Tinseltown Riff (13 page)

A second show featured footloose singles ensconced in a beachfront condo who were “looking to be doing something that feels like me.” And “to stop being polite and get real.” At the moment, this involved a pair of heavily muscled beach boys dickering over whether or not to hold back. The object of their dilemma was a cute Latina lazing nearby on a straw hammock.

Switching to the third channel he found a wide-eyed brunette who was starting up a band and was excited because they were “beginning to vibe” over her new song entitled
I'm a little mixed up in my head
.

Refusing to give up, Ben scanned a dozen more channels until he came upon a young women apparently praying to herself as she scaled a rock wall on a show called
Really Real
replete with standard-issue types like a slutty girl, a sweet one and a racially ambiguous one.

For relief, Ben glanced over at the soap the Amazon was glued to. All he could gather before the next instant break was that a jilted night nurse was stalking a doctor with a syringe.

“Oh, give me a break,” Ben pleaded.

Without missing a beat, the Amazon jerked her head and gave Ben a quizzical look.  

Shrugging, Ben wanted to tell her to hang in there because surely, no matter what venue Gillian had in mind, Ben could come up with something a lot less mindless. But he kept the thought to himself as she jerked her head right back to the soap, continued to pound away and gave the night nurse a thumbs up as she stuck the needle in.

Finished with this cursory research, just as he was about to hit the cool-down button, Iris' muscled forearm reached over and pressed the accelerator. With her beige jumpsuit and chopped hair pressing in on him, she shouted over the blaring speakers, “Go for it and then get with it. You're due at the studio in forty minutes.”

“No kidding,” said Ben, trying to sneak the speed indicator back down.

“Come on, Benjamin, at least jog. Get in shape, shape rules. How many times I've told you?”

“Too many.” Ben hit the stop button and hopped off.

“Just looking out for you,” said Iris, grabbing a towel and wiping off the machine's jutting handles.

“You mean Leo,” said Ben, drifting over to the water-cooler.

“You bet your ass. Guess what happens if this deal with Angelique tanks. Guess what your life's gonna be worth.”

Before Ben could answer, two nubile teens on the adjacent step machines and the grunting Amazon had all shifted their focus to Iris' jabbing finger as if checking out a new reality show.

Impervious to the scene she was making, Iris followed him to the men's locker room door. “Hey, I'm talkin' here. Don't get dreamy on us, for God's sake.”

“Will you please, kindly, back off?”

“No way. I am officially in Leo's corner, Angelique's coach and June's proxy.”

In what passed for a display of affection, Iris reached up, mussed Ben's hair and tweaked his cheek.

As he watched her stride off in that jaunty way of hers, Ben couldn't help noticing the close-up on the nearest monitor. There again was the marked resemblance between the old Angelique and the maiden in the vintage pickup.  

 

As for Ben's next and primary destination, for the most part the Avalon Studios were a well-kept secret. Only people in the business knew that somewhere south of the sprawling empire of Paramount/Viacom stood a miniature production facility down Van Ness and around a sleepy corner on Clinton. And few people recalled that in its heyday, as movies segued from silent to talkies, it was called
Famous
Studios.
From there it went  through name changes like
Prudential Pictures
and
Allied Producers.
Later on in the 1940s, it was known as
Cimarron
and, later still, the logo changes included
Phoenix
,
Odyssey
,
Galaxy
and a host of others until it settled in as a production facility rental.    

Remnants of the old days still littered the back lot, like the set pieces for an outer space TV series and what was left of a generic Western town. Recently, just before the latest failed venture, the three airplane-hanger-sized sound stages were employed for a yet another short-lived shopworn TV cop series; the selfsame show featuring a distracting sexpot “muchacha distraido” C.J. discredited for Leo's edification. Ostensibly as a result of this fiasco and subsequent bankruptcy, the studio gate was now manned by a guy shaped like a beanpole with a goofy drawl to match. Ben expected a skeleton crew till the new operation got up to speed, but this was ridiculous.  

“Hold on,” said the beanpole as Ben jammed on the brakes just past the metal barricade.

“Why? What's the problem?” said Ben, switching off the engine.

“Just hold on, is all. I'm Lester, who are you?”

 Ben sent the electric window sliding down and said, “Ben Prine. I'm expected.”

Drawing closer, Lester's flame-red hair glinted in the sunlight, his sliver of a face pale in comparison. Leaning down, Lester said, “Then maybe you can tell me what's goin' on?”

“What do you mean?”

“There was supposed to be four of us. I report and find the other three opted for some theme park somewheres. And a little while ago, this Russian comes by and says not to worry, he'll be right back. I mean, hell, how do I know who to let in? Am I supposed to man this whole thing by myself? And for how long? And who pays me? What is this, some kinda hustle?”

Lester ran back to his glass-plated station, ducked inside and scampered out holding up an air rifle. “This is all I got. For guard duty and such.”

Smirking and changing his tone, Lester added, “But hell, since this place has an old western set and all, which is the only reason I took the job ...”  For emphasis, he peered through the front sight. “Pretty neat though, huh? Oak wood stock—butt and forearm. Blueing, steel cocking lever, gravity fed. Just like Steve McQueen ridin' shotgun next to Yul Brynner in
The Magnificent Seven
. That old movie is my favorite.”

Ben didn't have the heart to tell him McQueen's gun had a pump action. And he didn't have the patience to put up with him a second longer. “I'll take up your concerns with Leo. See you in a bit.”

“Not so fast. You still ain't told me who you are. And what, if anything, this new operation's got goin' for it?”

“Desperation.”

“Come again?”

“The Russian has to make it work. He has no choice.”

“Oh?” Lester cranked the lever of his air rifle, aimed at the flat rooftop of the nearest sound stage and said, “Okay, that's more like it. Maybe I jumped the gun. Get it?”

“Uh-huh. Where do I park?”

“Just a sec.”  Lester ambled back to his station and reappeared with a handful of printouts and notes. Shouting over to Ben, he said, “Office building's locked. So is soundstage one and two, plus the screening rooms, editing, media, grip, electrical, hydraulic lifts, carpentry and set building, tank stage, café, plus—”

“Then what
is
operational?”

“Everything else I guess. Which don't leave a helluva lot except soundstage three, writer's bungalow, what's left of the western town and—”

“Never mind. I get it.” Ben put the Prelude in gear. Lester banged on the trunk.

“One last thing,” said Lester, returning to Ben's side. “Got this here note from some gal from Paramount.”

“Gillian.”

“That's the one. Says for you to check it all out and she'll give you the skinny during her break.”

Ben drove on, passing the cylindrical office building and media center and the brace of main sound stages. Following his nose and his memory, he took a left and cruised down a narrow alleyway flanked by the tech support buildings and post production site and the vast sound stage two. He hung a right in front of the pink stucco café with its matching tile roof and open veranda; then parked in the shade of a stand of ficus trees whose multiple trunks bundled together like swollen tubes.

There, in the stillness, he reminded himself if he was going to pull off this juggling act, if he was truly going to keep all the balls in the air, he'd have to make sure nothing got scrambled.

Along these same lines, Ray from Vegas belonged in a completely separate box. So did the girl in the old truck and Leo's one-big-happy-family promo.  

It was bad enough he knew next to nothing about crossovers streaming in cyber space. Or what they were currently throwing in the mix including anything Gillian may have in mind. His newfound accountant mindset not withstanding, as everyone had made abundantly clear, he had no recourse but to play it as it lays while avoiding any more deflections.  

Thus, following Gillian's directive till she and Leo returned, Ben doubled back around the corner and walked up the tech alley to the side entrance of soundstage three. Inside the huge dimly lit cavern, he meandered in and out of the warren of police offices, holding cells, interrogation rooms and the like; each furnished with every detail down to the log book and roster sheet on the desk sergeant's counter.  

He glanced up at the second tier of motel room facades, shabby interiors doubling as hideouts and stakeout blinds and a cutout of a sniper's lair. Rimming the walls, encircling the entire cop world, he found fire-escapes, spiral staircases, spider-covered attics, back alleys and various clichés of Halloween Hollywood including a rusted wrought-iron gate encircling a number of open graves.

Leaving the soundstage and returning to the locked café, he gave the back lot and the rest of the area a quick once-over. Diagonally across from the ficus trees and his parked car was the salmon-colored writer's bungalow. Fanning out and away from the bungalow was a cut-rate moonwalk replete with craters, fragments of a shattered space ship and simulations of a windswept barren outcropping. Ruffled-leafed banana plants and rubber trees and a sea of palm fronds fought for purchase and were succeeding in their quest to conquer outer space.

On the other side of the bungalow, in the opposite direction, he took in Lester's beloved western town, complete with hitching posts, raised planked sidewalks, livery stable and corral. A cursory inspection revealed that all but the livery stable consisted of facades and partials that leaned up against a steel-mesh fence that enclosed the entire property. The western town, like the moonwalk, had lost the battle with the foliage with only a few dumpsters offering any resistance.

But for no reason he was drawn to the livery stable. He told himself he was only killing some more time and would give this backdrop only a quick once-over.  

Lifting the heavy metal bar up and over, he pressed the warped flanking doors open a smidge and squeezed in. Again for no apparent reason, he checked out the dusty buckboard, harnesses, bridles and other gear hanging from the supporting posts, and the rickety wooden ladder propped up against a landing about thirty feet away.

Ambling around, he noticed the huge oil drum sitting in a far corner under a hay loft filled with greasy rags redolent of motor oil and rancid gasoline. Dangling from a chain directly above the oil drum was a rusty motor, probably taken from the Model T sitting way over in the far corner.

Moving left, he came upon a pit, partially obscured by the buckboard and filled with a pile of burlap grain sacks.      

Edging back, just out of curiosity, he climbed up the ladder and eyed the hay loft and a flimsy wooden door close by. He lifted the latch, entered a cramped piney room and took in the sagging cot and a wash stand serviced by a hand pump. After a half dozen tries, the crank only produced a trickle of rusty water. The only ventilation came from a slot in the wooden screens next to the cot. Twisting around, staring down from the landing onto the plank flooring, he spotted a half-dozen bales of hay wedged next to the grain pit.

Climbing down the ladder, Ben muttered, “Grist for the mill, Benjamin. You never know.”  But, then again, why had he studied all this so carefully? The cop world sound stage made some kind of sense but what did this livery stable have to do with
something streetwise with backup while shaking off the denizens of the underworld
—the kicker he'd tossed out to appease Angelique? What did the livery stable have to do with anything?  

Coming to his senses, he got out of there, closed the barn doors and clamped the metal bar in place. He had to quash these nagging, incessant omens if it killed him.

 
 
 

Chapter Fourteen

 

 

A few moments later, heading back to the writer's bungalow, he spotted Leo clambering out of a golf cart that had stalled by the café. By the time Ben reached him, he'd turned the ignition key a dozen times and assaulted the dead battery with some flavorful Russian invectives. Sporting the same California-black outfit he'd worn last night at the Polo Lounge, and with his bald pate shimmering in the sunlight, Leo curled his thick lips upward into a lopsided grin.  

“No worries, dude. All things not gold yet, is true, but my hand to God, becoming silver as we speak.”

Before Ben had a chance to ask for a definition of “silver,” Leo spun him around, escorted him across the way to the writer's bungalow and stopped short at the entrance.

“To you, bungalow is neutral zone between outer space and old west, plus cop city and haunted house up tech alley.”

Again, trying to get a word in edgewise, especially about the dubious use of the extra set pieces, got Ben nowhere. Pointing to the scrawny orange trees nearby, Leo said, “Like oasis beckoning to you, and what could be better? Nothing. I am right or I am right?”

Leo carried on about how he had laid the groundwork, provided Ben with an easel in anticipation of his storyboard sketches leading to “what I am hawking to finance boys as tax shelter. Which Gillian is then right away pitching to production company right after you are providing the goods. I'm telling you, out of old ashes is rising ... Is rising what?”