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A
week later David Koffman was gone and I was back as a full-time chauffeur and part-time manager, still going to an AA meeting four times a week and waiting in line afterward like a weak suck to get my paper signed.

Cal Berwick, one of the regular drivers, had been filling in for me on the all-day,
It Creeps
movie job. I finally took over for him at Stedman’s request. When I knocked on Ronny’s door at five thirty a.m. on my first day back, the guy’s grin was ear to ear. “Bruno! My lad! And just where the fuck have you been?”

“Long story, Mr. Stedman. But I’ll tell you this and drop it: It involved a crazy woman.”

“Say no more. Been there—done that,” he sneered. “Hey, I like your guy Cal. He’s a decent lad. Don’t get me wrong, though. He ain’t you. You’re my driver. My man! From now on, right?”

“Ten-four.”

The best news for me was that I had printed up my short
story collection,
Belly Up,
and was ready to send it out to publishers. One hundred and seventy-five pages. In
Writer’s Market
I found five new publishing houses that specialized in short fiction. I had copies made at Kinko’s on Cahuenga Boulevard and then stopped off at the post office to pick up a stack of Priority Mail envelopes. The stack was sitting on Pearl’s front seat waiting to be mailed.

It Creeps
had moved its location to Malibu and was using the former home of Michael Landon, the TV cowboy star who died of cancer a few years before. Young Ronny liked the high-end ambiance because it was near the
fucking fabulous
homes of Bob Dylan, Barbra and Cher and Anthony and Nick and Lewis and Martin and Mel and Goldie. Ronny apparently had a sycophantic desire to be noticed by his peers while he worked.

Cal had told me that the days with Stedman were twelve to fifteen hours and there would be lots of down time. I planned to spend it reading and writing stories in longhand in my notebook, sitting in the Malibu sun. I still didn’t like Stedman much but he was a good cash tipper, and as a driver I was hoping to knock down some decent daily money on top of my Dav-Ko partner salary.

David Koffman had grudgingly agreed with me that it would be tough getting to AA meetings while I was on-call with Stedman and decided to cut me some long-distance slack. I said I would find a local Malibu group and go as often as I could on my meal break. But I was free now, unhampered by the ball and chain of a Twelve Step program. My new plan was to take a pass on the local meetings and have a couple of different guys on the crew sign my attendance paper in the column marked “Secretary’s Signature.” I was friendly with the assis
tant director and one of the lighting guys. Both of them were juicers I had met at the slashing-surf-scene beach location. We’d drunk beers together and watched the filming, so signed meeting papers would be no problem.
“Fake it ’till you make it.”

It Creeps
had been adapted from a book by a true crime writer named Lawrence Scuccimarri, an
In Cold Blood
kind of story. It took Larry three years of traveling the country taking photographs and doing interviews and getting legal releases to finish the thing. I’d read the first twenty pages of the hardback the night they shot the slashing scene on the beach, for fun, then left it to gather dust in Pearl’s trunk. It was pop slop, sensational and disposable.

Scuccimarri, I’d heard, had been paid peanuts for his book and the screenplay by Ronny’s company. When Larry arrived on the set to do scene rewrites Stedman had condescendingly introduced him to the cast and crew as “Scooch.” This was because Ronny Stedman couldn’t pronounce the name Scuccimarri correctly twice in a row. Larry’s day job was as a professional translator. He was an immigrant from Calabria, Italy, and what my father, Jonathan Dante, used to refer to ungently as a
Mustache Pete
—a greenhorn and a patsy for the sharks in the American movie business.

That afternoon I was working on a story in my notebook with my stack of ready-to-mail envelopes next to me on the front seat, trying to find a sitting position that didn’t bother my red and still-healing crotch. Stedman stormed out of the house and down the driveway and got into Pearl before I could get out of the car and open the rear door for him. His director, Mel Kleinman, had been filming a garage suicide scene where a fat mother of one of the victims decides to hang herself but fails when the rope breaks.

“Just drive, Bruno,” Stedman snarled. “Head up the Coast Highway toward Trancas. I’ve gotta get away from that fuck
ing guy. That goddman imbecile is ruining my movie…Hey, is there booze in the car?”

“Sure,” I said. “In the console. Ice too. You know where it is.”

As we drove Ronny poured himself a tall Scotch and ice, lit a cigarette, horned two toots from his coke vial, then tossed his Prada sunglasses on the seat next to him. Five minutes later he was more sociable. He leaned through the partition opening to talk to me about something but instead saw my stack of envelopes.

“Hey, Bruno, what are those?” he asked.

I hesitated. “Nothing special,” I said.

“So, you’re in the direct mail business or some goddamn thing?”

“No,” I said, “just stuff I’m sending out.”

“Like what?”

“A manuscript. A collection of short stories.”

“You’re a writer?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but not like Larry Scuccimarri. Not that kind of writer.”

“You never mentioned that.”

“You’re not a publisher. It never came up.”

“What do you write?”

“Fiction,” I said. “Short stories. Some poetry too.”

“Anything published?”

“Look, Ronny, I don’t like talking about my work, if that’s okay.”

“Hey, man, just tell me. I ain’t the book police, for chrissakes. You know me. I’m always looking for new material.”

“I have a book pending with a publisher, but nothing in print right now. This is my newest collection.”

Ronny Stedman was smiling. “Can I have one? I’d like to read it.”

I handed him one of the sealed packages. “Sure Mr. Stedman,” I said. “Whatever. No problem.”

When we reached Broad Beach I pulled into the parking lot and Ronny got out. After he threw his sports jacket onto the backseat next to my envelope he climbed down the path to the sand and took a walk by the ocean.

T
hat night I got back to Dav-Ko after dropping Stedman off in east Hollywood at one thirty a.m. I was beat. It had been an eighteen hour day. Rounding the corner off Highland Avenue on to Selma I saw flashing patrol car lights in front of our office—three sets of pinball machines stinging the darkness. A crowd of two dozen of the local hustler talent, unable to conduct business because of the confusion, stood by smoking cigarettes and nancy-baiting the cops.

Joshua, our night dispatcher, was on the front steps talking to two of the uniforms who held notebooks, and my driver, huge Robert Roller, his suit and shirt torn and his nose caked with dried blood, was splayed out across the hood of one of the prowl cars that looked to have crossed the curb in a hurry, coming to rest on our front walkway. Robert was in handcuffs.

The limo he had been driving, Big Red, was a few feet away, parked in our driveway with a smashed-in hood and two broken headlights. One of the front wheels had scraped itself bald on a dented fender.

Roller had been chauffeuring Nick Tallman and his manager to a concert that night at the Staples Center. Tallman was the co-headliner and had just completed a two-year bit for spousal abuse and drug possession. This was to be the first of his comeback gigs.

I interrupted the cops telling them I was one of the owners of the company, then pulled Joshua aside to get the full story. According to my night dispatcher, Tallman apparently was still a full-on juice mooch and had chosen to anger his audience by being too drunk to finish his set.

Joshua retold what happened. Half an hour after Tallman left the stage, as his limo pulled out of the underground limo entrance, two dudes in motorcycle boots who had not gotten their seventy-five-bucks worth stopped the car and did what is known in
limo-eze
as a
raindance
on the hood, causing the damage.

Apparently Robert Roller was the right guy for the job at the wrong time for the two bikers. A former bouncer and mixed martial arts fighter, Robert got out of Big Red to offer a short dissertation in pain management. After the beating he drove Nicky and his manager back to their hotel. The upshot was that someone in the parking lot had taken down the limo’s plate number, and as Robert pulled into our driveway he was swarmed by the three squad cars and six uniforms. My driver was busted for assault with a deadly weapon—his fists.

I had David Koffman on the phone at five a.m., New York time. He’d just gotten in from an after-hours club and was half gassed, but he woke up our L.A. attorney and by ten o’clock that morning, after interviews and witness confirmation, the charges against Robert Roller were dismissed. I drove down to County Jail to pick Robert up as Big Red was being limped to the local Lincoln dealer where we had our limo warranty work done. The damage estimate was $7,560.

Then, a crazy twenty-four hours got even crazier: the strangest day I’d ever spent in the limo business.

While I was on my way downtown to pick up big Robert, Rosie Camacho received a frantic call from Don Simpson’s mansion in Beverly Hills. Simpson was a new client for Dav-Ko, our richest client along with his producer partner, Jerry Bruckheimer. The two guys had ten of the biggest-grossing Hollywood films in the last few years.

According to Rosie the emergency call came from Simpson himself. He’d been standing in his bathrobe outside his pool house. He demanded that we immediately dispatch three limos. The EMTs and the fire department, he screeched, were already on their way.

Two of the cars were to go to shops in Beverly Hills to transport their owners, fish experts, and the third was to pick up a guy named Dr. Atwalt at Universal Studios.

After getting Robert at County Jail we drove directly to the store on Little Santa Monica Boulevard and found a frantic lady, Nora Hiramoto, waiting outside at the curb.

Simpson’s gated mansion was on Calle Tu Juevos, back in the mountains above the Beverly Hills Hotel. When we got there the carport looked like an aerial scene from a
S.W.A.T.
TV episode. Twenty vehicles, among them several limos, but mostly cop cars and emergency trucks with flashing lights, made it impossible for us to get near the home’s entrance. I parked outside on the street, then me and Robert and Nora Hiramoto made our way down the one-acre lawn toward where everyone was gathered at the ninety-foot, Marilyn Monroe-shaped, swimming pool.

I recognized one of the other drivers in a black suit from a competing limo company, Music Excess. We had worked together at concert gigs. His name was Zeke. “Hey, Zeke,” I said. “What’s up? What’s all the commotion?”

“Hey,” he said back. “It’s just goddamn Mr. Winkie. He’s at it again.”

“At what?” I asked. “Who’s Mr. Winkie?”

“Don Simpson. Mr. Nutcase himself. Your customer and our
former
customer. You’ve got three or four cars here. Right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Mr. Winkie. Jesus, you can have him. I can’t stand the jerkoff.”

“He’s been good for us so far,” I said.

“Just wait,” Zeke said. “You’ll find out. He rides around to studio meetings with the partition up and his pants down smoking meth and talking to his cock, asking it for advice. They have meetings together in the back of the car.”

“C’mon. You’re joking. Right?”

“Straight dope. The dude’s a total squirrel cage. A rich, crazy, meth-sucking asshole. You should hear the stuff he says to his dick.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Forget it. Just trust me. He won’t be your customer for long. You’ll want nothing to do with the guy in a month or so, millions or no millions.”

And there was Simpson in his open bathrobe, a cigarette in one hand and a telephone in the other, his back to the huge koi pond that rimmed the decking of the swimming pool, frantic, screaming into the telephone while simultaneously barking orders to the police and firemen.

According to Zeke the madness had started innocently enough. An hour before, while one of his groundskeepers had been cleaning the koi pond, one of Simpson’s fish had jumped from the guy’s net and fallen into the swimming pool. The little guy had been frolicking in the water with the chlorine and chemicals for over half an hour and death, the
panicked Simpson insisted, would be certain and inevitable unless he was rescued.

Dr. Atwalt, the Universal Studios animal curator, had arrived with two rolls of fishnetting. Here was a man of action. Atwalt understood command in an emergency situation. He began barking orders and selected four volunteers from the three dozen bystanders gathered around the pool. The men stepped forward. All firemen. They removed their clothing down to their underwear then descended into the evil, chlorine-filled waters at the deep end of the pool.

The nets were unfurled by Doctor Atwalt and the foursome, now wearing varying colored fins and goggles from Simpson’s pool house, slowly began swimming from the deep end toward the shallow end in an attempt to entrap the eight-inch koi, who still appeared to be having the time of his life.

Ten minutes later the rescue had been a success and Simpson, who’d since managed to tie his bathrobe closed, was shaking hands, passing out cigars and hundred dollar bills, congratulating all concerned.

B
ack at the office in the chauffeur’s room, through the window, I could see our driver Marty Humphrey, chain-smoking and guzzling a Big Blast energy drink, waiting to talk to me. He’d had an incident the night before with one of our clients and Rosie let me know that he was very upset and I needed to meet with him immediately.

I entered the chauffeur’s room and closed the door behind me, then turned off the Dodgers game.

“Look,” Marty said, getting to his feet, “I just want to know: Am I fired or not? I need this job. Just tell me if I’m bumped. Yes or no.”

“What happened?” I asked. “I know nothing about this. I just got here. I’ve been chasing fish in a swimming pool all morning.”

“Okay, right. Look, you know that we started driving Jennifer Lopiss, right?”

“Right,” I said. “We got the account from her management company. Damn decent new clients according to Koffman. We drive them in New York.”

“Well, last night after a party in Hollywood, like around two a.m., I was taking Lopiss back to her place above Sunset and she’s in the back of the car talking on her cell most of the ride. Just this and that kinda stuff, but you could tell she was pissed-off at someone. Her manager or an agent or somebody.”

“Okay.”

“So, I didn’t realize that she ended the call. I was doing something else. You know, checking her street address on the GPS. Something. But then she starts yelling at me. “Hey, jerkoff! Whaz your problem? I’m talkin’ to you! Hey, moron, don’t fuckin’ ignore me!’”

“So I look in my rearview mirror and now she’s right behind me on the jump seat. She’s kicking the console with the heels of her pointy boots. Screaming. Going nuts, you know. I mean I’m thinking maybe she’s on dust or speed or something, but I can see she’s doing some real damage to the car.”

“Okay. So what happened?”

“We were on La Cienega. I put the flashers on and pulled over and got out. I walked around to the passenger side and opened the back door. ‘Look,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t hear you. I thought you were talking on your cell. I’m very sorry. But you’ve got to stop kicking the car.’”

“I’d have done the same thing,” I said. “You can’t put up with that stuff. It doesn’t matter who she is.”

“But now she’s completely out of control, calling me bitch and cocksucker and faggot and screaming and all.”

“So…?”

“So I pulled her by the arm out of the car. Then I handed her her purse. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I left her on the sidewalk and drove off. Right there.”

Marty’s account sounded true and I knew him as a decent
guy. Reliable, presentable, and always on time. I was sure that the story had already gotten back to David Koffman and that there would be major problems. “Well,” I said, “as far as I’m concerned you’re clean. You were looking out for company property.”

“But when I come in this morning for my airport run Rosie’s frantic ’n’ all. She got calls from Lopiss’s manager and two different attorneys. Rosie says they’re going to press charges for assault and sue the company for this and that.”

“Spoiled-brat central, pal,” I said. “Welcome to the exciting and glamorous limo business.”

“Look, man, I didn’t hurt the woman. I was trying to do the right thing is all. I just want to know: Will I get fired for what happened? Is my job at risk here?”

“No,” I said, “you’re not fired from this company. Of course I’ll go over the details but if everything you just said is on the money, you and I have no problem. That’s a promise.”

“What about David Koffman? He gets upset. I’ve seen it. He’s pretty picky.”

“I’ll handle David.”

“You mean we’re cool?”

“Just keep doing your job and I’ll straighten this out with Koffman and our attorney and whoever else is hunting your scalp.”

“Thanks, Bruno. I mean
really,
thank you.”

“You’re a good chauffeur, Marty. Go in and tell Rosie to put you back on the schedule. Tell her I said it’s okay.”