Finnegan's Week

CHAPTER 1

It was the face of a sociopathic killer. Granite eyes: gray, opaque, remorseless. The killer eyes narrowed, the jaw muscles bunched, the clenched lips whitened.

Fascinated, he watched as the killer began to belt out the sociopath’s theme song: Reee-grets … I’ve had a few … but then again … too few to mention.

An astonishing performance! Jack Nicholson doing Sinatra. No conscience, no regrets, Cobra Man. Or at least too few to mention.

Then he lifted a throw-away razor, five shaves past throwing, and shaved the killer face, nicking his chin dimple. He flicked the razor into the bathtub where it landed on the crumpled sports page, and he plastered toilet paper on the bloody cleft. He used to do a pretty fair Kirk Douglas impression, using the chin dimple to maximum advantage.

All this because Harbor Nights—a new late-night network melodrama—was shooting in San Diego, and they were casting for a contract-killer role. Daily Variety said that the killer might appear to get killed off in the first episode, but that he’d keep coming back at you, like Henry Kissinger or Elton John. So the job might be good for several episodes if Harbor Nights got a seven-show pickup.

After the shave he tried to summon forth the killer again, determined to at least read for the part. His worthless swine of an agent hadn’t even called him about the role and yet there it was in yesterday’s trades. That’s what happens, he thought, when you have an out-of-town agent who couldn’t make it in L.A., when you’re an out-of-town actor who’d never even tried it in L.A. And once again he wondered if it could’ve all been different had he lived in L.A. instead of in this town.

Never believing stories about people being discovered, he believed that people discovered it: the opportunity to get out of your own miserable hateful body and be someone else for a while, without resorting to mind-altering, liver-killing drugs to accomplish the transformation.

For a moment he thought he’d found his man again while pulling on his socks, but when he ran to the mirror it told him he was wrong. Morning eye pouches caused momentary despair so he pressed a hot washcloth to the sockets, stimulating circulation. The contract killer was supposed to be in his thirties, and he’d just turned forty-five years old. Forty-five!

A wry thought: Maybe they could use a middle-aged sociopath. Gazing into the mirror he used an actor’s trick and conjured images of middle-aged sociopaths: Fat Tony Salerno, Saddam Hussein, Ted Kennedy. Nothing worked, the killer had boogied.

The only way to catch his worthless swine of an agent was to get him when he came to the office at ten o’clock. That’s what he planned to do, and he’d covered himself at his job by claiming he had a morning dental appointment.

The job. Maybe the face in the mirror could tell him the truth about his job, a job he’d wasted himself on for twenty-three years when he should have been acting. Truth? Looking squarely in the mirror at the forty-five-year-old face, he decided there was not a single truth about which he was certain, so maybe he should run for office.

He spoke aloud to the mirror in a theatrical baritone: "Today, a typical day in Southern California, two thousand, three hundred and seventy-five unemployed actors will phone their agents. Three of them will receive callbacks, and I, I shall not be one of them. Then he added, But maybe I’ll catch him and tear the Velcro grin right off that smirky moosh!"

Then after jacking up his agent, he’d have to rush to work and begin the daily brain-slaughtering paper-shuffle that was his life. With a sigh that could blow out a bonfire, he adjusted his tie, brushed off his green-checked sport coat, collected his gun, badge, and handcuffs, and headed for the door. He hoped some junkie would burglarize his goddamn rathole of an apartment so he could make an inflated insurance claim.

It was 10:05 A.M. when he parked his Corvette on the street in North Park at the office of Orson Ellis Talent Unlimited. Orson was a failed talent agent, formerly of Hollywood, U.S.A., now living in San Diego, California, who’d made a scientific study of his failure as a Hollywood agent, scientifically concluding that it was the result of his mother not dubbing him Marty, Michael, Mort, or some other name beginning in M.

After locking his Vette, he noticed a passing coach full of elderly tourists, probably going somewhere like La Jolla, where they’d discover that they could spend two months at a time-share at the Lawrence Welk Resort with unlimited golfing for what a simple frock would cost in a pricey La Jolla boutique. He knew that most of the seniors would be wearing walking shorts, and would have varicose veins like leeches clinging to their poor old legs. He also realized that the seniors were not that much older than himself. It made him think of polyps. Before entering Orson Ellis Talent Unlimited, he decided that Mother Nature is a pitiless cunt.

The agency was not impressive, but Thirtieth Street and University Avenue was not a trendy address. Orson had decorated the place to make you think you could actually get a job there, until you realized that all the inscribed photos of famous movie stars lining the walls weren’t Orson’s clients, only people to whom he’d sucked up during his twenty years of failure in Hollywood.

The new secretary was a lip curler, even more hostile than the last one. She wore her blond hair in a retro 1960’s Afro, bigger than Danny DeVito. When she reached for the phone he noticed a clump of hair (brown) under her arms, and her toothy grin accentuated by cinnamon-brown lipstick could only be described as iguanalike, but not as warm. There was an X cap on her desk as well as a framed photo of movie director Spike Lee. He’d always had to spar with Orson’s guard-dog secretaries, but this one looked like a fight to the death.

I wanna see Orson, he said. "I don’t have an appointment but I’ll wait till he’s out of his meeting. Or until he comes in through that front door, whichever happens first."

She shot him a look that could’ve reversed global warming, and said, "Mister Ellis is not in a meeting."

Really? This must be my lucky day. I’d check my lottery tickets but I already did that three times.

Your name?

Finnegan.

First name?

I’m the Finnegan that calls here twice a week hoping to at least hear Orson say there’s no work, except that you shine me every time, and I never hear him say anything at all.

First name?

Finbar. Fin for short. Middle name, Brendan.

It doesn’t fit.

Neither did General Schwarzkopf’s little hat, but he kept that tiny thing perched on his bean anyway. I’d tell my mother you don’t approve, but she’s dead.

Like an eel this time: "I mean, Fin Finnegan’s like John Johnson or Will Williams. Why don’t you pick a professional name that fits? And if you’re really a serious actor you could consider moving to L.A. where there’s more work for older people."

Knowing how openly political and ethnically sensitive show biz was during this presidential campaign, Fin said, "Why don’t you move to L.A. where your Afro fad might even last hours now that African American is Hollywood’s craze du jour."

A tooth-and-claw counterattack was interrupted when Orson Ellis came panting into the office. He looked like he’d climbed ten flights of stairs, but Fin knew that Orson wouldn’t use the staircase if the building was on fire. He wasn’t a man to go vertical other than by mechanical means.

"Jew-lye! Jew-lye," Orson Ellis said to his secretary when he closed the door.

Pardon me, Mister Ellis? Jew what?

"That putz Ross Perot had to reenter the race! Orson Ellis said, Jew-lye. I thought he was making an anti-Semitic crack till I realized he was still apologizing for having withdrawn last July. Jew-lye. The cracker!" Then he noticed his client.

Fin, Orson said, looking like his spaniel died, "Fin Finnegan. How good to see you, you old schlemiel."

Despite having done a thousand lunch meetings at Nate ’n Al’s, Orson never got the Yiddish right. He said kvel when he meant kvetch, schmutz when he meant schvitz and schlemiel for schlemazel. Fin definitely considered himself a schlemazel, not a schlemiel.

I thought you might call me next week if I started reminding you every night around midnight. I just dropped by to get your home address so I could start the night stalking.

You been here long? Orson asked.

I been here so long her roots grew out, Fin said. Then to the secretary, Really though, Albert Einstein did very well with that hairdo. I think you should keep it.

"I love this guy," Orson said to the young woman, who was glaring at Fin with a pair of scissors in her hand.

After Fin followed Orson Ellis into his private office, the fat man removed his size 52, double-breasted Armani knockoff, and plopped his bulk into an executive chair done in blush leather to complement the pearl client chairs, now that pink and gray had vanished from the designers’ vocabulary.

Want a drink? No, too early. Want an orange juice? Coffee?

Fin was shocked by Orson Ellis’s hair. All the side strands were about three feet long, and looped, swooped, and coiled across his naked skull, with some extra hair woven through it. The top hair was dyed the color of dead leaves, even though the sideburns were still gray.

My new do, the agent said. Whaddaya think?

Looks like a nest of tarantulas’re eating your head. Why don’t you just put a little minoxidil on your Froot Loops every morning?

Sensitive, that’s what cops are, Orson Ellis said to the wallpaper. Then he opened a cold Evian, since Perrier was out. That’s why I took you as a client, your sensitivity and compassion.

And because I got your sister’s kid outta that jam where he tried to punch out a whale trainer at Sea World because Shamu got his Rolex wet. By the bye, is the little prick still at large?

He’s maturing. I think he’ll eventually find himself.

Yeah, in the gas chamber. Another victim of Doctor Spock.

What’s on your mind, Fin? It wasn’t really a question he wanted answered, and Orson Ellis punctuated it with a wet burp.

What’s on my mind? I haven’t worked in fourteen months.

Fin, you work every day, Orson Ellis reminded him, leaning back and raising his patent loafers to the top of the desk. You’re a cop, remember?

"I was trained to be a cop, Fin said, but …"

"You were born to act. Orson shook his head sadly. You got it, kid, the addiction. I knew it first time I saw you. When was it? Five years ago?"

"Seven. In which time you got me four one-day jobs on that shitty private eye show, three one-line jobs on those movies they shot in Balboa Park that nobody but my sisters saw, and two dinner theater gigs. I got the real stage jobs on my own."

How about the little theaters, Fin? Not to mention the one-act plays at the Gaslamp Quarter and the Sixth Avenue Playhouse and …

"Nobody saw me there either. I need a good job. The last time you got me a good job that twinkle on your pinkie ring was still coal."

"It’s a shame you ever got involved in that amateur theater group. Look how acting’s made you dissatisfied with your real-life job. You got a good job. Civil service. With a pension and everything. You’re a police detective, for chrissake!"

I hate my job.

"I know, you wanna be a movie star. You’re ready to quit the police force, move to Hollywood, right?"

I’m not asking you to get me in something so hot you can only see it on cable, am I? This is just a crappy late night network melodrama!

What melodrama?

"Don’t you ever read the trades? Harbor Nights!"

"Oh, that melodrama."

"I’ll bet even your new secretary knows about it and she doesn’t have enough brains to churn butter. Do you hire them with an attitude or do you help them cultivate it, like slime mold?"

But those tits’d raise Dracula outta his coffin at high noon, right?

"Sure. And she’s lugging enough silicone to raise the Kitty Hawk clear outta the water. You could lose your wristwatch in her cellulite and either she’s doing a feminist armpit thing or that’s a swarm of caterpillars under her arms."

She’s hot, Fin.

You could find hotter ham in a meat locker.

Bitter and cynical, the agent said sadly, "is what you are. Just because you got a chin dimple and a Cary Grant haircut that I told you to get, you ain’t got what’s in between. You got a pleasant Irish mug, but that’s about it."

Then get me a role playing Father O’Malley where I get to yell faith ’n begorrah and rescue street people.

The camera looks for hope, not bitterness, Fin. Vulnerability, not cynicism. Haircuts don’t matter.

"I shoulda kept my old hairdo and my Nehru coat. Everything comes around. Just ask your secretary."

There was only one Elvis, Fin, the fat man informed him. It wouldn’ta worked for you.

I been thinking, maybe I should change my name. Fin Finnegan might not work for me. My old man’s name was Timothy but everybody called him ‘Fin,’ so my mother decided that if they were gonna call me ‘Fin’ no matter what, it’d be because it was my Christian name, not my surname. But I been thinking, maybe it’s too much like John Johnson or Ed Edwards?

"Your name’s not the problem, but I have noticed that your hair’s receding. These days, your haircut looks more Clint Eastwood than Cary Grant. Have you considered a weave?"

I don’t need sensitivity or a haircut to play a contract killer. To get homicidal I only gotta think of shoulder pads Hillary picking out bad scarves and federal judges. You gonna help me or not?

What’s an agent for? I’ll make a call today. Is that acceptable?

As acceptable as a drive-by shooting. Get me the job.

"You think it’s easy to book local actors in anything decent? This town’s as avant-garde as your average Thursday night bowling league. I mean, around here a cultured person is one that don’t drink dago red from a jar. Why do you think the San Diego Symphony’s got more debt than Lithuania? You think I don’t try? I can’t even find anything to eat around here that don’t look like a coroner’s exhibit. A maggot in Musso and Frank’s Hollywood garbage can eats better than the mayor of this burg. I’m malnourished, even!"

"Malnourished? Orson, Dennis Connor and his entire crew could sail you in the next America’s Cup. Now listen, Variety said they’re gonna use this contract killer in the episode they’re prepping right now. Surely you can get me in to read this week."

What age they looking for?

Thirties.

Kee-rist, Fin!

I’m barely forty.

You look suspiciously older.

So do Filipino Little Leaguers but they get to play, god-damnit!

Okay, okay, I’ll do what I can. Now go crush crime, for chrissake. Catch some crooks. Do what you do best.

"I act. That’s what I do best. I’m only a cop by training. I was …"

Born to act.

"No, I was born to sell my organs and live under bridges like a bum or wino—pardon me, now they’re called the homeless—but I happened to take a police exam twenty-three years ago and here I am and now I hate police work and I hate cops above the rank of me which is just about everybody and I hate three ex-police wives, mine. And I got to do the fucking job five more years till I’m fifty years old or I won’t get my pension and …"

You’re forty-five then, the agent said ruefully. "I thought so."

"… and I wish I could be immature irresponsible rich pampered spoiled and stupid with no hope of growing up or having a single sensible opinion. In short, I’d love to be a movie star. I’d even register Democrat and stop puking in my popcorn during Oliver Stone movies if I thought you could get me in the cultural elite. But I’ll settle for a one-day bit as a contract killer in that chickenshit TV show before it gets canceled! Okay?"

Okay okay, kid. Calm down, Orson said. "I’ll get to work on it right away. I know who’s casting that show. They’ll like the idea, a real live San Diego cop playing a contract killer. Now I want you to do something for me, okay?"

What?

I got a lawyer-pal. He’s got a client. He wants to know what the DEA has on his client and …

Forget it. I still have five years to do. I’m not risking my pension.

He’s a respectable lawyer for God’s sake.

"Sure. Respectable lawyer means he was never caught taking meetings with the Medellín Cartel, or doing lunch with BCCI bankers, and he hasn’t been indicted by a federal grand jury. That’s a respectable lawyer. Forget it."

Okay okay. Let’s you and me do lunch …

"If you say someday, I’ll kill you."

"I was gonna say tomorrow. Let’s do lunch tomorrow."

I’m too busy. Tomorrow’s the day I fill my ice-cube trays. Look, Orson, I’m not asking for a movie with a Swedish director and subtitles, but I’m as serious as a tumor on your willy.

The agent studied his client thoughtfully for a moment and said, I’ve seen this before, Fin. It’s real tough for an actor to hit the benchmarks: forty, forty-five, fifty. You take it harder than normal sane people. Acting’s an addiction, an obsession. Most of my clients, they need Prozac more than they need an agent.

Well maybe I should just chuck it all and go sell derby hats to women in Bolivia.

Just remember, no matter how down and depressed you get …

Yeah? What?

Tomorrow is another day.

That one’ll have me slapping my forehead for hours, the detective said, standing up to leave. "Why didn’t I think of that? Now let’s see if I can accomplish something real hard, like getting past your secretary without getting spit at."

Orson said, If I can get them to let you read, please wear a decent outfit. That sport coat’s older than Hugh Hefner and even more tacky. Don’t pick your teeth with a matchbook, and try to remember, Fin, tomorrow’s another day.

Before the detective exited, he said: Fuck you, Orson, and fuck Scarlett O’Hara.

CHAPTER 2

The father of Jules Temple had always worried a great deal about Jules’s emotional development, especially as his son neared adulthood. Jules’s father had become conversant with certain clinical designations after Jules had been expelled from two private schools, and later when, as a college sophomore, Jules had been accused of what came to be called date rape.

Jules’s father, Harold Temple, was a corporate lawyer whose own father had been a San Diego superior court judge, so Jules’s disgrace had been particularly hard to bear, but Jules’s mother had been able to compartmentalize her feelings when it came to their only child. Harold Temple had been told by more than one of his son’s therapists that Jules’s mother lived in a world of denial, and it continued until her death in 1977.

Still, Jules Temple had managed to reach his twenty-fifth birthday in 1978 without having been convicted of a crime, thus satisfying the terms of his grandfather’s trust. Jules then inherited $350,000 and had invested it and lived well as a real estate developer until after the Reagan years when the bottom dropped out of California’s real estate—driven economy. Jules Temple then found himself broke, divorced, and back home living with his father in the Point Loma hilltop home overlooking the bay of San Diego.

Upon the approach of his thirty-fifth birthday, Jules had had a very significant conversation with his father. It took place in the study where Harold Temple spent most of his days. The floral chintz sofa in the study had been selected by his late wife, along with a nineteenth-century walnut bench decorated with elaborate needlepoint. Harold Temple hated all of his furniture except for the ugly old mahogany desk he’d inherited from his father, the judge.

Jules poured himself a double Scotch that evening, sensing he’d need it, and he sat down across the desk in a client chair. Jules thought it highly appropriate and very lawyerlike of the old boy to separate them with a desk. Jules couldn’t remember ever having sat on his father’s lap, even as a tot.

His father was dressed in pajamas, slippers and a silk robe. The old man’s hair was wispy by then, and his back was bent from arthritis. His skin had thinned and grown transparent, and in the semi-darkness Harold Temple was as vivid as a Rembrandt. The older man had suffered a stroke that left him with paralyzed facial muscles and made his speech hard to understand.

Son, his father had said to him on that fateful evening, I’m extremely worried about you.

Really? Jules said with his trademark wry smile. I wonder why.

For a moment, the father silently studied the son. Jules was blond like the Temples, tall and good-looking. Harold Temple was certain that his son was quite intelligent though he hadn’t had decent grades since he’d been a seventh grader. Jules was a good golfer and sometimes played in tournaments at the La Jolla Country Club where Harold Temple had been a longtime member, and Jules frequently sailed at the San Diego Yacht Club. In short, Harold Temple believed that Jules had everything needed for success, but his son was a failure by any measure whatsoever.

I’ve been reading a lot, Harold Temple began awkwardly.

Hot novels, Dad? Jules took a large swallow of Scotch and grinned wryly.

"This thing … this stroke that I’ve suffered, it’s made me think a lot about you, about your … personality. In case … if something should happen to me I’d like to know that you’ll be all right."

Then Harold Temple stared into his son’s eyes, dreading that he’d see a flicker of anticipation. Fearing that Jules would say, Is there any danger, Dad? with mock concern.

But Jules said nothing. Jules was, as usual, noncommittal, uninvolved.

His father continued: I’ve had a certain worry for a long time, long before your marriage. Before your business went sour. About your personality and character.

What about it?

You’re clever and charming, but manipulative, Jules. You’ve always been like that. You were always the coolest one in the house every time you got into trouble, when your mother and I were yelling our heads off.

A young man sowing wild oats, Jules said, finishing the Scotch and standing to refill his glass.

Not always, his father said, thinking of the coed upon whom Jules had forced himself. That one had cost Harold Temple $50,000 through an intermediary, until the girl and her family agreed not to prosecute. I think you’ve never had enough self-doubt to yell or get emotional about anything.

"What are you getting at?" Jules asked.

It’s that I’ve never sensed a feeling of … shame in you.

Shame?

Or guilt or remorse. I must say, not ever.

Shame about what? Guilt about what? About the fact that my development company went broke? Should I feel shame about hard economic times? I tried, didn’t I? I risked my capital. What do you want from me?

I wasn’t talking about that, son, Harold Temple said, and then his left leg started to shake. This had been happening a lot, a trembling of his limbs that he couldn’t control.

What then?

There are … terms for people who don’t have empathy, who don’t understand how their actions can hurt other people.

Other people? What other people?

Your wife. Your child.

With a trace of a sneer: "Ex-wife, the bitch."

She’s the mother of your child.

I see my child. I see Sally every chance I get, Jules said. I’d send checks if I had any money!

Harold Temple knew it was a lie, but he continued: "I worry that there’s not a complete person inside you. You haven’t outgrown a certain … incompleteness."

I see, Jules said, looking past his father at the portrait of his grandfather on the wall. What crimes am I guilty of? What have I done that’s so terrible?

Call it a certain … moral insensitivity, the older man said, in great distress. You haven’t been involved in criminal activity, thank god, but …

"You think I’m capable of it. That I’ll disgrace you."

Jules, I’ve heard stories about the investors in your development company. Your actions bordered on criminal fraud.

"They lost, I lost, we all lost. Sour grapes, hard times. What else, Dad? Let’s get all my faults out on your desk so we don’t miss anything."

This isn’t easy for me, son.

For me this is a picnic, right? All this psychobabble.

This isn’t getting us anywhere, Jules, his father said, so I might as well tell you that I’ve had my will rewritten. When I die you’re getting an allowance of two thousand dollars a month for five years. And that’s it.

"And the house?"

No house, no property of any kind, no insurance. No more than two thousand a month for five years. You won’t starve, but you’ll have to get off your butt and make something of yourself.

And where does the balance of your estate go?

To various charities.

Jules put the glass on his father’s desk, then turned and headed for the door of the study. But he paused and said, Thanks, Dad. Thanks for giving me everything, and then taking it away. You’ve been swell. And please don’t tell me it’s for my own good.

I wouldn’t tell you that, Jules, Harold Temple said. Not anymore.

Maybe I should just move out now, Jules said, and was shocked when his father replied, That might be a good idea. Get out on your own and start scratching like everyone else has to do.

That evening Harold Temple wrote his son a check for $5,000. He called it seed money. And that was that.

Jules packed his things and left the next morning, moving in with Margie, a divorced cocktail waitress he’d been dating. She said he could stay until he got on his feet. It was while living with her, after he’d grown desperate, that Jules Temple again became an entrepreneur.

The idea came to him when he was baby-sitting for Margie, who had the late shift at a nightclub in downtown San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. He’d spent night after miserable night in front of the TV, drinking the cheap Scotch that Margie bought at discount outlets. Margie’s seven-year-old daughter, Cynthia, had been begging him to play dolls with her when it happened: the idea!

He’d heard of the pedophile’s motto: Eight is too late. Cynthia was only seven, but she looked even younger. She was very pretty, but not a terribly bright child, not nearly as bright as Jules’s own daughter had been at that age. Cynthia was a lot like her mother, he thought.

The next day Jules was in several adult magazine and book shops in downtown San Diego looking for chickenhawk and pedophile publications. When he got back to the apartment, he studied many photos of naked children in provocative poses. Then he homed in on the ads in those publications to learn how they