Payback (33 page)
Authors: Sam Stewart
There was silence in the room.
Carol said, “The
what?
He's the hero of the
what?
”
“Of the year,” Burt said.
“Of the night,” Cy corrected. “It's the
story
of the year.”
“Oh,” Burt said. There was silence for a time. “Where're you going?” he said to Cy.
“Out. I'll be back. I got something in the car.”
***
What he had in the car was a telephone. He got to the girl at Information. “Yeah,” he said. “Give me the number for Paramount.⦠Darling? What're you hitting me with âParamount what?' Paramount
Films
. I mean, shit ⦠is this Hollywood or Kansas?” Cy said. “Yeah ⦠Okay.⦔ He dialed and got through. “Okay,” he said quickly, “now I don't want a runaround, I want to talk to Ned. Are you listening? You tell him Cy Tate's on the phone. Like in Tate Pharmaceuticals. You tell him I've tied up, tight and exclusive, the story of the year.â¦
That
story, yeah.”
Cy waited, lit a Kent from the dashboard lighter.
“Ned baby? Yeah.⦠Uh-huh. Exactly. It's an action movie. Right.⦠Are you kidding me? Mitchell? We're like brothers.⦠Uh-huh. Okay, so the bidding starts at two million dollars but I thought you'd like to talk.⦠Uh-huh. Breakfast. Uh-huh. Polo Lounge at seven sounds good.⦠Uh-huh. Okay.”
Cy leaned back again and looked at his grinning reflection in the mirror.
Virtue, he thought, always triumphed in the end.
A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
In order of their appearance:
Joan Collins
was the star of
Dynasty
, the popular primetime soap, in which she played an arrogant, scheming bitch. The show, about the lives and loves of the super-rich, ran from 1981 to 1989.
“
Un-California Activities Committee
.” This is Leo's spin on the US Congress's House Un-American Activities Committee which in 1947 investigated political incorrectness in Hollywood.
Bhopal
(India) in 1984 was the scene of a massive release of toxic gas from a Union Carbide pesticide factory. It was said to have killed thousands.
Johnson & Johnson
. In 1982, an unknown psycho tampered with J&J's Tylenol capsulesâfilled them with cyanide, resealed the bottles, and placed them on the shelves of Chicago stores. Seven people died.
Bryant Gumbel
was cohost of the morning news show,
Today
, from 1982 to 1997.
High Noon
, the classic gunfighter Western. Gary Cooper as the marshall, Grace Kelly as his wife.
Linda Evans
played the Nicegirl on
Dynasty
andâlike Collinsâgot endlessly uninteresting attention from the press.
Johnny Carson
was the longtime (1962-92) host of NBC's
Tonight Show
. From the mid-80s on he took frequent vacations and
Joan Rivers
subbed.
Mickey Mantle
was a Hall of Fame player for the New York Yankees.
Gene Krupa
was a drummer.
David Begelman
, the head of Columbia Pictures, was indicted for embezzlement and forging actors' checks; the actor
Stacy Keach
went to jail for holding coke.
“
Mary, Mary
, quite contrary” was a nursery rhyme.
Redford in
The Candidate
. Robert Redford at the age of 35 and the height of his handsomeness, starred in
The Candidate
, possibly the best movie ever made about contemporary American politics
In the televised
Nixon-Kennedy
debate, Kennedy looked cool, handsome, composed and Nixon looked sweaty, speedy-eyed, shifty. As does Cy.
Leonard Nimoy
, who'd made his name playing Spock on
StarTrek
, hosted
In Search Of
, a popular tabloid television series that investigated spooky paranormal events.
Wang computers
were state-of-the-art in the 1980's
The Deerhunter
and
Rambo
were movies about POWs in Vietnam.
Don Johnson
was the star of
Miami Vice
from 1984 to 1989;
Tab Hunter
starred in movies of the '50's and '60's
Juan Valdez
was the TV commercial spokesman for Columbian coffee.
The comedan
Richard Pryor
cooked dope the wrong way and it exploded in his face.
“
Buck Rogers
Of the 25th Century”, the first sci-fi hero, was featured in comic books, through the 1980's.
Nancy Drew
was a fictional teenage detective in an endless series of popular novels.
Diana Vreeland
was the editor of
Vogue
who did, in fact, look like the Wizard of Oz witch.
“Jet-setter”
Stavros Niarchos
was a billionaire Greek shipping tycoon.
Reubens
was a famous Broadway delicatessen that named sandwiches after celebrities.
Jane Fonda
, at the time, was starring in a series of excercise tapes for menopausal women. Mack, seeing Mitchell doing stretches in the snow, therefore makes the crack
Charlie Chan
was a fictional Chinese detective in novels, movies, radio and TV. Best known for dialog that sounded like the stuff on a fortune-cookie.
Carmen Miranda
(aka “The Brazilian Bombshell”) was a singer-dancer in Hollywood musicals famous for her fruit-decorated hats. Except by pun, she has no relation to the Miranda Warning.
“
Who knows ⦠what evil ⦠lurks ⦠in the hearts of men?”
was the opening teaser for a popular (radio, television, comic book, film) series called
The Shadow
.
Evita was
Evita Peron, the activist wife of Argentine President Juan Peron, and of course the leading character in the musical
Evita
.
Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker
were gaudy televangelists brought down by sex and money scandals (are there any other kind?) in 1987. At the height of their ostentation, according to the press, they had an air-conditioned dog house on their sprawling estate.
In the Iran-Contra scandal (1985-87)
Oliver North
was in charge of illegally selling arms to Iran. The profits, hidden in a numbered Swiss bank account, were slated to be used to illegally fund the Contrasâthe Nicaraguan rebels. However, $10 million was lost when North forgot the number of the numbered account.
Ludes
. Quaaludes. A pharmaceutical downer.
In the late '80s,
Mick Jagger
of The Rolling Stones was still strutting viable stuff. Among the band's hits was
Sympathy for the Devil
and
Time is On My Side
.
Robert Vesco
fled the US for the Caribbean with his multi-milliions intact in order to avoid charges of securities fraud.
Ferdinand Marcos
, the deposed dictator of the Philippines, fled to Hawaii in 1986.
Nixon
, the deposed US president. Often took refuge at the California estate of a man named Walter
Annenberg. The Ayatollah Khomeini
, exiled from Iran, spent 15 years in Paris till the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah and restored the theocracy.
The Peter Principle
, derived from a book of the same name, was the theory that in hierarchies, everybody rises “to his level of incompetence.”
F. Lee Bailey
was a high-profile criminal defense attorney often hired by the rich and infamous. His last notable case, in 1995 was the defense of O.J. Simpson.
Huey
. A military helicopter.
Gary Gilmore
was a stone-cold killer who became a kind of national anti-hero through media fascination. At his own request, he was executed by a Utah firing squad, a fate he preferred to a life sentence.
Tom Selleck
starred in the popular TV series,
Magnum, PI
. He was dark-haired and mustached so when Joanna sees the dark-haired mustached Jackie, the likeness comes to mind.
Bela Lugosi
was a well-known actor in horror films and spoke with a lugubrious Hungarian accent.
Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
, was a brutally hilarious classic film.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Hot Toddy” lyrics by Herb Hendler, music by Ralph Flanagan, copyright © 1953, 1981 by Valley Entertainment Enterprises Inc. (Coachella Music Inc.). Used by permission.
Payback
by Sam Stewart. Copyright © 1988
by Linda Stewart.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0925-6
Distributed in 2015 by Open Road Distribution
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
