09 Shot on Location by Laurence Shames

Author:Laurence Shames [Shames, Laurence]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

27.

Jake gunned the engine of the El Dorado.

The car was still parked in front of Charlie Ponte’s condo, not in gear, and of course it went nowhere. Still, there was a kind of release in high-revving the archaic old V-8, hearing the roar, feeling the quiver of the chassis as the gas exploded in the cylinders and the pistons slammed in their exigent rhythm, straining the rivets in the engine block. The brief and rising roar suggested assertion and decisiveness. Then it dwindled into a softly clattering purr as the motor returned to idle, and Jake sat there in the driver’s seat feeling rather helpless. “Shit, Bert,” he said. “Guy’s got an hour head start. Now what do I do?”

Sitting somewhat slumped on the passenger side, Bert contemplatively stroked the head of his chihuahua as if he was rubbing his own chin. “Broad’s still inna hospital, right?”

“She gets out tomorrow morning.”

“That’s okay then,” the old man said. “Nothin’s gonna happen while she’s inna hospital.”

“You sure?”

“My age, I ain’t sure of nothin’. But I’m pretty sure. I’d say we got all night to find him.”

“We?”

“Hey, I don’t sleep good anyway. Ya gotta be awake, ya might as well be doin’ somethin’, right?”

Jake didn’t so much consider the comment as absorb it. Might as well be doing something. Well, of course. Doing anything. Action! That was the key, he realized—the key to beating back helplessness, refreshing his resolve. Just do something, then do something else, and something else again, until decisive action became a habit and a reflex that might actually lead to results and maybe even pass for courage. He put the giant car in gear and, showing off for no one but himself, burned rubber as he headed back down the Keys.

–

By that time, Charlie Ponte’s enormous desk was almost entirely covered in money.

The money had been poured forth from a black satchel carried by the boss’s next appointment, a very handsome man whose perfect salt-and-pepper hair rose and fell in elegant, old-fashioned finger waves. The bills were all crisp new fifties neatly bundled into stacks of twenty. There were two hundred packets in all, and the payment represented a small fraction of what Ponte would realize from a relatively modest investment in an independent film that had caught on. He stared down at the cheery profusion of cash and smiled. He had never lost his zest for making money and in this he was a fortunate man. “These Hollywood deals,” he said, “when they pay off they pay off good.”

“Nature of the business,” said Handsome Johnny Burke. “High risk, high reward.”

“The reward part I like,” said Ponte.

“Plus it’s totally legit,” Johnny added.

Which was true if you chose to overlook a couple of inconvenient facts, such as that the money that Ponte channeled into movie projects had originally been obtained through theft, extortion, and occasionally murder. Still, by the time the profits had been filtered through a fancy L.A. law firm and the experienced bookkeepers at Handsome Johnny’s Crab Joint, the money had been scrubbed quite clean.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.