Similar reports were on every local channel and all the network news shows. There were "file" shots of Buddy with famous actresses smiling at premiers, waving at the press, showing his tanned, surgically enhanced face and white-capped teeth. They spewed out lists of his hit movies, along with opening weekend grosses. He was called a hero, a handsome hero, the bad-boy producer with the golden touch, a romantic outlaw. And on and on it went…
Upstairs in his bedroom, Buddy was watching it all from his bed, with the covers pulled up around his chin. He had been forced to endure the police for almost three hours. Thank God, he thought, that dumb bitch, Consuelo, got it right, or I would probably have been arrested for killing Iverson in cold blood.
The body had been taken out two hours ago, and after the cops left, Buddy locked the front door, wearily climbed up to his bedroom, then stripped and flopped. He turned on the TV and watched, deadpan, as his legend grew right before his eyes. He was on every channel. This sort of heroic notoriety was something he had struggled to achieve for twenty years. It was suddenly happening on a level far beyond his wildest dreams, but he felt corrupted by it. He could still feel the fearHe knew now that beyond any doubt, he was a coward. He had always styled himself as a bad-boy outlaw who played by his own rules, kicked ass, and was afraid of nothing. Ironically, now that the world was finally embracing that image, he wanted to run from the lie.
He stared at the TV in dead-eyed stupor, feeling nothing but a low-level dread about his future.
Consuelo knocked on the bedroom door. "Senor Brazil…?"
"Yes, what is it?" he snapped, and struggled to see over his barrel chest to the bedroom door. She was standing there, her fresh paramedic bandage covering her right arm, which was in a sling.
"Senor, dere ees mans downstair…" she said in her broken English.
"I don't wanna see anybody."
"Dey heff dis por jew."
"That's you, Consuelo, not Jew. Jews are agents, Sephardic ten-percent assholes."
"No. Por favor, dey give dis por jew." She was holding out something in her hand.
He sat up in bed, exposing his furry chest, and nodded. She came to him on tiptoes and handed him a gold ring.
Buddy had never had a particularly good personal relationship with Consuelo. He used to shout at her and tell her she was an idiot. Consuelo had told her sister in Cuemavaca that he was a pendejo, a gringo malo, who used bad drugs and took advantage of women and had kinky sex with prostitutes. She had called him el diablo pequeno, the little devil.
Now that he had saved her from the mad doctor, she didn't know how to treat him or what to think.
"Thank you! Leave me alone," he snapped coldly, and she quickly left, quietly closing the door behind her.
The ring in his hand looked familiar. He had seen it before… a gold band with two snakes entwined. Then he remembered. It had been a gift to him from the head of the studio, when Snake Dancer went over one hundred million in domestic grosses. That was back in the seventies. Now when that happened, they gave you a fucking Mercedes. He hadn't liked the ring. He preferred bigger jewelry with diamond settings, but what the fuck had he done with it? Who could have taken it? Why wasn't it somewhere in the back of his jewelry box?
Then it hit him. He had given the ring to Michael when his son moved into the pool house after being thrown out of Pepperdine. A sort of "welcome home/bury the hatchet" present. He had lied and told Michael he'd had it designed especially for him.
Now, as he sat holding his dead son's ring, the taste of sour chocolate unexpectedly filled his mouth, startling him. He rolled over and hit the intercom.
"Jes?" Consuelo's voice came over the speaker into his bedroom.
"Tell them to wait out by the pool house. No… no, hold it, fuck the pool house, I'm never going in there again. Tell them to wait in the den."
And then Buddy Brazil got out of bed and put on a pair of new black jeans and a black silk shirt, his patented "Outlaw Buddy" attire. He slipped into a pair of custom-made black rhino cowboy boots that gave him an extra three inches in the heel. After inspecting his bloated face in the bathroom mirror, he gargled some Listerine and went downstairs.
There were three of them waiting, not in the den as he'd instructed, but in the living room, which was a mess, filled with shattered glass, empty Coke cans, and police cigarette butts. There was a slender, underweight man with a shaved head, and a rumpled, gray-haired porpoise with a bow tie. Last, but hardly least, a drop-dead gorgeous blonde of exquisite proportions, with aqua-blue eyes and a world-class bumper kit. Buddy focused on her, ignoring the two men. He slipped easily back into his old outlaw persona.
"How may I help you?" he said, trying to sound tired, but heroically resolute, like Alan Ladd after the big gunfight in Shane, his favorite movie, growing up.
"I'm Stacy Richardson. This is Dr. Wendell Kinney and Cris Cunningham," she said.
He looked over at the skinny, bald-headed man. "Cris Cunningham? There used to be a guy with that name who played quarterback for UCLA. They called him Lucky Cunningham 'cause he'd always complete some bullshit Hail Mary pass with seconds left on the clock. A real gamer. Not a bad player for a Bruin. Livin' in L. A., I bet you hear about him a lot," Buddy said, never for a minute suspecting that this underweight, bald, unhealthy-looking character in front of him was, in fact, that same man.
"Yeah," Cris said, "now and again." And that was all he said, so Stacy let it go.
"Sir, we've come to ask you a few questions about your son."
Again, it was the beautiful blonde doing the talking. Buddy would have truly liked to fuck her, but he hadn't had sex with a non-pro in almost five years. Now that Heidi Fleiss was out of the business and standing trial again, he was just using the few remnants from her old stable, who were still flat-backing around Hollywood. He preferred hookers. He had always been afraid of rejection. Prostitutes never rejected you. If you pre-ejaculated, or couldn't sustain an erection because of drugs, or whatever, they never said anything. Hookers always made you feel like your tool was a diamond cutter and you were the blue-vein prince of the city. He looked at this girl and desired her, but knew he would posture and strut, then probably never get up the nerve to take a cut at her.
"First, maybe you should tell me where you got this ring," Buddy said, holding it up between his thumb and forefinger.
"I got it off Mike when he died," the underweight young man said.
Buddy moved farther into the room, coming closer. He could see now that Cris Cunningham was surprisingly tall, at least six-three. Even in his custom boots, Buddy was a few inches shorter. "Why don't we go in here," he said, leading them into the den, which contained all of his showbiz trophies and pictures of him with celebrities, including shots with three different U. S. Presidents. "I'm sort of played out, so if we can make it fast," he said, going for a heroic pose by the bar, making it sound like his fabulous gunfight was nothing to really talk about, but maybe had tired him slightly.
"Sir," the beautiful blonde said.
"Buddy," he corrected her.
She rewarded him with a smile and went on, "Mr. Cunningham was with your son for several weeks just before he died…"
"And where was that? I heard he was hoboing up in Texas, for God's sake. Why Mike would be riding the rails, hanging with a buncha bums, sure beats the shit outta me."
"He was searching for himself," the tall, head-shaved man said. Buddy showed him to a seat on the sofa, while taking a high stool by the bar for himself. Buddy never let his head be lower than another alpha male's if they were both in the vicinity of prime pussy. From this angle, Buddy could now see a stitched wound in the back of the man's head.