After a swallow of vodka, I looked around at everyone and noticed RG and JG were coked out of their minds. DD had been steadily drinking and looked like she was about to pass out. Time to go. I told JG and RG if they wanted a ride, we were leaving. I practically had to carry DD out to the car. I put her in the backseat with RG.
As we pulled away, JG asked if we could make one quick stop. He just wanted to score before he headed home and since the place he mentioned was on the way, I said it was fine.
Fine is not exactly the way it turned out.
A refresher for those of you not here Monday.
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“Go, go, go. Get the f**k out of here right now.”
I had just watched JG run across Vine’s multiple lanes of traffic at a full sprint. He was alternatively looking back over his shoulder from the bar where he had been to me, sitting in the driver seat of a car belonging to an actress currently asleep in the back. What JG was not doing while running across the street was looking out for any of the cars using the street. There was no honking. There were a lot of slammed brakes and strange looks. The way he was running, they probably thought he robbed the club. Nope, but it turns out he had robbed someone inside the club.
“Seriously, we need to get the f**k out of here right now,” JG said as he looked past me at the club door.
Never wanting to be an escape driver, I still managed to understand the need to get out of there and ask questions later so pulled away from the curb and into traffic. Nothing crazy, but I could feel myself shaking. What had happened?
Meanwhile, in the backseat, I heard “Did you get it?”
The voice didn’t belong to the owner of the car, but another actress who was seated behind the passenger seat and was wide awake. Let us call her RG. At that particular point in time, she was the highest on the list in that car. She was probably A- list. Mostly movies. All of you know her. Honestly, you know who JG is and the actress sleeping behind me in the car too. Let’s call her DD.
JG turned to face RG and held up multiple glassine bags, each about the size of half a finger, and each filled with powder. In the rearview mirror, looking to see if we were being chased, I saw the eyes of RG light up and her tongue quickly lick her lips as JG handed her a few of the bags.
As JG took a glance out of the back and side, I asked him why we had to get out of there so quickly.
“I punched the f**ker in the face and grabbed the stuff.”
“Wait, what? Why did you do that,” I asked.
“We were in the bathroom and he was showing me the stuff and I just decided that I didn’t want to pay so took it from him instead.”
“And you think you can get away with it?”
“Hell yes. I’m a mother f**king movie star man.”
After he said that he rolled down the window and screamed it to some people on the corner of Sunset & Vine who all yelled back. JG was in his element.
---
So, yeah, well, right after JG screamed, I happened to notice in our rearview mirror someone following us. I say they were following us but they were a couple of blocks back. How did I know they were following us? Well, after what the idiot next to me in the passenger said and the way the car behind me was swerving around other cars and even crossing the center line to gain ground, I figured they were after us, and we will probably all die because of JG’s drug addiction and violent tendencies.
I told JG to look behind us and then RG looked behind us. DD kept sleeping. I was driving her car, so didn’t really think I should floor the thing to 100 and risk ruining it, but I also didn’t want to die. JG was freaking out, but I actually had a plan. I know. I even silently congratulated myself for it because I didn’t know I had on the spot planning while under possibly dangerous circumstances talents.
The great thing is, I was pretty sure it would work. I was just about at Franklin and turned left. Sure enough, about 20 seconds after I turned left, here came the car behind us. There were a couple of cars in between us and they really had no chance to go around. They tried once and got stuck behind a car waiting to take a left turn and that gave us an extra 45 seconds. That was all I was going to need.
I turned right and pulled right up to a gate in front of a parking garage.
JG looked at me and basically asked what I was doing and that we were so f**ked because we were at a dead end. The guy was freaking out and I was thinking to myself we wouldn’t be in this situation if he hadn’t punched a drug dealer and stolen all the dealer’s drugs.
You know what almost ruined everything right then? I couldn’t find the button to lower the driver’s side window. I saw the button but, apparently there was a way to lock them, but not normally where you would find it. I was freaking out and DD was asleep. I finally had to back up a bit to open the door and then pressed the button on the intercom which would hopefully get us inside.
“Leo. It’s me________. I need you to open the gate now.”
OK, so I probably screamed it, and probably threw in a hurry and some other expletives. Leo, not always the fleetest of foot, but not quite the sloth in Zootopia managed to hit the button fairly quickly. JG, RG and myself were all watching that gate open soooooo slowly while at the same time looking back every few seconds to see where the car was.
That gate opened just enough for us to get in and I flew inside that parking garage. I could make this really dramatic and say that the guys behind us barely missed getting in, but in reality they got pushed further behind and we had already parked when they finally pulled up to the gate. They too pressed the button, but Leo was not going to let them in.
If you ever wanted good stories, Leo was the guy. He just didn’t know the names of the people involved which kind of makes the stories for purposes of blinds not so great. Oh yeah, most of Leo’s stories are about actors. Lots of D listers and below but also plenty of A listers too.
We left the parking garage through a door and were on the grounds of a hotel. That is probably too nice of a word for the place. More of a resident hotel. A big two story square around a pool. Each of the rooms at that time had at least one actor or four staying there. DD was still sleeping in the car, but I had to get out and go give Leo a tip. The gatekeeper of the parking garage. JG and RG tagged along. They had both been here. Every young actor has probably been there before. You probably didn’t stay there but you partied there or picked someone up from there or dated someone staying there, but you had been there.
As is the case most nights, there was a party going on there. I made my way over to Leo to give him a tip while RG and JG went over to the pool and the party. When I got to the lobby, the door opened from the street side and I knew the two guys coming in were the ones who followed us. How? The blood all over the shirt of one of them and the way his nose was bent at an odd angle. They didn’t know me though, so I just slid over to Leo and dropped $40 in his hand courtesy of RG’s never ending pile of cash, and made my way back out to the pool area.
I don’t know what they said to Leo, but they didn’t get past his desk. No chance was he going to let them in unless they knew someone at the hotel and what room they were staying in. Although there were parties every night, they were primarily self-contained affairs. Generally limited to hotel guests and maybe one of their friends from outside.
I was tired, but there was a silver lining to the night. I ran into this foreign born actress who all of you know, but didn’t know then. Even now, she is probably B+ list. She is also a steady blind subject, but more importantly she is also a wonderful spy. I will say she is on a pay cable show. One of the very best spies there is. We once made out. Oh, maybe twice, but if you are both drunk does it count? From about the 3rd or 4th months of the site she has given me some of the best blinds and is an award show regular. I would never have met her if not for that night. Don’t worry, I didn’t leave DD in the car all night. I did leave JG and RG to get home on their own. I drove DD back to her place and tried to wake her up but she would not get out of the car. So, she slept in the back and I slept in the front and when we woke up, she drove me home. It was her who was the holdout on telling this story even in blind item format. Some things have happened to some of the people in this story over the years and some other things happened that night that I didn’t talk about which were pretty bad and witnessed by DD and the rest of us but she didn’t want to be reminded of them or think about them. So, this has waited to be written for a while.