Fridays at Enrico's

by Don Carpenter

  Stan and Fishkin carried the stove out to Fishkin’s Mercedes and got it into the trunk with the door open but tied down with some manila twine. Stan reached into his pocket to pay, but Fishkin just waved, his suit mussed, sweat on his face. “It’s on me,” he said. “Somehow, some day, I’ll get the studio to pick it up.”

  And so off they went, back to the health food restaurant to get Stan’s car, and then to Stan’s house, to take out the old stove, put it in the garage, and hook up the new one. They had to call PG&E and by four in the afternoon the new stove was in. Fishkin looked happy in his shirtsleeves, dirty on his face and hands. “That was fun!”

  He left Stan alone, but with an appointment to come in the next day and talk about the script. Stan gratefully stripped, showered, then walked naked through his house to the pool and fell in the water.

  The next morning, just as he finished his breakfast of beautifully-fried eggs and properly-buttered toast, orange juice and coffee, the phone rang.

  “My name is Evarts Ziegler,” the voice said. “But people call me Ziggie.” Ziggie was an agent, and perfectly willing to be present that morning at his meeting with Bud Fishkin. This wouldn’t commit Stan to anything. Only serve to protect him. “They take no prisoners in this town,” Ziggie said. After he hung up Stan wondered if Bud had told Ziggie he was an ex-convict. Of course he had. That was the selling point, wasn’t it? Stan had to laugh. Anywhere but Hollywood, a black mark against his name. He’d certainly come to the right place.

  57.

  Stan saw his novel for the first time in Bud Fishkin’s office, on his first visit to Universal, which turned out to be only a few blocks from where he lived. The guard who filled out his temporary pass and stuck it under his windshield was about his age, with red hair and freckles, his hair too long to look right with the police-style hat. Rather than saying “Get a haircut, man,” Stan asked directions to Bud’s bungalow. The guy wasn’t a cop, he wouldn’t know a thief if one came up and put his hand in his pocket. Stan followed the guard’s directions to the bungalows, and parked in a space marked andrei kelos, as Bud had suggested. Kelos was still in London.

  The bungalow was white with green shutters and dark shingles, surrounded by trees, shrubbery, and singing birds. Inside was a nice light airy waiting room with a secretary at her desk. She was a stocky woman of about fifty in a white satin blouse and red slacks.

  “Stan Winger?” she asked with a smile. “Bud’s on the phone. Can I get you a cup of coffee? The trades? He’ll only be a minute.”

  Stan waited. The secretary answered the phone, which buzzed every few minutes. There was a shelf of books, and from where he sat Stan read the titles. Mostly books he’d never heard of, new-looking in their dust wrappers. Some were paperbacks, and among these he saw his own book. He got up and pulled it from the shelf. The cover was garish, but he liked it. A guy looking straight out at the reader, wearing a brown suit with his badge pinned on the lapel, a gun sticking out of one coat pocket and some money sticking out of the other. Instead of a face, just a blank, a white blank. Night Cop, by Stan Winger. A Gold Medal Original.

  Stan sat down, feeling very strange, and started reading his own book.

  “We just got those,” the secretary said, her hand over the telephone mouthpiece.

  “I’ve never seen it before,” Stan said, reading on. He was finding a lot of stuff right on the first page that he hadn’t written. His face got hot and his ears started ringing. Not important changes, just different word or phrase choices, more and more of them. He told himself furiously that he wouldn’t have minded so much if the changes had improved the flow of the book or something, but they were just changes, for the sake of change, as far as he could tell, and ultimately goddamn fucking ridiculous!

  “What’s the matter?” the secretary asked.

  “Nothing.” Stan had to calm down. Of course it had been rewritten, and of course Knox Burger hadn’t told him. They owned the book, they bought it outright, they could change it all they wanted. Still he felt angry, and a little betrayed.

  At this moment a man came in. He smiled tired at the secretary and held out his hand to Stan. “I’m Ziggie.” He was dressed in an immaculate blue suit with chalk stripes. He had thin blond-gray hair, pale blue bloodshot eyes, and a red face. His hand was warm and firm. Stan stood, and Bud came out of his offices in shirtsleeves, smiling.

  “So you’ve met,” he said. “Come into my domain.”

  The office seemed large, but Stan had nothing to compare it to. Movie posters on the walls, a lot of comfortable leather furniture and shelves of books. It could have been the office of a college professor, except for the movie posters. Stan hadn’t seen any of the movies, but then he’d been away.

  Instead of sitting behind his desk, Bud joined Stan and Ziggie around a little coffee table, over by double windows looking out at shrubbery and blue sky. “I see you have your book in hand,” Bud said. To Ziggie he said, “Have you read it yet?”

  Ziggie shook his head. Stan handed him the book. Ziggie frowned at it and put it on the coffee table. “I’m just here as a referee,” he said.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’d have an agent present when I could have just run you over the bumps,” said Bud. “The answer is, I want to work with you on a legitimate basis, no later recriminations, and you really need an agent on your side. Anyway, the studio’s paying, so I’m not cutting off my own nose, just theirs.” Bud smiled. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Sure,” Stan said. He grinned to indicate that he was completely in the dark.

  “If I end up representing you,” Ziggie said in his tired voice, “I negotiate with the studio, not with Andrei Kelos associates. We’re all in this together against a common enemy.”

  “I get it,” Stan said.

  “Ziggie’s not my agent,” Bud said.

  “I represent writers, a few directors.”

  “I wanted you to have the best,” Bud said. “But I didn’t bring you to my agency because I didn’t want you to think I was running a number on you.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought that.”

  “Maybe I should leave the room for a few minutes,” Bud said, and went out the door. Stan felt like he was going to be asked to the prom. He waited.

  “I need a drink,” Ziggie said. “But I can’t. I never drink during the week, it interferes with business. You know those lunches cost you whole afternoons. So I start drinking at around six on Friday and drink my way right through the weekend. My hangovers last around three days. You want to be my client? We won’t sign anything. I’ll represent you until you holler quit.”

  “Okay.” Stan held out his hand. Bud came back into the room only seconds later.

  “Do you have a deal?” he asked.

  “I’m representing Mr. Winger, if that’s what you mean.” Ziggie hooked a finger at Stan. “Let’s get out of here.” Then he laughed and sat down. “Talk deal,” he said to Bud.

  It lasted twenty minutes. Stan realized he was going to have to learn a new language, if he wanted to stay in Hollywood. As he understood it, the great director Andrei Kelos was going to direct Night Cop as his next picture, starting in a year or so. A screenwriter hadn’t been hired. Kelos usually relied on one or another of several favorite writers, most of them English. But now that Stan had arrived, it was Bud Fishkin’s notion that Stan be tried on an experimental basis, to get the extra stuff they wouldn’t from an English writer. The American underworld criminal stuff. Bud was morally certain he’d get the go-ahead to hire Stan. Stan would work every day with Bud and, if necessary, Bud would hire another screenwriter to help Stan learn the ropes. If Stan was interested, they’d call Andrei, and if Andrei went for it, they’d come up with some numbers and hit up the studio.

  “You can’t have him for a nickel under seventy-five thousand dollars,” Ziggie said. Stan was shocked. Bud just grinned and said nothing, escorting them out to the front door. When Ziggie and Stan were outside, Ziggie sai
d, “They want you pretty badly. I think we can get seventy-five.”

  “I thought the studio put up the money.”

  “Under pressure only. We have to strike while Andrei is in love. These big directors tend to run off in all directions. But don’t worry. That’s why you have me. Go home and write another book.”

  Stan found a package of five copies of Night Cop in his mailbox. He started reading again, losing his temper all over at some of the stupid changes. Finally, exploding with anger, he called Knox Burger. Burger answered the phone himself.

  “I just got my copies. I’m a little pissed off about some of the changes.”

  “Oh, grow up,” Burger said. “Did you expect to coast through on your own prose?”

  It was Stan’s turn to be embarrassed.

  “We do that to all our books,” Burger said. “They did it to Hammett, they did it to Chandler, and they’ll do it to you. As I said, grow up. You’re in Hollywood now. What we did to your prose is nothing compared to what they’ll do to it. Capeesh?”

  58.

  When he didn’t hear from either Evarts Ziegler or Bud Fishkin, Stan decided everything had fallen apart and it was his fault. He went over his meetings with both men to try to find out what he’d done wrong, but finally had to admit he just didn’t know. Hollywood was mysterious. He didn’t call them because what would he say? He didn’t call Knox to find out how his book was doing in the marketplace, if Knox even knew. Gold Medal Originals didn’t get reviewed. They were issued in huge numbers and gobbled up by eager readers like Stan himself, then vanished. According to Burger, there were Gold Medal writers who turned out five or six a year, under various pen names, a damned good living. Or so it seemed until you heard Evarts Ziegler talking lightly about seventy-five thousand for writing a screenplay. Stan had hoped to make a living. Not get rich, though once the possibility opened up, he couldn’t help daydreaming. For now he turned to Ziggie’s advice to write another book. But there was nothing there.

  He adjusted to his day-to-day life in the Valley, waiting to hear from anybody. Since there was a television set in the living room he turned it on once in a while, more as a professional looking at the competition than as a viewer, or so he told himself. He recalled Fishkin’s words, about television reducing everything to tiny pictures. There’d been television sets in C Block, but Stan hadn’t had one. He could hear them, though, and hated the sound. He preferred his Zenith radio, a big portable job that drew stations all over the world. He liked to splash around the pool and then sit at one end, in the water up to his neck, with the radio playing music. He let his mind empty out and his body relax, with the pool water “warm as piss.” He could afford it.

  Driving around in his Cadillac convertible, he got acquainted with the varieties of Southern California, and loved it. Of course. A Portland kid, he half-expected it to rain every day. When instead it was hot and sweet he just naturally felt good, full of optimism and hope. He drove to the beach towns as far south as Long Beach and north well past Malibu, surprised by the dullness of the beaches themselves compared to the drama and beauty of those in Oregon. Maybe if he got really rich he’d move out here to Malibu, or maybe even up to the Oregon coast, with a huge beach house to entertain all his friends. What had happened to them, his Oregon friends? When he’d been arrested he’d thought of calling Charlie, asking for help, for bail or a lawyer, but was too embarrassed. Now too many years had passed.

  He walked in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Westwood, the only places that seemed worthwhile to stop and walk around. Hollywood, he discovered, was full of bookstores, and his little house began filling with books. He’d never before had so much money, so he bought stuff he only maybe planned to read, as well as a lot of used Erle Stanley Gardner, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Chandler, Hammett, etc. He looked for any books by Charles Monel but couldn’t find one. And nothing by Dick or Richard Dubonet, or by Jaime Monel, but one day he saw a picture of Jaime on the back of a book in a bin of remainders, out in front of a store on Hollywood Boulevard. She’d published under her maiden name, of course. He bought the copy of Washington Street and took it home, more excited than he could understand.

  It was a hot day, so his first act was to strip and run out and fall into the pool. His scruples about swimming dirty had vanished under the pleasure of hitting that water all hot and sweaty, feeling the explosion of cold. Then, after a nice little swim, he got out, shook himself like a dog, sat down on his big white towel draped over his white wrought-iron chair, and read Jaime’s book cover to cover. At first it was like science fiction, so remote was it from his own experience, but Jaime pulled him into her life and the life of her parents and neighbors. Not a thief in the lot, no killings, no chases, no cops, and yet exciting, even thrilling. Jesus, she could really write. Jaime in her Lake Grove kitchen, white tee shirt, jeans, standing at the stove smiling and cooking, her daughter in her high chair, old Charlie sitting there, a big warm smile on his face. Stan felt extraordinary. A gush of feeling like nothing he’d ever felt. Or could remember, anyhow. Was it just the book? No, it was love. He loved those people. They were the only people he loved. He thought of writing Jaime care of her publisher, explaining why he’d so suddenly disappeared six years earlier, and including the happy news of his book and movie possibilities. Everybody thought Charlie was going to be an important writer. Nobody thought about Jaime, although they’d certainly respected her for finishing her little book. Dick Dubonet had called it that, “her little book.” Were they all still in Portland? He was tempted to call and find out, just to see if they were in the phone book, but didn’t. The past was over, remember?

  He realized too that they’d not likely be reading his book. They didn’t make a habit of reading drugstore pulps.

  “Well, fuck ’em,” Stan said to his pool. He felt good. He inventoried his well-kept yard, the shrubs and trees, the red-brown grape stake fence, the patch of lawn. Everything grew down here. He thought about going into gardening heavily, working in the sun. It would help him wait. He sighed. He thought he’d learned all there was to learn about waiting, but no. He looked at himself, naked in the sun. He’d gotten pretty tan in the few weeks he’d been here. He was in good shape, but it wouldn’t hurt to buy some exercise equipment. He could afford it. He’d pump iron until somebody called.

  In the middle of the night he woke sweating and terrified. What had her book done to him? He sat at his kitchen table in the midnight with a cup of instant coffee, the radio playing low, and tried to figure it. He didn’t have to think long. It was obvious. Jaime’s book had reminded him of how empty his life was. Because there was no woman. He was afraid of women. Afraid of losing control of himself. Sexual feelings and burglary. He had to face it. He was so scared he was afraid to jack off, much less get into bed with a real live woman. All the rest of this shit was a joke. What matter money and success and Hollywood without a woman? He knew the answer. It meant nothing. He wasn’t really waiting for Hollywood to come through, he was waiting for himself to break out of himself.

  He had to laugh, sitting there in the semi-darkness, planning the greatest jailbreak in history. Stan Winger finally breaks out of himself. Suddenly he remembered Linda McNeill. He’d blanked her from his mind. Another thing Jaime’s book had done, recalled to him the one woman he could have loved. Now in his emptiness her face floated back to him. He wanted to put his head on the table and cry. Since there was nobody around to see him, that’s what he did.

  59.

  This one would be about a man who kidnaps a woman. Linda. The man would not be Stan, but some poor sap who is egged into it by seeing beautiful women all day, and not getting to touch them or even talk to them, except to pass them in and out of the studio. The rent-a-cop at Universal. Only it wouldn’t be Universal, it would be some out-at-the-ass broken-down hack studio where they make cheesy movies for the gutter trade. Red. Red the boob. Red the hungry. Red the dreamer. Red Reemer. One day poor ol’ Red just snaps. Maybe it’s one of those
really hot L.A. days, The Fifth Hot Day in a Row, that would be his working title. Poor Red hasn’t slept in days. He keeps tossing and turning, this one girl in his mind, the girl that comes in and out of the lot in Stan’s Cadillac, or one just like it, a blonde, lots of wonderfully curly hair blowing in the wind, always a big smile and a friendly hello. As Red all but drools down her cleavage, in she comes, out she goes, he has no idea what she does, he assumes she’s an actress in one of the sleazeball movies they turn out around here, so one day when the heat is cooking his brain, Red gets his ass chewed off by some fat executive with a cutie at his side, and as he is standing there after a long hard day in the melting heat, swallowing the executive’s insults and remembering the little bimbo’s nasty smile, here comes the blonde in the Caddy, and when she gives her big friendly smile, something snaps. He gets into the car beside her, pulls out his gun and points it at her. “Turn right and keep driving straight,” he says to her surprised face.

  Stan realized the girl in his story wasn’t Linda at all, but somebody fresh, somebody he didn’t know. A secretary, not an actress. Everything Red thought about her was untrue. So she would be a mystery. This was going to be fun.

  He was happy to be back. Work gave focus to his day. He got up early, took his swim, made his breakfast, ate listening to the radio either outside or in his breakfast nook, and then, dressed only in jockey shorts, went into the bedroom he’d made over into his office. He wrote a chapter every day, each representing an hour in the story, the same as his first two novels. Only in this one he had not only Red and Sissie—the blonde—but Frank Greise, aka Greasy Frank, detective on the LAPD, who is assigned to the case of the missing secretary because nobody thinks it is important. Poor Frank is only a cop because he couldn’t get on the fire department. All he wants to do is get through his day so he can start drinking. Frank has a rule, no drinking before sundown. That’s because he tends to go nuts drunk. So every other chapter would be about poor hapless Greasy Frank, the last guy in the world you’d expect to solve a crime. Which of course he doesn’t. He just falls into it. Although Stan didn’t know exactly how he was going to get there, he knew what happened at the end of the story. Red would gradually convince himself that she loved him. She’d give him every reason to think this, and the reader must think it, too. Finally, near the end of the book, when through fumbling and stupidity Red has both the girl and the ransom money, and it looks like they’ll flee together to Brazil, he hands her his gun while he zips his fly or something, and since this is actually the first opportunity she’s had to shoot him, she does. Just as Greasy Frank arrives, drunk out of his mind. Another triumph for justice.