Dead Lines

  Those had been bad times for erotic cinema, legally speaking, and things would only get worse, but there was money to be made, pretty women to take to bed, exciting times moving actors around under hot lights, and of course, that perennial flower in Hollywood, dreams of bigger things.

  Peter had made twenty-one films between 1969 and 1983, fifteen of them under his own name. During the same period, he had sold over a hundred photo layouts, beginning with basement men’s magazines like GRR and Tuff. Then had come a spread in Rogue. In 1972, two layouts in Oui had followed. Those sales, and three films paid for in cash and released in one month, had helped buy him his used Porsche and the Glendale hills house.

  Big-busted and leggy women had arrived in Peter’s life, more than even he could imagine dealing with, attracted to power, any power, and desperate for anything resembling charm. But compared with Peter’s dreams, it had all seemed small potatoes.

  Then had come his three months with Sascha and, coincidentally, felony obscenity charges in LA County Superior Court. That had forced Peter to realize that his wave was breaking. He was little more than a grunion snatched off the local beach to serve as an example to deepwater sharks. Hard core was beginning to dominate the skin-flick industry, bringing with it sharp but futile jabs of legal repression and a pall of mob activity.

  Eventually, Peter had sold five cartoons to Playboy. But every novel and story he had submitted—written on sets during downtime and at home—had been rejected. Finally, with too much energy and too many bills to pay, he had taken on a novelization, writing a book based on a popular TV show, Canine Planet.

  “On Canine Planet, dogs rule and men are slaves . . .”

  That, at least, had come out under his own name.

  He dusted off the drafting stool and sat on it with a sigh. The storyboard sat blank and silly before him, with its rows of old-fashioned TV-screen templates.

  He tried to conjure up some way to begin a spot about Trans: a film, a video, anything. Thought of Carla’s dream. Sketched frames of people dragging word-balloon voices behind them, leaving trails of talk.

  Doing the human thing. To talk is human. To listen is divine. To do it on the cheap is just good business.

  He smiled, shook out his hand, and quickly sketched a Phil cartoon of a nebbishy guy with a big silly smile clutching a stack of word balloons and handing them out to people, boarding taxis, subways, on bicycles, men and women chatting away with big smiles, swapping word balloons. He and Phil could trade styles when they wanted to, and now a Phil guy seemed the better choice.

  Talk is what we do. Reach out. Touch them with your voice before it’s too late. Talk to your mother, your father, your friends . . .

  Before they’re gone.

  That stopped him. He stared down at the Phil guy: long nose, big sloppy grin, slyly handing out word balloons. Free talk.

  Peter spent ten minutes dotting a circle on the border of the paper, then looked up at the basement window, listening to birds in the backyard. An hour went by. With a short, grunting hum, he stepped off the stool and lay down the pencil.

  He did not know where to begin. It had been decades. These ideas were nothing like the films he used to make. If they wanted the old Russell, edgy-cheesy, he was failing miserably. That man was long gone.

  Peter shook his head and climbed the stairs. In the kitchen, the answering machine was flashing a big red 2. In the basement, he had not heard the phone ring. He pulled up a stool, a little out of breath, and pushed the playback button.

  “Mr. Russell, this is Detective Scragg, LAPD. Something got me thinking about you and Mrs. Russell. We haven’t talked in a while. I’ve been going through some paperwork here and I thought I’d find out how’s it going. Nothing new, I’ve just been thinking over details, have some more questions. We should touch base. I’m calling from—”

  Peter closed his eyes and pushed the stop button. The next message was also from Scragg. They had last spoken six months earlier, and there had been nothing new at that time. A dead-end case. Peter did not want to think any more negative thoughts. He erased both messages, then backed away, as if the old kitchen phone might be tainted. He picked up the Trans and punched in a standard phone number. He hoped the number was still good.

  He hadn’t spoken to Karl Pfeil in years.

  CHAPTER 21

  PFEIL STOOD SIX-FEET-THREE-INCHES tall in—literally—his stocking feet. His long blond hair swayed forward over his eyes as he leaned across the swoop of glass-topped desk to clasp Peter’s hand.

  “Eight years! I looked it up. We haven’t talked in eight years,” Karl said. “How the time shrieks by.”

  The walls of Karl’s long, windowless office were covered with framed posters, photos, and three big plasma screens, two turned off, one still exhibiting rough animatics—computer graphics loops of lizardlike characters walking.

  “You’ve done great,” Peter said with genuine admiration.

  “Don’t look,” Karl warned cheerfully, and punched a button on the desk to turn off the screen. “Jim Cameron’s new movie. Well, maybe. Top secret. What brings you to Santa Monica?”

  “I’m old,” Peter said.

  Karl made a face. “Bullshit.”

  “I’ve been out of the business so long, I don’t know a lens from a pixel. I need professional advice.”

  Karl sat and leaned his elbows on his desk. “If I can return any favors . . .”

  As a green kid, Karl had worked on Peter’s final picture, Q.T., the Sextraterrestrial, putting together two stop-motion sequences. Karl had animated—for almost no money—an anatomically correct monster alien rampaging through a college campus, chasing coeds who had taken one too many tabs of LSD.

  Now Karl was in charge of one of the best computer graphics studios on the West Coast.

  “I’ve got a commission,” Peter said.

  Karl looked tan and buff and wore a silk shirt and linen pants, his geeky hair and face now part of a stylish personal signature. Peter’s chest suddenly felt cold.

  “I presume I’m going to shoot HD video,” he continued, his tongue gluey. “I’ve never used a Betacam, or whatever it is now. I’d like to see some of the equipment, just to know what to rent.”

  Karl shrugged. “Hell, with what’s in Circuit City right now, you might as well buy. Only cost you a couple of grand for something pretty terrific.”

  Peter shook his head. “This is professional, Karl.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, Peter. Something the size of your hand, locked onto a hundred-dollar tripod, will give you great results. What kind of budget?”

  “Hasn’t been set, but it’s promoting a telecom startup.”

  Karl worked to keep a straight face. “Are they actually going for psychotronic?” he asked with a speculative squint.

  “Probably,” Peter said.

  “Ah. Then they’ll want a film look, bad color correction. Scratches and blotches. Just like the old days. I’ve got a terrific Arri Super 16 gathering dust in my attic. Yours for the asking.”

  Peter nodded his thanks and walked around the room, studying the posters. “I saw your last picture. Beautiful work.”

  “Not much of a challenge,” Karl confessed. “We turned Robin Williams into a talking elephant. Did you know he’s a fan of yours?”

  Peter laughed.

  “No, really,” Karl insisted. “He quoted me some lines from Q.T.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Peter said.

  Karl pushed back his chair and stood. “Come on. I’ll show you something. CGI is about to put all your pretty ladies out of business.”

  KARL GAVE PETER a tour. They walked down a hallway lined with more posters and passed a fifty-seat viewing theater. Karl opened a heavy white metal door and they stepped into a quiet, shaded room filled with long rows of cubicles.

  “Our genies,” Karl said.

  Weinstein had been right—there was little difference between a cubicle and a prison cell. Inside each cubicle was a des
k holding a twenty-one-inch monitor, a trackball, and a keyboard. Shelves were filled with books and manuals and plastic toys. A young woman in jeans and a T-shirt sat manipulating blocks of color around a plain-vanilla human figure. She grabbed a limb and positioned it to her liking, then swiveled on her chair and leaned back to smile toothily at Karl.

  Karl benevolently returned her smile, boss to wage slave. “Tracy, this is Peter, an old friend.”

  “Good to meet you,” Tracy said. Her eyes were glazed. She yawned and stretched. “Sorry. I’ve been working here since four in the morning.”

  “Take a break.”

  “I’m fine,” Tracy said, returning with fated slowness to her screen. She made the animated figure grimace.

  “Tracy is twenty-two,” Karl said as they walked to the end of the corridor between the cubicles. “Just out of MIT and one of the best in our building.”

  “MIT?” Peter asked. “Not USC?”

  “She debugs our Slicer and NextMove software,” Karl said. He took Peter up a flight of stairs into a long loft space filled with more posters, figures of dinosaurs and dragons, and a full-sized chrome-plated skeletal robot. “Ah am pumping iron,” the robot intoned as they walked by. It swiveled its head and swayed its arms menacingly. “Scrahtch my bahk.”

  “Sheila—my wife, I’m married now, believe it?—she rigged that for my birthday,” Karl said. He plopped down in a red leather chair and switched on a forty-inch flat-screen monitor. “This is top secret. Not even Sheila knows. Just some of the boys. You’re going to love it.” He clipped on a receptionist’s microphone and earplug.

  Jean Harlow glowed into being on the monitor, in black and white, seen from the shoulders up, her hair a dazzling silver cascade. A radiant, crystallized glow outlined her head.

  “Helllooo, Jean,” Karl said. “Where have you been all my life?”

  Harlow turned to face him. “Is that you, Karl?” she asked, and rewarded him with a bored smile.

  “None other. I’d like you to meet Peter.”

  “Is he rich?” she asked.

  “Very.”

  Harlow peered directly into Peter’s eyes. Peter laughed nervously as she winked and threw him a kiss. “Why don’t you and I go dancing and leave Karl to his monsters? I’ve been cooped up in this box all day.”

  “My God,” Peter said. “She looks real. Is there a . . . ?”

  “Model in the other room?” Karl finished, and scoffed. “Do you think I’m made of money?” He tapped his nose. “Jean, could you get Jane for us?”

  Harlow tossed her blond hair and assumed a could-care-less moue. She stepped aside and Jane Russell moved into view. Karl spun the mouse wheel to pull back. Russell stood on a soundstage with a wind machine and a cloudy-sunset backdrop. She was wearing the blouse and bra made famous by The Outlaw.

  “Jane, honey, how about a little cleavage?”

  The figure shrugged, said, “Boys will be boys,” and started to bend forward. Hands on her hips and elbows out, she gave a little wiggle. The resulting pendulum motion was very convincing.

  “They’re all anatomically correct, and very willing,” Karl said. “We have Marilyn, Bettie—”

  “Davis?” Peter asked.

  “No, Page, joker. And about a dozen others. They run off the same engine, and not even I can tell what they’ll say next.”

  “Wonderful,” Peter said, but he did not sound convinced. In fact, he was starting to feel uncomfortable.

  Karl brought Bettie Page on-screen with her trademark straight-cut black bangs. Dressed in a leopard-skin skirt, Page was in the act of pinning fishnet hose on a clothesline crowded with dainties. Behind her was a pink couch. She raised her head to deliver a summer-promise smile. “Why, it’s Karl,” she said. “Who’s your friend?” She sashayed forward until her face filled the frame. “Could you boys help me move some furniture?”

  “Not tonight, Bettie. Nice, huh?” Karl said to Peter in an aside. “Next up . . . Sascha Lauten. Our prize. I have to admit, your photos inspired us, Peter. The best-covered model we have, actually—if what you did can be called coverage.”

  Sascha appeared on-screen before Peter could protest. And it was Sascha, right down to the way she folded her arms—Karl had always been a master at capturing subtleties. She wore a filmy scarf and nothing else. Peter felt his face pink.

  “Good to see you, Sascha,” Karl said.

  “Good to be seen, and by such talented eyes.”

  “Peter Russell wants to say hi.”

  “Is that really you, Peter? What a surprise!” She sat demurely on an office-style chair, pulling down the edge of the scarf. Sascha had been his best-looking model—gorgeous, buxom, and classy, with a come-hither look that seemed not only natural but accidental. In Peter’s photos, she had appeared surprised and pleased at once that anyone could find her sexy—giving her a naÏve vulnerability that belied her ample charms.

  “Let’s skip Sascha,” Peter said, but Karl was busy and did not hear him. Sascha’s image had frozen and bright red pixels were marching like ants across the bottom of the screen.

  “Damn,” Karl said, clicking up a set of command buttons and picking through some digital remedies. “Tracy refuses to debug this software. Leaves us at a disadvantage.”

  Peter could not take his eyes from Sascha’s face. “White man steal soul,” he said, his mouth dry. Even in still-frame, she looked healthy and natural. And she was no older on this screen than she had been when Peter had last taken pictures of her. “I mean it, Karl. Please.”

  Karl looked up. “Jeez, you look awful,” he said. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I don’t want to see her like this,” Peter said.

  “Sorry,” Karl said, dumbfounded. “Let me clear the buffer.” He tapped the keyboard. Suddenly, the image jerked and became ragged at the edges. The eyes went milky white, then dropped out of sight completely, leaving black hollows. Peter watched Sascha de-rez. Her colors dropped out as if bleached. The copy stared at Peter—directly into his eyes—with those blank hollows, and said through jagged lips, in a reedy skirl, “You shouldn’t leave me alone in here. I’m a very needy girl. Where have you been, Peter? Why did you leave me all alone?”

  Peter felt a shooting pain in his rear molars and down his arm. He reached up to his shoulder and stooped forward.

  “Sorry, she’s caught in a loop.” Karl tapped madly on the keyboard. He made another sweep of the mouse and reached for the monitor to just shut it off. Before he could do so, the image jerked, reversed its last movements, and juddered to another freeze. He held his finger above the monitor button, curious as to what might happen next. “Whoops,” Karl said. “Bad girl. Well, she’s down. Shit.” Karl punched off the monitor. “My apologies. Good night, ladies!”

  Peter backed away from the monitor station, still stooped. “Could we get some water?”

  BACK IN THE front office, Karl gave Peter a bottle of Evian and some aspirin and sat on the edge of the desk as Peter massaged his arm.

  “You look shook, Peter, if you don’t mind me making an observation. Does your arm hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Peter said.

  “My dad had angina pains in his head and arms. He had to—”

  “It’s just indigestion,” Peter said, slugging back the pills with a long draft of the flat-tasting bottled water. He usually hated Evian but the liquid felt good in his throat.

  “Have you had an EKG?”

  “Last month,” Peter lied. “I just ate too much for lunch and it’s pushing back.”

  After a moment, Karl looked crestfallen. “You don’t approve of our ladies,” he said.

  “They’re lovely,” Peter said. Too lovely. Images, memories of the dead—except for Bettie Page and Sascha, still alive but now disturbingly like wraiths, bits of information forced to dance through an endless loop of wet dreams . . . Male lust tuned to the nth degree. He felt a shudder creep up his back. It was too much like a nightmare distortion of his life’s work, his
movies, his photographs.

  Another important meeting headed for salvage.

  “You make me feel like a fifth wheel, that’s all,” Peter said. “Just thinking about what it takes, with masters like you around, makes me jumpy.”

  “Sure,” Karl said, unconvinced. “Well, the ladies aren’t commercial. They’re just a hobby. Geeks will be geeks. We don’t even have image licenses.” Karl gave Peter a searching look, as if regretting the entire afternoon. “We could get in trouble if someone found out, you know?”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Karl walked around the desk and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Hey, they want you, man. Not some MTV version of Ridley Scott. They want what you did so well, and there’s no reason you can’t do it again, right?”

  Peter nodded, gripping the plastic bottle.

  Karl could not hide his relief as he accompanied Peter down to the parking garage. Standing by the Porsche, Karl said, “If you need equipment, anything . . . let me know. We have sweetheart deals all around town. I’d love to help.”

  “Thanks.”

  Peter opened the car door. Karl was almost twitching to get back to work.

  “Man, it is great to have you visit,” he said as Peter slid into the seat. “Just like old times. Hey, do you remember that class you taught?”

  Peter looked up. “Class?”

  “Lessons in oral sex. Cunnilingus.”

  Peter said, “I don’t remember you being there.”

  Karl grinned sheepishly. “I was sixteen, a total nerd virgin. We looked up to you like a god. Jeez, you knew it all. Well, it worked. Sheila and I have been married for sixteen years. Thanks, man. I owe you.”

  But Peter could tell. The next time, Karl would not take his call.

  CHAPTER 22

  HE PULLED OFF and parked near the Santa Monica Pier. It was six o’clock; he had three hours until Helen showed up at the house.

  Peter rolled down the window and took a deep breath.

  The sun was dropping slow and rich over the water, with that special light the coast manages to wear like a silk dress in the evening.