“Let’s get a coffee,” Grey said.
He and Kendra crashed the caterers table and munched on some buffalo wings and antipasto. Between bites she asked, “So what do you think of him?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Up close, I’m not impressed. He gets a lot of help in the editing room.”
Besides his non-functioning twelve-inch wonder of the world Harvey looked like pretty much any other guy on the block. He kept his hair closely cropped, wore a little peach fuzz beard, had tribal tattoos to show he was a man of the world. He had an armband crown of thorns that matched Ellie’s. Grey couldn’t really read his eyes because Harvey was caught up in his fuck face expressions.
“Are you going to pull the gun on him before you introduce yourself or after?” she asked.
“Which do you think will make the biggest impression?”
“Probably before.”
Kendra knew one of the lighting guys and struck up a conversation. Grey watched as Harvey finally pulled the trigger to the applause of the cast and crew. Folks shook his hand. Grey wondered why in the fuck anybody would shake anybody’s hand during a porn shoot until after they’d hit the showers, but clearly he didn’t know how things worked around here.
Harvey put on a robe and followed the girl he’d just banged up a large staircase. A few of the other performers marched upstairs as well. Grey wondered if he should wait for Harvey to clean up and come back down or approach on the move.
He told Kendra, “Back in a minute,” but she was so busy primping for the lighting guy that she didn’t respond.
Grey stood at the bottom of the stairs and tried to imagine what Pax would do. But he figured Pax would have waited until Harvey got home to his place in the valley and wouldn’t attack him in the middle of a porn set cleanup.
Well, Pax was making the world safe for democracy and wasn’t here. Grey took the steps three at a time. The second floor had two large hallways with six or seven doors. It wasn’t hard finding the right one. The sound of squealing emerged from the end of the corridor. Grey figured what the hell and walked in.
It was a bathroom about three times the size of his old apartment in New York. To the right was a claw-foot bathtub with two hot chicks in it, a huge shower currently occupied by several folks behind a beveled glass door, a sink you could bathe in, and a counter covered with three different drugs he could name and a couple he couldn’t. Two of the orgy guys were sniffing coke off the rock hard tits of the girl who’d been Harvey’s partner.
To the left was a large hot tub. Harvey was alone in it. He had lain back and looked half-asleep.
Grey thought, Where’s the toilet? A thousand square feet of bathroom and no shitter?
He shook his head, stepped over to Harvey, and said, “I’m Ellie’s brother.”
Harvey opened his eyes. He was a kid who took everything in stride. He yawned and scratched his peach fuzz. “Ellie didn’t have a brother.”
“She did and she does. Have you heard from her recently?”
“Been almost a year since we split up, man.”
“I know. Have you been in touch since?”
“You some kind of a crazy fan, man? Eva Rains always had the craziest goddamn fans after her. She encouraged that kind of crap. That what you’re about?”
Grey decided he might have a little better luck if he used Harvey’s real name. “Paul, I really am Ellie’s brother. Tell me what happened before the two of you broke up.”
A couple of the orgy chicks broke from the shower and hopped into the hot tub. They giggled and sighed and murmured, oblivious to Grey and everything else. Harvey kissed one of the ladies and within a minute was almost asleep again.
So much for this.
Grey grabbed Harvey by the back of the neck and forced his head under the bubbling waters. The girls didn’t open their eyes. For the first few seconds Harvey didn’t even struggle, stoned and just going with it.
Then he started to struggle a bit, and then a bit more, and then he began to thrash down there. Grey left him under the foam for another ten-count, then pulled him up.
Coughing and sputtering, Harvey turned his face to Grey, his eyes finally showing some focus and interest.
One of the orgy guys walked over and said, “Hey, anything wrong?”
“No trouble,” Grey said. “I’m a trained lifeguard. Get the fuck out of here.”
He hauled Harvey out of the water.
“Wait, man, wait…what…?”
“Okay, now we can dialogue. My sister. Have you heard from her since you split up?”
Harvey Wallbanger’s hands went up in front of his face like he expected to lose what few looks he had. “No, man, no no!”
“Tell me what happened.”
“What happened when?”
“What happened when you split.”
“She left, man, she left, that’s all! She got in deep into heroin, fucking nobody does heroin anymore. That’s not a righteous high. It kills everything. We started fighting, she was costing us jobs. So we parted ways, totally amicable, I’m telling you.”
“Who’s Johnny?”
“Who’s Johnny who, man?”
One of the girls opened an eye and said, “I think he means her manager, Harvey. That old fat fucker.”
Harvey’s eyes lit. “Yeah, yeah. That’s right. Name was John. Yeah. John…Raymond. Right. That who you mean, man? John Raymond?”
The girls over in the claw-foot tub were starting to get into each other, which was sort of distracting. Grey found a towel and tossed it to Harvey. “Let’s go talk next door.”
14
Next door was an empty bedroom. Jesus, there was a guy in a little booth out front but nobody around the house to keep assholes out of your closets. The hell kind of town was this?
Harvey sat on the bed. With his crank covered over he looked a little pathetic, like a child held after class. Grey was worried he might start crying. For this he’d been carrying Monty’s .32?
“Tell me more about Ellie’s manager.”
“There’s nothing to tell, man. After we decided to split up I got new representation with Monty Stobbs. You heard of him?”
“Yeah, I have.”
“He didn’t want anything to do with Ellie. She was already getting a bad rep in the business. Once your reputation goes like that everybody in the industry knows. No one wants to work with you, nobody wants to hire you.” Harvey started to get a little animated again, talking with his hands, mauling the air. “Our agent dumped us because we were a package team. I had my career to think about. So we broke up and I went with Monty and she found this other guy, John Raymond. Said he was more than an agent, said he was a manager. Was going to get her parts in straight movies. Was going to have her do TV. He thought she should start over in New York, doing bits on the crime shows. Last time I saw her, that’s where she was headed.”
“You let her go?” Grey asked. “Knowing she was using heroin? How could anybody get her a job on network television if she’d already been drummed out of porn?”
“I don’t know. He said it and she believed it. I told her it was crazy but she wouldn’t listen to me. You must know what she’s like.”
If only that were true. “You ever hear of this John Raymond before? He the real deal or just a-” Grey almost said pimp. “-manipulator.”
“All agents are manipulators. But no, I never heard of him before, but he seemed no better or worse than the other bastards.”
“No phone number or contact info or anything?”
“She said New York, that’s all I know.”
“How long were you two together?”
“Over a year. We were thinking of getting married.”
Grey wondered if it was a good thing she’d gotten out of being wed to this guy. Or if somehow that might’ve helped to stabilize her, even if the day job was fucking on top of a dining room table. “What got her strung out?”
“She was always strung out, man. She was an explosive personality. Anxious, always on edge. It made her interesting, made her exciting, but she could wear you out. Wore herself out too. She’d try this and try that. She just liked the H better than the other shit.”