True Fiction (Ian Ludlow Thrillers #1)(38)

VINE

What am I supposed to do?





HOLLYWOOD


Use the trees for cover.





VINE


Would you use your sister for cover?

Hollywood gestures to the tree beside Vine.





HOLLYWOOD


That is not your sister.





VINE


No, it’s not. It’s a distant cousin.

Suddenly gunshots ring out from the forest ahead. Hollywood takes cover behind a tree . . . and Vine leaps in front of it, TAKING THE BULLETS that would have slammed into the trunk. Vine goes down, his gun flying out of his hand.





HOLLYWOOD


Vine!

Furious, Hollywood picks up Vine’s gun and, with a weapon in each hand, charges out into the open, guns blazing. He takes down both Nazis, then hurries back to his fallen partner.

Hollywood crouches beside Vine . . . who has taken two bullets in the center of his vest. Vine got the wind knocked out of him but otherwise he’s fine.

HOLLYWOOD (CONT’D)

Tell me you didn’t just take a bullet for a tree.





VINE


Two. Bullets.





HOLLYWOOD


That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen a cop do.

It was certainly the dumbest thing that Ian had ever written. He hated himself as he was writing it but if he didn’t get this script done today, then two hundred crew members of Hollywood & the Vine would be sitting around on Monday with nothing to shoot, the series would go on hiatus until new scripts were ready, and he’d never work in television again. He felt that pressure like a vise, squeezing his head, forcing the crap out of his imagination and onto his computer screen.

He was hunched over his laptop in his windowless office in a warehouse in Reseda that had been converted into a soundstage. The production designer had taken pity on Ian and built him a fake window, with a picture of San Francisco Bay, and installed it on one of his cinder-block walls so it felt less like he was writing his prison memoirs in solitary confinement.

Ian stared at the Golden Gate Bridge and, his head pounding, tried to think of a comeback line for Vine that wouldn’t get his Writers Guild membership card revoked for gross negligence. He typed: VINE

But I bet you’ve never seen another cop bloom in the spring, either.

The line was terrible. The script was terrible. The whole fucking show was terrible. He was a TV writer, living the dream he had when he was a kid. But nobody told him the dream came with fine print: You’ll be writing for a plant that fights crime.

He also got none of the prestige that came from being a TV writer. Nobody was clamoring to hire him, and not even aspiring actresses, who were attracted to just about any producer on any series, were impressed by the credit. He needed to get on a tiffany show, something with miserable but beautiful doctors in constant angst, or conflicted but beautiful lawyers in perfectly tailored suits eloquently arguing about social issues. Those were shows that would get him respect and, more important, fucked by lots of actresses.

There was an urgent knock at his half-open door and then an assistant director poked his head into the room. The ADs were easy to spot. They all wore earpieces that kept them in radio communication with the rest of the crew and they were perpetually in a rush, as if they were doomed to always be hurrying to catch a departing train.

“We need you on the set,” the AD said. “We’ve got a big problem.”

“I’m writing. Couldn’t you tell from the gun I had in my mouth when you walked in?”

The AD gave him a blank look. “I don’t see a gun.”

That was another thing that made ADs easy to spot: They had no sense of humor. That was what happened when you lived in constant crisis. “Grab another producer, preferably one of the guys who has a real window in his office.”

“I would but it’s Ronnie. He’s in one of his moods and he won’t come to the set.”

Everyone knew that Ian was the only producer who could talk to Ronnie when the actor was in what they called “one of his moods.” It was nicer than saying “psychotic break,” “nervous breakdown,” “panic attack,” or “crazy tantrums.” Those were phrases that, if heard by the wrong people, could make the actor uninsurable and could lead to the series being shut down or canceled. As appealing as that possibility was to Ian at that moment, he felt an obligation to the crew. They had mortgages to pay and kids to put through school. All he had over his head was a lease on a BMW.

Ian sighed. “Has he left the stage?”

“No, he’s still here somewhere,” the AD said.

That was a plus. Ian wouldn’t have to go find him on the beach, in a diner, or at LAX trying to board a flight to Bora Bora, all of which had happened in the past.

Ian believed that all actors were crazy. They had to be if they were any good. The truly great ones had to have a manageable version of split personality disorder. How else could they pretend to be someone else so fully that we not only believe it but we invest ourselves emotionally in what they are experiencing?

Ronnie’s gift was making unbelievable characters believable. His breakthrough part was playing a dog that switches bodies with a publicist in the movie Publicity Hound. Audiences loved seeing Ronnie fetch tennis balls, sniff people’s butts, and pee on fire hydrants. That led to one absurd part after another. Ronnie somehow found the heart and the soul in their contrived characters and made them real. He could do that because he became them, which made him crazier than actors who simply became other people. Ian worried about Ronnie’s ability to maintain his sanity and felt guilty about his own culpability in exploiting the actor’s increasingly shaky mental health. That guilt-ridden concern was what set Ian apart from the other producers on the show and Ronnie probably sensed that. Besides, Ian actually liked Ronnie.