Devil's Dance

by Daniel Depp

  ‘I can get beef stew anywhere.’

  ‘One day she’s going to wake up and realize she could be with a Français.’

  ‘Ah, but she’s a Texas girl, and she knows that once you’ve had cowboy there’s no going back.’

  Julien pulled a disgusted face.

  ‘You make it sound like a social disease. I’ll call you when the beanie-weenies are ready.’

  ‘Please do,’ said Spandau, and went back across the street.

  ELEVEN

  When Spandau came in Pookie was at the reception desk and Leo Reinhart was flirting with her. Pookie was young and beautiful and would often remind you she’d gone to a good school back east. A healthy portion of the money her father sent her each month went to antique and exotic clothing. Spandau took a look at what she was wearing and said,

  ‘Grace Kelly.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘What movie?’

  Spandau thought.

  ‘Rear Window?’

  ‘No, no!’ she roared. ‘To Catch a Thief. Look at the purse, it’s a dead giveaway.’

  He turned to Leo. If Pookie generally reminded him of Audrey Hepburn, it was Leo’s fate to be cast as Jim Hutton. Tall, gangly and shy, he played online computer games and was hopelessly outclassed by Pookie, with whom he was in love.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be out watching Ullman on that insurance thing?’

  ‘He’s in the hospital. He fell off the roof of his house cleaning the gutters.’

  ‘We can assume then that he was fibbing about being paralyzed?’

  ‘Well the thing is now he actually is. Which brings up a kind of weird philosophical point. He was lying to the insurance company but now he isn’t anymore. So do they have to pay him anyway?’

  ‘You mean like the movie,’ said Pookie, ‘where the guy is tried for killing his wife but it turns out she’s not dead so he gets a kind of mulligan to go ahead and kill her for real?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Leo.

  ‘I don’t think it works that way, children,’ said Spandau. ‘Most likely once fraud is proven his policy will be considered dead, which means at the time he fell he technically didn’t have any insurance.’

  ‘Bummer,’ said Leo. ‘You want to see the tape? I got it on my iPhone.’

  They all watched. It was painful.

  ‘You’d think a guy that fat would bounce or something,’ said Leo.

  ‘Look at his face,’ said Pookie. ‘I wonder what was going through his mind.’

  ‘Second thoughts about being too cheap to hire one of the neighborhood kids to do it, I would imagine,’ said Leo.

  ‘Okay, hatchlings, enough fun and games,’ said Spandau. ‘Tomorrow we watch kittens in a microwave, but today there’s work.’ To Leo he said, ‘Send that to Derek Bell at the insurance company. What are you doing now?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Did you clock out?’

  ‘God, you sound like Walter. Management offers you a crumb and you immediately become a class traitor.’

  ‘There’s a thing called the work ethic.’

  ‘Were you thinking work ethic when you spent that three hours over lunch last week at Ago’s?’

  ‘That was purely in the line of duty. It comes under public relations, schmoozing the clients.’

  ‘Anna is thinking about hiring her own boyfriend to do what exactly?’ asked Leo.

  Pookie, ever conciliatory said, ‘Shall we not cloud the issue with facts?’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Spandau said to her, ‘I want you to fix an appointment for me with Frank Jurado.’

  Her mouth dropped open.

  ‘Oh my god. So it’s true. You’re actually going to work for him again? Didn’t he like try to kill you or something?’

  ‘Yes, but we’re all professionals here.’

  ‘You’re just using this as an opportunity to get your hands on him, aren’t you?’ she said, delighted.

  ‘Just do what you’re supposed to do and stop meddling in the affairs of management.’

  ‘You’re going to beat the holy crap out of him. I can see it in your eyes. Gosh, I wish I could be there.’ She turned to Leo. ‘You see? This is why I came to Los Angeles. Everything is a movie.’

  ‘Let’s just hope this one’s more John Wayne than Woody Allen,’ said Leo.

  Spandau glared at him and went into the office and shut the door.

  TWELVE

  Spandau stopped at the gate to Jurado’s office building. There was a camera watching. He leaned out of the car window and pressed the button.

  ‘This is Ground Control to Major Tom,’ he said when the speaker crackled.

  ‘What?’ said a young female voice, not amused.

  ‘David Spandau to see Frank Jurado.’

  A pause. Then:

  ‘Any of the spaces on the right.’

  The gate opened and Spandau drove through into the parking lot. He wedged the BMW between a Range Rover and an impeccably preserved baby blue 1965 Ford Fairlane. The Rover would belong to one of the executives, the Fairlane to somebody’s hip assistant. That’s the way these things worked. Status had to be preserved one way or another, and you couldn’t have the flunkies aping the bosses.

  Spandau crossed to the door into the building. There was a lock and another camera here too. They made him wait this time. Spandau whistled ‘Leaving Cheyenne’. Finally they buzzed him through.

  The receptionist was about twenty-five and looked like Louise Brooks if Lulu had gone in for piercings and tattoos. There were rings in her nose and ears and a red and blue macaw covered most of her left arm. She wore a severe black dress and a look of unbridled hatred toward Spandau.

  ‘Quite a security system you’ve got,’ Spandau said, giving her his best smile. ‘You expecting a jihad?’

  ‘You can’t be too careful,’ she said coldly.

  ‘I don’t have to stand in front of an X-ray scanner, do I? I always forget to bring a rolled-up sock.’

  She stared at him and it took her a moment to get the joke, which made her hate him all the more. She was sexy in that Suicide Girl kind of way and was used to staring most men down. Spandau had an unfair advantage in that he didn’t like either her or her boss and he wasn’t in the mood to hide it.

  ‘I’ll let Frank know you’re here,’ she said, turning her back to him and walking away before the sentence was finished. It was an effective dismissal. Spandau wondered if that was practiced or she just had that kind of timing.

  She hadn’t bothered to offer him a seat or a drink. Spandau sat on the edge of her desk because he knew it would irritate her the most. There were just some days when it was good to give into your baser instincts.

  She came back out and saw his ass on her desk and stopped and glared at it for a moment, during which she realized: a) he’d done it to piss her off, and b) by reacting to it she’d already lost ground and surrendered the advantage.

  She sucked her teeth, sat down at the desk, and pretended to arrange some papers.

  ‘Frank will see you now,’ she said without looking at him.

  ‘That’s real sweet of you, honey,’ Spandau said to her and went into Jurado’s office.

  Jurado was at his desk and Annie Michaels sat on the sofa, thumbing through a copy of Vanity Fair.

  ‘Are you going to be a prick about this?’ she asked Spandau before he got entirely through the door.

  ‘Probably,’ Spandau said. ‘Anyway that’s one of the options. The other two were not showing up at all or physical violence. None of them have been ruled out yet.’

  ‘Look,’ said Jurado, ‘we’re all professionals here.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Spandau, ‘I was saying that very thing earlier and it didn’t sound convincing then either.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  Spandau towered over the desk and it made Jurado nervous.

  ‘I’ll stand,’ said Spandau. ‘I don’t intend being here that long.’

  ‘David, what is it going to take to get yo
u to put the past aside.’

  ‘Can I have a puppy?’

  ‘This is a fucking monumental waste of our time,’ Annie said.

  ‘I thought you’d feel that way. That’s why I came.’

  ‘Frank …’ she said.

  ‘Let’s cut to the chase on this—’ said Jurado.

  ‘God,’ Spandau interrupted, ‘I just love it when you do movie talk.’

  ‘We have a job for you,’ continued Jurado, ‘and aside from how you feel about me, you wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t piqued your interest. It’s Jerry Margashack. You know Jerry Margashack, right?’

  ‘I know of him.’

  ‘You like his work?’

  ‘I have a weakness for stylized violence and sexual perversion.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘I think he’s probably a twisted bastard but he’s also probably a genius.’

  ‘You’re right on both counts. He is a sick bastard and he is a genius. Like all geniuses he is a pain in the ass and his own worst enemy. We announced we’re releasing Wet Eye next month, and the day after that this appeared on the internet.’

  He handed Spandau a copy of the article. Spandau scanned it and handed it back.

  ‘Is this true?’

  ‘Did he rip off somebody else’s screenplay? Who the hell knows. Who cares. It was a damn good movie, and it was fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Okay, so what? Why would you need me?’

  ‘And this appeared two days ago.’

  He passes over another article.

  ‘Sexual misconduct with a production assistant. Settled privately out of court, no big deal about it. Except the timing, that it comes out now, after Wet Eye has garnered all this buzz. We think it’s Oscar material.’

  ‘And you think it’s a smear?’

  ‘Putting a film in the running for an Academy Award is like running for a public office. You invite the entire world to look at you and pass judgment. This shit has nothing to do with the quality of the film, but the fact is that the public won’t give an Oscar to someone they don’t like. They want their contenders to be squeaky clean. None of them are, of course, but the point is they want to think so. It’s still a country that likes to consider itself moral.’

  ‘I was under the impression the Oscars were chosen by one’s peers.’ Spandau was being contrary.

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Jurado. ‘You know as well as I do half the selections are made by wives and grandchildren.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘I want you to find out who’s doing it and I want you to make them stop.’

  ‘How am I supposed to do that?’

  ‘You get proof against whoever is doing this, they’ll stop. This shit happens all the time but it can backfire against you if you get caught.’

  ‘You think it’s one of the other contenders?’

  ‘Duh,’ said Annie from across the room. ‘It’s Mel Rosenthal. The cocksucker is renowned for this kind of crap. It’s got his paw marks all over it.’

  ‘You know this sort of thing is impossible to prove.’

  ‘I just want him made nervous enough to stop,’ said Jurado. ‘You start seriously nosing around and anything you find we can leak to the press and turn the game around. We might even be able to use this to our advantage. Big Bad Melvin attacking poor little Jerry. We’ll spin it somehow, we just need the bastard to stop.’

  Spandau nodded sagely.

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘brings us to the big question as to why I should do this, since I hate your guts.’

  ‘How much would it take to buy your affections back, David?’

  ‘You’re joking, right? I can’t believe even you are stupid enough to say that.’

  ‘Look,’ said Annie. ‘Jerry is my client. He’s a good guy and he’s in trouble. His career has been in the dumper for the last ten years, and this is his shot at getting back into the game. There’s been the drink and the drugs and every other kind of excess, he’ll admit to that. But he’s trying to straighten out his life. He’s made this brilliant film and now there’s Rosenthal trying to ruin him, not because he hates Jerry or anything, but just out of cold blood, because it’ll give him a leg up for the Oscars. You think that’s fair?’

  ‘This isn’t about me,’ said Jurado. ‘Okay, so you hate me. But Jerry deserves a fair deal.’

  ‘You two rehearse this, did you? You go to the Polo Lounge for breakfast and sit and figure out how to pluck at my heartstrings?’

  ‘Actually it was dinner last night at Dan Tana’s.’

  ‘Why me? If I thought Mel Rosenthal was trying to fuck you over, I’d be selling tickets to the event.’

  ‘Oh, you know why. You’re connected, you know everybody in the business. People talk to you when they won’t talk to anybody else. They trust you, and you’ve got a track record. We live in a closed world, David. You know that. You’re on the inside. You’re one of us, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘We can’t farm this out to some sleazy private dick in Burbank,’ said Annie. ‘If you don’t help Jerry nobody can.’

  ‘What happens if I say no?’

  ‘If this shit keeps up, and it will, then we pull the film,’ said Jurado. ‘There’s no point in wasting the money and subjecting the film to the negative publicity. The bad guys win.’

  ‘The bad guys? Jesus, coming from you, that’s priceless. You had two guys take me out in an alley and beat the shit out of me.’

  ‘I do what I do to make things happen. There’s nothing personal in it. You got between me and my film. I can’t let that happen.’

  ‘Yeah, the films are great but your actors end up killing themselves.’

  ‘Look, I know Bobby Dye was a friend of yours, but I didn’t kill him. None of us did. He fucked up his own life without any help from us.’

  ‘Meaning you didn’t pull the trigger, you just left the ammo lying around.’

  ‘Bobby Dye made everybody a lot of money. Nobody wanted him dead. Look at it that way.’

  ‘And now Jerry Margashack is the latest meal ticket. And what happens to him if you pull the film?’

  ‘We cut our losses.’

  ‘How do you sleep at night?’

  ‘I don’t. I work until one or two in the fucking morning, dealing with shit from every film we’ve got going from all over the world. I take a pill to get to sleep, and I sleep maybe four hours if I’m lucky and then I take a pill to wake up. Contrary to my doctor’s suggestions I will do this until my liver fails and my eyeballs fucking turn yellow. At that point I’m either going to retire to an island in the Bahamas or I’m going to off myself like your pal Bobby Dye. I won’t know until I get there. Does that answer your fucking sanctimonious fucking question? Do you want to help this guy or not? I have a job to do and I’ll fucking do it, even if it means cutting Jerry Margashack loose to sail with the tides. You know this and I know this and he knows this. It’s the way the game is played and I don’t have the time or the patience to let you stand here and pretend you’re fucking Peter Pan or the moral voice of the universe. So what’s it going to be, because I have a meeting in five minutes.’

  THIRTEEN

  Spandau entered the darkened Bar Marmont half blind from sunlight. The hostess asked if she could help and Spandau blinked at her like an emerging mole. She laughed. It was a good laugh, he wished he could see where it came from. He told her he was there to meet someone. She asked who. From the back of the bar a male voice shouted, ‘Where the fuck is my drink?’ and Spandau said he believed he’d located the party in question.

  Jerry Margashack was in a table at the far corner of the room, happily inserted between two young and very beautiful women. He had his right arm draped around the neck of one of them, the tips of his fingers absentmindedly brushing the nipple beneath a thin blouse. His left hand was around a glass of bourbon, holding it on the table as if it might decide to run off on him. The other girl had her hand on his thigh and was whispering something into
his ear. Jerry cackled and raised the glass to his lips, where the ice banged against his nose and it dawned on him it was empty.

  Spandau walked up to the table and Jerry eyed him warily. There was that look of a man who’s used to bar-room brawls, but Jerry’s face lightened a bit.

  ‘You Spandau?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Spandau offered his hand. This created an ethical dilemma for Jerry, who could either release his glass or the girl’s breast. He released the breast and shook Spandau’s hand.

  ‘You look like they said you’d look,’ Jerry said to him.

  ‘So do you.’

  ‘They said you looked big and stupid but not to worry about that.’

  ‘They told me you’d be drunk and rude but not to worry about that either.’

  Jerry gave one of his belly laughs.

  ‘Ladies,’ Jerry said to the girls, ‘I hate to end this, but we have gentlemen’s business to transact.’

  The girls looked Spandau up and down. One of them said to Jerry, ‘Let’s do get together later. You can bring your friend.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if he wants to.’

  ‘You want to, don’t you,’ the other girl said to Spandau. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I do, I really do,’ said Spandau. ‘It’s just that I’m self-conscious about the skin disease. It’s not as contagious as it looks.’

  Jerry hooted again.

  The girl with the recently freed knocker wrote a phone number on a napkin and tucked it into the pocket of Jerry’s shirt. ‘So you don’t forget.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Jerry, which meant either he was certain to forget or certain not to. He didn’t specify.

  The girls got up and passed close to Spandau but made an effort to avoid body contact. Spandau sat down and both men did what every other guy in the room was doing, which was to watch them leave. They were tall and gorgeous and knew how to make an exit. It was worth watching.

  ‘Skin disease,’ repeated Jerry. ‘You are a character. You’re not a fucking writer, are you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Good. I hate fucking writers. Where you from. You look like you might just be a Good Ol’ Boy.’