'I'll be lucky if I can hold it to that. You want to know the truth? This boat has left the dock. Our only real chance of bailing out is to get Universal to take it over.'
'Are you telling me that the Los Angeles Police Department is actually producing a Michael Fallon high-budget action picture?'
'I wouldn't exactly call it an action picture. It's more of a spiritual thriller.'
'Shane, don't fuck with me.'
'Yes, we're producing the film. How do you want your credit to read?'
'I'm speechless.'
'Listen, I think I need to get out of here.'
'What was all that malarkey about Farrell Champion and Dennis Valentine both being involved with this drug deal and gang war?'
'Oh, that.' He smiled. 'I've gotta rethink some of that.' He kissed Alexa, then gave her a hug.
'I'm out of here at eight A. M. to New Jersey. I'll keep the StarTAC on. They're monitoring the tapes at ESD.'
'Shane, what was it you were going to tell us? You said it was important.' She was leaning forward, insistent now.
'I'm not sure what's important and what's not anymore. I think I'm losing my perspective. I need sleep. At least five hours all in one snooze. I'm starting to ramble.' He kissed her again, then left the sixth floor.
He took the water glass and box top out of his briefcase, tagged them, along with the matchbox, and dropped them all off at R amp;I, with instructions for an immediate print-run on all three items.
Shane drove back to North Chalon Drive and let himself in. It was 2:30 A. M. Chooch wasn't there probably still at the hospital. His gun was in the mail slot and Franco was waiting for him. The cat followed Shane into the bedroom and watched while he set the alarm. Exhausted, Shane fell backwards on the bed without undressing. Franco jumped up, licked his face, and purred in his ear.
'I'm trying, Frank. I don't know who did it yet. The hole I'm in just keeps getting deeper and wider. I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing anymore.'
The cat reached out and put a soft paw on his cheek. Finally, somebody cared how he felt. Shane fell asleep with Franco curled beside him. He didn't open his eyes until the alarm went off at six o'clock the next morning.
Chapter 41
The jet was a shiny new green-and-white fourteen-passenger Challenger. Shane sat across from Dennis Valentine, who had elected to shed his Hollywood plumage; no white on white for this visit. He was now in pinstripes. His tailor-made suit draped his scrupulously maintained body like a charcoal-gray paint job. His ruby cuff links danced and twinkled. Silvio Cardetti and Little Mo were decked out in Gotti-esque double-breasted black. They sat a few seats back, near the rear of the cabin, playing cards.
The cuisine was tofu and brown rice. Colonel Sanders and the Frito Bandito had missed the flight.
The plane thundered down the Burbank runway, lifting off toward the purplish mountains to the east. In a gesture that symbolized the entire trip, Dennis threw his Hollywood trade papers aside and picked up the Wall Street Journal.
Conversations with Dennis, when they weren't on business, were usually on fitness. As soon as the wheels were up, he launched into a primo riff on vascular health.
'People don't know how important it is,' he said. 'You got guys walking around, their ankles all swollen, and you know what causes it?'
'Bad shoes?' Shane asked, trying to field an easy grounder but missing the ball.
'Fuck no. Lack of diosmin. It's a flavonoid. Flavonoids are microscopic water-soluble pigments and there are over four thousand kinds. Diosmin is the most important flavonoid 'cause it makes the veins in your lower limbs elastic. You find it mostly in rosemary leaves, but it's gotta be chemically micronized, so its small enough for the body to process.'
'I won't forget that,' Shane said. 'But scotch tastes better and does the exact same thing. Makes your lower limbs rubbery as hell.'
'I know you're just fucking with me, but one day, some vascular surgeon is gonna be stripping your veins and you're gonna wish you'd listened.'
Shane couldn't take this all the way to Jersey, so he told Dennis that he'd only had two hours' sleep, lowered the seat on the comfortable jet, and closed his eyes. As he tried for unconsciousness, his mind kept circling the tragic memory of Carol White. Maybe it was the close proximity to the man he suspected of having her killed, or maybe it was because he was headed to Carol's hometown in Teaneck. Whatever the reason, the pictures and remembered sounds of her haunted him.
The beauty contest winner who came to Hollywood to be a star but ended up with a King Kong habit, turning tricks for a bunch of curb-crawlers on Adams Boulevard.
He thought about the slender thread that was binding all of them to their futures. Chooch had risked everything to save Delfina. She was still in psychological shock, choosing a world of soft shapes and blurry sounds over a more brutal set of memories that, if confronted, might destroy her. Delfina had done no wrong, a victim of nothing more sinister than her relationship to American Macado.
Unlike Delfina, Carol had made horrible choices. She had tried to drown the ache of her life's mistakes by shooting up. But she'd also been too vulnerable. Carol White had 'loser' written in invisible ink on her forehead, in letters only predators could see. Sadly, her weakness had led her to the garage in Rampart as surely as this jet was taking them back to Teaneck where her tragic journey began.
Shane half-opened his eyes and peeked under his lids at the handsome mobster who worried about how much diosmin he was getting. Shane wondered if the thread holding Dennis to his future was as slender as the ones holding Carol and the rest of them. He wondered if there was too much lead in a 9mm bullet for a vegetarian.
Then Shane fell asleep. He dreamed about a lot of things, most of them aimless and jumbled. But as they were landing in Newark, one dream stuck with him. He was riding in a parade with Chooch and American. They'd been in a barrio bouncer, a low-rider splashed with a sparkle paint job. The car would rise up on its rear axle, then come down again, bouncing over and over. American Macado was driving, wearing a vest with beautiful silver conchos.
'Ain't this tits?' Amac said, grinning.
Suddenly, the Challenger's wheels touched down and they had landed.
A black limousine with two chase cars was waiting on the tarmac as the jet taxied up and they deplaned. It was cold in New Jersey. Frost clung stubbornly to the ground. Silvio and Little Mo got into the lead car as Shane and Dennis climbed into the Lincoln stretch.
'Only takes about ten minutes from here,' Dennis said. 'When I was a kid, I owned this county. Had a little Corvette, red with white seats. Bagged more pussy than a cat doctor.'
'Didn't have a numero uno?' Shane asked, thinking of Carol.
Dennis looked over at him, his eyes a little distant. 'There were a few who thought so, but a guy like me, I've got to taste everything; gotta eat at all the restaurants. Know what I'm sayin'? Pussy is cuisine.'
'But is it vegetarian?' Shane deadpanned.
'You love to bust my balls, don't you?'
'Hey, Dennis, you know how it is. A slow-moving target is always gonna draw fire.'
Valentine looked over at him, and for a minute, Shane didn't know which way it was going to go. Most made guys and mob smart-heads had an instinct for who was an employee and who was a player. Once they had you down as an ass-kisser, you were never going to hear anything but orders. He needed to get Dennis on even ground, so he would eventually open up and say something meaningful for the little mike hidden in the cell phone on Shane's belt.
He thought it was significant that Silvio hadn't run the wand over him before they boarded the plane in
