Larry was through dealing with freaking lowlife; this was worse than ICM.
“How did you know I was at In-N-Out Burger?”
“Huh?”
“The fuckin’ note on my windshield.”
“The boss handles that shit, I just follow orders.”
“What are you, some kinda Nazi?”
“What’s a Nazi?”
“You don’t know what a Nazi is?”
“Oh yeah, from Seinfeld.”
“You been following me around all day or not?”
“Why you care?”
Larry decided that going on about this could only get him into more trouble.
Hoping for the best, he said, “How about we get to down to business?”
Mo smiled. One way or another, Larry was bringing all kinds of weird sunshine into the lives of shitheads today.
Mo said, “So what’re you waitin’ for? Pass it over.”
Larry didn’t budge, said, “You’re fucking kidding, asswipe. First Bev, then the payment.”
Mo shot to his feet, snapped a crisp salute, said, “See you at her funeral then.”
Larry caved, gave him the briefcase, said, “Okay, okay, here... but how can I trust you?”
Mo reached over, lightly took the case, turned to walk, said, “Trust is like a dick, usually stuck in all the wrong holes.”
As Larry drove home, he couldn’t help thinking of a dire script he had once worked on, about a father of a kidnapped girl, the money’s paid but no girl and the father goes mad, winds up in an institution and it spiraled into a Cuckoo’s Nest ripoff. They had Anthony Hopkins penciled in but he fucked off and got an Oscar for playing a cannibal.
Back at his house, he was horrified to see blue lights flashing and a fleet of cop cars strewn around his driveway. He got out slowly, his heart pounding, thinking, “They found Hoff.”
He formulated a new plan, because that’s what sharp thinks like him did — they planned. When they told him about Hoff he’d go for one of their guns. He wouldn’t get his hand near the holster before one of the Fruitvale idiots would shoot him and he’d wind up dead. He didn’t know if he believed in life after death or reincarnation or any of that bullshit, but if he lived this life over again he just hoped it would be easier to make it to the top of the movie business next time around.
Two cops approached — why were they always in twos? were they fucking Siamese? — and the taller one said, “You Laurence Olivier Horowitz?”
“Yes,” Larry said, eyes aimed at the holster and gun right there, a few feet away.
“We found your wife,” he said.
Not what Larry was expecting.
“She okay?” Larry asked, relieved he hadn’t gone for the gun.
But the relief didn’t last long.
“No,” the tall cop said.
Larry stuttered, “Y-you mean...”
And the short cop went, “Your wife’s dead, Mr. Horowitz.”
Seventeen
Do I see sheets of plastic in your future?
Mo was jerking off to Season 2, Episode 6 of Orange is the New Black when he heard the woman screaming and thought, Ah, shit, man, makin’ me pause fuckin’ prison sex an’ shit? Damn.
Headed up into the bedroom to see the woman curled up against the wall, mouth gagged, but her dress hiked up and panties off. Jo had his jeans undone and was sweating.
Mo grabbed Jo by the shirt, dragged him out to the corridor, hissed, “I told you not to be doin’ that shit.”
But something had given Jo a whole new set of cojones.
He squared up, sneered, “You ain’t my boss, yo, I’m sick of you tellin’ me how to act an’ shit. I go by my own rules, kid, by Colombia rules.”
Mo slammed his fist into Jo’s chest, harder than he intended. Jo staggered back, tottered at the top step, then crashed down the stairs, Mo would swear afterwards he heard a definite Ker-ast as the man’s neck snapped.
Mo rushed down but he could see from the angle of Jo’s head that Jo was a goner. Mo had killed men lots of ways but he’d never broken a man’s neck before. That was kinda cool.
If Jo hadn’t disrespected women, Mo may have been upset, or at least concerned, but he didn’t give a shit.
The producer’s wife was on the floor, mouth still gagged, crawling, trying to get to the window. Mo went and grabbed her, said, “Where you going, sweetheart?”
She was crying ’cause of what Jo done to her. She was suffering and Mo couldn’t stand to see her suffer. When a horse is suffering you got no choice, you got to put it down.
“Sorry, I can’t have you go on livin’ with this shame,” Mo said, and he broke her neck. Ker-ast.
He hoped it was the last woman he ever had to kill, but it had to be done.
He didn’t bother to clean up the bodies, figuring he’d be in Mexico before they started smelling, and then he watched a few more episodes of Orange is the New Black in peace and fucking quiet.
Later, he got a text from the boss, told him to go to the Four Seasons to get the money from Larry. Shit, the Four Seasons was fancy, so Mo put on his best suit — okay, his only suit — and went to meet the movie producer.
Mo got a text from the boss: How’d it go with Larry?
Mo texted back: meet me right now at the spot important
“The spot” was the meeting spot they’d worked out in advance, at a bar in Venice Beach. The boss thought he was meeting to get his share of the money, but Mo wasn’t planning to give the man nothin’, well, except a bullet it in the head.
Eighteen
On days like today, when they’re talking to me like that, I just feel like killing them. I’m not kidding, I actually want to murder them.
Things were finally coming together for Bill Moss. When he came to Hollywood, fucking sixteen years ago, he got hired to write a screenplay for Fox and he was one of the hottest screenwriters in town. But in Hollywood fifteen minutes of fame lasts about fifteen seconds. In a flash, Fox had fucked up the script, bringing in too many writers to do rewrites, and Bill lost his agent and blew most of his money on gambling, eating out, and hookers. Broke and with few other options, he had to get a temporary part-time job selling discount phone service in a telemarketing cubicle.
The temporary job had lasted seven years. During this time, a producer named Larry Reed somehow had gotten ahold of Bill’s draft of the Fox script and wanted a meeting with Bill. While Bill thought Larry was full of shit, the guy had some serious credits, had gotten that Garofalo movie made, and it wasn’t like other producers were lining up to offer Bill work.
Work. Well, that had turned out to the ultimate four-letter word, as Larry didn’t pay Bill a cent to write the script for Spaced Out. Bill poured his soul into that script, considered it his meister verk, or however the fuck they say it in German. Worse, Bill did free rewrite after free rewrite, believing Larry’s bullshit that Travolta and then Tom Selleck were attached. Then Larry stopped taking Bill’s calls and it hit Bill that he had wasted years of his life, working for that jackass.
All sorts of people worked at telemarketing jobs, including the occasional ex-con trying to go straight. Enter Mo, stage left. One night at a bar they were exchanging sob stories when Mo said, “Man, there’s somethin’ I don’t get. This producer fuck, Larry, been fuckin’ you over for years, right?”