"You working on a movie right now?" she asked.
"I'm doing rewrite on a cop film."
That was a good sign, his calling a movie a film. Especially a cop movie. The ones who took themselves too seriously – meaning they had money – called them films.
"Who's in it?"
"It hasn't been cast. That's why I'm doing rewrite. The dialogue sucks."
To prep for the test drive Cassie had read the story in Variety about the first-look deal. It said Michaels was a recent graduate of the USC film school and had made a fifteen-minute film that won some kind of studio-sponsored award. He looked maybe twenty-five years old tops. Cassie wondered where he would get his dialogue from. He didn't look as though he had ever met a cop in his life, let alone any outlaws. The dialogue would probably come from television or other movies, she decided.
"You want to drive now, John?"
"It's Joe."
Another bingo. She had called him the wrong name on purpose, just to see if he would correct her. That he did meant he was serious and ego-driven, a good combination when it came to selling and buying automobiles that were serious and ego-driven.
"Joe, then."
She pulled into the overlook above the Hollywood Bowl. She killed the engine, set the brake and got out. She didn't look back at Michaels as she walked to the edge and put a foot up on the guardrail. She leaned over and retied her black Doc Marten work shoe and then looked down at the empty bowl. She was wearing tight black jeans and a sleeveless white T-shirt beneath an unbuttoned blue Oxford dress shirt. She knew she looked good and her radar told her that he was looking at her instead of the car. She ran her fingers through her blond hair, newly cut short so she could wear the wig. She turned abruptly and caught him looking at her. He quickly looked past her, out to the view of downtown in the pastel pink smog.
"So what do you think?" she asked.
"I think I like it," Michaels said. "But you have to drive it to know for sure."
He smiled. She smiled. They were definitely moving on the same plane.
"Then let's do it," she said, careful to keep the double entendre working.
They got back in the Porsche and Cassie sat in the passenger seat a bit sideways, so she was facing Joe. She watched as he brought his right hand up to the steering column and it searched for the ignition and keys.
"Other side," she said.
He found the keys in the ignition on the dashboard left of the wheel.
"That's a Porsche tradition," she said. "From back when they made cars for racing. It was so you could start with your left hand and have your right already on the gear shift. It's a quick-start ignition."
Michaels nodded. Cassie knew that little story always scored with them. She didn't even know if it was true – she had gotten it from Ray – but she told it every time. She knew Michaels was imagining himself telling it to some sweet little thing outside any number of pickup joints on the Sunset Strip.
He started the engine and backed the car out and then drove back out onto Mulholland, over-revving all the way. But after a few shifts he picked up on the nuances of the gearbox and was taking the curves smoothly. Cassie watched as he tried not to smile when he hit a straightaway and the speedo hit seventy-five in just a few seconds. But the look came over his face. He couldn't hide it. She knew the look and what it felt like. Some people got it from speed and power, some got it in other ways. She thought about how long it had been since she had felt the hot wire coursing through her own blood.
Cassie looked into her little office to check for pink phone slips on the desk. There were none. She moved on through the showroom, running her finger along the spoiler of a classic whale tail, and past the finance office to the fleet manager's office. Ray Morales looked up from some paperwork as she came in and hooked the keys from the Carrera she had used on the test drive on the appropriate hook on the fleet board. She knew he was waiting to hear how it went. After all, he had invested more than a hundred dollars in Scotch whisky.
"He's going to think about it a couple days," she said without looking at Ray. "I'll call him Wednesday."
As Cassie turned to leave, Ray dropped his pen and pushed his seat back from his desk.
"Shit, Cassie, what is up with you? That guy was a hard-on. How'd you lose him?"
"I didn't say I lost him," Cassie said, too much protest in her voice. "I said he's going to think about it. Not everybody buys after the first test drive, Ray. That car's going to run a hundred grand."
"With these guys they do. With Porsche they do. They don't think, they buy. Cassie, damn, he was primed. I could tell when I had him on the phone. You know what you're doing? I think you're psyching these guys out. You gotta come on to these guys like they're the next Cecil B. DeMille. Don't make 'em feel bad about what they do or what they want."
Cassie put her hands on her hips in indignation.
"Ray, I don't know what you're talking about. I try to sell the car, I don't try to talk 'em out of it. I don't make them feel bad. And none of these guys even know who Cecil B. De Mille was."
"Then Spielberg, Lucas, whatever. I don't care. There is an art to this, Cassie. That's what I'm saying and what I've been trying to teach you. It's finesse, it's sex, it's givin' the guy a hard-on. When you first came in here you were doin' that. You were moving, what, five, six cars a month. Now, I don't know what you're doing."
Cassie looked down at his desk for a moment before answering. She slid her hands into her pockets. She knew he was right.
"Okay, Ray, you're right. I'll work on it. I guess I'm just a little out of focus right now."
"How come?"
"I'm not sure."
"You want some time, maybe take a few days?"
"No, I'm cool. But tomorrow I'll be in late. I've got my see-and-pee up in Van Nuys."
"Right. No problem. How's that going? That lady doesn't call or come around anymore."
"It's going. You probably won't hear from her unless I fuck up."
"Good. Keep it that way."
Something about his tone bothered her but she pushed it aside. She averted her eyes and looked down at the paperwork on his desk. She noticed that there was a fleet report on a stack of paperwork to the side of his work space.
"So we have a truck coming?"
Ray followed her eyes to the report and nodded.
"Next Tuesday. Four Boxsters, three Carreras – two of them cabs."
"Cool. You know colors yet?"
"The Carreras are white. The Boxsters are coming arctic, white, black and I think yellow."
He grabbed the report and studied it.
"Yeah, yellow. Be nice to have these locked in before they get here. Meehan already has a contract on one of the cabs."
"I'll see what I can do."
He winked at her and smiled.
"Thattagirl."
There was that tone again. And the wink. She was getting the idea that Ray was finally getting around to wanting to collect on all of his goodwill. He'd probably been waiting for her to hit a drought so she'd feel she had less choice in the matter. She knew he would make his move soon and that she should think about how to handle it. But there were too many other things that were more important on her mind. She left him in the office and headed back to her own.
3
THE offices of the California Department of Corrections, Parole and Community Services Division, in Van Nuys were crowded into a one-story building of gray, precast concrete that stood in the shadow of the Municipal Court building. The nondescript design features of its exterior seemed in step with its purpose: the quiet reintegration of convicts into society.
The interior of the building took its cue from the crowd control philosophy employed at popular amusement parks – although those who waited here weren't always anxious to reach the end of their wait. A maze of roped-off cattle rows folded the long lines of ex-cons back and forth in the waiting rooms and hallways. There were lines of cons waiting to check in, lines waiting for urine tests, lines waiting to see parole agents, lines in all quadrants of the building.