Hot Shot (4 page)

In the middle of the next block, she stopped so quickly I almost ran into her back.

We were standing in front of a low-slung building: lemon-yellow with red enamel trim. Red wooden silhouettes of roosters hung next to old-fashioned saloon doors. I could hear
tejano
music and male voices inside. A hand-painted sign over the entrance read
EL GALLO ROJO
. The Red Rooster.

“Here,” Felina said.

“You been here before?” I asked dubiously. For all we knew, this was a cockfighting palace or the meeting hall for a Tijuana tong.

Felina shook her head no. She looked hypnotized. “The rooster is my power animal.”

“What?”

“I was born in the Year of the Rooster.” She reached out to stroke one of the silhouettes on the building's face. “It's always an important year.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. Whatever. The woman was giving me the creeps.

Felina walked through the saloon doors without a word. I followed her, hanging back a couple of paces.

No cockfighting, I noted with relief. The Gallo Rojo was just a working-class restaurant and bar, with oilcloth-covered tables and battered wooden booths. It smelled of lard and cumin. A long bar against one wall was trimmed in tinsel and Christmas lights, with a large plaster madonna standing guard over the tequila bottles. Behind the pass-through window that led to the kitchen, an old woman was patting dough into ovals and turning them onto a griddle. We took the only available booth, right near the two doors that read
DAMAS
and
CABALLEROS
.

Time to butter the lady up. “So tell me about roosters.”

“It's a sign of change. Every twelve years,
el gallo
brings change and cataclysm. The Nazi Party came into existence during the Year of the Rooster. Twelve years later, World War Two ended. Twelve years later, Sputnik was launched and the Space Age began. Twelve years later, people walked on the moon. Twelve years after that, AIDS was discovered.”

“How interesting.” What a pile of cock-a-doodle-do.

Up close, Felina looked forty, maybe even forty-five. Her tawny mane was still thick and shiny, but spiderwebs were inlaid around her eyes, her hands were marked with blue veins, and her neck was turning to crepe. Her olive skin was stretched tightly across her cheek implants, which stood out in bas-relief like knife slashes.

“Those homemade tortillas smell great. Are you going to have some?”

“Lard,” Felina said ominously. “Lard.”

So far we had all the rapport of two eighth-graders thrown together by a teacher and told to complete a science project.

The waiter came over. He and Felina started talking in rapid-fire Spanish. My language skills are at the
“¿dónde está la biblioteca?”
level. I couldn't follow a word. When the waiter looked at me, I shrugged and said,
“Dos.”

Felina reached into her purse and brought out a black velvet drawstring bag. From it she removed several small carved stones that looked like onyx, quartz, alabaster. She arranged the stones on the table in a semicircle in front of her. She rearranged, fussed, rearranged again. When she was done, it looked like a tiny Stonehenge.

“Your stones are pretty,” I said.

“Not stones. They're Zuni fetishes.”

“Like good-luck charms?”

“Sort of.”

“Can I look at them?”

She shrugged. I picked up a white alabaster blob. Up close, a bird revealed itself: sharp beak, carved feathers smooth against its back. I ran my finger over its coolness.

“The eagle,” she said. “
La águila.
A symbol of strength, fierceness, protection.”

“He protects you?”

“I protect myself. The eagle is a symbol. My familiar.”

“I see,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. Power animals. Familiars. Hollywood New Age types got on my nerves. I wasn't sure whether it was the crass selfishness couched in spirituality or the Chinese-menu aspect of New Age that bothered me. It wasn't that I didn't have an open mind; it just didn't catch every trendy stray breeze.

“I didn't want another writer on my book,” she said.

“Oh.”

“I spent six months working on my story. My agent was the one who said I needed a co-writer.”

“Why didn't you take it to another publisher?”

“Because I listened to
la águila,
” she said, touching the eagle. “He told me that I wouldn't get my story out until I teamed up with someone else. And he told me about you.”

I was over the New Age mysticism. “And what did he tell you, Felina?”

“You don't want to be here. You don't want to be writing this book with me.” Her eyes never left mine. “You think it's sleazy. Cheap. So why are you doing it?”

“Same reason you are,” I told her. “Money.”

“Are you a good writer?”

“You tell me when we're done.”

“How did Jack pick you?”

“My agent set it up.” Thrust, parry. Thrust, parry.

“You could have turned it down.”

“I'm just a boy who can't say nnn—nnn—nnn—”

She didn't laugh. Neither did
la águila.

The waiter brought over two wooden bowls filled with romaine. He poured olive oil into a glass dish, broke an egg, separated the yolk in one economical motion, and added it to the oil. In quick succession, he cut a lemon, squeezed the juice, and added Worcestershire and fresh crushed garlic. Last was a whole fresh anchovy, which he diced with the casual malice of a sushi chef. A few quick motions with a whisk, and the mixture became a glossy dressing, which he poured over one salad. Then he added fresh ground pepper and put the bowl in front of me. He set the plain bowl of romaine in front of Felina and left.

“No dressing?” I said.

“I bring my own.” Felina reached into her bag again. She pulled out a three-finger leather cigar case, a couple of vitamin bottles, and several glassine envelopes full of herbs before she found the Ziploc she was looking for. It was filled with what looked like a thick, lumpy vinaigrette. She poured the goo over her lettuce. It smelled like a piece of Gorgonzola that had been left out of the refrigerator for a day.

“Well,” I said. “Shall we get to it?”

*   *   *

“We're going to have to add some things, do a little restructuring, but overall it's all there.”

“You didn't like that section?”

“No, it worked fine. But it'll work better—turn back a couple—there. See?”

She bent her head over, and I could smell the garlic on her breath. “Oh. Yeah.”

It was an hour later, and I was beginning to think maybe the book was salvageable—even if it might not be as rosy as Felina painted it or as dirty as Danziger wanted it to be. To my surprise, Felina accepted the few soft criticisms I lobbed at her, and suggested improvements on her own. We were getting along just fine.

And then I brought up Dick Mann's drug use. “I know you don't want to talk about that,” I said gently. “But it's part of the story.”

“Why do we have to bring that up?”

“It's already been brought up for us. Look at this.” I handed her the
Celeb
article.

She looked at it for a long moment. “Oh, God,” she said. “Sloan Baker.”

“Who?”

“Sloan Baker. We worked at the same agency. I knew she was double-dealing customers to the tabs.” She tapped
la águila
on the table nervously. “This is just like something Sloan would do. She probably got a few thousand for it.”

“Did Sloan sleep with Dick Mann, too?” I took her silence as a yes. “How do you know?”

“I was there. But that was at the beginning. After that it was just Dick and me. And I don't want to write about that, anyway,” she said sharply.

“I know. I know. But if you don't, no one will read the rest of your story. Dick Mann's personal life is going to become public knowledge very soon. If you're not honest, people like this”—tapping the tabloid—“will get the last word.”

Felina was quiet for a moment. “I'm not just thinking about Dick and me. There's a child involved,” she said.

“His son?”

“Betty Mann never did anything to me. I'm just not the same…”

“Give it some thought. We can tell the whole truth without making it exploitative,” I said earnestly. “It is called
Mann's Woman,
after all. If you're going to tell the good times, you have to tell the bad times, too. Right?” I was full of more shit than a bag of Bandini.

Felina opened her cigar case, thinking. She took out a panatela and used a pair of curved silver scissors to behead the cigar. It was a strangely elegant gesture, feminine and masculine at the same time.

“You don't eat lard, but you smoke?”

“These, you don't inhale. My father taught me how to smoke. He was a cigar roller.” She produced a long wooden match and touched it to the head of the cigar, the flame just kissing the tip. A rich fragrance drifted up, a plume of spice and leather.

“It smells good.”

“Romeo y Julieta. From Cuba.” She pronounced it Koo-ba, not Kyew-ba. “I taught Dick how to smoke cigars, too.”

“I read that. I liked that detail.”

“I just don't want it to look like …
Cristo…
”

“Look like what?”

“I was a different person back then. I had bought into the L.A. scene. Drugs, parties. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. But living with Vernon Ash changed me. After a while, I knew that I had two choices: leave or die. Dick was the one who convinced me to leave him.”

“That wasn't in the book,” I noted.

She nodded. “Dick was a client of mine for sex and a client of Vernon for drugs.”

“Was that unusual?”

“No. We had a few people like that. I got 'em coming and Vernon got 'em going.” She laughed nervously, puffing smoke. “That was Vernon's joke. Can't you see why I don't want to—”

“Wait a minute. You were working while you were Ash's girlfriend? He wasn't jealous?”

“Are you kidding? The agency I worked for catered to movie stars, athletes, Saudi money. Most of them used drugs. I was their connection to Vernon, and I was Vernon's connection to them.”

“Did Dick Mann use a lot of drugs?”

“No! A little coke here and there. Once in a while some 'ludes. He told me he'd tried Hot Shot before, but he didn't like it.”

“And Vernon got them for him?”

“Oh, yes.”

I rubbed my eyes, trying to keep my voice steady. “Felina,” I said, “why didn't you put any of this down in the book?”

Felina opened her mouth, as if to say something defiant, but nothing came out. I waited. She shrugged. I tried another tack.

“Great. You've got the love story down. Now we just have to add some of the—the background. Okay?”

Like a little girl: “'Kay.”

“I made a list of questions. Feel up to answering a few?”

She stared into a corner of the restaurant, where a plaster Madonna stood in an old bathtub, arms outstretched.

“Felina?”

“I guess,” she said.

*   *   *

When I got back to the Hotel del Toros, I had two and a half hours of tape in my recorder. I also had a message from Jocelyn. She could barely control the smugness in her voice when I told her about the afternoon.

“Don't crow,” I told her.

“So what did she tell you?”

“Some interesting stuff about Vernon Ash. They shared clients. Quite a team. He supplied the drugs and she supplied the—you know.”

“What about Betty Bradford Mann? We need some juicy bits on her, Peaches, but nothing litigable.”

“Not a lot yet. Felina never met her. She said that back then Dick was in a career lull. He hadn't had a good part in five years.
Mann of the Family
didn't come along for another year or two. Betty was the TV star. Felina says they were separated then—”

“Dick and Betty Mann were separated? I didn't know that.”

“Not physically. They were still living in the same house, but they weren't sleeping together. Or so she claims.”

Jocelyn snorted. “There's no one dumber than a woman in love with a married man. How many washed-up actors would leave their rich and successful wives for some hooker? Even with California's community property laws, a good divorce lawyer would submarine him.” Jocelyn had personal experience with divorce law; when her husband left her and moved to Seattle, she did a little submarine job of her own. “So. When are you meeting next?”

“Tomorrow morning at nine.”

“See how everything worked out? I knew it couldn't be as bad as you thought, Peaches. Felina needs the money from this book as badly as you do. And Danziger is drooling all over that horrible Armani suit of his. Did I tell you there was an item about the project in this morning's
Biz?
I'm sure he leaked it himself.”

“Was my name mentioned?” More than ever, I didn't want my name on the project—except on the pay-to line of the royalty check. Still, I had to admit to a frisson at the thought of my name linked to a big deal in the trade-industry daily.

“No, you're still anonymous, Peaches. But don't you see? It ups the stakes for all of us. This is going to come off. Trust me.”

*   *   *

When I hung up, I had a slimy feeling I couldn't shake. It was only five o'clock. I didn't feel like sitting around the hotel or strolling the streets of Tijuana, so I walked back over the border and drove into San Diego. I stopped at the first multiplex off the freeway and bought a ticket for the next feature without even noticing what the movie was.

No matter how you sliced, diced, or julienned it, I was as big a sleaze as Felina, if not more so. The worst part was that I still wasn't sure I could give Jack Danziger what he wanted.