The Cutting Room (17 page)

I approached the computer, stealthily, as if it, too, were recording my image. Then, with a deep breath, I placed my forefinger onto “Enter” and pressed down.

The screaming figure disappeared. A whirring sound began and slowly built. I spun around, my heartbeat now as loud as my breath.

It was only the printer, commencing its work. One, two, three pages came gently spitting out.

Taking them, I sat on an expensive leather swivel chair, its back designed for peace and comfort. I could hear Stu Drayton’s quiet, “contemplative” voice in each word as I read.

TO MY FRIEND.

If you are the man Ben Williams met in Malibu that night, whom Little Bobby—that’s how the boy is known—brought to see him, then I assume there is something you want back.

If you are that man, you should know that I want something back, too.

Little Bobby has gotten too big for his Tommy Hilfiger jeans. First, after a night of fun with Ben that I arranged, the movie buff stole a film from Ben. Then, after I gave Little Bobby the lecture he deserved and relieved him of his duties, he absconded both with the film . . . and with a priceless valuable of my own. Perhaps he means to go into business for himself.

Given my recent run-in with injustice, I cannot pursue Little Bobby myself. Nor do I trust anyone else to do so. That is why I am offering you this opportunity.

I have it on good authority that Little Bobby is currently hiding at his girlfriend’s house, 35 Cramen St., #4E, in Silverlake. My good authority is his girlfriend, to whom I introduced him, an aspiring painter with a primitive style but a sophisticated sense of self-promotion.

If you are interested, please open the drawer on the desk to your right. The first envelope is for Little Bobby. The second is for you. The third is in case Little Bobby does not accept the first.

Then come see the show again, tomorrow night, after seven.

Please burn these pages with the matches on the same desk, and flush them in the commode in the bathroom to your left.

Close the door behind you when you leave.

Thanks from one art lover to another.

Very slowly, I approached the desk. In the one drawer below the computer, I indeed found three envelopes. As I had expected, the first two contained money. As I had feared, the third contained a gun.

My hands shook a little when I closed the drawer again. It was all very
Mission: Impossible
. After one season, Peter Graves became the star of that show when Steven Hill went off to study Judaism. But TV facts were lesser trivia than movie facts, and so they were less comforting.

I had gone from being a movie star’s private eye to a drug dealer’s paid assassin. Was
The Magnificent Ambersons
worth it? Was anything?

I kept the door of the inner bathroom closed until I saw the charred pages swirl completely down. Then, nervously, I sat and used the bowl myself. Then I passed through the party—which had grown only larger—one more time.

I stared across the chic revelers, posed against the bloody photos, until I found their guest of honor. The envelopes were in a pocket of my jacket. I caught Stu’s eye just long enough to nod.

The first thing I did, of course, was pay a cab to wait.

I did not wonder why Stu Drayton had trusted me with the money, with the weapon, with anything. Ben Williams’s account of me on that night had probably assured him—as the cops had felt back in New York—that I was insignificant and eccentric enough not to betray anyone. And that I was expendable in case I did. They were all right on both counts.

I would have felt a kind of euphoria, an expectation of a long road ending, if I had not seen the other car. The sedan was parked across from my waiting cab, its windows tinted opaquely. It was far too expensive to belong to anyone in the run-down neighborhood. It had an official-looking license plate, which it needed to sit in a
NO STANDING
spot. I did not get close enough to find out why.

Trying to act nonchalant, I walked toward the door of Little Bobby’s girlfriend’s building. On the fourth floor, a curtain pulled slowly open, then fell closed again. Sweat starting to heat my head, I pressed the buzzer at 4E. No voice inquired as to who I was. The bell just rang, and I just pushed the door open.

It was a dingy walk-up, and smells of fast food and sounds of rap music filled the staircase. By the time I reached the fourth floor, I was panting, and no match for anyone who got in my way.

Nobody did. And it only took one knock for 4E to open.

The young blond woman standing there—Little Bobby’s girlfriend, I assumed—did not say a word. She wore a painter’s smock, slightly stained, and smiled once at me, quickly, without pleasure. Then she nodded her head, down the hall, before escaping into another room and closing its door behind her.

I heard faint applause from a TV game show. As I walked slowly down the hall of the large and shabby apartment, I placed my hand upon the pocket where I had stashed the gun. I did not intend to use it—of course, I did not know how—but just feeling it there gave me the illusion of control.

There was no need for such precautions. The door I was seeking was not even shut. I walked a few more steps and saw Little Bobby inside the room, sprawled upon the bed, watching TV. The smell of marijuana was everywhere.

“Hey,” he said.

Little Bobby did not even look surprised to see me. Of course, he had the foggy look of someone stoned. But he also had the air of someone waiting for attention, indeed impatient for it. What had taken me—or anyone—so long to come?

“Have a seat.”

I had never seen his face before; it had been hidden by his hood. He had a flat nose, a full mouth, and eyes so big, they almost bulged. His skin was covered with acne scars. I picked some clothes off a rickety wooden chair and sat down.

“Do you remember me?” I said.

“Sure.” Then he sang, “I’ve grown accustomed to your face,” more like James Mason than Rex Harrison.

“Right. So, uh, Little Bobby—that’s your name, right?”

“Yeah. Like a younger De Niro. Or Duvall. Or Redford. Or he’s just Bob?”

“Bob, yeah.” I paused, hearing the game show shift into a commercial for coffee. “Do you know why I’m here?”

His eyes closed for a minute, then shot back open. “You got something to do with what I took?”

I was surprised by his honesty, though not by his unsurety, given the joint that lay, burned down, in the ashtray beside him.

“The movie is mine,” I said.

“It’s
yours
?”

He seemed shocked. Of course, it wasn’t true. It had belonged to Alan Gilbert, who had stolen it from Erendira’s mother, who had been left it by Orson Welles. But I felt I had as much right to it now as anyone. Certainly more than this boy, who was trying to focus on the commercial now before him.

“Yeah,” I said, defensively. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Stu had me and my crew go to Ben Williams’s place a lot, to drop off stuff and whatnot,” he said, still studying the set. “One night, he said he had these old movies, some of them pretty skanky. So Stu called up three of our girls, too. And all of us watched those movies. And then Ben . . . watched us.”

“Okay.”

“Now I got myself a good girl. She’s an artist.”

I said nothing in response.

“So, what, then you stole Ben’s—”

“Yeah, while he wasn’t looking, I took one of those flicks. Of course, I got no way to even show it!”

He laughed at this, uproariously, and ended up coughing. I laughed, too. The thought of a modern urban man struggling with film cans and reels was pretty funny. So was something else.

“You thought you stole old
porn
?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, looking at me now. “Didn’t I?”

“No.”

“Huh.”

That was the extent of Little Bobby’s response, a little burp of bewildered interest. I did not pursue it with him. I only watched what Little Bobby did now.

He reached down, under the bed he was on. Then he pulled out a familiar object by its nylon handle.

It was the bag that Gus Ziegler had stashed the
Ambersons
in, the one I had fought him for on the subway train, the one he had handed over to Ben Williams. The one Little Bobby had stolen from Ben.

I had to restrain myself from reaching immediately for it. Nearness to the film always made me impulsive, sometimes foolishly brave.

I had to save my strength for the rest of the story. Trying to stay calm, I said, “You’ve stolen something else, too, now, haven’t you, Little Bobby?”

Little Bobby seemed to nod off again. Then I realized only one eye had closed; he was winking.

“That I have,” he said. “That I have.”

He gave one of those
yar-har
laughs, as if imitating an old movie pirate. I thought that, toward the end of his career, Orson Welles had played Long John Silver in an ill-fated foreign-made film of
Treasure Island
.

“And let Stu-pid beg for it.”

Little Bobby clicked to another station, one showing a Burt Reynolds car crash movie from the Seventies. He stared at it for a second, blankly.

“I can’t do Burt,” he said. “Newer ones, they’re not so easy.”

“Won’t you please go on?”

“But I can do the fat guy in
Deliverance
.”

Little Bobby started to hop up off his seat, grabbing his behind, crying out, “Ow! Ow! Ow!” Then he collapsed in more drowsy hilarity.

This was also pretty funny, and I laughed with him again. But then he cut it off.

“Stu wanted me to give the movie back, but I wouldn’t.”

Slowly, I placed one of the moneyed envelopes down on the bed before him. The boy peeked inside, pulled out a few bills, but left the bulk of them.

Then, from Gus’s bag, where he had hidden it, Little Bobby threw a little leather-covered object at me. It landed harshly on my chest, then fell into my lap. It was Stu’s Filofax, the kind that executives keep. With all their names and addresses in them.

“Let that fool fire me,” he said.

“I see.”

“Especially now, when he’s in such trouble. Meester Beeg.” He did Peter Lorre.

“I hear you.”

“You should see who’s in that goddamn thing.”

“I do.” Scrolling through, I caught glimpses of familiar names from movies, music, TV. And politics.

“I should be hearing from some of them any minute. That’ll be
real
money.”

I looked up, not at all sure of what he meant. “You’re telling me that—”

“Why not start the bidding now, baby?” Little Bobby did a demented auctioneer. “Do I hear a million? One million! Do I hear two million? I hear—”

“Oh, no. You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have called the people in Stu’s file.”

“No? How come? It’s like a, like a scam.”

The word—Little Bobby’s whole young, misbegotten plan—had come right from the silver screen. So had the idea that losers ever get revenge on the powerful. I knew because, like Little Bobby, I was a loser, too.

My mind went immediately out the window, down to the street. I thought of the car sitting there, too good for its surroundings, the car with the official plates.

I jumped up and, cautiously, pulled the window shade away. The car was still there. My cab wasn’t.

Then I heard a woman scream.

It got even Little Bobby’s attention. He flinched, suddenly, seeming to be hurt himself, hurt by the assault someone was committing on his beloved new girl, the one who had sold him out to Stu.

Before I could stop him, Little Bobby rose. Then, from beneath the bed, he grabbed another object.

It was not the kind of gun I carried. It was a chunky little machine gun, an automatic weapon.

I covered my face, instinctively. Hoisting the gun unsteadily, he wavered toward the door. At the second he crossed the threshold, before he could even aim, he was collapsed by a foot kicking him, commando-style, in the gut.

The weapon flew from Little Bobby’s hands, skittered back into the room, and slid beneath the bed again, as if on purpose. From my cowering position on the chair, I could see Little Bobby sitting on the floor by the door, and a gloved hand at the base of a black sleeve pulling him to his feet.

“Where is it?” the man in the hall yelled.

His bravado gone, smoke blurring his brain, Little Bobby looked up, helplessly. Then he just pointed inside the room.

The man let Little Bobby go, making sure his head slammed hard into the door behind him. Then he stepped over him and entered.

He was small and dressed in a neat, dark pin-striped suit. His face was covered by a ski mask, a jarring touch to his elegant look. Upon seeing me, he stopped. I pulled back from him, reflexively, allowing maximum access to the bag, which lay on the floor.

Just a foot stride away from me,
The Magnificent Ambersons
was stolen again, this time by a masked man.

He hoisted the bag over his shoulder. Then, glancing only once at me, and doing nothing else, he turned to go.

Little Bobby was now standing in the doorway, blinking madly, trying to focus. He clearly intended to be a threat, but he was weaving from one foot to another. Then Little Bobby made the mistake of taking one step forward.

The man pulled out a tiny gun and placed two silent bullets into the young man’s heart.

Like a marionette packed away for the night, Little Bobby fell immediately to the floor. Gripping the bag, the man walked past him and disappeared into the hall.

From there, I heard a sudden rustle of feet and a female cry of—

“Bastard!”

The man cursed once, then the wall shared by the hall and bedroom shook with the force of a woman slammed against it. I heard something—the body of Little Bobby’s girlfriend—sliding down it, softly, onto the floor. She had regretted her decision too late.

I heard the man’s footsteps going away. He was humming a tune, an irritating ditty of the late 1960s: “One and one, they still make two. One of me needs one of you . . .”

He may have had the bag, he may have even had the
Ambersons
. But he did not have the Filofax. It lay wedged in the belt of my pants, covered by my shirt, pressing cool against my sticky skin. In my fear, I had forgotten to give it back.