The table over by the windows was set for five. I was the last to arrive. I was forty-five minutes late—by design. It’s vital to keep movie people waiting for you. If you don’t, they know you need them.
Abel Zorch jumped to his feet at my arrival, the genial host. “Ah, Mr. Hoag, you made it!” he exclaimed with great pleasure as he pumped my hand. “I’m so pleased. I’ve been so looking forward to this.”
The Iguana was in his late forties, trimly built, charming, effeminate, cunning, and so oily I half expected to find a puddle forming under his chair. The iguana resemblance was in his eyes, which were hooded, and his complexion, which was deeply tanned and uncommonly reptilian in texture. He was mostly bald. The leathery dome of his skull reminded me of the skin around a ripe avocado. What hair he still had in back he wore long and tied up in a ponytail. He had on a black Armani suit with a black silk shirt and one of the two or three ugliest ties I’d ever seen, iridescent lime green silk adorned with bright orange wedges.
“Now then, let’s get acquainted, shall we?” he said, rubbing his hands together. “May I present Toy Schlom, Norbert’s lovely wife?”
“How do you do, Mr. Hoag,” she said, smiling at me radiantly. Cat suits were officially in. Toy’s was black velvet, worn with a diamond choker collar. She was a slender, taut blonde of the Nordic high cheekbone variety, about forty, with slanted, rather exotic violet eyes. She looked like she exercised hard three hours a day and then got rubbed down by a masseuse for two hours more. Her complexion had a strangely smooth, shiny quality, as if she used sandpaper on it and then sealed it over with polyurethane. “My, what a perfectly adorable little dog you have,” she observed, her inflection high-toned Park Avenue, with a hint of Locust Valley lockjaw. She wouldn’t fool a soul in either of those places, but she wasn’t in either of those places.
“Lulu doesn’t care for that word,” I said, though in fact she wasn’t even listening—too busy rubbernecking at all of the heavy hitters about the place. For a would-be starlet, Spago was heaven.
“Adorable?” Toy frowned prettily.
“Dog,” I replied.
“Oh, I see.” She went back to the smile. “I must tell you—I admire Merilee Nash’s work tremendously.”
“We all do,” Zorch chimed in effusively. “How is—?”
“Merilee’s fine,” I said, my happy face glued on. “She’s fine. I’m fine. We’re both fine.”
“So glad to hear it,” said Zorch. “I don’t believe you’ve met my close friend Norbert Schlom.”
Norbert Schlom nodded sourly and didn’t offer to shake my hand. The president of Panorama was a gruff, thick-necked bull in his early sixties with too little chin, too many jowls, and a thick, loose underlip that was the color of fresh, moist liver. His eyes were yellow and malevolent. The only other time I’d seen eyes like them was when I once saw a Norway rat scrabbling up through a grate on Amsterdam Avenue. Schlom worked at his grooming. His white hair was carefully layered and combed, his stubby fingers manicured, his teeth capped, his pitted face tanned. There was a ten-thousand-dollar Philippe Patek gold watch on his wrist. His gray flannel double-breasted suit looked custom made, as did his white broadcloth shirt. But none of it helped. He still looked like a thug. He
was
a thug. His first job in show business had been bouncer at a mob-owned strip joint in Detroit. From there he graduated to strong-arming for a Chicago loan shark. Harmon Wright brought him out to L.A. in the midfifties to chauffeur around some of the agency’s unsteadier talent. He moved over to Panorama during a labor dispute and gradually worked his way up from enforcer to hatchet man to mogul. He was a throwback to the old days of Hollywood—an uneducated bully who ruled by intimidation. He and Abel Zorch made an odd pair, but Hollywood is full of just such odd partnerships.
Rounding out our party was Zorch’s date, a sculpted young male model done up like a harem boy in shirt and trousers of billowing purple silk. His name was Geoffrey, with a G, and he was there to look attractive and to not make a sound.
“Now please,” Zorch urged me, “do sit.”
I sat. Lulu didn’t. She hesitated. For one awful moment, I was afraid that she was about to go table-hopping, sucking up to all of those rich, powerful movie people. But she didn’t. She was better raised than that. She curled up under me, content to wait for her opportunity to come to her.
A waiter appeared at my elbow.
“We’re sampling a cabernet sauvignon that Wolf keeps here for me,” Zorch informed me. “It’s from my own small winery in the Napa Valley. Would you care to try it?”
“I would.”
The waiter poured. I tasted it, Zorch watching me anxiously.
“Excellent,” I declared. And it was excellent—for removing the shellac from a nightstand.
Pleased, Zorch sent the waiter off for two more bottles of it.
An agent seized the moment to swoop in on Schlom. “Did you get a chance to read it, Norb?”
“Pass,” growled Schlom, staring straight ahead.
“You read it?” he pressed.
“Don’t have to,” Schlom replied. “Pasadena.”
“But it’s a slam-dunk script, Norb,” the agent protested. “If you’d only take a look at it.”
Schlom pulled a Bottega Veneta leather-bound notepad from the inner pocket of his jacket and tore off a sheet of crisp, white notepaper. He rolled this between his thumb and forefinger until it was a ball, then stuck it in his mouth. Norbert Schlom ate paper. It was what he did instead of chewing gum or smoking. “I been making movies for thirty years,” he argued, chewing on the paper until he swallowed it. “I don’t have to read a script to know whether or not I want to do it.” He waved his hand to indicate the subject was closed. The agent fled.
Zorch smiled at me apologetically. “Have you heard the latest agent joke? Two agents are walking down the street and they pass a gorgeous woman, and one says to the other, ‘How would you like to fuck
her
?’ And the other says, ‘Out of what?’ ”
I’ve never been an easy laugh. Geoffrey with a G didn’t laugh either, since that would have involved making a sound. Nor did Schlom. I doubt he’d laughed in thirty years, and then only when he was working somebody over. Toy laughed. She was amused, and in no way offended by the coarseness. Toy was, after all, a former call girl—one of three women currently married to film studio bosses who could make such a claim. The happy couples were quite open about this. In fact the husbands, all of them older men on their second marriages, were proud of it, as if being married to an ex-pro served as testimony to their sexual prowess. All three wives were poised, attractive, gracious, and well known for their excellent parties and their tireless good works on the charity circuit. One already had a society ball named after her, and there was even talk of a telethon.
“You can’t get through a meal here without at least ten agents stopping by to talk business,” Zorch complained airily. “But if you
don’t
eat here then you go crazy wondering what you might be missing out on.”
“And we can’t have that,” I said. “Can we?”
“We can’t indeed,” Zorch said with utmost conviction. “This is where the game is played—the principal players are all here.” He looked around the room at them with greedy fascination. “There are three types of movie people, Mr. Hoag. Players, nonplayers, and nonentities. Which type are you?”
“I prefer to think of myself as a conscientious objector.”
Toy laughed again. “I believe I like this man already.”
“Well, well, you’ve made yourself a fan, Mr. Hoag,” Zorch observed happily.
“My wife creams for clever,” growled Schlom.
I raised my glass to her and she and I drank to clever, her exotic violet eyes locking onto mine and lingering a moment. Her husband watched the two of us balefully. Possibly the lady got out nights. Clever was not a commodity she was likely to find in abundance chez Schlom.
Zorch requested, and was granted, liberty to order our first course for us, an assortment of pizzas covered with things like lamb sausage, goat cheese, and smoked salmon. Then an invisible signal passed—Toy suddenly had something she desperately needed to say to Diandra Douglas and Geoffrey with a G was suddenly out of cigarettes. I was now alone at the table with the two amigos. Lulu stayed put under me. The promise of smoked salmon pizza was enough to keep her there for a long while.
Zorch reached under his chair and produced a slender black leather briefcase. Inside was a manila envelope. He handed it across the table to me. I took it. Schlom watched me. Inside was a stock certificate made out for a thousand shares of Panorama City Communications. In my name.
“For your information, Panorama City closed at sixty-five and a quarter today,” Zorch said, lighting a cigarette. “And will go up dramatically when the merger with Murakami goes through in the coming weeks. Way up. Way more than you’re paying for it.”
“And how am I paying for it?” I asked, returning it to the envelope. Schlom watched that, too. Schlom watched everything.
“With your cooperation,” Zorch replied.
“I am very cooperative,” I said. “Ask anyone.”
Schlom ripped another piece of paper off of his little pad and chewed on it. I watched him, wondering how many trees he’d eaten in his lifetime, and what it had done to his digestion.
Zorch took a sip of his awful wine. “We’re in the midst of a multibillion-dollar international merger, Mr. Hoag. That’s big stuff. Bigger than the three of us at this table. Bigger than Matthew Wax and Pennyroyal Brim and their marital hassles.
Big.
Our absolute, number one priority is to make certain that this deal goes through. Nothing must get in the way of that. Absolutely nothing. Can you understand me so far?”
“I can. I can also count to ten and tie my own shoes.”
Zorch’s tongue darted out of his mouth, then retreated just as quickly. That was another reason why they called him the Iguana. He smiled faintly. “These sleazy House of Wax headlines, this ugly publicity about their battle over who gets little Georgie and who gets Bedford Falls—”
“Most of which is coming from you,” I pointed out.
“It scares the Murakami people,” Zorch continued, deftly slipping my jab. “It shouldn’t. It has nothing to do with them directly. But they’re extremely sensitive about bad press. They don’t wish to find themselves caught in that whole Japan-bashing thing that happened over Rockefeller Center and Yosemite. These are low-profile people. They dislike the way all of this is heating up.”
“Because
you’re
heating it up,” I pointed out.
Schlom glowered at me.
Zorch puffed calmly on his cigarette, refusing to be baited. “And now they’re—”
“They’re leaning on you,” I broke in. “They don’t like your gutter tactics. They don’t like any of it. They may even pull out of the whole deal.”
Zorch smiled at me. “Then you do understand me.
“I understand you perfectly,” I said. “I just don’t like you.”
A low, menacing rumble came from Schlom’s throat. Zorch cautioned him with a quick shake of his head, then turned back to me, still smiling. The tongue darted in and out. “We’d like you to help us quiet it down, Mr. Hoag. We’re anxious to see things proceed with dignity from here on in.”
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“It’s never too late for a little well-targeted spin control,” he suggested, glancing at the envelope.
I handed it back to him across the table. “I only work for one employer at a time, thanks.”
The two of them exchanged an unhappy look.
“Perhaps you’d like to think it over,” Zorch offered.
“I would not. No perhaps about it.”
“I’m very serious about this, Mr. Hoag.” There was a well-oiled edge to his voice now. “I mean business.”
“If you do, then why are you wearing that tie?”
“Aw, Christ,” growled Schlom. “We’re getting nowhere with this coconut. Look, Hoag, my wife, she likes clever. I don’t. I like meat and potatoes. Know what I’m talking about?”
“So far, you’re talking about meat and potatoes.”
“We want you protecting our interests,” he raged, stabbing the table with a stubby index finger. “You don’t want stock, fine. Tell us what you do want. Cash? A development deal? Just say it plain. And let’s get it done with.”
I tugged at my ear. “Okay—leave Bedford Falls alone.”
“Impossible,” grunted Schlom. “Never happen.”
“Why not? Why can’t you let Shelley Selden find another buyer for Pennyroyal’s half of the studio—if she gets it.”
“She’ll get it,” Zorch promised me. “That’s a lock.”
“We gotta have Bedford Falls,” Schlom explained. “We got this
Dennis the Dinosaur
prehistoric planet attraction on the drawing boards for our studio tour. It’s gonna be huge, and Murakami is very excited about it. Only, it means tearing out a half-dozen more soundstages. We
need
their soundstages.”
“There are other soundstages around town.”
“Bedford Falls is part of the deal,” Schlom insisted, sticking out his thick, wet underlip. “I already made a verbal commitment to deliver it.”
“So your ass is in something of a sling.”
“We’re not here to talk about my ass.”
“Okay, then let’s talk about Matthew’s book. What don’t you want him saying in it?”
Schlom frowned. “I don’t follow you.”
“I’m here to deliver a book. And you seem very anxious to buy my cooperation. That generally means silent approval of the manuscript. What don’t you want him talking about? Is it the
Three Stooges
episode?”
“Whatta you know about that?” Schlom’s face turned purple.
“Enough to know I wouldn’t want it made public if I were you.”
“Damned right I don’t!” he roared, pounding the table with his heavy fist. Heads turned at neighboring tables. “And don’t you try to do it, you skinny, wise-ass New York
pencil head
!”
“I use a Waterman exclusively.”
Zorch tried to step in. “Come on now, Norb. Let’s not—”
“Don’t
fuck
with me, Hoag!” Schlom spat, ignoring him. “I’ll break you! Hear me? I’ll
break
you!”
“You’re too late. I’m already broken.”
He called me a few more cuddly names, then drained his wine in a gulp and slammed down his glass. We sat there in charged silence.