Ken Bruen - Pimp

Joe wrote the name in a pad, muttering, “Sounds like a porno name.” Then, “Any more names for us?”

“Bill Moss,” Becker said.

“Who’s Bill Moss?” Joe asked.

“He’s writing the pilot,” Darren said. “He’s been researching Fisher. He’d know more than me.”

“Where do we find this gentleman?” Gaylin asked.

Becker gave her the once over, said, “She speaks. I thought you were here to take notes.”

Gaylin smiled and it transformed her, made her looked like Halle Berry, and how great is that?

She asked in a demure tone, “You’re an industry guy, ever hear of the Hollywood hop?”

Becker was into it now, going with the mellow vibe, asked, “That a book I should option?”

She let her weight shift to her right then stomped ferociously on Becker’s instep. He roared and hobbled over to his desk.

She said, “Get Moss’s address and then hop back here with it.”

Back in their car, Gaylin pulled out into traffic, a small smile playing on her lips, said, “Like the kids go, let’s bounce.”

Joe was in love, and almost didn’t hear her when she said, “Tell me about this Fisher. I heard some shit but surely no one guy could have caused all the havoc they claim.”

Where to begin? Joe said, “This guy is like Keyser, the fuck’s his name? Whoozie? You know, that movie. He’s like a ghost, but trails mayhem and homicide like bad news.”

Gaylin, focusing on her driving, asked, “Keyser?”

“You know, Kevin What The Fuck’s His Name played him.”

“Costner?”

“You don’t see a lot of movies, do you?”

She threw him a look, said, “I work with these fuckheads every day, clean up after them, you think I want to pay twelve bucks for anything they produce?”

Joe smiled. She had a pair, this one.

He said, “Reason Fisher is still in the game, still free, is people underestimate the schmuck, they see this fat jerkoff, in fucking love with himself, and they let down their guard. The tighter, more hopeless the jam, the more bodies he leaves behind.”

Gaylin digested this, then went, “Guess we’ll have to go the Hollywood route.”

Did she mean traffic?

She added, “Shoot the fuck in slow motion.”

Joe didn’t for a moment think she was kidding.

She dropped Joe at his rental, said she had to get back to pick up her kid from daycare.

Joe, feeling the hit in his gut, asked, “You’re married?”

“I look that dumb?” she said. “Divorced twice.”

Back in business, Joe said, “Join the club.”

Was he imagining it or did he and Gaylin have a connection? He had the light, weightless feeling of falling in love; who the fuck cared that this always led to disaster?

He went to see Bill Moss.

In his bungalow apartment in Venice Beach Bill Moss was antsy, big-time. He’d just taken a call from some New York cop who was coming by to “ask some questions about Bust .” Was that just bullshit and was he really coming to talk about Mo? Yeah, probably.

Bill looked at his laptop, Final Draft open to the Bust screenplay, and man, it had been flying. The words tumbling over each other in an attempt to outshine anything he’d ever written before. He was into the Drano scene, but wasn’t using the dialogue Segal and Stiegsson had written. They were fucking novelists; what did they know about screenwriting? Even Faulkner and Goodis had gotten the shit kicked out of them out here.

Bill stopped typing for a moment, nearly laughed, saw that image of the Drano melting through the skin of the dead psycho and thought, Fuckit, I’m the real deal, the big cheese, a Matt Weiner of word alchemy . Hot on this thought was lurking paranoia. The lingering stench of having offed Mo was like a constant whisper of, You are so fucked, Jose .

He crushed some speed ampoules, put them in a blender with pineapple, Red Bull, and sheep urine. The sheep urine was a tip from Gwynne, before she consciously uncoupled from the Coldplay dude.

Going Taxi Driver , he muttered, “Every muscle must be tight,” as he put the concoction on warp speed and watched as the whole mix whirled.

He was dressed in khaki combat shorts and a black T with the words LET IT BE... LET THAT SUCKER SLIDE across the chest. His feet were pushed into Huaraches, loose Mexican sandals he’d bought in Cancun while working on his last script. It had been called Fast Track , and was, let’s face it, a total ripoff of the ill-fated HBO series Luck , based on a self-published book by some has-been New York City crime writer. The writer had been e-mailing Bill lately, and contacting him on Twitter and Facebook, trying to arrange a time “to hang out” during his next trip to L.A., but Bill had been blowing the jackass off. Yeah, like he needed to hang out with some hanger-on novelist, when he was finally making it onto the Hollywood A-list, getting rez’s at the best restaurants and partying with Nic Pizzolatto.

As Bill gulped the foul beverage, he remembered hanging on the set of Luck , for research — writer code for stealing ideas — and shooting the shit with Dusty, that’s Dustin Hoffman to the plebs, and what a fucking shame it was that Luck had been cancelled just because, get this, a few freaking horses got hurt. Boo hoo, Jesus Christ, did they ever count the death toll after a John Wayne western?

In the large right pocket of the awful shorts, Bill had a long lethal blade with a gold handle and a precious stone embedded in the handle. A gift from a nephew of Ortega’s. Oh yeah, Bill knew the players. As in speed dial to the maddest and most juiced honchos, guys Bruce Willis would piss himself to know. The drink shot into his bloodstream, giving his heart a wallop, making him feel like the Irish psycho in the Bust screenplay.

The doorbell shrilled, and fuming, wired, murderous, he let the cop in.

“I’m Miscali,” the prick hard-assed, then pushed by him, no like, hello, how you doing , and insult to fucking injury, walked over to the Bust screenplay and, Bill couldn’t fucking believe it, began to read.

Bill took a moment of sheer incredulity to assess the guy. Where the fuck did he find that shitty suit? If he’d worn that suit in the eighties it would’ve been ten years out of style. Was there an auction of the old wardrobe from Barney Miller ? In L.A., where pretty much anything went fashion-wise — see Brad Pitt — this suit screamed, Shoot me now.

Miscali sneered, “So you’re glorifying that psycho Fisher, the man responsible for the death of my partner, one of New York’s finest ever?”

The drink took Bill for a momentary mellow stroll along his pride in the work. He said, “I’m working on the part where a cop gets iced and dumped in a lot in Harlem — that your partner?”

And Miscali did the worst thing of all, he sneered. You could see the contempt dripping off him. He snarled, “Exploitive sensationalist bullshit. You get off on killing? Are you writing a movie or the script for a snuff film?”

The insult pushed Bill to instant aggression. He fingered the blade, went, “What’re you implying?”

“You get ideas in your head, when you’re writing this shit, maybe you get the urge to act some of them out.”

“That’s the way you think it works?” Bill asked. “All writers are killers?”

“No,” Miscali said, “only some of them.”

Bill lost it, went, “Cut the shit, I never even knew Mo!”

Jesus, he thought, did I really say that?