“Stay out of my house!”
“That was just a stunt. Shall I send it to your husband by old-fashioned snail mail? I will if it comes to that. But I don’t think it will. I trust we understand each other.”
Tessa listened in helpless fury.
Her tormentor chuckled. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said, and hung up.
68
Teddy had lunch with Peter Barrington. They couldn’t do it as often as when he was producer Billy Barnett, but Peter could eat with his stuntman occasionally. They chose an out-of-the-way café five minutes from the studio that featured good burgers and fast service.
There was a lot to catch up on. Peter thought he was still living at the airport. Teddy hadn’t told anybody about the break-in at the hangar, because there was no way to conveniently explain how he’d dealt with it. He just told Peter his apartment was ready.
“When will your new house be ready?”
“Ask Marvin Kurtz. I have no idea.”
“You can move in next week when we wrap the picture and Billy Barnett gets back from vacation.” Peter took a bite of his burger. “Are you ready for the money shot?”
The climax of the movie was being shot on the top of a construction site with bare steel girders. What Peter was referring to as the money shot was a shoot-out on top of the girders and a five-story fall.
“Not to tell you your business,” Teddy said, “but on most pictures they schedule the crucial exteriors early in the shoot, in case there’s bad weather and they have to move to the cover set and reschedule.”
“Yes, and that’s how I had it originally scheduled,” Peter said. “Until I found out my featured villain would be doing his own stunt. I scheduled it at the end so in case you kill yourself falling off the beam, I can still cut the picture.”
“You’re all heart.”
“I wish you’d use a stuntman.”
“I am a stuntman.”
“After the life you’ve led, to kill yourself making a movie would be pretty ironic.”
Teddy smiled. “Hey, getting shot in the chest on a twelve-inch-wide steel girder five stories up in the air. What could possibly go wrong?”
69
Slythe, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of sunglasses, a camera hanging around his neck, stood in line for the Centurion Studios back-lot tour. He didn’t have a reservation, but he bought a place in line for a hundred dollars from a college kid who was happy to have the money, and joined the group of starstruck tourists being led through the Centurion gate onto the lot.
Their guide was a young production assistant with an insider’s arrogance and enough knowledge to get by.
“Now then,” he said, “we’re going to be walking through the sets where we shoot our street scenes. You may recognize them from the movies and TV. The same streets have appeared in many movies, slightly redressed, with different street signs, different windows, a different saloon door.”
“Saloon door?” a big man in a straw hat said. He had a booming voice, louder than that of the guide’s. “We’re in New York City.”
They were indeed walking down a Manhattan street, easily recognizable by the police station with an NYPD police car parked out front.
“Yes, we are,” the guide said, “but if we turn right at the corner, I think you’ll get the idea.”
They did, and found themselves in front of a charming French café with tables on the street. A scene from An American in Paris could have easily been filmed there.
“See? Another street, another country, another time period. Our saloon door should be up on the left.”
The group turned another corner and found themselves on a dusty street with hitching posts and water troughs, a saloon, a hotel, and a sheriff’s office.
“There you go,” the guide said. “Throw in a few horses and extras, and you’re set for your gunfight at high noon.”
“Where are the actors?” a girl wanted to know. She was of high school age, and clutched an autograph book.
The guide smiled. “Of course, everyone wants to see the actors. I’m afraid they’re filming inside today. We can’t enter the studio, but you might see someone on the way to their trailer or going out to lunch.”
As if on cue, a man rounded the corner and came walking down the street.
“And look who that is,” the guide said.
People craned their necks eagerly, whispering guesses as to who it was.
“That’s special-effects wizard Fred Russell,” the guide announced, and the crowd deflated. A technical wizard was not who they wanted to see. “Hey, Russell, how’s it going?”
“Busy, busy, busy,” Russell said, strolling up. “This film has a lot of special effects.”
“What are you working on now?”
Russell had clearly done this many times and had his own line of canned patter. “This film has a zillion gunshots. For a contemporary thriller that’s not a cops-and-robbers, that’s rare. You can’t shoot live bullets at the actors, because they’re expensive to replace. We do it with blanks and squibs. If someone gets shot, it looks like they’ve been shot, but they can get up and walk off the set. I’m responsible for every gunshot in the movie. If there’s one live round, I lose my job. And it’s not great for the actor either.” He smiled and raised his eyebrows at the joke, which landed with a thud.
Russell was carrying a bag. He set it down on the empty water trough and took out a gun. “Here’s your basic gun. A .38 Smith & Wesson revolver.” He swung open the cylinder and took out the shells. “And here’s your bullets. You can see they’re all blanks. Just a shell and a charge.” He reached in his bag again. “And here’s a live round. You can easily tell the difference because you can see the top of the rounded bullet.” Russell reloaded the barrel and snapped it closed. “And there you are. A perfectly safe, personally inspected movie prop.”
The man in the straw hat wasn’t buying it. “Can I see the other bullet?”
“Oh, I put it away,” Russell said. “But, trust me, it’s perfectly safe. I stand behind my work. Actually, I stand in front of it. I can’t let any gun be aimed at an actor that I wouldn’t have aimed at me.” He looked over the crowd. “Who wants to shoot me?”
“I do,” the man in the straw hat said.
The guide chuckled and returned to his tour script. “I’m sorry to be a party pooper, but for insurance purposes we can’t let any guest fire a gun on the property. I’ll shoot Russell.”