Indian Country Noir Read online

  "Chief, the phone's for y'all!" It was Marissa LaTerre, the black drag queen from two doors down. "Come on, y'ole redskin, you. Man on the phone got me all wet with that sexy voice a his."

  "Wet!" Harry said. "What, he make you piss your pants?"

  Harry, long used to being called "chief," pulled the door open to behold the slender, 6'4" man with dark coffee skin and features as delicate as a first kiss. Without her makeup, lame outfits, and wig, Marissa was just plain old Morris Terry, formerly of Camden, New Jersey and myriad points in between.

  "He says it's about a part, chief," Morris cooed like a teenage girl, but it simply didn't work without the feminine accoutrements. Frankly, delicate features notwithstanding, his golf ball-sized Adam's apple and towering stature made it a tough sell to begin with. "Y'all think if I do him, there'll be a part in it for Marissa?"

  Harry didn't answer, pushing his way past Morris-Marissa and to the pay phone, its receiver dangling in midair.

  "Yeah," he barked. "Who is this?"

  "Harry Garson, is that you?"

  "Last time I checked. Who is this?"

  "Dylan Rothenberg, Irv's kid."

  "Irv's kid?" Harry was drawing a blank.

  "Your old agent, I'm his youngest boy. Remember me? You used to come to my birthday parties when I was little. I've got home movies. You gave me my first cigarette and first sip of scotch."

  "Sure. Sure. I remember you. You were the blond-haired kid with the blue eyes. You looked like your shiksa-goddess mother. What was her name . . . Kitt, right? Kitt was her name. Christ, she was hot."

  "And you're still the picture of tact and diplomacy, I see."

  "Sorry, kid."

  "No worries, Harry. She still speaks fondly of you as well."

  Harry wisely shifted gears, remembering he'd once nailed Kitt Rothenberg after a movie premier Irv was too sick to attend. "So what's this about a part? You following in your old man's footsteps?"

  "God no, I teach physics at Hofstra University on Long Island. Someone tracked me down because of my dad having been your agent. I still have some friends and contacts back home who found you for me."

  "So you found me, kid. Now what?"

  "You got a pen and a piece of paper?"

  He knew he didn't, but Harry unconsciously patted his pockets.

  "Here, honey, you looking for these?" It was Morris, who'd been watching the whole time, handing Harry a little yellow note pad and a pencil. "You can thank me later." Morris blew Harry a kiss.

  They made quite the couple, strolling down Sunset: Harry, stoop-shouldered in his pink Salvation Army leisure suit and the now 67" Marissa in her heels, khaki miniskirt, fishnets, and green chiffon blouse. Harry didn't like acknowledging it, but age and too many Maker's Marks had rendered his once steel-trap memory rusty and full of holes. Lines, no problem. He could remember reams of dialogue like when he played Geronimo in Mission Apache or the rebel brave Eyes Like Knife in the cult favorite Hunting Ground. He tested himself, running lines with his ersatz escort before they left for the audition.

  Harry's trouble was with figures and his sense of direction. His navigation system was shot and he couldn't recall phone numbers for shit, not that he'd been in need of that facility any time recently. What Harry needed was someone's help getting him to the address on Sunset, and it wasn't like he had thousands of eager candidates from which to choose. He supposed he might've gone stag and taken a taxi, but that meant he'd have to pay cab fare in both directions. In turn, that meant he would have to sacrifice a few meals this week. He'd had to do that a lot lately. When he'd weighed the unlikely prospect of getting the part and a paycheck versus lost Big Macs, Whoppers, and Potato World cheese fries-his favorites-Harry decided Marissa's company and help was worth the four bus fares.

  "Will you slow up, goddamnit!" he growled at Marrisa. "You take longer strides than a fucking giraffe!"

  "I didn't know giraffes took long strides when they were fucking, chief."

  "Funny lady."

  "Streisand already got that part."

  "You're so tall, they could have made a disaster movie about you in the '70s: Towering Transvestite."

  "Steve McQueen and Paul Neuman can climb all over me whenever they want. Here we are," Marissa said, looking up at the nondescript building wedged between a dry cleaner and an abandoned music store.

  The interior of the building was even less impressive than its exterior. Harry had seen furrier putting greens than the threadbare carpet that lined the lobby floor. Come to think of it, he'd seen cleaner putting greens, and putting greens were half dirt. It wasn't encouraging and all he could think about as he and Marissa rode the creaking elevator up to the fourth floor were the burgers and cheese fries he'd sacrificed to cover the public transportation. Still, when the elevator jerked to a stop at four, Harry took his traditional deep breaths and mentally flicked up his on switch. Irv Rothenberg had always said that no one auditioned like Harry.

  "I got stars in my stable, sure," Irv once told a junior associate, "but Harry Garson is the guy who bought my house and paid for my first son's bar mitzvah. He's automatic, like a given in geometry. He gets the audition, he gets the part." Problem was that after Crazy Cavalry, Harry couldn't get many auditions. Charm is less charming on a typecast actor with a bad off-screen rep and too many years on his bones.

  Suite 403

  The Rights Agency, LLC

  "This is the place," Marissa said, reading Harry's chicken scratch off the sheet of yellow paper. "The Rights Agency."

  Now this was better, Harry thought. The carpeting in the fourth-floor hallway was clean, and while the pile didn't exactly tickle your shins, it was at least soft under your shoes. And he liked that the company name was painted in gold and black on the door the way people with class did it in the old days. No cheap plastic piece-of-shit sign or gold-plated tin placard. Class. Harry appreciated class.

  "You going to wait for me here or downstairs?" he asked.

  "No way, chief, nuh uh. I didn't take y'all to the church just to get jilted at the altar."

  Harry thought about arguing the point, but he knew better than to use up his limited energy on futile arguments. He knocked, turned the knob, and strode in, his escort looming behind him. The eyes on the two well-dressed men inside the office got big as dinner plates at the sight of Marissa LaTerre. Harry had expected nothing less. Helen Keller, he thought, would've gotten big eyes in the presence of the power-forward drag queen, especially dressed up in that outfit.

  "I'm Harry Garson," he said, walking up to the older of the two men. He slid his ancient black-and-white head shot and CV across the top of the fancy etched glass desktop.

  "Paul Spiegelman," the man replied, shaking Harry's hand. His eyes were still on Marissa. "This is my partner, Mel Abbott." Spiegelman nodded his head at the man at the adjoining desk. Abbott, who looked about thirty-twenty or so years younger than his partner-stood and shook Harry's hand.

  ,,And this is . . ." Abbott said, gesturing at Marissa.

  "My agent, Marissa LaTerre," Harry said, immediately regretting it. He was more nervous than he suspected he would be and the words just came out.

  The partners managed not to roll their eyes at that. There was a second round of handshakes.

  "Let's get down to business, shall we?" Spiegelman said, gesturing at the two red leather chairs facing the desks.

  Spiegelman was a fit fifty. Compact and thin with probing hazel eyes that looked through Elvis Costello glasses, an angular jawline, a sharp nose, and a crooked but ingratiating smile. He was dressed in a gray, light wool pinstripe suit and his accessories were all silk and gold. To Harry, Paul Spiegelman smelled of Yale Law School and twenty years at a New York firm, a big New York firm. He was definitely a lawyer or a money man. In the business, they were sometimes one and the same. Mel Abbott, on the other hand, was a Hollywood hyena, all lean and hungry looks. Harry would have to keep an eye out for him.

  "The part," Harry said, unable to contai
n himself any longer. "What about the part? Where are my lines?"

  "Lines?" Abbott asked, seemingly confused.

  Spiegelman waved a calming hand at his partner. "I'm afraid you misunderstand, Harry. This isn't that kind of part."

  "Christ, I knew it!" He jumped out of his chair. "What is this? Listen I-"

  "Harry, Harry, please . . . sit down. Relax. Let me explain." Spiegelman kept his voice even and reassuring. But what Harry found most reassuring were the two bundles of crisp, rubber-banded bills the older partner was pushing across the top of his desk. "That's ten thousand dollars there, Harry."

  Now it was Marissa LaTerre's eyes that got big. Harry's weren't exactly squinty either. It was all Harry Garson could do not to reach out and snatch the money. Instead, he sat back down and tried not drooling over the notions of what he could do with that much cash. Visions of cheese fries and hookers, a lot of hookers, danced in his head ...

  Marissa decided to take her role as agent to heart. "So what are you gentlemen speaking about here for my client?"

  "It's more theater than film work, though it's a little bit of both, frankly," Abbott said.

  "We want Harry to play the part of an Indian," Spiegelman added. "We need him and only him for the part, and this ten grand is only a down payment."

  Suddenly, the buzz all came back into Harry's bones and he was rushing harder than a junkie who'd just gotten fixed with the purest skag on Earth. He was barely thinking of the money anymore. It was about the role. He was so juiced by the thought of being in front of the cameras again, he nearly broke into one of those stupid war dances he'd done in fifteen movies and on almost every episode of Crazy Cavalry.

  "But I'm still not hearing what the role is exactly for Harry," Marissa persisted.

  "Harry, do you think you can stay in character for a long period of time?"

  "No problem, Mr. Abbott. I worked for some directors who demanded we stay in character for the whole shoot. It was a pain in the balls, but I did it. I'm a professional."

  "See, Mel, I told you Harry was our man," Spiegelman spoke up. He then launched into a long stroking session, naming several movie roles and commenting on just how well Harry Garson had done this or that. "And even in your comedic roles, you always stood out. My favorite was in the `Bismark Goes West' episode on CC. Your timing was great when you did the line about the Goodyear blimp."

  Harry chuckled. "Yeah, the trooper asks Bearstein how his future will be and I say, `It will be a good year. . .'Then I look up and yell, `Blimp!' And there's Bismark and his Siamese kitten Cleo flying overhead in a zeppelin."

  Now they were all laughing. All except Marissa. "I'll ask this one more time. What's the role?"

  "Fair enough," Spiegelman said. "Look, we've been hired to make training films for Native American tribes looking to set up gaming establishments on reservation lands. It's about time the indigenous peoples of this country make some profits off the lands the government ceded to them. It's a difficult and arcane process, as you might imagine, and it just makes sense to the lawyers who do this kind of work to have a tool they can use to train the tribes."

  "Okay," Marissa said, "that's better, but-"

  Spiegelman held up his palms like traffic cop. "I understand your concerns. Here's the deal. Harry will have to relocate to the Tucson, Arizona area and live as . . ." he looked down at a sheet of paper, "Ben Hart, the long-lost son of an elder of the Tohono O'odham tribe, they're a Pima people. Actually, you'd be part of a subgroup of theirs, but we can discuss all that later. We will have film crews following you and have you miked whenever you leave your house. We will supply you with paperwork, references, etc., and we will walk you through the process of dealing with government agencies and the tribes themselves. But you absolutely must remain in character during this whole period. When you go out to a store or to a diner or go to the bathroom, you go as Ben Hart. Do you understand that, Harry?"

  "Who's Harry? I'm Ben Hart, the long-lost son of a tribal elder of the Tohono O'odham," he said, perfectly mimicking Spiegelman's pronunciation. "When do we get going?"

  "Well . . ." Mel Abbott hesitated, "first you're gonna have to go through some schooling while you're in L.A. We need you to get very familiar with the role and then we'll send you down to Tucson. It won't be a cakewalk, this will be-"

  "Stop being such a worrier, Mel. Harry-I mean, Ben Hart is up to it. Right, chief?"

  "No problem."

  "Very well then," Paul Spiegelman said, pushing one of the money piles toward Harry and pulling the other one back. "Here's half as an advance. When you complete your education for the role up here, you'll get the second half. I trust you, but our clients need some guarantees, you understand."

  "Well, I don't!" Marissa stood up and walked over to Mel Abbott's desk. She sensed he was the more easily intimidated of the two and, at 67", she was pretty intimidating. "What about a little thing called a contract?"

  Abbott's mouth moved silently as he fumbled for an answer. The hyena was looking mighty scared. Harry was enjoying it all and thought Marissa LaTerre born to the role of agent. An image of Irv Rothenberg in fishnets, a miniskirt, and high heels flashed through his mind and Harry shuddered. One of Kitt followed quickly thereafter and Harry almost got hard. Almost.

  "Contract. You want a contract?" Spiegelman asked. "You got one. We'll have it drawn up, but first we had to see if Harry would take the part. It's only reasonable, no?"

  Harry said sure, sure. Marissa was still skeptical. Harry took the money and shoved it in his jacket pocket.

  "Now, Harry," Mel said, "don't disappear on its with that five grand."

  Harry was really starting to dislike Mel. Most people, he guessed, would dislike Mel. "Listen, mister, I'm a professional. I was never late on set in 150-plus movies. I never called in sick or injured, ever. As hard up as I am, I'm not going anywhere."

  Spiegelman chided his partner. "Mel, I keep telling you, Harry Garson is a pro. Besides, he knows the five large is bubkes compared to what he'll make for the whole shoot."

  "And speaking of that," Marissa chimed in, "what are we talking about for the whole gig?"

  "Minimum of fifty grand, less the ten up front. Depends how long the shoot goes. Anything over a month, Harry will receive five grand a week. The clock on the shoot starts ticking once he lands at the airport in Tucson. One month from that day, the five grand per kicks in. Once the shoot spills over into the next week, five grand will be prorated. How does that sound to everyone?"

  "Wonderful," Harry said. "When can we sign the papers and get started?"

  Mel answered: "It'll take a day or two to draw up the contract, then we'll have them messengered over to your hotel and you can have the signed copies sent back here."

  Marissa kept at it. "And you have no issue with a lawyer looking the contracts over?"

  "None at all," said Spiegelman. "Contracts are meant to protect both parties. For now, Harry, go home and enjoy yourself a little. It's going to be tough work once we get rolling." He stood and offered his hand to Harry and Marissa. "Mel and I have to get things started on our end, so please excuse its. I think this is going to work out very nicely. Very nicely indeed."

  In the elevator on the way back down, Harry Garson peeled off five crisp hundred-dollar bills and handed them to his new agent. "You should give up the drag queen routine, kid. You're a natural as an agent."

  "Harry, I can't take this."

  "Take it. Take it!" he insisted, shoving the money through the low-buttoned chiffon blouse and into Marissa's thickly foamed bra. "You earned it. Besides, you heard Spiegelman. I'm looking at home-run city here."

  "About that, I-"

  "Forget it. When the contracts come, we'll worry about it."

  "But-"

  "No buts. Come on, I'm treating for a cab."

  Paul Spiegelman and Mel Abbott stood silently, watching out their office window as Harry Garson and his drag queen agent stood on Sunset trying to flag down a cab. It was almost as if they
wouldn't speak until the oddest of odd couples was completely out of sight. Of course they understood that no one, not even people in the hallway outside their door, could hear their conversation. Still, they waited. When a cab finally pulled to the curb out front, gobbled up the two riders, and sped off, Spiegelman and Abbott sighed with relief. The older of the two began whistling "We're in the Money," but all Mel could do was pace.

  "Why the fuck did he have to bring that fucking African queen with him? He- She's gonna fuck everything up."

  "Mel, will you calm down, for goodness sakes? You're going to give yourself a stroke."

  "`Calm down,' he says. How can I calm down? You know what's at stake here?"

  "I know, Mel. I know."

  "I told you we should have sent a car to pick him up. I told you."

  "If we sent a car for him, he would have gotten suspicious. Harry's dumb and hungry, but he's not stupid. He knows the business. He knows that someone who hasn't worked in nearly fifteen years doesn't get picked up in a limo for an audition. That would have queered the deal right there."

  "Stooping to puns now, Paul?"

  Spiegelman thought about that for a second, snickered quietly, and said, "I didn't realize."

  "Never mind. So what are we gonna do about Sheena, Queen of the Jungle?"

  "Go round up Joey Potholes for me. Tell him I need to see him here. In the meantime, I've got Harry Carson's contract to write up."

  At 4:27 a.m. the next morning, Marissa LaTerre stumbled out of Midnight Cruiser, an after-hours club frequented by freaks, geeks, and beautiful people alike. She'd had a hell of a night, giving head in a back room to a pretty-boy British film star and having the favor returned by the guy's fifteen-year-old date. She'd also managed to spend every dime of her agent's fee and then some.

  A tall, elegantly thin man with pocked skin and fish eyes leaned against the front fender of a Lincoln Town Car. He watched Marissa come out of the club and turn in his direction. He'd made sure to shoot out the streetlamp under which he'd parked the stolen Lincoln. When Marissa got close to the back bumper of the car, the thin man pulled open the rear passenger side door.