Case of Lucy Bending (4 page)

"The best? I don't know . . . maybe
Gone with the Wind."

"All right,
Gone with the Wind.
Would you pay, say, fifty bucks for a video cassette to watch on your small TV screen? Fifty bucks? For Christ's sake, how many times can you watch
Gone with the Wind
? Bill, you're the music nut. Would you pay fifty bucks to watch the New York Philharmonic play Beethoven on your TV set?"

"No ... not really," Holloway said, finally getting interested. "There's no particular advantage in
watching
an orchestra play. The sound is everything. In fact, seeing the orchestra would probably be a distraction. Hearing a good stereo LP or tape is all you want, or need."

"Right!" Empt said. "And what about opera and ballet. On the TV screen the singers and dancers come out a few inches high, and you lose all the effect of the big sets. So what does that leave for the billion-dollar market?"

"Individual stars?" Holloway suggested. "Performers like Liza Minnelli or Sinatra. Las Vegas comedians."

"Fifty bucks so you can keep watching some sad-ass comic tell dirty jokes?" Empt said. "Maybe once, but how many times could you watch it? You'd know all the gag lines. What I'm geiting at is who'd want to
own
those tapes and disks? Even if the price comes down to ten dollars, I just don't think the market is there. Let's have another round."

They leaned to fill their glasses. Holloway could feel the vodka working. He was beginning to sweat. There was a rosy glow that softened everything. No more rough edges. These were splendid fellows.

"Maybe the answer is like a lending library," Turk Bending said. "You rent a video cassette or video disk. You want to see a certain movie or football game, say, and you rent it for a day, a week, whatever. From a catalogue."

"Maybe," Luther Empt agreed. "Maybe that's the answer. But rentals are no billion-dollar market. All I'm saying is that there's not going to be any great rush to buy cassettes or disks of movies, plays, sporting events, orchestras, operas, or ballets. Oh, there'll be a market with the gadget crowd and maybe the rock-and-roll groupies. But the potential isn't as big as everyone thinks. Except for one thing."

"Porn," Bending said promptly.

"You son of a bitch," Empt said with heavy good humor, "you're way ahead of me. But you're right. Pornography. Blue films on tape cassettes or disks, played through your TV set in the privacy of your own home. Now
there's
a market."

"Enter your mob guys," Holloway said wryly.

"Right," Empt said. "They're no dumbbells. They're in it already as far as eight- and sixteen-millimeter films go. Plus books and photos, of course. Now they want to get into TV cassettes and disks. They've already got a production, processing, and distribution setup in LA. They want to do the same thing on the east coast."

"Why Florida?" Holloway asked.

"Because they think they own the state. And maybe they do. Because the weather is great for movie production. Because taxes are low, low, low, and these guys are very law-abiding. And because distribution from, say, Miami to the big cities east of the Mississippi is a lot easier than from LA. Also, the talent for porn is here. Plenty of young creamers ready to spread their pussies. Directors and cameramen. Writers and set designers. And if they're not here, they can fly down from New York in less than three hours. Florida is perfect for this business. After all,
Deep Throat
was made here. And they could run the finished stuff up to Long Island or Boston by boat, just the way they do with coke and hash, if they don't want to truck it up or fly it up."

"And they think the market will be that big?" Holloway asked.

"They
know
it will be that big," Empt said definitively. "Porn is something that the guys who get turned on by it can watch over and over. So they'll want to
own
it. Collect a library of the stuff. And they'll pay top dollar."

"What do they—" Holloway started to say, but then Luther Empt exploded a great roar of fury and disgust. He struggled out of the canvas sling and stood swaying, pointing down with a trembling finger.

"Look at that bastard!" he shouted. "
Look
at him!"

They looked. A giant cockroach had climbed up the concrete, over the edge of the terrace. Its brown carapace gleamed in the glow from the picture window. Feelers moved languidly. It scuttled this way and that.

"Shee-it," Turk Bending said, "that's nothing but a palmetto bug. Can't hurt you."

He rose gracefully, moved quickly, and with his bare foot scraped the bug off the terrace back down to the beach.

"No use trying to kill the mother," he said. "You need a jackhammer to dent them. Let him run away and play."

"I hate those bastards," Empt said, shuddering. "They're so fucking ugly. Lemme get us some fresh supplies."

Holloway and Bending grinned at each other in their host's absence. It was comforting to discover another man's weakness.

"Bugs and snakes don't bother me none," Bending said. "You?"

"Not really," Holloway said, finishing the bottle of vodka and trying to remember how much had been in it when he started. "I can do without the Portuguese men-of-war, but they're easy to avoid."

Bending looked at him narrowly.

"Nothing much bothers you, does it, Bill?"

"That's right," Holloway said uncomfortably, hoping for deliverance.

It came with Empt's return. He brought unopened liters of vodka, scotch, and bourbon, and a tub of fresh ice cubes.

"Woo-eee/" Bending said, exhaling. "I may be a wee bit late at the office tomorrow."

They poured themselves drinks with the exaggerated care of men who feel their coordination slipping. They settled back in their slings. Holloway noticed Luther Empt kept glancing nervously at the spot where Bending had kicked the palmetto bug off the terrace.

"Where were we?" Empt said. "Oh yeah . . . They told me about the production, processing, and distribution facility they want to set up in south Florida."

"What
did
they want you to do?" Bending asked. "Be the top honcho?"

"That's right," Luther said, not without pride. "Run the whole shebang. No, that's not right. They would handle distribution and marketing. I would be in charge of production and processing. I'd deliver the finished product to them, packaged and ready for point-of-purchase sale. All the money I wanted—within reason, of course—and all the technical help I needed. They said they could practically guarantee I'd have no trouble with John Law. But if it bothered me, they'd put a million in escrow to cover my legal fees if I got in a bind. That's the way they talked: million this and million that. Like it was popcorn."

"Wow," Bending said enviously.

"What did you tell them?" Holloway asked curiously.

"I told them thanks, but no, thanks. I said that first of all, I had no experience in porn, didn't know the market, and didn't know the winners from the dogs. They said no problem, they could provide a staff to make sure the product came up to snuff. So then I told them I just didn't have the balls for it. I've got a reputation around here, and I didn't want to risk it. Teresa would have my heart and liver if she found out. You know how she is. The house, the garden, the society columns, the charity teas, the story in
Architectural Digest,
and all that stuff. Teresa would kill me. Let alone what my mother would say. So I told them no soap."

"How did they take it?" Bending said.

"They took it fine. No strain. Maybe I was just one guy on their possibles list. They made motions like they were ready to leave, but I didn't want to see them go. I guess all that big-money talk was getting to me. Turk, are you sure those goddamned bugs can't bite or sting?"

"I'm sure."

"Yeah. Well, you know, as long as I've been hustling I've followed what I call 'Luther K. Empt's Three-B Law.' It guarantees financial success, but they don't teach it at Harvard or Wharton."

"What does the K. stand for?" Bending asked.

"Konrad."

"And what's the Three-B Law?" Holloway asked.

"Bullshit Baffles Brains. Every time. So I figured I'd sing a song for those mob guys. I told them they were trying to invest in my weakness, not in my strength. I told them I know shit-all about the production of porn. But when it comes to processing, I know as much about it as anyone south of New York. I'm talking about the conversion of film to tape, the reproduction of tapes into cartridges and cassettes, the technology of video disks, and so forth. So why not, I said, get someone else to shoot the goddamn stuff, do the actual production, and I'd take over the technical end."

"There goes my dream of stardom," Turk Bending said.

"I figured this way," Empt went on. "In case the law did move in, I'd be in a hell of a better position if all I had was a factory full of automated machines than if I had a studio full of naked creamers sucking every cock in sight, including Dobermans and donkeys. That makes sense, don't it? I could even claim I didn't know what was on the tapes; I just took them in and made copies. Who the hell has the time to inspect every negative they develop? Bill, what do you think?"

"I don't know," Holloway said slowly. "I don't know all that much about obscenity law. I think you're probably right that as merely a processor, your culpability would be less than that of the producers and sellers. But there'd still be risk."

"Of course there'd be risk. But the money!"

"Better talk to a lawyer, Luther," Bending advised.

"I did," Empt said. "But that's getting ahead of my story. Come on, drink up. All this gabbing makes me thirsty."

The moon was high now, to the south, sailing through a serene sky. Occasionally they saw the lights of an airliner letting down for the Fort Lauderdale airport. Occasionally a cloud, no larger than a puff of smoke, drifted, dissipated, vanished.

They were not conscious of the noise of waves slapping the beach, or the rustle of palm fronds. The tropical world was there, but they didn't feel it, didn't sense it.

"They looked at each other," Luther Empt continued. "The mob guys. That's when we went to Palm Beach for dinner. They picked my brain, and I let them. Technical stuff. Video cassettes versus video disks. They wanted to know which I thought would be the most popular. I told them I didn't know, and no one else did either. In my business, I'm getting ready to go both ways. I told them that in their business, they better hope it was video disks because tapes are too easy to pirate. Any garage mechanic can copy a TV tape. They laughed and said they had some experience with guys pirating their eight- and sixteen-millimeter films, making duplicate prints from the original, but they said those problems had been solved."

"Oh sure," Turk Bending said. "And the guys who tried it are now walking around on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean wearing cement boots."

"Probably," Empt said, shrugging. "Those guys play hardball. But I told them that the big problem with video tapes wouldn't be with pirates trying to peddle copies; it would be with the average joe who buys a porn cassette. Then he calls in a neighbor who's got a player, too, and it's the easiest thing in the world for the neighbor to rip off a copy on a blank tape. Get it? You buy porn, and I copy it for my library. Then I buy, and you tape my cassette. There goes your billion-dollar market. So I told these guys they better pray that video disks make it big, because it's practically impossible to copy a disk—for the average guy anyway. Now you're getting into laser technology and expensive equipment.

"Anyway, that's mostly what we talked about at dinner. Technical stuff, and how I'd be the sole processor of then-east coast production. They said the proposition sounded good to them, and they'd present it to their people and get back to me. And that's how we parted. They paid for the dinner. I had a great red snapper."

There was a pause.

"Is that the end of it?" William Holloway asked, hoping.

"Oh hell no!" Luther Empt said boisterously. "While I was waiting for them to get back to me, I called Lou Man-ata—he handles my legal stuff—and told him what the problem was. He made some calls and got me the name of some hotshot attorney in New York who specializes in obscenity and pornography law. So I called him, made an appointment, and flew up for one day. I laid it right on the line to him and asked him what the risk was."

"I hope he told you to forget it," Holloway said, emboldened by the vodka.

"Just the opposite," Empt said smugly. "He said anyone who claims to understand obscenity and pornography law in this country is a goddamn liar. It changes every time the Supreme Court opens its mouth. Every state has its own laws, every county, city, town, and village. It's a mess. But he said that in the situation I outlined, his best judgment was that the risk to the processor would be minimal. His exact words: 'The risk is minimal.' If I was producing the fuck-'em-and-suck-'em tapes, or transporting them across state lines, the risk would be much more. But as strictly a nuts-and-bolts guy, a processor of an existing product, the legal risk would be minimal."

They drank again. More slowly now because when they looked up, the stars seemed to be swirling, the sky revolving, the whole dark dome of the cosmos tilting in a magical way.

"They came back to me," Luther Empt said in a thickened voice. "They said their people had okayed it. They wanted to hire me. Set up a separate processing corporation. They'd own it; I'd work for them. I said fuck that. I've been an independent too long to go back to the nine-to-five routine. I guess they expected that; they were ready with a fallback offer. I could have my own business, and they'd work on a contract basis. That's what I wanted, so I agreed. Then they showed me the numbers. I almost died. I had no idea the porn industry was that big. I'd need a new factory, machines, more people. With the output they were talking about, I figured it would take an investment of at least a mil to tool up."