Self-Defense (39 page)

“I’ve only been here a couple of weeks....
He’s in a meeting.”

“At least ask him,” I said. “Sanctum. Buck
Lowell, Terry Trafficant, Denton Mellors.”

She agonized, then punched two numbers on
a see-through Lucite phone.

“It’s some producer. About Santa and
Dylan— uh—Miller.... I’m... What?... Oh, okay, sorry.”

She put the phone down, looked at it,
blinked hard.

“He’s in a meeting.”

“No problem, I can wait.”

“I don’t think he wants to see you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he was pretty bent about being
interrupted.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. The meeting must be
with somebody important.”

“No, he’s all by—” She touched her mouth.
Frowned. “Yeah, it’s important.”

“Is a big star in there with him?”

She went back to her cuticles.

To her left was a hall. I strode past her
desk and went for it.

“Hey!” she said, but she didn’t come after
me. Just as I rounded the corner, I heard buttons being punched.

I passed gray wool doors and movie posters
depicting gun-toting huge-busted women of the receptionist’s age, and
leathered, four-day-bearded, male-model types pretending to be bikers and
soldiers of fortune. The films had names like
Sacrifice Alley
and
Hot
Blood, Hot Pants,
and several had recent release dates.

The drive-in circuit or instant video.

At the end of the hall was a big tooled
brass door, wide open. Standing in the doorway was App.

He was around sixty, five-six, maybe a
hundred and twenty. His Caesar cut had been reduced to a few white wisps
tickling a deep tan forehead. He wore a custard-colored cashmere cardigan over
a lemon-yellow knit shirt, knife edge-pressed black slacks, and brown crocodile
loafers.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he said, in a
calm big-man’s voice, “or I’ll have your fucking ass
thrown
out.”

I stopped.

He said, “Turn yourself the fuck
around.
”

“Mr. App—”

He cut the air with both hands, like an
umpire calling a runner safe. “I’ve already called Security, you fucking jerk.
Reverse yourself, and you just might avoid getting arrested and your fucking
paper sued from here to kingdom come.”

“I’m not with any paper,” I said. “I’m a
freelancer writing a biography of Buck Lowell.”

I put a card in his face. He snatched it
and held it at arm’s length, then gave it back to me.

“So?”

“Your name came up in my research, Mr.
App. I’d just like a few minutes of your time.”

“You think you can pop in here like some
fucking salesman?”

“If I’d called would I have been able to
get an appointment?”

“Hell, no. And you’re not getting one
now.” He pointed to the door.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll just write it up the
way I see it. Your optioning
Command: Shed the Light.
Bankrolling Sanctum only to see it
collapse a year later.”

“That’s business,” he said. “Ups and
downs.”

“Pretty big down,” I said. “Especially on
Lowell’s part. He took your money and funded guys like Terry Trafficant and
Denton Mellors.”

“Denny Mellors.” He laughed without
opening his mouth. “She said something about Santa Claus and Dylan Miller. You
know who Dylan Miller is?”

I shook my head.

“Grand prize asshole—and that asswipe rag
he works for. Every other week we’ve got droves of assholes just like him,
fucking paparazzi creeping around the building like roaches, looking for stars.
The other day Julia Roberts was on the twelfth floor for a meeting and they
were sweeping the bastards out with brooms. There’s no end to it.”

“Maybe you need better security,” I said.

He stared at me. This time his laughter
came with a flash of capped teeth.

Pulling up the left cuff of his cardigan,
he peered at a watch so thin it looked like a platinum tattoo.

I heard footsteps behind me. App looked
over my shoulder, then leaned against the doorframe.

Turning, I saw a big, heavy Samoan
security guard. The name on his tag was long and unpronounceable.

“Some kind of problem, Mr. App?” he said
in a tuba voice that made App’s sound prepubescent.

App moved his eyes back to me and studied
my face the way a casting director would. Smiling, he put a hand on my
shoulder. “No, Mr.—Del Rey and I were just having a little chat.”

“Delondra called down.”

“A misunderstanding. We’re going to take a
meeting, Clem. Sorry to bother you.”

I smiled at the guard. He sucked his teeth
and left.

App called out, “Delondra!”

The receptionist came over, taking Geisha
steps in her skin-tight jeans.

“What, Mr. App?”

App reached into his pocket and drew out a
wad of bills clamped by a sterling silver monkey paw. Peeling off five, he held
them out to the girl. Hundreds.

“Thanks, Mr. App, what’s this for?”

“Severance pay. You no longer work here.”

Her mouth opened. A small smooth hand
closed around the bills.

App turned his back on her and said, “Come
on in—was it Sandy? Let’s hear what’s on your mind. Maybe we can conceptualize
it for film.”

Two walls of his office were windows; the
other two, bleached maple burl. The windows showed off L.A. County the way a
hawk would see it just before it swooped. The wood showcased a Warhol
silkscreen of a smiling Marilyn Monroe and transparent plastic shelves full of
bound scripts. Some of the screenplays had titles hand-lettered on their
spines, others were blank.

App took a seat behind a blue, triangular
marble desk, with nothing on it but a blue marble phone, and offered me the
only other chair in the room, an unupholstered, black, straight-backed thing.
At his feet was a large marble wastebasket full of more scripts.

“So,” he said. “What else have you done
besides this book?”

“Journalism.” I threw out the names of a
few magazines, betting he didn’t read much.

“What made you want to write about Buck?”

“Fall from grace. The whole notion of
genius gone bad.”

“No kidding. Giving him money wasn’t one
of the brighter things I’ve done. You can write that.”

“What led you to option poetry?”

“Soft heart,” he said. “Everything was
collapsing around the bastard.” He touched his chest. “Got a soft spot for
creative types.”

“Same reason you financed Sanctum?”

“Yeah. Helping young artists. What could
be more fucking important, right?—don’t put “fucking’ in—hey, aren’t you going
to take notes?”

“Didn’t bring anything,” I said. “I
figured I’d have enough trouble getting through the door without a tape
recorder and a notepad.”

“See?” More capped teeth. “Never know. You
caught me on a good day. I’m Mother Fucking Teresa.”

There must have been a drawer in the
marble desk, because he pulled a piece of paper out of it and waved it at me.

New Times stationery.

“Here,” he said, retrieving a bound script
from the wastebasket. “Write on this. Do I need to give you a fucking pen,
too?”

I pulled out a ballpoint.

“Five minutes,” he said. “All you can eat
during that time, and then vamoose.” Putting his arms behind his head, he sat
back.

“So you liked the concept of Sanctum,” I
said. “What about Lowell’s choice of fellows?”

“Terry? Terry was a talented guy,
actually. Personal problems, but who doesn’t.”

“So you never saw him act violent.”

“Not to me. He used to put on this Mr.
Macho thing, walking around without a shirt, all these tattoos of naked girls.
But he had talent.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“Hell if I know. Idiot had all sorts of
good stuff coming to him. I coulda had deals for him, and he just split.”

“Do you think Lowell knows where he went?”

“I always figured he did, but he never
admitted it. That was the final straw between us. After all I did for the
bastard, I figured I had some honesty coming. You meet him yet?”

“Just briefly.”

“Sick, isn’t it? Guy’s rolling in money
and he lives like a pig.”

“If he’s rich, how come he needed to come
to you for financing?”

He slid his arms from behind his head and
placed them on the desk. “Because I was a jackass. Didn’t know he was rich,
never checked him out. And I used to be a fucking financial analyst, no
excuse.” Tapping the marble. “Hey, that’s showbiz.”

Another glance at the platinum watch.

I said, “So you have no idea about what
happened to Trafficant?”

“No, but if you find out, let me know.
Asshole owes me a script.” Shaking his head. “Stupid mudfuck. He coulda made a
living. Great ear for dialogue, he knew how to conceptualize in terms of
scenes. Now, Denny Mellors was another story—wooden ear, thought he was some
fucking Ivy League
literati-
type. And no fucking boy scout, either. He never got
the bad PR Terry got, but he was antisocial from day one, nasty temper. Not
that I have anything against black people—not that he was even that black. I
think his mother was white, or something. He talked like a white. But the guy...”

Waving disgustedly, he put his feet up on
the desk. The soles of his shoes were shiny black, unmarked.

“What did he do?” I said.

He looked out the window. The San Gabriel
Mountains were capped with brown air. “You know, my friend, talking to you is
giving me ideas. Any film interest in your book yet?”

“Some.”

“You have any experience in film?”

“Not really.”

“Then don’t jump into anything. People are
going to tell you they can do all sorts of things for you; meanwhile they’ve
got a thumb in the Vaseline, ready to yank down your jockeys. I’ve been in the
industry for twenty years, can get things done. And this book of yours is
flashing concept lights. Like you said, fall from grace. And did you know the
place used to be a nudist colony? How’s that for a premise? Writers and artists
and
nudists.
They get thrown together and shit happens.”

“Violent shit?” I said.

“All kinds of shit. You’d have to change
things around, of course. For legal purposes. Maybe make Lowell a musician—a
cellist. Yeah, I like that. It’s a music retreat—nudists and musicians, rock
types and classical types, all thrown together—seductive, right?”

“Interesting. So who’s the bad guy,
Mellors? That’s not too PC.”

“So we make him white—he was mostly white
anyway. Blond hair, little yellow mustache. Big, strong buck... nasty.”

“Nasty how?”

“Nasty temper. Talked all the time about
hurting things—hurting women. I’m not saying he actually did anything, but you
talk like that long enough, who knows?”

“See what you mean,” I said. “I’ve read
about the grand opening party for Sanctum. Sounds like a wild affair—a love-in.
That might be a good place for the shit to happen.”

He looked up at the ceiling. Cheap
acoustical tiles. “Maybe, yeah. Like a Felliniesque thing.
Dolce Vita
with acid, pot—kind of a sixties/seventies thing. That’s coming back, you
know.”

“Were you at the party?”

“In the beginning,” he said. “Then it got
too loud, and my wife made me take her home.”

“Did you see Mellors or Trafficant?”

“Nah,” he said. “Too many people, noise,
mess, all sorts of shit. One of those situations where you see everyone but you
don’t see anyone, know what I mean?”

“La Dolce Vita
meets
The
Trip.”

“Exactly.” He moved his eyes from the
ceiling to me. “You know how to conceptualize. Have an agent?”

“Still looking for one.”

“You got a book deal without one?”

“Contacts from journalism.”

“Who’s your editor?”

I made up a name.

He nodded. “Well, get yourself an agent or
talk to me directly, and we just might work something out. Let’s say an
eighteen-month option with first rights to renew.”

“What kind of option money are we talking
about?”

“Hey,” he said, grinning. “Maybe you
don’t
need an agent. What kind of money? The usual. Assuming we get a
network interested. But I’ve got to have everything tied up before I go to
them. Nowadays, they’re more cautious than a virgin on horseback—you weren’t
thinking big screen, were you?”