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Overview
Alan White is a hot young writer-producer looking for the one megahit every Hollywood writer dreams about. He thinks he’s found it with a new TV show called The Mercenary. The network has never seen anything like it. Sex. Violence. Nudity. This time they’re taking it to the max and the Nielsen ratings are shooting through the roof. Alan couldn’t be happier. Until the morning’s headlines start to read like a rerun of last night’s episode. Until The Mercenary begins to take on a terrifying life of its own. Until it becomes chillingly clear that Alan must cancel his creation—before it cancels him.
“[Created By] gets the reader into a wrestler’s grip and will not let him go.”—Peter Straub
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307788733 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/13/2011 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 396 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
teaser
May 12
Los Angeles
What is it? I’m getting something?”
Alan smiled. Maybe she was as incredible as everyone had said. He’d been sitting with her for five minutes and it was happening: the top-hat-zap.
“I’m not sure. The new pilot, I suppose.” Alan made a nervous face. It was borderline creepy hanging out with this broad. The way she sat there, staring.
Watching.
The trappings weren’t much, sure. Just a hold-it-in-your-hand condo in a so-so part of town. The whole dinky place had a blown-up Vegas swap-meet look and there was velvet everything. Cruddy art, too. Piles and piles of that ultrabrocade, Liberace nightmare stuff. As they talked, Alan couldn’t ignore a swag lamp that hung overhead, golden cupids encaged by cat gut that dripped glycerine in slo-mo. Sort of the tacky tears of time trickling into schmaltzy eternity. Nearby, the electric Elvis air freshener hummed.
Not at all the right setting for a famous psychic. Rich oil sheiks sought out this woman. Incredibly wealthy celebrities. Major league ball players having bad seasons. Lovers who feared defection. Terminal disease sufferers. Gamblers. They all came. Filled with wonder and hope. Lots of hope.
All the guys at Paramount who’d gone told Alan they swore by her. Absolutely fucking swore. As in the Holy Virgin or even J.C. himself. The faith ran that deep. Maybe even deeper when you got right down to it.
Shows that were going to have legs or ones that were fated to be flushed. It didn’t matter. She knew. She could pin it just like the gas man reads your meter. That’s how weird it really was. One felt more than vaguely naked.
And her specialty was picking shows. She’d even been on big salary with one of the networks to do that very thing. They sat her every day in a hidden little office and let her look at pilot proposals, pilot scripts, casting ideas, you name it. And, man, she had the fucking touch.
She’d seen Bell’s pilot “Mike and Pooky” two seasons back and loved it. Watched the whole half-inch cassette in her office at the network H.Q. in L.A. and laughed her head off. Loved it. Dialogue. Pacing. Acting. Action. It was all there, ready to roar like a rocket.
And when the suits marched in with tasseled feet and asked her what she thought, she said it didn’t have a chance in hell. Three and out. Maybe four.
Her visions had been a kindness.
“Mike and Pooky” got creamed first two weeks against some old Sly movies the other networks put in America’s face.
After a month, the network pulled the plug. No chance to catch on. Find its audience. Bell had freaked. All his Emmys, Humanitas, and WGA chrome, brass, and crystal didn’t make a bit of difference. That’s what was so fucking crazy. Didn’t matter if you had a star that tested out better than sex. Didn’t matter if you had a premise that was plated at the mint. None of it mattered.
And there was that goddamned psychic pulling down twenty-five large and calling them like some pointy-hatted deity.
The network had poured god knows how much into the promotion of “Mike and Pooky” and they were as frazzed as Bell. Over lunch last week, at Lorimar, some gay line producer swore up and down that the network had dropped at least five million. Double truck spreads in Newsweek, The Stone, Time, TV Guide. Radio and television spots. Talk show jibber-jabber with the groins who played Mike and Pooky, charming Jay, walking on the comedy sun-surface with Dave, doing a Pearl Jam ballad with Paul and the band.
But it didn’t help. The pilot got a fourteen share and it just wasn’t enough. Bye-bye, Mike. Bye-bye, Pooky. Turn in your wax figurines to be melted down. Back to potato chip commercials and method workshops.
And she’d done the same thing for the last six years, employed by the network. She’d only missed a few times. She even claimed she could get 80 percent accuracy. Time had proven her right.
“What about the new pilot?” Her eyes were somehow very sad. Too much despair. Too much everything. But then how would anyone look who knew what was coming tomorrow. And the day after. And next week. And five years from now. And could see you dying in some hospital ward. Or maybe worse.
“What do you see?” Alan’s fingers braided, nervously. “Will I do well with it?”
She closed her eyes, took several deep breaths, polished toes tugging at blue shag. Her body faintly vibrated, curled in the chair as if she watched a favorite movie on TV. All she needed was buttered popcorn and a kitty.
“Write down the name of the show …” Her eyes opened a bit; shutters. She gestured to some writing implements on the desk. Then, her stare was petitioned back by the trance and heavy lids sealed, again.
Alan picked up a felt pen and scrawled THE MERCENARY on a sheet of white paper. It looked great, he thought. Bold and gutsy. The kind of title that made you want to go out on a midnight raid and slit villagers’ throats.
He slid the paper back to her and she didn’t move. The strange, hammocked eyes were restive. A minute passed.
More.
Alan needed to cough but drowned it with some Hires she’d given him. It was warm, tasted like the skull soda they give lunatics so they can dress themselves.
She stirred a little, opened eyes. Traced her finger over Alan’s words. Slowly, again and again. It was eerie. Maybe ten times from the T to the Y. Then, she stopped, froze; peered up at him, from her little writing desk. Smiled. “I see a great deal of money … you’re going to be successful.”
She stared off, as if savoring an evocative painting, she alone saw.
“It’s going to be a huge hit. I love the whole thing. I love all the E’s in the title. E is very good for you. People or places with that letter …”
Alan’s smile fanned. It was a rush. Like your best friend in high school telling you he’d talked to the girl you had a crush on and finding out she didn’t sleep at night thinking about you.
But it was a lot more. He’d been totally balls-out nuts working on this pilot idea for “The Mercenary” and the outline bible was the best thing he’d ever done. It had all the colors, textures. He knew it would make America insane and spin on the meanest, biggest ceiling fan they ever saw.
Mimi was still trancing, surfing the solar system. Jesus, thought Alan as he watched her, this lady might be the wall and the plug. And she was sparking to his idea.
She’d told Franky his sitcom for the Fox Network, “Let’s Get Serious,” was going to pull numbers and yank a fat pickup for a full twenty-two, first three out. And that’s what happened. One year ago, today.
That was Mimi.
Like you wind a clock and it ticks. That’s what she did. Franky had explained the whole thing this way: your life was a book and as Mimi sat with you, she zonked into some starry, forever place, sat on a rock, skimmed a few chapters, then galaxied back, opened her eyes, and abrafucking-cadabra she’s in her tacky little condo smiling up at you and the Elvis air freshener.
At least you hope she’s smiling.
Tell that one to Bell, Alan thought. No smiles on that clog in his bloodstream. Just a ten-million-dollar cancelled albatross winging over a traumatized brain.
“Any problems? Delays?” Alan had to know. The network hadn’t even heard the idea yet. And those clawhammer smiles could smash your head.
Mimi sighed.
But it wasn’t weariness. It was just giving the channel some room to breathe and stretch and feel good about doing the reading; making the timeless data feel at home so it would stay awhile.
He needed some coffee. He always needed coffee.
All day, at Paramount or Universal or Columbia or wherever somebody was renting his thought process, he’d drink as much head diesel as he could hold. Fucking stuff was probably eating everything inside. Take an X ray, get a big blank. “Sorry, Mr. White, you don’t appear to have any internal organs left. You really should consider a nondairy creamer.”
“No delays. But it’s …”—she took his hand like a mother—“it’s going to be very difficult, Alan.” She grasped his hand more tightly. “This show of yours. It’s extremely special. I want to be here for you if you need me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He said nothing. It was the way she was looking at him, the way she was gripping his fingers harder than she needed to. The fear that seemed to flash across her face, a REM death mask.
“Maybe not,” he confessed.
“Success can be … very dangerous.”
He felt the bromides slinking near; Dear Abby thongs rounding the corner, out for a stroll. Thanks, lady, but I’ll put up garlic and mirrors if it really gets …
“… religion may not help.”
Alan stared. Spoke softly. “Did you just read my mind?” He was more uneasy than he sounded.
She didn’t reply. Looked away in private travail.
“Right,” he muttered. “So, what’s going to go wrong? Am I going to have a heart attack or something? Go bankrupt?” His eyes twinkled. “Get stuck on a bad cruise?”
She didn’t smile.
Alan sensed the crystal ball going black. He wanted to leave.
“Could just be … challenges.” She gestured without detail.
“I … is there something you’re not—”
“Alan …”
The two locked in an uncomfortable stare. Those eyes, lost in miserable giftedness, were aflame. She was being scarier than shit, again.
“I’m right, aren’t I? There’s something you want to say to me.” He’d kill for a cup of coffee. Something to do with his hands. Something to make him forget. His eyes had the shifting-crawlies: left, right, up, down; like Beaver Cleaver caught jerking off.
“Your show is going to be very powerful.”
Alan didn’t exactly feel shook up by that one. He’d figured she was going to tell him something really horrible. Something monstrous that psychics tell doomed souls. Some cursing finality.
But this was good news. Why the dread?
Then, it hit him the way the punch line of a complicated joke suddenly goes from gas to solid in your thoughts—ka-boom: the genie appears with subtitles. He realized everyone in L.A. was too damn melodramatic, that was why. They all wanted the kleig-rub, and Mimi was just stroking the histrionic gloom.
The ones who weren’t trying to act were trying to model. The ones who weren’t trying to model were trying to write screenplays. Or produce. Or write jingles. Or produce jingles. Or act in jingles. Or be a jingle. People talked about pilots not feelings, unless it was how they felt about pilots. The box-office bloodstreamers were leaking everywhere you went. Ideas or creative notions were regarded as signals from deep space if they were good. If they were bad, they were treated like bad dogs.
L.A. didn’t need a mayor. It needed a director.
“Then I really don’t have anything to worry about …”
Mimi stood in the cramped bedroom-converted- to office, went to her bookshelf. Squeezed fingertips along books, found a musty hardcover. Slid it out, undusted a semicircle on the cover. Handed it to Alan.
“Depends.” She’d lowered her voice and Alan tried not to feel her sawing him in half.
“I want you to have this. Keep it, Alan. Read it if you need to. If not, it’s still yours.”
He glanced at the book, accepted it. Grimaced at the odor: old bookstore smell.
He rested it on the lap of his blue jeans, cleared a bit more of the semicircle of dust. The title looked him in the eye.