Orange County Noir

by Gary Phillips

  But when you met them again-or people just like them-you started to realize that there was a reason you'd left your old hometown. The people were too coarse, too selfish, too rude, and mainly just too fucking dumb to make it in the larger world.

  It wasn't that he didn't like them, no ... because he did. It was just too much to deal with.

  But what of his new idea, Hometown? Did his new hostile understanding nullify the whole project?

  No, not at all. Instead, it made it all the more interesting. The guy who comes back home wants kindness and Hallmark card simplicity, but instead finds out life in the adult world of the working class is tough too.

  Yeah, maybe that would make the story even richer.

  So maybe he wasn't nuts to hang with these people after all.

  No, the thing to do was keep hanging out with them but look at them as a scientist looks at his specimens. Eddie was dead-on right. He'd never actually be friends with this crew but just the same ... he could learn a few things, and in the end he'd throw them a bone once the day of principle photography began. A nice little piece of change.

  It was good to finally get the thing sorted out. He was a camera, and they were his subjects, and from now on he would be there, play ball, maybe even go for a beer, but no more buddy-buddy. That was over. Totally.

  After a couple of glasses of red wine, Johnny went to bed. Ev erything was going to be fine. He had his priorities straight and he would soon head back to the Hollywood Wars refreshed and renewed by his time in the O.C.

  He'd been in a restless sleep for about three hours when the doorbell rang. Half out of it, Johnny got up and made his way through the hallway to the front room.

  "Who is it?" he said, without opening the door.

  "It's me, bro," came a sad voice. "Eddie."

  Johnny thought about telling Eddie to bag it and head home. Looking over at Terry's clock, he realized it was 3 a.m. Jesus, this was the last guy he wanted to deal with now. But what the hell, Eddie's voice sounded kind of high and pathetic. He unlocked the front door and let him in.

  Eddie looked like he'd actually shrunk. His shoulders were all hunched up, and his eyes were cloudy. "I'm sorry to bother you," he said. "But I just need to talk to you, man. It can't wait."

  "Why not? It's 3 a.m."

  "I know, bro, but after that scene tonight, things got worse. Connie's gonna leave me, man. I can't make it without her."

  "Well, where is she now?"

  "Out at her sister's house. Out in Black Star Canyon. I gotta go there but I don't want to go alone cause I might lose it. Man, I know it's a huge thing to ask, but would you drive out there with me?"

  "Black Star Canyon?" Johnny loved the name of the place! Jesus, this could be a whole episode, or better, a three-parter for the series. Maybe it was even the name of the series, cause it was like a ton better than Hometown.

  "Okay," he said. "I'll do it, Ed, but you have to promise me that if I come you won't start anything. How do you know she's even awake?"

  "I know. I just talked to her on the cell. She can't sleep either. Man, it's so great of you. You're a real bud."

  "Let me get dressed," Johnny said. "I'll only be a minute."

  They drove inland in silence through Cook's Corner, with its ugly little houses, greasy food joints, and a scummy-looking bar called JC's Place. There wasn't even a sign at this joint, just a gold star and the letters JC on the door. Johnny shuddered at the thought of the kind of men who hung out in there.

  They stopped at a barren crossroads and he saw a fallingdown house with a collapsed screen porch and a Naugahyde couch lying out front of the place. It was all just a little too real for him. The toughest place he'd been in the last three years was Barney's Beanery, the old Jim Morrison hangout. And all the "tough guys" who hung out there were actors playing Jimmy Dean.

  Next they came to two-lane Santiago Canyon Road, and as they drove through steeper and steeper hills, and Johnny looked at the brush and chaparral, and thought of what might be coming toward them from the other lane. Terrible people with bad yellow teeth who had never even heard of sweeps week.

  They drove faster and Eddie started talking about Connie and how she and her sister had always dissed him. "She laughs at me, bro. She thinks I'm nothing. She wants a guy ... a guy like you. She said that to me, bro. It's funny man, cause what you do ain't even real."

  "What do you mean?" Johnny replied. He felt a fury building in him. All his writing life he'd had to put up with morons who talked about his talent for "words" with that certain nasty little inflection, as though words were just a cover for cowardice.

  "What do I mean?" Eddie said. "Well, you look at the big mansions in Newport Beach, I painted all of those places. When you see a house there and talk about how cool it is, it's because you see my paint on it. That's real, man. But words, what you do, making up little stories you put on TV. Even if you do make all the actors say the stuff, it's still not real. But look how much money you get for it. Look how many women would fuck you for it. You see, that ain't right, is it?"

  Johnny had a desire to reach over and throttle Eddie. Take him by his throat-

  "Depends on what you value," Johnny said. "Words are imagination. People have always valued imagination, Ed."

  "No, well, I can see people liking a director or an actor, but a guy who uses words? I mean, be honest, how do you get those jobs, John? Aren't they all about who you know, or screwing some big suit's daughter or something?"

  "No, not really, Eddie. You need to have talent. And if you think writing scripts is so easy, then try it sometime. What the hell, why aren't you doing it right now? Why do a tough job like house painting when you could easily be making millions using shitty little words?"

  Eddie bit his lip and looked over at Johnny in a sorrowful way. "Hey, no offense. Just always thought people who could do something, you know, like did it. People who can't do nothing, they trick people with words. But maybe I'm wrong, bud. Maybe I'm wrong."

  "Yeah, maybe you are," Johnny said.

  They drove on through the night hills, and then turned down a road that seemed to stretch to the yellow moon.

  "This is it. This is where she is," Eddie said. "Black Star Canyon. Just down the road."

  He turned left down what looked a like a road made of dust. They made another turn and the back end skidded a little, and then they were suddenly pulling up in a dry gulchridden place, with no houses in sight.

  "We're here, bro," Eddie said.

  "Where's the house?" Johnny asked, looking out at the barren hills.

  "The house? Her sister's place? Oh, it's back in Mission Viejo. Just a few doors down from ours."

  Eddie reached into his door well and pulled out a snubnosed .38.

  "Get out, Johnny."

  "What?"

  "Get out. Now!"

  Johnny felt like something was crushing his heart. He got out of the car, and stood in the whirling dust. Eddie did too.

  "Now look in the trunk, bud," Eddie said. Reaching inside, he popped the trunk.

  Johnny walked around to the back slowly, very slowly ... already knowing what he would find.

  And there she was, Connie, lying crumpled in the trunk, blood all over her face and dress.

  "You see how it is, Johnny boy," Eddie said. "I don't want no baby. I'm just not cut out for managing the Little League. And maybe now you can understand how I don't have much patience with mere words. What you do-let's pretend-that don't quite make it. What's lying in there, that would be the real thing. If you know what I mean."

  "You know you can't get away with this." When Johnny said it he almost laughed at himself. It was one of the lines all TV writers hated most. So corny, so hackneyed. So Barnaby Jones.

  But given his messy situation, so appropriate.

  "Oh yes I can," Eddie replied. "My girlfriend gets pregnant by a slick guy from Hollywood. She demands that he takes care of the baby, and when she refuses to have an abortion he brings her out here to kill
her. But lo and behold, they fight and kill one another instead. Stenz is going to swear he heard you two fighting. Connie dumped him last year. Unlike you, asshole, he's a real pal."

  Johnny felt the fury whipping through him again, but worse, he felt a cringe-inducing embarrassment. "Did you have this in mind all the time?" he asked. "From the first day?"

  "That's right," Eddie answered. "From day one. See, Johnny boy, you ain't the only sharp guy in town. I betcha I could write those scripts with their twists and turns even better than you. Now you stand right over there." He pointed out into the night desert.

  Moths fluttered through the moonbeams. They were really beautiful, Johnny thought. He started to walk out to the lonely patch of ground, to his own little doom, but instead found himself walking right for Ed.

  "Not this way," Eddie said. "Out there. Back up."

  But Johnny didn't back up. "No, I know what you want. You want to turn me into a thing that you shoot. But I'm not going to let you do it. You have to shoot me in the face." He felt a wild panic inside but also a kind of demented hilarity. He had seen this scene in a crime movie from the '40s a couple of years ago. He was pretty sure he had quoted the lines verbatim.

  Eddie suddenly seemed less confident. "I will shoot you right in the fucking eye. I fucking will. Now get over there."

  He gestured with the gun. But Johnny smiled and kept walking toward him.

  "In the face, Ed. In the face or in the balls, but in the front. You got the cojones?"

  "Back up," Eddie said. "You don't get it."

  He started to say something else, but Johnny leaped on him, and put his hands around his throat. Eddie screamed and fell back, and Johnny choked him down, tightening his grip.

  "What's the matter, Ed, you think I just deal in words? Motherfucker!"

  The whole thing was over in about thirty seconds. Eddie lay in the sand with his tongue hanging out. His face was purple under the moon. The gun was now in Johnny's hand.

  He started back to the car.

  When suddenly an apparition stood in front of him.

  Blood-spackled Connie was up out of the trunk, like a zombie from the B's.

  Johnny made a funny shrieking sound, and aimed the gun at her. But she ran by him and threw herself on Eddie's body.

  "Ed, oh Christ," she said. "Oh, Ed." She turned, bloodied and manic. "It was a joke," she said. "He wanted to show you he was a good idea man. I tried to talk him out of it. But he wanted to show you ... So when you went back up to Hollywood you wouldn't forget him."

  "Very funny," Johnny said. He walked back to the trunk of the car and saw the oilskin with the car jack and tire iron in it.

  She got up and followed him there. He looked at her dumb mouth and blood-splattered cheeks. And felt a tremendous disdain.

  "What are you doing?" she said. "We've got to go in to the police and report what you've done."

  "I knew you were going to say that. So you're not even pregnant?"

  "No, of course not."

  "Too bad," Johnny said.

  He held the iron over his head and looked down at her with real sorrow in his eyes.

  "Johnny, you can't do this. You're not a murderer. You're a writer."

  Johnny smiled.

  "No," he said. "Up to now I've always been a wordsmith. But I think maybe Ed was right. The real thing. It's a lot more exciting than fucking words."

  He brought the tire iron down on her head, crushing her face with one mighty blow. Under the pig's blood, human blood began to flow. He hit her a few more times, and felt even more refreshed than he had on the front porch. Power slammed through him like two thousand volts.

  Connie fell behind the car.

  Johnny looked inside the well-stocked trunk and found a small shovel. It would be a lot of work, but with all the adrenaline coursing through him, he was up to it. Besides, it was great being out here in nature, digging like a real man, under the lunatic moon.

  He strode out into the desert like some kind of Karloffian monster, and started to dig.

  Then he remembered Stenz.

  A week later, Johnny was back in Hollywood and sold Hometown to NBC. He'd learned his lessons well from Boys in Blue. Hometown was full of sentimental types: the good buddy with a drinking problem; the old girlfriend who had been a hooker but had a serious heart of gold; Mr. Mooby, the kindly janitor who was secretly a Nazi. Problems that the hero, Dave, could solve, because Dave, unlike his creator, was smart, and good. It was shot in a sunny, blue-sky way and sold to Hallmark in a flash.

  CBS gave him an overall deal at two million a year.

  The bodies of Eddie and Connie were never found.

  Johnny only went back to the O.C. one more time. To hire his new assistant at a salary of two hundred thousand a year. Stenz was delighted with his new digs in Hollywood, and turned out to be the most loyal employee Johnny ever had.

  The following season Johnny had three new series on the air. Leonardo Stenz was Co-Executive Producer on all three.

  And whenever interviewed, Johnny still maintains that none of his good fortune would have ever happened if he hadn't taken his two weeks to renew himself down in the laidback and beautiful O.C.

  very Randolph finished the stretched-out riff of Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are," hoping his playing covered the flat notes coming out of his mouth. He'd meant to take his voice up in pitch during the last chorus, not down. The throat was the second thing to go. There was polite applause from the Seaside Lounge crowd, and Randolph nodded slowly while noodling the keys.

  An aging couple, both in bright attire, their matching sterling-gray hair arranged just so, walked by the piano, hand in hand. The woman, peach-colored lipstick gothically enticing in the bar's subdued lighting, dropped a five into the large brandy snifter for tips. She smiled. Randolph smiled. The man gave a quick wave to a short-haired woman at a table near the window, and the two headed for the door. The man let his hand glide down to briefly and tenderly flutter against the woman's backside.

  "This is for Emily," Randolph announced, and began a leisurely intro into "Straighten Up and Fly Right." He channeled Nat "King" Cole's artful syncopation, letting it build while several patrons bobbed their heads and tapped their feat to the rhythm.

  "Cool down, papa, don't you blow ... your ... toppppp," he finished in the key he meant to, and this time the applause was more heartfelt. He stood and bowed and blew a kiss to Emily, the woman the guy had waved to, sitting at her usual spot next to the window overlooking the medical center down below. For sixty-three, Randolph reflected, she looked good, handsome in her dark blue dress and diamond brooch, an everpresent martini glass near her steady blood-nailed hand. She lifted her drink and toasted him with a sip and a toothy grin.

  Randolph finished his set with an instrumental rendition of Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'," adding, "Don't forget the sand dab special, folks, Rene swears they are to die for." That got a few chuckles and he offered a wave en route to the bar. Sitting at one end of it was a National Guard trooper in his camouflage, a combat service badge dully gleaming over his flapped breast pocket. He was drinking a beer from a pint glass and was having an animated conversation on his cell phone. He turned his body away and hunched over some as Randolph approached the opposite end of the bar.

  Carlson, the head bartender, came over with his Jack and Coke. "You tinkled them good tonight," he commented, setting the squat glass on a napkin with the establishment's name on it.

  "Thanks, man." Randolph watched the logo become distorted by the wet bottom of the glass, then took it to his lips.

  "I guess you have to go easy on that stuff, don't you? Or does it help your playing?"

  Randolph looked over at the woman who'd just sat down beside him. She was young-that is, younger than him. In her late twenties, he figured, jeans and some kind of loose fauxsuede top. Not too much makeup, Rite Aid earrings. Pretty, but not overwhelmingly so. He sized her up as the wife or girlfriend of some soldier or marine over in Iraq or Afgha
nistan. Lonely. Bored. There was a lot of that in Los Alamitos.

  "Everything in moderation," he replied to her. He didn't offer to buy her a drink, making sure he kept his eyes on her face and not down on that alert swell beneath the shirt's fabric. The bare arms, though, impressively toned.

  "I used to play guitar in high school," she said. "Even had us an all-girl band for a while. But you know how it goes." She elevated a shoulder.

  "Not the next Bangles, huh?"

  She frowned.

  "Before your time," Carlson piped in. A not so subtle reminder that Randolph was probably a decade and a half older than the woman. Randolph resisted a remark. Goddamn Carlson was older than he was but worked out on the weights, and had bragged about getting pectoral implants. So I can pick up pussy more easily, he'd cracked to Randolph and Rene Suarez, the chef.

  "Can I have a gin and tonic?" the woman asked, looking from Carlson back to Randolph.

  "Yours to command," the bartender said, and went to prepare her drink.

  "What do you do now?" What the hell, no sense making it easy for Carlson. Besides, Randolph was just making chitchat, no more, no less.

  "Work at the PX on the base. Original around here, right?"

  Carlson returned with her drink. "Me lady."

  "Shit fire," the soldier down the bar snapped, then threw his cell across the bar top. It landed in another customer's glass, the drink's owner glaring at him.

  "Aw, hell, here we go. Another old lady done told her hero boy bye-bye." Carlson, himself a vet, double-timed to cool out the service man.

  "Your husband on his second or third tour?" Randolph asked the woman. They both watched Carlson putting an arm around the shouldiers of the soldier, who dropped his head, mumbling words of self-pity.