Our action this week moves from the Malibu mansion where Celeste and her bombshell daughter Rachel are grieving over Larry’s murder, to the corner of Franklin and Bronson in Hollywood, where Larry’s killer has also turned up dead -- and not too far from yet another corpse.
“What do you know,” says Mayor Napolitano’s medical examiner pal, Hendricks. “It’s raining bodies.”
Indeed the two deaths would seem to be related, but yet… why is the mouth of the big goon “Rannoch” stuffed with peat, which is the same M.O. he himself had used the night before to brutalize Larry? And why is the second victim, a woman in her 40s, wearing a sweater from The Order, the cult-like group whose possible involvement sends chills down the spines of Hendricks and the mayor?
Alas, those questions are for others to figure out in coming weeks. But if you want to know what I like about “Right of Way’s” new pages, 18-22, contributed over the weekend by reality show writer Michael Breiburg, that’s an easy one.
First, Breiburg has revealed that Mayor Napolitano has an LAPD background, possibly as chief. It is Napolitano who will be our story’s main detective, driving its plot.
He has also created the amusing new character Hendricks, the type of jaded insider who fits well into stories of this genre. (And whose name, by sheer coincidence, is an alternate spelling of my family dog’s handle, so how could I not like that?)
I also appreciated Mike’s obvious knowledge of the neighborhood he wrote about, which happens to be where he lives.
“The geography of my location was a no-brainer,” he says. “It's a cool little neighborhood called Franklin Village. The building I wrote about really does exist. Mervyn Leroy, Jon Voight and Jon Favreau once lived there. The vacant, fenced-off lot really exists. As does the parking problem.”
And across the street from those apartments, is the castle-like Scientology Celebrity Center, originally built by William Randolph Hearst as a gift for Marion Davies, which may or may not have gotten Michael thinking about his fictional group, The Order.
“I didn't mean to auto-geographize my pages so much,” he says, “but ‘Right of Way’ is about L.A., and every day I feel like I live right in the heart of it in Hollywood.”
In addition to figuring out the conundrums he’s developed for our story, Mike has one more request for subsequent writers: “Hopefully someone will turn in some pages, maybe in Act Three or around the end of Act Two, where Napolitano hikes up to the Hollywood sign looking for clues with Rachel in tow. Then he has to climb down to the actual sign.
“I've done the research, so feel free to let that writer get in touch with me for some real life notes or an actual tour.”
Nice offer, Michael, and good idea. Anybody listening?
