L.A. Times

by Stuart Woods

  “You gave my friend your word,” Vinnie said slowly. “That was good enough for him. Now you’ve disappointed him.” The fat man’s fingers curled over the top of the desk drawer and yanked it open, but Vinnie moved faster. He caught the fat man by the wrist, then turned and drove an elbow into his face. The fat man grunted and made a gurgling sound but didn’t let go of the desk drawer. Without a pause, Vinnie lifted a foot and kicked the drawer shut. A cracking sound was heard in the room.

  The fat man screamed. He snatched his hand from Vinnie’s grasp and held it close to his bleeding face. “You broke my fingers!” he whimpered. He wouldn’t be doing any calculating for a while.

  Vinnie bent over, grabbed a leg of the chair in which the fat man sat, and yanked. The fat man fell backwards into a quivering heap. Vinnie opened the desk drawer and found a short-barrelled .32 revolver. He lifted his shirttail and tucked it into his belt. “This is a dangerous weapon,” he said. “You shouldn’t have it; you’ll end up hurting yourself.” Vinnie reached for the stack of bills on the desk and started counting. The fat man watched with an expression of pain that had nothing to do with his bleeding face or his broken fingers. Vinnie stopped counting. “Five hundred,” he said, sticking the wad into his pocket and returning a few ones to the desktop. “My friend will apply this to the interest on your loan. On Friday, he’ll want all the back interest. A week from Friday, he’ll want the five grand.”

  “I can’t raise five thousand by then,” the fat man whined.

  “Sell the Cadillac,” Vinnie suggested.

  “I can’t; it’s got a loan on it.”

  “Maybe my friend will take the Cadillac in payment,” Vinnie said. “I’ll ask him. You could go on making the payments.”

  “Are you nuts? That car is new—it cost me thirty-five thousand.”

  “Just a suggestion,” Vinnie said. “It would be cheaper just to come up with the five grand.”

  “I can’t,” the fat man whimpered. “I just can’t do it.”

  “I’ll tell my friend you promised,” Vinnie said. He left the office and closed the door behind him.

  Vinnie was in his seat, eating buttered popcorn, in time to raptly watch Orson Welles’s incredibly long, one-take opening shot of Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh crossing the border into Mexico. He’d seen it at least a dozen times, and it never failed to amaze him. So much happening all at once, and yet the shot worked. He loved Welles; he loved the deep rumbling voice. Vinnie could do a very good impression of the Welles voice. He was a talented mimic.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Vinnie’s beeper went off as he left the movie house. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. “The sonofabitch couldn’t wait until tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch; he could still make it if he hurried.

  He grabbed a cab to Carmine Street in Little Italy. “Wait for me,” he said to the cabbie as they pulled up in front of the La Boheme Coffee House.

  “C’mon, mister,” the cabbie moaned, “it’s six bucks. I ain’t got time to wait.”

  Vinniè fixed him with the gaze he used on delinquent debtors. “Stay here,” he said, then got out of the cab without waiting for a reply. He hurried into the coffeehouse, past old men at tiny tables, and stopped at a table outside the door of the back room. An enormous man wearing a hat jammed on his head sat there, his gross fingers gripping a tiny espresso cup.

  “Hey, Cheech,” Vinnie said.

  “You din’ ansa da beep,” Cheech said.

  “It was quicker just to come.”

  Cheech made a motion with his head. “He’s in dere.”

  Vinnie waited for Cheech to press the button, then opened the door. Benedetto sat at a small desk, a calculator before him. Vinnie was reminded of the fat man. Both counted their money every day. Vinnie’s old friend Thomas Provensano, now Benedetto’s bagman and bookkeeper, sat at a table in a corner, working at a calculator. Tommy Pro winked at Vinnie.

  “Vinnie,” Benedetto said, not looking up from the tally sheet on the desk. Benedetto was in his late thirties, prematurely graying, a dapper dresser.

  “Mr. B.,” Vinnie said, “I talked to the fat man.”

  “Was he nice?”

  Vinnie produced the five hundred in cash and placed it on the desk. “He was nice for five hundred after I broke his fingers.”

  Benedetto held up a hand. “Vinnie, you know it’s not good for me to know those things.”

  Vinnie knew, but he also knew Benedetto loved hearing them. “Just between you and me, Mr. B., I told the fat man all the vig by Friday and the whole five grand in another week.”

  “Will he do it?”

  “He’s got a new Cadillac. I told him you’d take that, and he could keep making the payments.”

  Benedetto laughed. “I like that. You’re a smart boy, Vinnie; you could go places, if you could ever stop going to the movies.”

  This was high praise as well as scorn from Benedetto, and Vinnie nodded gratefully. Benedetto was a capo in the Carlucci family, and rumor was he’d be the new don when the present don’s appeals on a triple murder conviction were exhausted. Keeping Benedetto happy was Vinnie’s constant worry. The man had the disposition of an unhappy rattlesnake, and there were corpses planted far and wide, men who had once displeased Mr. B., not the least of them Vinnie’s father, Onofrio Callabrese.

  Benedetto handed the money to Tommy Pro, who quickly counted it, entered the sum into the calculator, then put the money into the safe. Tommy extracted another envelope from the safe and handed it to Benedetto.

  “Payday, kid,” Benedetto said, handing the envelope to Vinnie.

  Vinnie pocketed the envelope quickly. “Thanks, Mr. B.,” he said.

  “Make sure the fat man keeps his new schedule,” Benedetto said. “Come see me after you collect the vig. How’s the rest of your list doing?”

  Vinnie knew that Benedetto knew the status of every account; he just wanted to hear it aloud.

  “Everybody’s on schedule this week,” Vinnie replied.

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Benedetto replied. “Keep it up.”

  “Right, Mr. B.” Vinnie turned to go.

  “And Vinnie…”

  “Yes, Mr. B.?”

  “Next time, bring me the money right away; don’t take in a movie first.”

  “Yes, Mr. B.”

  “What is it with you and the movies, huh? I never seen anything like it.”

  “It’s kind of a hobby, you know?”

  Benedetto nodded. “You’re getting too old for hobbies. How old are you now, Vinnie?”

  “Twenty-eight, Mr. B.”

  “Time you was making your bones.”

  Vinnie didn’t speak. Sweat broke out in the small of his back.

  “Maybe the fat man don’t come through, you can make your bones on him.”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. B.,” Vinnie said.

  “Getoutahere.”

  Vinnie got out. The taxi was waiting, and he gave the cabbie an address in Chelsea, then sat back in the seat, drained. He opened the envelope and counted: three thousand bucks—his best week ever. Working for Benedetto had its advantages, but this thing about making his bones was beginning to weigh on Vinnie. Once he did that, he’d be a “made man,” a full member of the family. And once he did that, Benedetto would own him forever. Vinnie didn’t like the idea of being owned.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Vinnie paid the cabbie, tipped him five, then ran up the steps of the Chelsea brownstone. As far as Benedetto and the rest of the family knew, Vinnie lived in his dead mother’s place on Bleecker Street, but he spent fewer and fewer nights there; his real home was three rooms in Chelsea.

  He unlocked the mailbox labeled “Michael Vincent.” Three years before, he had picked a lawyer out of the phone book, legally changed his name, gotten a Social Security number, a driver’s license, a voter registration card and a passport, and opened a bank account. After two years of filing tax returns, listing his
occupation as freelance writer, he had obtained credit cards and charge accounts in his new name, signed a lease on the Chelsea apartment, and had even taken out and repaid a bank loan. He made his bank deposits in cash at a different branch each time, he never bounced a check, and he had twelve thousand dollars in a savings account, plus a stash of fifties and hundreds. Michael Vincent was the most respectable of citizens.

  “How do you do?” Vinnie said aloud to himself as he climbed the stairs to his second-floor apartment. “I’m very pleased to meet you.” After a lot of experimenting, he had settled on the Tyrone Power voice. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.” Power was the star whose vocal sounds most closely matched Vinnie’s own, and the actor’s accentless California speech and silken delivery was what Vinnie strived for. He had seen The Razor’s Edge only the day before, and Vinnie tried to project the serenity of Larry as played by Power into his speech. “I’m extremely pleased to meet you,” he said as he unlocked the three locks on the front door of the apartment.

  The interior was classic New York Yuppie. Vinnie had exposed the brick on the wall with the fireplace; the furniture was soft and white, with a sprinkling of glass and leather; the art was a few good prints and a lot of original movie posters—Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and His Girl Friday among them. Nearly everything in the place had fallen off the back of a truck, including the posters, which Vinnie had stripped from a broken-down revival movie house before a wiseguy acquaintance of his had torched the place for the strapped owner. There were nearly a thousand videotapes of movies neatly catalogued by title on bookshelves.

  He checked his answering machine; there was one message. “Michael, darling,” a woman’s low voice said. “Dinner’s at nine. Don’t be late. In fact, try and be early.”

  Vinnie got out of the black clothes he habitually wore on his collection rounds—his mob outfit, as he thought of it. He took a shower, shampooed his hair, and carefully blow-dried it. He dumped the two gold chains and the flashy wristwatch into a basket on the dresser top and slipped on a steel-and-gold Rolex and a small gold signet ring engraved with a family crest. He had selected a Vincent crest from the files of the genealogical department of the New York Public Library and had taken it to Tiffany’s, where he had chosen a ring and had it engraved. The ring was very nearly the only thing Vinnie had ever paid retail for.

  He had a small wardrobe of Ralph Lauren suits and jackets that a shoplifter of his acquaintance had systematically acquired for him on order from half a dozen Polo shops, and he selected a plaid tweed jacket and a pair of flannel trousers. Vinnie slipped into a Sea Island cotton shirt and Italian loafers, and he was ready for class. He glanced at the Rolex; he had twenty minutes.

  Vinnie arrived at Broadway and Waverly Place with five minutes to spare. He was seated in a classroom of the New York University Film School by the time the professor walked in. The class was on production budgets.

  Waring, the professor, held up a sheaf of papers. “Mr. Vincent?” he said.

  Vinnie raised his hand.

  “Do you really think you can shoot this film for two million six?”

  The class of thirty turned as one and looked at Vinnie.

  “I believe I can,” Vinnie replied in his silky Tyrone Power voice.

  “Tell us why, Mr. Vincent,” Waring said.

  Vinnie sat up. “Well, just because the piece is set in New York doesn’t mean it has to be shot in New York. My budget is for an Atlanta shoot with some stock street footage of New York. That’s in the budget, by the way.”

  Across the room a young man with curly red hair slapped his forehead.

  “And in what areas did you achieve savings by shooting in Atlanta?” Waring asked.

  “In almost every area,” Vinnie said. “Cost of housing, transportation, sets. And no Teamsters or craft unions to worry about. I knocked off half a million because of that.”

  “Can you give me a single example of a film set in New York that was successfully shot in Atlanta?” Waring asked.

  “I saw a TV movie, ‘The Mayflower Madam,’ last week. That was a New York story shot in Atlanta, and it looked good to me.”

  “Didn’t my instructions specify a New York shoot?” Waring asked.

  Vinnie pulled out a piece of paper and glanced at it. “Where?” he asked. “You may have implied a New York shoot, but you didn’t specify it.”

  “You’re right, Mr. Vincent,” Waring said, “and you were the only one in the class who figured that out. That’s why you came in eight hundred thousand dollars under anybody else’s budget. Congratulations, it was a good, workable budget, and you saved your investors a lot of money.”

  “Thank you,” Vinnie said, feeling very proud of himself.

  After class the redheaded young man approached Vinnie. He was wearing jeans, an army field jacket with an outline where sergeant’s stripes had been, and wire-rimmed glasses. He needed a haircut. “I’m Chuck Parish,” he said, sticking out his hand.

  “How do you do?” Vinnie replied. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  “You’re Michael Vincent, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can I buy you a cup of coffee? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  Vinnie glanced at the Rolex. “I’ve got twenty minutes,” he said, “before I’m due somewhere.”

  The waitress put the coffee on the table. Chuck Parish paid her, and when she had gone he pulled a script from a canvas briefcase. “I’d like you to read this and cost it for me. I’m going to shoot it in New York, and I need a production manager.”

  Vinnie flipped through the pages, one hundred and nineteen of them.

  “It’s a caper movie, about some Mafia guys who steal two million dollars of their godfather’s money and nearly get away with it.”

  “Who’s financing?” Vinnie asked.

  “I can raise three hundred thousand,” Parish said. “Family connections.”

  “You think that’s enough?”

  “That’s what I want you to tell me. My girlfriend’s doing the female lead, and there are enough people in her acting classes to cast from. There’s one guy I think looks good for the male lead.”

  “Do you have a distributor?”

  “No.”

  Vinnie nodded. “I’ll read it and call you.”

  “My number’s on the back of the script.”

  They shook hands and parted.

  Fifteen minutes later a cab dropped Vinnie at a prewar apartment building on Fifth Avenue near the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  “Good evening, Mr. Vincent,” the doorman said, opening the door for him.

  “Good evening, John,” Vinnie said smoothly. He took the elevator to the top floor, emerged into a marbled vestibule, and opened a door with his key.

  “In here, darling,” she called.

  Vinnie walked down the long hall past twenty million dollars’ worth of art and turned into the huge master bedroom. She was in bed; a rosy-tipped breast peeked out from under the sheet. She had wonderful breasts for a woman of forty-one, Vinnie thought.

  “We have half an hour before our guests arrive,” she said, smiling. “Don’t muss my makeup.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  Vinnie had met Barbara Mannering at a benefit for the NYU Film School eight months before. He had been waiting in line for a drink when she appeared at his elbow.

  “Shit,” she said.

  He turned and looked at her. A blonde of five-seven or eight, expensively coiffed and dressed, discreet but very real diamonds. “I beg your pardon?” he said.

  “I am unaccustomed to standing in lines,” she replied. “Would you be a prince and get me a double scotch on the rocks?”

  “Of course,” Vinnie had replied.

  “Are you a budding movie director?”

  “A budding producer,” he said.

  “You look a little old for NYU.”

  Vinnie knew he looked thir
ty-five. “I’m not a full-time student.”

  “What do you do full-time?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Of what?”

  “Books, magazine pieces, speeches sometimes.”

  “Anything I would have read?”

  “Of course.”

  “Such as?”

  “I have a rather peculiar specialty; I’m a ghostwriter.”

  “And whom do you ghost for?”

  “If I told you, I’d no longer be a ghost. Business people, the odd politician.”

  “How do you find your clients?”

  “They seem to find me—a sort of grapevine, I guess.”

  “You must do very well.”

  “Not all that well. I didn’t write the Trump book or the Chuck Yeager book. My clients are more modest.”

  “So that’s why you want to be a film producer, to do better?”

  “I want to produce because I love film. I think I love it enough to do very well at it.”

  “I’m inclined to believe you will,” she said. “Do you know, you sound just like Tyrone Power?”

  Vinnie smiled more broadly than he had intended. “Do I?”

  He took her home, and they began making love while still in the elevator. They had been making love ever since, once or twice a week. She gave a dinner party regularly, twice a month; Vinnie was invited about every other time. He had met a couple of ex-mayors, some writers, and a great many other interesting people.

  Vinnie kissed a breast, unstuck his body from hers and headed for the shower. When he came out of the bathroom she was leafing through Chuck Parish’s script.

  “What’s this?”

  “A guy in my budgeting class asked me to cost it for him. He’s scraped up some money and wants to shoot it.”

  “Is it any good?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but he has a reputation at NYU as a kind of genius. I’ve seen a couple of short films he’s done, and they were extremely good. My impression is that he doesn’t have much business sense.” He went to the closet that held the wardrobe Barbara had chosen for him and selected a dinner jacket and a silk shirt. Both had been made by a London tailor who visited New York quarterly, and Barbara had picked up the bill. The clothes were the only thing he’d ever taken from her, although the first time he had seen the twelve-room Fifth Avenue apartment and its art and furnishings, his first impulse had been to tell Benedetto about it and get the place cleaned out some weekend when she was out of town. He’d liked her, though, and he’d thought she might be more useful to him as a friend. He’d been right. “Who’s coming to dinner?” he asked.