The Flaming Motel

XI


Ten minutes later we were calling Ed Vargas to tell him we’d be giving most of his retainer back. “It’s just as well,” Jendrek said, morosely, as he dialed the phone. “This whole thing was starting to look like a train wreck.”

The phone rang. Ed answered. Jendrek told him the bulk of it in a few cryptic sentences. There was a groan on the other end of the line followed by a brief silence. When Ed spoke again, his voice resonated with desperate irritation.

“Look, I need you guys to help me with something else. Jesus,” he muttered, his voice trailing away from the phone. “She’s on her way to the f*cking lawyer right now. Look, I have to stop her. Stanton told me she’s going to inherit everything. All of it. There’s got to be a way to stop it.”

Jendrek stared at the phone like it was some kind of beast, about to attack him. “This is a community property state,” he said, as if invocation of the law would somehow ward it off. “She was his wife.”

There was more silence, and then Ed spoke again, quietly this time. “But what if the marriage was a fraud? What if she was just a scam artist looking to rip him off? Couldn’t that be used to challenge it?”

Jendrek shrugged at me. I shrugged back. We weren’t divorce lawyers. What the hell did we know? “It’s possible,” Jendrek said.

“Look,” Ed said, “when I talked to Stanton, when he recommended you guys, he told me Oliver was a wiz of an investigator.” Then he spoke directly to me. “Stanton told me you were the guy who cracked that Steele case wide open a few years back.”

He seemed to be waiting for confirmation, so I said, “Yeah, that was me.” But I was really thinking how the case had nearly cracked me wide open, how the whole damned thing was blind luck.

“I need someone like you to dig around, check into Tiffany’s past. I’ve always been suspicious of her. Now, the thought of her pulling the business out from under me is, f*ck, it’s totally f*cking nuts. It’s unbelievable.”

Jendrek cut in. “What exactly do you want us to do?”

“Like I said, just do some digging. Then we’ll sue the shit out of her.”

“What is it you think we’ll find?”

“I don’t know. But if you dig hard enough, I’m sure you’ll find something. Like I said, I’ve never trusted the woman.”

Jendrek said, “We know some very good PIs.”

“I want you guys. I’ve already paid you. You already know the case. I want this thing to move fast. I don’t want to f*ck around with someone new. Besides, Stanton told me you were good.”

Jendrek started to say something else, but Ed cut him off. “Look, I’m up at the house now. She’s downtown at Stanton’s office, but she won’t be gone forever. Why don’t you come up here, Ollie, and I’ll give you what little paperwork I have on her and tell you what little I know. Hurry, before she gets back.”

The conversation ended and Jendrek looked at me across his desk, smirking and shaking his head as if the whole world had gone mad. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a client.”

I took a cab up to the house on Mulholland. Ed came out the front door and met me at the top of the wide stairs. “Why the taxi?”

“I left my car parked down the street last night.” I smiled as we shook hands. “I had a little too much fun.”

He grinned and slapped me on the shoulder as he turned to go back inside. As I followed him through the entryway into the main room, he said, “Brianna was sure hanging all over you last night. I had half a dozen people ask me who the hell you were.” He winked at me. “I told them you were Brianna’s flavor of the week.”

I laughed, but secretly wondered if he was right. I said, “Speaking of whom, is she here?” I looked around the room. It was littered with the remnants of the party, much as it had been the very first time I’d seen it. Apparently its natural state.

“No one’s here. That’s why I wanted you to come over right away.” I followed him down the hallway to the back of the house. He went behind the bar in the pool room and got a can of tomato juice from the fridge. “Can I get you something?”

I said I’d have the same and took a seat on a barstool. Ed drank half his glass and then added some ice cubes to it. “Yeah, Brianna’s out with a real estate guy this morning looking at places.” He spoke in a weary, ironic tone. “I swear the old man was dead three hours and she was already planning to move. She had no interest in hanging around once Dad was gone.”

“Why was she here to begin with?” I tried to ask it like I was just making small talk. Like I wasn’t really interested in the answer.

“She was one of Dad’s projects.” He smiled. “His little protégé. Dad had an eye for that sort of thing.” Ed paused, his eyes drifting far away. “Man, he was good. I still remember when Brianna first came around. She was seventeen at the time and just a total knockout. Dad told her no way. A lot of producers might have tried to use her, figuring they could get away with it if they didn’t sell any movies until she turned eighteen. But not Dad. I remember he took her out to dinner and came back, telling me he’d found a star.” Ed finished his tomato juice and poured more. “He was right too.”

He looked at me like I knew what he was talking about, as though everyone in the world knew what a star she was. I was sure everyone in his world did. I said, “She told me she moved in here when she turned eighteen.”

He laughed and said, “Yeah, she showed up with her little suitcase and Dad had a birthday party for her. She’s never left. She did her first movie the next day.” He stopped himself, almost wistful when he spoke again. “It was like she’d been doing it for years. She was a natural. Goddamn, was she one talented girl. She’s incredible. They don’t come along like that very often.”

“What do you mean?”

“Shit man, she’s the total package. Drop dead gorgeous, willing to do anything, and smart as hell. I mean, Brianna’s a genius. She knows she’s talented and she calls the shots. And Dad taught her the business. With my dad keeping her out of trouble, there was no stopping her.”

I gave him a look like I didn’t understand—which I didn’t, really—and he shrugged and shook his head, continuing in a nonchalant tone.

“Look man, the whole San Fernando Valley, shit, probably the whole country, is filled with girls who at least think about doing porn. We must have a hundred a week contact us saying they’re interested. Most of them, they come and go. I mean, these girls are eighteen, nineteen, usually from some f*cked up home life. Some shitty part of the country. These ain’t girls who walked away from a job as a surgeon to do porn. I mean, for most of them the choice is clear. Make six bucks an hour folding shirts at the Gap, or a thousand dollars for a couple hours of getting f*cked in the ass beside a swimming pool. For a lot of girls, it’s an easy choice.”

Ed drank some more juice and then topped it off with a splash of vodka. He threw some in mine as well. “Here,” he said, “you look like you could use a little of this.” He got out a jar of pickled asparagus and threw a couple stalks into each of our drinks as he continued.

“But most girls only do it a few times and then disappear. Of the percentage that stays in the business, most are mediocre, very limited talent. Of the even smaller percentage that have talent, most of them won’t be attractive enough to be a real star. So you’re really down to just a handful of girls who want to make porn, are talented, and are drop dead gorgeous. I mean flawless. We’re talking about a minute fraction of the population, here, and most of them still won’t become big stars. Some of them will last a while, maybe a few years, and then either fall into drugs or just get too used up. The one that becomes a true star is the one with brains. And that’s a rare combination in this business. That’s Brianna, and the old man knew it.

“That’s why Dad latched onto her, had her move in, watched her, kept her away from drugs. Brianna’s got what Dad used to call a million dollar p-ssy. But it’s probably more like ten million today, who knows, maybe even more than that.”

I listened to him turning philosophical as I worked my way through my drink. The vodka was hitting my system and easing the pain of the hangover. The clock on the wall behind the bar said it was nearly eleven in the morning. Monday morning. I asked myself what I was becoming as Ed told me the secret to success in porn.

“Brianna’s smart, and that’s why she’s successful. She listened to the old man and she paid attention. She’s been careful and done things right. I mean, I see it all the time. The burnout. You hear about a producer who’s found some fresh young thing. Then, a few months later you start seeing her everywhere. She’s doing a movie a day, sometimes two. She starts doing meth or coke just to keep up the pace. I mean, I’ve seen chicks so wacked on a meth binge they can f*ck for seventy-two hours straight. After 150 movies in six months, a girl looks like she’s aged ten years.

“Sure, maybe she’s made a hundred thousand in six months, but most of these girls are stupid. They pay cash for a BMW and get a three grand a week habit, thinking they’ll be making that kind of dough forever. And then their phone stops ringing.

“You can always see when the slide starts. All the sudden that same girl will pop up somewhere else, working on the fringes, you know, some producer that wants her to drink piss, or get beat up, or whatever. They can make money doing that for a while, but even that doesn’t last. Pretty soon she’s twenty-two and looks forty. No one wants her around. She’s hooked on drugs and starts selling her p-ssy in bars on Ventura Boulevard. Then she disappears. And there’s a thousand other girls waiting to take her place.

“And the Internet has made the competition even worse. Video was bad, but you had to have someone to distribute a video. Now, shit, you got housewives making 50K a year running websites their husbands don’t even know about. All of the sudden, anyone with an Internet connection can be a porn star. Video was bad enough, but the Internet? Jesus.

“That’s why it’s even tougher now for a star to break out and last a long time. Most of the amateur stuff, it’s shit. It always has been. But the problem is that any lonely drunk can log on in the middle of the night and jack off to pictures of some exhibitionist college girl for free; why’s he going to pay for it?

“That’s why Brianna is smart. She understands supply and demand and she understands that she has to sell something more. And she does. She sells relationships. She does this online chat stuff. It’s f*cking brilliant. It’s once a week, limited number of people. I mean, you can’t just log in and watch, she’s got a waiting list.

“She recognized that all she needs is a small, devoted fan base, and she can make a fortune. She’s got a guy in Japan who does a one-on-one with her once a month. You know what he pays her? Twenty grand. Guy’s some kind of billionaire, it ain’t much to him. And she’s got some other regulars too. Then the weekly group thing, she puts five grand in her pocket for each of those. Then all the subscription money. And she does tours at strip clubs one week a month, at about ten grand a night. Then there’s the dates.”

“Dates?” I asked.

He smiled. “Hey, all the top girls do it. How could they not? A Saudi prince flew Brianna to Dubai two months ago. All first class, and paid her sixty grand to f*ck her one time. Add in one of those per month and she’s grossing close to two hundred thousand a month, probably putting more than two-thirds of that in her pocket.

“Like I said, she’s smart. And now, with Dad gone, she doesn’t owe anyone anything either. She’s going to get the hell away from Tiffany as fast as she can. Especially now that Tiffany is going to be taking over.”

His voice went cold at the mention of her name, but his eyes went hot with rage. He stopped himself and tried to drown the fire in his head with the rest of his drink. He set his empty glass down hard and said, “You have no f*cking idea how sick it makes me to think of her getting everything.”

“I can imagine,” I offered, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

“I just can’t believe she doesn’t want to sue over this. The cops have been harassing Dad for years. It’s a chance to get even.” He spoke with a measure of desperation and revenge.

“What do you mean?”

“They love to bust the porn industry. That f*cking police chief is a goddamned Jesus freak. A real religious nut. He thinks he’s on a mission from God to keep us all safe from ourselves.” His eyes hardened with vengeance.

I said, “He said something along those lines in the paper this morning.” But Ed was lost in thought.

He regained his focus suddenly, reached under the bar, and then slapped a manila file folder on the counter. He opened it and flipped through some pages. “Here’s the stuff I have. Marriage license. Photo copy of her driver’s license and passport. Some tax forms that have her social security number on them. It’s all stuff I found in files in the business office.”

He handed the file to me and I leafed through it. “This is all you have?”

“Yeah. As I gathered it up, I realized how little I actually knew about her. I mean, she just appeared about ten years ago. I’m not even sure how Dad met her. I was in college, you know, doing my own thing, I really wasn’t paying that much attention. Then, all the sudden, he’s getting a divorce from my mother and marrying Tiffany.”

“What did she do? For work, I mean?”

“She wanted to be an actress. I know that much. But I don’t think she ever made any films. Apparently, she and my dad hit it off immediately.” Ed’s voice matched the amazement in his eyes. He shook his head and said, “The whole thing happened in a matter of months. Like I said, I was in school. It was like one semester everything was normal, the next, my parents are getting divorced and this chick who’s a year younger than me is going to be my stepmother. It was weird. It never seemed quite right.”

“Who else would know more details?”

“My mother would, she saw the whole thing, obviously. She lives in Encino. She should be one of the first ones you talk to.” He found a pen and wrote her information on the inside of the file folder. As he wrote, he said, “Everyone says they fell for each other immediately. It was like they were already old friends the day they met. I could see some of that, I guess, but I never really bought it. Maybe I was resentful. I don’t know. She just always seemed a little fake to me, like she was trying a little to hard.”

I finished my drink and said, “Well, your dad was a wealthy guy. Men with money do strange things to women.” I thought of Liz and Ben Cross as I said it and winced inside.

“True,” he nodded. “That’s how I always felt about her.” Then he leaned in close and said, “I mean, she was just too much. I remember being up here at the house after Mom and Dad split up, in this room, in fact. Dad was putting on old Sinatra records. He loved Sinatra. And Tiffany knew every word. She would sing along and shit, trying to be all cute. And Dad ate it up. I remember him putting his arm around her and saying to me, ‘You see why I love this girl.’ It was too much.”

I shrugged and said, “People like Sinatra.”

Ed shook his head and said, “No man, not like this. I’m talking old Sinatra records. Not just ‘My Way’ and greatest hits stuff. This was obscure shit that most people don’t know. But she knew it all. The whole damned thing just seemed like a big performance to me. But Dad bought it. He had this romantic side. You wouldn’t think so, but he did. And he fell hard.”

“Maybe she was just the right girl at the right time.”

Ed threw his head back and laughed. “Now you’re just f*cking with me.” He paused for a second and then added, “I suppose anything’s possible. But it was like she came out of nowhere. I mean, I’ve never met any friends of hers from before. That’s weird, isn’t it? She’s got no old friends who ever come around.” He flipped through the pages in the file folder, “And this, you know. There’s nothing here. Like she’s got no past.”

I laughed and said, “Yeah, like an old Clint Eastwood movie. The man with no name.”

“Exactly.”