Marco had been a stabilizing influence in a world that was showing signs of becoming more unstable by the hour. But more than that: he'd been Todd's friend. He'd had a good nose for bullshit, and he'd never been afraid of speaking his mind, especially when it came to protecting his boss.

There would come a time, Todd had promised himself, when he would sit down and think of something to do that would honour Caputo's name. He'd been no intellectual, so the founding of a library, or the funding of the Caputo Prize for Scholastic Achievement, wouldn't really be pertinent: it would need some serious thought to create a project that reflected and honored the complexity of the man.

"You're thinking about Marco Caputo." Tammy said as she watched Todd adjust to the spatial arrangements of the driver's seat.

"The way you said that, it didn't sound as though you liked him very much."

"He was rude to me on a couple of occasions," Tammy said, making light of it now. "It was no big deal."

"The fact is he was more of a brother to me than my own brother," he replied. "And I'm only now realizing how much I took him for granted. Christ. First I lose my dog, then my best buddy -- "

"Dempsey?"

"Yeah. He died of cancer in February."

"I'm sorry."

Todd turned on the ignition. His thoughts were still with Marco. "You know what I think?" he said.

"What?"

"I think that the night he got killed he wasn't just drunk. He was panicked and drunk."

"You mean he'd seen something?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. He'd seen something up at the house and was running away." He drew a loud breath through his nose. "Okay. Enough of the detective work. We can do some more of that when all this is over. Right now, we're heading for Malibu."

On the way down to the ocean, Todd provided Tammy with a little portrait of where they were going. She knew about the Colony, of course -- the guarded community of superstars who lived in houses filled with Picassos and Miros and Monets, with the ever-unpredictable Pacific a few yards from their back door, and -- just a jump across the Pacific Coast Highway -- the Malibu Hills, which had been the scene of countless wildfires in the hot season, and mud-slides in the wet. What she didn't know was just how exclusive it was, even for those who were powerful enough to write their own rules in any other circumstances.

"I was planning to buy this house next door to Maxine's place, way back," Todd told her, "but my lawyer -- who was this wily old fart called Lester Mayfield said: 'You're going to want to rip out that concrete deck and take off the old shingle roof, aren't you?' And I said: 'You betcha.' And he said: 'Well, dream on buster, 'cause they won't let you. You'll spend the next ten years fighting with the Colony Committee to change the color of your toilet seat."

"So I didn't buy the place. They've lightened up on the rules a lot since then. I guess somebody must have pointed out that they were preserving some pieces of utter shit."

"Who ended up buying the house next door to Maxine?"

"Oh ... he was a producer, had a deal with Paramount. Made some very successful movies for them. Then the IRS taps him on the shoulder and asks why he hasn't paid his taxes for six years. He ended up going to jail, and the house stood empty."

"Nobody else bought it?"

"No. He wanted to be back making movies when he got out of the slammer. Which is what he did. Went straight back into the business. Made six more huge movies. And he still snorts coke from between the tits of loose women. Bob Graydon's his name."

"Isn't he the one who had an artificial septum put in his nose because he'd had the real thing eaten away by cocaine?"

"That's Bob. Where'd you hear that?"

"Oh, the National Enquirer probably. I buy them all in case there's something about you. Not that I believe everything I read -- " she added hurriedly.

"Just the juicy bits."

"Well after a time you get a feeling about what's true and what's not true."

"Care to give me an example?"

"No."

"Go on."

"That's not fair. I'm screwed whatever I say. No! Wait! Here's one! About two years ago they said you were going into a private hospital in Montreal to have your ding-a-ling enlarged."

"My ding-a-ling!"

"You know what I mean."

"Do you say ding-a-ling to Arnie? It is Arnie, isn't it?"

"Yes it's Arnie and no I don't say ding-a-ling."

"Tell me about him."

"There isn't much to tell."

"Why'd you marry him? Tell me that."

"Well it wasn't because of the size of his dick."

"Dick! That's what you call it: dick."

"I guess I do," Tammy said, amused, a little embarrassed to have let this slip. "Anyway, back to the story in The Enquirer. They said you were in Montreal getting your thingie -- your dick -- made bigger. Except I knew that wasn't true."

"How come?"

"It just didn't make any sense. Not after the articles I'd read about you."

"Go on," Todd said, fascinated.

"Well ... you know I read everything that's ever been written about you? Everything in English. And then if there's a really important interview in, say, Paris Match or Stern, I get it translated."

"Jesus. Really? What for?"

"So I can keep up with your opinions. And ... sometimes in the foreign magazines they write the kind of things you wouldn't read in an American magazine. One of them did a piece about your love-life. About all the ladies you'd dated, and the things they'd said about you -- "

"My acting?"

"No. Your ... other performances."

"You're kidding."

"No. I thought you knew about these things. I thought you probably signed off on them."

"If I read every article in every magazine -- "

"You'd never make another movie."

"Exactly. So, go back to the article. The ladies, talking about me. What does that have to do with the story in The Enquirer!"

"Oh just that here were all these women talking about you in bed -- and a few of them were not exactly happy with the way you treated them -- but none of them said, even vaguely intimated that ... "

"I had a small dick."

"Right."

"So I thought, there's no way he's gone to Montreal to have his ding-a-ling enlarged because it's just fine as it is. Now. Can we move on, or shall I throw myself out of the window from sheer embarrassment?"

Todd laughed. "You are an education, do you know that?"

"I am?"

"You are."

"In a good way?"

"Oh yeah, it's all good. It's all fine."

"You realize, of course, that there's stuff being written about you right now, a lot of people upset and worried."

"Why?"

"Because nobody knows what happened to you. There are plenty of people, fans of yours, like me, who think of you practically as a member of the family. Todd did this. Todd did that. And now, suddenly, Todd's missing. And nobody knows where he's gone. They start to fret. They start to make up all kinds of ridiculous reasons. I know I did. It's not that they're crazy -- "

"No, look. I don't think you, or any of them, are crazy. Or if you are, it's a good crazy. I mean, what you did last night ... none of my family would have done."

"You'd be surprised how many people love you."

"They love something but I don't think it's me, Tammy."

"Why not?"

"Well for one thing, if you could get inside here, in my head with Todd Pickett, you wouldn't find much worth idolizing. You really wouldn't. I am painfully, excruciatingly, ordinary. My brother, Donnie, on the other hand: he's worth admiring. He's smart. He's honest. I was just the one with this." He turned on his smile as he drove and gave her the benefit of its luminosity. Then, just as easily, he turned it off. "See, you learn to do that," he went on. "It's like a faucet. You turn the smile on, and people bathe in it for a while, then you turn it off and you go home and wonder what all the fuckin' fuss was about. It's not like I deserve the adulation of millions. I can't act. And I've got the reviews to prove it." He chuckled at his self-deprecation. "That's not mine," he said, "it was Victor Mature."