Runaway Heart (37 page)

     
"I love this record angle, Clark," Susan enthused.
"I think we could be talking cover."

     
"Maybe . . . maybe . . . could be . . . could be. If you can
get Mimi to go for it."

     
Russell smiled broadly, trying to close them. "We just
finished our first week in the studio. Next week we do slap backs. My songs
mostly. I compose my own stuff."

     
"This record producer thing is definitely our angle,"
Susan gushed.

     
They had him.
Just reel the boy in,
Jack thought. So he
looked skeptical and sang the chorus. "Maybe . . . maybe . . . could be .
. . could be."

     
Russell steered them away from the cabana and his
guests, heading
toward his house. Jack guessed he wanted privacy so he could nail down the
cover without interruptions.

     
Chief Ibanazi led them through a patio door into his study, then
locked it behind him.

     
"When my songs come—my inspiration—I always work in here.
Once I'm in the zone my shit slams." He opened a wall cabinet and produced
a sound system and a keyboard.

     
"I see some wide shots in here, Clark," Susan enthused,
framing the room with her hands. "All this equipment. . . Russell at the
piano." She was really getting into it.

     
"It's not a piano, Lois, it's a Yamaha Sound Machine,"
Russell corrected her. "I design sounds by sampling everything from
automobile horns to bagpipes."

     
"Mimi's gonna flip, Clark. This could be perfect for the
cover story on the 'L.A. Sounds' edition," Susan said.

     
"Maybe . . . maybe . . . could be . . . could be."

     
Russell was drooling. The cover of the "L.A. Sounds"
edition. Does it get any better than that?

     
"Look, Russell. . ." Jack started.

     
"I go by Izzy." Off their puzzled looks, "Short for
Ibanazi."

     
"Right. Very cool," Jack continued. "So Izzy, if
we're going for the 'Sounds' cover, Mimi is gonna demand all her usual cover
profile and background stuff. She's a stickler for facts. If we bring this to
Mimi we gotta really sell it. A take-no-prisoners approach always works best
with her. You with me?"

     
"Right. Of course."

     
"So I'm gonna need the whole soufflé—why you're living in
Beverly Hills and not out on the res. I need the old mystic music from the
native soul rap. See where I'm heading, Lois?"

     
"It's fantastic," Susan said.

     
Izzy's face actually fell. "Do we really need all that? The
reservation stuff, I mean. It's so. . .
Dances With Wolves."

     
"Oh no, Izzy, you misunderstand," Susan jumped in.
"It's not for the magazine. We don't want the reservation material in the
body of the story.
213,
as you know, is very high-profile. A Beverly
Hills society magazine. But Mimi absolutely demands full backgrounds on all
cover subjects."

     
They watched his handsome face scrunch up again, like a squirrel
trying to crack a walnut. The last thing Izzy wanted was a
213
cover
shot of him with a peace pipe sitting in front of a rusting trailer on an
Indian blanket. He saw himself in an Armani jacket and Gucci shoes, maybe some
cool leather pants.

     
" 'Course, if you'd rather not. . ." Jack stood and put
his pen away.

     
Izzy actually lunged across the desk and caught Jack's arm.
"No, no. It's okay. No problem. If it's just for Mimi, what's it gonna
hurt?"

     
"Exactly," Jack nodded. He had his spiral pad and pen
back out in a flash, and licked the end of the ballpoint for effect, leaving a
little streak of ink on his tongue. "You're the current chief of the
Ten-Eyck tribe?" Jack asked.

     
"Yes. Ibanazis have been chiefs going back two hundred
years."

     
"Mimi'll probably want to know exactly where the reservation
is located," Susan prompted.

     
"It's way out past Indio," Russell said, and now he was
wrinkling his nose, as if he could almost smell it all the way from Bel Air.
"But it's nothing," he added quickly, "just seventeen hundred
acres of old truck tires, cactus, and jackrabbits. It's worthless land."

     
"I see. Okay," Jack looked at Susan, then back at Izzy.
"If it's so poor, how do you afford all this?"

     
"Oh . . . now I see where you're heading."

     
Jack was glad Izzy got it, because he wasn't sure he did.

     
"I lease the reservation out," Izzy continued. "I
mean, the tribe leases it to the federal government."

     
"You do?" Jack looked at Susan, who smiled.

     
"Yeah. It's a great deal, too," Izzy went on. "Each
month the government pays us about two thousand dollars an acre
on seventeen
hundred acres. There're only thirty-two members in our tribe, so once we cut it
up, the annual take comes to over a million dollars apiece. My end, for
instance, covers the payments on this place, living expenses, and my monthly
recording studio fees. In return, we had to vote in a non-Indian administrator
that the government chose for us. He just deals with the day-to-day running of
the reservation. We moved out. Now most of us live around here or on the far
West Side."

     
"Who's the administrator?" Jack asked, guessing it was
Paul Nichols's brother or cousin.

     
"Scott Nichols," Izzy replied, confirming Jack's suspicion.
"But, like I told you, it's just a pile of rocks and gopher holes.
Seventeen hundred acres of nothing. Your magazine wouldn't care about it.
Dingy, y'know . . . few old buildings an' shit."

     
"Right. . . right." Jack sounded disappointed. He made a
few notes and furrowed his brow theatrically, like this story was about to get
up off his notebook, stagger around the room, then fall over dead with a spike
through its heart.

     
"Something wrong?" Izzy leaned forward anxiously.

     
"Well. . . I just. . ." He let it hang there.

     
"What? You just what?" Izzy was actually wringing his
hands now.

     
"Well, I was wondering why the federal government would pay
the Ten-Eyck tribe almost forty million a year for seventeen hundred acres of
cactus and gopher holes. Doesn't seem to make sense."

     
"Oh," Izzy actually sighed in relief. "I can tell
you that. That's easy: EPA standards."

     
"EPA standards?" Susan and Jack did that one together.
Pretty good harmony, too. Maybe Izzy would give them a recording contract.

     
"Yeah. See, Indian land isn't subject to the same state and
federal laws that the rest of the country is. Each tribe in the U.S. is like an
independent nation, and we can make our own laws. The federal government has
big toxic waste dumping problems for both nuclear and chemical gook. They don't
have enough
EPA-sanctioned sites to handle it all, so they started renting a few remote
reservations where they could dump it cheap, without all the EPA hassles. It's
a good deal for them
and
for us. Right after we signed the lease they
started to dig a huge waste pit. Started even before we left. A hole to pump
all that toxic shit into. On the res there's no EPA inspection, so the feds
don't have to worry about tests to check for pollution of the groundwater.
Nothing. As long as the Tribal Council votes an okay, then it's done."

     
"Which you obviously did," Jack said.

     
"You bet."

     
"So that's how you end up living like this," Jack
motioned toward the garden and smiled. "Pretty cool."

     
"Right." Then Izzy wrinkled his handsome brow as it
finally occurred to him that maybe he was telling too much. "But please
keep this confidential. I mean, all the EPA stuff and everything. That gets
out, it's really gonna cause problems. This has to be just between us."

     
"Right, us and Mimi," Jack nodded.

     
"For background," Izzy repeated.

     
"Don't worry," Susan chipped in.
"213
does
stories about celebrities, Marvin and Barbara Davis fundraisers, stuff like
that. Nobody on our staff wants to write about a dumb old toxic hole in the
ground."

     
Izzy looked relieved. "Thank God." Then his smile lit
him up. He really was a great-looking guy. "You guys wanna hear some of my
new sides?"

     
"God, wouldn't that be a gas," Susan said, shooting a
do-we-have-to look at Jack.

     
They had to.

     
Izzy's music was hard to describe. He had the Yamaha Sound Machine
on gargle mode, or maybe it was on cats fighting. It lingered between muffled
screeches and something that resembled a four-car traffic accident. The rhythm
section sounded like drunks pounding ash can lids with hammers.

     
People outside were banging on the door, adding to the
racket, but Izzy
was in the zone, lost in his tunes. Somebody out there was shouting about there
being some kind of problem with the catering, but Izzy didn't care. He was
slamming.

     
An hour later Jack and Susan managed to shake away, but before
they left, Izzy gave them both business cards.

     
Sure enough—Miracle Records.

     
Jack shook his head and frowned as he looked at the card.
"How 'bout Orgasm Music? If it's good music, it's an orgasm."

     
Izzy smiled. "God . . . I
love
it. If you don't mind,
maybe I'll use it."

     
"My gift."

     
As Jack and Susan headed toward the front door, she smiled at him.
"Clark Lane and Lois Kent?"

     
"Just trying to keep things interesting," Jack said.
Then they turned a corner and ran into two uniformed cops who had just arrived
and were asking who owned the green XKE parked up the street. Jack grabbed
Susan's arm and diverted her up the hall. "Shit. When I was on the job a
car theft hardly ever got solved."

     
"Maybe it's because they weren't out looking for a pissed-off
D.A.'s classic Jag," Susan observed.

     
When they reached the end of the hall, Jack smiled at the
coat-check girl. "She had the red fox with the snakeskin collar and
cuffs," Jack said, adding, "I lost her ticket."

     
"The what?" the coat-check person said, wrinkling her
nose at the description.

     
Susan smiled and nodded. She didn't know what the hell he was
doing, but she was playing along as instructed.

     
"I don't think I saw anything like that," the girl
hedged.

     
"Can I look?" Jack asked. "It's got her initials in
it."

     
"I guess."

     
She led Jack into the coatroom and watched him like a prison guard
while he went through half a dozen coats. He found what he was looking for in
the side pocket of a nicely tailored gray gabardine.

     
A blue valet parking stub.

     
He deftly switched tickets.

     
"I don't see it. . . maybe it's in the hall closet," he
hedged, then pulled Susan out of there.

     
They sauntered past the cops, down to the driveway. Jack handed
the new blue claim check to one of the snooty red-jacketed valets, who sprinted
off to get the car.

     
"I can hardly wait to see what we'll get this time,"
Jack said.

     
"If it wasn't a class-A felony, it would be more fun,"
Susan complained.

     
A beautiful, royal blue Rolls Royce Corniche convertible with a
champagne interior rolled down the hill and stopped. The valet opened the door
and looked at them with appreciation. Jack got behind the wheel, handing the
guy a folded-up one-dollar bill, then pulled away fast before he could unroll
the bill and throw an orange or something.

     
Susan began digging in the glove box for the registration.
"Ever heard of anybody named James K. Hahn?" she asked.

     
"You're shitting me? Our luck can't be that bad. This is
Mayor Hahn's car?"