The muzzle wavered, pointing toward a Van Gogh print on the wall before coming back to Shayne.
“Are you willing to bet on that?”
“Sure. You’re smart enough not to fool around with live ammunition in a car moving at eighty-five miles an hour.”
A look of disgust crossed her face. She pointed the little gun at her own forehead, decided against that, and aimed it at a lamp and pulled the trigger. There was a sharp report, but the lamp stayed together.
“I knew it was loaded with blanks. How did you know it?”
“There weren’t any bullet holes in Larry’s car.”
She threw the gun. It sailed past his head and hit the wall. As she changed position, her tight, red skirt rode higher on her thigh.
“So that was a con job downstairs. I should have known. What’s going to happen to me now?”
“I hope nothing much. I’m working for Marcus Zion, not Larry. I took half the fee in advance; but if anything bad happens to you, I don’t get the rest of it. He hired me to keep the peace for thirty-six hours. After that you’re on your own, but he thinks you’ll be all right. You might as well lean back and finish your drink.”
She stayed as she was, giving off static. “Larry told Marcus about the gun? That means he’s conscious again. I couldn’t find out from the hospital.”
“He came out of the coma talking. And then he thought better of it and clammed up. This is all according to Marcus. Some of it didn’t have quite the right smell. Why don’t you give me your version?”
She breathed in and out slowly, then reached for her drink again. “Why did you blow it? You had me fooled. I really thought you made that move in the bar because you wanted to go to bed with me.”
“I do intend to go to bed with you. But later. He didn’t really tell me a hell of a lot. I’m in the middle, and that can be a bad place to be. I need to know more about it for my own protection. If a bellboy knocks, should I open the door or not? Should we stay here and eat on room service or get out of town? Marcus wanted to make sure I realized that his father’s a tough and determined man who got to be head of the studio by slamming everybody else out of his way.”
“God knows that’s true.”
“Marcus himself wasn’t coming across to me too well. But I think he wants to prove he can be just as ruthless as his old man, even though they’ve had him out in the back room counting money all these years. Sometimes that kind can be scarier than the real thing.”
“Marcus Zion? Scary?”
“He tried to get me to take a gun. The way he described the setup, a gun wasn’t called for. Guns make more problems than they solve, except in the movies. But maybe he doesn’t know that. What kind of a guy is he?”
“Marcus,” she said slowly. “He’s one of those people who are always leaning over backwards. I mean he’s more cautious than he has to be. Being Larry’s only son can’t be easy, but people don’t exactly feel sorry for him — he’s too cold a fish.”
He had given her something to think about. She was rattling the ice in her glass and frowning.
“Is Larry out and around?”
“I think so. There’s some kind of business reason why he doesn’t want to stay in the hospital. Marcus was being so careful not to be overheard that I didn’t catch all of it.”
She hit the bed with her open hand. “He was doing sixty at least when he went into that barrier. Ordinary people get killed if they run into a pole at five miles an hour. That car was spattered all over the landscape. And he came out of it with a broken leg and a concussion.”
“The Zion luck,” Shayne said. “Marcus thinks it may win him some votes.”
“Great, I’m delighted. But that wasn’t my object.”
Suddenly she came off the bed, bringing her drink. Stooping above Shayne, she kissed him lightly on the mouth. When she straightened, she moved slightly so her breast touched his face. Then she drew away.
“You hit a nerve, Mike… I wish I hadn’t had so many drinks… We’ll figure out a way to handle this. Ask me some questions.”
“Were you trying to kill him?”
“Of course not. Not that I look on him as an actual human being. Wiping out Larry Zion would be on the same ethical level as swatting a mosquito. The things he’s done…”
She returned to the bed and sat down with one foot tucked up under her. “I didn’t know that exit thing he ran into was going to be where it was, around the bend. All I wanted to do was convince him I wanted to kill him, Mike.” She concluded doubtfully. “There’s a difference. There really is.”
“You mean you wanted to scare him into giving you a part in this movie?”
“That’s right. He used to shoot lions in Kenya, and my theory about that is that he did it because he’s a coward.”
“What makes a part in this particular movie so important?”
“He promised it to me. That’s the only reason he bought the novel. And I need it badly right now. Dear God, I need it. And it’s a gorgeous part. The one woman on a ship filled with mangy, heterosexual pirates. It’s a gamble, a pirate picture in this day and age; but even if it bombs, whoever plays Doña Isabella is going to get great reviews. And Mike, it was set! The contracts were all drawn. Then all of a sudden…”
She drew the flat of her hand across her throat.
“Who got it instead?”
“His current discovery. Her name is Alix Hermes; and she’s half-Greek, half-Italian, and all bitch. She’s made a couple of artistic pictures in Europe which I’ve seen, unfortunately. Don’t expect any objectivity out of me. I’m told the New Republic critic adores her.”
“Do she and Larry travel together?”
“Everywhere. And Larry’s one endearing trait is that he always believes his current bed companion has great box-office potential. The idea is: if he wants to ball her, so will the audience.”
“Were you on that list?”
She gave him a quick glance. “Did Marcus say something? No, the girls I’m thinking about have been bracketed with him. Nobody thinks of Alix as anything but Larry’s girlfriend. It’s a long-standing thing, six months at least. By playing my cards very carefully, I stayed out of the category. Of course when I broke into pictures, it was a lot like the Middle Ages: the master had first refusal on every virgin on his property. I didn’t have the leverage to set a precedent and say no. It isn’t that important to me anyhow. We had one or two tepid weekends in the desert. Boat trips and so on. All I tried to be was barely adequate, no raptures or convulsions; and pretty soon he stopped phoning me.”
“Marcus says the director wants you for the part.”
“Baby, because he wants the picture to make money! He’s worked with me. He knows what I can do. There’s a big fight scene. I’m in man’s clothes, which get torn, naturally. I’ve got a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other, and I could be absolutely tremendous! Nobody wants to take a chance with that Greek stick. They’ve argued and argued, but Larry’s in charge of production, and he makes the decisions. He switched me out, and he can switch me back in, but only if he’s really persuaded that I want it badly enough to kill him to get it.”
“And if he’d died in the wreck…”
“I’d be on the set tomorrow. I can see you think it sounds a bit extreme. Mike, let me tell you what that man did to me — and the fact that he’s done worse to other people doesn’t make me feel any better. He doesn’t have quite as much muscle as he had in the old days when he didn’t have to explain to anybody. He couldn’t yank me out at the last minute and drop Hermes in because she’s the new girl in town. But if he could make me look bad up there on the screen, where it counts… So he killed me in my last picture; and that’s the exact, literal truth. You know how movies are made. They shoot miles and miles of film, cut it up into slivers and put them back together in the cutting room. The dailies were marvelous. Everybody said so. But the cutter was under orders to make me look like a bum.”