Black

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

"Cheatsheet" Leadbetter parked his beat-up Toyota Corolla two blocks from the Manchester hotel downtown and fed some quarters into the meter. He glanced around a final time, taking in the cardboard lean-to a dozen yards away and the filthy sleeping bags near it. The theater district in Lost Angeles had become a no man's land taken over by the increasingly large homeless population, and both the city and the police seemed unable to make any headway against the rising tide of the indigent. His companion, "Bones" Ortiz, shifted his backpack, which contained their cameras, anxious to get moving.

The car would probably be safe, at least for the hour it would take for him to get his shot and get the hell out of there. Cheatsheet had been working for Freddie Sypes for three years, Bones for two, and they were typical of the paparazzi brigade: twenty-to-thirty-something, male, hungry, with the morals of starved piranhas, usually dressed in drab, dark colors, the better to fade into the background. Their code of conduct could be reduced to one axiom: Do whatever it takes to get the shot.

It was an interesting way to make ends meet - living by one's wits, developing a circle of tipsters who could let them know when a noteworthy celebrity was going to be at an airport or restaurant, or if a starlet was drunk or high and making a fool of herself at a club. Cheatsheet's usual payday for a shot could be all over the map, anywhere from nothing to a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands. He'd heard all about the guy who had gotten the shots of that vampire movie star kissing her married director. Rumor was the snaps had sold for a cool quarter mil, and he believed it. Of course, that was the equivalent of the Holy Grail in his business, but the point was it could happen, and once or twice a year, it did.

Most of the time, though, he was lucky to get a few hundred here, a grand there. His employer hosted the top gossip website in the world, and it had an insatiable appetite for fresh meat - but it had to be juicy, or otherwise the work was worthless. Cheatsheet had long understood the game, and for all the uncertainty, he made over fifty grand a year basically hanging out and stalking the newsworthy. Bones made about half that, but he was an up-and-comer, and would do just about anything to get a scoop, even if it meant bending the law on occasion.

This evening's exercise was based on one of the countless tips Freddie got every day, but it had seemed legit, which is why more dependable stringers like Cheatsheet and Bones had been deployed rather than any of the hundreds of aspirants who waited like starving pups for the food dish to be set out. There was a never-ending supply of paparazzi hopefuls trying to break into the business, but the plum jobs went to those in Freddie's inner circle, into which Cheatsheet had worked his way after nearly a decade of living by his wits and selling to anyone with a checkbook.

The hotel was low profile, which was probably why it had been selected for the meeting rumored to be taking place in one of its conference rooms - a meeting with Andrew Hunter and his costar, their public relations people, their media handlers, and several trusted press contacts to coordinate the upcoming film release of Hunter's latest and to manage the spin on his female lead having gone to her reward yesterday, along with two of Cheatsheet's colleagues. Freddie was still waiting for the toxicology report on Melody, but he was willing to bet she'd been drunk and high at the time of the crash. He'd gotten a phone report from the assistant manager of the restaurant where she'd been hanging out with two friends, knocking back margaritas in the private rear courtyard, and judging by a scan of the bill, which had mysteriously arrived in Freddie's email inbox, nobody had been feeling any pain by the end of the afternoon.

Freddie had posted the bill on his site, an exclusive scoop that drove traffic through the roof, along with a lurid commentary suggesting that she'd been obviously drunk and abusive to members of the staff - an embellishment, perhaps, but non-disprovable, and it made for more interesting reading. The truth was that Melody was fairly boring by Tinsel Town standards, and was mainly newsworthy because of her upcoming role opposite Hunter. Their on-screen sizzle had been rumored to extend behind the camera, and Freddie had been giving his arch-enemy Hunter hell over it, memorializing his every move during production and hinting broadly that the over-the-hill action star was doing more than reading lines with his young co-star.