Loser's Town Read online

  Keep driving.

  You’re approaching the Sunset Strip. The Lamborghini dealership hints that there might be some glamour ahead. But no, this too is disappointing. It could be anywhere, and looks a little white-trashy, if anybody were to ask you. You wouldn’t be caught dead in a neighborhood like this back home. Just look at those giant billboards, covering the entire sides of respectable buildings with bulging tits and crotches! Good lord! Restaurants, hotels and nightclubs whose names you vaguely recall sail past, but they don’t look anything like the way you’d imagined. Look! There’s the Whiskey A Go Go, where Jim Morrison and The Doors used to play, though nobody in the car but you knows or gives a shit who The Doors were. Your wife tells you she thinks you’ve passed Rodeo Drive, but you’re damned if you’ll turn back, not in this traffic, and anyway that’s what she gets if she won’t read the goddamned map. Your daughter thinks she’s spotted that club where the famous young actor overdosed and died in the street. She wants to stop again and get her picture taken on the very spot. Screw her too, and keep driving.

  Drive past the clubs and the bistros. Past the Chateau Marmont, that Gothic elephants’ graveyard where stars go to kill themselves. Keep driving until it seems as if the dubious history and the chintzy glamour of the Strip have all been exhausted, and the world starts to give way again to strip malls and taco stands, the domain of us regular people. This would be Laurel Canyon Drive. Do not give up hope. You have not yet left history and glamour after all. Turn left into Laurel Canyon and you are entering the Hollywood Hills, where life in LA really begins to get interesting.

  On the other hand, none of this has any meaning for you at all.

  Because you, being one of us regular people, one of the unprivileged, one of the hoi polloi, will never get to see it.

  Because the whole point of this world, in case you haven’t noticed yet, is to keep you out.

  Wonderland Avenue crawls up the eastern side of the Santa Monica Mountains, pushing itself off from Laurel Canyon like a tired and indecisive burro. You do not drive up Wonderland so much as slog up it, since it is steep and twisty and even the few street signs appear to have abandoned hope. There are so many abrupt changes that it’s useless to give directions, and most popular guidebooks don’t even bother, instead recommending that tourists arm themselves with a Thomas Guide and hope for the best. Of course it is precisely this sort of confusion that makes the place so desirable for the people who live there. It’s like living at the end of a gigantic garden maze and only a few people know the key. Who needs to live in a gated community when nobody can find you anyway? The result is a closed community, a community of secrets, while giving the appearance of being just another laid-back neighborhood. Musicians and actors have always liked the place because of the unspoken rule of keeping your mouth shut and minding your own business. This code of omerta has interesting consequences. Its seclusion made it attractive to the creative rock revolutionaries of the sixties, a place where they could hide away, drop acid, fall in love with each other’s mates, and change the course of popular music. On the other hand, in 1981 porn star John Holmes was involved in a dope-infused, deal-gone-wrong bloodbath at 8763 Wonderland, in which police found an entire house redecorated in blood and guts. Privacy can have its drawbacks.

  Spandau was thinking of the Wonderland murders as he drove upward through the exclusive neighborhood. He thought about growing up in Arizona, a place where the dream was to work hard and make enough money to buy into a neighborhood where everything was guaranteed to be clean and safe. It was a world where income alone weeded out the riff-raff. A world where your neighbor in the big shiny house was going to be a doctor or a lawyer, not a successful drug dealer or porn star or a bunch of strung-out and psychotic thieves. In LA, you couldn’t be sure. That little house with the white picket fence might belong to the next Charlie Manson, just waiting to write your name in blood. You never knew where you were in this place. Spandau thought of five people getting hacked to death – a noisy enough enterprise, one would think – while ten yards away someone went on eating their cornflakes. In what sort of world does a blood-curdling scream seem commonplace?

  Spandau had often driven up Wonderland. The trick was to always hang to the right. Soon he came to the top where it leveled a bit, and there was a small selection of large but tightly closed gates to choose from. Spandau drove up to the security post outside Bobby’s gate. He pressed a button and let the camera have a good look at him. Waited, while they decided that a guy in an Armani suit and driving a new BMW probably wasn’t the new John Wayne Gacy. You couldn’t be sure though. The gate buzzed and opened. Spandau drove up and parked on the landing outside the garage. He glanced at the Porsche and the Harley, neither of which looked used. You had to feel a little sad for a guy who had those kind of toys and never got a chance to play with them. He walked up the hill to the house.

  Bobby Dye’s house – which, on the advice of his accountant, he did not yet own but merely rented for an exorbitant sum – sat on an outcropping that stuck out over a precipice like the hood mascot of a 1950s Pontiac, jutting its chin at the dried plains of Los Angeles. The house was all natural wood, glass, and high ceilings, built by a rock star in the sixties who liked the idea of living in a cabin somewhere but knew better than to let his manager or his record label out of his sight. The result was what one guest had called a ‘hippie Valhalla’ and Spandau thought it lived up to the name. A patio hugged the perimeter of the house, not the most burglar-proof arrangement but it led to some spectacular views. Spandau wondered how many drunks had toppled down into the hillside bushes. It wasn’t high enough to kill you unless you landed badly or kept rolling. He walked over to the edge and looked toward the back. A long flight of wooden steps led down to a pool and a cabana. Another shorter flight led to what was probably a guest house. Spandau turned and through the plate glass saw Bobby watching him. Bobby came over and slid open the patio door.

  ‘I really appreciate your coming over here,’ said Bobby, extending his hand. Spandau shook it. It was a different Bobby from last night. He was cool and confident. The eyes were bright and alert, and his grip was firm. His skin had regained its color. It was as if the previous night had never happened.

  ‘You ever think I wouldn’t?’ Spandau asked.

  ‘Nah,’ said Bobby. ‘Not really.’

  Bobby led him into the living room. A tall cathedral ceiling and acres of glass that looked down on most of Los Angeles. So this is what it’s like on Mt Olympus, thought Spandau. At first glance the furniture was a collection of odds and ends, but the dining table was genuine Spanish mission and the childlike scrawl above the couch was a Basquiat. The couch itself was art deco, rescued from a 1920s ocean liner, and the lamp beside it was Lalique. The room had a southern exposure so the sun never managed to penetrate the window directly. The house was light and cool inside though all the wood still gave it the feeling of being in a forest somewhere. A good architect can do wonders. There was no consistency but the kid had taste and a good eye, Spandau had to admit. He’d been working class, Spandau had read. Maybe not poor but enough that the money would have been a shock. There were a few auction house catalogs around, and Spandau imagined him feverishly picking through them, researching the names, desperately trying to make up for all that time without. The trailer had been a blank screen, but this was different. Spandau felt he was beginning to get a handle now. Again there were no personal photos about, nothing to display his past, but that itself was telling. It was the place of a young man trying to recreate himself.

  ‘Thanks for last night,’ said Bobby. ‘I might’ve shot him.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t have.’

  ‘What makes you so goddamn sure?’

  ‘You may be dumb, but you’re not a complete idiot.’

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means you aren’t dumb enough to throw away a billion-dollar acting career in order to kill a shit like Richie Stella, no matte
r how pissed off you think you are.’

  Bobby flopped down in an art deco leather chair. ‘You really think you got me pegged, don’t you?’

  ‘Well enough to know you faked that note. And well enough to know that Richie Stella is blackmailing you.’

  Bobby didn’t bother to look surprised. He took out a packet of French cigarettes and made a show of lighting one.

  ‘You could just pay him,’ Spandau said. ‘Or better yet, just go to the cops. They have units that specialize in this crap. I know this is Hollywood, but blackmail is still supposed to be illegal.’

  ‘He wants me to do that fucking movie. He wants to be a fucking movie producer, the asshole.’

  ‘Well, he’s a vicious and immoral little shit. He sounds qualified to me. How bad is the movie?’

  ‘The script is shit. Annie would never let me do it. I mean, it would be fucking embarrassing. That’s what Wildfire is all about. It’s my breakthrough, man. Annie says I could make the A-List with this one. I do his shit movie, I throw the whole thing away. What I’m doing on Wildfire is good, man. The best work I’ve ever done. Real fucking acting. I turn around and do this piece of shit and Wildfire looks like a fluke, you know? I can’t do it.’

  ‘Talk to the studio. Let them deal with it.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘How bad can it be?’ Spandau said to him. ‘You’re a gold mine for them, they’ll do whatever they can to protect that.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s exactly what I need. Get rid of Richie and then give these motherfuckers the leash. They’re worse than he is.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to get him off my back,’ said Bobby, suddenly animated. ‘I don’t care how. I mean it. I’ll pay whatever it takes. You do whatever it takes, as hard as it takes.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I off him?’

  ‘He’s a fucking weasel. The world won’t miss him.’

  ‘Gee, Bobby, I don’t know. I have to think about it. I haven’t assassinated anybody in a while and I don’t know what the going rate is.’

  ‘I want him off my back. I want him to be history.’

  ‘It’s a good thing you don’t write your own lines,’ said Spandau. ‘You sound like a bad imitation of Jimmy Cagney.’

  ‘Fuck you, then!’ shouted Bobby. He got up and started pacing. ‘I’ll get somebody else, with balls. Not some fucking washed-up stunt man.’

  Spandau took a deep breath. He held it for a few seconds, then let it out in a slow stream. ‘Now I want you to listen to me, kid, and I want you to listen carefully. First, I’m about fed up with the way you and all the other bozos around you have been talking to me. Unlike you and all the other star-struck unfortunates in this town, I don’t need them to like me. Second, I think you’re a snot-nosed little prick, but I’m convinced it’s mainly because suddenly you’re required to act like a grown-up and you don’t have a fucking clue how to do it.’

  Bobby stood a few feet away, glaring at him, his fists clenched, the Gauloise dangling from the corner of his mouth like Jean-Paul Belmondo. ‘You think I’m afraid of you? I used to box, man.’

  ‘No,’ said Spandau, ‘you used to fart around in a gym until somebody gave you that trademark broken nose of yours. Now maybe you look like a tough guy to millions of mall-rats around the country, but you’ve got girls’ hands and you wouldn’t last ten seconds in the ring with anybody except Stephen Hawking, and I’d still give him odds.’

  Bobby got into what passed for a fighter’s crouch. He looked at Spandau and blinked as the smoke from the Gauloise burnt his eyes.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Spandau, and rolled his eyes. ‘You want to throw a punch? Come on, honey, send it home. But your feet are all wrong, and the second you throw that left cross you got cocked there you’re going to be off balance before it gets anywhere near me. Meanwhile I got fifty pounds on you and four more inches of reach. And while I will try not to mess up that pretty sculpted face of yours, when I hit you it is still going to do some damage.’

  Bobby thought about it and dropped his hands. Then he held them up and looked at them. ‘Fuck you, girls’ hands,’ he said, laughing. ‘Anyway, I’m not going to blow this movie because some fucking macho has-been gets lucky with a punch.’

  ‘Good for you. At least you’ve learned the first lesson, which is never to fight unless you know you can win. Didn’t anybody ever explain that to you? The trick is to wait until I’m off-guard and then brain me with a Louisville slugger. That’s the way it is in the real world. That’s the way guys like Richie Stella do it.’

  Bobby took the cigarette out of his mouth and ground it into a cut-glass ashtray. ‘So long and thanks for nothing. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass when you leave.’

  ‘Okay, tough guy,’ said Spandau. ‘You want my help or not?’

  ‘You don’t have the balls. He’s not going to stop until he’s dead.’

  ‘Let me decide that. I need to know what he’s got on you.’

  ‘Then you got it too. I’m fucked no matter what.’

  ‘Sooner or later you’ve got to trust somebody, sport. How bad is it?’

  ‘It’s bad.’

  He walked across the room and took a wooden box out of a cabinet, and carried it back to the sofa. He sat down, crossed his legs like a brahmin, and rolled a joint. He was hesitant to begin. He lit up, took a deep hit and began talking.

  ‘I picked up this girl . . . Really cute, man. Really hot. She had this sort of schoolgirl thing going, you know, a white blouse and a cute little plaid skirt. She even had fucking pigtails. It was, like, every dirty old man’s fantasy. She knew exactly what she was doing, too.

  ‘Anyway, I brought her back here. I’m wrecked, I don’t even know how I made it up the hill without killing both of us. So we’re in here, and we start making out, and she says to me, “You got anything I can use to relax, it’s better when I’m high, I get wild.” And I’m thinking, Fuck yes. And I’ve got a little rock, and she says, oh yeah, she loves rock. So we’re sitting over there and we smoke a little rock and then she comes over and we start to mess around again, but she says wait, she’s got to go to the bathroom, so she takes this little purse she’s got with her and she goes upstairs to the bathroom.

  ‘So off she goes and I’m sitting here and then the crack hits me and I’m sort of blissed out for a while, I don’t know how long. That rush, you know? So in a few minutes I’m back in the real world again, and she still isn’t back. So I get worried and I go upstairs . . .

  ‘I check the bathroom. I knock, nothing. I open the door. It’s unlocked. And she’s sitting there, on the toilet, sort of slumped over, her tights pulled down around her ankles and this fucking needle sticking out of her thigh. She’s like fucking blue. And she’s not breathing, and there’s this whole set of works on the sink, man, she’s been cooking up heroin and she’s shot up and fucking OD’d in my bathroom. I got this dead girl in my bathroom . . .

  ‘I panic. You know? The fucking crack doesn’t help. I’m like running around the place beating my fists against my head, crying like a fucking baby . . . I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I mean, this dead girl. I don’t know what to do. Then I think of Richie.’

  ‘Why Richie?’

  ‘Because that’s what Richie does, man. That’s what Richie’s all about. He’s the champion fixer of all time. You want something, Richie gets it. You want something done, Richie finds a way to make it happen. He’s fucking famous. Richie the Fixer. Half of LA uses Richie.’

  ‘So you called Richie . . .’

  ‘I’m on the phone, I’m like babbling, and Richie tells me to calm down, talks me down. Richie’s like that, he’s good at that. He’s got that voice, you know. Really calm when he needs to be. You trust him. Anyway he calms me down and I tell him what’s happened. So Richie tells me, “Okay, give me the details.” And I tell him and he says okay, don’t panic, be cool, it’s not a problem, he’ll take care of everything. But it’s going to take
a couple of hours. So he tells me to get the fuck out of the house, go check into a hotel or stay with a friend, just disappear for the rest of the night while he takes care of it. Says to just beat it and leave the door unlocked. Said when I got home tomorrow it would be like nothing ever happened.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘I got in the car and fucking drove out to the desert. I checked into a motel and got shitfaced and passed out. When I finally got the balls to come back here next day, it was all gone, though the fuckers he’d sent forgot to take the set of works. Man, if the fucking cleaning lady had seen that . . . I called Richie, asked him what had happened. He said nothing. He said nothing ever happened, and that was the way I was supposed to think about it. Nothing happened. It never happened. I asked him what I owed him, and he acted like he was really insulted. “Fuck that,” he said, “we’re friends,” he said. “This is the sort of shit that friends do for each other.”’

  ‘And you bought it.’

  ‘What the fuck else was I supposed to do? There was a fucking dead girl in my bathroom, then there wasn’t. She was there, now she’s gone. I’m sad about the girl, but I didn’t fucking kill her and I’m not letting this fuck up my entire life. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just wanted the whole thing behind me. I wanted the whole thing to be gone.’

  ‘But it wasn’t gone.’

  ‘No. It wasn’t gone. A couple of weeks later, Richie comes to me with this script. He wants to produce it, wants me to star in it. I explain to him I can’t do it. Then he reminds me that I owe him. He says if I need to be reminded he’s got photographs.’

  ‘They took pictures of the dead girl?’