Magic Hour by Susan Isaacs (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📕

before…He handed it to me and said, ‘Our next movie, Easton. It just might make history.’”

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “Things were going great with him, weren’t they?”

“I finally—” He cut himself off, realizing Robby was there.

“My life was tied to his,” he said quietly. He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again he was the old Easton, aggressively cheerful. “Well, I guess I’ll have to beat the bushes, find something else.” He shook his head. “I’d hate like hell to have to move to California, but I may have to.

Be closer to the action, to people in the business.”

Oh, shit, I thought. Easton had lucked out with Sy. He’d found a patron who liked his Southampton style and who had the rare and good instinct to trust Easton, to allow him to rise to all sorts of occasions, to prove himself. But Sy couldn’t give a reference. And what the hell kind of résumé could my brother hand out in Hollywood? Failed car salesman? For years Easton hadn’t even been able to sell madras Bermudas to congenital preppies. He lacked something—conviction, balls. What would he do in Los Angeles? How would he maneuver in a city of sharks?

“Uh, where were we?” Robby wondered. He was massaging the bridge of his nose as if it were some newly discovered acupuncture point that would induce bright eyes and a clear mind. Except it didn’t work. Christ, he was wiped. I thought: Thirty years old is too young to get that tired that fast. Maybe that was why he was always trying to jump the gun, pushing for an arrest. The guy had no stamina.

He couldn’t keep it up for a long investigation.

“We were on Mikey,” I reminded him.

“Right. Mikey.”

“Sy did get…on edge when Mikey called,” Easton admitted to Robby. “But ‘on edge” for you or me might mean losing our temper, biting our nails. For

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Sy, it was just a slight tightness in his voice. You’d have to know him quite well to pick it up.”

“Did he seem afraid?” Robby asked.

“I don’t know. There was just that hint of tension. Although that in itself was a bit unusual. I mean, Sy never got anxiety. He gave it—to everybody. But every time Mikey would call, Sy would shake his head and mouth: ‘I’m out.’”

While my brother talked, I opened the script. It said:

“Night of the Matador” and “An original screenplay by Milton J. Mishkin.” I turned the page and read a little: LOW-ANGLE SHOT OF MATADOR, huge, commanding, menacing against black BG.

MATADOR

I am Roderigo Diaz de Bivar—El Cid. And I am Francisco Romero, seven hundred years later, piercing the bull with my sword.

SFX: Thunderous animal breathing. Is it the matador? Or the bull?

And I am Manolete, gored to death. And the young El Cordobes.

CAMERA RISES. BG brightens and WE SEE Matador in the center of the bullring, surrounded by PICADORS on horseback and BANDERILLEROS. He brandishes his red muleta.

I am Spain.

CAMERA MOVES IN to Matador’s muleta for ECU and as WE

HEAR flamenco music:

136 / SUSAN ISAACS

I am man.

BEGIN OPENING CREDITS against red.

I thought: They couldn’t pay me to read this shit, much less see it—which probably means it’s a true work of art.

“Did Mikey LoTriglio call Sy a lot?” Robby was asking.

“The last week or so, yes. About two or three times a day.”

Robby began playing with the fringe on the scarf that covered the table, running his fingers through it. “What were Mikey’s calls about?”

“I gather he’d been hearing rumors that the movie was having problems. Sy kept denying it, of course.”

“Do you think this Mikey made any threats?”

“I never heard his part of the conversation,” Easton said.

“But whatever his message was, Sy found it…disturbing.”

He paused. “Sy’s upper lip would get those little beads of sweat. You can’t imagine what that was like. Sy was not a man to sweat.”

Inducing perspiration is not, in the State of New York, grounds for arrest, but you couldn’t tell that from Robby’s face. Suddenly he was awake, alert. Mikey was his guy. You could see the gleam of handcuffs shining in Robby’s eyes.

“Hey, easy, Robby,” I said.

“Steve, this is a good lead,” Robby responded, ignoring Easton, as if he were another cop—or a member of the family. “Mikey’s bad.”

“Sure, but he’s no moron. Would he shoot Sy over a bad investment?”

“Come on. He’s Mafia.”

“Yeah,” I acknowledged, “but this doesn’t look like their kind of hit. They tend to be more personal, MAGIC HOUR / 137

more close-up than a couple of long-distance bullets from a

.22.”

But Sy might have had other enemies, I thought: a pissed-off poet from his old magazine; an old show-biz connection with a grudge; some South Fork local he’d insulted—a gas station attendant, an electrician, a swimming pool contract-or—some guy with a snootful of sauce and a pocketful of ammo. And what about Lindsay? Calculating, egotistical, arrogant, maybe ruthless, maybe about to be bounced in her dual role as star and concubine. Could she fire a rifle?

And, damn it: Bonnie. How much research had she done for Cowgirl?

“What about the ex-wife?” I asked Easton. “There’s some talk that Sy was developing her screenplay.”

Easton shook his head. “No. Sy gave me her script fairly soon after I started working for him, before we were in production. Asked me to find some nice things to say about it.

My guess is that when he told her no, he wanted to be able to say: ‘Oh, but the dialogue was so fresh, so honest.’”

“How was the dialogue?”

“I don’t know. Not horrible. But Sy said she was born forty-some-odd years too late, that she wrote 1942 women’s B movies.”

“Did she ever call him?” Robby asked.

“Yes. A couple of times a week, as a matter of fact. And she dropped in on him on the set, which did not amuse him.

I know; I was in the trailer with him. You know how cool Sy always was? Well, I thought he was going to have a