Hollywood Tough

Chapter 6

When Shane left the Snake Charmers Bar, a cold breeze had just started blowing out of the north. The stiff winter wind took the new spring leaves off the trees, then swept them along until they collected against the curbs and the sides of houses, where they fluttered in the cracks and crevices like tiny green-winged butterflies.

Shane was making the drive from Adams to Hollywood ' General Studios, where Nicky Marcella's office was located. The afternoon sky was cloud-blown and cobalt blue. The air sparkled with a heart-quickening freshness.

Despite all these natural splendors, Shane's mind was still back inside the grimy Snake Charmers Bar. He couldn't get the picture of Carol White out of his mind-a picture of desolate remorse. Shane's friend and ex-partner Jack Wirta used to say that God gave with one hand but took away with the other. And it was often true. God had given Carol a beautiful body and the face to go with it, but had taken away the toughness she needed to survive in the glitzy world that would ultimately beckon, creating a circle of pre-ordained failure.

Franco Zeffirelli hadn't let her move during the audition, made her sit in a chair, and, according to Carol, that one moment had changed her entire life. Her dreams of stardom were now reduced to that one pathetic memory. "I came this close."

Shane shook his head as he drove north on Highland Avenue. She probably hadn't been close at all. From the day she arrived in Hollywood, she had been low-end fuel for the system. Hollywood needed its losers, its fallen dreamers. Without the Carol Whites, what does it count to be Julia Roberts? There had to be profound tragedy to define overwhelming success.

So Carol was in the Snake Charmers Bar with her pincushion arms still oozing from the morning's jab-job, telling Shane about her brush with stardom. It almost made him want to cry.

Why were the losers affecting him so much lately? A few years ago he could have looked at Carol White, put the cuffs on her, and never looked back. But now it was almost as if he felt responsible for her plight, as if she existed in her current wretched state because Shane Scully had not done his job correctly, had somehow failed her personally. He knew that cops usually couldn't change the way things were, but since the Viking case, he had started to see the remnants of humanity inside all of these human flameouts.

He had looked past the surface of Carol White. Behind her red-rimmed eyes he could see the beautiful girl from Teaneck, New Jersey, still alive inside looking out at him, bewildered at how she'd ended up this way.

And that's what haunted him. That's what was ruining this beautiful windswept day.

Hollywood General Studios was on Seward, just five blocks east of Highland. The studio was one of the oldest in Hollywood and had always been a rental lot. Shane thought he remembered hearing that Ozzie and Harriet had been shot there.

He pulled up to the main gate and stopped as a uniformed guard with a clipboard came over. "Shane Scully to see Nicky Marcella."

"He's casting today. Is Mr. Marcella expecting you?" "No, sir, you'll have to call."

The guard went into his wooden shack and picked up the phone. Shane could see past the gate into the studio lot. Hollywood General occupied one large city block and had five or six soundstages. There was also a construction mill and some postproduction facilities. The guard came back and nodded, leaning toward Shane. "You know where Building Six is?"

"No, sir."

"Go through the gate, turn left, and find a visitor space along the front of the administration building. Then walk north toward the low one-story building at the end of the lot. Mr. Marcella's office is number six forty-five, end of the hall."

"Thank you."

Shane did as instructed and found a parking place in front of the ranch-style administration building. He got out and locked his car, then looked around. The studio buildings were mostly one-story stucco, with slanted slate roofs. The warehouse-size soundstages loomed above them. Everything was painted a strange reddish-brown color, and the little patches of grass that were part of the meager landscape plan were now engaged in a desperate struggle for dirt with some kind of wiry, weedlike growth.

As he walked toward Building Six, he passed a new maroon Bentley convertible parked across two stalls. One of the blocked stalls read: Nicholas Marcella.

As soon as Shane entered the corridor, he could see perhaps twenty beautiful young girls sitting in metal chairs that had been placed along the walls. They were all dressed in short-shorts, heels, and halter tops despite the cold wind whipping around outside.

As he moved down the hall, he could see that most of them were studying their audition scenes from miniaturized Xeroxed script pages, which he remembered a casting director once had told him were referred to as "sides."

Shane walked past the line of actresses who were sitting outside Nicky's production company, identified by a gold relief of a coliseum bolted to the door-and under that a gold sign:

CINE-ROMA PRODUCTIONS

NICHOLAS MARCELLA,CEO

Shane continued through the door and found himself in a very commodious reception area. Several huge posters of hit movies that Shane knew Nicky had nothing to do with hung on the walls. A very pretty young girl with coal-black hair was typing with two fingers on a computer keyboard. She glanced up in frustration as he approached her desk.

"I'm Shane Scully, here to see Nicky Marcella."

"Mr. Marcella is in a reading right now. I'll tell him you're here once the actress is finished with her audition. We never interrupt a reading."

"Right," Shane said, "wouldn't want to do that," and he sat on the beige leather sofa.

One of the short-shorts and halter tops came in and hovered next to the receptionist's desk. "Excuse me, I'm Donna Daring and I have another appointment across town at three. Is it going to be much longer, or would it be possible for me to read next?"

The receptionist looked up at her and scowled, then picked up a casting sheet. "Your time was two-forty, Ms. Daring. We're running about fifty minutes behind. That's all I can tell you," she said, clipping her words, pissed Off at the request.

"Okay," the girl said. "Can I use your phone to call my agent?"

"Sorry, I have to keep these lines open. You should carry a cell."

The actress scowled, then teetered out of the office, her long dancer's legs tapering down into five-inch fuck-me pumps that forced her to stumble along, leaning slightly forward.

A few minutes later the door to Nicky's office opened and Shane could hear men laughing at something a girl said, then a particularly beautiful blond actress teetered out in stiletto heels and butt-clinging booty shorts. She had tears running down her face but a smile on her lips. She gave the receptionist a thumbs-up, then handed her a slip of paper.

"Mr. Marcella wants me to get some new head shots and suggested I should use this photographer. He said you could set it up for me?"

"Sure, glad to. Congrats." Then the receptionist leaned forward and whispered, "He usually only does this for the actresses he's thinking of casting."

Shane got up and, without waiting to be invited, stuck his head into the office. "Nicky… Got a minute?"

The receptionist exploded out of her chair and dove through the door in a failed attempt to stop him. "I'm sorry, Mr. Marcella, I know you said you'd see him, but he doesn't have an appointment and we're running late."

"No problem, Daphne. Come on in, Shane. I want you to meet some people."

Shane entered a large paneled office. On the shelves were all kinds of knickknacks and awards. The desk was the approximate size and shape of an Egyptian sarcophagus. There were two large leather couches, some pull-up chairs, and five seedy-looking men in short-sleeved polo shirts and pleated pants. They were all fat, and three looked like they were hiding watermelons under their shirts.

"Shane, I'd like you to meet the investors," Nicky enthused. A round of names was exchanged, which Shane made no effort to remember.

A toilet flushed and a door in the back of the room opened. A sixth man came out of Nicky's private executive bathroom. He was in his middle to late fifties, with a sallow complexion, and was wearing a baseball cap backward. A dangling cross hung from his left ear. Had to be the director.

"My God, that girl is the one," the man said. "What acting chops. New York-trained. I saw some Stella Adler in that read. When she found the baby in the Dumpster and did the dead Marine soliloquy seriously, I like fucking almost lost it myself."

"We've got our Marsha," Nicky exclaimed. "My God, that really takes the pressure off. Who's her agent?"

"Inter-Talent," the sallow-faced man said, looking at the casting sheet. "Whatever you do, don't tell that shmuck Marty Kittlebaum that she's got the part. Just say you hated her read but I begged you to keep her on the list. We gotta keep her price down if we can."

Nicky grinned and nodded, then made an expansive introduction. "Shane Scully, this is our director, Milos DeAngelo. You probably remember his simply brilliant, award-winning film Intermezzo."

"I musta been outta town that weekend," Shane said. "He also did Mandalay Music and The Grasshopper Factory."

"Missed those as well."

The director glowered. Shane hadn't seen his work. Milos angrily turned away, snapping up the casting sheet instead, checking to see who was next.

"Nicky, I need to talk to you," Shane said.

"Did you find Carol White?"

"Yes."

"He found our Cherise," Nicky proclaimed to the investors and Milos, clapping his hands with glee. "Wait' 1l you see this girl, she's perfect. This is some lucky day. First our Marsha, now Cherise. Awesome, awesome news, Shane."

"Can I talk to you alone for a minute?"

"Yeah, sure." He turned to Milos. "Why don't you guys read the next girl? I'll be right back."

He led Shane out of his suite, across the hall, past the lineup of girls in the chairs, and into an adjoining office. They entered and he closed the door. "Are these girls gorgeous?!" Nicky beamed. "You wonder why they all came dressed in heels and booty shorts?"

"No"

"I put it in the damn script…" He grinned, then he pulled a set of sides out of his pocket and pointed to a shot description and read it for Shane aloud: "Marsha is a beautiful girl, wearing extremely tight short-shorts, four-inch stiletto heels, and a revealing top." He grinned at Shane. "These are the little casting tricks you learn when you're a player," he bragged, "otherwise casting days can get long and boring."

"Nicky… please, can we talk about Carol?" Shane said, not in the mood for any of this.

"Right. So you found Carol… this is awesome news, Shane. Go on, tell me. Where is she?"

"She's a junkie, Nick. Heroin or eight-balls. She's shooting something hard and turning tricks down on Adams Avenue. Got a pimp named Paul Mills, a real dink-carries an umbrella. She's got ten current unadjudicated 167-Bs."

Nicky looked puzzled.

"That's straight street hooking. You didn't know any of this?"

Nicky shook his head.

"She also told me you two went to high school together, something else you forgot to mention."

"Yeah, Teaneck High School. New Jersey. We met in ninth grade." He seemed saddened by this news about Carol.

"She's not gonna be acting in your movie."

"Film."

"Right. But if she's your friend from high school, you'd better call her folks or, better still, go and get your hands on her yourself. She's in bad shape."

"Jeez… holy-moley… a prostitute… and you say she's on heroin…"

"She's got more tracks than the Southern Pacific. You really didn't know?"

"No. A while back I had her in here to read. She kinda froze during the audition, but it wasn't like she was strung out on bang, or anything."

"If you're her friend, just go down there and get her. Here's the address." He handed Nicky a slip of paper with the location of the Snake Charmers Bar on Adams.

"Absolutely… absolutely. My God, anything else you can tell me?"

Shane was already at the door, but he turned back. "Yeah, some asshole parked his Bentley in your space."

"It's mine, Shane. My Bentley." Then he grinned. "Like I said, things have really turned around for me."

"Nicky, go get her," Shane repeated. "Go get Carol before she dies down there with a spike in her arm."

"I will, Shane. I promise."

Shane walked out of the office and back into the hall. One of the sides was lying on the seat of an empty chair. He picked it up. The name of the movie they were casting was Boots and Bikinis. Shane had just started to read the scene when one of the actresses interrupted him.

"It's about post-traumatic stress syndrome in Gulf War nurses, only we all live in Huntington Beach now and we're dancers in a club called Boots and Bikinis. We dress like hookers and screw like bunnies. The script blows. I'm outta here." She turned and walked down the hallway while the other actresses watched her go.

Shane put the sides back on the chair and followed the beautiful actress out into the cold April day.