Hollywood Tough (2002)

by Stephen - Scully 03 Cannell

  “Few and far between.” Shane sipped his Taittinger. “You gotta understand how it works… .” Shane was now recalling some of the crash course Nicky had given him yesterday. “You’ve got very young people of both sexes with very little experience in positions of great power at the studios. They’ve got money and Porsches; they get the best tables at restaurants, and the only thing that is gonna screw that up is if they say yes to a picture and the studio spends tens of millions to make and release it, and it bombs. If they say no, they won’t be proved wrong, except once in a few thousand pitches, like the time some development exec at Paramount turned down Jaws and Universal made it and it grossed a few hundred mil. Some people lost their jobs over that, but it’s a rare occurrence. The vast majority of films shot in this town tank. If you’re a studio exec, your odds of not fucking up are a thousand times better if you say no rather than yes. Get it?”

  Valentine nodded. The waiter came to the table to take Shane’s order, but Valentine waved him off. He wanted to hear more.

  “Then how do films get made?” he asked.

  “They get green-lit when the elements are so tantalizing that only a fool would say no. For instance, let’s say you have Nelson DeMille’s or Michael Connelly’s latest bestselling novel. You’ve got Spielberg to direct, Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise to star. Now if the film tanks, you’ve got a prepackaged excuse. You can tell your boss, ‘How could I not make this picture with all these A-list people involved?’ “

  “I see.” Valentine put down his glass and studied Shane. “You’re a smart guy. Maybe you are a movie producer.”

  “I busted a buncha these A-list players for drugs when I was still in Vice. I cultivated contacts, did some favors. What goes around, comes around.”

  “So we work together. Your knowledge and Hollywood contacts, my East Coast relationships and ancillary toughness.”

  “By that, are we talking about muscle?”

  “I have valuable things I can offer.”

  “You can’t have a piece of my movie,” Shane repeated. “This piece blends neo-impressionistic heroism with gut-wrenching social commentary. It’s ferae naturae, which is a term we use, meaning full of untamed nature. Obviously I’m in no hurry to sell off pieces.” Stealing the better part of Jerry Wireman’s riff in these few sentences.

  “I’m not used to being turned down.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “According to this news article, your wife runs the LAPD Detective Services division.”

  Shane nodded.

  “If what I read in this paper is true, that may not last much longer.”

  “She’s as pissed off about the way they run things down there as I am,” Shane snapped.

  “Maybe there’s a way I can help both of you. From what I see, and from where you’re living, you must be in way over your head; either that or you’re already selling police favors to people with money. Maybe I can help you get more of what you want. While this is an offer, you should also think of it as a demand.”

  “Am I supposed to get all shook up ‘cause you’re a mobster?” Shane said softly. “I should agree to anything so you won’t unleash Gino on me?” Shane leaned forward. “This isn’t New Jersey. We aren’t too scared of the mob out here. We’ve had a few cheeseball Mafia families over the years, but they have never been a problem for us ‘cause they couldn’t buy any influence. Being a mobster in L. A. is kinda like being an admiral in the Swiss navy. It’s all protocol and no boats.”

  Valentine also leaned forward. “What if I was to tell you that’s all about to change?”

  “I wouldn’t believe it. In order for you guys to get any foothold here, you’ve gotta have cops and politicians on the pad, and that’s never happened in L. A.”

  The mobster leaned back. He seemed to change his mind, or pick a new direction. He studied Shane carefully, like he was an intricate puzzle that needed solving. “I don’t wanna argue with you. You’re a smart guy, but one way or another, I intend to get a piece of the Fallon movie. Gotta be a way that can happen without a lot of pain and suffering.”

  “It’s not for sale.”

  “Okay. Before I give you the fist, here’s the carrot. How much you figure this movie is gonna cost?”

  “It’s a film, and we’re still budgeting it, so I don’t have a clue. Michael has some very expensive codicils in his talent agreement with us, but we can get bank financing off his box-office power, so it’s really a moot point.

  “Okay, let’s say, just for the hell of it, that it’s gonna costyou fifty mil below-the-line. That sound reasonable?”

  “All right, let’s say.” Shane tried to sound bored. He had a fair grasp of how the movie industry worked from Nicky and friends in the business, and of course, everywhere you went in L. A., people talked about film production, so you couldn’t help picking some of it up. But he was far from an expert. He decided if he got in over his head with Valentine, he would just be vague.

  “What if I can cut the cost of production to around half that?” Dennis was saying. “What if I can get it made for twenty-five mil instead of fifty? How many points is that worth?”

  ” ‘Cept you can’t. It’s a union film. We’re gonna be stuck with union rate cards, union overtime, meal penalties, force calls. No way it gets made for half-cost.”

  “But let’s just say I can. What does that buy me?”

  Shane decided on the spot that a dollar-for-dollar formula probably made sense, so he cleared his throat and said, “Okay. If you could do that, and I know you can’t, but if you could, it might be worth a percentage equal to the percentage saved, less maybe, ten points.”

  “There, you see? We got us the start of a negotiation.”

  “We got shit, because nobody can cut the cost of a union shoot,” Shane said. “I. A. unions don’t deal on their rate cards.”

  “What if I put it on paper that you don’t pay for it if you don’t get it … what then?”

  “I’m not negotiating with you, okay?”

  The waiter returned. Valentine looked up, and the glower in his eyes was so fierce that it froze the man, who spun and left quickly.

  “You ever heard of an Italian Alka-Seltzer treatment?” Valentine said softly.

  “What’s that, three goombas bubbling in a hot tub?”

  “You’re a funny guy, but now you’re pissing me off. An Italian Alka-Seltzer is made of Semtex. It goes under your car. When it pops, you fizz. I could take you out hard, like that, or I got guys I can import who do vehicular hitand-runs; turn you into a sack a crosswalk vegetables, separate your brain stem from your spinal column. Let you finish your tour down here sucking oxygen out of an iron lung. Or I can go easy and just put you in a body cast for half a year. These guys I got do surgical bumper and fender hits. The victims all get booked as traffic accidents. I got a guy works for me we named Thirteen Weeks. He’s so good on crosswalk jobs, I once told him to put a guy in the hospital for thirteen weeks and he did it to the day.”

  Shane slowly stood and looked down at Valentine. “Guess I’ll pass on dinner. Nice knowing ya.”

  “Why don’t you let it percolate for twenty-four hours?” the mobster suggested. “Why don’t you ask Nicky the Pooh about me? Ask him what kinda guy Dennis Valentine is. Then maybe we revisit this in a day or so.” Dennis stood up and Shane rose with him.

  “Anything you want. But the answer is still gonna be no.”

  A Mexican busboy came up to Shane. “You have telephone call,” he said.

  “Nobody knows I’m here,” Shane said.

  “You Scully?” the busboy asked.

  Shane nodded, now wondering if something had happened to Chooch and they’d somehow tracked him down here. Valentine was opening his wallet.

  “Let’s get outta here,” he said to Parelli, who had magically appeared at the table.

  Shane watched Valentine throw a couple of hundreds down on the table to cover his vegetarian lasagna and the champagne. The busboy led Shane to the
back of the restaurant near the kitchen, then pointed to a pay phone in the corner. The receiver was off the hook and balanced on top of the box. Shane picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Shane Scully?” a voice with a Mexican accent said. “Yeah, who is this?”

  “Momentito .”

  Then Shane was put on hold … for almost a minute. As he waited, he was looking into the brightly lit kitchen when the busboy who had led him to the phone took off his white coat, revealing a wife-beater tank-T underneath. On the back of his neck Shane could see interlocking M and 13 tattoos. La Eme.

  Shane held the dead receiver to his ear, still trying to make sense of it when the busboy with the gang tatts exited the kitchen through a side door.

  The penny dropped. Shane knew what was going on.

  “Shit.” He dropped the phone and sprinted back through the restaurant. Valentine was not there. He had already walked out through the main entrance. Shane reached down and clawed his ankle gun from its holster as he ran, then he exploded out into the street.

  A few yards away he could see Valentine’s white-andtan Rolls-Royce convertible pulling up to the curb. Valentine paid the valet and was moving around to get behind the wheel. Gino was standing nearby, waiting for his rental.

  Shane heard it before he saw it. The low rumble of blown mufflers. “Get down! A hit!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. Everyone dove for cover just as an Eme work car peeled around the corner and four auto mags opened up.

  Bullets ripped into the Rolls and chipped brick dust off the building behind him. Shane landed on his stomach behind the Rolls and maneuvered into a prone firing position, then started squeezing off rounds under the car in the general direction of the low-rider. He heard a taillight break as more automatic gunfire ripped the night. Somebody screamed from behind the Rolls. Then suddenly rubber squealed and the carload of Emes was gone.

  As Shane stood, Valentine was just pulling himself up from the wheel-well where he had ducked. He had a little cut on his forehead from a piece of windshield shrapnel. Blood was leaking down into his eye. Sprawled in a sitting position against the restaurant wall, his shirt soaked crimson, was Gino Parelli.

  Valentine ran over to him. “How bad is it?!”

  “How the fuck do I know?” Parelli croaked. “Fucking beaners. How’d they know where we were?”

  Then they could hear the wail of a siren in the distance.

  “Gimme a hand!” Valentine yelled at Shane. The two of them pulled Parelli to his feet, dragged him to the bullet-riddled Rolls, and laid him across the backseat.

  Valentine got in the car and turned the ignition key. Miraculously, nothing had hit the engine and it started. Precious blood was pumping dangerously out of the bullet wound in Parelli’s chest. Valentine took off his expensive cashmere coat, reached back and put it over Gino’s wound. “Hold it there, tight… . Compress it,” he ordered his gunsel. “Let’s get the fuck outta here. I don’t wanna try to explain this to the cops.” He turned to Shane. “You saved my life. This sure as shit complicates our negotiation.”

  “We don’t have a negotiation,” Shane said.

  “That’s what you think. Get your car and follow me.”

  So Shane grabbed the keys off the valet board and sprinted into the parking lot next door. The street-savvy Mexicans had all magically disappeared.

  The sirens were only a block away as Shane bounced his Acura out onto Fairfax, leaving a trail of bumper sparks on the asphalt. He hit the gas and hung a right, then followed Dennis Valentine’s Rolls out of West Hollywood.

  Chapter 23.

  THE PROPOSITION

  As he followed the Rolls across town, Shane tried to call the chief and Alexa on his cell, but he must have had a weak battery or something because he couldn’t get a signal. They finally arrived at Valentine’s rented estate on Mandeville Canyon Road, where he was greeted by state-of-the-art security: panning cameras, punch pads, motion detectors, and a sign on a not-too-friendly wrought-iron gate that announced: VICIOUS ATTACK DOGS. Shane followed Valentine’s Rolls as they headed up the long designer-brick drive. Vast lawns with lit fountains decorated the landscape while they pulled up to a huge Greco-Roman house. Stone and granite pillars held up a monstrous roof with porch dormers. Motion detectors clicked on security lights, illuminating large sections of the property as they drove past.

  Shane followed the Rolls around to the back, where Valentine parked and got out. No bloodthirsty dogs. Shane guessed either the sign was a fake or Dennis had phoned ahead to have them locked up. Valentine looked down at Parelli in the backseat, then waved at Shane to come over.

  Shane got out of the Acura and started toward the Rolls, but Valentine was now moving away, motioning for him to follow as he headed toward the backyard. Shane didn’t know why the handsome mobster was leaving Parelli, unless the bodyguard had bled out during the ride across town and was already dead. Shane veered and followed Valentine through a side gate, past an Olympic-size pool with swim lanes set in blue tile strips along the bottom.

  As they walked across the deck, more lights clicked on, illuminating their way. Valentine stopped beside a lounge chair, then motioned to it.

  “Wanna get Gino out of the car. We can put him on this,” Valentine said, so they picked it up and carried it back to the Rolls.

  “How is he?”

  “Not good. The bleeding is slowing some, but I think he’s going into shock. He’d be dead if those barrio rats didn’t all hold their Tec-Nines sideways like a buncha rock-video gangsters. Looks cool, but nobody can hit shit that way. Musta been a lucky shot.”

  When they got back to the Rolls, Parelli was trying to sit up.

  “Hey, Gino, lay back. We’ll do it,” Valentine said, while putting on a pair of leather driving gloves to protect his skin. With a little struggling and careful tugging, they finally pulled Gino out and laid him on the lawn chair. He looked pale. A cold sweat glistened on his sallow, pasty face. With Dennis carrying the front and Shane the back, they hoisted the two-hundred-fifty-pound enforcer and lugged him back through the pool gate.

  They set Gino down near the lighted Jacuzzi. Dennis told Shane to wait, then went inside the house. A minute later, he reappeared with an armload of beach towels and put one of them on Gino’s bullet-shredded shoulder.

  “Fucking frijolito dickheads,” Gino grunted as he held it tightly on his wound.

  “Don’t talk. I called the doc from the car,” Valentine ordered as he rolled up two more towels and placed them under Gino’s feet, elevating them to help ward off shock. Suddenly he headed to the pool house.

  “You got a doctor coming?” Shane asked, trailing after him, but by now Valentine was already inside, so Shane stood by, waiting. A minute later, he reappeared with a blood pressure cuff.

  “Use this to check my pressure every day. Do it thirty minutes to the second after I swim my laps. I stay at exactly one twenty over eighty. Textbook numbers.” He went back to Gino, who now looked unconscious. Dennis wrapped the gunsel’s arm with the cuff, then pumped on the rubber ball.

  “The fuck you doin’?” Gino opened his eyes and whined.

  “Checking your pressure. Shut the fuck up and stay quiet. Now I gotta do it over.” He pumped it again till he got a reading. “Eighty over sixty. Not so good. Too low. You’re going into shock.”

  “Them fuckin’ greasers,” Gino growled. “Somebody in our crew musta ratted us out. How’d they know we was at Ciro’ s?”

  “I think it was my fault. I wasn’t paying much attention when I left the house. They musta tailed me,” Valentine said, picking up the pool phone and hitting a buzzer.

  “Lynette, you lookin’ for Doctor Seligman’s car?” he said, then paused. “Okay, okay, open the gate the second you see him.” He hung up. Gino’s teeth were starting to chatter.

  “Wouldn’t it be warmer in the house?” Shane suggested.

  “I’ll get him a blanket. Last thing I need is this guy bleedin’ all over my wife�
��s ivory carpets. I fuck up her new decorating, Lynette’ll start bitching like a French whore.” Valentine went into the main house and reappeared seconds later with two blankets. He draped them over Gino.

  Then they heard a car pull up around the side and Valentine moved quickly to the pool gate and let in a small, balding man, carrying a doctor’s bag. He rushed over to Gino and kneeled down.

  Only then did Valentine turn away and walk Shane over to the outdoor pool bar. He opened the cabinet, reached for an ice bucket, filled it from the ice-maker, then grabbed a chilled bottle of Taittinger from the refrigerator. He worked off the wire that held the cork, accidentally fired it into the night, then poured himself a foaming glass, dropping the open bottle into the ice bucket. “You want a glass? Help yourself.”

  “You got any scotch?” Shane asked.

  “Scotch? You know what you’re doin’ when ya drink that shit? Aside from what it does to your liver and kidneys, it’s like you’re eating whole wheat. It’s all barley grain and rye—carbohydrates. An hour after it hits your system it turns into pure sugar. Scotch is eighty, ninety proof alcohol. Alcohol makes you retain water. You’re gonna bloat.”

  “Gimme a fucking scotch, will ya?” Shane growled, his nerves still jangled from the gunfight.

  Valentine shrugged, began hunting through his liquor supply under the bar, then finally came out with some Ballantine’ s. He uncapped it, smelled it, wrinkled his nose in disgust, and finally poured it into a club glass, neat. After he handed it to Shane, they clinked rims and drank.

  Shane followed Valentine over to the glass-topped table near the pool house.

  “Your doctor friend is going to have to report that gunshot wound,” Shane said. “It’s a state law.”

  “He’s not a people doctor; he’s an animal doctor, a vet. So he can report it to the SPCA.”

  “If Gino needs a transfusion, whatta you gonna do, give him a pint of Doberman blood?”

  “Look, Scully, get outta my business, will ya? This doc used t’ be a people doc, but he got busted for using drugs so now he delivers puppies and cuts off cat balls. NYU School of Medicine, so he oughta be able to handle this. If Gino don’t make it, then them’s the breaks, but I’m not gonna check him in at County General and have a buncha cops over there asking me why the front of Ciro’s Pornpadoro ate ten pounds of lead tonight.”