Finnegan's Week (2 page)

“I hate my job.”

“I know, you wanna be a
movie
star. You're ready to quit the police force, move to Hollywood, right?”

“I'm not asking you to get me in something so hot you can only see it on cable, am I? This is just a crappy late night network melodrama!”

“What melodrama?”

“Don't you ever read the trades?
Harbor Nights
!”

“Oh,
that
melodrama.”

“I'll bet even your new secretary knows about it and she doesn't have enough brains to churn butter. Do you hire them
with
an attitude or do you help them cultivate it, like slime mold?”

“But those tits'd raise Dracula outta his coffin at high noon, right?”

“Sure. And she's lugging enough silicone to raise the
Kitty Hawk
clear outta the water. You could lose your wristwatch in her cellulite and either she's doing a feminist armpit thing or that's a swarm of caterpillars under her arms.”

“She's hot, Fin.”

“You could find hotter ham in a meat locker.”

“Bitter and cynical,” the agent said sadly, “is what you are. Just because you got a chin dimple and a Cary Grant haircut
that I told you to get
, you ain't got what's in between. You got a pleasant Irish mug, but that's about it.”

“Then get me a role playing Father O'Malley where I get to yell faith 'n begorrah and rescue street people.”

“The camera looks for hope, not bitterness, Fin. Vulnerability, not cynicism. Haircuts don't matter.”

“I shoulda kept my old hairdo
and
my Nehru coat. Everything comes around. Just ask your secretary.”

“There was only one Elvis, Fin,” the fat man informed him. “It wouldn'ta worked for you.”

“I been thinking, maybe I should change my name. Fin Finnegan might not work for me. My old man's name was Timothy but everybody called him ‘Fin,' so my mother decided that if they were gonna call me ‘Fin' no matter what, it'd be because it was my Christian name, not my surname. But I been thinking, maybe it's too much like John Johnson or Ed Edwards?”

“Your name's not the problem, but I
have
noticed that your hair's receding. These days, your haircut looks more Clint Eastwood than Cary Grant. Have you considered a weave?”

“I don't need sensitivity or a haircut to play a contract killer. To get homicidal I only gotta think of shoulder pads Hillary picking out bad scarves and federal judges. You gonna help me or not?”

“What's an agent for? I'll make a call today. Is that acceptable?”

“As acceptable as a drive-by shooting. Get me the job.”

“You think it's easy to book local actors in anything decent? This town's as avant-garde as your average Thursday night bowling league. I mean, around here a cultured person is one that don't drink dago red from a jar. Why do you think the San Diego Symphony's got more debt than Lithuania? You think I don't try? I can't even find anything to
eat
around here that don't look like a coroner's exhibit. A maggot in Musso and Frank's Hollywood garbage can eats better than the mayor of
this
burg. I'm malnourished, even!”

“Malnourished? Orson, Dennis Connor and his entire crew could sail you in the next America's Cup. Now listen,
Variety
said they're gonna use this contract killer in the episode they're prepping right
now
. Surely you can get me in to read this week.”

“What age they looking for?”

“Thirties.”

“Kee-rist, Fin!”

“I'm barely forty.”

“You look suspiciously older.”

“So do Filipino Little Leaguers but they get to play, god-damnit!”

“Okay, okay, I'll do what I can. Now go crush crime, for chrissake. Catch some crooks. Do what you do best.”

“I act.
That's
what I do best. I'm only a cop by training. I was …”

“Born to act.”

“No, I was born to sell my organs and live under bridges like a bum or wino—pardon me, now they're called
the homeless
—but I happened to take a police exam twenty-three years ago and here I am and now I hate police work and I hate cops above the rank of me which is just about everybody and I hate three ex-police wives, mine. And I got to do the fucking job five more years till I'm fifty years old or I won't get my pension and …”

“You're forty-five then,” the agent said ruefully. “I
thought
so.”

“… and I wish I could be immature irresponsible rich pampered spoiled and stupid with no hope of growing up or having a single sensible opinion. In short, I'd
love
to be a movie star. I'd even register Democrat and stop puking in my popcorn during Oliver Stone movies if I thought you could get me in the cultural elite. But I'll settle for a one-day bit as a contract killer in that chickenshit TV show before it gets canceled! Okay?”

“Okay okay, kid. Calm down,” Orson said. “I'll get to work on it right away. I know who's casting that show. They'll like the idea, a real live San Diego cop playing a contract killer. Now I want you to do something for
me
, okay?”

“What?”

“I got a lawyer-pal. He's got a client. He wants to know what the DEA has on his client and …”

“Forget it. I still have five years to do. I'm not risking my pension.”

“He's a respectable lawyer for God's sake.”

“Sure.
Respectable
lawyer means he was never caught taking meetings with the Medellín Cartel, or doing lunch with BCCI bankers, and he hasn't been indicted by a federal grand jury. That's a
respectable
lawyer. Forget it.”

“Okay okay. Let's you and me do lunch …”

“If you say
someday
, I'll kill you.”

“I was gonna say
tomorrow
. Let's do lunch tomorrow.”

“I'm too busy. Tomorrow's the day I fill my ice-cube trays. Look, Orson, I'm not asking for a movie with a Swedish director and subtitles, but I'm as serious as a tumor on your willy.”

The agent studied his client thoughtfully for a moment and said, “I've seen this before, Fin. It's real tough for an actor to hit the benchmarks: forty, forty-five, fifty. You take it harder than normal sane people. Acting's an addiction, an obsession. Most of my clients, they need Prozac more than they need an agent.”

“Well maybe I should just chuck it all and go sell derby hats to women in Bolivia.”

“Just remember, no matter how down and depressed you get …”

“Yeah? What?”

“Tomorrow is another day.”

“That one'll have me slapping my forehead for hours,” the detective said, standing up to leave. “Why didn't I think of that? Now let's see if I can accomplish something
real
hard, like getting past your secretary without getting spit at.”

Orson said, “If I can get them to let you read, please wear a decent outfit. That sport coat's older than Hugh Hefner and even more tacky. Don't pick your teeth with a matchbook, and try to remember, Fin, tomorrow's another day.”

Before the detective exited, he said: “Fuck you, Orson, and fuck Scarlett O'Hara.”

C
HAPTER
2

T
he father of Jules Temple had always worried a great deal about Jules's emotional development, especially as his son neared adulthood. Jules's father had become conversant with certain clinical designations after Jules had been expelled from two private schools, and later when, as a college sophomore, Jules had been accused of what came to be called “date rape.”

Jules's father, Harold Temple, was a corporate lawyer whose own father had been a San Diego superior court judge, so Jules's disgrace had been particularly hard to bear, but Jules's mother had been able to compartmentalize her feelings when it came to their only child. Harold Temple had been told by more than one of his son's therapists that Jules's mother lived in a world of denial, and it continued until her death in 1977.

Still, Jules Temple had managed to reach his twenty-fifth birthday in 1978 without having been convicted of a crime, thus satisfying the terms of his grandfather's trust. Jules then inherited $350,000 and had invested it and lived well as a real estate developer until after the Reagan years when the bottom dropped out of California's real estate—driven economy. Jules Temple then found himself broke, divorced, and back home living with his father in the Point Loma hilltop home overlooking the bay of San Diego.

Upon the approach of his thirty-fifth birthday, Jules had had a very significant conversation with his father. It took place in the study where Harold Temple spent most of his days. The floral chintz sofa in the study had been selected by his late wife, along with a nineteenth-century walnut bench decorated with elaborate needlepoint. Harold Temple hated all of his furniture except for the ugly old mahogany desk he'd inherited from his father, the judge.

Jules poured himself a double Scotch that evening, sensing he'd need it, and he sat down across the desk in a client chair. Jules thought it highly appropriate and very lawyerlike of the old boy to separate them with a desk. Jules couldn't remember ever having sat on his father's lap, even as a tot.

His father was dressed in pajamas, slippers and a silk robe. The old man's hair was wispy by then, and his back was bent from arthritis. His skin had thinned and grown transparent, and in the semi-darkness Harold Temple was as vivid as a Rembrandt. The older man had suffered a stroke that left him with paralyzed facial muscles and made his speech hard to understand.

“Son,” his father had said to him on that fateful evening, “I'm extremely worried about you.”

“Really?” Jules said with his trademark wry smile. “I wonder why.”

For a moment, the father silently studied the son. Jules was blond like the Temples, tall and good-looking. Harold Temple was certain that his son was quite intelligent though he hadn't had decent grades since he'd been a seventh grader. Jules was a good golfer and sometimes played in tournaments at the La Jolla Country Club where Harold Temple had been a longtime member, and Jules frequently sailed at the San Diego Yacht Club. In short, Harold Temple believed that Jules had everything needed for success, but his son was a failure by any measure whatsoever.

“I've been reading a lot,” Harold Temple began awkwardly.

“Hot novels, Dad?” Jules took a large swallow of Scotch and grinned wryly.

“This thing … this stroke that I've suffered, it's made me think a lot about you, about your … personality. In case … if something should
happen
to me I'd like to know that you'll be all right.”

Then Harold Temple stared into his son's eyes, dreading that he'd see a flicker of
anticipation
. Fearing that Jules would say, “Is there any danger, Dad?” with mock concern.

But Jules said nothing. Jules was, as usual, noncommittal, uninvolved.

His father continued: “I've had a certain worry for a long time, long before your marriage. Before your business went sour. About your personality and character.”

“What about it?”

“You're clever and charming, but manipulative, Jules. You've always been like that. You were always the coolest one in the house every time you got into trouble, when your mother and I were yelling our heads off.”

“A young man sowing wild oats,” Jules said, finishing the Scotch and standing to refill his glass.

“Not always,” his father said, thinking of the coed upon whom Jules had forced himself. That one had cost Harold Temple $50,000 through an intermediary, until the girl and her family agreed not to prosecute. “I think you've never had enough self-doubt to yell or get emotional about anything.”

“What
are
you getting at?” Jules asked.

“It's that I've never sensed a feeling of … shame in you.”

“Shame?”

“Or guilt or remorse. I must say, not ever.”

“Shame about what? Guilt about what? About the fact that my development company went broke? Should I feel shame about hard economic times? I tried, didn't I? I risked my capital. What do you want from me?”

“I wasn't talking about that, son,” Harold Temple said, and then his left leg started to shake. This had been happening a lot, a trembling of his limbs that he couldn't control.

“What then?”

“There are … terms for people who don't have empathy, who don't understand how their actions can hurt other people.”

“Other people? What other people?”

“Your wife. Your child.”

With a trace of a sneer: “
Ex
-wife, the bitch.”

“She's the mother of your child.”

“I see my child. I see Sally every chance I get,” Jules said. “I'd send checks if I had any money!”

Harold Temple knew it was a lie, but he continued: “I worry that there's not a
complete
person inside you. You haven't outgrown a certain … incompleteness.”

“I see,” Jules said, looking past his father at the portrait of his grandfather on the wall. “What crimes am I guilty of? What have I done that's so terrible?”

“Call it a certain … moral insensitivity,” the older man said, in great distress. “You haven't been involved in criminal activity, thank god, but …”

“You think I'm capable of it. That I'll disgrace
you
.”

“Jules, I've heard stories about the investors in your development company. Your actions bordered on criminal fraud.”

“They lost, I lost, we all lost. Sour grapes, hard times. What else, Dad? Let's get all my faults out
on your desk
so we don't miss anything.”

“This isn't easy for me, son.”

“For me this is a picnic, right? All this psychobabble.”