Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 8

Right now, he had rather a lot on his plate. Did Jack expect him to go hunting the snack food reducing monster? Because that so wasn't going to happen.

"Tony!"

"Right. Sorry. Distracted."

Lee sighed and ran a hand up through his hair. "I was just asking if there was anything in what Groves said. That you were out with Constable Elson because a construction worker got killed."

He wanted to be a part of it-whatever it turned out to be. It was obvious in his voice, in his expression, in his body language.

Everything said: Let me help you.

Oh, yeah, like Tony was going to let that happen. In the last six months, Lee had been possessed three times and there was no way in h.e.l.l-any h.e.l.l-that he was going to add to that list.

Let me help you.

Why?

Because I seem to have a deep-seated metaphysical death wish I'm not even aware of. Maybe it stems from my repressed s.e.xual ident.i.ty, but since that's tied up with you, too, I guess I'm in the right place.

No f.u.c.king way. He was not going to be responsible for Lee getting whammied yet again. Tony managed a near approximation of a s.m.u.tty grin and flashed it in the actor's general direction. "Hate to admit it, but Groves was right. I was with Constable Elson because we were having hot Mountie s.e.x in the cab of his truck."

Long pause.

Lee stared.

Tony kept grinning.

Finally, Lee sighed again, the exhalation a type of surrender. "CB let you off work for that?"

"Yeah, the boss is all about keeping the cops happy." He started walking again. Once in the soundstage, Peter'd have them both back at work and this conversation would be over. "Just be thankful Jack's not interested in your a.s.s, or he'd pimp you out, too."

"You call him Jack?"

"When I call him other things, he reminds me he's armed."

"Tony..."

Tony sped up just enough to keep Lee's hand from landing on his shoulder. G.o.dd.a.m.n it! The red light was on, and they were stuck together at the end of the hall, waiting for the camera to stop rolling in a s.p.a.ce barely a meter square. They were not going to talk about the Demonic Convergence. He was not going to give Lee the chance to talk him into changing his mind, then somehow put himself in danger, and confuse the h.e.l.l out of both of them when Tony had to ride to the rescue. Again. "So, how's the blonde?"

Lee frowned. "Which blonde?"

"You can't keep track?"

"Sure, but..."

"The one you took to the latest premiere." Hands curved out in front of his chest indicated her dominant features. "Nice picture of the two of you in TV Week."

"Ah, yeah... Judith. She's fine. Great."

"Rented?"

"Jesus, Tony." Lee rolled his eyes. "No, she was not f.u.c.king rented."

"Borrowed?"

"Where do you go to borrow a blonde?"

Tony snorted. "Probably not the same place you do. So how was the movie?"

"What movie?"

"The one you went to with the borrowed blonde."

"Obviously, not great; I don't remember it. How was the morgue?"

Nice try. "What morgue?"

"The one you went to with your borrowed blond."

"Before or after the hot Mountie s.e.x?"

"Look, Tony, if you don't want me to have any part of this-whatever this is-all you have to do is say so."

A long moment pa.s.sed, and it was as if all that guy banter hadn't happened. They were back at the Demonic Convergence part of the conversation.

Tony'd never noticed before that the red light made a noise when it went off. Sort of a faint plock. "I don't want you to have any part of this," he said, yanked open the door, and stepped out onto the soundstage.

He hadn't expected to be done with work by sunset let alone have time to get from the studio to VanTerm before Leah finished her stunt. But at 5:50, almost an hour before the sun actually went down, he was in his car and heading west on Hastings, squinting behind the shield of his dark gla.s.ses.

VanTerm was a container terminal up on Burrard Inlet. Eventually, everyone shooting any kind of shipping in the Vancouver area ended up there because its layout made it easy to crop the shot. For the short time Tony'd been paying attention, it had stood in for San Francisco, New York, New Jersey, Singapore, Gotham City, and at least two alien planets not to mention the half-dozen times it had actually played itself. It was the UBC of shipping locations.He turned right on Victoria Drive, drove more or less the speed limit to Stewart Street, turned left and then right onto the terminal grounds.

"I'm here for the CBC shoot." He fumbled out his Director's Guild Card, but the middle-aged security guard in the box barely looked up from his laptop before waving him through.

Berth three was past the reefer yard, past the container yard, jutting out into the inlet across the end of the jetty that also held berths one, two, and four. Tony parked by the first truck-freshly purple, the CBC logo bright and shiny on both sides and across the back-locked his car, and started walking. Quickly. It was still a bit of a hike and he wanted to make sure he saw Leah take her dive. It was more of a stunt than CB would ever be willing to pay for-even if the season one Darkest Night DVDs sold as well as Olivia in marketing predicted. Since Olivia in marketing was ten thousand or so in debt to a bookie named Icepick Ernie, no one put much faith in her ability to pick a winner.

They had four cameras set for the shoot. One up on the back end of the container ship to catch the fall from above, one in a Ports Canada Police boat about ten meters out, and two on the jetty. The two on the jetty were, Tony was happy to notice, one model older than the cameras used by CB Productions.

"Let's hear it for government spending," he muttered, hands in his front pockets as he watched the second unit director set the shot.

"Repaint the trucks before you replace the equipment."

Still, hard to argue with the kind of pull that got clear skies and a totally killer sunset in a city that got roughly three hundred days of rain a year. When the CBC wanted a sunset, they got one.

A familiar voice shouting his name turned his attention away from the water.

"Daniel?"

CB Productions' entire stunt team jogged over, grinning.

"What are you doing here?"

Daniel patted his radio. "I'm on the safety crew. You don't honestly think I can support a family on the hours I get from CB, do you?"

"I thought your wife supported your family." Daniel's wife was in advertising. Tony wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but it had, at one point, involved Daniel bringing in packages of wieners for everyone on the shoot.

"Ouch. Way to kick a guy in the nuts." But he was still grinning when he said it, so Tony decided not to worry about insulting a man who had black belts in three martial arts and who cheated death for a living. Okay, maybe not death, not most of the time, but he definitely cheated soft tissue damage on a regular basis. "So, you're done early today."

"I am that."

"You here to see Leah's dive?"

"Yeah." Tony nodded up at the container ship. "She going from the back end there?"

"It's called the stern, you ignorant git."

"Looks stern. Also high."

"And this is one of the smaller ones. There's ships out there today that can carry up to and above 8,000 TEU-this one, I'd say no more than 4,000."

"No s.h.i.t." "You have no idea of what I just said, do you? TEU stands for twenty-foot equivalent unit and... uh, never mind. Essentially, this may look big, but there's lots bigger." He waved a hand; a Blue's Clues bandage wrapped around one finger. "Approximately seven meters, railing to surface, into water approximately fifteen meters deep."

"Deep enough?"

Daniel snorted. "More than. And cleaner than usual, too. Ports Canada guys on the boat were saying it was highest tidal backwash they'd ever seen up the inlet. Swept all sorts of c.r.a.p out to sea."

"And that's good?"

"Very. Hitting a hunk of c.r.a.p that floated in past the cleanup crew is always a frightening possibility-where always means not today."

Not today, not for Leah, Tony thought as Daniel took on the unmistakable characteristics of someone listening to voices in his head. Coincidence or Demongate? He didn't have enough information to answer that. He really didn't want enough information to answer that, but then, it sucked to be him.

"Divers are in the water." Daniel clapped him on one shoulder hard enough to rock him back a step. "We're ready to go. I'll talk to you later."

"You know you've got a burning windmill in your future, right?"

He paused, half turned. "Frankenstein rip-off?"

"Homage."

"That's what they all say."

True enough, Tony admitted as Daniel jogged back to join the rest of the safety crew on the jetty. The sunset had painted the tops of the waves red-gold and burned highlights along the edges of the ship. Leah, wearing a short blonde wig and a shorter red dress was standing at the rail talking to a heavyset man with a gleaming shaved head and a down vest. Probably the show's stunt coordinator. As Tony watched, she glanced down and lifted a hand to acknowledge the divers, then positioned herself with her back to the rail. She had to be on a box. She wasn't that tall.

Bald-and-gleaming moved back to stand by the camera.

The entire crew gathered itself up.

"Rolling!"

Tony repeated the word silently as it bounced up and down the jetty. As it faded, he knew the director would be telling Bald-and- gleaming that Leah could go when she was ready.

Leah's arms went out; she jerked back, and went over.

Seven meters later, she hit the water b.u.t.t first, folded just enough to take the heavy slap off her back. From the pumped fist rising up over the video village, the splash, lit by the setting sun, was everything the DP wanted.

He couldn't see her surface, the edge of the jetty was in the way, but he heard her.

"d.a.m.n! That's cold!"

He joined the crew's applause and moved closer as the divers swam up to help her to the aluminum ladder Daniel had just lowered into the water. The strappy, red high heels seemed to be giving her a bit of a problem, but hands reached down to pull her the rest of the way. She accepted their congratulations with a coy and dripping curtsy, waved toward the director's double thumbs up and again to Bald-and-gleaming. By the time she got to Tony, she was wrapped in a thermal blanket.

"You okay?" he asked, falling in to step beside her.

"Please. Went out of the crow's nest once on a pirate ship in the Caribbean-1716, it was. Now that was a fall."

"I thought you said you spent your time in the beds of powerful men?"

She winked at him from under a dripping fringe of wet wig. "What do you think I was doing in the crow's nest?"

"Keeping watch?"

"I had my eyes open if that counts."

Tony followed her up into the makeup wagon where she sat, still wrapped in the blanket so that a middle-aged j.a.panese woman could work the wig off without ripping the lace that attached it to her face.

"Tony, Hama. Hama, Tony."

The makeup artist nodded without looking up.

"Tony works over at CB Productions."

"The vampire show?"

"That's the one."

She looked up then. "Everett Winchester still with you?"

"Yeah. But don't quote me on that."

Hama grinned at Everett's signature line. "Tell him I said hi. All right, that's got it." She tossed the wig onto the counter where it looked like blonde roadkill. Drowned blonde roadkill. "Get into dry clothes, and I'll take out the pins."

Her own hair still up under a net cap, Leah left the towel in the chair and slipped in behind the set of shelves that separated makeup from wardrobe. It was a layout Tony was familiar with and therefore just a bit on the cheap side for any other show. Still, with only Leah on camera, there wasn't a lot of point in bringing out two separate trailers.

"So, you the boyfriend?"

Given the peal of laughter from behind the shelves, Tony didn't see much point in answering.

Hama raised a delicately arched brow. "Apparently not."