the Prostitutes' Ball (2010) (32 page)

Latimer estimated that each counterfeit gold bar only had a value of five hundred dollars, making it not worth the effort or potential criminal risk to recover.

Hitch and I sold The Prostitutes Ball to Jamie Foxx's production company for a million eight plus change. After agents' commissions and legal fees, my thirty percent of that will come to slightly over four hundred thousand dollars. After taxes, a quarter of a mil.

I'd been fantasizing about a house on the sand, so Alexa and I looked at condos on Venice Beach. They seemed too expensive, so I'm using the money to fix a lot of delayed maintenance on the house and redo the garage addition for Chooch's room instead.

We're going to wait for the movie to come out and pray we get to break even quickly. Our pari passu payout kicks in at rolling break, and Hitch says that's when we'll start banking the really big profits.

Then comes the house on the sand. . . .

Maybe.

I subscribed to Daily Variety at Hitch's insistence, but I don't read it. Headlines like "Ten Percenters Shutter Pic Pact as Cruise Loses" scared me off. The issues pile up on the hall table and are thrown out at the end of the week, but I am getting better and better at movie speak. Hitch and I can now shorthand our frequent discussions about deal points.

Not for nothing, but we've decided to stay a team. Strange as it seems, Sumner Hitchens turned out to be a perfect partner for me. Fast, loose, funny, and smart. With Hitch, I'm never bored.

The night after we closed the deal on Prostitutes Ball with Jamie's production company, Alexa and I celebrated with a drink and dinner at our favorite restaurant. Then we came home and got in bed.

Before I fell asleep, I turned on the TV to catch the late news. As I was lying there, flipping through channels, I came across Brooks Dunbar on TMZ.

He was being pulled out of a bar by two Hollywood Division cops. According to TMZs managing editor, Harvey Levin, he had assaulted a bartender and was being further charged with sexual misconduct. Harvey reported that Brooks had mooned a table full of German tourists.

"Lick my balls, you shitsticks!" he shouted at the paparazzi as the cops led him past. At least, I think that's what he said because half the sentence was bleeped.

"Not much going on there," Alexa said. She was lying in bed beside me, an arrest-to-conviction percentage analysis for the Detective Division on her lap, looking at the TV over half-glasses perched on her nose.

On New Year's weekend, just after the case wrapped, Alexa and I had taken our son, Chooch, out to dinner. At the Emerald Bowl game on Christmas day, he'd held a clipboard and never got on the field, but we were proud of him, and for me, more important than him playing was the effort he'd displayed in his years so far with the Trojans. He was a good teammate. He continued to strive, despite disappointments, and never gave up on his dream.

You can't do any better than that.

I couldn't help but note the difference between Chooch and Brooks Dunbar.

They were about the same age, but Chooch honored me and his mom with his life and his values. Brooks, on the other hand, pursued nothing. The Heir Abhorrent was about nothing and, as a result, cared for nothing. Brooks was already bored with his life and that boredom was destroying him.

One final irony: because of his need to finance a nose candy habit, Brooks had illegally rented that backyard on Skyline Drive to an Internet madame so he'd have money to buy eight balls.

It was an event that had led to a triple murder, which in the end brought down his parents and eighty-nine-year-old uncle for five murders and an armored car heist committed more than twenty-five years earlier.

As I watched Brooks being shoved into the back of one of our Hollywood Patrol Division units, my phone rang. It was Hitch.

"Hey dawg, turn on TMZ," he said. "You won't believe this."

"I'm watching."

"This just gets better. That little turd, Brooks, is the throughline that holds our whole plot together."

"He is?" I asked, puzzled. I'm still not as good at this as Hitch.

"Yeah, he is," my partner purred. "This club bust is the final event that concludes our story."

And so, months later, when the script was finally written, that's exactly how it ended.