Free My Gun Has Bullets by Lee Goldberg Page A

said. "There are a million variables—time slot, audience flow, counter-programming. We've got no control over any of it. It's all up to the networks."
    "Daddy Crofoot isn't going to like that," Delbert said.
    "Hey, that's the business," Eddie said. "If he didn't like the rules, he shouldn't be playing the game."
    Delbert let it all soak in for a full minute, staring at the board. It was insanity. The producers were taking all the risks, but the networks were making all the decisions. They were spending millions of dollars, and for what? They had absolutely no control over their own fate. What kind of business was that? Why couldn't television be run like any other business? Or even like his business?
    And then it hit him.
    Who said it had to be done their way?
    Up until that instant, he had been staring at a plastic board covered in titles. But now it was coming to life for him. He saw it for what it was. He saw the possibilities. The potential. The millions to be made.
    This wasn't a primetime schedule. Those weren't television networks. And those little magnetic blocks weren't series.
    This was a city. The networks were mob families, all scrambling for a piece of the drug trade. Or the numbers business. Or the protection racket. It didn't matter what the pot of gold was, they all wanted a handful. And the television series—they were the lieutenants, the soldiers, the runners, the small-time hoods.
    It was aIso clear. He knew exactly what he had to do. How to make Frankencop or any other series a hit.
    Yes, this was what he had been waiting for—no, preparing for—all his life.
    He whirled around and grabbed Eddie Planet by the shoulders, causing the poor man to yelp in surprise and terror.
    "You fools," Delbert laughed. "You stupid, fucking fools."
    "What?" Eddie blubbered.
    Delbert shook the buffoon. "It's so easy!"
    "It is?" Eddie feIt his bowels seize up.
    "A child could do this." Delbert pushed Eddie aside and faced the board again, relishing what was to come. He started rearranging series on the board, moving them across the schedule, rearranging the networks into a new configuration.
    "Yes, yes, it must go like this." Delbert was swept up, carried along by something bigger than the two of them. A man possessed by divine inspiration. He had found his calling.
    Eddie staggered backward, transfixed by what he saw. It was Beethoven conducting his first symphony, Einstein scrawling E = mc 2 across the blackboard and opening up the universe. It was Moses parting the Red Sea.
    Delbert stopped for an instant, admiring his creation. "Yes, that's the way it should be. That's the way it will be."
    He turned to Eddie for confirmation. Eddie's head bobbed enthusiastically, like one of those dashboard doggies. Delbert then turned back to the board, juggling the magnetized pieces around once again. "Then it will be like this," he said.
    Eddie's back hit the wall. He watched in awe as the network schedules were turned upside down, as the laws of primetime physics were rewritten, as Frankencop went from a struggling show into an overnight hit.
    There was no question about it. Eddie Planet was in the presence of a genius.

CHAPTER SIX

    T he My Gun Has Bullets crew was on the backlot, which was doubling for downtown Los Angeles. While the director of photography oversaw the lighting of the abandoned warehouse set, the crew was hanging around the craft services table, killing time and accumulating calories.
    The craft services table was a perk devised eons ago to keep everyone on the set. An industry rule, carved in stone somewhere, mandated that there had to be an endless spread of crackers, candy, cheese, nuts, ice cream, chips, dip, sandwiches, fruit, cookies, and brownies available at all times, along with iceboxes of soft drinks, juice, and milk to wash them down.
    And the craft services table was only an addition to the catered, four-course, freshly prepared hot lunches served each day of production to everyone in