Loser's Town Read online

  ‘You’ve got a message from someone named Ginger Constantine. He says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, give me the number.’

  Spandau scribbled it on his hand. He rang off and dialed the number. A man with a light English accent answered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is David Spandau. You said it was urgent.’

  ‘Oh my lord, yes! I’m Bobby Dye’s assistant, I saw your card and I knew he’d talked to you . . . Look, it’s Bobby, he’s in trouble. He’s gone to see Richie Stella. He took a gun with him. I didn’t know who else to call.’

  ‘Thin guy with a rat face?’

  ‘That’s Richie.’

  ‘How can I find him?’

  ‘He went to Richie’s club. You know the Voodoo Room on Sunset?’

  ‘Yeah, I know it. How long ago did he leave?’

  ‘Maybe ten minutes.’

  ‘I’m leaving now.’

  The Voodoo Room was the most popular club on the Strip, wedged between a liquor store and sushi bar. From the outside it looked like the sort of hopeless dive where alcoholic grannies could be found resting their cheeks in a puddle of bar sweat. Prior to this it had been a yuppie hangout done up in Philippe Starck, all shiny metal and mellow glass, and it cost the new owner a cool quarter of a million to rebuild the façade, carefully removing any taints of success or beauty and replacing it with a texture and design that resembled a matte-black cardboard box. This was designed to attract the truly hip, who were already smothered in the higher aesthetics and required a place where they could pretend to slum in comfort and safety, like Marie Antoinette’s goat farm in the backyard at Versailles. When Spandau arrived there was the inevitable Friday night crowd of the terminally stylish waiting to be allowed past the gatekeepers. Spandau managed to park in a lot nearby and wondered how he was going to get in. He looked in his wallet to see if the fifties were still there.

  A girl sitting on a stool at the door, flanked up by a couple of professional-looking bouncers, was culling humans like dried legumes. Bad this way, good over here. Only the beautiful or the well known got inside. Spandau was aware he was neither. The line kept growing. Spandau went up to two lovely young things toward the end.

  ‘Look, I’m an actor, and there’s a producer in there I’ve really got to meet. It’s worth fifty bucks each. You don’t have to stick around, all you’ve got to do is get me past the door.’

  They sized him up and for a moment Spandau was sure they were going to start laughing. Then one of them said, ‘Sure, for fifty bucks.’

  ‘Anyway, you don’t look so bad for an old guy,’ the other one said.

  As they reached the door the girls looped their arms through his. The girl on the stool looked at the girls, then at Spandau. She shook her head. Spandau thought it meant no, but she was merely expressing disbelief. She waved them past.

  It was early yet but the club was packed, the floor filled with couples writhing to a near-deafening beat that filled the room. It was like being on the inside of a drum. Spandau had been to enough clubs like this before, though never by his own choice, always on some case. He hated them, of course, but he could see their attraction. It was a kind of licensed orgy where beauty and fame bought you permission to behave as you wanted. Places like this existed everywhere and always had. Like Steve Rubell’s legendary Studio 54 in New York in the seventies, nobody would tell on you, provided you could get through the door. You could snort, fuck, grope and exhibit as much as you pleased – and share it all with the glitterati. There was a weird sort of democracy at work here. Where else would Lulu Snekert, homecoming queen from Grand Rapids, get a chance to do lines of coke with her favorite stars?

  After buying them drinks, Spandau left the girls at the bar and looked around. He made a couple of rounds of the packed floor and didn’t see Bobby. He wasn’t worried about Stella spotting him – Bobby would be wherever Stella was.

  The room was dark and smoky. Smoking was only one of the many municipal laws the place ignored, for which the management paid handsomely at the end of each month. The general idea was to recreate a 1940s Harlem nightclub, the sort of exotic place where white people went to watch negroes smoke reefers and look sensually menacing. You still occasionally found jazz in the Voodoo Room, but mainly it was rock and the bands were as ofay as the clientele. That special frisson of menace – de rigueur for all successful slumming – was provided by the flashy gangbangers modeling bling and girlfriends, and upscale drug dealers, who on some nights turned the place into a dope-addled souk that extended from the restrooms out onto the street.

  There was a large mirror covering most of one wall. Behind that, Spandau reasoned, would be the infamous VIP room, where celebs hung out to avoid the hoi polloi. Spandau looked for an entry to the place. There were two closed doors at the end of a hallway. Spandau opened one. It was an office, and a pretty blonde in her late twenties sat at a desk hunched over a pile of receipts.

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ Spandau said in a fuzzy voice. Pardon me, just another lost drunk. ‘Looking for the bathroom.’

  ‘Other side of the club,’ said the blonde and went back to her calculations.

  Spandau tried the other door. Unlocked. It opened into a short, narrow corridor and another door. Spandau heard voices on the other side. One of them was Bobby’s. He pushed open the door.

  The room itself was in half-light, as if lit by candles. Through the glass plate on the opposite wall you could see the entire club floor and the stage. It was like watching some high-definition television program of Hollywood Gone Wild, broadcast on a giant screen. The room was soundproofed and music piped in through speakers, which made it even more unreal.

  Richie Stella sat on a sofa. Bobby stood in the center of the room, backlit by the panorama of the club floor. There was a pistol in Bobby’s hand aimed at Richie. The hand shook and the barrel of the .38 made small circles in the air. Bobby was soaked with sweat and though Spandau couldn’t see his eyes he knew he was high on drugs or booze, probably both. Richie sat quietly with his legs crossed. He didn’t seem particularly worried, though there was a good chance of Bobby shooting him by accident if nothing else.

  When Spandau came in, Bobby turned quickly and brought the gun around.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Spandau, ‘it’s just me.’

  ‘What the fuck do you want,’ said Bobby in a plaintive voice. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Ginger sent me to find you,’ Spandau said. ‘He was worried you were going to do something stupid.’

  ‘I’m not going to do anything stupid,’ Bobby said, his voice quivering. ‘I’m just going to kill this miserable fuck.’

  ‘I was just trying to explain to the kid—’ attempted Richie.

  ‘Shut up!’ said Bobby. ‘Don’t talk, don’t move!’

  Stella continued anyway. ‘I was just trying to tell him how dumb all this is. I’m a friend of his.’

  ‘You’re a fucking maggot and you deserve a bullet between your eyes,’ Bobby said.

  ‘Why don’t you tell him how wrong this is?’ Richie said to Spandau.

  ‘I’m the wrong guy to ask,’ said Spandau. ‘I don’t like you either.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell him about life in prison,’ Richie said. ‘He shoots me, that’s what he’s going to get.’

  ‘He’s got a point,’ Spandau said to Bobby. ‘You think it’s worth it?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Bobby. ‘It’s worth it.’

  ‘Hell, then,’ said Spandau. ‘Just shoot him and we can all go home.’

  Stella gave Spandau a long, withering look. They waited and when no gunshot came, Spandau said:

  ‘Give me the gun, Bobby. That’s a lousy .38, and unless you hit something major you’re not going to kill the son of a bitch anyway. You’ll just wind up going to jail and ruining your career.’

  ‘I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘Then do it,’ said Spandau, ‘and quit fucking around.’

  Bobby stared at Stella. He raised
the gun and aimed it at Stella’s chest. His damp hand tightened on the gun, relaxed, tightened again. He waited.

  Spandau went over to him and took the gun away. Bobby slumped and dropped down onto the sofa next to Stella. He sat with his face in his hands.

  ‘Well that was just fucking lovely,’ announced Stella. He looked at Spandau and shook his head, then turned to Bobby.

  ‘How are you? You okay?’ Stella said to Bobby.

  Bobby didn’t reply, just sat with his face covered.

  ‘Jesus, kid,’ said Stella, putting his arm around Bobby’s shoulders, ‘I thought I was fucking done for there for a minute. Look at you, all upset. You want a Xanax? I’ll get somebody to find you a Xanax.’

  ‘Leave him alone,’ said Spandau. ‘I’ll take him home.’

  ‘You,’ Stella said to him, ‘I have had enough of. You’re lucky I don’t off you. You nearly got me shot.’

  ‘He wasn’t going to shoot anybody.’

  ‘No thanks to you and your cheerleading. Go ahead and shoot him, he says, so we can all go home. Where the fuck is Martin?’ To Bobby he said, ‘I’ll have Martin drive you home.’

  Stella picked up a phone and demanded Martin. In a few moments the bruiser who’d been with Stella at Bobby’s trailer came in the door.

  ‘I want you to take Bobby home,’ Stella said to him. ‘Get him anything he wants. Get him some Xanax or something. He’s upset.’ To Bobby he said, ‘We’ll get you something, you’ll sleep like a fucking baby.’

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Spandau said again.

  ‘Martin will take him home,’ Stella said to him. ‘You, you’re not going anywhere.’

  Martin lifted Bobby to his feet. Bobby was like a zombie. Martin led him out. Bobby passed Spandau without looking at him, just stared at the floor.

  ‘What a fucking night,’ said Stella. ‘You want a drink?’

  ‘Sure. Bourbon.’

  ‘Have a seat,’ Stella said to him.

  Spandau sat down and looked through the two-way mirror at the dancing bodies. Stella turned off the sound as if to gain his attention. He picked up the phone. ‘Send a bottle of Makers Mark in here, some ice and a couple of glasses.’ He put down the phone and turned to Spandau. ‘This is all your fault.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’

  ‘You hadn’t stuck your beak into things, this would never have happened.’

  ‘I hadn’t stuck my beak into things,’ said Spandau, ‘you might be pushing up daisies about now. We could look at it that way.’

  ‘I like my way better,’ Stella said to him. ‘This way you owe me.’

  There was a knock at the door and the blonde from the office came in with the tray of the drinks. She gave Spandau a curious glance then looked away. Stella smiled at her and put his hand on her hip as she put the tray on the low table in front of him. She didn’t shrug off the hand but she didn’t seem pleased it was there either. She left the room without saying a word. Stella dropped ice into the two glasses and covered them with whiskey. He handed one to Spandau.

  ‘You,’ he said to Spandau, ‘are a pimple that is uncomfortably close to my asshole.’

  ‘Is that a metaphor for something?’ Spandau said.

  ‘I’ll give you a metaphor in a minute. Who the fuck do you think you are, messing around in my business?’

  ‘I was thinking along the lines of keeping Bobby from ruining his life. You I’m not much concerned with.’

  ‘You think he’ll be okay?’ Stella said with genuine concern.

  ‘He’ll go home and sober up. Hopefully he won’t get the same idea tomorrow night.’

  Stella sat down on the couch and crossed his legs. ‘You want to work for me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I need an HMO and a dental plan. Besides,’ said Spandau, ‘I don’t like you.’

  ‘In the great scheme of things, likes and dislikes are of no importance. For the superior man, the key to success is the conquest of the ego.’

  ‘Sun-Tzu?’

  ‘Mike Ovitz reads Sun-Tzu,’ said Stella. ‘Business is warfare. You can learn a lot from the chinks. And they’ve got a lot of fucking money now.’

  ‘You doing a movie with Bobby?’

  ‘You bet,’ said Stella. ‘He’s my star.’

  ‘Does his agent know this?’

  ‘Fuck her. They work for him, he doesn’t work for them.’

  ‘Well that’s certainly a novel way of looking at it. Maybe it will catch on.’

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ said Stella. ‘I got a script and I got financing. All I need is a start date.’

  ‘And let’s not forget a star who’s willing to work for you.’

  Stella laughed. ‘That crazy little fucker, he’s killing me. He doesn’t know what’s good for him. He fucking runs hot and cold. He says he’ll do it then he cold-shoulders me. Then he fucking hires you, for chrissake.’

  ‘He didn’t hire me.’

  ‘Well you’re fucking here, aren’t you, and in my fucking way.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘He likes you. I can tell. He respects you,’ said Stella.

  ‘You got a contract?’ Spandau asked him.

  Stella looked hurt. ‘A man gives me his word, I don’t need a contract.’

  ‘Look – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – this isn’t The Godfather and there is no romantic code among crooks. This is Hollywood and everybody is a liar until the check clears. I hate to be the one to shatter your innocence.’

  ‘You don’t work for him, why are you here?’

  ‘His assistant called me and said he was coming down here to shoot you. Ordinarily that would have seemed like a pretty good idea to me, but it would have fucked up his life. He seems like a nice enough kid, at least until you and the fucking studios get through with him. Leave him alone. His life is going to be ugly enough without one more vulture sucking at him.’

  Stella pretended he didn’t hear the last sentence. He picked up the phone, dialed a number. ‘How is he?’ he said into the receiver. After a pause, he hung up and said to Spandau: ‘He fell asleep in the back seat.’ He sighed. ‘A filmmaker has got no end of worries.’

  Spandau drained his whiskey and stood up. ‘I think you are all fucking deranged,’ he said, ‘and I’m going home.’

  ‘You sure you don’t want to work for me?’

  ‘I think my being an employee would jeopardize our friendship.’

  ‘Fucking smart-ass. Stay out of my way. Opposition should be destroyed in its infancy.’

  ‘Sun-Tzu?’

  ‘Nah, my old boss, Vinnie the Gag. Best garrotte artist in the business. I still got his number.’

  Stella gave him a wolf-like smile. Spandau put down his empty glass and went home.

  The following afternoon, a thankfully quiet Saturday, Spandau was working in the garden. The raccoons appeared to have forgotten about the goldfish for a while. It was nice and quiet and he was relaxed for the first time since his vacation had ended. The phone rang inside the house. He didn’t answer it, let it go through the machine. He tried not to listen to it. He cleaned the pump in the bottom of the pond and fed the fish. They were like dogs now, they gathered in a clump whenever they saw him. He dropped in the pellets and they ate and wriggled around happily. He tried again to think of some way to protect the goldfish from the raccoons. Short of putting a top over the pond there was nothing he could do. He thought about killing the raccoons again. But there was the problem of what to do with a dead raccoon and, anyway, there were always more raccoons. His golden moment was spoiled and he went into the house and listened to his message.

  ‘Hi, this is Gail. You’ve got a message from Bobby Dye. He wants you to call him. His number is . . .’

  Spandau scribbled down the number. He thought about not calling. It was a mistake to get involved any deeper in this, a clear lose–lose situation, as Coren would have been the first to point o
ut. The job was hard enough without working for a client who didn’t know what the hell he wanted. Spandau crumpled the bit of paper and tossed it into the trash. He went into the kitchen and opened a beer, then went back into his office, dug the paper out of the trash and made the call. A machine picked it up. Bird noises and gorilla sounds, then the beep.

  ‘This is David Spandau . . .’

  Bobby picked up quickly. He sounded sober and crisp. ‘Hey, man, thanks for calling me back. Can you come over here, to my place? I need to talk to you. I live up at the top of Wonderland . . .’

  Head east on Sunset Boulevard, starting at the Beverly Hills sign, the most famous residential locator in the world.

  You’re well in from the sea now, and the funkiness of Santa Monica is but a memory. You’ve endured the twisty, disappointing paved section past UCLA (with all this dough you’d think they’d fix the potholes) and by now you’re coming to terms with the fact that the houses in Beverly Hills don’t look a thing like Jed Clampett’s, since the yards are diminutive and there’s nary a Southern Revival mansion to be found. Did we fly all the way out here for this? you ask. You’ve passed Bel Air, too, the exquisitely gaudy, privately maintained and closed to the public neighborhood where O.J. Simpson did (or did not) off his wife and her lover, and where Ray Bradbury was once arrested for just walking. (You just kept driving, since they would not let you in. Standards have to be maintained. The snotty bastards.)

  Finally you reach the sign, which, for some reason, doesn’t look quite the way it does in the pictures. (This is because the sign you’re thinking of, the big one, the really famous one, is actually a few blocks away on Wilshire. This is a second-string sign, and it’s just as well you don’t know this, because then you’d really feel like a putz, wouldn’t you?) Your teenage daughter in the back seat wants to stop, to get her photo taken beneath the sign. But half a dozen people are doing that already, and there’s no place to park without getting run over or another ticket like the one you got for trying to park in Westwood. And your old lady is tired and her sinuses are killing her. Maybe it’s the flowers. You tell your daughter no and keep on driving and now she hates you, just the way she’s hated you ever since you left home. She hates you. Your wife hates you. You suspect you may be about to get lost. You have a map but nobody except you is willing to read it, and you can’t read it without getting everybody killed or pulling over, and there is nowhere to pull over. There are too many cars driving too fast, and the people in these cars apparently hate you too.