Steven Bochco (18 page)

Which is why, when Daniel hit the bookies for six hundred thousand dollars, Dennis, against his better judgment, went to New York City to pick up the money for him.

In any event, by the time we've gone back and forth with our Daniel Deveaux stories, Dennis and I have hit it off pretty well, and he finally asks me if I know what Bobby was working on when he died.

“No,” I say. “He wouldn't tell me. He said he wanted to finish it and have me read it cold. He was pretty excited, though.”

“Did he say anything about the project
we
were working on?”

Again I tell him no, so Dennis explains that it was an idea for a cop show he wanted to call
Blind Justice,
which he says he told Bobby with the notion that Dennis would provide the stories and Bobby'd write it, but now that Bobby's gone, Dennis is thinking maybe he'd like to pitch it to HBO himself, and would I be interested in representing him, since Bobby always spoke so highly of me.

No one's immune to flattery or the prospect of earning a buck, so I tell Dennis I'd be delighted to represent him, but who's going to do the actual writing?

“I was thinking,” Dennis says sheepishly, “I'd take a shot at it myself. Bobby said I was a natural storyteller, and if I could tell a story I could write it, so I'm thinking, Why not? I mean, who knows more about this stuff than me anyway? In fact,” he goes on to say, “I was thinking there might also be a really good movie in this Ramon Montevideo case.”

“Well,” I say, not wanting to burst his bubble, “no one knows the story better than you.”

“I'm thinking I might take a whack at it,” Dennis says. “I've never actually had the balls to try it, but I think it might be fun.”

I don't want to piss all over Dennis's fantasy, but it's not too often a cop suddenly turns in his badge to become a successful writer, Joe Wambaugh notwithstanding.

“I know it sounds pretty naÏve,” Dennis says, reading my mind, “and it's probably a lot harder than it looks, but what the hell. If I really stink up the joint, I can always count on you to tell me, right?”

“I promise if you stink up the joint, I'll tell you,” I say, and Dennis's smile is heartbreakingly sad.

“Y'know, Bobby's death hit me hard,” he says. “I hadn't made a friend in a long time, and suddenly here's this guy in my life I can really talk to about stuff. Most of the guys I know, if we argue, it's about where to go for dinner. But Bobby and I, we had
real
arguments. He gave me the idea I could be something more than a cop. I guess I want to try and honor that idea.”

Suddenly there's a lump in Dennis's throat and he's wiping his eyes and apologizing. “I'm sorry. But I miss him.”

In all honesty, I do too, and I puddle up a little myself.

CHAPTER 34

Over the course of the next three months or so, Dennis calls me once or twice a week, just to check in and report on his progress. With Bobby as his inspiration, he says, he's writing every night after work, and by the time the three months have gone by, he's written an entire screenplay, called
Death by Hollywood,
which, as advertised, is about the murder of Ramon Montevideo. But it's more than just a murder mystery, Dennis says. It's also a tribute to Bobby, who's the central character in the movie.

I can tell you now that when I read the script, I was shocked at how good it was and by how much of it was infused with Bobby's style and sensibility, almost as if his spirit had been watching over Dennis as he wrote. It gave me chills reading it.

That I didn't realize the title page should have read “
Stolen
by Dennis Farentino” instead of “Written by” him is an index, I suppose, of how naÏve and gullible I am. It simply never occurred to me, until later, that Dennis was passing off Bobby's last script as his own. And even when that idea did take hold of me, the thought that Dennis might have actually
murdered
Bobby for his computer was inconceivable. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

One week after I read
Death by Hollywood,
Dennis and I are sitting in Jared Axelrod's office, along with his tight-assed little development executive, Lainie Ginsberg, and he's raving about the script. He says it's one of the best screenplays he's ever read. “It's got everything. Great story, lots of sex, and I love the dark humor,” he says, raising his hands above his head like a referee, palms facing each other. “It's a fucking touchdown.” He says he can see Mel Gibson, or maybe Brad Pitt, as the cop, and Kevin Spacey would be perfect as the writer. “And how about
Mrs.
Brad Pitt for the part of the writer's wife?” And he raises his hands again, shouting, “Touchdown!”

As much as I'm thinking, What an asshole, I'm also thinking, What a payday.

“So, Jared,” I say, looking to close, “what kind of deal are we talking about?”

“Well,” he says, fucking weasel that he is, “it
is
a first screenplay.”

Dennis gets up from the couch and extends his hand to Axelrod. “Nice talking to you, Jared,” he says. Then, to me, “Come on, Eddie. Let's go.”

“Hold it, hold it, hold it,” Axelrod says. “Let me finish. It's the
best
first screenplay I've ever read, and I'm prepared to offer you a preemptive bid of one million dollars.”

Dennis sits back down.

“We've already turned down a million two-five against five percent of adjusted gross from Paramount,” I lie.

“All right, you've got a gun to my head. I love this script, I want this script,” Axelrod whines. “I'll give you one point five against seven adjusted.”

“I tell you what,” Dennis says before I can respond. “I don't know anything about how your business works, so it's not that I don't trust you guys, but how about you keep the back end, make it two million cash, and she's all yours?”

Axelrod's hands signal touchdown again. “Deal.” And just like that, Dennis has sold his script for two million dollars, and because Hollywood producers are essentially junkies always looking to score, Axelrod says, “As long as we're all here, what else have you got in your back pocket?”

Dennis says, “I've got an idea for a TV series I'm calling
Blind Justice,
about a cop who loses his eyesight in a shootout but stays on the job.”

“I love it,” Axelrod says. “But why not make it a movie first, then do the series?”

“Hey,” Dennis says, grinning. “You're the expert. I'm just the writer.”

And we walk out of Axelrod's office with
two
deals. When we walked in, Dennis was a cop making eighty-five grand a year. When he walked out, he was a multimillionaire.

Puts a different spin on the whole concept of identity theft, doesn't it?

On the way out of Axelrod's office, Dennis stops and tins Sylvia, the hatchet-faced assistant. “Sylvia,” he says, “you're under arrest for felony impersonation of a human being. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Then he gives her his impish grin, and because Dennis has suddenly become a star, the old bitch actually smiles, charmed, and I have to vacate the area quickly so as not to laugh out loud.

CHAPTER 35

That night, Dennis and Vee celebrate Dennis's new-found success with dinner at Spago, in Beverly Hills, after which they go back to her house and make love in the nice cushy king-size bed that used to belong to her and Bobby.

And after, because it's an unusually warm night for this time of year, they take their refilled champagne glasses and walk naked out onto the deck to look at the bright, twinkling lights of Hollywood. Vee says to Dennis that she never knew it could be like this, that Dennis is the first man she could ever see spending the rest of her life with. And Dennis, thinking his own feelings for Vee might be moving in the same direction, is smart enough to keep his mouth shut. He takes her in his arms and kisses her, she kisses him back, and after a couple of minutes of serious tonsil hockey, Vee slides down between Dennis's legs and commences giving him the oral B-plus special, right out there on the deck, with the
HOLLYWOOD
sign in the distance.

CHAPTER 36

Three days later, Dennis and I are sitting in Brian Grazer's office. Brian's a character. Small and wiry, with goofy, gel-spiked hair, it's easy to think he's some kind of hyperkinetic adolescent with the attention span of a six-year-old. But if you did think that, you would be very wrong. In fact, he's an extremely smart, very astute producer who, like Dennis, likes to lull you into a false sense of superiority. And if you fall for it, he'll probably wind up having you for lunch. Trust me when I tell you it's not luck that's put a string of box office hits as long as your arm on his résumé. This is a guy who's done everything from
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
to
A Beautiful Mind.
It's no accident that there's an Oscar in his trophy case.

Anyway, we're sitting in Brian's office in a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise right around the corner from the Grill, because Dennis has an idea he wants to pitch. And because Brian's heard about Axelrod buying the
Death by Hollywood
script, not to mention the deal for
Blind Justice,
he's extremely gracious toward Dennis, who, in his best Columbo way, tells him that he has a nine-year-old nephew named Mikey and the Grinch movie is his all-time favorite, he watches it over and over, so when Dennis had this idea for an animated kids' movie, he immediately thought of Brian.

Now, Brian's like a kid himself, practically levitating out of his chair. “Tell it to me, I want to hear it,” he says, and Dennis can't help grinning at Brian's infectious enthusiasm.

“Okay,” Dennis starts. “The movie's called
First Dog,
and it's about this talking dog named Bob, who becomes president of the United States . . .” And because Brian's already captured by the thought of it, neither he nor Dennis can see the color draining out of my face.

CHAPTER 37

Being a successful agent in Hollywood requires a kind of willful ignorance. I know I've preached the virtues of telling the truth, but by the same token, I don't necessarily believe the truth will set you free. I've seen too many examples in this town of the truth actually getting you killed, figuratively speaking anyway. So in the neutral zone that exists between not lying but not always exactly telling the truth, there lurks the Clinton doctrine as it applies to gays in the military: don't ask, don't tell. In other words, go along to get along.

I guess it was Bobby's murder that dragged me, kicking and screaming as it were, to a place where I realized I couldn't just go along anymore. I had to confront Dennis, knowing full well that we were two voyagers passing in opposite directions. Dennis was in a rudderless ship on a journey away from his moral center, and I was setting sail from the land of situational ethics toward an island of absolute moral conviction. And I was realizing as well, with equal parts fear and excitement, that my boat was also rudderless, its course irrevocably set. Having belatedly blundered into what I hoped was my own true moral nature, it took me about the length of time it takes to get to the parking garage under Brian Grazer's building to realize that if I didn't finally look Dennis in the eye and tell him I knew what he'd done, I wouldn't be able to look
myself
in the eye.

It was a pretty scary decision, particularly if what I was suddenly starting to believe was actually true—namely, that Dennis had gone up to Bobby's house, murdered him, and made it look like a junkie had broken in and stolen a bunch of his shit, including his computer.

The fact that he had Bobby's computer and had stolen his scripts and stories was, as far as I was concerned, indisputable. What was up for grabs, of course, was whether Dennis had killed him for it.

At the car, Dennis looks at me, knowing I'm chewing on something. “You haven't said a word since we left his office. What's going on?”

I take a deep breath and start. I tell him I wasn't sure about the script, that it sounded like Bobby's voice, but I couldn't be sure, and there was certainly no way to prove he'd written it. Plus, I admit, I was seduced, not only by the high price the script fetched but by the sudden heat my new client, the next Joseph Wambaugh, was generating. Then, while the
Blind Justice
idea seemed vaguely familiar, I couldn't really place it. And so it wasn't until he pitched
First Dog
to Brian Grazer that I was positive. “I read that story five years ago,” I tell Dennis. “But it took me a while to put it together. I knew
Blind Justice
was familiar, I just couldn't think why, but that was in the story too, about the writer with the talking dog who gives him a bunch of ideas, and one of them turns into a smash-hit TV series.”

Dennis says that Bobby told him no one had ever read it. I tell him I'm not no one—I'm his agent, for Christ's sake, I read
everything.
And probably because I told him I didn't think it was very commercial, he never showed it to anyone else.

Unfazed, Dennis says that Bobby had let him read the story when they first began talking about collaborating, and both ideas had kind of stuck in his head. “Besides, with Bobby dead, what's the difference?”

“The difference,” I say, “is that any way you slice it, you stole another writer's ideas and represented them as your own, and in all good conscience I feel that it's probably best for all concerned if we part company.”

“I think it's a mistake to fire me,” Dennis says, suddenly cold-eyed, and I imagine the coldness of those blue eyes being the last thing Bobby registered before Dennis shot him with that .22.

“Your secret's safe with me,” I say. “I just can't represent you, knowing what I know.”

“You don't
know
anything,” Dennis says.

“I know you stole his work,” I tell him. “What I don't know is whether you murdered him for it. Not that I could ever prove it anyway—you're too good for that.”

“Then for the sake of argument,” Dennis says, “let's pretend I did what you think I did. If you can't prove it, why not just continue to represent me and make a pile of money?”

“Agents may not be the most ethical people in the world,” I say, “but Bobby wasn't just a client. He was a friend. And if I turn my back on that, I'm no better than you are.”

“So under the circumstances,” Dennis says, “I guess a blow job is out of the question.”

And if I hadn't been so scared, I probably would have laughed . . .