The pancakes were excellent-real butter, fresh fat raspberries, thick Vermont maple syrup-and so was the steaming hot coffee. If he had needed a domestic scene in his movie, this could have been it.
“You sure I yelled out your name?” she said. “I swear, if I did, I didn’t even know it.”
“You said, ‘Gabe, hurry up.’ That’s all it took.”
“Fitzhugh should have pretended not to hear me. If he’d ignored it, you’d have thought he didn’t hear what I said, and you wouldn’t have killed him. It’s just as much his fault that he got shot as mine.”
“No,” Gabe said. “Bottom line, it’s my fault. I’m the director, I’m the producer-I put too much pressure on you. It was too big a part. We didn’t rehearse. I shouldn’t have put you on the hook for such a big role.”
“It’ll never happen again,” Lexi said. “I promise.”
“Just to be on the safe side, I think you should stay behind the scenes for a while.”
“I’m fired from the production?”
“No. No. Just the opposite. I really want you to be my coproducer. We’ve got a new scene or two to write. I need you now more than ever.”
“What new scene?”
“I’m not sure yet, but we netted forty-five thousand, and we only need thirty, so I thought maybe we could come up with a couple of cool new scenes and buy some more of Mickey’s pyrotechnics. We have fifteen thousand dollars to play with.”
“Fourteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-four,” Lexi said. “The raspberries cost six bucks.”
Chapter 43
Mike Jackman was tall with broad shoulders, warm brown eyes, and an air of intelligence about him. On a good day he was probably just the kind of guy you’d want on your crew. But this was not a good day, and Mike looked like Bambi staring down the barrel of a shotgun.
“Did the lady cop tell you that Jimmy Fitzhugh is my brother-in-law?” he said.
“Yes, sir, and we’re sorry for your family’s loss. I’m Detective Jordan, and this is my partner, Detective MacDonald. With your help we can find the man who killed your brother-in-law. What can you tell us?”
“Nothing,” Jackman said. “Fitz and I meet first thing every morning to go over production notes for the day. I’m the AD; he’s the line producer. He always shows up before I do, so as soon as I got here, I went straight to his trailer. The safe was wide open. Fitz was dead in his chair. I called 911.”
“What was in the safe?” Kylie asked.
“Not my job to know.”
“Did you and Jimmy have a good relationship?” she asked.
“We were best friends. More like brothers than in-laws.”
“So your best friend, the guy you sat down with over coffee every morning, never gave you a clue about what might be in the safe worth killing him for?”
“No.”
“Maybe your sister knows. When we break the bad news to her that her husband is dead, we’ll ask her.”
“Don’t. She has no idea…”
“Sounds like maybe you do,” Kylie said.
“Mike,” I said. “You seem like the kind of true friend who would hold back information because you think it will protect Jimmy. But the truth is, you’re protecting his killer. Why don’t you tell us what you know? We won’t use it against Jimmy.”
“Jimmy’s dead. It’s not him I’m worried about.” Jackman shook his head. “Shit like this gets out, it’s my sister and the kids who suffer.”
“We’re not here to trash Jimmy’s reputation,” Kylie said. “We’re here to catch his killer. Please…help us.”
Jackman sat staring into Kylie’s eyes. He let out a long, slow breath. “Just make me a promise,” he said. “Whatever I tell you, it never gets back to my sister.”
“Promise,” Kylie said.
He nodded. “Okay. Fitz was a…I don’t know what the cops would call it,” he said. “Like a mule.”
“A drug mule?” Kylie said.
“Maybe that’s the wrong term. He was the middleman between the buyer and the seller.”
“Who was the seller and what was he selling?”
“Monte. That’s all I know. Just Monte. He was selling coke.”
“And who was the buyer?”
“Our boss, Bob Levinson.”
“Is that the guy you were cursing out in the squad car?”
“He makes great movies, but he’s the boss from hell. He’s got a ton of money and a never-ending supply of blow buddies. He buys by the kilo, but he doesn’t personally go near the supply chain. His line producers always act as the go-between.”
“And if the line producer says ‘no,’ he finds himself on the unemployment line,” Kylie said.
“Right,” Jackman said. “Levinson always hires top-notch producers. They’re always family men who need the job, and they’re always clean-no past, no drug history, no rap sheet.”
“How much do you think was in the safe?”
“Every month Levinson would give Jimmy four packets with fifteen thousand in each one. Monte showed up every Thursday with a key of cocaine, and Jimmy would give him one of the packets. Today is the ninth, so there were probably three packs still in the safe.”
“Did anyone else working on this production know about the drug deals?”
“People talk. Rumors fly around. So yeah, but I have no idea who knew what about what.”
“We need a list of every single person connected to this production. Grips, gaffers, catering truck drivers-everybody,” said Kylie.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll get you a printout.”
He started to leave, then turned back. “One question-are you going to arrest Levinson?”
“We would if we could,” I said, “but we don’t have anything we can charge him with.”
“Maybe it’s just as well. Keep Fitz’s memory clean,” he said, and walked off.
“You got a minute?”
We turned around and there was the humorless hulk of Chuck Dryden.
“You find something?” I said.
He gave me a look that basically said Dumb question. There’s only one reason I would ever interact with the detectives on the scene. Of course I found something.
He gestured with a short jerk of his head, and we followed him back to the trailer.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing to the window on the left side of the trailer. “Window Number One. Blinds down.
“Now this.” He pointed to the window on the opposite side of the trailer. “Window Number Two. Blinds down. Except these two slats are turned so a person could stand here and look out onto the street.”
“A short person,” I said. “The opening in the slats is only about five feet high.”
“But judging by the angle of the bullet in the victim, whoever pulled the trigger was a foot taller,” Dryden said. “You’re looking for two people. The shooter and a lookout.”
“Two people,” Kylie repeated. “We can’t even find one.”
Dryden shrugged. Definitely not his problem.
Chapter 44
The WALTheR PPK was Gabe’s gun of choice, the perfect little pocket pistol-the same one James Bond used. But right now his was too hot to carry. Still, he wasn’t about to transport $45,000 on the subway unarmed.
He went to his closet and dug out the Glock 23. It was a.40-caliber, bigger than the PPK.380, so it was harder to conceal, but on the off chance that a cop stopped him, it wouldn’t connect him to the robbery-homicide on West 62nd Street.
He took the number 6 local uptown, got off at Grand Central, and transferred to the number 7. The ride was uneventful-pleasant, actually. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lexi. The girl was a genius. When he asked her to help him come up with a scenario for using the extra fifteen thousand, he was just trying to make her feel wanted. He didn’t expect much.
And then she came up with an absolutely mind-blowing idea. It made the script a thousand times better.
“I want to supersize my order,” he said to Mickey when he got to the loft.
“What kind of weapons of mass destruction did you have in mind?”
Gabe had sketched Lexi’s idea out on a notepad. “I’m not sure of the exact layout, but best as I can tell, it’s something like this. What do you think?”