I bought her about ten years ago, right after my divorce. The timing was perfect. I needed the sea again after that marriage. Pussy-whipped and virtually landlocked for eight years, I bought Stella and sunk some money (hidden from my ex) into fitting her out the way I wanted. I tossed my dock lines and sailed her alone, singlehandedly, around the Pacific. It was what I needed to get over the heartbreak of finding the woman who I thought was the love of my life, Sandy, banging the man who I thought was my best friend, Rudy, behind my back. It was the only time he’d ever done me wrong. But that did it.
I puttered around for months, down the coast of Mexico to Cabo San Lucas, drowning myself in tequila and cheap hookers along the way. When I got bored, I set off to the Marquesas and went island hopping all over French Polynesia. At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever come back, and I wasn’t really planning to. Sold everything I owned and put it in the sailing coffers. Half of me just wanted to sail off the edge of the earth. The other half answered an email I got when I found an internet connection in Papeete.
I didn’t have the kind of fuck-you money I needed to sustain myself forever, and the coffers were already starting to run low. I suppose I could have done it down and dirty, picking up some boat work here and there. But Doug Strong had a well-paying, choice gig for me back in L.A. if I wanted it. Doug was a teamster boss, a transportation captain in the movie biz. I met him early on in my years in L.A.—Rudy and I worked on his boat. It was my foot in the door to the Hollywood Teamsters, Local 399. He had a forty-two foot Catalina, and together Rudy and I refitted and customized his cabin and navigation station according to his wild ideas. We rewired all the electronics along with his new radar, GPS, chart plotter, depth sounder, and state-of-the-art stereo. When he popped a shroud in a twenty-five knot gust on the way back from Catalina, I re-rigged his standing rigging. In return, he got me a union card and a gig driving the rescue boat for the Beach Patrol television series. Rudy was already in and driving the camera boat. It was like old times. It was good, easy money, and there were plenty of good-looking, bikini-clad AMW (Actress/Model/Whatever) extras who wanted to go for a boat ride.
“Welcome to below the line,” Rudy quipped when I got my union card.
“What, the water line?” I asked.
Rudy explained that in the film business there were two kinds of people: Above the line and below the line. Above the line were all the mucky-mucks: the suits, the producers, the directors, the writers, the stars, and the big-money big shots. Below the line were the craftspeople, the laborers, the extras, and pretty much everyone else in show business. I told him I was happy being “below the belt.”
“Not below the belt. Below the line,” he would laughingly correct me.
“Whatever. Belt, line, if this is what it is, I’m okay with it,” I replied.
I worked on the show for its last three seasons. After Beach Patrol wrapped, Rudy went to work driving a grip truck on a feature shooting out in San Diego. I got another below the belt gig driving a prop truck for Hollywood Beat, the popular TV cop show shooting here in town. That’s how I first met my wife, Sandy, a set dresser, but that’s another story. Eventually I learned to drive bigger rigs, even semis, making myself more marketable in the teamster circles. I started working on features and commercials too—TV shows were longer gigs but features had panache. Commercials were the shortest, but they paid the best. They were great for in between the longer gigs. Since I also knew boats—and many teamsters had boats that usually needed work—I was a popular guy. I did a lot of favors working on their boats, and in thanks, kept getting well-paid Hollywood Teamster union work.
The gig Dougie had for me was a “dream job” as he called it. It was driving Gabriella Vassey, the hot, young “A” list ingénue, to and from set for her next major motion picture. It was a cushy job and had status. Producers want to protect their investment. So when there’s forty to fifty million dollars riding on a starlet’s name, they not only want to take care of her, they want her protected. It was the kind of job everyone Doug knew was hitting him up for, except me. Which was one of the reasons why he wanted me. It was not the kind of gig you gave to some donut snacking, burrito packing, overweight dumb-shit, or the outlaw surfer “dude” that a lot of Hollywood movie teamster were famous for. This was a gig for someone you could trust to be professional, well mannered, and courteous, yet pack a presence of intimidation against any stalker-types or paparazzi. Plus, I cleaned up pretty well. It was more like being a glorified limousine driver-slash-bodyguard than a teamster, and you didn’t have to get your hands dirty. As a matter of fact, getting your hands dirty on this gig was actually frowned upon.
Doug also told me he could also help me get a conceal-and-carry permit for the gig, something I had been wanting to get for some time. Not because I get my jollies carrying a gun, but because I can demand a higher rate. You see, lots of teamsters own their own equipment and like having someone driving for them who’s going to protect their investment. Equipment like fuel trucks, stake-beds, generators, and fifth wheels are coveted by the Mexican drug cartels, and hijackings were not unusual. Packing a piece also made me feel safer driving to remote locations, even before I had my concealed carry permit. It was also great for gigs like these, and a way to get more of them. I’d been doing USPSA shooting for some time, even won a couple of trophies and moved up in class, so I was quite proficient with a handgun. So much so that Sandy tossed my Glock 17 off the Venice pier the moment she knew I had found out about her and Rudy.
I’d be lying if I said I never toyed with the idea of taking out Sandy and Rudy. I imagine anyone who goes through a divorce with a cheating wife has the same thoughts. Living out those fantasies is what separates the crazies from the sane. Getting back at Sandy and Rudy that way wasn’t worth spending the rest of my life in the can for. I couldn’t blame Rudy too much. I’m sure it was Sandy who seduced him. I should have known. To think of all the times I knew they were alone together, crossing paths on work related errands or favors at our place or his. It all made sense. I was pissed it was Rudy and felt betrayed by him, but in a funny way I guess I felt like I owed Rudy for all he’d done for me over the years. Maybe I even owed him for showing me Sandy’s true colors. Hell, maybe he was still trying to get back at me for banging that Boston University cheerleader Sally Walton behind his back while he was puking up Southern Comfort off the stern of the gaff-rigged schooner we were crewing on that Labor Day weekend in Bar Harbor so long ago. Maybe I’ll run into him one of these days and ask him.
So I pulled Stella’s mast and packed her into a container to ship home before flying back to L.A. to take the ingénue gig. Through Doug’s “friend” we got all my papers in order, and I received my concealed carry the day before first day of principal photography. The job itself was a piece of cake. The hardest part was getting up at three in the morning so I could haul myself up to Calabasas to pick up my starlet and get her to the make-up trailer by five.
Gabriella Vassey was fun lady, and yes, she was a lady. In this day and age, that’s hard to find. She came from Hollywood royalty. Her great-grandmother was a silent film star who made the transition to talkies by being one helluva singer and dancer in those big lavish musicals they did in the thirties. Her grandfather started out as an editor and became a staff director at Paramount during the studio days. Her father was a big time character actor and Emmy winner but drank himself to death when Gabby was still a baby. Gabby was only twenty-five when I started driving her, but she had already led more of a life than most people twice her age. She was acting when she was four and got an Oscar nomination when she was thirteen, playing a teenage runaway turned street hooker. By the time Gabby was eighteen, she had already been in and out of rehab twice and her career washed up. But she persevered. She straightened herself out and reinvented herself doing smaller indie pics. Now she was riding a wave of two blockbuster hits in a row. She commanded seven figures a picture plus a piece of the box office, and got an in-
house production company deal from the studio. Yet unlike so many others in Hollywood, perhaps because of her “long,” checkered life, she was genuinely down to earth and actually in touch with reality. She would rather go hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains and cook her own dinner on her weekends off than fend off the paparazzi at the latest Sunset Boulevard nightclub du jour. During our commutes, she enjoyed hearing my seafaring tales, and when the film finished shooting she gave me a Rolex Platinum Yacht Master watch as a wrap gift. The lady had class.
I thought of her as I checked the Rolex once again, still waiting for that test sail to show up. He was now over an hour late and neither he nor Corey had returned any of my calls. I had already finished walking the docks checking on my “other” boats. Boats that I was left in charge of for nominal fees or favors. Amongst other things, I was maintaining and making sure cleaning crews and bottom cleaners were doing their jobs. I had two fishing boats owned by fellow teamsters who were out of town on location for a few months, Doug Strong’s new Beneteau, and a forty-nine foot Grand Banks trawler that belonged to the infamous Israeli producer, Ari Goldman. He had made his fortune in the straight-to-video European film market of the eighties and nineties. He’d been out of the country for almost a year and half now, avoiding tax collectors and the residuals department of the Screen Actors Guild. But every once in a while I would get a fat check from him to make sure his boat was well taken care of.
I decided the buyer for my boat wasn’t really looking to buy, or if he was, Corey showed him something else he fell in love with. So I locked up Stella and walked back to my apartment across from the dock in the Tiki Marina apartment building to grab a bite and change. I was between gigs, but working tonight. Pays Lee was coming in on his private charter jet from Vegas. I had a couple of clients over the years who hired me as a freelance limo driver and bodyguard on a per diem basis.
Pays Lee was one of my regulars. He’s a big time gangsta-rap record producer with his own label. Pays Lee got his name from wearing these outlandish paisley outfits. Everything he wore was paisley. He even had a line of overpriced clothing popular amongst his gangsta-rap peers. Pays started out young, in the eighties as a highly sought-after session musician. As a bass player Pays Lee played with some of the biggest and best contemporary artists before becoming a successful record producer.
Pays owed me over five thousand dollars and promised to pay up tonight. He always paid in cash, my preferred method of payment for these types of gigs. Since I still hadn’t sold the boat and work had been slow, I was probably going to need it for another month of slip fees and bottom cleaning. Not to mention rent, food, and bills. Figured I’d kick back and watch the rest of the Yankee game, maybe catch a couple of Zs before heading over to Santa Monica Airport for the pick-up.
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Chapter 1
THE DOCTOR WAS A NO-NONSENSE west-coaster, type that called a spade a shovel and if you didn’t like it would add, You got a problem with that?
Problems I had. In spades. Or should that be shovels?
‘What were you drinking?’ he said.
‘Black Heart.’
‘Rum…the condemned man’s tot.’
Like I’d argue. He laid hands on my head, tilted my face to the light, opened my eyelids with his thumbs.
A tut.
‘Pardon?’
No response.
He motioned me stand, said, ‘Open your shirt.’
The unbuttoning was a trial. My hands shook like fluttering starlings. The doc looked at his watch.
‘You in a hurry?’ I asked.
A frown. ‘Are you?’
I got his meaning. Didn’t answer.
The stethoscope felt cold, made me flinch. What made the doc flinch, I could have done without knowing.
‘You’re dangerously underweight,’ he said.
I hadn’t been on any scales that I could remember, said, ‘You weighed me with your eyes, did you?’
He took off his glasses, frowned again. ‘Mr Dury, I can count your ribs.’ He put back his glasses, stood fists on hips. ‘You’re malnourished.’ Then the killer: ‘How frequent are the hallucinations?’
I hadn’t told anyone about those. Either this guy was good or moonlighting as a stage hypnotist.
I sat upright in the bed. ‘Halluci—wha’?’
A hand on my shoulder, was meant to calm me. ‘You were flapping arms on Princes Street like Freddie Krueger was after you…You’re a sorry state, son.’
My heart stilled when he called me son. My own father had never shown such concern. I grabbed the crisp white linen of the bed sheets, lifted them up to my throat. I could remember nothing. ‘How did I get here…I mean, what happened?’
The doctor exhaled slowly. I felt as if I was back at school, in the headmaster’s office after some dust-up or a smashed window. ‘An old lady on a mobility scooter ran into you. She must’ve been going at a fair clip, mind…put you into the window of Burger King. Out like a light you went.’
He didn’t even smile; I had to fight to suppress a laugh. Well, if you can’t laugh at yourself, you really are in bad shape.
‘She’s okay, by the way,’ said the doc.
Like I gave a fuck—she put me in hospital; lied: ‘Glad to hear it.’ I touched my elbow; the skin was broken and reddened. As I looked at my fingers I saw they were stick thin, yellowed by nicotine and black under the nails. I was plugged into a saline drip. I looked, and felt, like complete shit. Worse, I was choking for a drink.
The door behind the doc opened. I caught sight of Hod. He held out a bottle of Lucozade, bunch of grapes. He was motioned in. Doc said, ‘Try talking sense to him, eh…He’s living on borrowed time.’
I’d heard it all before. Been to the meetings, the therapy, the interventions. The ex-wife couldn’t help me—what made them think anyone else could? I felt like a man at the end of a long road; I was tired. Done. I needed no more looking after than I could give myself, and that wasn’t much. I didn’t care, though, because I’d lost all cares. As you stare down that dark well of despair, there’s the most astounding sense of relief, a release almost. A surrendering. A feeling of putting it all in the man upstairs’ hands. Fuck it, like anyone could do a worse job of it than me. I looked at the clock on the wall. It said 3 p.m. I’d be off by half past, if I could get a drink in me.
‘What’s this?’ I said to Hod.
‘Lucozade.’
‘You serious? Nothing else…?’
Hod bridled. ‘Gus, your liver’s fucked. You’re up Shit Street, and you want me to bring you sauce.’ He shook his head, sliced the air with his hands. ‘No can do, buddy.’
I tried to get out of bed. My head swam.
Hod flattened me back with his forearm. ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’
Oh, I was that all right: ran over by an old grunter on Edinburgh’s main drag—this was a new low, even for me. I wanted out. I wanted a bottle to climb into. I wanted to wash away the contents of this banged-up head of mine. I needed out, away. Anywhere but here. I struggled with Hod, but I didn’t have the strength; I was piss weak.
‘Okay, okay…you got me,’ I said.
‘Are you quite settled?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Good, because I need you to get yourself together pronto.’
Hod’s eyes widened. He had that stare of his on, one that says, Whatcha make of those apples? He had my full attention as he handed me a copy of the evening paper. Front-page splash was a story about a hanging at one of the city’s universities.
‘The fuck’s this?’
Hod snatched back the paper, read aloud: ‘Lothian and Borders Police ann
ounced the death of nineteen-year-old Ben Laird at a capital press conference this morning…blah-blah…His mother, the actress Gillian Laird, dismissed police claims of an erotic asphyxiation accident and pledged to spare no expense to root out her son’s killer.’
‘Erotic…what?’ I said.
‘Asphyxiation…Think they call them gaspers. Y’know, tie themselves up to get turned on.’
Sounded like too much work to me. I took the paper back. ‘This him?’
Got nods.
I could see the family resemblance now: the lad’s mother was Scottish acting royalty, but she’d been front-page news herself recently. ‘Hod, this is the chick that came out, yeah?’
A grin spread over his chops. ‘That’s the one…Left her husband, some big film director, for a twenty-year-old glamour model.’ He put open hands in front of his chest to mimic a sizeable rack.
‘She just dumped the film guy and swapped sides?’
‘He was a bit of a swordsman, lives over in the States now. Put it about for years. I’d say she got fed up and took the dramatic course of action.’
I shook my head. ‘Some family…The glamour girl was a pole dancer, yeah?’
‘I dunno what nationality she was!’
‘Ha-fucking-ha…The one she’s sleeping head-to-toe with, she’s the one the papers ran the scoops on: had worked in the Pubic Triangle, and been a junkie and all that.’
‘Aye, aye, aye…’ Hod clicked fingers at me, shook his head, rapid-style. ‘Look, that’s neither here nor there, mate. What you need to know is, Gillian Laird is looking for someone to go and poke about in her son’s murder, and she’s paying big money.’
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