Lights. Camera. Murder Read online

  I waited for him to bridge the subject of his stolen script with the plot of this unrelated show being filmed.

  Instead, John asked, “You aren’t one of those ‘I don’t mind gay people, but do they have to be gay around me?’ folks, are you? Because I’ll tell you right now, there will be none—”

  “Far from it,” I answered calmly.

  “Good,” he concluded, although he didn’t seem to entirely put two and two together on that one. He offered me his coffee cup. “Hold this for me.”

  I unhurriedly extended a hand, took the Starbucks beverage that weighed in at mostly foamed milk and zero coffee, and watched John remove his pack again. He started to put another stick to his mouth, realized he already had one lit and burning between his lips, and awkwardly put them back in his pocket. He snatched the coffee from my hand.

  “My script,” John said at length, “is The Bowery on steroids. All those things, but bigger. Better. We expect—oh.” He looked up at me. “Far from it. You mean you’re….”

  “My sexuality isn’t relevant.”

  John snorted and then coughed after inhaling wrong. He thumped on his chest a few times and wheezed, “Gay investigator on a gay drama helping a gay producer. It’s relevant.”

  I absently stamped my feet a few times. “You were saying?”

  “Er, right. Yes. We expect Emmy nods for The Bowery, maybe even an award or two, but my screenplay has more to offer. And the thief knows it.” John looked up at me again, fire in his beady eyes. “That script was my ticket to getting out of producing. It’d make my career as a writer. Not only in New York, but LA too.”

  Hotshot, indeed.

  “I understand,” I answered, keeping my tone neutral. “Tell me why you decided to hire a private investigator instead of reporting this incident to the police.”

  John’s boisterous attitude deflated like a balloon. He took a drag off the cigarette and slammed back the final dregs of his coffee. “I don’t want this going to court. I don’t want to involve lawyers and unions. I just want to know who’s willing to risk their career to claim my idea as their own, so I can squash them like a bug.”

  “You want to blacklist them from the industry?”

  John smiled a wicked sort of smile. “It’s far more satisfying. Besides, we’ve a lot of high-profile cast and crew on this production. If any of them got wind the police were involved, I could end up with contracts at stake and the thief may escape. And considering the show’s content, we can’t afford bad publicity before it airs. I mean, for God’s sake, we’ve got Marion Roosevelt playing Tommy.” He squinted when I didn’t offer an immediate response. “Marion Roosevelt.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Do you know who that is?”

  “I’m not a connoisseur of television.”

  “Good grief.” John tossed his second cigarette to the ground. “And you call yourself a gay man.”

  I frowned at that.

  He stepped past me and motioned to follow. “Come along, then. Let’s get you set up with an ID badge.”

  INT. CHAPTER TWO – DAY

  John wasn’t lying. Of this, I was quite certain.

  He was stressed. Violated and embarrassed. And angry. He wasn’t angry at me, the questioner, but his situation. Listening to the way John had spoken outside, noting the lack of nonverbal indicators that would have had me leaning toward deception, I was convinced he was telling the truth. Where it mattered, at least. He had quite the grandiose ego, but I figured that came with the territory of the industry.

  “The beauty of being a PA,” John whispered as he led the way down a long hall, “is that it allows you to be everywhere.” He waved his arms for emphasis. “The office, the set—and no one will be surprised a newbie PA is clueless about the ins and outs of the job.” He stopped outside a doorway on the right that opened to a massive staging area with a ceiling nearly twenty feet tall. “We need some kind of cover story, right? Maybe I met you at a film festival, or—”

  “No. That’s too complex.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Which festival?” I stared John down. “Who was there? What films did you watch?”

  He held up both hands. “All right, all right. Point taken.”

  After a moment of thought, I said, “I’m a family friend looking for a career change. That’s all.”

  John nodded, took a step through the threshold, then turned to me again. “A few suggestions: don’t talk back, drink plenty of water, don’t sit down, and never speak to talent.” He walked into the huge room after sharing that tidbit, the tip-tap of his shoes bouncing off faraway walls and staged scenery to the right.

  “John,” I whispered loudly, catching up with him. “You do realize I’m not actually here to work on your show.”

  “Of course,” he muttered, saying hello to passing crew members and not looking at me.

  “Then you understand that everyone is a suspect in this theft and I have to talk to your cast.”

  John stopped and looked at me again. “It’s not allowed.”

  “Do you want me to investigate this missing script or not?”

  “Of course I do,” he hissed, glancing from side to side. “But there are rules on a film set. You don’t break them. And the most important is, outside of the director, no one talks to talent. You never know when they might be mentally prepping for a scene—and this show is heavy on emotion.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  John took off his spectacles and scrubbed his face vigorously with one hand. “Look. If talent approaches you, it’s okay to chat. But they need to be seen initiating the conversation.”

  “I’ll be sure to face-plant in front of your actors, then,” I said dryly.

  John patted my upper arm. “Attaboy.”

  I rolled my eyes to the ceiling once he turned his back.

  This investigation was going to be… a challenge.

  Laughter and radio-edited rap drifted out the open door of some sort of workshop to my left. Immediately ahead of us were two six-foot-long tables packed with an array of juices, coffees, teas, on-the-go breakfast foods, and various high-protein snacks. And at the end of the staging area farther ahead, a massive sliding door opened to the set beyond.

  “Art department,” John explained, pointing to the left. “And this is crafty. Help yourself when you’ve got a moment. No one is going to babysit you and make sure you’re eating.” He led the way onto the dimmed set. “Welcome to The Bowery. Specifically, the interior of Thomas O’Sullivan’s home.”

  To my untrained eye, the layout, furniture, even color choices, seemed historically accurate. Definitely rendered as an apartment for someone with a fair amount of money and influence. Nothing out of Millionaire’s Row, but also a far cry from some tenement in the Tenderloin District. Perfect for an Irish gangster, I supposed. A few crew members were moving about the area, minutely adjusting props, lights, and calling to each other in lingo sounding reminiscent of military jargon.

  “Marion’s been featured in Out magazine,” John was saying, and I looked away from the set design to him. “‘Fifty Up and Coming Out Actors.’ He was ranked number four, and they wrote a snippet about his role as Tommy.”

  “So he has audience draw?”

  “Oh, definitely. He’s very charming. The camera loves him. And with this being his first leading role, his net worth is bound to go up a few mil.”

  Huh.

  John touched my arm for a second time and not so discreetly lingered on my bicep. “Come over here.” He led the way toward the back right corner of the stage, interrupting a Brooklyn hipster from his work. “Davey, can you spare me a second?”

  Davey glanced up from a sheet of paper that looked like a script page, quickly set it aside, and smoothed his beard with one hand while tucking the other under his arm. Even at a foot or two away, I could smell an abundance of earthy, cedar-like cologne trying to mask the smell of too much tobacco. The edges of his fingernails looked disc
olored. He rolled his own cigarettes. Very edgy, Davey.

  “Yes, sir, what can I get you?” he asked John.

  “This is Rory Byrne.” John brought me into the conversation with a small handwave. “A family friend and our newest PA. Rory, Davey here is Key PA. You’ll report to him.”

  Davey immediately nodded and said, “Sounds good, sir.” He still tugged on his beard.

  John thanked him, gave me a thumbs-up, and left us.

  Davey watched over my shoulder until the producer was suitably out of earshot. “Let me guess—first gig?”

  “I’m a quick learner.”

  “Great,” Davey muttered, sounding wholeheartedly unimpressed. Even his beard seemed to object to my presence on set. He grabbed a walkie-talkie from a large bay on a table. “Here you are. Don’t forget to do a walkie check. I’m guessing you don’t own a surveillance?”

  I’d been officially undercover for no more than ten minutes and already found myself someone with a Star Service attitude. The man was lucky I wasn’t armed. I had at least a decade on this Brooklyn bro, but I was coming to realize that age probably meant little on a film set. Position is where the power was, not in life experience. So I was likely to be getting the college-kid treatment for the remainder of the investigation.

  “Figures,” Davey said when I hesitated over “surveillance.” He grabbed an earpiece similar to those worn by Secret Service. “Put this on and stay out of the way.”

  I was certain Davey held his dick with four fingers and pissed on three of them.

  Nearly one hundred suspects.

  Not a workable number. I needed to narrow the scope to a handful of individuals almost immediately.

  So the moment Davey sent me to the office to “make myself useful,” I asked for a roster of the staff and crew. The production manager met the request with considerable side-eye, but I convinced her of my fledging PA status and talked up wanting to learn crew positions and names.

  “You can’t keep this,” she said, reluctantly handing over a freshly printed sheet. “But go ahead and study it.”

  I accepted the list. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “It’s smart of you,” she added after a pause. “A good PA should be familiar with all the departments.”

  I looked up over the rim of my glasses.

  “Including the office. Most people forget we run the show.”

  The lines around her face were pronounced, as if she’d not smiled once in the last… oh… decade. She was stick-thin, with artfully curled brown hair, thick-lensed glasses, and she wore a shade of red lipstick that was particularly aggressive. There was also a touch of hostility in her tone as she spoke.

  A bit like, those who can’t art, critique art.

  Or in this case, those who can’t work set jobs oversee from a cozy office chair. I mean, as far as I was aware, the general public was pretty interested in the behind-the-scenes of movie-making, but really, who cared about the phone calls made and emails sent throughout the day that kept the show chugging along?

  Interesting.

  I had no intention of broaching that bit of reality with—I scanned the list until I found Production Manager, Laura Turner—with Laura. She was especially salty for a Tuesday. And in order to weed out suspects quickly and efficiently, I needed to have key personnel cooperative.

  “It’s great to meet you, Laura,” I said, offering a hand.

  She narrowed her eyes skeptically but took my hand in a firm shake. “I don’t have any jobs for you. Davey is trying to play a game of volleyball.”

  And I’m the ball.

  “I’m not above stapling and collating,” I said by way of suggestion.

  “Eager beaver.” She opened a few folders on her desk, pawed through some documents, then held up a few loose sheets. “Wow me with your photocopying skills, then we’ll discuss stapling.”

  I accepted the documents, moved around the corner from her desk as Laura indicated, and walked down a short hall. Ahead was the copier, situated between two office doors, one of which read: PRODUCER, JOHN ANDERSON.

  A young man, who couldn’t have been a day past his twentieth birthday, stood in front of the machine, leaning heavily on the top with both arms. He glanced sideways at me. “It’s broken,” he explained.

  “Ah.”

  “Have to practically sit on it, or the copy comes out blurry.”

  Whirr-thck. Whirr-thck. Whirr-thck.

  The tray was heavy with tree-pulp sacrifices shooting out at lightning speed, and it didn’t look to be finishing up anytime soon.

  The man inclined his head awkwardly. “There’s another machine down the hall, past the Editing Suite. It’s slow as hell, though.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.” I nodded and moved past him.

  I took in my surroundings, memorizing several faces at desks in an open pocket of office space—admin assistants?—and walked by another closed office door, where someone inside was arguing animatedly with what I hoped was a phone on speaker. I came across a massive suite next, darkened and empty through the glass wall, with an impressive computer and digital display setup that had to belong to the editing team.

  I checked my watch. Just after nine in the morning. And yet, everyone else appeared to have been manning their stations for some time. Did post-production work on a different schedule? I looked at the crew roster I still held on to. There were about a dozen names listed among editing, Foley, and post-audio. Considering John said the script went missing sometime between Saturday and Monday, depending on when these individuals came and went through the office area, it either eliminated them or narrowed my list of suspects to this Dirty Dozen.

  I made a mental note to follow up with John about the post-production team in particular, and carried on until I found the lonely photocopier in a darkened, unused wing of the rented out office space. Curious setup. Abandoned desks that’d seen better days were haphazardly strewn around the area. Phones sat in piles on the floor beside wrangled office lines, and there was yet another hall to the left, tarped off for what looked like some minor building maintenance.

  I peeled off the Post-it asking for fifty copies, set the papers on the feed, and hit Start. The copier groaned to life. I tugged my surveillance bud free and rubbed at my swollen ear. The tiny nub of plastic was already killing my inner ear, but there was a lot of communication going on between crew members—not that it all translated to plain English—and it was worth the discomfort to hear what was going on.

  I slipped the piece back on in time to pick up Davey’s voice saying, “Take it to two.”

  A second voice confirmed, and their conversation abruptly ended.

  Take it to two?

  I removed my phone from my back pocket, and as the copier sputtered along, did a quick internet search.

  Extend the conversation in private to channel two.

  Did this work like John’s unlocked-door honor system?

  When someone announced they were moving to the next channel, was it simply assumed no one would stick their nose into the chat? Seemed like a good way to hide in plain sight. And if it were this simple to stay in constant communication, it opened the possibility of more than one individual behind the theft.

  I took the walkie off my belt and turned the knob on top to the next channel.

  “No, sir, but—”

  Davey quickly cut the other person off. “You answer to me, kid, understand?” he barked in a voice that suggested the only person he could possibly be speaking to in that way was a PA.

  “Yes.”

  “If you go gallivanting off with the art department without reporting to me first—”

  “They needed help quick,” the PA answered. “I was just trying to lend a hand.”

  “They’re not your boss. I am. And the minute I can’t find your ass at any given second, consider yourself out of a job.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Report to set.”

  I twisted the knob back to the main channel an
d shook my head absently. No suspicious plotting, but for someone who was only one step above the rest of the PAs, Davey had an ego bigger than his beard.

  Before leaving the isolated hall, I made a copy of the crew roster, carefully folded it, and tucked it into my sock. I then carried the stack of warm papers, slowing my walk to watch the same young guy still hanging over the finicky copier.

  He turned his head, and his expression dropped. “Jesus. You finished before me?”

  “I only needed fifty.” I pointed at the massive stack he was working on. “So are you an administrative assistant or…?”

  “I’m a PA,” he corrected while leaning harder on top of the copier when one or two of the printouts came out blurry. “Davey sent me here my first day to make copies, and then I wasn’t allowed to leave.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He made a face and nodded in Laura’s direction. “She won’t let me work on set.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, lowering my voice a bit.

  “She’s a bitch.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  He swallowed. “Sorry. I mean—I don’t know. Her and Davey don’t like each other. One of the other PAs heard from a gaffer who worked on a Disney show with Laura years ago that she’d once been a set PA and got fired.”

  So there was a definite validity to that antagonism toward set jobs I’d picked up from her.

  “Anyway,” he said as the last page spit onto the tray, “don’t make yourself too useful, or she might steal you from set. The office sucks.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  I went back to Laura at the front of the office. “Here you are.” I handed over the stack of copies and the crew list. “Thanks for letting me look at the roster.”

  Laura took everything without even a half-hearted thanks. “Go find Davey if you want something else to do.”

  If there was a test I had to pass in order to be entrusted with her stapler, I guess I’d failed it.

  Apparently it was for the best.

  I spent my lunch break in the men’s bathroom.