Free Heartland by Davis Bunn Page A

he stumbled to his knees again. Then he was up and pushing through the crowd headed toward the buses and safety. “Are you all right?”
    Derek gave him a smoke-streaked grin. “All right? Man, this is fabulous .”
    â€œAre you nuts?”
    â€œI got it all, Peter. Every second of JayJay Parsons and the rescue.” They let the crowd push them across the clearing and out toward the vehicles. Derek stripped the water bottle from Peter’s hand, drank hard, then poured the rest over his head. “I’ve been dreaming of doing that.”
    â€œWhere were you?”
    â€œOn top of a fire truck. I waved at you. But you were too busy being scared to see me.”
    Peter slugged his friend’s shoulder. “I thought you’d gone down!”
    â€œYeah, I saw that too.” Derek grinned at his friend. “Nice to know you cared, man.”
    Suddenly Peter was laughing. It was crazy. But he couldn’t help it. Laughing and coughing and stumbling in his exhaustion. Giddy with relief and excitement. He had been there. And he had survived. The feeling was incredible. “Hey, don’t kid yourself. I was just worried about having to deliver the news to your wife.”
    â€œWhatever.” Noise from the claxon and the choppers gradually eased. Derek grabbed two more water bottles from a torn box. He passed one over. “My arms are two feet longer from hauling this camera around.”
    â€œWant me to take it?”
    â€œI won’t say no.”
    Peter was scarcely able to hold himself upright, but he took the extra weight anyway. He pointed to a bus up ahead. “There he goes.”
    â€œYeah, I see.”
    JayJay turned in the process of climbing on board. The Oriental girl still clung limpetlike to his neck as he carried her into the bus. He spotted the pair and nodded at them. An easy gesture from one firefighter to another.
    Peter said, “He saved my life out there.”
    Derek could not stop grinning. “Yeah, I got that too.”

Chapter 9
    W e’re not talking about art. You want art, I know a good dealer down on Rodeo, he’ll show you a sketch by some dead French guy, you can shell out twenty thou and hang the thing on your bathroom wall. Forget art. We’re talking money here, Harry. The only kind of numbers that matter. Big ones.”
    Martin resisted the urge to reach for his cigarettes. He had already smoked four today, and he was due at some interminable dinner that night. He rarely went out to such LA functions. But tonight was special, an intimate dinner at the home of a film producer Martin actually admired. Not the man, of course, the man’s work. The man was merely a vehicle Martin intended to steer toward Martin’s dream. The same dream that had brought him here.
    â€œYou know what my kind of art is, Harry? Art is a line at the box office. And that’s what Martin and I can produce for you. Art that sells in Kansas City. You’ve been in this business long enough to know that if you can’t sell it in KC, you’re dead. The land that Hollywood has forgotten for far too long. That’s what we intend to take back, Harry. With your help, we are going to reconquer America.”
    Milo Keplar was Centurion’s director of sales. Martin Allerby ran the studio with just two number twos, a director of production and Milo. Milo Keplar hated Centurion’s location with a passion that surpassed Martin’s. Milo referred to the San Bernardino Valley as Tombstone West. A place of buried dreams. A place to flee from at the first possible opportunity. Which is why they were here. To escape.
    Harry Solish was the unseen face of Hollywood. Only the top execs in the business even knew Harry Solish existed. At any one time, there were never more than five or six people like Harry Solish. They, as much as any other force operating within the film world, determined what got shown on the silver screens.
    Harry Solish