Dog Beach Page 4
That’s when he saw the SUV.
Twice it had driven by, like a shark slowly cruising the shallows. It made a third round now, a bit more slowly. For Louie Mo, assessing danger was something of a handicap. He never knew quite how to describe it, but he once told Dutch that the brain chemicals normally triggered by fear had been so depleted by his years of high-falls and full-burns that he now had to draw on reason more than instinct. When he saw the gun in that man’s hand back in the Palm Springs hotel room, it spiked no adrenaline. Yet, random and benign happenings could chill him to the core, make him break out in a sweat, like that talking E-Trade baby on the TV commercials. So now, watching that SUV circle the boardinghouse in an ever-tightening spiral, Louie drew on hard logic: Fire in the hole. Be alert.
He wasn’t even back to the porch when he heard gravel crunching under fat, heavy tires. Two black men were in the backseat of the SUV. Riding passenger: a young white guy with a shaved head and an earring. But it was the man behind the wheel who looked dreadfully familiar.
The former football pro from Marina del Rey was wearing a silver-and-black Polo shirt, his meaty, tattooed arm hooked over the open window. The tiny wire-rimmed glasses he wore for driving offset the ferocious air. Until he took them off. He was out of the car now, gigantic. So were the two black guys, while the young whitey in the passenger seat was left behind to watch the vehicle.
Louie stood up, slowly. The steroid giant was walking straight toward the circle of Chinese as the little girl wobbled away on her repaired bike. Louie turned on his sneakers and walked casually, but quickly, back to the house.
“Hey,” he heard the big man say. “I want to talk to you.”
Louie entered the house, closed the door. Took a breath. Then he jogged. He jogged the length of the hall, his gaze fixed on the back door, the light outside. In seconds though, one of the black men was standing there, crouching to look in. Quickly, he let himself inside and said, “Yo, Grasshopper.”
Louie turned abruptly, entered a bedroom full of girls. They looked up, silently, but when he stepped up onto a bed and opened a window, they screamed. He laid a finger alongside his nose, urging silence. They screamed louder, huddling in a corner. Crazy fucking Chinese girls, he groaned to himself.
Outside, he landed on his feet, like a cat on gravel. Then he winced. The hip, his elbow, the aging titanium screws in his lower back—all protested in one cruel spasm. But he had to run anyway, out toward the train tracks and the cluttered industrial area behind.
In the drainage alley, he saw him. The big laowai. The two colored guys had gone around one side, Banazak the other. He had a direct path to Louie Mo. Smiling, his face flushed, he started toward him. Louie’s adrenaline kicked in:
In the narrow alley between two crappy houses, he can run between, split the gap. Instead, he runs straight ahead for the opposite wall. Cheating gravity, he runs up the cement and siding. Not all the way up for a reverse somersault, just a few feet up so he can launch sideways, fire a hook kick. It hits Banazak in the ribs, throws him off course and into a stumble.
Somehow the big laowai corrects the stumble, uses his momentum to twist and grab Louie, slam him against the cement. Louie tries to spin; Banazak comes in low and inside, pummels him like a hanging side of beef. Louie doesn’t know what the hell is happening; feels like he’s lost a step. But on the fourth punch, Louie traps it. The hard, powerful slap downward—pak sao in Cantonese—not only clears the big man’s fist, it jerks him forward and low. Louie hits with a vertical fist. Then another. Then a half dozen, all in a blistering chain of vertical blows. An average man would crumple. Not Banazak. He rocks back two wounded steps, covers up like a boxer. “I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU,” the steroid giant barks as Louie runs for daylight then side-shuttles onto a fire escape, goes upward. All the while, his backpack miraculously rides one shoulder.
Over the rooftops, Louie Mo runs. He can see the tracks and wishes that, like in a movie, the train would come at the perfect time and he could jump onto it, ride away. But there’s no train, no first AD directing him in an ear speaker, just a brutal jump down to dead tracks and scattered paper trash. How the black guys got onto the roof so fast, he can’t figure. But when he sees how they move, he can tell: athletes. “GRASSHOPPER BOY,” one of them yells. Louie has no idea why he keeps calling him “grasshopper” but he assumes, in the rush of the moment, that it’s a black guy thing.
They come at him, one on each side. One is in a tae kwon do stance and appears capable. Very capable. The other has a gun coming out of a waistband, and he’s yelling like a cop for Louie to get on the ground. Banazak is on the roof now, breathing like a winded, wounded water buffalo. He and Louie lock eyes. The big laowai catches his breath, says something about Jesus.
He doesn’t charge, he rampages. Yelling. Blitzing. His eyes almost roll back in his head. Louie cyclones, back fists the brother with the gun, drops low and shin-rakes the second one. From his position on the ground, he rolls. It’s the roll that a stuntman hopes will put out a full-burn if the fire extinguishers aren’t doing the job. He rolls right off the roof. This time, he doesn’t land like a cat. . . .
• • •
Flat on his back, he felt the wind huff from him, felt an odd tremor, wondered if he was having a kidney spasm. Not so. As Louie’s bad luck would have it, a train was coming. He got up, started running, like a limping deer, west down the track. A horn-siren blared behind him, getting closer; air brakes were whooshing and screaming. Louie jumped onto the chain-link fence that kept kids off the tracks, crawled upward, clinging, letting the train thunder past. He could feel its power, its hydraulic wind ripping at his baggy jeans. His left hand was growing numb, falling asleep from clinging so hard to the fence.
From the rooftop, Banazak watched, gathering his breath. When the train passed, Louie Mo was gone. Not a sign of him.
“Who is that motherfucker?” the brother with the gun said, laughing. If he didn’t laugh, he’d feel bested.
“Dead,” Banazak said, hands on his knees, sucking air. “A dead motherfucker.”
8
THE DOGS OF ENTROPY
Troy was doing his barefoot run up the beach, earbuds in, trying to outpace his worries. It wasn’t working. He’d been half-joking when he told his boys that they were hostages at Avi’s beach house, but now the description felt all too apt. Maybe, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he was making a Faustian deal with the B-movie producer, blinded by the allure of a Go pic, a six-figure budget, and sweet digs in Malibu.
He picked up his speed, lengthened his stride. Dude, what were you thinking? he huffed to himself. As always, though, he knew the answer, knew damn well what he’d been thinking: His student heist film had shown great promise and got some national press, but it was still a student film. Slash was going to get real distribution, Avi promised. Probably play for a solid week at the multiplexes, including back home in Fairfield County, Connecticut. He had rationalized the commitment as a stepping-stone toward making bigger and better movies, but he knew in his gut what was really behind it.
Success is the best revenge.
Some guys just fade away from the hometown that has mocked their ambitions; others fold and become a part of the local walking dead, join the naysayers in crushing those who dare to dream. Troy wanted to show them—the relatives, the classmates, the old girlfriends—that they were wrong not to bet on him. Wanted to show them that faith and hard work could move mountains, make movies. But it was all backfiring on him. The movie was a train wreck, his time was running out, and he already used a portion of the budget to make late payments on his Mini-Cooper. Now a displaced Hong Kong stuntman shows up at Dog House and threatens to break his legs?
Could it get any worse? Or, as Troy kept asking the boys, could it get any better? Troy had talked of little else since the strange encounter; “Fucking Louie Mo,” he’d kept ranting, running down the list of G
olden Harvest movies the guy had a hand in. How bizarre was it that he’d walked out into the sun-drenched living room to find the dude standing there, eleven in the morning—and then the guy had put him up against the wall. The Dogs didn’t find it all that strange; Avi’s house drew all kinds.
Durbin had said something else then too. Having come out of the USC screenwriting program, the young writer had something of an unhealthy obsession with the Hero’s Journey structure. “Have you ever considered,” he told Troy, “that this dude who showed up at the house is like some fucked-up version of the Supernatural Aide? Like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Or Gandalf.”
“Maybe,” said T-Rich. “But he could just as easily be the Evil Guardian of the Threshold. He did threaten you with violence.”
Avi must have hired him through his big-money connections, Troy reasoned. The behind-the-scenes engine they didn’t teach you about in film school. Life was unscripted on Dog Beach, bro; anything could happen. That’s what Troy told Durbin then and it’s what he was thinking now as he jogged past celebrity homes. He slowed down to eye a certain duplex and take a beat to catch his breath. It was the beach house where Timothy Treadwell had once been a boarder and so it held a strange fascination for Troy. Zoe had told him that the Treadwell kid used to sit on the porch and wait endlessly for dolphins. Whenever a school would appear, the kid would fly off the porch and begin making high-frequency wails, running in the surf with his left elbow folded behind his back, emulating a fin. Sometimes Dolphin Boy would get overwhelmed and swim out to them, assigning them names. The point of the anecdote, said Zoe, was that Dolphin Boy decided to move to Alaska and explore the same bonding relationship with grizzlies. He gave them names like Quincy and Emmy and Mr. Chocolate. One autumn day they ate him. That was how Dolphin Boy became Grizzly Man, the subject of the Werner Herzog film.
Life was unscripted. Alaska was not Safari World and Hollywood was not Disneyland; there were no rails to keep you from falling into the dark if you made a pact with the wrong guy for the wrong reasons. Troy had to get out of this mess somehow, or everything he had ever dreamed of would go out to sea with the sewage.
Just past Matthew McConaughey’s place, he turned around, his shoulders to the sun. He began jogging the two miles back to Dog House, wondering if it was too early for a beer.
• • •
On a scale of one to ten, the getaway from the Palm Springs Marriott had ranked a soft five. This Dutch Dupree judged by how long the odd euphoria lasted, how long she’d completely forgotten what depression felt like, how long she’d gone without feeling the need for another jolt of pure cortisol.
She was parked at the curb of the Laurel Canyon house where she’d been staying with Crazy Jen, a makeup artist she met on a movie set in Santa Fe. The neighborhood was quiet during the day and she sat there for a time, reflecting on the past forty-eight hours, her latest gag with Louie Mo. Maybe it ranked a six; she had even slept well last night, parked in the Marina harbor.
“Hey, girl,” Jen said when Dutch came through the door. She said it without looking away from an up-do she was sculpting on some dark chick, the two laughing in silly delirium as they drank margaritas. Los Lonely Boys was blasting from an iPod deck.
Dutch stared at the drinks for a moment too long; it almost made her want one. So she made it a point to glide quickly past her roommate and receive an intercepting smooch from Charles, the petite Romanian hair stylist who lived there on and off. Dancing overtly to the Texican rock, Charles spun off the kiss, did a Zumba move, and said, “How’s my little speed racer?”
Oh, he added, as she made her way to the shower, he had a lead on a job for her, a legal gig on an independent film shooting up in Fresno. They needed a stuntgirl who could ride a Ninja sport bike up a flight of stairs.
“Regrettably, I pass,” Dutch said, getting out of her hoody and jeans, bathroom door open. It didn’t matter that Charles was standing there, watching her undress. She wasn’t his type.
“What do you mean you pass? Nobody passes, not in this economy.”
“Not available,” she said.
“It’s nonunion. They won’t run a background check. I already asked.” Then Charles crimped his nose: “My God, you smell like an ashtray; let me toss these in with my wash.”
Charles gathered up her clothes, then averted his eyes as he held out a hand, as regal as a stage prince, for her panties. She smiled and hesitated. “If I knew you were going to undress me, I wouldn’t have worn the beige ones.”
She stripped them off boyishly, and he kept his eyes politely away. She stole her jeans back for a quick moment, removed a pill vial and a scrunched twenty from a pocket. “You can’t keep doing this, Dutch,” said Charles.
“Doing what?”
“Driving a getaway car. For you-know-who. Your Korean hit man or whatever.”
“He’s Chinese.”
“I don’t care if he’s the King of Siam, you’re going to get yourself arrested. Or worse.”
Dutch laughed, if such a cynical hiss could be called laughter. How she’d come to board at the Laurel Canyon house was common in the circus-troupe world of film crews. She had been working on a Western when she bruised her thigh purple and Jen the makeup artist covered it in concealer so Dutch could wear her Daisy Duke cutoffs to the wrap party at the Pink Adobe. Now Jen rented her the back room of her rented L.A. house, a crash pad for the hair-and-makeup fraternity. A strange lair for a stuntgirl but a room just the same.
As she surrendered her beige undies to Charles, he turned and looked at her full-on over the rims of his red designer glasses. She was naked but for her ankle bracelet, and too tired to care. Charles clucked his tongue.
“Why don’t you let Jen do something about those bags under your eyes? You look like fucking Al Pacino.”
Dutch lightly ushered Charles out, closed the door.
“At least ice them,” he sang from the other side of the door as she turned on the warm water and stepped in to rinse away four days on the dusty road. The economy had nothing to do with it. Riding a sport bike up a flight of stairs just didn’t cut it anymore. If adrenaline was alcohol, that kind of stunt was soda pop.
Her long hair, almost dreadlocked by a few days of wind and neglect, wasn’t even wet in the shower when her cell rang. Louie Mo. She reached from the stall, grabbed it, squeezed into a dry corner.
“What’s up?”
He had to say it over the roaring echo of some freeway somewhere. “Big trouble.”
• • •
HOW TO MAKE MOVIE BLOOD
* * *
Gather the following ingredients:
• 1 level tsp. zinc oxide
(any laboratory supply)
• 1 oz. red food color
• 1 oz. yellow food color
• 1 quart white corn syrup
• 1 oz. Kodak Photo-Flo *Poisonous*
(any photo supply store)
• 1 oz. water
1. Put the zinc oxide and Photo-Flo into a bowl, add an equal amount of water and paste. Add the food coloring and stir.
2. Add a little of the corn syrup and mix well. Pour into a container that holds more than the final amount (you have to shake it up before use, as it may separate), add the remaining corn syrup and mix well. Then add the amount of water specified and mix again. This will give your blood a normal consistency. Keep this and all corn syrup recipes refrigerated when not in use (or it will grow mold) and mix well before use.
WARNING: Due to one of the ingredients being poisonous, this blood recipe should not be used if it is likely to be swallowed during or after application—that is, of course, unless you want a real death in your movie.
3. Malone’s Exploding Squib Technique:
Pour mixture into ultra-thin latex condoms, tie off condoms, and drape each over weight-lifting belt. Hide belt under clothing. KA-BOOM. Actor slaps at torso
, blood explodes.
This Malone was experimenting with at the kitchen table—his own twist on makeup legend Dick Smith’s recipe—when the door buzzer sounded. He had been smoking weed while making his mixture, so he sat paranoid for a moment before cleaning his hands and making his barefoot way down the hall.
“Yeah, I got it,” he said when Troy called out from his bedroom.
Whoever was ringing the beach house’s doorbell was not announcing themselves, but Malone, high on weed, just kept asking, “Who is it?” After a fourth ring, the ginger scratched his temple, shrugged, and walked away. The voice came over the speaker then, hoarse tones of broken English:
“Me. Louie Mo.”
Troy came flying around the corner in his running shorts, wet towel in his grip. Within seconds, Louie Mo was inside, this time accompanied by a dangerous-looking girl with a tiny nose ruby and a tattoo on her shoulder that read “Radar Love.” On her left wrist, three Indian horse-hair bracelets were loosely ringed.
“Driver,” Louie said, gesturing toward the girl.
“You must be Troy,” she said.
“Come on in.” Troy’s voice was thin with excitement, still a little winded from his jog. Durbin met them too. Then T-Rich and Malone, hiking up his baggy plaids. “Mahalo,” he said.
“Can I get you guys a beer?” Troy said.
Moments later they were sitting around the living room, drinking chilled Coronas, all but Dutch, who took ice water instead and played the role of interpreter. She told Troy that Louie had indeed been sent to the house earlier at the request of an unnamed employer; he’d been doing a little moonlighting as a bill collector. He wanted Troy to know, she explained, that it was nothing personal, that he considered that uncomfortable piece of business behind them now.
“So who sent him? Avi?”
Louie shrugged, and Dutch said, “Never heard that name. Louie’s jobs are all outsourced through one guy, and it doesn’t matter now.”