Part 17 (1/2)
TWENTY-FIVE.
The Chelsea Piers. Same movie-fog, movie-fog-horn ambience. Danny Zito-writer, artist, bon vivant-would come trailing out of it like a movie-mob guy.
Clive wondered about all that while he waited in the wet and seeping cold: the G.o.dfather, Don-who's-it-Corleone?-name like a kind of pasta. Gotti was real. But was it really like that? He wondered what, exactly, you had to do to be a made man. Did you get points for different things? So many for a body stuffed in a car trunk? Buried in the desert outside of Vegas? A gunning down in some spaghetti restaurant? (Extra points for the Four Seasons or Le Cirque?) Avoiding the slaughter of innocents? Not avoiding the slaughter of innocents? Drive-by shootings probably ranked really low-no panache, no style. Or was being ”made” more to do with longevity? Was it loyalty that was important? Would he know the answers to all of these questions when Danny handed over the next hundred pages of opus number two? Probably not; probably it would be a treatise on ephemeral art.
Clive looked out over the Hudson, at the mist that clung to its surface like a river specter, ghosting across the water's surface. What he should have done when he was young was to catch a freighter. He could still do it . . . Oh, get real. Nothing kills you quicker than romancing things. The trouble with those romantic ideas is that your mind always shoots straight to the payoff-to the black sands and turquoise water, and you walking the beach; to the exotic and the beautiful. The mind skips right over the day-to-day stuff it takes to get to the good parts. Buy the castle in Scotland. The mind sees you moving through the baronial splendor of the big rooms, fingering the lush fabrics of draperies and sofas, conveniently omitting the ha.s.sle of moving the sofas in and hanging up the drapes, or the dreary cold from inadequate fires, the clanging pipes, the awful plumbing, the hook-nosed gardener, and the need for many servants. In other words, the daily grind, the dreadful awareness of being You again, only now you're You again and cold as Scott of the Antarctic.
And for you who abscond to backwoods cabins in Minnesota and Saskatchewan so that you can write that edgy memoir-are you going to set down the days and weeks each following one another until you collapse from the boredom of it all?
”Mr. Editor, yo!”
Clive jumped.
”Man, you were orbiting. What the h.e.l.l are you smoking?”
”h.e.l.lo, Danny. Marlboro Lights, a carnival of sounds and colors. I started again.” Clive dropped the cigarette, ground it with his heel, nodding at the white Dean & DeLuca bag Danny carried. ”That where you do your grocery shopping?”
”Absolutely. Best produce in town.”
”Most expensive, that's for sure.” The man had to be kidding. ”You're in the witness protection program, remember?”
Danny winced. ”Oh, come on. Who'd expect one of them to turn up in Dean and DeLuca?”
”Well, h.e.l.l, then, why don't we meet in produce at Dean and DeLuca instead of this G.o.dforsaken pier?”
”Dean and DeLuca ain't a place for a meet, Clive. That's what you got piers for. Come on. And what's so 'G.o.dforsaken' about it?” Danny swept his arm out. ”You got your skateboarding, your hoops down there”-he pointed into the darkness-”and there's two more galleries opening in that warehouse.” He nodded to a place over Clive's shoulder.
Clive did not bother looking around. ”Spare me Chelsea art. What about the, uh, contact, Danny?”
”Yeah, yeah. I got a name for you. Did you get those details worked out? What we talked about?” Danny folded a stick of gum into his mouth.
”Details?”
”What we talked about.”
Clive tried to call this up, which was hard with Danny's damp brown eyes wide on him as eager as a Derby entrant a furlong from the finish. Then he remembered. ”The hard-soft deal, the split? Sure. Fifty-five, forty-five, just what you asked for.”
Danny kept looking at him. ”And-?”
” ' And'?”
”Jacket art.”
”Oh, yeah. Jacket approval. No problem. It's yours.”
”And-?”
Clive searched his mind but did he need one for this? ”And . . . copy. You write your own copy?” That would be a break for Clive or a copy editor.
”Good. Here.” Danny smiled as he handed over the white bag. ”I think you're gonna like it if I do say so. It's set in Vegas.”
”In Vegas? My, my. De Niro will be all over it. Come on, Danny, do you think that's wise?” Wise? What in h.e.l.l did wisdom have to do with any of this? ”I mean, there was Casino, there was Bugsy-every mob story's set in Vegas or New York.”
Danny shut his eyes, pained by such obtuseness. He shook his head slowly. ”No, no. This is way different. This is totally different.”
Clive hated himself for asking, but he did. ”How?”
”Well, for one thing, it's like a comparison with the Romans. All of them Caesars. Julius is only one-”
”How does Julius get to Vegas?”
Danny snorted. ”You never heard of Caesars Palace? The old world and the new. Just read it, you'll get it. It's myths. That Bellagio place, you know, with the fountains out front, h.e.l.l, that's a myth run wild. I got another hundred pages done.”
Myths. ”I can hardly wait.” In some insane way, this was true.
”And when it comes to movie rights, I get cast approval. And director. That's important. Lynch would be right for it. Maybe Christopher Nolan. As me I see Pacino or maybe Ray Liotta. Joe Pesci, I don't think so. But that newer guy, what the h.e.l.l's his name . . . ?” Danny was chewing gum furiously now, thinking of who he wanted to play him.
”Good.” Clive smiled. ”The name, Danny?”
Danny snapped his fingers. ”Vince Vaughn.”
”Not the actor, Danny, the investigator.”
”Oh, yeah. You got a pencil? Oh, a Montblanc, excuse me.”
Clive had his pen out and gave Danny a sour look.
”Blase Pascal, that's P-a-s-c-a-l. Phone number-”
For a moment Clive was struck dumb. ”Hold it. That's a philosopher.”
”What philosopher?” Danny frowned.
”Blaise Pascal. He was a philosopher. You've heard of that famous wager-”
”He's Vegas, too?”
Jesus! ”This name. What is it, a pseudonym?”
Danny shrugged, chewed his gum. ”f.u.c.k do I know? B-l-a-s-e P-a-s-c-a-l.”
”Danny, that's 'blah-zay' you're spelling. Meaning, 'apathetic,' 'bored.' ”