Suicide Hill Read Free Page B

details. In two months he had the down payment for a classy West L.A. condo. In three months he had Vandy primed for stardom with a health food diet, daily aerobics, coke as an occasional reward and three-walk-in closets stuffed with designer threads. In four months he had the feedback of two high-priced voice teachers: Vandy was a weak, near tone-deaf soprano with virtually no range. She had a decent vibrato growl that could be jazzed up with a good amplifier, and gave great microphone head. She had the haunted sex look of a punk-rock star—and very limited talent.
    Rice accepted the appraisals—they made him love Vandy more. He altered his game plan for crashing the L.A. rock music scene and took Vandy to Vegas, where he dug up three out-of-work musicians and paid them two bills a week to serve as her backup group. Next he bribed the owner of a slot machine arcade/bar/convenience store into featuring Vandy and the Vandals as his lounge act.
    Four shows a night, seven days a week, Vandy’s vibrato growled the punk lyrics of the group’s drummer. She drew wolf whistles when she sang and wild applause when she humped the air and sucked the microphone. After a month of watching his woman perform, Rice knew she was ready.
    Back in L.A., armed with professional photographs, bribed press raves and a doctored demo tape, he tried to find Vandy an agent. One brick wall after another greeted him. When he got past secretaries, he got straight brush-offs and “I’ll call yous”; and when he got past them and whipped out Vandy’s photos, he got comments like “interesting,” “nice bod” and “foxy chick.” Finally, in the Sunset Strip office of an agent named Jeffrey Jason Rifkin, his frustration came to a head. When Rifkin handed back the photos and said, “Cute, but I have enough clients right now,” Rice called his fists and took a bead on the man’s head. Then inspiration struck, and he said, “Jew boy, how’d you like a brand-new silver gray Mercedes 450 SL absolutely free ?”
    A week later, after he picked up his car, Rifkin told Rice that he could introduce him to a lot of people who might help Vandy’s career, and that her idea of showcasting her talent via a series of rock videos was an excellent “high-exposure breakthrough strategy,” albeit expensive: $150-200 K minimum. He would do what he could with his contacts, but in the meantime he also knew a lot of people who would pay hard cash for discount Benzs and other status cars—people in the “Industry.”
    Rice smiled. Use and be used—an arrangement he could trust. He and Vandy went Hollywood.
    Rifkin was partially good to his word. He never procured any recording or club gigs, but he did introduce them to a large crowd of semisuccessful TV actors, directors, coke dealers and lower-echelon movie executives, many of whom were interested in high-line cars with Mexican license plates at tremendous discounts. Over the next year, paperwork aided by an Ensenada D.M.V. employed cousin of his old Soledad buddy Chula Medina, Rice stole 206 high-liners, banking close to a hundred fifty thou toward the production of Vandy’s rock videos. And then just as he was about to drill the column of a chocolate-brown Benz ragtop, four L.A.P.D. auto theft dicks drew down on him with shotguns, and one of them whispered, “Freeze or die, motherfucker.”
    Out on $16,000 bail, his show biz attorney gave him the word: for the right amount of cash, his bank account would not be seized, and he would get a year county time. If the money were not paid, it would be a parole violation and probable indictments on at least another fifteen counts of grant theft auto. The L.A.P.D. had an informant by the balls, and they were squeezing him hard. He could only buy the judge if he acted now. If he were quickly sentenced, the L.A.P.D. would most likely drop its investigation.
    Rice agreed. The