Ed McBain - Puss in Boots

“That’s why I came to you,” he’d said. “There are hundreds of people in Miami who can shoot this movie, I could’ve gone to any one of them. I picked you instead.”

“Thank you,” she’d said.

This was back in September.

Very serious girl, he’d thought. Been shooting movies for years now, good reputation. Interested in making a buck, though, who wasn’t? Move out of the penny-ante documentary shit she was doing into the big time. He was putting up a hundred and seventy-five grand to make the movie. Plus she’d be getting ten percent of the gross, which wasn’t meatballs.

“A movie is like a bullfight,” he said, “the same ritual each time out. Raw stock to dailies to assembly to rough cut to final cut to first answer print to second answer print to release print. Every day of the shoot, you ship your exposed film to the lab, and get back your one-lights the next day — everything you asked the lab to print. Ritual. Routine.” He looked across the desk at her. “I could get this movie done for a hundred grand, maybe less,” he said. He was lying. “I know guys in Miami who can grind it out in a week.” Still lying. “But then I’d get the usual cheap product, and what I’m looking for is taste. I’m looking for something, if we do it right, it’ll be like a first-class Hollywood production, not something we shot in some sleazy hotel room on Collins Avenue with a tattooed sailor and a couple of hookers. There are more hookers in this town than you can shake a dick at.”

He smiled.

Prudence Ann Markham did not smile back.

Very serious girl. Sitting there in a gray skirt and a white blouse, low-heeled shoes, hands folded in her lap, blonde hair caught in a bun at the back of her head, looked like a minister’s wife. He wondered what kind of panties she was wearing.

“I’m looking for style,” he said. “Class. I want the kind of taste I saw in that movie you did on child abuse. Understated. Powerful.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “I want to see everything there is to see, we’re not doing Donald Duck here.”

“I know that.”

“But there’s a cheap way of showing sex, and there’s a classy way, and I want the classy way.”

“You’ll get class,” she said.

He wondered if she had blonde pubic hair.

“And style,” he said.

“And style.”

“And taste.”

“Of course.”

“Did you see Behind the Green Door ?”

“No,” she said.

“There’s a slow-motion shot in it, that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Very classy. The man ejaculates in slow motion for what must be five minutes. It’s like a snowstorm on the screen. Very beautiful. That’s the kind of class I’m looking for. You should get the video, take a look at it.”

“I will.”

“You should also take a look at Deep Throat . That played in legit theaters, do you realize it? Grossed fifty million dollars. What you saw was this gigantic edifice on the screen, husbands and wives in the audience, guys with their girlfriends, a regular movie theater, not one of these cheap porn houses, and Linda Lovelace swallows it to the hilt. That’s what I’m looking for, a tasteful movie like that, where maybe we have a chance at getting into a legit house. The video I’m not worried about. We’ll make a lot of money on the video. Also, you’ll do two versions — when you’re cutting it, I mean. So we can sell the soft one later on to cable. Cable,” he said, and shook his head sadly. “On cable, you never see any real action. You know what they’re doing, but you never really see any close shots of what they’re doing. I want a lot of close shots, there’s nothing more beautiful in the world than two people making love, don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” she said.

“We can make a lot of money on this movie, if we do it right,” he said. He paused, looked her dead in the eye. “Do you think you can do it right?”

“Oh, yes, I know I can.”

Eager. Smelling the money. He was willing to bet her thighs were sweating under her serious gray skirt.

“Because a hundred and seventy-five thousand is a lot of money I’m putting up.”

“I know.”

“When can you start?” he asked.

“I thought the end of the month.”

“And when can you deliver a final cut?”

“By Christmas?” she said.

A question mark. She wasn’t even sure it would be Christmas.

“That long, huh?”

“Well, we want to do it right,” she said.

“How many days do you figure? For the actual shooting?”

“I thought thirty-five.”

“Make it twenty.”

“Twenty?”

“Figure a four-to-one burn ratio—”

“I was thinking ten-to-one.”

“Make it six-to-one.”

“Still, twenty days—”

“That’s all you should need.”

“I don’t see how—”

“Thirty-five days is out of the question. There are people could do this in ten, fifteen days.”

“Twenty still feels—”

“All right, make it twenty- five , that should do it.”

“Twenty-eight,” she said. “Because, you see—”

“Okay, twenty-eight, I’m not gonna argue three days. Can you get the people you need in Calusa?”

“I don’t want to use my regular people,” she said.

Running scared already, he thought.

“Who will you get?” he asked. “I don’t mean your actors, that’s up to you, provided you don’t use hookers.”

“I’ve got some good people in mind,” she said.

“And no junkies looking to make a fast buck unzipping their flies.”

“No, no.”

“I want this to look real. Real people doing it. With taste, of course. So who have you got in mind?”

“For the actors, do you mean?”

“No, I told you, that’s up to you. I don’t want to mess here with artistic control.”

“I appreciate that.”

“So who have you got in mind?”

“Some people in Tampa.”

“Experienced movie people?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Don’t hire anyone in Miami. I’ve been running this dinner theater here for ten years now, I don’t want word to get around that Henry Gardella is financing a dirty movie. Not that it’ll be dirty.”

“It won’t, I promise you.”

“And I don’t want the boys to get wind of this, either. Do you know who I mean by the boys?”

“No. Who do you mean?”

“The boys,” he said, and brought his fingers to his nose, and bent the nose sideways. “The ones who’ll shoot you in the kneecap if they think you’re moving in on their territory. Keep this quiet, keep it discreet, keep it tasteful.”

“I will.”

He wondered if she’d object to his throwing up her serious gray skirt, teach her what he meant by taste.

That was back in September.

Now, on the fourth day of December, he sat in his office at the Candleside Dinner Theater, and wondered what had happened to the goddamn film.

Prudence Ann Markham dead, and nothing to show for his money.

He’d personally budgeted the movie at a hundred and seventy-five grand. He’d figured five men — camera, lighting, sound, and two grips — at twenty-eight days, a ten-to-twelve-hour day, for about thirty-five thousand. He’d figured another twenty-five for the actors. Renting the equipment would cost seventeen. The sixteen-millimeter stock, processed and printed, would cost about ten thousand, figuring a six-to-one burn ratio, though Prue kept saying ten-to-one would be better. The quarter-inch sound stock would cost another six to seven hundred bucks. He had to figure something like ten bucks a day per person to feed the crew and the actors. Federal Express charges for shipping the negative to a lab in New York or Atlanta and the dailies back to Florida would come to something like fifteen hundred. All the later lab work — quarter-inch to mag, sixteen to thirty-five millimeter, opticals, and so on — would be another forty to fifty grand. A hundred and fifty grand in all, give or take a penny here or there, with an additional twenty-five going to her as a bonus on delivery of the final cut.