Donnie gave the big smile, telling everybody that he and his old pal Peter were in solid on this one. “No, hey, Pete-man, I mean it.” Pete-man. “You want a new production designer, you got one. I mean, we’re making film here, am I right?”

Peter Alan Nelsen screamed, “Shit!” as loud as he could, stalked back to the Harley-Davidson, and kicked it over. Hard. There were gouges in the floor where it had fallen before. The blond woman waited until Peter was through, then went over and righted it, her cut muscles straining against the weight. Peter paid no attention. He stood in the center of the floor, breathing hard, hands down at his sides like there was a terrible anger bubbling within him that he didn’t know if he could control, but he would give it a game try. Drama. I said, “I’m Elvis Cole. Is there a problem you want to discuss with me, or should I leave now during the intermission?”

Donnie Brewster said, “Oh, shit,” and made more of the how-to-keep-Peter-happy hand moves. “Hey, what a kidder, huh, Pete-man? This guy is the private cop we were talking about. He’s—”

Peter said, “I heard him,” and came toward me. He put out his hand and we shook. He squeezed harder than he had to and stood closer than you stand to someone you don’t know. “I’m sorry you had to see this,” he said. “These guys give me the weight of making a major motion picture, then do everything they can to screw me up. It gets a little crazy.”

“Sure.”

He jerked his head toward the woman. “That’s Dani.” He gestured toward the two guys. “That’s Nick and that’s T.J. They work for me.” Nick was the guy in the Stunts Unlimited T-shirt. T.J. had the eelskin boots. Each of them outweighed him by maybe sixty pounds.

Peter said, “You see my movies?”

“I saw Chainsaw and Hard Point.”

“What did you think?”

“Pretty good. Chainsaw reminded me of The Searchers.”

He smiled a little bit at that and nodded. “I was a twenty-six-year-old film-school flunk-out when I made Chainsaw. I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground and I ripped off The Searchers every way I could.”

Donnie looked up from where he had gone to a phone. “We were talking about Chainsaw before we came over. A dynamite film. Just dynamite. Tremendous gross.”

Peter went to the candy machine, slammed it with the heel of his hand, pulled a lever, and got a bag of M&M peanuts without putting in money. He tore open the bag with his teeth, dropped the paper on the floor, and poured half the bag of candy into his mouth. He didn’t offer to share. Dani drifted over and picked up the paper.