by Dan Fante
“What’s your name?” I asked, trying to take my time.
“Oh cripes. I’m sorry,” she giggled. “I’m Heidi. And who are you? I know! Don’t tell me. You’re Prince friggin’ Charming.”
“I’m Bruno. Bruno, from L.A.”
Heidi shook my hand.
“How about a ride in my Benz, Heidi? Would you like that?”
“Geez, Bruno from L.A.,” Heidi giggled. “I’d like nothing better but I’m, you know, with somebody. How about a rain check?”
“Too bad. I’m out of town in the next day or two. Some other time, maybe.”
Pretty Heidi was still smiling. “You going in?”
“I’m planning to.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“You sure can, Heidi.”
Inside, the bar was the same as I remembered, minus the short stage and the sound system. A few more tables.
Heidi was at the bar with a straight-looking guy in a sports jacket and tie. She introduced us. He was Biff or Bill or Benny or Buck or Barney, or some goddamn thing. He sneered and shook my hand, reaching across Heidi. I could tell that the asshole was cordial because he had to be and not because he was a friendly person. He was with the hottest girl in the bar and he had to put up with guys like me saying hello to captive fox. Then he went back to his scotch-rocks and me and Heidi chatted on about the limo business and rock stars and what it was like for me to do my job driving all those cool celebrities. Somehow her smile and confident manner reminded me of a much younger J. C. Smart.
Eventually, three drinks later—doubles for me—her guy stepped outside for a smoke with one of his bar pals and Heidi, still flashing the amazing, sexy smile, leans close to me and says, “Excuse me, Bruno honey, I’ve got to make a pit stop. Be right back.”
From time to time, in my years in bars, boldness and being pushy with women has worked for me. So, a few seconds after she’d gone, I decided to make my move.
I followed Heidi to the ladies’ room, then waited outside the door until I was sure she had entered a stall. Then I walked in quietly. There were only two booths. I opened the door to the one next to the one she was in, then stood up on the seat and looked over the top.
There was Heidi taking a squirt. I watched and waited. When she leaned back to unroll the paper from the fixture against the wall I got a shot at the sweet little cookie between her legs. It was shaved. Heidi’s hips and thighs were as pretty as her legs.
“Need any help with that?” I whispered.
She looked up. But her reaction wasn’t the one I’d hoped for. “Hey, Jesus Christ, man! That’s just plain rude. Get the hell out of here!”
Back on my stool at the bar, I waited. Five minutes later, Heidi finally appeared. Not smiling. I leaned close, “Hey, look,” I said. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
She wouldn’t look at me. Then, before she could answer or say anything, necktie returned and took his place on the seat next to hers.
There was some whispering back and forth, then he stood up.
He was behind my stool. “So you’re a peeper,” he snarled. “A fuckin’ asshole perv.”
The punch came quickly and was unexpected because usually, in bar fights, I get a chance to stand up first. But not this time. The blow caught me at an angle, on the side of the head. I fell against the empty stool next to me and whacked my ear on the bar rail.
Outside by my limo Biff or Benny or whatever his name was, and one of his friends, each took another turn. His pal was a bigger guy with some kind of apparent martial arts background. When he clouted me it was with an open hand—the butt of his palm—right in my mouth. The blow split my lip and blood gushed down my face onto my white shirt and suit jacket.
All in all I hadn’t had a good night.
It was after three a.m. when I got back at David Koffman’s condo on Riverside Drive. I cleaned myself up and even used some remover stuff from a kitchen cabinet to try to get the popcorn blotch off my pants. No sale.
twenty-five
That Sunday morning at three a.m. a day later my cell phone started ringing on the nightstand by my head until it woke me up. It was Che-Che. I could hear in her voice that she was buzzed on something. “Yo pisano, how ya doin’,” she sang.
“I was asleep,” I said. “What do you need, Che-Che?”
“Pick us up at my place in half an hour. I feel like having some fun.”
An hour later I was standing in front of Che-Che’s condo in the Village buzzing apartment number 16B.
No answer.
On the third try my pissed-off sounding client finally pressed her “talk” button. “Yeah!”
“It’s me. Bruno,” I said. “I’m downstairs.” In the background I can hear someone yelling and something crashing.
“Hang loose, okay,” Che-Che snarled. “I’m dealing with…a situation here.”
“I’ll be downstairs when you need me.”
An hour later the building’s oak doors swing open and out struts my beautiful customer, alone, wearing a formfitting exercise outfit, with a Nikon strapped around her neck. In her hand is a brown shopping bag turned on its side.
After she got into the blue Benz stretch I turned around to face her. “Is everything okay?” I asked.
“What happened to your face?”
“A long boring story with no happy ending.”
“But,” she forced a smile, “you’re okay?”
I tried to act nonchalant about the bruises and my cut lip. “Sure. At your service,” I said. “But the real question is, how are you? I heard yelling. You look upset.”
Che-Che slid a long dinner platter out from inside her shopping bag, then rested it on the console opposite the backseat. On the plate was at least half an O-Z of cocaine and a glass straw. “Everything will be just peachy-fuckin’-dandy in about thirty seconds,” she said.
“Whatever you say. Ma’am.”
I watched my client snort three long fat lines, then she looked up at me. “Get on the West Side Highway, Bruno. We’re headed upstate.”
“Soo, no Dennis?” I asked. “We’re riding alone?”
“I’m done with that putz,” Che-Che hissed. “That punk struts around like a frikkin’ Greek god but the asshole slams steroids twice a day and, pardon the expression, he can’t get it up for love or Jesus.”
“That can’t be good.”
“The boy’s hung like a fucking miniature Chihuahua. He goes to the gym twice a day but it sure don’t help my love life. I mean he gives decent head and all, but, so does my neighbor’s pug. Then the stronzo tells me this caca crap about, ‘Geez, baby, I’m sorry. I’m feeling tired.’ I mean, what am I, Bruno, fucking brain-dead? Do I look neutered to you?”
“You emphatically look anything but neutered to me, Che-Che.”
“What a waste. He acts like Hulk Hogan but fucks me like an eight-year-old choir boy!”
“I’m here for you, Ms. Sorache. My services come free of charge. With a willing smile.”
“Shut up, Bruno. I’m into pretty young guys is all. If I wasn’t I’d take you up on it. Look at me. I’m twenty-nine, for chrissake, and all I do is strike out.”
“Keep swingin’, Che-Che, you’ll hit one. But you might try not eating the picture off the front of the menu. I mean, before you order, make sure that you’re getting the real deal.”
“No shit!” my client whispered.
We arrived at West Point at seven a.m. My customer was completely stoned, sipping straight from a glass decanter of vodka in the car’s minibar. Her eyes were two huge black holes.
After we entered the compound, Che-Che pointed toward an elegant stone cottage at the far end of the parade grounds. “Pull over at the front door of that house,” she said. “That’s the commandant’s residence.”
“I don’t feel good about this,” I said. “You’re pretty whacked. You could get us both in a huge jackpot.”
“I was on a shoot here last year for Elite. A cover. I know what I’m doing
. Trust me, okay? You’re about to see just how far a smile and a tiny pair of tits can take a girl.”
“What the hell are we doing here, Che-Che?”
“We’re having fun, dummy. Calm down.”
“Okay, but let’s put the drugs in the trunk. This is military, for chrissake. I don’t feel like going to jail on Sunday morning.”
Che-Che was grinning. “Damn, Bruno. You come on like some kind of removed, edgy hardass, but down deep you’re a pussy.”
“But not a stupid pussy.
After I stowed my client’s cocaine plate in the boot I pulled the limo around to the front of the commandant’s cottage.
Tall, beautiful Che-Che, her Nikon around her neck, her tits half out of her warm-up jacket, weaved her way up to the residence door, then knocked loudly.
A short time later a tall, gray-haired guy, wearing a bathrobe, opens up. From twenty-five feet away, behind the wheel, I watch as Che-Che smiles and charms the colonel.
Back in the limo a few minutes later my client is beaming. “Pull the Benz out on to the middle of the parade grounds on the grass,” she commands. “And go get my fucking toot out of the trunk.”
“No! Have a drink. Settle down, for chrissakes.”
“Fucking pussy!”
Not long later, perhaps a quarter of an hour, there are nine hundred cadets in full dress uniforms, in formation, on the grass, ready to march.
Che-Che Sorache, filmless Nikon camera is hand, half her body protruding through the car’s moonroof, begins snapping away, unable to stop herself from laughing.
On the way back to Manhattan my customer is now very drunk and very sleepy and slurring her words.
“Hey, Bruno?”
“Yeah, Che-Che.”
“That was a kick, right? I mean all those boys marching around on the grass, looking so pretty, on Sunday morning. Fun, huh?”
“Right.” I said. “Just great. Now go to sleep. We’ll be back in town in an hour.”
“When you see Nana, don’t tell her about this, okay? She’d be so annoyed with me.”
“I won’t tell anybody, Che-Che.”
“Hey, Bruno, you’re not really a pussy. You’re a good friend. I mean it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Ditto. It’s all in a day’s work.”
My first-class airplane ride the next day, featuring half a dozen double Jack Daniels, was paid for by Che-Che.
Back in L.A. at Dav-Ko, up in my room, after unpacking, I sat on my bed and sipped at a beer, opening my mail. I had returned to the madness of Los Angeles. I was home.
Among the bills and junk mail were two thick manuscript envelopes I had addressed to myself and put return postage on. I knew what they were. They were publisher rejections. My short story manuscript had been returned. Both the boilerplate letters said essentially the same thing. They weren’t looking for more short fiction. They were cutting back.
Flipping the pages of each manuscript I concluded that neither one had even been read.
I could feel my stomach tighten. Once again I had failed. Nobody even looked at my work. Across my room was a wall of books. All I had ever wanted was to have my words rest among theirs. My Kafka and Shakespeare and Miller and Steinbeck and Selby and O’Neill and Tennessee Williams and Wallant and Hemingway. I was a forty-two-year-old loser. A man who’d fallen between the cracks of an empty life. A freak. Not a writer but something else—another dime-a-dozen lost Los Angeles mutant. One of the thousands of drifting if-come asshole wannabes who had attached his heart and mind to a fraud and squandered his life for the rancid, empty wet crotch of hope.
Jimmy’s voice had been right all along. I amounted to shit. I was shit. I was simply a washout. A juicehead. A drunk. A talentless, empty fool. The son of a drunk, the grandson of a drunk, and the brother of a dead drunk.
But I’d become sure about one thing. The events of the last few weeks had made me certain: I had to get out of the limo business. It was madness. It was making me drink. I’d be better off in a phone room, flogging pens or copier supplies, than caretaking and servicing a clientele of self-indulged celebrity brats. I no longer had the stomach for it.
twenty-six
It was one-forty-five in the afternoon several days later. Attorney Busnazian was waiting alone outside the West L.A. Courthouse, dressed in his double-breasted black suit and pink tie, a coordinating hankie stuffed in his breast pocket, carrying his Gucci briefcase. He chuckled when he saw me walking toward him. “Right on time, Bruno. Good. Excellent.”
It felt like a drug deal, except not. I handed him a white, sealed envelope. It contained the additional thousand dollars (twenty fifty dollar bills) we had agreed upon over the phone. “There you go,” I said. “As promised.”
Without counting the money he stuffed the envelope into his inside coat pocket. “Cheer up,” he said, grinning. “I’ve got news. Good news, actually.”
“A total of three grand’s worth of good news, I hope.”
“Your hearing is scheduled for two o’clock. They moved us up in the calendar. The drunk driving charge against you will be dismissed.”
“Wait! No kidding? Dismissed?”
Still the leer. “You were motionless in the car when the officer arrested you, correct?”
“That’s right. At the beach. I was asleep.”
“The vehicle’s motor was not running. Correct?”
“Correct,” I said.
“Well, it’s generally a useless technicality, but sometimes, depending on the presiding hearing officer, it works. To be guilty of a DUI the law states that you must be operating the vehicle.”
“C’mon!” I said. “That’s it?”
“You weren’t driving. Ipso facto the DUI will be quashed.”
“That’s amazing. I don’t know what to say.”
“You’ll recall that I mentioned to you that it pays to have friends in tall glass buildings. This was strictly a quid pro quo situation. A favor. Any other time you’d be convicted. Your appearance today in court is perfunctory.”
Busnazian extended his hand and I shook it. “Thanks,” I said. “Good job. You earned your money. So—let’s go in and get this deal over with.”
“In a minute. First, there’s the Dav-Ko matter of your driver, Martin Humphrey.”
“Right,” I said. “The lawsuit. Jennifer Lopiss. The assault thing. That stuff. Marty’s still on the payroll. He’s a good employee. Marty’s not going anywhere. I gave him my word.”
“I’m gratified to report to you that the entire situation has also been resolved. Just this morning, actually.”
“What about the pending charges?”
Busnazian was smirking. “Let me say it this way: Sometimes unreasonable people become reasonable. When their unreasonableness is documented and presented in a persuasive manner by their own attorney, they return to a more rational mode of thought. But candidly, I wouldn’t expect any more business from that particular celebrity management firm.
“Hey, no problem. I don’t need that kind of business. As a matter of fact, fuck those guys. I mean, who needs the headaches?”
“That’s very cavalier. But, as we both know, it is your livelihood.”
“Yeah, it is. Unfortunately.”
“Anyway, a good day, all in all,” Busnazian smiled. “Now, shall we go in?”
“Hey, you’re three for three, counselor,” I said, “including the Robert Roller arrest. My partner was scared to death about that lawsuit.”
“I pride myself in my ability to earn my fee. You fellows are getting what you paid for. My job is to smooth out the bumps in the road for those glitzy cars of yours. So far we’ve been extremely fortunate.”
“How about this; your next limo ride is on us. Our treat.”
“I’m going to Boston on Monday. I’ll take you up on it.”
“Done. Call the office and book the car.”
Attorney Busnazian now modulated his voice for maximum dramatic effect. “One last caution: In your case you
may not be so lucky next time. I’d be mindful of that.”
“I hear you.”
“No more drinking and driving.”
“I know. Look, there’s something else. Can you and I talk confidentially? I need your advice.”
Now my lawyer put on his best, most serious barrister expression. “I’m your legal representative. As I’ve said before, whatever we discuss remains in confidence.”
“I want to get out of the limo business.”
“I see.”
“Can you help me with it? I’d need your help in writing up an offer to my partner.”
“In a word, no. Unfortunately, I represent your firm. You and Mr. Koffman jointly. My personal association with you in the matter would represent a conflict of interest. But I can refer you to a very competent man.”
“Okay, good. Have him call me.”
“I have to say that I’m a bit nonplussed. Dav-Ko is doing quite well. You fellows have a successful, thriving operation.”
“I’m tired, okay? I live where I work. That company is up my ass twenty-four-seven. And I hate Hollywood. I hate my job and I hate my clients.”
“Just a suggestion: Move. Get your own place. You can easily afford it.”
“It’s beyond that. Way beyond that.”
“You strike me as an impulsive person, Bruno. I would restrain that emotion for the time being. Perhaps talk it through with your partner. But certainly, don’t piss away all that you have worked to achieve.”
“I’m tired of being a garbage man. Koffman can have it. But first I’d like to know my options.”
“Very well, I’ll have my associate contact you. He’s with a good firm. Now, shall we go in?”
“Sure. Let’s do it,” I said. “Today I’m a happy camper.”
twenty-seven
The next afternoon, following up on my plan to cut loose and get free from Dav-Ko, while Rosie was dispatching, I began to go through Joshua’s computer files trying to come up with a precise monthly gross income for Dav-Ko. The current figure that Koffman and I and Joshua had come up with was roughly 30K per month. But some months were a lot more and Koffman, for his own reasons, liked to downplay how well the company was doing. He and Joshua would talk on the phone twice a week for an hour discussing money stuff and expansion strategies and that shit. Then Joshua would meet with me in the chauffeur’s room and give me the short version if I asked for it.
