The two victims: a white female Caucasian, identified as Robin Lamoureaux, age 51, of Hollywood, and an unidentified white male Caucasian, approximate age 35, with tattoo over right nipple-"Milk"-and over the left nipple-"Tequila"-were admitted from paramedic mobile unit #5837 to the emergency room of our Lady of Light Hospital at 3:35 A.M. The two victims were pronounced dead at the time of arrival. See death certificates below.
Notification pending.
It must have started sometime early in the morning. I got a call at the hotel from our neighbor, who thought she had heard a window break and then, when she went to eyeball it, saw a little flame or something in the upstairs bedroom.
Fortunately our hotel was only over the hill. I told Robin to stay there, I'd go check it out. She wasn't too thrilled with that, but I took off. When I got to our castle, I stood outside for a few seconds. It seemed okay. At least, sort of okay; a night that was not quite dark, a smell of rotted jasmine and garbage, a sky of stars that had smooshed into kind of a big river of light.
Across the molded gulch on Amor Drive, a coyote yipped. The castle was quiet Still, I thought I'd better go and scope it out. I let myself in with my key.
Holy Jesus. I looked upstairs and I could see the flames reflected in the Crusader armor statues. Wisps of smoke were crawling down the stone steps like snakes. I tried to call the fire department but the goddamn phones-I told you about them-didn't work. The only tiling left for me was to do it myself. I went running upstairs, terrified.
Our bedroom was wall-to-wall fire, I never saw anything like it The floor was a lake of flames.
Richard the Lion-Hearted's throne-the one with all the gold scroll and jewel work-had gone up like a torch. The noise of the licking flames was beyond belief. Above the throne (right where our bed had been) the lead in the St. Michael stained glass window was melting, running down the glass, popping the panes out like rifle shots.
And then I saw something which made my heart go cold. A medieval tapestry, one of the for-real museum jobbies, had been hung over a closet door. It was on fire, and from behind it came a man walking right through the flaming image of where this knight guy was! Holy shit, it was Jimmy!
"What the hell are you doin' here?" I yelled as I threw my coat over his smoldering tee shirt.
"I was rehearsing fate last night. I just went t'bed - I always try to sleep somewhere on the set, the first night. It's good luck for met" We both had to laugh at that one. He told me someone had cold-cocked him in his sleep and heaved him in the closet We ran into the bathroom. There was a faucet in the steam room and a short hose under the sink. Jimmy attached them, I turned the faucet on fall, and he began hosing down the flames. For a little while, it looked like we might beat it back. The red light dancing on his incredible face was eerie.
The neighbor had finally called the fire department and now they came in like an army. I looked out the hall window. Must've been a dozen spotlights hit the house at once. Red truck after red truck roared up, all crackling with their CB intercom talk which had been turned up fall volume. One guy yelled up to me, but 1 didn't hear him. Suddenly, I remembered the costume room.
I hauled ass down but somehow, the fire had got there first. Seemed like every costume I grabbed, them flames would take the tail of it, and by the time I would run to a window to toss it out, the whole thing would go up. I almost got caught a couple of times. Everywhere you'd took, there would be these harmless-looking little sparks, cutely winking, settling down like hot feathers, you know, only whatever they landed on would burst into flame.
Somebody had opened all the windows so the hot Santa Ana winds came roaring through, taking fire into every corner in every room.
Outside, I heard a woman screaming.
Inside, Jimmy and I were trying to save the Nagra sound equipment, the mikes and mixing board. We no sooner got them tossed out into the bushes when we were back trying to wheel the Chapman dolly with its big old Panaflex camera out.
That was when Robin came running in, her nightie flying out behind her in the firelight. We yelled and the three of us hugged real quickly. The dolly tracks headed out toward our huge two-story oak front door which was already starting to blister from the heat. The three of us really doubled our backs into that dolly as the flames walked up the walls. To complete the craziness, the superheat had managed to fry some wires and turn our stereo on, loud - the Eagles, "Take It to the Limit."
Can you believe it?
This looked like it wasn't even real, like I had written it for a scene or something. And it damn sure was taking it to the limit. We had turned out to be Richard and Blondie, for real, there with the dude who'd dreamed them up.
Crusaders in Love were trapped in Hell, Bo. The fireguys were bashing their way through the back with their axes and pike poles and hoses. But it was too late. The TV company, in the interest of over-art-directed "realism," had put so many false fronts, had done so much construction, used so many 1 x 3s and plywood and lathing, everything seemed to explode when the flames hit ft. You never want to see anything like this, believe me.
Suddenly, the ceiling in the back hall caved in, cutting us off from the fireguys. There were timbers and exploding water pipes and shorting electrical cables that were snapping around in the smoke so much you could barely see anymore. Still, we pushed that dolly toward^ the front door. Only now, it wasn't to save any movie camera. We were trying to build up speed and use it as a battering ram.
Just then, there was this ungodly howling laughter. The three of us turned, and across the huge smoky room, coming through the flaming portals of the porch, spotlights playing all over their backs, were Buddy Wickwire and Lefty Annbruster!
"I thought you'd be here," was all Dean said as he drew himself upright. I stood in front of my Robin when I saw Wickwire pull a i22 pistol.
"Boys," yelled Lefty, "it's done. Time to call in the dogs and get the insurance adjusters. I've saved the network fifty million with a match. All they'll find is your bridge-work and some belt buckles."
Lefty laughed the laugh of a big winner and nodded to his next in command, Buddy Wickwire, who lifted his .22 and pointed it dead at us. He cocked it as Jimmy, Robin, and I joined hands. I jumped from the shock Wickwire fired
The hammer snapped down as the ammo in his pistol exploded from the heat! I took his arm off at the elbow. He had just enough time to feel the first wave of blinding pain before a two-ton naming timber fell on him.
If Lefty Armbruster ever even noticed, you couldn't tell by his face. With that victorious smile still there, he seemed to come toward us, growing bigger and bigger and bigger, right through the fiery timber and his minion's melting body. I guess it was Jimmy who sort of led the way, pulling us forward. Or maybe it was Robin, I don't know.
But in the middle of that pyre, in the noise and heat and insanity, the three of us, joined at the heart, met something that had become so big not even this fire could hold him, too big even for the whole wide world! Just at the very moment when I thought we would be enveloped by the roaring size alone, the slowly lumbering dolly and Panaflex camera crashed through the flaming black cinders that had been our front door and this howling blast of icy air came through. It seemed to take the three of us, still holding tight to each other's hands, away on its wings of cold out into the night, where we could look down and see the castle below us, getting smaller and smaller, as the fire jumped to the hills around it. The wind fanned the flames that shot hundreds of feet into the night air, which showed this little guy with a blue velvet eyepatch come running out the door, stamping his feet and howling some shit that none of us would ever work again in that town, that we'd never work again in movies or TV. But that doesn't include writing books, does it? Fuck no, it doesn't. And now that me and Robin have this neat little place in Vermont and we hear every couple of months from Jimmy, who is happy as a clam living a new life (he has kids and everything), and now that you know just what happened to Crusaders in Love, if that asshole corporate raider Lefty Armbruster thinks he can stop me, I say let him try.