Life Blood Part 3

"You two're just gonna 'talk' about it?" Russo's penetrating eyes dimmed. "Now that's a little disappointing, I gotta tell you, since I sent for my business manager, Eddie down there in the car, hoping we could reach a meeting of minds right here. Sign a few things. Roll that note I'm holding into a distribution deal and give everybody one less worry." He turned in his chair, boring in on me. "Like, for instance, I checked out your locations and I noticed there ain't no Teamsters nowhere. All you got's a bunch of f.u.c.kin' Mick scabs driving them vans.

Now that can lead to circ.u.mstances. Inadequate safety procedures. Of course, that wouldn't have to be a concern if we was partners together.

Then you'd have good security. The best."

I looked at David, who seemed on the verge of a heart attack. Why was he letting this even be discussed? Get in bed with Nicky Russo and the next thing you know he's got somebody hanging you out the window by your ankles.

Besides, ten to one the guy was bluffing, seeing if he could scare us.

I refocused. "Mr. Russo, it may ease your mind to know that our security is managed by a former agent for the FBI. He was with them here in New York till about a year ago, when he came to us full time.

His name is Agent Lou Crenshaw. You're welcome to check him out. He's familiar with union issues, and he carries a .38. He also has plenty of friends down at 26 Federal Plaza. So if you have any lingering concern about our security procedures, why don't you run it by him?"

The mention of Lou seemed to brighten David's listless eyes. He leaned back in his chair and almost smiled.

He had good reason. The favor he'd done for Lou, and indirectly for me, was enough to inspire eternal loyalty. Lou would face off against half of h.e.l.l's Kitchen for David Roth.

"That ain't the point, exactly," Russo said, s.h.i.+fting uncomfortably.

"Thing is, Roma could do good distribution for you. We work with a lot of people."

"Then why not submit a formal proposal? In writing. I'm in charge and that's how I do business. If your numbers work, then we can talk."

"Just trying to be helpful." He glared at me, then seemed to dismiss my presence. I disappeared from his radar as though lifted away by an alien s.p.a.cecraft, and he turned back to David. "You know, Dave, me and you've kinda drifted apart lately. Old friends oughtn'ta do that. We ought to keep more in touch. I think we get along okay."

In other words, get this pushy broad out of my face.

"It's just business, Nicky," David said, trying to conjure an empty smile. "Business and pleasure don't always mix."

Yes! David, tell the creep to leave us alone. Tell him.

"Doing business with me ain't a pleasure?" Nicky Russo asked, hurt filling his voice. He'd brought out a large Havana and was rolling it in between his thumb and forefinger. "I figured we was best friends.

_Paisans_."

"We're not _not_ friends, Nicky. We've just got different goals in life. You know how it is."

I worked my way around behind his desk and glanced out the window. The lingering day was beginning to cloud over, a perfect match for my state of mind. After this I had a late appointment with Dr. Hannah Klein. I feared she was going to end my baby hopes.

"Yeah, well," Nicky Russo said finally, rising, "I gotta be downtown in a little while, so I guess we can talk about this later."

"Okay, sure." David made a shrugging sign. Like: Women! What can you do? Then he got up too. "Look, Nicky, let me chew on this. Maybe I'll get back to you."

"Yeah, you think about it, all right?" He rose without a further word and worked his way out the wide double doors, stumbling through the ficus forest as he struck a match to his cigar.

"David, don't sign anything with him. Don't. I'll handle the Teamster stuff if it comes up. I know how to talk to them."

"Okay, okay, calm down. He was just seeing if he could push me. I know him. You called his scam with that talk about Lou. By tomorrow he'll forget about the whole thing." He looked at me, his eyes not quite yet back in focus. "Thanks. You can say things to him I'd get cement shoes for. Nicky's not really ready for people like you. He has this macho front, but he doesn't know how to handle a professional woman with b.a.l.l.s."

"You're welcome. I guess." b.a.l.l.s? I adored those vulnerable male bits, but I preferred not to think of myself in those terms. Truth was, Nicky Russo played a large part in my personal anxieties. "But I mean it. N.

O."

"I hear you," he said, sighing. Then he snapped back to the moment. "So where do things stand otherwise?"

I'd come for an after-the-fact green light of the day's shoot, but already I was thinking about Hannah Klein. "David, I'm going to find out in about an hour whether Steve and I are ever going to have a baby.

But truthfully I don't think I'm pregnant. I think it's over." It hurt to say it. He knew about Steve and me--I'd written some language on maternity leave into my contract--and I think he was mildly rooting for us. Or maybe not.

"Could be it's all for the best," he declared. He'd sat back down, picked up a pencil off his desk to distract himself, and was whirling it pensively, one of his few habits that made me crazy. "Maybe you were destined to make movies, not kids."

I listened to his tone of voice, knowing he often hid his real feelings with safe, sympathy-card sentiments. He rose to eloquence only when nothing much was at stake. He'd even sent me flowers and a mea-culpa note twice as a makeup after we'd had a disagreement over costs and scheduling. And one of those times, I should have sent him flowers.

Sometimes I wondered why we worked so well together. The truth was, we operated on very different wavelengths.

Some history to ill.u.s.trate. Over the past eight years, before I teamed up with David, I'd done three "highly praised" doc.u.mentaries. But getting to that point meant busting my behind for years and years at the lower end of the professional food chain. After NYU, I toiled as a script supervisor on PBS doc.u.mentaries, about as close to grunt work as it comes. Eventually I got a fling as a production a.s.sistant, a.s.sembling crews, but then the money dried up. (Thank you, Jesse Helms.) Whereupon I decided to try capitalism, working for three years as an AD on the soaps: first Guiding Light, then As the World Turns, then Search for Tomorrow. I can still hear the horrible music. Then a connection got me a slot at A&E as a line producer. Eight months later the series got canceled, which was when I decided the time had come to take my career into my own hands. I hocked every last credit card, went to j.a.pan, and made a doc.u.mentary. The result: I was an "overnight"

success. Men started addressing me by my name.

My first film was about the impact of Zen on j.a.panese business. As part of my research, I shaved my head and lived three months at a Kyoto temple, eating bean curd three meals a day, after which I had enough credibility to land long interviews with Tokyo CEOs. I then sold the edited footage to A&E. When it became a critical hit, they financed a second film, about the many G.o.ds of India and how they impact everything about the place. There, I also got caught up in the mystical sensuality of ragas, Indian cla.s.sical music, and took up the violin (one of my major professional mistakes). Next I moved on to Mexico's southern Yucatan to film a day in the life of a Maya village for the Discovery Channel. They wanted me to add some footage from Guatemala, but I scouted the country and decided it was too scary. Instead, I spent several months in Haiti filming voodoo rituals, again for A&E.

And met Steve.

Then one day I checked my bank account and realized that, financially speaking, I was a "flop d'estime." I was doing the kind of work that does more for your reputation than your retirement plan. I decided to go more mainstream and see what happened. But to do that I needed a commercial partner, a backer.

Ironically enough, when I first teamed up with David, he had bottom-line problems too, but from the opposite direction. He was busy disproving the adage that n.o.body ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American public. He knew something was wrong, but what?

Apparently, when he started out, somebody told him cable audiences possessed an insatiable appet.i.te for bare-skin-and-jiggle. Hey, he figured, that stuff he could grind out in his sleep. His first, and last, epic in the skin genre was _Wet T-s.h.i.+rt Weekend_, whose t.i.tle says it all. He explained the economics to me once, still baffled why the picture hadn't worked. He'd a.s.sumed all you had to do was find a bunch of nineteen-year-olds who looked like they're sixteen, go nonunion someplace down South with a beach, and take care the wardrobe trailer has nothing but string bikinis. "Cost only a million-eight to make," he declared with pride, "but every penny is on the screen."

He insisted I watch it, perplexed that it was universally regarded as a turkey. It was a painful experience, so much so I actually began to wonder if his heart was really in it. (The great schlockmeisters secretly think they're Fellini; they're operating at the top of their form, not consciously pandering.)

Chastened financially, he decided to move into low-budget action-adventure. His efforts, most notably _Virtual Cop_, had car chases, blue-screen explosions, buckets of fake blood. Somebody died creatively in every scene.

They did business in Asia and Southern Europe, but he was dumbfounded when n.o.body at HBO or Showtime would return his calls. It gnawed at his self-esteem.

That was the moment we found each other. He'd just concluded he needed somebody with a quality reputation to give

Applecore an image makeover, and I'd realized I needed somebody who knew more than I did about the mechanics of making and distributing independent films.

We were an odd couple. I finally shook hands on the partners.h.i.+p after he caved in and agreed I could do anything I wanted, so long as it looked mainstream enough to get picked up by Time-Warner or somebody else legit. Well, quasi-legit. We both agreed on no more bikinis and no more films about places that required cholera shots. It was something of a compromise on both our parts.

Thus far, though, we were getting along. Maybe luck was part of it, but _Baby Love _was still on schedule and on budget. And I already had a deal nearly in the bag with Lifetime, the women's channel, that would just about cover the costs. Everything after that would be gravy.

Again, hope hope. Maybe not the theatrical release I'd been praying for, but good enough--so he had to smile and not give me a hard time about the money I'd just spent. Had to, right?

I took a deep breath.

"David, I did a little extra shooting this morning that's kind of. . .

outside the plan. But it's really important. Want to hear about it?"

"What! I thought you were finished with princ.i.p.al photography." He looked disoriented, the deer in the headlights. Hints of extra crew time always had that effect on him. "You're saying this wasn't in the budget?"

"Just listen first, okay?" Like a politician, I avoided giving him a direct answer. I told him about the interview with Carly and the reason for it.

"Nice of you to share the news with me." His eyes narrowed. "I think we've got some big-time communication issues here."

"Look, don't worry. I'll figure out how to save some money somewhere else."

"Morgy, before we continue this unnerving conversation, we've got to have a serious review of the matter of cash flow." He frowned, then went back to whirling the pencil, his hair backlighted from the wide window, his eyes focused on its stubby eraser as though he'd just discovered a new strain of bacteria. "So let me break some news regarding the current budget."