“So what?”
“That’s your angle, asshole,” Eddie said triumphantly.
Corman stared at him silently.
“You play that up,” Eddie said insistently. “You play the shit out of it.” He leaned forward, planting his elbows on the table. “The editor looks at the picture, says nothing, unimpressed, you know?”
Corman nodded.
“He says no, right?” Eddie said. “You say, okay, fine, no hard feelings. You start to pick up the picture, then you say, ‘Nice block, huh? Hepburn lives on it.’ You tap the print. ‘Right there,’ you say. ‘Jesus,’ you say, ‘imagine that. A drug hit right on Hepburn’s block.’ You slap your forehead. ‘What a city?’ you say. ‘Drug burns even on Hepburn’s block.’ You shake your head at the thought of it. ‘My God,’ you say like it’s just hit you, ‘what if she’d been passing by,’ you say. ‘She coulda caught some lead.’ It doesn’t change the picture, but it gives the editor an angle on the story. The angle goes with the picture. You give him both, but you act like you don’t know it.” He leaned back again, his arms folding proudly over his chest. “You make the sale.”
Corman stared at him, wonderingly. “You actually make sales like that, Eddie?”
“Do I?” Eddie cried. “Do I? Jesus Christ, man, I got a map of the city tacked to my wall.” He spread his arms out wide. “Big fucking thing. Big as you can get. I got little numbered pins that tell me where every celebrity in this town lives.” Again, he smiled proudly. “So what do you think?”
“It’s good, Eddie,” Corman said quietly, with a small, very slender smile. Anything seemed better.
CHAPTER
SIX
AFTER A DAY of chasing small fires and fender benders, Corman returned home just before sunset and found Trang staring at the bulletin board which the tenants had hung on the wall.
“Ah, Mr. Corman,” Trang said as he turned toward him, “I was hoping to have word with you.”
Corman stopped, stared at him expressionlessly, said nothing.
“You know you must make decision soon,” Trang said gravely. He was the new owner of the building, a South Vietnamese immigrant who had, according to his disgruntled tenants, accumulated large sums of money by shipping drugs out of his country before the fall of Saigon. He wore perfectly tailored blue suits, but in a 1940s style, three-piece double-breasted, with wide lapels and pleated, slightly baggy trousers, the style, as some residents liked to claim, of a French imperialist. His teeth had been capped somewhat oddly, too, so that almost all of them were the same length, like piano keys.
“I mean concerning apartment,” Trang explained.
“I made it a long time ago,” Corman told him flatly.
“What was decision?”
“I don’t want to buy it.”
Trang looked mildly hurt. “But Mr. Corman, the insider price is very good,” he said, his eyes sweet, sorrowful, as if he were a good friend trying to prevent Corman from making a disastrous mistake. “And it is very good apartment, as you know.”
It was a dump with loud radiator pipes and rattling windows, but Corman didn’t feel like going into it. “I just don’t want it,” he said.
Trang’s face tightened. “Perhaps you have specific problem?”
“No.”
“If you do, it could be repaired,” Trang assured him. “It could all be part of purchasing agreement.”
“I’m not interested,” Corman repeated.
“But why?” Trang asked. “We could come to arrangement. I am willing to provide financing to insiders.”
“I don’t want to own an apartment,” Corman said firmly.
“And that is final?”
“Yes.”
Trang cleared his throat loudly. “Well then,” he said darkly. “I have to bring up other matter.”
“The rent.”
“I am afraid so.”
“I’ve been a little short recently.”
“Short, yes,” Trang said curtly.
“I’ll get it to you as soon as I can.”
Trang didn’t look convinced. “The people here, they think I am rich man, that rent does not really matter to me.” He shook his head. “But I have mortgage, you see. It is quite big one, too, as you know from prospectus. I have to pay it, just as you have to pay rent. Every month.”
Corman nodded, his eyes staring evenly into Trang’s face. It was not an evil face, just flat and faintly yellow with oval eyes and soft, almost purple lips. But there was something behind it, an edginess and brutality that added up to a capacity to do whatever the scheme of things demanded. He looked like the sort of person who was perfectly willing to accept the law of the jungle as the only one there was or ever would be. His body always looked tightly coiled, as if around a low-slung limb, poised to drop, entangle, squeeze.
“You very smart person,” Trang said. “I am sure you understand about mortgage.”
“I need a little more time.”
Trang looked at Corman as if he’d asked to sleep with his wife, daily with his twin daughters. “You make it difficult for me, Mr. Corman,” he said flatly. “I am not bad man. People, here, they think I am bad person.”
Corman said nothing, and his silence seemed to set Trang on edge, stiffen his resolve. His eyes shriveled into two small green dots. “At this point,” he said, “I believe that you are two months in arrears.”
“That sounds right,” Corman told him.
“Of course, this problem with rent could be figured into purchase price of apartment,” Trang added, now shifting again, becoming more conciliatory. “As discount, you see.”
Corman shook his head, his eyes still focused on Trang’s face. There was a small birthmark just above his right eyebrow. It was dark pink, and roughly in the shape of a fish. For a moment Corman thought it might be a tattoo, the mark of some murderous Oriental gang of drug runners and assassins to which Trang had once belonged. He wondered if Trang had ever killed a man, slit a throat or bashed in a skull. It was entirely possible, if the rumors were true, and the odd thing was that in America he would never think of such a thing. He would use the law instead, wielding it like a dagger, hurling it at you like a pointed throwing star.
“The figure is eight hundred and forty-two dollars and seventy-two cents, I believe,” Trang said.
“Yeah,” Corman told him, “I got your letter.”
“I wrote it with regret,” Trang said. “It is not personal matter.”
It was an interesting choice of words. For an instant Corman dealt with the hidden element within it. Nothing personal meant that they could do anything to you, but it wasn’t exactly to you they were doing it. They were just doing it in response to some phantom sense of the way things were. That’s what dictated their action, and you weren’t supposed to get mad about it.
“I’m working on a few things,” Corman said.
Trang’s eyes widened hungrily. “Things?”
“An angle on some pictures.”
“Angle?” Trang said uncomprehendingly. “Pictures?”
“I’m hoping to make some money.”
“I hope you do,” Trang told him. “Do you think it will be soon?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Trang said, his words now quite precise, lawyerly, emphatically stated. “If not, it is necessary I have to ask you to leave.”
“I understand.”
“Eviction proceeding very slow. I would like better to avoid.”
“So would I.”
Trang stepped back, edging himself against the bulletin board. Angry tenants had posted a newspaper article which had been written about Trang and other developers who were transforming the theater district, turning old Broadway hotels and rooming houses into state-of-the-art co-ops and condominiums. It showed Trang heatedly wagging his finger at an old man in a sleeveless undershirt and suspenders, and although Trang had never noticed it, the photo credit in the right-hand corner of the picture was Corman’s.