Wag the Dog (47 page)

“You have two men watching Brody's apartment. Is Brody in the apartment? By the way, how much does Brody know? How long has this been going on? Is this their first meeting? Come on, man, get with it.”

“Yes, sir. We saw Brody enter the apartment building. He has not come out. I spoke with my surveillance people not long ago. Twenty or thirty minutes. I don't know how much he knows. It's hard to say because I don't know enough to judge. That's not a complaint. That's a fact. It seems pretty clear that they have had one contact. Brody called Broz, asked for a job
interview. Broz said sure, come on over. If you don't mind my saying so, if Broz is fishing for something, why not let him get it, catch him with it, and then deal with both of them.”

“And suppose Broz communicates with someone else in the meantime. Like Maggie. And she calls her girlfriends. Or her press agent. The risk grows geometrically. The disturbance grows in widening ripples. Keep it smooth. Keep it from happening. Anticipate and find the position that prevents. Those are your orders.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Taylor said. “Excuse me, I have to ask you to hold for a moment—”

“You what!” Hartman cried. Nobody put Hartman on hold. Hartman put others on hold. Who was this twit?

This twit had a big problem. It was C. H. Bunker on the other line, the one person in the world whose calls he had to take, even over the most powerful man in Hollywood. But he wasn't happy about it.

Bunker's call had come through on the scrambled line. “Taylor,” Bunker said in those rolling, enunciated, interminably slow tones. “Tay-lor, my boy, this dogwatch of yours, has lay-ers u-pon lay-ers. Di-men-sions of which you dream not . . . Umm . . . Umm . . . You may . . . You may, if ne-cess-i-ty pro-vokes, let slip the dogs of war. Do I make myself clear, Tay-lor.”

“Yes, sir, you do.”

“Cry Ha-voc-k.”

Bunker hung up. Taylor said, “Jesus fucking Christ.” He wasn't quite sure if he believed what he'd heard, or believed what it meant, 007 shit—he'd just been given a License to Kill. Inside the United States. Not in Nicaragua or Chile, using natives to do the actual hits, most of the time. Not in Asia. But here, among—what else to call them—white people. Over Hollywood shit? Not that he minded. But what the fuck was going on?

As soon as he hung up, another phone line was ringing and the intercom was flashing. “What the fuck is it, Bambi?”

A bit put off by the obscenity, she said, “Mr. Hartman is calling back.”

“Did you cut him off?”

“No, sir. I think he hung up on you.”

Taylor grabbed the line. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Where were we, sir?”

“Are you sure he's in that apartment?”

“I'll check, sir. Right away.”

“Do you know how to do that?”

“Yes. We know how to do that.”

“You fuck this up and you're fired. You'll never work in this town again. I can see to it that you never work in this world again. Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, sir, I think so,” Taylor said. When the phone slammed down in his ears, he couldn't help himself, the words just hopped off his tongue, like popcorn exploding in the heat: “You're another Hollywood asshole, sir.” Nonetheless, he did the obvious thing. He picked up the phone and called Teddy Brody. It was a pretty fair assumption that if he was home, he would answer.

The phone rang and rang and rang. Taylor prayed that Brody was grabbing a shower and a shave, taking a shit, cleaning out the old bowels. Things to do before a job interview, yes, sir! It rang and rang and rang, Taylor's heart sinking.

Then, an answer: “Hi, there. Teddy Brody here.”

Taylor sighed with deep, deep relief and started to hang up the phone. But reflex inside the reflex made him stop. He lifted it back to his ear and heard “. . . leave a message at the sound of the tone. Thanks. I'll get right back to you.”

Teddy's printer had acted up. It was not as if he had left things for the last minute. He hadn't. He had printed up his material the evening before. Everything appeared to be going along just perfectly.

Then, in the morning, right after a shower and shave, he went to sort the material and put it in binders. He was bringing damn near everything with him to Joe Broz: his résumé, his essay and notes on war films—he figured he was one of the world's leading experts on war films and war footage by now—his propaganda one-pager, his letters of recommendation, his film treatment, and a special rewrite of the treatment so that it had a starring role for Magdalena Lazlo. He'd spent the last week tweaking and polishing that, getting it down to three neat pages. In fact, he'd only finished it the day before and that was the reason
he got to the printing so late. It should have been time enough, but when he sorted the pages, he saw that everything after the third page had a meandering blank spot, a wandering failure to print, that made its way from the top of each page to the bottom.

He didn't panic. Yet. He replaced the ink cartridge. He fired up the computer. Opened up a file, gave the print command—just one page. A test. He watched the paper roll silently out of the $1,289.95 laser printer. Whatever each of those many, many dollars represented, in hardware, software, manufacturing care, and engineering effort, the bottom line was that they failed him now, when he needed them the most. The problem remained, a crooked white sneer, right through his thoughtful, effort-laden Yale- and UCLA-trained words. He was, as the poet cries, in deep shit.

He reached for the Yellow Pages and tried not to weep at his watch. It was just possible that he could find a commercial printer that could print from his discs. If they were close and could take him immediately and their printer didn't break down. Then he remembered that Sam, of the hot body and broken date, who lived a few blocks away, had said that he had some kind of computer and a printer. Maybe, if Sam was home and he had a Mac—Teddy prayed for compatibility—and a printer . . . Teddy called. Yes. Sam was home. Sam would be delighted if Teddy wanted to use his computer. Now. Anytime. It was an LC II with an HP Laser Jet, not a new one, but still, what more could a boy want?

He grabbed his box of backup discs and the binders and everything and put them into his backpack. By going out the back way, the service entrance where the trash was taken out, past the Dumpsters, Teddy was a block closer to Sam. So, completely unaware that two heavies were watching his front door, he slipped out the back.

Surveillance is rarely flawless and Newton's First Law of Motion, also called the Law of Inertia, which states an object in motion tends to stay in motion, would seem to imply that an operation that starts fucked-up tends to stay fucked-up.

 

 

 

¹⁰⁰
Bush was famous for knowing everyone in politics—every county chairman, all the contributors. It was considered one of his greatest strengths. Until he blew it—then it was considered a weakness as compared to, for example, Reagan's vision and principles.

S
AM FOUND HIMSELF
falling in love with Teddy. He just didn't know how to tell him that. Well, he thought, maybe he had a way. But it wasn't ready quite yet. It would be ready soon. But even if he did tell him, how would Teddy respond? Sam thought of himself as a bit of a bimbo, a dumb blond, dim but pretty. It was lack of self-esteem, he knew that, a real problem in California. There had even been a state commission to study it. It was one of those weird things that seemed to run a thread through all of life. He knew dumb, ugly people with big esteems, and they had just success upon success. Lovers that they weren't good-looking enough to get, great jobs that made lots of money even when they couldn't read their way through the morning paper. He wished he could self-esteem more. But esteem didn't seem to be that easy to control. Maybe it wasn't what it appeared to be. Maybe lack of self-esteem was like a vitamin deficiency. Or a disease, like they'd discovered alcoholism is. It could be a disease—hell, everyone knew that you felt more self-esteem when you took drugs. If drugs could fix it, it was a disease, that was practically a definition.

The thing about Teddy was that Teddy was smart. With all that education. All those books. At the health club, on the exercise bike, in the sauna, he was always reading stuff. Sam knew he should read more, but what? What should he read?
Premiere? Blueboy? Cosmopolitan? The New Yorker?
He tried to read all of the
Los Angeles Sunday Times.
It came out once a
week and it took him a week to read it. Really two weeks. So he always got behind and really, it was from a
different planet.
He meant it, the people who wrote it were from a
totally different planet.
The question was, where was that planet and how come he, Sam, had never been there? He liked
Spin.
And
E. C. Rocker,
which were hard to find here in LaLaLa.

Here was Teddy with that box of discs, just turning on the computer, figuring out what was what without asking any questions even. Just looking at it and knowing. Which was a good thing because if he'd asked, Sam couldn't have answered. The computer, printer, the whole setup had been, like, you know, a gift of friendschtup. He didn't want to explain
that,
not to Teddy. And truly, bimbo or dim or not, Sam was not that way. That was not a
thing
with him. Sometimes, in his life, it happened. What does one do? Say “No Gifts Please, it will ruin me for marriage?” Anyway, he wasn't a slut and he wasn't a queen, he wasn't a fag and he wasn't a pansy, he was just a regular guy who liked guys, and what was wrong with that? It sure wasn't easy.

He asked Teddy if he drank coffee. Teddy said yes, so he ground some beans—nothing fancy or prissy—just 100 percent Colombian, medium roast. They both took it with milk, no sugar. Something in common.

By then the printer was running. Teddy was checking it page by page and collating it into those great little binders he had.

Sam wanted to say, “Call me and tell me how the interview went and come on over after work, no matter how late it is.”

Teddy was relieved and grateful. Sam had been willing to go out with him but hadn't seemed wild about it. Or disappointed when he canceled. Actually, Sam was so good-looking, such a great body, that it was—not intimidating, it just made Teddy sure that Sam was not his type. Too good-looking. With guys always after him. Rich, powerful, in-the-biz-type guys. Sure to be making the scene—scenes—and that was too much stress for Teddy to deal with. Not what he wanted. Not at all. Maybe there was some way that he and Sam could be—friends. Just a friend. Was anybody in this fucking town, in this business, just a friend? In this life? Maybe, if he got things going
with this Broz guy, or somewhere else, where he got a shot at making his film, and made films and became a person of stature and substance, then maybe a thing with a guy like Sam would work out.

The Law of Inertia, which is different from Murphy's Law—it's more specific and directional—continued in effect. Otis and Perkins's car phone was out of order.

The only saving grace was that they knew it. So they had instructions to call in as soon as possible if the subject started to move, or on the hour, so as not to be totally out of touch. According to their last call, thirty, now almost forty minutes ago, Brody was in the apartment. But now he wasn't. There were two possibilities: the kid had left and Otis and Perkins were following him, or the kid had left and Otis and Perkins had missed him. And there was no way for Taylor to know which it was for at least—he looked at his watch and it hadn't moved, how could it not move, his anxiety was moving forward full throttle, why was time on a freeze?—twenty minutes. While the client sat and waited for Taylor to get back to him
right away.
Even if nothing was wrong, every minute that Hartman had to wait—with his anxiety engaged to the gears that churned his stomach acids—would be held against Taylor. Hartman was that kind of guy. He not only wanted the right answer, he wanted the right answer right away.

In the minutes that ticked so tediously away, Taylor became more and more certain that Brody had slipped away from his minders. The dumb fucks had let the subject get past them. What were they doing? The crossword puzzle? Taking lunch at Le Dome? Slurping each other's schlongs? What the hell had they been doing? And Taylor couldn't pick up the phone and scream at them. He had to wait for them to call in to find out how they'd screwed up.