Loser's Town (3 page)

His thumb was beginning to throb now and his back was hurting as well. He refused to take the painkillers but he badly wanted a cigarette and a hefty shot of Jack Daniel’s. At a rodeo in Salinas the week before he’d gotten thrown from a horse named Tusker and pulled a muscle in his back. Then he’d managed to dislocate his thumb while trying to rope a calf. He’d looped it between the rope and the saddle horn – a truly greenhorn mistake that had gotten him much laughter but absolutely no sympathy from his peers. The Salinas rodeo had been a disaster, but there was another one at the end of the month in Bakersfield. He was wondering if he had enough vacation days to make that one when he noticed she had stopped talking.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

She was standing next to him with her hands on her hips and a look that made him wonder if he’d suddenly developed Tourette’s syndrome. It took him a moment to realize he’d absent-mindedly pulled out his cigarettes and had started to light one.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she said, ‘this is a non-smoking building, just like everywhere else in this state! How fucking observant are
we
?’

He put the cigarettes back into his jacket pocket. He was getting sleepy now, too. He’d driven all night from his sister’s house in Flagstaff, cutting his vacation two days
short because Walter, his boss, said he’d been expressly requested for this case, and that the client was an important one. It was now late-Thursday morning and he wasn’t supposed to go back to work until Monday. He was betting that Walter, the chintzy bastard, hadn’t even put him on the clock for this. It was just the sort of crap he’d pull. Spandau made a note to get this straightened out before Walter slipped out of the office and spent the rest of the day getting hammered somewhere.

‘You haven’t been listening to a fucking word I’ve said. Geary said you were supposed to be good, but frankly you don’t look to me like you could handle a street crossing, much less a case like this.’

Paul Geary was a TV producer he’d done some work for, and was the one who’d given Spandau’s name to the Allied Talent Group, the agency that had constructed this particular air-conditioned nightmare. They in turn had foisted Spandau off on her, and now she was sweetly telling him she wasn’t happy about it. Annie Michaels was one of the best agents in the business, known for being intensely loyal and protective of her clients. She was also famous for having one of the nastiest mouths in Hollywood and Spandau was getting particularly tired of having it aimed at him.

David Spandau stood up and carefully closed a single button of his Armani jacket. She was about five feet three inches and now he towered nearly a foot above her. She stopped talking when she had to look up at a forty-five-degree
angle. As Spandau’s old mentor Beau McCaulay used to say, ‘When all else fails, just be taller.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you.’ He held out his hand. She simply stared at it.

‘Where the fuck are you going?’ she asked incredulously. Hollywood agents are so used to people trying to get in to see them, they forget people can also walk out.

‘First,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d stand in front of your lovely new building and light a cigarette, provided nobody runs out and douses me with a fire extinguisher. Then,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d go over to Musso and Frank for the eggs and roast-beef hash. After that I don’t know. Somebody told me there was a German Expressionist exhibit at the county museum. While I adore Emil Nolde’s woodcuts, I’m not sure I could deal with all that angst on top of the roast-beef hash.’

It’s hard to get the drop on a good agent. The trick is that they’re so used to people caring, their motor-neurons lock up when confronted with someone who simply couldn’t give a shit. She continued to give him a blank stare as she processed the fact that he was actually walking out on her. She looked him up and down, as if actually noticing him for the first time. A big, dark man with a broken nose and tired eyes. Something wrong with his thumb. Good suit, a real Armani, but what’s with those fucking cowboy boots? He looked a little like Robert Mitchum but she thought Robert Mitchum was sexy as hell so she tried to ignore that part of it. Genuinely tough, she figured. Tough
enough that he could afford to downplay it. Maybe he even had a brain. Finally the program completed its loop, and she gave Spandau a nasty smile.

‘A real smart-ass,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s just that I’ve got better things to do for the ass-end of my vacation than to sit around and be verbally abused by some Long Island neurotic in a two-thousand-dollar potato sack.’

‘Look,
Tex
, you were hired—’

‘No, I wasn’t hired. Nobody’s hired anybody. Your agency asked me to come here and see if I wanted to help them out with a problem. So far this is just a freebie, a professional courtesy among supposedly civilized people. Frankly, though, I’m not all that crazy about getting shit on, even when somebody’s paying for it.’

‘My God, who the fuck do you think you are? Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with? I need a fucking professional, and they send me a fucking extra from
Bonanza
!’

She’s talking about the Tony Lamas, Spandau thought. Otherwise he was in Armani and impeccable. Spandau saluted her and turned toward the door.

‘Hey, buster, don’t you turn your back on
me
!’

‘If you’d like, I can have the agency send someone over more to your liking.’

‘Are you kidding?’ she cried as he opened the door. ‘Fuck you
and
your agency! Don’t track horse shit on the carpet as you go out, Hopalong!’

Spandau opened the door and nearly ran into a slim, elegant middle-aged man in a pinstripe suit and a good haircut. ‘Excuse me,’ Spandau said, and started to pass him.

‘Would you mind waiting just a few more moments?’ he said to Spandau. His smile was a triumph of orthodontics. He graciously escorted Spandau back into the room and closed the door. ‘Hello, Annie,’ he said to her. ‘I see you’ve been honing those social skills that made you so popular at Bennington.’

‘This . . . 
asshole
the detective agency sent me was just leaving.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Mister Spandau?’

‘David Spandau. Coren and associates, personal security and investigations.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Spandau. Annie is far too used to getting her way. Her idea of diplomacy is to scream loudly until people give in. It’s not pretty but surprisingly effective. It works with most people. I apologize for her.’

‘Robert,’ she said. ‘He’s an idiot. He’s all wrong for this. Just look at those shoes!’

‘Sweetie,’ he said, ‘for somebody who can wear Versace and still look like a Hasidic Jew, I’m not sure I’d talk.’

‘Robert, that’s cruel!’ she whined, but it made her laugh.

‘Honey, you know it’s true. You’d be wearing go-go boots with that dress if the shop hadn’t given you instructions.’ To Spandau he said, ‘Chanel refuses to sell her anything.’

‘That’s an outright lie!’

‘She’s practically a legend. They’re convinced she takes their clothes and has them altered by some little Chinese man in Reseda. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense.’

By this time she’d collapsed into a fit of giggles. ‘Robert, you are horrible!’

‘I love you, that’s why I can tell you these things. You do look good in that black thing, though. Is it DK?’

‘God, no. Balenciaga, honey. You think it looks okay?’

‘It looks great. Just the style for you. The lines suit you.’

‘You think so?’ she pleaded.

‘Am I not the most honest man you know? Now be nice and quit picking on this poor guy.’ He held out his hand and we shook. ‘I’m Robert Aronson, by the way. I’m Bobby Dye’s attorney.’

He motioned for Spandau to sit down again, then sat down himself, after adjusting the knees of his suit.

‘Now let’s see if we can get this sorted out. I’ve been on the phone all afternoon about you, Mr Spandau, and in spite of Annie’s impression, it seems you are highly regarded in your profession.’

‘I—’ began Annie.

‘Shut
up
, Annie. You remember the lunatic who was stalking Marcie du Pont last year? This is the gentleman responsible for putting him away. It seems Mr Spandau specializes in people like us. Tell me, Mr Spandau, are you really as good as all that?’

‘Better,’ Spandau said. ‘I’m a genuine asset to any organization.’

Aronson laughed. It would have been a pleasant laugh if Spandau thought he meant it.

‘He’s not going to work,’ Annie insisted.

‘The bottom line, dear, is that no one gives a shit what you
or
I think. I was just on the phone with Gil – Gil White,’ he said to me, ‘the head of Allied Talent – and Gil wants Bobby to see him. The rest is up to Bobby.’

Annie Michaels shrugged and gave a frustrated sigh. She sat down behind her desk, picked up the phone and pushed a button. Spandau heard a buzz on the assistant’s desk outside. ‘Millie, check and see when the
Wildfire
shoot is breaking for lunch.’ She hung up the phone. ‘And when this whole fucking thing blows up, it’ll be my ass, as usual,’ she said to no one in particular. Her phone buzzed. She picked it up, listened, then asked, ‘Is he on the set or in the trailer?’ then hung up again. She picked the phone up yet once again and quickly dialed a number. ‘Hello, sweetie, it’s me. The detective is here. Are you in the mood to see him? When? In about half an hour? Bye.’ She replaced the phone with the tips of her fingers, as if it were a piece of bad fruit. ‘Okay, let’s try it.’

‘That’s all we can ask for,’ said Aronson. ‘That is, if Mr Spandau still wants the case, after being subjected to your charms.’

‘I’d like to talk to him,’ Spandau said.

‘They’re breaking in half an hour,’ she said. ‘They’re shooting on 36 at Fox.’

She picked up her purse and marched out the door. Aronson looked at Spandau and rolled his eyes.

‘We’re going to the
Wildfire
set at Fox,’ she told her assistant. ‘Call and have passes for us at the gate. I’ll be back after lunch. Transfer anything important to the cellphone. Everything else can wait until I get back. Are you clear on the difference between important and not important?’

‘Uh-huh,’ said the assistant, embarrassed and turning crimson.

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Yes, Annie.’

‘I don’t want to be bombarded by calls from people who just want to chat.’

‘Annie, how am I supposed to know if they want to chat or not?’

‘Because, honey, it’s part of your fucking job to know who’s important and who’s not, and important people don’t have time to chat. Is this clear now?’

‘Yes, Annie.’

‘Why does everybody act as if they’ve just had a goddamned lobotomy? Robert, you come with me. Hopalong, you can follow us on your horse.’

‘I’ll just meet you there,’ Spandau told her. ‘I know where it is.’

She grunted and strode to the elevator and assaulted a button. Apparently the elevator was as frightened of her as everybody else, because it opened right up. ‘Robert, are you coming?’

‘Of course, Annie.’

Spandau followed him. Aronson purposely took his time about getting to the elevator. Annie had to jam her purse between the doors to keep them from closing. Walking away, Spandau distinctly heard the assistant mutter ‘miserable bitch’ under her breath. As the elevator doors closed and Annie Michaels began another stream of invective, Spandau made a mental note to send the assistant a bouquet of flowers and his deepest sympathy.

Spandau followed Annie Michaels’ Mercedes out of the Allied Talent underground garage. She drove the way she talked, like a screaming banshee, nearly taking the ass off one of the attendants as she pulled onto Wilshire. She drove fast, but so reckless it was impossible to lose her. It was like following the path of a tornado; you simply traced the destruction in her wake. Through the rear window he could see her either talking on the phone or yelling and gesticulating at Aronson, who sat quietly and endured it. Every fifty feet or so, she looked at the road long enough to slam on her brakes and scream at another driver or pedestrian she’d nearly killed. It exhausted Spandau just to watch her. He eased back and let the Mercedes disappear in traffic. He’d been to the Fox lot a thousand times and could have driven to it blindfold. He turned the radio onto a country and western station and took his time.

Spandau’s BMW was leased by the agency he worked for, so he couldn’t smoke in it – and he badly wanted a cigarette.
Walter, his boss, had already reamed his ass a couple of times for lighting up in the car, so Spandau had to relinquish the a/c and open the windows. The moment he did Los Angeles came rushing in like the angry breath of Hell. It was late September but LA still hadn’t managed to outrun a miserable summer. The air shimmered above the pavement, above the parked and waiting cars, and the western horizon turned a lovely but unnatural orange in the smog. A hot, fine mist, composed of equal parts road dust, motor oil and the exhalations of ten million anxious Angelinos, settled on any available skin and clung there to turn clothing into sandpaper. The eyes watered and the throat burned.

Spandau smoked, and thought the city gliding past was like an over-exposed film, too much light, all depth burnt away and sacrificed. All concrete and asphalt, a thousand square miles of man-made griddle on which to fry for our sins. Then you turn a corner and there’s a burst of crimson bougainvillea redeeming an otherwise ugly chunk of concrete building. Or a line of tall palm trees, still majestic and still refusing to die, stubbornly sprouting green at the tops of thick dying stalks, guarding a side street of bungalows constructed at a time when LA was still the Land of Milk and Honey. If you squinted hard, you could imagine what brought them here, all those people. There was a beauty still there, sometimes, beneath all the corruption, like in the face of an actress long past her prime, when the outline of an old loveliness can still be glimpsed through the desperate layers of pancake and eyeliner. Spandau could never
figure out why he stayed, what kept bringing him back to LA, until a drunken conversation he’d had in Nevada with a cowboy who’d fallen in love with a middle-aged whore. It was true, said the cowboy, that she was old and greedy and had no morals to speak of. But sometimes when she slept she had the face of a young girl, and it was this young girl the cowboy kept falling in love with, over and over. And also, added the cowboy, she had tricks that could make you the happiest man alive when she was in the mood.