by Rex Weiner
In the end, Columbia was sold by its owners, Coca Cola, to the Japanese, becoming Sony Entertainment. Lost in the translation, Ford Fairlane went into a kind of limbo called turnaround. Nearly every studio in town had a swing at it, each time optioning my original stories—since my smart agent had managed for me to retain the rights to my original material—and then commissioning a screenplay. Along the way, over the years, I joined the Writers Guild and became one of the first writers hired to create the TV series Miami Vice. Keeping my hand in journalism, several articles were optioned and one made into the Turner Network’s first made-for-TV movie (Forgotten Prisoners: The Amnesty Files). I got married, had a kid, bought a house, acquired a hacienda in Mexico, and sold the New York loft, closing off that part of my life. It seemed I was in California to stay, all due to Ford Fairlane—which took a helluva of a long time to get onto the big screen.
When the producer Joel Silver (Die Hard) finally came to me in 1988 and said he wanted to make my stories into a movie, I said sure. My agent made the deal, I turned in a whole new screenplay, did revisions, and other writers came aboard. Andrew Dice Clay, the hot, young comic star at the time, was cast in the leading role. Renny Harlin was given the directing job—not because an action director from Helsinki knows the first thing about directing a Jewish stand-up comic from Brooklyn—but as a prerequisite for directing Die Hard 2. Daniel Waters (Heathers) did a final polish on the screenplay.
So, finally, cameras began rolling on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, nearly ten years from when I’d first started writing the stories that are collected here, for the first time, in their original form. Whatever made it onto the big screen from these stories, or from my original screenplay, can be debated, but that’s besides the point. The movie got made, I got paid, and that’s that. My feature film credit as arbitrated by the Writers Guild (in the days before the rule that first screenplay writer always gets a writing credit) was “Based on characters created by Rex Weiner.” Fair enough, I guess.
One day during filming I got a call from “The Diceman” requesting that I come visit the set; he wanted to work up some new jokes with the original writer. We sat around the trailer and had some laughs. Then suddenly he got up and said, “C’mon with me a sec.” We go outside where the crew is setting up the lights and moving the camera for the next shot. Dice says, “Hey! Everybody, lissen up! This here’s Rex Weiner, the writer. He’s the reason we all got jobs, okay?”
The crew all looked at Dice like he was the biggest shmuck and then went back to their work. I went back to my life knowing that although it’s not every day that you get an idea in your head and it turns into a Hollywood movie, it’s not that big of a deal.
On the other hand, these stories—which at their best, in short, dirty strokes and minimalistic style, capture a time and place we’ll never see again—did change my life.
Thanks, Ford!
NEW YORK
Chapter 1
Where it all began
The lights glimmered down Broadway like a strand of pearls slung over a black girl’s thigh. Bleecker Street flashed by, then Houston. The windshield wipers beat rhythm to the cabbie’s dull monologue. “Quit the chatter,” I told him, “and step on it.”
“Two ay em and the fella’s in a hurry,” the cabbie groused.
Damn right. My rush hour starts when everyone else’s ends. Long after the nine-to-fivers have switched off Carson and sunk into dreamland, that’s when I’m getting into high gear. Sure, I work weird hours. Some people say I’m weird. But nobody says I don’t take care of business. Tonight I was taking care of business. And while traffic lights on Broadway flipped green, a pale light in my brain kept flashing Caution! Caution! For comfort, I patted my coat beneath my left shoulder: the .44 was there, ready.
The taxi skidded around the corner of Walker Street. I got out. The usual crowd stood outside the Mudd Club, looking like jerks and yammering to be let in. I elbowed my way though and Richie ushered me in the door.
“Glad you’re here,” he said. “Ike’s upstairs. He’s been causing trouble all night.”
I ran into Jane Jelly, singer for the Slithereens, coming down the stairs. I used to know her as Jane Blatzky before she found out she could sing like a banshee and be hailed as a pop star. It helped that she had a body like Jayne Mansfield. I asked her if she’d seen Ike. Jane pointed upstairs.
“He’s totally out of control. Completely maxed. Somebody should do something about him.” She smiled at me. “Speaking of doing something, what’re you doing later, Ford?”
I might have had a good time that night if not for that cretin named Ike. I took a rain check with Jane and continued up to the club’s inner sanctum.
The place was jammed tight: pop stars, cheap filmmakers, a couple of Ramones, two Dead Boys, a Helmut Newton–model looking icy, assorted sycophants, art students, and trendies. Just a lot of mouths flapping in the breeze. Ike was there, too.
Ike Schmidt was the lead singer for the Argumentative Types. It was one of those computer bands from Germany, the kind that made music like the sound effects you hear in old sci-fi movies. He was standing in the corner, talking too loud and weeping at the same time. A real mess. My guess was ’ludes and red wine. That’s a bad mix. Everyone knows ’ludes go only with white.
The club owner, a thin, nervous guy with a Long Island accent named Steve, was trying to talk the slob into leaving. When Steve spotted me, he looked relieved.
“You know Ford Fairlane,” he soothed Ike. “He’s a detective. He’ll protect you, Ike. Now won’t you go outside?”
“But they’ll kill me! They’ll kill me, I tell you!”
I told Ike to shut his mouth and took him by the arm. He wouldn’t stop blubbering. He was a big guy with a nasty streak and a rep for beating up on audiences. It was part of the band’s mystique. But now Ike let me lead him downstairs and out the door like a baby. After going a few yards down Walker Street, I steered him into an alley. Then I slammed the creep against the brick wall.
“Vat you vant?” he whined piteously.
I ran it down quickly and plainly. My client, a very famous rock and roller, was missing his favorite guitar. It was a Link Wray lyre-body Danelectro, one of only five ever made. Ike Schmidt was the last one seen with the rare axe. I’d been hired to retrieve it.
“Dat’s a lie,” Ike spat. “I neffer took dat guitar.”
He seemed scared. Too scared. I wondered why. This game had to be played carefully, or else he might light up “tilt.”
“Where is it, Ike? Maybe this is all a big mistake.”
“She gave it to me.”
“Who?”
“Vait a minute, I tell you.”
I waited while Ike fumbled in his coat pocket. If it was a knife, my left arm was flexed from shoulder to pinky, my right leg poised to kick his wrist into another time zone. Instead, he came up with a tiny bit of folded paper and unwrapped it. Nose candy.
“Vant some?” he smiled thinly. “Iss goot shit.”
“You first,” I said, and watched him take a snort. I don’t mind a snort now and then, especially when I’m partying. But this wasn’t my idea of a party.
“Dis girl,” sniffed Ike, “she got the guitar. Also, she giff me dis coke. Ah!”
He rubbed his charred nostrils with his bony fingers. The tips were thick with callouses from playing guitar. I asked him what the girl’s name was.
“Shirley. From Cincinnati. Got fantastic hair, cut like a Mohawk, you know? It is dyed red und white und blue. I met her here one night und she came to my room bringing dis guitar. I didn’t know nothing about it. Then last Friday she took the guitar back and she…HAUGHHH!”
Ike suddenly grabbed his throat and went down, eyes pooping out of his head like a couple of overdone Brussels sprouts. His faced turned purple and he clawed at the air.
“Help!” he gasped. “Help
me!”
I couldn’t do shit for the poor sick bastard and that’s the fucking truth. How do I know? Because I took what was let of the white powder to the lab the next day and got a report.
It was 99 percent pure Drano.
My guess was that somebody, possibly named Shirley, was out to shut the German’s fat mouth. They’d done a pretty good job of it, too. Not only did I have to let him croak in that alley off Walker Street, but now the word was out that the last guy seen with the stiff was Ford Fairlane. I had exactly one chance to exit this bad scene and I chanced it the next night.
“S’matter, Ford, stickup the Chase Manhattan?” said Jack, holding open the door for me at Hurrah. “The cops was here. Dey was axing ’bout you.”
I knew they would be. The fuzz knew I used to do security at this club, among a score of others, before I got sick of it and went for my PI license. I’d taught Jack, a former Bed-Stuy Golden Gloves champ, everything he knew about being a door bouncer, including a memory trick for recalling names together with faces. Now I was counting on him to be an A student. I asked him what he knew about a gal named Shirley.
“Chick name of Shirley? With a Mohawk? Lemme think, now. She have a red, white, and blue dye job? She from Cincinnati? Yeah, sure I know her. Used to come here all the time. Real heavy into Dead Boys, Pere Ubu—all those Ohio groups.”
“Seen her lately? Know when she might be back around?”
“Forget it, man. She won’t be back nowheres. Didn’t you read about it in the papers? She went back to Cincinnati and scored free tickets to a Who concert. I hear Shirley was first on line when the crowd broke loose. Lotta folks got stepped on and snuffed.”
Shit! My one goddamned alibi, trampled to death.
“Funny thing is,” said Jack, “she didn’t even like The Who. She just dug being first on line, know what I mean?”
I needed to think and think fast. Shooting a few games of pinball at Playland in Times Square helped clear my head. I was being framed for murder in somebody’s dirty game. Somewhere, a dirty rat held the rule book and I had to find him—or her. But first I had to get some shuteye. So just as dawn crawled up over the East River, I slipped up the back way to my flat on St. Marks Place. A peek through the blinds told me what I’d suspected: two plainclothesmen were staked out across the way, dressed like bums. But bums don’t have new heels on their shoes.
I fell into bed and was out like a light. Maybe I’d wake up in jail, but I was too tired to care. Then the phone jangled and I picked it up with only half my brain functioning. It was a girl’s voice. She said her name was Shirley, she had something important to tell me about a guitar, and I should meet her at Tier 3 tonight. At the same awful moment, somebody was beating my door down, shouting “Police! Police!” It wasn’t the rock band, either.
Chapter 2
Laffs and stilettos on the Lower East Side
Some smart aleck invented a tool they call “The Claw.” Cops use it to rip doors down. The Claw was doing a Godzilla act on mine. I could hear the cops swearing out in the hallway. Three heavy-duty dead-bolt locks stood between them and me. The first one popped off the frame and shot clear across the room.
I threw on some fresh threads and tucked my shooter under my arm. There was a switch behind a bookcase. I flicked it. A wall panel fell back. The second door lock clattered to the floor. I crammed inside the dusty dumbwaiter and the wall panel slid shut. This getaway gizmo was something I’d inherited from the previous tenant, a sixties radical–type with a fondness for mixing black powder and national monuments. I hear he’s still loose and I wish the bastard a lot of luck.
The dumbwaiter got me to the basement that led to an alleyway that led to fresh air, sunshine, and Second Avenue. While the boys in blue were frisking my pad, I was ordering breakfast at the B&H luncheonette. Max, the counterman, served me a plate of French toast and a face full of scowl.
“Yer a popular guy today, ain’tcha?” Max said to me.
“Quit spitting when you talk, Max.”
“Wise guy. First the cops come askin’ fer ya this mornin’, now this shmegegge over here.”
“Over where?” I asked, not turning my head.
“S’funny,” said Max. “The guy was sittin’ there a minute ago. You walked in and he was sittin’ right over there havin’ coffee and babka.”
“What’d he look like?”
“No nose.”
“Quit pulling my yo-yo, Max, this is life and death.”
“I swear, this guy had no nose in his face, just a big sorta hole in the middle. A skinny guy with no beak and he looked like trouble. Like you, shmuck, always lookin’ for trouble.”
“Don’t spit in my food, Max.”
The record store outside was blaring out “Hunted” by The Passions. I lamped the street for cops and found myself lucky. Stepping sideways to the newsstand at Gem Spa, I dropped a quarter on the rubber mat and picked up a Post. Someone leaned over my shoulder. His breath could have stripped paint.
“Looth jointh?”
He had a wool cap pulled low, wrap-around mirrored shades, a shabby overcoat, and a harelip. Forget it, I said, and moved to go. He blocked my way and smiled dreamily. In his hand was a K55, a cheap gravity knife that can perform expensive surgery.
“Leth walk,” he said.
We walked. I told the slimeball we didn’t need to travel, he could have my wallet right there on Second Avenue. He only laughed and dug the steel point into my lower lumbar region.
“I’m takin’ ya to Thpinkth. He wanth to thee ya.”
“Spinks? You mean the boxer?”
“Don’t be funny, thonny. I thaid Thpinkth. Wid an eff.”
He shoved me around the corner onto Seventh Street. I said I didn’t get it. Could he explain that again?
“Eff, eff. Ya know, Thpinkth. Ya heard me.”
Couldn’t figure it out. The harelip had me halfway down the deserted block. I had to think fast, double-talking him in the meantime.
“Eff? As in Fred? Eff as in ferry, eff as in fire, eff as in…” The newspaper fell accidentally on purpose from my hand. It distracted him long enough for me to whip around, catch his Adam’s apple in a yubi-waza punch, and drop him in a writhing heap on the asphalt. I’m sure it didn’t do his speech impediment any good.
“Eff as in fuck you.”
Midnight found me chugging a Bud at the Tier 3 bar. I was looking for Shirley, hoping she’d take me off the cops’ wanted list, and still wondering what the harelip had been trying to tell me. A combo called the Raybeats was capping a set. I scanned the rockers and marked a lot of hairdos: beehives, flips, flattops, razor cuts, and skinheads. But no Mohawks, no Shirley. The Raybeats performed “Green Onions,” then took a break.
The drummer, a character named Don, parked himself next to me at the bar. He’s got the kind of face that looks at home under a pork pie hat. The guitar player named Jody sat down too. I gave them a rundown of my blind date. They hadn’t seen her.
“Working on another case,” asked Don, “or just having fun?”
“Don’t know yet,” I said, and worked the talk around the missing Danelectro. “A Link Wray lyre–body?” said Jody. “There’s only five of those ever made.”
Don said it was a funny thing because two musicians he knew were also missing guitars. “A fifty-nine Gibson Sunburst Les Paul, and the other guy had an ES three-three-five Gibson Dotmarker, nineteen sixty.”
“And there was that guy I read about,” said Jody. “He owned Jimi Hendrix’s powder-blue Fender Strat with the maple neck and it got ripped off.”
A rash of guitar heists, all of them rare models: I put the figures in a column but I didn’t get a chance to add them up. My calculator jammed at the sight of a red, white, and blue Mohawk and a long pair of legs gliding up the stairs. I left my pals at the bar.
The upstairs room is
always dark, except for the colored strobes that flash on faces. I tried to pick her out. The shadows held a menagerie of ’lude freaks, gropers, reggae rudies, beatnoids, and brooding art students.
“Here,” a voice whispered.
She was sitting in the corner. My eyes adjusted to the dark enough to see a pretty face. I could take or leave the shaved skull with the single strip of dyed hair down the middle, but the rest of her had nice geometry. I took a seat.
“You’re supposed to be dead in that Who riot.”
“This kid’s all right,” she smiled. “That was just somebody who borrowed my ID for the night. Poor Susie. Oh well, it’s only rock and roll.”
She was maybe eighteen and smooth as ice cream. I could have eaten her with a spoon. But I had to kick myself hard. She was the one who’d snuffed Ike, a killer in a red-vinyl miniskirt. Still, it was tough to not trust the little sweetheart. I decided to play the thing straight.
“Got any more of that stuff you slipped Ike?”
She looked up with frightened eyes, big enough to swim in.
“That wasn’t my fault,” she whispered.
“Mine either. That’s why I’m taking you downtown.”
“I know. They think you killed him. I’ll go to the police. I’ll tell them everything. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Sure.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. For you. But you have to do something for me first.”
“No deal.”
“Just give me a chance to explain everything to you.”