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the bad guy’s character dictated he must, that made it all the more satisfying when Clay pitched him into a blast furnace for the finale.
    From the very first screening, the buzz was about Clay Steadman. He was the guy who got the word of mouth. He was the one people came to see in droves. He was the one who got the best supporting actor nomination.
    He was on his way.
    As part of his compensation for The Fire Within, Clay was given five net points of the profit. A novice, he didn’t know that a studio’s job was to keep a movie from ever showing a profit, no matter how many millions of dollars it took in at the box office. He learned.
    When the studio asked the picture’s producer and director to take Clay on a deep-sea fishing trip off Baja California, in the hopes of getting him to sign a multi-picture deal, Clay was only too happy to accept. The trip lasted only one day, and nobody caught any fish. But when the three sportsmen returned to port in Cabo San Lucas, Clay Steadman’s five net points in The Fire Within had been miraculously converted to five gross points. Starting from the first dollar of box office receipts.
    The gross points came equally out of the director’s and producer’s pockets, and nobody ever revealed the reasoning — or threat — that Clay used to bring about such unprecedented generosity. But in Hollywood circles, it conferred an immediate sense of awe upon the new actor that only helped his legend grow over the years.
    The other thing that day at sea conferred upon Clay Steadman was a taste for a brand of stout he’d never had, or even heard of, before. Walsh’s Private Reserve.
    The producer told him he had the stuff flown in from a little place up in the Sierra.
    A town called Goldstrike.
     

Chapter 5
     
    After the body had been taken down and the crime scene taped off, Ron and Oliver drove back to police headquarters.
    “This is the first homicide in my two years here,” Oliver said. “I thought I was leaving this shit behind in L.A. Come to think of it, I can recall just about any kind of killing you can name in L.A. except a crucifixion.”
    Ron replied, “It’s my second homicide here in three years. The other was a domestic.”
    “A domestic?” Oliver asked incredulously. “What the hell would anyone have to fight about up here? Somebody serve the wrong wine with dinner?”
    Ron shook his head. “Wounded pride. Can happen anywhere.”
    “Somebody steppin’ out on somebody else? Hanky panky?”
    “In a manner of speaking. He was a director and she was an editor. He had the contractual final cut on a film they’d both worked on, but she went back in on the sly and did a little more cutting and splicing. He found out and went ape. They yelled and screamed, and he summed up his argument by hitting her over the head with his DGA award. She died the next day.”
    “Why do I think this SOB’s not on death row?”
    “He copped to manslaughter. He’s at a medium security facility teaching theater arts.”
    Oliver Gosden shook his head. “People are fucked.”
    “Must be why the courts are, too,” Ron opined.
    “I want in on this one,” the deputy chief told his boss bluntly.
    The chief looked at his second-in-command with an air of assessment.
    Oliver Gosden’s interest in the case might have been purely professional, a desire to expand his base of experience. Or his feelings could be a lot more personal than that. You didn’t have to be Joe Friday to see the anger in those dark brown eyes. In either case, Ron knew he’d have to trust him.
    “I didn’t bring you up here to ride the bench,” he said.
    “Good.”
    “But insofar as possible, Oliver, you’ve got to keep an open mind about the case. You prejudge things, you might step on your dick.”
    The deputy chief chose to remain silent.
    The two men pulled into the police garage at the Municipal Services Complex. The Muni was the mall for governmental services in Goldstrike. One stop shopping. Located in