*****
Twenty minutes later, I was standing outside in front of our rented SUV while Mac and Manny loaded it with equipment.
“Guys, I know last night was a little upsetting and we’re on very little sleep,” I began, “but I think we should just try to forget about it and move on.”
Mac laughed as he threw a pile of extension cords into the trunk. “You’re telling us to move on? We weren’t the ones in Lenny’s office trying to get fired.”
“I wasn’t trying to get fired; I just wanted him to know where to stick it.”
“Well now he does.” Manny said. “I guess I do too.”
“Look this is weird now, okay? I mean the cops think we’re morons – especially me. Plus they’re right. I barged in there and could have destroyed key evidence. Lenny’s an asshole, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have a lot of work to do now to make things right.” I knew the argument with Lenny was already water under the bridge; it was the cops I was worried about.
Mac and Manny checked their inventory while I read a brief bio on each of the detectives. Bradley Reid had worked in homicide for the past four years, while Flanagan only had two years in homicide. They were new partners and specialized in drug- and prostitution-related homicides. The bios contained a photo of each officer and neither looked too happy. There was no information on whether they were married, what their favorite pastimes were or what kind of upbringing they had. I would have to find out that stuff myself.
As I thumbed through the page and a half of literature, I felt someone standing behind me. I turned to see Missy, one of the other three producers. She was rod thin and had a stick-up-her ass attitude. We’d worked together before and though we usually acted cordial, we hated each other’s guts.
“Missy, so nice to see you,” I lied.
“Rough night, Victoria? I heard about your little mishap.” She had a snotty sound to her voice and bobbed her head as she spoke.
“I’m sure you would have reacted the same way,” I said.
“I doubt it. I’ve spent the last week doing research on dead bodies at the county morgue.”
“I’m sure you fit right in with all those skeletons,” I retorted. “Really Missy, you should eat something.”
“You’ll be eating crow when I deliver the premiere episode.”
“Did Lenny promise you the premiere?” I asked.
“No, but I have no doubt that my story will be the most compelling – no matter what I end up with.” She smirked.
“That sounds like a challenge.”
“May the best woman win.” Missy flipped her stringy hair over her shoulder, turned on her heel, and scampered off.
I turned to Mac, my teeth gritted. “Ughh!”
“Shake it off Sharpe. Don’t let her get to you,” he said, patting my shoulder.
Mac had proven to be a good friend to me over the years. We had always kept things platonic, except once. In production, when you’re working on a show, it consumes your life. You work day and night with the same people in the same world and everything else fades into the background. You don’t return phone calls, your family barely knows you’re alive; you’re just existing in a bubble. Crew members are notorious for hooking up because when you’re with someone 24/7 you start to think there’s a connection there. Mac and I had always flirted, and one drunken night we crossed that line. Nothing ever came of it and we didn’t mention it again, but sometimes I wondered if he ever thought about it.
Mac was one of those perfect looking guys. He was tall and lean with light brown hair. His skin was always tanned from shooting outside, and he had some of the whitest teeth around. He had one of those movie-star chests too – the kind that the leading lady would lay on when they were having “pillow talk.” He was thirty-five and still single, but that didn’t surprise me. Perfect could be boring, and when you combined that with the fact that he tended to be a know-it-all, it made perfect sense. Still, when he smiled it put me at ease.
“Come on, let’s go,” Mac said and jumped in the front seat of out eight-passenger SUV. Manny opened the side door and sat in the middle row. I sat up front next to Mac.
Inside, the SUV had gray leather seats and the air conditioning felt wonderful. I loved AC and I didn’t get to enjoy it nearly enough.
The SUV was equipped with a GPS, but Mac insisted on looking up the address of the police station the old-fashioned way – by map. He pulled out his guide and looked up the address. In a few minutes we were on our way.
As we drove, Mac pulled out a pocket-sized container of mace from his pocket and handed it to me.
“What’s this for?” I asked, sliding it into my pocket.
“For protection – just in case. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
I looked down at my meager jeans and t-shirt and suddenly felt naked without a gun strapped to my hip and a band of bullets draped over my shoulder.
“Isn’t mace illegal?” I asked.
“Everybody has it, Sharpe, and you never know what kind of situation you could find yourself in.”
“Thanks, MacGyver.”
“Yeah, you might get kidnapped and held for ransom by some crazed killer,” Manny chimed in from the back. “Or worse yet, maybe you have to go undercover in some gang where getting beat up is part of the initiation.”
I turned around and glared at Manny.
“So whaddaya think we’re gonna get?” Mac asked us. “Gunshot victim, strangling maybe?”
“I’m banking on a drowning,” Manny answered. “One of those cases where the body is in the river but the lungs are dry.”
“Oh yeah, or maybe the lungs have fresh water in them but they were found in the ocean,” Mac said.
“Yeah, that’d be cool,” Manny said.
“Stop trying to act so tough,” I said to both of them. “Don’t act like you weren’t scared last night.”
“I wasn’t,” Mac said.
I leaned in and looked at Mac. “Let me guess. That wasn’t your first dead body, right?”
“There was one other,” Mac said. “I was hiking and a guy got charged by a bear. His leg went right through this massive tree branch. He lived a little while, but not long.”
“Oh God, come on!” I said, slapping Mac’s shoulder. “You’re making me sick.”
Of course Mac would have seen a dead body. Why would I think otherwise? That was something that annoyed me about him – he had done it all and seen it all. If I saw a man impaled on a tree, I would have the willies for the rest of my life, but not Mac; he would just bank it in his vault of stories and play it when the time was right.
“Why are you always so sensitive?” Mac asked me.
“I’m not, I’m just tired of you acting like Mister Cool all the time. If you were sliding in someone else’s blood you’d be scared too.”
“I think you need to meditate,” Mac said.
I threw up my hands. “Yeah Mac, that’ll help.”
“Knock it off, guys.” Manny said. “You’re making my head hurt. I’m taking a break.” Manny jumped over the back seat and into the third row. I heard the window crack, and Mac and I both knew he was smoking up.
“How come he never offers us any?” Mac asked.
“Because we’re squares,” I said. “Well you’re a square – I would probably embarrass myself on that stuff.”
“Yeah, you definitely would.” Mac laughed.
Mac weaved the SUV in and out of side roads. I would have taken the 405 and sat in traffic for two hours, but Mac seemed to know a shortcut. The roads were changing quickly as we moved from the West Side to the Valley. The houses were mostly beaten-up apartment complexes built in the 70s coated with stucco and slate roofs. The landscape was virtually nonexistent, as everything was brown and dead. The billboards went from English to almost exclusively Spanish in a matter of a few blocks. I had never learned Spanish, but Manny was fluent.
The closer we got to the station, the more twisted my nerves bec
ame. Mac placed his hand reassuringly on my leg. “It’s gonna be fine.”
“I know,” I said quickly.
“Have you thought about how you’re going to approach them?” he asked.
“No. All I can think about is payback for last night.”
“How you gonna do it?” Mac asked.
“The edit,” I answered. In my experience, if a contestant crossed me during a shoot, they would live to regret it. I’d done some of my best work making people look like fools. I could take the words “I hate” from one interview and combine them with “Justin” from another interview and voila – I had myself a villain. I could take the statement, “I would never have sex with a stranger” and edit out the never to create “I would have sex with a stranger.” Just that easily I could create a slut. If you’ve ever wondered why contestants aren’t on camera for the majority of their sound bites – that’s why. It was called a Franken-bite, and it was one of the most useful tricks in our trade.
Another tool in my arsenal was the ability to convince my participants to make fools of themselves. I had worked on a dating show a few years back, and the female contestant was a major prima donna. She would hold up production for hours because she was doing her hair or couldn’t figure out what to wear. I decided that I needed to teach her a lesson, and luckily I had an easy solution. The man on the show she was paired with was not interested in her, but she really liked him. I told her that the guy had a huge crush on her but was too shy to act on it. I said that his fantasy was a woman wearing a Wonder Woman costume. I think it goes without saying that when I handed her the costume, she threw it on and promptly humiliated herself. The beauty of it all was that she didn’t just embarrass herself in front of the guy; she embarrassed herself in front of all of America. I considered that to be one of my finest television moments. I was already thinking of creative ways to humiliate Detectives Reid and Flanagan when it came time to edit.
We pulled into the police station and parked our SUV in the lot. The station was mostly gray and metal with some windows in the front that were tinted so you couldn’t see inside. There were several no-smoking signs in front and a bunch of people standing around smoking in front of them.
“Why don’t you guys grab the equipment and I’ll head inside,” I said.
“Good luck,” Mac said cheerfully.