Tinseltown Riff (3 page)

But before he could break away, Sweet-face and the guy in the Disney T-shirt cornered him and asked how any of this actually jibed with
Oh the Places You'll Go
. What kind of success story was this anyway?  Then the matrons butted back in. One of them, brandishing a shiny clipboard covered with a jumble of notes, mentioned the movie
Wall Street
and reminded then that Gordon Gekko said,
The most valuable commodity is inside information.  If you're not inside, you're outside
. She also crowed that the second Ben let on what he'd really been up to, it was no longer exclusive and anything he had to offer was worthless.

Sweet-face chimed in suggesting that, perhaps, Ben was only a flunky who did odd jobs. After all, who'd ever heard of him?  And the best any of them could hope for was to follow suit, volunteer to be a gofer at a production company, latch on to a seasoned pro and worm their way in like Ben.    

As they headed off for the lobby kicking this notion around, Ben spotted Gillian by a cooling vent on the far side of the hall. Lying in wait, she now went straight after him, her three-inch heels clacking on the terrazzo floor. How she managed to balance herself--toes tucked into a strand of velvet with no sides or back--was one of the world's great wonders.  

“Dr. Suess?” said Gillian, hissing over his right shoulder. “‘Find some un-loopy road'?”                                                                                                                                  

“Okay okay.  But, no matter how you slice it, I put a spin on it which you gobbled up. Why? Because you're relegated to scraping the bottom of the barrel and could really use someone who can wing it with the best of them.”

“Oh, really? Well if I struck brain back there, your so-called abilities are bloody useless without a bona fide backup who has actually walked the mean streets and provides me with some bona fide cachet.”

“Meaning?  Will you goddamn spell it out?  What have you got for me and what's the price I have to pay?”

Gillian turned away, obviously weighing the pros and cons of actually letting him in on her latest ploy.  

“Come on, let's have it.”

When Gillian spun back, her perfect oval face only inches away, he couldn't help noticing that, even when miffed, she appeared freshly packaged. Not to mention everything else in her arsenal that made her so maddeningly self-possessed.

“What are you staring at?” said Gillian.

“Nothing. Talk to me, will you?”

Gillian teetered around in a wide semi-circle and returned to her original square. “All right.  Here's the check for your efforts. That ought to cover the repairs on the car you scrounged and leaves only your living expenses and whatever else it takes to survive.”

“Speak, dammit, what is the deal?”

She flicked her eyelashes for a few beats and finally came out with it. “This little gig was, of course, just for openers. The real test requires you to leap two hurdles.”

“Go on.”

“What did you think I meant up there on the dais? Why did I pick you for the topic?  Who did you think I was referring to?”

“You don't mean ... ?”

“Bingo. First off, you enlist the services of Pepe, your alleged friend and undercover cop.”

The Pepe Gillian was referring to was C.J. Rodriguez. The fact that Pepe was short for Jose and a common Latino nickname was obviously beyond Gillian's sphere of knowledge. So was the fact that his true identity was unknown. All of which didn't make Ben's first hurdle any less problematic.

“Ah,” said Ben, doing his own semi-circular turn, “of course. And does this, by any chance, have anything to do with Leo, the gonzo Russian? The very same Leo who  conned me into glomming Aunt June's camera and got me to slip past the police barricades the other night to take shots of--?”

“Never mind, never mind. Okay, assuming there truly is a Pepe ...”

“Yes?  So? ”

“... you, Benjy, will get him on board as a gritty source. Because, pal, you'll be moving way out of your league. Because the initial question is, How do we get you in the door? With Pepe behind you, we may, God help us, have an outside chance.”  

“For what?”  Ben said as he crammed the check into his shirt pocket. “A fly-by-night indie, a home movie, a shot in the dark?  What am I selling out for?”

“At the moment, it's up for grabs.”

“Terrific. And what kind of money are we talking? And where do you fit in?”

“First things first, you hear me? What's your schedule like for the next couple of hours?”

Glancing at his watch, Ben hemmed and hawed. It was almost twelve-thirty. He had to admit he was free.  

“Fine. You seek out your elusive buddy while I pursue more viable contingencies.” With that, Gillian shut off the fluorescent lights, turned sharply and clickety-clacked away.

Before she made it past the louvered doors, Ben hollered, “Suppose, by some weird quirk of fate, he agrees? What then?”

“You'll ring me at my desk by three.  If I still have no better option, and against my better judgment, we'll shift into phase two.”

“At your desk? On Labor Day? Doesn't Viacom ever sleep?”

A few more clickety-clacks and Ben hollered, “The truth, humor me! Tell me why I'm so blessed?”

“We need a patchwork artist with links to the mean streets. As you've duly noted, with everyone out of town on this absurd weekend, and due to the pressing time frame ...”

“You need a winging-it and grit act pronto.”

A quick condescending smirk and Gillian was gone.  

For a time, Ben just stood there dawdling. He gazed out at the picture window at the Santa Monica Pier, past the wide sandy beach and swarm of parked cars over to the hazy outline of the boardwalk. He glanced to the left of the Ferris wheel, arcade and roller coaster and fixed on the old-timey carousel. The image of his favorite painted pony came to mind--the silver one with the shimmering green-and-black saddle blanket. The only one prancing and laughing as if to say, “Come on, kid, let's go for it.”

Tossing his lecture notes into his battered briefcase, he moved off. He had a few hunches how to hook up with the mercurial C.J. But the odds of C.J. going along were, at best, a hundred to one.  

Outside, the hot breeze turned playful, subsiding into little gusts that meandered through the wide archways of the hotel's portico. The gusts flittered over the gravel of the courtyard and a crumpled leaflet advertising the writers' conference; then picked up a notch around the shiny yellow pebbles and maroon flower petals atop the squat Hedgehog cacti. No worries about the flowers though. They were protected by a network of white knitting needles protruding in all directions.

The gusts drew still for a moment under the pulsing noonday sun. Soon, as if keying on the leaflet, they picked up strength again, lifting the crumpled paper in the air, dropping it and lifting it higher until they pinned it against the jutting spikes.

The premonitions were obviously working overtime. Telling him it was simply a given that his days were numbered and his time was at hand.

 
 
 

Chapter Three

 

 

Only a few days before, on a late Friday afternoon, Deke too was on the verge. But he was a wild rover, indifferent about what he might come up against or even what the job was all about. “Bring it on,” he said. All that mattered was a chance for a little fun.

As he reached the top of the next rise, he was right where a lanky, rawboned man ought to be.  Not still killing time in goddamn Cut Bank helping his old man fence-in a herd of buffalo headed for some meat counter. Truth to tell, the days when the two of them could stand each other were long gone.  Nowadays it went like this:

“You home for a while?”

“Not really.”

“I could use some help.”                                                                                                 

“That figures.”

And besides, his old man was pushing sixty-five. Hanging around him, you start missing a step. Hanging around anybody or anywhere, you lose your edge.

Taking in the scene, he marked the stretch of dark cloud hanging low overhead. The sky so massive the gray seemed flat and painted, tacked on to a sheet of blue as far as the eye could see. From this vantage point he could look down at the Glacier Park Trading Company by the train stop. Starting with its peaked roof faking a crest in the Rockies, he could easily scan the adjacent Glacier Village Restaurant and jagged flat sign running the length of the building. If his calculations were right, some weasely accountant would slip out of one of these wooden buildings or step off the train. Failing that, the guy was already hunkered down in a rented cabin. Either way, as soon as this little errand was done and dusted, he had the rest of the loose ends to square away.

Walt had hinted the whole job might take him down to Salinas. Which was fine.  Walt also hinted it could take him further, a whole 1400 miles, maybe as far as L.A.  Which damn well wasn't fine. Deke had always avoided L.A. You head southwest from Vegas onto I-15, you hit the Mojave Preserve, then its Barstow and, before you know it, it's Riverside and you're sinking right into it—the smog, the traffic sprawl, hemmed-in to where it was pure torture working your way out again.  

Just the thought of it put a damper on his good mood. Hell of a choice between L.A. and hanging out back in eastern Montana. With its godforsaken squares and rectangles of alfalfa, soybean and wheat. Patches of in-between acres, ochre-colored grasses and then the abandoned line shacks falling apart and empty horse corrals. Plus rusting farm equipment, old tractors with flat tires, a bunch of rotting cars they don't even make anymore: Nash Ramblers, Packards, Hudsons, Desotos and Studebakers. Things you can't get parts for, places too far out for a mechanic to reach; a way of life that went bust. And all the while, his old man muttering, “It ain't so bad.” It is, was and always will be so bad.  Aside from the in-between acres, Deke too had been lying fallow. And nothing was going to keep him still anymore. Even if it meant goddamn L.A.

Casting his gaze solely on the train station, he waited a while longer. Within minutes, the eastbound special came, passengers got on and off. No sign of the little guy.  No sign of him anywhere.  From the photos, he was probably in his late thirties, wore horn-rimmed glasses and had a squinty, worrisome look on his face. In other words, he appeared to be exactly like he was: a spooked bookkeeper who'd downloaded some files back in Portland, then lit out for the boonies and figured the trail would go cold. A little weasel who flat-out figured wrong.

Just then, little beeps caught Deke's attention. He plucked up his Levi jacket off the high flat rock, jerked the cell phone out of the top pocket, flipped it open and hit the green icon. Even transmitted through this little gizmo, Walt's rasping drawl was deep and tired. If you didn't know him, you still couldn't help picturing a barrel-chested geezer in suspenders with a walrus mustache and a lot of mileage on him.

“Well?” said Walt, wasting no words.

“I'm on it.”

“That's what you said this morning.”

“Right.”

“So?”

“Two more hours, tops.”

Receiving no reply, Deke added, “I'm moving in, what's your problem?”

“My problem?”

“Yeah.”

“Contingencies is my problem, Deacon. And time. You hear me?”

“Like I said, two hours.”

Walt did another one of his low growls and switched off.

Giving up on the train stop, opting for the cabins, Deke pocketed the cell phone, circled back down, hopped in the rental car and drove another ten miles west.                                                                                                       

The stretch of painted gray continued to hold up, still tacked on the waning afternoon sky. After parking on the gravel by the wayside, Deke started walking in a northwesterly direction. In no time, he found himself in the cool of the mountain range, deep inside the thick stands of aspen, pine and cedar that dwarfed everything else and blotted out the horizon.   

Though he couldn't smell it yet, he knew the charred timberline was close by where the fires had burned out. Once he came upon the cabin, there'd be nothing to it to flush out the bookkeeper, recover the records and split.

Relying on what was left of the light, he soon came upon a break in the terrain. About a hundred yards across from where he stood, a sheer rock face rose skyward scarred with crevices, slots and slits. It went on far to his left until it diminished into an outcropping of slabs and ledges. All he had to do was follow the ridge, keeping the sheer rock formation in sight till it veered sharply away. At that point he'd be at the gorge where the river ran still just before it churned into rapids. The log cabins would be tucked away on his side of the break. They'd all be empty, vacated by families heading back in time to get the kids squared away for school at the end of the Labor Day weekend.  Meaning, all he'd have to do is step inside a vacant bunk and hold out his hand. Not much action, just a little practice, a little warm-up drill.  

 As traces of the sky began to wash into charcoal and deep blue, Deke easily covered the distance, ambled by the scattering of trees that dotted the rim of the ridge and threaded his way through the low-lying brush and beargrass.

Presently, he heard the water gurgling and took in the scene just as he imagined: his side of the gorge running a few hundred feet lower down a slope with the river humming below. The only thing that surprised him were the hemlocks snapped almost in two, blocking his path. Their tops tugging at the roots as if straining to end it all, plunge over and get swept away. What surprised him more was a rise on the far side where the gorge gave way to a waste-dump of charred and splintered red cedars directly opposite from where the cabins would be.