Wag the Dog Read online

  It is a slow and uncertain method and requires great patience.

  While U. Sec. watches me, Steve follows Ray Matusow.

  Ray is running a pattern. He has eight regular stops. But just knowing the stops doesn’t tell us who he’s actually recording. One of his stops is an apartment building where his recording post seems to be the basement. Two more are apartment complexes with security which means Steve can’t follow him in even to determine which of several buildings the subjects live in. One stop is a warehouse building on Flower Street. This appears to have one residential loft, which belongs to Maxwell Nurmberg. I am able to determine that someone by that name is employed at CinéMutt, so I assume that’s who is being recorded there. The other three are VDs, vehicle drops.75One of those, I assume, due to proximity, is for Maggie and me.

  What’s interesting is that he starts the circuit at U. Sec. and ends it at home. And he takes everything in at night.

  I make sure that I’m not followed and I drop in on Ray at home, unannounced, on a weekday evening. I note the locks. I knock. There’s video surveillance, but he looks out the keyhole.

  He opens up. “Joe, what are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to talk to you, something private.”

  “Private?”

  “Something profitable.” I smile. “For you and for me.”

  “Oh, yeah, well sure.”

  He steps aside to let me in. His wife, Myrna, is in the living room. She’s cute as a button, even after the two children and all. We’ve met at company functions. “Nice house,” I say to her.

  “Thank you,” she says, truly pleased.

  “Did you do it? All of it?” I ask.

  “Well . . .” she says. Almost blushing. She’s a quiet one. Always has been. Ray’s real happy about that. His first wife wasn’t.

  “You got a nice eye for color and stuff. I’m no expert, but I can see that,” I say.

  “Would you like to see more of it?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Joe just stopped in on business,” Ray says.

  “Oh. Of course,” Myrna says, shutting down.

  “I really would,” I say. “It’s got a warmth. I have to tell you something, Maggie’s house . . .” Myrna’s all attention—I am going to tell her secrets of one of the stars! Inside view of her Home Life. A real live outtake from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous! “. . . it’s spectacular, of course. But it’s like somebody made it for a TV show. It’s not . . . how can I say it, warm and homey, like this.”

  Myrna blushes. Even Ray is pleased. Proud of her. To have his wife’s homemaking compared to a Star’s. So now he has to let her show off her house. She tells me how she had the paint colors mixed. I note that all the windows are wired to the alarm system and there are motion sensors too. The system is worth more than the goods that it is protecting. I’m certain that there’s a silent alarm that rings U. Sec’s armed-response number.76There may be a sound alarm as well. The two little girls share a bedroom that’s very girlish, full of frills and with an overall sense of pink. The bedroom is a bedroom, the kitchen’s a kitchen, the dining area has a table. The prize, for me, is the basement, Ray’s space. “It was all hodgepodge,” she says. “With everything every which way . . .”

  “I knew where every single thing was,” Ray says.

  “It wasn’t so much messy, it’s true, but it was . . . raw. I found these wall and filing units that you customize into your own system and you can add on at any time and always be consistent.”

  “It’s a wonderful job,” I say.

  We go back upstairs. Ray locks the basement behind us. “Gotta keep the kids out,” he says. We sit down at the table in the dining area. Myrna leaves us. “What’s up?”

  I tell him that through Maggie I’m in a position to score lots of new business, but since I’m on an LoA I can’t get a commission on it. Ray’s a great tech man, but not much of a hustler. He’s hungry for this. Most tech guys, all they get is salary, none of the gravy. “How much would I get?” he asks. I let it sit there for a while before I answer. Finally, I say, “Fifty-fifty.”

  “That’s only fair,” Ray says, greatly relieved. I could have said, ninety-ten, take it or leave it, and he would have taken it. “Only fair.”

  “It’ll take a while to set up, but you’ll probably begin to see some action, a couple of weeks, a month at the most.”

  “Thanks, Joe. Thanks. With the kids and all. There’s enough, mind you, but more would sure ease some of the strain. You know.”

  “I know.”

  We shake. Ray walks me to the door. The alarm system shut off uses a key, not a number pad. My guess is he put the system in about ten years ago when the high-speed tone-code generators got popular and the number-pad systems became vulnerable.

  The next day, when Ray goes into the loft building, Steve and I pull up in a rental truck, a thirty-five-foot van. We park it so that the door can’t be seen from the street. Steve, wearing shades and a fake Fu Manchu mustache, waits in the cab. When Ray steps out, he sees the truck. It’s blocking his way.

  I step out from behind and hit him on the back of the head with an old-fashioned blackjack. I steal his watch, wallet, and keys. I drag him over behind a trash bin.

  I steal Ray’s car, empty the trunk, and take it to a chop shop. I drive to Ray’s house in a plumber’s van rented from a motion-picture prop-vehicle company. It comes with plumber’s toolboxes, by accident or as an extra courtesy. I use them to carry a high-speed tape duplicator and a load of cassettes. The kids are at school. Myrna is at her part-time job. I figure I have two hours. I let myself in with Ray’s key. I turn off the alarm system, unlock the basement door, and go down to explore his treasure trove.

  A very thorough man. Bless him.

  Steve stays behind. I want him to make sure Ray doesn’t wake up too soon. But Steve says he won’t do that. “I’m grateful and all and I needs the work. I’ll do all them other things. Tailing around after people. I got a family to support, I’ll do mos’ anything, but I got a problem with puttin’ a hurt on someone. I done my share, don’ wanna do no mo’.” So I just tell him to watch Ray and when Ray wakes up, if he heads for home, call Ray’s house. Dial, ring once, hang up. Dial, ring twice, hang up.

  “Joe,” he says, “I want you to understand. I got trouble with my boy. My boy, I make him go to school and work hard and his mama, she’s on his case. But he’s startin’ to run with gangbangers. He says, ‘I got to carry a piece, be a man.’ I say, ‘Bullshit.’ I don’ wanna be telling him one thing and be doin’ another, you unnerstand?”

  “Got it,” I say. “Just don’t forget to call.”

  The surveillance of Magdalena Lazlo is listed under Operation Dog’s Bark. There were seven others cross-referenced to the same file: Katherine Przyszewski, Luke Przyszewski, Maxwell Nurmberg, Morris Rosenblum, Theodore Brody, Carmine Cassella, and Seth Simeon. Just these names, with phones and addresses, are a score. If these are the people that have to be watched, that’s the reverse of saying that these are the people I should target.

  When I find that he has copies of the surveillance tapes—something I hoped for but did not count on—it is like striking gold. Here’s the record of who’s happy and who cries in the night, who gets laid and who gets high, who’s ambitious, dumb, resentful, afraid.

  Ray even has a high-speed tape duplicator. I set up mine as well and start running copies on both.

  All I have to worry about is whether there is a backup alarm that I’ve missed. Or a nosy neighbor. Or Myrna comes home early. Doing something to Myrna, who would recognize me, to cover up the break-in would be a very unfortunate thing to do. Or to the kids.

  73 Agent jokes are virtually the same as lawyer jokes—the sharks don’t eat them out of professional courtesy; their hearts are good for transplants because they’ve never been used—that sort of thing. There are a few that are powerful enough to actually help and even to actually hurt someone’s career. Most of them are just hop
ing to find—or hold onto, clients who generate more income than they cost in overhead.

  74 Both Cruise and Travolta are Scientologists and have publicly spoken about how much good it has done for their lives and careers and mental health. Scientology does claim it can alter a homosexual orientation. Both Mr. Cruise and Mr. Travolta are married men with children. There is nothing to suggest that they are anything but heterosexual. The only inference a reader should make is that Hollywood and America are rife with gossip with no regard for truth or respect for privacy.

  75 Electronic surveillance sounds high-tech, and on a certain level it is. But it is also terribly labor-intensive and full of awkward physical problems—like where do you put the tape recorders where they can receive signals, either hardwire or broadcast, so that they are secure and can be serviced on a regular basis. Apartment and office buildings offer any number of locations in service areas. Private homes on individual lots in residential neighborhoods, especially those that are security-conscious, are vastly more difficult. One solution is to park a vehicle near the site of the LDs and put the tape recorders in the vehicle, called a VD, vehicle drop. Places like Beverly Hills where there is virtually no street parking, create an even greater dilemma. Technology has some answers: microwave broadcasting permits a narrow-band directional signal; satellite uplinks are also possible.

  76 U. Sec. actually has two armed-response services. The main one, offered commercially, is, like much else in life, semifictional. It is actually a referral service that calls the police to inform them that there is a break-in and to rush right over. Police are armed. It is, therefore, an armed response. U. Sec. will also supply private armed response. This creates a variety of legal problems, which vary from state to state, most of them ones of liability, so it’s extremely expensive with a lot of money going to the insurance company.

  Chapter

  THIRTY

  TAYLOR WANTED TO meet in the Cube. Although his first meeting there had been sort of fun, Hartman considered the Cube an affectation.

  They met at RepCo. Mike Ovitz and CAA had gone totally modernist—gray suits on the agents and a building by I. M. Pei—in effect making the statement “We are business persons running a corporation, not fast-talking comic-strip Jews with gold chains like Sib Kibitz in Doonesbury.” Hartman felt he had topped Ovitz with his dramatic re-creation of the Harvard Club, a Georgian Revival cathedral of capitalism, including the historic three-story-high main hall, with its towering windows and walk-in fireplace. Air-conditioning kept the hall, and the other rooms that had hearths, cool enough for charming and aromatic fires—oak and mesquite—even during Los Angeles summers.

  “A week ago, as you know, Katherine Przyszewski, Beagle’s personal secretary, quit her job,” Taylor said. “The day before yesterday, Ray Matusow, who installed and maintains the listening post at the Przyszewski residence, was mugged while he was making his rounds. Today, Katherine Przyszewski calls Joe Broz to ask for a job.”

  “Do they connect?” Hartman asked.

  “Exactly,” Taylor said. “Do they connect?”

  “What does that mean?” Hartman asked.

  “There are no accidents,” Taylor said.

  “How much does she know?” Hartman asked.

  Sheehan said, “She doesn’t seem to know much.” Sheehan wanted to reassure the client.

  “It’s hard to know how much she knows,” Taylor said. He wanted to make sure the case stayed alive and that if there were any chance of nailing Joe Broz, he didn’t miss it.

  “We’ve reviewed her home tapes and her job tapes,” Sheehan said. “And it seems pretty clear that she doesn’t know much. About the project.”

  “She could know more than she thinks she knows,” Taylor said.

  “Like what?” Hartman asked.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Sheehan said, “that revealed anything to me.”

  “That remark about real people,” Taylor said, although actually he didn’t know if the remark had significance. It could have been just something the director had come up with as an excuse not to give some bimbo a part. “That could mean something to somebody, puts it together with something else.”

  Hartman kept a poker face and his voice indifferent. “What remark about real people?”

  “Beagle said he was only using real people in his next movie,” Taylor said.

  “That’s it?” Hartman asked.

  “There are no accidents,” Taylor said. “Matusow, he’s responsible for watching nine people. Two days after he’s mugged, one of them, one of the three or four people closest to Beagle, the classic disaffected ex-employee, suddenly calls the guy I pick as the number-one troublemaker in the deck. That’s what I see.”

  “Where was Broz when the mugging took place?” Hartman asked.

  Not a question that Taylor wanted to hear. Because he didn’t know. Not for sure. The operative watching Broz had lost him. However, Mel had decided, if asked, to make the information another piece of evidence rather than an admission of failure. “Broz ducked the surveillance that morning.”

  “Just keep it simple,” Hartman said. “See to it that she doesn’t meet with Broz.”

  Propaganda

  Propaganda that looks like propaganda is third-rate propaganda.

  WE

  are innocent. THEY

  are guilty.

  tell the truth, inform. lie, use propaganda.

  defend ourselves. are agressors.

  are law-abiding. are criminals and outlaws.

  respect our agreements and treaties and abide by international law. are liars, cheaters, thieves, and opportunists who break treaties.

  are Peace Keepers. Our use of force is police action to protect law and order. are violent, gangsters, a criminal brand.

  stand for justice and civil rights. brutalize, repress, tyrannize both, their own and their neighbors.

  Our leaders govern with the consent of the people. Their leaders are usurpers with no popular support who will eventually be overthrown.

  The enemy commits torture, atrocity, and murder because he is a sadist who enjoys killing.

  We use surgical or strategic violence only because we are forced to by the enemy.

  Killing is justified so long as one does not take pleasure in it and it is done in a clean manner—preferably from an antiseptic distance—the saturation bombing and the free-fire zones in Vietnam were legitimate, the face-to-face slaughter in My Lai was a war crime.

  As a popular passion producer, experience indicates that there is nothing quite like the atrocity story.

  This war is a war, as I see it, against barbarism. . . .

  We are fighting against a nation which, in the fashion of centuries ago, drags the inhabitants of conquered lands into slavery; which carries off women and girls for even worse purposes; which in its mad desire to conquer mankind and trample them under foot has stopped at no wrong, has regarded no treaty. . . . What we want most of all by this victory which we shall help to win is to secure the world’s peace, broad based on freedom and democracy. . . .

  Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

  to the American Senate, April 4, 1917

  Propaganda in America is far more successful than anyone ever thinks it is. Its achievement is what is not spoken, not talked about, not even thought. Even its invisibility is strength, it’s impossible to counterattack unaction.

  For purposes of making your war look just, the most reliable device is the self-defense thesis.

  In general, you should seem to prove what people already want to believe, and to justify what they already want to do.

  Chapter

  THIRTY-ONE

  FINDING THE MATERIAL was not the hardest thing for Teddy Brody to do. Staying up all night, speed reading, marking passages, taking notes, was not all that much of a strain either. Breaking his date with Sam, from Anaheim, who was a fitness instructor at Best Bods in the summer and a ski instructor at Steamboat Springs in the winter, didn’t bother Teddy much. W
hile he responded to the body thing—a hot bod is, after all, a hot bod—it was not what he was searching for. After all, in the age of AIDS, genital warts, herpes, condoms, hand jobs, and mutual masturbation, how much better was a bod than a video or a dream?

  Teddy had anticipated that cutting the material down to size would be the hardest part of all. One page was astounding brevity for someone who’d graduated college with honors. Let alone a Yalie. It meant more than choosing. It meant shutting up about his choices: simply saying things and letting them hang there, unexplained, unexplicated, neither proving them nor expanding on their implications, trusting the reader to understand them all by himself. That had required a Kierkegaardian leap of faith. But once done, it turned out not to have been difficult at all.

  The really hard thing—it froze him for hours, gave him stage fright, touched him as deep as the fear of defecating in his pants in public—was quoting without attribution.77My God! in old academia that was plagiarism! University chancellors were fired for having done it once, twenty years earlier. A presidential candidate—that is to say, someone presumed to be a professional liar—had to quit his campaign for doing it. And yet Teddy knew that Beagle didn’t want footnotes. He didn’t care from whence the thoughts came. In CinéMutt it didn’t matter. It was clutter. Intellectual litter. The quote from Lodge, and the date, being the exception, because that was part of the point; that we’d used the same themes for three or four wars now and it seemed to work every time. When he handed in his thesis—naked, every word taken from someone else with no recognition, ruthlessly, with cynical abandon—he felt a sense of graduation. He didn’t even have to wait for his grade. Beagle had, by the very asking, taught him something important and deep, and made him a better man. Now Brody had the potential for success in Hollywood. At last, he thought, I can steal.