Skeeks was now in its fifth year, its popularity through the roof and still climbing. Just this year a third regular had been added, little Tommy Little, a winsome child, already another audience darling. Skeeks himself was a robust nine-year-old with his own production company to handle the details of endorsements and other residual income. Away from the set, he lived quietly on an estate in Santa Monica just a few blocks from the sea. He was said to be the cast favorite among the writers.
And now Skeeks was dead, unexpectedly, calamitously. A stunned nation mourned the dog it had taken to its heart. The president had been quoted on the morning news shows as saying, “Thank God my mom passed away before this happened. It would have killed her.”
Celebrity deaths, along with celebrity weddings, celebrity hanky-panky, improbable diets, visits from outer space and dubious arthritis cures, were the bread and butter of the Galaxy. When a celeb went down, the entire career could be rehashed just one more time. Earlier sins and scandals could be evoked in order to express forgiveness at this time of grief, and a final photo of the departed, lying in a casket, would be featured on the front page of the next issue: seven days of waxy dead flesh, in color, next to the cough drops at the cash register.
Frequently, the selfish and narrow-minded friends and relatives of the deceased didn’t want that particular picture taken and might even take steps to prevent it. The pic of the body in the box was thus often a difficult and expensive proposition, with bribes to pay, bones to set, reporters to be bailed out of the slammer. Of all the Galaxy’s talented and unscrupulous staff, Boy Cartwright was the most consistently successful in getting the body in the box. This time would be no exception.
A dog would be different. There would be no list of marriages to go through, no extramarital affairs or history of support for wimpy environmental causes, no statements on record to demonstrate the decedent’s nobility or earthiness or Americanism. No stock photos of this celeb playing golf with Glen Campbell.
Nevertheless, Boy now understood that Skeeks was (a) beloved and (b) a star. The funeral, in Forest Lawn’s Wee Kirk o’ the Heather, would be the largest send-off there since that tramp what’s-her-name. There would be a full day of viewing the body — what a challenge for the hairdresser that would be! — and then the flames. This was a major celebrity death, no matter the species of the celebrity, and Boy intended to give it the full treatment.
Beginning with the house. Whenever there was a top-of-the-line story like this, the Galaxy’s first move was to send a local stringer out to rent a house, a modest, plain, ordinary house in a modest, plain, ordinary neighborhood. Eight to 12 phone lines would be put in, most of the furniture taken out, the local authorities reassured that this was not a bookie’s office, and then the regular Galaxy staffers would fly in from Florida, ready to do battle: The morons of the world deserve the facts!
Why a house? Why not rooms in some hotel or motel? The Galaxy needs privacy, and the Galaxy well knows how easy hotel staffers are to bribe. Galaxy phone calls should not go through a hotel switchboard, the people the Galaxy interviews should not be seen in a hotel lobby. Believing in privacy for no one else, the Galaxy absolutely requires it for itself.
The house for the Skeeks offensive was a flea-bitten one-story stucco cottage near one of the nonexistent canals that give Venice, California its name. Occupied by an ever-shifting bevy of flight attendants, the house was always available for profitable short-term rental, since these young women never lacked entirely for alternate accommodations. Normally, the house looked exactly like a den of iniquity, but with its beds replaced by phones, fax machines and long tables bearing rows of telephones and notebook computers, with its largest bathroom converted to a darkroom, the place looked like no fun at all.
Here Boy assembled his team: Trixie and three other staffers, Jim Jemmy, three local photographers who often did piecework for the Galaxy, plus two more longtime stringers, one a bartender and the other a famous limousine driver. “At ease, ladies and gentlemen,” Boy said unnecessarily. Gazing around with the slow insolent smile of command he said, “You are in good hands now. Boy will lead you. Trixie, did Skeeks ever father a child?”
“No idea.” She appeared to be a bit hungover.
“Learn, dear,” Boy said and went on to give the other peons their initial assignments: cause of death, disposition of the estate, friends and enemies, rivals (if any), ownership of the animal (even millionaire dogs, like senators, belong to somebody), future of the program, future of Bill Terry.
When the reporters had scattered, leaving Boy with Jim Jemmy and the photographers, Boy rubbed his hands together in expectant satisfaction and said, “And now, the body in the box.”
Jim came closer, lowering his voice. “There’s a fellow at the vet, he’s—”
“Tell you what, dear. Let’s chat on the porch.”
“Oh. OK.”
Out on the tiny sagging porch, with its unimpeded view of the canal, Boy sat on the untrustworthy railing, some distance from Jim, and said, “Tell me about it, dear.”
“I have a contact at the vet, but he’s being a little funny. He wants money.”
“They all do, dear, and that’s why we’re here. To provide money.”
“I think he’s got something else. He wants more, he wouldn’t talk to me. He seems to want, you know, more money.”
The body in the box was always a delicate task. Boy had sent photographers into funeral homes disguised as priests, as nuns, as firemen, as long-lost offspring of the deceased and, on one memorable occasion, as a process server determined to press divorce papers on the corpse. Each case was different, and to each case Boy responded with his usual grimy savoir faire.
The simplest way, in the present instance, would be to insert a photographer into the veterinary hospital after the late Skeeks had been arranged in his coffin, but before the dog and coffin had been transported to Forest Lawn. That would require no more than the suborning of one employee. Jim Jemmy had clearly done the first part of the job in finding a bribable employee, but now there was going to be some sort of problem.
Sighing, Boy saw he would have to deal with this veterinary lowlife himself. “How do I make contact?”
“I can call his home and leave him a message.”
“Do, dear boy. And don’t look so worried. Boy is here, and joy shall prevail.”
They met at a small outdoor restaurant on the Malibu coast. Driftwood had been imported from as far away as Tierra del Fuego to construct this restaurant in which you were guaranteed to get splinters. Boy, with clip-on sunglasses clipped on his sunglasses and a dark blue Moon Mission cap pulled low over his pasty brow, remembered again just what it was he hated about Los Angeles: everything.
The outdoorness of the restaurant was necessary, given the redolence of both his companions. Jim Jemmy continued to smell like Jim Jemmy, and Carlo, the squat Incan from the vet, smelled like the vet. He was a janitor, a man who knew every scrubbed inch of the place as well as he knew his own toilet, and his news was not good. “Sports department,” he announced, hunched over the hamburger with sprouts the Galaxy was buying him.
“All,” said Boy, squinting behind all his dark glass.
“Dey got dese jackets, you know what I mean? Color like a raspberry. On da pocket, by da heart, dey got dis network sign—”