Bruce did not reply. Normally when people enthusiastically repeated his work back to him, as they often did, he would say, ‘Thank you, that’s very kind,’ at the earliest opportunity to try and shut them up. But this time he said nothing. There was an awful fascination in just how well this terrible man knew his work.
‘I don’t know how many times Wayne watched that movie,’ said Scout.
‘A shit load of times, let me tell you,’ Wayne added. ‘It said on the poster that the New York Times reckoned it was ironic and subversive. I just thought it was classic the way everybody got wasted. It was so witty.’
Bruce was getting nowhere. He had been attempting to get to know his persecutor, to get inside his head. All he got was his own imagination quoted back at him.
For a moment Bruce remembered something from before. Mirrors. Something about mirrors. Then that thought, too, was interrupted.
Buzzzzz… Buzzzzz.
They all jumped, even Wayne. After all it was only seven a.m.
Buzzzzz. The entryphone intercom on the wall was not going to shut up.
‘Now who’s that coming calling, Bruce?’ Wayne took up his gun. ‘It’s Oscars morning. Everybody knows you’re liable to have a head sorer than a hog’s ass on a country farm. You ain’t pushed no alarm button or nothing, have you, Bruce? Because if you have, I’ll kill you inside’a one single breath.’
‘No, Christ, no!’ Bruce said quickly. ‘I think it’s my wife, my ex. We have a settlement to discuss. Christ, she’s an hour and a half early.’
Scout squealed with excitement. First Brooke Daniels, now Farrah Delamitri. It was like being in her very own edition of Entertainment Tonight. ‘Farrah Delamitri! My God, I’d love to meet her. Didn’t I read somewhere you wished she was dead?’
‘It’s a figure of speech,’ Bruce replied ‘I was quoted out of context.’
The buzzer sounded again, more insistently this time.
Bruce turned to Wayne. ‘So I leave it, right?’
There was very little love lost between Bruce and his nearly exwife, and on occasion he had wished many horrid things upon her, but inviting her in to visit with the Mall Murderers went beyond any desire for revenge he might have had. Unfortunately the decision wasn’t up to him.
‘You’ve made an appointment, you keep it,’ Wayne said. ‘I guess she can see your big old Italian Lamborfuckin’homosexual parked out in the drive. She knows you’re here and I don’t want her getting suspicious about nothing.’
Again the buzzer.
‘Look, surely we don’t need to bring anybody else into this. I mean…’
Wayne was trying to be patient. ‘Ain’t going to drag nobody into nothing, Bruce. You just have her come on up here, do your business like you would anyhow, and then she can go.’
With great reluctance Bruce crossed again to the wall intercom and picked it up. There was a harsh New York voice on the other end.
‘For Christ’s sake, Karl,’ said Bruce, ‘have you any idea what the time is?’ He put his hand over the receiver and turned to Wayne. ‘It’s not my wife, it’s my agent, a guy called Karl Brezner. He says he has to see me right now. It’s urgent.’
‘Now if me ‘n’ Scout wasn’t here, Bruce, and it was just you and Brooke here, would you let him up?’
‘I…’ Bruce knew he had hesitated too long to lie. ‘I guess I would, if he said it was urgent.’
‘Tell him you’re sending someone down,’ said Wayne.
Wayne put all the bigger guns behind the sofa cushions where Scout was sitting. He put one handgun in his pocket and Scout kept one ready under a cushion on her lap. ‘I’m going to go down to the gate and let Karl in so we can visit with him for a while. Now he don’t have to see no guns or nothing but Scout and me are going to be ready, and anybody who tries to mess around with us is going to get very dead, d’ya hear? So you all just sit tight till I get back. Like I say, this guy don’t need to see nothing suspicious.’
He was about to leave when Scout stopped him. ‘ Wayne, honey, what about the head?’
He laughed. Turning back, he plucked the head from its stand on the lava lamp and dropped it into a wastepaper basket.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Did you see that movie Ordinary Americans?’ the detective, whose name was Crawford, enquired through a cloud of blueberrymuffin crumbs.
‘Please close your mouth when you’re eating,’ his partner, Detective Jay, replied. ‘It makes me sick to my stomach.’
‘You make me laugh, Frank. Most days you get to see the insides of some poor fuckin’ dead guy or a smackhead drowned in his own puke and yet still my spit offends you.’
‘Just because we work in a pigsty doesn’t mean we gotta act like pigs.’
‘So did you see the movie?’ Another deposit of muffin crumbs.
‘Yeah, I saw the movie.’
‘And?’
‘And when they finally blow me away, I hope I look half as good. Look, I don’t care about any movie right now. I’m thinking, OK? Working. Remember work? Or maybe the city pays you to redistribute food.’
‘Oh my God, that’s funny. I can’t wait to have grandchildren so I can tell them how funny you are.’
Detective Jay ignored his partner. ‘These two psychos, they’re in LA, you know that?’ He was looking at the map he had made of Wayne and Scout’s most recent atrocities, plotting their course. ‘Look, they were heading straight down the interstate. Sure they left it after they did the motel murders, but if you plot a path between the caravan park and the 711, they are clearly heading for town.’
‘Maybe they turned around.’
‘Sure they did. They’re in LA, I’m telling you.’
‘Like we didn’t have enough psychos in LA already, for Christ’s sake,’ Crawford said. ‘You think they’re looking to go to ground?’
‘I doubt it. These wackos are attentionseekers. Serial showoffs. I mean, for Christ’s sake, making out against a Slurpy Pup in front of a bunch of bulletriddled shoppers! They think they’re some kind of twentyfirstcentury Bonnie and Clyde. I don’t see them wanting to lose themselves in a big city.’
‘Maybe they’re visiting relatives.’
Detective Jay looked again at the crime report on Wayne ’s attempted murder of the old storekeeper.
‘Bourbon, smokes, pretzels… and a guide to the movie people’s homes.’
On the desk in front of him was a copy of the LA Times , the front page cover of which carried a picture of Bruce holding his Oscar, alongside a picture of a corpsestrewn 711 and the obligatory piece on violence influencing kids and copycat killings.
‘Movie people’s homes,’ Detective Jay repeated. ‘Hey Joe, that picture, Ordinary Americans. Who were the stars?’
‘Kurt Kidman and Suzanne Schaefer, although there were a lot of cameos. Anyhow, I thought you didn’t care about no movies.’
‘Yeah, well, I changed my mind.’