P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 02 - Exile on Slain Street Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Establishing Shot

  Chapter Two: Pre-Production

  Chapter Three: Casting

  Chapter Four: Eau De Psycho

  Chapter Five: Hair and Makeup

  Chapter Six: Supporting Actresses

  Chapter Seven: The Premiere

  Chapter Eight: Bottoms Up

  Chapter Nine: Attack of the Stripper Pole

  Chapter Ten: Lockets Galore

  Chapter Eleven: Mike Watt, Meet Dating Show

  Chapter Twelve: Commercial Break

  Chapter Thirteen: First Date

  Chapter Fourteen: Stretch Hummer on the Loose

  Chapter Fifteen: Toasted Centerfolds

  Chapter Sixteen: Purple Prose

  Chapter Seventeen: Spitting and Quitting

  Chapter Eighteen: Obligations to Fulfill

  Chapter Nineteen: Bull by the Horns

  Chapter Twenty: Slipped Away

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Ox and the Ditch

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Stiletto Army

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Car Wash

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Ex-Boyfriend for Hire

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Interrogation

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Forest Royalty

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Slap Happy

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Parents’ Day

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Fun and Games

  Chapter Thirty: No More Wishes

  Chapter Thirty-One: Lead Singers Live Forever

  Chapter Thirty-Two: The Last Elimination

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Got You Good

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Rewriting the Script

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Alternate Ending

  Free Preview of Heavy Mental

  Exile on Slain Street: A Clancy Parker Mystery

  Copyright © 2013 by P.J. Morse. All rights reserved.

  First Kindle Edition: 2013

  Proofreading: Red Adept

  Cover and Formatting: Streetlight Graphics

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One:

  Establishing Shot

  Topaz was bitching about getting her weave wet when I first noticed Kevin’s body floating in the pool.

  “I paid good money for this, and I ain’t bustin’ it,” she said, pointing to the roots of her honey-streaked, flowing, fabricated locks. “It is not worth winning a challenge.”

  I’d had it with all these women and their hour-long beauty routines that kept me waiting to use the bathroom. “Shut up! I don’t care about your weave!” I yelled.

  “Repeat that,” Topaz dared me.

  I was tempted to do so, but I refrained. I could show Topaz what having a weave torn out felt like another time. Instead, I pointed out what Topaz and everyone else missed. “There is a body in the pool!”

  Even though it seemed we had a drowning on our hands, my fellow reality-show contestants looked from one to the other. Like Topaz, they didn’t want to get wet, not even if it were a matter of life or death. If the body in the pool had belonged to Patrick Price, the rock star we were all supposedly fighting for, every one of those women would have been making like Pamela Anderson in Baywatch.

  I ran for the pool while the other women stood to the side in their miniskirts and hot pants cut up to their choo-chas.

  “They didn’t say the challenge started yet! It starts at ten, and it’s only nine forty-five! Not all the crew is here!” Lorelai shouted. “This might be part of the challenge! It might be a dummy!”

  Lorelai was wrong. I knew the challenge that day had nothing to do with the pool. Earlier that morning, Kevin, who was the executive producer of Atomic Love 2, had tipped me off that the cast members would be forced to drink shots of Pepto-Bismol mixed with orange juice and hot cocoa blended with tomato soup. By drinking these noxious beverages, the contestants would prove their everlasting love to the aging rocker who was the star of the show.

  Whoever had the strongest stomach and didn’t throw up earned a big date and an escape from a hothouse full of jealous, drunk women. All of the contestants were craving a brief moment of freedom, possibly even more than the chance to spend time with a relatively famous musician.

  That morning, Kevin said it was okay for me to take one sip of a mystery beverage and eliminate myself from the challenge as soon as I felt the need to gag. I’d already been on a date with the rock star, and he liked me. Besides, since the producers and I had a special arrangement, I knew I wasn’t going to be eliminated for a while.

  When Kevin vowed that I would be safe from vomiting on national television, he was wearing a perfectly tailored white shirt with narrow, vertical purple stripes. The reality-show trade had been good to him. He was a minor god, pulling strings and adjusting situations to bring out the worst in people, as that was the best for the camera.

  But somehow he’d fallen off his pedestal and landed face-down in the pool, with his waterlogged skin showing pink through the white part of his shirt. The morning was already hot, so his body must have been steeping like a tea bag.

  I pulled off my mic pack, threw it into the grass, and dove into the pool. As soon as I entered the water, my cowboy boots dragged me down to the bottom of the pool instead of toward the body. My bustier and jeans didn’t help. I surfaced for a moment, flailing and gasping for air, the body getting closer and the chattering from the contestants getting louder.

  “Oh, God! This is a challenge! I just know it!” Lorelai yelled. “I’m getting in! I would drown for you, Patrick!” I heard some splashing behind me.

  I was terrified at the prospect of a horde of strippers, Playmates and wannabes following Lorelai and impeding my progress, so I tried to swim faster. I went under one more time and surfaced near the body. I hooked my arm under Kevin’s armpit and tried to push both of us toward dry land.

  Kevin and I finally reached the edge. When I grabbed the concrete, I opened my eyes again, and the chlorine stung. Then again, they needed a lot of chlorine in that pool given where some of my fellow contestants had been. I fumbled toward the body and tried to keep Kevin’s head above water. I had hoped he might stir eventually, but he didn’t.

  Topaz surprised me, putting in some physical effort for what I figured was the first time in her life. She grabbed the back of Kevin’s shirt to pull him out. To avoid a tumble into the water, she wedged one of her black stiletto heels against the lip of the pool for leverage. Suddenly, she slipped and fell on her butt, hard, but she got up again and kept pulling. “C’mon, big boy. Let’s go,” she grumbled at Kevin.

  Some of the other girls fluttered around. As Topaz pulled Kevin, I pushed him until we got his butt over the edge.

  I screamed his name over and over, if only for the benefit of the women flocking by the pool, so they could realize this wasn’t just television. The members of the camera crew finally set down their gear and rushed to the side of the pool.

  “It’s real! It’s real!” I yelled while scrambling out of the water. I kept feeling this greasy stuff under my fingers, probably the same stuff that caused Topaz to slip, but I clung to the tiles and hoisted myself out.


  “Holy shit! Kevin! Dammit! Wake up!” Topaz hovered over him and gave his chubby cheek several stinging slaps. “This better not be a joke!” Her fingers bounced off like his face was a trampoline.

  Bumping against me, Lorelai shoved Topaz aside and frantically pushed up and down on Kevin’s chest. Topaz pushed her back, but Lorelai slapped Topaz away. Before a catfight broke out, I screamed, “Lorelai! Stop! You’re going to break his sternum!”

  Lorelai grew quiet and just flopped back on her behind, right at my feet, her shiny red hot pants soaking in the pool water that had splashed up. She started sobbing. Out of all the women there, her emotions about Kevin seemed the most genuine. I knew from her audition tape that Kevin was the man behind her big Hollywood break.

  Patrick, the rock star, finally emerged from the pool cabana, sans shirt. He must have been sleeping. After the first night, with a few notable exceptions, he avoided being torn into pieces by the contestants by going to sleep early and claiming to need regular naps. No wonder the production crew had been force-feeding him Major Rager, a bright orange, near-combustible energy drink that was sponsoring the show.

  “What the hell?” he asked, lifting up his aviator sunglasses and rubbing his eyes. All of the contestants loved his sexy-sleepy look. “We’re not doing the pool today. It’s drink day.” Once he noticed Kevin, he flinched. “What happened?” he asked to no one in particular.

  “I think he’s dead,” I told him.

  Patrick walked back into the cabana and returned with a stack of white towels and a few cans of Major Rager. “We’ll wait for the ambulance,” he said, stroking my wet hair. He then wrapped me in a towel and handed me one of the energy drinks. I had a gulp, and the caffeine hit me right away.

  While Patrick moved among the contestants, trying to comfort them, I stood quietly. Kevin had hired me to protect Patrick from a stalker who may have been on the set of Atomic Love 2. I assumed that Kevin, my boss and the man behind the reality-show curtain, was safe. I was wrong.

  Chapter Two:

  Pre-Production

  Three weeks before, Kevin Bybee was very much alive and giving me the assignment that would put me on Atomic Love 2 in the first place. Originally, Kevin hired me to do background checks on all the finalists for the dating show in which various women competed for the love of Patrick Price, former guitarist for grunge band the Nuclear Kings and current reality-television mainstay.

  He said he chose me because I was the only detective he could find who understood the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. When I wasn’t working as a detective, I was the lead guitarist for the Marquee Idols. We weren’t huge, but we had just signed to a Canadian indie label, Comet Records.

  When Kevin first handed me the files and applications, he told me, “You’ll get what’s really important. Don’t worry about the drunks or the disorderlies. We are mostly worried about violence, or anyone who might hurt Patrick.”

  After I spent a week with the files, he called a meeting with me so we could talk about the results. The show was to be shot at a mansion up in Marin County because Patrick Price was, according to Kevin, “all about authenticity” and LA just wasn’t authentic. As if reality television were authentic. I assumed Patrick just realized, like so many people, that San Francisco offered better food and drugs.

  I met Kevin at a satellite office his production company had opened up in North Beach, a small suite that had a view of City Lights Bookstore. We had just sat down at the office’s mahogany table when Kevin said, “Well, Clancy, this one’s pretty simple. Just tell us which one you think is the stalker, and I’ll get rid of her.”

  “According to my,” I gulped, “research, all of them seem to have stalker problems.”

  “All of them?” Kevin asked. He leaned back in one of those expensive mesh-backed chairs that were so big during the dot-com boom. Since he was a heavy guy with a round belly, the chair squeaked in protest. To brace himself, he put his feet up on the conference table. His black Prada shoes had just been shined.

  “You wanted groupie types, I assumed. You got ‘em. I’m just doing my job.” I set down my folder and started flipping through the papers inside. These women had more than stalker problems. Most people who appeared on reality television had some sort of fame addiction, but the women who wanted to be on Atomic Love 2 were extraordinary. One of them had been arrested for assault with a high-heeled shoe. Another had to be escorted from a hotel where Marilyn Manson was staying because he discovered her hiding in his closet.

  Just by researching the finalists for this show, I felt like I was taking Psych 101 at UC Santa Cruz all over again. And these were the candidates that the network’s shrinks actually allowed. Apparently I was looking at the cream of the crop, the sanest of the sane.

  Kevin took his feet off the table, leaned forward, and stared at me, almost like a standoff. “What?” I finally asked.

  “We have to keep some of these girls,” he explained. “Can we just get rid of one or two?”

  I closed the folder and held it up to make perfectly clear just how thick it was. “There’s an assault charge. With a high-heeled shoe. And Marilyn Manson wanted one of them arrested. Usually people are scared of Marilyn Manson, not the other way around. And, besides, this isn’t television, where I can look at paper records and say, ‘Bingo! That one’s nuts!’ Most of these women seem nuts. My recommendation is simple. Get rid of these women, call in alternates, and bring their files to me.”

  “There are no alternates.” Kevin sighed. “The casting pool is drying up.” Then his dark eyes widened and sparkled with an idea. “What if we had you there? On the set?”

  “I’m not a bodyguard by trade, but sure. Can I carry a gun?”

  “That’s not what I had in mind,” he replied. Then he paused. “Can I have you undercover?”

  I did not like the sound of that. Even though I had played guitar onstage to packed clubs, I most definitely was not an actress.

  While I was mulling it over, Kevin didn’t take his eyes off my face. He seemed like the type who could be persuasive when he wanted something. “Hear me out,” he said. “We are on the hook for the ratings, more than ever. The network thinks the dating shows are cooling off, and we have to make the most of it. Otherwise, they won’t pick up our next show.”

  “Do ratings trump personal safety?” I asked.

  Kevin had an answer to that. “The charges you’re talking about are minor, and we need the catfights. We seriously don’t want this to turn into Granny’s Got a Boyfriend.” He rolled his eyes. “Lame!”

  “Actually, Granny’s Got a Boyfriend sounds slightly amusing,” I replied. “Don’t you just edit everything together to get what you want anyway? Like pro wrestling?”

  Kevin’s face darkened. He didn’t like that I suggested reality television wasn’t “real.” “Look, we don’t need to have a debate over entertainment quality here. We just bring out what’s already there. If you have boring people on your show, the show will be boring. People know fake. Some of these people know what they are doing and where they want to take their stories, and that’s fine with me. But it’s not total fiction, okay?”

  “There are millions of people who want to be on TV out there,” I said. “And I’m sure most of them don’t have police records.”

  Kevin shook his head. “We need big personalities for a show like this.”

  Pulling back his sports coat, Kevin touched a cigar that he had in his pocket, like he really couldn’t wait to get this meeting done and get started on it. With his thick, black hair and impressive bulk, I could imagine him relaxing on the patio of Enrico’s in North Beach, boldly breaking San Francisco’s strict no-smoking rules. “If we have a bodyguard there, the girls won’t be natural. They’ll assume you want to arrest them.”

  “There’s no way the girls are ‘natural’ with all those cameras around,” I told him.

  Kevin shrugged. “You’d be surprised. They’re used to cameras. Half of them have done porn.”

>   “Actually, a quarter.” I looked down at the stack of files, trying to forget the names of any of the pornos I had encountered during my research.

  “Just a quarter?” Kevin asked. His face fell.

  “Sorry to disappoint you there,” I told him.

  Rolling his eyes, Kevin continued, “People get comfortable around cameras and producers. They start thinking of us like we’re furniture. But, you, on there as an authority figure, ready to stop fights? No. We have to push situations right to the breaking point, or they just won’t read on camera. Your job would be that of the mole. If there’s a problem, you go in, get information and relay it to us.”

  “And what about Patrick?”

  “Well, Patrick isn’t going to know anything about you. That keeps him natural.”

  “What? So let’s say I actually do this, and the stalker makes it onto the show. What do I do if there’s a problem? Or he’s in danger?”

  The look on Kevin’s face indicated he had no idea why I would be concerned. “I’m sure we can bring in the police if it gets that bad. Hell, we put the Marin County Sherriff’s Department on speed dial when we taped the first Atomic Love. I know the sheriff personally.”

  “I really don’t think I could do this,” I said. “First, look at me. I am not one of those girls.” I pointed at my outfit, which was a black peasant blouse matched with purple corduroy pants. Then I pointed at my face. I have long red hair and green eyes, and people tend to look at me twice, but I don’t have the exaggerated Barbie doll features and curves required by major record labels and reality-television shows.

  Kevin appraised what he could see of me above the table and seemed to come to the same conclusion. “Every season, we pick girls who are, as you say, ‘not one of those girls.’ And they may not win, but they always get in the finals. The audience identifies with your type. Problem solved. We give you an identity, and you run with it.” He took his cigar out like the meeting was over.

  Although Kevin tried to seem relaxed and nonchalant, I could sense an urgency in his voice: an urgency that I could use to my advantage. Maybe I could get a little more than my usual fee in return for going undercover. “Well, what’s in it for me? This would be a long-term commitment. My band might have to cancel gigs.”