“Where is he?”
“Los Angeles, I suppose. I think he lives in Hollywood Hills. Steve intended to be the line-producer on this film. That is, stay with it during shooting, and all that.”
“So which of them hired Geoff McKensie and which hired Sy Koller?”
“Cross hired McKensie. Peterman fired him.”
“And Peterman hired Koller.”
“Right.”
“So Peterman is more powerful than Cross? I mean, one of the co-producers is more equal than the other?”
“Sure. Cross is more of an employee. Hired to do the production stuff Steve didn’t want to do, or didn’t have time to do.”
“Does Cross get a share of the profits?”
“I suppose so. But probably not as big a share as Steve… would have gotten.”
Down the dock, also sitting on the edge, a girl in cut-off jeans was staring at Moxie.
“What makes Steve Peterman as a producer more powerful than his co-producer, what’s-his-name Cross?”
“Talcott Cross. Everything in this business, Fletch, comes down to one word: the bank. Where the money comes from.”
“Okay. That’s my question. I thought a producer was someone who raises money for a film.”
“A producer does an awful lot more than that.”
The girl in cut-off blue jeans nudged the boy sitting next to her. She said something to him.
“But it was Steve Peterman who raised the money for this film.”
“Yes. From Jumping Cow Productions, Inc.”
“What’s that?”
“An independent film company. A company set up to invest in films. The world’s full of ’em.”
“Forgive me for never having heard of it. Has it made many films?”
“I don’t think so. I think it has some others in pre-production. Most likely it has. I don’t know, Fletch. It could be a bunch of dentists who have pooled their money to invest in movies. Jumping Cow Productions could be a subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph, for all I know.”
Half the big red sun had sizzled into the Gulf. A black, ancient-rigged sloop was sailing up the harbor toward them.
“Don’t you care who’s producing your film?” Up the dock-edge Moxie was causing widening interest among the group of young people. “I mean, if the source of the money is so all-fire important…”
Moxie sighed. “Steve Peterman was producing this film.”
The top of the sun bubbled on the horizon and was extinguished.
In the harbor, in front of the dock, the Sloop Providence fired her cannon and ran down the stars and stripes prettily.
And the people on the dock cheered.
Evening in Key West had been declared.
Fletch swung his feet onto the dock and stood up. “Let’s go home.”
“But, Fletch, after the sunset is better than before. That’s when the clouds pick up their colors.”
“There aren’t any clouds.”
She looked at the sky. “You’re right.”
The young people down the dock had stood up, too.
“Come on,” Fletch said. “We can walk slowly. Look back.” Moxie got to her feet. “You see the sun set in the ocean all the time anyway,” he said.
The girl in cut-offs was facing Moxie. “I know what you’re trying to do,” the girl said.
Her friends were all around her.
Moxie said nothing. She stepped closer to Fletch and took his arm.
“You’re trying to look like Moxie Mooney,” the girl laughed.
Moxie said, “Actually, I’m not.”
The young people around the girl laughed. One said, “Oh yeah.”
The girl said, “Moxie doesn’t wear all that crap on her face.”
“She doesn’t?” Moxie asked.
“She’s natural,” the girl said. “She don’t wear no make-up at all.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“Naw. But she’s stayin’ somewhere here in Key West.”
“She’s over on Stock Island,” said the boy. “In seclusion.”
“Yeah,” said another boy. “She murdered somebody.”
Moxie’s arm flexed against Fletch.
“You really think Moxie Mooney killed somebody?” she asked.
“Why not?” shrugged a boy.
“What are you—a look-alike contest?” asked another girl.
“I want to see her,” the girl in cut-offs said. “I’m gonna see her.”
“Well,” Fletch said. He tugged Moxie’s arm. “Good luck.”
The girl in cut-offs called after Moxie. “You look sorta like her.”
“Thanks,” Moxie called back. Miserably, she said, “I guess.”
They were walking back on Whitehead Street. There was some color in the sky.
“Anyway,” Fletch said in a cheery tone, “I enjoyed talking with your father this afternoon.”
“You like him, don’t you.”
“I admire him,” Fletch said. “Enormously.”
“I guess he’s a brilliant man,” Moxie admitted.
“He’s funny.”
“After all these decades of acting,” Moxie said, “he speaks as if every line were written for him. He says Good Morning and you have to believe it’s a good morning—as if nobody had ever said it before.”
“How come he’s all-of-a-sudden so attentive to you?”
“He’s not. He just landed on me. Can’t find work, I guess. Nobody else wants him.”
“Did he call you, did he write you, did he arrange to stay with you?”
“Course not. He had taken up residence in my apartment in New York. I didn’t even know it. When I went there a few weeks ago—you know, to talk to Steve Peterman—there he was at home in my apartment. His clothes and his bottles all over the place. He was nearly unconscious. Looking at cartoons on the television. I had to put him to bed.”
“Jesus,” Fletch said. “Frederick Mooney looking at cartoons on television. All the bad satires of himself.”
“I was pretty upset anyway. Yelling into the phone, trying to find Steve.”
“Had you given him a key to the apartment?”
“No. He had never been there before.”
“How did he get in?”
“The doorman gave him a key. He is Frederick Mooney, after all.”
“I heard someone else say that.”
“I mean, everyone knows he’s my father. I had never told the doormen to keep him out. What else could they do—have a legendary genius raving in their lobby?”
“Different rules,” said Fletch. “This may seem strange to you, Moxie, put me down with those kids on the dock, but I’m proud and pleased to know your father. I find him damned interesting. I mean, for me to really see him and talk with him and know him. Even though he keeps confusing me with a corpse.”
“You’re not a corpse, Fletcher.” Moxie stroked his arm. “Not yet, anyway. Of course, if you get me to sign any more papers in the dark…”
“Think of all he’s done.”
“I had to bring him down here with me. What else could I do with him? Couldn’t leave him sitting there in New York.”
“So you packed him up and poured him onto the plane.”
“He entertained everybody in the first-class section. He had a few drinks, of course. There was a little girl, about twelve years old, sitting across the aisle from him. He started telling her the story of Pygmalion. He got everybody’s attention by making all Eliza Doolittle’s mouth noises. Began playing all the parts at once. Henry Higgins, the father. Then he began singing all the songs from My Fair Lady. People were standing in aisles. Get me to the church, get me to the church, get me to the church on time…” Moxie sawed out flat and guttural. “People crowded up from the coach section.”
“Marvelous,” Fletch said.
“It’s nuts!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, nuts. But the little girl will never forget it. No one aboard will. Frederick Mooney doing Shaw at thirty thousand feet.”