Free Head Shot (A Thriller): A Crime and Suspense Thriller by Dani Amore

assume there's a quick turnaround on this?" he guessed.
    "The producers are waiting for you to do a quick read this afternoon, and then they'll call me before end of day to let me know if it's a go."
    "All right," he sighed, "what's the address?"
    She gave it to him, along with a condensed version of her usual pep talk.
    "So I guess crime really does pay,” he said.
    "Let’s hope so,” she responded and then Mike heard a dial tone.
    Mike set his cell phone on the table, changed clothes, hopped in the Camry and headed over to the address in Studio City, which looked familiar to him and then he remembered that he'd read for a pilot once, quite awhile ago, at the same address.
    The receptionist showed Mike to the appropriate office and a man dressed in jeans, a blue jean shirt and a baseball cap rose from a deep, black leather chair as Mike entered.  He was tall and lanky with tufts of gray hair sprouting out from underneath his baseball cap, and his gray beard was neatly trimmed.
    "Hi, Mike, Dean Harwell, nice to meet you," he said, offering his hand.
    Mike shook it.
    "Hi, Dean, nice to meet you."
    Dean Harwell was a well-traveled director whose claim to fame had been a popular television show in the seventies called, Chicken Feed , a sitcom based around the antics of employees at a fried chicken restaurant.
    "Hi, Mike.  Curtis Bentley, good to see you," said a short, fat, balding man in an Armani suit with suspenders and a bright red tie.
    "Hi, Curtis, thanks for giving me the chance to read for you."
    Bentley gave a wave of his hand as if to say "ah, forget about it," and gestured Mike to a chair next to Harwell, across from his glass desk.
    The office was filled with Hollywood memorabilia as well as pictures of young children who Mike assumed the show had helped ‘discover.’ Bentley was a well-known producer in town who often ventured back and forth between television projects and feature films, not a feat every producer in Hollywood could pull off.
    "There you are, Cynthia," said Bentley as a tall, casually dressed woman entered the office.  She had red hair piled high on her head and was carrying a large bottled water.
    "Mike, Cynthia Broggins, our casting director."
    Mike shook hands with the woman then they got down to business.
    "Did Beta tell you what we had in mind?" asked Harwell.
    Mike nodded.  "She said you were considering me for the part of a serial killer in one of the re-enactments?"
    Bentley answered.
    "Yeah, there's an amazing likeness," he said, nodding toward Cynthia, who then handed Mike a mug shot photo.
    The attached form gave the name of Joseph P. Ferkovich.
    Mike looked at the photo.
    "I guess I look a little bit like him," he said.  "His nose is thicker and I think my face is wider, but yeah, I can see the resemblance.  Except for that fucked-up eye."
    "We'll take care of that with a contact lens, no problem," said Cynthia.
    Mike looked again at the picture of the killer.
    "You're both from Wisconsin," said Harwell, a small smile on his face.
    "Small world," Mike said.
    "Let's go over the script, guys," Bentley interrupted, adopting a let's-get-down-to-business tone.
    For the next ten minutes they had Mike act out the action of the scene in which Joe Ferkovich breaks into Harriet Bednarski's apartment and kills her.
    Mike had to improvise some of the dialogue, and he felt silly saying "I'm going to kill you!"
    When they were done, the men thanked Mike and Cynthia turned him over to a production assistant who took him to a small studio where she took pictures of him and had him fill out some forms.
    Mike made the drive back to his apartment, stopping briefly to pick up some beer and a pizza for dinner with Laurie.  When he got home, the red light was blinking on his answering machine and it was Beta's voice, telling him he got the part and that he should be back at the studio the following afternoon.
    Mike crossed the kitchen and turned the oven to four hundred degrees, pulled the pizza out