The Blue Jungle (1)
A noir novella in 10 chapters. “Mr. Feathers, I’m just a reporter, not a…”
Welcome to THE BLUE JUNGLE, a noir novella by Jamie Dibs.
Naomi is a struggling reporter in LA. Gangsters kidnap her because their boss thinks only Naomi knows what happened to his daughter.
He may be right: Naomi covers the porn industry, where all secrets lead to the king of sleaze, Bobby Feathers.
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This story is intended for adults and is not suitable for people under the age of 18.
And now…
THE BLUE JUNGLE: CHAPTER ONE
Los Angeles, March 2003
Naomi
Naomi Sato couldn’t take her eyes off the cabana. She clutched tight the recorder, as if for balance. She had come to interview the director, but what was going on by the pool…it was gonna pop.
The noises from the actors reached animal intensity, disturbing the bronze beauty of the sunlit patio, roiling the infinity pool soaring over the Valley.
The crew, stepping lightly, blocked and unblocked her view of the action, and the director gestured at his cast like an orchestral maestro. Everyone ignored Naomi as they focused on keeping the boom and the mic and their shadows out of the camera’s eye.
But she had become part of the scene, even from its fringe. It wasn’t the first time she had experienced something like this – hazard of the job – but the chemicals were sparking. The two white guys were reliable pros, but the black 18-year old girl-woman was a newcomer, and she was into it. Really into it.
Naomi moved closer, hooked by the woman’s unfeigned pleasure – plunging into the center of the universe.
The scene popped.
Silence blessed the patio. Then, slightly awed by the intensity of the performance, the director and the crew began to applaud. “That was awesome,” the director said. Naomi joined in the clapping, allowing herself to become a full part of the group. Then dead-fish smells reached her from the exhausted performers’ bodies, and one of the crew began handing out packets of wipes, and she retreated back to the far side of the pool.
“So, is now okay?” Naomi asked the director.
He adjusted his baseball cap. “Whadja think?”
“Hot,” Naomi said. Behind her came splashes as the actors cooled off in the pool.
“Amazing when it clicks like that,” the director said.
“You think performances can still click if the city council passes that condom law?”
“This on the record?” the director asked.
Naomi had been so distracted by the performance that she had forgotten to hit Record. “Yes – please. Go ahead.”
A Mexican teenager in a French maid’s uniform – skirt up to here – walked out carrying a tray with water and glasses of juice. Naomi assumed she served the owner of the house more than liquid refreshments.
“Coz,” the director said, lifting an O.J., “I don’t really want my name in your paper. Bobby’d kill me.”
Naomi passed on a drink, even though she was desperate for some water. She was here only because she had buttonholed the director in the driveway; Naomi had given him flattering coverage before, which got her permission to be on set today.
But she didn’t want to avail herself to the hospitalities of the house. The owner would not have approved of her being around.
The animosity was mutual. Naomi had interviewed Bobby Feathers for the first time only six weeks ago. She had gone to talk business but his only interest had been in trying to get her to strip – and he hadn’t been subtle about it, or even nice. You’re Asian, he had said in that serpantine hiss. Give me a massage.
“Off the record,” Naomi agreed. “The mayor said he wanted to require any porn videos shot in L.A. County—”
“Yeah, I know what he said,” the director cut in. “Reason I let you on set was so you could see how we do it. STD check, start of every shoot.”
“Maybe not every director is that conscientious?”
“I know AIDS is a big deal and believe me, these are friends of mine. But if the sex isn’t real, the mayor’ll just drive the industry somewhere else, like Brazil – and we lose all these jobs. Besides,” he added as one of the male actors, still naked, walked into the house, “nobody makes a condom that could fit on Danny’s ween.”
Quote gold! even if it had to be anonymous. Naomi shut off her recorder and thanked the director. She wandered inside to find some of the actors, to get their take.
The mansion’s interior, with its Versailles-meets-“Saturday Night Fever” décor, reminded Naomi of the wild-themed sex hotels back in Tokyo. But this was someone’s home. The pink tasseled cushions all bore the monogrammed initials ‘B.F.’ over the icon of a feather. The owner liked to stamp his imprint on anything...on anyone.
The actors had already passed through. The only two people were the maid with her tray and a tall redheaded man, all left thumbs and goofy elbows, ridiculous in silver lamé pants.
“Naomi?” he squeaked.
“Hi, Pimples,” she sighed. If Pimples was around, that meant his boss was, too.
“Bobby know you’re here?” Pimples asked.
“Uh, no. I was just leaving, actually.”
Pimples’ look of awe seemed to be permanent. He was always scuttling around Bobby’s feet, running menial errands, managing the office – and salivating over the ceaseless flow of women. Naomi wondered if he ever got any action, because Pimples still gave off the vibes of a jittery virgin. He was desperate in his pestering of Naomi’s colleague Meredith – Meredith Pepper, who had helped Naomi get the Bobby Q&A by promising Pimples a date, a promise Merry had spent the past six weeks reneging.
“You seen Meredith?” Pimples asked. “She totally owes me.”
“Sorry, we’ve been super busy. Deadlines.”
“You may not realize this, Naomi, but I’m the one who scored you facetime with Bobby.”
“Really?” Best to play dumb. “Gee, thanks.”
“But Meredith stood me up, so I guess you’re the one who owes me now.”
“Owes you?”
He was checking her out, very obviously. “Yeah, big time. What’s your number?”
The woman performer emerged from one of the bedrooms in street clothes. Naomi took advantage of her appearance to cut the chat with Pimples. “Hey Charelle,” she called, pressing the record button. “Got a minute?”
“Not for you, sugar,” said the budding mattress actress.
“Oh come on, just two minutes,” Naomi pleaded, trailing Charelle, but all she got was a raised middle finger.
And there, at the exit, Charelle stopped to exchange kisses and hugs with the owner. But the whole time, Bobby Feathers kept his eyes on Naomi.
B.F. to Naomi: “You hasslin’ my talent?”
Naomi instinctively tightened her grip on the recorder. “No, I’m not hassling anyone, Mr. Feathers.”
He was about Naomi’s height – only about five-foot-six – and similarly skinny. But there the resemblance ended. Naomi was dressed down in jeans, T-shirt and sneakers, no makeup, hair in an artless bun. Bobby, on the other hand, sought to make an impression: gold pants, black silk shirt undone to belly button, fire truck-red espadrilles. The bling didn’t mask his baggy eyes, vanishing hairline and hungry, pasty face, but it gave him swagger.
“Who said you could come onto my property?” His voice was silky as a rattlesnake’s tongue.
“Not me, Bobby,” said Pimples.
“Shut up, I know that. I’m asking her.”
Naomi gestured back to the patio, where the crew was packing up their equipment.
“Oh, they own this place? They own Explicit Videos?”
“I’m doing a story on the mayor’s…”
“You want a quote?”
She managed a smile and turned on her recorder. “Sure.”
“I’m not giving you a fucking quote. Put that thing away.”
She turned it off and put it in her handbag. “Okay.”
“We off the record?”
“Sure.”
“Who you know in Japan?”
“What?”
“You heard me, geisha girl.”
“Mr. Feathers, I’m just a reporter, not a…”
“Hey,” he snapped, “everybody knows you’re connected. Hell, you’re the one who sent me that jailbait on Valentine’s Day.”
Naomi scrunched her face. “I what?”
“Wherever she came from. That’s the source. Jackrabbits got nothing on that girl. I’m not saying I fucked her, understand, I’m just saying I’m getting educated on the legals and whatnot in the Orient. Give me some names.”
“I don’t think I can help you,” Naomi said, recoiling.
“You can’t help me?” he demanded. “Then what the hell am I letting you trespass for? Hey Duke!”
“Yes, Mr. Feathers?” said the muscle, a bullet-headed, brown-skinned two hundred-fifty-pound benchpresser. He had just come into the foyer carrying a feather-embossed suitcase for B.F.
“I’ll be on my way,” Naomi said, desperate to escape.
“Yeah, Duke’ll see you out,” Bobby said, but he grabbed her arm, startling her. “Relax, honey, I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Duke was impassive; Pimples just watched, open-mouthed, like he always did. She said, “Please let go.”
“So,” Bobby said, “what about you?”
“What about me?” Bobby still clutched her arm.
“Put on some makeup, six-inch heels, you could be a lot more than a dumb reporter.” This elicited a snort from Pimples.
Naomi jerked free. “I like my job just fine.”
Bobby got in her face. “Tell me, Sucky-Fucky, who put about a hundred grand of advertizing into X-tra last year? Who was the gold sponsor of the X-tra News awards two months ago?”
“I’m sure Stu appreciates all the support.” Naomi tried to move around him but he didn’t let her go.
“You want to make Bobby Feathers happy? Tell your boss I want you in my movies.”
“I’ve got a story to file,” she said, glancing nervously behind her. Duke was watching, arms folded, making his muscles smile.
“Not a story with me in it,” Bobby warned.
“No. I’m leaving now.”
Bobby leaned in, conspiratorially. “Confucius say, Sucky-Fucky make white man happy, or X-tra News go down pagoda toilet.”
Naomi’s retort stopped before it escaped her lips. She hurried out of the mansion, face rigid, and forced herself not to break into a run as she headed through the outer gates to the hillside lane. She was going to become a reporter people respected. A real journalist. Her Nissan Sentra, bought third-hand for eight hundred dollars, sported more rust than paint. Naomi got in, started the ignition, forgot to release the parking brake, the car lurched nowhere, and she burst into tears.
She found Stu in a foul mood when she returned to X-tra’s premises on the third floor of a bland office block off Interstate 5. She had barely sat at her cubicle when he walked over and threw a clutch of newspapers and trade magazines at her. Humiliation scattered across her desk and the floor.
“XBIZ break the story?” she winced.
“XBIZ, Variety, City Business – even the goddamn L.A. Times!”
“Well, I told you it was already online.”
‘Online’ was not a concept resonating with Stu – fortyish, potbellied, and convinced the world had sucked since they took “Magnum, P.I.” off the air. He hated the whole idea of it being 2003 already. “The L.A. Times!” he screamed.
“It’s an entertainment news item,” Naomi said. “Condoms in porn, affects a lot of jobs. I got some quotes though.”
“From the mayor? Cause that’s who’s in Variety and City.”
She sighed. “No, Stu, not from the mayor.”
“And I got a phone call.”
Naomi could guess who from. “He’s an asshole, Stu. He had no right.” She had managed to calm down during the drive back to the office, and was now chiefly angry with herself for letting Bobby Feathers talk to her the way he did.
“B.F. practically keeps us afloat – all of us.”
She would have quit right there but the rent was due and her side projects were turning up zilch. Naomi pressed her fingers to her temples. There was only one way she could get something fast. “Any Japanese in town?”
Stu sat on the corner of her desk. “I was waiting for you to ask. Silk On Demand is doing a shoot tomorrow morning. They got two chicks in. Ayumi something and Keiko something. And a director, Something Something-san.”
“Okay,” she said, “you want their take on the condom thing?”
“Do I want Something Something-san’s take on the condom thing… Can’t say that I do. But neither does XBIZ or Variety, and they don’t speak Japanese either, so at least you can fill two columns tomorrow.”
“All right, Stu. You’ll have it.”
“I better. This is a professional news outfit, for Chrissakes.”
After he had retreated to his office and closed the door, Naomi heard, in childish singsong, This is a professional news outfit!
Naomi peeked over the cubical wall. “You been there the whole time, crazy bitch?”
Meredith laughed. “Man, if I had a buck for every time I heard Stu say that.”
“You know it.” They bumped fists. Meredith was all punk, black hair bursting in hard jagged cones, chained and pinned from head to toe. Tattoos of stars, a Milky Way of ink, decorated one skinny bare arm. She wasn’t especially pretty, especially not behind the Goth gear, but her time in the Army had given her a sort of confidence. She had a knack for getting enough scoops for X-tra News to stay relevant.
Naomi considered telling Meredith about what had gone down at Bobby’s, that Pimples hadn’t forgotten what he considered coming to him. But Meredith asked first: “So, another Pacific Rim job?”
Naomi sighed. “I guess it’s my competitive advantage. But it would be nice to, you know, get an assignment for some other reason.”
“You mean like for our incredible writing talent?”
“Yeah,” Naomi said, “you know, so we can really make it as pornalists.”
“Living the dream.”
Naomi was glad to have Meredith around. Merry knew how to poke fun at Naomi’s aspirations without being mean. Maybe because, for her, X-tra News was a step up: Meredith used to be on screen, after getting kicked out of the military. Actually it was doing porn while in the army that had gotten Meredith her discharge. Performing had paid a lot more than writing but everybody in the Valley talked to her with respect and she liked the airs of being the industry’s top-read columnist. Throwing favors Naomi’s way was her idea of noblesse oblige. Or maybe she just relied on Naomi to clean up her grammar.
Naomi picked up the mess Stu had left strewn around her working space. She forced herself to open Variety and saw the byline beneath the condom story. That writer had a real job covering entertainment news. Of course, she’d rather be at the L.A. Times, or even L.A. City Business News, or hey, why stop there? The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. But days like this, even Varietyseemed like a distant dream.
She had done a little freelancing, but always under a pseudonym, because Stu would fire her if he had found out. ‘Naomi Smith’, wielding about as whitebread an American surname as she could imagine, had managed to sell two pieces to Variety over the past six months. Both were retreads of porn industry news she had done for X-tra News, one about AIDS, the other about how the trade continued to pioneer commercial applications online: Bobby Feathers may have been a slimeball, but he was also an astute Internet businessman, a New Media pioneer.
‘Naomi Smith’ had been hoping today’s condom story might be added to her freelance clips, beefing up her portfolio enough to find a job somewhere else, but it looked like the whole world was already on the case.
Naomi Sato powered up her PC to check her email: the usual spam and useless press releases. Then the word ‘gaijin’ caught her eye. Something involving Japan? Gaijin was the Japanese word for foreigner.
She opened the message and beheld the photo of a beautiful white woman. No, beautiful wasn’t enough. The scar on her left cheek should have made her ugly, but somehow had the reverse impact, and those smoldering eyes made the figure magnetic. Valerie Benson, author of the best-selling memoir Gaijin Cowgirl, was in town. She’d be holding a signing tomorrow in which she’d announce a deal with a major movie studio.
“Hey, check out this chick,” Naomi said, showing the photo to Meredith. “Hot or what?”
Meredith shrugged. “Hot, if you like your blondes out of a bottle.”
Naomi couldn’t stop staring at the image. She scanned the article, got the gist of Val’s book. “This is right up my alley,” she said. “Japan angle, gorgeous writer, press conference, what more do I need?”
“Her tongue, right up your alley.”
“I’ll settle for a couple of quotes.”
“Is Naomi Smith out seeking fame and fortune?”
Naomi Sato flashed Meredith a smile. “You want to watch?”
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