I sat at the light and thought about Christmas.

At Christmas, I could send Lucy Chenier a card.

CHAPTER 17

S ongbird kept its standing sets on Stage 12 at the rear of General-Everett Studios. I parked at a Shell station across from the front gate, called a friend of mine on the lot, and had them send down a pass.

Much of the time when you walk along the back streets of a movie studio, you see Martians and Confederate soldiers and vehicles of strange design and other magical things. I have visited the different studios maybe a hundred times, and I have never grown tired of that little-boy surprise at seeing the strange and unexpected. But not this time. This time, the magic had been put away and the walk to Stage 12 seemed somehow oppressive and unwelcome.

The little streets around Stage 12 were alive with activity. Big eighteen-wheelers were wedged against the soundstage walk, belly to butt with costume trailers and makeup trailers and a honeywagon. Econoline vans and station wagons were parked between the larger vehicles, all of which had little cards with the Songbird logo displayed in the windshields. Burly men wearing ball caps sat in the station wagons reading newspapers or Dean Koontz novels. Teamsters. Sid Markowitz's Jaguar XJS convertible was parked behind a full-sized motor home near a door in the side of the soundstage with a red light over it. The red light was on, and a couple of people who looked like grips were watching it. I walked up like I had business there, and we stared at the light together. When the light went out, a loud buzzer rang inside the soundstage and we went in. I followed the two guys along a stream of heavy electrical cables between false walls and through dark sets: Jodi Taylor's bedroom in the series, her family's kitchen, the big bedroom where all four of her tiny blond children lived. Welcome to Oz, the Land of Make Believe where the nation's favorite family drama comes to life.

I came out at the roadhouse set where Jodi Taylor sang every week in Songbird, chasing her character's dream of becoming a star. Maybe forty people were setting up for a shot: the camera crew positioning the camera on its dolly and gaffers rigging lights and stand-ins and extras waiting for their call to the set. A woman in an L.A. Raiders cap and baggy bush pants was with Jodi and the actor who played Jodi's husband, framing a shot with her hands. She would be the director. A guy with a walkie-talkie and a guy with long gray hair were watching, the guy with the hair suggesting something every once in a while and whispering to the camera crew. The guy with the hair would be the director of photography. Sid Markowitz was talking to a woman in a business suit by a coffee machine in the shadows to the side of the set. I went over and said, "Hi, Sid."

Sid Markowitz's face turned the color of fresh clams. "It's you."

I held up two fingers. "Two words, Sid. Leon Williams."

The fresh clam color went fishbelly white and Sid Markowitz pulled me away from the woman in the business suit. "Jesus Christ, keep your voice down. Whattaya doin' here, f'christ's sake? All this is confidential."

"That was before I found out you lied to me, Sid."

I stepped away from him into Jodi Taylor's line of sight and crooked my finger at her. She looked at me as if she wasn't quite sure who I was, and then she recognized me and her race shut down into a grim chalk mask. Now you're smiling, now you're not. Sid hurried up behind me and took my arm again. "C'mon, Cole, don't make a scene here, okay?"

I said, "If you don't stop touching me, I'm going to break off your hand and stuff it up your ass."

Jodi Taylor left the woman in the Raiders cap and came up to me as if we were the only two people in the soundstage, as if everyone else were only shadows flickering on the wall, cast by a tree through an unseen window. She said, "Leon Williams is my father, isn't he?"

"Yes."

Sid Markowitz had Jodi by the arm now, trying to move her away from me. "Jesus, would the two of you keep it down? Let's go outside." Then he was back with me again. "We had our reasons for not coming clean, all right? What's the big deal?"

"Jimmie Ray Rebenack is dead. A human being died, and now it's time to tell the truth because I have to decide what to tell the police."

Neither Jodi Taylor nor Sid Markowitz said anything for several heartbeats, and then Sid Markowitz said, "I'm gonna call Bel, kid. Bel needs to know." Beldon Stone was the president of General-Everett Television.

I said, "Other people know about this?"

"About this, but not about you. We hired you without telling anybody."

We went out to the motor home, Jodi moving as if she were numb and Sid Markowitz fluttering like a moth around a Bug-Zapper. The motor home was the full-size luxury model, with a bedroom and a bath and a kitchenette with a dining table. Last week's Nielsen ratings had been push-pinned to a little corkboard in the kitchenette, along with a couple of clippings from the Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety: HIT SERIES!!, SONGBIRD SCORES AGAIN! A teamster was sitting in the driver's seat, listening to the afternoon race report and reading the paper. Sid said, "Eddie, we need a little privacy here, okay?"

The teamster left without a word. Jodi Taylor curled up on the motor home's couch, and folded her hands in her lap while Sid went to the phone. Jodi looked small and frightened.

A few minutes later a studio limo double-parked next to the motor home, and two men in suits and a woman in a short skirt got out. One of the men was in his fifties, and the other was in his thirties. The woman was in her twenties, but she looked older. Sid Markowitz saw them and said, "Oh, Christ, Beldon's gonna be pissed." He shook his head and chewed at his lip and went into the Bug-Zapper routine again. "I told you, Jodi. Didn't I tell you?"

Jodi pulled herself tighter and nodded without looking at him. On TV, Jodi Taylor was strong and resilient and exuded confidence. But that was TV, and this was real. I guess they don't put you on the cover of People for being real.

They came into the motor home without knocking, Beldon Stone first and his two assistants in trail. Beldon Stone had a great hawk nose and tiny eyes, and he looked like he wanted to swoop down and eat someone. Sid plastered on a big smile and said, "Hey! Bel!" and offered his hand, but Beldon Stone ignored him. Stone looked first at me, then at Jodi, and then at Sid, and you could tell that he read it before the first word was spoken. "Well," he said, "it seems someone else is in on our little secret."

Jodi said, "I'm sorry, Bel." A voice like a child.

I said, "Okay, Markowitz, the gang's all here. Knock off the bullshit and tell me what's going on."

Beldon Stone said, "Yes, Sid." His voice was resonant and smooth and filled with authority. "Tell us how this gentleman conies to know our secret." He said it to Sid Markowitz but his eyes never left me, as if I were a potential adversary and might attack him.

Sid identified me as a private investigator who had been recommended by Peter Alan Nelsen. He used Peter's name at least six times in the telling, as if that might take the edge off. He said, "Jodi couldn't just let it hang there, Bel. She had to know if all this stuff Rebenack was saying was true. You can understand that, can't you? She hired this guy to find out if it was true.

Everything was Jodi, even the business about not telling me the whole story. Putting the blame on her. When Markowitz was finished weaseling to Beldon Stone, he looked back at me. "Rebenack was threatening to sell the stuff to the tabloids. Hey, all the guy wanted was thirty grand and thirty grand's nothing to keep the lid on something like this, so we paid him. Everybody agreed." He glanced at Beldon Stone like he expected Stone to chime in with how much he agreed, but Stone was silent. Markowitz said, "I don't see what you're so pissed about, Cole. We were paying this guy, and we wanted to find out if what he had was really real." Really real. "We didn't wanna stir the water, so we didn't hip you to the whole deal. So sue us. We wanted you to go into this with a fresh eye. That makes sense, doesn't it? We wanted to see if you'd get to the same place as the goof with the hair. If he had bupkis, you didn't need to know. If it was emmis, then you'd confirm it and we'd know it's real.