Passing Through the Flame (62 page)

Both documents had come in the same envelope from Taub’s office without a covering letter. As if one were needed.

Sandra Bayne appeared in the outer office before Horst could force his reeling brain to produce a concrete plan of action, to compose what he would say to her or to Beck. All he knew was that if Beck’s check to Taub were cashed, he and the studio were dead, killed by the three million dollar loss Eden Pictures would be swallowing on Sunset City. There had to be
some
way to force Beck to rescind his action.

“Can I help you?” Sandra Bayne said coolly.

“I’ve got to see Jango Beck immediately.”

“He’s in a very important conference, and he’s left word that he’s not to be disturbed.”

Horst studied her calm, unemotional face. Does she know? Would Beck tell her? Do I have anything further to lose? What is there that isn’t lost already?

Horst reached into his pocket and handed her the envelope with the check and the bill. “More important than this?” he said.

Horst watched her face as she opened the envelope and read the documents. Her mouth opened slightly. Her eyes widened a bit, and when she looked up at him, he thought he saw compassion in them. She understands what this means.

“Follow me, Mr. Horst,” she said softly. “I’ll see what I can do. But I can’t promise you anything.”

“I understand,” Horst said. “Thank you.”

She led him through the glass doors into the inner offices, through a secretarial pool, down a long corridor that ended with a door covered with a black-and-white photograph of Beck grinning like the cat that ate the canary and holding the doorknob in his teeth like the last tail feathers. She stopped in front of the door marked “Conference Room.”

“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll do what lean.” She knocked on the door, opened it without waiting for a reply, slipped inside, and closed it behind her.

What can I do? Horst thought. He’s mousetrapped the board into giving him the power to sign checks. He’s probably got paper covering him every inch of the way. I’ve got nothing on him, and he’s got everything on me. But why? Why is he doing this? What can Beck possibly gain from playing along with Taub? If I knew that—

Sandra Bayne emerged from the conference room. “The Great Man will see you now,” she said. “I wish you luck. You’re going to need it.” Horst started in through the half-open door. She touched him lightly on the arm. “If it means anything to you, Mr. Horst, I think this is about the shittiest thing Jango’s ever done. I hope you make it, I really do.”

“Thank you,” Horst said weakly, and stepped inside.

Jango Beck was seated in a high oaken chair behind the massive oval oak table. There were three record albums in plain white covers on the table and three onyx ashtrays full of marijuana butts and ashes. Three longhairs in patched blue jeans and work shirts were standing up as if caught in the act of leaving. The air was blue with pot smoke.

“...sure you’ve got those security cops taken care of?” one of the long hairs was saying.

“Would I let my own cops bust my own recording crew?”

“With you, who knows, Jango...”

“Who else would pirate his own artists?”

“Yours not to reason why, Chick,” Jango Beck said, snubbing out a marijuana cigarette and noticing Horst officially with a nod of his head.

“Just remember our motto—never fuck a Rubber Duck.”

“How could I forget it, Chick, when I made it up?”

Rubber Duck?
Horst thought. Where do I know that name from? Haven’t I heard it at a board meeting? From Taub? Wasn’t there an outfit called Rubber Duck Records?

The three longhairs filed out of the room past him, not noticing him in a way that made it seem as if they wished he wouldn’t notice them.

“Well, John?” Beck said, pouring himself a large snifterful of brandy from the crystal carafe on the table.

Horst sat down across the table from Beck, separated from him by the shaft of light cast by the Tiffany chandelier, a cone of yellow illumination through which pungent smoke drifted, seeming to give it tangible substance.

“You know why I’m here,” Horst said.

Beck nodded, poured another brandy, slid it across the table at Horst. Reflexively, Horst took it and gulped down half the contents, sending a trail of warmth down his esophagus to his stomach.

“You’re here because you think you’ve been royally screwed,” Beck said.

“And?”

Beck laughed. “And you’re right,” he said. “You can figure it out. Taub wanted
Sunset City
to kill the studio operation with the board so he could push the sell-off through. A three-million-dollar loss should do that nicely, don’t you think?”

“But
why?”
Horst said. “We had a deal. If we stick Taub with the festival expenses, you end up president of Eden Records. Why the double cross? Why do you want to see the studio sold off to a bunch of land speculators? What’s in it for you?”

Beck sipped at his brandy. “I find it touching that you’re still looking out for my welfare,” he said.

Horst gulped down the rest of the brandy, felt a glow spreading from his gut to his extremities, an artificial sense of power, a chemical well-being. It mocked him, yet it gave him a kind of desperate strength. You haven’t pulled this off yet, Beck. Not by a long shot.

“I’m not going to let you get away with this,” he said.

“Aren’t you?” Beck said mildly. His black eyes were laughing at Horst, a cynical, patronizing silent laughter.

“The board can still veto that check,” Horst said. “If they do, you’re personally holding a three-million-dollar bag, aren’t you?”

“Quite true,” Beck said. “Do you think your life is worth three million dollars to me?”

“Don’t try your cheap gangster threats on me, Beck!” Horst snapped. But not without a twinge of fear, for Beck had leaned forward on his elbows and was regarding him with a cold cobra’s eye.

“Not that I think it’s going to be necessary to have you offed, John,” he said. “The board isn’t going to stop payment on the check. Taub and I have enough votes to see to that.”

“Maybe not. It depends on how the bankers vote, doesn’t it?”

“Do you think they’ll vote to eat a three-million-dollar corporate loss?”

“We eat a three-million-dollar loss either way. Don’t you think they’d rather ram it down the throat of the man who stuck the corporation with it?”

“Not when they can sell it for ten cents on the dollar to the Carbo-Williams combine, along with a profitable sell-off of the studio facilities. And then write off another million and a quarter of it again as record album PR.”

“Goddamn it, you’ve thought of everything, haven’t you, Beck?” Horst said, a snarl that ended in a sigh, for he knew that what Beck had said was true. There’s no way out of this. Taub’s won, and Eden Pictures is finished.

“Everything
, John,” Beck said.

“Even your own welfare.” Beck leaned back in his chair, lit a joint, and blew smoke in Horst’s direction. The green walls of the conference room seemed to pulse, an extension of the artery pounding in Horst’s temple, a reminder of what too much tension could do to his heart. But the twinge didn’t bother him this time, for he found himself hanging on Jango Beck’s prolonged silence; the unresolved tension was that of hope.

“I’ll lay out two scenarios, John,” Beck said. “Scenario one. You try to get the board to block the check. You fail because, having been suckered in this far, my way out is EPI’s cheapest way out, because Taub and I have the votes. Still, they’ll be in a mood to shitcan someone because there
will
be a loss, and EPI stock
will go
down. Guess who? Without an Eden Pictures, guess who they’re going to make the fall guy for this deal?”

Beck took a sip of brandy, leaned forward again. “Scenario two,” he said. “You make no waves. You don’t go to the board. You let the check quietly go through. You play along. You do a favor for me, and I do a bigger one for you.”

“Like what?” Horst said.

“First, I buy up all your EPI stock now, at current prices, before the shit hits the fan. Save you a couple hundred thousand.”

“You can’t buy me that cheap, Beck! You can’t destroy my whole life and then—”

Beck held up his hand for silence. Something about the gesture made it commanding. “That’s only a fringe benefit,” he said. “I’ll also take full blame for
Sunset City as
producer. So I’ll never make another film in this town again. So who cares? Now here’s the kicker: when we sell off the studio facilities, we keep Eden Pictures alive as a film financing and distributing company with you as president. And since we’ll be unloading the festival expenses as a tax loss to the Carbo-Williams combine,
Sunset City
will be showing a profit practically from the first dollar of gross for the distributing company. The hand is quicker than the eye, Horst. Or at least quicker than the IRS.”

“Jesus Christ,” Horst whispered. “Jesus Christ.”

He marveled at the elegance of it all. Vile, but elegant. But it
will
save Eden Pictures and my career. It’ll be a much smaller Eden Pictures, but on the other hand, we won’t have to grind out crap for television, I can pick only the projects I want to finance or distribute, do maybe just three or four good films a year. I won’t have the power I had, I won’t have the equity I had, but I’ll survive. And I’ll slow down. Just like the doctor ordered. Who thought I could come out this well when I walked in the door?

“Are you going to be able to get all this past Taub?” he asked, in a tone of voice that made it clear he was accepting the deal.

Beck laughed. “By the time the last hand is played, Mike Taub will be in no position to make waves,” he said.

Horst shook his head. “I believe you,” he said wanly. “But what’s in all this for you? As things stand now you’re buying stock you know will go down, you’re ruining your reputation as a film producer, and all you get out of it is your piece of the movie. I don’t figure you for a philanthropist, Beck.”

Beck downed the rest of his brandy, sucked on his joint. His eyes sparkled through the smoke. “This is only the tip of my iceberg, John,” he said. “These waters run deep. Do we have a deal or don’t we?”

“Do I have to sign it in blood?”

Beck laughed. “That’s what I like about you, John,” he said. “You have a sense of tradition.”

Paul Conrad gobbled a handful of raw almonds and dried apricots, stuck the baggie back into his pocket, and walked back to the set sucking up sugar flash for energy and protein for endurance, knowing that he would need both. Today he had to shoot the final scene of the prefestival interiors, and being a soft-core sex scene between Velva and Rick Gentry, it promised to be the biggest hassle yet.

Velva was sitting behind the lights in front of the motel-room set, leafing through the prop magazine she’d be reading at the beginning of the scene. He had had her costumed in filmy pink pajamas that managed to combine a salacious suggestion of about-to-be-violated innocence with maximum PG exposure of flesh.

Paul came up behind her and touched her on the shoulder. She turned her head to face him, moving liquidly under his touch, which he did not withdraw for long seconds. Automatically, her mouth half opened; her lips seemed to become moist as he watched. She gave him eyes; she was really pouring it on.

“I want you to look real sexy in there for me, Velva,” he said half-teasingly. “I want to see you look turned on.”

“I should get an Oscar if I can look turned on while Rick Ick is touching me.”

“Think of something else,” he said. “Think of something that turns you on.”

“I’ll think of your cock inside me,” she said, running a fingernail up the seam of his fly, sending an uncontrollable surge of lust through the quick of him.

“Velva, you’re incredible,” he said, feeling the truth of it in several flavors—incredibly gross, incredibly corrupt, incredibly naive, incredibly exasperating. And yes, possessed of an incredible animal attraction that he couldn’t help responding to, even though he knew full well that she was turning it on him like the weapon it was. He knew what the scene she was trying to set up was, yet he couldn’t entirely step out of it.

“Cool it,” he said, nodding toward Rick Gentry, who was emerging from his dressing room like the queen of the May. He turned the phrase into an intimacy between them. What it takes to make her look turned on today, he thought, is what I’m going to give her. Two can play the star-director sex-strip game.

Paul backed away from Velva’s chair and intercepted Gentry ten yards from the set.

“I’m ready for today’s ordeal,” Gentry said. “Bring on Little Miss Pussy.”

A flash of anger ripped through Paul, followed by disgust and trepidation. But he was determined to let none of it show. Today is going to be bad enough without letting Gentry goad me into goading him into bitchiness.

“I know you’ll do a professional job, Rick,” he said. “Despite what your personal feelings may be.”

Gentry laughed almost girlishly—and it wasn’t an unconscious faggot mannerism; he deliberately put it on. “Oh, I have my ways of faking enthusiasm for female flesh,” he said. “I simply concentrate on the image of the thing I’d most like to be doing. With the man I’d most like to be doing it with at the time.” He stared directly into Paul’s eyes and parted his lips in a pouting smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know what with whom?”

Paul felt himself blushing, and he picked up on-Gentry’s sly reaction to it. And he didn’t know what to do. “I wouldn’t want you to give away any trade secrets,” he finally said.

“Yes, the trade can get pretty rough these days,” Gentry said. “Not that I mind it.” And the moment passed—or transformed itself into something else.

“All right, Velva, on the set please. Rick, we’ll try a run-through,” Paul called loudly, clapping his hands and double-timing toward the camera position, making his exit through his tyrant-of-the-set persona.

Velva walked onto the motel-room set, lay down on the blue bedspread, propping her back up against a big white pillow. “Good,” Paul said. “Fine. Okay, now we’re going to run through this scene once before we start shooting, let’s get into the feel of it. Okay, Velva, pick up the magazine, Rick, take the bottle and the glasses and hide them behind your back and....”