“You?” Leonard said, sarcasm dripping, like why would they bother to write about Joe Miscali on Page Six. “No, it’s not about you, but it’s about somebody you know.”
Agitated, Joe snapped, “Stop fucking with me, I’m in the middle of breakfast here, all right?”
“Testy today aren’t we?” Leonard said. “Well, you’re really gonna be on the rag when you read about the new Max Fisher book.”
That name, Fisher, brought up acidy eggs Benedict. Another Max Fisher book? There was the instant book, right after Max’s arrest, written by a couple of reporters from the New York Post. Then one by an American guy and an Irish guy that got a few reviews and disappeared. Joe had thought the Fisher literary trend was finito.
“Bust is on the Times bestseller list,” Leonard said. “Ahead of the latest Jack Reacher. Can you believe it? Bust above Reacher? I bet Lee Child’s flipping out.”
Joe started to choke, had to take a big swig of coffee to get a hold of himself.
Joe read:
WE HEAR that Paula Segal and Lars Stiegsson will read from their bestseller BUST, about Manhattan businessman turned homicidal drug dealer Max Fisher, tonight at seven p.m. at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square.
If Fisher was alive, maybe Miss Writer Broad knew where he was hiding out.
So Joe went to the store, found Paula at the information desk. It was easy to spot her, she looked just like the pic on her website, except, what was the word? Snooty. Yeah, she looked snooty.
They had coffee and Danish and she was one of those lesbos with a chip on her shoulder. He called her “honey” and she flipped out, acted like he was trying to fuck her. Christ, in 1997 you couldn’t stick a broomstick up a perp’s ass, and now you couldn’t call a witness honey? What was next?
She claimed she hadn’t had any contact with Fisher. He thought she was full of shit.
He caught some of the reading, Paula and the midget Swedish nutjob taking turns. Paula read the section where Kenneth Simmons, Joe’s partner, was killed by the Irish psycho. Paula looked right at Joe a couple of times as if saying, This one’s for you.
It made Joe sick that people were lining up, buying this book, and, worse, that it was going to be a fucking TV show.
Joe left the store, but lingered outside, double parked in his unmarked. When Paula and Stiegsson left with a few other people and hopped a cab, he tailed them to the Soho House. Snooty literary people hanging out, for fuck’s sake. He waited there till Paula and a dark-haired women left, arm in arm, kissing while waiting for a cab. Jesus Christ, Paula was a carpet muncher, no wonder she had a thing against Joe, a manly cop.
Joe tailed the cab to Brooklyn, Dumbo. It was a clear night, full moon, maybe the werewolves were out. Joe had been hoping Paula would lead him to Fisher, but after waiting a couple of hours, pissing into a Pepsi bottle three times — his damn prostate — it looked like she was in for the night with her girl toy.
On his way back to the city, Joe hit a diner near the Manhattan Bridge for his second dinner of the night, deciding he wasn’t going to give up on Fisher till there was a dead body. As he wolfed down two cheeseburgers, onion rings and a large chocolate milkshake, he just hoped the dead body wasn’t his own.
Eleven
Can we talk about something other than Hollywood for a change? We’re educated people.
Back in the glory days when Stallone was a star — yeah, that long ago — Larry had a partner named Jerry Yarmolowitz, Jewish guy. That’s how Larry would introduce him to people, go, “Meet Jerry Yarmolowitz, Jewish guy,” and smirk, getting a kick out of it every time, a Jew so jew-y he didn’t even bother covering it up, while Larry had quietly Ellis Islanded Horowitz into Reed.
He and Larry were the new kids on the block and some early successes had critics comparing them to great double acts:
Lennon/McCartney
Scorsese/De Niro
Jagger/Richards
Bruen/Starr
Plus, these guys were tight. Not just professionally but buddies outside the job too. They’d fly to New York, hang at the Mansfield, drink until dawn, hit on hot waitresses, and score on the ponies. And through it all they worked on their projects nonstop. Larry was all about character but if you wanted the plot to jell, then Jerry was the go-to guy.
A true study in contrasts, Larry was all mouth — fuck this, fuck that — and on speed to get everything done. His mantra might have been, “Yeah, that’s great, what’s next?”
Jerry put the M in mellow, laid-back, no fuss, his mantra seemed to be: “Let it slide.”
And they were fun to be around, got people caught up in their shared energy. Weirdest thing was they looked alike — same graying hair, same pot belly, same bald spot. An exec once cracked, “Who are you guys, the Glimmer Twins?” and the name stuck. They even called their company Glimmer Productions.
Then came two pivotal moments. The first was the arrival of a movie script, The Wallace Tapes. This seemed to be a surefire hit but turned out to be a Heaven’s Gate clusterfuck of bad management, worse timing and budgets that went ballistic. Larry, always the savvy dude, cashed in his shares, got out before the shit really hit the fan, but neglected to tell Jerry. Neglecting to tell — that was the second pivotal moment.
Jerry, believing that their friendship could turn anything around, stayed until the bitter end, a premiere in Boise. He lost everything. Things were so bad he even contemplated writing a mystery novel for quick cash. But some shred of dignity still remained and he took a job as a dishwasher at a diner, and at last disappeared in to the great anonymity of Manhattan.
Worse, in interviews, Larry dissed him, going, “Thing is, ol’ Jerry lost control. Instead of writing the plot, he became the plot. He never understood the basic principle of cut and run.”
Even Michael Cimino referred to Jerry as the guy “who made Ishtar look profitable.”
Larry’s wife, in rare moments would ask him, “You ever think about Jerry?”
Larry, on his B-movie uppers, would snort, “Jerry, Jerry is history.”
But now, in traffic, on his way to a lunch thing at Musso & Frank’s on Hollywood Boulevard, Larry wondered, Could Jerry have kidnapped Bev? Jerry was a Sam Adams drinker, used to drink the shit like water, so there was that. And he had boatloads of motive for revenge.
So Larry did a little research. Well, called a neighbor who had a twelve-year-old kid who knew how to use the Internet, was some kind of genius with Google.
Larry went, “Hey, can you have Kyle do me a solid?” Larry had just heard this phrase used by some kid at his chiropractor’s office and felt hip using it himself. “Can he research Jerry Yarmolowitz, the ex-movie producer, and see what he finds out?” His neighbor wrote back a few minutes later, informing Larry that Jerry had invested in a start-up during the tech boom, cashed out, and was currently living in a villa in Greece.
This news established two important things for Larry:
One, the idea of Jerry’s involvement in Bev’s kidnapping was probably what the mystery writers call a red herring.
Two, he had to be some kind of idiot, wasting his time fartsing around in the fucking movie business.