The problem is, once you've made it to Hollywood there really is no easy way out. You either make it big or you keep waitressing at some hip WeHo diner until your ankles swell so much you can only pick up a quirky character role here and there. I guess there's always dying young and staying pretty, like Marilyn Monroe, but what fun is that? What I'm getting at is there is no Hollywood ending -- and diamonds are most definitely not your friend.
As for who to turn to now, I hadn't heard a peep out of my paparazzo friend Atti since he'd taken off for the relative safety of Sierra Leone, where he was reporting from the actual front instead of the mess out in front of The Ivy, according to his dormant Facebook page."Would you happen to know anything about gemstones?" I whispered to the dumb bunny bank teller with the second key to my safe deposit box. In the movie version, she'd have a Swiss accent and a tattooed boyfriend with underworld connections. "Not really," she said, twirling a fresh piercing in her nostril that looked a little infected. "I was born in January so I think I'm a garnet. Anyway, something red. Okay, we're supposed to leave you alone now."
She trotted off, hopefully to fetch some antibiotics, and I stood there considering the contents of the box -- the flash drive concealed as a car key, lipstick doubling as a camera, a gun that looked like a pen. Suddenly it hit me. Here I was in the heart of Hollywood, in plain view of the sign. If I wanted to know what happened next, all I had to do was picture the movie poster. Was this a tragic love story? A madcap buddy comedy? Was it a fish out of water story about a lone records clerk taking on the entire Los Angeles Police Department with nothing but her good looks and dim wits? My cast of supporting characters featured a pair of lesbian FBI agents with big career aspirations and messed up personal lives.
Two local cops, one good, one bad, were among my own love interests -- or disinterests, as it were. Since the only warning that I was in serious danger had come from the ghost of a dead stripper with an attitude problem, I figured my chances were less than average with the stiffs at Internal Affairs.
Just in case someone was following me, after locking up the diamonds with the rest of my life insurance policy, I walked out of the bank as though I hadn't a care in the world.
Jumping from star to star on the Walk of Fame, I got stuck in front of a "Don't Walk" signal on a star honoring "Barbara
Stanwyck." Though I had no idea who she was, convinced all of this must be a sign, I looked her up on Wikipedia. After starring in some of the biggest deal crime thrillers of all time, she got old right out in the open -- on horseback firing a rifle, no less -- in some TV show about the old West. A blonde with balls, imagine that. Sure, she was savvier than me, and Hollywood was simpler back then -- but I had the advantage of being alive, with a brand new smart phone.
I sucked in a breath, opened my phone and hammered in a number. "I'm sorry to bother you at work," I said, "but I could really use a cowboy right now. Are you down for a road trip to Mexico?"
