“Jew-lye! Jew-lye,” Orson Ellis said to his secretary when he closed the door.
“Pardon me, Mister Ellis? Jew what?”
“That putz Ross Perot had to reenter the race!” Orson Ellis said, “Jew-lye. I thought he was making an anti-Semitic crack till I realized he was still apologizing for having withdrawn last July. Jew-lye. The cracker!” Then he noticed his client.
“Fin,” Orson said, looking like his spaniel died, “Fin Finnegan. How good to see you, you old schlemiel.”
Despite having done a thousand lunch meetings at Nate ’n Al’s, Orson never got the Yiddish right. He said kvel when he meant kvetch, schmutz when he meant schvitz and schlemiel for schlemazel. Fin definitely considered himself a schlemazel, not a schlemiel.
“I thought you might call me next week if I started reminding you every night around midnight. I just dropped by to get your home address so I could start the night stalking.”
“You been here long?” Orson asked.
“I been here so long her roots grew out,” Fin said. Then to the secretary, “Really though, Albert Einstein did very well with that hairdo. I think you should keep it.”
“I love this guy,” Orson said to the young woman, who was glaring at Fin with a pair of scissors in her hand.
After Fin followed Orson Ellis into his private office, the fat man removed his size 52, double-breasted Armani knockoff, and plopped his bulk into an executive chair done in “blush” leather to complement the “pearl” client chairs, now that “pink” and “gray” had vanished from the designers’ vocabulary.
“Want a drink? No, too early. Want an orange juice? Coffee?”
Fin was shocked by Orson Ellis’s hair. All the side strands were about three feet long, and looped, swooped, and coiled across his naked skull, with some extra hair woven through it. The top hair was dyed the color of dead leaves, even though the sideburns were still gray.
“My new do,” the agent said. “Whaddaya think?”
“Looks like a nest of tarantulas’re eating your head. Why don’t you just put a little minoxidil on your Froot Loops every morning?”
“Sensitive, that’s what cops are,” Orson Ellis said to the wallpaper. Then he opened a cold Evian, since Perrier was out. “That’s why I took you as a client, your sensitivity and compassion.”
“And because I got your sister’s kid outta that jam where he tried to punch out a whale trainer at Sea World because Shamu got his Rolex wet. By the bye, is the little prick still at large?”
“He’s maturing. I think he’ll eventually find himself.”
“Yeah, in the gas chamber. Another victim of Doctor Spock.”
“What’s on your mind, Fin?” It wasn’t really a question he wanted answered, and Orson Ellis punctuated it with a wet burp.
“What’s on my mind? I haven’t worked in fourteen months.”
“Fin, you work every day,” Orson Ellis reminded him, leaning back and raising his patent loafers to the top of the desk. “You’re a cop, remember?”
“I was trained to be a cop,” Fin said, “but …”
“You were born to act.” Orson shook his head sadly. “You got it, kid, the addiction. I knew it first time I saw you. When was it? Five years ago?”
“Seven. In which time you got me four one-day jobs on that shitty private eye show, three one-line jobs on those movies they shot in Balboa Park that nobody but my sisters saw, and two dinner theater gigs. I got the real stage jobs on my own.”
“How about the little theaters, Fin? Not to mention the one-act plays at the Gaslamp Quarter and the Sixth Avenue Playhouse and …”
“Nobody saw me there either. I need a good job. The last time you got me a good job that twinkle on your pinkie ring was still coal.”
“It’s a shame you ever got involved in that amateur theater group. Look how acting’s made you dissatisfied with your real-life job. You got a good job. Civil service. With a pension and everything. You’re a police detective, for chrissake!”
“I hate my job.”
“I know, you wanna be a movie star. You’re ready to quit the police force, move to Hollywood, right?”
“I’m not asking you to get me in something so hot you can only see it on cable, am I? This is just a crappy late night network melodrama!”
“What melodrama?”
“Don’t you ever read the trades? Harbor Nights!”
“Oh, that melodrama.”
“I’ll bet even your new secretary knows about it and she doesn’t have enough brains to churn butter. Do you hire them with an attitude or do you help them cultivate it, like slime mold?”
“But those tits’d raise Dracula outta his coffin at high noon, right?”
“Sure. And she’s lugging enough silicone to raise the Kitty Hawk clear outta the water. You could lose your wristwatch in her cellulite and either she’s doing a feminist armpit thing or that’s a swarm of caterpillars under her arms.”
“She’s hot, Fin.”
“You could find hotter ham in a meat locker.”
“Bitter and cynical,” the agent said sadly, “is what you are. Just because you got a chin dimple and a Cary Grant haircut that I told you to get, you ain’t got what’s in between. You got a pleasant Irish mug, but that’s about it.”
“Then get me a role playing Father O’Malley where I get to yell faith ’n begorrah and rescue street people.”
“The camera looks for hope, not bitterness, Fin. Vulnerability, not cynicism. Haircuts don’t matter.”
“I shoulda kept my old hairdo and my Nehru coat. Everything comes around. Just ask your secretary.”
“There was only one Elvis, Fin,” the fat man informed him. “It wouldn’ta worked for you.”
“I been thinking, maybe I should change my name. Fin Finnegan might not work for me. My old man’s name was Timothy but everybody called him ‘Fin,’ so my mother decided that if they were gonna call me ‘Fin’ no matter what, it’d be because it was my Christian name, not my surname. But I been thinking, maybe it’s too much like John Johnson or Ed Edwards?”
“Your name’s not the problem, but I have noticed that your hair’s receding. These days, your haircut looks more Clint Eastwood than Cary Grant. Have you considered a weave?”
“I don’t need sensitivity or a haircut to play a contract killer. To get homicidal I only gotta think of shoulder pads Hillary picking out bad scarves and federal judges. You gonna help me or not?”
“What’s an agent for? I’ll make a call today. Is that acceptable?”
“As acceptable as a drive-by shooting. Get me the job.”
“You think it’s easy to book local actors in anything decent? This town’s as avant-garde as your average Thursday night bowling league. I mean, around here a cultured person is one that don’t drink dago red from a jar. Why do you think the San Diego Symphony’s got more debt than Lithuania? You think I don’t try? I can’t even find anything to eat around here that don’t look like a coroner’s exhibit. A maggot in Musso and Frank’s Hollywood garbage can eats better than the mayor of this burg. I’m malnourished, even!”
“Malnourished? Orson, Dennis Connor and his entire crew could sail you in the next America’s Cup. Now listen, Variety said they’re gonna use this contract killer in the episode they’re prepping right now. Surely you can get me in to read this week.”
“What age they looking for?”
“Thirties.”
“Kee-rist, Fin!”
“I’m barely forty.”
“You look suspiciously older.”
“So do Filipino Little Leaguers but they get to play, god-damnit!”