Loser's Town (32 page)

It was the middle of the afternoon and Salvatore Locatelli sat at a table in the back of his restaurant in Thousand Oaks, arguing with the chef about how long you were supposed to cook the tomatoes in a marinara sauce. Normally Salvatore wasn’t the sort of guy anybody would be dumb enough to argue with, but the chef was his sister’s husband’s nephew and Salvatore had always liked the kid. Salvatore had helped send him to a fancy assed cooking school in upstate New York, where the kid had learned to do amazing things with scungilli but still didn’t know shit about marinara. He could also be very condescending in a college-boy sort of way. The kid said you didn’t cook the tomatoes for very long because they’d break down and lose their identity in the rest of the sauce. Salvatore said
va fungool
to tomatoes and their identity, his mother and his grandmother and her fucking grandmother for that matter had cooked the tomatoes until they nearly dissolved, and
they made the best marinara in Europe. And unless the chef would rather end up picking tomatoes out in Bakersfield instead of cooking them in Thousand Oaks, enough with the goddamned identity crisis of fucking tomatoes and just cook them the way you’re supposed to.

Salvatore Locatelli’s world was a pleasant one. He had no real regrets in life. He had three kids who’d gone to college and still called him on weekends. He had a wife he still loved, and felt no guilt at the occasional indiscretion with younger women, since this was a perfectly natural thing for a man to do, and was doubtless the secret to his long marriage. Salvatore had no guilt about his business, which was mainly criminal, though not as criminal as it once was. He’d inherited the business from his father, Don Gaitano Locatelli, who ran Los Angeles the same way he ran his import–export business, his loan company, his three restaurants, his two car dealerships, his eight whorehouses, the burglary ring, and the variety of drug operations he’d lost count of. And this was only a few of his enterprises. Salvatore was educated at the Wharton School of Business, but his real education had been watching his father, a genius in his own chosen profession.

One day Don Gaitano pulled Salvatore aside and carefully explained to him his philosophy of the world. Don Gaitano said that there were two paths a man could take in life. He could withdraw from the strife and competition in this world, become a priest, surrender his balls, and worry about the fate of his fellow man. There was nothing wrong
with this, it was nice somebody did it, provided that you knew nobody actually gave a shit about what you were doing and you’d die poor. On the other hand, Don Gaitano went on, you could join in the fray and do the best you could do to avoid being eaten. You got to keep your balls and enjoy a family and sex and all the nice things that life had to offer. Provided you could afford them, and provided you were strong enough not to let some envious bastard take them away from you, which they would surely try to do. The key to getting by was to worry only about your family and your proven friends, to take care of them and they would take care of you. The rest of the world was on its own, and as Don Gaitano was sure that it was not the sort of world God had in mind when he set it rolling, he felt no shame that a good profit could be made by taking advantage of the confusion. At that point Don Gaitano kissed Salvatore and gave him his ring and the family business. It was a touching moment, and Salvatore could never bear telling him that the Wharton School of Business had taught him all this long before.

The restaurant was closed until six, and in the afternoons Salvatore liked to conduct business here, comforted by the smell of cooking. He owned a thirty-acre estate a couple of miles inland and an office building or three in Santa Monica but he preferred it here. Sometimes, like now, there was someone standing outside the locked restaurant door waiting to be asked in. Waiting to ask for a favor, usually. Salvatore didn’t think this guy was any different, though he
had balls, Salvatore had to give him that. How he got the home number was anybody’s guess. Salvatore would have to find out. Anyway there comes this call right to Salvatore’s personal number, which maybe three people knew, and Salvatore himself picks it up, since the caller ID says unidentified and even the Pope blocks his caller ID. And this guy, this complete stranger, announces to Salvatore that he has information about Richie Stella that Salvatore would find enlightening. That was the word he used, ‘enlightening’. Salvatore said yes, he was a sucker for enlightenment, thinking that in truth there was something about this guy he liked in spite of the bastard calling him at home. Salvatore said he would send someone to meet him. The guy said no. Salvatore asked his name. And the guy told him. This set Salvatore back a little. He never expected the guy to tell him his name. Who the hell was David Spandau? And why wasn’t he worried about Salvatore Locatelli dropping him some early morning head first into the La Brea Tarpits?

Spandau tried the restaurant door and it was locked. This was not surprising, since there was a big CLOSED sign hanging there. He knocked on the mirrored door, tried to peer inside. He waited. Locatelli watched him wait. It was always a good idea to keep people waiting if they were about to ask you for something. Finally Locatelli sent two men to the door. One of them frisked Spandau while the other relocked the door and checked the parking lot for surprises. They led Spandau back to the table where Locatelli sat.

Locatelli looked him up and down and said, ‘I know who you are. You’re the cowboy with all the dead friends.’

‘That’s right,’ said Spandau, looking down at the small, dapper man with the impeccable moustache and the impeccable gray wavy hair. The face was hard and never changed, but the eyes switched moods like Christmas lights. Right now they seemed, fortunately, to be amused.

‘Well, right off the bat we can tell you’re unlucky. You got three minutes, Texas. Just like a phone call. Start talking.’

Spandau waited for a day, then three days, then a week. Nothing happened. Maybe nothing would ever happen. Spandau sat around the house and read and watched videos he’d already seen. He tried not to think about Dee or Terry. He missed them both. Only Dee was still alive. He could pick up the phone, call her, or drive out there. She hadn’t heard about Terry or she would’ve called herself. Spandau knew he should tell her, though she hadn’t known Terry very well and was one of the few women who didn’t like him. Spandau came close to calling a hundred times that week, but was afraid of his own weakness, knowing that part of him saw it as an excuse to try to get her back. He worked in the garden, cleaned the pond. Discovered there were more missing fish, nearly all of them in fact, and found fins and heads in the brush. A sole fish swam in the pond, in a constant circle around the perimeter, as if looking for its own way out. Spandau knew how he felt.

They came for him early one night, about nine o’clock. Spandau was watching
Rio Bravo
for the thousandth time when he leaned back and felt the gun barrel against the back of his head. Spandau felt a little betrayed, that they’d been able to use the Duke to cover their entrance.

‘Richie wants to see you,’ said Martin.

‘Tell Richie to go fuck himself,’ said Spandau without bothering to turn around. There was more than one of them. Spandau could hear their breathing, feel their presence. One of them hit him.

Guys get knocked out in the movies all the time. In real life it isn’t so simple. For instance, a single punch to the jaw is unlikely to knock a guy out unless you’re a heavyweight boxer. And any blow that has sufficient force to knock you out has given you a concussion, which can be followed shortly by brain damage both long-and short-term, loss of memory, emotional shifts, violent retching, blindness, and death. And of course headaches.

Technically Spandau wasn’t knocked out. Stunned is probably a better word, and the headache would not be long in coming. They hit him with something heavy but soft, with enough impact to give his brain a good rattle and scramble things for a while. Enough to make him cooperative. They bound his hands behind him. He could stand and even walk, albeit not without falling over, and the three of them helped him out into the car. They were on the 405 heading into LA when one of them put a small heavy pillowcase over Spandau’s head. Spandau tried to visualize the
course the car was taking, counting the curves, but now his head was hurting and he was dizzy. He wanted very much not to throw up inside the pillowcase and visualization only made it worse.

The car stopped about thirty minutes later and somebody hit Spandau again. Not as hard this time, but another pretty good rattle. They dragged him from the car with the hood still over his head, up some steps, through a couple of doors, down a hallway. They dumped him on the floor and gave him a few kicks for good measure. Spandau lay on the floor, not moving, waiting. He waited for a while for another blow, something. Then he realized they’d gone.

Spandau worked at his hands, bound by a thin rope. It wasn’t much of a chore and it occurred to him they’d meant it that way. He got his hands free then pulled off the hood, sat up. He was in the office of the Voodoo Room. The place was eerily silent. Richie was sitting in the big office chair with his back to him. He stood up, swaying a little, and waited for Richie to say something. When he didn’t Spandau went over and spun the chair around and saw that Richie had a small hole in his forehead and a narrow rivulet of blood trickled down the side of his face into his shirt collar. A roll of 35mm film was threaded on some string and tied like an amulet around his neck. Careful not to touch anything else, Spandau snapped the string and put the roll of film in his pocket.

He went out of the office and down into the club itself. A single overhead light was on and the place had been nearly
stripped, as if the club he knew had never existed. He pushed open the side door with his elbow and stepped out onto the street. His head hurt and he wondered if it was smarter to look for a cab on Sunset or walk down to Wilshire. He’d decided on Wilshire and had turned the corner when a car behind him flashed its headlights and rolled up leisurely next to him. The back window of the Lincoln came down.

‘You’re out late, Texas, and very far away from home.’ Locatelli motioned for him to climb in. Spandau did so and Locatelli rolled the window back up and nodded at the driver to move on. Locatelli looked out the window at the city as it passed, like taking inventory of private property. ‘Well, Texas, you were right,’ he said finally. ‘And now I owe you a favor.’

‘I don’t want your favor,’ said Spandau.

‘Oh, you’ll want this one. Because you know what it is? You get to walk away from this. You get to go on living, Texas. Provided you stay smart and keep right on walking.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘It’s the shank of the evening,’ said Locatelli. ‘I thought we’d stop off for a nightcap. Sort of cement our friendship. It’s been a long day. If you don’t mind my saying so, Texas, for a guy who ought to be dead you don’t look so happy about it.’

‘It was a very funny joke.’

‘Oh, gosh, the truth is that you were outclassed every step of the way. I’ve been watching you for weeks now, Texas.
Not much goes under my radar. You nosing around, asking questions about Richie. I knew he was selling crack, but for the life of me I didn’t know where he was getting it. Turned out he was more enterprising than I thought. And using my cocaine to do it. Anyway, you did my dirty work for me. I thank you for that.’

Locatelli paused to light a cigar. He offered one to Spandau, who shook his head. The odor made him sick. Locatelli puffed happily.

‘Richie was going to kill you, you know. He didn’t have a choice. He’d made such a goddamn mess of things, he’d have to start cleaning up loose ends before I found out.’

‘So why not let him?’

‘I probably would have, if it hadn’t been for that business on your friend’s boat. That was ugly, messy. Richie was fucking up right and left and calling way too much attention to himself. And to me. I like things nice and quiet.’

Locatelli took a few more puffs, then looked at the cigar as if it had turned on him. He stubbed it out in the ashtray.

‘Anyway, what is this, the Old West?’ said Locatelli. ‘You can’t go around shooting people, Texas.’ He stopped to think for a second. ‘Well, not too many, anyhow. Guy as popular as you turns up dead and there are all kinds of problems. No real problems, mind you, but just enough to be irritating. Richie is another story. Nobody liked Richie. He will not be missed. Even his cousin sold him out. Martin’s going to be managing the Voodoo Room when we open it again. We’re going for a whole new look. You know, on the average, gay
bars are twenty-five percent more profitable than straight ones? What is the world coming to, I ask you.’

The car stopped in front of The Ivy. Locatelli stared at him, then said, ‘Well, go on.’ Spandau got out. Locatelli followed, stood on the sidewalk smiling, breathing the crisp night air. In the restaurant the maître d’ greeted Locatelli as an old friend.

‘Good evening, Mr Locatelli. Nice to see you again.’

‘Good to see you too, George. Have my friends arrived?’

‘They are waiting at your table. Have a pleasant evening, Mr Locatelli.’

‘Thank you, George.’

Spandau followed Locatelli toward a table at the back of the dining room, where Frank Jurado and Bobby Dye sat laughing. They looked up to see Locatelli and smiled, though it was Bobby who first saw Spandau coming up behind him. He glanced painfully at Spandau then at Locatelli and then at Jurado.

‘Good evening, gentlemen. I think you all know Mr Spandau.’

‘What’s he doing here?’ Jurado said sharply.

‘Mr Spandau wanted to drop by to say hello. He can’t stay long. He has something he wanted to give to Bobby.’

Spandau fished out the roll of film and tossed it across the table into Bobby Dye’s lap. Bobby looked at Spandau and for a moment he thought Bobby might say something, might thank him, but he didn’t. Bobby stared down at the film as he turned it over and over in his fingers.