(A/N: Will try to post more chapters 🙂)
Chapter 124 – You Never Know If Tomorrow or Trouble Will Arrive First
"Karen, that idiot! Son of a b*tch! Goddamn it! Motherf**ker!"
The sudden outburst from the production manager startled everyone. Wayne froze. So did the assistant director standing nearby. Even Nina was momentarily speechless.
John had never been the aggressive type. As the production manager—the person with the most authority on set in theory—he was known for being calm and measured. He had never raised his voice at any crew member. This just wasn't like him.
"Hey, hey, John!"
Wayne quickly stepped forward, placing both hands on his shoulders and giving him a firm shake. "Calm down."
He had no idea what Karen—another Warner Bros. staffer—had done, but it clearly had to be really stupid to make John this angry.
"So what happened?" Wayne asked. "The cops took him to the hospital? Then why was he arrested?"
John brushed Wayne's hands off, took a few steps back, and slumped into a chair. He let out a bitter chuckle.
"Wayne, you don't even know what that idiot did."
He sighed, taking a water bottle Nina had just handed over. He chugged half of it in one go before continuing.
"If he had just stayed in the damn car quietly, even asked the police to call an ambulance, none of this would've happened. But no—this moron panicked when the cops approached. He opened the door and ran! The moment he took off, the cops knew something was up. They tackled him and searched the car."
Clack!
John slammed the half-empty bottle to the floor, then scrubbed his face with both hands, clearly furious and exhausted.
Everyone around him was slowly starting to understand.
"…Drugs?" Zack Snyder asked cautiously.
John raised an arm and gave a weak wave. "Yeah. Drugs."
"Wait a second." Wayne frowned. "Even if Karen had drugs in his car, how much could it be? Why hasn't he been released yet? Warner Bros. assigned Joaquin as the legal rep on this shoot—he's no slouch."
He wasn't wrong.
This sort of incident wasn't unheard of in New York, but it was relatively rare. In Los Angeles, though, it was practically routine. Cops working in rich neighborhoods had their own playbook for these situations. No one made a big deal of it.
After all, the kind of people caught with this stuff—Hollywood actors, producers, executives—were usually high-income and high-profile. Their lawyers would post bail, and things would quietly go away.
Sure, New York was stricter than California when it came to marijuana laws—California being, of course, the only place crazy enough to legalize weed at that time. But still… this situation should have been manageable.
"I thought the same thing," John muttered. "But when Joaquin and I got to the station, we realized this wasn't a simple case."
He pulled out a printed document from his pocket—an official NYPD report listing the reason for Karen's arrest: Possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute.
"There was almost half a kilo of marijuana in the car. And a small bag of cocaine. What the hell was he thinking—dealing? That alone would've been bad enough. We could've just cut ties with him and moved on…"
John's face darkened.
"But when the police opened his car and started searching it, some paparazzi just happened to be walking by—and they caught the whole thing on camera."
Wayne stood silent for a moment.
That… was just a little too convenient.
A high-income film worker carrying that much weed and cocaine, with no reason to risk his job and reputation?
Karen was careless, yes—but from everything Wayne had seen, he wasn't stupid. It didn't add up.
"I could believe it if it were just a few joints," Wayne muttered. "But coke? He knows how serious that is. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy to lose his mind over something so obvious."
Unlike John, who'd been dealing with external affairs, Wayne had been buried deep in the indoor shoots, totally isolated from the outside world for the past couple of days. He hadn't even checked the news.
"How bad is it now?"
Before John could answer, Steve ran in, clutching a stack of newspapers. He dropped them on the nearby table, panting heavily.
"Reporters have surrounded the building. Even more are on their way. They're calling our film crew a freaking drug den!"
"Goddammit!"
John smacked himself on the forehead, frustration leaking from every pore.
"The police are now demanding to inspect the entire set. They think the drugs in Karen's car might have been smuggled into New York by the crew!"
Wayne could barely process it. Just when filming was finally going well—when things had started to run smoothly—something always had to go wrong.
Was this movie cursed?
He ignored the tabloids Robert had brought in and walked to the window, glancing down at the street. Sure enough, a crowd of reporters had already gathered.
And once again, Wayne found himself the center of unwanted attention.
It felt like Wayne had just buried himself in the rhythm of filming—and then looked up to find the sky had changed.
"The reporters must have already been to the police station… Calm down, John! We need to figure out how to contain this fast. If the tabloids dig up Nicolas Cage's incident again, this entire crew will really look like a drug den in the public eye."
Wayne yanked the curtains shut and began pacing, stopping in front of the production manager to refocus him.
"No. You think that's the worst of it? It's not even close."
John shook his head violently, looking up at his partner with frustration. "The New York City government called me the second I left the station. They want to terminate our filming contract early! Right now it's just a few local papers reporting this, but wait—by tomorrow, once the national papers pick it up, there's no way the city will let a so-called 'drug-dealing film crew' keep shooting on their streets. Those politicians care more about public image than anything else. Goddamn it!"
He slammed the newspaper on the desk.
The top page was from a local New York tabloid. Splashed across the front was a photo of Karen being pinned to the ground by two officers. Beside him was the open car door—and the clear, incriminating view of seized narcotics.
The bold headline read:
"Karen Feynman – Drug Supplier of a Hollywood Mega-Crew!"
Wayne didn't even need to read the article to guess what sort of outrageous fiction they'd written. It was the same old garbage: claims that Karen was running narcotics for the crew, conspiracies about rampant drug use among Hollywood elites, all riddled with wild speculation.
If Wayne were just a regular reader, he admitted, he'd probably be intrigued too.
A secretive film crew, an arrest, drugs—it had all the makings of an irresistible tabloid scandal.
The public loved gossip about the dark underbelly of showbiz. These small local rags weren't going to miss an opportunity to boost circulation. And this was just the start. Once the national dailies caught wind of the story, then the real media storm would hit.
"Zack, warn everyone in the crew—no interviews. Not a word to the press. If anyone insists on chatting with reporters, write their name down and bring it to me."
Wayne's first instinct was to shut down any potential leaks.
It didn't matter what anyone actually said—once the media got hold of a quote, they'd twist it beyond recognition. Expecting journalists to have ethics was like expecting billionaires to be saints.
And no—Wayne hadn't forgotten the mole who leaked the last story either.
He just hadn't caught them yet. But when he did, they'd learn the cost of selling out a production for a few hundred bucks.
"Wait—Zack," Wayne added, stopping the assistant director mid-stride. "Tell the crew we're done for the day. Everyone's dismissed. No use trying to shoot under these conditions."
Wayne turned back to John. They were both clearly exhausted and frustrated. But someone had to stay calm and take the lead—or the fragile progress the team had made would completely fall apart.
"Listen, John."
He flipped through the newspaper on the desk, scanning the overblown headlines with a blank expression. "Let's go back to the hotel and get a full handle on this. No matter what's going on, we deal with it one step at a time. It's messy, sure—but it's not the end of the world."
Wayne had his own doubts and suspicions about what was really happening behind the scenes.
But for now, those would have to wait. First, he had to clean up the chaos in front of him. Once things settled down, he'd start pulling threads.
Behind them, the prop crew—both full-time staff and temps—moved efficiently, dismantling the set and loading it onto trailers. Within minutes, the once-busy apartment location had fallen into silence.
As the film's lead, Nicolas Cage didn't rush off immediately.
Aside from the director and producer, he was one of the few with enough clout to move freely on set. He walked over with his agent, Susan, clearly wanting to find out what the hell had just happened.