by John Niven
‘Jesus Christ, Artie, fucking relax, man. What’s the problem?’
‘The problems, plural, Glen, are these.’ Artie ran a hand through his thinning hair, a sure sign he was trying to keep his temper under control. ‘One – conspicuous spending at this stage is bad. Do you understand?’
He looked at Glen and Bridget, this pair of fucking retards, standing there, both of them head to foot in new outfits, looking ridiculous, like they were dressed for the Oscars standing here in this shitbox. He thought of that brand-new black Porsche 911 out front, which had nearly caused him to have a stroke when he pulled up. What? 120,000 dollars? Parked on this street? In front of this place?
‘Look,’ Bridget said, ‘the car’s a lease. We traded that Mustang as the deposit!’
‘Two,’ Artie said, ignoring the dumb bitch, ‘you shouldn’t have taken that million in the first fucking place. And you what – you agreed to twenty million without even consulting me? Are you crazy?’
‘Come on, we knew fifty was high,’ Glen said.
‘We were in a negotiation, Artie,’ Bridget whined. ‘What were we meant to say to him? “Excuse us while we go call our friend”?’
‘Yeah, man. It’s not like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or something.’ Glen laughed at his own witless joke. Not for the first time Art Hinkley found himself wondering what the fuck he was doing in bed with these people. And Art was a man whose legal career had seen him happily defending wife-beaters.
‘And third,’ Artie continued, ‘three hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars belongs to me.’
‘Shit, we know that,’ Glen said.
‘What – you think we’re going to rip you off?’
Bridget stubbed her cigarette out and opened the cupboard next her knees, below the breakfast bar.
Artie watched in utter disbelief as she took out two brown-paper Ralphs bags, both of them stuffed to the brim with tightly banded packs of crisp hundred-dollar bills. She put them on the counter and started taking stacks out. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Art said. ‘You’re keeping a million dollars in cash in FUCKING RALPHS BAGS UNDER THE SINK?’
‘Just for now! We were gonna –’
‘Right, OK. Enough. Glen, go get me a suitcase. Bridget, stop. Stop that. We’re taking this money and putting it in a safety deposit box. And there will be no more spending until –’ He looked in the bag closest to him. It wasn’t quite full to the brim. ‘How much have you spent?’ he asked.
‘Not much,’ Bridget said. ‘Maybe … fifty grand?’
Glen’s hand instinctively went to his wrist. ‘Maybe, like, seventy?’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ Artie asked. Glen sheepishly brought his wrist up to show off his new watch – a chunky Daytona. ‘What the fuck?’ Artie said. ‘You already had a fucking Rolex! The one Du Pre gave you!’
‘Yeah, but I never really liked it. I always wanted the Daytona.’
‘Fuck me.’
Here was a guy without a pot to piss in last week who suddenly had decided what he really needed to do was upgrade his fucking Rolex. Art sat down on one of the stools at the breakfast bar and put his hands together in prayer fashion.
‘Right, guys, please. If you’re at all interested in, I don’t know, actually becoming rich instead of being the best-dressed couple of rubes in jail then, please, listen to me like you’ve never fucking listened to anyone before.’ Glen went to say something, but Bridget shook her head and he shut up. ‘We are engaged in a criminal enterprise. We have this appalling video that we chose not to go to the cops with. That’s withholding of evidence. We also set up how we obtained that video. Entrapment. Exploitation of a minor. Then blackmail. If your fucking neighbours suddenly think, “That’s odd. Glen and Bridget still seem to be unemployed but here they are head to foot in Armani stepping out of their new Porsche. Mmmm …” that could lead to bad things happening. OK? So here’s what we’re going to do. The cash is going to the bank, the Porsche is going back to the dealership, and we are all going to play it very fucking cool for the time being, do we understand each other?’ Silence. God, how Art longed to be out of this dismal fucking house.
Finally, very quietly from Bridget, ‘OK.’
‘Glen?’ Art looked at him. A beat.
‘I can keep the watch?’
Artie sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Yes. You can keep the fucking watch.
‘Yeah. Sure. Fuck it. Whatever you say, Artie.’
‘Now go get the suitcase.’ Glen headed off down the hallway. Artie took a cigarette from Bridget’s pack, lit it, and relaxed slightly, loosening his tie. ‘So, this guy you met with. Stelfox? What’s he like?’
‘He seemed like a nice guy,’ Bridget said. ‘Cooperative. We can handle him. He knows we got them by the fucking balls.’
‘When’s the next meeting?’
‘Monday.’
‘I’m doing it.’
Bridget thought for a moment. ‘Might spook him. Change of players.’
‘Bridget. I’m doing the fucking meeting, OK? Otherwise I’ll take my three hundred grand now and you and the brain trust through there can fly solo from here on in.’
‘OK, Artie. Jesus. You take the meeting. You don’t need to fucking insult us, man.’
Artie stubbed the cigarette out. What was he thinking? He was trying to quit. This thing was going to kill him. What was he going to do about this pair and their goddamned brat kid? Like they say, four can keep a secret.
If three of them are fucking dead.
FOURTEEN
Saturday morning. 8.23 a.m.
Still cold, out here in the desert. Terry Rawlings huddled down into his parka, sat in his rental car, a nondescript Dodge, looking through field glasses across Joshua Tree National Park. He could see the mountain range in the distance, the Pintos, to the north, reaching an elevation of 4,500 feet above sea level. It was low, but he’d made lower. He was doing calculations on the back of his rental agreement, adding weights together, drop speeds. He’d spent the previous evening reviewing the list the boss had given him that lunchtime (boy had the boss looked tired). It was a list of trips the target regularly made, ones that could be undertaken without arousing suspicion. He’d narrowed it down to three, but this looked the most promising. Several times a year he visited a dermatology clinic in Phoenix, which was directly along this flight path. There was a private airstrip at Palm Springs, only a forty-minute drive away from where he’d leave the car. He’d have to hit that mark in the dark, but he’d hit harder marks. And in the days before GPS. With towelheads taking potshots at him. Yeah, this could work just dandy. He’d need something fast-acting on the sedative front. Couldn’t be swinging punches and fighting before he had control.
And there was scale here, he thought, as he looked at the immensity of Joshua Tree, the endless miles of desert. The difficulty of conducting a search in those mountains, in winter. (Well, what passed for winter out here.) The cold. The wolves. Yep, forget those other sites (one north towards Carmel, one south to Mexico), this was it. Now he had to drive up to look at Du Pre’s place, posing as a maintenance guy from Bell. Terry checked his notes – Du Pre had the 407. Terry knew the model. It was good news all round at the moment.
FIFTEEN
I wake up a little after lunchtime on Saturday afternoon, having slept for twelve hours straight. I feel re-energised, almost athletic. Over coffee I check my voicemail and return one call – to Terry. He thinks he can be ready to go middle of next week. There is also a reminder from Trellick about his kid’s birthday party this afternoon. Christ – what do you take to a kid’s party? When I was younger the idea of having children, having a family, made me … physically fucking ill. Now that I am middle-aged. Well, it’s odd. Almost everyone I know has made that jump now. Even the most hardcore bachelors, the Trellicks, the Desotos, they all knuckled down at some point. Got with the programme.
I shower, jump in the Bentley (the GT coupé, black) and run over to Nate ’n Al’s for lunch, g
rabbing the newspapers on the way. But the place is rammed and, unlike almost any other restaurant in LA, trust me, celebrity counts for nothing here. You can’t book. Unless you’re literally a fucking rabbi who was born in the back you’re standing in line. Fuck it. I wander up the road to Le Pain Quotidien, which is quiet. I pick at my omelette and scan the headlines. Theresa May was in Washington, meeting the Donald. There they are – striding across the Whitehouse lawn, her tiny paw in his gigantic wanking paddle. (‘There’s no problem there, believe me.’) Yesterday, Donald signed an executive order that bans people from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia – all the Muzzers basically – from entering the USA for the next ninety days. The US State Department has just told the Wall Street Journal that Britons with dual nationality of one of the seven affected nations would be affected, this includes, say, Mo Farah. This has, pleasingly, caused outrage on the left. I jump on Twitter and spend a couple of minutes firing up the bots with the usual stuff – #gomuslimban #lockherup #draintheswamp #trumptrain. I end up getting into a row with some Jewish feminist. I send her a few Pepe the Frogs and then tell her to get in the oven. She calls me a fucking cunt. I report her. She gets her account suspended. See you later, Sooty.
There are already protests at airports across the country, people going nuts at JFK, where thousands have gathered, waving their placards saying shit like ‘NOT MY PRESIDENT’ and ‘MUSLIMS WELCOME HERE’. (Mate – 1. He fucking is. And 2. You want to go to the town of DogFucker, Indiana, and try your ‘Muslims welcome’ routine in a boozer. Ironically, it’ll likely be a Muslim doctor putting the two hundred fucking stitches in your face.) It looks like what the Donald hoped for – immigration officers basically throwing anyone who looks like a Muslim into the slammer and fisting them for a couple of hours – isn’t quite happening because border control officials are uncertain the order is constitutional. I read editorials in the Washington Post and the NewYork Times saying he’s finally gone too far. He’s signing executive orders like it’s going out of fashion. Something like half a dozen in his first week on the job.
Not for the first time I reflect on what a fantastic A&R guy Trump would have made. Because he truly understands something all the clowns writing these editorials don’t: there is no bottom to where you can go with this stuff. It’s like boy bands or reality shows. Find the stupidest, thickest, most mental bastards out there and go directly for them. Shoot someone on Fifth Avenue? Trump could get up there right now and tell his people that Pakis are the sole cause of AIDS and he’d still be laughing. He truly understands something that is a golden rule in the record business: never destroy your fanbase. Flipping quickly through the rest of the Post I see a small story, buried in the international news section, about a government minister in Bogotá who has been killed in a car crash, bad brakes on a tricky road. I smile.
‘Will there be anything else?’ The waitress’s voice is terse, unfriendly. True, I am not often the dream gig for people in the service industry, but to my knowledge I’ve done nothing to offend this bitch. ‘Thanks …’ I say, not looking up from the paper, just pushing my empty coffee mug towards her. She starts refilling it. I notice bruises in the crook of the arm holding the coffee pot, just visible at the hem of her sleeve – livid yellow and purple. Tiny red pinpricks. Ah ha. Now I look up. Something in her face strikes me. It is like an aged version of a face I used to know. This was undeniably once a good-looking woman, twenty-odd years ago. It dawns on me. I put the paper down and lean back, something very close to joy spreading through me.
‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ she spits.
‘You’re looking … well.’
This is a lie. The face is lined and haggard, the cheeks sunken. The tits are bolstered by some titanium bra but I’d go you dollars to doughnuts they’re smacking around her belly button when untethered. She’d be, what now? Early to mid-forties? Right on the cusp of true boilerdom.
‘Have a good day,’ she hisses as she sticks the check on the table and strides off.
‘Hey!’ I say to her back. ‘Hang on! Let’s catch up!’What’s her fucking name? Mary? Marnie? MARCY! That was it. ‘Marcy?’ But she doesn’t respond, disappears through the employees only door at the back of the restaurant.
A very long time ago, in another lifetime, Marcy was in a band called the Lazies who were signed to our label. They were, very briefly, the hottest band on the planet. I became their A&R guy after I took over the department, after the guy who signed them topped himself. Now, admittedly, and I’ll admit this, mistakes were made. Maybe we didn’t get the right producer. Maybe we did try and chase a polished radio sound a bit too soon after the rough-edged debut album that everyone loved. Maybe it did cost us their original fanbase before we’d done enough to appeal to a more mainstream audience. Whatever – their second album tanked. I mean, talk about shit the bed. I think we went from half a million worldwide on the debut (a good start) to something like 30,000 on album two. Losing about 95 per cent of your customers overnight? That’s not bad, is it? (I wonder what we could have done to lose that last 5 per cent? Made the CD case out of razor blades? Banged a swastika on the cover?) Anyway, after that, rest assured, I signed the papers to drop them faster than Trump signing an executive order. I heard they made the inevitable indie album for One Hunchbacked Man Records of Inverness (or wherever) before disappearing into the vast, dark chasm of Cunts Who Had a Shot. Occasionally, over the years, you do wonder what happens to these people whose lives you’ve destroyed. Whose hopes and dreams you wiped your arse with like so much toilet paper. And now we know – they wind up shooting smack and waiting tables at Le Pain Quotidien on South Santa Monica Boulevard. I finish my coffee as I look at another waitress across the room – older than Marcy, around sixtyish, proper boilerdom – and think about her getting off the bus here, back in the late seventies probably: the attempt at music or acting, followed by the stint as a hooker, or in the porn industry, followed by waitressing. It is hard not to think of it in this town, as some kindly old dear brings your food, or tops up your coffee – the frankly incredible amount of cocks that will have gone off in her fucking face.
The check is a little over eighteen dollars. I lay a twenty down, stiffing Marcy on the tip, and head off to get a present for Trellick’s kid, greatly buoyed by this chance encounter, my faith in the fundamental justice of the universe fully restored.
‘Middle of next week,’ I say to Trellick. We’re standing off to one side, in the huge, lush garden of his house on Coldwater Canyon, up above where Sunset snakes through Beverly Hills. Children run around going crackers, jumping in the pool, playing on the giant inflatable he’s hired in. Waiters move through the adults, offering canapés, cold glasses of Perrier-Jouët. We’re drinking Mexican beers from the bottle.
‘Is there anyone on the staff needs a heads-up on this?’ he asks.
‘Absolutely not,’ I say. ‘Reactions have to be totally natural.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Guess who I saw at breakfast this morning.’
‘Who?’
I tell him.
‘Nasty,’ Trellick says. Then – ‘Still doable?’
‘Barely.’
‘Very fucking nasty.’ We both follow our own trains of thought for a moment, both of us slipping back twenty years. ‘Poor old Parker-Hall,’ Trellick says. We clink beer bottles.
‘And what are you boys plotting and scheming about?’ Trellick’s wife Pandora has appeared. She’s mid-thirties, the standard fifteen years younger than Trellick, and is carrying their two-year-old, Henry. Despite the three kids Pan is (obviously) in very good shape: the LA regime of Pilates, yoga, canyon-hiking and eating only a single leaf of arugula every other day clearly paying dividends.
‘Oh, the usual,’ Trellick says.
‘Let me know when I can grab Steven for a minute,’ she says. ‘There’s a couple of ladies I’d like him to meet …’
�
�Oh, really?’ I say flirtatiously, although most of the women here look to be in their late thirties and forties and are, obviously, undoable.
Suddenly there’s an extra-loud splash from the pool followed by shrieking and crying. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Trellick says.
‘Well, don’t just stand there!’ Pandora says. Trellick puts his beer down and heads over to sort out whatever rumble is brewing. ‘I’d better … hang on …’ she says. ‘Steven, do you mind for a second?’ And with that she hands me the fucking toddler and heads after Trellick.
They do this, don’t they? Mothers. Hand you a fucking kid as casually as handing you a drink or a dildo. I sit down. The kid is chewing on something, a soft toy of some description, and seems relaxed, calm. I bounce him on my knee and try the usual baby-talk stuff you see other people doing. ‘Are you having a good time at the party, Henry? Yes? Is it a good party? What’s Mummy and Daddy up to? What are they up to?’ The problem with baby talk, like talking dirty, is that you soon run out of stuff to say and fall back on variants of the same thing. Changing tack, lowering my voice, I say, ‘Look … there’s that loser from Live Nation. What a loser. Yes he is. Yes he is. Look, see that right old monster over there? In the blue dress? Wouldn’t you like to bend her over that gazebo and pummel her arse? Yes, that’d be fun, wouldn’t it? Yes.’
‘Arsss.’ he says.
Fuck. They can talk at this age? ‘No no, you shouldn’t –’
‘Arsss.’ He’s giggling now.
I look into his eyes as he laughs, his whole face, seemingly in reaction to my horror, suddenly radiant with joy. Something dawns on me, with the force of an epiphany. You can teach them stuff. You tell them things and they retain it and it comes back out. I’ll admit, forty-seven is probably fairly late in the day to be having this count as a revelation, but, hey, gimme a break. I’ve been busy. ‘No. Henry, shhh …’ I say. But this only causes the fucker to piss himself laughing. I try reverse psychology. ‘Yes. Good. Arse. Continue.’
