Jeffery Deaver - Death of a Blue Movie Star

The Hudson was choppy; a storm was coming. Rune was afraid she'd lose electricity.

That's all I need tonight. My television premiere and all of New York has a blackout.

A flash of lightning over Jersey froze the image of Sam Healy, opening two cans of beer at once.

The rain began, whipped against the side of the houseboat by fast, surprised sweeps of wind.

"I hope the moorings hold," Rune said.

Healy looked out the window, then back at the dinner resting on Rune's blue Formica coffee table. The cold anchovy pizza seemed to bother him more than an unplanned voyage into New York Harbor.

"They pay you much for your film?"

"Naw. This is public television-you do it for love," Rune said, turning on the TV. "And because, if I'm lucky, a lecherous producer with a ton of money he's dying to give away is gonna be watching."

"You use your real name?"

"You don't believe Rune's my name?"

"No." He sipped the Miller. "Is it?"

"The credit line is Irene Dodd Simons."

"Classy. So that’s your real name."

"Maybe, maybe not." Rune smiled mysteriously and sat back in the old couch she'd bought from a Goodwill shop. It was still uneven from the time she'd cut through a lot of the stuffing looking for hidden money but if you settled yourself enough it got to the point where it was pretty comfortable.

Healy tried the couch, then sat on the floor, picking anchovies off half the pizza and dropping them onto the other half.

"You disarm bombs," Rune pointed out. "You're scared of a few little fish?"

The screen coalesced into the dense, fuzzy color of old TV sets and with just a hint of reverberation, the sound boomed into the room from the huge speakers.

They sat through previews of future programs-a science show on amniocentesis and a nature program that showed grown-up vultures feeding something red and raw to baby vultures.

Healy gave up on the pizza.

The Young Filmmakers program was introduced by a middle-aged Englishman. He referred to Irene Dodd Simons as a young, up-and-coming film maker from Manhattan who never had any formal film training but who'd gotten her experience doing television commercials.

"If they only knew," Rune said.

The camera closed on him as he said, "And now, our first feature, Epitaph for a Blue Movie Star…"

The fade from black emerged slowly as a gaudy mosaic of Times Square at dusk. Men in raincoats walked past.

A woman's voice:"Adult films. Some people pornography excites, some people it repulses, and some are moved by it to acts of perversion and crime. This is the story of one talented young woman, who made her living in the world of pornography and was pulled down by its gravity of darkness…"

"Did you write that?" Healy asked.

"Shhh."

Times Square dissolved into abstract colors, which faded and became a black-and-white high school graduation picture.

"Nice effect."

"… a young actress who searched and never found, who buried her sadness in the only world she understood -the glitzy world of fantasy…

The camera closed in on the high school picture, slowly coming into focus.

"This isthe story of Nicole D'Orleans. The life and death of a blue movie star."

A cut to Nicole, sitting in her apartment, looking out the window, tears on her face, recorded by the unsteady, unseen camera. She was speaking softly."These movies, the thing is, it's all I can do. I make love good. But I'm such a failure at anything else. I've tried. It doesn't work… It's such a hard feeling, to hate the one thing you're good at."

Cut back to the high school picture, as the opening credits rolled.

Healy asked, "Who's doing the narration? She's great."

Rune didn't answer for a moment. Then she said, "I got a pro to do it. An actress in Chicago."

"A pro? Anybody I'd know?"

"Naw, I doubt it." Rune tossed the pizza on the table and moved closer to Healy, resting her head against his chest, as the opening credits ended and Nicole's picture faded into the grimy, cold-lit marquee of a movie theater on Eighth Avenue.

Jeffery Deaveris the internationally best-selling author of thirteen suspense novels, includingThe Empty Chair, The Bone Collector, The Coffin Dancer andThe Devil's Teardrop. He is a four-time Edgar nominee and has twice been the recipient of theEllery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year. AMaiden's Grave was an HBO feature mm starring James Garner, released under the nameDead Silence, andThe Bone Collector became a feature release from Universal Pictures starring Denzel Washington. Readers can visit his website at www. jefferydeaver. com.