“How much are we talking? On the front end, I mean?”
I stayed silent and shook my head.
As if he’d mainlined a steroid, Mickey swelled toward the size of the Cliff House. “I’m gonna tell you what, Mr. Vice President of whatever, you best get it through your head that you’re not going to screw her. Not if I have anything to say about it, and you better believe I will.”
I frowned in all innocence. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Strunt.”
He sneered at my naïveté. “Here’s the way it goes down or Chandelier doesn’t play ball. First, gross profit participation is a must, plus a percentage of syndication rights and creator billing in any series spin-off. Second, sequel and prequel rights will double the pickup price. Third, dramatic rights to the main character are not exclusive. Fourth, electronic rights remain in reserve, with terms to be—”
The Hollywood jargon sounded as alien in his mouth as the particulars of particle physics. “You seem to know a lot about the entertainment business, Mr. Strunt,” I interrupted.
“Ought to. I been in it for almost twenty years.”
“Really? In what capacity?”
He started to answer, then slapped himself on the forehead in unconscious tribute to the Three Stooges. The blow seemed to dislodge his ingrown personality and replace it with a more civilized version. “I got the manners of a mule. Come inside, Mr. Tanner. Let me get you a drink or something. How about a beer?”
“Coffee would be nice.”
“Instant okay?”
“Actually, I—”
“Got steaming-hot water right out of the tap. I can have a cup of Folgers in front of you in twenty seconds.”
Mickey Strunt backed inside his house and made sure I followed him as he penetrated its core. I’d dangled the biggest bait you can use on a homo sapien in the nineties—participation in a movie scheme of any size, shape, or sleaze—and Mickey Strunt had bitten. I was getting to be such a good actor, I should have been making movies myself.
Predictably, the refinement of the structure was confined to the exterior—the living room was an idiot’s idea of chic. The art had been bought in a mall, the furniture came out of IKEA, the wallpaper was whorehouse red flecked with metallic accents in the shape of potato chips, and the carpet pretended to be Spanish tile. There were empty beer bottles everywhere, a half-eaten pizza still in the box, and enough crumpled bags of Frito Lay and Kettle chips to gorge a Dumpster. But the junk-food wrappers were only accessories to the predominant paper product, which was skin magazines. A dozen or more littered the living room, hard-core editions known only to the cognoscenti and featuring behaviors and bodies that were decidedly abnormal if not anatomically impossible. The only point in Mickey’s favor was that none of them featured kids.
Mickey scraped his idea of fine art off the gold velvet couch and motioned for me to sit down. “So you need some backstory from me, is that it? To put Chandelier in a context?”
“That’s it exactly, Mr. Strunt.”
“Call me Mickey. So I guess the rumors finally got down to L.A.”
“What rumors are those?”
He puffed like pudding. “That I made Chandelier what she is today.”
“Really.”
“Hell, I don’t like to brag, but I wrote her first three books myself.”
“Really.”
“Damned straight. Well, maybe not word for word exactly, but I told her what to put down. Hell, the main character’s modeled after me.”
I looked as puzzled as I felt. “The main character’s a woman.”
“Yeah, well, you know what I mean. The macho stuff—gunplay and martial arts and that shit—it all come from me. Hell, Chandelier didn’t know a cap pistol from an assault weapon before I come along.”
“When did you come along, Mr. Strunt?”
“Mickey. Back in ’83.”
“How did you and Ms. Wells meet?”
“I laid her carpet.”
“You what?”
“Laid her carpet,” he repeated proudly. “I laid rug in the east bay for eight years. Kramer Koverings, you probably seen the ads—guy laying green shag over a golf green at Tilden Park, that was me. I still get residuals.”
“Really.”
Mickey paused for breath. Something about the look on my face made him want to define the relationship with his ex-wife more precisely. “Yeah, yeah, I know what you think. You can’t figure what a woman like Chandelier seen in a guy like me, but listen up. She wasn’t who she turned out to be back then. Not by a long shot.”
“How so?”
“She was fat, for one thing. Two-forty easy. And working for pennies at Kmart. On her feet all day stuffing size-twelve women into size-eight dresses. Compared to the duds she saw around there, I came on like the fucking king of fucking Egypt.”
“She’s undergone quite a change, then.”
“Damn right she has, and I’m the one who got her going. When she got that first piddly-assed contract, I said, ‘Babe’—that’s what I always call her, Babe—I said, ‘Babe, there’s a pot full of money out there just waiting for someone to grab it, and that someone might as well be you.’ Then I told her how to go about it.”
“How was that?”
As lively as an inspirational orator, Mickey held up his fingers in turn. “She had to be glamorous but not ritzy; smart but not intellectual; funny but not silly; feminist but not butch; and hip but not political.”
“Sounds like sage advice.”
“Damned straight it was. So she goes to a fat farm and drops fifty pounds. And to a surgeon who cuts back her boobs, which I wasn’t entirely in favor of, by the way. And to one fag to learn how to fix up her house and another to learn how to wear clothes. Two years and six books later, she gets a half-million advance from Madison House and ain’t looked back since. And that’s pennies to what she gets now.”
“So you made her a star. Sort of like Pygmalion.”
“More like Sonny Bono if you ask me—Pig whoever didn’t have nothing to do with it. Without me, Chandelier Wells is still Betty Moulton under the flashing blue light. Yeah. That’s right. I come up with the name, too.”
“Seems to me you don’t get nearly enough credit, Mr. Strunt.”
“Mickey. Yeah, well, I can’t eat credit, know what I’m saying?”
I nodded as he rubbed his fingers together in the universal tic of the hustler. “Which brings me to one of the reasons I’m here,” I said.
I had his full attention. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“We were wondering what kind of financial arrangement you have with Ms. Wells. Is it a formal one? Reduced to a writing of some kind?”
He shook his head. “Handshake deal, is all.”
“Is your stipend regularized?”
“Say what?”
“Do you get a fixed amount of money from her per month?”
His look grew wary and defensive. “Fixed? No. I wouldn’t say it’s fixed.”
“Then how is your compensation calculated, if I may ask?”
He had finally found something he needed to keep secret. “What the fuck business is it of yours, anyway?”
I got as prissy as I get. “I don’t mean to pry, of course, but if we’re to go forward with Ms. Wells in a major way, I need to know what kind of financial obligations she has already undertaken. Arrangements that might adversely impact any effort she would be able to make in our behalf.”
My persistence made him angry. “Shit. I ask her for money and she gives it to me. When she feels like it. If I beg her hard enough. Is that what you want? Shit. I need a drink.”
Mickey lumbered out to the kitchen and returned a moment later with a can of Colt 45. He held it up. “Got another if you want.”
“No, thanks.” Mickey plopped down on the couch with the grace of a cannonball. “I was wondering what’s the most money Chandelier has ever given you at one time, Mr. Strunt.”
He started to resist, then rele
nted in service to the greater good, which was his future solvency. “What the hell. She gave me twenty grand once. To help me buy this place. Last month she gave me fifty.”
“Thousand?”
“Singles. Fifty lousy bucks. She earns that in a minute. I should sue the bitch is what I should do. Got plenty of lawyers ready to take it on, too.”
“How long have you and Chandelier been divorced, Mr. Strunt?”
“Mickey. We split twelve years ago June first.”
“Did you get a substantial property settlement?”
His blush told me I’d touched a sore point. “I got zip, practically. She claimed she didn’t have nothing, but she and her dyke lawyer hid most of her money offshore, I know that for an actual fact. But the idiot working for me couldn’t prove it.”
“Do you get alimony?”
“Alimony? Shit. Guys don’t get alimony, you schmuck. Sorry,” he added when he realized he’d insulted me. “The divorce thing still gets me hot.”
I waved the apology away. “Understandable. One final point. If Ms. Wells signs with us, would you expect a participation of some kind, Mr. Strunt?”
“Mickey. Damn right I would.” He drained his beer while he thought it over. “You can do that?”
“We could arrange some sort of consulting contract, I imagine.”
Suddenly listless, Mickey lifted the can in a mock salute, unable to make himself believe he would ever be on easy street. “Well, here’s to you, Mr. Vice President of whatever. Go to it, pal. Get me what I deserve.”
I stood up. “I’ll do my best,” I said in all sincerity, and we shook hands once again. “By the way, when’s the last time you saw your ex-wife?”
“Last month, like I told you.”
“Is that your only contact? When you approach her for money?”
“Yeah,” he grumbled. “Why else?”
“What about the child? Aren’t you Violet’s father?”
“Hell, no.”
“Then who is?”
“Beats me, mister. And you know what? Chandelier don’t know who he is, either.”
Chapter 12
The television studio occupied the entirety of a nondescript stucco building five blocks south of Market and two blocks west of the Hall of Justice, beneath a web of freeway underpinnings that looked like an outtake from Blade Runner. Given the aggressive insularity of show business, I anticipated a lot of trouble getting to where I needed to get, but someone, probably Lark McLaren, had paved the way for me.
A cheery receptionist handed me off to a perky girl guide who took me through a labyrinth of offices to the door to Studio B. After making sure the red light was safely off, she ushered me inside and introduced me to a producer named Carmen, a hyperactive bundle of nervous anxiety clutching a clipboard to her chest and a pen in her teeth and who clearly saw me as another in a long line of potential glitches that could ruin her day.
The event Carmen was producing was called Magda Makes Sense, a noon-hour talk-show broadcast over the largest independent TV station in the Bay Area, featuring an Oprah wanna-be named Magda Danielson. Magda was a former Raiders cheerleader and current society grande dame who was married to an investment banker who had gotten rich giving seed money to Sun and Cisco in exchange for a portfolio full of common stock. Magda was smart and uninhibited and the show was popular and at times controversial, although I had to admit that my supporting evidence was only hearsay—I’d never seen Magda or her show before and neither had anyone I knew. It’s amazing how much trivia you accumulate just by being alive.
“They told me you were coming but they didn’t tell me why,” Carmen was saying around the pen, manically and uneasily, her eyes flitting about the studio to be sure no catastrophe was in the offing so close to airtime.
“I just need to take a look around,” I said as I took a look around.
“For what?”
I returned my gaze to Carmen. “Ms. Wells is a bestselling author.”
She stuck her pen behind her ear and chewed her gum three times. “That’s why she’s here, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Bestselling authors have fans.”
“Duh?”
“Most of Chandelier’s fans are sweet and kind and generous.”
“Goody for them. But what does that have to do with Magda?”
I spelled it out. “But some of them aren’t sweet and kind, some of them like to make pests of themselves. And those are the ones I’m looking for.”
Carmen frowned. “You mean stalkers and such?”
“Something like that.”
She ran some scenarios through her mind. “That shouldn’t be a problem, I guess. As long as you’re not stumbling around the studio when we’re live.”
“You haven’t seen any pests yourself this morning by any chance?” I asked as Carmen started to turn away.
Her lip wrinkled. “Only the ones who work here.”
“No one out of place? Work being done that wasn’t ordered? Phones being repaired that no one knew were broken?”
She shook her head. “Nothing like that is going on. I’d know if there was.”
“Then I’ll just poke around for a while.”
A thought made her brow furrow with suspicion. “You won’t be needing to talk to Magda, will you? She doesn’t like it when her prep period is interrupted.”
“Does Magda carry a weapon?”
“No. Of course not. Why?”
“Then I don’t see why I would need to see her.”
She started to go into it, then passed. “Good. Great. Fantastic. Well.”
She started to walk away but I put out a hand to stop her. “It might help if I knew the schedule you’ll be following.”
Carmen looked at her watch, which was her only adornment. “Ms. Wells is due in ten and she’s always prompt. She’ll go straight to makeup, then Magda will speak with her in the greenroom at five till the hour. Airtime is noon sharp. Chandelier will come on at six after and stay till we wrap at twelve-thirty.”
“Where’s makeup and the greenroom?”
She pointed toward a blue door. “Through that, then look for the signs.”
“Thanks. I’ll let you get back to work.”
Carmen dashed off to forestall some calamity that was visible only to her, and I began to tour the studio.
It was a hive of electronics, of course, a forest of cameras, lights, TV monitors, and computer screens that were linked by a tangle of cords and cables that made me envision vipers. The set itself was à la Oprah as well, with a couch and an easy chair separated by a coffee table with fresh-cut flowers spilling out of a blue ceramic vase. The backdrop was a phony window draped with a phony curtain that masked a phony view onto a real blowup of the Golden Gate Bridge as seen from the yacht club. The mundane decor in the middle of the high-tech accoutrements gave the enterprise a schizophrenic aspect, which maybe explains why TV does such bad things to our brains.
Studio B itself was essentially an open bay filled with communications gear, so it took no time at all to confirm that the only people in sight seemed essential to the production. I got fishy looks from time to time, as though I was suspected of being a mole in hire to union or to management, but otherwise they paid me no mind. Five minutes later, my only conclusion was that if I ever worked in TV, I’d want to be the lighting guy.
The studio was one thing but the rest of the building was another. Half a dozen doors opened off the studio, and they led to a warren of rooms that served for everything from equipment storage to the dressing room for the star of the show. I opened all the doors that were unlocked, which numbered maybe a dozen. Most opened on to slipshod offices, desks topped with phones and laptop computers and walls hung with TV monitors and marking boards—producer-pods, I supposed, the offices of all those people listed in the closing credits. One large room held two entire sets—one for the newscast and another for a cooking show, mini-rooms on wheels that went to and fro to conform to the mandates of TV Guide.
Whenever I ran into anyone who asked if they could help me, I told them I was looking for a strange-looking guy from advertising. The theory was that my lie would elicit a response if anyone even marginally lethal had been seen in the vicinity. Of course that assumed Chandelier’s nemesis would fit the description of odd in some sense of the term, which may have been a stretch given the variety of people who apparently had reason to do her harm. When I had no luck with sightings of strange men, I switched genders, but no one had seen the spacey woman from wardrobe, either.
The next door I knocked on had a sign that read MAGDA taped to it at a slightly crooked angle. Below that was a sign that said PRIVATE, with a handwritten notation that read “Magda Means You, Stupid.” Stupid knocked anyway, and a muffled voice immediately cursed me. Since show business wasn’t my life, I opened the door nonetheless.
Two women were in the room, which was mostly full of racks of clothes and piles of makeup receptacles. A young black woman wielding a powder puff the size of a muskmelon was dabbing it on various promontories on the other woman’s physiognomy. The other woman had a black net over her black hair and a white towel draped over her shoulders. The only other garment I could see above the part of her that was hidden by the dressing table was a filmy black brassiere that seemed inadequate to its purposes, which was probably by design.
The woman in the bra looked up, but the other woman kept dabbing industriously, as though she were putting out a fire. “Who the hell are you?” the woman in the towel and bra demanded, in a preemptive tone that identified her as the Magda Danielson who made sense.
“Maintenance,” I said.
“No one called for any maintenance. Can’t you read? Get the hell out.”
I shrugged. “Someone said a fuse went out and something smelled like burning rubber. But if you got no problem, I got no problem.”
“Fine.”
I looked back toward the corridor. “Seen my assistant around?”
“No,” the woman who had to be Magda spat. “I have a show going on in ten minutes and guess what?”
“What?”
“It’s not about you and it’s not about fuses. So why don’t you disappear.”
Ellipsis Page 9
