Next they came to two-lane Santiago Canyon Road, and as they drove through steeper and steeper hills, and Johnny looked at the brush and chaparral, and thought of what might be coming toward them from the other lane. Terrible people with bad yellow teeth who had never even heard of sweeps week.
They drove faster and Eddie started talking about Connie and how she and her sister had always dissed him. “She laughs at me, bro. She thinks I’m nothing. She wants a guy... a guy like you. She said that to me, bro. It’s funny man, cause what you do ain’t even real.”
“What do you mean?” Johnny replied. He felt a fury building in him. All his writing life he’d had to put up with morons who talked about his talent for “words” with that certain nasty little inflection, as though words were just a cover for cowardice.
“What do I mean?” Eddie said. “Well, you look at the big mansions in Newport Beach, I painted all of those places. When you see a house there and talk about how cool it is, it’s because you see my paint on it. That’s real, man. But words, what you do, making up little stories you put on TV. Even if you do make all the actors say the stuff, it’s still not real. But look how much money you get for it. Look how many women would fuck you for it. You see, that ain’t right, is it?”
Johnny had a desire to reach over and throttle Eddie. Take him by his throat—
“Depends on what you value,” Johnny said. “Words are imagination. People have always valued imagination, Ed.”
“No, well, I can see people liking a director or an actor, but a guy who uses words? I mean, be honest, how do you get those jobs, John? Aren’t they all about who you know, or screwing some big suit’s daughter or something?”
“No, not really, Eddie. You need to have talent. And if you think writing scripts is so easy, then try it sometime. What the hell, why aren’t you doing it right now? Why do a tough job like house painting when you could easily be making millions using shitty little words?”
Eddie bit his lip and looked over at Johnny in a sorrowful way. “Hey, no offense. Just always thought people who could do something, you know, like did it. People who can’t do nothing, they trick people with words. But maybe I’m wrong, bud. Maybe I’m wrong.”
“Yeah, maybe you are,” Johnny said.
They drove on through the night hills, and then turned down a road that seemed to stretch to the yellow moon.
“This is it. This is where she is,” Eddie said. “Black Star Canyon. Just down the road.”
He turned left down what looked a like a road made of dust. They made another turn and the back end skidded a little, and then they were suddenly pulling up in a dry gulch — ridden place, with no houses in sight.
“We’re here, bro,” Eddie said.
“Where’s the house?” Johnny asked, looking out at the barren hills.
“The house? Her sister’s place? Oh, it’s back in Mission Viejo. Just a few doors down from ours.”
Eddie reached into his door well and pulled out a snubnosed .38.
“Get out, Johnny.”
“What?”
“Get out. Now!”
Johnny felt like something was crushing his heart. He got out of the car, and stood in the whirling dust. Eddie did too.
“Now look in the trunk, bud,” Eddie said. Reaching inside, he popped the trunk.
Johnny walked around to the back slowly, very slowly... already knowing what he would find.
And there she was, Connie, lying crumpled in the trunk, blood all over her face and dress.
“You see how it is, Johnny boy,” Eddie said. “I don’t want no baby. I’m just not cut out for managing the Little League. And maybe now you can understand how I don’t have much patience with mere words. What you do — let’s pretend — that don’t quite make it. What’s lying in there, that would be the real thing. If you know what I mean.”
“You know you can’t get away with this.” When Johnny said it he almost laughed at himself. It was one of the lines all TV writers hated most. So corny, so hackneyed. So Barnaby Jones.
But given his messy situation, so appropriate.
“Oh yes I can,” Eddie replied. “My girlfriend gets pregnant by a slick guy from Hollywood. She demands that he takes care of the baby, and when she refuses to have an abortion he brings her out here to kill her. But lo and behold, they fight and kill one another instead. Stenz is going to swear he heard you two fighting. Connie dumped him last year. Unlike you, asshole, he’s a real pal.”
Johnny felt the fury whipping through him again, but worse, he felt a cringe-inducing embarrassment. “Did you have this in mind all the time?” he asked. “From the first day?”
“That’s right,” Eddie answered. “From day one. See, Johnny boy, you ain’t the only sharp guy in town. I betcha I could write those scripts with their twists and turns even better than you. Now you stand right over there.” He pointed out into the night desert.
Moths fluttered through the moonbeams. They were really beautiful, Johnny thought. He started to walk out to the lonely patch of ground, to his own little doom, but instead found himself walking right for Ed.
“Not this way,” Eddie said. “Out there. Back up.”
But Johnny didn’t back up. “No, I know what you want. You want to turn me into a thing that you shoot. But I’m not going to let you do it. You have to shoot me in the face.” He felt a wild panic inside but also a kind of demented hilarity. He had seen this scene in a crime movie from the ’40s a couple of years ago. He was pretty sure he had quoted the lines verbatim.
Eddie suddenly seemed less confident. “I will shoot you right in the fucking eye. I fucking will. Now get over there.”
He gestured with the gun. But Johnny smiled and kept walking toward him.
“In the face, Ed. In the face or in the balls, but in the front. You got the cojones?”
“Back up,” Eddie said. “You don’t get it.”
He started to say something else, but Johnny leaped on him, and put his hands around his throat. Eddie screamed and fell back, and Johnny choked him down, tightening his grip.
“What’s the matter, Ed, you think I just deal in words? Motherfucker!”
The whole thing was over in about thirty seconds. Eddie lay in the sand with his tongue hanging out. His face was purple under the moon. The gun was now in Johnny’s hand.
He started back to the car.
When suddenly an apparition stood in front of him.
Blood-spackled Connie was up out of the trunk, like a zombie from the B’s.
Johnny made a funny shrieking sound, and aimed the gun at her. But she ran by him and threw herself on Eddie’s body.
“Ed, oh Christ,” she said. “Oh, Ed.” She turned, bloodied and manic. “It was a joke,” she said. “He wanted to show you he was a good idea man. I tried to talk him out of it. But he wanted to show you... So when you went back up to Hollywood you wouldn’t forget him.”
“Very funny,” Johnny said. He walked back to the trunk of the car and saw the oilskin with the car jack and tire iron in it.
She got up and followed him there. He looked at her dumb mouth and blood-splattered cheeks. And felt a tremendous disdain.
“What are you doing?” she said. “We’ve got to go in to the police and report what you’ve done.”
“I knew you were going to say that. So you’re not even pregnant?”
“No, of course not.”
“Too bad,” Johnny said.
He held the iron over his head and looked down at her with real sorrow in his eyes.
“Johnny, you can’t do this. You’re not a murderer. You’re a writer.”