by Shane Kuhn
Then it hit me. And by “it” I mean the broad side of a .45 to the broad side of my lousy head. Pistol-whipped like a bitch. I went down, of course, my head ringing like crazy, and saw myself being surrounded by several large men. Then one of them kicked me in the head with his large boot and I was out. When I woke up, I my wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape and I was hanging over the edge of Izzy’s pool diving board.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Izzy said.
As a wake-up call, the thugs holding my feet slid my head down into the water. This was rather unexpected, so I had no chance to take a breath and nearly drowned before they pulled me up again.
“So, you’re the button man they sent? What a fucking joke.”
Again, into the water. I anticipated this time, but they just held me under longer. When they pulled me up, Izzy was lying by the side of the pool, smiling at me.
“We’re only going to ask you one time who you’re working for. A very simple Q&A. If you answer honestly, then you get a nice little bullet in the back of the head. If not, we’ll just keep dipping you, slowly drowning you over several hours. It’s definitely one of the worst ways to die, suffocating and coughing and puking Guantanamo style. So, here’s your one chance, Nobody. Speak up.”
“Okay, Izzy. I work for the general public. They hired me because you and the other lazy, goldbricking, nepotistic, brain-dead, money-sucking, shit-eating zombies that run this town have raped and murdered cinema like she was a twelve-lira Italian whore with two wooden legs and a glass eye!”
He started laughing out loud.
“And for your sins against the silver screen, they’re gonna keep sending motherfuckers like me till you’re all lying facedown in the desert outside Barstow—with no fucking face!”
“Give that piece a shit a drink of water to go with his speech.” Izzy coughed.
Then . . .
“Izzy! Where the fuck are you!”
The sound of Peeka’s shrill, insistent voice, followed by her Yorkie’s incessant yapping, echoed through Izzy’s grotto. Next thing I know, the thugs have let go of me, presumably to disappear before Peeka saw them, and I’m sinking to the bottom of the pool. I’ve been close to death many times in the past, not only as an intern, but also when I was a child. For some reason, though, I never believed at the time that it was going to happen for real. I always felt that I would somehow pull through, scraping the skin off my teeth but alive nonetheless. Not this time. As I sunk to the bottom of the pool, occasionally twisting into a position where I could see the surface and the patio lights, I resigned myself to my demise. Bound like an exile, my nimble mind could find no avenue of clever Houdini-style extrication. This is it, I thought to myself.
I don’t know what was worse—knowing I was going to die or knowing I didn’t care. It’s an awful thing, feeling no affinity for your own life. As I held my last breath, more out of amusement than self-preservation, I tried to think of one thing that I would miss. Nothing. Well, maybe baby back ribs and Belgian ale, but I was sure they’d be serving that in hell. Then I tried to think of one person that might miss me. Less than nothing. And with that, I closed my eyes and started to slowly allow the air to escape in a feathery stream of bubbles that reminded me of precious stones. As the last bubble escaped, I prepared to inhale the water and climb into the oarsman’s boat to Hades. Instead I felt someone’s lips press against mine. I opened my eyes. It was Peeka. She smiled and blew her air in my mouth, filling my lungs. It was, and always will be, the greatest kiss of my life. Not only did she save me, but her breath was also tinged with a sweet, subtle mélange of extra dry champagne, clove cigarettes, and mint gum. Delicious.
Peeka raised her index finger, indicating that she would be right back. She swam to the surface and plunged back down moments later, holding a pair of hedge trimmers. She gave me another breath and cut me out of my duct tape prison. Then she helped me to the surface and hoisted me up to the side of the pool. No sign of Izzy or his thugs, and as I lay there, gasping like a landed fish, she sat across from me, smiling warmly. In that moment, her fame made perfect sense to me. She was an abstract concoction of girl-next-door familiarity, eroticism wrapped in love and truth, and divine passage. Her eyes were a balmy, inviting blue that reminded me of warm Caribbean water. And her smile was a ledge where even the most world-weary jumper would be enticed to perch. I fell in love with her, right then and there.
“You’re lucky I’m a Pisces,” she said.
“Peeka, thank you.” I coughed.
“Never thank someone for saving your life. It’s as much their responsibility for them to save you as it is your responsibility to live.”
“I love you,” I whispered hoarsely.
“That’s beautiful, John. Now, what the fuck is going on here?”
I kissed her to avoid ruining the moment with practical conversation. My kiss took her off guard because it wasn’t the usual checkmate she was used to coming from the presumptuous, sweating mouths of powerful men. I poured my heart into it, and I could feel her melt in my arms. We made love by the pool, and neither of us cared about someone seeing us. When we were finished, she drove me to her Laurel Canyon house—another barely used residence—and made us a drink. It was like one of the quieter moments in some kind of action noir film. I played the part of the wounded hero and she the part of the wiser, nurturing, and far more capable heroine. In keeping with the theme, I lied and told her that men had come to the house to kill Izzy, but that I had kept them at bay while Izzy escaped.
“You’re so brave. To think those animals were just going to drown you like an unwanted kitten.”
“They were interrogating me. They wanted to know if I knew where Izzy would have gone after he left the house.”
“My God. It’s like one of those horribly clichéd mobster movies.”
“I know! They looked like the cast of Goodfellas or something.”
“Charming,” she added.
“Do you know where Izzy might be? We need to warn him.”
“God only knows,” she said. “He has so many places, even more than me. I tried to call him, but it went straight to voice mail.”
“Probably wants to avoid having someone track the phone signal.”
“Right. That would be smart,” she mused. “Oh Izzy, what have you done to yourself now, you bloated lunch meat sandwich of a man?”
“He probably owes money.”
“No. Izzy has more money than he could ever spend. It has to go deeper than that.”
Smart girl, I thought.
“But he’ll be finished in this town now.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Tomorrow’s our first day of principle photography.”
This had been a detail Izzy somehow managed to conceal from me. Which makes perfect sense, considering he figured I would be dead.
“Clearly he won’t be present. Word will get out—via my publicist of course—and he’ll be persona non grata.”
“Right. I guess I forgot about that in all the excitement.”
“Understandable.” She hummed as she refilled my glass.
Then she stopped, struck by something.
“Maybe . . .” she started. “No, that’s too much to ask you after what you’ve been through.”
“What?”
“Well, you certainly know how to handle that idiotic excuse for a director. And . . . you and I get along famously. You should run the set.”
“What?” I feigned shock while inwardly high-fiving my luck. “That’s crazy. The studio would—”
“Fuck the studio. You know who gives them their marching orders? Me, that’s who. I’m getting eighteen million for this picture, and I have thirty gross points on the back end. If I say jump, those little fuckers better dunk. But I don’t want to stress you out.”
“It’s a daunting proposit
ion,” I lied, “But I’ll do it for one reason, and it’s not to save Izzy’s ass.”
“What’s the reason?”
“You.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” she said, grinning softly.
“I wouldn’t do it because I felt like I owed you anything. I would do it because of this.”
I stood and kissed her the same way we kissed by the pool. I breathed into her mouth and filled her lungs the same way she had filled mine. When I pulled away, she was crying. Her tears were a mix of bliss and the bitter realization that everything she thought was love up to that point in her life had been just a cheap snake oil sale someone was hawking to get something from her. She took me to her bedroom, and it had the very distinct feel of something “lived in.” We were in her real home, away from the elegant layers of hotel rooms, apartments, and bungalows that she kept to hold the world at arm’s length.
After another session of devouring each other, we strategized about the next day. By pure chance, the scene slated for day one was the climax of act two. It’s the moment in the script wherein the protagonist (Peeka)—a businesswoman who has been laundering money for a drug cartel in order to save her brother, who is serving time in federal prison after taking a fall for her—faces off with a killer from a competing cartel. The stakes are monumental. If she dies, her brother dies in prison. And up until then, she had managed to keep all of this from her high powered business partners. But the shit hits the fan, and the whole thing becomes Die Hard meets Wall Street in a Tarantino-esque gun battle that takes place right in the corporate offices of her successful company. And all of it goes down on Casual Friday, when everyone is sporting the Hawaiian shirts that the protagonist’s partners—a bunch of jowly crackers—require everyone to wear to “make work fun.”
“I love the script,” Peeka said, “but this scene is total shit. A complete letdown.”
She was right. The writer, someone who was well versed in writing drama, had zero chops in writing action. The scene, as written, would have destroyed any chance at word-of-mouth buzz for the picture. So, as someone who has some experience in this area, I rewrote the scene, with Peeka feeding me her notes. In the end, she read it and her jaw dropped.
“How do you know about these . . . things?”
“What things?”
“Guns and violence. Assassination. Anatomy . . .”
“My dad was a cop.”
One of my foster fathers actually was a cop. Nice guy till he tried to diddle me in the bathroom of a Tastee-Freez.
“Interesting,” she said, not believing a word but knowing that probing further could yield too much of the worst kind of information.
When we finally went to bed for the night, I didn’t sleep a wink. I love movies. They are near and dear to me, and they are the only things in my life that have never betrayed me—the good ones anyway. They have taught me how to live, guiding me to what I look forward to as act three redemption. Everything I ever wanted to know about anything, I have seen in a movie. So, knowing that I would be on the set of a real movie, running the show (unofficially anyway), made me delirious with excitement. But I also knew I had a job to do. Eventually Izzy would show his fat, mottled face, and I would have to put a bullet in his loud fucking mouth.
So I tempered my excitement by doing a little execution scenario planning of my own. First, I texted Izzy from Peeka’s phone, telling him (as Peeka) that I was going to carry on with the shoot, even in his absence. Of course, he never replied, but I figured Izzy’s ego was so massive that the thought of someone putting their fingers into his pie would drive him mad with jealous rage. It was the exact kind of juicy bait I needed to get him to bite. And if he showed up to set, I would be ready. No choice. If I expected to live, I could never let him out of my sight again.
The next day the set was buzzing with excitement. Peeka was showered with her usual bukake of praise and whisked into the makeup chair. The director—Special K (my new name for him)—sidled up to me with a sheepish look on his face.
“Peeka’s assistant sent me the script sides for today,” he mumbled.
“And?” I said.
“I have a problem. They are not what I prepared.”
“You’ll have to take that up with Izzy.”
“Is he here?”
“No. But Peeka told me we need to start without him anyway. Show must go on, you know.”
His face turned beet red and he hissed something in Dutch.
“Is that what you think of me, Special K?”
“What?”
He almost fell over. I don’t understand Dutch. I just guessed he was insulting me.
“You speak Dutch.”
“Yeah, dumb ass. I do.”
I grabbed him firmly by the elbow, like a misbehaving child, and led him off the set for a little come-to-Jesus.
“Listen, Peeka thinks you’re a fucking hack. Frankly, I tend to agree with her. But this is your big break. So, if you want to start bitching like a little bitch, then be my guest. Just know that she’ll fire your ass on the spot, in front of all these good people, and your rapid downgrade to Hollywood leper will be on the cover of Variety tomorrow. So, you gonna play ball or sit on the bench?”
He was so red I thought his eyes were going to start to bleed.
“I will play the ball,” he choked.
“Good. Now get your ass back to set. First setup is in an hour.”
The morning shoot, unbelievably, was very smooth. It turned out that Special K was a competent director, and for the most part, he covered the script as it had been written by Peeka and me. When we broke for lunch, everyone was in a positive mood, and you could feel a sense of optimism that we might be on to something. For a minute, I even started to entertain the notion of finding a way to convince Bob to let me stay in LA to start my own life as a hyphenate: writer-director-assassin. And just as the happy bubble we created on the set was full to bursting, it popped and rained shit down on the whole crew. Izzy showed up.
For starters, he was drunk. Not just a little tipsy from a three-martini lunch, but honky tonk hammered with a stink that rivaled that of a slaughterhouse blood drain or a Juárez jail. His beard was speckled with what was either nacho cheese or puke or both and his eyes were the beet red bloodshot color normally reserved for hanging victims.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he roared.
He was heading straight for Peeka, and her security thugs formed a wall in front of her that you couldn’t have driven a dump truck through. When he saw that she was untouchable, he turned his sights on Special K, who promptly ran off the set, whimpering like a whipped puppy. With nothing but peons left, he twirled around wildly, searching for something to destroy, and his eyes rested on me.
“Nobody. You backstabbing piece of shit!”
He ran at me. None of the security thugs made a move to save me because they weren’t on my payroll. So, I took a bullfighter step to the side, and Izzy smashed into the craft services table. Coffee, Twizzlers, doughnuts, and M&M’s exploded in a candy-colored smart bomb all over the extras. They just stood there, scalded and covered with half-melted confections, their accommodating ass kisser smiles quivering on their faces. The assistant directors quickly ushered them off the set, back to wardrobe so we wouldn’t miss a beat.
Clearly, they were not well versed in dealing with drunk, homicidal megalomaniacs. But I was. Just about every third stepfather I had was a carbon copy of Izzy. They just came in different forms. And when you have dealt with one of these people, you know that they are like rabid dogs that will not stop until they’re put down or locked up. I moved quickly, like a wily dog catcher, and knelt down next to Izzy. I hooked my fingers just under his jaw and rammed them into a pressure point that causes searing pain in the neck and skull but paralyzes the victim’s mouth, making it impossible for them to scream. Izzy just shook with agony,
his eyes watering and his hands twitching.
“Listen to me, you stinking piece of wet garbage,” I growled quietly. “You’re going to sleep it off in a honeywagon right now or I’m going to kill you and then I’m going to kill your sister Maggie and her four boys—Jaden, Cody, Eli, and Michael—with a rusty fucking hacksaw while your Grandmother Elsa watches.”
Of course, I would never do that. However, I had done my research on my boy Izzy because Bob taught me that sometimes you need to find a way to put the fear of God in motherfuckers when clearly they don’t give a shit about their own welfare.
“Do we understand each other?” I asked in a friendly voice.
He nodded and a long rope of drool slid out of his frozen mouth.
“Good. Let’s go.”
I helped Izzy up and he walked with me like a good little doggy into one of the honeywagons they reserved for actors. When I got him inside, he started foaming at the mouth again. Before he could unleash a torrent of insults and profanity, I punched him in the chest. This is a good technique—only when applied with pinpoint accuracy—if you want to shut someone up without leaving a mark on his face. Izzy went out like a light and I was about to finish him with a stiletto heel to the back of the neck (could be easily mistaken for a Mafia-style ice pick wound) when Peeka came barging into the trailer holding a knife from the caterer’s carving table.
“I’m going to kill him!”
“No, Peeka. Put the knife down.”
She lunged for him but I stopped her and easily disarmed her. She smiled her pervish grin.
“Wow, even this makes you hot?” I asked.
She bit her lip seductively and nodded.
I was about to kiss her when the first assistant director pounded on the door.
“I’ve got studio security out here! Is everything all right!?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “He’s sleeping it off.”
I laid Izzy down on the couch against the wall of the trailer and carefully put his bearded, elephantine melon on a pillow. Then Peeka and I walked out and I locked the trailer door from the outside. My head was swimming. I needed to whack Izzy before he woke up, which would probably be in an hour or so. If I allowed him to get out of that trailer alive, that would be it for me. As soon as he could get to a phone, he’d be calling in his thugs—if he hadn’t done that already. I had to assume the worst and start thinking about how to get this done quickly.