Passing Through the Flame (35 page)

As it should be and so rarely is, Sandra thought as she lay there clinging to his lightly panting body. Oooh, I think maybe we could have a good thing together. We just
did
have a good thing together.

“Now about the infor
ma
tion....”

She giggled. “Do not think I vill crack as easy as all that!” Sandy rolled slowly off him and onto the other pillow, and they lay side by side in the bedroom darkness. Paul put his arm around her, and she snuggled up to his chest. She felt right there to him; she fitted smoothly.

“I give up,” she said. “I happily surrender. I’ll tell you anything you want to hear.”

“All I want to hear is whatever you want to tell me.”

“Oh, come on, Paul, admit it, you’d like me to tell you about Rod and me and Jango Beck.”

He laughed. “I’ll admit it if you’ll admit you’re dying to tell me.”

“It’s all I can really tell you about Jango, in a way,” she said, suddenly serious. “It’ll tell you what I want you to know. Because I care for you somewhat. Because maybe it would be nice if this wasn’t just a one-night stand—if we could see each other sometimes, when we feel like it, okay?”

“Okay,” Paul found himself saying. “Sure, why not?”

“Okay, lover, then lover to lover, watch your sweet ass around Jango Beck. Rod was working in a big PR firm, and we got invited to one of Jango’s parties. We got into a conversation with Jango. He wanted to set up an independent PR firm for his Dark Star groups—not
too
independent, though. He wanted something more credible than house PR, but he wanted it to be something he still controlled. At the same time, he was subtly coming on to me and letting Rod know it. To make a long story short, I ended up balling Jango two days later, and a week later the Rod Dexter Agency was in business, bankrolled by all of Jango’s accounts.

“Rod got bigger and bigger and hollower and hollower. Jango owned half the agency, which was fair enough, but he had a trigger under his finger any time he cared to pull it by withdrawing his accounts. It was an independent agency up-front, but Jango’s creature under the table. Pretty soon we were involved in a lot of crazy stuff we knew nothing about. Jango would throw clients at Rod and then force him to handle them in a strange ways. Sometimes he was forced to screw them up.

“Rod got to hate being Jango’s puppet and not even being told why he was doing the dirty things he was doing. But at the same time, he liked all the money he was making, and he liked looking like a mover and shaper. Naturally, he started screwing everything in sight. And dropping acid. And getting drunk. Frequently all three at once.

“I had come along when the agency was set up, and as Rod slowly slid down the tube, Jango was dealing more and more with me, since dealing with Rod was becoming more and more like dealing with a vegetable. Jango treated me like a human being. We balled once in a while because we enjoyed it. I started more or less running the agency for him. I decided I wanted to divorce Rod. Rod decided to be nasty, though by this time it was probably just out of habit.

“So Jango withdrew his accounts from the Rod Dexter Agency, and it turned out that Rod somehow owed him mucho bread because his half of the agency was security against a loan from Jango that set it up. Jango threatened to foreclose unless Rod gave me the divorce and this house. Rod caved in.

“Jango put all his PR accounts back into a house PR department and hired me to head it. Then he saved the Dexter Agency by selling his half to some greasy gangster who wanted to be a silent partner in something legitimate and who had the bread to keep it going until Rod could recover from losing Jango’s accounts. Rod and the gangster are still in business together, and I hear they get along well. And I work for Jango Beck.”

Paul lay there trying to figure out what Sandra had told him. Was it a warning? Or what?

“What’s all that supposed to mean, Sandy?”

She laughed ironically and kissed him lightly on the nipple. “That’s the point, lover,” she said. “Can vow tell
me
what it’s supposed to mean?”

“This is a strange place to meet, Mr. Taub,” Supervisor Ryan said, leaning across the white tablecloth in order to make himself better heard. Ting Ho’s was crowded at this lunch hour; there were only a dozen or so tables and less than forty people in the little dining room, but the acoustics of the place and the pace of the waiters filled it with a clacking background din.

Jango seemed as pleased at Taub’s choice as Ryan was annoyed. Looking particularly freaky in a rust-colored suede suit complete with fringes and a belt fastened with a huge carved wooden buckle, he fitted into the downtown Hollywood clientele. He had a big grin on his face as he surveyed the dining room, the tables crowded close together, the direct entrance from the kitchen that kept accepting and disgorging scurrying waiters, almost as if he had chosen the place himself.

“I like it,” said Beck. “No one’s about to spot us in a place like this, and it’s too noisy for anyone to overhear what we’re saying. We can hardly hear ourselves.”

Taub opened the big complicated menu and watched Ryan pick up his, open it, and frown in bewilderment. “Besides,” Taub said, “the food here is excellent.” I’ll show you a thing or two, you sleazy crook, he thought. “Try the Szechuan shredded pork, or the chicken with peanuts, or the Szechuan bean curd,” he said slyly, naming three of the hottest dishes on the menu.

“I don’t like Chinese food,” Ryan said, looking ridiculously
uptight
in his conservative blue suit, his prim white shirt, gray slicked-down hair, and pink, pink skin. Tough shit, you son of a bitch, Taub thought. Ryan looked like a low-grade politician, dressed like one, talked like one, and apparently ate like one. You probably eat nothing but creamed chicken and boiled peas, you gonif.

A waiter appeared, vibrating impatiently. “Chicken chow mein, fried rice, and an eggroll,” Ryan said.

Beck glanced at Taub, smiled, shrugged. “Order for the two of us, Mike,” he said, “and leave us have some fire.”

Taub ordered Szechuan bean curd, chicken with peanuts, and for relief, a mild but subtle vegetarian dish, Buddha’s Feast.

“Mr. Beck informs me that you and he want to stage a large rock festival somewhere in Los Angeles County,” Ryan said, coming right to the point. “You realize that there hasn’t been a rock festival like that held in the country for two years. No municipality relishes the idea of having a quarter of a million hippies crawling all over its jurisdiction. Nor do property owners want their land overrun by a horde of dope fiends.”

“We’re not a bunch of stoned freak speculators trying to find someplace to set up a stage, sell admissions, and let a quarter of a million kids fend for themselves,” Taub said. “Rock festivals got to be such bummers because there weren’t enough toilets or places to sleep or decent cheap food. Sunset City isn’t going to be like that. It’s going to be run and financed by successful businessmen, by John Horst, Mr. Beck, and myself. It’s going to have the full resources of a major motion-picture studio behind it.”

He paused, looked Ryan straight in the face, but almost laughed as he said it: “No expenses will be spared.”

Across the table beside Ryan, Jango shook his head in rueful good humor. Ryan’s nose perked up like that of a dog catching wind of a nice juicy bone.

Ryan was the kind of hypocritical crook who turned Mike Taub’s stomach. He was for sale to the highest bidder, and everyone knew it. That wasn’t so bad; more politicians than not were like that. But this creep made a public career of beating on pornography, hippies, drugs, “lewd” movies, “dope-oriented” records, gay bars, and Volkswagen buses. Taub couldn’t believe it when Jango told him that they could grease their way to a festival site through Quentin Ryan, the original public enemy of dope, hippies, fucking, and smut. Ryan had opposed every rock festival ever held in Los Angeles County. But, Jango had pointed out, they had been held anyway.

Taub hadn’t known exactly what that meant until now. Now that he had waved the hint of money in Ryan’s face and watched it activate a well-engrained Pavlovian reflex, he realized that the bastard probably fought festivals so hard in public so he could up his price to the organizers. This kind of pig is a pig even to a confirmed capitalist like me!

“That is somewhat reassuring, Mr. Taub,” Ryan said, in a much friendlier tone of voice.

“This festival is not going to be a burden on the taxpayers,” Jango said. “We’re going to have subsidized cheap food, plenty of water, and plenty of toilets. We can afford to do this because we’re creating the whole event to shoot a major motion picture with a three-million-dollar budget.”

Taub did a take.
Three million
?Jesus Christ, when did the budget go up to three million? Then Taub laughed at himself. I’m just not used to trying to spend as much money as I can; it goes against all of my reflexes. But it sure is fun. There’s nothing like spending an enemy’s money!

“Very impressive,” Ryan said. “Los Angeles could certainly use more high-budget productions than the studios are engaged in now. I’m willing to do whatever I can to aid your project, gentlemen. But you realize there will be many problems associated with staging a large rock festival in Los Angeles County. You’ve got to either persuade the county to let you stage it in its jurisdiction or get a municipality to grant you a license. You may have two or even three overlapping police jurisdictions to deal with. Perhaps a local zoning board. State or even federal agencies may want to be satisfied that there won’t be a drug problem.”

The waiter arrived, set steaming covered dishes on the table. Ryan had a separate platter of chow mein, fried rice, and eggroll. Taub arranged the three covered dishes between himself and Jango.

Jango took off a cover, picked up a slippery white cube of bean curd with a pair of chopsticks, put it in his mouth, showing no reaction to the burning hotness of the sauce. “This is a major investment by a major corporation,” he said. “We’ve established a contingency fund for the purpose of dealing with such exigencies, haven’t we, Mike?”

Taub nodded, tasted some spicy-hot chicken, and allowed a random figure to pop into his head. “We’ve budgeted a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for public relations with state, county, and local government,” he said. Why not? It’s just more of John Horst’s money, a little more grease on the slide.

“That seems adequate,” Ryan said. Adequate, you miserable fucking thief, you’re being paid three times what you’re worth!

“We’d like to put this money in a kind of escrow,” Jango said. “A kind of unofficial performance bond. I’d like to see someone neutral hold it until the festival is held. At which time it could be impartially dispensed as he saw fit.”

“Someone with experience in smoothing along the political process,” Taub said. “Someone who will be able to use it to... ah, grease the skids....” He cooled his mouth with some soothing bok choy from the Buddha’s Feast.

“Someone who couldn’t be accused of partiality in our favor,” Jango said. “Someone who is not a vocal proponent of rock festivals or the counterculture. Someone as incorruptible and trustworthy as yourself.”

Ryan’s mouth stopped chewing in mid-stroke. He looked at Jango. Jango smiled a smarmy smile back, as if daring the supervisor to take umbrage at being called what he was. Ryan looked at Taub, and Taub gave him a fuck-you smile back. Ryan looked down at his plate, began sawing through an eggroll messily with the side of his fork. “I might be willing to serve in such a capacity,” he said. “Of course this transaction must not appear in any public record. This town is full of yellow journalists who would love to make it seem like other than it is.”

“Would you like it in cash?” Taub said, sampling some hot bean curd. In a paper bag on some street corner, you nerd?

Ryan looked up sharply from his eggroll. A deep flush turned his too-pink face scarlet. Taub stared levelly at him, daring him to say something, feeling a thrill of manhood and power.

Ryan looked down at his plate, picked at his eggroll. The flush passed. “That might be the simplest way,” he said quietly.

Jango glanced across the table at Taub, smiling slightly, and Taub felt a sudden surge of comradeship for Beck. He put a big bite of hot bean curd in his mouth, rejoicing in its searing goodness, in the sweetness of stomach which enabled him to enjoy it. God, I’ve been feeling good these past few weeks, he thought. Nothing for the digestion like spending someone else’s money. Except maybe putting down the kind of nerds who’d usually be putting the screws on you!

Taub put some burning-hot chicken into his mouth. “This is really tasty, Mr. Supervisor,” he said. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

Ryan eyed the diced chicken and peanuts suspiciously. He smiled faintly at Taub, dipped a morsel out with his fork, and put it into his mouth.

“Jesus Christ!” he whispered hoarsely, bringing his napkin up to his mouth.

“Perhaps you’d prefer this,” Jango said, pushing the bean curd across the table at Ryan. Taub’s eyes met Jango’s in a moment of silent laughter. If anything, that stuff was even hotter.

John Horst put a final forkful of chopped liver into his mouth, took a sip of coffee, and chewed slowly, looking across the table at Jango Beck. “I’m glad to see that Conrad has finally produced a first draft of the script,” he said.

Beck lit a thin cigar, blew the smoke to one side, away from Horst’s face. “The kid is a
film maker
, John,” he said. “He’s thinking about directing and set design and actors and budget while he’s scripting, so he couldn’t really get anywhere until we had our concept firmly together. If anyone’s responsible for the delay, it’s me. I should’ve understood that earlier.”

Horst nodded, inwardly flabbergasted at anything like humility from Jango Beck. Maybe I’ve misjudged Beck, he thought. A producer
should
act as a buffer between his talent and people higher up, and that’s what Beck is doing for Conrad, regardless of the true circumstances. He’s doing his job, and he’s doing it pretty damn well, for a novice.