Trouble & Strife Read online

  Grant watched them shoot a scene where the muscle-bound hunk confronts two black kids in hoodies on the footpath surrounding the lake. The fountain was in the background with sun shining through the spray. He noted that whenever Hollywood filmed a fountain the sun was always shining through the spray. He guessed it was the same as always facing the Westlake Theatre; what made it onto the screen was what looked good not what was real. He was standing next to the catering truck where Tanburro was drinking strong black coffee.

  “How come it’s always two black kids in hoodies?”

  Tanburro dumped a mountain of sugar into his coffee. “Because if it was Mexicans there’d be a riot.”

  “I thought L.A. was the home of riots.”

  Tanburro nodded at the muscle-bound hunk. “It’s the home of wannabe actors thinking they’re gonna be stars.”

  Grant watched the scene reset for a second take. “He’s not going to be a star?”

  Tanburro put a travel lid on his coffee. “Kurt Bochner? He’s going to be a pain in the ass.”

  “Bochner? Sounds like a German sausage.”

  “He wants to be a single name star. Like Eastwood or Schwarzenegger.”

  “Schwarzenegger is a German sausage.”

  Uniformed cops let the traffic through on Wilshire while the crew reset the camera. They were retired LAPD who looked too old for their uniforms. Grant had been surprised to learn that retired cops were allowed to keep their uniforms and sidearms and could perform traffic duty for hire. In Yorkshire you had to hand everything in when you retired or prove it had been destroyed. He remembered one constable who had to pay for his helmet even though it was the old style that had been replaced years ago.

  Grant indicated the traffic cops. “You liaise with the retirees as well as give technical advice?”

  Tanburro glanced at the LAPD veterans. “I liaise with everything to do with police work. Even got a doughnut shop down the way.”

  Grant smiled. “Is that true? The cops and doughnuts thing?”

  “Makes a good story. Same as throwing your arms out like Jesus on the cross.”

  “That was to show the gunman I was unarmed. Not my fault Fox News was filming it.”

  “Doughnuts and Resurrection Men. Tall tales we live by.”

  Grant watched the camera crew prepare for the next take. “Is this tall tale going to be one we live by?”

  “Bochner thinks so. Reality is, not a hope in hell. It’s a pilot that’ll never get picked up unless he creates enough publicity and gets his name in the news.”

  Grant watched the actor get his makeup touched up. “Maybe he should throw his arms out like Jesus on the cross.”

  It was Tanburro’s turn to look at the woman cowering in Bochner’s shadow. “Maybe he should stop beating his wife. That kind of publicity will stop his career in its tracks.”

  Lights, camera, action. Bochner confronted the black kids again and the camera followed on the dolly track. Grant had lost interest in the scene being filmed though and was looking at the man’s wife. “Yeah, I might have a word about that.”

  In the end it wasn’t Bochner that Grant had a word with. The Yorkshire cop had only watched the filming to gauge Bochner’s size and movement, knowing that when it comes to confrontations it’s speed over size that matters, not exactly what they say in the condom adverts. Grant had made a living avoiding confrontation but knew that the best way to avoid a fight was to be able to win it if you had to. Grant wasn’t going to win a fight with Kurt Bochner.

  Once he’d figured that out he turned his attention to the alternative to fighting. If there was any truth in the old adage divide and conquer, there was even more in the saying hell hath no fury like woman scorned. Even if that woman was battered and bruised and scared of her own shadow. Grant decided to work on removing that shadow.

  “How are you doing? Can I get you a drink?”

  Lizzie Bochner, formerly Bourdon, jumped despite Grant using his most English of accents. Friendly tone and no contractions. He was never going to have a BBC voice but the Yorkshire accent often worked wonders; a bit like the softened Scottish burr that made Sean Connery the best James Bond. Grant stood on the downslope so the woman was taller than him and gave her a lazy smile.

  “It must get boring watching your husband have his eye shadow retouched.”

  Lizzie gave him a nervous smile in return. “He doesn’t use eye shadow.”

  Grant sat on a park bench and gestured for her to join him. At first she seemed reluctant then responded to the smile and the accent. The camera crew was down the slope by the lake, Bochner too busy to see what his wife was doing. Sun glinted on the water, breaking up the clear blue reflection.

  “That’s because he puts the shadow on your eyes.”

  He held up a calming hand before Lizzie could back away.

  “But I’ve got something better than makeup remover.”

  The movie circus was finished at MacArthur Park by five o’clock, negotiating the rush hour traffic along Wilshire Boulevard by taking cross streets and a zigzag route back to the location base. For a TV pilot that was doomed to failure the production company didn’t scrimp on expense, having a heavily guarded compound opposite the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard. Not exactly the Paramount Studios backlot on the other side of the cemetery but in the same zip code. The cemetery looked more like a movie set than the studio.

  Grant tagged along, keeping the convoy in sight even when the lights went against him. He’d done a bit of covert observations and long tails in Yorkshire but much more with the Boston Police Department. You didn’t have to follow crooks in Yorkshire because you always knew where they were going. It was a limited pool and a smaller landscape. You could drop England into California and not even notice. Following Kurt Bochner was similar to tailing the petty crooks from Bradford, Bochner had a limited range and Grant knew where he was going anyway.

  A news helicopter thudded overhead, drifting towards West Hollywood and Studio City. Grant kept his eyes on the prize and refused to glance up at the bane of his life, 24-hour news coverage. Another helicopter raced across the sky in the opposite direction. He was surprised there weren’t more midair collisions, the skies above Los Angeles being almost as busy as downtown Manhattan.

  The convoy skirted the cemetery then turned into Bronson Avenue just past the Omega Cinema Props parking lot. The production vehicles snaked into the compound and began to line up in the cleared area beside a port-a-cabin office. The retired LAPD cops did traffic duty again, keeping the vehicles moving while appeasing angry commuters. They didn’t take much appeasing, with armed men in uniform waving their hands at them.

  Grant pulled into a strip mall opposite the Dearly Departed Tours and Artifacts Museum, a sign in the window advertising Cemetery Maps Available Here. The makeup trailer and craft services truck were the last into the compound. Five minutes later a Chevy Suburban with blacked out windows came through the gates and headed towards Hollywood and Vine.

  Just as expected. The most successful police operations were the ones with the best intelligence. Grant’s intelligence told him where Bochner was going next. There was no need to rush. He was going to savor this.

  O’Neil’s Bar reminded Grant of Flanagan’s in Jamaica Plain, small and dark with red brick interior walls and a full-length bar mirror. It was up the hill from Hollywood Boulevard on Vine Street between the antique cinema frontage of Avalon Hollywood and a 7-Eleven and just down from the Capitol Records building across the road. The Suburban was parked opposite with the courtesy driver lounging against the steering wheel. Grant dismissed him as not a threat and went inside.

  Yes, the interior was just like Flanagan’s. Maybe all bars with Irish names went for the same theme, rundown and dingy but with every shade of whisky. There were booths along the left-hand wall and tables in the front window and barstools all the way along the carved wood bar. A couple of workmen still wearing cove
ralls sat in the second booth from the end and three women sat at a window table, watching the world go by in between incessant chatter. The barman was polishing glasses near the cash register. Barmen always seemed to be polishing glasses if they weren’t serving customers.

  Kurt Bochner was sitting on the end barstool next to the restroom passage. He looked up when Grant came in but didn’t recognize him. The actor looked slightly put out that nobody was fawning over him and went back to nursing his drink. Grant glanced at the restroom passage then at the two workmen. No threats there either. If any trouble started it was the barman who would step in and stop it. That was something else they did when they weren’t serving customers. Grant smiled and gave him a wave to get him on his side. Barmen seldom hit a man who is smiling.

  “Before I ask, is it Coca Cola or Pepsi? Because whenever I ask for Coca Cola they only stock Pepsi and vice versa.”

  The barman stopped polishing. “It’s beer and whisky.”

  Grant walked up to the bar. “Sounds like a song I once heard.” He strangled his singing voice. “Cigarettes and whisky and wild, wild women. They’ll drive you crazy, they’ll drive you insane.”

  The barman nodded at the door. “Cabaret’s down the street.”

  Grant rested soft hands on the bar. Not fists. “I’m driving, so could I have a Coca Cola please?”

  “We only have Pepsi.”

  Bochner laughed and Grant threw his hands out in surrender. The barman couldn’t keep a straight face any longer. His leathery features broke into a smile.

  “Just kidding. We got Coke.”

  Grant smiled in return. “Well, that broke the ice. I’m Jim Grant.” He turned to Kurt Bochner. “And you’re that guy on TV aren’t you?”

  They settled in pretty quick after that, Grant with his Coca Cola and Bochner with his fifty shades of whisky. The workmen kept talking work and the ladies just kept talking. The barman went back to polishing glasses. Grant sat on the next available barstool; the one next to the second-rate actor and two down from the passage to the restrooms and the back door.

  Grant rubbed his chin. “Don’t tell me. Your name’s on the tip of my tongue.” He stopped rubbing and snapped his fingers. “Hart Butcher.”

  “Bochner.”

  “Hart Bochner? That weasely fuck in Die Hard?”

  “Kurt Bochner. And just call me a weasely fuck again. Go on.”

  Grant held his hands up again. “Sorry. Not you obviously.” He took a sip of his Coke. “He’d be sixty plus by now. But I have seen you before.”

  Bochner looked torn between bragging and embarrassment. “Done a couple of commercials. Some bit parts in CSI and NCIS. Played a dead body once.”

  Grant feigned distaste. “Urgh. Dead people. No thanks.”

  Bochner showed he had a sense of humour. “Not many lines.”

  Grant laughed. “I guess not. What you working on now?”

  Bochner brightened up. “Shooting a pilot for Netflix. Cop show where this PTSD soldier back from the war gets recruited by LAPD.”

  Grant shivered again. “PTSD? Gives you a chance to unleash your inner demons, I’ll bet.” He brought his fists up in a boxing pose and threw a few shadow punches. “Hit people in the face.”

  “This is the movies. We don’t hit people in the face. We aim to miss, just set the camera angle so it looks like we connect.”

  “No hitting in the face then?”

  “No.”

  “You come straight from the set? ’Cause unless you dress in ladies clothes you’ve still got your makeup on.”

  Bochner rubbed his cheek then checked his fingers. “Oh yeah. Left my high heels in the restroom.”

  Grant’s eyes widened as if he’d just remembered something. “I read about that Netflix thing. PTSD Cockney. Comes out with all this rhyming slang.”

  Bochner looked pleased that someone had heard of the show. “That’s right. Been watching The Sweeney to get my head right.”

  “Loaf. Not head. Loaf of bread.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The TV series not the movie I hope.”

  “There was a TV show?”

  “Would you Adam and Eve it? You didn’t know about the TV series?”

  “Adam and Eve it. Believe it. Good.”

  Grant took another swig of his Coke. “I knew cops back in Yorkshire, detectives mainly, used to model themselves on The Sweeney. Either that or The Sweeney got it bang right. Always getting Brahms and Liszt and falling down the Apples and Pears.”

  “Pissed and stairs.”

  “Whenever they had to search a villain’s house it was always, ‘Let’s go spin his drum.’ We never call it that in Yorkshire. It’s just a house search.”

  “Life imitating art.”

  “Amen to that.”

  A young couple came in off the street and sat at the other end of the bar. Smartly dressed. Young. Either business types or Jehovah’s Witnesses. The way the young man was eyeing the woman’s cleavage, Grant dismissed Jehovah’s Witnesses. Work colleagues maybe, with the man wanting it to be something more. The barman went down to serve them, giving Grant and Bochner a little privacy. Grant put his glass down and leaned in.

  “L.A. being the home of the weird and wonderful, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of sayings yourself.”

  Bochner shrugged. “L.A.’s home for everyone. Most cosmopolitan city in the world. We’ve got sayings from everywhere.”

  “America in general then.”

  “Yeah. We’ve got a few.”

  Grant lowered his voice. “Sleeveless vests and suchlike. Back in Yorkshire we just call it a string vest.”

  “You’re not in Yorkshire, you’re in L.A.”

  Grant snorted a laugh. “Yeah. Where nothing is what it seems.”

  Bochner braced his shoulders, flexed his muscles then swiveled on his barstool and gave Grant a sideways glance. “Meaning?”

  Grant kept his tone light. “Well, take you for instance. In America a sleeveless vest is a wife beater.”

  His eyes hardened. “But you don’t look anything like a string vest.”

  If they settled in pretty quick after the Coke and the whisky, things got unsettled real quick after the string vest joke. The barman was still serving the couple down the other end of the bar. The workmen were still talking work and the women were still talking. The only oasis of quiet was the two barstools next to the restroom passage.

  Grant leaned back in his seat but the barstool wouldn’t let him get out of Bochner’s fighting arc. He kept the glass of Coca Cola handy in case he needed a drink in the face distraction. The other way to keep from getting hit in the face was to smile. Grant kept the smile on his face and his tone light but the words were getting stronger.

  “You being in a cop show, I’m sure you know this already, but here’s the thing. With all this Me Too movement in Hollywood, the police have had to move with the times. Make it easier to report abuse and less stressful giving evidence. Back in the day, it was only kids who could give evidence by video link but now…”

  Grant held his hands out, palms up. “Well, now, woman with one eye swollen shut, she doesn’t have to give evidence at all. None of that facing your abuser shit that used to scare victims off. It’s a whole different landscape. Just ask Harvey Weinstein.”

  Grant took a sheaf of papers from his inside pocket and smoothed them out on the bar. Typed pages with thick black signatures at the top and bottom. Stapled together in the top left-hand corner. Witness statements. More than one. “You see, from what I remember back in Yorkshire, domestic abuse was always one person’s word against another. Same as non-consensual sex. If it happens in the privacy of your own home, there’re no witnesses. But get a woman, your wife for instance, going into a room looking beautiful then coming out half an hour later with a black eye and swollen face. If you can prove there was only one other person in the room at the time, with CCTV or witnesses for instance, then you’ve pre
tty much got an open and shut case.”

  Bochner sat frozen to the spot, face like stone and holding his breath. His eyes tried to hide the fact that he was running calculations and coming up empty. Grant slid the statements across the bar but the actor didn’t look at them. Grant stood up, keeping the barstool between him and the wife beater.

  “If this was a Western, the bar scene with a card game and a piano player, this is the part where the music stops.”

  He swept a hand in a swirling motion to include the entire bar but mainly to get Bochner used to the movement. The workmen had stopped talking work and the women just stopped talking. The barman stopped polishing glasses. The couple down the far end of the bar was looking at the confrontation taking place next to the restroom passageway.

  Grant gave the smile a sad inflection. “Quiet isn’t it?”

  Bochner was going red from the neck up. Grant couldn’t tell if it was anger or embarrassment so he kept his distance and scooped the statements up. He folded them and put them in his pocket. “Other movie clichés I like. The prison movie. There’s always one guy with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles. For hitting people in the face with.”

  He stopped smiling.

  “Want to know what mine would say?”

  The barman had somehow come halfway towards them, his hands reaching under the bar. The couple went out the front door. The women stared open-mouthed but the workmen just stared, watching to see which way this was going to go. Not getting involved one way or the other. They looked to be leaning towards a big guy victory.

  Bochner stood up, towering over Grant. “Trouble and Strife?”

  The actor balled his fists and they looked like they could slam through the carved wood bar. Grant stepped out from behind the barstool, giving Bochner a clear shot if he wanted to take it. The time for smiling was over but there was still wriggle room for a non-violent outcome. Delaying tactics.

  “That’s seven letters and six. I’ve only got four knuckles per fist.”