On days like today, when they’re talking to me like that, I just feel like killing them. I’m not kidding, I actually want to murder them.
JASON STARR, Cold Caller
Things were finally coming together for Bill Moss. When he came to Hollywood, fucking sixteen years ago, he got hired to write a screenplay for Fox and he was one of the hottest screenwriters in town. But in Hollywood fifteen minutes of fame lasts about fifteen seconds. In a flash, Fox had fucked up the script, bringing in too many writers to do rewrites, and Bill lost his agent and blew most of his money on gambling, eating out, and hookers. Broke and with few other options, he had to get a temporary part-time job selling discount phone service in a telemarketing cubicle.
The temporary job had lasted seven years. During this time, a producer named Larry Reed somehow had gotten ahold of Bill’s draft of the Fox script and wanted a meeting with Bill. While Bill thought Larry was full of shit, the guy had some serious credits, had gotten that Garofalo movie made, and it wasn’t like other producers were lining up to offer Bill work.
Work. Well, that had turned out to the ultimate four-letter word, as Larry didn’t pay Bill a cent to write the script for Spaced Out. Bill poured his soul into that script, considered it his meister verk, or however the fuck they say it in German. Worse, Bill did free rewrite after free rewrite, believing Larry’s bullshit that Travolta and then Tom Selleck were attached. Then Larry stopped taking Bill’s calls and it hit Bill that he had wasted years of his life, working for that jackass.
All sorts of people worked at telemarketing jobs, including the occasional ex-con trying to go straight. Enter Mo, stage left. One night at a bar they were exchanging sob stories when Mo said, “Man, there’s somethin’ I don’t get. This producer fuck, Larry, been fuckin’ you over for years, right?”
“Yeah,” Moss said.
“Then how come you don’t wanna fuck him back?”
A plot hatched in Bill’s brain—better than any other plot Bill had come up with lately. It sounded easy when he laid it out for Mo. Mo would kidnap Larry’s wife, hold her for ransom—the very same seventy-five K Larry had once promised Bill for writing Spaced Out. Bill would supply all the information Mo needed, figure out the timing, set the plans, supply the technology they would require, such as it was. Bill would be the boss. Mo would be the muscle.
Mo didn’t tell Bill about involving Jo until later, until after the kidnapping. Bill wasn’t crazy about changing to a three-way split but, fuck it, you didn’t argue with your muscle—not when you were built like Bill was. And twenty-five K would get him out of the telemarketing cubicle for six months. He could try to get a job writing for Nickelodeon. Bill had never written for a kids’ show before, and most of his writing was dark as hell, but he could write a kids’ show. He could write anything if he put his mind to it.
The kidnapping itself couldn’t have gone better, and they were holding Larry’s wife in some basement apartment or some shit. The best part—Bill had hidden GPS in Larry’s car, and had been tracking him all over the city, leaving notes on his windshield. Bill knew it had to be driving Larry crazy. The old fuck was so technologically challenged, he probably had no idea what was going on. Whoever thought revenge wasn’t sweet had never tried to get some.
Then, out of the blue, this chick Brandi Love calls, says she wants to hire him to write Bust. Bill did some research saw that Bust was a real, big-time book and the dark subject matter was right in his wheelhouse. But why was Darren Becker, a top producer, partnering with Brandi Love, an ex-porn star? Bill rented a couple of the Brandi with Ginger movies and there was no doubt she knew how to give head, but did she know how to make a movie?
Figuring the whole thing was worth a laugh, he showed up at the Chateau in an old sweaty sweatshirt and ripped jeans. She fed him some shit about how much she loved his writing, and wanted him on the project, and as the lunch went on Bill started to realize that this deal was real. For some fucking reason Darren Becker and Lionsgate were hell bent on getting him on board.
C.A.A. found out about the deal, and an agent signed Bill and started negotiating the contract. Didn’t take long for word to spread. Within days, Bill’s career had gone from zero to a hundred. It seemed like every studio in town wanted to be in business with him.
Meanwhile, time was running out for Larry. Bill tracked him on GPS to In-N-Out Burger on Sunset and, watching from across the street with binoculars, saw him receive a briefcase, hopefully one full of money, from some older, shady-looking guy who kind of looked like Nick Nolte.
Bill left a note for Larry to be at the Four Seasons in one hour. He wanted the exchange to happen at a public place where Larry couldn’t try anything stupid.
Bill tracked Larry there on GPS, so he knew Larry had shown up. Then Bill texted Mo, asking him how it had gone with Larry, and Mo texted back:
meet me right now at the spot important
This was weird—Mo changing the plan again? Mo was supposed to release Larry’s wife as soon as they got the money and meet at the spot tomorrow. Why did he want to meet at the spot “right now,” and why was it “important”?
Bill drove to the spot, about ten blocks from his place in Venice, at a parking lot behind a dive bar. It was late, after midnight, so there weren’t many people around. He didn’t see Mo’s car. He waited. Too late, he wished he’d brought a knife with him or some other kind of weapon.
Then Mo’s car pulled up and Bill watched him get out. Mo was holding the briefcase, so maybe the panic was for no reason. Maybe Mo would give Bill his twenty-five K and they’d go their separate ways and Bill would become the next Ethan Coen and never have to see Mo and Jo again.
Bill met Mo in the middle of the lot.
“Yo,” Mo said.
Okay, Mo was being polite, that was a good start.
“Yo,” Bill said.
Mo handed Bill the briefcase. It was light; felt like there was nothing in it.
“There’s nothing in it,” Mo said.
Shit.
“What happened?” Bill asked. “Did you get the money from Larry?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Bill didn’t like the inflection, said, “Did you let Larry’s wife go?”
“Can’t do that,” Mo said.
“Why not?” Bill said.
“ ’Cause she’s dead.”
Now Mo had a gun out, aimed at Bill. Bill’s heart was pounding —fight-or-flight, mostly flight, kicking in. But he couldn’t fly faster than a bullet.
Buying time, trying to figure out what the fuck to do, Bill said, “Why’d you kill her?”
“I didn’t kill her, man,” Mo said. “I’d never kill a woman. I just put her out of her misery is all.”
“So is that what you plan to do to me too? Put me out of my misery?”
“No,” Mo said. “You I plan to kill.”
Bill knew Mo was about to do it, so he swung the briefcase as hard as he could against the side of Mo’s head. It didn’t do much damage but was enough to distract him, get him off balance, and gave Mo a chance to try to grab the gun.
“Come on, man,” Mo said, wrestling with him for it. “Don’t make this harder than it is.”
The gun fell to the ground and Mo bent to get it. Bill had his hands around Mo’s throat. It felt like a chicken’s neck, more fragile than he’d thought it would, his hands stronger.
Bill had never killed anyone before, never even close, so he was surprised how good at it he was. Maybe it was because he was pretending that Mo was every exec in Hollywood who’d every fucked him over, but he found himself squeezing harder than he ever had in his life, and within about thirty seconds Mo was dead.
“Hey, what’s goin on there?”
A guy, didn’t look like a cop, was coming over from the direction of the beach. Maybe he’d heard the struggle or something.
“Nothing,” Bill shouted back, and after a moment the guy walked on. Angelenos. Always torn between nosiness and not wanting to get involved.
Moving as fast as he could, Bill dragged Mo’s body to his car, strained to get it up and into the trunk, and then peeled out of the lot.
He drove three hours straight, out to the desert. He’d once read a Wolverine comic book where Wolverine chops up a body and leaves it by the side of the road for the coyotes to eat. Bill couldn’t chop Mo up—he didn’t have time for that bullshit, and also didn’t have adamantium claws—but he dumped the body on the side of the road, someplace remote.
“Bon appetit, coyotes!” he shouted as he floored it, heading back to L.A.