Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army

by Steven Paul Leiva

  “It causes a terrific headache, but other than that, you’ll be fine,” he said as I faded and slumped towards him. A sniff of his cologne—cheap, of course—was the last thing I remembered.

  Chapter Twelve

  A Close Shave

  The American had been correct. It was a terrific headache. The kind one associates with a hangover, a body’s revenge kind of headache. Compounding its discomfort was stinging heat along my back and on my hands, which were tied together behind me. My legs were also tied, to the legs of the hardback kitchen chair I sat in. I looked up. A flickering golden light provided the only illumination, making shadows dance around a small and narrow room, including the large shadow cast by myself, and which covered in darkness a man sitting on a plush couch directly before me. He was so close our knees were practically touching. Behind him were drawn heavy brown drapes. Just where they came together, subtle early morning light was sneaking in. The man sat there, relaxed, considering me. We were in a house, I guessed, in the country. It was quiet. There was none of the traffic sounds of London. The room was unexceptional. There were tables with lamps; pictures on the wall, knickknack shelves to my right, a stereo set up on a low table to my left. Also to my left and in front of me was a doorway leading into a hall. The front door to the outside was probably at the other end of that hall. Flowing in with the subtle morning light was the pleasant chirping of early birds. It was a benign setting in which to be feeling pain and sweating to heat.

  “He awake?” The voice behind me was familiar and American.

  “Yes, but I don’t think he’s quite warm enough,” the man in my shadow said. “Why don’t you throw some more logs on the fire.”

  I could feel the presence of the man behind me stoking the fire. The new wood intensified the crackle of the fire, as it did the illumination in the room, beating back a bit of the dark and revealing the man before me to be the chauffeur.

  “Better?” the chauffeur asked in such a way; with such a natural sense of authority that I was quite sure he was no chauffeur. That nag was at the back of my neck again, fighting for breath among the moist heat. I looked deeply into the face before me. The small eyes looking past the long sharp nose; the wispy gray hair. Ah—in The Pavilion! He had been sitting in the Leatherbarrow & Boyle booth. I had given them a quick scan as we had made our way past. He had been there. Along with a young blonde woman, sexy despite being in a dark business suit, and two other men, one who needed a haircut, one who needed to lose weight (or a new suit one size larger). The man before me was Robert Pye, I was sure of it, but such astute intelligence, I did not need to reveal.

  “Wh—what are you doing. Are you going to rob me?” As Henderson I asked the logical question, achieving an appropriate fear of the immediate future.

  “I hadn’t thought of it,” he said. “Although I suppose if we are going to kill you it can’t hurt.” He turned slightly to his right and started going through a pile of things on the couch. They were my things. Coins, billfold, lose papers, a fax from Charles Humbolt of Humbolt, Henderson & Pinsker in New York addressed to Elsworth Henderson at the Savoy Hotel, London, covering the final details of a small real estate buy the partnership was going to make. It’s called a cover plant, a small innocuous item that lends credence. He looked into the billfold and pulled out the 200 pounds I had in there. He looked up at me. “Housekeeping money,” he said as he folded the bills and tucked them part way under a lamp on the table to his left.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Yes, I know you don’t, Mr. Henderson. Let’s just say you’re my competition and I, like the good capitalist I am, intend to eliminate my competition.”

  “Competition? I—I’m a lawyer.”

  “Okay. Then why don’t I kill you because Shakespeare said to?”

  “Look, 200 pounds is peanuts.” I felt it was best to be desperate. “I can get you a lot more money than that, if you’ll just let me go.”

  “Sorry, not really an option, I’m afraid. Let me explain things. A man shouldn’t go to his death confused. My name is Robert Pye. I’m an investment banker with Leatherbarrow & Boyle. Sara Hutton is my client. For about a year now I’ve been working very diligently, if quietly, trying to secure the financing for Ms. Hutton to make a management bid for Olympic Pictures. So far, I have not been able to secure that financing. I have some preliminary commitments, but certainly not all that I need. Sara Hutton does not understand why, and she is screaming at me. Screaming, I have come to understand, is the preferred mode of communication in Hollywood. My superiors are also not happy with the situation and, although they would never scream, their recent withering looks have accused me of putting the good name and reputation of Leatherbarrow & Boyle at risk. I would be upset if I thought that I had personally failed, but I haven’t. The Money just doesn’t want to get into bed with Sara Hutton. I was about ready to call it quits when I was lucky enough to overhear you in conversation with Lydia Corfu at The Pavilion. Although I’m sure luck had nothing to do with it. You planned that, didn’t you? How you found out we are representing Sara Hutton, I can’t guess, but it was quite clever of you—brilliant, actually, quite brilliant. You expected me to come at you with my tongue hanging out, hoping to get any piece of the action I could to save my face. But why would you need me at all? I suspect it’s because, despite what you may have told Lydia Corfu, you don’t have a hundred percent of the financing secured either. You have some. I suspect, just like I have some, but you’re not having any more luck getting the Money in bed with Lydia Corfu than I’ve had with Sara Hutton—but, now, ah, a ménage à trois. There is something—what else can I say?—sexy about that. You wanted me to come to you, though, didn’t you? You wanted me to be the junior partner? No. That just won’t do. So, thanks for the set up, but I’ll take over from here.”

  “I—I thought English bankers were supposed to be gentlemen.”

  “Not these days, I’m afraid. Especially being in competition with you Americans. You get nowhere, nowhere at all—” He suddenly raised his right hand up to my face; there was a knife in it. “Unless you have the cutting-edge.” He ran the tip of the knife down my left cheek. I could feel the blood gather—then drip.

  “George,” Pye said to the man behind me. “I’m going to ask Mr. Henderson here a series of questions. If he doesn’t answer them to my satisfaction, find ways to hurt him.”

  “Wait! Wait a minute. This is ridiculous. We can do business. You don’t have to kill me.”

  “Oh, yes I do. Because you are going to tell me exactly what you have lined up, all the details, then you are going to die in an unfortunate mugging on the streets of London. What were you thinking being out at four in the morning? Your tragic death, will, of course, throw your whole effort into disarray. Then I will come along to pick up the pieces, and make it happen.”

  “I—I could strike a deal with you. We could really cut you in on it.”

  “Why should I have some of it when I could get all of it? No, no, this is best, plus there is, of course, the consideration that if I were to backtrack now, accepting your kind offer, then your resentment over the way I have treated you this morning might eventually fester and you might just find some way to do me harm. No, self-preservation dictates that you have to die. Now it can be easy and painless—or not. That is your choice. It’s the only thing left, in the whole world, which you have any control over. Now, start telling me the sources of financing you have lined up.”

  I said nothing. Pye was visibly disappointed.

  “It’s absurd for you not to cooperate. It’s not like I’m asking you to reveal state secrets. It is only business.”

  I said nothing. Pye waited a moment. Which was damn decent of him, but still I said nothing. He shook his head, probably wondering why it had to be difficult when the outcome was obvious. There was an element of pity in his voice when he finally said:

  “George?”

  George walked over to me, raised his right hand to my fac
e, and tucked his forefinger under his thumb. My thought was that he was going to snap me on the nose, like something out of an old Three Stooges movie. If this was their idea of torture, I thought I might as well take a nap. Then he snapped. Not my nose, but my right eye. It was so fast I couldn’t even blink in defense. The combination of shock, disbelief, and pain made me howl. Then he brought his arm up and swung it down, giving me a blow with the back of his hand that threw my head hard to the left, twisting my neck and destroying my equilibrium.

  “The sources of financing you have lined up, please,” came a strong and reverberating voice.

  I shook my head straight. My right eye stung with a unique pain, and a flood of tears, maybe some blood, had welled up in it and overflowed. My left eye, in sympathy I suppose, was a bit moist as well.

  “That hurt!” I said with all the naive disbelief and surprise I could fake. It wasn’t hard.

  “Did it? Good, I’m glad,” said Pye as he looked up at George and nodded.

  I expected another broadside to the head and had prepared for it, but George had a creative moment. George gave me a swift kick to my left shin with, it was much too apparent, a steel-toed shoe. The surprise almost hurt worse than the strike.

  “The sources of financing you have lined up, please?”

  I opened my eyes. They had squeezed tightly shut in deference to my shin. I looked around the room while I tried to blink away all the involuntary tears. I noticed a framed 8X10 photo on one of the knick knack shelves. It was of Pye in a sunny clime in a white linen shirt, very happy to be holding onto a beautiful and sensuous blonde, the blonde in the dark suit that I had seen him within The Pavilion. She wore no dark suit here. She wore a loose and revealing sundress. They both had the look of people thrilled to be getting away with it. I knew in an instant revelation that Pye had a wife in a spacious Georgian in Kensington dealing with the children and the charity work that will eventually help get him a knighthood. This torture chamber I was in was normally, I was sure, a romantic hideaway for him and the blonde. Small, nondescript, mundane, but with satin bed sheets and a stock of pornographic tapes for the VCR—what a dumb place to die in!

  Pye sighed with impatience. “George.”

  George slugged me. A good, old-fashioned right cross to the jaw. I and the chair, as one piece, flew straight back and down, my head landing hard against the marble hearth of the fireplace, then bouncing a short distance into the inner hearth, the flames immediately licking at the back of my head, right at that place where that nag had been. Hot vibrant light and searing pain was suddenly all of existence. Panic was unavoidable, but I managed not to scream out. Not that there was much time as George almost immediately snatched me out, set me up, and slapped the flames out of my hair. Diligent in this task, he slapped very hard.

  Pye watched all this, unmoved, probably not wanting to get emotionally involved.

  “I’m going to ask you one last time to name the sources of financing you’ve lined up for Lydia Corfu. If you don’t answer me, George will slug you again and again and you will fall in the fireplace again. This time, though, George will not pick you up, and I will be happy to sit here to watch the flesh burn off your face until I can see the skull underneath. As I really don’t care for the scent of burning flesh, I would appreciate it, please, if you would name the sources of financing you have lined up.”

  “Excuse me, but that really is proprietary information.”

  It was Hamo’s voice. An unarguably sweet sound coming from behind my right shoulder.

  “Who the fuck—” George was suddenly on the ground jerking with uncontrollable spasms. Pye was up on his feet, swinging up a pistol, when I heard another sweet sound: the voice of Roee.

  “Don’t! Your friend has just been stunned with a Tazer. He’ll recover nicely due to the pacifistic tendencies of my friend, but me, I don’t mind killing in a good cause.”

  I assumed by the look on Pye’s face that Roee was holding a fairly formidable weapon, something more intensely phallic than the little pistol that Pye now tossed aside.

  “Good. Now untie Mr. Henderson here.”

  Pye moved cautiously, but he did a swift job of freeing me. Then he stood back. I stood up. We were face to face. My, “Damn handsome” yet somewhat battered face to his beady eyed, long, sharp nose face. I gave him a quick uppercut and he fell back onto the couch, unconscious.

  I turned to Roee and Hamo. “Your timing, while dramatically thrilling, seems just a little off.”

  “I’m afraid I have to take responsibility for that, Fixxer,” Hamo said. “We put the tail on you, the ‘Breech’ as you coded, but, well, the young man I chose, I’m afraid got a bit bored waiting in the car outside the hotel. You were in there for an awfully long time.”

  “I was just trying to consummate our business relationship, Hamo.”

  “Oh, understood. Even the Inland Revenue wouldn’t have a problem with it, I’m sure, but my man, Tim’s his name, by the way, he got a bit bored, not to mention cold, so he decided to call up his girlfriend on the cell phone.”

  “So he was busily engaged in a conversation and didn’t notice when I came out of the hotel?”

  “No, no, he had finished long before that.”

  “So, he was no longer on the phone?”

  “That’s right. He was a hundred percent on duty, saw you come out of the hotel, get into the limo with—” Hamo looked down at the unconscious American. “This git here, and dutifully began to tail you at a discreet distance.”

  “And then didn’t he dutifully call you to inform that I was riding in a strange limo with a strange man?”

  “Well, he tried, of course, I’ve trained him well, but, you see, that’s where the problem comes in. I’m afraid the battery in the cell phone was depleted.”

  “Oh. He didn’t have —”

  “A spare or a car battery cord? No, I think he rushed out so fast when I called him that he just simply forgot those, uh, usually, indispensable items.”

  “He doesn’t keep them in his car?”

  “He was driving his girlfriend’s.”

  “Whom he was with—”

  “When I called him, yes.”

  “And they were in the middle of—”

  “Not quite to the middle yet, I believe.”

  “So, in the car, bored and cold, he called her up to continue—”

  “With a perfectly natural part of modern romance, yes. Although, separated by a certain distance, they seem to have made do.”

  “And this took a sufficient amount time to deplete the battery?”

  “Premature ejaculation does not seem to be one of Tim’s problems.”

  “I hope you’ve noted that in his file.”

  “He’s a good boy, he is, really. He knew he had to stay on your tail, no matter what. Which he did, finally calling from a call box once the limo came to this location. I immediately called Roee, of course, and we got up here just as quick as we could.”

  “And where is here?”

  “Hertfordshire,” Roee answered. “Little village called Welwyn. Nice little house, white, two story, probably only ten years old. Couple of acres in the back, mostly lawn, bit of woods. Neighbor next door has horses. Very pleasant.”

  “Would you like me to buy it?”

  “It seems restful.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  George groaned.

  “Stuff something in his mouth and tie him up would you?”

  Roee and Hamo did so as they asked me what all this was about.

  “I’m not sure. Except it seems that the banking business in England has taken a bit of a thuggish turn. What do you know about this guy, Hamo?”

  “Pye? He’s the top man at L&B—highly competitive, of course. Married Boyle’s daughter, but that was to be expected, I suppose. Has worked aggressively to make L&B an international concern, obtaining influence for the bank outside of the UK. Known to make rather outrageous promises and claims, but often delivers. Gotte
n much press here, magazine covers, major profiles. We, meaning the British, both love and hate him, as we often do the successful. Consummate snob, but of a new sort. Comes from a middle class family. Dad was the manager of a cinema in Birmingham. Mom was a nurse working for National Health. So, he has, I suppose, earned the right, rather than just inherited it. If you don’t count his marriage into inherited wealth.”

  “Ever been rumored that he had connections with characters like this one,” I said, indicating the American.

  “No. That comes as a bit of surprise.”

  “Any hint of illegal activities? Insider trading, anything like that?”

  “No. Known as a good citizen.”

  “Well,” Pye was certainly a man to muse on, “I suppose he just saw too many gangster movies at his dad’s cinema as a child. Seems he wanted the Corfu-Olympic deal all to himself. Wanted to get our sources of financing out of me, kill me, and pick up the pieces in the disarray. Does that sound logical?” I asked Roee.

  Roee thought for a second. “Seems extreme. There’s an ulterior motive in there somewhere. Maybe he had a fairly large personal commission riding on setting it all up? Maybe it was pride? He was on the verge of failure.”

  “Yes,” Hamo said, “he hasn’t failed too often. If it had gotten out, it would have been, I suppose, a bit of tarnish on the family silver. Reputation may mean a lot to him.”

  It was Pye’s time to groan. He regained consciousness and opened his eyes. The little blue beads reflected fear as they stared at the three of us. “How—”

  “Shut up!” I shouted down to him. “I’ve heard enough from you.” I turned to Roee and Hamo. “Now the question is, what are we going to do with these two?”

  “I suppose we can’t kill them?” Roee asked.

  “I think both Hamo and I would vote against you on that idea.”

  “Two against one,” Hamo said.

  “But he was going to kill you,” Roee protested.

  “A momentary lapse in his basic ethics, I’m sure, due to the negative influence of the dream of wealth. We are all probably susceptible to it. There but for the grace of Goddamn-good-sense go I. But it is a problem. For we certainly don’t want him reporting back to Sara Hutton that we are lawyers with defenses beyond litigation.”