Fridays at Enrico's (31 page)

“I've been in jail for a while,” Stan admitted. Bud Fishkin dabbed at his mouth with his white napkin, clearly surprised.

“Jail?”

“Well, prison. San Quentin.” He explained that he'd written
Night Cop
in the joint. Fishkin sat back with a look of theatrical amazement on his face.

“Andrei is going to love this.” He immediately put a hand on Stan's. “Don't get me wrong. Listen, Andrei read your book flying to London, he's nuts about it. He wants to make it in black and white, fast, snap snap snap, no stars, almost a documentary. But he's gonna love it that you're an
ex-con, please, don't get me wrong, but in this particular circumstance it's a positive.”

Stan grinned at Fishkin. He liked this guy. “For me,” he said with a little smile, “being out is the positive.” They both laughed so loud people at other tables looked at them. Bud put a finger to his lips.

“People are taping us at this very moment,” he said. “I'm joking, but you never know. Anyway, tell me about prison. No, I mean, if you want to talk about it.”

“I don't.” Stan didn't really mind, but he didn't want to seem boastful or arrogant. Better to pose as the strong silent type.

“Anyway, Andrei's going to love you.” Fishkin waved for the waitress. “Would you like to come to the lot? We could talk in my office, between phone calls. I have a great idea. Who's your agent?”

“I don't have one yet.”

“We'll get you one. Then we'll see if we can't get the studio to buy you as screenwriter.” He smiled obscenely. “We'll tell 'em you're an ex-con.”

“Is that a good idea?”

Fishkin patted his arm. “In this town? You bet!”

Out in the parking lot under the hot sun, Fishkin was giving Stan directions to follow him to Universal, when Stan belched. “It wasn't the smoothie,” he apologized. “I couldn't get my eggs to cook right this morning.”

“Eggs? What kind of stove do you have?”

Stan told him electric, and Fishkin held up a finger. “That explains it. What you need, my friend, is a gas stove.” So instead of going over to Universal, Stan left his car baking in the sun outside the health food restaurant while he and Bud Fishkin drove through a maze of freeways to a place in Glendale, a storefront with brown paper on the windows and an old sign saying “Reopening Soon.” All the way over Fishkin had talked about the Los Angeles Dodgers while Stan pretended he understood or cared. When they got to the storefront Fishkin said, “Let me do the talking, okay?” and took him into what Stan recognized as a hot merchandise drop. His first Hollywood contact had brought him directly to a fence. For the purpose of
buying him a gas stove. Stan leaned against an old desk with his hands in his pockets as Fishkin talked to the two guys working the place. Both guys Stan recognized as a thief. They didn't give each other the office or anything, but the recognition was there. Maybe Hollywood wasn't going to be so hard to deal with after all.

Stan and Fishkin carried the stove out to Fishkin's Mercedes and got it into the trunk with the door open but tied down with some manila twine. Stan reached into his pocket to pay, but Fishkin just waved, his suit mussed, sweat on his face. “It's on me,” he said. “Somehow, some day, I'll get the studio to pick it up.”

And so off they went, back to the health food restaurant to get Stan's car, and then to Stan's house, to take out the old stove, put it in the garage, and hook up the new one. They had to call PG&E and by four in the afternoon the new stove was in. Fishkin looked happy in his shirtsleeves, dirty on his face and hands. “That was fun!”

He left Stan alone, but with an appointment to come in the next day and talk about the script. Stan gratefully stripped, showered, then walked naked through his house to the pool and fell in the water.

The next morning, just as he finished his breakfast of beautifully-fried eggs and properly-buttered toast, orange juice and coffee, the phone rang.

“My name is Evarts Ziegler,” the voice said. “But people call me Ziggie.” Ziggie was an agent, and perfectly willing to be present that morning at his meeting with Bud Fishkin. This wouldn't commit Stan to anything. Only serve to protect him. “They take no prisoners in this town,” Ziggie said. After he hung up Stan wondered if Bud had told Ziggie he was an ex-convict. Of course he had. That was the selling point, wasn't it? Stan had to laugh. Anywhere but Hollywood, a black mark against his name. He'd certainly come to the right place.

57.

Stan saw his novel for the first time in Bud Fishkin's office, on his first visit to Universal, which turned out to be only a few blocks from where he lived. The guard who filled out his temporary pass and stuck it under his windshield was about his age, with red hair and freckles, his hair too long to look right with the police-style hat. Rather than saying “Get a haircut, man,” Stan asked directions to Bud's bungalow. The guy wasn't a cop, he wouldn't know a thief if one came up and put his hand in his pocket. Stan followed the guard's directions to the bungalows, and parked in a space marked andrei kelos, as Bud had suggested. Kelos was still in London.

The bungalow was white with green shutters and dark shingles, surrounded by trees, shrubbery, and singing birds. Inside was a nice light airy waiting room with a secretary at her desk. She was a stocky woman of about fifty in a white satin blouse and red slacks.

“Stan Winger?” she asked with a smile. “Bud's on the phone. Can I get you a cup of coffee? The trades? He'll only be a minute.”

Stan waited. The secretary answered the phone, which buzzed every few minutes. There was a shelf of books, and from where he sat Stan read the titles. Mostly books he'd never heard of, new-looking in their dust wrappers. Some were paperbacks, and among these he saw his own book. He got up and pulled it from the shelf. The cover was garish, but he liked it. A guy looking straight out at the reader, wearing a brown suit with his badge pinned on the lapel, a gun sticking out of one coat pocket and some money sticking out of the other. Instead of a face, just a blank, a white blank.
Night Cop
, by Stan Winger. A Gold Medal Original.

Stan sat down, feeling very strange, and started reading his own book.

“We just got those,” the secretary said, her hand over the telephone mouthpiece.

“I've never seen it before,” Stan said, reading on. He was finding a lot of stuff right on the first page that he hadn't written. His face got hot and his ears started ringing. Not important changes, just different word or phrase choices, more and more of them. He told himself furiously that he wouldn't have minded so much if the changes had improved the flow of the book or something, but they were just changes, for the sake of change, as far as he could tell, and ultimately
goddamn fucking ridiculous!

“What's the matter?” the secretary asked.

“Nothing.” Stan had to calm down. Of course it had been rewritten, and of course Knox Burger hadn't told him. They owned the book, they bought it outright, they could change it all they wanted. Still he felt angry, and a little betrayed.

At this moment a man came in. He smiled tired at the secretary and held out his hand to Stan. “I'm Ziggie.” He was dressed in an immaculate blue suit with chalk stripes. He had thin blond-gray hair, pale blue bloodshot eyes, and a red face. His hand was warm and firm. Stan stood, and Bud came out of his offices in shirtsleeves, smiling.

“So you've met,” he said. “Come into my domain.”

The office seemed large, but Stan had nothing to compare it to. Movie posters on the walls, a lot of comfortable leather furniture and shelves of books. It could have been the office of a college professor, except for the movie posters. Stan hadn't seen any of the movies, but then he'd been away.

Instead of sitting behind his desk, Bud joined Stan and Ziggie around a little coffee table, over by double windows looking out at shrubbery and blue sky. “I see you have your book in hand,” Bud said. To Ziggie he said, “Have you read it yet?”

Ziggie shook his head. Stan handed him the book. Ziggie frowned at it and put it on the coffee table. “I'm just here as a referee,” he said.

“You're probably wondering why I'd have an agent present when I could have just run you over the bumps,” said Bud. “The answer is, I want to work with you on a legitimate basis, no later recriminations, and you really need an agent on your side. Anyway, the studio's paying, so I'm not cutting
off my own nose, just theirs.” Bud smiled. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Sure,” Stan said. He grinned to indicate that he was completely in the dark.

“If I end up representing you,” Ziggie said in his tired voice, “I negotiate with the studio, not with Andrei Kelos associates. We're all in this together against a common enemy.”

“I get it,” Stan said.

“Ziggie's not my agent,” Bud said.

“I represent writers, a few directors.”

“I wanted you to have the best,” Bud said. “But I didn't bring you to my agency because I didn't want you to think I was running a number on you.”

“I wouldn't have thought that.”

“Maybe I should leave the room for a few minutes,” Bud said, and went out the door. Stan felt like he was going to be asked to the prom. He waited.

“I need a drink,” Ziggie said. “But I can't. I never drink during the week, it interferes with business. You know those lunches cost you whole afternoons. So I start drinking at around six on Friday and drink my way right through the weekend. My hangovers last around three days. You want to be my client? We won't sign anything. I'll represent you until you holler quit.”

“Okay.” Stan held out his hand. Bud came back into the room only seconds later.

“Do you have a deal?” he asked.

“I'm representing Mr. Winger, if that's what you mean.” Ziggie hooked a finger at Stan. “Let's get out of here.” Then he laughed and sat down. “Talk deal,” he said to Bud.

It lasted twenty minutes. Stan realized he was going to have to learn a new language, if he wanted to stay in Hollywood. As he understood it, the great director Andrei Kelos was going to direct
Night Cop
as his next picture, starting in a year or so. A screenwriter hadn't been hired. Kelos usually relied on one or another of several favorite writers, most of them English. But now that Stan had arrived, it was Bud Fishkin's notion that Stan be tried on an experimental basis, to get the extra stuff they wouldn't from an English writer. The American underworld
criminal stuff. Bud was morally certain he'd get the go-ahead to hire Stan. Stan would work every day with Bud and, if necessary, Bud would hire another screenwriter to help Stan learn the ropes. If Stan was interested, they'd call Andrei, and if Andrei went for it, they'd come up with some numbers and hit up the studio.

“You can't have him for a nickel under seventy-five thousand dollars,” Ziggie said. Stan was shocked. Bud just grinned and said nothing, escorting them out to the front door. When Ziggie and Stan were outside, Ziggie said, “They want you pretty badly. I think we can get seventy-five.”

“I thought the studio put up the money.”

“Under pressure only. We have to strike while Andrei is in love. These big directors tend to run off in all directions. But don't worry. That's why you have me. Go home and write another book.”

Stan found a package of five copies of
Night Cop
in his mailbox. He started reading again, losing his temper all over at some of the stupid changes. Finally, exploding with anger, he called Knox Burger. Burger answered the phone himself.

“I just got my copies. I'm a little pissed off about some of the changes.”

“Oh, grow up,” Burger said. “Did you expect to coast through on your own prose?”

It was Stan's turn to be embarrassed.

“We do that to all our books,” Burger said. “They did it to Hammett, they did it to Chandler, and they'll do it to you. As I said, grow up. You're in Hollywood now. What we did to your prose is nothing compared to what they'll do to it. Capeesh?”

58.

When he didn't hear from either Evarts Ziegler or Bud Fishkin, Stan decided everything had fallen apart and it was his fault. He went over his meetings
with both men to try to find out what he'd done wrong, but finally had to admit he just didn't know. Hollywood was mysterious. He didn't call them because what would he say? He didn't call Knox to find out how his book was doing in the marketplace, if Knox even knew. Gold Medal Originals didn't get reviewed. They were issued in huge numbers and gobbled up by eager readers like Stan himself, then vanished. According to Burger, there were Gold Medal writers who turned out five or six a year, under various pen names, a damned good living. Or so it seemed until you heard Evarts Ziegler talking lightly about seventy-five thousand for writing a screenplay. Stan had hoped to make a living. Not get rich, though once the possibility opened up, he couldn't help daydreaming. For now he turned to Ziggie's advice to write another book. But there was nothing there.

He adjusted to his day-to-day life in the Valley, waiting to hear from anybody. Since there was a television set in the living room he turned it on once in a while, more as a professional looking at the competition than as a viewer, or so he told himself. He recalled Fishkin's words, about television reducing everything to tiny pictures. There'd been television sets in C Block, but Stan hadn't had one. He could hear them, though, and hated the sound. He preferred his Zenith radio, a big portable job that drew stations all over the world. He liked to splash around the pool and then sit at one end, in the water up to his neck, with the radio playing music. He let his mind empty out and his body relax, with the pool water “warm as piss.” He could afford it.