Ciggy leaned against the headrest of his king-size waterbed in the master bedroom of his Santa Monica beach house. He was smoking a Cuban cigar, drinking a glass of Chivas Regal, and he was naked. He looked at his body and decided he looked damn good for sixty-six.
"Pour me up, baby," he said as he held up his glass to the naked prostitute.
A stunning twenty-two-year-old black girl filled his glass, then crawled into bed next to him. I'll call her Cheyenne Ellis, and I'll say she's from Detroit. The ex-prom queen was a call girl by profession, but not by personality. She had come to L.A. to be a movie star and quickly discovered that no one would take her seriously. She needed better acting teachers on her resume and nicer clothes to get into the right clubs. But she couldn't afford any of it on a Johnny Rocket salary, so she began to moonlight.
But she wasn't hooking tonight, per se. Ciggy had agreed to give her a part in "Gun Butt" if she'd be his girlfriend for the shoot. For Cheyenne, it was a dream come true. A movie role, a beach house, and no "calls" for six weeks. Plus she liked Ciggy, and he normally only asked for her once every couple of weeks.
She laid her head on Ciggy's chest and let him run his hands through her thick black hair. She purred like a kitten because she knew it turned him on.
"Put on Johnny Carson," he told her.
"Johnny Carson" was Ciggy's generic name for anyone who hosted a late night talk show, as well as for the show itself. Leno, Letterman, Maher and Conan were all "Johnny Carson." "The Tonight Show," "The Late Show," and "Politically Incorrect" were also all called "Johnny Carson."
"Which one?" Cheyenne asked as she zapped on the TV.
"Doesn't matter," he answered. "They'll all do Rockman stuff. Flip around."
Ciggy had seen the news clips during the day, so it wasn't worth giving up a free second with Cheyenne to see them again. This was important because he knew it was the late night comics who determine pop culture.
For the most part, the jokes were quite mean, and very funny. Cheyenne laughed nervously as Robby was depicted as something between Charles Manson and Timothy McVeigh.
"People are going to hate this guy forever," Ciggy said mesmerized. "Every group on the left and right are going to protest this film. It's gonna be my first real mega-hit!"
Assistant District Attorney Theresa Chavez watched the same shows, but with utter fury.
Unlike Ciggy, she didn't believe the comics established pop culture, but she did know they reflected it. And judging by the howls the Rockman jokes were getting, it was clear a lynch mob mentality was sweeping the nation. And it terrified her.
Theresa's plan had been to try to lose the case in court because she knew Robby was innocent. Her only goal was to hide the fact that the victim had lied. But now all eyes would be on her. Every legal pundit would analyze her every move, and her purposeful mistakes would now be seen by the world as bad lawyering. She would become the comics' next target, and it would completely destroy her standing in the D.A.'s office.
Her only options were to do her best to put Rockman away, or to publicly admit Lisa had lied and start a chain of events that would allow scores of real rapists to go free.
She had no choice but to put the guy away for life.
Gloria, on the other hand, found the talk show jokes in bad taste, but it didn't overly concern her for the moment. What worried her was that Norman still hadn't called back. Midway through the monologues, she finally faced the fact that she wasn't going to pull this off. So she booted up her notebook and began to bang out a resume.
She got as far as the "i" in Gloria when the notion of starting over lurched up from her stomach and out of her mouth. She raced to the bathroom, which is where she remained until the phone rang.
"Hello, Gloria," said a filtered voice from her machine. "This is Norman Jackson, returning your call. I'm going to bed now, so --"
Gloria dispensed with her retching as fast as she could and raced on all fours towards the telephone. Norman had just finished leaving his home number when the nauseous secretary grabbed the receiver to keep him on the line.
"Don't you dare hang up!" she said, only slightly dizzy from her speed-crawl.
"Hello, to you, too," he answered.
"You know, I left you a lot of messages. Which one are you answering?"
"All of them," Norman explained. "Including Ciggy's. And I'm not going to renegotiate anymore than he did. But I've got to admire your persistence, girl."
"Come on, Norman," she said, searching for a lucid argument. "You know as well as I do that Robby only agreed to this deal because he was afraid to go back to that big fag in the cell. If you hold him to it, you're no better than the D.A.!"
"He accepted AFTER the arraignment," Norman said, only a little offended. "He was free. Next."
"Okay," she said. "I'll be honest with you. If I don't get Robby a triple-scale bump, I'll lose my job. So I'm asking you as my lawyer to help me."
"This creates a conflict-of-interest for me," he said. "You better talk to Ciggy."
"No, no! Wait!" she cried. "I want to talk to you."
"Gloria, you're not going to convince--"
"Hey, are you watching the talk shows?" she stalled. "Almost every second joke is about Robby. That's going to bring your little movie incredible press."
There was a desperation in her voice that Norman was starting to find very unappealing. But then again, he wasn't looking at her.
"Yes, it will," he replied calmly. "Next."
"Don't you think that press is worth a little more than scale?"
"He's getting a lot more than scale," Norman answered. "He's getting a six-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorney free of charge. By the end, he's going to come out of this with over three hundred thousand dollars worth of free legal expenses. That's significantly more than triple scale. It may not help your agency, but it's damn good for him. Now, I have to be on the set at seven tomorrow and I want to be well-rested, so good night."
And he hung up.
Gloria dropped to the ground and cried. How could a deal be good for the client but not the agency? It can't be possible. How could an attorney offer free services to the client out of which the agency gets nothing? It was almost criminal.
And then it hit her. With a jolt of optimism, she got Norman's number off her machine and called him back.
"Charge him!" she said, before he had even said hello. "Instead of giving him three hundred grand of free legal, pay him three hundred grand as salary, then charge him back the same three hundred grand for your services. Then reinvest it all in the picture."
"Why is that--"
"It's good for you because you only have a ten per cent profit participation in this one million dollar film. But if you pay Robby what he's worth, then reinvest the money he gives you back, you will increase your ownership by almost thirty per cent without spending a dime."
"That's interesting," he said as a preamble to his bigger point, but Gloria anticipated it.
"And you don't have to worry about Ciggy because it doesn't affect his cut one iota," she said. "He gets the same fifty per cent after recoupment either way."
"But it does affect the other--"
"The other backers," she said, excitedly cutting him off again. "No, it doesn't. You're a highly respected lawyer who justly commands six hundred an hour. No one can argue that you should give that away. And once paid, no one has the right to tell you what to do with your money. So why are you paying Robby so much? Because he buys you more press than you could ever afford. If the movie bombs, no harm, no foul, it's all the same difference. But if the movie hits, why should you be the one to get ripped off?"
"That's a really good way of looking at it, Gloria," he said.
"I try to look out for everyone's best interest," she said modestly before he could think too much. "So is that a yes?"
"Yes," he answered. "For me, it's a yes," he said. "Let me see if I can sell it to Ciggy--"
"You can sell anything to anyone," she cut him off again. "I saw you in court today."
"I'll have the papers drawn," he said. "Be on the set by seven to approve them."
"I'll be there at six-thirty," she said.
They hung up as a talk show guest made another tasteless Rockman joke.
Gloria laughed her ass off.
Artie flipped between the same talk shows as he petted his pedigreed Persian cat who nestled above his crotch. He laughed aloud at the funny jokes, but his only response to the less-than-funny vicious assaults at the man who gave him his career, was:
"They need better writers. I know who to sell them. I'll call them tomorrow."
Robby was flipping between all the "Johnny Carsons" as he and his wife listened to their jokes at his expense, but it was Trudy who couldn't stand it.
"Don't you get it?" she shouted at him. "They're talking about you! Turn it off."
Robby approached his public ridicule analytically because he knew it was great press. No one had talked this much about him since his show went off the air.
But he also knew the publicity was irrelevant if he couldn't get out of this mess. He absolutely had to make sure that when the rape charge was dropped, it would be as much a national topic as this was. In fact, the dismissal had to be an even bigger story than the rape. If not, the story would be buried and forgotten. The public hatred for him would last forever. "Gun Butt" would be his last job. And he had no idea how to pull it off.
He had a feeling that his answer lay in the TV comics' insulting jokes. The jibes didn't really bother him except when they were aimed at the victim. Lisa was not a pretty girl, and the comics had great fun with that. Some of the local stations aired classmates who described her as a "pathetic hanger-on." To the comics, this was just more fodder.
To lambaste him was one thing, he felt. But to trash a teen-age victim on national television was nothing less than wrong.
Still, he understood.
"They're just doing their jobs, honey," he told his wife. "And some of these jokes are darn clever. Replace my name with Clinton's or Downey's and I bet you'd laugh, too."
"You have a shoot tomorrow," she said. "Turn it off and I'll help you run lines."
"I'll learn my lines on the set."
"Isn't that unprofessional?"
"In the worst possible way. Now, shhh."
After another scathing rip at her husband's character, Trudy couldn't stop herself from turning off the set at its base.
"Stop that," said Robby who turned it right back on with the remote.
"You have an eight o'clock call," she said. "You should get to bed."
"It's okay," he said. "I don't plan to show up till ten."
"I have serious concerns about your well-being," she said.
"Good," he replied. "If I can fool you, I can fool anyone."
"You're not fooling anyone," she replied. "I think you're seriously ill."
"Excellent," he said.
"I'm going to bed," she told him.
They gave each other a peck of a kiss and, on the eve of their new beginning, they each went to bed alone.
Robby kept watching, searching for an answer. When the eleven-thirty to twelve-thirty guys were over, he watched the twelve-thirty to one-thirtys, but nothing helped.
But he was too hyped to go to sleep so he picked up the remote and flipped around. The women on the phone sex infomercial were sexy, but they had nothing on Gloria or his wife; he had no interest in exercise equipment since he played in a charity basketball league three times a week; nor was he interested in hair transplants since, at forty, balding was not an issue; and he had seen the "Taxi" rerun a million times because it was his favorite show.
But when he came across an old episode of his own show, he put down the remote. The episode was only vaguely familiar because he had done almost two hundred of them.
It was an episode in which a shy outcast student develops a huge crush on the morally questionable Mr. Song, played by Larry O'Dell. She believes that a romance with the teacher would make her more popular with the other kids. The unbearably unpopular student was actually quite a beautiful young lady because that's how sitcoms work. In fact, she went on to have a very successful career as a porno queen.
So comedy ensued when Mr. Song came to Mr. Bell to ask for advice because Mr. Song really wanted to "boink" the girl. Mr. Bell explained why it was morally wrong, and Mr. Song finally understood. Larry then had a heartfelt scene with the porn star, the very scene that got him his Emmy nomination.
And Robby had to admit that it was deserved.
It was at that moment that Robby got his answer!
All he needed was a simple conversation with the girl, and he knew how to get it set up. He was also pretty sure he could convince her to go along with it -- and that was the key to the whole thing because he could never pull it off without Lisa herself backing him up.
He turned off the TV and went to sleep ecstatic.
*** Up Next: "Meanwhile, The Victim" ***
The main characters in this e-novel are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual individuals, whether living or dead (except for Jeff Abugov who is a real screenwriter, director and producer.) Although certain real people and companies are mentioned in this e-novel, all of the events are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual events.
Copyright © 2015 Tinseltrash, Inc.