The AV Guy

Chapter One-1

Chapter One

“Mr. Blake wants to talk to you.”

He was just a guy sitting in a car parked in front of my apartment house when I got home. I hadn’t even been paying any attention to him until he spoke.

I did a double take, thinking hard. There was no question in my mind that he was talking to me, and I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know who Mr. Blake was. I owed the man a lot of money.

This encounter didn’t have the feel of something that could turn into a one way trip though. There was no muscle sitting beside this guy. If he was packing a gun, he wasn’t showing it to me. He was rehearsing that dead eyed, tough guy role. They all cultivate it, but he hadn’t perfected it yet. He was only about my age and size, which was hardly intimidating. He was just an errand boy, the kind of guy who would earn his keep by delivering packages, people, or messages. He would be well paid to see very little and remember nothing that he shouldn’t remember.

I didn’t know what the penalty for delinquent payment was, but it probably didn’t include a trip to small claims court. On the other hand, I wasn’t that late. We should be at the friendly reminder stage of collection, far short of having Mr. Blake blow cigar smoke into my bleeding face.

“Uh, sure.” I held up my camera and forced myself to grin. “Just let me stash this in my apartment and I’ll be right down.”

I was already mentally rehearsing a getaway. I could dash past the mailboxes and down the hall to the laundry room, out the back and over the fence. It would be an insanely stupid thing to do, but blind instinct argued otherwise.

Abandoning the apartment wouldn’t have cost me much. I was about to be evicted anyway. It was a fourth floor efficiency that I jokingly called “the penthouse”. A real penthouse would have had an elevator though, and more of a view. I had moved out of Mom’s house after she died, because I couldn’t keep up with the mortgage any more.

Dad hadn’t offered to take me in. He and Mom had been divorced for years. I had spent my weekends with him, back in the days when visitation rights mattered to us. He had listened to all of those enthusiastic ramblings about my film making ambitions with a sort of weary patience, hoping that I would grow up some day and get a real job, like plumbing, which was his line of work. He thought that movie making stardom was for folks who had been born into the life, like the Barrymore’s or Sheens. It wouldn’t have done any good for me to explain to him that I wasn’t doing it in the expectation of commercial success. I was doing it for the love of the art.

Anyway, it has always been traditional for starving artists to live in attics.

The kid in the car wasn’t buying any of my hustle though, at least, not enough to let me get out of his sight.

“Take your camera along,” he said casually. “Mr. Blake might be interested in seeing it.”

I glanced down at the camera. Collateral, I thought. Maybe he would take it and let me buy a little more time. Still, this one was my favorite. If it came down to getting a broken leg or losing this camera, I would have to think it over for awhile.

He leaned over the seat and popped the passenger door open for me. “You ain’t in any trouble, dude.” His voice was reassuring. “You might even want to hear what he has to say.”

When the gate rolled open, the errand boy drove up the long private drive to the main house. Sloan was waiting out front to pat me down and escort me around to the back of the house.

“I’ll need the camera,” he said.

When I hesitated he said, “I’ll just hold it for you until you leave. Mr. Blake is a bit camera shy.” He grinned at the protective way I was holding it.

“I won’t smudge the lens.”

He didn’t brace me with a hand on my arm or anything like that. He just walked beside me. He didn’t say anything else to me either.

I had seen him around town a few times, and knew him by his reputation. He was one of those lean, weathered guys you see a lot of out in flyover country. It would be easy to dismiss him as nothing more than dumb muscle, unless you noticed his reptile gaze. Everyone else that I knew had to cop an attitude to keep the predators at bay. In his case, the predators generally recognized him as one of their own, and they gave him a wide berth. He never raised his voice, or said much, but when he did say something, people always listened to him.

Blake was sitting in a chaise lounge beside the pool with a blonde standing behind him and massaging his shoulders. She was a buff bit of tawny flesh that had been stuffed into a string bikini. It was yellow with white polka dots, like the one in the old song.

When he saw us coming, Blake waved her away. “It’s business, Bunny,” he said.

She pouted prettily and went to sit at the far end of the pool. She passed me without so much as a glance. Maybe Blake was the jealous type, and she was being careful not to rile him, but it was more likely the usual reason. Girls like her never bother to look at guys like me.

It’s not that I’m gross or anything. I was a gangly kid who grew up into a skinny man. I started wearing glasses in middle school, and could only afford contact lenses later. I was never a jock or a party guy. If you threw in hobbies like reading and videography, you can see how I got typecast as a nerd early on.

Women generally go for the bad boys, or the guys with money or power, or the cool guys. I didn’t have any of those advantages. Blake had three out of four.

Bunny slumped in a chair and picked up a book of crossword puzzles to work on while she waited. She seemed unhappy about being sent off, as though pampering Blake was her most important mission and passion in life. I wondered what the compensation package was for such devotion.

Blake watched me watching her, but he seemed pleased by my appreciation. Maybe he was proud of himself for having a woman that other men wanted, or maybe he had been wondering if a known artistic type like me was gay, and he was relieved to find out that I wasn’t.

Not that he should have cared. A man like Blake would ignore anyone who wasn’t useful or threatening to him. I didn’t see how I could be either one of those things.

Blake leaned back in his chair and blew smoke. He liked thin little cigars. They went with his whole ensemble. There was a wide brimmed Stetson on his head. It was covering the bald spot, and no one had ever seen him without it. The jacket that was draped over the back of his chaise lounge had a suede yoke with piping around the seams and pearl buttons on the pockets and cuffs. His shirt was Western styled as well, but it was short sleeved. His string tie had been loosened so that he could open a couple of buttons to let the heat out, exposing too much black chest hair and a glint of gold chain. His boots were handmade ostrich. The hat and heels gave him height and swagger that he wouldn’t have had otherwise, but the lean and rugged persona would always elude him. He looked ridiculous, but nobody laughed at him, ever.

“So,” he said wearily, “this is the AV guy.”

The dialect spoiled the whole John Wayne image that he was trying for. It was classic New Jersey, with a hint of some Old World backwater. I don’t think that he had ever been west of Chicago. Blake wasn’t his real name. That would be something hard to pronounce, something that was familiar to officers of the law.

“Good morning, Mr. Blake,” I said.

Sloan sat down behind him. He was doing nothing, like a robot recharging his solar batteries. It was the wrong position to take if he wanted to prevent me from making a quick exit. I took that for a good sign.

“They tell me that you owe me some money,” Blake said.

“Yes, Sir.” I said. “I know I haven’t been able to pay down the principal yet, but I’m keeping up with the interest.” In fact, I was a few days late with that, but it was a forgivable sin I hoped.

“How much is it?”

Was that a rhetorical question, or was he that vague about the terms? If he really didn’t know what I owed him, maybe he didn’t know that I was falling behind in my payments either.

“The original loan was for ten thousand, Sir.”

He nodded, unimpressed by the number. I suddenly realized that ten grand was small change to Blake. He wouldn’t waste his own time collecting it. This had to be about something else.

“I need a guy who can make a movie for me. I want a good movie, with sound and color, not all fuzzy and crap. Something with real quality. If you make this movie for me, we can forget the whole loan and I’ll give you a few grand besides.”

A movie – the scene had become surreal. This thug with cowpuncher delusions wanted to be a film producer.

“You’re a smart kid,” his eyes narrowed as he studied me. “You know that nothin’ we talk about here don’t go out there.”

“I know that,” I swallowed.

He glanced to the left and right and leaned in toward me. I tried not to smile. There was just about zero chance that anyone could be close enough to hear us, but I suppose that old habits die hard.

“Okay, here’s the deal. There’s this guy. He used to be a loyal employee of mine, a real mover. Now he’s got, whatayacallit, deloosians a grandyure. He needs takin’ down a peg or two. He’s married, but he’s got some gash on the side. He keeps her in a crib out in the suburbs. He thinks nobody knows about her. What we do is – we snatch this p***y and chain her up someplace. A coupla guys turn her every way but loose, after that they get to the dirty stuff.”

Behind him, Sloan coughed.

Blake studied my face. “We let this guy know that he better play ball, or things could get worse for her.”

Now we were in bad dream territory. He was talking about extortion, kidnapping, and s****l assault, and he was doing it casually, as though no one should see anything wrong with his brilliant and perfectly reasonable plan.

“Why are you telling me about this?” I tried to keep my voice calm.

“I need you to make a film of the whole event, show this guy everything that happens, just like in the porn flicks. I wanta send that bright boy an Academy Award production of his prize p***y gettin’ it forty ways from Sunday. You don’t have to do any of the strong arm stuff yourself, unless you really want to. If that’s not your thing, you can leave it all to the experts. You just have to run the camera, give us the movie, and keep your mouth shut after.”

From the end of the pool, Bunny the blonde shouted. “Hey, Sloan. What’s a three letter word for domestic feline?” She sounded the words out slowly, mispronouncing them, putting three syllables in “feline”.

“Cat,” he stared blankly out across the pool. I put my hand over my mouth.

I was thinking hard. Saying no to a man like Blake could be hazardous to my health, and the plan he was describing was likely to be set in motion with or without me. I would be a mere observer, not a participant, no different from a war correspondent covering a battle.

All that was just so much rationalization. I knew that too.

Doing the right thing, contacting the police, or at least warning the intended prey, was no option at all. Witness protection was no place for a man who expected to have fame in his future.

Then there was the money. I had already finished “Morning”, the first film in my projected trilogy of modern urban life. I had charmed a cast and crew who were hungry enough to work for a percentage of the net. I owed them more than just the exposure, “Morning” had received an honorable mention at the film festival, but the distributor I had paid with borrowed money had gone into chapter eleven and my masterpiece wouldn’t be showing down at the Cineplex anytime soon. I was starting to fear that my masterpiece would be released direct to DVD and wind up in the discount store bargain bins next to “Martian Zombie Cult 3”.

Without a high interest loan dragging me down, and with money in my pocket, I could work some magic; maybe draw enough box office to finance my sequel. Visions of Oscars danced in my head.

Most shameful of all, this whole deal seemed like the dream gig of a lifetime. It could be the documentary to redefine cinema verite. True, it would be a film for an audience of one, and he wouldn’t be appreciating my skill. It would be my secret pride.

Perhaps the only remaining copy would vanish into legend; the “Hostage” video that everyone would claim to have seen once, when it was privately screened in an undisclosed location. Perhaps mere rumors of its existence would surround me with an air of mystery and notoriety.

Deloosians a grandyure

I dismissed that whole adolescent fantasy. Greed and cowardice were sins enough for me. I didn’t need to add pride. If I did this thing, I wouldn’t be telling anyone about it, ever.

“After this guy plays ball,” I asked. “What will happen to the girl?”

Blake turned a bit and exchanged glances with Sloan. I couldn’t read anything in either of their faces. Blake waved a hand through his smoke.

“Nothin’. She don’t matter to us one way or the other. She ain’t about to talk to the cops, and she won’t know nothin’ to tell anyway. She won’t never find out where she was, or who had her. When we’re all done, we put a blindfold on her and kick her ass out beside the road someplace. It ain’t like she’s some kinda virgin or nothin’. A gal like that has gotta know the score already.”

I thought some more. He could be lying just to get me on board, but he actually made the plan sound halfway sane, and buying into it was sure to be better than the alternatives. Anyway, my fingers were already itching to dig into my gear. I could really prove my worth here.

“You mentioned a bonus,” I said carefully. “What kind of money are we talking about?”

Blake burst out laughing. After a beat, Sloan laughed too.

“I like this kid!” said Blake. “He’s got balls! I figure about five grand ought to cover it.”

I was feeling lucky enough to test his good will. “If I’m there when it happens, I’m an accessory; I think that kind of risk ought to be worth ten.”

His merriment faded a bit, but he nodded. “Okay, ten’s okay.” He held up a cautionary finger. “But only after the job’s done.”

Either he had already been prepared to pay me that much, maybe even more, or he had no intention of paying me at all. Paranoia beckoned in the back of my mind. If the girl and I were considered future risks, we could end up sharing a shallow unmarked grave.

“Could I sleep on this?” I asked, wondering if I would be allowed to leave without some sort of blood oath commitment.

“Sure, I can understand that. You’re from the neighborhood, so I know you’re solid, but it’s a big step for a guy like you, with a clean rap sheet and all.” The way he said it, my lack of priors seemed like a handicap. It was also his subtle way of letting me know that he had run a check on me, at least a little one.

“Take your time. Think it over. Someone will call you tomorrow.”

He turned away and opened a file folder that had been resting on his lap. It wasn’t until he took a pen out of his pocket and threw me a questioning glance, as though to ask me why I was still there, that I realized I had already been dismissed.

I stood up. “I’ll just be going then.”

Without looking up, he raised a distracted hand to shoo me away. Sloan handed me my camera without saying a word.

I had to pass Bunny the blonde on my way around the end of the pool. She looked up at me over her sunglasses.

“Conflicted?” she said.

I stopped short, “What?”

She pointed to a row of empty squares on the page on her lap. “It’s a long word,” she said, frowning, “I think it starts with “A”.

I thought for a minute, looking out over the landscaped grounds instead of down at the dew of sweat that was pooling in her cleavage. I could feel Sloan’s eyes behind me, watching.

A gal like that has gotta know the score already.

“Ambivalent?” I suggested.

“That might fit.” She wrinkled her forehead, concentrating. “Could you spell that out for me?”