-” before his office phone rang. He answered, held up a finger in a wait-a-sec gesture, and huddled in the far corner taken up by a rubber tree plant. He told his secretary to put a big name actor through. He talked loudly and so rapid-fire that he sounded like the Portuguese stevedores loading cargo on the New York docks.

An argument over money. Monty broke from the corner and marched across the room and out into the huge corridor where harried mailboys shoved huge overloaded carts. He trotted past the glass wall and down to the waiting room where his secretary was eating a bagel.

Kendra turned to Grey, shot him the grin again, and said, “So what do you think?”

He thought it was odd that she didn’t correct Monty Stobbs for calling her Kenny, the way she did all the barflies in Reno. “Is it a compliment that he thinks you’re hot enough to star in all these soft-core skin flicks?”

“At my age, I suppose it should be. But those series are at the end of their strings. He figures the same for me.”

“And what do you figure?”

“It was my own fault that I lost what traction I had, but a drug habit isn’t a death sentence anymore. I’m clean now, I deserve better work than that. I can still have a modestly successful career. And maybe even a very successful one if I nab a couple of prime roles.”

He didn’t want to bring up the coke he’d found. So far as he could see she was telling the truth, she wasn’t using again. Maybe she clung to those last couple of ounces the way folks who quit smoking kept a last pack of cigarettes around.

“I’ve seen a couple of those Love Hotels,” he told her. “There’s a few names in them shedding their clothes, actresses who used to be high-powered, a couple of Oscar nominees. There can’t be any shame in it.”

“The things I’m ashamed of I’ll never talk about. I might be doing flicks like those in ten or twelve years, but it’s not my turn yet.”

“Okay.”

Grey got up and started opening the drawers on Monty’s desk, looking for the ‘A’ or maybe only ‘B’ material. He came across a couple of screenplays with lists of actresses’ names written in red pen on the covers and followed by question marks. The first two lists were made up of serious star power. He stuffed them back where they’d been and tried another drawer. He found a bottle of bourbon and a loaded .32 automatic. He pocketed the .32. The next couple of lists looked more in keeping with Kendra’s career stature. Grey figured they weren’t too much better-known than she was.

He recognized the names of two of the screenwriters, guys who’d been nominated for Academy awards but had lost out. One had been dead for three years. The other had done six months for harboring a fugitive. His brother had iced a meth lab cook who’d sold some bad crank to his kid. The writer had just gotten out about two months ago. The brother got a dime jolt and would probably be out in six.

Grey thought the only bad publicity was no publicity, and with some spin the writer’s story would help promote the hell out of the movie. He started paging through the script.

Remainder of the bagel clenched between his teeth, Monty stepped back in with the phone clamped to his ear, nodding to whatever the other guy was saying, but now turning his eyes in wonderment at Grey. He swallowed, said, “Let me call you back,” hung up, and cocked his head.

Grey leaned against the desk and said, “She’s not ready for the mature mom making a play for her stepson home on college flicks yet, Monty. I’d like her to read this one instead.”

You had to give it to him, Monty rolled. He swallowed his last bite and said, “Oh, I like him, Kenny. Very hands on. Not like those other schleps you brought in who were just interested in furthering their own careers. That last one…what was his name? Terry…?”

“Barry,” Kendra said.

“Well, he’s doing very well, has a recurring role on an HBO show.”

“I know. Him and his car.”

“So where’d you find this one?”

“Outside of Reno,” she said.

“He’s got a baby face but looks mean.”

“He’s not.”

“You certain of that?”

She shrugged. “So far.”

“What’s he want?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Grey scanned a few more pages. He liked what he read. He had no idea if it was actually any good, but it seemed like nobody in this town knew what made a movie a hit, so he was pretty much on even ground.

They kept talking about him like he wasn’t there. “He the love of your life, Kenny? Or just your muscle?”

“Ask him.”

Grey said, “Neither.” He held out the script. “This is the one. Killing Time. Set her up for an audition.”

Monty Stobbs just looked at him like he couldn’t believe what he was watching, but he was smiling.

“Oh, and can you do me a favor? You can get your hands on a directory with contact info for porn actors, right? Do it. And Monty, don’t forget the residual checks.”

7

With her feet up on the dash, Kendra directed him around Beverly Hills, pointing out which celebrities owned which mansions. She’d partied in a few of them, told nasty stories about who liked the sex swing contraptions, who was owned by the mob, who had three kids but was really gay and kept a Filipino boyfriend in the cabana. It was tough to be impressed. Almost all you could see were twelve-foot-high fences and gates and security guards in little booths who gave you the skunk eye.

“You’re not in this for the money,” she said.

“What money?” he asked.

“That’s my point.”

“And for that matter, in what?”

“In this relationship. And don’t say, is that what we’re having? A relationship? Call it whatever you want. And for however long you want to call it that.”

Not for much longer, he knew. He drove out of the ritzy area, got back to where life seemed more accessible, passed a car wash, flipped a U-turn, and drove in.

Full detailing would take two hours. Kendra decided to take him shopping during the interim, get him some new clothes so he wouldn’t stand out so much the next time they were in a place with glass walls. She dragged him to a shop that worried him at first. Too much fur and feathers and leather on display, but in back was the more down-to-earth clothing. She picked out some stuff he liked and some he figured he would never wear. But once he tried it all on he decided he looked pretty good and felt much more in tune with the town.

“You like L.A., don’t you?” she asked.

“Better than the desert.”

“You could’ve come in at any time.”

No, he thought, I couldn’t have. It took someone like you to take me by the hand and lead me here, to get me out of the dust and into the smog. I was waiting for Pax the way he’d told me to. I was wasting time and time was wasting me.

“What porn actor do you want to look up?”

“A guy who goes by the name of Harvey Wallbanger.”

She drew her chin back. “You’ve got a score to settle with Harvey Wallbanger?”

Grey looked at her. “You know him?”

“I’ve seen some of his movies. My ex, Barry, the one who’s on HBO now, we liked watching X-rated DVD’s together.”

“Any idea what his real name is?”

“No. It’s not like I ever met him or anything. I just watched him in action. Why are you after him?”

He had to do something here, get Kendra to stop thinking he was out to kill everybody he asked about. “I don’t have a score to settle with him. I just want to ask him a few questions.”

“Monty can get the list but he won’t hand it over.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You interest him. He likes people like you. The ones who ride roughshod, who don’t give a shit about playing kiss-ass or making a so-called good impression. Who take what they want.”

“If he likes me then why won’t he help?”

“He’ll want to know why first. He’ll want to see what he can get out of you, what you can do for him.”

“I can’t do anything for him.”

“Maybe not, but he’ll still get you to try.”

Like a major Hollywood agent didn’t already have everything anyway, the guy would have to try to squeeze whatever he could out of a guy like Grey.

They decided on lunch in a seafood restaurant, sat by the window and ordered real drinks to go with the food. She got something that looked and sounded frou-frou but had five shots of different liquors in it. He just went with a double whiskey and beer back. She took a sip of hers and said, “Why’d you steal Monty’s .32?”

“I’m going to ask Harvey some questions, and I need straight answers.”

“So that means you expect Harvey to lie to you otherwise.”

“Maybe.”

“Does this have to do with drugs, money, or a woman?”

“A woman.”

“Ah. Was Harvey banging someone he shouldn’t have been?”

“Probably.”

She sighed and gave him a frown, finally showing some signs that she was getting a little fed up with him. “You don’t like talking about this but you’re not bothered that I keep asking you so many questions. You want to get it out but you feel that you can’t because you need it internalized and want to keep your emotions, your story, to yourself. It’s kind of like the way that actors discover the characters they’re about to play. You read the script and know what’s supposed to be there in the movie, but you have to ask yourself questions about this person and find answers that aren’t on the page. What kind of a childhood did she have? What would she do in this or that situation? Did someone break her heart when she was sixteen? Did she have an abortion? Is she jealous of her sister? All these other bits and pieces of history go into helping define the character you eventually play.” She got in close, kissed him lightly, then with more passion. He went with it, looked deep in her eyes. He liked the taste of her drink on her tongue. Her expression had a mean edge to it. “So, why don’t we jump ahead a bit. Let me ask you. When you do find your character, when you know who you are, then what exactly are you going to do?”

“Some damage,” Grey said.

8

On West 4th, Ellie in his doorway with the blade in her side, Grey rushed to her and clamped his hands to the wound and was surprised at how little it was bleeding. She said, “Jesus, don’t pull it out.”

“I won’t.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad enough.”

“You know anyone who can help?”

“No hospital, huh?”

“No.”

“Let’s get you inside.”

All of this after not seeing each other for more than a decade. It was a little surreal, but somehow still expected, perfectly natural.

She put an arm around his neck and he half-carried her into the vestibule. His apartment was on the third floor. They got a rhythm going as they moved up the staircase, where she’d sort of take a tiny jump and he’d lift her up three steps at a time. On the second floor landing the manager was cleaning up old Chinese restaurant menus on the floor. The guy glanced at the knife handle in terror.

Grey said, “Look away. You didn’t see anything, right?”

He got the key into his lock and opened the door. It clunked against the surround-sound speaker.

Ellie asked, “You know anyone who-”

“A medic I was in the Army with. Let me call him. If your liver hasn’t been nicked he can probably help. If it has, we need to take you to the emergency room.”

“Goddamn it.”

Grey got her down onto his couch, propped pillows behind her head, threw a blanket over her to help with shock. She hadn’t been stabbed long ago, which meant it had happened fairly nearby. She’d been in the neighborhood and he hadn’t known.

He grabbed his cell and called Tough-Shit Sherman. T.S. answered on the first half-ring, barked, “The fuck?”

”It’s Grey. I’ve got my sister here at my place. Knife wound, not much bleeding. Looks like a two, maybe three-inch puncture. The knife’s still in. Think it missed the stomach but not sure about the liver.”

“First thing, don’t pull the blade out.”

“I’m not going to pull the fucking blade out.”

“Any black discharge?”

“Not that I see.”

“Good. If he was seeping liver bile you could cross her off your Christmas card list.”

“Just get here,” Grey said and hung up.

He looked down and Ellie was grinning at him, a welled drop of blood on her lower lip. He wasn’t sure if she was hemorrhaging internally or if she’d taken a smack in the mouth. She was radiant and lovely and looked exactly like the little girl he’d known and nothing like her at all. They’d only been in foster care together for about twelve months, but it was an important time, a year that would never merge with the rest of the years, never fade, never soften. He considered her to be his sister and always would. He’d looked for her several times over the last decade, but she’d hit the streets at fourteen and he’d never so much as caught a hint of her after that.

She raised one hand, her fingertips speckled with dry blood, and brushed the hair from his eyes. “You look good,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

“Don’t talk, Ellie.”

“I want to talk. It’s been long time since we’ve talked.”

A thousand questions boiled up in his throat, but he had to go with, “Who did this to you?”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“Whose fault?”

“Johnny’s.”

“Somebody named Johnny stabbed you in the guts and it wasn’t his fault?”

Her gaze unfocused for an instant, then she centered on him again. She wet her lips. “Did you look for me?”

“Yes.”

“How hard?”

“You dropped out of the system when you were fourteen.”

“I thought maybe I could change,” she said, and for an instant her exquisite face fell and her bottom lip trembled, eyes suddenly wet. And then just as quickly the moment of weakness was gone and she was beautiful and hard again. “Do you know anything about what happened to Pax?”

“He lives outside of Fort Bragg, but right now he’s back in Iraq.”

“He’s a soldier?”

“Career.”

“And what are you?”

Even though his eyes didn’t brighten with tears, his own moment of weakness hit him. “A fuckup.”

“No you’re not. You just still need to find what you’re good at.”

He’d lost his family, been abused by foster parents, kicked out of school, booted out of the Army, had nothing of value except the car, couldn’t hold a steady job and worked temp manual labor wasting his days waiting for something to happen. He wondered if this was it.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked.

“For the last few years, L.A. mostly.”

“Doing what?”

“Being very stupid.”

It made her laugh, which led into a coughing fit that went on so long she nearly convulsed.

“How long have you been in New York?” he asked.

“Eight months.”

He swallowed thickly. A knot in his chest tightened even further. “And you knew where I was that whole time. Why did you wait so long to come by? Why did it have to be like this?”

“I’ve watched you,” she said. “I didn’t…I didn’t want to make things worse.”

“There is nothing worse.”

T.S. rushed in through the door with his medical kit, moved to Ellie’s side, looked her in the face and said, “Goddamn, woman, you’re gorgeous.”

“Thank you,” she said and started vomiting bile.

9

It was rough going for a while, and there was a lot of blood. Grey went for the phone twice but Ellie, who should’ve been unconscious through it all, was still awake and kept telling him not to call an ambulance. Finally, T.S. got the situation under control. After he was done he gave her a couple of shots that put her out at last.

As T.S. washed his red hands in the kitchen sink he said, “She’ll make it if peritonitis doesn’t set in. I think she’ll be all right. I’m leaving bandages and antibiotics. Change the dressing twice a day and follow the directions on the bottles.”

Grey checked the meds and saw they belonged to an Esther Freeman on the Upper East Side. “Esther make out okay?”

“Esther’s long dead. Don’t ask any questions.”

“Right.”

Grey started scrubbing at the blood that had splashed onto the wall.

“She really your sister?” T.S. asked.

No need to get into it. “Yes.”

“I know this girl.”

“What?”

“I know her.”

“You know her?” Grey turned, tossed his rag down. “How the hell would you know her?”

“Yeah, from the movies.”

Grey knew then exactly what kind of movies Ellie had been making, what had probably brought her low, and what had brought her to New York. If you bottom out in porn your next step is pro. She’d probably burned a lot of bridges out in L.A. and wanted to try fresh in New York.

“Sorry, man,” T.S. said.

“Don’t be.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The wall had dried but the paint was still marked with her blood. “She didn’t get knifed by being a soccer mom in Westchester.”

“Still, if it was my sister, I’d be a little steamed thinking my best buddy had watched her on DVD and, you know, well…”

“Shut the fuck up, Sherman.”

“Right.” T.S. picked up his bag, started for the door. “You know she’s an addict, right?”

Grey’s chin dropped to his chest. He shut his eyes and welcomed the darkness, felt it cool him, befriend him, then he opened his eyes again. “I do now.”

“Heroin. I don’t know how bad a habit, but if it’s bad enough you’ll know it soon.”

“Jesus.”

“Call me if you need anything else.”

“Thanks.”

Once the echoes of footsteps receded down the stairs, Grey went through her purse and found a knotted condom full of heroin, a hypodermic needle, and a business card that sounded upper class unless you knew what you were looking for: “Premium Friends – For All Your Attendant Needs.” He thought it was cute how they interchanged the word “attendant” for “escort.”

Listening to Ellie’s labored breathing, he dabbed her sweaty forehead with a wet towel. He remembered being a kid and doing this same thing after old man Wagner had been at her. Washing her wounds, cleaning up blood.

She was naked under a blanket, snoring softly. He drew the blanket away and inspected her body. Some scars he recognized. Many others had been collected along the way. A nicely done armband tattoo of thorns around her left bicep. Another around her right thigh. The signs of addiction could still be seen. A few bad bruises and blemishes that hadn’t fully healed. She’d shot mostly in her feet and a couple of veins had collapsed, proving she’d been hardcore for years but had still been smart enough not to ruin the rest of her body, the moneymaker.

He took her hand and put her palm to his mouth and spoke against her flesh. He wasn’t aware of his own words and he couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t recognize his own voice and was almost lulled by the rhythmic murmur of it, like a hymn or a prayer. It went on like that until it was dark and then he kissed her hand and laid it back across her belly.

Ellie was sleeping soundly when Grey called the number and set up an appointment for later on that night. He said he was a businessman visiting town and would like some company. They went through the whole spiel that they were a “friendship club” and that their ladies were not prostitutes and there was no intent to sell sexual favors. He said sure, he understood. He showered, shaved, got dressed in his one black suit, and pulled a wedge of cash from his stash at the bottom of the closet. He needed to find out if anyone at Premium Friends knew this Johnny.

10

Turned out Premium Friends was a ritzy place down in the East Village. Grey met the madam and two bouncers out in the vestibule, who checked him out and put a little quiz to him that was supposed to force him to admit to being a cop if he was one. The madam was an Asian woman who was on the wrong side of fifty but still hanging in there. Her glossy black hair wagged and waved whenever she turned her head the slightest bit. He imagined her starting out as a pro playing the geisha girl, wearing teakwood sandals and telling guys in broken English how huge their cranks were.

The bouncers were the usual muscle-bound no-neck types with faces blurred from past battles. The only difference was these two were well-dressed in double-breasted suits.

Once Grey had passed muster he was charged a “membership fee” and they let him into the bar. This was the meeting area where you checked out the ladies who promenaded around in evening ware or lingerie. They slinked up beside you to ask your name and touch your arm and laugh at your lame jokes to make you feel comfortable.

If you wanted to take them out to a club or a social function, the date was one price. You wanted to stay in and maybe go visit one of the rooms in back, you paid something else. All major credit cards accepted. They chatted him up while he asked everyone in sight if Johnny was around.

He kept asking for Johnny and they kept saying, “Johnny who?” The ladies had no idea and he got the feeling they were telling the truth. He wasn’t sure what else to do but tell it straight. He said he was Ellie’s brother and that she’d been hurt and he’d found the card and knew what she did and he wanted to get some information from her employers and fellow employees. They said they had no idea who Ellie was.

It got the bouncers up in his face. They said he was bothering the girls. They ushered him into a different back room than the ones where you had sex. They worked his gut and kidneys for about five minutes. It was nothing compared to what the MP’s used to do to him when he was fucking around off base. He kept asking about Ellie and Johnny and the bruisers just looked at him like he was crazy. They tried to drag him out the back door into the alley but they hadn’t hurt him nearly as bad as they’d thought. He walked out on his own power past the madam, asked her the question too, and saw no flicker of deceit in her eyes when she said she didn’t know. He described Ellie to her. She said there were lots of girls who fit that description and he figured she was right. The bouncers started getting itchy to kick the shit out of him again and got in close, breathed threats in his ear.

Total bust. Grey grabbed a cab home.

Ellie was still out cold but he didn’t like the idea of leaving her on the couch alone until morning, so he changed her dressings and carefully hefted her into the bedroom. He crawled in beside her and made sure he laid far enough away from her that he didn’t accidentally roll over and re-open her wound.

At three in the morning he got up and pissed a little blood. He checked Ellie’s bandages again and got her to wake up long enough to give her the antibiotics. In a stupor she said, “We’re both naked.”

“Yeah.”

“Did we have sex?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

It was a tough question to answer, even if he did consider her to be his sister. It wasn’t kink. It wasn’t fetish. He loved her. He hadn’t loved anyone else in a very long time and a need to hold on to and be held by someone you loved was almost overpowering. While he stood there thinking about it she passed out again and solved the problem.

In the morning when he woke she was gone.

So were the pills, some of his clothes, and the rest of the stash from the bottom of his closet.

She left a note saying:

Thank you. I love you. Forgive me. I’ll see you again one day.

He called T.S. and asked, “My sister. What name did she perform under?”

“Give me a second.”

Grey could hear T.S. rummaging through his porn collection. Grey knew it was extensive but it sounded like T.S. was climbing over boxes, digging through two or three closets, unlocking trunks.

“No, not this one…no…no…Assbusters 7, this it?…no…no…Cum Home for Christmas…this the one?…wait…no…Sidesaddle Sally…Knee-deep Throat…Teen Cum Dumpsters…no…”

“T.S., you don’t have to read all the-”

“Here it is. Teen Ball Busters 2. Yeah. Her name is…Eva Rains. That’s right, now I remember. She did a lot of movies with Harvey Wallbanger, him and his twelve-inch wonder of the world. I think they were a couple. You know, in real life.”

“Thanks.”

Grey called Pax’s U.S. number and left a voice mail. If he wasn’t in the hot zone he’d call within the next day or two.

It took less than two hours. Pax said, “You should’ve phoned sooner.”

“I had my hands full.”

“Tell me everything.”

Grey told him everything and Pax said, “Wait for me.”

“I’m not sure that I can.”

“I’ll be done with this leg of my tour in less than three months.”

“That’s too long. I have to do something.”

“All you have to do is wait for me. In fact, you don’t even have to do that much. You can forget it ever happened, go on about your business.”

Pax was too kind to tell him that he would probably just fuck things up. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Then sit tight and just wait.”

But Grey hadn’t been able to do that either. He checked the phone book, found nothing. He checked the Internet, found about ten thousand websites devoted to Eva Rains. The message boards went on and on. The fanboys were some seriously fucked up individuals. Half of them wanted to marry her, half of them wanted to plow her to death.

Grey scoured the streets. He watched Premium Friends. He tried it again and the bouncers sapped him and left him lying on the edge of the East River.

He waited for her to find him again. But she was gone.

He had to move, even if he went nowhere fast.

So he sold the big entertainment system and the rest of his belongings, cleaned out his bank account, and drove across the country, heading west, killing time, meeting women who wanted to off their husbands. The coast pulled at him, like lips sucking out venom. He got closer and closer. He did his best to wait for Pax. He probably would’ve held out until Pax was back in the States if he hadn’t met Kendra and been led right to the town where he wanted to go. He was going to visit Harvey Wallbanger and his twelve-inch wonder of the world. It was just the way it had to be.

11

Kendra had been right, Monty didn’t want to turn over the contact info for the porn actors where Harvey Wallbanger would be listed under his real name.

“You took my gun, didn’t you?” Monty asked.

“Yeah,” Grey admitted.

It got Monty sort of dancing around his office, on display in the big fish bowl. “You going to shoot some porn actress? That it? You that kind of crazy? See her screw fifty other guys on screen but you figure she’s yours, you love her, you’re going to save her, set her up in house and home, she’s going to be mother of your kids? That what you’re after?”

Grey wasn’t sure how many questions that was, so he hoped one answer would cover them all. “No.”

“What’s it all about?”

“Do you really need to know, Monty?”

“I think I do.”

Monty had the list right there on his desk. Grey could’ve just chopped the guy in the throat and walked out with the information while Monty crawled on all fours gagging and barking like a dog. But Grey didn’t feel the need to go that way and decided to just lay it out. Maybe Kendra was right, he was getting into character, running his lines, finding out who he was, or who he was supposed to be.

“Okay then,” Grey said. “My sister was in the biz under the name Eva Rains. She and a guy named Harvey Wallbanger were apparently a real-life couple. She left porn, probably due to drugs. She dropped a rung on the ladder and came to New York, maybe to be an escort. She was hurt badly by someone she called Johnny. Then she vanished on me. Maybe she’s back in L.A. So I’m here to see if I can get a line on her. I want to talk to Harvey. That okay with you, Monty?”

A couple of famous actors that Grey recognized walked by on the other side of the glass wall. Just a few months ago he might’ve gone after them for an autograph, talked up what his favorite scenes from their films were. But his DVD collection was scattered across six pawn shops in Manhattan now and his love for film seemed to have gone with it. He couldn’t stop thinking about the collapsed veins and the tracks between Ellie’s toes. He thought of Ellie’s dog tasered to death by the cops. It seemed to be a metaphor for something but he didn’t know what. He wondered if Harvey had really cared about her and failed to protect or if he’d only been another part of the problem. Grey’s thoughts were splashing everywhere like a wave hitting the rocks.

Monty was talking. “-hand you his name and contact info, I want you to promise me that you’re not going to-”

“Monty, just give me the-”

“-go psycho and start blasting away.”

“I told you, I’d deal with it.”

“And what’s Kenny think of this bold plan?”

Grey finally understood that Monty was stalling because he was putting together his own scheme.

He didn’t give a damn if Grey put six in Harvey’s face or not. Whether Grey did go crazy because he thought he was in love with a porn princess. He’d just been feeling Grey out, trying to see how on the edge he was, and whether Monty could put it to use, get in behind him and push him the rest of the way.

“All right, spit it out,” Grey said. “What’s on your mind?”

At last Monty smiled. He didn’t have to pretend any longer. For a guy who made his living off of actors Monty proved to be a really terrible one. He sat at his desk and stretched out, thought about putting his feet up but then decided against it. He pulled out two glasses and a bottle of Jameson’s from the bottom drawer of his desk, a bottle that hadn’t been there a couple days ago when Grey had riffled the place. Monty didn’t want to waste the bourbon.

He poured the whiskey.

”I think I have a little job for you first,” he said.

Funds were running low. Grey could use some kind of a payday.

“What kind of job?”

“I want you to kill my wife.”

12

Christ, another maniac. There must’ve been some ancient curse woven into the wedding vows, you kissed the bride and bloody murder passed between your tongues.

Grey couldn’t do much more than stare at the guy, wondering why it was everyone thought he was a killer. Did he really have a baby face that somehow looked mean? He caught his reflection in the glass and thought he looked like anyone else. The secretary walked by and gave him a grin. Would she do that if he looked like a killer?

“You’ve got a gun,” Monty said.

“I’ve got your gun, you moron.”

“I’ll get you another one. Shoot her with the other one.”

“I’m not shooting anyone with anything.”

But Monty thought he was being suave again and put on a Cheshire smile, like he thought he had Grey by the nuts. “You took my gun for a reason. You’re going to kill Harvey Wallbanger!”

“I’m not going to kill him either,” Grey said, thinking, Well, not unless he’s Johnny. Unless he put a four-inch blade into my sister. Then yeah.

“You stole from me. You owe me.”

“Monty, you can only leverage someone you’ve got some kind of control over.” Grey tried to be reasonable. “You ever think of, you know, marriage counseling as a first measure here? Or maybe just get a divorce?”

“That bitch isn’t getting a dime off me. Now, I need you to do this job for me.”

“Go hire a hitter.”

“I looked into it. You know how much they cost?” A deep whine worked itself into Monty’s voice. “They’re expensive!”

“Do it yourself then.”

When things started spinning this far out of control Grey would try to imagine what Pax would do in his place. It was a futile exercise because Grey couldn’t get beyond the fact that Pax would never allow himself to get into this kind of situation. Still, he tried to see it. Pax in the room, sitting where Grey sat, staring over at Monty, talking about killing the wife. But it broke down and faded in his mind. Pax would never find himself here.

Grey got up and stepped over to the desk. When Monty tried to hurl himself on top of the porn list Grey tapped him lightly on the jaw. Monty flew backwards into his chair as if he’d been shotgunned.

“You punched me, you prick! I’ll sue!”

Grey grabbed the pages and read Harvey Wallbanger’s info. Real name: Paul Avon. No home address listed. Shit, he should’ve realized the contact info would be through the actor’s representation.

Monty Stobbs.

“You little goddamn weasel,” Grey said.

“Paul is a highly valued client of mine. If you snuff him, I lose a lot of money.”

“I told you, I’m not snuffing him or anyone. If he’s a valued client then you must’ve known my sister when she performed as Eva Rains.”

“I met Eva, yes.”

“Okay, then. Talk to me.”

Grey threw the listing on the floor, put a foot on Monty’s chair and shoved him to the wall. Monty sat there sort of pinned, tried to hold on to his cool but couldn’t keep his gaze from twitching all around. Grey waited, letting his silence speak for him. Sometimes you couldn’t say how serious you were, you just had to let the other person feel it.

Monty finally met Grey’s eyes and that was all that was necessary.

“Tell me about her,” Grey said.

“There’s not much to tell, really. I only started repping Harvey about a year ago. He and your sister were almost done by then. They had been something of a team but he wanted out. She was too deep into the shit and it was starting to show in her performance and her looks. He said he’d tried getting her help but it wouldn’t take. So he was going it alone. I met her at a Christmas party at their place. She was drunk and high but seemed like a nice kid. She didn’t realize he’d cut her loose yet, I suppose. Harvey got a new apartment and became my client. That’s it.”

No reason to believe any of it was a lie. “Where is he now?”

“Lives in the valley.”

“I mean right now, this minute.”

“On a shoot in Van Nuys.”

“I want to see him.”

“You can’t disrupt a shoot! Security will throw you out!”

“Let me worry about that.”

Clucking and groaning, Monty wrote the address out for him and Grey walked out of the fish bowl, got down to his car and re-entered the blazing sunlight.

When he got back to the apartment Kendra was stretched out on the bed waiting for him. No small talk, no can I fix you a sandwich. No how was your day, dear.

”I think you should find a new agent,” he told her. “Get dressed, you’re showing me how to get to Van Nuys.”

13

Turned out it wasn’t a studio or a set, but a mansion with an even higher wall and a larger gate than those in Beverly Hills. There was a bored guard in the little booth who asked Grey his name.

Grey said, “I’m Monty Stobbs, Hollywood super-agent. I represent Mr. Harvey Wallbanger.”

The guard called up to the house and a few seconds later opened the gate.

“So much for security,” Kendra said.

“You’re a fan of Harvey’s. Now you get to see him up close.”

“I have to admit I’m curious.”

“Figured you would be.”

“Is that jealousy I detect?”

“No.”

Grey parked up at the house and they stepped up a large Italian marble walkway that led to a porticoed entrance. The door was open so they waltzed right in.

Inside there was lots of action, lights, people walking all over the place. None of this quiet on the set. Grey smelled peppered chicken and turned to see a caterer’s table set up against the far wall. People were eating and drinking coffee. A photographer was taking photos of the scene.

“That’s him,” Kendra said.

“On the table?”

“Yeah.”

Harvey was busy kneeling on a dining room table behind a twenty-something girl. Around them sat about fifteen extras who were making small talk while eating soup and drinking wine. Grey figured this was some kind of homage to German expressionism or some shit. The girl had fake breasts that didn’t move an inch no matter how many acrobatics she and Harvey threw into the mix. A boom handler kept the mic up close on the performers. The director kept calling out positions. “Now into cowgirl…now reverse…now Mish…” Harvey followed through as commanded. The rest of the diners started to join in and soon an orgy was in progress. Harvey’s girl was making orgasmic noises that sounded so fake and painful that Grey figured she was going to hyperventilate soon and pass out under the candelabra.

“My biggest movie we had a crew only half this size,” Kendra said.

“You’re in the wrong biz.”

“I suppose I am.”

They watched the shenanigans for a little while longer. It was much more boring than Grey had been expecting. Harvey had trouble finishing off. The director told everyone to freeze until Harvey got his shit together. It seemed like it was going to take some time.

“Let’s get a coffee,” Grey said.

He and Kendra crashed the caterers table and munched on some buffalo wings and antipasto. Between bites she asked, “So what do you think of him?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Up close, I’m not impressed. He gets a lot of help in the editing room.”

Besides his non-functioning twelve-inch wonder of the world Harvey looked like pretty much any other guy on the block. He kept his hair closely cropped, wore a little peach fuzz beard, had tribal tattoos to show he was a man of the world. He had an armband crown of thorns that matched Ellie’s. Grey couldn’t really read his eyes because Harvey was caught up in his fuck face expressions.

“Are you going to pull the gun on him before you introduce yourself or after?” she asked.

“Which do you think will make the biggest impression?”

“Probably before.”

Kendra knew one of the lighting guys and struck up a conversation. Grey watched as Harvey finally pulled the trigger to the applause of the cast and crew. Folks shook his hand. Grey wondered why in the fuck anybody would shake anybody’s hand during a porn shoot until after they’d hit the showers, but clearly he didn’t know how things worked around here.

Harvey put on a robe and followed the girl he’d just banged up a large staircase. A few of the other performers marched upstairs as well. Grey wondered if he should wait for Harvey to clean up and come back down or approach on the move.

He told Kendra, “Back in a minute,” but she was so busy primping for the lighting guy that she didn’t respond.

Grey stood at the bottom of the stairs and tried to imagine what Pax would do. But he figured Pax would have waited until Harvey got home to his place in the valley and wouldn’t attack him in the middle of a porn set cleanup.

Well, Pax was making the world safe for democracy and wasn’t here. Grey took the steps three at a time. The second floor had two large hallways with six or seven doors. It wasn’t hard finding the right one. The sound of squealing emerged from the end of the corridor. Grey figured what the hell and walked in.

It was a bathroom about three times the size of his old apartment in New York. To the right was a claw-foot bathtub with two hot chicks in it, a huge shower currently occupied by several folks behind a beveled glass door, a sink you could bathe in, and a counter covered with three different drugs he could name and a couple he couldn’t. Two of the orgy guys were sniffing coke off the rock hard tits of the girl who’d been Harvey’s partner.

To the left was a large hot tub. Harvey was alone in it. He had lain back and looked half-asleep.

Grey thought, Where’s the toilet? A thousand square feet of bathroom and no shitter?

He shook his head, stepped over to Harvey, and said, “I’m Ellie’s brother.”

Harvey opened his eyes. He was a kid who took everything in stride. He yawned and scratched his peach fuzz. “Ellie didn’t have a brother.”

“She did and she does. Have you heard from her recently?”

“Been almost a year since we split up, man.”

“I know. Have you been in touch since?”

“You some kind of a crazy fan, man? Eva Rains always had the craziest goddamn fans after her. She encouraged that kind of crap. That what you’re about?”

Grey decided he might have a little better luck if he used Harvey’s real name. “Paul, I really am Ellie’s brother. Tell me what happened before the two of you broke up.”

A couple of the orgy chicks broke from the shower and hopped into the hot tub. They giggled and sighed and murmured, oblivious to Grey and everything else. Harvey kissed one of the ladies and within a minute was almost asleep again.

So much for this.

Grey grabbed Harvey by the back of the neck and forced his head under the bubbling waters. The girls didn’t open their eyes. For the first few seconds Harvey didn’t even struggle, stoned and just going with it.

Then he started to struggle a bit, and then a bit more, and then he began to thrash down there. Grey left him under the foam for another ten-count, then pulled him up.

Coughing and sputtering, Harvey turned his face to Grey, his eyes finally showing some focus and interest.

One of the orgy guys walked over and said, “Hey, anything wrong?”

“No trouble,” Grey said. “I’m a trained lifeguard. Get the fuck out of here.”

He hauled Harvey out of the water.

“Wait, man, wait…what…?”

“Okay, now we can dialogue. My sister. Have you heard from her since you split up?”

Harvey Wallbanger’s hands went up in front of his face like he expected to lose what few looks he had. “No, man, no no!”

“Tell me what happened.”

“What happened when?”

“What happened when you split.”

“She left, man, she left, that’s all! She got in deep into heroin, fucking nobody does heroin anymore. That’s not a righteous high. It kills everything. We started fighting, she was costing us jobs. So we parted ways, totally amicable, I’m telling you.”

“Who’s Johnny?”

“Who’s Johnny who, man?”

One of the girls opened an eye and said, “I think he means her manager, Harvey. That old fat fucker.”

Harvey’s eyes lit. “Yeah, yeah. That’s right. Name was John. Yeah. John…Raymond. Right. That who you mean, man? John Raymond?”

The girls over in the claw-foot tub were starting to get into each other, which was sort of distracting. Grey found a towel and tossed it to Harvey. “Let’s go talk next door.”

14

Next door was an empty bedroom. Jesus, there was a guy in a little booth out front but nobody around the house to keep assholes out of your closets. The hell kind of town was this?

Harvey sat on the bed. With his crank covered over he looked a little pathetic, like a child held after class. Grey was worried he might start crying. For this he’d been carrying Monty’s .32?

“Tell me more about Ellie’s manager.”

“There’s nothing to tell, man. After we decided to split up I got new representation with Monty Stobbs. You heard of him?”

“Yeah, I have.”

“He didn’t want anything to do with Ellie. She was already getting a bad rep in the business. Once your reputation goes like that everybody in the industry knows. No one wants to work with you, nobody wants to hire you.” Harvey started to get a little animated again, talking with his hands, mauling the air. “Our agent dumped us because we were a package team. I had my career to think about. So we broke up and I went with Monty and she found this other guy, John Raymond. Said he was more than an agent, said he was a manager. Was going to get her parts in straight movies. Was going to have her do TV. He thought she should start over in New York, doing bits on the crime shows. Last time I saw her, that’s where she was headed.”

“You let her go?” Grey asked. “Knowing she was using heroin? How could anybody get her a job on network television if she’d already been drummed out of porn?”

“I don’t know. He said it and she believed it. I told her it was crazy but she wouldn’t listen to me. You must know what she’s like.”

If only that were true. “You ever hear of this John Raymond before? He the real deal or just a-” Grey almost said pimp. “-manipulator.”

“All agents are manipulators. But no, I never heard of him before, but he seemed no better or worse than the other bastards.”

“No phone number or contact info or anything?”

“She said New York, that’s all I know.”

“How long were you two together?”

“Over a year. We were thinking of getting married.”

Grey wondered if it was a good thing she’d gotten out of being wed to this guy. Or if somehow that might’ve helped to stabilize her, even if the day job was fucking on top of a dining room table. “What got her strung out?”

“She was always strung out, man. She was an explosive personality. Anxious, always on edge. It made her interesting, made her exciting, but she could wear you out. Wore herself out too. She’d try this and try that. She just liked the H better than the other shit.”

Grey wanted to hate the guy. He felt the righteous need to beat and choke someone for not taking care of Ellie, for not watching over her. But he’d failed at that himself. She’d slipped out of his bed with a knife wound in her side, so how could he expect this punk to have done any better?

Without another word Grey turned and left the bedroom, went back downstairs to where they were breaking down the set and putting away all the cameras and lights and equipment and dinner plates. Kendra was in the same spot except she was holding court with five or six guys now. Maybe they all knew her from the movies. Maybe they were making pitches on how she could break wide into porn.

Grey stood outside the circle and waited. He decided to call Monty and ask about John Raymond but he couldn’t get past the secretary, who kept saying Monty was in a conference and couldn’t be disturbed. Grey was now persona non grata unless he offed Monty’s wife for him. He hung up and Kendra said her farewells and slid in beside him.

She met his eyes, looked deep in his face as if searching for some intrinsic change in him. She didn’t see it and gave him a vapid grin. She seemed a little disappointed that he hadn’t snuffed Harvey or anybody else yet.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s still plenty of time.”

“Time for what?” she asked.

15

Back at the apartment she wanted him to help her run lines. She had an audition in the morning. He sat on the couch with the script of Killing Time open on his lap.

“You know, this screenwriter just got out of prison,” she said. “His brother killed a dealer who’d sold meth to his son and he helped the brother while he was on the run.”

“I know, I read about it in the papers.”

“That’s why you chose this script, right?”

“Mostly. I spotted a couple of good scenes for you while I was paging through it in Monty’s office.”

It was a crime thriller about an older woman who’s in the Witness Protection Program after seeing a mob hit. She gets married to the FBI agent who’s helped her out along the way. Then the agent starts having an affair with a trampy waitress who gets him to betray the wife so they can collect a big payday from the mob. A young hit man shows up to kill the wife but they fall in love instead and set in motion a plan to get revenge on the husband, the tramp, and the mob boss.

Tie the story in with the real life crimes of the writer and his brother, and you had something that had legs. There were a few nude scenes where Kendra got to show off her body, some good action thrills, a couple of big confrontations. She got to cry on screen, be seductive, and act the total bitch with a gun who shoots her husband’s balls off.

“Monty should hire you,” Kendra said. “You’ve got a good eye.”

They ran her lines for a couple of hours. Grey enjoyed playing different parts and started to really get into the roles. When it was time for her to seduce the young syndicate shooter she climbed into Grey’s lap and they tossed the scripts over their shoulders and fell onto the floor.

Afterwards, while she lay panting, she said, “I don’t know. I got more hot rehearsing opposite you than I did watching the orgy.”

“It was a pretty stupid orgy. Fucking on top of silverware.”

“It was more raw with you. More honest.”

It was raw, Grey admitted, but it was anything but honest.

“In the morning I need you to call Monty for me,” he said. “See if he’ll cough up John Raymond’s address.”

“My audition’s at nine a.m.”

“After that. After you nail it.”

She rolled over and crawled back on top of him. Salt was smeared at the corners of her eyes, and the flecks of gold pinned him. She was doing it again, trying to go deep into him, see into his soul.

“You fill me with confidence,” she said.

“That’s not all.”

“I don’t know what it is about you. But there’s something. It drives me a little crazy. Maybe it’s because you don’t give a shit about anything.”

“I care about something.”

“The woman.”

“My sister.”

“Is that what she is?”

“Yes.”

She rode him hard and chewed his chest and mewled in his ear and later, as they were falling off together, the room turning cold with the wet breeze from a sudden shower, she murmured in his arms and called him a fucking liar.

16

In the morning he drove Kendra over to the casting agent’s office. He was going to wait in the waiting room out front but she said, “Come on in.”

He shrugged and followed.

Grey was surprised by how small and somber the audition area was. Looked like the break room in a factory he once worked in.

The casting agent was a young woman who introduced herself as Judy. No last name. Grey was surprised that she was alone. He figured you had to audition for the director, the writer, the producers, a whole group of folks that sat in judgment and gave you the stink eye. But the lady was amiable and he could see that Kendra was at ease.

A small video camera was set up on a tripod, aimed at a little stage. He took a chair in the corner and Kendra asked Judy, “Would you mind terribly if my friend read with me?”

“Not at all,” Judy said, waving her hands like her fingernails were wet and she was trying to dry them. Everyone in this town spoke with bold bodily gestures. “Whatever works best for you.”

Kendra smiled and nodded for him to come over. He stood and figured what the hell. He was familiar with the parts by now.

Judy handed them one five page scene. It was the one where the hitter catches up to the woman on the run and she tries to seduce him. Kendra seemed to already know this was the scene she was supposed to have rehearsed for, but if she did she’d never mentioned that to him.

Grey didn’t go overboard and didn’t underplay the role. He started off in a chair, but when Kendra began to really get into the part she touched him on the throat and he lunged to his feet, and they played out the seduction leaning up against a wall. He pressed against her and she wrapped her legs around him. The script dropped from his hand. He didn’t know the piece line by line but he remembered the context and improvised. Kendra wound up saying her lines into the side of his neck, where she nipped at his jugular. The hitter was supposed to shove her away and stick the gun in her face one last time before he realizes she’s already got a hold on him. Except nobody had given Grey a prop gun.

He pulled out the .32 and stuck it under her chin. He thought of Ellie. He thought of his one chance to sleep with her passing him by and he was filled with regret, guilt, and self-loathing over it. His breathing grew more and more shallow until he was panting. Kendra glared at him, the terror alive in her eyes knowing it was a real gun but still playing into the role. She grunted. He mashed his lips against hers and she bit his tongue hard enough to make him bleed. He drew his knuckles across his mouth and backhanded her. It made the entire scene perfect.

Grey stepped away, returned the .32 to his pocket, and walked out of the room exactly like the hitter would in the movie.

Ten minutes later Kendra got into the Chevelle. He knew he had to apologize but didn’t know how to go about it. He waited for her to smack him. He waited for her to rail and rage against him. He looked out the window at the palm trees lining the parking lot and thought this town probably made everyone at least a little crazy.

He turned to look at her and she said, “Best audition I ever had. Let’s go home.”

That afternoon Monty called her to congratulate her on acing the audition. They’d offered her the part. They’d looked at sixty women and had given several of them three call-backs each, but Judy wanted Kendra.

Beaming and doing a little rabbit hop of joy, Kendra repeated everything he said. “A six-week shoot. Twenty K a week and a cut off the back end. Start on the 1st in New York.” Kendra smiled but there was something else clouding her eyes. “What? What’s wrong, Monty?” She listened for a moment and let out a gasp. “What? No. No. You did what? You didn’t, Monty. You couldn’t have.”

She met Grey’s eyes and he got a seriously bad feeling. She almost let the phone fall from her hand but he grabbed it, heard Monty crying on the other end. He looked at Kendra and she said, “He told me he killed his wife. He said he bashed her head in with a 3-iron.”

Grey turned his face from her, focused on Monty on the other side of the phone. Could imagine him there in the fish bowl, sobbing. Major celebrities walking by in the halls peering in at him. The cops would be there soon.

“Monty, listen to me-”

“If only you’d done it.”

“Have you ever heard of a man named John Raymond?”

“You told me to do it! You said I should do it myself!”

Christ, Monty was right. Grey had said it. But who the fuck would’ve expected him to go through with it? Here, everybody he came across looked at him like he was a murderer, and some slick little shit without a plan winds up grabbing a golf club and taking out his wife.

“John Raymond. He called himself a manager. You ever heard of him? He the real thing?”

“You think a brain is solid,” Monty said, “like, I don’t know, like meat, but it’s not. It’s like egg yolk. It runs. It spatters!”

There was a buzz of activity as Grey heard men entering Monty’s office, cops identifying themselves, and Monty being wrestled to the ground. Someone picked up the phone and gruffly asked, “Who is this?”

Grey hung up.

Kendra said, “Is it true?”

“Yes. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He grabbed the .32, went out to the curb out front, and smashed the gun to pieces. Then he got in the Chevelle and drove out to the freeway and scattered them for miles.

17

Three in the morning Pax called. “Sorry about the time, but this was my only chance to phone.”

“I was up.”

“I’ll be back in two weeks. Wait for me.”

Grey explained about Reno, Kendra, L.A., the Hollywood sign, Killing Time, Harvey, the hot tub, Monty, the murdered wife, and John Raymond.

Pax let his silence talk for him, the same way Grey often did, the way they’d been taught to do as kids.

Finally Pax took a breath and said, “You’ve been busy.”

“Running in circles mostly.”

“It’s not easy finding someone who doesn’t want to be found. What’s your next move?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Ellie could be dead, you know. From the knife wound in New York. You never did check the morgue or the hospitals or the police. That should’ve been your first stop. Maybe this Johnny tried to ice her again.”

“She’s not dead,” Grey said.

“She could be,” Pax insisted. “She could’ve died twenty steps outside your front door and you wouldn’t have known it. If it’s true, and she is dead, are you going to be able to handle it?”

The question offended Grey. He wet his lips and his mouth worked for a moment before he found his voice. “You just keep blowing up insurgents, right? Leave family matters to me.”

18

He drove back to Judy the casting agent’s place. She was auditioning two actors that Grey recognized from a couple of indie films he’d really enjoyed. They were doing a comedy scene about two guys on the road with a stolen gorilla being hunted by neo-Nazis and a pre-op tranny CIA agent. They played to the little tripod camera, screamed and ran around the little area like the gorilla or the chick with a dick was after them. Grey sat in the corner again thinking, Jesus, what these poor fuckers have to do to make a buck.

They finished up and walked past him without a word, their heads hanging.

Judy bustled up and said, “I’m glad you came back. I wanted to offer you the part of the hit man in Killing Time.”

Grey said, “What? I’m not even an actor.”

“You’re a natural. I’ve interviewed more than a dozen men for that role and you were by far the most authentic and appealing. We want you for it.”

“Who’s we?”

“All of us.” She gestured to the empty room like it was full of people. “I showed the digital video to our director and writer and they loved you as well. You won’t even need to do a call-back.”

Grey took a step away, drew his chin in like he was in a fight with enemies all around. “No, no, that’s not what this is about. Listen, have you ever heard of a manager named John Raymond?”

She waved her hands in the air again, doing the nail thing. “Tell me he’s not repping you!”

“No, he’s not, I’m not an actor, but I need to get in touch with him.”

“Who is representing you?”

“No one. Listen, I-”

“I know just the person. Kendra’s agent. Monty Stobbs. Have you met him yet?”

“I have, but Monty, he’s-”

“I think you two will work magnificently together.”

Nobody in this town ever heard a damn word you said.

“Look, about John Raymond-”

“He’s a bottom feeder. Small time with aspirations. He doesn’t protect his clients; he uses and wastes them.”

“He’s here in L.A.?”

“He has offices here and in New York, from what I recall, but please, if this film means anything to you, don’t bring him on board.”

The film didn’t mean anything to him but he wasn’t getting anywhere this way. “I won’t, I promise. Killing Time is far too important.”

“It is, it truly is!”

“But I need to talk to him. He’s been trying to lure Kendra away from Monty with promises of television work in New York.”

“That bastard will ruin her!”

“I think so too,” Grey agreed. “So I need to see him face to face in order to…dissuade him.”

Grinning, Judy got that look in her eye, the one that said she knew he was capable of great violence and wanted him to stay the course. “I’ll get his address for you.”

She vanished into her small office and Grey stood there wondering where Ellie was right at that second, and if she had any idea at all what he was willing to do to find her.

Judy returned with a Post-it note scribbled with John Raymond’s L.A. address and phone number.

“Nothing for New York?” Grey asked.

“No.” She touched his wrist with a little extra something, rubbed the back of his hand. “I can’t wait to work with you.”

Her wedding ring was a wide band of gold with deep-set diamonds. She backed up toward the wall where he and Kendra had pawed each other. The fire in her eyes filled the rest of her face. A bead of sweat dripped down her cleavage. He smiled and thanked her, thought of her husband, wished the poor fucker well, and walked out.

19

He called the number but got no answer and no voice mail. He had to stop into three gas stations to get the directions down to Raymond’s office. He was in a shit part of town but Grey liked the liveliness of it. A lot of people out on the street, gangs of punks yelling and fucking around, drunks laughing, homeless pushing carts. Raymond’s office was in the middle of the block bookended by a pawn shop and a liquor store. He imagined how tenuous Ellie’s grasp on the world must’ve been for her to believe Raymond could do anything for her besides put her to work on the street.

The lettering on the front window read STARMAKERS INC. The lights were out, the door was locked, and there was a sign glued to the glass saying the building was for lease. He put his face up to the window and saw that there was still a desk, chair, some photos on the wall, phones, and a computer inside.

Grey called the leasing company’s number and said that he was considering renting the property but he wanted to know more about STARMAKERS INC. They told him that the owner, John Raymond, hadn’t paid his rent in over three months and they were planning on putting his belongings in storage and selling them off at auction to help defer costs. Grey said he couldn’t think of leasing the office until the matter had been completely resolved and maybe he could help facilitate the process if they gave him John Raymond’s contact information.

They said that as a matter of course they couldn’t give it out, but since these were somewhat special circumstances they would. They gave him a New York number and an address in East Village that he realized was about three blocks from Premium Friends. He’d been close but not close enough.

Grey phoned and got no answer, no voice mail. He walked to the street, opened the trunk of the Chevelle, and rummaged through the tools that he’d stolen from Bo. He grabbed the hammer, wrapped it in an old shammy cloth, stepped back up and smashed in the glass door of STARMAKERS INC.

He went through the drawers of the desk looking for anything that might have information on Ellie or Eva Rains. He found a couple of DVD’s, including Teen Ball Busters 2, and some nude shots of her. On the back of the photos were her measurements, her sexual likes and dislikes, and Monty Stobbs’ address, which had been crossed out and poorly replaced with a stamp of the STARMAKERS INC. logo and phone number.

For a moment the edges of his vision turned black and red and he didn’t know why. It took him a second to realize that he’d been holding his breath. He didn’t know for how long. He took the least offensive photo of Ellie, climbed back into the car, and hurtled toward east Hollywood.

When he got back to the apartment Kendra was sitting naked on the bed, sipping from a champagne glass, a bottle on ice. She was looking through the paper for moving companies and had already started to box up some of her belongings.

She filled another glass and handed it to him. “So, I got us a new place. Judy called me. I hear you’re my co-star.”

He gulped the champagne down. “I’m not a co-star. I’m not doing it.”

“Why not?”

He snorted. “Jesus Christ, you people. I’m not an actor.”

“Who cares about that? You’ve got better instincts than at least half the schleps I’ve worked with over the years. The payday is a big one. There’s already a buzz building. You were right, the writer’s been getting a lot of publicity again. He’s being hailed as a hero. Interviewed on all the major talk shows. They might overturn his brother’s conviction. Killing Time is going to be a big release.”

“None of it means anything to me.”

“None of it means anything to anybody. It’s just what we do.”

“It’s not what I do.”

“Not yet maybe, but why not play along until something better comes around?”

He imagined the next phone call with Pax, telling him about being in a movie, and that Grey was doing better than the guys playing opposite the gorilla.

“We have a new agent, by the way,” she said.

He didn’t ask who. “I’m leaving.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Where?”

“New York.”

“I’ll go with you. Killing Time starts in six weeks. You can show me the lay of the land before we start. I need to work on my east coast accent.”

“I’m not starting anything. And I need to go alone.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to find John Raymond.”

“You’re still on that?”

He turned and she put her hand on his belly and started rubbing him the way she might try to calm a wired puppy. He wondered why she thought that he would stop looking for Ellie just because this dumb-ass film fell in his lap. Did she sincerely believe that once he had some cash he could set the search for his sister aside? That all he needed was something shiny flashed in front of his nose to make him forget the knife sticking out of Ellie’s side, the blood on her teeth, the tracks, the hardness? These people, didn’t they hold anyone or anything sacred?

The women out in the desert, the dust in the hollows of their cheeks, the careless way they smeared their lipstick on, the way their shoulders bowed beneath the burdens of their loneliness and failed dreams. It wasn’t only L.A. He thought of the savagery in their kisses and the way they pleaded with him to commit murder. Everyone had a scheme. Everyone had a plan. They all wanted a dupe. At least Monty had manned up at the end and taken responsibility.

“What is it?” Kendra said. “What’s this expression on your face?”

“Nothing.”

He drank directly from the bottle and finished about half the champagne. Then he packed his few bags, put them by the door.

“You’ll need money,” she said. She took the dowel off the corner post of the bed and he saw that inside there was a niche deep enough to hold a wad of cash. At least it proved she didn’t trust him enough to keep her money lying around. She pulled it out and counted off five thousand. “Here, you deserve it. You picked the script. You won me the audition. You made it happen. Besides, Monty won’t be getting a cut in prison.”

“I can’t take it,” he said.

“Call it a loan. Until you get your check from the company.”

“I’m not doing the movie.”

“I think you will when the time comes.” She stuffed the roll of bills in his hand. “Who knows, maybe you really will find your sister in the next six weeks. Maybe you can even help her get a bit part in the film. Isn’t that better than doing damage?”

He thought, No.

20

After twenty hours on the road Grey started to see double. He pulled over and got a room at a highway motel outside of Oklahoma City. Tired as he was he couldn’t fall asleep, so he spent a couple of hours flipping through the cable stations. He half-expected to find one of Kendra’s movies but there weren’t any playing. He checked the adult entertainment channels and saw he could order an Eva Rains and Harvey Wallbanger film for $19.99. He drew out Ellie’s photo and stared at it, thinking again about how he’d let her go and hadn’t done enough to protect her. He dropped off with the sun still shining and had fitful dreams about Pax beating hell out of old man Wagner, neo-Nazis and monkeys, Monty’s wife’s brains running like undercooked eggs thrown against a wall. He saw himself at the premiere to Killing Time, standing on a red carpet, wearing a tux and smiling and waving to screaming fans. Except they weren’t fans at all, they were just people in pain who couldn’t stop shrieking. And it wasn’t a red carpet at all, it was white and growing more and more stained with lapping blood. Grey kept grinning and waving.

21

With only six hours sleep in three days, having covered 2700 miles, Grey crawled through the mid-day traffic of the Holland Tunnel, crossed into Manhattan and made his way to the Village. He parked on the street half a block down from STARMAKERS INC.

The New York office looked very much like the L.A. one, stationed between a liquor store and a vintage clothing shop. The same kind of “For Lease” sticker was glued to the glass. Grey stuck his nose up to the window and saw a figure go by and a light snap off.

The door was locked. Grey knocked and the figure in the shadows ignored him. He banged harder and the figure gestured for him to leave.

Grey took the shammy-wrapped hammer out of his jacket pocket and smashed the glass in.

Turned out not to be John Raymond but a girl of about twenty-two who was cleaning out a desk. She looked so much like Ellie that his stomach dropped and he took two quick steps toward her, arms wide as if going in for a hug. He realized his mistake just in time and stopped short, his heels squeaking on the dirty tile floor.

She backed off into a corner and spoke quietly, calmly, like she was talking to an escaped mental patient. “Okay, okay, I suppose I should have opened the door. But now you’re here, so, right…how may I help you?”

He hit the light switch on the wall. Now that he could see her clearly she didn’t look much like Ellie at all. Her face was rounder, eyes bright with a swirl of fear and maybe even droll mischief in them. There was a small space between her front teeth that gave her a little girl appearance. Her hair was a dirtier blonde, longer and more curly. How could he have mistaken her for Ellie?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you were someone else. I’m looking for John Raymond.”

“You thought I looked like that fat bastard?”

“No, I-”

“Let me guess, you’re another satisfied client, yeah?”

“No, not exactly, I just-”

“Well, everyone’s looking for him. The landlord, the folks he reps, his grandmother in Poughkeepsie. She’s eighty-five and calls every…fuckin’…day. These old ladies, they get something set in their heads and there’s nothing, absolutely nothing that can get it out again. He took a powder almost three months ago and he hasn’t paid his bills or his employees, of which I am the last, since. I’m Lace.” She squared her shoulders and put her fists on her hips. “And no, I don’t have any residual checks for you. And I don’t know where your head shots are. And I can’t send you out for auditions. And I haven’t heard back from any casting agents about your screen test. And you can’t have anything in the office because I’m taking it all to sell before I get kicked out of my apartment. Are we square on all that?”

“Yeah,” Grey said.

“Good. This is good, I’m glad you’re being reasonable.”

If Raymond had been gone all this time, with no one in L.A. or New York knowing where he was, then there could only be one of two explanations. He was either dead or in hiding. And that meant Ellie was dead or in hiding with him.

Grey shook his head, his breathing hitching in his chest. A cold sweat broke on his forehead.

He put a hand out to the desk and held himself up.

“Are you all right?” Lace asked.

“Yeah.”

What would Pax do? Pax would have a plan. Pax wouldn’t be chasing his own tail. Pax would do something more than smash windows. Grey imagined him here now, beside him, tall and powerful and in command, cool and ready for anything, in charge. He looked to the left as if he was looking into Pax’s eyes now, reading them, seeing what the next move was supposed to be.

“You don’t look so good,” Lace said. She pulled a bottle of Jameson’s out of the bottom drawer of Raymond’s desk. These agents, they all kept a bottle on hand for nips between clients, and they all had the same taste. “Whatever he did to screw you over, at least you can drink the last few shots of his whiskey.”

Grey ignored the bottle. “Do you know Eva Rains?”

“That fucking bitch. Of course I know her. She’s the one who brought this house of cards down on us all.”

“What do you mean?”

Lace riffled through the drawers, pulling out anything that looked like it might have any value at all. A calculator, an iPod. “I told him a hundred times to cut loose the junkies, but he liked her for some reason and refused to let her go. He set her up with some nice bits on the weekly crime dramas but she always ruined it for herself. But she had a hold on him, you know? She’s beautiful and sexy and a porn gal who can spin around the world with that golden twat and those big fake tits.”

“They’re not fake,” he said, and then wondered why he’d bother. Lace looked at him like she had no idea what he was about and was still worried he might start swinging the hammer again. She clutched the few items to her chest. He asked, “Is there any contact information on her?”

“All right, now I’ve got to ask. Who are you?”

“I’m her brother.”

Lace actually clucked. “Right.”

“For Christ’s sake, it’s the truth.”

“I don’t see the resemblance.”

Grey tried not to sigh. “Does it really matter? Even if you don’t believe me, do you care enough not to tell me?”

“No, I suppose not. She was living with John.”

“Where?”

Lace gave him an address on East 72nd. “But they’re not there. The apartment might even have been rented out by now.”

There had to be something. Some way to find out what had gone wrong. What had made them run. What had happened to make Raymond stab Ellie with a four-inch blade, if it had been him. Where their bodies were.

“You’re sweating like hell. Are you on the needle too?”

He glared at her. “No.”

She proffered him the whiskey again. “Here, take a swig. You need it. You look like you’re about to fall down.”

He drank deeply from the bottle. The heat went through him and swarmed up into his skull and then down into his chest and across his exhausted muscles. He took another swig. The girl watched him. She still had no clue whether he was telling the truth but she didn’t really care. She just wanted out. His strung nerves began to loosen.

“Can you find out what the last job Raymond got for her was?”

“I already know. It was a bit part on a sit-com. It aired a few weeks back. I saw it. She was pretty good. But she’d already gotten a reputation as someone who wouldn’t show up on time and might not show up at all. Once you’ve got that rep, you’re through.”

It was practically word for word what Harvey had told him. “You knew she was a junkie.”

“Everyone did. And not a coke fiend or a pill popper. Those we know how to handle. But you get a meth-head or a crack-head or a needle shooter, and it’s all over.”

“Where did she buy her product?”

“Product?”

“The H. The heroin.”

“How the hell should I know?”

He’d crossed the country just so he could learn almost nothing.

He left the Chevelle on the street and started walking with no idea of where he was going. He didn’t have an apartment anymore. He would have to get a hotel room or crash with T.S. He could still feel the dust of the desert stuck in his lungs. He coughed and couldn’t get rid of it. Grey looked up and he was back at Premium Friends.

22

He stepped in and the Asian madam immediately barked something. She had a good eye and remembered him from three months ago when he’d stirred trouble. The two bouncers moved in but they did it slowly, with a real wariness because there were some other johns moving in and out of the parlor room where the girls were lined up and drinking cocktails. Grey tried to smile pleasantly but could guess he was probably only grimacing.

A strange sense of vertigo hit him. His head was dizzy but his legs didn’t waver. He felt rooted and light on his feet as he moved to the first bouncer, spun, and brought an elbow up high to the no-neck’s temple. The guy dropped like a dead rhino. The madam yawped again and the second bouncer unsnapped two buttons on his jacket and reached inside a shoulder holster for what looked like a snub .38. Grey didn’t give him time to pull it. He danced over, head still fogged and kind of whirling, lashed out and punched the prick in the throat. It was a cheap move he’d learned in the Army, but an effective one. The guy went to his knees choking. Grey reached in and grabbed the .38, then clipped him on the back of the head with the barrel. A gout of hair, scalp, and blood flew through the air and the guy fell flat on his face and didn’t stir.

The beautiful thing about New York is no one ever wants to get involved. The girls fled to the back rooms. The johns bolted out the door. No one was going to call the cops. Grey grabbed the madam and held her up against the front counter where she welcomed clients.

His head cleared. He’d had the answer the whole time but just didn’t know it.

All that had been in Ellie’s purse that day was the heroin, the needle, and the business card.

Ellie hadn’t worked here.

This was where she scored her heroin.

If you want to find a junkie, go to a drug dealer.

He asked the woman, “Who runs this place?”

She tightened up, shut her eyes, hugged her elbows. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“You’re in a position of responsibility. I think you do know something.”

“No no. I just set up the dates. That’s all.”

“Open your eyes.”

“No no.”

“Open.” She squinted at him. “You report to someone. I would like to know who that someone is.”

“No, no report.”

“Yes, report. Get him on the phone.”

“No, no phone.”

”I’m really enjoying our talk,” he said. “But seriously, it’s time to get the show on the road, lady.” He cocked the .38 and held it up to her forehead. “Give me a name.”

The gun alone didn’t scare her, but she took a look into Grey’s face, saw that he’d come to the end of his road and played out his entire string, and that was enough. She whispered something.

“Again,” Grey prompted.

“Mr. Jericho.”

“Full name.”

“Benson Jericho.”

“And where is he at the moment?”

A silky voice came from behind Grey. “I’m right here.”

Grey turned.

He thought, Is this the end? Am I there yet? Is Ellie around the next corner?

He took two steps forward and stood practically toe to toe with Jericho. The man was younger than might be expected. He didn’t look like a whoremaster and drug dealer. At this level it was all big business, and he projected the cultivated persona and attitude of the wealthy and cosmopolitan businessman. Refined with expensive tastes. Silk suit to go with the voice.

Grey took a breath. Jericho’s cologne, face cream, exfoliates, and hair product all smelled like money.

He thought, This man has an enormous backstory. This is the kind of role a serious actor could set his teeth into. Jericho. You’d run the lines and think off the page, like Kendra had said. No matter what the dialogue was you had to figure out, Did he hate his father? Was he bullied as a child? Was he allergic to strawberries. Jericho. Grey looked and saw him flayed open, his whole life leaking out. When he was a kid his old man drilled holes in bowling balls. Looked like Jericho was going to wax lanes his entire life, but raised himself from some one stoplight town and managed to swing a serious scholarship to a prestigious school. Not Ivy League but close. Started off selling weed but quickly moved up to the harder stuff, had a whole network in place by the time he was nineteen. Had the charm to pimp a few of the cheerleaders at school, made money with Internet amateur porn. Made a bundle and moved to the city, put the girls up in a nice place and gave it a five-star name. Premium Friends. Didn’t really need to get his hands dirty except on a few occasions. At least one girl probably thought she was getting cheated and threatened to go to the cops. Jericho cuffed her to the bed and tortured her with pressure points, raped her, and promised to kill her parents if she ever said anything. She fell back in line and was probably one of the happiest whores in the place. The heroin came in from the Asian woman’s family somewhere in Thailand. If anything ever went wrong he was at least four connections away from customs. Nothing ever stuck to him. He thought of himself as a gentleman bandit, an entrepreneur of pleasure and desire.

Grey kept the gun pointed directly at Jericho’s belly.

“You don’t need that,” Jericho said. “Give it to me.”

“Eva Rains. Ellie. Where is my sister?”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Jericho said. “I’ll take you to her.”

23

Maybe one of the bouncers doubled as a chauffeur because Jericho drove his own Mercedes over to a hospital on the Upper West Side. Grey had given him the gun and followed without another word and they’d both kept silent the entire ride uptown. As they pulled in to the medical center Grey swallowed down a groan.

Pax had been right. Grey had gone about this entire thing backward. He should’ve checked the morgue and the hospitals the day that Ellie sneaked from his bed. But he’d been so blinded with his need to find her that he’d gone out of his way not to discover the truth.

“Are you Pax or Grey?” Jericho asked.

“Grey.”

“She talked a lot about both of you. You’re the one she ran to.”

Grey said nothing. He thought, What could she have said? She hadn’t seen either of us in more than ten years. Would she just tell the same old stories of the abuse they’d suffered at the hands of the Wagners? He had questions to ask but couldn’t seem to quite form them.

They parked and walked into the building and Jericho nodded and said hello to a nurse working the front desk. He’d been here plenty of times before. They knew him on sight and gave him sweet smiles.

Grey followed, the lights of the corridor burning as brightly as the desert sun. He had to shade his eyes.

When they got to ICU, the antiseptic stink of the place made him gag. He had to stop for a moment.

“Are you all right?” Jericho asked.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have to go on.”

“Of course I do.”

“You look sick. What do you use?”

“I don’t use, you prick.”

Jericho tilted his head. “This way.”

They proceeded up another hall, had to punch in a number on a keypad to get through. Jericho was a trusted visitor. They turned one corner and then another. They passed open rooms where head trauma cases lay in bed with their shattered skulls held in place by enormous iron braces. Grey huffed.

Finally they arrived at Ellie’s room.

It reminded Grey of Monty’s office. Glass walls and a huge sliding glass door. Another fish bowl where every passing stranger could look in on the dying.

Ellie was hooked up to fifty-thousand watts of machinery. A ventilator had been attached to a tube in her throat and every few seconds it would force air into her lungs and make her body jerk and sway. As if she were lying at the edge of a lake and wind-blown waves pushed and pulled at her body.

Grey sat in the visitor’s chair at the side of the bed and took her hand. It was cold and so pale that he could see the veins working beneath her skin. She’d lost a lot of weight in the last three months. He spoke her name or thought he did. Her eyes were half-open and empty. He put her palm to his mouth and spoke against her flesh. He wasn’t aware of his own words and he couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t recognize his own voice and was almost lulled by the rhythmic murmur of it, like a hymn or a prayer.

He thought about her hugging her dog in the corner of the Wagners’ kitchen while Pax beat the hell out of the old man. He thought of her telling the DA to get fucked. So many machines were attached to her that he could barely see her body beneath the tubes and wires. The ventilator breathed her breaths for her with hideous regularity. His breathing soon fell into the same mechanical cadence.

“What happened to her?” he asked. “Was it peritonitis?”

“What?” Jericho said. “Oh, you mean from the knife wound. No, not peritonitis.”

“Then what? Overdose?”

“Yes.”

“On your product.”

“Yes.”

No guilt. No oh my God I am heartily sorry. No I’ve devoted my life to saving children from the evils of drugs.

“Tell me what happened.”

Jericho took a deep breath, nearly a yawn, like he was already bored. “She and her manager started off as customers of mine. Good people. We spent a lot of time together. I own a small movie outfit. Erotic thrillers. Soft-core. I wanted her to star in our next feature. I fell in love with her.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Why, you think it can’t happen?” Jericho seemed genuinely offended. “You think a man like me can’t fall in love?” Grey simply stared at him, realizing it was impossible to guess at the complexities and stupidities of a pimp in silk. “But her habit kept growing.”

“And you kept feeding it.”

“She and Raymond…he’s the manager…”

“I know.”

“…they planned on ripping me off. Botched the job, killed one of my low-level dealers, just a kid really-”

“No…”

“And she was stabbed by the kid, who was only defending himself, even as he was dying with a bullet in his heart. Raymond left her on the street. It was all out in the open, not very well-planned. She ran from me. She shouldn’t have run. I never would have hurt her. I didn’t care about the money or the product. I only wanted what was best for her. I would have done anything for her. I wanted to marry her.”

“You’re the one who sold her the heroin,” Grey said.

“I didn’t sell it to her. I gave it to her. What else was I supposed to do? She’s a junkie. But I still loved her.”

Look at how large and in charge. Look at how he ruled the world. Look at how he had no fear, talking about his drug deals and murder right out in the open, where any doctor or grieving relative could overhear him. But Jericho felt shielded, immune, impervious.

“You could’ve helped her.”

“Did you? Did you try?”

Grey hadn’t. He could’ve thrown away the H he’d found in her purse but he hadn’t thrown it away.

“She said it wasn’t John’s fault.”

“He talked her into trying to rip me off.”

“How do you know?” Grey asked. “How do you know it wasn’t the other way around?”

Jericho ignored him. “Raymond grabbed the cash and the heroin and went back to his apartment. He’d cooked his load and was nodding. He was new to the needle. He still didn’t know how to ride his high. He actually opened the door when I knocked.”

Of course he was new to it. Ellie got him hooked. Like Harvey had said, shooting up wasn’t a righteous high. It kills everything. Raymond took a chance on her in L.A. and tried to give her a second chance, and she dragged him down with her on the streets of New York.

“What did you do to him?”

Jericho tsked. “What do you think?

Grey shut his eyes and felt Ellie’s body heave and bounce, the vibrations working through him until it felt like he was in bed with her, moving along in the same measured tempo. He imagined this is what it would be like to make love with her, their lips sealed together, breathing the same breaths.

His voice was hoarse and rasping. He looked up and said, “She was a junkie porn actress who tried to rip you off, and you loved her.”

“We don’t choose who to love, now do we?”

No, we don’t, Grey agreed. “Is there any chance for her?”

“No. She’s brain dead.”

“Then why keep her-”

“I can’t let her go,” Jericho whispered.

His words were nearly drowned out by the machinery, the hiss and hum and drone of the ventilator.

Grey hadn’t saved her. Perhaps he hadn’t even wanted to. He should’ve forced her to go to a hospital, where they could have treated her for addiction, where they could have brought the psychiatrists over from the mental wing and she could have talked to someone the way she had never talked to him. It’s what Pax would have done. Pax would have made the effort to protect their sister if he wasn’t already busy protecting America.

A kind of wild keening started to rise in the room but it abruptly stopped. Grey looked to see if it was Ellie. But she was still asleep, still as dead as she could be. His gaze shifted to Jericho and he saw the slick silk god of the sewer staring at him in sympathy. Pax wouldn’t let this go on.

For once, Grey would do the right thing.

“I’m turning it off,” he said.

Jericho shook his head. “You have no right.”

“I’m her brother.”

“You’re not even blood-related.”

“She wouldn’t want this.”

“You don’t even know her.”

“I know enough. I know she wouldn’t want to be like this.”

“You have no say in the matter.”

“Tell her goodbye.”

“I won’t.”

The equipment was insane. It kept whirring and beeping, the endless switches snapping on and off, circuits opening and closing. Grey kissed Ellie’s forehead and said, “Goodbye.” He found a huge wire and followed it to the plug and pulled. It didn’t come loose easily. He grunted and growled and put his back into it. Jericho snarled, “Stop.” With a shower of sparks the wire came free from the wall. An alarm began to sound. Ellie’s body thrashed as the ventilator stopped functioning. Jericho whispered, “No no…” and rushed forward, got his arms around Grey and started to wrestle with him. Grey shoved him off and watched, as if from a great distance, as Jericho reached for the .38 he’d pocketed and began to withdraw it. That same sense of vertigo assailed Grey, made his head spin even while his body performed almost without his awareness. He gripped Jericho’s wrist and squeezed until the tiny bones ground together. The gun smacked the floor with a hard metallic ringing that went on and on like the toll of a bell. Grey slipped the wire around Jericho’s neck and tightened it, his muscles straining as Jericho wheezed. He pulled him into the corner closest to the door just as the doctors and nurses burst in and descended onto Ellie’s body like wasps. No one looked to the left to see him and Jericho there. He tightened his grip further as Jericho’s legs went out from under him. The doctors disconnected the ventilator from the tube in Ellie’s throat and connected a plastic pump they used to manually squeeze air into her lungs. Grey wanted to tell them to stop but he was gasping exactly as her body was. He felt his own lungs bursting just as Jericho’s were. Ellie made a nearly human sound, the kind an upset child might make. She took one last deep breath and so did Grey. He thought he would never get enough air from now on, not for the rest of his life. Her body relaxed as Jericho’s did in Grey’s arms. Still unseen, he lowered Jericho to the floor and stepped out the door. He drifted through the halls and somehow wound up in the emergency room, where he sat among the forgotten, the bleeding, the diseased, the discarded, and the damned. Their moans and sobs and feverish chatter comforted him. He heard his mother tell his father, Slow down, Eddie, the roads are icy. He turned his face to the wall and sucked air like a fish washed up on the sandy shore. The cops would be here soon. He shut his eyes and thought of himself in prison for the rest of his days. He thought of himself hailed as the most natural actor since Brando. He and Kendra and Pax sipped champagne at the premiere. He bought a house in Beverly Hills but tore down the wall out front. Let them all in, let them all see. When the police finally showed up they broke past on the run and disappeared down the hall. Grey rose like an abandoned child new to the world, walked out onto the streets of the city, lost himself in the wind and the shadows, killing even more time, and waited for the next thing to happen.

Content

Tom Piccirilli
The Last Deep Breath

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