Hollywood Crows (20 page)

“I suspected you were a dancer,” Nate said. “Those legs.”

“Since turning thirty I’ve gotta work harder to keep things in place.” She sipped again, put the martini down, and said, “I wasn’t born to all this. My dad worked for the post office, and it almost broke my parents to put my older sister through college. Lucky for them, I didn’t want that. I wanted to dance, and I decided I was going to give it all I had. And that I did for nearly four years. I did waitressing to buy food and keep my car running. And then I did other things.”

Nate thought he’d heard this story before. Or seen it in just about every movie ever made about showbiz wannabes. He waited while she lowered her amber eyes as if ashamed, and he finally said, “Other things?”

“I became a topless dancer at some of the clubs on the boulevards. It was good money compared to what I’d been surviving on. Sometimes I made five hundred dollars a night on tips alone.”

She looked at him as though awaiting a response, so he said, “A girl’s gotta make a living somehow. This is a tough town.”

“Exactly,” she said. “But I never danced at the totally nude clubs. Those no-liquor joints that do totally nude attract servicemen and other rowdy young guys. I’d never take all my clothes off.”

“I understand,” Nate said, but he was wondering how big a difference a G-string made. He remembered a screen-writing class he’d taken at UCLA. Reductive. This freaking story was reductive.

“And then I got a job at the Leopard Lounge,” Margot said, “and I met Ali Aziz.”

“Your husband,” Nate said.

She nodded and said, “He owned two clubs. I danced at the Leopard Lounge for more than two years and made quite a lot of money, by my standards. I moved into a very nice condo, and Ali kept taking me on dinner dates and buying me expensive presents and behaving like a real gentleman. And he kept begging me to move into this house with him, but I refused. And finally he convinced me that he would be a kind and loving husband. Fool that I am, I accepted his proposal and married him, but only when he agreed to a proper marriage with no prenuptial. By the way, have you ever heard of my husband?”

“The name’s familiar,” Nate said. “We have a Nightclub Committee that’s run by our Community Relations Office. I think maybe I’ve seen the name.”

“He makes sure he donates to all of the Hollywood police charities. You may have run into him at police events. He’s chummy with lots of the officers at Hollywood Station.”

“Yeah, I do think I’ve heard of Ali Aziz,” Nate said, wondering how chummy Ali would be with the Jewish cops at Hollywood Station.

“My parents were not thrilled when I told them about Ali, but I took him home to Barstow just before the wedding and they were very impressed by his good manners. He even assured my mother that if we had children, they would be raised Christian.” This time when she paused, she took another sip from the martini and yet again topped off Nate’s wineglass.

“Back then it was peachy, huh?” Nate said, thinking, she was the most exciting woman he’d ever shared a meal with in his entire life, but this sappy story was killing his wood!

“For sure,” Margot said. “The honeymoon was in Tuscany and he bought me a little Porsche for a wedding present, and of course I never had to set foot in the Leopard Lounge again, except to help him with the books. The last real work I ever did in that place was when I talked him into a major refurbishing and he let me do the design.”

Nate sneaked a look at his watch. It was 10:30 and they weren’t even close to getting naked. And all the goddamn wine was making him gassy. Pretty soon he’d be farting!

He said, “So after a few years of marriage, what? He was no longer a gentleman?”

“He’s a fucking pig!” Margot said it so viciously it startled him.

“What happened?”

“Women. Cocaine. Even gambling. And the scary thing, he kept talking about leaving Hollywood. Leaving America. Going back to the Middle East with Nicky and me.”

“Nice,” Nate said. “I can just see you in a burka, or one of those other beekeeper outfits.”

“He said I’d like Saudi Arabia. Claimed he had connections there, even though he’s not a Saudi. I said I’d die first, and that he wasn’t taking my son anywhere.”

“And that started the fireworks?”

“Definitely,” she said. “And it resulted in my filing for divorce and starting a really big-time dispute over the division of property. But that’s another story.”

Nate finally decided that even if all this was gospel, it was hard to feel sympathy for rich people. He offered an official police response, saying, “Has he hurt you or threatened you in any way?”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you tonight,” she said. “He
has
threatened me, but in very subtle ways.”

“Like how?”

“Like when he comes to pick up Nicky for his visit. He’ll say things like, ‘Enjoy this while you can.’ Or, ‘A boy needs his father, not a mother like you.’ Then he makes signs.”

“What signs?”

“He points a finger at me like a gun. Once he mouthed the word
bang
. Things like that.”

“That’s not much in the way of a threat. And it’d be his word against yours.”

“That’s what the other officer said.”

“What other officer?”

“I’ve talked to another of your officers about it. An officer I met last year with my husband at one of the Tip-A-Cop fund-raisers. I can’t remember his name. I told him what was going on, but he said that I should talk it over with my divorce lawyer. He said that so far, my husband hadn’t done anything criminal that I could prove.”

“Took the words right outta my mouth,” Nate said.

“But last week when Ali brought Nicky home, he said something that made my blood run cold.”

Nate remembered his screen-writing professor saying that no screenplay should ever contain those last three words. “Yeah?” he said, trying to muster enthusiasm.

“He said if I didn’t agree to sign certain business documents, something very bad would happen.”

“What documents?”

“Documents pertaining to the businesses, the stock portfolio, and properties we own.”

In a minor way Nate had an understanding of divorce law, and at last something piqued his interest. He said, “You mean you’re an owner right along with him of everything?”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

And now Hollywood Nate started getting a woody once again. This Barstow babe must be a world-class piece of ass to have rigged a deal like this with a dude from the Middle East! Nate said, “He wants you to sign off on certain things?”

“On certain things I can’t even talk about. Signatures I agreed to give so that he could avoid certain tax liability, as well as others of his dealings I can’t discuss.”

“Back to the very bad thing that would happen,” Nate said. “Did he describe what might happen?”

“He’s too smart for that,” Margot said. “But he drew his finger across his throat.”

Here we go again, Nate thought. Finger across the throat. Every time she said something he was ready to buy into, she came up with lines that could have come from the piece-of-shit movies he’d appeared in.

Nate said, “Did you tell your lawyer about it?”

“Of course,” she said. “But he told me Ali would deny it, and just to change my locks and alarm code. Which I had already done.”

“Anything else by way of a threat?”

“Yes. One night last week I saw him standing on the street when I came home from dinner with a girlfriend. He was half a block down behind a parked car. He ducked when I drove past, but I’m sure it was him. When I got in my driveway, I saw taillights driving down the hill.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Yes. I called Hollywood Station and talked to an officer at the front desk. I told him I wanted a car to patrol my street, and if they found my husband, to stop and investigate. The officer said he would tell the area car to be on the lookout for Ali prowling around. I insisted that he make a record of my call. My lawyer advised me to be sure that there is official verification of every incident.”

“So you’ve told the cop you met at the fund-raiser, and you called Hollywood Station, and now you’re telling me. Any other police officers know about this?”

“Yes, last Saturday night I was sure I heard footsteps beneath the bedroom balcony at about eleven
P.M
., and I called Hollywood Station again. And two officers arrived, along with a sergeant. They didn’t find anything.”

“Do you remember the sergeant’s name?”

“Let’s see… no, but he was young and officious. He issued a lot of orders to the officers.”

“Did he have lips?”

“What?”

“Was his name Treakle?”

“That’s it. Sergeant Treakle.”

Well, Nate thought, she’s done everything but put it on MySpace and send up smoke signals. Help! Ali Aziz is threatening me, but I can’t prove it.

“Does your husband still see your son?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. I had to agree to reasonable visitation rights. Ali has a luxury condo in Beverly Hills and a full-time housekeeper and au pair. There was nothing I could do about it.”

Nate felt his woody withering again, especially when she said, “Won’t you let me make you a vodka martini? It’s a wonderful mood enhancer.”

And yet hers wasn’t half finished. This chick was way more interested in pouring booze into him than into herself. What about
her
mood? It occurred to Hollywood Nate Weiss that wealthy people could be very perplexing.

He once again declined a martini and said, “If you’re really scared of him, have you considered moving away?”

“I have,” she said, “and I will. But in the meantime I went to a gun store in the Valley where they have a pistol range and I took a shooting lesson. The gun store owner said I’m a fast learner. I’m thinking of buying a pistol. Do you like the Glock or the Beretta?”

“Whoa!” Nate said. “Are you
that
scared?”

“I am,” she said. “I’d have bought a gun already, but with Nicky getting into every nook and cranny in this house, I’ve been afraid to do it. The alternative is more expensive but might be wiser.”

“And what’s that?” Nate said.

“I’ve been thinking about hiring someone from a security firm to stay here in the house until it closes escrow. Oh, did I tell you that I sold it already?”

“No, you didn’t,” he said.

“Well, I did. With the agreement of my husband and his attorney. And with proceeds to be shared. I’ll just need someone here for forty more days, maybe less if the buyer can close early. We have bedrooms and bathrooms we’ve never used. But then I thought, Who knows what kind of person might be employed by those security firms? And I got to thinking, there might be a police officer from Hollywood Station who’d be interested in a very nice room-and-board arrangement for a month or so. I think I could feel safe with a real police officer being here. Is that feasible, do you think?”

Now Nate was so baffled by this woman that he decided to test her. He said, “I might be interested.”

“I was hoping to hear that, Nate,” Margot said with a little sigh. “I’m truly scared for my safety and for my son’s.”

“Where’re you moving to?” he asked.

“Haven’t decided yet,” she said. “That’s another thing our lawyers are fighting about. He doesn’t want me to take Nicky out of Los Angeles, but we’re trying to show the court that Ali’s business environment does not make this the ideal place to raise Nicky. Ali knows I love San Francisco and New York. But until that’s settled, I’ll rent a condo for Nicky and me right here in L.A.”

“Good luck with your battle,” Nate said.

She took another tiny sip from the martini glass, her voice sultry now, and said, “What do you drink besides wine? Let’s take a pair of fresh cocktails out onto the balcony and talk about this further.”

And then it kicked in: the cop’s survival instinct, honed by all the years of playing Guess What I’m Really Thinking with countless miscreants on the streets. She had drunk far less wine than he had, and she’d hardly tasted her martini. And those eyes — the color of good whiskey, Jack, maybe, or Johnnie Black — were mesmerizing, but Nate’s response to more drinking was dictated by blue radar, not raging hormones.

He said, “Okay, I’d love to talk about it further. But I’m just not that much of a cocktail drinker. I’ll hang on to my wineglass. You go ahead and have another James Bond special.”

He saw the immediate disappointment on her face. And then he heard a cell phone chime from the butler’s pantry. Margot excused herself, went to the pantry, and picked up her go cell from the countertop.

“Yes,” she said and listened. Then she closed the pantry door and whispered, “No, honey, he won’t do.” She listened for a moment and said, “He’s not a drinking man.” She listened some more and said, “Please, baby, don’t say that. I’m going back to number one. I’m going after him very hard. Please. Give me a week.”

While Margot Aziz was in the butler’s pantry, Hollywood Nate Weiss made a very tough decision. He was going out on that balcony for more talk, but he was going to make a serious move on her to see where all this was going. And if she resisted and tried one more time to pour booze down his throat, he was outta there. This is Hollywood, he thought, and there are extremely unusual people around these parts — gorgeous, scary people who could turn smoking male wood into a steaming pile of sawdust.

Nate didn’t get a chance to execute his strategy. When Margot came out of the butler’s pantry and back into the dining room, she said, “Nate, I’m terribly sorry. That was my au pair. Nicky’s got a fever and she’s worried. I’ve gotta drive over there right now and pick him up.”

“Sure,” Nate said, not as disappointed as he might have predicted. “Anything I can do?”

“No, I’ll call you tomorrow. I have your number.”

When Hollywood Nate was walking out the door, it occurred to him that he should get her cell number too. He started to ask for it but thought he’d better leave. She had a sick kid to deal with. And anyway, he wanted to see if this stunning, rich, very strange woman
would
call him tomorrow. The amazing thing was, he’d been so bowled over that he hadn’t done what he always did when he met a likely babe. He hadn’t even told her about his SAG card and that he’d appeared in two TV movies.