Wag the Dog (35 page)

When I was a teenager, a guy walking toward me down the street, I automatically think, Is he bigger? Tougher? Can I take him? Later, when I get older, when I go to Nam, and after, it changes. I look at a guy and the question is, Can he kill? Has he killed? Will he do it again? That's my bottom line.

I look at Hartman. I don't think he's killed. Not even in war, not even at a distance. I don't know why I evaluate this, but I do. Later on, when I check his service record, it confirms that he wasn't in combat. Can he kill? Will he kill? My thinking is that he would like to. Not for the dying—there are guys who love the dying—but for his sense of himself.

Agents have a rep for being ruthless, merciless, heartless, for being “killers.”
⁷³
But being a killer agent is like being a tough touch football player. Something's missing. Blood. Even in an environment like L.A., with little respect for reality, they know the difference. Hartman would like to look at himself in the mirror and have that secret knowledge that he is a killer. A real one. He would like that.

Hartman raises his glass to us. “To new love,” he says.

Maggie's PR person sends out releases about the new office. I am interviewed over the phone by
Variety. Hollywood Reporter
sends a guy over. The
Enquirer
sends a writer and a photographer, someone from
Entertainment Tonight
calls. I agree to make myself available. That never actually happens, though.

Plus, I'm getting calls from hundreds of people, it seems nice. Scripts arrive at the office. Letters. Résumés. I see some people. I'm going to need a reader, a secretary, maybe someone else.

There is a reasonably priced restaurant a few blocks from the office. It has two separate back ways out, an easy way through the kitchen door and a more difficult one from the bathroom window. It's where I go if I just want food. I'm sitting there alone when Bambi Ann Sligo, Mel Taylor's secretary, walks in. It's a bit far from U. Sec's office. It's possible that she is there by accident. Some people in this business insist there are no accidents. I greet her and she joins me at my booth. She orders a hamburger and a cup of black coffee. I order a burger for myself. I tell her that Maggie would disapprove. Bambi—spitting image of the Iron Lady—simpers and says, “You should listen to Maggie. She's a star.” I smile. “All right, I will.” I ask her how her job is going and how it is to work for Mel Taylor. She wants to tell me something, I think, but she doesn't do so. We talk about other people in the office we don't care much about. When she's done with her burger, she lights a cigarette. I order her another coffee and a piece of peach pie. Bambi says she shouldn't have the pie. Too fattening. I tell her that she is slender enough to eat it.

The clock is ticking and Taylor is the type to be strict about his secretary's lunch hour. She gathers up her pocket-book, fussing to get herself together. She's out of time and now she must speak.

“Mr. Broz, Ms. Lazlo knows all the other big stars doesn't she?”

I have come to understand that celebrity is a small, very small world. “Yes. More or less.”

“Does she know—” Bambi looks down at her setting; she cleans up some crumbs; she refolds her napkin, presses it flat—“John Travolta? And Tom Cruise?”

I don't know specifically that she does, but I am reasonably certain that she does. “Yes.”

“I heard”—she takes the paper napkin and dabs at the drip of coffee in the center of her saucer, she wipes the tines of her fork clean—”that Scientology cures . . . uhh . . .”—she places the fork down; she tries to look at me and has trouble doing it—“homosexuality. That Scientology can cure it. Can they?”
⁷⁴

“I don't know.”

“I know you don't know. Does Maggie know? Could you ask her to ask them? Is it alright that I called her Maggie?”

“That's fine,” I say. “I'll ask her.”

I begin to see the appeal of this life. Aside from having money. You spend your time talking to people, exercising so you look good—I'm going to the dojo a lot—dressing so you look good, and, if you don't have someone to do it for you, reading a lot.

A lot of this is smoke and mirrors, part of the mask of me as the lover-producer, but it's also the next step. When U. Sec. does an industrial-espionage investigation, the first thing we look for is a disaffected ex-employee or a disgruntled current employee. What I'm doing is setting up something like a sting operation. If they're out there, someone from Beagle's place, I'm giving them a place to go.

It is a slow and uncertain method and requires great patience.

While U. Sec. watches me, Steve follows Ray Matusow.

Ray is running a pattern. He has eight regular stops. But just knowing the stops doesn't tell us who he's actually recording. One of his stops is an apartment building where his recording post seems to be the basement. Two more are apartment complexes with security which means Steve can't follow him in even to determine which of several buildings the subjects live in. One stop is a warehouse building on Flower Street. This appears to have one residential loft, which belongs to Maxwell Nurmberg. I am able to determine that someone by that name is employed at CinéMutt, so I assume that's who is being recorded there. The other three are VDs, vehicle drops.
⁷⁵
One of those, I assume, due to proximity, is for Maggie and me.

What's interesting is that he starts the circuit at U. Sec. and ends it at home. And he takes everything in at night.

I make sure that I'm not followed and I drop in on Ray at home, unannounced, on a weekday evening. I note the locks. I knock. There's video surveillance, but he looks out the keyhole.

He opens up. “Joe, what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you, something private.”

“Private?”

“Something profitable.” I smile. “For you and for me.”

“Oh, yeah, well sure.”

He steps aside to let me in. His wife, Myrna, is in the living room. She's cute as a button, even after the two children and all. We've met at company functions. “Nice house,” I say to her.

“Thank you,” she says, truly pleased.

“Did you do it? All of it?” I ask.

“Well . . .” she says. Almost blushing. She's a quiet one. Always has been. Ray's real happy about that. His first wife wasn't.

“You got a nice eye for color and stuff. I'm no expert, but I can see that,” I say.

“Would you like to see more of it?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Joe just stopped in on business,” Ray says.

“Oh. Of course,” Myrna says, shutting down.

“I really would,” I say. “It's got a warmth. I have to tell you something, Maggie's house . . .” Myrna's all attention—I am going to tell her secrets of one of the stars! Inside view of her Home Life. A real live outtake from
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous!
“. . . it's spectacular, of course. But it's like somebody made it for a TV show. It's not . . . how can I say it, warm and homey, like this.”

Myrna blushes. Even Ray is pleased. Proud of her. To have his wife's homemaking compared to a Star's. So now he has to let her show off her house. She tells me how she had the paint colors mixed. I note that all the windows are wired to the alarm system and there are motion sensors too. The system is worth more than the goods that it is protecting. I'm certain that there's a silent alarm that rings U. Sec's armed-response number.
⁷⁶
There may be a sound alarm as well. The two little girls share a bedroom that's very girlish, full of frills and with an overall sense of pink. The bedroom is a bedroom, the kitchen's a kitchen, the dining area has a table. The prize, for me, is the basement, Ray's space. “It was all hodgepodge,” she says. “With everything every which way . . .”

“I knew where every single thing was,” Ray says.

“It wasn't so much messy, it's true, but it was . . . raw. I found these wall and filing units that you customize into your own system and you can add on at any time and always be consistent.”

“It's a wonderful job,” I say.

We go back upstairs. Ray locks the basement behind us. “Gotta keep the kids out,” he says. We sit down at the table in the dining area. Myrna leaves us. “What's up?”

I tell him that through Maggie I'm in a position to score lots of new business, but since I'm on an LoA I can't get a commission on it. Ray's a great tech man, but not much of a hustler. He's hungry for this. Most tech guys, all they get is salary, none of the gravy. “How much would I get?” he asks. I let it sit there for a while before I answer. Finally, I say, “Fifty-fifty.”

“That's only fair,” Ray says, greatly relieved. I could have said,
ninety-ten, take it or leave it,
and he would have taken it. “Only fair.”

“It'll take a while to set up, but you'll probably begin to see some action, a couple of weeks, a month at the most.”

“Thanks, Joe. Thanks. With the kids and all. There's enough, mind you, but more would sure ease some of the strain. You know.”

“I know.”

We shake. Ray walks me to the door. The alarm system shut off uses a key, not a number pad. My guess is he put the system in about ten years ago when the high-speed tone-code generators got popular and the number-pad systems became vulnerable.

The next day, when Ray goes into the loft building, Steve and I pull up in a rental truck, a thirty-five-foot van. We park it so that the door can't be seen from the street. Steve, wearing shades and a fake Fu Manchu mustache, waits in the cab. When Ray steps out, he sees the truck. It's blocking his way.

I step out from behind and hit him on the back of the head with an old-fashioned blackjack. I steal his watch, wallet, and keys. I drag him over behind a trash bin.

I steal Ray's car, empty the trunk, and take it to a chop shop. I drive to Ray's house in a plumber's van rented from a motion-picture prop-vehicle company. It comes with plumber's toolboxes, by accident or as an extra courtesy. I use them to carry a high-speed tape duplicator and a load of cassettes. The kids are at school. Myrna is at her part-time job. I figure I have two hours. I let myself in with Ray's key. I turn off the alarm system, unlock the basement door, and go down to explore his treasure trove.

A very thorough man. Bless him.

Steve stays behind. I want him to make sure Ray doesn't wake up too soon. But Steve says he won't do that. “I'm grateful and all and I needs the work. I'll do all them other things. Tailing around after people. I got a family to support, I'll do mos' anything, but I got a problem with puttin' a hurt on someone. I done my share, don' wanna do no mo'.” So I just tell him to watch Ray and when Ray wakes up, if he heads for home, call Ray's house. Dial, ring once, hang up. Dial, ring twice, hang up.

“Joe,” he says, “I want you to understand. I got trouble with my boy. My boy, I make him go to school and work hard and his mama, she's on his case. But he's startin' to run with gangbangers. He says, ‘I got to carry a piece, be a man.' I say, ‘Bullshit.' I don' wanna be telling him one thing and be doin' another, you unnerstand?”

“Got it,” I say. “Just don't forget to call.”

The surveillance of Magdalena Lazlo is listed under Operation Dog's Bark. There were seven others cross-referenced to the same file: Katherine Przyszewski, Luke Przyszewski, Maxwell Nurmberg, Morris Rosenblum, Theodore Brody, Carmine Cassella, and Seth Simeon. Just these names, with phones and addresses, are a score. If these are the people that have to be watched, that's the reverse of saying that these are the people I should target.

When I find that he has copies of the surveillance tapes—something I hoped for but did not count on—it is like striking gold. Here's the record of who's happy and who cries in the night, who gets laid and who gets high, who's ambitious, dumb, resentful, afraid.

Ray even has a high-speed tape duplicator. I set up mine as well and start running copies on both.

All I have to worry about is whether there is a backup alarm that I've missed. Or a nosy neighbor. Or Myrna comes home early. Doing something to Myrna, who would recognize me, to cover up the break-in would be a very unfortunate thing to do. Or to the kids.

 

 

 

⁷³
Agent jokes are virtually the same as lawyer jokes—the sharks don't eat them out of professional courtesy; their hearts are good for transplants because they've never been used—that sort of thing. There are a few that are powerful enough to actually help and even to actually hurt someone's career. Most of them are just hoping to find—or hold onto, clients who generate more income than they cost in overhead.

⁷⁴
Both Cruise and Travolta are Scientologists and have publicly spoken about how much good it has done for their lives and careers and mental health. Scientology does claim it can alter a homosexual orientation. Both Mr. Cruise and Mr. Travolta are married men with children. There is nothing to suggest that they are anything but heterosexual. The only inference a reader should make is that Hollywood and America are rife with gossip with no regard for truth or respect for privacy.