Black Evening

  We didn't care. I was making a picture I believed in, and Wes was on the verge of being a star.

  I did my homework. I brought the picture in for twelve million. These days, that's a bargain. The rule of thumb says that you multiply the picture's cost by three (to account for studio overhead, bank interest, promotion, this and that), and you've got the break-even point.

  So we were aiming for thirty-six million in ticket sales. Worldwide, we did a hundred-and-twenty-million. Now a lot of that went to the distributors, the folks that sell you popcorn. And a lot of that went into some mysterious black hole of theater owners who don't report all the tickets they sold and foreign chains that suddenly go bankrupt. But after the sale to HBO and CBS, after the income from tapes and discs and showings on airlines, the studio had a solid forty million profit in the bank. And that, believe me, qualifies as a hit.

  We were golden. The studio wanted another Wes Crane picture yesterday. The reviews were glowing. Both Wes and I were nominated for — but didn't receive — an Oscar. "Next time," I told Wes.

  And now that we were hot, we demanded fees that were large enough to compensate for the pennies we'd been paid on the first one.

  ***

  Then the trouble started.

  You remember that Deacon never knew he was a star. He died with three pictures in the can and a legacy that he never knew would make him immortal. But what you probably don't know is that Deacon became more difficult as he went from picture to picture. The theory is that he sensed the power he was going to have, and he couldn't handle it. Because he was making up for his troubled youth. He was showing people that he wasn't the fuckup his foster parents and his teachers (with one exception) said he was. But Deacon was so intense — and so insecure — that he started reverting. Secretly he felt that he didn't deserve his predicted success. So he did become a fuckup as predicted.

  On his next-to-last picture, he started showing up three hours late for the scenes he was supposed to be in. He played expensive pranks on the set, the worst of which was lacing the crew's lunch with a laxative that shut down production for the rest of the day. His insistence on racing cars forced the studio to pay exorbitant premiums to the insurance company that covered him during shooting. On his last picture, he was drunk more often than not, swilling beer and tequila on the set. Just before he died in the car crash, he looked twenty-two going on sixty. Most of his visuals had been completed, just a few closeups remaining, but since a good deal of Birthright was shot on location in the Texas oilfields, his dialogue needed re-recording to eliminate background noises on the soundtrack. A friend of his who'd learned to imitate Deacon's voice was hired to dub several key speeches. The audience loved the finished print, but they didn't realize how much of the film depended on careful editing, emphasizing other characters in scenes where Deacon looked so wasted that his footage couldn't be used.

  So naturally I wondered — if Wes Crane looked like Deacon and sounded like Deacon, dressed like Deacon and had Deacon's style, would he start to behave like Deacon? What would happen when I came to Wes with a second project?

  I wasn't the only one offering stories to him. The scripts came pouring in.

  I learned this from the trades. I hadn't seen him since Oscar night in March. Whenever I called his place, either I didn't get an answer or a spaced-out woman's voice told me Wes wasn't home. In truth, I'd expected him to have moved from that dingy house near the desert. The gang that lived there reminded me of the Manson clan. But then I remembered that he hadn't come into big money yet. The second project would be the gold mine. And I wondered if he was going to stake the claim only for himself.

  His motorcycle was parked outside our house when Jill and I came back from a Writers' Guild screening of a new Clint Eastwood movie. This was at sunset with sailboats silhouetted against a crimson ocean. Wes was sitting on the steps that wound up through a rose garden to our house. He held a beer can. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt again, and the white of that T-shirt contrasted beautifully with his tan. But his cheeks looked gaunter than when I'd last seen him.

  Our exchange had become a ritual.

  "Did you win?"

  He grinned and raised a thumb. "Yourself?"

  I grinned right back. "I've been trying to get in touch with you."

  He shrugged. "Well, yeah, I've been racing. I needed some downtime. All that publicity, and… Jill, how are you?"

  "Fine, Wes. You?"

  "The second go-around's the hardest."

  I thought I understood. Trying for another hit. But now I wonder.

  "Stay for supper?" Jill asked.

  "I'd like to, but…"

  "Please, do. It won't be any trouble."

  "Are you sure?"

  "The chili's been cooking in the crackpot all day. Tortillas and salad."

  Wes nodded. "Yeah, my mom used to like making chili. That's before my dad went away and she got to drinking."

  Jill's eyebrows narrowed. Wes didn't notice, staring at his beer can.

  "Then she didn't do much cooking at all," he said. "When she went to the hospital… This was back in Oklahoma. Well, the cancer ate her up. And the city put me in a foster home. I guess that's when I started running wild." Brooding, he drained his beer can and blinked at us as if remembering we were there. "A home-cooked meal would go good."

  "It's coming up," Jill said.

  But she still looked bothered, and I almost asked her what was wrong. She went inside.

  Wes reached in a paper sack beneath a rose bush. "Anyway, buddy." He handed me a beer can. "You want to make another movie?"

  "The trades say you're much in demand." I sat beside him, stared at the ocean, and popped the tab on the beer can..

  "Yeah, but aren't we supposed to be a team? You direct and write. I act. Both of us, or none." He nudged my knee. "Isn't that the bargain?"

  "It is if you say so. Right now, you've got the clout to do anything you want."

  "Well, what I want is a friend. Someone I trust to tell me when I'm fucking up. Those other guys, they'll let you do anything if they think they can make a buck, even if you ruin yourself. I've learned my lesson. Believe me, this time I'm doing things right."

  "In that case," I said, vaguely puzzled.

  "Let's hear it."

  "I've been working on something. We start with several givens. The audience likes you in an action role. But you've got to be rebellious, anti-establishment. And the issue has to be controversial. What about a bodyguard — he's young, he's tough — who's supposed to protect a famous movie actress? Someone who reminds us of Marilyn Monroe. Secretly he's in love with her, but he can't bring himself to tell her. And she dies from an overdose of sleeping pills. The cops say it's suicide. The newspapers go along. But the bodyguard can't believe she killed herself. He discovers evidence that it was murder. He gets pissed at the coverup. From grief, he investigates further. A hit team nearly kills him. Now he's twice as pissed. And what he learns is that the man who ordered the murder — it's an election year, the actress was writing a tell-it-all about her famous lovers — is the President of the United States."

  "I think" — he sipped his beer — "it would play in Oklahoma."

  "And Chicago and New York. It's a backlash about big government. With a sympathetic hero."

  He chuckled. "When do we start?"

  And that's how we made the deal on Grievance.

  ***

  I felt excited all evening, but later — after we'd had a pleasant supper and Wes had driven off on his motorcycle — Jill stuck a pin in my swollen optimism.

  "What he said about Oklahoma, about his father running away, his mother becoming a drunk and dying from cancer, about his going to a foster home…"

  "I noticed it bothered you."

  "You bet. You're so busy staring at your keyboard you don't keep up on the handouts about your star."

  I put a bowl in the dishwasher. "So?"

  "Wes comes from Indiana. He's a foundling, raised in an orphanage.
The background he gave you isn't his."

  "Then whose…"

  Jill stared at me.

  "My God, not Deacon's."

  ***

  So there it was, like a hideous face popping out of a box to leer at me. Wes's physical resemblance to Deacon was accidental, an act of fate that turned out to be a godsend for him. But the rest — the mannerisms, the clothes, the voice — were truly deliberate. I know what you're thinking — I'm contradicting myself. When I first met him, I thought his style was too natural to be a conscious imitation. And when I realized that his screen test was identical in every respect to Deacon's hayloft scene in The Prodigal Son, I didn't believe that Wes had callously reproduced the scene. The screen test felt too natural to be an imitation. It was a homage.

  But now I knew better. Wes was imitating, all right. But chillingly, what Wes had done went beyond conventional imitation. He'd accomplished the ultimate goal of every method actor. He wasn't playing a part. He wasn't pretending to be Deacon. He actually was his model. He'd so immersed himself in a role which at the start was no doubt consciously performed that now he was the role. Wes Crane existed only in name. His background, his thoughts, his very identity, weren't his own anymore. They belonged to a dead man. "What the hell is this?" I asked. "The Three Faces of Eve? Sybil?" Jill looked at me nervously. "As long as it isn't Psycho."

  ***

  What was I to do? Tell Wes he needed help? Have a heart-to-heart and try to talk him out of his delusion? All we had was the one conversation to back up our theory, and anyway he wasn't dangerous. The opposite. His manners were impeccable. He always spoke softly, with humor. Besides, actors use all kinds of ways to psych themselves up. By nature, they're eccentric. The best thing to do, I thought, was wait and see. With another picture about to start, there wasn't any sense in making trouble. If his delusion became destructive…

  But he certainly wasn't difficult on the set. He showed up a half hour early for his scenes. He knew his lines. He spent several evenings and weekends — no charge — rehearsing with the other actors. Even the studio VP admitted that the dailies looked wonderful.

  About the only sign of trouble was his mania for racing cars and motorcycles. The VP had a fit about the insurance premiums.

  "Hey, he needs to let off steam," I said. "There's a lot of pressure on him."

  And on me, I'll admit. I had a budget of twenty-five million this time, and I wasn't going to ruin things by making my star self-conscious.

  Halfway through the shooting schedule, Wes came over. "See, no pranks. I'm being good this time."

  "Hey, I appreciate it." What on earth did he mean by "this time?"

  You're probably thinking that I could have stopped what happened if I'd cared more about him than I did for the picture. But I did care — as you'll see. And it didn't matter. What happened was as inevitable as tragedy.

  ***

  Grievance became a bigger success than Mercenaries. A worldwide two-hundred-million gross. Variety predicted an even bigger gross for the next one. Sure, the next one — number three. But at the back of my head, a nasty voice was telling me that for Deacon three had been the unlucky number.

  I left a conference at the studio, walking toward my new Ferrari in the executive parking lot, when someone shouted my name. Turning, I peered through the Burbank smog at a long-haired bearded man wearing beads, a serape, and sandals, running over to me. I wondered what he wore, if anything, beneath the dangling serape.

  I recognized him — Donald Porter, the friend of Deacon who'd played a bit part in Birthright and imitated Deacon's voice on some of the soundtrack after Deacon had died. Porter had to be in his forties now, but he dressed as if the sixties had never ended and hippies still existed. He'd starred and directed in a hit youth film twenty years ago — a lot of drugs and rock and sex. For a while, he'd tried to start his own studio in Santa Fe, but the second picture he directed was a flop, and after fading from the business for a while, he'd made a comeback as a character actor. The way he was dressed, I didn't understand how he'd passed the security guard at the gate. And because we knew each other — I'd once done a rewrite on a television show he was featured in — I had the terrible feeling he was going to ask me for a job.

  "I heard you were on the lot. I've been waiting for you," Porter said.

  I stared at his skinny bare legs beneath his serape.

  "This, man?" He gestured comically at himself. "I'm in the new TV movie they're shooting here. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."

  I nodded. "Tom Wolfe's book. Ken Kesey. Don't tell me you're playing — "

  "No. Too old for Kesey. I'm Neal Cassidy. After he split from Kerouac, he joined up with Kesey, driving the bus for the Merry Pranksters. You know, it's all a load of crap, man. Cassidy never dressed like this. He dressed like Deacon. Or Deacon dressed like him."

  "Well, good. Hey, great. I'm glad things are going well for you." I turned toward my car.

  "Just a second, man. That's not what I wanted to talk to you about. Wes Crane. You know?"

  "No, I…"

  "Deacon, man. Come on. Don't tell me you haven't noticed. Shit, man. I dubbed Deacon's voice. I knew him. I was his friend. Nobody else knew him better. Crane sounds more like Deacon than I did."

  "So?"

  "It isn't possible."

  "Because he's better?"

  "Cruel, man. Really. Beneath you. I have to tell you something. I don't want you thinking I'm on drugs again. I swear I'm clean. A little grass. That's it." His eyes looked as bright as a nova. "I'm into horoscopes. Astrology. The stars. That's a good thing for a movie actor, don't you think? The stars. There's a lot of truth in the stars."

  "Whatever turns you on."

  "You think so, man? Well, listen to this. I wanted to see for myself, so I found out where he lives, but I didn't go out there. Want to know why?" He didn't let me answer. "I didn't have to. 'Cause I recognized the address. I've been there a hundred times. When Deacon lived there."

  I flinched. "You're changing the subject. What's that got to do with horoscopes and astrology?"

  "Crane's birth date."

  "Well?"

  "It's the same as the day Deacon died."

  I realized I'd stopped breathing. "So what?"

  "More shit, man. Don't pretend it's coincidence. It's in the stars. You know what's coming. Crane's your bread and butter. But the gravy train'll end four months from now."

  I didn't ask.

  "Crane's birthday's coming up. The anniversary of Deacon's death."

  ***

  And when I looked into it, there were other parallels. Wes would be twenty-three — Deacon's age when he died. And Wes would be close to the end of his third movie — about the same place in Deacon's third movie when he…

  We were doing a script I'd written, Rampage, about a young man from a tough neighborhood who comes back to teach there. A local street gang harasses him and his wife until the only way he can survive is by reverting to the violent life (he once led his own gang) that he ran away from.

  It was Wes's idea to have the character renew his fascination with motorcycles. I have to admit that the notion had commercial value, given Wes's well-known passion for motorcycle racing. But I also felt apprehensive, especially when he insisted on doing his own stunts.

  I couldn't talk him out of it. As if his model behavior on the first two pictures had been too great a strain on him, he snapped to the opposite extreme — showing up late, drinking on the set, playing expensive pranks. One joke involving fire crackers started a blaze in the costume trailer.

  It all had the makings of a death wish. His absolute identification with Deacon was leading him to the ultimate parallel.

  And just like Deacon in his final picture, Wes began to look wasted. Hollow-cheeked, squinty, stooped from lack of food and sleep. His dailies were shameful.

  "How the hell are we supposed to ask an audience to pay to see this shit?" the studio VP asked.

  "I'll have to shoot around h
im. Cut to reaction shots from the characters he's talking to." My heart lurched.

  "That sounds familiar," Jill said beside me.

  I knew what she meant. I'd become the director I'd criticized on Broken Promises.

  "Well, can't you control him?" the VP asked.

  "It's hard. He's not quite himself these days."

  "Dammit, if you can't, maybe another director can. This garbage is costing us forty million bucks."

  The threat made me seeth. I almost told him to take his forty million bucks and…

  Abruptly I understood the leverage he'd given me. I straightened. "Relax. Just let me have a week. If he hasn't improved by then, I'll back out gladly."

  "Witnesses heard you say it. One week, pal, or else."

  ***

  In the morning, I waited for Wes in his trailer when as usual he showed up late for his first shot.

  At the open trailer door, he had trouble focusing on me. "If it isn't teach." He shook his head. "No, wrong. It's me who's supposed to play the teach in — what's the name of this garbage we're making?"

  "Wes, I want to talk to you."

  "Hey, funny thing. The same goes for me with you. Just give me a chance to grab a beer, okay?" Fumbling, he shut the trailer door behind him and lurched through shadows toward the miniature fridge.

  "Try to keep your head clear. This is important," I said.

  "Right. Sure." He popped the tab on a beer can and left the fridge door open while he drank. He wiped his mouth. "But first I want a favor."

  "That depends."

  "I don't have to ask, you know. I can just go ahead and do it. I'm trying to be polite."

  "What is it?"

  "Monday's my birthday. I want the day off. There's a motorcyle race near Sonora. I want to make a long weekend out of it." He drank more beer.