Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

“I’m not a big-city girl,” she said. “I’m from Barstow, California. Where desert teens spend Saturday night dining at the historic Del Taco fast-food joint and getting deflowered at the prehistoric El Rancho Motel. I dreamed of being an entertainer. Danced and sang at all the school assemblies and plays. I was Margaret Osborne then, voted the most talented girl in the senior class.”

She was quiet for a moment, and when they reentered the dining room, she said, “A James Bond vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred. Can’t I tempt you?”

“No, really, Margot, I’m feeling just perfect.” He wondered if “tempt” was meant as a double entendre, hoping it was.

She tasted the martini, nodded in satisfaction, and said, “The problem was, when I came to Hollywood and started looking for an agent and attending cattle calls and auditions, I discovered that every girl here was the most talented girl in her school. Changing my name from Margaret to Margot didn’t glam it up much.” She gave a self-deprecating shrug.

“I suspected you were a dancer,” Nate said. “Those legs.”

“Since turning thirty I’ve gotta work harder to keep things in place.” She sipped again, put the martini down, and said, “I wasn’t born to all this. My dad worked for the post office, and it almost broke my parents to put my older sister through college. Lucky for them, I didn’t want that. I wanted to dance, and I decided I was going to give it all I had. And that I did for nearly four years. I did waitressing to buy food and keep my car running. And then I did other things.”

Nate thought he’d heard this story before. Or seen it in just about every movie ever made about showbiz wannabes. He waited while she lowered her amber eyes as if ashamed, and he finally said, “Other things?”

“I became a topless dancer at some of the clubs on the boulevards. It was good money compared to what I’d been surviving on. Sometimes I made five hundred dollars a night on tips alone.”

She looked at him as though awaiting a response, so he said, “A girl’s gotta make a living somehow. This is a tough town.”

“Exactly,” she said. “But I never danced at the totally nude clubs. Those no-liquor joints that do totally nude attract servicemen and other rowdy young guys. I’d never take all my clothes off.”

“I understand,” Nate said, but he was wondering how big a difference a G-string made. He remembered a screen-writing class he’d taken at UCLA. Reductive. This freaking story was reductive.

“And then I got a job at the Leopard Lounge,” Margot said, “and I met Ali Aziz.”

“Your husband,” Nate said.

She nodded and said, “He owned two clubs. I danced at the Leopard Lounge for more than two years and made quite a lot of money, by my standards. I moved into a very nice condo, and Ali kept taking me on dinner dates and buying me expensive presents and behaving like a real gentleman. And he kept begging me to move into this house with him, but I refused. And finally he convinced me that he would be a kind and loving husband. Fool that I am, I accepted his proposal and married him, but only when he agreed to a proper marriage with no prenuptial. By the way, have you ever heard of my husband?”

“The name’s familiar,” Nate said. “We have a Nightclub Committee that’s run by our Community Relations Office. I think maybe I’ve seen the name.”

“He makes sure he donates to all of the Hollywood police charities. You may have run into him at police events. He’s chummy with lots of the officers at Hollywood Station.”

“Yeah, I do think I’ve heard of Ali Aziz,” Nate said, wondering how chummy Ali would be with the Jewish cops at Hollywood Station.

“My parents were not thrilled when I told them about Ali, but I took him home to Barstow just before the wedding and they were very impressed by his good manners. He even assured my mother that if we had children, they would be raised Christian.” This time when she paused, she took another sip from the martini and yet again topped off Nate’s wineglass.

“Back then it was peachy, huh?” Nate said, thinking, she was the most exciting woman he’d ever shared a meal with in his entire life, but this sappy story was killing his wood!

“For sure,” Margot said. “The honeymoon was in Tuscany and he bought me a little Porsche for a wedding present, and of course I never had to set foot in the Leopard Lounge again, except to help him with the books. The last real work I ever did in that place was when I talked him into a major refurbishing and he let me do the design.”

Nate sneaked a look at his watch. It was 10:30 and they weren’t even close to getting naked. And all the goddamn wine was making him gassy. Pretty soon he’d be farting!

He said, “So after a few years of marriage, what? He was no longer a gentleman?”

“He’s a fucking pig!” Margot said it so viciously it startled him.

“What happened?”

“Women. Cocaine. Even gambling. And the scary thing, he kept talking about leaving Hollywood. Leaving America. Going back to the Middle East with Nicky and me.”

“Nice,” Nate said. “I can just see you in a burka, or one of those other beekeeper outfits.”

“He said I’d like Saudi Arabia. Claimed he had connections there, even though he’s not a Saudi. I said I’d die first, and that he wasn’t taking my son anywhere.”

“And that started the fireworks?”

“Definitely,” she said. “And it resulted in my filing for divorce and starting a really big-time dispute over the division of property. But that’s another story.”

Nate finally decided that even if all this was gospel, it was hard to feel sympathy for rich people. He offered an official police response, saying, “Has he hurt you or threatened you in any way?”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you tonight,” she said. “He has threatened me, but in very subtle ways.”

“Like how?”

“Like when he comes to pick up Nicky for his visit. He’ll say things like, ‘Enjoy this while you can.’ Or, ‘A boy needs his father, not a mother like you.’ Then he makes signs.”

“What signs?”

“He points a finger at me like a gun. Once he mouthed the word bang. Things like that.”

“That’s not much in the way of a threat. And it’d be his word against yours.”

“That’s what the other officer said.”

“What other officer?”

“I’ve talked to another of your officers about it. An officer I met last year with my husband at one of the Tip-A-Cop fund-raisers. I can’t remember his name. I told him what was going on, but he said that I should talk it over with my divorce lawyer. He said that so far, my husband hadn’t done anything criminal that I could prove.”

“Took the words right outta my mouth,” Nate said.

“But last week when Ali brought Nicky home, he said something that made my blood run cold.”

Nate remembered his screen-writing professor saying that no screenplay should ever contain those last three words. “Yeah?” he said, trying to muster enthusiasm.

“He said if I didn’t agree to sign certain business documents, something very bad would happen.”

“What documents?”

“Documents pertaining to the businesses, the stock portfolio, and properties we own.”

In a minor way Nate had an understanding of divorce law, and at last something piqued his interest. He said, “You mean you’re an owner right along with him of everything?”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

And now Hollywood Nate started getting a woody once again. This Barstow babe must be a world-class piece of ass to have rigged a deal like this with a dude from the Middle East! Nate said, “He wants you to sign off on certain things?”