Zeitgeist (3 page)

Starlitz lowered his voice. “We just want the girls to be seen in the clothes. That’s all we want. We want screen time and column inches for the clothes and the shoes. We got a buncha sweatshops gearing up in Anatolia, that used to do Versace forgeries. They’re gonna flood the Turkish market with G-7 glitter crop-tops and platform sneakers. So we can pay your foreign paparazzi top dollar, because that outlay is gonna be maybe five, six percent of our revenue. Not to mention that we’re laundering the works offshore in Turkish Cyprus, so it’s totally tax fucking free!”

Wiesel’s eyes grew round as lens caps. “Damn.”

“So here’s your angle, man: you hire ’em, you deal with ’em, and you pay them off for us. You’re my cutout, Wiesel. They never know about me, ever. So whether your boys kick you back a commission, that’s your own business, I don’t care about that, you are the boss there.” Starlitz drew a breath. “So, you want in on this lig, or what?”

“Nobody ligs like you do, Leggy,” Wiesel said. “But I don’t need any business now. I’m settling down, see? I’m looking after her health. What about my wife?”

“We’re not married,” the Princess said hastily.

Wiesel winced. “We’re formally engaged. Awright?”

Starlitz beamed at them. “You kids ever try a Turkish marriage? You can repudiate it just by saying, ‘I divorce you,’ three times in a row.”

“Whoa,” the Princess said, blue eyes gleaming. “That’s something nice, that is.”

Wiesel recognized defeat. Then he rallied himself. “So what about this Turkish health spa you were talking about?”

Starlitz offered a troubled frown. “Well—I sure would have to pull a lot of strings.…”

“Then you better do that, Leggy. You cut my Princess in on the action, or it’s no deal.”

“This isn’t like you, Wiesel. You’re twisting my arm here, man.” Leggy glanced into the wheelchair. The byplay wasn’t fooling the Princess any, but she looked rather pleased about it anyway. She was touched that Wiesel would take the trouble to bullshit her.

“Okay,” Leggy said. “Have it your way, man. I can handle that. Princess Di goes first class, all the way down.”

DRIFTING OVER THE TERRACE WALLS, THE CYPRIOT breeze carried a sensual reek of oleanders, seaweed, and badly tuned cars. Ozbey signed the chit for another round of margaritas for the boys.

Turgut Altimbasak’s sprawling casino favored heavy plungers. The sprawling seaside establishment was especially attractive to swingers like Ozbey, moneyed gentlemen from Istanbul or Ankara, traveling with squads of armed retainers. The casino’s Byzantine wings and high-rise floors could be sealed off like a card-sharp’s Führerbunker.

Mehmet Ozbey’s private thugs always clumped up at crucial business junctures. Drey and Halik and Aydan, their scarred mugs gleaming with sweat and booze, had never looked happier. The boss was in an expansive mood.

Ozbey gazed dramatically past the white masts clustered in the Girne harbor, past the old Venetian villas and the blue romantic hills, and into the lucid depths of the slightly discolored Mediterranean. His handsome face took on a visionary cast. “Our business deal is sure to prosper.”

Starlitz propped one Guccied foot on a whitewashed plaster wall. “Absolutely. You got the big ticket, man.” Now that he was back in air and daylight, Starlitz felt better. The dank interior of the casino, with its solid harem walls and distinct lack of clocks, had given Starlitz an oozy sensation of chronic liquidity. “You define reality,” Starlitz
pronounced. “You got the press in one pocket, and the cops in the other. Cops and the media, that’s all the reality most people will ever need!”

Ozbey nodded. “We have kidnapped the spirit of the times! We are manufacturing reality!”

“Well, pop hits come and go quick, that’s the beauty of pop. But the
money
, right? That money stays just as real as money ever is!”

“And money is never real inside a casino,” Ozbey diagnosed. “Casinos are factories that make money less real.”

“Exactly, man. Now you’re getting it.” Aydan and Halik and Drey couldn’t follow English, but they were fascinated anyway. As Starlitz and Ozbey pontificated for them, they had the look of New Guinea tribesmen exposed to video porn. “You see,” Starlitz said loudly, “casinos have a very hot product. Casinos sell people their own greed. ‘Greed’ is one of those way-hip meta-commodities, like ‘access,’ or ‘click-through,’ or ‘bandwidth.’ That’s like this fabulous new-economy thing, and—“ Starlitz stopped short, staring in astonishment.

Ozbey rose from his chair. “Here comes Gonca. Late, as usual.” He spoke briefly in Turkish, and air-kissed the actress’s roseate cheeks.

Gonca daintily adjusted Ozbey’s white boutonniere. Then she offered Starlitz a paralyzing dark-eyed glance and emitted a bright contralto stream of lilting Turkish.

Ozbey offered his girlfriend a private briefing and then switched to English again. “Leggy, this is Miss Gonca Utz. She was Miss Turkish Cinema 1997.”

“Charmed,” said Starlitz. Miss Utz offered her hand. Starlitz took the risk of briefly gripping her perfectly lacquered fingertips. Then he had to sit down and exhale.

“Miss Utz has no English,” said Ozbey.

“That’s a pity.”

“She has excellent French,” Ozbey bargained. “She grew up on the Syrian border.”

“C’est triste,”
Starlitz said, “tough choice of imperialists there.”

Gonca Utz lifted the gilded hem of her midnight-blue Saint-Laurent gown and did a slow and exquisite twirl. A group of stunned Bruneian oilmen at a nearby table burst into spontaneous applause. They subsided rapidly under the sudden feral glares of Drey, Halik, and Aydan. It was a very large casino, but it was a rather small terrace.

At a twitch of Ozbey’s eyebrow one of his muscle guys hustled aside to give Miss Utz a chair. The actress did the chair the supreme favor of sitting in it. She began the elaborate ritual of producing a cigarette.

“Miss Utz was in one Italian coproduction,” Ozbey said, leaning forward deftly with his platinum Zippo. “Her film role came with the beauty contest. But that film was domestic release only. Turkish cinema is no longer what it was, back in the glory days of Muhsin Ertugrul. Too many foreign cassettes, you see.”

Starlitz adjusted his sunglasses and watched Miss Utz breathing smoke. Gonca Utz was a sleeping geyser of primal feminine charisma. The woman was all steam and seltzer-bubbles.

“She dances, right?” Starlitz said.

“Of course she dances.”

“And she sings?”

“Like an angel.”

“I can see where this is going, Mehmetcik.” Starlitz leaned forward, frowning. “Your problem here is that you have very good taste. This woman is a natural. She’s a true star. In any country with a functional film industry she would be huge. She’s got way, way too much talent to be in a teenybopper pop act.”

“She’s young,” Ozbey offered. “You need an Islamic G-7 girl, Leggy. To sell your concept in Teheran.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m with that approach big-time. I’d love to have an Islamic G-7 girl. Hoofin’ it up with the others in her spangled chador, man, I guarantee you the sparks would fucking fly. The thing is, she’s got to be a
genuine fake
, just like the other G-7 girls. She’s got to be a
random, everyday
Islamic girl. The kind of girl who could be
any
Islamic girl, if she took a few lessons and had a pro do her makeup.”

“Not like a true star, you mean.”

“Exactly, not like a star. But, see, the demographics of Islamic chicks are very badly surveyed. There’s just no standard for the Islamic female consumer in the fifteen-to-twenty-one age bracket. We’re talking the Mahgreb to Malaysia! That’s at least a hundred million girls, in thirty-something nationalities, and a couple of dozen major language groups.”

“But Gonca’s so pretty,” Ozbey said wistfully.

“I concur, man. She’s fantastic.”

“Why can’t it matter that she’s pretty?”

“Oh, she could matter all right. But you got the wrong scene for that. G-7’s about marketing, it’s absolutely not about mattering. You want to matter with a pop group, you are talking a different reality.”

Despite his feigned indifference Ozbey was visibly vibrating with the urge to lunge for commercial daylight. “Tell me about this so-called reality. I need to know that. It’s important.”

Starlitz scratched his jaw. “Let me get you up to speed here, man. You wanna know who
matters
in Islamic pop music? Fuckin’ rai musicians in Algeria, they matter. They’ve got a backbeat and electric guitars, they sing about sex and drugs. All the Algerian fundies want ’em dead, blind, and crippled. Cheb Khaled, for instance. You ever heard of Cheb Khaled?”

“No,” said Ozbey thoughtfully, “I never have heard of this Khaled.”

“Khaled matters big-time. He has to live in Paris, ’cause they burn his records back home. Cheba Fadela, she sang ‘N’sel Fik,’ right? Biggest rai hit ever recorded! She and her main squeeze are beatin’ the streets in exile in New York now, looking for a Yankee record deal. And they’re hoping they don’t get what John Lennon got.”

“I have very much heard of John Lennon,” Ozbey said alertly. “Oh, yes, I remember him well. One man on the street, with a pistol.”

“Lennon mattered. Lennon mattered even when he didn’t want to matter anymore. See, there’s
no expiration date
with mattering. That’s the basic problem there.”

“What if I
want
to matter? I have the money to matter. I have the business contacts too. With Gonca I have the talent. Maybe I would like to matter.”

“Go ahead! Give it a try. But you’re never gonna get there with
my
act, because we fold our tent for good on Y2K Day.”

Ozbey smiled bitterly. “The number-one rule. Of course, you have my word about your number-one rule.” He lowered his voice. “But what can I do with my little friend? She’s so pretty, and so ambitious.”

Starlitz nerved himself and gazed at length upon Miss Gonca Utz. It was like staring into sunlight on water. “You want my professional advice there, Mehmetcik?”

“Yes, of course!” said Ozbey, leaning back. “As long as you’re not telling me to give her up and go back to my wife.”

“Television personality,” Starlitz prescribed at last. “Turkish game-show hostess.”

“Television?” Ozbey considered this proposal. “That’s your answer?”

“Fuckin’ A, man. Cinema is dyin’ everywhere that can’t afford digital special effects. So it’s gotta be Turkish national TV, definitely. TV will overexpose her and burn her out, but TV is big stardom.”

Ozbey nodded. “Hmmmm.”

“And when she starts to lose her looks, go for elective office.”

Ozbey brightened. “Politics?”

“Absolutely. After TV, that’s the only media outlet big enough to hold her. Yeah, I mean run her for Turkish Parliament. Center-left party, very mildly progressive, a women’s-issues scene, plenty of time on the stump, a lot of public baby-kissing. But with, you know, some hidden steely depths there. Kind of an Iron Lady riff. Know what I mean?”

“Yes. You mean Mrs. Tansu Çiller.”

“Mrs. Tansu Çiller is not Turkey’s prime minister by accident, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I know very well about all of that.” Enlightenment was visibly breaking over Ozbey. He was definitely with the program; he was moving it to the top of the wheel in his mental Rolodex. “I know Mrs. Çiller,” he confided. “My Uncle the Minister and I, we had dinner with her, in Ankara, last month. And also her husband, Mr. Ozer Çiller: the prominent businessman, and party financier. Mr. Ozer Çiller is a very clever fellow.”

“You’re kidding. You know the prime minister?”

“We’re all very good friends! We’re very close! I spent two semesters at her alma mater in America. That’s where I learned my American English.”

Starlitz considered this revelation. It was explaining a lot to him. “You’re an ace guy to know, Mehmetcik. I’m very pleased with these informal exchanges. This is leading us to a new world of expanded market potential and multicultural amity.”

Ozbey spread his hands. “Business is good! G-7 will be big in Turkey. As big as you let me make it.” He narrowed his eyes. “If you can deliver the seven girls. On time. Dressed in the proper merchandise. Ready to dance and sing.”

“No problem, man. The girls love Cyprus, they are tanned, rested, and ready. I got all their roadies and trainers in town, they’re rehearsing their little hearts out.”

Ozbey gazed on Miss Utz with jaded Asiatic sentiment. “Don’t tell me ‘no problem,’ because I don’t believe it. Woman is always a problem for man, it is her nature. Seven girls! Ha! I have just two girls in my life, and I am a busy man.”

Gonca erupted with a sudden petulant demand. Ozbey listened to her with a pious show of gallant attention. Then he turned to Starlitz again. “When will Gonca meet the French One?”

“Tonight,” Starlitz promised, “in the casino. It’s cool,
man; the French One is okay. The French One’s mom is a little off the wall, but the French One is good with her fans.”

Gonca had grown impatient. It was simply not in her nature to wait in anybody’s wings. “I gotta go, man,” Starlitz said politely, rising and glancing at his faked Korean Rolex. “Gotta take a meeting tonight.”

“Tonight? I booked a table at Niazi’s.”

“Sorry, man, can’t make it. I gotta see a Russian about some hardware.”

This remark touched Ozbey. His reaction was very much as Starlitz had predicted. Despite his cosmopolitan airs, Ozbey considered himself a Turkish patriot of the very first order. In strict precedent Ozbey fiercely despised Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, Arabs, Iraqis, Serbs, Iranians, Jews, Circassians, and Croats. The Russians were also among Turkey’s blood enemies, but unlike these other nationalities the Russians had never been a subject people in the Ottoman Empire. So Ozbey tempered his partisan disgust for Russians with a certain curiosity.

“You must have noticed all the Russian whores in this casino,” Ozbey offered smoothly.

“You bet, those Natasha hookers are way hard to miss.”

“Many Russians in the Turkish lands these days. Russia is Turkey’s biggest trading partner. As my Uncle the Minister always likes to tell us.”