Hidden Bodies

The Quinns and their entourage all travel to Cabo by boat. Nearly everyone is passed out except Joe and Captain Dave. Dave says he always called Milo the third twin. Dave chums the water and First Mate Kelly helps them set up fishing rods. Dave makes Forty sober up before he’ll let him fish.

They arrive in Cabo, and Joe practices his plan as they swim: he will pose as Nick Ledger, a celebrity realtor. He will call other realtors and tell them there’s no key at Axl’s house, hoping to get one from them. After several failed calls, a man named William Papova says he’ll get him a key.

However, now he has to get Captain Dave’s key to the boat so he can dispose of Fincher’s body after he kills him, which means Joe has to get to know Dave better. When he hints to Love about taking the boat, she says no captain will ever agree, but she gives him Dave’s number. Joe jogs to Axl’s unfinished house, goes in, and emails Fincher.

Joe uses the fishing line to make a trip wire at the top of the stairs to the basement, before crushing Percocets into water bottles and putting them in an ice bucket. He creates his “kill studio,” a glass-walled panic room, in the basement. The studio door locks from the outside. He hears Fincher arrive fifteen minutes later. Fincher trips over the wire and falls down the stairs, knocking himself out. Joe calls Captain Dave and asks he if can use the key to stow a drunk friend in the boat. Dave refuses. Love texts him to check in. Joe decides he doesn’t need the ocean to get rid of Fincher: he only needs a shovel.

Joe sneaks out at 4:42 AM and goes to a nearby home that is under construction, including an infinity pool. Fincher’s duffel bag contains a rolodex of celebrity encounters. There is a note on the back of each index card, detailing the nature of the interaction. Joe realizes that Fincher would pull celebrities over to talk to them, hoping to gain access to them and their influence. He is a stalker with the protection of the law.

Fincher wakes up and throws himself against the glass of the studio. He is frantic when he sees Joe with the rolodex. Joe reminds Fincher that he should be looking for Delilah and admits to killing Henderson. Fincher cries because he wanted the rolodex to be real interactions, not forced ones through his power as a policeman. Joe reminds Fincher that the celebrities all just wanted to get out of a ticket. Fincher shouldn’t have tried to be more than he was: “You don’t get to be anything slash anything” (295). Frantic and angry, Fincher runs into the glass so hard that it kills him. Outside, Joe digs up a cactus. Then he buries Fincher under it, along with the rolodex. He feels like the cactus is smiling at him. As he considers Fincher’s death, he thinks about the people in LA: “They forgot that the sweetest thing in life is to be alone, as you were born, as you will die…that you don’t need someone to come along and compliment your work” (298). He feels as peaceful as Fincher.

The entourage returns to the States and Joe lives in Love’s home. In the pool, he contemplates the concept of being together: “We talk and our songs are on a loop, our life is on a loop, and suddenly my favorite word in the English language: we” (301). Forty jumps into the pool with them. He opens a projection wall at the side of the pool, visits a website, and shows them the headline announcing that he has sold two scripts to Megan Ellison’s company. Forty is the only writing credit. Joe goes inside and checks articles about the acquisition on his phone. None of them mention Joe. He wants to kill Forty for stealing the scripts and the credit. The articles also mock Barry for missing the opportunity.

The stories are all about Forty’s perseverance. Joe blames his obliviousness on his aspirations. The show Variety broadcasts the news and Joe goes inside. He gets Forty’s iPad and reads emails between him and his agent. He reads an email from Barry, in which Barry asks Forty when he got so funny. Someone wants to know how he came up with the idea for the cage, which is from Joe: it is the panic room Joe uses for his kills. Love gets in the shower with Joe as he fumes. She says that Forty can give him pointers if he still wants to write. After, Joe texts Forty and says they have to talk.

Forty vanishes on a bender and it tortures Love, which bothers Joe. Four days later, there is still no word from Forty. Every day Joe has to rehash the story with Dottie. Love is in a worse mood every day. Dottie resents Joe because Ray loves him, and Ray loves him because Joe loves books. Ray and Dottie fight, another casualty of Forty’s disappearance. They tell stories about Forty’s lifelong love of hide and seek, which includes an impromptu skiing trip that postponed Love’s wedding.

Love asks Joe, again, why he wasn’t happy about Forty’s deal. She knows he was angry. He plays it off as if he was insecure that she would want to be in Forty’s movies. Soon Love is practically blaming Joe for Forty running away. Then Forty texts Joe and asks if he wants to get food. Joe says he’s going out to look for him and Love apologizes for her moods. Joe knows he is going to kill Forty unless he is about to apologize.