Deal to Die For

by Les Standiford

  When people talked about South Beach, this short stretch was what they meant; and what the words connoted was more than geographical. Fashion and photography center for the world; international hot spot; place to see and be seen…and to somehow become.

  Uncounted trillions of tiny marine creatures had come to stack their shells one upon another from the very beginning of time so that one day their distant air-breathing cousins could congregate on dry land here, to eat, drink, dance, wear Spandex pants and tops that made a crease around every body part, and drive automobiles which, converted to cash, could feed a Third World tribe for a lifetime.

  Far down on the corner, just short of where the late-afternoon breeze tussled with a couple of coconut palms in the dunes, Deal saw the green flapping awnings of the News Café, where he’d met Barbara for lunch. He and Barbara, come together for commiseration and comfort in the midst of all the moving and shaking and desire not just to be but to glow. And look what had happened since.

  As he had any number of times already, his mind traced the events of that day, trying to recapture the tone of her voice, the look in her eyes, to see if there was something that might have suggested the mind-set of a person teetering on the edge, ready to pack it in. But despite her anguish, and her anxiety, and her anger, there was nothing that suggested she had been beaten down.

  There was the other possibility that Deal had considered, of course: that he was willing to involve himself this way, to undertake this half-baked investigation, because the alternative was to be at home wrestling with his own demons, but he refused to be that cynical. A woman who cared for him, who’d saved his life and Janice’s, had died. If there was the slightest suspicion that someone else was responsible, then he owed Barbara that much, didn’t he? He turned back to Driscoll, who’d been waiting, watching him closely.

  “So,” Driscoll said, waving his hand at the facade of the Grover Cleveland Hotel. It was a tiny place that looked more like a rooming house than a hotel, but it was freshly painted, with the requisite canvas awnings and gaily decorated umbrellas and patio furniture lining its porch and patio. “Do we go see what’s brought Ms. Nobleman here or not?”

  Deal glanced at him and nodded. “Sure, we ought to do that much, Vernon,” he said.

  And they got out into the gathering twilight together.

  Chapter 27

  “Rich or poor,” Carl Cross said, sweeping his arm expansively over the view before them, “it’s a hell of a lot better to have money.” He smiled and raised his third Bloody Mary of the afternoon in salute.

  Mahler smiled back, tipped his iced tea in return. He and Cross were sitting on the veranda of a hotel bungalow high in the hills above Santa Barbara. The air was pristine, the temperature in the low seventies, the afternoon sun just strong enough to counteract the cool breeze that rolled up the canyon from the Pacific that sparkled far below.

  They looked down on a nearby tennis court where a bronzed young couple in white, Cross’s traveling companions apparently, whacked balls back and forth. The red tiled roofs of other cottages poked up through the canopy of pines here and there like angular banks of flowers, a young woman pedaled an adult-sized tricycle laden with fresh linens down a geraniumlined path, a sprinkler fired jets of water over a swath of emerald lawn. Cross had a point, he supposed, obvious as it might be. And Rhonda would like it here, he thought. She always had.

  “I spent my honeymoon here,” he said absently.

  Cross considered that a moment. “Which marriage?” he asked.

  “I’ve only been married once,” Mahler said.

  “No kidding,” Cross said, clearly amazed.

  “Rhonda is quite a woman,” Mahler said. “I never saw the point of screwing things up.” He shrugged, staring out at the horizon where the Channel Islands popped in and out of view like huge whales sounding in the surface haze. “We’ve been very lucky all these years.”

  Cross grunted, shaking his head. “I’m on my fifth,” he said, “but it doesn’t look good.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mahler said. “How long has it been?”

  “Going on two months now,” Cross said.

  Mahler stared at him.

  “What the hell,” Cross said, oblivious. “This deal goes through, I can afford to get divorced again.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Mahler said. “This deal is solid.” He took a drink of his iced tea. “Hard as it may be to believe, these are men who actually keep their word.” He paused and gave Cross a significant glance. “And expect us to as well.”

  Cross nodded. He was watching as the woman on the court nearest them bent to pick up an errant ball. She revealed formidable cleavage, then stood and waved gaily up at the terrace. Tall, red-haired, careful makeup job. A Rockette comes courtside, Mahler thought.

  Cross smiled and waved back at the woman like some kindly uncle. “It’s a fixation,” he said to Mahler. “I’ll be the first to admit it.” His eyes were still on the young woman who tossed, stretched her perfect body, and served to her playing partner, a far less graceful young man with his shirttail flapping.

  “You know how Jack Valenti used to say he never saw a movie he didn’t like?” Cross turned to Mahler, still shaking his head. “Well, I never saw a set I didn’t like.”

  When Mahler didn’t respond, Cross shrugged and finished his drink. “Anyway, you and your Chinese friends won’t have to worry about product. The kind of money you’re talking about, we can have these kids bopping one another twenty-four hours a day. The thing I don’t understand is why your guys just don’t buy up a bunch of dupes of what’s out there now, take it back home to China, and be done with it. Why screw around with guys like you and me?”

  Mahler sighed. He’d gone through it all once before, had taken the trouble to explain things thoroughly to Richard Mendanian, and look what had happened.

  Before he knew it, there was Mendanian going straight to the Chinese, trying to cut Mahler out of the loop. The only thing that had saved him was the rigid sense of propriety that his new business partners maintained. And it wasn’t like Mahler had suggested they go whack Mendanian in retaliation, for Chrissakes. The matter had simply been handled. Maybe a little intimidating the way they went about it, but at least Mahler could take heart: He had partners who would actually look out for his interest, a rarity in this industry. And as for himself, if he’d ever considered chiseling on these people, well, one look at the picture the Times ran of the backseat of Mendanian’s limo had cured him.

  So what the hell, he thought. Go ahead and give Cross an idea of what he was getting into. Guy like Cross who’d been just smart enough to turn a failing temporary employment agency into something that actually paid off, using the agency to attract enough industry wannabes to turn out porn for twenty years running, he had sense enough to know his boundaries, didn’t he? In his case, maybe a little knowledge would keep him from getting any dangerous ideas.

  “You remember that industry trade mission to China last year?”

  “Sure,” Cross said. “It was all over the papers.”

  “That’s right,” Mahler said. “I particularly liked the Variety headline: ‘KLONDIKE!’” He broke off to make little quotation marks with his fingers. “A Communist country of one and a quarter billion opening itself to foreign trade at last. Including the movie business.”

  “So?” Cross said.

  “I was part of the group that went over there—studio execs, some of the bean counters, a couple of directors and technicians, and just one agent. Did you know that?”

  “You’re telling me,” Cross said, shrugging. “How was the food?”

  “The food was fine,” Mahler said, impatient.

  “But the hotels were lousy and the women are flat-chested,” Cross said gloomily. “Some junket, right?”

  “It’s not why I went,” Mahler said.

  “Why else?” Cross said, his eyes fixed on the court, where the young wom
an had bent over to retrieve another ball.

  “Because it sounded interesting,” Mahler sighed. He sat back in his chair, stared up into a thicket of bougainvillea that lapped over the terrace. He was speaking more to himself than to the man next to him. “Because I was sick and tired of furthering the careers of idiots. Because I was flattered to be asked. It suggested to me that there was some merit in all the years I’d put into this line of work.”

  Cross glanced up. “Tits and ass,” he said flatly.

  Mahler stared at him. “What?”

  “Tits and ass,” Cross repeated. “That’s what we do out here. At the end of the day, that’s what it all comes down to.”

  “I don’t know…,” Mahler said, feeling a headache coming on.

  “Hey, it’s nothing to apologize for,” Cross said. “The way I see it, it’s the meaning of life. Everything anybody does, Henry Kissinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joe Blow from Kokomo, it gets around to tits and ass: how big’s your whanger, how big are your boobs, who wants to hang on to ’em.” He shrugged. “Any time I get stressed out with the business, I just remind myself: Tits and ass, Carl, you’re playing an essential part.”

  Mahler sighed, covered his face with his hands. In a way, talking to Cross was like talking to his former self, the Marvin Mahler who thought small and fed off the eddies of greater creatures, glorying in evanescent victories of deal making and pleasures of the moment. He’d spent most of his life that way, but now he had the opportunity to put Marvin Mahler front and center. What he was putting in place might not make him famous, but it sure as hell would make him rich. No more kowtowing to nincompoops whose greatest asset was playing make-believe, no more treadmill of tedious parties and handshakes and back-claps, no more second fiddle. And after the man had fulfilled his “essential part,” as he put it, no more morons like Carl Cross to deal with.

  “I was going to tell you about China,” Mahler managed.

  “Take your time,” Cross said, amiable.

  Mahler nodded, forcing himself to be patient. “I have to be honest with you, Carl. At first, I was looking at the trip just as you say—a chance to get away from the phones, see the Great Wall, all that. But then it occurred to me, this is a real opportunity, Marvin. You’re getting older, you’re sick and tired of what you’ve been doing, maybe, just maybe, you can cut yourself a slice of this new pie.”

  Cross nodded. “Midlife crisis,” he said. “Hits most guys a little earlier. Like me and the employment business.”

  Mahler nodded. “I did some reading before the trip,” he said. “I didn’t know a damned thing about the Chinese economy.”

  “Who would?” Cross said.

  Mahler waved it away. “I discovered some interesting things,” he said. “The way the Chinese have prepared themselves for the transition to capitalism, for instance: where the European Communists tried to switch over from an agricultural economy directly into heavy industry, steel, automobiles, all that, what they got was instant rust belt. The Chinese, of course, did it the smart way. The last twenty-five years, they’ve been slowly phasing out rice paddies, phasing in light industry: toys, clothing, computers, consumer electronics, the kind of things that people working in the factories want and can afford. Forget steel. Nobody’s wearing armor these days. But give a guy a job sewing shirts, pay him enough to buy one of those shirts, pretty soon you have a billion happy campers.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Cross said.

  “There’s an actual growing middle class over there. They have eighteen thousand Avon ladies in the province of Guangdong, for Chrissakes. Up on the Mongolian border there’s still people living in caves, families with one pair of pants, so that they have to take turns going to town…”

  Cross stared at him on that one, but Mahler pressed on. “But in the coastal cities alone, there’s three hundred million people with an average ten percent increase in their economic growth. That’s more people than the entire U.S.,” he said. “People who’d like to entertain themselves—among other things, to go to some movies that didn’t look like they were made in the basement of the Ministry of Communist Culture.”

  “What did I tell you?” Cross said. “Tits and ass. All they have to do is set up and start cranking them out. Klondike, just like you said.”

  “The Chinese would like to do a lot of things,” Mahler said patiently. “The problem is, they lack the expertise and the dollars. They’re looking for technical advice, of course, but more important, there’s still no hard currency, not nearly enough for all the start-up costs, anyway. We weren’t two days into the trip before we started hearing it. What they really want is partners with wherewithal. Joint ventures. In simple terms, we put up the cash, and they’ll take it from there.”

  “You can’t blame them for that,” Cross said. “It sounds like a pretty safe bet: all those people ready to see some movies.”

  “Maybe,” Mahler said, “but the governmental interference is a nightmare. They’ve got a million restrictions and conditions and they’re hellbent on running the actual businesses themselves. That might be all right if you’re bottling Coca-Cola, but can you imagine sitting around listening to Mao Tse-tung’s grandson telling you how to make movies?”

  Cross shrugged. “Couldn’t be any worse than Louie Mayer.”

  Mahler ignored him. “Besides that,” he said, “you’re looking at a period of long, slow growth and return on capital. It’s great if you’re Met Life or some outfit like that, but once I began to see what Klondike really looked like, the whole prospect was boring me to tears.”

  “You’re not doing a bad job on me,” Cross said. His eyes were following the tennis players. “I still don’t see how this gets to you and me doing the deal of a lifetime here.”

  “I’m getting to that,” Mahler said. “I just want you to have the whole picture, just so you’ll appreciate how it finally developed.”

  “Can we get another one of these?” Cross said, holding up his empty glass.

  Mahler nodded, and pulled a cord that would run a little blue flag up a pole on the peak of the bungalow. In a minute, there’d be someone there on one of the trikes, ready for orders.

  “Watch out!” a voice called. It was the young woman on the tennis court, staring up their way in concern. A moment later a tennis ball landed by Cross’s foot.

  “Sorry,” her playing partner yelled.

  Cross waved and tossed the ball back.

  “I hope that guy acts better than he plays tennis,” Mahler said.

  “He doesn’t have to act,” Cross said. “Paco’s from Texas. He’s got a lot of energy. That’s what’s important.”

  Mahler was trying to think of some response to that when a young man in the hotel’s service outfit—blue shorts and white polo shirt—appeared on the path, guiding a trike to a stop near the terrace. Mahler signaled for another round. “And see what they want down there,” he added, pointing to the courts. The young man nodded smartly and picked his way down the bank to where the tennis players were taking a breather. The woman had her leg hiked up on a net pole, retying her tennis shoe. Even from this distance, Mahler could see that her bloomers were sheer, hardly the sort of thing he was used to seeing on tennis courts. She smiled, watching the young man approach, making no shift in her posture.

  “He’d better watch out,” Cross said. “Cherise there’ll have him in a new line of work if he’s not careful.”

  Mahler turned away. He cracked a cube of ice in his teeth, asking himself again if he had the patience to endure the Carl Crosses of the world. But it was necessary for now. He’d assured his partners. Later, with the pipeline open, product quality assured, a mutual trust established, Mahler could step away, let things take care of themselves, virtually retire if he wanted. Right now, it was essential that he be involved.

  “We were getting to the interesting part,” Cross reminded him.

  Mahler turned back grudgingly. “Well, there I was,” he sai
d, “sitting in some karaoke bar in Guangzhou with one of our hosts—a guy who imports refrigerators—and I’m thinking that this trip has been one colossal waste of my time, when the guy points at something on one of the video screens that runs with the lyrics of the songs—it’s a couple holding hands on a beach—and he says that a couple of years ago, you could get arrested for showing something like that in public…”

  Mahler broke off then, snapping his fingers. “…and just like that, bells start going off in my head. We get onto one thing and another, about how for the Chinese orgasm is this terrific mystical union of the yin and yang that the religion even celebrates, all that, and the guy goes on to say how the Communists tried to wipe all that out because it was screwing up their population control efforts and so on.”

  “So the Chinese like to screw just like the rest of us,” Cross said.

  “Exactly,” said Mahler. “The only thing is, the Communists come in…,” he paused, searching for words that might reach Cross, “…they come in and tie a knot in everybody’s whanger.”

  Cross was nodding as Mahler went on. “No more Tao talk about the mystical orgasm. No more sexual subjects in painting or the arts. Public kissy-face can get you thirty days. Premarital sex or adultery carries a minimum mandatory.”

  He broke off, savoring the look of disbelief on Cross’s face. “That knot’s been there in the national whanger for fifty years. You have any idea the force behind what’s been knotted up in a billion or so people for fifty years?”

  Cross was enthusiastic now. “Tits and ass,” he said softly. “Just like I told you.”

  Mahler nodded. “So by now I had begun to sense a vacuum in our trade talks, you know? I take this so-called importer of refrigerators who wants to get involved in the movies aside, and we get down to the nitty-gritty. Like how important is the artistic motive, I ask him, this guy whose production office is a cubicle you have to walk to through a warehouse full of shitty Polish refrigerators leaking Freon all over the Chinese ozone layer, right? And when the guy tells me the summit of his ambition is to make a chop-socky movie that’ll net him out of the refrigerator business, I ask him about porn…”