Kapowie! (Pinx Video Mysteries #7)

Chapter 1

ONE

The whole thing began, as things often do with us, on a Thursday night. It was mid-June, and we were sitting outside in the courtyard of our small, L-shaped apartment building in Silver Lake. The giant birds of paradise were in full flower and there was a night-blooming jasmine doing its thing nearby. It was around eight, and the setting sun had driven the temperature down under seventy. Fortunately, I was wearing a blue jean shirt over a black tee, like a jacket.

Marc and Louis were both wearing the peeling sunburns they’d gotten the previous Sunday at Pride. I didn’t go. Instead, I’d worked at Pinx Video all by myself so my staff could go. Trust me, that was not as generous as it sounds. Spending the afternoon with a couple hundred thousand gay people is an amazing experience—the first couple of times. Eventually, it becomes an exercise in getting pushed around, stepped on, gawked at, losing your friends, drinking too much beer, and getting a scorching sunburn. I’ll probably go next year.

The details on the where-are-they-now episode of Kapowie! had fallen into place and would be shooting in two days. Marc had convinced the producers to hire Louis to do craft services, mainly so we could all be there, but also… the money. They were still stashing away every penny they could get their hands on to buy a house after one had fallen through in January. Or rather, nearly fallen down and then fallen through. Louis needed two helpers—well, knowing Louis he probably didn’t, but he’d insisted on two—so now he had to come up with them.

“Absolutely not,” Leon said stridently. “I’m a dom not a sub.”

“I’m not asking you to be submissive,” Louis said. “I’m asking you to be a cater waiter for one night.”

“Honestly, I don’t see the difference. I will not submit.”

I nearly choked on the white lasagna I was eating. Which would have been a shame since it was delicious. How could Leon refuse to go? I was going to refuse to go. Well, not refuse exactly. More like politely decline. But I couldn’t do that if Leon refused. I couldn’t leave Louis completely in the lurch. Could I?

“Won’t you do it for me, Leon?” Marc asked, dramatically batting his eyelashes.

“Darling, you know I’d kill for you. I just won’t cater. Or for that matter do any other sort of menial labor.”

“In other words, you wouldn’t lift a finger for me.”

“I’m glad we understand each other,” Leon said before sipping his glass of white wine.

To Louis, Marc said, “I thought for sure he’d say yes once he found out Finn Henderson would be there.”

In case your name is Gilligan and you’ve been living on a deserted island, Finn Henderson is a big movie star—well, he was until a nasty heroin addiction and multiple arrests sidelined him. He’d been at Betty Ford most of ’92 and into ’93, and had just shot a new movie that was already getting a lot of buzz. He was on the brink of a comeback. The Kapowie! producers were thrilled when he agreed to revisit the show that had given him his start.

“I’d love to get up close and personal with Finn Henderson,” Leon said. “But trust me. ‘Would you like a Perrier?’ is not the conversation I’d like to have with him.”

Marc rolled his eyes.

“Well, at least we can count on Noah,” Louis said.

That was my opportunity to speak up and explain all the reasons I couldn’t do it. I was too busy with Pinx—which was not true. I had enough employees, and as nearly as I could tell the shoot wasn’t taking place during business hours. My health was not good—except it was. I was feeling better than I’d felt in a long time. And, and… But those were the only two excuses I could come up with. Still, I should at least try to get out of it.

“The thing is?—”

“I was wondering,” Louis said to me. “Can you help me find someone? To replace our useless friend over here.”

“What? Me? Couldn’t you call a catering company? And I don’t know that Leon is useless. I mean, not completely.”

“Thank you. Such glowing praise.”

“You have employees,” Louis said. “Could we ask one of them?”

This was not going well. I really should hold my ground and say no. Particularly since now it wouldn’t just be me helping them out, we’d be involving one of my employees. With a deeply frustrated sigh, I said, “Well, Mikey’s a bad idea. He’ll try to run everything. And Carl and Denny only work as a team.”

“What about the new guys?” Marc asked.

“Ryan is absolutely out of the question,” I said, immediately. “The porno thing.”

“Oh, yeah,” Louis said. “There’s that.”

I liked Ryan. A lot. He was good to have around the store. He just liked the porn section a little too much, and since one of Marc’s castmates was Ricky Bellows, well... And in case you don’t remember him , he’s the one whose ex-girlfriend sold their sex tape to Verve Video and everyone who saw it was very impressed by Ricky. Of course, he threatened to sue but eventually dropped it. That was probably a ruse to get even more publicity. Long story short, the gym he owns in Reseda is now a chain.

The sex tape angle made it a bad idea to let Ryan anywhere near him. He might ask for an autograph with black marker—on his butt.

“What about Eldridge?” Louis suggested.

“Yeah, he’ll do it,” Marc said. “He has such a crush on you.”

“Oh, he does not. And how would you know?”

“Duh, we rent videos from you. We’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

Everyone at the table raised an eyebrow at me. Nightmare. Complete nightmare. Now I was going to spend eight hours doing something I didn’t want to do with someone I didn’t want to spend time with. Well, I didn’t not want to spend time with him. And I did spend time with him at the store. Well, some. Admittedly, I spent a lot of time in my office. Anyway, the whole thing was—complicated.

“He is awfully cute,” Louis said.

“Stop trying to push us together,” I said. “He’s too young for me. Okay?”

“Nine years,” Marc said. “It’s the perfect age gap. Louis is ten years older than I am.”

That didn’t leave me a lot of room to complain without being rude. Anyway, I’d always been interested in guys who were older than I am. And then there was the fact that Eldridge worked for me, which would be awkward if it didn’t work out. Which it wouldn’t because, well, I’m me.

Since Jeffers died, I’d been interested in three guys, two of whom are now dead. And the third is, well, a mess. And not in a good way. All of which left me in the precarious position of not wanting to date people I actually liked.

“I’m not going to date him. But I will ask if he’d like to pick up a little extra money. If I have to.”

“You have to,” Louis said.

Eldridge was a student at UCLA, so it was likely he could use some extra cash. And I couldn’t say no to helping out a college kid, could I? Well, I did want to say no to the whole thing, but clearly that wasn’t happening.

“You said Saturday. What time?—”

Leon interrupted by asking, “Is Kathleen going to be there?” He gave the former child star-turned-televangelist’s name the annoying spin it deserved.

“Everyone’s going to be there except Wes Lange,” Marc said. “Apparently, no one can find him.”

“You know, I always thought he was much sexier than Finn Henderson,” Louis said. “All that blond hair.”

“Most people did,” Marc said. “In person. Something about him didn’t translate on camera.”

“Anyway, I was asking about the time to?—”

“Getting back to Kathleen ,” Leon said. “You are going to slip a laxative into her food, aren’t you? The idea of her shitting her panties is just too delicious.”

Kathleen True had been the sexpot on Kapowie! , always dressing in the workout gear of the late seventies, foreshadowing the fitness craze of the eighties. During the show she was eighteen and nineteen, and, to the horror of the network executives, was ‘connected’ to several older movie stars. But mostly she was Finn Henderson’s girlfriend.

After the show ended they broke up and she’d gone on to marry Winthrop True, the televangelist with the church next to the 5 freeway down in Orange County. She had a regular segment on her husband’s show, True Faith , and was prone to crying jags in which she asked God to smite the gays. Or so I’ve heard. It’s the last thing in the world I’d actually watch.

“Time? What time is all this happening?”

“I always find it interesting that no matter how many times she asks we never get smote,” Leon said.

Louis said, “I don’t think she’d see it that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Uh, AIDS?!”

“Yeah, but that’s…” Leon got an angry look on his face. “So, when an eight-year-old gets cancer, that’s God smiting a child?”

“No, that’s God loving your child so much he wanted him in heaven.”

“So it never occurs to anyone that maybe God wants some gays to liven things up? I mean, the heaven people like Kathleen are planning sounds dreadfully dull. I can’t image a God who doesn’t love a fabulous party.”

As forcefully as possible, I said, “I’ve been trying to ask?—”

“What darling?” Leon said. “Spit it out.”

“What time is all this happening?!” I took a breath, then calmly added, “I’ll need to tell Eldridge.”

“We need to gather at the south gate of Bennett Day Studios in Culver City at ten forty-five,” Louis said. “The producers are being very weird about it. They keep strongly repeating the instructions.”

“Ten-forty-five Saturday morning, got it.”

“No, no, no. Ten-forty-five Saturday night .”

“Night? Wait, you mean we’re working all night? Why are we doing that?”

Like I said, this was a nightmare. One with sequels.

“Well obviously it’s cheaper,” Marc said. “I have no idea how small the budget is, but I’m sure it’s minuscule. Even if it weren’t, the producers are notoriously cheap. I’m only getting scale plus ten.”

“So it’s the same producers?”

“Donald and Wendy Barclay. I don’t think they ever worked again after Kapowie! I’ve had three phone calls with them and every time they mention how great it is to be back in the biz. Well, Donald says that; Wendy doesn’t seem as excited.”

“So how much am I getting?”

“Fifteen an hour.”

That wasn’t horrible. And Eldridge would be happy. It was more than the nine dollars an hour I was paying him, and that was more than double minimum wage.

Lewis brought out dessert. A vanilla walnut parfait that was amazingly good. When he sat back down again, he asked, “Have you been following the O.J. thing?”

“A little,” I admitted.

“A little?” Leon said. “I’m glued to it!”

Then Marc said, “Apparently his ex-wife’s therapist is in all sorts of trouble for talking about things she said in therapy. Things about O.J. beating her and threatening her.”

“They found a bloody glove at his house,” Louis said, simply.

“Do you think they’re going to arrest him?” Marc asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

The guys talked a bit more about the things they’d heard on TV. Mostly, I was just happy we didn’t personally know O.J. There was no need for us to do anything more than talk about his case over dessert.

* * *

The next day, I went into the store well after lunch. I knew Mikey could handle things. It seemed like a good idea to sleep late since I’d be staying up all night the very next day. In fact, I was tempted to spend the entire day in bed, but I did have to get a few things done at work.

Walking in, the first thing Mikey said to me was, “I’ve had six calls about Wayne’s World 2 .”

This was a bone of contention. I’d ordered seven copies, but Mikey had insisted we needed at least ten. Sequels didn’t always rent as well as the original, and if they didn’t rent to the point of breaking even we’d end up with three or four extra copies floating around the store for years. I hated that.

I was about to thank him for the info, when the screeching sound of the modem made me jump. It was not my favorite noise. The damn thing sat on the counter next to the computer that recorded all our sales. The modem, which connected us to Prodigy, was touchy. It frequently stopped working and had to be restarted. It seemed that’s what was going on just then.

Mikey was excited about creating an interweb page for us, though honestly, I wasn’t sure why. I mean, if you wanted to rent a video you had to come to the store. If you wanted to ask a question, you could call us and talk to an actual living person. I couldn’t quite see the point of an interweb page, other than to keep Mikey busy. Which did have its charms. And maybe he was right, maybe it was a good idea. The jury was still out on that one.

“Thanks for the info,” I said, and went to hide in my office. On my desk I found two boxes of videos I had ordered. I opened them and checked to make sure I’d actually gotten what I ordered. I didn’t always.

Five copies of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective —Mikey thought I should have gotten ten of that one too, but it looked terrible. Three copies of The Pelican Brief , two copies of The Air Up There , two copies of The Piano , one copy of The Double Life of Veronique , and six copies of Dr. Doolittle . Honestly, I wasn’t excited about any of them.

I was halfway through putting the new videos into our system when Mikey popped in. “You have to come see this.”

And then he was gone. I walked out to the front, sure he was going to explain something about the World Wide Web that I really didn’t need to know. I already knew more about it than I wanted to. But when I got out to the counter, the TV above it had been tuned to KTLA, which was the only TV channel we got clearly. On the screen was a shot from a helicopter of a freeway. It seemed that one white vehicle was being followed by an entire freeway full of cars.

“Randy called to tell me. Can you believe it?”

“What is it?”

“A white Bronco. O.J. Simpson is inside.”

“Okay.”

I can’t say that made any sense.

“He was supposed to turn himself in this morning, but he didn’t. The police are going to arrest him.”

“Is that a chase? I mean, it’s kind of slow.”

“He’s in the Bronco with a friend. His friend is on the phone with the police. They’re negotiating.”

“They’re what?”

“Negotiating.”

“Um… They think he killed two people. They don’t normally negotiate with suspected double murderers.”

“He’s O.J. They’re not going to shoot him in the middle of the 5 freeway. There’d be another riot.”

Okay, that did make sense.

The door opened and Eldridge Hall walked in to begin his shift. He was twenty years old, tall and angular, with dark brown hair and eyes. He almost always wore a black leather jacket and a collection of political pins. The smile on his face always made me happy to see him.

Like Marc and Lewis, he’d had a sunburn most of the week. Aside from a few flakes at the top of his forehead, the only remaining evidence was that his eyes were surrounded by white skin. He’d been wearing sunglasses most of that day and now looked a bit like an inverted raccoon.

“What’s going on?” he asked, meaning the television we were staring at.

We repeated what the reporters had been saying.

“Wow, that’s major.”

Mikey was too enrapt to respond. This was my chance. I leaned in toward Eldridge and quietly said, “Could I talk to you in my office?”

I could have just asked him about the craft table in front of Mikey, but I didn’t want Mikey to wonder why he wasn’t being asked. Especially since I’d convinced myself Eldridge was probably going to say no. If I asked in front of Mikey and he said no, well, Mikey could yes and then… I didn’t even want to think about that.

When we got back to my office I closed the door, which left me standing very close to Eldridge. I cleared my throat and stepped behind my desk. I sat down and started playing with a pen.

“So, um, I have a question I want to ask you… You probably won’t want to, so I want you to know it’s okay to say?—”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me?”

“The answer’s yes.”

“I haven’t asked the question.”

“You kind of did.”

“No, I kind of did not.”

“You’re asking me out, right?” There was uncertainty in his voice as he began to understand this might not be about what he thought it was about.

“Oh, um, actually, my friend Marc was on the show Kapowie! , which you might know already, and, anyway… They’re shooting a reunion show on Saturday night. Like, overnight.”

“Okay,” he said, still looking confused because it did still sound like I was asking him on a kind of weird date, even though I wasn’t.

“Anyway, Louis, who’s Marc’s partner—I know you know that, sorry—Louis is catering the craft table, which I’m helping him with, and we need someone else. To help. It’s fifteen dollars an hour. It begins at eleven Saturday night and it lasts until seven Sunday morning. And I thought… you know, you could probably use the extra money. But now that I’m asking, I’m sure you have better?—”

“Oh, um, yeah. I could.” He looked crushed for a moment then rallied. “Saturday? Sure. I can do that.”

“Great. Louis wants to meet in front of the store at ten.”

“No problem.”

I got up and started around my desk to open the door for him, but he said, “I can open the door.”

“Of course, you can.”

He walked out of the office and shut the door behind him. I felt just awful. And at the same time a bit elated. He’d said yes. He said he’d go out with me. Not that it could happen. Bad idea. Terrible idea. I shouldn’t even think about it.

But I wasn’t sure how to think about anything else.