J. Black - Icon

He finished up with the thousand-yard stare.

A hundred screenwriters can’t be wrong.

II: ICONOCLAST

Chapter Fourteen

AFTER THE CALL, Jerry went into his study. Talia followed, but he motioned her out and closed the door. He needed to think.

Normally a showplace, the room’s walls had been papered with 8 ½” x 11” sheets of paper. Four rows of them, taped up all the way around, even over the French doors looking out on the pool. He could have taken them down days ago, should have taken them down, but for some reason he liked looking at them. They reminded him of the early years, when he was just another spoke in the film industry’s wheel, a lowly screenwriter-turned-indie-prod, long before he became Max’s business manager.

It had been fun, getting back to basics. Planning and scheming, working out how it would look—the tracking cam, the extra-long shot, the two-shot, the extreme close-up. Most of it was unnecessary—this wasn’t a film project. Most of the story would stay on the cutting room floor. But he realized he’d gotten…lost. Lost in the work. Reminded himself what it had been like as a young man, a starving artist. When he was creative .

Another great thing about working on this project—he could shut out Talia’s whining. She’d become increasingly strident as days went by. He understood it. The waiting had been difficult. She was worried, frightened that it wouldn’t work out. But her voice had a knife’s edge at times he just had to avoid. So he came in here and storyboarded.

The scenario Jerry and his brother Gordon had chosen for Max’s death would have looked great on a computer, but there could be no computer. There would be no paper trail. Paper could be destroyed, but a computer’s memory had a way of staying around forever.

One more week, he’d thought, and they would have been home free.

Jerry’d had rotator cuff surgery once. They’d scheduled the surgery and he had burned up daylight just waiting. Waiting to get started, waiting to go through with the damn thing, just hoping to get out fine on the other side and start living again. That’s what it had been like, even though the stakes now were much higher. He wanted it done already.

And now, suddenly, everything was out of their hands.

A timid knock on the door—Talia. She knew she’d annoyed him. Knew he was upset.

“Come in.”

Her eyes looked bruised. Had she been crying? Or faking? You could never tell with Talia.

She slipped her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry. I should have let you handle it. Is it going to be OK?”

He pulled away from her, went to stand before the fourth scenario. The one they’d planned. Now, after all the foresight, the risk-taking—they’d even killed a world-famous forensic expert—it might well be that the plan had been smothered in its crib.

“They’ll call back, won’t they?”

“Probably.”

She said, “I still don’t see why we can’t just let them do it.”

He stared at his storyboards. The forensic specialist, Dr. DePaulentis—what the man had done was spectacular! He’d kept it as simple as possible. The fourth scenario. No drug cartels, no terrorist gangs, no spectacular plane crashes, just…a lone bad guy. Jerry’d initially wanted a prison escapee but Gordon had pointed out that wouldn’t work. A prison escapee would have to break out of a real prison, and it would be on the news if that happened.

So it was back to a chance encounter with a bad guy. Simple. No frills, but planned down to the exact detail.

A reconstructed crime scene, clues and all.

He stared past the sheets of paper at the glimmer of the pool, the fountain, the royal palms beyond. It had been foolproof until Max escaped from the Desert Oasis. Elegant—a thing of beauty. He turned to Talia. “Now our fate is in the hands of strangers.”

“But that’s better, don’t you see? Then there’s no involvement on our part. No one could ever connect—”

“Have you ever played high-stakes poker?”

She looked at him. Clueless.

“What if they do kill him? What would that look like? A bruised, broken body dumped by the side of a road? Have you seen gunshot wounds? It’s not a pretty picture. Maybe they leave him out somewhere to be eaten by predators. Or what if he’s still alive? What if they send us a video? Can you picture it? He’s beaten up, terrified, practically peeing in his pants. Max Conroy reduced to a mewling baby. They might slap him around. Tell him to say ridiculous things, plead for his life. What if it goes on YouTube?” He stepped toward her, his anger building. “How do you think that would look? It would look like seventy million dollars going straight down the drain!”

He walked to one wall and ripped down a piece of paper and held it up. “There goes the graphic novel!” He crumpled it and threw it down. Another piece. “The action figure!” Another. “The Max Conroy Memorial Limited Edition Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle!”

More sheets—ripped, crumpled, wadded-up balls of paper raining down on the Aubusson carpet. MacMillan’s whiskey—he’d envisioned a series of ads profiling Max’s bravery as a doomed, real-life hero. The suite of men’s hair and body products. The T-shirts, the posters, the hats, the phone apps, the Maxphone, the movie, the book, the Wheaties box.

Any time a photographer, writer, TV personality, or news source profiled Max Conroy, any time his image was used, a little angel got its wings.

“Marilyn Monroe’s estate is estimated at over a hundred million dollars! Michael Jackson’s made over one billion dollars since he died. His estate is pulling in one hundred and seventy million dollars this year . Think about what it would be like to license a Michael Jackson, a James Dean, the next Elvis Presley! Do you have any idea of the stakes ?”

Finally, he couldn’t go on. Like a tired horse, he just stood there, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

Talia stared at him, shocked. He was sure, this time, she really was feeling what she looked like. Maybe he’d finally gotten through to her.

He sat down on the floor, Indian style, and stared out at the pool. “Do you realize now,” he said quietly, “what you have done? What you’ve accomplished with your flip little remark?” He pounded his thigh. “He could have been an icon !”

Chapter Fifteen

“IT’S A WRAP!” Sam P. shouted when they were done. “I always wanted to say that.” He patted Max on the head. “Let’s go and change the world.”

“We’ll do that,” Max said. “But we have to do it right.”

“You said we’d ‘go viral.’ All I have to do is upload to the phone and off we go.”

“And we will, we’ll get to that. But first, we have to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For them to get nervous.”

“Nervous?” Sam P. looked nonplussed. “Your wife told us to keep you. The only way to pressure her is to go viral—you said so yourself!”

“If you remember, I said we have to do it right. You want to do it right, don’t you?”

“Well…yes, of course.”

“This guy is scamming you!” said Corey. “He’s screwing with your heads.”

“Shut up, Corey.”

“Look—”

“Shut up! I want to hear what the man has to say.” Sam P. fixed his eyes on Max. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying we give them a chance to think about it. To stew.”

“And how long, do you propose, should we let them ‘stew’?”

“A day or two.”

“A day or two?” Sam P. shook his head. “That’s too long. We want to wrap this up. The longer we keep you here as our guest, the more of a chance for something to go wrong. Frankly, we need to unload you as soon as possible.”