Tom Piccirilli - The Last Deep Breath

“Tell me more about Ellie’s manager.”

“There’s nothing to tell, man. After we decided to split up I got new representation with Monty Stobbs. You heard of him?”

“Yeah, I have.”

“He didn’t want anything to do with Ellie. She was already getting a bad rep in the business. Once your reputation goes like that everybody in the industry knows. No one wants to work with you, nobody wants to hire you.” Harvey started to get a little animated again, talking with his hands, mauling the air. “Our agent dumped us because we were a package team. I had my career to think about. So we broke up and I went with Monty and she found this other guy, John Raymond. Said he was more than an agent, said he was a manager. Was going to get her parts in straight movies. Was going to have her do TV. He thought she should start over in New York, doing bits on the crime shows. Last time I saw her, that’s where she was headed.”

“You let her go?” Grey asked. “Knowing she was using heroin? How could anybody get her a job on network television if she’d already been drummed out of porn?”

“I don’t know. He said it and she believed it. I told her it was crazy but she wouldn’t listen to me. You must know what she’s like.”

If only that were true. “You ever hear of this John Raymond before? He the real deal or just a-” Grey almost said pimp. “-manipulator.”

“All agents are manipulators. But no, I never heard of him before, but he seemed no better or worse than the other bastards.”

“No phone number or contact info or anything?”

“She said New York, that’s all I know.”

“How long were you two together?”

“Over a year. We were thinking of getting married.”

Grey wondered if it was a good thing she’d gotten out of being wed to this guy. Or if somehow that might’ve helped to stabilize her, even if the day job was fucking on top of a dining room table. “What got her strung out?”

“She was always strung out, man. She was an explosive personality. Anxious, always on edge. It made her interesting, made her exciting, but she could wear you out. Wore herself out too. She’d try this and try that. She just liked the H better than the other shit.”

Grey wanted to hate the guy. He felt the righteous need to beat and choke someone for not taking care of Ellie, for not watching over her. But he’d failed at that himself. She’d slipped out of his bed with a knife wound in her side, so how could he expect this punk to have done any better?

Without another word Grey turned and left the bedroom, went back downstairs to where they were breaking down the set and putting away all the cameras and lights and equipment and dinner plates. Kendra was in the same spot except she was holding court with five or six guys now. Maybe they all knew her from the movies. Maybe they were making pitches on how she could break wide into porn.

Grey stood outside the circle and waited. He decided to call Monty and ask about John Raymond but he couldn’t get past the secretary, who kept saying Monty was in a conference and couldn’t be disturbed. Grey was now persona non grata unless he offed Monty’s wife for him. He hung up and Kendra said her farewells and slid in beside him.

She met his eyes, looked deep in his face as if searching for some intrinsic change in him. She didn’t see it and gave him a vapid grin. She seemed a little disappointed that he hadn’t snuffed Harvey or anybody else yet.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s still plenty of time.”

“Time for what?” she asked.

Back at the apartment she wanted him to help her run lines. She had an audition in the morning. He sat on the couch with the script of Killing Time open on his lap.

“You know, this screenwriter just got out of prison,” she said. “His brother killed a dealer who’d sold meth to his son and he helped the brother while he was on the run.”

“I know, I read about it in the papers.”

“That’s why you chose this script, right?”

“Mostly. I spotted a couple of good scenes for you while I was paging through it in Monty’s office.”

It was a crime thriller about an older woman who’s in the Witness Protection Program after seeing a mob hit. She gets married to the FBI agent who’s helped her out along the way. Then the agent starts having an affair with a trampy waitress who gets him to betray the wife so they can collect a big payday from the mob. A young hit man shows up to kill the wife but they fall in love instead and set in motion a plan to get revenge on the husband, the tramp, and the mob boss.

Tie the story in with the real life crimes of the writer and his brother, and you had something that had legs. There were a few nude scenes where Kendra got to show off her body, some good action thrills, a couple of big confrontations. She got to cry on screen, be seductive, and act the total bitch with a gun who shoots her husband’s balls off.

“Monty should hire you,” Kendra said. “You’ve got a good eye.”

They ran her lines for a couple of hours. Grey enjoyed playing different parts and started to really get into the roles. When it was time for her to seduce the young syndicate shooter she climbed into Grey’s lap and they tossed the scripts over their shoulders and fell onto the floor.

Afterwards, while she lay panting, she said, “I don’t know. I got more hot rehearsing opposite you than I did watching the orgy.”

“It was a pretty stupid orgy. Fucking on top of silverware.”

“It was more raw with you. More honest.”

It was raw, Grey admitted, but it was anything but honest.

“In the morning I need you to call Monty for me,” he said. “See if he’ll cough up John Raymond’s address.”

“My audition’s at nine a.m.”

“After that. After you nail it.”

She rolled over and crawled back on top of him. Salt was smeared at the corners of her eyes, and the flecks of gold pinned him. She was doing it again, trying to go deep into him, see into his soul.

“You fill me with confidence,” she said.

“That’s not all.”

“I don’t know what it is about you. But there’s something. It drives me a little crazy. Maybe it’s because you don’t give a shit about anything.”

“I care about something.”

“The woman.”

“My sister.”

“Is that what she is?”

“Yes.”

She rode him hard and chewed his chest and mewled in his ear and later, as they were falling off together, the room turning cold with the wet breeze from a sudden shower, she murmured in his arms and called him a fucking liar.

In the morning he drove Kendra over to the casting agent’s office. He was going to wait in the waiting room out front but she said, “Come on in.”

He shrugged and followed.

Grey was surprised by how small and somber the audition area was. Looked like the break room in a factory he once worked in.

The casting agent was a young woman who introduced herself as Judy. No last name. Grey was surprised that she was alone. He figured you had to audition for the director, the writer, the producers, a whole group of folks that sat in judgment and gave you the stink eye. But the lady was amiable and he could see that Kendra was at ease.

A small video camera was set up on a tripod, aimed at a little stage. He took a chair in the corner and Kendra asked Judy, “Would you mind terribly if my friend read with me?”

“Not at all,” Judy said, waving her hands like her fingernails were wet and she was trying to dry them. Everyone in this town spoke with bold bodily gestures. “Whatever works best for you.”

Kendra smiled and nodded for him to come over. He stood and figured what the hell. He was familiar with the parts by now.