“Nicky, we’ve got less than a hundred grand left in the bank. That’s it. After that, all our checks are coming straight from Goodyear Rubber.”
“Shane, whatta you want me to do? The minute anybody criticizes Lubick, he threatens to leave and Rajindi goes with him, Fallon follows Singh, then Valentine splits and I’m back auditioning bimbos in short-shorts.”
“We gotta slow him down, Nicky. We gotta find a way to build a time loop into all of this. Maybe we can put all the purchase orders on this picture through a pay office … hold everything, all the accounts payable, for two weeks.”
“Shane, if Lubick tells these vendors to begin working, they’ll start spending our money on his say-so alone. He’s an A-list guy. Nobody’s gonna tell him no.”
“Whatta we do?” Shane was beginning to panic.
“I think we oughta consider getting the LAPD to really make this film. We’re already in over two hundred grand on holding deals and preproduction costs. Once we factor in Fallon’s step-option deal, plus Lubick’s, we’re gonna be pushing half a mil by Monday. The only hope we have of getting any of your money back is to shoot this thing and release it.”
“Are you outta your Inind?!” Shane was almost shouting.
“Shane, a strange and wonderful thing is happening.” Nicky lowered his voice confidentially. “My phone hasn’t stopped ringing since this morning. Thing about Hollywood is: Activity is its own endorsement. We’re rolling here. We got A-list people signed. Everybody who read this script a year ago and hated it now thinks maybe they misjudged it and missed its hidden brilliance. I’ve got studio guys calling and offering us slots in their distribution schedule, maybe even some P and A participation.” Off Shane’s puzzled look he added, “That’s Prints and Advertising. I think I can actually sell a piece of this film to a major studio—Warner or Universal. We got offers for housekeeping deals at two major studios. That’s a deal where they give us an office and some overhead, maybe a development fund. It’s like I finally broke through because of this thing, and I love you for it.”
“Nicky, we are not gonna make this movie, okay?” Just then, the door flew open and Champagne Dennis Valentine walked in. “Is Michael Fallon around?” he asked, smiling.
Chapter 27.
ZELSO
Shane found out that Paul Lubick had a few numbered copies of the script. He saw one in the director’s briefcase just before lunch. He would have swiped it and made a copy, but it was printed on red paper, which defeated Xeroxes. When Shane asked for one, he was told by Lubick that he wasn’t on the approved distribution list.
“I’m the producer. I’m paying your salary. How can I not be on the approved list?” Shane argued.
“Woody Allen doesn’t even let the lead actors who’ve already been cast in his movies read the whole script, just the scenes they’re in. You have to operate on a little faith … have trust in your director,” Lubick said.
“But I’m the producer,” Shane raged impotently.
“Right. And you’re not on the list. I don’t know you from a box a rocks. How do I know you’re not gonna get it retyped on white paper? Make copies and pass ‘em around town? Next thing, critics are taking shots at me before I even shoot a frame. I’m hot news in show business. When you’re tits, you’re prime for trashing. Right now, just the few people I need to read it will get a copy, and then only the pages they’re involved with. No exceptions.” He left Shane standing in the hallway.
At twelve, Shane and Dennis Valentine, who had both been more or less ignored all morning, decided to keep each other company for lunch. They walked across the lot toward the Studio Commissary, which was really only a restaurant located just off the property, across an alley in an old railroad dining car. Nicky called it the vomitorium, but the manager gave discounts to people who could show studio gate passes.
They sat in a back booth. Framed cartoon sketches of old movie actors grinned down at them from red flocked wallpaper.
“When do you suppose Michael Fallon will show up?” Valentine said.
“Don’t know. You should check with Paul.”
“This guy, Paul, whatta you think of him?”
“He’s an asshole.”
“Purebred and overfed,” Valentine agreed.
They ordered. Shane asked for the twelve-ounce rib-eye. Valentine ordered steamed vegetables and Taittinger.
“We don’t stock Taittinger. Got a nice Paul Masson sparkling Bordeaux,” the waiter said, and got the vitamin lecture for his suggestion.
They did some showbiz small talk, and after ten minutes, Shane finally worked his way around to Alexa. “That thing we were discussing yesterday?” he began as they both picked at a lettuce and tomato salad.
“Yep,” Valentine said as his order of cooked vegetables arrived, looking like a steaming plate of dinner scrapings. The rib-eye followed.
After the waiter left, Shane continued. “I talked it over with her. I think we got a player.”
Valentine stopped eating his vegetables and looked up angrily. “I don’t wanta discuss this here. I don’t talk about business in rooms I don’t trust.” Valentine had undoubtedly heard the tape of Shane and Alexa from last night and was well prepared for this conversation. But just not in a room he hadn’t swept.
“If not here, how about tonight?” Shane said.
“Tonight’s fine.” Valentine forked in some steamed cauliflower. “My house, five-thirty this afternoon.”
“She’s pretty busy. How’s after work sound … around seven?”
“Sure, seven’s good.” Then Valentine switched subjects quickly, pointing disgustedly at Shane’s plate. “Y’know how long some of that meat’s gonna live in your intestines?” he said.
“Not long … I shit logs.”
“Yeah, you laugh, but most Americans carry around ten pounds of undigested meat in their colons. You’re killing yourself one bite at a time.”
“I’d rather be dead than hungry,” Shane said as he took another bite. “We can compare notes in hell.”
Shane’s afternoon was full of couldn’ts. He still couldn’t get a copy of the script, because Paul and Rajindi were locked in a Concept and Tone meeting, whatever that was. He couldn’t hang with Dennis, because once the mobster knew Michael Fallon wasn’t going to show up, he left. Shane couldn’t beat up on Nicky because he had gone with Buzz, the UPM, on a preliminary location scout out to the Disney Ranch. Shane had been fielding phone calls from vendors that Lubick had already put to work. They all wanted down payments. An extras casting company had started hiring teenage boys for the Georgia regiment, and the bank had called twice to tell Shane that they were overdrawn again.
Nicky had somehow managed to add himself to the signature card on Shane’s blind account and had been writing checks. Shane had totally lost control. He felt closed in on, and impotent, so he left the studio at four-thirty and escaped to the relative safety of Parker Center.
He pulled into the vast underground garage next to the Glass House, parked on the third level, then went to the fourth floor where the CRASH unit was located inside the Geographic Operations Bureau.
Shane found a sergeant he knew named Sylvia Hunt.
Everybody in the CRASH unit looked tired and overworked.
“What d’ya need, Shane?” Sylvia said, her green eyes still on the computer screen at her desk. She was scrolling Crip gang addresses.
“With all this going on, I’m guessing you’re probably working The Hills pretty hard, am I right?”
“You can’t piss on a wall in Las Lomas without getting busted,” she said, finally looking up.
Shane handed over the Jeep’s license plate number and vehicle description, along with the photo of Chooch he always carried in his wallet. “This is my son. He’s half Hispanic and has a girlfriend in The Hills who’s missing, named Delfina Delgado. She’s American Macado’s second cousin. I’m worried my son is gonna end up in the middle of this fire zone, trying to find her.”
&nbs
p; Sylvia stopped working and focused on him. “Your son’s dating Amac’s cousin?” she asked.
“Yeah. Anyway, that’s his picture and his plate number. He drives a 1999 black Jeep Cherokee. If anybody spots him, I’d appreciate it if you’d pick him up.”
She took Chooch’s picture and the paper, and studied them. “If she’s Amac’s cousin, maybe she was abducted.” “Yeah, maybe. But he doesn’t think so.”
“Who doesn’t think so?” Sylvia Hunt was now drilling him with her green eyes. “What do you know? Who have you been talking to?”
“Nothing. Nobody,” he said.
“Have you been in contact with American, Shane? If you’ve spoken with him, the head of DSG will want to talk to you.”
“Hey, Syl, I’m married to the head of DSG, remember? This is her adopted son.”
“Forgot.” She blushed.
Shane turned and left the bureau. On his way to the elevator, his cell phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“Shane, it’s Fineburg,” the little computer jock said. “I got something, but maybe we shouldn’t talk on an open line. When can you come see me?”
“I’m upstairs,” Shane said. “I’ll be right down.” “See you when you get here.”
Shane found Lee Fineburg at his console in the computer section. They headed to the coffee room at the end of the corridor. Nobody was inside, so they entered and closed the door.
“My brother finally put the hat on Farrell Champion.” “Who is he?”
“His name is Daniel Zelso, but he doesn’t look anything like the picture of the guy in People magazine. I went across the street and bought one.” He opened his briefcase and pulled out a black-and-white fax photograph of a slender man with an undershot jaw, hollow cheeks, and dark hair. Then he took out the copy of People and opened it to a picture of Farrell at a movie premiere.
“Jesus, whoever did his face work was a magician,” Shane said. “Got a new chin, different hair. Completely transformed him.”
“Yep. Doesn’t look anything like he does today. Back when he got busted by the feds, he was working as a money launderer for a bunch of Panamanian drug lords. The feds rolled him. The way I get it, they now fly him all over the country to testify in these complex criminal cases he woulda been a defendant in, but. the feds gave him immunity. They protect his identity he testifies behind a screen. So everything you said makes sense now. It explains how he can be so high profile and still be in WITSEC.”
“How ‘bout the two dead wives?”
“That’s how the feds nailed him. They made him for the two wife murders both food-poisoning cases like you said. The A. G. threatened to gas him on a double-one, and he rolled,” Fineburg said, referring to a double first-degree homicide. “Under the threat of getting a cyanide pill he gave up most of his pals and Panamanian drug associates. Only he didn’t roll on everyone. A few got away, most notably a Panamanian who did the Syndicate’s money transfers from Hawaii. Guy is named Generalissimo Miguel Fernando Ruiz, still missing.”
“So Farrell Champion is Daniel Zelso. He’s testifying behind a screen in a bunch of drug cases while simultaneously producing big-budget movies and living in Malibu. The government is protecting him in WITSEC despite the fact that he killed his first two wives with poison shrimp.”
“Actually, it was crab.”
“I can’t believe they’d shield a murderer.” Shane snorted.
“Come on, lighten up. The guy only committed two murders. How many people did Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano whack and still get immunity? Nineteen or something? Two unhappy women had an unpleasant meal. We oughta be able to overlook that.” Black humor.
“Thanks, Lee. And tell your brother I owe him. You happen to find out who’s handling Zelso out here?”
“Can’t get it. Tried. Obviously it’s someone in the U. S. Marshals. They’re a small unit, not more than six or seven guys in the Southwest office, so you should be able to sniff it out.”
“Right,” Shane agreed.
Before he left Parker Center Shane went downstairs to the Electronic Science Division and found a sergeant named Bob Alvarez. “I’m working U. C.,” he told him. “My target does constant bug sweeps with a 2300 Frequency Finder. I’m working him tonight. I’ve got to wear a wire, and I need a way to beat that thing.”
“I got just the unit, but you’ll need approval from DSG to check it out ‘cause I’ve only got two.”
They called Alexa’s office, but she was out, so Shane got the approval from Filosiani directly. Then Alvarez went back to his equipment room and returned a moment later with a cell phone. He placed it on the counter in front of Shane.
“This should beat the scan,” he said. “It’s a regular StarTAC, and if it’s turned off, it doesn’t transmit a signal, so the wand on the bug duster won’t pick anything up.
Once you’ve been scanned, turn it on, and lay it on the table. Cell phones are so common, these guys never seem to check ‘em. The cell will record the conversation. The signal goes to a satellite and the downlink gets picked up here.”
Shane thanked him, then headed home to North Chalon Road. Nora’s friends’ cars were parked up and down the street in front of the house. He had forgotten that Alexa was throwing Nora’s shower this afternoon.
Shane was reluctant to go inside, because he knew he would eventually have to tell Alexa that Nora’s fiance wasn’t just a famous producer but a drug dealer, money launderer, and wife murderer. He drove around the block once before finally getting up enough nerve to pull into the driveway.
He walked through the front door and saw them all out by the pool. Nora was sitting behind the huge glass-topped table, opening gifts and laughing while a dozen or so women clustered around, watching. Alexa was seated next to Nora, frantically writing who-gave-what-presents down in a shower book.
Shane picked up Franco and went outside to join them. Alexa spotted Shane first, came over to give him a hug, then guided him to the guest of honor.
“Oh, Shane, this new house is incredible…” Nora gushed.
They descended into introductions and small talk with Nora’s circle of friends and bridesmaids.
“Oh, by the way,” Nora said, “Farrell’s really hoping you’ll be able to attend his bachelor party tomorrow night.”
“I’ve been so busy getting back to work, I completely forgot to call him,” Shane lied. “But I wouldn’t miss it now, for anything.”
Chapter 28.
BAD TIMING
They were standing outside on the front porch, away from the bugs, watching the last of the shower guests drive off. Alexa had just packed up her briefcase and was getting ready to head back to Parker Center.
“I can’t do this tonight,” Alexa said.
“Honey, we’ve gotta do it tonight. I’m running out of time.”
It was already six-thirty. They were arguing about the seven o’clock meeting Shane had set up with Dennis Valentine.
“Why is it so important we do it tonight?” she persisted. “Can’t we set it up for tomorrow, or on Saturday?”
“My bank account is empty. I need the hundred grand in good-faith money Valentine promised you.”
“Tony just put in another hundred thousand at two this afternoon. That means the department is out over three hundred K. There’s a limit to all this insanity, Shane.”
“You haven’t been down there. It’s a zoo. You got any idea how much it costs to FedEx a two-ton Civil War cannon from Virginia to L. A.? I’ve got sets being built around the clock and people up in Oregon cutting down redwoods. I’m making three hundred pairs of Civil War lace-up underwear for three hundred teenage extras who, starting tomorrow, will be on full salary out at a farm in Reseda, practicing close-order drills with muskets. If we don’t get this RICO case made soon, we may have to actually shoot the damn movie to have any chance of coming out.” “You better be joking,” she said, ominously.
“You haven’t met Paul Lubick. When they were passing out assholes,
this guy got one with fangs.”
Shane pulled the StarTAC off his belt and showed it to her. “I checked this out at ESO. It has a bug inside that broadcasts to a satellite. If I can get him on tape trying to bribe you in a union-fixing scam, then I can shut this bullshit film down. I’m moving as fast as I can. I know it sounds crazy, but right now, I’m up against trigger clauses on three big talent deals. When they hit, we’re fucked. We can’t delay this.”
“Trigger clauses. For how much, you never said.” “You don’t want to know.”
She glared at him, so he told her, “Seventeen million in unamortized, abovethe-line costs. Ten for Michael Fallon, two for Rajindi Singh, and five for Paul Lubick.”
Alexa had her hands on her hips, which he’d come to recognize during their first year of marriage as her most bellicose posture.
“But we won’t have to pay it, ‘cause I promise I’ll close it down before that happens, but you can’t build in any delays. I know it’s a shiny time, but this thing sort of got away from me. I think I can hold it to under half a million if we move fast.”
So ten minutes later they were in Shane’s Acura, driving to Kenny Rogers’s old house on Mandeville Canyon. They were both stressed, and halfway there got into another argument.
“This movie has turned into a runaway train,” Alexa fumed.
“I’m doing the best I can,” he flared.
“It’s like everything is coming apart at once,” she complained. “Chooch is missing and that’s got me worried sick. This damn gang war is escalating. Now I’ve got this mess with Valentine, and to top it off, Nora just told me she needs more help with the wedding. One of her bridesmaids, the one from Michigan, who was handling the flower arrangements and the chapel decorations, is AWOL and won’t be out here till the day before the ceremony. All that got dumped on me this afternoon.”
Hollywood Tough (2002) Page 19