Peter Corris - The Big Drop

Ro Bush and Hill greeted Talbot as if he was Mick Jagger who’d just dropped by with his band to help out. He disappeared into the studio and I was left with Hill and the sordid business of my cheque. He signed with a flourish and handed it over.

‘Good job, thanks.’

‘Better keep an eye on him.’

‘Will do.’

‘Will he get his way with the production of the song?’

His eyes narrowed and all the money-worry lines on his face deepened. ‘Maybe.’

I heard the song when it came out; there was a different singer, less chorus and more mandolin, but it still lacked the nice, light beat I’d liked and sounded like bricks being dropped on a tin roof. I despaired for the younger generation, but then, so had my Dad when I got my first pair of pegged’ pants.

‹‹Contents››

I felt a pang, I won’t deny it, when I yanked out the pin that held the card to the door. I crumpled the card and put it in my pocket, closed the door. CLIFF HARDY-PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS was out of business. As I went down the corridor, past the voice teacher and the horoscope-caster, I tried to remember how much turnover there’d been along that corridor in the twelve years I’d graced it with my office. A lot, and now my turn had come. I didn’t imagine it was any different from the experience of the guitar teacher and the graphic artist and the literary agent-just a matter of the door opening too many times for the occupant and not enough times for clients.

I could have paid the rent for another month; hell, the rent was paid a couple of weeks in advance, but there didn’t seem to be any point in just sitting there listening to my hair grow. Get out, Cliff, I could hear a voice saying. Don’t wait until you can’t pay the rent-retire with the title.

I tried a little Gene Kelly dance on the stairs, telling myself that it would be a relief to go to work for the Roger Wallace Agency-to get a salary cheque and be insured against breakage. A company car maybe. Eight steps down I lost balance and would have fallen if a man coming up hadn’t steadied me. His grip on my arm was firm; I felt embarrassed and more so that he knew me.

‘Mr Hardy? Been watching Flashdance?’

No, just young and foolish. Do I know you?’

‘We’ve never met but you were described to me. I want to hire you; that is, if you’re not all tied up at Arthur Murray’s.’ He was a dark, smooth-featured man, a little shorter and wider than me and he smelled of expensive after-shave when he pushed his smooth face close to my rough one.

‘What’s the idea?’ I jerked my arm free.

‘I wanted to see if you’d been drinking.’

‘I don’t drink before six these days.’ As I said it I was thinking that today might be an exception.

‘So I’ve heard, that’s good. Can we talk business?’

What could I do? He looked, smelt and moved like money, and a flash company car would only get vandalised in my street, anyway. Still, I nearly reverted to my previous decision when I found out that he was in the movie business. He leaned forward and rested his elbows in the dust on my desk, laced his fingers under his chin and talked. It sounds uncomfortable but it’s actually not a bad talking posture; it gave him a forward-thrusting, determined look.

‘My company starts shooting today, this afternoon. That’s Boston Picture, we…’

‘Boston?’

‘Just a name, we’re making

‘Why not Brisbane Pictures, Mr Boston?’

He sighed. ‘I was told you had a sense of humour. I suppose this is it. My name is Fuller, Richard Fuller. I’m the executive producer of a movie called Death Feast.’

‘I haven’t read the book.’

‘It’s not that sort of picture, there hasn’t been a book, there never will be a book-not even a novelisation. Trouble is, there mightn’t be a picture unless I can get this wrinkle ironed out.’

I like a good command of metaphor; I nodded and shut up and let Fuller smoke his cigarettes in a tar-guard-holder and tell it the way he wanted to.

‘ Death Feast is an action picture, sort of cops’n robbers thing set in Sydney, Kurt Butler’s the star. The script is better than average, we’ve got great locations and a terrific crew.’ He drew deeply on his low tar, filtered, tar-guarded cigarette and filled his lungs luxuriously. ‘We’ve also got a TV pre-sale. Big one. You know what that means?’

‘I suppose the picture has a chance of coming out ahead.’

‘Has to. Can’t help it.’ He expelled the smoke and took in some more. ‘If the bloody thing ever gets shot. Some crank’s threatened Kurt’s wife; he wanted to pull out, take her to Acapulco or some damned place. I promised I’d handle it, make him happy. You’re the solution we came up with.’

‘Why not delay the thing? Check on the crank, grab him or wait till he stops?’

He shook his head. ‘We’ve got non-completion clauses, other people are tied up later, weather problems-it’s now or never.’

‘How long’s the shooting last?’

‘Six weeks.’

‘I charge a hundred and twenty-five dollars a day-you’re looking at five thousand bucks.’

‘We’ve got a 2.3 million budget, as a below the line cost it’s a piddle in the bay.’

‘Where’s the wife going to be? There’ll be a big expense sheet if I have to hang around Palm Beach renting speedboats.’

‘She’ll be on the set every day, she always is. Kurt doesn’t comb his hair without asking her first.’

‘Is that why the crank’s working on her-to get at him?’

‘I hadn’t thought of it.’

‘Who’s handling the crank angle-looking into that?’

‘No one, that’s another problem. I’ll pay you a hundred and fifty a day; no, let’s say a hundred and seventy-five.’

‘What for?’

He looked nervous for the first time, maybe for the first time in his life. ‘You won’t like it. Kurt plays a private eye in the film. He thinks it will help his performance if he can sort of assist you in your investigation of the crank calls.’

‘I’m investigating them, am I? Not just guarding the wife?’

‘Hell, the set’ll be bristling with security men, she’ll be as safe as houses.’

I squinted against a ball of light that came in the window and bounced off the metal filing cabinet behind Fuller.

‘You didn’t exactly play that very straight, did you?’

He grinned. ‘Sort of sideways.’

‘I expected a better metaphor.’ He looked puzzled and I slammed down the front legs of the chair I’d been leaning back in. ‘Skip it. Write me a below-the-line cheque, show me how generous you are.’

It was generous enough to make me forget about guitar teachers and rent and Roger Wallace.

I followed Fuller’s new Commodore in my old Falcon to Leichhardt where the interior scenes of the movie were to be shot. He stopped in front of a terrace house in one of the narrower streets and a plane roared overhead as we stood outside the place. He spoke but the jet noise drowned him out and I leaned my head towards him.

‘Hear that?’ he said. ‘That’s what we wanted-great dramatic effect.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’ll cut down on the dialogue.’

‘Always a plus. Come and meet the mad house.’

I followed him into the house which looked as if a giant metal arm had ripped out all the walls and half the ceiling. The rooms seemed to have been dismembered, and the floor crawled with black power leads. There were forests of light stands and boom microphones and clusters of cameras that looked to be talking to each other. There wasn’t a canvas-backed chair in sight, but a group of people were squatting on a few uncluttered square inches of floor and one had a rolled up manuscript in his hand and was thumping the boards with it. If he wasn’t the director the film was in trouble already.