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  “Ambitious?” Thistle said.

  “Scene twenty-one,” Rodd said. “Why not get one of the big ones out of the way? Make it a little easier later on.”

  “What’s scene twenty-one?”

  “Tatiana and, um, Ellie will explain it all to you. You do have a script, don’t you, Tatiana?”

  “No, Rodd,” Tatiana said wearily. “I always report for work without a script.”

  “Wait, wait,” Thistle said. “This was supposed to be an easy day, just a few setups.”

  “This will be much better for you,” Rodd said. “As I said, get one of the big ones-”

  “I’m going to need cards,” Thistle said “Cue cards.”

  “Not that much dialog,” Rod said, glancing at his watch. “Mostly action.” He began to turn away.

  “Just a minute,” Thistle said. “Action. What action? What kind of action? What are you trying to-”

  “I’ll let the ladies explain it to you, darling,” Rodd said. “I’ve got to get the set ready.” He gave her a critical look. “You’re going to need some lighting,” he said, and then he turned and went down the hall, his feet splayed out like a duck’s.

  “Come on, honey,” Tatiana said, taking Thistle’s arm. “We’ll talk you through it.”

  “But, what” Thistle stopped. She started to say something, failed to find her voice, and tried again. “It’s those guys, isn’t it? Those guys who just came in?”

  Tatiana looked at me and then at Thistle, but said nothing. It was Ellie who said, “It’s, um … sorry, Miss Downing. It’s them.”

  27

  Digital mode

  “Sweetie,” Tatiana was saying. “You’ve got to face it. You’re in digital mode now. It’s either on or off, yes or no. There isn’t anything in between.”

  Thistle was caught in an eyelock with her own reflection. She shook her head, about a sixteenth of an inch, the movement so small I wouldn’t have seen it except that one of the two makeup girls, the one who was dabbing foundation on Thistle’s forehead, lifted her sponge for a second. When Thistle’s head was still the girl went back to work, saying to the other, “Maybe some shading under here?” indicating the space below Thistle’s cheekbones.

  “The light will do it,” the other makeup girl said. “Can you look up, Thistle? Just with your eyes, honey, not the whole head.” She began doing something to the lower lids of Thistle’s left eye.

  “I can do it,” Thistle said.

  “I’m sure you can,” Tatiana said. “They’re all pros. The guys, I mean. For what that’s worth. They’re not people you’d run into at the public library or anything, but they know what they’re doing.”

  “I meant my eyes,” Thistle said between her teeth. “I can do my own eyes. I’ve never liked having people do my eyes.” She extended a hand, and the makeup girl gave her the pencil.

  “Are you going to be okay here?” I asked her.

  “Here’s fine,” Thistle said. She tugged down the skin below her left eye and applied an expert line. Her hands were not shaking, as far as I could see. “It’s there that terrifies me.” Her eyes went to Ellie, who was standing with her back against the wall as though she wished she could melt through it and out of the room, maybe out of the day altogether. “How about it, double? Wanna go to work today?”

  “Ohhh,” Ellie said, blinking fast. “I’m not-I mean, I’m not that kind of double, just, just for rear shots and exteriors, and …”

  “I’m kidding,” Thistle said. “Sort of. How about I give you some of the money they’re going to pay me? Maybe pay me.”

  Ellie’s head was going back and forth at surprising speed. “I couldn’t … Ms. Annunziato would never-”

  “No,” Thistle said. “She wouldn’t.” Then she lowered her head and seemed to study the hands folded in her lap. Both makeup girls stepped back, and Thistle looked very much alone. She said, “Oh, my God.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

  I managed not to slam the door behind me, but just barely. The hall was full of people, most of them carrying stuff: lights and equipment, but also odds and ends of furniture. I followed them down the hall and out of the building. The first thing I passed was a jumbo trailer full of mirrors and chairs. The six guys who had barged down the hallway were sitting there, stripped to the waist, smoking and talking as they got makeup sponged on their chests and shoulders. Beyond the trailer, some twenty feet away, was a sort of oversize quonset hut with an airplane door standing open. Inside, it was dark except for a brilliantly illuminated corner at the far end. That was where everyone was going, and I tagged along.

  Another three-walled room, this one a bedroom that was obviously supposed to be in some sort of penthouse; large color photographs of a nighttime big-city skyline filled the windows. A king-sized bed with a peach-colored spread on it had been positioned in front of the windows, and above the bed someone had hung a big mirror, about the same size as the bed, facing directly down. Rodd was standing next to a woman who was busily aiming a camera at the mirror. He said, “Are we horizontal?”

  “We’re in tight,” the woman said. “It’ll fill the screen exactly.”

  “That’s an artsy touch,” I said. “The mirror, I mean.”

  Rodd glanced at me and then ignored me, but the woman said, “It’s just coverage. It gives us a different view to cut to when we need an edit. And it’s a little disorienting, so we’ll be able to cut between setups that don’t really match.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Lauren Wister.”

  “Junior Bender,” I said.

  “You’re working with Trey, right?”

  “I guess.”

  She gave me a very quick look. “The idea here is to have four cameras going the whole time. Two of them-this one on the mirror, and the master shot that takes in the entire bed-will be stationary, meaning that the cameras don’t move. The other two, the Steadi-Cams my assistant and I are holding, will move all over the place. The whole idea is to try to get as much as possible in one take. We’re not sure how long Thistle will last.”

  “One take of what?”

  “Her and the-the guys,” Lauren said. She had the grace to look embarrassed.

  “Exactly how does this concern you?” Rodd said, a bit waspishly.

  “I seem to be Thistle’s sounding board. I can guarantee you I’m the person she’ll talk to about this scene. I don’t know whether you’re even going to get her out here, once she knows what she’ll have to do, but if anyone can explain it to her, it’s probably me.”

  Rodd gave me a long look and then sighed. “In this scene,” he said, “Anna-that’s Thistle’s character-tests the limits of her newfound sexuality. It’s really the pivotal sequence in the first film. It’s also probably the hardest-if Thistle can get through this, everything else should be relatively easy. You see, Anna begins as a totally repressed person, just completely closed off, living in a shell, too shy even to say hello to people. One evening, on her way home to the apartment she lives in alone, she encounters a homeless person who confronts her. She tries to sidestep, like she always does, but no go. He just won’t let her walk past him without acknowledging his existence. She’s a very nice person beneath all the anxiety, and she finds the courage to talk to him. She even gives him some money. We’ve already shot those scenes with the camera behind Thistle’s character, using that mousy girl, what’s-her-name-”

  “Ellie,” I said. “Ellie Wynn.”

  “Yes, using Ellie. We’ve shot the reverses-those are the shots where you’re looking over Thistle’s shoulder, so you don’t see her face-on a number of scenes, using Ellie. Anything to minimize the length of time Thistle has to work. We’ll shoot the other setups, the ones where the audience actually sees Thistle, later. Three of her twelve days, in fact. So she-Anna, I mean, Thistle’s character-helps the homeless person, and he reveals that he’s actually a kind of, uh, spirit, and he gives her three wishes and tells her to use them well, and then he goes all sort of twinkl
y and disappears before her eyes, in the one and only visual effect in the film. Anna’s first wish is for the courage to act on her impulses.” Rodd was more focused than I’d previously seen him, walking his own way through the story as he told it. “Her first trial of her new power was to go out with one guy, someone in her office that she’d never had the nerve to talk to, and that worked out fine, I mean, he’s calling her all the time now. But in this sequence of scenes, culminating in the one we’re about to shoot, she takes a giant step. She goes to a bar, and all these men cluster around her, and she decides to take them all home. The bar is over there,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder at a dark set diagonally across the stage.

  “She’s supposed to have sex with these guys?”

  “A couple of them. Some of it can be simulated, but not all of it. She’s going to have to do some of it, before the day is through. If there are shots she just can’t do, we can shoot some inserts later with a body double and cut them in-”

  “A body double,” I said.

  “Some girl with the same build as Thistle, someone who’s done, uh, this kind of movie before. Those will be close-ups of the real thing. The audience for a movie like this expects a few genuine money shots.”

  I said, “Jesus Christ.”

  “Actually,” Rodd said, “I pretty much agree.”

  “Call it any fancy name you want,” I said, “but what it is, it’s a gang-bang.”

  “Now that we’re actually on the verge of filming it,” Rodd said, “it would probably be disingenuous to call it anything else. But not in front of Thistle, please.”

  “You have some good credits,” I said. “Why are you here?”

  “Darling.” Rodd put an open hand beneath his face, palm up, as though presenting it to an audience. “I’m fifty-eight years old. In Hollywood, that’s too old to qualify for an obituary. Do you remember those signs they used to have at amusement parks for the kids’ rides? If you were too tall to walk under it, you weren’t allowed on? Well at the networks now they have a picture of a teenager over the door and a sign that says, if you’re older than this, don’t knock. Last job I actually went out for, the network executive wore braces.”

  “If it’s any comfort,” Lauren, the cinematographer, said, “he’ll probably be a soda jerk on Sunset in six weeks. Most of those guys don’t keep their job long enough to get the chair warm.”

  “Over there,” I said, pointing across the stage. “You said that was the bar set, right?”

  “Right.” This was Lauren again.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to start with the bar scene? I mean, at least give Thistle a chance to, to talk to these guys before she has to-you know.”

  “Yes,” Rodd said. “It would be better. It would, in fact, be the way I had it sequenced in the first place. That’s why the bar’s built and ready to go. But it is exactly not what Ms. Annunziato wants to do. She wants Thistle to cross the great divide, as she herself put it, before one more penny of the Annunziato millions is spent on this film. First the press conference, then this scene. With those out of the way, she figures she’ll have no way of losing her movie. If Thistle can do this, she’ll be able to do anything.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Lauren said, “we’re going to talk her through all of it. We’ll clear the set except for the essential people, the minimum crew to get the sequence. Most of them are women. We’ll shoot the action silent and dub it later, so she can call off any activity that she absolutely can’t do, and we’ll find a way to film around it. Inserts, as Rodd said. But she’s going to have to do some of it, or Trey will shut the movie down.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Rodd said, “Join the club.”

  “God damn it,” I said. “I’m going to talk to Trey.”

  I went back outside, blinking in the sunlight, and bulled my way through the people carrying stuff until I was back in the building where we’d had the press conference. I looked everywhere-the screening room, the classroom set, the cafeteria, anyplace I’d seen Trey, but couldn’t find her. I was on the way to the makeup room when Tatiana called my name. She was obviously distressed, twisting the tail of her plaid shirt in both hands as she came down the corridor. At the same time, Ellie appeared, coming from the other end of the hall, cell phone to her mouth, talking behind a cupped hand.

  “Where is she?” Tatiana said. “Tell me you know where she is.”

  “I’m the wrong guy to ask where anyone is,” I said. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Thistle,” Tatiana said. “She’s gone.”

  28

  Little black dress

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Well, she got through with her makeup and then put on the costume for the scene, just a kind of nothing dress, a little evening dress, black with-”

  “I don’t need to know about the dress. And?”

  “And she hadn’t said anything for five or ten minutes. It was like she was miles away, or memorizing something. You know what I mean? Just not there. Anyway, she asked for a few minutes alone. So I told everyone to leave the room, and then we, I mean Ellie and I, we went to the cafeteria and got a couple cups of coffee. Just, you know, giving Thistle some time to pull herself together. Then we went back and knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer, and when we opened it, she was gone.”

  Ellie came up from behind me, putting the phone away. “Not on the sound stage,” she said to Tatiana.

  “How long was she alone?” I asked.

  “Fifteen minutes?” Ellie said, aiming the question at Tatiana.

  “Maybe twenty,” Tatiana said.

  “Say twenty,” I said. “Enough time for anything.”

  “Anything?” Tatiana said. Her fingers flew to her mouth. “Oh. Oh, my God. You said it, if they’re really serious about shutting this thing down, it’s Thistle they’ll target.”

  “Let’s not go there yet. Did you both go into the room?”

  “Yes,” Ellie said hesitantly. “I went first.”

  ‘How long ago?”

  “Oh, gosh, hard to-I’ve been so upset.”

  “Eight, ten minutes,” Tatiana said. “And I didn’t actually go into the room.”

  “Okay, when you went into the room,” I said to Ellie, “was the dress in there?”

  “The dress-”

  “The costume dress. The one she had on. Did you see it in the room Thistle had been in?”

  The two women looked at each other, and Ellie said, “No.”

  “The clothes she arrived in. Were they in there?”

  “Yes,” Ellie said.

  “Okay,” I said to Tatiana. “Now you can tell me about the dress.”

  “Little basic black number, sort of tarty,” Tatiana said. “Cut to bare one shoulder-”

  “The left,” Ellie said.

  Tatiana frowned. “Are you sure?”

  I said, “It doesn’t matter. There’s no way Thistle would leave the lot wearing a dress like that. If she’s got that on, she’s here somewhere. Tatiana, get six or eight good people and divide up the lot. I want everyplace searched by at least two people. Clear?”

  “Sure. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to see whether I’m wrong.”

  There were three ways in and out of the studio. The gate we’d come in through was used mainly by vehicles, and it consisted of an eight-foot section of chain link that had to be opened and closed by the guy in the guard shack. He hadn’t opened it for anyone on foot in hours, although he’d let a few cars out in the past fifteen minutes. The only car he recognized was Trey’s chauffeured, bulletproof limo, which had pulled out five or ten minutes earlier.

  It was also possible to walk out through the gatehouse, but it was only about four feet square, and anyone who left that way would practically have to bump into the guard. He said no one had come through on foot.

  “Do you check the cars that leave?”

  His brow furrowed beneath his imitation cop’s hat
. “Check them?”

  “You know, look inside, open the trunk, anything like that.”

  “Geez,” he said, “this ain’t Checkpoint Charlie.”

  It wasn’t Checkpoint Charlie in the Palomar Studios lobby, either. Two weight lifters in rental uniforms sat behind the desk, one of them wearing mirrored sunglasses that made me dislike him instantly.

  “Has a young woman in a black dress gone past you guys in the past ten, fifteen minutes?”

  “Who’s asking?” said Sunglasses.

  “Good to know you’re awake,” I said. “Hard to tell with those Top Gun way-cools sitting on your big fat nose.”

  “Hey,” he said, getting up.

  “Think about it,” I said. “Somebody as rude as I am is probably eager to kill you. Can you think of another reason?”

  “Um,” he said, but the other guy said, “No, nobody like that. I mean, one woman, but she works here. We see her every day.”

  “Thanks,” I said. To the other guy, I said, “Any time. Just take a swing at me any time. It’ll be a pleasure.”

  The third gate was at the back of the lot, and it opened onto a narrow, eucalyptus-lined street that bordered the wide, white concrete trench of the Los Angeles River. There was no guard, just a metal gate with a handle that anyone could open from the inside. To re-enter from the outside, you needed to punch a numeric code into a keypad. It was the logical place for Thistle to have chosen if she’d known about it, but I doubted she did. As far as I knew, she hadn’t worked at Palomar before.

  I stood there, looking at the gate, at the tall rows of eucalyptus bending slightly in a breeze I couldn’t feel, and kicked myself. Despite the little black dress, despite the fact that no one had seen her leave, I didn’t think Thistle was still on the lot. She’d either gotten out on her own somehow, or someone had spirited her away. And there were a lot of potential someones. I remembered my question about all the things that had gone wrong before I got involved. I had said, Who has access like that?