Free Hollywood Hills by Joseph Wambaugh Page B

friend of ours and comes highly recommended. Besides, I don't give a rat's eyeball for all this. It was my late husband's passion, not mine. It's well insured anyway, so que sera, sera."
    "I don't know very much about art," Nate said, sipping his soda and thinking, Yes, this lady really does like to get her drink on.
    "Neither do I," she said. "And I'm too old to learn. And speaking of old, how old did you say you are?"
    "I'm thirty-eight," he said. "I know I'm getting a bit long in the tooth to make it in the movie business. I've been a cop since I was a baby of twenty-one."
    "Hah!" she said. "Old. Thirty-eight is old, is it?"
    She took a long pull from the wineglass and put it down on the coffee table. She scooted close to him and said, "I'll bet I could help your career a little bit. As far as the part in whatever the thing is that Rudy's doing, you've got it. I'll see to that. But it's only a couple of days' work. I know other people in the business. People with real topspin. I could introduce you around. Some evening when you're off duty, would you like to come here to a dinner party and meet a few of my friends?"
    "You bet I would," Nate said, wondering if a chemical peel gave her that buttery skin.
    "I have to warn you, though," she said, "all they talk about is diets, drugs that facilitate diets, and box-office grosses."
    "Fine with me," he said.
    "Can you really act?"
    "Well, I'm not one of those who go through life imagining how everything would look through the lens of a Steadicam, but I've taken some classes," he said. "And I've had a couple of speaking parts, but not in a feature film yet. And I can't count the number of times I've been an extra." He stopped when he saw her lips curve up in a little smile, and he felt like a kid bragging to a wealthy aunt. Then he said, "So, yes, I think I can act. But so can thousands--no, make it tens of thousands--of other people trying for the same breaks. I know what I'm up against."
    "Rudy Ressler is no Martin Scorcese," she said, "but I'm sure you're aware of that. Is that how you see yourself? In a crime movie directed by Scorcese or maybe by Clint Eastwood?"
    "In my fantasies?"
    "Yeah, let's hear your fantasies."
    "To be honest, in my fantasies I'm not playing a cop. I see myself in a Woody Allen movie."
    He watched her burst into laughter, and he wasn't sure how to interpret it until she stopped and said, "You are adorable, Nathan Weiss. I think I could like you a lot."
    "I like you, too," he said, not knowing what else to say. And then it occurred to him that what was making him feel so uncomfortable and awkward was not just the fact that she was Rudy Ressler's fiancee and he wanted the job. And it wasn't just her age. She was a fit, hot-looking woman, even if she was as old as his mother. It was that she was rich. This was the first time in his life that Nate Weiss was playing a flirtation scene with a seriously wealthy woman.
    "Meanwhile, you do have a job that you like, yes?" Leona said.
    Nate said, "At Hollywood Station we used to have a sergeant w e c alled the Oracle. He said that doing good police work was th e m ost fun we'd ever have in our entire lives. And I've found that t o b e true." Then he thought of his former partner, Dana Vaughn, o f h er lying dead in his arms, and he said, "For the most part it's been fun.
    "Where does acting come into it, then?" she asked.
    Nate said, "I thought acting would be what I could do full-time after my pension is vested. I'll reach that in three more years, but if I retire at that time, I still won't be able to draw the pension until I'm fifty years old. I figure I could be a full-time actor in the interim. But I need a break. Don't we all?"
    "So that's your dream, is it?" she said.
    Nate said, "My dreams aren't complicated. Any one of the Kardashians could interpret them."
    She said, "I'm surprised that when you serve twenty years as a cop you aren't able to receive any pension money yet."
    "I'll still be too young