Lady Boss (24 page)

He got the number and called, prepared for anything.

‘I took my roses back to L.A.,' she said casually. ‘Oh, and I had my assistant get me
Time
magazine. I don't like the picture – you look like a self-satisfied asshole. I do a little photography myself – wanna pose in front of my lens?'

He made an excuse to Deena and left her in the hotel while he hurried over to Venus Maria's house in the Hollywood Hills.

She made him a cup of herb tea and touched his face with long silky fingers. ‘I won't sleep with you until I know you,' she said softly. ‘That might take a couple of years. Right?'

Wrong.

It took five weeks. During which time he made six trips to the Coast and she visited New York twice.

It happened in a friend's house overlooking Big Sur in a four-poster bed with an incredible view of the ocean.

And Martin Z. Swanson – tycoon, sophisticate, billionaire, man-of-the-world, forty-five years old – finally learned about love and sex and passion.

It was a revelation.

* * *

The first thing Martin did upon arriving in L.A. was to call Venus Maria from his limo. She was on the set, but he got through anyway, using their private code-name – Mr. Whacko. He felt like a fool using such a name, but Venus Maria had insisted. ‘Only a stupid name like that will work,' she'd assured him. And she was probably right. So Mr. Whacko it was…

‘What time shall I come over?' he asked.

‘You can't. My brother's still at my house.'

‘God damn it! I thought you were getting rid of him.'

‘I am. It takes time. I'd really prefer he doesn't go running to the
National Enquirer
to sell my secrets.'

‘He'll do that anyway.'

‘You think?'

‘I know.'

‘I'll rent him an apartment.'

‘When?'

‘Today.'

‘I've missed you.'

‘Good.'

‘Well?'

‘What?'

‘You
know
what. Have you missed me?'

‘Martin, when you're here, you're here. When you're away, that's your other life. Missing you is negative energy. I don't have time for it.'

She could be infuriating. Didn't she have any idea how much it took for him to say ‘I miss you'? He'd never said it to anyone in his life. And she dismissed it like it was nothing.

‘I'm out here to do a takeover deal on a studio,' he said, as if that would impress her.

‘You told me on your last trip.'

‘That particular deal fell through.'

‘So what now?'

‘New negotiations.'

‘I've gotta go, they're yelling for me.'

‘Make 'em wait.'

‘Martin! I'm surprised at you. I'm a professional.'

‘Get rid of your brother. I want to come to the house.'

‘I'll try.'

‘Don't try. Do.'

‘Later.'

Later he would have her in his arms. That young, vibrant body pulsating with energy. Pulsating all over him. Giving him the best hard-on he'd ever had.

And so to work. Martin Z. Swanson wanted to achieve a take-over. And when Martin Z. Swanson wanted something he always succeeded.

Lucky lit a cigarette. Once, long ago, she'd promised herself she'd give up smoking. Impossible. The habit was too deeply ingrained. And besides, she enjoyed the process. Lighting up, inhaling, allowing the smoke to drift lazily away.

Boogie didn't smoke. Boogie was into wheat bran and whole flakes and brown rice and grains. He'd discovered health with a vengeance and kept on shooting her disapproving looks when she gulped her coffee black, strong, and certainly not decaf, and settled into a thick juicy steak for dinner.

It was Saturday morning and there was lots to do. No time to run off to London – maybe a day trip to Acapulco if she wasn't supposed to be in Japan.

God damn it! She needed to be with Lennie.

She called him tentatively. From the sound of his voice on the phone to Mickey yesterday he was not likely to be in the best of moods. She was right.

‘Where are you?' was his first question, asked in a belligerent tone.

‘Bowing a lot and drinking tea,' she replied calmly.

He was getting more annoyed by the minute. ‘Are you aware you have moronic idiots working for you?'

‘Don't we all?'

‘C'mon, Lucky, I'm not screwing around. The people in your office are either slow-witted or totally obtuse.'

Whom had he spoken to? ‘Why do you say that?' she asked anxiously. It wouldn't do to blow it now.

‘Because for the last twenty-four hours I've been trying to find out exactly where you are. A phone number. An address. Anything. “We have no idea, Mr. Golden,” they tell me – like I'm some kind of schmuck.'

Two weeks and she was already in deep shit.

‘They don't know where I am,' she answered blankly, ‘
I
don't know where I am. Mr. Tagasaki is a strange and wonderful man who conducts his business in a somewhat eccentric way.'

Lennie sounded disgusted. ‘What the
fuck
are you talking about?'

‘It's difficult to explain,' she answered quickly. ‘It's that kind of a deal. He's a little crazy. I'll be out of here soon.'

Lennie was not to be placated. ‘Are you sleeping with this Japanese prick?' he asked accusingly.

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

‘No, Lucky,
you're
being ridiculous.'

Now it was her turn to get angry. ‘
I'm
making a deal. Do I interfere with the way
you
do things?'

‘All the time.'

Oh, God! She didn't want this to develop into a fully fledged fight. ‘Please understand, Lennie,' she said softly. ‘Just this once.'

‘I
don't
understand. Get your ass back here.'

His accusing tone was beginning to grate. ‘Lennie,' she said carefully, ‘I do what
I
want.'

‘Well, keep on doing it, honey, an' you'll be doing it on your own.'

Honey!
He was
really
mad.

‘This deal is important to me. Why don't you just let me pull it off my way, and then I'm all yours. We won't move for the entire summer. We'll sit in Malibu and build sandcastles.' Her voice softened again. ‘OK, baby?'

He calmed down. ‘I was going to surprise you this weekend. Just turn up. That's if there'd been anywhere to turn up at.'

‘What about the movie?'

‘Screw the movie. I told Mickey Stolli if they're not prepared to dump Grudge, I'm walking.'

‘I'll have a big surprise for you soon.'

‘What?'

‘Be patient.'

He wasn't giving up. ‘Since when was I patient? What's your phone number?'

‘There isn't one.'

‘Where are you speaking from, the street?'

‘A hotel.'

He sounded exasperated. ‘I don't know what game you're playing, Lucky, but do me and yourself a favour and get back here. I need you.'

‘I'll be with you sooner than you think.'

Not the ideal phone conversation. How long was he going to believe her lightweight excuses?

She tried Bobby in London next. He'd been to a James Bond movie and insisted on telling her the entire plot. She listened patiently, told her son she loved him, and hung up.

You're fucking up your life, Santangelo.

Only temporarily
.

* * *

Monday morning back at the studio she knew a lot more than she'd known when she'd left on Friday carrying a briefcase full of papers and contracts from Mickey's locked file cabinet. She'd had plenty of time to study them over the weekend. It seemed Mickey was creaming money all over the place. The head of business affairs had to be in on it. Major collusion.

Mickey came running in late snapping his fingers. ‘Get me Zeppo White on the phone. Cancel my nine o'clock with Eddie Kane. Tell Teddy Lauden to stay after the meeting. An' fix me fresh juice – grapefruit. Get your ass in here. Fast.'

The man was unbelievable. Whatever happened to ‘Good morning' and a little common courtesy?

She followed him into his office. He was already throwing off his tennis shirt, revealing an extremely hairy chest. If the shorts came next she was out of there.

He trotted into his private bathroom, took a loud pee with the door open, and dictated a terse fax to Grudge Freeport.

The fax read:

Unhappy actors are a pain in the ass.

A pain there makes me unhappy.

You are replaceable. The stars are not.

Do something nice and make everyone happy.

He then dictated a similar fax to Ned Magnus, the producer of Lennie's movie. Lucky added a terse

Accommodate Lennie Golden in every way.

Allow him to make any changes he wants.

Mickey then disappeared under the shower while she hurried to make his phone calls.

He emerged screaming for his fresh juice.

Lucky darted into the stainless-steel kitchen, sliced a grapefruit in half – nearly taking her finger along with it – and threw it on top of the juicer.

A fit of laughter almost overcame her. This was insane! What the hell was she doing this for?

Adventure.

A studio.

Lennie.

* * *

Eddie Kane was nervous. He had urgent matters to discuss with Mickey, and the prick was giving him a runaround.

Eddie Kane smoked a joint in the men's room ten minutes before the Monday morning meeting of the major players. He would have preferred a hit of coke, but he was all out, and Kathleen Le Paul never made her weekly visit until after lunch.

A joint took the edge off. Just about. Not really.

Fuck! He was wired to the hilt. He needed to sit down with Mickey and straighten out business.

Staring in the men's room mirror he noticed he'd developed a twitch. Almost imperceptible, but it was there – if you were looking.

Who's looking, for chrissake ?

Eddie ‘The Twitch' Kane. Former child star. Still hot with his
Miami Vice
attitude.

This is what Eddie was into:

Porno flicks.

Distributing them.

Hiding them along with Panther's legit products.

Making a tidy pile.

Scooping it in.

He stared at himself for a long while.
Who else has a wife like Leslie?
he thought. She was prettier than any movie star. Sexier, too.

Ah, what wouldn't he give to see her thigh high in diamonds. She deserved every single one. Thigh-high and bare-assed. What a sight!

‘Good morning, Eddie.'

Zev Lorenzo, head of the recently formed Television Division, snuck up on him. Zev was an elegant man in his late forties, with a pencil moustache, thinning hair, and a trim build. If he'd had to make a guess, Eddie would have said that Zev was the only executive at Panther who wasn't in business for himself in some way or other.

‘Hiya, Zev.'

The older man nodded, and stood in front of the urinals.

A closet queen
zipped through Eddie's mind. Someone had told Eddie that Zev was a closet queen – although why, in 1986, anybody would bother staying in the closet was beyond Eddie.

‘How's everything?' he mumbled, running a hand through his long hair.

‘Excellent,' replied Zev. He was into words like
supreme
and
primacy
and
surpass
. Eddie had never heard him swear, not even a simple
fuck.

‘That's good, that's very good,' Eddie said. ‘Hey – one of these days ya gotta meet my wife.'

‘I've heard she's a stunner.' Zev zipped up and exited. Didn't even stay to wash his hands.

Eddie twitched again. He didn't feel good. He felt like shit. He looked like shit. He'd frightened Zev off.

* * *

‘Do I accompany you to the meeting, Mr. Stolli?' Lucky asked.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take notes. Get it all down. You do fast shorthand, right?'

She nodded.

‘What's wrong with your hair?'

‘Uh…'

‘Forget it. Follow me an' don't open your mouth.'

She trailed him into the conference room. Three steps behind, like an obedient geisha.

The boys were gathered. No girls.

Shame.

That's Hollywood
.

Quietly taking a back seat, notepad poised (shorthand was the one useful skill she'd learned at school in Switzerland), she looked around, silently identifying the players, matching them up to their photographs in the glossy Panther end-of-year financial report.

Ford Werne, Head of Production. Killer sharp in an Armani suit and five-hundred-dollar tinted aviator shades. He was around fifty, but he'd kept his act very much together.

Teddy T. Lauden, Head of Business Affairs, was exactly the opposite – thin, nondescript, precise.

Zev Lorenzo, the man who ran the Television Division, impeccable and charming.

Eddie Kane, Mister Distribution, Mister Coke-Head, looked like he was ready to fall apart.
Seedy
was too kind a description. He was handsome in a smarmy way – but definitely in trouble.

That left only two other senior executives:

Grant Wendell, Jr, Vice President of Worldwide Production – young and sharp-eyed in baggy pants with a button-down Gap shirt.

And Buck Graham – Marketing. A plump, jovial man, with ruddy cheeks and an ‘I'm here to please' smile.

Average age of the group – early forties.

That's why there were no women execs. These guys had not experienced feminist mothers. What did they know?

Lucky grinned to herself. In her dowdy wig and glasses, concealed by her baggy clothes, she was invisible to this group of probable chauvinists.