Passing Through the Flame (17 page)

“I thought up a great film project,” Beck said. “We create a big four-day rock festival, something really grandiose, a kind of Woodstock World’s Fair. All the groups that appear are under contract to Eden or Dark Star. Then we get someone to shoot a
Love Story
type feature against it, instead of doing the usual hype rock film.”

“Well, that
is
the worst idea of the year,” Horst said incredulously. Beck has to have more sense than that. The kind of festival he’s talking about could cost a million all by itself; just the graft involved would be enormous. And what kind of dreck would emerge at the other end?

Beck leaned back, smiled a serpentine smile. “That’s just what Mike will think when I tell him the idea and tell him I’ve sold you on it,” he said. “Eden lays out three million to make a piece of shit, and your ass is out the door.”

“You’ve lost me around that last bend. Why would I cut my own throat?”

Jango Beck blew out a cloud of smoke, studied it as it whirled and spun through the rose-colored cone of light that surrounded him. “Because it’ll be
Mike
who’s cutting his own throat,” he said. “What if the film turns out to be a winner? What if Eden
Records
gets stiffed for the tab? Then Mike’s real estate deal is dead, the studio is secure, and yours truly aces out Taub as president of Eden Records. A far more elegant outcome than current trends would seem to indicate.”

Horst thought fast. Right now, I’ve got a slim majority on the board, men who are loyal to me, but if Taub—and Beck?—take it to the stockholders, there’s no telling what would happen, particularly since the studio is going two million into the red again this year. Who am I kidding? I’m fighting a holding action. Another year or two in the red, and Eden Pictures is finished. Unless I can nail Taub. So like it or not, I’ve at least got to be polite to Jango Beck.

“All right,” he said. “I’m at least willing to hear your proposition.”

“Break it down,” Beck said. “The heavy expense is the festival itself. Shooting the actual love story involves not much more than two principals, some bit players, some interior sets. A good low-budget director could bring that end in for under a quarter million. And I’ve found one of these brilliant award-winning kids who can write, direct, edit, and go out for his own coffee. I’ve seen his footage, and the kid is a genius at turning out quality product for next to nothing. But since he’s got no real credits, I can convince Taub that he’s just some lox I picked up. What does Mike really know about the film business? Okay, you follow, we’ve got this brilliant kid Conrad who can bring in the actual film for a quarter million, and bring in something good?”

“What about the rock festival expenses?”

“That’s where we get Taub,” Beck said. “Because we end up charging the festival expenses to Eden Records. Eden Pictures comes out with a film that costs a quarter million on its books and has three million dollars’ worth of production values. And Mike ends up holding the bag for the difference.”

Horst found himself listening to Beck’s pipe dream with burgeoning hope. If such a thing could actually be pulled off, the record end of the corporation would be put in its place, Taub would be finished, and the studio would have a windfall.

“How?” Horst said.

Beck leered at him, waved his hands like a card shark. “The hand is quicker than the eye,” he said. “I produce the movie. As producer I naturally control the recording rights, and with all the Eden and Dark Star groups that are going to perform at the festival, those rights are going to be very valuable. I sell the recording rights to Dark Star, to myself, for one dollar. Then I turn around and resell them to Eden Records for
mucho dinero
, but still an attractive price. While all this is going on, I accept the festival expenses as president of Dark Star from myself as producer, and when I resell the recording rights to Taub, I have the contracts written so that the festival expenses ride along. Taub will never know what he’s buying along with the recording rights till Eden Records gets the bill.”

“How do you expect to slip a thing like that past Taub?”

Beck laughed. “Because the key transaction is the contract the producer of the movie signs with the president of Dark Star Records—and that’s a contract between me and myself!”

My God, Horst thought, it could really work! If worse came to worst and the film was a disaster, it would still only cost a quarter million on the studio’s books. We could even shitcan it as a TV movie and show a profit. The only room he could find for a balls-up was in Beck’s end.

“What if Taub spots the sneaker in the contract between Dark Star and Eden Records?” he said. “Then you’re stuck with the festival costs yourself, as Dark Star....”

“It’s nice to see someone looking out for my welfare, John,” Beck said. “But it’s really quite simple. I don’t sign the contract between me and myself for the recording rights until Taub has already signed the resale contract.”

“No way,” Horst said. “That way, if Taub refuses to sign, Dark Star can simply refuse to accept the festival expenses and you can stick
me
with them.”

“An interesting problem,” Beck said. “One of us is going to have to trust the other. Unless I incorporate an independent production company and retain half the film proceeds. Then if I got stuck, I could simply bankrupt the corporation.”

“Forget it,” Horst said. “Your end of the deal isn’t going to be more than thirty percent of the net proceeds. And this film has to be a straight Eden production; otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Okay, then why not just make my contract with you as producer of the film contingent on all the other paper going through?” Beck said. “All I want is a decent salary as producer, the right to dispose of the recording rights, and thirty percent of the net proceeds after distribution. Of course, I’ve got to have immediate power to sign Eden checks if I’m going to put this together before I have a firm deal as producer.”

“For the film production only.”

“Done. We’ve got ourselves a deal, John.”

“Maybe,” Horst said. “If all this survives closer scrutiny. But I wonder if I wouldn’t be trusting you too far.”

Jango Beck smiled a great mock-innocent smile. “I’m a very trustworthy character,” he said.

Horst snorted.

Beck leaned across the Aztec stone altar and looked Horst full in the face. The cone of light suddenly seemed blood-colored. Beck’s huge bush of hair seemed alive, Medusa-like. His thin lips were creased in a warm, open smile, and yet... and yet...

“I’m neat,” Beck said, “I’m clean, I’m discreet, and I’ve never hurt anyone unnecessarily. And let me tell you, I know things that would curl people’s hair.”

“I suppose you would,” Horst said. For a moment he wondered if Beck was alluding to Billy or if the ghost of his own guilt was simply coloring what he heard.

“Believe me, John,” Beck said, “I feel I can trust you. And I like working with men I can trust. Shake on it?”

Beck reached across the stone altar. With his arm fully outstretched, Horst was just able to take his hand above the center of the desk, directly above the receptable for human hearts. Beck’s hand was cool and dry. His light grip gave the feel of enormous leashed strength, held in ready reserve.

The spiral staircase wound up toward the sound of loud rock music and many human voices. A tall blond man was walking slowly down it, nuzzling a stunning redhead in a tiny red vinyl miniskirt and almost no blouse at all. Chris Sargent waited nervously at the foot of the staircase until they descended and disappeared out onto the balcony. Seeing that the corridor and the staircase were momentarily clear, Sargent checked the Luger in his shoulder holster, unsnapped the flap for max speed of draw, and bounded up the staircase as quickly as possible, taking the steps two and three at a time. You were horribly vulnerable on a staircase like this; someone could lay for you at either the top or the bottom, aim for the next turn in the spiral, and blow your head off before you even saw the bastard.

The staircase emerged into a maelstrom: a huge circular dance floor under a faceted translucent geodesic dome, like the inside of an enormous insect eye. Color wheels rotating in front of powerful spotlights made the glittering ceiling a mad kaleidoscope of ever-changing flashes of red, blue, green, yellow. There were at least a hundred people under the dome, a third of them dancing to the amplified music of a rock band playing in a raised shell built out from the carved wall, the rest milling about randomly. The tinted shadows flickered their own patterns of motion over the twisting and circling dancers, breaking the whole scene up into abstract fragments in motion, pieces of a shattered stained glass window clattering around a record turntable, seemingly syncopated to the driving electric beat of the music.

Sargent didn’t like it at all. His eyes couldn’t focus clearly on anyone for more than a fraction of a second; the rhythms of the dancers, the music, and the moving flashes of colored light were all interfering with one another. You couldn’t hit anyone cleanly from twenty-feet away in here. Well, at least if there’s anyone laying for me in here, he’s got the same problem....

And then Sargent’s luck changed. Not thirty feet away, standing in the center of a small knot of people, dressed in a suit that kept changing colors with the tinted shadows that passed over him, was the tall, unmistakable figure of Jango Beck.

Sargent unbuttoned his jacket for a faster draw if need be and pushed his way across the crowded floor, brushing citizens aside with his elbows and his eyes. Beck was flanked on either side by a rock-hard woman poured into a studded black leather suit; a stunning black with an afro and thin delicate features and a blonde with bruised sunken eyes. Beautiful meat, Sargent thought, and he felt a stirring in his loins which he could ill afford tonight. Boy, I’d like to get both of those dyke bitches in bed and let them try to run their black leather act on me! I’m sure tired of screwing Mexican whores. But heavier things were happening tonight....

“—is a problem for Sandy Bayne, but frankly I could care less about what losers like that say about me in print—”

“—feel that you have an obligation to the people who buy Dark Star records and pay to see your groups—”

“—after all, rock is the people’s music, and the exploitation—”

“—my only obligation is to give fair value for money received. I don’t see the people who call me a ripoff doing anything but ripping off other people’s energy themselves—”

Jango was bullshitting with a wild-haired dude in a blue satin T-shirt, a scrawny brunette who clung to this guy’s arm as if she couldn’t stand up without him, and a theatrical-looking middle-aged longhair in a fancy suit whom Sargent recognized as some heavyweight Movement lawyer. Assorted hangers-on hung on.

“—if people like you turn one quarter of their profits back to the people who made those profits possible, just one quarter, we’d be able to—”

“—when you say the people, I assume you’d accept a check made out to yourself—”

“
Jango!”
Sargent said loudly.

Beck turned to the sound, saw him, smiled, said, “Hello, Chris.” Then he turned back to the Movement lawyer. “The trouble with—”

“I want to talk to you alone, Jango.
Now
.” Sargent made his voice as hard and sharp as the edge of a knife, and it cut right through the bullshit conversation. Beck turned to look at him, and there was no smart-ass smile this time, just a hard businesslike shrewdness in those black eyes. The asshole in the fancy T-shirt and the Movement lawyer chose to get pissed off.

“Who do you think—”

“Take your bummer somewhere else, man—”

Sargent ignored them, kept his undivided focus on Beck. “Now, Jango. Alone. Unless you want it right here, right now.”

Beck sighed, shrugged to his guests, and followed Sargent across the crowded, flashing, writhing dance floor toward the staircase. Sargent saw that the two black-leather dykes were trailing after him.

“Alone means alone,” he said.

“They’re my bodyguards.”

“I’ll bet they are. Get rid of them.”

Jango Beck nodded to the women, and they melted back into the crowd, stroking each other’s asses. Maybe I’ll get him to lend me his bodyguards, Sargent thought. If I don’t blow his damn head off first.

Jango nodded and smiled to everyone he passed, walking at a lazy, slow gait which started Sargent on a slow red burn. But after they had reached the staircase, walked halfway down it, and found themselves alone, Sargent faced a very different Jango Beck.

“All right, Chris,” Beck said, the smile gone, the eyes hard and cold, “what the hell is this all about? It better be good. I don’t stand for people running numbers like that on me in front of my guests without an A-number-one good reason.”

Sargent reached into his jacket and placed his right hand on the Luger. “Is this a good enough reason?” he said.

“That’s juvenile bullshit, and you know it,” Beck said. “Stop wasting my time.”

White-hot anger coursed through Sargent. He whipped out the Luger and held it lazily in the palm of his hand, not quite pointing it as Beck. “You may not have that much lime left to waste.”

“Put that thing away before someone sees it,” Beck said with infuriating casualness. “Shoot me and you kill the golden goose, and we both know it. So can the cheap stunts and say whatever you have to say without props. They don’t impress me.”

Sargent’s finger tightened on the trigger. His hand stiffened on the grip of the Luger, and he pointed the weapon right between Beck’s eyes. Not a flicker of fear was visible on Jango Beck’s face; he stared straight into the barrel of the gun without blinking, and his thin lips parted in a patronizing smile. Sargent heard footfalls on the stairs above.

“For Christ’s sake, Chris,” Jango said-tiredly, nodding in the direction of the sound.

Something made Sargent slip the gun and his hand into his jacket pocket as two men in business suits passed them on their way down the stairs.

“—they have the Wankel license here, and you can bet their stock will go through the ceiling—”