Pimp (12 page)

Max joking around with her, trying to loosen the nun up, but knowing he was in some deep shit.

Back in Attica, before Max rose to prominence, came into his own, he’d been shit scared. No idea of how he’d survive at a notorious prison, and especially survive a giant of a black man named Rufus, who on Max’s first day had promised to make Max’s ass his “own sweet booty.”

Sometimes clergy came round to visit—nuns, pastors, rabbis, undercover Scientologists, trying to lure the cons into their respective scams. Usually they got lots of interest as it meant time out from the cell and you could usually hit the pious up for cigs, Hersheys, mags and hey, even some off-color sex talk in the form of confession.

Max had drawn the nun, went by the name of Sister Alison. She’d opened the chat with, “Call me Ally….God’s own wee pally.”

Trace of an Irish lilt hidden amid the bullshit. The Irish seem to have the patent on the whole nun gig, as they knew how to scare the shit out of you better than anyone. Max was terrified for another reason—because yet another Irish person had entered his life, and this always led to some sort of disaster.

But he’d assessed her, then gone ghetto, said, “Babe, you a playa, a crazy bitch, but you got it goin’ on, know what I’m sayin’?”

Stone-faced, she said, “I see from your file you are a very dark sinner.”

Max, knowing the power of repentance, as a tool of holy manipulation—fuck, he’d prayed in the courtroom every day—bowed his head, said, “I wanna be good.” Using the submissive voice he’d been taught by a vibrant dominatrix in the Bronx.

The nun asked, steel amid the piety, “Are you prepared to take the steps to salvation?”

Hmm
, Max thought. Said, “I need to be chastitied.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean chastised. I need to be chastised.”

He saw the color rise in her deadly pale face, spread all down her neckline, as she went on, “And will you follow my guidance?” Was that a
purr
crawling into her voice?

Both of them a little breathy now, he said, “On my worthless knees.”

So was born a very unhealthy dialogue that kept Max in heat until he managed to break the fuck out of the joint.

He hadn’t really given her a whole lot of thought until she turned up at his party. Now she gave him the special nun glare, full of malevolence and viciousness. She asked, “These good folk out there don’t know who you really are, do they?”

Max, flustered, tried to rally. The weight gain and red hair and plastic surgery had worked until now.

He tried, “I think you might be mistaking me for somebody else.”

Didn’t realize he was shouting until the burr of conversation died down around him. He cleared his throat, asked, “Who did you think I was?”

She gave an evil smile, said, “You want to get on your knees, Max?”

Fuck.

He said, “Might I get you a drink?”

She grabbed his arm brutally, hissed, “Cut the horse shite, Max. I’m not going to blow your act if…” and smiled sinfully.

Now he eased up a notch. A deal. Deals were his thing. And they weren’t in freaking Attica now. He asked, “What you want… bitch?”

Let her know he was now The Man.

She stood back, surveyed him. Then, “Looks like you have a heavenly business going here. Half a mil for starters.”

He laughed, said, “That all?”

“For starters, yes.”

Max was still smiling but knew then he’d have to take the cunt out.

“Speak up, don’t mumble.”
“Kill.”
T
HE
O
DD
C
OUPLE

Joe Miscali was at his desk, having his usual heart-attack breakfast—two eggs Benedict, with sausage and bacon on the side—when Leonard came into his office and went, “You don’t want to read Page Six of the
Post
today.”

Joe took a huge breath, rolled his eyes, thinking,
Ah, fuck me, what now?
Saying, “If it’s about me I don’t wanna hear it.”

“You?” Leonard said, sarcasm dripping, like why would they bother to write about Joe Miscali on Page Six. “No, it’s not about you, but it’s about somebody you know.”

Agitated, Joe snapped, “Stop fucking with me, I’m in the middle of breakfast here, all right?”

“Testy today aren’t we?” Leonard said. “Well, you’re really gonna be on the rag when you read about the new Max Fisher book.”

That name, Fisher, brought up acidy eggs Benedict. Another Max Fisher book? There was the instant book, right after Max’s arrest, written by a couple of reporters from the
New York Post
. Then one by an American guy and an Irish guy that got a few reviews and disappeared. Joe had thought the Fisher literary trend was finito.

“
Bust
is on the
Times
bestseller list,” Leonard said. “Ahead of the latest Jack Reacher. Can you believe it?
Bust
above Reacher? I bet Lee Child’s flipping out.”

Joe started to choke, had to take a big swig of coffee to get a hold of himself.

Joe read:

WE HEAR that Paula Segal and Lars Stiegsson will read from their bestseller BUST, about Manhattan businessman turned homicidal drug dealer Max Fisher, tonight at seven p.m. at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square.

If Fisher was alive, maybe Miss Writer Broad knew where he was hiding out.

So Joe went to the store, found Paula at the information desk. It was easy to spot her, she looked just like the pic on her website, except, what was the word? Snooty. Yeah, she looked snooty.

They had coffee and Danish and she was one of those lesbos with a chip on her shoulder. He called her “honey” and she flipped out, acted like he was trying to fuck her. Christ, in 1997 you couldn’t stick a broomstick up a perp’s ass, and now you couldn’t call a witness honey? What was next?

She claimed she hadn’t had any contact with Fisher. He thought she was full of shit.

He caught some of the reading, Paula and the midget Swedish nutjob taking turns. Paula read the section where Kenneth Simmons, Joe’s partner, was killed by the Irish psycho. Paula looked right at Joe a couple of times as if saying,
This one’s for you
.

It made Joe sick that people were lining up, buying this book, and, worse, that it was going to be a fucking TV show.

Joe left the store, but lingered outside, double parked in his unmarked. When Paula and Stiegsson left with a few other people and hopped a cab, he tailed them to the Soho House. Snooty literary people hanging out, for fuck’s sake. He waited there till Paula and a dark-haired women left, arm in arm, kissing while waiting for a cab. Jesus Christ, Paula was a carpet muncher, no wonder she had a thing against Joe, a manly cop.

Joe tailed the cab to Brooklyn, Dumbo. It was a clear night, full moon, maybe the werewolves were out. Joe had been hoping Paula would lead him to Fisher, but after waiting a couple of hours, pissing into a Pepsi bottle three times—his damn prostate —it looked like she was in for the night with her girl toy.

On his way back to the city, Joe hit a diner near the Manhattan Bridge for his second dinner of the night, deciding he wasn’t going to give up on Fisher till there was a dead body. As he wolfed down two cheeseburgers, onion rings and a large chocolate milkshake, he just hoped the dead body wasn’t his own.

Can we talk about something other than Hollywood for a change? We’re educated people.
G
RIFFIN
D
UNNE IN
The Player

Back in the glory days when Stallone was a star—yeah, that long ago—Larry had a partner named Jerry Yarmolowitz, Jewish guy. That’s how Larry would introduce him to people, go, “Meet Jerry Yarmolowitz, Jewish guy,” and smirk, getting a kick out of it every time, a Jew so jew-y he didn’t even bother covering it up, while Larry had quietly Ellis Islanded
Horowitz
into
Reed
.

He and Larry were the new kids on the block and some early successes had critics comparing them to great double acts:

Lennon/McCartney

Scorsese/De Niro

Jagger/Richards

Bruen/Starr

Plus, these guys were tight. Not just professionally but buddies outside the job too. They’d fly to New York, hang at the Mansfield, drink until dawn, hit on hot waitresses, and score on the ponies. And through it all they worked on their projects nonstop. Larry was all about character but if you wanted the plot to jell, then Jerry was the go-to guy.

A true study in contrasts, Larry was all mouth—fuck this, fuck that—and on speed to get everything done. His mantra might have been, “Yeah, that’s great, what’s next?”

Jerry put the M in mellow, laid-back, no fuss, his mantra seemed to be: “Let it slide.”

And they were fun to be around, got people caught up in their shared energy. Weirdest thing was they looked alike—same graying hair, same pot belly, same bald spot. An exec once cracked, “Who are you guys, the Glimmer Twins?” and the name stuck. They even called their company Glimmer Productions.

Then came two pivotal moments. The first was the arrival of a movie script,
The Wallace Tapes
. This seemed to be a surefire hit but turned out to be a
Heaven’s Gate
clusterfuck of bad management, worse timing and budgets that went ballistic. Larry, always the savvy dude, cashed in his shares, got out before the shit really hit the fan, but neglected to tell Jerry. Neglecting to tell—that was the second pivotal moment.

Jerry, believing that their friendship could turn anything around, stayed until the bitter end, a premiere in Boise. He lost everything. Things were so bad he even contemplated writing a mystery novel for quick cash. But some shred of dignity still remained and he took a job as a dishwasher at a diner, and at last disappeared in to the great anonymity of Manhattan.

Worse, in interviews, Larry dissed him, going, “Thing is, ol’ Jerry lost control. Instead of
writing
the plot, he became the plot. He never understood the basic principle of cut and run.”

Even Michael Cimino referred to Jerry as the guy “who made
Ishtar
look profitable.”

Larry’s wife, in rare moments would ask him, “You ever think about Jerry?”

Larry, on his B-movie uppers, would snort, “Jerry, Jerry is history.”

But now, in traffic, on his way to a lunch thing at Musso & Frank’s on Hollywood Boulevard, Larry wondered,
Could Jerry have kidnapped Bev?
Jerry was a Sam Adams drinker, used to drink the shit like water, so there was that. And he had boatloads of motive for revenge.

So Larry did a little research. Well, called a neighbor who had a twelve-year-old kid who knew how to use the Internet, was some kind of genius with Google.

Larry went, “Hey, can you have Kyle do me a solid?” Larry had just heard this phrase used by some kid at his chiropractor’s office and felt hip using it himself. “Can he research Jerry Yarmolowitz, the ex-movie producer, and see what he finds out?” His neighbor wrote back a few minutes later, informing Larry that Jerry had invested in a start-up during the tech boom, cashed out, and was currently living in a villa in Greece.

This news established two important things for Larry:

One, the idea of Jerry’s involvement in Bev’s kidnapping was probably what the mystery writers call a red herring.

Two, he had to be some kind of idiot, wasting his time fartsing around in the fucking movie business.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
W
OODY
A
LLEN

YOU GOT SIX HOURS LEFT

The note Larry found stuck to the windshield of his car when he left Musso’s.

“Christ,” Larry said, ripped up the note, the way he’d rip up a parking ticket.

He’d just finished a power lunch with Eddie Vegas, young guy who’d invested in a couple of Larry’s film projects that had failed to launch. Vegas, like the whole town, believed that TV was the place to be.

Vegas wasn’t from Vegas, he was a young Spanish guy from the hood, about thirty, kind of looked like John Leguizamo, and Larry had no idea how some Cheech from East L.A. got the last name Vegas. Honestly Larry didn’t give a shit about him, except that he a) had money and b) was willing to invest in practically any film project. As they say at Santa Anita—nice perfecta.

Larry hadn’t heard back yet from Angela yet, but he was taking meetings on the project, being proactive, figuring if the Irish bitch couldn’t pull off the deal, he’d go to Darren and blackmail the child-molesting fudgepacker himself.

“Tellin’ you right now, bro,” Vegas had said. “This
Bust
shit sounds cool, but it better not die like those other two shits you put me in. I got a three strikes rule, man. Two strikes, Eddie be cool, but Eddie don’t strike out,
entiende
?”

Larry didn’t
entiende
. He didn’t know what the Latin fuck was talking about—he just wanted the kid’s money and he’d say anything, tell any lie, to get it.

“No, this is a different kinda situaton,” Larry said. “This deal’s solid, as close to a slam dunk as you can get.”

“Yeah, that’s what you was sayin’ ’bout
Spaced Out
.”

“
Spaced Out
was an unfortunate, isolated situation,” Larry said. “We would be at the premiere now, talking to Melissa Rivers, if Tom didn’t fuck us over.”

“Tom Cruise was gonna be in it?”

“No, Tom Selleck. But as a fortune cookie I got once said,
The wind of one door closing opens another
. If
Spaced Out
got going maybe we never get involved in
Bust
, and ten, twenty years from now, when
Bust
is hailed as one of the greatest TV shows of all time, right up there with
Bonanza
…” Shit, that made him sound old. He said, “I mean
The Sopranos.
Yeah,
The Sopranos
. You’re gonna be thanking God I got you in on the ground floor of it.”

“What about
Prison Break
?” Vegas asked.

“What prison break?” Larry asked.

“The show
Prison Break
,” Vegas said. “
Bust
gonna be like that?”