L.A. Success (11 page)

Some guy answered it. He was
speaking Mexican, so I didn't understand a thing.

“Is Dennis there? Dennis?” I asked.

“Just a minute,” said the guy. He
didn't have an accent or anything when he spoke English.

I could hear Dennis walking over to
the phone. When I heard the noise of the receiver changing hands, I also heard
the first guy ask who I was.

“It's my lover. What do you care?”
answered Dennis. “Just keep packing your suitcase.”

I guessed the first guy was Ignacio,
Dennis' lover.

“I'll be back before you know it.
There's no reason to get like this,” said Ignacio.

“Hello Lonnie. Great to hear from
you,” Dennis said, talking into the phone but loud enough to be sure Ignacio
heard him.

“Hi Dennis. I just wanted to let you
know that your house and your dog are doing fine.”

“That's great,” he said. “Manolete's
not giving you any problems?”

“No. He's been great. Hey listen—I
was talking to my buddy the other day, and we were wondering how much a
big-shot private investigator made for a job.”

“Well, it depends on the difficulty
of the job and the expenses incurred, but anywhere between 300 and 500 a day.”

“A day?”

“Yes, unless I decided the job
wouldn't take long enough to be worth my time. Then I charged a flat fee.”

I couldn't believe how stupid I had
been all my life, thinking that working had to be difficult. People like Dennis
knew how to go at it. And I was sure that he could charge that much because he
worked on the west side. If he'd been a private eye in the east, he'd have
worked for minimum wage. Why did anyone want to live out east?

“Thanks Dennis. So, are you having
fun out there?”

“
I
was until Mr. Businessman decided to cut his visit short,” he said loudly so
Ignacio could hear. “He hasn't even been here for one day. He had enough time
to unpack his suitcase, and then the office called.”

“I'll be back in three weeks!” said
Ignacio in the background.

“No, seriously, Ibiza is amazing. I
love it,” he said.

“Cool. I'll call you again in a week
or two to let you know how we're doing here.”

“Thanks Lonnie. Glad I can count on
you.” We said goodbye and hung up.

I realized that my strategy had been
all wrong. I was trying to get done with this Gertie case as fast as possible,
but what I was really doing was cheating myself out of a lot of that E.T.
money. Spieldburt probably knew that private investigators got paid by the
day—who knows how many times he'd hired one before—so I couldn't ask him for a
ton of money for something I had done in under a week. I decided that if I got
the goods on Gertie this weekend, I'd keep it from Spieldburt until a few more
weeks had passed. I'd string him on with a little more info every week, and
that way when I finally gave him the pictures of Gertie rubbing those smoky
whiskers of hers all over some dude, he'd be so exhausted and angry that he
wouldn't even notice my enormous fee.

29

That morning I had my dad walk the
big poodle while I hit the store and bought some more supplies, mainly more
clothes for him and chocolate for sculpting. So far, he hadn't gotten too bored
with this arrangement.

I needed to find out how to get in
touch with Spieldburt. I figured he'd want an update, and since I was about to begin
the next phase of my plan, this would be a good time to sum up everything I'd
done so far. He had told me that he didn't want to be contacted because he
didn't want anyone to be able to put us together, but I was feeling pretty
sneaky, so I wasn't worried about it.

I knew I could drive around
Hollywood and pick up a star map from someone, but even if Spieldburt did have
a house in L.A., his old lady would be stalking around there. I needed to find
him at work, where I could try to blend in long enough to get close to him.
Lucky for me I now had contacts in the movie business.

That afternoon the big poodle and I
took the Charger to my Starbuck's stakeout place. I read over my notes for
tomorrow's open house so my writer buddies would think I was working, but as
soon as I thought I'd put in enough time, I went after what I needed to know.

When USC-Shirt Jake got up to grab
another coffee, I followed him and got behind him in line.

“Hey Jake,” I said, "don't tell
this to anyone, but I got a sweet idea that I'm working on. The thing is, I
don't want to get too far in before I get permission to run with it. It uses
someone else's characters, but I'm sure the guy will like it. It's completely
in the spirit of the original movie.”

“Oh yeah? Getting permission to
write a sequel for someone is a real long shot, to be honest.”

“I know, but this is the shit.”

“What is it, if you don't mind me
asking?”

“Well, you ever see that
extra-terrestrial movie, with the crazy glowing finger?” He looked at me like
it was a stupid question.

“Um yeah,” he said with a
valley-girl accent.

“Here's the deal. Every good movie
ends with people doing it. That movie didn't show us the doing, but you know it
happened. Are we really supposed to believe that that little green dude just
got in the ship at the end and that was the end of it? Come on! His friends
forgot about him, left him on a strange planet, and then didn’t even realize he
was missing until he called them. There's going to be a lot of guilt there. So
my movie starts with the little dude getting it on with all the guilty alien
chicks on the ship. But what none of them realizes is that he's spreading a
human virus around to everyone. Now, he's got immunity to this because he's
eaten so much human food, but everyone else is going to croak wicked fast. That
leaves our little guy with no one to do, so he gets all enraged, comes back to
Earth and goes futuristic all over us. He captures a whole harem of beautiful
chicks that he can't actually do because he doesn't have the right equipment,
and that just makes him even angrier and crazier.”

“You should definitely look into
getting permission for that before you spend any time on it,” Jake said.

“Where do I go for that?” He told me
Spieldburt had his own studio up in Glendale. As soon as I got a coffee, I
grabbed my stuff and took off in the Charger.

30

I drove downtown and then cut up
north past Dodger stadium. It was really hot out there and the pollution was a
lot worse than it was near the ocean. It got so bad that all I could think about
was the tail pipe of the car in front of me and how I was breathing all that
in. I started feeling better when I pulled off the highway.

The studio didn't have any public
parking, so I found a place a few blocks away near a Starbucks. When I got to the
front gate, I couldn't see any ticket prices to tour the place. I asked a
security guy what was up, and he said they didn't do tours because they didn't
have sound stages or lots there, just animation studios and offices. He
recommended Paramount on Melrose.

“What if I need to talk to someone
in this place?” I asked. He looked at me suspiciously.

“Does anyone in this place need to
talk to you? Because if they do, your name will be on my list. Should I
check?"

“You can check next time I come
here, smart guy,” I said and started walking back to the car. Maybe I was going
to have to wait for Spieldburt to contact me after all.

I couldn't bear getting back on the
highway so soon, especially now that it was closer to rush hour. If I left
immediately, I'd just spend an extra hour blocked in traffic sucking on
someone's tail pipe, so I wouldn't get home any faster than if I sat around at
the coffee place for another hour and then left.

The Starbucks was swarming with
people. I got in line and within a few minutes there were so many people that
the line behind me was all the way out the door. As I stood there, I was
thinking about how I was going to order without Max, my usual coffee guy. I
couldn't remember exactly what he had made for me, and if I told this new guy
to make me a P.I. coffee, I'd be pissed off when it didn't taste the same. I
figured I'd change and ask him for something new.

The guy at the register's badge said
his name was Daniel and that he was the manager. He looked really
straight-laced. Everything about him said he made a conscious effort to make
everyone think he was clean and organized. His hair was clipped short, his
clothes were wrinkle free, and his smile came and went with every opening and
closing of the cash register.

“Hey,” I said when he was ready.

“Hello good sir. I hope you're
having a fine day. What can I do you for?” he said so fast that I had to let it
replay in my head before I could register everything.

“Um...here's the thing. My normal
guy at the other place always makes me stuff—”

“Well sir, we have all the same
excellent drinks you've come to love at any of our nation-wide chains. Would
you like to step aside a moment and consult the menu?” he asked and directed
his gaze at the next customer.

“No,” I said, scooting in front of his
glance. “Here's what I'd like. You know that guy who works down the street—that
E.T. director guy?”

“I always liked Jaws myself.”

“He did that, too? Damn...Well, if
you were going to make a coffee for that guy—and I mean for his E.T. side—what
would you make him?”

“Sir, there's a long line here. I'd
like to help you, but you're going to have to tell me what you want,” he said
nervously. This whole creative aspect to coffee making was overloading his
dollars-and-sense brain.

“Just give me a Spieldburt, minus
the razor-sharp teeth and plus some freakishly long alien neck.”

He took a small cup and turned
toward all the coffee machines. He put the cup under one dispenser and then
moved it to another. He was about to pour the coffee when he snatched the cup back
up. He looked back over at me and the line of now-hostile customers, and then
up at the menu. He nodded and shook his head as he tried to find the right one.
Then he stepped back over to me and leaned over close.

“I really, really don't know what
you want. But...” he stopped speaking and his eyes lit up as he caught sight of
something behind me. “But that guy back there, he's one of the director's
assistants.” He pointed discretely at a wormy-looking, dark-haired, pencil-thin
kid who was texting away on his phone. “He gets coffee for him all the time.
Just wait here and see what he orders.”

I stepped aside and got dirty looks
from the next four or five customers as they came up to order. I took a closer
look at the wormy kid while waiting for him to make it up to the counter. He
was one of those guys who always have a five-o'clock shadow, but on him it
didn't look tough because he was so scrawny. He also had a concave chest that
made you think he had been stepped on by a horse.

He made it to the register and then
ordered without waiting for Daniel the manager to be ready.

“Two skim vanilla lattes and a
chai,” he said. His voice was whiny and pompous, like some new-England egghead.

“Will
you
be drinking the
chai, sir?” Daniel asked and looked over to see if I was paying attention.

“Yes. And this is important
because...?” asked the kid.

“I'm just trying to memorize our
regular customers' favorite drinks.”

Daniel poured the coffee and gave it
to the assistant, who paid and headed out. I was about to follow him when
Daniel held up an extra vanilla latte that he had already poured. I paid for
it, thanked him, and then left.

I needed to talk to this assistant
guy before he got away. I followed him to his car, and while he balanced his
coffee tray and dug around for his keys in the pocket of his cargo shorts, I
came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“You're the guy who works for that
director, right? What's your name again?”

“Grant. Do I know you?” he asked.

“Well, no, but I'm trying to see
your boss—”

“Look,” he said, cutting me off.
“Are you a writer or an actor? It's always one or the other.”

“Uh...a writer.”

“Okay. Yes—I read scripts for
Steven, but the scripts are already picked from among the best available, most
of which come from agents we've worked with for a long time. We don't take
submissions from just anyone.”

“But imagine someone came up to you
with an amazing idea. If you were the person that discovered it and brought it
to your boss, he'd think you were always doing your best to look for talent.
That's the kind of guy he'd want working for him for a long time.”

“And you're the guy who's going to
give me this idea?” he asked, with one of his eyebrows arching up. “I'll tell
you what. I'm headed out of here now—I need to get back before this gets cold.
But some day, if I ever see you here again, I'll let you tell me about your
idea the time it takes me to get through the line. And you'll buy the coffee.”