City of Dreams, page 20
“I’ve been with so many jerks,” Diane says. “I’ve been with too many L.A. boys. Danny is a man.”
“With a past,” Sue says.
“I’m the last person who should judge anyone about their past.”
Sue tries a different tack. “Diane, if this film tanks, both our careers could go down with it.”
“So that’s what this is all about.”
“I’m just being realistic,” Sue says. “I’m not saying don’t be with him, I’m just asking you to keep it on the down-low for a while.”
Too late for that.
It’s out there.
They’re out there, and they’re not going back into some dark cave.
They’re too happy in the sunlight.
But nothing is more persistent, more patient, than the past.
After all, the past has nothing but time.
Chris Palumbo stands in line at the little grocery store in town.
He likes doing the shopping. Who knew? Likes planning the meals, strolling up and down the aisles, shooting the shit with the clerks. And he likes doing it by himself, so he can take his time and so Laura doesn’t bust balls about his Jimmy Deans.
So now he waits with his red plastic basket—it has his Jimmies, a bunch of veggies for her, a couple of boxes of penne pasta he talked the owner into stocking (before Chris, the locals thought all pasta was spaghetti), a dozen eggs, brown rice—and looks at the rack of magazines and newspapers.
Then he sees it.
Danny Ryan’s smiling mug.
Chris grabs the tabloid.
And son of a bitch, there’s Ryan with his arm around some gorgeous blond chick. dashing danny, the headline screams and darling diane, and as Chris reads he learns that Danny Ryan is dating a movie star.
Fucking Danny, Chris thinks, shaking his head. That Irish donkey hump could fall face-first into a pile of shit and come up with a diamond in his mouth. Chris doesn’t know what kind of angel Danny has sitting on his shoulder, but it has to be one with some heavy swag.
“Joe?”
“Huh?”
“Joe. You want that paper?” Helen asks. Her gray hair, which looks a little blue, is tightly permed.
“Uh, yeah.”
He starts laying his stuff on the counter.
“Danny and Diane,” Helen says as she rings him up. “Quite the couple. I guess he was some kind of a gangster. What a world, huh?”
“It’s the one we got,” Chris says.
He likes Helen. He likes just about everybody in town, and they like him back. They make fun of his accent, that he doesn’t pronounce his r’s, asking him if he’s pahked his cah, and Chris always answers, Yeah, outside the bah, and they all laugh, even though it’s about the seven-thousandth time they’ve done it.
Chris takes the groceries to the car and sits and reads the article.
Christ, they’re making a fucking movie about the war?! And Danny’s involved with it? The fuck is that dumb bastard thinking?
Then he wonders, Am I in the movie?
If I am, who’s playing me?
Better be some good-looking son of a bitch.
Reggie Moneta reads the stack of tabloids on her desk.
And laughs.
Danny Ryan, the man no one could find, then the man no one wanted to find, surfaces as a media star.
They say there are no second acts in American life, but Ryan is having a beaut. Dating a movie star, living it up all around L.A., a tabloid darling, he’s freaking Joe DiMaggio now.
Good, she thinks.
Let him have his fun.
Every second act, Reggie knows, is followed by a third.
She picks up the phone.
In Washington, Brent Harris and Evan Penner go for another walk, this one in Rock Creek Park.
“What does your boy Ryan think he’s doing?” Penner asks.
Harris doesn’t like the depiction of Ryan as his boy. For a couple of reasons—first, Ryan isn’t anyone’s boy; second, he doesn’t want Ryan’s actions tied to him. “Living his life, I suppose.”
“In the public eye?” Penner asks. “Don’t you think that’s a problem?”
Of course I think it’s a problem, Harris thinks. The tabloid media are one thing, but if the serious press gets into it, they’re going to dig deeper than the obvious superficial titillation of the gangster-and-the-movie-star story. If the Times or the Post gets hold of Ryan’s investment in the film, they’re going to want to know where that money came from. So yes, it’s a problem.
As usual, Penner is ahead of him. “My sources tell me that Ryan put considerable monies into this film project. That makes the corporate types very nervous.”
“Maybe they should have thought of that before they took the money,” Harris says.
“Sadly,” Penner says, “few shiny baubles are as irresistible as ready cash. The reality remains, however, that we cannot afford to have Danny Ryan linked to us.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” Penner asks. “I wonder.”
Harris wonders, too.
Bernie shows Danny the billings. “They’re robbing you.”
The old accountant lays it out. The catering company that provides meals for the production when it’s out shooting on the street is billing for meals it doesn’t deliver.
“How do you know?” Danny asks.
“I went to the set, I checked,” Bernie says, as if it’s obvious. “Look, see here? ‘Seven dozen chicken breasts’? No, five. Tenderloin, crab legs, the same. They’re even shorting you on macaroni and cheese. Now look at this . . .”
Bernie shows him bills from UR Peein’.
“The hell is that?”
“Porta-potties,” Bernie says. “They bill you for five, they deliver three.”
“Why haven’t the studio accountants picked this up?”
“They don’t leave the studio,” Bernie says. “I tracked down both companies, both are owned by the same person, Ronald Faella.”
The next morning, 5:00 a.m. sharp, Danny’s waiting on the location set when the catering van pulls up. Danny walks up to the lead guy. “You’re fired.”
“What?”
“What about ‘fired’ don’t you understand?” Danny asks. “You’ve been ripping us off. I have another company coming in.”
“I gotta call my boss.”
“Call whoever you want,” Danny said. “But get your trucks off my set.”
Forty-five minutes later, a very annoyed Ronald Faella pulls up and seeks out Danny. He looks like someone woke him up, his hair is disheveled and he hasn’t shaved. “You Ryan?”
“Yup.”
“So what’s the problem, chief?”
“The problem is you’re a crook.”
“Whoa.”
“I look like a horse to you?” Danny asks.
“Obviously there’s been some sort of misunderstanding here,” Faella says.
“No misunderstanding,” Danny says. “I pay for seven, I get seven. I pay for three, I get three.”
“You better talk to someone at the studio,” Faella says.
“Who?” Danny asks. “Who should I talk to? Give me a name.”
Faella stares at him but doesn’t say anything.
“What I thought,” Danny says. “Anyway, I just fired you.”
“We have a contract, my friend.”
“Call your lawyer,” Danny says. “I’ll call ours. I’m sure everyone will have a good time going over your books.”
“Do you know who I am?” Faella asks.
“Don’t you know who you are?” Danny asks. “We have an amnesia problem here?”
“Do you know who I’m with?”
Shit, Danny thinks. It’s always the same old, same old. “I don’t care who you are, I don’t care who you’re with. The party’s over, the grab bag is closed. I don’t care who else you rip off, it’s just not going to be me.”
Faella’s not ready to give it up. “Twenty minutes after I leave, the union steward is going to find safety violations.”
“No, he’s not,” Danny says.
I already explained it to him.
“Danny who?” Angelo Petrelli asks.
“Ryan.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Angelo and Ronnie Faella are sitting at the nineteenth hole of the Westlake Village golf course sipping Long Island iced teas and eating club sandwiches.
The West Coast mob is not the East Coast mob.
“You remember a couple of years ago,” Faella says, “the Providence people had a problem with some Irish crew? Ryan was one of them.”
“That was Peter Moretti?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s dead, right?”
“I guess,” Faella says. “I think there’s still a brother. Seriously, haven’t you read about this guy? It’s all over the papers. He’s banging Diane Carson.”
“A salut.” Angelo lifts his glass. “Other than the fact that it’s him instead of me, why do I care?”
He’s sleepy. The combination of sun, exercise, food, and booze makes him want to take a siesta.
Faella tells him about what happened on the set.
Now Angelo cares. Ronnie Faella kicks up to him, so now this Ryan guy is lightening his pockets. “We got a union guy there, don’t we?”
“Dave Keeley,” Faella says. “I went to talk to him, two of Ryan’s guys were there.”
“What did they say?”
“Nothing, they just looked at me,” Faella says.
“They looked at you?”
“You know what I mean,” Faella says. “Keeley basically told me there was nothing he could do.”
Angelo doesn’t like it all. Some guy comes out of the East Coast—Providence, no less—and sets up camp in L.A.?
No.
“You are receiving a telephone call from an inmate at El Dorado Correctional Facility. Do you accept the charges?”
“Yes,” Diane says.
It’s been a long time.
Then she hears, “Hello, sweetheart.”
Danny watches the sunset from Diane’s deck.
On the beach below, Ian is running around in circles with Holly, and Danny thinks he’ll go down there in a minute to join them.
But it’s been a day, and it makes him sad and tired.
I came out here to get away from all this wiseguy bullshit, he thinks, and here it is waiting for me. I came here to be a different person, and here I am right back in the middle of it.
He only hopes now that this Ron Faella will give it up and just go away. Nevertheless, he had the Altar Boys go check him out, see how much of a threat he really is, who he’s with, if he’s with anyone. Maybe he’s just another big-mouth wannabe like Danny used to run into in Rhode Island all the time, the type who’s always bragging about knowing a guy.
Diane comes through the slider and sits down beside him.
They have a quick kiss, a peck, and she asks, “So how was your day?”
“Yeah, fine. Yours?”
“Good.”
They’re lying to each other.
That’s how it starts.
Kevin Coombs is not impressed with Ronnie Faella and Angelo Petrelli. It took him two days, but he tracked them down to a bakery in Westlake Village where they usually meet for a late breakfast.
“Guess what they were eating,” he says to Sean.
“Do I have to?”
“Croissants,” Kevin says with disgust. “The fuck kind of mob guys eat croissants?”
“What do you want them to eat?”
“Bacon and eggs,” Kevin says. “Mob guys eat bacon and eggs, okay, maybe sausage, the Italians. But croissants? Sean, come on. And you know what they were wearing? Pastel polo shirts.”
“So what?”
Kevin shakes his head. “Mob guys wear black. Captains and above, black suits. Below, black leather jackets.”
“It’s ninety degrees out.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kevin says. “There are standards. And the next morning, my hand to freakin’ God, one gets oatmeal, with berries, the other? Yogurt. A so-called boss. Yogurt. How are we supposed to take these guys seriously?”
“Danny takes them seriously,” Sean says.
“All we got to do is run Ned in front of them,” Kevin says, “they’ll piss themselves.”
“Yogurt is good for the urinary tract,” Sean says.
The next morning, Kevin sits in a car in the parking lot of the strip mall where the bakery is located and watches Faella and Petrelli munch on muffins. He’s disgusted and not happy anyway at this time of the morning because he’s wicked hungover.
Then Faella gets up and starts walking toward him.
Kevin lays his hand on his gun.
Faella gestures for him to roll down the window. When Kevin does, he asks, “You South or Coombs?”
So they’ve done some homework, Kevin thinks. Good for them.
“Coombs.”
“My boss would like to talk with your boss,” Faella says. “A friendly sit-down. You think we can work that out?”
“I can ask.”
“You do that,” Faella says. “You ask.”
He goes back to his freakin’ muffin.
Kevin sets down his gun.
Diane flinches.
“Cut!” Mitch yells.
They’re shooting the first love scene between Pam and Liam today—in fact, probably for the next three days. Mitch has waited until relatively late to schedule this scene because it’s difficult and delicate and he wanted to give Diane time to get comfortable with Brady Fellowes, the actor playing Liam. And she has been, their previous scenes have shown great rapport and sexual chemistry, but now, as Brady touches her shoulder, easing her blouse off, she’s flinched for the third take in a row.
“I’m sorry,” Diane says.
“No problem,” Mitch says. “Let’s take a five.”
The set is almost empty, Mitch having closed it—essential personnel only—for the sex scene.
Diane sits down in the chair to have her makeup and hair refreshed.
“You okay?” Ana asks.
“Yeah.”
But she’s not. Diane feels terrible. She knows she’s letting everyone down, costing the production money, getting Mitch behind on a shooting schedule that’s already behind. And she knows how quickly the rumors can start, the questions. Is Diane high again? Is she back on drugs? On alcohol?
She isn’t, but it’s the first time in a while that she’s felt the urge.
Mitch comes over.
Ana doesn’t need to be told to walk away.
“How are you?” Mitch asks.
“There’s an old joke,” Diane says. “On their wedding night, the groom asks the bride if it’s her first time. And she says, ‘Why does everyone keep asking me that’?”
“Funny,” Mitch says. “But you seem, I don’t know, jumpy. Is it Brady? Do you have a problem with him?”
“No. Brady’s great.”
Mitch lets the question hang.
Diane says, “I don’t know, Mitch. I don’t . . . I’m just jumpy.”
“Yeah, look,” he says, “maybe we bring in the body double for the close-ups. And you know, for the rest of it, I’m framing up from the shoulders.”
“Thank you.”
But, Diane thinks, the passion has to be there. Without the sexual attraction, the compulsion, the Pam-Liam story makes no sense. Without that, the whole film doesn’t work.
And I have to deliver that.
The body double can’t.
It’s on me.
She tries to focus, tries to get into Pam, leave herself behind. But the voice on the phone keeps coming into her head.
Hello, sweetheart.
Danny goes to Petrelli’s breakfast place.
He doesn’t mind, he’s not into playing the status game and settling on a neutral location. And there’s no risk to coming here—nothing is going to happen in Westlake Village at ten thirty on a Thursday morning.
Westlake Village doesn’t even feel like Los Angeles, it feels more like an upscale suburb.
Danny’s done his research.
Angelo Petrelli is the boss of the L.A. mob, which isn’t saying a lot in itself. Back in the day, the day being from the twenties through the fifties, the L.A. family was something, with powerful guys like Jack Dragna, Mickey Cohen, Benny Siegal, and Johnny Roselli.
Then in the seventies and eighties, guys started flipping on each other, a lot went to prison, sending the L.A. family into a tailspin from which it’s never recovered. Now some of those people are out, including Petrelli, and the family is trying to make a comeback, mostly by reinfiltrating the studios and moving to take a piece of Las Vegas.
But what L.A. really is, Danny learned, is a semiofficial colony of the Chicago Outfit, and that’s a problem.
Danny doesn’t want a problem with Chicago.
No one does.
So Danny goes to the meeting.
He goes alone. His crew was against it, but Danny thought he’d actually look stronger if he was confident enough to show up by himself.
Petrelli’s already outside, sitting at a table with Faella. He stands up and greets Danny warmly. “Danny, thanks for coming.”
Because Angelo’s done his homework, too. He knows that Danny Ryan is a serious person, that he boosted forty kilos of heroin from Peter Moretti, that he took at least two guys, maybe more, off the count, and, most of all, he’s an old friend and protégé of Pasco Ferri. The former New England boss is in retirement in Florida, but he stays in touch with all the major families, including Chicago.
So Angelo shows Danny Ryan some respect.
“You want anything, Danny?” he asks. “A coffee? A pastry? Ronnie, get Danny here a coffee. Sit down, Danny.”
Danny sits down.
Faella goes into the bakery.
“Danny,” Angelo says, “if you had a problem, I wish you’d come to me first.”
“I didn’t know,” Danny says.
“But see, that’s the problem,” Angelo says, “with just showing up in a place. You don’t know what you don’t know.”
“You make a point.”
Angelo smiles. “So look, forget about it. You let Ronnie back in, life goes on, everything is forgotten.”
