Last Call

"If it does, invest every pe

Booker took a long drag, exhaling as he spoke. "Amber's expensive. Twenty grand. But she'll bend over backward – literally – if I ask her to. Rosa gets about half that."

Theo glanced toward the happy guy in the middle. "What about him?"

"Five hundred bucks. And a free blood test."

The director rose from his chair and shouted "Cut!"

Booker said, "You want to meet the girls?"

They were gorgeous, fit, and probably a couple of soap opera rejects. They climbed off the pool table, completely comfortable in their nakedness, and wiped each other clean. It took more than one towel.

Theo said, "Not this time."

Booker removed his cigarette and cupped his other hand like a megaphone. "All right – girls and Tony. The nurse is here. I need two vials from each of you."

They groaned, but not very much. AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases were the porn industry's biggest threat, and nobody in their right mind worked for a filmmaker who didn't do blood tests.

Theo knew that much about the business of sex, and he also knew how surprisingly tight-knit the porn industry was because of it. Someone like Mel Booker knew everyone.

"So, what brings you here?" said Booker.

"A guy named Lance Gilford."

Booker walked to the coffee machine and poured half a cup, black. Theo declined.

"What about him?" said Booker.

"You know him?"

"Not well, but I know of him. Big-time investor. Mostly edgy stuff."

"How do you mean 'edgy'?"

"He joint-ventures with Reality Bitches, companies like that. It's the kind of stuff I just don't do. Mostly amateur photography. Guys on videotape beating the shit out of their girlfriends. Five punks from a Hialeah gang raping a teenage girl. It's all very low budget but high profit.You put the label 'real' on anything with sex and violence, you get pervs paying through the nose."

Theo reconsidered on the coffee and took a cup. "We talking about the same Lance Gilford? The one I'm after owns a studio called Memories in the Gables."

"Same guy" said Booker. "All his porn is done through off-shore banks and some Costa Rican companies. The studio is a total front."

"Money laundering?"

"It's more complicated than that. He married a minister's daughter, so he would shoot a few weddings and bar mitzvahs to convince his family and friends he's legit."

"A man with two lives," said Theo.

"Yeah," said Booker, chuckling. "But it finally caught up with him. His wife moved out and took off for Europe about six weeks ago. Hiding from the media before the scandal hits, I'm sure. This is go

"Business?" said Theo, giving the word careful thought. "Yeah. You could say that. Him and me got unfinished business."

LANCE GILFORD CANCELED HIS two o'clock appointment. He'd played it pretty cool with Swyteck, but he still had plenty to think about. Pretending to care about some bridezilla's $300,000 wedding from hell was the last thing he felt like doing. He went to his computer and pulled up the Portia Knight rape film.

How could he have missed his own image in the mirror?

Perhaps there was some validity to the notion that he had been so careful to protect his friends that he'd failed to protect himself. He'd been so concerned, in fact, that he even paid off the frat boys to destroy the 1972 composite in the chapter room, just in case. The real explanation for his oversight, however, was far less heroic. He'd made the mistake of editing the film at home. The old sixteen-millimeter footage wasn't digital technology, of course, so it took fairly sophisticated equipment to do the equivalent of digital frame-by-frame analysis. His equipment here in the studio rivaled anything the FBI used. The same could not be said about his two-year-old stuff at home.

"Idiot!" he said through clenched teeth.

There it was, his mug and the Greek letters of his old Pi Alpha Delta jersey right on-screen – his momentary reflection in the mirror, visible only with the kind of frame-by-frame advancement that he could never have accomplished at home.

With an angry click of the mouse, Gilford exited the computer program. The LCD screen went blue and turquoise with Caribbean Sea wallpaper, far too calming and relaxed for his present mood.

He drew a deep breath and let it out. No doubt about it: He had trouble on his hands. He hadn't completely lied to Swyteck. Although it wasn't true that his wife had taken ill, the part about dragging out the old film for badly needed cash was no lie. In hindsight, he should have edited out the faces of the drunk hecklers, even if they weren't Pi Alpha Delta fraternity brothers. But the angry expressions of those young men added a certain realism to the overall effect from an artist's point of view – and he was an artist, no matter what people thought about his films. In terms of CYA strategy, however, it was a big mistake.

Gilford picked up the telephone. He dreaded making this call, but he forced himself to punch out the numbers. He reached a secretary and gave his name. She had no idea who he was and asked him to hold. Two minutes later, the voice of an old friend was on the line.

"What is it this time, Lance?"

It was the firm and confident voice of a man of power and position, but it was also the distinctly agitated tone of an old friend who was still ticked off about the release of the Portia Knight rape film.

Gilford cleared his throat to speak. "We have a problem," he said. "Knight and his lawyer got the movie."

"So do a hundred thousand Internet perverts around the globe."

"But Jack Swyteck came to see me today. He knows I filmed it."

"Did you tell him?"

"No. Not at first. But he had… proof."

"So you admitted it was yours?"

"Well, you know, it was kind of-"

"Stop blubbering! Just tell me how he knows it's your film."

Gilford started to explain, but he was suddenly afraid. He didn't want to come across as stupid and careless. "I think the FBI helped them."

"That's great, Lance. Just great. What the hell were you thinking when you put that thing out on the market?"

"I lost my ass on that gambling website. I'm sorry, but some of the folks I borrow money from don't fully grasp the legal niceties of a nonrecourse loan. So the movie is out there. Knight and his lawyer know I was the cameraman, and even worse, they've tied it to the PAD house in Miami."

There was stone silence on the line.

Gilford said, "You still there?"

"My face is in that movie," he said in a slow, deep voice.

"I understand that."

"I was angry that you left: me in there, but I didn't freak. So long as the film wasn't linked to Miami, I figured there was little to no chance that anyone would recognize me thirty-something years after the fact."

"That was my thinking, too."

"But you thought wrong. So now I'm angry. Really angry."

Few things were more chilling than the flat, even voice of someone who was really angry. The room suddenly felt hotter. Gilford was starting to sweat. "I – I don't know how many ways to apologize. But we have to stay together on this, right? We need to stay focused. And the question is, Now what?"

"I'll deal with it."

"How?"

"My way," he said, and the line clicked in Gilford's ear.