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Hollywood: sex, murder, corruption, fraud, theft and obsession with the Cult Of Celebrity; then there are bad days.
Boysie Blake solves problems. Yours. He doesn’t need the money. You can be rich or poor, famous or not, it doesn’t matter. What does, is that you’re straight with him. The last thing you want is to become the problem he has to solve.
Michael Santoro, Boysie’s stepdad, was found floating face down in Sycamore Cove. Drowned while surfing, apparently. His long time friend, Detective Lawton, Santa Monica PD, tries to help, but he’s got his own problems.
Marjorie Wallace, art dealer to Hollywood’s powerful elite, has brokered a deal between two of its most formidable and dangerous players, for a previously unknown and never before seen Jackson Pollock. Problem is, the painting’s a 3D printed fake, and now she’s on the hook for a $150 million.
Boysie knows there will be blood. He has to make sure it’s not his, or Marjorie’s.
The buyer, her ex-husband, David Gandolfo, is connected to the Vatican and the US government; now he wants her dead. The seller, Jack Valentine, more violent gangster than B movie producer, wants Boysie dead.
Valentine has a minder, Bruno, monster of a man. Gandolfo has a minder, Cardinale Christoforo, monster of a man. Violence can wield a gun or a chalice. The Hollywood rumor mill has it that in 2002, Gandolfo had tried to buy Dan Brown’s manuscript, The Da Vinci Code. Boysie’s stepdad had backed the wrong horse by loaning the agent that was brokering the deal, one million dollars so that he could buy the manuscript for himself. Brown smelled a rat and withdrew it. Gandolfo never forgave Michael or the agent. Now both are dead.
At 63, Marjorie is beautiful, very much alive and Boysie is unable to resist. However, she’s twice his age and after their one night together, the guilt of it weighs on her, especially as she is also his mum’s best friend. She breaks it off with him, much to his disappointment.
Boysie is summoned to meet Cardinale Christoforo in the one place he shouldn’t – the Vatican. He returns to L.A. understanding that there is no justice, only the perception of it and if you can’t find it one way, then find it another, because that’s all you have.
