by John Fusco
“We’ll go back through the Canyon,” Dutch said.
“Nice,” Troy said, imagining another three hours of hairpin turns and cortisol speedballs.
• • •
Banazak was walking his lapdog along the yacht basin on Fiji Way, his eyes hidden by a visor and sunglasses. He had an iPod in and was listening to classic vinyl. He loved new stuff like Government Mule, but when he really wanted to feel motivated, it was ’80s rock ’n’ roll. Van Halen could make him bench four hundred pounds on a good morning; Molly Hatchet could rock his deadlift off the charts. But this was his rest day and he was walking easy. Not that he wasn’t vigilant; he was always keeping an eye out for the lesbian couple who walked a large Doberman. His only fear in life was of something happening to Captain Jack, his tiny apso.
His cell phone vibrated in his pink shorts and he slapped for it a bit awkwardly, overeager to take the call. When he checked the caller ID, he was even more eager.
“S’up, Paps?”
“Another call on the Chevy,” the former private eye to the stars said on the other end. “PCH. Malibu, between Dukes and Moonshadows.”
“On it,” Banazak said. He hung up, took a breath. He began to jog with purpose.
• • •
He located the Chevy right where Papagallo said, pulled in, and left a car length between them. He wanted some space to make an ID on the chink, and some ramp-up room so he could blindside him with the baseball bat. The guy wasn’t going to get a chance to throw any karate or slip off behind a passing train. Banazak had him in a perfect position, would ideally beat him between the parked cars and the beach house gates, where no one could really get a glimpse. Some movie star—Banazak imagined Cher for some reason—would come out to her Mercedes and find a dead Chinese man.
Sitting there, like a duck hunter in a blind, Banazak rolled down his windows and slid his seat back half a foot to give his massive legs some room. In defensive football, they used to talk about the fine line between patience and overplaying the ball. Timing took years, but when it clicked, it was like bulldogging or spearing a fish. Fast, brutal, done. That’s how he was going to blitz this rice monkey, make him beg. He wondered if it was possible to beat a man so forcefully that dental records would be moot. He even wondered if there was wisdom in flinging the guy out into the PCH traffic after rendering him disabled. Then no one would even know he’d been clobbered. Maybe get Papagallo to get some blow-job queen to call 911 and report a drunk Chinese guy walking down the middle of PCH. Whatever.
Then a car pulled in, oddly abrupt. The silver Lexus with rental plates nosed even with the Chevy, reversed into a smooth parallel-park job. In three seconds it was perfectly tight between Banazak’s SUV and the target vehicle.
“Fucking asshole,” Banazak said. There were four guys in the car, all business. He felt his ’roid rage quicken as he waited for them to get out, but they remained seated. A few moments later, however, one of them opened a rear door. Slowly, he climbed out from the backseat. The guy was Asian and dumpy, dressed in a plain suit. He took a few idle steps, looked around at the addresses on the gates, then lit a cigarette.
Banazak studied him; he didn’t look like his mark. Had to be some connection, though. He caught a side profile of the driver, saw that he was Asian too. They all were. No, you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to smell something fishy. And the way they were loitering, it seemed they were waiting for someone. Then the cigarette smoker looked directly at him, did a double take. He seemed surprised that someone was behind the wheel of the parked SUV; it almost made him jump. He stared for a time, smoking and squinting. The brazen eye contact did something to Banazak, made him get out. Fuck patience.
“Where is he?” he said, coming at the Chinese guy so aggressively that it made him scuff a step in alarm. “Where the fuck is he?”
“Sorry, my English not so good.”
Banazak went to the driver’s side of the Lexus and leaned in, inspecting each face. The driver was a stout guy with a red tie. The one in the passenger seat had an expensive coif of layers like some sporty chick and wore tiny sunglasses.
“Where’s your boy?” he said.
“Pardon?” said the passenger, his voice silky and British inflected.
“Which house is he in?”
“Why you are so angry?”
Banazak hiked a knee into the door with a bang, made all the men flinch. He put his face right in the driver’s, nearly fogging his glasses with his breath. “I’ll kill every fucking one of you little nip motherfuckers.”
Then he shoved the driver’s head back against his seat. “English not so good?”
The passenger said something in Cantonese. The driver kept his head back, held it still. The passenger raised a small handgun and fired two shots, both punching into the big man’s chest. Banazak rocked back half a step then pitched forward against the car. Tiger Eye fired a third shot, piercing Banazak’s forehead. The huge man tried to fall in at them through the window, but his steps were carrying him northward, out near the traffic. Still, he kept on, shuffling toward his SUV now as if to go fetch the baseball bat. The four Chinese men watched him, fascinated. The big laowai was still alive with a bullet through his brain, staggering like a headless chicken at a Mong Kok market. He grabbed for his door then spun and slid hard. Buckling, he went still against his front tire, his eyes fixed toward the sun.
The Lexus eased out, drove away.
19
DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD
Avi sits at the Coffee Bean, the one at Sunset Plaza, looking at the trades on his phone, scrolling down through Deadline Hollywood’s announcement blurbs:
—CBS Buys Gay Father Comedy
—MPAA’s Chris Dodd Urges Tech Community to Support Ban on Rogue Websites
—Damon, Affleck to reunite for new Lehane Beantowner
—Paramount proceeds with Caution; Cursio and Ellison to Pen Mo-Cap Actioner Based on Crosswalk Signal
Avi nearly spits out his espresso, scrolls back up. He reads only the opening line of the article and says, loud enough to reach every sidewalk table around him, “Tyler, you snaky little motherfucker. I’ll sue your ass and I’ll sue fucking Brad Gray—I’ll own the studio.”
That’s when he notices the guys getting out of the Hummer at the curb. Central Americans, five of them. Hektor walks at the front, quick and certain. Guns come up. A woman screams as—
BULLETS RIP INTO AVI GHAZARYAN, shredding his sport coat, throwing him violently from his chair. He tries to crawl toward the walls as chairs tip all around him, SAME WOMAN SCREAMING. Then, on his elbows, in pooling blood, he sees the back door of the Hummer open, white shoes step down. The guy walks calmly across the bloody plaza and trains an AR-15 on him. Avi looks up and recognizes the man as HARVEY KEITEL.
“You are a lying, scamming, scum-of-the-earth cocksucker,” Harvey says. “Amateur hour is over.” Then he UNLOADS. Avi feels himself jackhammered off the concrete in a death spasm. Still, he gets up on his elbows, looks right at the Central Americans and Harvey Keitel and says, “I’ll fucking sue you.” And he dies.
In death—
• • •
Avi woke up. It was a cool, late morning in the Hills. He had slept in, compliments of a double dosage of Lunesta. Despite the slightly metallic taste on his tongue, he had needed it. But those dreams? Terrible. Violent. And what was up with Harvey Keitel? Maybe it had something to do with the doomed financing of an independent film that he had once tried to attach Keitel to. He had used the term “amateur hour” back then, when he walked out of a meeting on Avi. Must’ve stuck in his mind.
With his kettle heating up and his medium-bold coffee in the Bodum, he did his stretches. As was his routine, he checked his iPhone as he loosened his quads, leg up on a chair. There, on the front page of the L.A. Times online edition, he saw it:
Ex-NFL Star Slain on Malibu
Highway
A football photo of Jason Banazak in younger, healthier years appeared just below. Avi read a little of it, felt a kind of chill. Maybe he had picked up on the murder vibe and had the violent dream about gunshots. Ridiculous, he thought; he was starting to sound like his daughter, Zoe, when she’d go off about energy and chakras and all that New Age crap. There was a far more pressing article about the Euro and its impact on the U.S. economy just adjacent. If he had read on, he would have learned that the murder, in broad daylight, occurred less than a hundred yards down from the beach property he was renting to Troy and his film brat friends. He might have even worried about his daughter, the way she liked to sunbathe on Las Flores and go in and out of the house at will.
Avi poured hot water into the press. He was still feeling the nightmare—feeling the bullets—which was a good thing. After dreams like that, he didn’t feel so unlucky. Especially when drive-by stuff actually happens, like to the football player on PCH.
As his coffee brewed, he stood in front of the wall calendar, did his shoulder rotations, and got his bearings. Troy had eight days to deliver a cut. Eight days. If he didn’t, maybe that Coffee Bean massacre dream would come true. But if anyone was taking the heat, it was going to be Troy. Avi had trusted him, let him live in his house with all his little freeloading buddies.
He dialed Troy, was surprised how quickly the kid answered.
“I just want to say, you little motherfucker, you don’t have my cut in eight days, I can no longer hold back the wolves. What you have is a clusterfuck. Unreleasable. Your second act is like the Bataan Death March. Fix it. I can no longer hold back the sharks. Eight fucking days, Troy, you little Jew motherfucker.”
He hung up and felt good. His coffee was ready. The first cup, always full of such promise.
• • •
“That was random,” Troy said, hanging up just as Durbin came out of his bedroom. “He was talking like he saw my cut or something. He even called it a clusterfuck.”
“At least you guys are on the same page,” said Malone.
“Dog House–gate,” said T-Rich. “We been hacked.”
“Dude,” Durbin said, holding up his iPad. “You see this? Murder on PCH this morning, right outside.”
“I heard the sirens, thought it was an accident.”
“No, check it out. Nine thirty in the morning, this Oakland Raiders guy was gunned down, just down the road from Gary’s.”
“You shitting me?”
“No. That’s, like, right outside our front door.”
Malone was already on it, reading his phone. “Steroids,” he said with that stoner grin. “Guy had a history of steroids, drug busts, date rape. I bet it was a drive-by. Lucky we weren’t hit.”
The Dogs were on the case. T-Rich stepped outside, came back with the paper. “They got the yellow tape all along the road. CSI.”
While Durbin and Malone hurried with juvenile zeal to investigate, T-Rich opened his iPad on the table where Louie and Dutch were eating cereal. “Shot three times,” T-Rich said. “Point-blank. Sick.”
Dutch craned to look then choked a bit on her Puffins. Louie gently patted her back. “You see that, Louie?” she said.
“Football player was shot this morning, right outside.”
“Outside where? Here?”
“Yeah.”
She slid the paper where he could see it, the photo of a younger Banazak. Louie pulled it closer, looked harder.
“What, you like the Raiders, Louie?” T-Rich laughed.
Louie stared at the photo then looked over at Dutch. Her eyes said it all: It was him, the big steroid head who they’d subcontracted to and then ripped off. What had he been doing just outside the house where they were crashing? Had he been relentlessly tracking Louie Mo since the encounter in Monterey Park? More important, who put three bullets in him?
The way Dutch was looking at Louie, he felt like the accused. Then he wondered if maybe Dutch, who had finished off her bottle of vodka in the night, might have plugged the guy with her little .22 sidearm when she went out to her car for smokes. She did hate the guy for being a rapist. If not one of them, then who? Guanyin, goddess of mercy?
“All right, peeps,” Troy announced. “Big day. Let’s go get it.”
Dutch looked back at the iPad. T-Rich was already on his email. Life was cheap up here, she thought, on the golden side of the overpass.
Louie shook an oxy like dice, then threw it back with a swig of orange juice. “Let’s go get it.”
But Dutch could read Louie, could see he was disturbed; like something beyond his control was closing in.
20
CITY ON FLAME
Tiger Eye was the only one of the Triads not talking. There were nine of them now—five of their San Francisco members coming down out of respect—all sitting at a shitty table in a small pizza joint in Playa del Rey. They spoke in clipped Cantonese about the big crazy guy who had attacked them and paid the price for it. Louie Mo must have protection, they reasoned.
The sworn brothers from San Fran didn’t wear business suits like the Hong Kong faction; they wore a mix of hip black leather jackets and tracksuits. One of them, a crew-cut guy almost as tall as Yao Ming, wore a lightweight, gray linen duster.
While they chattered and laughed in their southern Chinese, Tiger Eye was staring at his iPhone, scrolling through the attachment that his hacker in Hong Kong had just sent. No longer could they stake out the Las Flores beach house and hope to kill Louie Mo coming or going. They’d have to find another location.
The overseas hacker used the American filmmaker’s e-mail address to poach his password and get into his account. From there, he uploaded a shooting schedule with maps of locations, even driving directions. It appeared, Tiger Eye told the sworn brothers, that Louie and the kid were down to just a few more shots on their calendar. They knew where to find him now. They knew when. It would be a hit and run, and a night flight back to Hong Kong. Tiger Eye couldn’t wait. He hated the laziness of Los Angeles.
INT. NUMBER 9 BAR—NIGHT
As the club empties, CHO gets his duffel bag and walks over to a tired BUZZ. He offers him some cash.
CHO
That’s for the mirror.
BUZZ
Screw the mirror. It made me look heavy around the middle anyway.
Still, Buzz takes the cash. Just the way he is.
BUZZ (CONT’D)
You better get out of here, Cho.
BUZZ (MORE)
They’re coming for you. Nowhere left to run, my man. No more time . . .
CHO
You’ve got yourself a nice place. Good feng shui.
Buzz smiles. Cho lingers for a second more, looks at the Elvis clock behind the bar, hefts the duffel, and starts out with Wes.
The BLIND MAN listens to Cho’s footsteps. Lifts the sax to his lips and PLAYS an end to the night riff. A theme of sorts. We will call it THE CAGE SONG.
• • •
Louie was back in the beach house after shooting half a day in the crappy Venice bar Troy used as the Number 9 Bar. The crew went off to shoot Dutch burning rubber in a parking lot so Louie had a rare afternoon to himself. On his way to his upstairs room, something caught his eye in the hallway water closet: a vintage clawfoot bathtub that had been tempting him for weeks. None of the boys ever used it, and Louie himself only showered in the tight stall in his bedroom bath. But now the fine tub beckoned.
He filled it with a mix of hot and cold—mostly hot—got in, and savored the warm soak all the way up to his neck. With a skylight overhead and European prints on the walls, he felt like Ringo Chou must have when he starred in his movies: like a king. He lit a cigar that T-Rich had given him one night in Zuma, a nice Dominican, the kid said it was.
He let the smoke out slow and easy, sank a little deeper, feeling his hips loosen. I
t was the most peaceful moment he had felt in years. Then he heard a dog barking. The sound was a common one in Las Flores—they called it Dog Beach for a reason—but this sharp yapping seemed to be coming from the little private walkway where the boys kept the trash barrels and Malone kept all manner of surfboards and kayaks.
When the barking finally stopped, Louie relaxed again and began practicing his lines at a whisper. He was trying to remember that direction Troy always gave him: Keep it simple, keep it real. He remembered the first day that Troy said, “Keep it stupid, simple,” as some kind of joke, and he didn’t get it and had grown offended. That was the same day that Louie had executed a spinning heel kick and Troy called it “ridiculous.” The director had to chase Louie down, explaining that the word was actually high praise. Perhaps the worst offense was when Malone told Louie that he was “the bomb.” Over time, Louie began to get a better feel for the Dogs’ lingo and humor and he often fired it back at them, followed by a sophomoric chest bump. He was smiling at the memory of one of those exchanges, savoring the cigar, when that dog began barking again. For ten minutes straight it yapped.
Louie toweled off, pulled on his red sweat-suit bottoms, and made his way downstairs. The barking was so loud and sharp down near the living room that he wondered if a dog had gotten inside the house. Then he spotted it. The small white dog was on the back porch, snapping so close to the glass on the French doors that it looked like he might smash his teeth.
When Louie approached, the dog grew quiet for a moment, staring at him with deep-set eyes. It growled, then resumed its yapping in near hysterics. It struck Louie then that he had seen that dog, heard that shrill yelp somewhere before. When it became clear, the blood rushed to his face. It was Banazak’s lapdog, the little apso from the houseboat in Marina del Rey. A dead man’s dog.
What the hell was he doing here?
All Louie could figure was that when the former football pro was gunned down on PCH, the dog must’ve jumped out of his SUV; amazing that it hadn’t been pulverized in the traffic. No, it must’ve taken off scared along the side of the highway, found its way down to the beach, and wandered lost for days before ending up on the porch of Troy’s house. But why? Did he sense that Louie was in there hiding? A month or so ago, he had scented Louie’s intentions on the houseboat and threatened to bite him. It was as if he had sniffed Louie out now and was trying to alert passersby.
