Between Good and Hollywood (eBook)

A Crooked Novel

Tyler Patrick Wood (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
260 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-8857-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Years ago, Benjamin Billings and Tabitha Johns were arguably the two most promising talents in showbiz. Youth, looks and charisma all seemed on their side. Even in an industry as speculative as entertainment, Ben and Tabby were close to a sure bet. But when their dawning careers took a disastrous and irreparably bleak turn, the desperate pair soon found themselves employing their skills to become con artists. Now they're looking to take a score that sets them up for life, using fellow Hollywood castoffs and all the guts and luck they have to get out clean and alive. It was never in the cards to be famous. Notorious will have to do.

Tyler Wood is a fiction writer and musician from Fort Worth, Texas. Find out more about his work at www.Tylerhaswords.com.

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For Benjamin Billings and Tabitha Johns, talent was never the problem. After bad luck ran their fledgling Hollywood careers aground, they decided to use their abilities to become con artists. In this witty crime novel, we follow Ben and Tabby as they look to pull off the most ambitious job they've ever tried. Deception is practiced at its highest level by all parties in this labyrinthine thriller full of quirky characters and menacing antagonists.

Textauszug

Chapter 2:

Make Like Kang

The ride to Evan Henk’s house was brief. Tabby Johns had a heavy foot, and they more or less lived in the same neighborhood. Highland Park. One of richest zip codes in the country. Planting a flag in affluent habitats was usually a sound methodology for making inroads to the big money. Months ago, Ben came across an older woman who spent most of her time living overseas, offering to take care of the house they were currently staying in. It needed a lot of work and was surprisingly cramped, though the location alone lent the property a value around four million. And they lived on the poor outskirts.

Henk’s place was palatial and immaculate, smack in the middle of the community, next door to tedious investment bankers and dodgy corporate lawyers at the top of their predictably dirty games. “I don’t like this street,” Ben said, buttoning his sport coat as he motivated himself from the car. “If for some reason Hitler wanted to live near downtown Dallas, he’d pick this exact spot.” Billings scanned the perfectly trimmed hedges and unnaturally organized dispersion of colorful flora, fighting a nasty taste in his mouth.

“Are we having a Hitler day?” Tabby asked. “I think you skipped Mao day. Did I forget Pol Pot week? I’m such a dummy. Stupid women. We’re the stupidest ever.”

“Okay,” he said, noting the heavy mockery, trying to refocus on the role. “I get it.”

“No, it’s great how you regularly include despots in our repartee. Gives everything a needed sense of morbid history.”

As they walked up the snakelike redbrick path, the massive house became more imposing. Ben made sure to shrug in a particularly pouty way.

“Don’t do the hurt child routine. That’s not how we go into this scene.”

He couldn’t look at her, instead talking straight ahead. “What? Some of the stuff you say, it can get pretty nasty. Times I even think you mean it.”

“I do mean it,” Tabby said, clasping a new purse now. It was tiny, worth much more than its weight in gold. She was glad to be rid of the bulky handbag from before. For more than one reason. “You’re a criminal and extremely judgmental, Benji. How does that even work?”

“You’ve lost me.”

“That’s for damn sure,” she answered, ringing the doorbell while waving at the camera angled down at them with overactive shoulders and a warm smile.

A buzzing sound went off and the heavy door opened slow and steady. No greeter to be seen. “Yeah,” Ben muttered, “that’s not creepy at all.”

“Come on in,” said a squelched voice from an intercom underneath the camera. “I’m toward the back of the house. Just go by the den and the library and make a right at the sitting room. Oh, and a left at the parlor.”

“This should be quick and easy,” Tabby whispered, slipping her arm through Ben’s as they stepped inside. Everything was polished and shiny, from the ceramic floors to the chandeliers. The taste was eclectic. It was the house of a man who’d taken decorating advice from many girlfriends, all from different countries. The entrance had a bright flair; the remnants of time spent with a Latina. The dining room was functional and minimalistic, most likely on the advice from someone tall with a name like Ingrid. The artwork was impressionistic. There was a real Manet in a place it didn’t belong and a fake Monet displayed under decent light—the idea of a French girl or a girl wishing she was. Strangely familiar plucky music was coming from somewhere in the back.

These were a few of the things Ben noticed as they made their way through Evan Henk’s mansion. “A parlor, a library and a sitting room,” he whispered, still scanning every inch of the cross-cultural hodgepodge. “Guy thinks he’s in a BBC series but lacks the class or restraint to pull it off.”

The plucking got louder as the pair entered yet another section of the enormous home. Tabby looked around and raised her healthy light-brown eyebrows, thinking about all the men and all the lines she’d suffered and gently rebuffed over the past few weeks. “Wait a second. Is that music the score from our movie?” she asked.

“Oh no.” Before the words could dissolve, Ben knew she was right. His tan face went white as a sheet. “I’m getting the feeling this is going to be more than quick and easy. Should we get the hell out of here?”

“We can’t just bail,” Tabby said, tugging at him to prevent any attempt at retreat. Whatever was going on, she wanted to let it play. “He asked to meet. We meet.”

“But he’s watching it.”

“Hey, you two!” said Evan Henk, bursting through a set of double doors in a brilliantly white karate gi. He bowed to Ben and stood on his toes to give Tabitha a quick kiss on the cheek. His smile was full of strange cheer and as bright as the unexpected outfit hanging from his short, stocky body.

“Love the house,” Ben said, keeping the lie as brief as possible.

“Oh. Nice. Just had the landscaping done. Told that company if it wasn’t the best in the neighborhood, I’d ruin them. As a black man I feel it’s my duty to show up these old cracker assholes I’m living around. Such douchebags.”

“Good stuff. Hey, are you watching Dynasty of Danger in there?” Ben asked hesitantly, looking over Henk’s brown bald head toward the source of the sound. “In a karate outfit? That’s… interesting.”

“I’m not really watching it,” Henk said, playfully stopping a punch short of Ben’s midsection. “I mean, I’ve seen it. Way in the way back of the day. Hahahmm.” His laugh was singularly strange. The first part of it was fake. The second part sounded like he was moaning from some secret, inappropriate satisfaction. “The Kang and I were training in my media room and had it going in the background. Wow. What an astonishing piece of crap. How do I currently have it? Scrubbed from the internet doesn’t mean it can elude me. Hahahmm.”

Evan Henk was referring to the film that had served to sink the once burgeoning careers of Benjamin Billings and Tabitha Johns. With the hottest writer and director in Hollywood, a massive budget, and two beautiful and talented leads carefully selected for a rise to the top, what could possibly go wrong?

Turns out, pretty much everything you could think of. And a lot more.

Riding the success of their previous projects, the vaunted writer/director duo spent most of preproduction, production, and postproduction drunk and high. The script for Dynasty of Danger included a treasure hunt in Manchuria, an incessantly helpful monkey, and a blind Buddhist guide with whiskers too long not to be bigoted. The studio’s blank check only worsened the stacking problems, adding steady fuel to a conflagration of epic proportions. The rough cut was racially and artistically offensive in every way possible. Final edits made it even worse. The distributor sent it straight to video and wrote off the loss, only releasing it in parts of Canada. The few copies that got out mostly ended up in Alberta truck stop bins, purchased by the occasional drunk mistaking it for an adult film of one sort or another.

After Dynasty, Ben and Tabby’s careers in showbiz well and truly dried up. The tiny circle of decision makers that had extracted them from obscurity gave them the coldest of shoulders. Tabby’s agent ran for the hills. The musical side of her career shriveled as well. She lost her record deal within a year. Ben’s father, who was also his agent, died six months after the movie flopped, mostly from guilt over his son’s botched prospects. Even writing opportunities went away. The song publishing deal Ben was signed to was bought out and two scripts he had in development were shown the scrap heap. Their complete failure was as unfathomable as their previously promised success. Trying to climb out made it worse. They were in the same quicksand, names inextricably tied to each other.

And so they stuck together, two dejected casualties of the Hollywood thresher. They found some solace on the stage. Off Broadway, in the way that Neptune is Off Earth. After a few more shots at redemption and a few more crushed hopes, the pair chucked it when a new character entered their lives. Someone who taught them other ways of converting talent to money.

“So, for inspiration or something?” Tabby asked, pointing at the screen.

Dynasty did have some fight scenes. Terrible ones. But nevertheless.

“Inspiration, hahahmm?”

“Oh,” she said, put off by the way Evan Henk could ask a question and do his stunted laugh thing at the same time. “I was wondering why you had the film playing.”

“Not for inspiration, my dear. I only wanted to be reminded of my new partners during the workout. Two birds. Hahahmm.”

“New partners?” Ben asked, looking sternly at Tabby. “When did we jump to partners?”

“She didn’t tell you much, did she?” Henk responded, dabbing his right eye with the lapel of his gi while daintily poking Ben in the chest.

“We really didn’t have much time, Evan....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.2.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-8857-4 / 9798350988574