Cap askew, forehead damp, the porter wheezed: “Señor, the bags … now they come with wheels.”
Turning slowly, Halliday seemed surprised not at this insight into modern luggage but that a minion could or, indeed, should speak. Satisfied the staffer had nothing further to add, Halliday swung back towards reception, checked in and was waiting at the elevator before the bellboy had made it halfway across Il Capri’s expansive foyer.
Tuesday the 9th. A quarter of 11. Seventy-five minutes until the production conference. Time to shower, punish the mini bar and rinse out with Listerine Cool Mint breath freshener, roughly in that order.
The mini bar was better stocked than he’d anticipated. If he’d bothered to check his Longines DolceVita watch when he finally reached the hotel’s conference room, he’d have noticed he was late. No matter. Most of the seats encircling a large lozenge-shaped table were empty. In the movie industry, timeliness was for apparatchiks. Real players operated by their own internal “screw you” clocks.
Eventually there was enough above and below the line film crew present to tackle the most important agenda item: lunch. By 1, the executive producers and principal cast members still hadn’t arrived. “At least the workers are here,” began the production manager.
Only Halliday didn’t laugh. With his back to the room, he was working the buffet again, forking remnants of Maine lobster onto his plate. The manager cantered through the production schedule. The producer, one eye on Halliday who had graduated to spearing shrimp and scooping oysters, touched on budgets.
Director James Snide held up a hand. “When Raymond has finished prepping for the End Times, perhaps we can get to the script changes.”
Halliday heard only the final words. As a scriptwriter, they were two he loathed, along with “early deadline” and “budget restraints”. Plus there were elements within the script he couldn’t alter. Not unless he fancied sharing his Coco-Mat king-size bed in his fountain-view room on Level 20 with a horse’s head. If there was a single word which encapsulated any gangster’s approach to business failure it would be “unsentimental”.
Snide’s assistant stabbed at a MacBook Air’s keyboard and the movie’s title popped onto a wide screen on the far wall: The Ketamine Konnection.
Snide continued: “How’s this sound – The Special K Konnection? After all, Special K is a street name for ketamine.”
Halliday’s sphincter relaxed. But not too much. As a screenplay hack he could live with that minor change. As a man with debts to pay to Sláinte, L'Chaim and Gānbēi (sadly, as he’d discovered, not a reputable, broad-church New York loan firm) he was just happy to live. “Love it,” he said a little too loudly.
Dudley Duncan the Prop Master, a louche young man in white linen, hurriedly seconded Halliday’s support and gave Snide a kiss-ass smile: “So clever of you to have the plot revolve something other than stolen old school drugs such as coke, ice or horse.”
Again with the horse? Halliday suppressed a shudder. “It was my idea.” He swiveled to address the room. “Ketamine is the dope du jour. It was Matthew Perry from Friends’ mellow hallucinogen of choice when he hopped into his hot tub for the last time. It might also make the user feel disconnected and not in control. Or as I like to think of it: Tuesday.”
He gestured at the assistant who flicked onto the screen photos showing a bulky khaki kitbag packed with small plastic sachets containing white powder. The little bags had been consolidated into larger glassine ones. “I calculate that at $100 per gram, the prop K will appear to be worth around $12 mill. Street value, that is.”
“Nothing to sniff at,” said Duncan.
To match the movie’s new title, the script needed to be tinkered with. Halliday dutifully made notes then stared out the floor-to-ceiling window at the forced gaiety of the Las Vegas skyline. The plot remained unchanged: two divorcees on a cross-America road trip in a pink Corvette convertible pick up a handsome hitchhiker lugging a kitbag. He’s stolen ketamine from the Mob. The women, in turn, steal it from him. Neither the hitchhiker nor his former colleagues in crime are happy. The women flee.
Up next on the agenda: the DP blocked out the following day’s shoot capturing the divorcees exchanging a drug parcel after they’ve slo-moed towards the camera, seemingly floating on the quivering heat of the desert sand. No shortage of the latter around Las Vegas. It was a one hour 50 drive to the planned Death Valley location. A 2nd unit director was already setting up just off the CA-190. “Look ethereal,” had been Snide’s directive during rehearsals.
Wednesday the 10th. To Halliday it felt like pre-dawn. The
bedside clock insisted it was 0805. He finished dressing and wondered for the
second time in 15 minutes if lighting a cigarette would set off an alarm.
Perhaps he could wrap the room’s smoke sniffer thingee in a hand towel. A soft
knock on the door. Through the spy hole, Halliday saw enough fresh linen to flag
who the visitor was. Duncan was shouldering a canvas kitbag.
“Heavy?” asked Halliday.
Duncan ignored the question. “It went well, thanks to me.” He heaved the bag onto Halliday’s rumpled bed. “What better way to disguise real dope than transport it in plain sight as a movie prop? A few busybodies questioned the two identical bags. I said we needed a backup if the first got damaged.”
“And where’s the dummy dope in the second bag?”
“In the trunk of the Corvette. Our leading ladies are taking it for a spin to the location site this morning. As you insisted, the real thing has a green tag sown on the bottom, the prop has a brown tag.”
There was that sudden clenching feeling – again. “No,” cut in Halliday. “The actual K is stashed in the bag with the brown tag, the dummy is green.”
On cue, the room phone chirped beside the clock. Snatching up the receiver, Halliday heard the Concierge announce that Messrs Sláinte, L'Chaim and Gānbēi were waiting for him in a limousine outside the hotel’s entrance. He looked at Duncan. The two men chorused an obscenity. Approximately 78 seconds later, they tumbled out of the lift into the hotel’s car park, scrambled into Duncan’s rented Jeep and, after torching the rubber on its tyres, were catapulted onto The Strip.
After a moment, a black stretch limo squealed out of Il Capri’s semi-circular driveway, sliced into the boulevard’s traffic, took a hard right, then a left, then another right; all the time keeping the Jeep in sight.
That quiet, sunlit morning, the corner of West Bonneville Ave and South Grand Central Parkway was blessed with the presence of a black and white patrol SUV. With their vehicle parked far enough onto the kerb to allow traffic to flow, deputy sheriffs Kellaway and Branston tried to, firstly, avoid spilling just-bought coffee on their crisp beige uniforms and, secondly, avoid any work.
Kellaway spotted the Corvette a moment before his second sip. Two scarf-wearing woman in the front seat squealed with laughter as their hot pink car fishtailed through the intersection. Within a heartbeat, it was rear-ended by a Jeep which, while still hovering several inches off the ground, was T-boned by a stretch limo. Melded together by momentum and twisted metal, the three vehicles spun in a choreographed swirl before slamming into the black and white’s hood. Scalding coffee seeped into the deputies’ crotches.
A kit bag, hurled into the middle of the intersection by the impact, lay ripped open. Hundreds of plastic sachets spilled white powder onto the asphalt.
Branston was first out of the patrol car, one hand on his holstered weapon, the other covering his sodden fly. He reached the passenger side of the Jeep as Halliday slowly lowered the cracked window.
The scriptwriter smiled: “Officer, I can explain everything.”
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Copyright 2024 GREG FLYNN
