Chapter Thirty-One
Someone knocked at my door early the next morning. Katrina still wasn’t home. I’d left the party twenty minutes after Antonio.
Looking out the window, I saw a bald man in jeans and a long black jacket. He was smoking. Would answering the door be stupid? Would that be getting myself into trouble? I decided not to risk it and let the curtain close. I waited one minute, then two, then looked out. He was gone, and a little package had been left behind.
I opened the door and peeked at the package without picking it up.
Contessa
Same handwriting as the cards on Antonio’s flowers. I brought it inside and opened it. A phone dropped into my hand.
This device is secure. My number is on it. Please only use it for emergencies. And be very safe.
I checked and saw one number in the contacts with an area code in Nevada.
The front door opened, and I jumped. It was Katrina, and her lip was split.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He picked me up.” Her breath hitched in a loud sob. “I got in the car, I didn’t think anything of it. He said I lied about who I was. That I couldn’t pay him back because no one was going to buy my movie.”
“What did they do to you?” I said with an edge I didn’t recognize from my own throat.
“The lip. It’ll go away. I’ll just make my vig until I prove him wrong”
I did something I’d only done once before, on the side of the road with a Club in my hand.
I lost my temper.
“What do you mean make your vig? Do you live in one of your goddamn movies? Who the hell even knew that fucking existed anymore?” I paced.
Katrina cried. She’d never seen me like that. I’d never seen me like that. I didn’t even know who I was.
“I’m calling the cops!” My hand was shaking so hard, I couldn’t dial before Katrina snapped the phone away.
“Central?” She spat the name of the LAPD’s Downtown division like a curse. “Are you fucking with me? They’re a bunch of blabbermouths. The editor of the Calendar has every one of them on the take. If this gets out, I’m finished.”
“When what gets out? That he pulled you into a car and slapped you around? No. No. A thousand times no. I’ll call Antonio.”
“No! I don’t want to be rescued by your boyfriend. That’s weird. Forget it. Just forget it. I’ve handled douchebags like this before.”
“How much do you need?”
She leaned on the back of the couch and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “A thousand for last week and a thousand for next.”
“Interest compounded minutely if you don’t pay.” My arms were crossed. I was so mad, all my compassion had run away in fear.
“I can pay it all back when I get distribution. He just…” She drifted off, and tears welled again. “He didn’t know about the lawsuit I lost. He found out. I think it just… I don’t know.”
“For someone so smart,” I said, unable to stop myself, “you leave yourself open to the stupidest mistakes.”
I stormed into my bedroom. My closet held a few thousand in small bills for emergencies. I counted out three grand and stuffed it in an envelope. I called Antonio from my new phone then hung up. Was this an emergency? Did he just tell me to stay away from Mabat because he was being protective? I really didn’t want to bother him when he had so much going on. I’d apologize later for disobeying him if I had to.
I went downstairs. “Come on. I’m delivering it personally.”
* * *
Katrina drove. The place was in East Hollywood, a trashy nightclub as big as my childhood living room. Vtang. I had no idea what it meant, but it was in big, flat red letters on the front, bathing the people in line in blood.
The bouncer, his hairline a receding M, moved the rope before we’d even slowed down. He ushered us past the register for the cover and into a room so dim I wouldn’t have been able to tell the girls from boys if there had been no high hair involved.
I was still mad. I didn’t know how I’d held onto it that long, because anger wasn’t my forte. It was unattractive and uncontrollable. It pushed people away and for the most part, achieved nothing. This anger was mine, though, and it was a caged mink about to get skinned.
The bouncer nodded to the bartender and opened a door to the back room for us. We passed through then down steps, past a smaller door, into an underground office. I should have been scared, but I was too pissed off. Even when I saw four men lounging around the room, two playing backgammon, one on the phone, and one tending blood on his knuckles, I wasn’t afraid.
Before anyone had a chance to explain our presence or introduce us, I spoke. “Which one of you is Scott Mabat?”
One middle-aged dirty-blond man in a black leather jacket, bent over the backgammon board, raised his hand slightly, the pointer extended to say, one second.
“Scotty, come on,” the skinny guy across from him demanded. He pushed aside a tiny cup with a lemon peel in the saucer.
“Shut the fuck up, Vinny,” Scott said.
“This is a fast-paced game.”
Scott moved his piece. “Not when I play it.” He stood. “Kat, nice to see you so soon. Who’s the friend?”
“She’s—”
“I’m the money.” I wanted to throw the envelope down and storm out, but common sense cut through my anger. “I’m putting up her interest, and I’ll be paying off her loan next week.”
He stepped around the desk and slowly opened his top drawer. “Cash.”
“Cash.”
“I recognize your face.” He flipped through a folder. “You marrying the district attorney?”
“No. Let’s get this over with. I have last week, this week, and next week on me. I’ll get you the—”
“Whoa, whoa, lady. Don’t rush. Kat, did you explain that our terms changed?” He spoke to her as if she was a child.
I wanted to kill him slowly.
“No,” she said.
I’d never seen her so cowed. She was the fucking Directrix, for Chrissakes.
“This is the contract,” he said. “It’s easy as shit. A moron could understand it. The studios give you a ream they nail together. You go to the Giraldis, they don’t even write shit down. You’re lucky.” He flipped me two stapled pieces of paper. The contract was in bullet points and looked as if it had been the result of a hundred generations of photocopying.
“Point four,” he said with his arms crossed. “Kat, would you like to read aloud to the class?”
She held out her hand for the pages. Was she insane? That docile girl couldn’t direct a movie.
I read point four myself. “‘Recipient has made no misrepresentation of their ability to repay the loan.’” I shrugged. “Okay, so?”
“So?” he said. “So!”
Throats cleared and chairs squeaked. A heightened intensity vibrated in the room.
Scott pointed his rigid finger at me as though he wanted to stab me. “This bitch didn’t tell me she was poison. I put up half a mill on an Oscar nominee, not a whining cunt no one wants to touch. Her fucking shit’s gonna be at the CineVention selling to Latvia for five G.”
“A little underwriting would have gone a long way, Mister Mabat.”
The guy whose knuckles were now fully bandaged snorted a laugh.
“That’s fucking funny?” Scott said.
Knuckles shrugged. Scott, a man who could not be rushed through a game of backgammon, picked up a dirty coffee mug and bashed Knuckles in the back of the head so hard his neck seemed to shake back and forth like a seizure. It happened so fast, Knuckles’s head had dropped to the table before either of the other guys could stand to aid him.
“This was easy money.” Scott pointed the cup at me. There was blood and a single black hair on it. “A no-fucking-brainer. Terms changed. There are no prepayments. There’s a thirty-year schedule she’s keeping.” He slapped the cup down. “We’ll be happy to take it out of her ass when she can’t shell out.”
I was scared finally, but I didn’t flinch. Knuckles was conscious and being tended by his two compatriots. Katrina sniffled behind me.
“Shush,” I said to her. I held my chin up to the loan shark. “You will take the prepayment, plus five thousand, and you will be happy with that.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really.”
“Or what? You getting the mayor after me? I’m all grown now. He can’t do shit.”
I pressed my lips together in a smile. “He can’t. But if you knew my name, you’d know I have a family. And if you knew anything about how they settle debts, you’d back away slowly.” I pulled the envelope out of my jacket and plopped it on the desk. “I suggest you do your research before dismissing my offer out of hand.”
I dragged Katrina out by the forearm and didn’t look back. I pulled her up the stairs, through the club, and into the street. I walked with my shoulders straight, confident that I owned everything in my sight. My friend blooped the car and got in. I followed and got into the passenger seat as if I was being chauffeured. It wasn’t until Katrina stopped at a light on Temple that, in order to release the tension, I started crying.
Katrina rubbed my back. “Look, I’ll pay what I can, and he’ll get bored of me at some point. I mean, he can’t make it so bad that I go to the cops.” She laughed bitterly.
“Your memoir is going to be a blockbuster.”
“How To Ruin a Perfectly Good Career in Two Years.”
“The Girl With the Busted Kneecaps.”
“Maybe I’ll make him fall in love with me. I’ll be Katrina Mabat.”
“Oh God. no. You’d drive him to his ultimate death,” I said.
“I think you should back off. Self-preservation is honorable.”
“I’m paying him off and walking away. You’ll release your movie, and everything will be back to normal.”
She sighed and left the dead weight of it in the air. There was a shadow and a clack clack clack at the window that I recognized from my car breaking down in Mount Washington. Bald guy. Cigarette.
“Who’s that?” Katrina asked.
“My shadow.” I rolled down the window. “Hi. Can I help you?”
The smell of turned earth overwhelmed the air coming into the car. He handed me his phone. I hesitated.
“Spin,” Turkish Cigarette Man said. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Wow, Tee Dray. Wow, okay? Weird and possessive much?”
I took the phone. I had to stop myself from calling him Capo in front of Katrina.
He took the moment’s pause to demand my attention in a tight voice. “Contessa?”
“Hi.”
“You were in an Armenian nightclub? This somewhere you usually go?”
That was him asking me what I was doing without making assumptions. His tone was a coiled spring. He needed a flat truth, or he would wind himself tighter.
“I was seeing Scott Mabat.”
He was silent, but in the background, I heard the mumblings of men, as if he was in a crowded room.
“Antonio?” I said.
“Otto will take you to me.”
“No, I have—”
“He will pick you up and carry you.” He would have been shouting if his voice had been raised, but he kept all the power and tension while practically whispering.
I knew then why he was capo. I hung up on him. I wouldn’t disobey him, but I didn’t have to tolerate the tone either.
“Kat,” I said, “this guy’s driving me to see Antonio. We’re going to follow you home first and make sure you get in the door, okay?”
“Okay, Tee Dray.” Her voice was suspicious even as her words were compliant.
I turned to Otto. “Okay?”
He held up his hands in surrender and smiled. Both of his pinkies were missing. “It’s no problem.” He had a thick accent.
He opened my car door. I started to get out, but Katrina put her hand on my forearm.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It’s no problem,” I said in Otto’s accent.
She smiled. “You’re pretty badass. I didn’t know that about you.”
“Me neither.”
Otto had parked his incredibly nondescript silver Corolla two spaces down, and he opened the back door for me.
When he got in, I said, “The car smells nice.”
“Grazie. There’s no smoking in the car. Still smells new, no?”
“It does.”
“Okay, I take your friend home, then we go, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
“Where are we going?” I asked after we’d walked Katrina to the door.
Otto tapped on his phone from the front seat. “The office. But I confirm now.”
“How long have you been watching me, Otto?”
He shrugged and pulled out. “A week. I sleep in the car. But no smoking in it. My wife, she’s mad I’m not home, but I have a job to do until the boss tells me to stop doing it.”
“I hope you get to see her again soon.”
He waved the notion off with a flip of his four-fingered hand. “Spin, he save my life. She just make me crazy all the time. Watching you? Like a vacation.”
“How did he save your life?”
“That is a long story, I promise.”
“I have time.”
He made a motion of locking his lips and throwing away the key. “Let him tell you. But he won’t. He is too modesto.”
“Antonio Spinelli? Modest?”
“Like a priest.”
I bit back a laugh.