Loser's Town Read online

  Spandau followed Annie Michaels’ Mercedes out of the Allied Talent underground garage. She drove the way she talked, like a screaming banshee, nearly taking the ass off one of the attendants as she pulled onto Wilshire. She drove fast, but so reckless it was impossible to lose her. It was like following the path of a tornado; you simply traced the destruction in her wake. Through the rear window he could see her either talking on the phone or yelling and gesticulating at Aronson, who sat quietly and endured it. Every fifty feet or so, she looked at the road long enough to slam on her brakes and scream at another driver or pedestrian she’d nearly killed. It exhausted Spandau just to watch her. He eased back and let the Mercedes disappear in traffic. He’d been to the Fox lot a thousand times and could have driven to it blindfold. He turned the radio onto a country and western station and took his time.

  Spandau’s BMW was leased by the agency he worked for, so he couldn’t smoke in it – and he badly wanted a cigarette. Walter, his boss, had already reamed his ass a couple of times for lighting up in the car, so Spandau had to relinquish the a/c and open the windows. The moment he did Los Angeles came rushing in like the angry breath of Hell. It was late September but LA still hadn’t managed to outrun a miserable summer. The air shimmered above the pavement, above the parked and waiting cars, and the western horizon turned a lovely but unnatural orange in the smog. A hot, fine mist, composed of equal parts road dust, motor oil and the exhalations of ten million anxious Angelinos, settled on any available skin and clung there to turn clothing into sandpaper. The eyes watered and the throat burned.

  Spandau smoked, and thought the city gliding past was like an over-exposed film, too much light, all depth burnt away and sacrificed. All concrete and asphalt, a thousand square miles of man-made griddle on which to fry for our sins. Then you turn a corner and there’s a burst of crimson bougainvillea redeeming an otherwise ugly chunk of concrete building. Or a line of tall palm trees, still majestic and still refusing to die, stubbornly sprouting green at the tops of thick dying stalks, guarding a side street of bungalows constructed at a time when LA was still the Land of Milk and Honey. If you squinted hard, you could imagine what brought them here, all those people. There was a beauty still there, sometimes, beneath all the corruption, like in the face of an actress long past her prime, when the outline of an old loveliness can still be glimpsed through the desperate layers of pancake and eyeliner. Spandau could never figure out why he stayed, what kept bringing him back to LA, until a drunken conversation he’d had in Nevada with a cowboy who’d fallen in love with a middle-aged whore. It was true, said the cowboy, that she was old and greedy and had no morals to speak of. But sometimes when she slept she had the face of a young girl, and it was this young girl the cowboy kept falling in love with, over and over. And also, added the cowboy, she had tricks that could make you the happiest man alive when she was in the mood.

  He was thinking again of leaving Los Angeles. He often thought of it –hell, anybody sane thought of it a hundred times a day –but like the cowboy’s whore she inevitably lured him back. This time it was hard. This time he nearly didn’t come back. Leaving his sister’s place in Flagstaff and rolling the truck back toward LA was like pushing into cloud that only got darker, until crossing the California line felt like having a curse lowered on you. He was too old for this crap. He’d tell Walter he was quitting. Dee was gone, and the detective work had begun to numb him to anything good and decent in the universe. He was already drinking too much, and he could see himself ending up like Walter, having spent the best years of his life chasing things that, when caught, made no sense at all. With the sale of the house and what he’d set aside, he could buy a small ranch in Arizona. But no, shit, he was no goddamn rancher, he didn’t have the energy to start and build a spread of his own. Not this late in the day. He’d started collecting books on the American West, and he enjoyed that world. Maybe he’d become a bookseller, fill up a little house somewhere with books, put out a catalogue. But no, he wouldn’t do that either. He didn’t know a damn thing about selling books. Beau McCaulay had always said that a man should do whatever he does best. All Spandau could do was fall off a horse. It wasn’t much of a résumé.

  The Fox lot was in Beverly Hills, across the street from the country club. What disappoints visitors to a movie set is that glitz is reserved for the paying public. From the outside, the place looked like a factory that produced canned goods or toilet seats. And as far as most of the executives were concerned, there was no difference. The only trace of Hollywood glamour was the three-story billboard advertising Bobby Dye’s latest film, Crusoe, a hip remake of Defoe’s classic, in which Friday was played by a pneumatic French actress in a loincloth. The film was about to open, and while serious critics were going to pan it, of course, there were only three of those left in the country, the rest worked for papers or magazines owned by the same people who owned the studios. The buzz was huge and the movie was expected to make back twice its budget in the opening weekend. So, for the time being anyway, Bobby Dye was as close as you get in Hollywood to being a god.

  Willard Packard was on duty at the guard’s shed when Spandau pulled in. Willard had worked for the studio for more than forty years, and said he knew all the great ones intimately from the chest up.

  ‘Mr Spandau.’

  ‘Mr Packard.’

  ‘Wildfire, Stage 36, right?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you where it is, do I?’

  ‘I think I can find it.’

  ‘Dead Letters,’ he said. ‘1976. Horse’s Mouth, 1978. Doublecross, 1981. Am I right?’

  ‘You forgot The World and Mr Miller,’ Spandau said, naming one of the other films he’d worked on at Fox.

  ‘No, sir, I was just too polite to remind you,’ Willard said. ‘I believe they handed out cranberry sauce with that one, didn’t they?’

  ‘I do believe they did,’ Spandau agreed. ‘Has Bobby Dye’s agent got here yet?’

  He made a serious face, then held up a hand with several fingers folded back, as if they’d been chewed off. Spandau nodded and drove onto the lot. He parked in the lot behind the executive building, locking the doors of the Beamer in case the VP in charge of distribution felt like stealing his Blaupunkt sound system. He dodged a flying golfcart, a Chinese man in a headless Panda costume, and two women in suits arguing if blackened catfish was allowed in a macrobiotic diet.

  Spandau turned right and walked down a deserted city street past the New York Public Library and an Italian restaurant on the Lower East Side. He’d once fallen dead out of the second-floor library window, and been machine-gunned through the window of the restaurant. Both had been routine stunts, nothing to be proud of, but he felt a twinge of nostalgia for the old work, until he remembered he’d cracked his wrist falling out the window. The airbag had interfered with the shot the director wanted and he’d moved it slightly while they were at lunch. As a result, it didn’t deflate properly and Spandau bounced like a pingpong ball onto the sidewalk. The director had a track record of hits and was only mildly rebuked by the studio. Meanwhile Spandau spent a month in a plaster cast, unable to work and wiping his ass with the wrong hand.

  Stage 36 was on the other side of the lot, surrounded by a maze of trailers, cables and equipment. A grip pointed out Bobby Dye’s trailer, a small motorhome that would have looked at home in an Arizona retirement community. So much for Hollywood glamour, thought Spandau, though he knew that actors’ trailers expand in direct proportion to egos and box office revenues. If Crusoe and Wildfire did as well as the buzz predicted, Bobby’s next trailer might require its own area code. Spandau knocked on the door. Annie Michaels popped out like a ferret and shut the door behind her.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Taking a stroll down memory lane,’ he said.

  ‘Can you make an effort here, please?’ There was a slight panic in her voice. Spandau nearly felt sorry for her but stopped himself. ‘Now listen. He’
s under a lot of pressure, he’s tense, he’s taking a lot of shit from the asshole producer and the asshole director. His co-star has the talent of a bran muffin. Just let me do the talking, just sit there until he talks to you first. If it’s a bad time, you’ll just go, nothing will get accomplished anyway. He’s got good instincts. If he doesn’t like you, you’re history, understand?’

  ‘Should I have brought a carrot or some sugar cubes?’ Spandau asked mildly.

  She sucked at her front teeth and gave him the Bronx death stare. ‘Personally,’ she said, ‘I give you about thirty seconds.’

  Inside the trailer, Bobby Dye sat wedged behind the small dining table across from Aronson.

  ‘Bobby,’ said Aronson, ‘this is David Spandau from the detective agency.’

  Bobby stood up and they shook hands. Annie hovered behind Spandau for a moment, then inserted herself between them, separating them as if protecting her client from contamination.

  ‘Sweetie, you don’t have to do this now if you’re not ready,’ she said to Bobby.

  ‘I’m fine with it,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Dear God, Annie,’ said Aronson, ‘will you just get a grip?’

  ‘Annie,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re driving me fucking batshit, okay?’

  ‘Sweetie, I’m just looking out for you. That’s what I get paid to do.’

  ‘Well stop. Enough, okay?’

  ‘Whatever you want, sweetie.’

  ‘I want you to fucking stop calling me sweetie,’ said Bobby. ‘It gets on my nerves.’

  ‘Well excuse me,’ Annie said, and launched into the post-mortem of a call she’d had that morning from a Finnish director who was interested in working with Bobby. It could have waited, of course, but Annie was trying to save face and wanted the appearance of surrendering ground rather than having had it pulled from under her.

  Spandau tuned out the family melodrama and sat down, taking the opportunity to glance around the trailer.

  Fifteen-hour days are not uncommon on a movie set. For a starring actor, most of that time is spent sitting in a trailer, under a kind of house-arrest, since you never know when you’ll be needed and you dare not leave the set. There’s probably nothing in your contract to prevent it, of course, but there’s something unsettling about popping round to McDonald’s dressed as a cowboy or a flesh-eating zombie. And if you’re a popular actor, there are the fans and the press to contend with. If you’re filming on a lot, you could in theory go out for a stroll, though you would have to be pretty desperate, since film lots are marginally less exciting than a lumber yard. And like teachers who discover they’re a child short at the end of a field trip, producers and directors –a nervous bunch anyway –display apoplectic seizures when they can’t locate their actors, who, if left to their own devices, have been known to distract themselves in clever and interesting ways. Everyone is much happier if an actor simply stays nice and safe in his trailer.

  Since motorhomes have never been known for their warmth, actors do what they can to make them ‘homey’. Spandau had seen trailers decorated like Turkish brothels, opium dens, French boudoirs and gymnasiums. One star he knew traveled with a pot-bellied pig, and had a section of her trailer fenced off and covered with straw. The place smelled accordingly, and the star herself –an international sex symbol who’d ploughed through five husbands – was often redolent of eau de cochon. But if the star was happy so was everybody else, health codes be damned.

  What made Bobby Dye’s trailer special, in Spandau’s mind, was its utter lack of distinction. There were no frills, no pillows or fancy curtains. No family photos – no photos at all, no memorabilia, nothing that provided any access to Bobby’s personal life or past. The door to the bedroom was open, and Spandau could see a messy bed, some tossed clothing, and a set of weights. The rest of the trailer was as factory-issued, cool and impersonal, as if an effort was made to keep it that way. The only clues to the inner life of its inhabitant were the magazines and books laying about. Among the magazines were Cahiers du Cinéma, Sight & Sound, the New York Times, Esquire and People. A diverse reading list, though Spandau unkindly suspected if you looked closely enough they’d each contain some reference to Bobby. On a small bookshelf Will Durant cuddled up with Charles Bukowski and Carl Jung. Had Bobby actually read them? Or were they a bit of theatre dressing?

  ‘A real detective, huh,’ said Bobby, calling Spandau’s attention back.

  ‘The genuine article.’

  ‘You packing?’

  ‘A gun, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bobby.

  ‘No,’ said Spandau.

  Bobby was disappointed. ‘I mean, what the hell is the point, then?’

  ‘Sometimes I ask myself that very question,’ Spandau replied.

  Spandau liked the fact that Bobby had stood up when they shook hands – someone had given him some manners, at least. Bobby Dye was four inches shorter than Spandau’s six-two. He’d gripped Spandau’s hand and looked him in the eyes, though there was something exaggerated about it, as if he were playing a role and this was how his character behaved. Bobby was indeed still in costume – faded jeans, scuffed cowboy boots, a plaid shirt open to reveal a tanned but hairless chest. Sleeves rolled up on strong, wiry arms decorated by a collection of tattoos just visible beneath the makeup. A tangled mass of longish brown hair, made worse by hair extensions that were dramatically teased to look windswept for the camera but on close up looked more like a nest of garter snakes. The eyes were brown and a little sad – a fact much commented upon in the teen magazines. And there was the nose – the famous broken beak, slightly pushed in and crooked, the supposed result of a short boxing career, that gave Bobby’s face most of its character and redeemed it from looking like a million others. Not for the first time, Spandau was amused at how mundane an actor could seem in person, then somehow blaze into magnificence on screen. There was some peculiar magic in those otherwise plain features that gave them a grandeur and romance through the lens of a camera. No one could explain why it happened with only a few chosen ones, though people had tried since the beginning of film.

  ‘So how are you supposed to protect me?’

  ‘Generally speaking, if it gets to a point where there’s any shooting, I haven’t done my job. And I always do my job.’

  ‘What I think Mr Spandau means is—’ started Annie.

  ‘I know what he means,’ Bobby said to her sharply. ‘I got ears.’

  She glared at Spandau. Spandau realized he must have been smiling. ‘Mr Spandau, I don’t think you are quite—’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Annie,’ Bobby said.

  Spandau tried not to gloat. Spandau said to him, ‘I thought we might talk.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Alone would be a good idea,’ Spandau said, ‘unless we’re having a tea party.’

  Aronson looked over at Annie and nodded. She reluctantly followed him out of the trailer.

  ‘You don’t much want this gig, do you?’ Bobby said to Spandau.

  ‘I guess that depends on you. I can’t do anything without your cooperation.’

  He handed Spandau a sheet of paper with a message in cut-out letters glued onto it: YOU’RE GOING TO DIE, DYE!

  Spandau handed it back to him. ‘Cute.’

  ‘I found it yesterday morning. Somebody’d slipped it under the door over there.’

  ‘You get a lot of these?’

  ‘It happens. Some chick falls for me in a movie and her boyfriend gets pissed and sends a letter.’

  ‘How do you normally handle it?’

  ‘There’s a guy who does security. Mainly nobody does shit.’

  ‘You show it to him?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about. We could tack on a couple of bodyguards. The production company will pay.’

  ‘So why do you feel this one is any different?’

  ‘Becaus
e they managed to slip it under the door of my fucking trailer.’

  ‘Why call me? What can I do for you?’

  ‘I want you to find out who it is.’

  ‘You got any ideas who it might be?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it’s unlikely I’d be able to chase it down, brilliant shamus that I am. Like you said, it could be a pissed-off boyfriend. It could be anybody. Take the bodyguard and forget about it.’

  ‘That’s it? That all you’ve got to fucking say? Somebody threatened my life!’

  ‘Some shithead sent you a note. I’m not blowing it off, but it happens all the time and I don’t think it means much.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Look,’ Spandau said, ‘if this sort of shit meant anything, half of Hollywood would be dead already. These things go around like supermarket flyers. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but everybody gets them. You can chalk it up to the price of fame. If you think you’re in serious danger, then there are people to protect you and you need to go to the police. But trying to narrow this thing down by a process of elimination isn’t going to work. It could be anybody. Unless you know who it might be? Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then there’s nothing to say. Go to the cops and hire the bodyguards.’

  ‘Then fuck you. I’ll get somebody else.’

  ‘You can always find people to take your money.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Spandau was getting tired of his mouth. He thought seriously about grabbing him by the lapels and lifting him up out of the seat and delivering a little lecture on the proper way to treat guests, especially ones who have nearly fifty-five pounds and four inches on you. And he might have, too, if Bobby Dye’s hands hadn’t been shaking as he lit a cigarette. He was trying to be tough and failing at it. Up until this point the whole thing had felt funny to Spandau but now he was sure something else was going on.