John heard a hum up the hill — Ivan's treadmill buzzing to life at its usual six-thirty time slot. Company! He walked up to Ivan, who was also watching the morning news on an ancient 14-inch TV placed on its usual perch on a lawn chair. «John-O.»
«Ivan.»
«You look like shit. Up all night?» Ivan's treadmill was on 3 out of a possible 10.
«Yeah.» This was not uncommon.
«Watch anything good?»
«Actually, no. I read something.»
«You read ?»
«A script, actually.»
«My,my. High School Graduates Eat Steak. When was the last time you even touched a script?»
John had to think. «Yeah, yeah. Whenever.»
«Something we can use?»
«I think so. It's okay.»
«Okay good, or okay crap?»
«Okay good. Okay great, actually.»
«Spiel forth, pardner.»
John started to describe the film.
«What happens after the Galveston blowup?» Ivan was hooked.
«We go back in time — to the famous Tungaska “meteor explosion” of 1909.»
«Isn't that the one where half the trees in Siberia got knocked down?»
«That's it — except it turns out it wasn't a meteorite explosion. It was this hoop thing.»
«Not aliens, I hope. The market's supersaturated with alien shit.» Ivan timed some sort of pulse or throbbing in his body with his stopwatch.
«Not aliens. The hoop is from Switzerland. From Bern, Switzerland. It's from 1905, and it was made by a voluptuous Russian Jew down the hall from Einstein's apartment. That was the year he discovered the Theory of Relativity.»
«Vol up tuous? What kind of word is that? Where are we, John-O — 1962?»
«Okay okay. But she's hot.»
«She's hot ? Are we in 1988 now?»
«God, Ivan. She's hot in a cold kind of way. Her parents died and she had to go back to Siberia from Bern. But when she's there, there's the accident — the Tungaska explosion.»
«What kind of psychic energy creates an explosion that levels half of Siberia?»
«The woman's first orgasm accidentally funneled through an amplifier ring within the hoop.»
«Jawohl.»
«Anyhow, she's at the center of the explosion, so she's safe. That's part of the deal. Imagine the special effects on this one, Ivan. Anyhow, by now the bad guys know all about this hoop.»
«Who are the bad guys?»
«A Swiss banking consortium just before WWII. The guys who were about to rake gold fillings out of the death camps.»
«Go on.»
«These banking guys want it. All of the governments want it, but she keeps both herself and her hoop hidden until 1939 and the war. She's sent to a death camp and the Nazis get the hoop. Then the Americans steal it from the Germans, and the Americans use it to nuke Japan. And after that the hoop moves to Nevada, where they suck in the gambling energy and the desperation energy from Las Vegas to do their nuclear tests. But then the woman's son, a ballistics scientist working there at the Nevada test site, makes these connections and realizes what the hoop is really about — and also that it belongs to him.
«So he manages to swipe it — that's when the nuclear testing stops — in the eighties — and he smuggles himself and the hoop down to Galveston. But he has a stroke. His daughter, played by the same actress, puts the hoop into a luggage closet. It's when she's cleaning out the closet that she has the accident with the hoop up against the TV set. The tornado alerts the bad guys, and so there's this chase and it ends with a hurricane of blood. Fish turn inside out. Roses bloom at midnight. It's Revelations. At the end the woman takes the hoop to Hawaii and throws it into one of the live volcanoes on Oahu. Whaddya think?»
Ivan was measuring his breath as his treadmill kicked into a hill simulation. «Sounds to me like there's lots of debris flying around in it.»
«Debris? What? Yeah — I guess so.»
«I was meeting with these nerds at ILM and SGI up in San Francisco before I went to Scotland. Their computers can do perfect flying debris and litter now. They're looking for a showcase for their new techniques and this sounds like just the thing. Story needs some work, though. Who's the writer?»
«One of these young turks — Ryan Something. He's boiling hot right now.»
«I haven't heard his name. Is there an auction on it?»
«We have the option to make a preemptive bid.»
«How much you think?»
«Five hundred.»
«Make it three. You feel good about this?»
«First script in years to give my brain a hard-on.»
«It's the first script you've read in years.»
A bell rang, announcing somebody at the front gate. Ivan switched off the treadmill. «Come on, John-O, let's see who's here.» They walked around the patio, which was dripping with flowers and lush branches. Out front a police car was at the gate, one officer standing beside the car manning the intercom, another in the passenger seat. Ivan buzzed them in with a remote. The four of them formed a congress on the front steps.
«Officers?» Ivan said.
«Hello, Mr. McClintock,» the tall one said. «And you, too, Mr. Johnson. Do you have a moment, Mr. McClintock?»
«Call me Ivan. Of course. What's this regarding?»
«Doing a check. Do you own a white Chrysler sedan, license number 2LM 3496T?»
«Yes.»
«Were you driving the car last night around twoA.M . in Benedict Canyon?»
«That was me,» John said.
«Could you tell us where you were last night, Mr. Johnson?»
«Easy. I was getting tapes at West — West — West Side Video on Santa Monica.»
«What tapes?»
«About ten of them. Susan Colgate stuff — Meet the Blooms, and some cheesy B flick.»
The policeman shared a flickering meaningful glance. «What time would that have been, Mr. Johnson?»
«The guy was just closing the shop. Around oneA.M ., I guess.»
«What then?»
«Then I — went and parked in front of Susan Colgate's house. For about an hour.»
«Why was that, Mr. Johnson?»
«Is something wrong? What's going on here?» John was getting edgy.
«It's a routine check, sir. Why were you parked outside her house?»
«John-O,» said Ivan. «Just talk, okay? We're not cutting a distribution deal here.»
«She didn't answer my phone message. Susan Colgate. I thought she might be coming home late.»
«You live here, Mr. Johnson?» asked the shorter officer.
«In the house down there. With my mother.» The police looked down at the guesthouse, almost unchanged since the day John first saw it. «I lost my old Bel-Air tree-fort last year. You probably read about that in People. »
«You didn't lose it, John,» said Ivan, «you gave it away. »
«To the IRS. That's not me giving. That's them taking.»
«Is that the Chrysler down there?» asked the tall cop.
«That's it,» John said, his stomach turning to slime as he remembered the shrine still in the back seat. «There's a — oh fuck. You'll see.»
The four walked down the hill, the police clicking into almost paramilitary action as they discovered the shrine in the back. One called HQ requesting something technical immediately. The other blocked John from the car.
«Am I under arrest? Do you have a warrant?» John asked.
«No. And we don't have to go through that if you agree.»
«John, it's my property,» said Ivan. «Go right ahead, guys.» He looked in the back seat. The white towel around his neck dropped onto the gravel driveway and he didn't pick it up. «John-O, there's a goddam Susan Colgate parade float in the back seat of the car — you made this?»