Loser's Town Read online

  Potts sat down at the small galley table. Deaf, disoriented, plagued by the hellish raging of the drug. The sides of his face throbbed, while the sheer weight of how ugly things were came to rest on him. It was as fucked as fucked could be. Everything. All of it. His entire life. Forever.

  He struggled to think of some way to recover, but he knew it didn’t exist.

  The plan had been this: they show up and break the guy’s legs, mess up his face. Nobody touches the girl, the bitch gets to watch, but nobody touches her. At the end of it she calls the ambulance or whatever, but nobody is going to be able to pin this on Richie and nobody is going to the cops anyway, it’s just more trouble. A valuable lesson in morality learned. Potts and Squiers are long gone, and Potts has enough money in his pocket to start his life, a real life, with Ingrid and his kid. End of story. Well, okay, it is a shitty little story. But life is full of shitty little stories and we do what we can, the best we can. Here we have Potts doing his best, making lemonade from lemons.

  Or not.

  Now we have a murder on our hands. Oh yes, it’s murder. A life lost in the commission of a violent felony. Screw self-defense, Potts is going to spend the rest of his life in jail.

  Potts thought. Or tried to think.

  Potts had killed Squiers. Now we have this large dead body. All this now goes to the cops. They are going to question the man and the girl, who will tell them everything, all about Richie, all of it. They are going to identify Squiers and tie him to Potts. They are going to find Potts and lock him up for a very long time if Richie does not find him and kill him first.

  None of this is pretty.

  Potts knows what he has to do. He does not want to do it. How soon can they tie Potts to Squiers? How much time does Potts have? Can they prove Potts was in on this when they do? Oh yes. The man and the girl, they’ll talk about Potts. They’ll paint a lovely picture.

  Witnesses, thought Potts, and the drug seemed to echo it.

  Potts got up and went into the head. He tore off some toilet tissue and dampened it and stuffed it in his ears. He went back into the cabin and went over to the girl. ‘Everything is fucked,’ Potts said but he couldn’t hear it and neither could she, then he shot her. He went over to Squiers and shot him in the head for good measure, then removed anything in his pockets that could ID him. This would at least slow things down. Potts went over to the man on the bed, the bastard who’d caused all this trouble, the guy who’d ruined Potts’ life. As he stared down at Terry, Terry’s eyes flickered and opened and for a few moments the two men gazed at each other like lovers. Terry saw the gun in his hand and knew what was about to happen. Potts raised the gun and Terry closed his eyes and thought about Allison, wondered if she’d be fine, prayed to God she’d be fine, and never heard the gun go off.

  Potts came out on deck and nearly slipped, looked down to see the blood he’d tracked everywhere. He sat down and took off his shoes and threw them as far out as he could into the water. He looked at the gun and threw that too, far out into the sea. Potts sat there trying to remember if he’d covered everything, left prints, made mistakes. Fuck yes, everywhere. And that smelly old bastard on the dock, he’ll make me. What do I do, fucking row back and whack him too? Short of building an atom bomb and nuking the whole of Ventura, Potts couldn’t think of a decent alternative. Just run. Just run and don’t look back, you miserable unlucky fuck. At best I’ve bought a little time.

  Potts climbed into the skiff, and started the motor, which no longer bothered him since he could not hear it. And anyway, he had other problems.

  Twenty-One

  Bobby stood in front of a mirror, half-dressed in a gray Versace suit, trying to button up his pants. Spandau was sitting in a chair, reading a fashion magazine. Bobby was fumbling angrily with the buttons and finally one came off in his hand.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck me, fuck me . . .’

  Ginger came in with a collection of neckties. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘A fucking five-thousand-dollar suit and the fucking button comes off.’

  ‘I’ll sew it back on.’

  ‘Fucking piece of shit. I’m wearing something else.’

  ‘You promised them you’d wear it. They had the whole thing tailored for you. You have to wear it.’

  ‘I don’t have to do shit.’ He began to take off the suit.

  ‘You’re just going to tear something else,’ Ginger warned him.

  ‘Give me a pair of scissors. I’ll send it back to them in a grocery bag. Fucking wop confetti.’

  ‘Just calm down,’ said Ginger. ‘What else would you wear?’

  ‘I have a fucking closet full of clothes.’

  ‘You want to piss off Versace,’ said Ginger, ‘then be my guest. But good luck getting anything else from them.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Hold still while I sew it on. And be still, unless you want me to stitch your Little Soldier to the fly.’

  ‘Is it always like this?’ Spandau asked.

  ‘Always,’ said Ginger.

  ‘I hate these things,’ said Bobby. ‘Man, you don’t know. You watch this shit on television, it looks simple. You just get out of the car, wave, walk in. It’s not like that. You fucking don’t know where you are. The flashbulbs, and everybody yelling. It scares the shit out of me.’

  ‘Jurado says the security is good,’ said Spandau.

  ‘Where the fuck is Irina?’ asked Bobby.

  ‘She called and said she’s on her way,’ Ginger said.

  ‘What’s she wearing? Is she okay?’

  ‘I told her you were wearing Versace. She knows what to wear. She’s a supermodel, for chrissake.’

  Bobby, Spandau, Irina and Annie stood out in front of Bobby’s house in front of a pair of limos. Janine, Jurado’s publicist, gave directions.

  ‘Bobby and Irina in the first limo. They pull up, get out, walk almost to the doors. Then, Annie, you and David are in the second limo. You follow behind. I’ll already be there.’

  ‘I guess you’re my date,’ Spandau said to Annie.

  ‘I am so fucking thrilled,’ Annie said to him.

  ‘You start to swoon,’ said Spandau, ‘just grab my muscular arm.’ Annie sucked at her teeth with a hissing sound.

  Crusoe was going to be a huge hit. Tonight was the official Hollywood premiere, and in the next weeks it would open in Europe, then be released in Latin America and Asia. The critics had already had their screenings, their verdicts were locked in and assured. The ones who could be bought or cajoled were taken care of. The ones who couldn’t never got to a screening in the first place, and by the time their reviews came out it would make no difference. Crusoe was going to be a huge. The Powers That Be had spoken. This is the way the industry worked.

  Like everything else about the film, the premiere had been hyped for months, so there was no surprise at the turnout. People lined both side of the street for half a block, with a screaming, roiling mass surrounding the entrance to the theatre. Guards and a tight cordon kept fans off the street and away from the cars as they approached. The cordon stretched up into the theatre itself, on either side of the red carpet leading from the street. Bobby’s limo pulled up and when the door opened the crowd went wild. Spandau watched from the second limo. Bobby and Irina poured out and stepped forward, stopped, allowed themselves to be photographed, stepped forward, allowed themselves to be interviewed briefly, stepped forward again. Meanwhile Spandau and Annie’s car moved forward and spat them with little fanfare onto the red carpet. They shuffled forward quickly, told by the driver that Jurado’s car was just behind and they needed to free the way. They caught up with Bobby and Irina three-quarters of the way down the carpet. Bobby had a TV camera aimed at him and Bev Metcalf shoved a microphone in his face. The fans screamed and flashbursts went off and the high-standing lights were bad enough anyway. The crowd itself was one encompassing, roaring blur. You couldn’t see faces, couldn’t see what people were doing. You felt helpless, naked, vulnerable.
Whatever animal instincts you’d been given for survival were useless. You were blind and in the open and surrounded. You hoped like hell the security people were good, knew what they were doing. Somebody could be pointing a howitzer at you and you’d never know it. It happened often enough too. This was why Bobby hated these things. This was why everybody hated these things, it was a nightmare every goddamn time. But you had to do it, you had to walk down there naked and shaking because that was what was expected.

  Security looked good. Spandau surveyed the cordons. The guards were pros, were patient yet strong and not aggressive. They held the line, taking their orders through discreet earpieces, kept aware of where the stars and guests were on the carpet. Spandau had forgotten to ask who the head of security was. Whoever it was, he or she knew their job. Then it happened.

  Spandau saw it purely by chance, otherwise he’d have missed it like everyone else. He happened to be looking right at one of the guards, was able to see him clearly in spite of the lights. Saw him lean his head slightly to listen to an order in his earpiece. Then saw him pretend to check his section of the cordon where it met a post, but instead he unhooked it and let it drop. It might have been an accident but it wasn’t. That section of the crowd instantly plunged through the breach and onto the carpet, heading straight for Bobby. The rest of the crowd, on both sides of the carpet, all around, followed suit and simply broke through the rest of the barriers in a gigantic swarm.

  Spandau ran toward Bobby before the crowd closed between them. Three guards assigned to Bobby tried to form a circle around him, but one of the guards went down and they couldn’t close the circle and kept getting pushed apart, so that Bobby was wide open. Fans reached forward, some trying to talk to him, some trying to touch him, some just wanted to be acknowledged by the movie star, some were as much victims of the crush as Bobby was. The guards tried to push Bobby toward the doors, but it was a case of pushing him deeper into the crowd, no one had yet started forcing a path from the inside toward him. Spandau ruthlessly knocked and elbowed people aside. He was big and he put his shoulder down and ploughed through like a linebacker. Through the heads he could see Bobby, his face a rictus of panic, trying to protect his eyes and keep from being blinded by the waving ballpoint pens of autograph hounds. The guards were worried about hurting fans; this was drilled into them. Spandau didn’t gave a shit who he hurt.

  He edged close to Bobby, pushing between Bobby and a rabid fan. The fan shoved angrily back at Spandau and Spandau elbowed him in the gut and hit him in the chin with his shoulder, knocking him backwards and down. This nudged people aside as he fell and Spandau grabbed Bobby by the lapels of his Versace and pulled him forward through the open space and over the top of the prostrate fan. Spandau’s two hundred and fifteen pounds had gained impetus now and he wasn’t giving it up. He cut through the crowd at a run, blindly knocking people aside like bowling pins, dragging Bobby behind him. As they reached the doors guards tried to open it from the inside but couldn’t push aside the fans who blocked it. Spandau solved this by simply grabbing two people blocking a door, a teenage girl and boy, then lifting them up and literally throwing them into the crowd. Lawsuits might fly, but this wasn’t his problem. He opened the door and flung Bobby through, then stepped in after him.

  ‘Shit,’ said Bobby. There was a cut on his cheek where a waving pen had just missed his eye. ‘Where’s Irina? Did you get Irina? You have to go back out there and get Irina!’

  Spandau stared at him for a second, shook his head, then forced his way back out the door. Irina wasn’t far away. The bodyguards had managed to circle her and inch forward, and the crowd was thinning now that Bobby wasn’t on the menu. It was Bobby they wanted, though Irina was shaken and crying when they brought her through the door. Bobby took Irina in his arms, comforting her. Jurado was there, having miraculously skirted past it all.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ asked an outraged Jurado. ‘You okay?’ he said to Bobby. ‘Jesus,’ he said to nobody in particular, ‘how the hell could this happen?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Bobby.

  ‘You sure?’ asked Jurado.

  ‘I said I was fucking fine. Some professional fucking job here, Frank.’

  ‘Where’s Janine? I’ll have her goddamn ass.’

  ‘How the hell did you get in here?’ Spandau said to Jurado.

  ‘I saw the crush and had them bring me around to the back,’ he said offhandedly to Spandau. Then to Bobby he said, ‘At least you’re okay. The bodyguards did their job.’

  ‘Fuck the bodyguards,’ said Bobby. ‘If it hadn’t been for Spandau I’d still be out there, being eaten alive.’

  One of the doors opened and Annie staggered in, looking as if she’d done ten minutes in a clothes dryer. ‘Thank you all very fucking much,’ she announced. ‘Now I know who my friends are.’

  Janine came running up. ‘Oh God, I heard! Everybody okay? Oh God, I’m so sorry! I don’t know how it could have happened, these guys are the best . . .’

  ‘We’ll have a long talk about all this later,’ said Jurado, ‘and I assure you some fucking heads will roll. But for now, if everybody’s okay, let’s just get through this. The show must go on, right?’

  ‘Kiss my ass, Frank,’ said Annie.

  Bobby, Irina and Jurado went into the theatre. Spandau and Annie listened to the applause as they walked in.

  ‘I saw what you did,’ said Annie. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m sorry I left you but—’

  ‘You did the right thing. You’re a pro, I have to hand it to you. You did the right thing.’ Annie started to go into the theatre. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I’m going to wait here for a little while,’ Spandau said.

  Annie shrugged and went inside. Spandau went over to one side of the lobby and waited until all the guests had come in and the film began. A few security guards remained outside, while others came inside. The security guard who’d dropped the cordon came inside. Spandau followed him into the men’s room, grabbed him and slammed him hard up against the tiles.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘Who gave you the order?’ Spandau demanded.

  ‘Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about . . .’

  ‘I saw you drop the cordon. Who was on the other end of that headset?’

  Another guard came in, saw Spandau bang the guy a second time against the wall. He ran out and in a moment the toilet was full of security guards.

  ‘Fucking assault, man!’ said the guard as Spandau let him go. ‘Your ass is going to jail!’

  Spandau came out of the bathroom in handcuffs, followed by a dozen security guards. Janine was waiting and said to Spandau, ‘You want to tell me what the hell is going on?’

  ‘This bozo attacked me,’ the guard said to her.

  ‘I saw him drop the cordon,’ Spandau said to her. ‘He let the mob through on purpose.’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ said Janine. ‘Look, it was insane out there. That’s what you think you saw.’

  ‘You think the publicity is worth that much? You could have gotten him killed.’

  To the guard Janine said, ‘Let him go.’

  ‘He attacked me!’

  ‘I said, let him go. Get back to work. I’ll deal with him.’

  One of the guards unlocked Spandau’s cuffs. The rest dispersed, grumbling.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you saw, but keep your mouth shut. Don’t make an unfounded accusation like this. We’ll be forced to counter it.’

  ‘You and Jurado cook this up? It sounds like him.’

  ‘You’re mistaken. Let’s leave it at that.’

  ‘Maybe Bobby will see it differently. It was his ass you almost killed.’

  ‘He won’t believe you,’ she said.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Because he can’t afford to believe you,’ Janine said. ‘Not at this stage of his career. You know that as well as I do. Look, you don’t want to cross Frank Jurado. Or me either, for that mat
ter. You don’t need any more enemies around here than you’ve already got. Go home before you get hurt.’

  ‘I’ll wait for Bobby.’

  ‘Wait for him at the restaurant. Just tell them you’re with us, everything is on the house. Just go away and think this thing through. Cool down.’

  They’d taken over an entire restaurant in Beverly Hills. By the time Bobby came in with Irina on his arm the place was full and Spandau had downed several free drinks. He’d also made up his mind to tell Bobby he was quitting, but he wanted to do it in person. He owed the kid at least that much. It took Bobby fifteen minutes to fight off the usual swarm of sycophants. He saw Spandau in a booth nursing a large vodka and went over.

  ‘What happened to you? You disappeared.’

  ‘I didn’t feel like sitting for two hours,’ said Spandau.

  ‘I wanted to thank you.’

  ‘It’s what you pay me for,’ Spandau said to him.

  ‘Is that why you did it?’ said Bobby. ‘Is that the reason?’

  ‘You okay?’ Bobby looked tired and his jaw was tight.

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m having a fucking meltdown but I can’t do it here. I don’t have that fucking luxury.’

  Jurado saw them sitting together and rushed over. ‘Bobby, I got some people for you to meet. They loved you, by the way. You were frigging wonderful.’

  ‘I have to go whore,’ said Bobby, and went off with Jurado.

  Spandau downed part of his drink and thought about another. While he was thinking Ross Whitcomb ambled over. Whitcomb had been a famous star in the seventies and eighties, a huge box office draw, in a series of films where he played a charming redneck. He tired of the redneck role and tried his hand as the Cary Grant-type but the public refused to see him in anything other than a cowboy hat. His box office took a nosedive and a spate of bad and public marriages kept him in more courtrooms than movie theatres.