Sick City

by Tony O'Neill

  “Murder She Wrote . . . Airwolf . . . Manimal . . .” Du Wald recited, waving his cocktail glass around the room, “I worked on all of them at some point. . . .”

  Randal’s gaze was drawn to some paintings hanging behind glass. “Is that a Picasso?” He asked, peering at one of them.

  “It sure is. You don’t even want to know what that beauty is appraised for. Almost makes you feel sad when you think that there are people starving in this city. Almost, mind you. . . . But onto business, gentlemen. Mr. Rox informed me that you had something that I would be quite interested in. A piece of Sharon Tate memorabilia. Are you sure I can’t get you a drink? I’m fixing one for myself. Then you can tell me all about it. . . .”

  Randal looked over to Jeffrey. His chin was slumping down onto his chest again, the stoned lurch of the satiated dope fiend. Randal elbowed him in the ribs quickly, and Jeffrey jerked awake again, slurring, “What the FUCK, man?” Randal cleared his throat. Thankfully, Du Wald seemed entirely oblivious to how loaded Jeffrey was. He was standing by the bar, mixing himself a Tom Collins.

  “Well,” Randal said, “it’s a home movie, shot in the late sixties. An orgy at the Tate house. A kind of sixties free love, pot brownies, and acid hors d’oeuvres kind of thing. Sharon Tate, Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, Mama Cass.”

  “Uh-huh,” Du Wald said, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary. “And this is the original copy?”

  “Yeah. No duplicates exist. It’s been sitting in a safe for the best part of thirty years.”

  “My goodness. And who owns it, exactly? You?”

  Randal looked over to Jeffrey again. His head was bobbing, as if it weighed thirty pounds and his neck could no longer support it. “Yeah,” Randal carried on, “we both own it. It’s a partnership.”

  “And the source of the tape?”

  “A contact in the LAPD, now deceased.”

  “Interesting.”

  Du Wald walked over to the door of the room and shouted, “Lilly! LILLY! I HAVE SOME BUSINESS TO ATTEND TO, AND I MUST NOT BE INTERRUPTED!”

  A faraway voice replied, “YES, MR. DU WALD!”

  Du Wald closed the door and locked it. Then he walked over to the bookshelf. Randal gave Jeffrey another dig in the ribs and hissed, “Snap out of it, fuckwad!”

  “Oh, uh, shit, sorry,” Jeffrey slurred, standing up suddenly to clear his head. He saw the little old man in the robe pulling a book from the middle shelf, and as he did so, the entire bookcase popped away from the wall, revealing a hidden steel door. There was a keypad to the right of the door. Du Wald typed a sequence of numbers into the pad, and the door opened with a heavy-sounding click.

  “Jesus,” Jeffrey said, “that’s pretty cool.”

  “This way, gentlemen. . . .”

  They followed Du Wald through the door. They found themselves in what looked like a modern art gallery: a large white room, cold and sterile, with marble floors and a series of glass cases housing what looked to be a ragtag collection of junk. Du Wald walked in between the “exhibits,” throwing his arms in the air theatrically.

  “Gentlemen—here are the star items in my collection! Consider yourselves lucky—you may never see the likes of these artifacts again. . . .”

  They followed him for a moment, staring at the contents of the glass boxes.

  “A toilet seat?” Randal said, staring at one of the items. “A gold toilet seat?”

  Du Wald smiled mischievously and raised his eyebrows.

  “Not just ANY toilet seat. This is the toilet seat that the King himself, Elvis Presley, died on. Did you know that nobody has been allowed into the second-floor rooms of Graceland since Elvis died in 1977? That the bedrooms, the bathrooms have all been kept exactly as they were? That the sheets are still full of Elvis’s dead skin cells and hair, the pillows stiff with the King’s drool? Not even President Clinton was able to get access to the private rooms of Graceland when he requested it. In fact, the only thing that has been changed since the day Elvis died is this toilet seat.”

  Jeffrey placed a hand lightly on the glass.

  “So Elvis died sitting on this?”

  Du Wald nodded. “Quite right.”

  “How did you . . . ?”

  Du Wald shrugged. “A lot of negotiation. And a lot of money. But believe me, this artifact is totally authentic. I was present for the removal and replacement myself. This is the second most valuable thing in my collection.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Randal said. “What’s number one?”

  “This.”

  Du Wald was at the far end of the room now, looking into the last glass case. Randal and Jeffrey followed him and crowded around to take a look. It contained an old Cartier box, frayed at the edges. Inside, on a bed of white silk, was what looked to be a small piece of beef jerky, or maybe a dried eel. It was brown, and shriveled, and utterly unrecognizable. But Du Wald was staring at it in wonder, his breathing fat and labored.

  “What IS it?” Jeffrey asked.

  “This, gentlemen, is the penis of Napoleon Bonaparte.”

  Rupert fell into silence again, allowing the words to resonate. He looked to his guests, who stared at the small, dried-up thing with mouths hanging open. He cleared his throat, and continued:

  “There have been several fakes floating around the collectors’ market over the past fifty years, but this one is the real deal. It was removed from the corpse by the emperor’s physician Francesco Antommarchi and a priest named Abbe Vignali, on the island of Saint Helena. Now here’s the rub: supposedly the penis was sold to a rare book dealer in 1916 by Vignali’s descendants. That curio has passed through several auction houses over the years, finally ending up in the hands of a private collector who bought it in the late 1980s. However, back in 1821 a manservant called Ali was also present at the removal, and this artifact came as a package with Ali’s diaries, which reveal that Ali substituted the penis with the mutilated corpse of a seahorse. The diaries also reveal that the priest was a shortsighted drunk, who was easily duped by his plucky manservant. This—the genuine penis—has never appeared on the open market and has only been in the hands of three collectors before me.”

  “It’s so . . . small,” whispered Jeffrey.

  “Well”—Du Wald smiled—“if we were to remove your penis, drain the blood from it, and mummify it for a century and a half, it may also seem suddenly less than impressive, yes?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Randal said, his nose pressed against the glass, “that is some crazy shit.”

  “Indeed. Now, gentlemen, enough small talk. I think that it’s time for our featured presentation, don’t you?”

  They straightened up. Randal had the bag in his hand. “You have the equipment ready?”

  “Of course. Film makes up a large portion of my collection. This way, please. . . .”

  “Um, do you have popcorn?” Randal asked as they walked through another door, leading to a small theater room. There were two banks of fold-up red velvet cinema seats, facing toward a small screen. In the center of the room was an ancient-looking sixteen-millimeter projector. Du Wald ignored Randal and placed a hand lovingly on the projector.

  “Gentlemen,” he breathed, “the film, if you will.”

  Randal passed the bag to Jeffrey. Jeffrey placed it on the floor and removed the canister. He looked at it for a moment and took a deep breath.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Jeffrey said. “This thing is old. Delicate.”

  Du Wald smiled softly. “I will treat it as if it were my own child,” Du Wald said, in a way that made Jeffrey feel extremely bad for Du Wald’s descendants. Reluctantly, he handed the canister over. He watched as the old man opened the lid in the dim light and looked upon the reel of film within, awestruck. He took a deep breath, as if he were trying to inhale the essence of what this reel contained. His eyes were gleaming with anticipation. He lifted the film from the canister and loaded it onto the front of the projector. With practiced movements, he clicked open the len
s and turned it to one side. Then he took the film and gently unraveled around three feet of it, holding it up to his eye in the dim light, and nodding appreciatively. Randal and Jeffrey anxiously watched him feed the film through a series of cogs, locking the film in place with a small lever.

  “Film is a tactile medium,” Du Wald was muttering to himself. “I find this to be part of the appeal. I mean . . . video . . . there’s no romance to video. I feel sad for the people who will come after us, don’t you? Those people for whom video or CD will be the medium that documents their history? I mean, can you imagine someone getting genuinely excited by finding an old dusty DVD that had been misplaced over the years? Everything is available to everybody at the click of a mouse button, these days. The art of collecting is dying.”

  Creating a loop with the film, he lined it up behind the lens, fiddling with it, positioning it perfectly. Then he closed the lens over the film with a dull clunk. He repeated the process on the back end of the projector, looping the film through a series of cogs of various sizes with quick, nimble fingers. He threaded the film upward, until he was able to wind the film onto the empty reel, holding it gently in place while he started turning the reel slowly, wrapping the film around it. He tinkered with the machine for a few more moments, muttering about the framing of the movie, before he turned to his guests and said, “Gentlemen, we’re ready. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  · · ·

  Randal and Jeffrey sat in the front row. Both stared at the screen as Du Wald dimmed the lights further and took up his position behind the projector.

  “How long did you say it has been since anyone saw this tape?”

  “At least thirty years,” Jeffrey answered.

  “Goodness. In that case, gentlemen, we are truly privileged. Ms. Tate . . . we are ready to be entertained.”

  With a whirring sound, the projector started up, and a flickering image appeared. Indistinct figures danced on the screen, out of focus in a psychedelic splash of colors. The image sharpened, and a mouth appeared, filling the screen. A perfect smile, full red lips, laughing silently. As Du Wald continued to tinker with the projector, sound began to fade in, filling the small screening room with laughter, muted voices, and the musical chime of glass on glass. The soundtrack of a long-ago party filled the air, and Randal felt the small hairs on the back of his neck rise. He looked over to Jeffrey, and even Jeffrey was enthralled now, eyes fixed on the screen, mouth half open in a mixture of awe and disbelief. A male voice, mute for decades, now saying, “Okay, okay, we’re rolling. We’re rolling . . . ,” as a woman laughed drunkenly in the background, and the camera pulled back suddenly, and everyone’s eyes focused on a familiar face on-screen.

  “My God,” Du Wald muttered to himself as the action unfolded. “She really was beautiful. I suppose it’s easy to forget, amidst the ugliness of what happened to her. But she was beautiful. Utterly devastating.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “Three million dollars,” Jeffrey was saying again in a voice dripping with wonder. “That’s a lot of fucking money.”

  Randal shrugged. “It is. One and a half million each. It’s not bad. But then you gotta figure in Stevie’s cut. Twenty-five grand finder’s fee, and his ten percent. That’s a pretty hefty chunk.”

  They were back in the Mark Twain now, Jeffrey on the bed, shirtless, fixing dope and Randal smoking meth, blowing the rank cat-piss-stinking fumes out the window. Randal watched Jeffrey as he slid the 28-gauge ½ cc insulin needle into his flesh, digging around under there, the thin rivulets of blood running down his stick-thin arms. So long as he stuck to just smoking meth, Randal could feel a little bit of moral superiority over his companion. He started to get the impression that whatever cut Jeffrey was going to make from this deal might well prove fatal.

  · · ·

  There was something that struck Randal as almost comical about this moment. They could hear a pimp loudly beating one of his girls in the adjoining room. She was sobbing, begging for forgiveness, and occasionally she would let out a blood-curdling scream when one of his blows really connected with her. It sounded like he was using a belt buckle, because each blow had a heavy, metallic sound to it.

  “Where’s my MONEY?” the pimp kept screaming. “BITCH, where’s my MONEY?”

  Here they were, shirtless, bathed in sweat (the Mark Twain did not boast air conditioners), listening to all of this in one of the scummiest hotels in one of the scummiest corners of Hollywood, discussing their cut of a multimillion-dollar business deal. Below them some homeless drunks were fighting and cursing at each other in the parking lot.

  Jeffrey got his hit, slid the needle out, and lay back on the bed. He raised his arm to his mouth and sucked away the excess blood with a contented grin.

  “Still . . . ,” he said, “it’s a lot of money.”

  When Jeffrey said it this time, there was a hint of doubt in his voice. Something about Stevie Rox walking away with such a huge chunk of their money rubbed Jeffrey the wrong way. He hated people like Stevie. It seemed in America, whenever you made some money, there would be a queue of bastards like Stevie lining up to take their goddamned cut. Usually they only had two things in common: they were already as wealthy as shit and they had done nothing to earn their percentage. You put your money in a bank, and they start creaming shit off the top. You buy a house, and some asshole wants a percentage of the sale just because they unlocked the door for you and gave you some rehearsed spiel about what a great place it was. And here was Stevie Rox, no doubt right now snorting blow and banging Baby in his four-poster bed, in some obscene mansion up in the Hollywood Hills, about to take his cut because he happened to write Du Wald’s number on a napkin for them.

  With a sudden crash, the prostitute next door bounced off of the connecting wall. “Well, you gone and done it now!” the pimp screamed. “You made me go mess up yo face! Stupid ho!”

  “Aw, fuck this!” Randal spat. He got up and started banging on the wall. He screamed, “Can’t you beat her quietly? Keep it down, man!”

  There was a moment of silence, and then the girl started screaming: “Mind your business, fuck face! My man has a gun! He’ll shoot your ass!”

  “I gotta gun too!” Randal screamed back. “And I’m halfway outta my mind on meth right now, so DON’T FUCK WITH ME!”

  As this was happening, Jeffrey’s cell phone rang. It was the third time tonight. Jeffrey was about to ignore it again, but Randal said, “Can you like turn that thing off? Or answer it? It’s driving me crazy. What the fuck is that ringtone? It’s from the Tom and Jerry cartoons, right?”

  “It’s called ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.’ It’s by Handel.”

  “Handel? So he’s the guy who did the music for those old cartoons?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  Jeffrey looked at the phone, wrinkled his face, and said, “Oh, shit. It’s Spider.”

  “Who’s Spider?”

  “Guy I know. Speed freak. Used to be in the porno industry. . . .”

  “Oh, yeah? He knows porn people?”

  “Sure, I guess. He used to work for the Russians, some guy called Dimitri Barakov. Big porn guy, financed a lot of shit.”

  “I know that name. Barakov. Yeah . . . he’s pretty big. You think Spider could help us? I mean, get rid of the movie?”

  “What, sell it to the porn industry?”

  “Why not? What I saw tonight was pretty pornographic. I mean, if fucking Paris Hilton giving a half-assed blow job is worth millions to the porno industry, what about this tape? You saw the way that McQueen was drilling Sharon Tate and Mama Cass at the same time? He coulda had a career in hard-core, easily.”

  The song kept playing. “Dada-dah—dada-dah—dada da-daaah . . .”

  “But you said that porno wasn’t the way to go.”

  “But we have an offer on the table now. If we could get someone to match it, we could cut Stevie out altogether. It doesn’t hurt to see what our options are. . . .”

/>   “I guess . . .”

  Jeffrey looked at the phone.

  “Spider is kind of an asshole, though. . . .”

  “Who isn’t? You think I wanna go hang out with fucking Rupert Du Wald and play with his collection of mummified dicks?”

  Somewhat reluctantly, Jeffrey picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Jeff! Baby! You okay?” Spider’s crackly, faraway voice said.

  “Yeah. I’m good. What’s up, Spider?”

  “Nuthin’. I just, uh, wanted to give you a call . . . see how you were doing. . . . You know, I hadn’t heard from you since the whole Tyler thing went down, and, uh, you know I got a new connection now. Good guy, good stuff. I mean he can get it all, and I mean I don’t wanna talk bad of the dead or anything, but he’s a much more reasonable guy than Tyler ever was. Guess I wanted to call and see if you needed to find a steady source, you know?”

  “Spider . . . ,” Jeffrey said, cradling the phone with his shoulder while he caressed the fresh tracks on his arms, “I just got out of rehab. You crazy or something?”

  “Oh, shit! My bad. You still off the shit? It’s been like two months already! I just assumed . . .”

  “Well, don’t. Actually, though . . . there is something I wanted to talk to you about. You around tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  “You wanna meet me in the Spotlight, on Ivar? I got a friend I’d like you to meet. We got some business you might be interested in. . . .”

  “Sure, sure, baby. Now?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Okay, I’ll be there, man . . . Gimme like forty minutes, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  · · ·

  With that Jeffrey hung up. Randal gave him the thumbs-up. Jeffrey still looked unsure.

  “It’ll be fine,” Randal said. “We’re just gonna shake the tree a little. If he can’t help us, we call Du Wald tomorrow morning and tell him we accept. Either way, we’re outta here by tomorrow night. What do you say?”