“Huge. The ad budget alone’s twenty-five million. National print, TV, radio, transit ads…everything. The time slot for the first show is after Central Park West and on Thursday it’s right after Hostage.”
CPW was the hottest comedy since Friends, and Hostage was the season’s biggest crime drama, a 24-kind of action show.
“Okay, it’s big. And we can probably get our hands on the money but we can’t afford for you to lose it, Mike. And even if you win, okay, you make a million dollars. We could do that in a couple of years in the real estate market. So, what’s in it for you?”
“Oh, it’s not about the money. It has nothing to do with that.”
“Then what’s it about?”
“The bump.”
“The bump? What is that? A Hollywoodism?”
“Of course,” he said. “Why use a dozen words to express yourself exactly when you can use a buzzword?”
He explained to his wife, in a slightly censored fashion, what Aaron Felter had told him earlier: “Mike, buddy, a bump is a leg up. It’s getting recognized on the media radar. It’s grabbing the limelight. A bump means you’re fuckable. A bump gets your name in the trades and Entertainment Tonight. You haven’t had a bump for years. You need one.”
O’Connor had asked Felter, “So you’re saying that if I’m in this game, I get a bump?”
“No, I’m saying if you win the game, you get a bump. Will it get you a housekeeping deal at a studio? I don’t know. But it’ll open doors. And I’ll tell you if you win, I promise I’ll take your proposal for Stories to the people I’ve got deals with. Again, am I promising they’ll green-light it? No, but it’ll get me in the front door.”
He now said to Diane, “All the contestants’re like me. At a certain level, but not where we want to be. They’re from a cross section of entertainment industries, music, acting, stand-up comedy.”
The woman considered this for a long time, looking over the blue hills, the porn house, the pale evening stars. “This is really your last chance to get Stories on, isn’t it?”
“I’d say that’s right.”
Then, to his disappointment, Diane was shaking her head and rising. Without a word she walked into the kitchen. O’Connor was upset. He loved her. And, more important, he trusted her. Mike O’Connor might’ve played the tough, blunt Detective Mike Olson on TV, but emotionally he was the antithesis of the cop. He’d never do anything to hurt his wife. And he resolved that, seeing Diane’s negative reaction, he’d call Felter immediately and back out.
She returned a moment later with a new bottle of Sonoma chardonnay.
“You don’t want me to do it, do you?” he asked.
“I’ll answer that with one question.”
He speculated: Where would they get the money, what about the girls’ tuition, would they have to hit their retirement funds?
But, it turned out, she was curious about something else: She asked, “Does a full house beat a flush?”
“Uhm, well…” He frowned.
Diane withdrew from her pocket something she’d apparently collected when she’d gone into the kitchen for the wine: a deck of Bicycle playing cards. “I can see you need some practice, son.”
And cracked the wrapper on the deck.
The bar was on Melrose, one of those streets in West Hollywood where you can see celebs and people who want to be celebs and people who, whether they’re celebs or not, are just absolutely fucking beautiful.
Sammy Ralston was checking some of them out now — the women at least — and looking for starlets. He watched a lot of TV. He watched now in his small place in Glendale. And he’d watched a lot Inside, too, though the Chicano inmates dictated what you saw, which during the day was mostly Spanish-language soaps, which weren’t so bad, ’cause you got a lot of tits, but at night they watched weird shows he couldn’t figure out. (Though everybody watched CSI, which he had a soft spot for, seeing as how it was physical evidence — from one of his cigarettes — that landed him Inside in the first place after the B and E at a Best Buy warehouse.)
He looked up and saw Jake walk through the door, shaved head, inked forearms. Huge. A biker. He wore a leather jacket with Oakland on the back. Say no more. He stood above Ralston. Way above. “Why’d you get a table?”
“I don’t know. I just did.”
“Because you wanted some faggot chicken wings, or what?”
“I don’t know. I just did.” The repetition was edgy. Ralston was small but he didn’t put up with much shit.
Jake shrugged. They moved to the bar. Jake ordered a whiskey, double, which meant he’d been here before and knew they were small pours.
He drank half the glass down, looked around and said in a soft voice, “Normally I wouldn’t fuck around with a stranger but I’m in a bind. I’ve got a thing going down and my man — nigger out of Bakersfield — had to get the fuck out of state. Now, here’s the story. Joey Fadden—”
“Sure, I know Joey.”
“I know you know Joey. Why I’m here. Lemme finish. Jesus. Joey said you were solid. And I need somebody solid, from your line of work.”
“Windows?”
“Your other line of fucking work.”
Ralston actually had two. One was washing windows. The other was breaking into houses and offices and walking off with anything salable. People thought that people who boosted merch went for valuable things. They didn’t. They went for salable things. Big difference. You have to know your distribution pipeline, a fence had once told him.
“And you understand that if we can’t come to an agreement here and anything goes bad later, me or one of my buddies from up north’ll come visit you.”
The threat was like the fine print in a car contract. It had to be included but nobody paid it much mind.
“Yeah, yeah. Fine. Go ahead.”
“So. What it is. I heard from Joey about a month ago this TV crew did a story at Lompoc. Life in prison, some shit like that, I don’t know. And the crew got this hard-on to hang with the prisoners.”
“Macho shit, sure.” Ralston’d seen this before. People from the Outside feeling this connection with people Inside.
“So Joey heard them talking about this TV poker show some asshole producer is doing. It’s planned for Vegas, but in a hotel, not a real casino. And they don’t use chips. They use real cash. The buy-in’s supposedly two-fifty K.”
“Shit. Cash? What’s the game?” Ralston loved poker.
“Fuck, I don’t know. Old Maid. Or Go Fish. I don’t fucking lose my money at cards. So I’m thinking, if it’s not a casino, security won’t be so tight. Might be something to think about.” Jake ordered another whiskey. “Okay. So I check out the prison show and get some names. And one of the gaffers—”
“Yeah, what is that? I’ve heard of them.”
“Electrician. Can I finish? He’s a biker, too, from Culver City. And he’s a little loose in the mouth when he’s had a few and so I get the details. First of all, this’s a live show.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Live? They don’t record it ahead of time.”
“They do that?” Ralston thought everything was recorded.
“So it’s a big surprise who wins.”
“That’s not a bad idea for a show. I mean, I’d watch it.” Ralston peeled the label off his beer. It was a nervous habit. Jake noticed him and he stopped.
“Well, you can tell ’em you fucking approve, or you can shut up and listen. My point is that they’ll have a mil and a half in small bills on the set. And we’ll know exactly when and exactly where. So Joey speaks for you and I thought you might be interested. You want in, you get twenty points.”