Peter James - Not Dead Yet

‘It was a joke!’ Halpern said. ‘ CB. Cecil B. DeMille. Right? Ready when you are, CB! ’ He frowned. ‘You don’t know it?’

‘If I’d wanted jokes, I’d have hired a goddamn comedian.’ Brooker pulled out his handkerchief and folded the broken joint into it. ‘I have a problem too. I suggest you take a look at your contract. The clauses on how you can be fired. Taking drugs is one of the first.’

The actor shook his head. ‘I’m just smoking a cigarette, man. I like to roll my own.’

‘Yeah? And you know what? I’m the fucking pope.’

The two men glared at each other, Halpern having a hard time focusing. Brooker tried hard to contain his rage. He had a movie to make and bring in on a tight budget, and it was getting harder every day as the schedule slipped. ‘You want to tell me your problem?’

‘Sure,’ Halpern slurred. He picked up the pages, scrunching them. ‘This is not what I signed up to.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I took this role because I kinda liked the idea of King George the Fourth. He was an innovative dude. He had a great and tragic love affair with Maria Fitzherbert.’ Halpern lapsed into silence.

Brooker waited patiently and then, as a prompt, he said, ‘Uh huh.’

‘I was assured the script was historically accurate.’

‘It is,’ Brooker said. ‘George screwed Maria for several years then dumped her. What’s your problem?’

‘He was twenty-eight – I’m forty-two.’

‘So why did you take the part?’

‘Because I was told Bill Nicholson was doing a rewrite, that’s why I agreed to this. He’s quality, man.’ He pointed at the script pages. ‘He didn’t write this, surely?’

Brooke shrugged. ‘We had a bit of a problem at the last minute.’

‘You mean you didn’t want to pay his fees, right?’ The star pulled open a drawer, lifted out a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it. ‘The comedian who wrote these pages doesn’t seem aware that this Pavilion wasn’t even built at the time this scene was supposed to happen. That’s another problem.’

‘You want to know my problem?’ Larry Brooker said.

Halpern shrugged at himself in the mirror. Then he watched himself draw on his cigarette. ‘No,’ he replied, finally, curling his lips, attempting – and failing – to blow a smoke ring.

‘My problem,’ Brooker said, coolly, ‘is actors. You ask an actor to walk down the street, and he turns round and he says, “Why exactly am I walking down this street?” You know what I tell him?’

Halpern stared at him, clearly struggling to hold focus. ‘No, what do you tell him?’

‘I tell him, “The reason you are walking down this street, is because I’m fucking paying you to walk down this street.”’

Judd Halpern gave him an uneasy smile.

‘So listen to me good, Mr Big Shot Actor. You’re trying to rebuild your busted career. That’s fine by me. For the rest of this production, when you are called, you’re going to come out of this trailer like a goddamn greyhound out of its gate, walk straight on set, and give the performance of your life. You know what will happen if you don’t?’

Halpern looked at him a tad sheepishly. He said nothing.

‘You’ll be history. There won’t be a production company in the world that’s going to want to work with you by the time I’ve finished telling them about you. I promise you. You reading me loud and clear?’

‘I am, but the script is still not right.’

‘Then you’d better use your acting genius to turn it into something magical.’

‘You think I can?’ Halpern said, his demeanour changing.

‘Sure you can, kiddo. You’re the world’s Greatest Living Actor! That’s why I goddamn hired you.’

Halpern stiffened and preened. ‘You really think so?’

‘I don’t think so, Judd. I know so.’ He gave him a winning smile.

‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Let’s rock and roll!’ He reached for his wig.

‘On set in ten minutes, okay?’ Brooker said.

‘I’m there!’

‘You’re goddamn terrific, you know that?’

Halpern smiled and attempted a shrug of modesty. But he wasn’t very good at modesty.

Brooker closed the door behind him and headed back to the set. You total asshole , he was thinking.

‘That is so much better!’ Gaia said, sitting wrapped in her silk dressing gown as her hairdresser, Tracey Curry, standing on killer black heels, finished cropping her blonde hair.

Gaia stared approvingly in the mirror at her new cut, which was even shorter than a few days ago.

‘You’ll find that a lot more comfortable under that wig,’ the hairdresser said.

‘You’re a treasure!’ She turned to her assistant, Martina Franklin. ‘What do you think?’

‘It kinda suits you!’

Eli Marsden, her make-up artist, nodded approvingly. ‘It looks terrific!’

Gaia turned to her little boy, who was seated at a table further along the motorhome, watching a video on his iPad. ‘Roan, hon, you like Mama’s new hairstyle?’

‘Uh huh,’ he said glumly. ‘I’m bored. Can I go take a look around the palace?’

‘Sure, hon. Go take a wander, I’ll be in soon. Ask one of the security guys to walk you over there.’

Roan, dressed in a baggy blue THE KING’S LOVER T-shirt, jeans and trainers, jumped down from the table and scampered out of the air-conditioned chill of the trailer into the warm, clouding over, evening air. Deciding to ignore his mother and explore alone, he walked jauntily across the Pavilion lawns and up to the front door. The security guard looked down at him. ‘You’re Gaia’s son, right? Sloan?’

‘Uh, Roan,’ he corrected.

‘Sorry, Roan .’

The boy shrugged. ‘S’okay. Mama said I could take a look around.’

He gestured. ‘Go right ahead, Roan. Turn right when you go inside and follow the corridor and you’ll get to the Banqueting Room where your mum’s going to be filming.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay, everyone, clear the doubles, please, the cast are coming on set.’ The voice came out of the baby monitor, loud and clear for some moments, then distorted by a feedback squawk.

Perched up at the top of the dome’s wooden frame, watching and listening, Drayton Wheeler began trembling with nerves and excitement. Now! Now! Have to do it now! He was never going to know for sure exactly when the cast would all be assembled around the table. He was going to have to rely on a calculated judgement – and luck. But this moment now was, in his view, the best shot he was likely to get.

He picked up the San Pellegrino bottle, his hands shaking so much he was scared of slopping some of the mercuric chloride acid on himself. Pointing it away, he unscrewed the metal cap, and it slipped from his fingers. He could hear it tumble all the way down the wooden slats, rat-a-tat-tatting, then as it struck something metallic, a loud ping .

He held his breath. Listened. Static came through the baby monitor. Then Larry Brooker’s voice, talking to the director. ‘We gotta make some time up. We’ve lost two hours thanks to that asshole.’

‘We can work on, Larry, keep everyone late,’ Jack Jordan said. He had a soft and precious voice that Drayton Wheeler found particularly irritating.

‘Don’t go there.’ Brooker was thinking about the budget and the overtime rates for some of the crew if they went over the maximum number of hours, Wheeler guessed. ‘You’ll just have to take some shortcuts,’ Brooker commanded.

‘Darling boy, this is not the scene to take shortcuts on.’

Wheeler could hear the disdain in the director’s voice, and thought, Don’t have a fucking argument, not now!