Hollywood Tough

Chapter 5

The Snake Charmers had wood floors, a small stage painted black, and a bar on the far side of the room. When Shane came through the door, an African-American dancer with a pockmarked complexion was standing in the center of the stage doing a slow coffee grind, while Tina Turner sang "Tiny Dancer" from the old-fashioned Wurlitzer. An overweight blond stripper sat in a metal chair with a towel tucked under her armpits, watching her colleague with listless, dead-eyed indifference. Morning dancers in nude clubs were on the bottom rung in show business, just one step from unemployment. There was a glass full of quarters on top of the jukebox; each dancer would put several in and pick her songs, then do her set and sit down. Shane looked around, and as his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see a few people sitting in the imitation leather booths that lined the walls. The windows had been boarded up and painted over to keep it dark inside. Shane walked up to the bartender, who had burly shoulders, a shaved head, and was watching a baseball game with the volume turned off on a small black-and-white TV set that was just below the bar top.

"Is Carol White around?" he asked the man, who looked up, immediately making Shane as a cop. The bartender was in his mid-forties and bald. He had green tattoos on his arms the kind you get in prison because the only color available in the joint was the green institutional ink supplied by the government to the penal system. The man didn't answer Shane, but looked back down at the TV.

"How about Crystal Glass?" Shane persisted. "Sometimes she uses that name."

The bartender kept ignoring him, so Shane reached out and slapped the ex-con hard across the side of the head. That brought him up fast.

"What the fuck?!" the man snarled.

"Sorry," Shane said. "You had a big yellow wasp about to land on your bald head there."

"Hey, this ain't the fuckin' police department, and I ain't four-one-one."

"This bar ain't gonna be open much longer either, unless you give me a little respect."

The ex-con glowered at him, flexing his right hand, which had the word fuck tattooed across the first four knuckles. Classy guy.

"Eat me, cop."

Shane reached out and again slapped him hard across the side of his head. It was an open-handed slap that made more noise than damage. Suddenly everybody in the bar stopped talking and was watching. The stripper had stopped in the middle of her grind and stood in the center of the stage, her breasts sagging, hands on chunky hips. Everybody, including Shane, wondered what would happen next.

"Lemme ask you one more time before I go through this place and confiscate everybody's bag of sparkle," Shane said. "Is Crystal Glass in here?"

It was a hard moment for the bartender. He didn't like getting punk-slapped in front of his dancers, but he knew that if Shane wanted, he could make a mess of the morning business. Finally he nodded at the far booth on the right, and Shane smiled and put down a twenty.

"For your trouble."

He turned and walked up to the booth the bartender had indicated. The girl sitting there was hard to evaluate at first. From a distance, in the low light, she seemed quite beautiful. Long blond hair and a luscious body. She was dressed in a low-cut minidress, no jewelry, and some eye glitter. But the closer he got to her, the more this changed. It was as if someone was turning a time-distance dial on his first-impression meter, until as he was sliding into the booth, she looked old and used up. He could see the tangles in her hair, the droopy eyes, and the extra weight that was hanging from under her arms. Grime caked her wrists, while unhealthy skin and this morning's oozing track mark completed the depressing picture. Up close, Carol White was tarnished, dirty, and aging fast. She projected carnal desperation. But the remnants of her looks were still there. Like a child peeking around a curtain, he could still see the residue of teenage beauty.

"You shouldn't fuck with Leo," she said. "Leo shot some people and went to prison for it."

"Yeah? Well, Leo and I have an understanding. He's not gonna shoot me."

"You look like a cop, so probably you ain't here for a forty and five, right?" Talking about the hooker's forty-dollar charge with the five-dollar room fee; most likely for an hour at the Ho-Tell Motel.

"Are you Carol White?" Shane asked, jumping right into it.

"I'm Crystal Glass."

"But before that?"

"Before that?" Her eyes clouded up as if she were trying to remember.

The way she said it was sort of lost and sad, as if she could barely conjure up what her life had been like before she'd started hooking on Adams.

"Carol, I'm not here to bust you, okay? I'm here because a mutual friend of ours, Nicky Marcella, sent me."

A smile suddenly appeared in her sad eyes, then slipped slowly down her face, until it finally managed to turn up the corners of her mouth.

"Nicky the Pooh?" she asked softly.

"The what?"

"Nicky Marcella… That's what everybody in our high school called him, Nicky the Pooh. That was his nickname."

"You went to high school with Nicky Marcella?"

"Teaneck High. Course I didn't finish, 'cause I won Miss Solar Energy and then Miss Teen New Jersey, so I decided to take my shot, y'know?"

"Hollywood."

"Yep. The prettiest girl in Teaneck, ask anybody. Gonna be a motherfuckin' movie star. Didn't quite make it, did I?"

"It's a tough business. Only one out of a million, they say."

Carol leaned forward and now there was actually some light in her tired blue eyes. "You know how close I came?" Shane shook his head. "That close." She held up her thumb and forefinger about a quarter of an inch apart. "That close. I was up for the Zeffirelli film Endless Love. It was a great part… a film about teenage passion, y'know? It was down to just me and Brooke Shields. Y'know…? Brooke Shields?"

"Yeah, good actress." Shane nodded.

"Right… I'd been reading for Mr. Zeffirelli's West Coast casting director. She was this really nice motherly kind of lady who said I had unique qualities. That's what she said, 'unique qualities,' and after three reads, she gave me a callback to read for Franco Zeffirelli. The Franco Zeffirelli, can you believe that?" Shane shook his head in wonder. "I named my cat Franco because of that-I went out and bought him so I'd have somebody to celebrate with. I named him Franco, after Mr. Zeffirelli. I was so excited." He watched this memory play across her face like a faded dream. She seemed anxious to tell the story.

"Okay, so the callback was at Metro-that's MGM." She was leaning farther forward, her breasts bulging out of her low-cut dress.

"Right," Shane said, "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer." "Exactly… and he wanted us to do the original balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, 'cause Endless Love was kind of a rip on that play. So I'd been practicing with my acting teacher all night, and I've got the scene down pat, y' know?"

"Tough scene."

"Tell me about it." Her eyes were almost sparkling now. "You gotta plead and cry, and you gotta not understand what Romeo's saying in that scene. It's all about mis-understanding-lotta different emotional values you gotta play. That's why Franco had us doing it, me an' Brooke. So I show up for the audition and I see Brooke sitting in the other chair and she was so beautiful… so composed… and I sorta started to choke. I thought, how is he ever gonna choose me over her, y'know? But I was there, so I thought what the hell, y'know?"

Shane nodded. "What the hell."

"So I went in first and I started to do the scene, but Mr. Zeffirelli stopped me and said, 'Do it inna da chair.' And I said, 'Mr. Zeffirelli, I need to move around,"cause, see, that's the way I practiced it. But he was walkin' around in front of the lights waving a cigarette, sayin', 'I'm a shoot dis test widda bery tight lens ana donta wanta no movement.' Like that, with his Italian accent and all, and it was sorta hard for me to understand him, and I had to get him to say it twice. I could tell he was getting frustrated, but I asked him again, 'Can't I do the audition standing?' And he sort of started to raise his voice and shout. So I sat down and tried to do it the way he wanted, but I kept seeing my own face off to the side of the room on the monitors, and I looked so different, kinda pasty and white. It just kinda threw me, y' know? I couldn't remember the words and I froze."

She sat there, her face now in a slight scowl, her eyes down on the chipped linoleum tabletop. Then she slowly brought them up, dragged them, as if she were pulling weights. "So that was it. Brooke got the part… but it was close. If I hadn't had to sit in that damn chair, I bet I woulda got it. It was down to her and me that close."

This time she put her two fingers together and smiled at him. Shane felt his heart go out to her. She was so vulnerable, so fragile, that he thought if he said the wrong thing she might break into pieces right before him. She smiled a sad smile of apology. That smile seemed to be saying: "I know I look like a cheap forty-dollar whore, but I used to be the prettiest girl in Teaneck, and I was almost in a Zeffirelli movie… almost. It was that close."

Shane returned her smile, but she didn't see it. She was looking at him, but her mind was somewhere else. He looked down at the twenty or more old track marks on her arms, the open one still glistening from that morning's fix. Heroin-the gift that keeps on giving.

"Listen, Carol, Nicky Marcella sent me here because he has a part for you. He's producing a film and he asked me to look you up. He said the part was very unique, that you have the exact quality needed to pull it off."

"Nicky said that?" She was smiling again. "Nicky the Pooh is such a sweet guy. He almost put me in another movie two years ago. I met his investors. Even went out with one and we partied, 'cause Nicky said the guy was about to put up more pre-production money. But I had to do a reading in front of the director. By then I'd lost my confidence. I froze there, too."

"I think he's planning on just putting you in this. He said you were the one he wanted.".

She was wringing her hands on the table, over and over again in a desperate motion, as if she couldn't get them clean-the Lady Macbeth of the Snake Charmers Bar.

"Wouldn't that be something?" she finally said. "Course, I'd have to get straight…"

"Right. Gotta stop shootin' slat."

"Yeah… yeah. Wouldn't that be somethin'? Me back in the movies…"

Then a shadow fell over them and Shane looked up. A skinny, ebony-black man, wearing a pinstriped suit and carrying an umbrella, was glaring at them. The man had no tie, but wore a pound of jewelry under his silk shirt-a Mr. T starter set.

"You better be pitchin' your ass, or makin' a pass, girl. 'Cause, if he ain't buyin', you be dyin'," rhyming his sentences like a Baptist preacher.

"Sorry, Black… I'm sorry." Carol was grabbing for her purse and starting to scramble out of the booth.

Shane reached out and grabbed her arm. "Hold it. Hold it… Who is this?"

"Ain't talkin' t' you, Chuck," the black man said. "I been watchin'. You ain't nothin' but a tire-kickin' Gumby motherfucker. Jus' sittin', jaw-jackin', takin' up the ho's time."

"Black, please… I'm going back out. No need for trouble."

"You must'a forgot you ain't Black's bottom girl no more," the pimp growled. "So you can't be settin' in d' shade, drinkin' d' Kool-Aid and not gettin' laid. You nothin' but street merchandise now-a three-way girl who don't got no bidness sittin' in the air-conditioning when Black need his stack money. So you best be puttin' it on d' street, woman, or you gonna be tastin' a wastin'."

Shane got out of the booth. This skinny asshole had to be Paul "Black" Mills. When Shane stood, he was two inches taller than the pimp, who seemed to be the only one in the place who hadn't made Shane as a cop yet. If Shane badged him, Carol White would probably end up getting beaten. So instead, he smiled at Mills. "Listen, I assume you're Crystal's business representative. I really am a paying customer. We were just coming to terms."

"Don't be fuckin' wid my shit, Chuck."

"Go back to your house next door," Carol pleaded. "He's a client, Black. We was just talkin' cash. Honest, we was."

Shane reached into his pocket, took out his wallet and handed forty dollars to Mills, thinking this "favor" had already cost him a hundred, but there was no turning back now.

"Forty and five," Shane said. "I'll give the five to the Arab over at the motel."

"This fuckin' bitch don't do 'nuf business." Black was glaring at Carol. "Yo' ass best be movin' on some heavy cruisin', or you gonna get a bruisin'." Then he turned and did some kind of gangsta-limp out of the bar, tap, tap, tapping with the umbrella.

"Thank you," she whispered to Shane. "He would have beat the shit out of me if you'd shown him your badge."

Shane nodded. "Does he sit at home thinking that stuff up?" Shane asked as he wrote Nicky's number on a cocktail napkin, copying it off the business card in his wallet, then slid it across the table.

She looked at it, afraid to even pick it up. "Thanks, but my movie days are over," she said. "Black will beat me like a Texas mule I even think about trying that again."

Then Shane handed her one of his police business cards. "You ever want me to come back down here and run that rhyming asshole off, call."

She got up, grabbed her beaded bag off the vinyl seat of the booth, hesitated, then snatched up the cocktail napkin, put it inside her purse, and snapped it shut. She gave Shane a timid smile, then hurried out the door.

How did the prettiest girl in Teaneck, New Jersey, end up selling her body to strangers on Adams Avenue? Some things, while on the one hand were easy to understand, at the same time defied all human logic.