Devil's Dance

by Daniel Depp

  ‘What sort of deal are you trying to make?’

  ‘Just talk to Mel. You get that end of it straightened out, then we’ll talk.’

  As if on cue the door opened downstairs. Mel Rosenthal trudged up the steps followed by Lena Swift. He said something to Lena and she nodded and then went downstairs. Rosenthal sauntered on out to the deck.

  ‘Mr Spandau?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Sal tells me you can be a real pain in the ass when you feel like it.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘He’s a real kidder, our Sal,’ said Spandau. ‘He gets a few in him and he’s liable to wear a lampshade and dance on the table.’

  ‘Did you actually hit Frank Jurado?’

  ‘It was an accident. I was reaching for my milkshake and he got in the way.’

  ‘Somebody should club the oily bastard to death,’ said Rosenthal. ‘Everybody hates him, but he doesn’t give a shit. You have to respect that.’

  ‘Is this the part where you tell me that being a sociopath is actually an attribute in our business?’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ said Rosenthal. ‘Anyway, this thing you think I’m doing, I’m not doing it.’

  ‘And exactly what thing is it that I think you’re doing that you’re not doing?’ said Spandau. To Locatelli he said, ‘Did I get that right?’

  ‘I’m not trying to smear Jerry Margashack. I don’t need to. Wet Eye is a good film but our film is better, and Jurado is a clever fucker but he’s never got an Oscar and I’ve got a dozen of them. He doesn’t know how to get there and I do. If I needed the extra leverage, I’d smear his ass all over the place, but in this case I don’t. I don’t need it and it’s not worth the risk. If you knew anything about Academy Award politics you wouldn’t even have to ask.’

  ‘You don’t think Wet Eye is competition?’

  ‘Everything nominated is competition. Wet Eye isn’t serious competition. Jurado has fucked around with reshooting and the editing and he’s getting a late start. He’s second-guessed his director and everybody knows it and that in itself is like pouring blood into shark-filled waters. People haven’t got a fucking idea now who they’re giving the award to. Besides, he’s in trouble financially and he hasn’t got the bread to back a serious campaign, even if he did know how to do it. This is not a crap shoot, my friend, this is science. There are little rivalries everywhere. It’s a popularity contest just like everything else. You sell a film to the Oscars the same way you sell it to the rest of the world.’

  Inside the house Lena Swift came up the steps followed by the model, now huddled into a thick terrycloth robe. Spandau finally recognized her. She had long black hair and icy blue eyes, and the sort of delicate face you saw carved on Victorian lockets. You’d have to spend a while getting used to those before you ever started worrying about what was under the robe.

  ‘Toni, Toni, Toni,’ said Rosenthal. ‘Get your ass out here.’

  ‘There are icicles hanging from my tits,’ Toni said. ‘There’s no way in hell I’m coming out there again.’

  ‘Toni is staying here while she’s in town,’ said Rosenthal. ‘When do you go to Milan?’ he asked her.

  ‘Next week,’ she said. ‘Come in here and talk to me. And close the door.’

  They went inside. Rosenthal walked over and kissed Toni very lightly on the lips. ‘When do I finally get tongue?’ Rosenthal said to nobody in particular.

  She grabbed a handful of middle-aged belly and pinched it. ‘Lose some of this and maybe you’ll get the whole enchilada one of these days.’

  ‘I’ll make you a star,’ said Rosenthal.

  ‘Both of us know I can’t act worth a damn,’ she said.

  ‘When has that ever made any difference?’

  ‘I did that Italian thing and even you laughed at it.’

  ‘Wrong casting, honey,’ he said. ‘You look like an Italian social worker the way I look like a Chippendale.’

  She shrugged, sat down on the sofa, and reached for a packet of cigarettes and a lighter on the coffee table. She lit it and looked at Spandau through the smoke.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ Rosenthal said to Locatelli. Locatelli and Lena Swift followed him out of the room.

  ‘That was subtle,’ Toni said to Spandau. ‘I’m supposed to seduce you, or haven’t you figured that out.’

  ‘How far are you prepared to go?’

  ‘Not very far,’ she said. She opened the robe and flashed lots of skin and little bikini. ‘Are you swooning?’

  ‘There’s a definite weakness at the knees,’ he said, and sat in a chair across from her. He took out one of his own cigarettes and she reached across the table to light it for him. She saw the appreciative look on his face and smiled.

  ‘You’re living with Anna Mayhew,’ she said.

  ‘Sorta kinda,’ he said. ‘I still have my place and she has hers.’

  ‘Is that a hint?’

  ‘No. Just a statement of fact. I was married and I’m still a little gun shy about cohabitation.’

  ‘You’re the faithful type. You look it, you know. Jesus, don’t look so hurt. I meant it as a compliment. You were practically any other guy, I’d be feeling your eyes all over me. It’s not always so nice.’

  ‘So I’ve been told.’

  ‘She’s beautiful, your Anna. I bet she’s got enough of that in her time.’

  ‘Still does.’

  ‘You ever get jealous?’

  ‘A little, every now and then,’ he said. ‘At the end of the day you have to figure she’s with me because she wants to be, not because she doesn’t have other choices. I can’t say I always understand her reasons, but I don’t have to. They’re her reasons, not mine, and they seem to work for her.’

  ‘You’re not half bad,’ she said. ‘If I changed my mind about seducing you, how far do you think I’d get?’

  ‘I could tell you about this pet rabbit I had as a kid,’ he said.

  ‘If I had a nickel for every time somebody has tried that line on me,’ she said. They laughed. ‘Lucky woman,’ she said.

  ‘Now I am swooning.’

  Louis appeared at the top of the stairs. He stood there looking at Spandau until Spandau finally got up and went over to him.

  ‘Mr Rosenthal has gone,’ Louis whispered, ‘and Mr Locatelli would like to know if you are going or staying.’

  ‘Tell Mr Locatelli that I will be going.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ said Louis.

  ‘Reasonably,’ said Spandau.

  Louis turned and left. Spandau looked over at Toni, who was standing next to the sofa smiling at him.

  ‘Nothing but class, these guys,’ she said. ‘They know how to treat a woman, right?’

  ‘It was nice meeting you,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll meet again in less awkward circumstances.’

  ‘I’m here until next week,’ she said. ‘In case you have a change of heart.’ She slid the robe off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. ‘Not bad, right?’

  ‘Not bad at all,’ he said, and meant every word of it.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘I tried to tell him it wouldn’t work,’ Locatelli said when Spandau climbed into the waiting Lincoln. ‘Mel thinks everybody in the world is motivated by the same things he is. She’s not bad, though. Maybe I should reconsider this ban on models.’

  ‘Leave her alone, for chrissake,’ said Spandau. ‘I’m sure she enjoys getting passed around like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. She’s not a bad kid.’

  ‘This is what I mean about you and your misplaced sympathies,’ Locatelli said. ‘She would eat both of us alive.’

  ‘I’d give you an argument,’ Spandau said, ‘but lecturing you on human morality is about the biggest waste of breath I can think of.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Texas,’ Locatelli said in a cold voice. ‘I live by a different set of rules than you do, and maybe you don’t see that, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have them. You sitting here
now proves that. There are a lot of savages out there, and every day it’s like the fucking barbarian hordes are hammering at the gates, a lot of animals with no rules at all. Your friend Charlie has managed to fall into a nest of them.’

  ‘Are you going to do a fan dance all the way back to Santa Monica, or are you going to tell me what you want to tell me?’

  ‘Your pal Charlie,’ said Locatelli, ‘owes eighty-five thousand dollars to an Armenian fucking lunatic named Atom Baldessarian. Uncle Atom, he owns a butcher shop in Los Feliz down by the 101. Butcher is a good name for him.’

  ‘The Armenian mafia?’

  ‘There is no such thing as the mafia,’ said Locatelli. ‘How many times have I got to tell you this? They’re a gang of fucking hoodlums is all they are, crazy fucking animals who have no sense and are giving me a pain in the ass. Their idea of collecting on a debt is to hack off an arm or something. That’s about as subtle as they get. Every time they pull this shit it makes life harder for me. In addition to several other badly run little operations, he’s got this scam where he hangs around private clubs and casinos and pops up offering a loan to some loser on the spot. The fucking vigorish is impossible and I can’t imagine what his collection rate is like. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I mean, you want the marks to pay, right, so hacking off an arm and crippling the poor fuckers doesn’t make any sense. I’m not even sure he wants to collect, you know? It’s like he just hates people and has got it in for the entire human race. Sick crazy, this guy. All I know is that various arms and legs and other body parts have been cropping up all over LA and I’m getting tired of trying to explain it isn’t any of my boys. Who thinks about fucking Armenians? There used to be like three of them in LA and now they’re all over the fucking place.’

  ‘He’s got three guys who collect for him?’

  ‘You mean the Chipmunks.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘His nephews. It’s an Armenian thing, you know, the guy who invented Alvin and the Chipmunks was Armenian or something. No wonder they have a hard time collecting with a tag like that. Anyway, two of them are idiots but the oldest is a pretty cool character. He’s scared shitless of his uncle – they all are – but I could probably deal with him if I could get Atom out of the way. It’s not a bad little operation if it wasn’t run by a psychopath.’

  ‘How do I come into this?’

  ‘You keep looking for Charlie and you are going to cross their path at some point, I assure you. When you do, I want you to talk to the oldest nephew for me. I want to see if we can make some sort of deal. I can’t send any of my boys around without sending up a fucking signal flare and having Atom go apeshit like a fucking Ubangi with a machete. Nobody is looking at you.’

  ‘Thanks for the info, but finding Charlie is no great shakes. I’d find him anyway sooner or later.’

  ‘If he steps into any gambling establishment in the United States I can finger him in about ten minutes, whereas you’re sniffing the ground like Tonto and hoping you’ll get lucky and nab him before he’s as limbless as a twenty-pound sack of potatoes. Even if you find him, what the hell are you going to do? He’s still into Atom for the eighty-five big ones. You get to the nephew and maybe we can negotiate something. Charlie gets to keep his arms and legs and you’re a big hero to your ex-old lady.’

  ‘What about this campaign against Jerry Margashack? That is the reason I trooped all the way out here.’

  ‘Well, here’s where it gets really amusing. It seems Jerry’s into Atom too. Not for a lot, but enough to put Uncle Atom at the top of your must-do list.’

  ‘Why would Atom want to smear Jerry?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Atom has nothing to do with that. But considering he’s your client, I’d think keeping him in one piece might be of interest to you.’

  ‘And Mel?’

  ‘You know as well as I do that Mel has nothing to do with any of this. You heard what he said. There’s no percentage in it for him. Even you with your limited abilities should be able to see this.’

  ‘So what happens if I don’t manage to cross paths with these Chipmunks?’

  ‘Oh, you keep nosing around, you’ll run into them okay. Trust me on this. And when you do, you are going to be looking around for a friendly face.’

  ‘What’s to keep me from just backing away from the whole damned thing?’

  ‘That’s what I’d do. Except you won’t do it. Like it or not, Texas, you’ve got two lives dumped into your lap. I know you, Texas. You’re fucking Gary Cooper. Everything is fucking High Noon with you. I’d walk away and not think twice but you can’t do it and we both know it. Everybody knows it. You’re as predictable as a clock, which is why people dump this stuff on you in the first place. Sooner or later this is going to get you killed, and I will miss our little jokes when you are gone, but your stupidity about such things is not my problem.’

  Locatelli clipped a Cuban cigar and lit it, filling the back of the car with a fug of smoke.

  ‘It’s not too late to turn around and go back to the beach house,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t leave for Milan until next week. You lay up and act out every fantasy you’ve ever had, and by the time you stick you head out again it will all be over. Just say the word. Come on, Texas. Surprise me.’

  ‘Don’t you ever get tired of playing Mephistopheles?’

  ‘With you, Texas? Never. You’re one of the few things in life that never disappoint me. I always know right where you are if I happen to need you. That’s very comforting to a man like me.’

  Locatelli almost sounded as if he meant it. When Spandau realized that he did, and in what way, it made the hairs stand up on his neck.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Pookie sat on the terrace of a hip cafe on Melrose looking glamorous in her sunglasses and a Hermès scarf draped over her head. Spandau was inside getting the coffees. Pookie watched the young and beautiful come and go. After a while Spandau came out with two cups and wound his way toward her with an irritated look on his face.

  ‘Can you explain to me why you can order a double shot of orgasmic foot-crushed Kahuna bean and Nubian goat’s milk latte and they get that right, but I order a lousy cup of black coffee and that confuses them?’

  ‘Would you go to La Tour d’Argent and ask for a hamburger?’

  ‘If I did,’ said Spandau, ‘I would at least expect them to look at me as if they knew what it was. We could have gone to Starbucks.’

  ‘Not with me you couldn’t.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re taking this “my life is a work of art” thing a bit too far?’

  ‘First Starbucks, then Arby’s. It all ends in a trailer park with the Schlitz cans piling up outside the window. It’s a slippery road.’ She took a sip of her latte. ‘It’s a bit coolish, but I can live.’

  ‘Thank god,’ said Spandau. ‘I’d hate to try committing hara-kiri with a spork.’

  ‘Your pal Margashack is an interesting character. Tina did a web search and I had her email you some old articles. He was out of the news for a long time, until Wet Eye and now this.’

  ‘Anything incriminating?’

  ‘Oh my yes. Lots. Just nothing that wasn’t already public knowledge. He’s never been very discreet, has he, your Jerry?’

  ‘You say that like I’ve taken him for a pet.’

  ‘He’s another cowboy. You’ll be like Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea in Ride the High Country. Two aging cowpokes. You can go shootin’ and stuff together. Except I don’t think he’s a very nice man, your Jerry. Not very nice to women.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘A lot of booze, a lot of drugs. It was always like Keith Richards sitting in a director’s chair. He did half his films drunk or high, rumors of excess that makes Led Zeppelin and their fish episode seem like Sesame Street. Worked with a lot of great actors and it was either love or hate, never a middle ground. He wasn’t exactly the darling of completion bond companies, since everybody expected to see him kack at any minute. Came c
lose though on his last studio film, collapsed on set and they called in another director to finish. The suits claimed it was drugs but Jerry says it was exhaustion, he’d pissed them off and they were trying to break him. That did it for our Jerry in Tinseltown. He’s done some low-budget features and a couple of documentaries to keep afloat. Supposedly he’s cleaned up but one does begin to doubt.’

  ‘What about him lifting that script?’

  ‘Finally settled through arbitration with the Writer’s Guild and the studio. Money exchanged hands, hush papers were signed. The other guy made a good enough buck off of it.’

  ‘But is it true?’

  ‘Nobody knows. I could ask around but we’ve all got our hands full right now and I don’t think it would do any good. All we’d get are conflicting rumors at this point.’

  ‘You don’t much like him.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t, not much.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s not very nice to women.’

  ‘You know better than to believe what you read in the papers. Women seem to like him well enough.’

  ‘He has a rather aggressive libido when he’s stoned. He drinks and gropes. I talked to some people who’d worked with him. They finally had to stop hiring female production assistants on his sets. He seemed to think that doing it doggie style in the trailer was part of their job description.’

  ‘Doggie style?’

  ‘Well, I admit that part is my own contribution. Doggie style would give a man like that a sense of empowerment. He’s probably into gagging too.’

  ‘Damn, Pookie,’ said Spandau, ‘where do you come up with this shit?’

  ‘Just because I went to a good school doesn’t mean I’m naive,’ she said. ‘I also like watching you turn red. It’s so cute.’

  ‘He married a couple of his actresses.’

  ‘And oh, didn’t that work out well for everybody. One he gave a broken jaw and another claims he tried to cut her throat while she slept.’