“Rena, excellent job.  I knew the second you sent in your headshots that you had the part, and you haven’t let me down once.”  Rena—character actress Jenna Monroe—blushed at the young director’s praise.

“What about me?”  Fox turned his gaze toward Jenna’s scene partner, draped somewhat in shadow as the electric crew dismantled the light on the other side of the fake office window.

“Ah, yes.  Trilby.”  Alex removed his fedora and straightened his hair with his fingers.  “Well, quite frankly, it’s your lucky day.”

Alex breathed a sigh of relief.  Used to the open stage setup of Time After Time, he’d been nervous about having the camera and lights so close to him.  He had worried he might have stumbled in parts of his scene.  He stuck out his hand to his new director.  “Thanks, Derek.  I won’t let you down.”

Fox looked at the outstretched hand with bemused curiosity.  “What?  Oh, no, you don’t have the part.  Why would you think that you did?  You were terrible.  You flopped your way through the easiest scene in the script, your blocking was uninspired, you waved your hands around like you were in a middle school drama production, and thanks to you sweating like a pig, we’re probably going to have to replace your costume.  I wouldn’t want you as an extra on my set, much less as a lead.  Frankly, Kane, you’re thirty-four years old.  With eight years on me, I’d expect you to know this game a little better.”

Alex’s hand dropped.  He gritted his teeth.  “You just said it was my lucky day.”

“It most certainly is.  One word from me and you’d never work again.  Luckily, I saw your interview last night.  Thanks to you, I’m in a good mood.  After all, I won the pool.”

Megan snickered.  Alex squinted.  “What pool?”

Fox, Megan, and Jenna all shared a laugh.

“Oh, you poor thing.”  Jenna slapped Alex on the shoulder.

“The pool to see when you’d throw in the towel and finally give up on that wretched slice of melodrama you called a show,” said Fox.  “Everyone in the industry saw it coming when you separated from your wife.  Obviously she had a good run left in her, given her looks and everything.  But you?  You were getting stale long before the divorce.  I figured you knew, which is why I had you done at the end of the season.  Megan here thought you’d overstay for another six years, assuming the show even went that long.”

His cheeks growing red, Alex shook indignantly.

“And what about her?” he asked, pointing at Jenna.  “She’s been cast for two weeks.  I’ve been here one day, and I had to feed her a line.  What, is she just here to be a pretty face?”

Fox shrugged as if the answer was obvious.  “Duh.”

Alex bit the inside of his lip.  He didn’t know what to say.  Fox chuckled slightly and clapped Alex on the shoulder.

“Calm down, Kane.  Look, there’s no shame in knowing when to bow out.  It’s like basketball—sometimes you have to spend some time in the D-league before you can rejoin the team.  I’ve got a new show coming out every half-season.  Maybe five or six years from now, when New York Vendetta has a couple of spin-offs, you’ll be ready.  We might even write in an alien or an evil twin, or whatever the hell it is you soap actors love so much.  But right now, I’m having trouble really buying you as an actor who’s ready to do a one-camera show.  How is America going to buy you as a hard-boiled detective?  You’re too soft for all that.”

Throwing one last sympathetic smile at Alex, who felt completely belittled at having to receive sympathy at all, Fox turned and walked off with Jenna.  Alex went to slump against the desk, but fell on his rear as two set grips moved it away.  Megan helped him up.  She straightened his coat, but he shrugged her arms away.  She looked down.

“Um, for what it’s worth, sir, I happen to be a big fan of yours.  I didn’t put you later in the pool because I thought you’d overstay your welcome or anything.  I really wanted you to finish the show.”

Alex hung his fedora on a coatrack from the office set as an intern from the art department carried it past.

“Thanks, I guess.  I just wish I’d known about the pool.  I might have bet against myself.”  He laughed.  “Then again, maybe not.  This industry’s enough of a gamble as it is.”

His eyes widened as a thought struck him.  His forehead tightened; one could practically see his mind racing.  Megan grew concerned.

“Mr. Kane, are you okay?  You’re not having a stroke, are you?  Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“No, I have a better idea,” Alex said.  “I need to go see my bookie.”

Chapter Three

Kimberly Daniels wondered at the deafening sound as she approached the old casino off of 36th Street, near Avenue of the Americas.  An unassuming place for this sort of dive, the location might have gone completely unnoticed if not for the roaring music that had been aggravating passers-by all morning.

Kim wasn’t the first at NYPD to hear of the disturbance, the music having been reported primarily as an irritation rather than as the source of any suspicious activity.  She and the rest of the homicide division weren’t called to the scene until a would-be looter of the clearly abandoned dive called in to report the blood leaking from under the doorway.

Kim took the rubber gloves from her back pocket, pulling them on before removing her gun from its holster as she descended the stairs from the sidewalk down to the narrow alley.  Her partner, Jacob Newport, lightly grazed the stone walls with his own gloved hand as they walked single-file down a passageway much too narrow for them to navigate side-by-side.

“Fascinating,” mused Jacob.  “This passage is an anomaly in New York City planning.  Most establishments below street level should be visible from the sidewalk.  It’s rare for such a walkway to be hidden like this.  Even more rare that we should be able to hear the music from the street.”

Kim said nothing.  She generally had little to add when Jacob went on rants like this.  If it wasn’t pertinent to the case, she would just shut him up.  But without even knowing if there was a case yet, she found it best to let him talk.  He was known for solving cases through his attention to rudimentary detail, and she wasn’t going to stand in the way of his work.  Especially not with the incredibly high record of unsolved cases they’d been struggling with for the past couple of months.

As they rounded a corner in the passageway, Kim saw why their department had been called so quickly.  They sure as hell didn’t need a beat cop to tell them this was a murder scene.  Kim quickly pulled out her radio and called up to the team she had waiting street-side.

“Langley, get your field kit prepped.  You also might want to call in the rest of your team.  You won’t need to do prelims on this one; it’s definitely a four-man workload at least.”

Maria Langley sighed as she radioed back.

“You sure, Daniels?  My brown ass is sittin’ pretty up here.  I was thinking I might just start standing next to this fly-ass car of yours every day, make the force look good.”

Kim smiled.  “I don’t see how an M.E. standing around doing nothing makes us look too productive.”

“I didn’t say nothing ‘bout productive, baby.  I said I’d make this look good.  Somethin’ you wouldn’t know about with them rugged-ass jeans you’re always wearing.”  Maria laughed.  “I swear, you’d think a babe with a low-rider like this one might have a waistline to match.  At least with my big ass standin’ here, no one can see the four doors you got on this thing.”

Jacob pulled out his own radio, staring Kim right in the eyes as he clicked in.

“I’d like to remind you two there’s a male officer here.  One who does not keenly enjoy the sight nor smell of blood, and who would like to get this scene wrapped up quickly.  Furthermore, I would opine that Detective Daniels and her gluteal region cannot be adequately compared to a woman of Latin-American descent, as the commonalities of the race would suggest—”