Read John Shirley - Wetbones for Free Online

Grafters , the expose that had given Arthwright a veneer of respectability; Warm Knife , his mega hit thriller. The teaser read: Keep the knife under the pillow. It'll be warmer that way  . . .
    Prentice stared at the poster for Warm Knife . Thinking: We're a sick bunch of flickers, all of us.
    "Creative control stays right here," Arthwright was telling the speaker phone. Turned sideways from Prentice, looking as if he were talking to the air; like Jimmy Stewart talking to Harvey. "If I need to, I can get Hagerstein. She's damn good."
    Arthwright took his long legs down and spun his swivel chair around once, in an absently playful way, as he waited for the ultimatum to sink in.
    "Zack, get real" A crackly female voice on the speaker phone. That'd be Doll Bechtman, Jeff Teitelbaum's agent. Prentice and Jeff had gone to NYU
    Film School together; had chased girls and made pretentious 16 millimeter student films together. Prentice decided he was going to have to look Jeff up.
    Evidently Arthwright was arguing with Doll Bechtman about Jeff. Prentice had met Doll once; a middle-aged woman with a look like Betty Crocker and a style like Roy Cohn. A barracuda, Jeff called her gleefully. The tougher she was, the better he liked it. It appeared she'd met her match in Arthwright. But she kept on: "I'm telling you, Jeff has good instincts. This Hagerstein woman cannot write an action picture. It'd be a joke."
    Jeff, Prentice mused. Arthwright was fucking Jeff Teitelbaum out of creative control on a movie? So what else was new.
    'Then tell Jeff to compromise a little, work with us, Doll. Look, I got someone here. You talk to Jeff."
    "I'll get back."
    "Sure, okay."
    Arthwright swivelled to the phone and hit the disconnect. He cocked his head impishly, grinned at Prentice, and said, "Tom. Long time no see."
    "Yeah. I've been holing up in New York." Prentice had only met Arthwright once, briefly. Arthwright probably didn't really remember the occasion.
    Prentice toyed with the idea of asking what Sunrise had cooking with Jeff. But, even though he was undoubtedly supposed to hear Arthwright throwing his weight around on the phone negotiation, he wasn't really supposed to listen to the details. He didn't need to ask, anyway, when he thought, about it. Arthwright was co-producing A Cop Named Dagger II for Sunrise; Jeff had conceived and written the first A Cop Named Dagger picture. Chances were, he was supposed to do
    the screenplay again but was holding out for creative control. Something few writers got till they became a "hyphenate" - writer-director, a writer-producer. Usually he had to be a Player, a guy who could command points of the gross profits. Jeff wasn't there yet.
    Why the hell did Jeff want to hold out for creative control over an action picture? But come to think of it, Jeff thought action pictures could be high art.
    Arthwright checked out his watch, and said, "Glad to see you back in town. What have you got for me?"
    Arthwright wanted the pitch now . It was do or die. "What I've got is . . ." Prentice spread his hands - and then stepped off the cliff into space. ". . . a comedy with a strong drama backbone, a twist on buddy pictures." He could see Arthwright's eyes glazing already. Another buddy picture. Prentice went on hurriedly, "A lady cop walks a beat in San Francisco. She walks it alone, in a tough neighbourhood. One day she gets a new partner - a rookie, a kid who ignores her eight years on the force and thinks he's hot shit, compared to her, because she's a woman and he can't take a woman seriously as a street cop. The humour'll come naturally. She's going to learn he's not the asshole he seems, deep down; he's going to learn she's a good cop and that he's got a lot to learn."
    It sounded stupid to Prentice in his own ears, just now. It sounded vague and fatuous.
    "Uh huh." Arthwright managed to seem half interested. "Might be a little predictable. Familiar."
    Come on, you son of a bitch, Prentice thought. All