Bel-Air Dead (Stone Barrington 20)

Stone expected Rick Barron to call the meeting to order, but that did not happen. Instead, the lights went down, and in the darkness a screen must have been lowered, because suddenly a large, wide-screen image of the Centurion main gates, filmed from above, appeared, and the music of a full symphony orchestra welled up.

The camera was in either a blimp or a stabilized helicopter, and it rose and began to move slowly over the studio grounds, past the administration building and over the soundstages. Various standing stages, like the New York street and the small town square with its courthouse passed beneath. Then the camera moved over the lake, where an eighteenth-century sailing vessel was anchored.

In the distance could be seen the main street of a western town, with its Boot Hill at one end. From the opposite end of the street a man on horseback was at full gallop in the direction of the camera, which descended to ground level to meet him. As he approached the camera he reined in the horse, which skidded to a halt in a small cloud of dust, as its rider jumped gracefully to the ground. The man was Vance Calder.

Tall in his heeled boots, wearing a buckskin shirt with fringed sleeves and the Stetson he had worn in many westerns, Vance looked wonderfully handsome, Stone thought.

Vance slapped his horse on its ass, and it galloped off-screen, while he walked to the side of the street, outside the saloon, swept off his hat and tossed it a few feet to where it landed on one end of the hitching post. He leaned against the rail and contemplated the camera for a moment, allowing the audience to take in his lean figure, his graying hair, and his deeply tanned, finely cut face. He smiled, revealing a beautiful set of teeth.

“Hello,” Vance said, in his beautifully modulated baritone. “I believe we’ve met before.”

The audience of film people went nuts, and it was as if the dead man on the screen had anticipated this, because he paused until the noise subsided, before continuing. “Welcome to my home for the past half-century,” he said, waving an arm around him. He pushed off the rail and began to move with the camera up the street, past the sheriff’s office, the general store, and the undertaker’s parlor, continuing to speak as he strolled.

“I’ve made seventy-five films at Centurion, from westerns… to comedies… to romances… to war films… to police procedurals and just about every other kind of picture…”

And as Vance strolled and talked, something magical happened. Without his so much as pausing for a breath, the actor’s image dissolved as he continued to speak, through a series of shots of him in different costumes, on different sets around the lot. It was completely seamless, something that could only have been accomplished by a ghost-or a superb film editor.

Finally he reached the town square, and dressed in a brassbuttoned blue blazer and gray flannel trousers, and an opennecked white silk shirt with a colorful scarf tied at the neck, he took a seat on a park bench in front of the courthouse, crossed his legs, and continued.

“Centurion has survived, intact, over all these decades, because of the management of people who wanted more than to rake in big grosses, who wanted to make fine motion pictures, films that will still move audiences a hundred years hence, and beyond. The more than seven hundred films made on this lot since the late thirties have won more than a hundred and fifty Oscars, for everything from costumes, makeup, and production design to scoring, producing, directing, and acting. Six of those came to me-not just because I did a good job, but because from their inception, each of those pictures had invested in it the brains and creativity and skill of a group of extraordinary people, working together to craft some of the best entertainment this industry has ever seen.

“The board of directors, of which I am glad to be a member, has always followed a policy of offering ownership of the studio to a wide variety of the people who work here, in the belief that this practice will maintain the structure of our business in such a way that will allow the excellence of the work done here to continue for decades into the future.

“Technical advances will come along, and Centurion will embrace them, but it is the talent and creativity and hard work of the people who make our films that will always be at the heart of the work we produce, and that will enable us to keep this studio in the forefront of the motion picture business.

“You are all part of that, and I am very proud to be one of you.” Vance paused, then stood and said, “I’ll see you in the movies.” Then as the music swelled again, he turned and strolled off down the street, until, with a little wave, he disappeared around a corner.

The audience were on their feet again, applauding and shouting, many of them in tears.

Slowly, the lights came up, first on the row of Oscars, then on the people seated at the table onstage.

Rick Barron adjusted the microphone in front of him and spoke. “Now we will vote on a motion to sell forty percent of our property to Prince Enterprises.”

55

Stone turned and looked at Arrington. She was still staring at where the screen had been, and tears were running down her cheeks. He gave her his linen handkerchief.

“That was wonderful!” she said, trying not to sob.

“And showing it was brilliant,” Stone replied.

Rick began calling names of shareholders: “Gladys Hemmings, Wardrobe,” he said. “Fifty shares.”

“I vote with Centurion!” a woman shouted from the rear, and applause broke out again.

“Harry Bland, Maintenance, sixty-five shares.”

“You’ve got my vote, Rick,” a man shouted.

“Martin Manulis, Production, twenty thousand shares.”

A man in the front row stood. “I vote with Centurion!” he shouted.

The roll call continued, and fifteen or twenty names had been called before someone voted his ten thousand shares with Prince. A low rumble of disapproval began.

Stone had his notebook out and was keeping score. The studio was ahead about sixty-forty, he reckoned, then someone voted twenty-five thousand shares with Prince, and the developer edged ahead.

“We know where this is going, don’t we?” Arrington asked.