Dog Beach (2 page)

3

MARINA DEL REY

The sun had been up for twenty minutes, but Louie Mo and Dutch “the Clutch” Dupree were just waking in the front seat. They'd spent most of the night in the dark little bar of the Marina del Rey Hotel, drinking house cabernet and recounting the Palm Springs gag. Both had been out of the stunt business for years, but they still called their jobs “gags.” On her third glass, Dutch had proposed a plan for balancing the books: deliver the signed jersey to the client but keep the collectible football; store it in the trunk, like a treasury bond. At first, Louie had resisted, equating this to spilling hot coffee on your thigh and suing Jack in the Box. But by his last glass of sour cab, he had warmed to the idea of double-dipping. In fact, he told Dutch that she was clever.

Yet, it bothered him now as he lugged the framed Raiders jersey down onto the mooring along a crowded row of aging yachts and sailboats. He could hear Dutch ringing a cell phone somewhere on one of the crafts—the ringtone was some kind of rock guitar riff—and a moment later, the client appeared. He was a hungover hulk of a man, waving Louie on board the small yacht.

Down inside the mahogany galley, Louie got a better look at Jason Banazak. At six foot six and three hundred pounds, the onetime football star was closer in size to a Kodiak bear than a human being. Dutch told him that the guy had earned a half-dozen sports awards and just as many steroid charges, firearm possessions, and date-rape scandals. Louie noted that he also had the pronounced brow ridge of a Neanderthal. Like Louie himself, Banazak's best days were far behind him and he had stopped cutting his graying curls. But it was his eyes—flat and cold—that stopped Louie short.

It wasn't that Louie was intimidated by the guy's size; he loved fighting oversized men, playthings if you've been trained in kung fu. What scared him was that wounded glaze in the ex-jock's eyes that made him feel like he was looking into a mirror.

“Where's the Super Bowl ball?”

“Couldn't find.”

“What do you mean, ‘Couldn't find'?”

“Could not find.”

“I know every single fucking item they had in that room, and the Super Bowl ball was on a stand with a little plaque.”

“Couldn't find Super Ball.”

“Couldn't find Super Ball,” Banazak mocked Louie's broken English, then grunted, sitting on the edge of the unmade cot near a tiny white lapdog. Louie looked around the galley, intrigued. “You live here? On boat?”

Banazak surrendered a tired nod, already counting off a fold of cash. “Did you fuck them up good, Chinaman?”

“Yes. Fuck them up very good.”

Banazak glanced up, grinned with a broken front tooth. He seemed amused by this loan-out enforcer, the little Asian guy with a reputation for clearing a room. When he handed Louie the cash, Louie quickly, almost magician-like, handed back a one-hundred-dollar bill.

“Oxycodone,” Louie said, surrendering a sheepish grin. “I see it. On the desk. Right over there.”

It took Banazak a few foggy seconds to make the connection. Then he reached back and snagged a full vial of prescription painkillers, tossed it hard at Louie. When he caught it, Louie went dark.
Crude American asshole.
A man bluffs his way into a hotel room and beats the living crap out of four scumbags for the price of three, retrieves stolen property and delivers it to your Marina del Rey houseboat and you toss a vial of painkillers at him like he's a beggar.

Fuck you.

That's what Louie wanted to say.
You give to me, you give to me with two hands and with respect. A little humility.
But then the lapdog lifted its pink nose and began to yap. Louie drew back a step, but the apso kept barking sharply at him. Funny, Louie thought, how dogs can sense what a person's thinking. That observation cooled him down. Temper was a weakness anyway, a sign of a lesser man. He remembered the old Sifu at the Peking Opera School telling him such things when he was a child, hanging upside down from his ankles while the Sifu beat him with a rattan cane. Westerners never understood Louie when he talked about Peking Opera School; they thought he'd been trained to sing and dance. The school, however, was really a boarding facility where young students—so many of them orphans or runaways—trained rigorously in acrobatics, martial arts, and tumbling skills. Louie was disciplined if nothing else. But more than anything, right now, he was just happy to have his hands on a fully loaded cylinder of relief. He also felt bad for the big, broken shell of a giant who used to wear number 99. When Louie climbed back to the sunny deck and the smell of hash browns and starter fluid, Banazak remained down in the galley, still staring at the floor.

“So sad,” Louie said back in the car, going on and on about it. “So sad, this man.”

“He's a rapist,” Dutch said, popping an oxy. “Served time for beating up a sixteen-year-old black chick. He's forfeited any right to fair play. Fuck him.”

Onward they went, like Bonnie and Clyde.

4

THE IVY

“The economics of the industry have changed,” Avi Ghazaryan said in that silky, Armenian timbre. “The town used to be paved with dumb money. You have a good idea, you get a deal. Now? They will only make movies that come with an underlying brand.” He was sitting at a lunch table with three Latino men and a private detective named Papagallo, onetime “private eye to the stars.”

“My daughter used to play that game Scrabble. Go to Paramount and pitch Scrabble as a movie and you'll get a deal. Or fucking Slinky. Go to Warners with Slinky and a writer and you've got one on the books. One problem: You have to pay the rights holder. So, I ask myself: How do you pitch a brand without having to pay the rights? You ready? Look outside the window. Do you see the little man on the crosswalk light? Yes, you see him. The little stick-figure man. He's also on all the pedestrian crossing signs, from here to New York. So imagine this: An old woman is out walking her dog in the rain. Lightning strikes the caution sign as she passes. The dog barks, they run inside. Next morning, the old woman—Kathy Bates, say—walks by the caution sign. But something's strange. The little man is gone from the sign. He's out there somewhere. And he kills. Serial killer. These guys, the town—I don't know what town, some fucking town—they bring in a bounty hunter. I can get Randy Couture. He has to hunt down the little crosswalk man, the caution sign man. It's a brand that everyone knows, but no one owns the rights to.”

Avi drew a soft breath, ate a little salmon and balsamic greens, genuinely inspired. “I call this idea
Caution
. That's it. Just
Caution
. It's a pre-branded fucking hit with a nice one-word title.”

“What's going on with the zombie movie?” said one of the Latinos, a handsome guy in a blazer named Hektor. Papagallo was busy with his iPhone, and this frustrated Avi; he'd expected a bigger reaction to his crosswalk-man idea, but he knew he was dealing with idiots.

“This little fuck, Troy,” Avi said. “He's having an artistic tantrum. Needs more time.”

“Needs more time?” said Hektor, looking at his partners. “We put in real coin, Avi. You guaranteed a return.”

“One thousand percent,” said an older Latino, staring warily at the talapia lunch special.

“That's right,” Avi said. “As soon as this little fucker finishes the movie.”

“Well,
make
him finish the movie.”

“Why are we babying this guy?” the older one said. “Have Hektor go over there and show him his tattoos.”

Hektor smiled at the thought. Indeed, the side of his neck facing the wall was scrimmed with elaborate ink swirls and symbols; there was little doubt that those tattoos must have covered his torso and back.

“He's just a kid,” Avi said, a little embarrassed by how protective he sounded. “These kids are geniuses, but they're babies. Immature.”

“Well, put him in fucking time-out,” Papagallo said, looking up from his iPhone for the first time. “I know a fixer who sends out a guy. Foreign guy. Knee-breaker. Puts the fear of God in guys who don't want to write a check.”

“How much?”

“Let me call my guy, but I think it's under two grand for him to put the first elbow on. Usually don't need a second.”

Avi was gazing out at the little blinking crosswalk man, thinking about how he'd look in motion-capture. And then he had one of those brainstorms like the one that engendered the idea for
Slash
. In the final scene, Randy Couture should trap the Caution Man at the curb, pull his gun, and speak a line that audiences would be recalling for years:
Don't walk, motherfucker.

“It's time,” said the older Latino, still not touching the talapia. “Get a fire under this guy's ass or give us back our money. My boss wanted to invest in some Internet stuff, but Hektor loves your movies.”

“The action ones, I like,” Hektor said. “
Low Tide
, I like. I don't like the ones when the people talk.”

“Let me tell you a little story,” Avi said. “By the time Johnny Depp's next movie comes out, he's five years older but everyone wants to cast him at the same age as the last movie. That's the one thing people never understand. Making a movie is like planting an apple tree. Time and patience.”

“I'd rather just buy the fucking apples at Farmer's Market,” the older guy said, and Papagallo laughed.

Avi looked away from the crosswalk man, stared at Papagallo and his itchy iPhone thumb. “Okay. Call your guy. Put a little pressure on my director. But don't hurt him. Just scare him and let him know he's not in film school anymore.”

Avi was up, saying good-bye, but not shaking hands. He had his Beamer's keys out, eager to call the boys at WME and get on the Paramount lot, ambush Tyler at the commissary. “Tell Tyler I want to hand him a fucking pot of gold” is what he always instructed his agents when he knew he had a eureka idea.
Caution
. It had the ring of
Taken
,
and
Taken
had made two hundred million on a twenty-mill budget.

Don't walk, motherfucker.
It could be the new
Go ahead, make my day.

5

THROUGH THE OVERPASS

Driving Highway 10, Dutch had a headache, a dry mouth, and a strange yearning for pork carnitas, slow cooked like they used to do in Santa Fe. A heavy mantle of smog and haze left a residue on her windshield and that's what she blamed her headache on: L.A. Not the wine; the wine was her friend and ally. Los Angeles was the disease and this ugly stretch of freeway was the darkest part of it. No matter how many times she drove this route, she always forgot that it would soon duck beneath an overpass just north of Santa Monica and mercifully spit her out into a cleansing wash of blue sky and surfers. She always felt a false jolt of freedom, like the drab underpass was the wardrobe and Malibu was the Narnian multiverse waiting on the other side. When she glanced at Louie to see if he was feeling it too, she found him sleeping, mouth agape.

They were almost at their destination, but she let Louie sleep through a U-turn at Moonshadows Restaurant. She parked where she could find a crack between cars a few houses down from the Las Flores Beach address.

Feeling the stop, Louie came awake, said the same thing he always did: “I snore?”

“The brown house up there.”

She spilled a key from an envelope, handed it over. “They said let yourself in through the gate, follow the path down to the beach, and go in through the back porch.”

Louie turned the key over in his hands, assessed the duplex. It was one of the more ramshackle beach places wedged between the nicer homes, but Malibu was Malibu and ramshackle was still ten million in real estate; who knew who might live there?

“I scare this guy, right?”

“Yeah, scare his ass. Don't break it.”

She looked at the address on the Jack in the Box napkin. “His name's Troy.”

Louie committed the name to cloudy memory, opened his door. Dutch watched him shuffle along the side of the roaring highway. He often walked with what stunt guys called a “lifetime achievement limp,” but he looked particularly sore and tired today. Still, he had that incongruous youthful stride, buoyed by white sneakers. From behind he could appear almost young, his glutes permanently hardened from five decades of martial arts. Reclining her seat back a notch, she tapped a smoke. Beautiful day. Not a bad place to sit. Maybe she'd see Tom Petty.

•    •    •

“Spank my ass like you're mad at it,” Alexis Cain breathed, in between shrill, rhythmic calls like dolphin song.

The redhead who played a zombie in Troy's movie was sitting on him in reverse cowgirl, wearing nothing but pink Uggs because her feet were always cold. She rode him hard, slapping his leg and digging in her nails. “Spike it like a volleyball,” she wailed.

From his bedroom window, Troy could see the morning haze burning off Dog Beach. Malone was out surfing, and T-Rich and Durbin wouldn't be back from Ralph's with groceries for a good hour. Dog House was all his this morning, his and the ginger's, cat-backing now like a Montana bull rider. He felt himself lurch, close to eruption. Alexis Cain knew sex like Troy knew the collected works of Abel Ferrara; the girl lived up at the Point in a large glass-and-adobe triplex owned by Charlie Sheen. She was, if the rumors at Googie's were correct, one of Charlie's girls. Not one of his porn star goddesses, but part of the farm team. She wanted to go legit, she said, but Charlie wouldn't take her seriously. This kid Troy seemed to be her best chance. If
Slash
got distribution, she could be on her way; she was young enough to start over. Young enough to play high school girls if she had to.

Troy grimaced and did the thing he'd been doing lately for staying power: He thought about scenes from his doomed movie. Almost instantly, it triggered reverse ejaculation. Sometimes even shrinkage. Thinking of profoundly vile things like the compost bucket or Zoe Ghazaryan's dialogue always helped him prolong in such moments. So he was baffled that the image of Zoe, the bane of his grueling imprisonment in the Dog House, had the opposite effect.

He spasmed.

Alexis cheered him on, her voice like helium. She must've had a volleyball fetish because she kept using terms like “spike it” and “jungle ball.” Troy begged her to dismount. She was bruising his pelvis now, riding him into the springs. Finally, she pitched forward and rolled, looked up at him crazy-eyed.

“Did you film us?” she said. “Don't lie to me, Troy.”

“Film us? Just now? God, no.”

Troy caught a mope of disappointment on her face, but before he could analyze it, he heard the sound; they both did. Someone was in the house, moving around. Sounded like a cat getting into the cereal boxes. But there were no cats at Dog House.

“Shit, it's her,” he whispered.

“Who?”

“Avi's daughter. She lets herself in from the beach. Probably using the shower.”

“The bitch?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you fucking her?”

“Of course not, but if she catches you in here, I'll be out on the street. She thinks I'm trading close-ups for blow jobs.”

“Well,
duh
.”

He got up, slipped into his Jams, gave her the shush signal. Giggling, she burrowed under the covers, popped back up, stuck her pierced tongue out at him. Like a magician, she was now holding and filling a tiny pipe with weed.

“Let me just get rid of her,” Troy said.

He shuffled out barefooted, fixed his tousle of hair. “Zee? That you?”

He heard nothing, turned the corner and yelled. So did the aging Chinese guy in tinted glasses standing in the hall.

“Can I help you?” Troy said.

“You are Troy?”

“Who are you?”

“Your name is Troy?”

“Yes.”

The Chinese guy shrugged innocently, then moved with deceptive quickness, laying a palm at Troy's chest and driving him across the room, against the wall. He felt like he'd been hit by a heavy, breaking wave. “What the
fuck
, man?”

“Pay boss.”

“What?”

“Pay boss or I come back and break your legs.”

In the bedroom, Alexis heard the confrontation, hid under the covers for a moment, then sat bolt upright. Hearing the scuffle, she dropped her tiny pipe and grabbed for her cell, quickly dialed 911, and whispered, “Somebody's fucking attacking my boyfriend. In his house. I don't know the address. Las Flores Beach in Malibu, east of Duke's. It's the brown house next door to Gary Busey's.”

Out in the living room, Louie kept an iron-like finger high on Troy's chest.

“You understand me?”

“Who are you?”

“Never mind,” Louie said, spittle flying. “Big trouble, you don't pay boss.”

Louie turned on his heel, hurried toward the door. It was done. Over.

“Wait,” Troy said, and Louie stopped. For a moment, panic danced across his eyes, swollen behind the amber tint of his glasses.

“Do I know you?” the kid said.

“What?”

Troy studied the face, knew he'd seen it somewhere. The loose jowls, thick head of black hair going gray, outsized sunglasses almost hiding a scar near the temple.

“No, you don't know me,” the guy said.

“No, I think I do.”

Louie went a shade of alabaster. Troy erupted into a sound that made Louie flinch. “Holy
shit
. I
know
you.”

Louie fumbled for the door handle.

“
No Wires, No Nets
,” Troy blurted. “Am I right? The documentary. I watch it, like, once a month. You're Mo Chen Liu, the stunt guy. Am I right?”

Louie threw a befuddled look Troy's way. The damn antique brass door handle didn't work, neither up nor down.

“Louie Mo, the stunt man. Shaw Brothers Studios.”

“You are crazy.”

“
Shaolin Executioner
.
Five Deadly Venoms.
You did the full-burn scene on the boat in
City on Flame
.”

Louie turned again. From this well-lit angle, Troy was almost positive now.

“Louie Mo, right?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“What are you doing here? Are you working with Avi or something? Are you on a movie with Avi?”

“How do you know all this Hong Kong movie?”

“Victor Lo tried to say he did his own stunts in
Two Tigers of WuDang,
but you did them all. Except for that big roll down the temple steps, I think that was Victor.”

“Bullshit,” Louie spat, then caught himself. Maybe, he reasoned, he was still napping in the passenger seat and this was some crazy wine-and-oxy dream.

“Wait a minute,” Troy said. “Did you say . . . did you say you were going to
break my legs
?” He laughed, incredulous.

“I'm not here.”

“You're not here?”

“No, I'm here, but I'm not Louie Mo.”

“You're not?”

Louie searched for an alternate escape, breezed quickly toward the French doors. “Wait,” Troy interjected. “Can I just give you something?”

“No. What you give to me? You don't even know me. Just pay boss and let me go.”

•    •    •

Out in the car, Dutch woke from a hazy nap. Sirens were whining closer. Two LAPD cruisers passed her, heading north then “flipping a bitch” as they say in the stunt world, swinging a wide U-turn and pulling in, one behind her, one forced to park on the highway. Lights were turning and it made her cortisol spike. When she saw two cops walking toward the same brown house that Louie had entered, she did the thing that meant she was ready for lockup. She slipped off her right shoe, freeing her bare foot and her ankle bracelet, the one with a tiny St. Christopher medal on it. Monkey foot was what she called her driving style, a closer connection between driver and pedal. Her hand edged deliberately to the ignition. “Fuck a duck,” she whispered.

•    •    •

“Would you read it?” Troy said.

Louie looked at the slim script in the kid's hands then glanced over his shoulder at the sound of sirens outside.

“It's called
The Cage
,” Troy said. “A onetime famous cage fighter who killed a guy in an illegal match down in Mexico. He gets out of jail after twenty years. Tries to find his family and live a normal life, but the brothers of the guy he killed hear that he's out. They come after him.”

“You make movie?”

“Everyone is after him. All the young guys in MMA, all different styles of fighting. It's like John Woo meets fifties Western noir meets
Run, Lola, Run
. It's kick-ass, Louie, almost like one big shot that doesn't let up. How cool would it be, Louie Mo in his first leading role? All his own stunts, not for someone else.”

“You're crazy.”

“I can pay you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've got some cash from the production I'm on now. I can get you ten grand up front. Maybe another ten to finish and then some back end. Same as we just did for Eddie Morales on
Slash
.”

Louie stared, incredulous. Twenty grand to star in an action movie, not just doing stunts? He looked around the big living room, did a quick inventory of shabby-chic furniture and framed art. This was Malibu, maybe this kid was for real. Louie was taking in the seven-million-dollar ocean view when he saw the cop at the open porch door, hand on his leather holster. A second cop sidled calmly alongside the house, same position.

“Shit,” Troy said, “chick must've called the police.”

When Troy started toward the cops, they calmly ordered him to stay where he was.

“Is there a problem here, bud?” the first cop said.

“No, Officer. My girlfriend must've called.”

The cops were looking at the Asian man now.

“This is Louie Mo,” Troy said, almost bragging. “Hong Kong stuntman. Legend.”

When the cops angled unimpressed looks, Louie gave a slight nod.

“We got excited, about a script,” Troy said. “That's all. There's no problem, Officer.”

“Must be one hell of a script, bud,” the first cop said, “if your girlfriend calls nine-one-one.”

When the second cop saw Alexis peering out, he stared, expressionless. “Did you report an incident, Miss?”

“I thought,” Alexis said, “this guy was assaulting my boyfriend.”

The second cop scanned her through his Ray-Bans. “You from Charlie's house?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought so.”

“You the home owner?” the first cop asked Troy.

“No. Avi Ghazaryan the film producer owns the house. I'm the tenant.”

The cops stayed on the porch for a moment, instructing Troy and Louie to stick around. Troy could tell that they were bored by the affair but were seizing the opportunity to loiter on a sunny Malibu balcony and catch a break from the freeway. After a few radio calls, they asked Troy again if there was a problem. Finally assured, they left.

Alexis, wearing nothing but Troy's violet NYU tee and her Uggs, eased out into the room a wary step. “Troy, what's going on?”

Troy ignored her, fixated again on Louie Mo. “Would you just think about it? We'd shoot the whole thing right here in L.A. in four weeks. I'll cut my fee if you need more money.”

“Your name is Troy?”

“Troy Raskin. I had a film at Austin last year.”

“You make a very big mistake, Troy. I work for a man who collects money for people. I came here to tell you only to pay your bills.”

Louie left Troy in the hall, confused. Alexis hadn't moved either. “Troy, what the fuck is going on?”

•    •    •

Out in the Chevy, Dutch felt a kind of vertigo as she drove. “He
knew
you?”

“I don't know how; nobody knows me. Always I'm behind the action.”

“Is this a joke?”