The Big Bamboo Read online

  “

  Tinseltown remains stunned by last night’s brazen abduction of Ally Street, who witnesses said was standing on this very spot along famous Sunset Boulevard when she was forced inside a dark van by masked gunmen

  ”

  Mark turned up the volume.

  “

  Ms. Street’s dining party reported that shortly before the kidnapping, the actress received a mysterious call on her cell phone and excused herself

  ”

  The roommates exchanged looks.

  “

  Authorities aren’t officially commenting, but inside sources at the police department say they’ve been able to trace that final call to another cell phone and are seeking to interview this man, described only as a ‘person of interest’

  ”

  A blown-up paparazzi photo from Skybar appeared on the tube.

  “It’s Ford!” said Pedro. “When he was talking to Ally last night by the pool!”

  “

  Meanwhile, a Vistamax spokesman said the studio is saddened by the news and will do all in its power to ensure Ms. Street’s safe return and maintain the shooting schedule for a holiday release

  ”

  Loud banging on the apartment door.

  “Open up! Police!”

  ** Chapter 1

  NINE MONTHS EARLIER

  Serge sat in a grimy motel room along Tampa’s Nebraska Avenue, banging away on a manual Underwood typewriter.

  Coleman chugged a Budweiser and stared out the window at prostitutes and a bearded man pushing a rusty shopping cart full of curled phone books. There was no middle ground— the section of town where motels rent by the hour or the month. Disagreements and unidentifiable thumps through thin walls.

  Coleman tossed his empty aluminum can in the wastebasket, but it bounced out because the basket was already full of crumpled pages with “Scene One” at the top.

  Serge ripped another sheet from the typewriter’s spool, wadded it up and threw it in the corner.

  Coleman popped another beer. “How’s your screenplay coming?”

  Serge inserted a fresh page. “Great. Almost finished. Guaranteed to make my movie career. All I need is the opening hook.” He began typing again.

  Coleman stopped chugging and lowered his beer. “How do you write a movie, anyway?”

  Serge sighed and stopped typing. “Well, you begin by just letting your mind float. After a while, if you don’t have any distractions, you enter an astral-plane dream state, where the scene you’re writing becomes as real as this desk.” He slapped the top of the table.

  Coleman killed the rest of the beer and tossed it in the corner. “Can I come with you?”

  “Sure.” Serge resumed typing. “But first you’ll have to loosen all the bolts on your imagination.”

  “No problem.” Coleman snatched a fat spliff from over his ear and fired it up. He blew a large cloud toward the ceiling. “Okay, I’m ready.” He leaned over Serge’s shoulder for a peek at the typewriter. “Where are we going?

  ”

  SCENE ONE

  Nine Months Earlier

  Klieg lights sweep the night sky. A bustling city street in black-and-white. Vintage automobiles from the ’40s drive past the exterior of a popular bar in Morocco. A neon sign: SERGE’S. The perspective segues inside. People drinking, gambling, singing along with the piano player. The camera zooms. A tall, debonair man in an immaculate white tuxedo appears from a back room. He moves through the crowd with panache and approaches the source of the music.

  Coleman glances up from his stool: “Hey, Serge, look at me, I can play the piano!”

  Serge fits an unlit cigarette between his lips and lets it droop.

  Coleman, noticing his hands on the keyboard: “And I’m black!”

  Suddenly, a commotion toward the front of the club. SS uniforms fill the entrance.

  Serge turns toward them with a penetrating gaze.

  Coleman: “What is it, boss?”

  Serge: “I don’t like Nazis.”

  “Why’s that, boss?”

  “Goose-stepping never preceded any big laughs.”

  “What are you going to do, boss?”

  Serge faces the door and grabs his crotch. “Master race this!”

  The platoon draws its sidearms and charges. Serge and Coleman begin running but are quickly pinned down in the back of the club.

  German captain: “Shoot them.”

  Soldiers raise their Lugers.

  Coleman: “What do we do now, boss?”

  Serge: “Damn. I wrote us into a corner.”

  A crumpled ball of paper bounced off the top of the wastebasket. Serge inserted a new sheet.

  “That was a rush,” said Coleman, looking at the joint in his hand. “I thought we were dead for sure.”

  Serge ignored him. Internal dialogue chattering in his head. He tapped furiously on his trusty Underwood, the kind Mickey Spillane would have used. Warm memories of the Old Florida washed over him like something that is warm and also washes over you.

  Coleman popped another beer. “You mentioned something about a movie career?”

  Serge was on a roll, typing like a machine. “I’m following the Sly Stallone formula— write myself into a killer script, star in the movie, then get overpaid for hack work the rest of my life

  I’m almost done.”

  Coleman walked up and looked over Serge’s shoulder again. “But you’re back on page one.”

  “It’s all about the opening hook. After that, the rest writes itself.”

  “You got an opening hook?”

  Serge ripped out the page and crumpled it.

  Coleman fit the end of his joint into a roach clip. “Maybe you’re hung up on location.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Serge inserted another sheet.

  “Wait for me,” said Coleman. He began hitting the roach

  and into a seedy motel room.

  SCENE ONE

  Nine Months Earlier, the Lunar Surface

  A rocket ship lands. The horn section of a Stanley Kubrick soundtrack builds in the background as the spacecraft’s hatch opens dramatically.

  Serge steps out, hands on hips. Coleman stands next to him with a Budweiser in the new ZX9 micro-atmospheric delivery system.

  Serge surveys the horizon with thermogoggles. The orchestral music swells; kettle drums signal an epiphany.

  Coleman stops sucking on the beer tube extending through the self-sealing port in the side of his space helmet: “See an opening hook out there?”

  “Just an old black monolith.” A crumpled ball of paper falls slow-motion into a crater.

  Coleman clutches the tube in his mouth again: “What about a different time frame?”

  SCENE ONE

  A Hundred and Nineteen Years Earlier

  Horses’ hooves thunder across the Wild West. A large posse seals off all escape.

  Two outlaws squirm along the edge of a cliff.

  Serge: “Who are those guys?”

  Coleman peeks over the cliff at the water hundreds of feet below: “I can’t swim.”

  Serge: “I have to go to the bathroom.” He steps off the cliff

  Coleman sat down at the foot of a bed. “Why are we staying at this crappy place, anyway?”

  “Inspiration,” Serge yelled from around the corner. A toilet flushed. He came back out. “I thought some stuff might happen that would give me ideas

  ” He wandered to the window and stared outside at Nebraska Avenue. A car crashed. Gunshots echoed from an alley. A streetwalker in a cheerleading uniform pulled a switchblade on a pimp. Serge went back to his typewriter and sat down in front of an empty page. “Why can’t I think of anything?”

  A knock at the door. Coleman answered. A man with strands of aluminum foil in a long beard stood next to a shopping cart. He wanted to know if they had any phone books. Coleman gave him two thick ones from the nightstand.

  Serge started typing again. “Who was that?”

  Coleman closed the door. “I don’t know.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Our phone book
s.”

  “Another sign of The End Times.”

  Coleman sat down again and picked at his toes. “So when did movies become your latest obsession?”

  “What do you mean latest? I’ve always been into movies.”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Every couple months you get on some kick, and we have to drive all over the place and completely change the way we live. Then something new comes along and you forget all about the last thing.”

  “Like when?”

  “Are you kidding?” Coleman switched the foot he was scratching. “There was the space program, then politics, railroads, the Keys, the history of some Florida shit, then the space program Part Two— remember that? When the shuttle crashed? You cried for like two weeks.”

  Serge pointed at Coleman. “You didn’t tell anyone!”

  “Of course not. I’m just saying I didn’t realize you’d switched again. I thought you were still writing your book. Whatever happened to that?”

  “I finished it,” said Serge. “But all the rejection letters claimed there wasn’t a market, like they know everything.”

  “What was the title?”

  “Chicken Soup for the Fucked-up Chicken-Soup Book Buyer.”

  Coleman scratched his toes harder.

  Serge crumpled the latest sheet into a tight ball. “If only I could find the opening hook

  ”

  A loud banging sound.

  Serge looked around. “What was that?”

  Coleman pointed across the room. “That guy in the closet you tied up and gagged. I think he’s come to.”

  Bang, bang, bang.

  “Interruptions!” Serge got up and grabbed a pistol by the barrel. He headed across the room.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  Serge opened the closet door and cracked the man in the skull with the butt of the gun. He closed the door.

  Coleman looked up at Serge as he came back across the room. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s resting.” Serge sat down and stared at the typewriter. “Nothing interesting ever happens.”

  Coleman pointed at the closet again. “Serge, what about the guy—”

  “Shhhh!”

  “But that’s a really fascinating—”

  “I’m trying to concentrate!”

  Coleman shrugged. Minutes passed. Serge finally stood and shook his head. “I don’t know what the problem is. I can’t get the hook.”

  “What about sex?” said Coleman. “That always works.”

  “Too gratuitous.”

  Another knock at the front door.

  “What now!” Serge walked over and turned the knob.

  Standing outside was a stunning brunette in a conservative business suit. High cheekbones, full lips, almost six feet tall. A high-priced trial attorney on lunch break.

  “Serge, you never called me back.”

  He returned to his typewriter and sat. “I’m in lockdown. Have to finish my screenplay.”

  “Can’t you take a little break?”

  “Not until I find the hook.”

  The attorney walked up behind Serge and began running her hands down his chest. Serge stared at the typewriter. Her hands reached his stomach and began undoing buttons. “It’s been two weeks since the charity ball. Didn’t you have a good time?”

  “Yes”— eyes straight on the page.

  It had been a good time. The attorney was precisely Serge’s type— a woman in full bloom. She would have been a stunning thirty-five-year-old, but was unreal considering she was actually forty-eight. Still, most guys would have preferred the alternative of a tittering twentysomething. Not Serge. A bimbo package still meant a bimbo mind, and the first inane comment always collapsed his sexual house of cards. After enough flaccid evenings, Serge began giving pop quizzes. The fastest litmus test, he found, was vice-presidential running mates on losing tickets. The mandatory minimum was Sargent Shriver, but anything before Edmund Muskie lit the afterburners.

  The feeling was mutual among a certain segment of professional women in Tampa Bay. Bimbos come in two flavors, after all. They usually met Serge because of the enormous time he spent in museums and art galleries. Besides looking spiffy in a tux, he could hold his own in dinner conversation with any Jeopardy! finalist. Sure, the women knew he was nuts. But that was the thing about Serge: It could take hours to figure that out. Over the short course of a cocktail reception, he merely appeared effervescent and charismatic. Only much later in the evening did it become evident that Serge was wired out of his gourd. But by then it was the sex time, when this turned into a plus. More than one date had seen the origins of the universe.

  The attorney now undoing Serge’s shirt was his third chamber of commerce member in as many months. “Let’s play.” She reached for his belt buckle. “I don’t have to be back until two.”

  Serge pushed her hands aside. “Even if I wanted to, you know how I am when I’m trying to concentrate. I’ve got twenty planes circling in my head waiting to land.”

  The attorney understood Serge inside out, weaknesses. She nuzzled and whispered in his ear with a raspy voice. “I’ll go to one of your special places. My sleeping bag’s in the car.”

  Serge’s breathing shallowed. His face reddened. “Anyplace I want?”

  She ran her tongue along his neck. “Mmmm, hmmmm

  ”

  He stood up and wrote an address on a scrap of paper. “Tomorrow at noon.”

  She initially pouted over the delay, then gave him a wicked grin and strolled out the door. “Don’t be late.”

  Serge’s attention was already back at the typewriter. “Uh, right

  ”

  The door closed on one side of the room and banging started on the other.

  Serge jumped up and grabbed his gun again. “This place is nonstop bullshit!”

  “But, Serge,” said Coleman, pointing toward the closet, “I still think you should write about—”

  “Can you please be quiet? I got too much coming at me at the same time.”

  Bang, bang, bang.

  “But, Serge, it’s a really exciting—”

  “Not now!” Serge opened the closet. Crack. He closed it.

  SIXTEEN HOURS LATER , FAR AWAY

  A Greyhound bus arrived in the dark. The empty street glistened and smelled from a recent rain.

  No bus station, just a roadside shelter a block from the town square with a obelisk of engraved names from World War II. There wasn’t anyone waiting for the 331, but the driver was required to stop anyway. A police cruiser went by. One of the few left with the old Car 54 bubble-top lights.

  Mark was using bunched-up clothes as a pillow, trying to sleep against the window. His eyes fluttered when the Greyhound lurched away from the curb and continued west.

  Ford was completely awake in the next seat.

  Mark sat up and stretched. “How long was I out?”

  “Two hours.”

  Mark’s watch said four A.M. They passed a barbershop and went through a blinking yellow light.

  “Where are we?”

  “Kansas,” said Ford. “Wamego.”

  Mark yawned and ran a hand through uncombed hair. “Can these towns get any smaller?”

  Yes.

  There’d been a transfer in St. Louis, but then back roads again. Higginsville, Salina, Russell, Hays. And what was with all the junctions? Ellsworth Junction, Quinter Junction, Grand Junction, Junction City.

  Twenty hours since leaving Zanesville. Stripped their lives to a duffel bag each. Stuffed the rest in plastic garbage sacks and left them on the porch for Salvation Army. Got the deposit from the landlord and bought $99 one-way tickets to L.A.

  Mark was alert now as the bus picked up speed in the emptiness between towns. He got out a homemade sandwich. “I’ll never travel by bus again.” Tuna, soggy.

  “I kind of like it,” said Ford. “See things you never do otherwise. Gives me ideas.”

  “You been writing?”

  Ford jotted something in a composition book. “It’s quiet at night. Just the bus sound. I’ve gotten a lot done.”

  The book rested in Ford’s lap on top of
a zippered cloth bag full of spare pens and rubber-banded packs of typewritten pages and more notebooks crammed with tiny print. One of the pockets bulged with the odd receipts and napkins Ford had used when a book wasn’t handy.

  “Why’d you get rid of your typewriter?” asked Mark.

  “Too much hassle to take. I’ll buy one in a pawnshop when we get there.”

  Mark turned to the window. “I’d like to paint.”

  Ford jotted something. “Then do it.”

  “Don’t know how. I think I’d be bad at it.”

  Sunrise in Colorado. Sunset in Utah. In between, vast, lifeless panoramas that adjusted the young men’s scale of things. And the other passengers, who put it in perspective. The bandanna guy who sat down behind them in Aurora and asked if they had anything to get high. The screaming child who locked himself in the restroom outside Beaver and forced the driver to pull over. The gaunt man in a personal aroma envelope of sour wine.

  Hour fifty-two. Ford’s neck was starting to hurt, but hope came in a welcome sign with a golden bear. The California line. Interstate 15, making good time. Mark watched the Mojave go by. Ford wrote. Baker and Barstow.

  “You’re lucky you have a dream,” said Mark. “Wish I had one.”

  “I’m not fooling myself. The odds are astronomical.”

  “The way you work so hard? No, you’re definitely going to make it.”

  “I’d do it anyway. The best life is when your dreams come true. The second best is when they don’t, but you never stop chasing.”

  “I’ve always wanted to take up an instrument,” said Mark. “Except I’m not crazy about music. Is that important?”

  Ford gazed out the window. “This is the way they all came.”

  “Who?”

  “The dreamers.” Ford closed his book and stuck it in the zippered bag. “Free ranch land, then Sutter’s Mill and the gold rush. And when the gold ran out, they struck oil.”

  “Talk about your luck.”

  “Finally, Hollywood. An entire generation fantasizing about being discovered at a soda fountain in Schwab’s.”

  “I heard that story wasn’t true.”

  “It’s not. But kids from small towns all over America still kept arriving by bus with a single beat-up suitcase, not knowing what they were going to do next. We’re on the same journey.”