Monkey See Monkey Murder Read online

  Monkey See, Monkey Murder

  By Jack Bates

  Copyright 2011 by Jake Bates

  Cover Copyright 2011 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Jack Bates and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Ambrosia

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  Monkey See, Monkey Murder

  By Jack Bates

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ONE

  I arrived on the set of Motor City Monkey right about the time Will Peyton, the director, was having a meltdown. The tabloids billed the production as a return to the family movie, but the language coming out of the director’s mouth was a darker shade of blue. From what I caught during his tirade, he was upset with the former teenage songbird whose most recent notoriety dealt more with what she did off screen than on. At that moment, she was having difficulty relating to the chimpanzee sitting in the driver’s seat of a race car.

  The tension around the soundstage stemmed from a weak high-concept script. High concept is a term Hollywood types throw around for when their girlfriends has an idea that a team of scriptwriters, producers, and marketing gurus try to mash into a viable project. The high concept for Motor City Monkey? A gifted chimpanzee races in the NASCAR circuit for a well known family of drivers who have hit a few too many potholes in life.

  It seemed like a solid project. Anyone catching the release would recognize the chimpanzee from a series of commercials for a cruise line. It’s the one where the hapless human oaf takes his family aboard a ship over run with chimps. The last bit of it shows Butch, the chimp, in a skimpy bathing suit, sipping an umbrella drink as the voice over guy warns the would-be travelers not to “monkey around with your family’s vacation.”

  Haley Goslin, the twenty year old chanteuse whose big hit included that song about girls and lollipops, freaked out every time the chimp pulled its lips back and looked at her. I did have to agree. From where I stood, the chimp was far from the image of the docile primate enjoying a cocktail on a sundeck.

  “I’ve seen When Wild Pets Attack, Peyton,” Haley said. Her southern twang echoed around the makeshift soundstage in an abandoned Detroit warehouse. “I know what these demons can do to a person. They rip out your eyes and bite off your fingers. No thank you.”

  “Haley, you’re being ridiculous,” Peyton said. Once upon a time he had a long, decorated career, at least by Hollywood standards. By forty, he was deep in debt because he was deep in cocaine and on his third or fourth divorce. Motor City Monkey was supposed to be his way out of the toilet.

  Haley’s mullet-haired old man jumped into the discussion. “Now you just hold on, buddy,” Daddy Goslin said. “I’ve seen those TV shows, too. I don’t want nothin’ happening to my Haley.” Goslin marched over to his daughter and put an arm around her shoulders. Haley shrugged it off, taking a step away from him.

  “Go sit down, daddy,” she said. She turned to Peyton. “Where is that thing’s handler?”

  “I’m right here, Miss Goslin,” a man said.

  Standing in a partially raised lift was a man in beige coveralls, the kind with the oval name patch on them. His said Al. There was a .22 caliber, bolt action rifle slung over Al’s shoulder. Behind him was another man in a hard hat and orange vest whose only job was to raise or lower the cart on its accordion arms. A plus size black woman stood next to the trainer. She also wore a hard hat that barely fit over her tightly wound dreadlocks.

  “You ready to shoot this thing if it goes after me?” Haley asked.

  “It’s why I have the rifle,” Al said. The woman next to him turned her attention to the gun handler. She started to say something but was cut off.

  “I got my pearl-handled pistols out in my truck,” Daddy Goslin said. “Maybe I’d better go get them.”

  Again, the woman next to the handler opened her mouth to speak.

  “Stop!” Peyton’s voice cut through the absurdity. “Everyone just calm down.” He looked up at Al the trainer. “Al, has there ever been any problem with Butch?”

  “None that I know of, Mr. Peyton.” Al said. “He’s as gentle as a baby.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not wild about babies, either,” Haley said.

  Peyton eyed the cast and crew. “Look. All we have to do is get this shot and we can wrap for the day. Just hug the frickin’ monkey and we’re out of here, okay?” Peyton stared directly at Haley.

  “You can do it, pumkin,” Daddy Goslin said. I wasn’t sure if he purposely missed the “p” in pumpkin or if the chew in his lower lip obstructed the plosive consonant. Twenty years before, Daddy Goslin had a boot-scootin’, rock-a-billy tune, something about “a froggin’ in the bog again”. Made him big and rich and big and famous. Now, he was riding the plaid shirttails of his lil’ ol’ pumkin.

  “Quiet!” It was Peyton again. He turned around and made eye contact with me. He looked a little relieved to see me but held up a finger letting me know it wasn’t the time to approach him. I nodded and stepped off to the side of the set knowing I needed not to be seen.

  Motor City Monkey wasn’t my first job since Hollywood came to Detroit. I had been hired on as a consultant for an episode of a short-lived cop show shot in the Motor City, and I had been hired to keep an eye on an A-lister filming with Clint Eastwood. The guy had a string of hits in the 90s, liked to spend long nights at the local casinos, and had a habit of showing up late or not at all the next morning. For the two weeks I was on the job, I made sure he did.

  Peyton had heard of my work and contacted me to make sure Haley Goslin stayed low and stayed clean. At twenty, she’d already been on the internet for drunk-sexting to any fan that tweeted her. Desperate to shake the little girl image created for her by the suits and skirts of a noted, youth-oriented cable network, Haley Goslin was putting it out there.

  Literally.

  The set quieted. Peyton took his seat, called for the usual, and started the action. He took a small gray pen from his front pocket and tapped it against a clipboard, keeping an eye on the action in front of him. I figured he needed to take notes to tell the actors what they were doing right or wrong. His thumb rolled over the clicking mechanism.

  Haley delivered her lines, arms spread, with a warm and happy smile on her face. She leaned in to hug Butch. From his perch on the lift, Al the trainer used a clicker to cue the chimp. Butch smiled. He threw up his arms and looked like he was going in for the hug but something distracted him. Instead of giving off the happy chimp hoots, Butch dropped his arms, his eyes went sullen, and he pulled his lips back again in that menacing grimace, the kind that appears on the little wind-up monkey smashing tin cymbals together. The monkey grabbed Haley’s arm. Haley tugged back and while her body moved, her arm barely
budged.

  Haley Goslin went nuts. Her scream rocked the warehouse. Butch tugged on her arm with enough force to snap Haley’s head forward and then back to one side.

  Al came down from his spot. He blew a loud, shrill whistle several times before Butch released his grasp on Haley’s arm. The chimp screeched loudly. Al held his hands out in front himself, palms down and slowly lowered them to his waist. He did this several times before Butch settled back into the lovable chimp everyone knew from the cruise line commercial.

  “That thing wants to kill me!” Haley wailed. She held her arm, acting like it had nearly been ripped from her, which, I guess, it had.

  “We are not leaving here until we get this shot,” Peyton said. “Everyone take a break and be back in here in fifteen minutes ready to work.”

  Haley hurried past her father, digging a pack of smokes, a lighter, and a cell phone out of her large, over-the-shoulder purse: It looked more like the kind a flying British nanny might carry. Daddy Goslin went out after her, Starbucks coffee cup full of chew in his hand.

  Al clicked the small hand held device in his hand. Butch hurried over to him. Al handed Butch an apple. He rubbed the primate’s head as Butch broke off half the apple in one bite.

  “So this is Hollywood,” I said.

  “This is hell,” Peyton said. “Let’s go to my trailer, Mr. Ward.”

  “It’s Henry, Mr. Peyton,” I said. “My friends call me Hack.”

  He didn’t say anything. I followed him outside, the afternoon sunlight temporarily blinding me. I caught a whiff of Haley’s cigarette smoke. She turned away when she saw me but not before I caught her eyes roll over me and her lips turn up in an interesting smile. I returned the gesture. At thirty-two, I was twelve years her senior and should have known better. I guess in an industry where a guy in his seventies can marry a woman forty years younger and have children, age becomes relative, especially when the woman shows off a body like hers to anyone who asks.

  I don’t think Haley Goslin was cast for her acting ability.

  Peyton’s trailer was nothing fancy: An Airstream with a cream interior to warm the cold, shiny aluminum exterior. The trailers were on loan from some local dealership that would collect quite a bit of insurance money should anything happen while on set, which was bound to happen if everything written in the tabloids was taken for truth. A 2010 orange Mustang was parked diagonally in front of it.

  “Have a seat, Hank,” Peyton said. I shook my head and was about to correct him when he said, “Hack. Sorry. Stressful day.” Peyton opened a cupboard over the small sink and pulled out a bottle of high-end scotch. The bottle was green with a paper label made to look older than it was. He took down one glass and held it out to me. I shook my head. “Suit yourself.” He poured himself a generous portion and drank half of it. “That’s better, mommy,” he said. He poured to level off his tumbler and sat down on the bench sofa opposite the swivel chair where I sat.

  Peyton stared at me. “Where did she go last night?” he asked.

  “She spent most of the night up in a trendy town called Royal Oak,” I said. “It’s kind of caught on with the visiting celebrities. Sigourney Weaver shot some film there for a movie of the week a few years ago. There’s some boutiques and cafes, a couple of trendy bars.”

  “Where did she go the rest of the night?”

  This was the tough part. “Are you asking because you want to keep your star in check?”

  “Why else would I be asking?”

  I reached into the back pocket of my jeans where I kept a thin paperback journal for jotting down notes and observations. Folded and tucked inside the back cover’s thin pocket was a print-out from a Hollywood gossip site. On the sheet was a gray-scale image of Peyton and Haley leaving a Brazilian restaurant in West Hollywood. I handed it to him.

  Peyton unfolded it, looked at it, and then dropped it to the cushion next to him. He took a sip of his drink and looked at me.

  “Officially,” Peyton said, “the producers want to make sure she stays clean.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “You know what it’s like dating a twenty year old girl?”

  “I’ve dated girls in their twenties, when I was in my twenties.”

  Peyton smirked at me. “You’re not that far out of them.” He finished his drink and held the glass out to me. “Reach around behind you and grab the scotch.”

  “Don’t you have a movie to shoot?”

  “You’re confusing a movie with the epic piece of crap I’m stuck doing,” he said. “Please.” He held up his glass. “Pour me some freaking scotch. Besides, with any luck, my petition to the Director’s Guild will give Alan Smithee all the credit.”

  “If it’s so bad, why do it?” I poured directly into the tumbler as he held it. Alan Smithee was a pseudonym used to protect the reputation of a director who knows the project he or she has just wrapped will be universally panned.

  “Same reason you’re doing what you’re doing. Money.” He took a drink. A moment later, he sighed. “We were actually going to go with another actress for this project.”

  “What happened?”

  “Haley seduced me, let’s leave it at that. I sold her to the producers by telling them she could pull off being fifteen. I mean, look at her. She still acts fifteen.”

  “So she got the part and you got the shaft?”

  “Getting it,” Peyton said. “Meaning my shaft is seeing less and less of her. Not that it matters with Daddy Mullethead hanging around twenty-four-seven.” Peyton took another healthy pull of his scotch. “Did she go home with someone?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I flipped through the paperback journal. “A bartender named Carl Dempsey. She didn’t stay the night, though. She wasn’t there more than a couple of hours.”

  “It’s all you need,” he said. He put the drink on a small ledge next to him and dropped his head into his hands. He shook it and laughed. “A bartender. God, I’m an idiot.” Peyton looked up at me. “You’d think after three wives and one pregnant mistress, I’d get it. But I don’t.” He finished the rest of the drink in one gulp.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yeah?” Peyton asked. The door opened. A guy a few years younger than me looked up into the trailer, his hand still on the door knob. He wore a hands-free ear piece that poked out from his curly, blonde hair. In his hands he carried an iPad, but he still had a variety of pens in his pocket. There were a couple of clickable ball points and one silvery metal cylinder similar to the one Peyton had been tapping on his clipboard that afternoon.

  “Do you want the crew back on set, Mr. Peyton?”

  “Yeah, Bobby, I do.”

  “All right.” Bobby started to close the door.

  “And Bobby?”

  Bobby jerked the door back open. He peered in. There was a certain amount of admiration mixed with anticipation in his eyes.

  “Get Annie to shoot the scene for me, will you?”

  The anticipation in Bobby’s stare morphed into anger before dissipating altogether. “Ah, yeah sure,” Bobby said. He closed the door.

  “Annie Galt is my second unit director on this project,” Peyton said. “I just can’t go back in there right now.”

  It could have been the scotch, but I figured it was probably more that he didn’t want to be around Haley Goslin at that moment.

  “Do you want me to follow her again tonight?” I asked.

  “I paid you for the week,” Peyton said. The alcohol blurred his speech and soured his demeanor. He grabbed a throw pillow and squished it behind his head. He stretched out over the bench sofa. “Annie will have no problems, I’m sure of that.” He chuckled to himself as he drifted off in a booze snooze.

  TWO

  I left Peyton’s trailer to join the parade of crew marching back into the warehouse soundstage. I saw Bobby the assistant talking to a woman I assumed to be Annie Galt. She had that panicked, deer in the headlights look as she flipped back and forth through some sheet
s attached to a clipboard. Daddy Goslin walked hurriedly past the two and went into the warehouse. Al walked hand in hand with Butch. The only person I didn’t see was the star, Haley Goslin.

  That changed quickly.

  “Boo!” she said. She wrapped her hands around my arm and laughed.

  “You got me.” I said.

  “I got you last night, buddy,” she said. “Peyton hire you to keep tabs on me?”

  “He did.”

  “You’re not very good at your job, then.”

  “Yeah? Why is that?”

  “I made you following me.”

  I shrugged. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t do my job. You went from Café Musica to Mr. G’s Bar where you spent about an hour hitting on the bartender you later met at his apartment. You stayed there for two hours before coming back here where you got into a heated discussion with your daddy.”

  I didn’t need to see the hair on the nape of her neck to know she bristled.

  “What color underwear was I wearing, Mr. Know-It-All?”

  “Come on. Trick question,” I said. “You don’t wear underwear.”

  Haley Goslin let go of my arm and moved quickly ahead of me. She went to Bobby, pointed at me, and said something I could tell was not favorable. Bobby, knowing who I was, looked defeated as he approached me.

  “She doesn’t want me on set,” I said.

  “Whatever Haley wants, Haley gets.” He said it in a kind of sing-song voice and wobbled his head. I was surprised his hands-free phone clipped to his ear didn’t fly across the lot.

  “Does she know Peyton handed off the scene to his back up?”

  “You mean Annie “Can’t-Tell-My-Ass-From-A-Hole-In-The-Ground” Galt?”

  “You’re not a fan then, Bobby?”

  “Honey, I shoot better second units than she does. God, even that stinky little chimp could shoot better than her.”

  “Why does Peyton use her then?”

  Bobby shrugged. He fished a cigarette out of his jeans pocket and held it up for me to light. I held out my hands.