Chapter 15: The Show Must Go On

The paramedics came to a stop by the gate. A man and a woman got out. She hurried over to the one whose neck was bent at an angle. "Get a cuff over here," she called. "This is a bad one."

"How did that happen?" the cop asked in a friendly voice.

"I did it," Amanda answered in a low voice. He tried to kidnap Mark. I stopped him. I squeezed his neck."

"You also crushed a vertebrae," the female paramedic accused in an angry voice.

"Well damn," Amanda answered just as angry. "I tried to kill him, but I only had one hand to work with. Maybe next time." That earned her another dirty look from the paramedic.

Suddenly three reporters seemed to materialize out of nowhere. A new detective came up behind them. "You people keep back out of the way," he told the news people. He looked around.

The female paramedic told the detective angrily, "That person just admitted she tried to murder this victim. She dramatically pointed a finger at the injured man in a neck cuff. "She bragged she almost killed this man with one hand."

Amanda snorted, "Someone get Florence Nightingale out of here before I sic my cook on her. Cookie hates idiots."

The cook came out of the house. "I also hate the name 'Cookie" if you please. Lunch is ready." She turned and went back inside.

Amanda laughed, "Uh yeah. I don't want to get her mad at me."

The uniformed cops took the three relatively uninjured intruders away. The paramedics left with their patients, the intruder and the wounded guard. The detective took statements from Amanda, Billy, Billy's helper and the cook. He promised to come back later if there were any more problems.

The reporters surrounded them. "Amanda, What happened?" one reporter called, "Were they rogue cops making another try?"

"No!" Mark's voice rang out. "They were criminals in the hire of my father. They tried to kidnap me and Amanda broke the neck of one. One of the guards protecting us got shot. My father is a sick pervert. He must be stopped."

There was a dead silence. Finally one newspaper reporter asked, "Do you mean your father?"

Before the reporter could finish his question, Amanda grabbed Mark's arm and pulled him toward the house. "The interview is over. You got your story." The excited reporters left.

As they walked back into the house, Mark complained, "Amanda, why did you stop me? I wanted to tell them what a hypocritical monster he really is."

"Babe, read tomorrow's headlines. You won't be sorry I shut you up. Your father will be dropped by the Republicans like a hot potato. Wait and see."

Billy returned from outside. "Sorry I jumped on you like I did. I wouldn't let that sorry ass use a phone here to call for a cab. He has to hitch hike home." He paused, "We're stretched way too thin here and I need more men."

"I told you last night to hire them," Amanda told him in a sharp voice. "Filming starts on location in sixty days. I want eight men on days, four on second shift. I want three on graveyard. I do not want any rent-a-cops. Find ex seals and Special Forces people who will do what is necessary. That nutty freak of a father of Mark's has too much money and too few brains. God only knows what he will try next."

"I thought you said ninety days," the studio writer protested. He was unsure he could work in such an environment as this. There were no long booze laden lunches to break the tedium of a do nothing day. Never in his professional career as a screenwriter had he been forced to do nearly all the creative writing all by himself without other writers to bounce things off of. It was scary to have to think for himself.

"So I lied. We better get busy." Amanda sat back in her chair. She drew Mark to her and kissed his hand. Mark stood next to her, stroked her face and held her close. Amanda, Mike and the writer blocked out the rest of the first draft.

The next morning the headlines in the Los Angeles Times read, "Mark Says Daddy a Pervert." The other papers were a little more fanciful. One claimed Mark accused his father of sexually molesting him. "I see what you meant," he told Amanda. "We have to be more careful than ever. He will not take this lying down."

Later, Mark and Willow sat together in the dining room drinking coffee. Mike joined them. "Mark, tell me what happened from the first time you met Amanda." Dirk made himself as unobtrusive as possible as he stood just inside the door, camera already recording.

Mark laughed, "You won't believe how dumb, how innocent I was. If you can imagine, my companion and I went door-to-door and rang doorbells for Jesus until the day my companion twisted her ankle. I will always be grateful for that accident..." He omitted the part where Amanda pressed her pussy against his lips for a couple of moments, but stayed close to the truth otherwise. "Here I was, naked in bed with the most beautiful woman imaginable and I all but proposed to her. It scared her, no it terrified her and she did what I guess nearly all people do when they get crowded and pushed for a commitment. She panicked."

He told of his feelings when he took the fateful walk and what happened afterward with the cops and the drunken judge. Mike skillfully asked the questions in a gentle, confiding way. Mark gave straightforward answers, unaware they were being recorded. When the interview was over, Mike patted his shoulder and left. Dirk carried his heavy professional camera away with him.

"Mike, don't you dare edit one thing out. Don't let anyone else touch it. That was the best interview of your life. Man, but I wanted to go back to San Diego and kill a cop just for the hell of it. That was good, no that was great."

Mark wandered into the front living room that looked unlived in. He sat down at the baby grand piano and began to play. He belted out the old standards, the songs from "South Pacific" and "West Side Story." Then as he started to play "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" from the "Wizard Of Oz," Willow came to stand next to him and sang in a thin, clear soprano voice. The small amount of a nasal overtone gave her voice a sensuous, virginal quality. By the time they finished their duet, Mike, Amanda, Dirk and the writer all stood in the doorway, completely mesmerized.

"Write in a song or two," Amanda commanded. She added, "I want Willow to sing a blues theme song all the way through from beginning to end. Consider "Town Without Pity." No one argued.

"Amanda, come here," Mike called from the projection room. He played the interview with Mark.

Amanda listened, hypnotized by the honest and the simple eloquence of Mark's narration. "Man, that alone is worth the price of admission. He is a natural. With those two, Mark and Willow working together, I'm going to be a bit player in my own production."

"To misquote a cliché, 'Houston, we have an Oscar.' And you may quote me," Mike laughed; then he turned serious, "It's time for Dirk and I to head back to San Diego. I'd like to take a couple of Billy's men along to ride shotgun. Dirk will shoot in infrared plus some new medium he has been experimenting with. He plans to employ light amplification for part of the visuals and try to use plain old corner streetlights and subtle overhead angled lighting with the hookers leaning against the lamp poles in profile in classic poses as they are interviewed.

"We will also be on the lookout for proof of shake downs. Damn, but I would give your left nut if you had one just to get one single cop on camera as he took money or a blow job from a whore." Mike looked eager to go even though he still had a few not quite healed bruises for mementos from his encounter with the Long Beach Police Department.

"See Billy," Amanda told him and returned to the den.

That evening Mike and Dirk left for San Diego with two bodyguards. They went in three nondescript cars furnished by Stanley's Green B Studios. They were gone for thirty-three days. The moment they were back, all four went to bed and slept the clock around. When they appeared at the breakfast table in the kitchen, Mike had a black eye and scabbed over fists. Dirk's nose had been broken yet again and the two guards had bruised faces and mean grins on their lips.

"What the hell happened to you?" Amanda asked. "The cops catch you?"

"Nah," one of the guards said. "But two pimps caught Mike and started in on him. Dirk jumped them before we could get into the act. We gave the punks something to think about. We also brought eight teenagers back with us who had been forced into the life. We dropped them off at a women's shelter on the way home."

Mark asked, "What happened to the pimps?"

"They were dealt with, okay?" Dirk said darkly.

"Oh," he said weakly. He understood.

Amanda interrupted them, "Next week we start my part of the story. We have an agreement to shoot the hospital reenactment scenes in County General in Los Angeles," Amanda told Mark. "The shots from there will be intermixed with the raw footage of the lard assed cop when he shot me and of your mother when she struck my sore shoulder. The rest will be a re-enactment, such as the main shots of me as I got in and out of my car. Then on the set we'll do a series of my workouts. There's enough stuff in my own archives to handle the work out scenes. Do you realize how we have done the impossible? After we do the arrest scenes and the court and jail sequences, we shall be ready for the first edit.

"Hartman has already gotten federal court orders enjoining both the City and County of San Diego from interfering with us or harassing us. Stanley is paying the freight and arranged it so Federal Marshals will be on hand just in case. That San Diego bunch will try something, but what they have in mind I have no idea. Come what may, next month we open."

Her injured shoulder was mostly healed and free of the bandages and the sling. "Honey, I'm scared." She looked uncertain for the first time since Mark first met her. It surprised him. To Mark Amanda seemed the unstoppable force. How could she be uncertain of anything?