Stuart Kaminsky - Show Business is Murder

Slots. Twenty-two hours of prime time. The most expensive real estate on the planet. Muldoon owned one hour of Monday night on one network-if they could hold on to it. A show like his employed almost one hundred people. Not just the actors the audience saw, but the writers, the producers, and hell, even the caterers and floorsweepers had a reason to want this show to keep going.

But nobody needed it more than Mitch. When the network stars you in a drama they are resting a million bucks or so on your shoulders. If you drop it down the tubes you needn’t hold your breath waiting for them to offer a second chance.

The next day Si called back. “They renewed Brain Trust, and Money for Nothing. And they’re moving Ike and Alice to Wednesday.”

“My head is swimming. Who’s left on the bubble?”

“A couple of comedies, plus Muldoon and Cutting Edge. I gotta tell you, Mitch, I think there’s only one slot left for a drama.”

Mitch stood on his mortgaged deck and looked down the mountain at his neighbor. A washed-up movie star, floating around his pool without a care in the world.

“The Veep says we’ll hear by the end of the week. You hang in there, Mitch. It ain’t over yet.”

AND NOW ITwas the end of the week and Mitch was still hanging in there, waiting to hear whether he was going to spend the next year collecting paychecks or unemployment. Driving his Lexus or driving a taxi. He thought about calling Lou to see if he had heard anything, but something made him hesitate.

And suddenly he could see Lou, back from wherever he had been. He was out by the pool in his swimming trunks, shouting instructions to Marta, his maid. Mitch watched as Lou stood at the shallow end of the pool, carefully settling himself into his float-not a raft so much as a blow-up chair, complete with indented spaces for a cell phone and a shaker of martinis-and paddling out into the center of the pool to bask in the sun.

What did his neighbor have to look so cheerful about?

The cell phone rang. Mitch yanked it to his ear and heard a familiar Latino accent. “Mr. Renadine? This is Marta. Mr. Garlyle wanted me to invite you to a party tomorrow night.”

Mitch felt a cold fist cramping his guts. But, in spite of what some of the critics said, he was an actor. His voice came out as cheerful as a talk-show host. “Terrific, Maria. What’s the occasion?”

“The network just renewed his show for another year. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Wonderful,” Mitch agreed. “I’ll be there. Tell him to have plenty of champagne.”

Then he hung up and began to plan a murder.

WHEN MITCH WASa kid he had always felt he was destined for something. Not being a TV star necessarily, but something that would take him out of suburban New Jersey. When they studied Julius Caesar in high school and the teacher talked about the concept of fate he felt as if he was at last being introduced properly to someone he had known for years.

Fate, yes. The destiny that shapes our ends.

Until that phone call from Marta homicide had never crossed his mind. He was certain that was true. And yet he had prepared himself for it so perfectly. Or had fate done the preparing?

Mitch was not what Hollywood called a spiritual person but, hell, when ten thousand handsome faces apply for the same acting job there must be someone or something spinning the wheel and deciding who wins and who loses. And that force had given him the tools he needed to win now.

Look at what he needed to know-and did know. That Lou would be drunk and probably asleep on his float all afternoon. That Marta would be preparing dinner. That she couldn’t see the pool from the kitchen.

And if you argued that he only knew these things because, at some level, he had been preparing for a murder all these months, well, what about buying this house in the first place? Surely that had been fate, preparing him for this day, when he had to climb off the bubble before it burst.

Mitch opened the cabinet under his sink and pulled out a box of disposable latex gloves. He had worn them several times on the show when Lieutenant Muldoon was investigating a crime scene and, having seen how useful they were, he had brought home a box for cleaning up messes.

Was that preparation again? Or fate? He wondered about that as he tucked a pair into his jacket.

The trail through the brush between his yard and Lou’s had been worn long before he moved in. Mitch had taken it a dozen times when his neighbor invited him for a drink, so he knew that no one could see him as he moved through the thick brush. At the bottom of the hill he carefully pushed the vines out of his way and looked out at the pool.

Lou was lying on the big red float, his head tilted a little to the side. He snored softly. The martini shaker was in place but the cell phone was not. That was perfectly reasonable. After all, he had already gotten the phone call he cared about, the call Mitch had waited for in vain.

The inflatable float drifted slowly clockwise. Soon Lou would be facing away from him.

Mitch knew that no one could see the pool from the neighbor’s houses. Except from his, of course. He put on the disposable gloves.

It was easy to open the gate in the fence and step quickly onto the cement surface around the pool. The pool skimmer-a long pole with a hoop and net on the end-hung on the fence not far away.

Mitch was a strong man, built to play an action hero, as Lou had pointed out. It only took a moment for him to pick up the pole, bend over, and tuck the hoop end under the edge of the float and drag it slowly toward the edge of the pool.

Good ol’ Lou didn’t even stop snoring.

When the back of the float was almost against the edge of the pool, Mitch put the skimmer back in its place on the fence. A knife lay on the nearest table; one of the throwing knives Lou so loved to show off with.

Mitch picked it up in a gloved hand. He took one last look around and saw only the beautifully cared-for estate and the back of Lou’s house. No one in sight.

The idea was simple: make it look as if Lou had thrown the knife in the air and it had landed in the float. What was so odd if a drunk, known for tossing knives around, and not a good swimmer, sank his own float and drowned?

Sure, it might have raised a few eyebrows back in Plainfield, New Jersey, where Mitch grew up. But this was Los Angeles where the coroner heard stranger stories practically every day, most of them having to do with the show biz crowd.

Detective Carl Chaney, the cop who served as technical adviser on Muldoon, had told Mitch they even had a name for it: HRD-Hollywood-Related Death.

Mitch studied the float carefully. A knife coming down from the air would only make one cut, so he had to get it right the first time.

Kneeling at the pool’s edge Mitch took a deep breath. My career or your life, he thought. It was an easy choice. He raised his arm and brought it down hard, cutting through the fabric near the left edge of the float.

His one fear had been that the float might burst, making enough noise to wake Lou, but the fabric tore instead, letting water slide in gently. The float had several compartments so it would take a while to sink, but sink it would.

Mitch smiled and dropped the knife. It slipped, shimmering, to the bottom tiles. He gave the back of the float a gentle push, nudging it toward the deepest part of the pool.

Moving quickly now, he slipped back through the gate and up into the brush. When he reached his own property he risked a look behind him. The big red float was in the middle of the pool, listing badly to the left.

Mitch walked over to the compost bin at the far end of his yard. A few months ago the president of his studio had gotten a bee in her bonnet about organic food and suddenly everyone who worked for the studio had to install one of these damned smelly rat hotels on their property. Now this one was finally earning back its cost. He reached in, still wearing his lab gloves, and shifted the organic muck around.