Tough Luck L.A., page 4
I parked around the corner and shut off my lights and engine. My only concern was Herbert’s bodyguard George, who was usually close at hand. Herbert had a long list of enemies, or thought he did, and wanted his goon around at night; either that, or he slept with an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry.
I closed my car door quietly, turned the corner, and walked toward the house. I detoured around the Cadillac in the driveway and went through the back gate. The door on the service porch was locked. So was another door on the far side of the house. I climbed the two short steps to the narrow wooden porch that looked out over the back lawn. It was rickety and creaked with each step. I slowed down, lifting my feet like moonshoes as I approached the center panel of the French windows and pulled it outward by its small handles. It wouldn’t budge. The house was sealed up tight.
I stood still for a moment and felt a quietness about the place that mocked me to pieces. Hadn’t Vicky and I forgotten that this supposed pawn of Herbert’s had been putting a pretty obvious tail on her for two, three, maybe four days before he struck. Why in the world would Herbert have wanted her followed? To find out whether she was still hustling or feeding a daily drug habit? Possibly. But it still didn’t seem right. Something about it didn’t quite fit. And could Herbert have really been that desperate for a featured meat grinder? He had sought out Vicky as a matter of convenience, it seemed to me, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t easily find a million others who would jump to it at a moment’s notice. The man was shrewd. I couldn’t deny him that. He wanted to control risks or eliminate them if at all possible. Getting dependable personnel—especially for the tight budgets these sleazy shows always had—was crucial. But there was no reason to bludgeon or kill for it.
What sense was there in damaging the hot property one sought to acquire? It would be weeks before Vicky would be ready to go before the cruel eye of a camera with or without makeup. A little less lucky, and she might have needed plastic surgery. That wouldn’t exactly be the way to go about organizing to meet an urgent deadline for beginning a production. Putting aside all doubts, what could I prove by busting into Herbert’s house, then vilifying his lousy, sleepy face?
I looked up at the dark second-story windows. I stepped off the long porch, went back through the gate, and cut across the front lawn.
9
I was on the sidewalk beyond the front of the house, just around the corner from my car, when the tired hum of late night traffic a few blocks further up on Wilshire was broken by a car door slamming. Shock waves killed my legs, made them numb, and the whites of my eyes popped like the flash cubes on an Instamatic. It had come from around the corner—where my car was. I steeled myself and turned the corner.
There was only one person, a squat, square-figured man who had his driver’s door wide open and was about to give it another throw. The door must have either fallen off its hinges or bounced back. I was getting ready to ask him if he was using some modern method to practice the shotput when I realized he was George, roaring homeward with enough of a buzz-on to fuel a jet. His legs were buckling under the strain. If you drink like that, you need pretty good landing gear. The door was swung back all the way, straining at its hinges, and George was draped over it with all of his weight. His arms were extended through the open window, and they hung limply at rest over the inside of the door.
I was hoping he’d find it a good place to catch some shuteye, when, suddenly, he leaned a little too far forward and swung toward the car with his feet dragging behind him. He saw me through the window on the passenger side as I walked by. Out of the side of my eye, I could see his hands waving toward me. He stood up straight and banged his back and shoulders against the inside of the car. The car rocked and he pulled his head out, straightened up, and staggered toward me, his arms jerking out in front of him, looking for something to hold onto.
“What you doin’ here?” He was trying to look menacing, but gave that up as soon as he heard himself. Then he smiled at me like an old friend.
“Not much.”
I could tell he was trying hard to focus on me. “You writin’ somethin’ for Herbert?”
“That’s right.”
He came over and stood by me and let his arms drop over my shoulders like a couple of steel girders. “Herbert, he’ll give me hell if I get home any later ’n midnight. Gets scared if I’m not there to protect ’im. Used a gun, wouldn’t even need me. That’s what I told ’im. But he’s afwraid—wittie fat ’fwraidy cat. Ha-ha-ha.”
I tried to smile and look like I was enjoying this.
“Got some bourbon. Let’s you and me go sit an’ …”
Then his legs folded and I let him sink down to the sidewalk. He went down on his belly, eyes closed, and the side of his face flattened out against the cement, fixing his mouth into a goofy sneer.
“Helen and Herbie—you could write a story!”
This seemed to strike him as the funniest thing he’d ever said. I wasn’t sure whether he was amused by the idea that someone might write about Herbert and Helen, or if it was the notion of writing itself that cracked him up. I left him there on the sidewalk, got in my car, and drove off.
10
I went back to Vicky’s and we hashed over the situation one more time, then decided to make a police report in the morning. She was a wreck. I ran a bath for her, then I put her in bed and tucked her in like a little tot. I turned off the light and stood in the doorway for a moment and heard her start saying her prayers. Then I got an extra blanket out of the hall closet and spread out on the living room couch. We said goodnight and went to sleep.
I awoke around seven-thirty and remembered I had an appointment at nine with Bradford Bobby, the producer. My plan was to get him to renew his option on one of my old screenplays. It had just expired and I needed the money, so I didn’t want to cancel the appointment. It might be worth a couple thousand dollars to me. I wrote Vicky a note and told her I’d pick her up at noon for lunch, went into the bedroom, and put it next to her pillow. Then I left.
A half-hour later, when I got down to Venice, I felt worried so I parked my car by Brad Bobby’s office and walked down to the boardwalk to look for a pay phone. Kids were whizzing by on rented roller skates—some crouched down like experts, leaning forward to reduce their wind resistance and gather speed; others clumping along, half-walking, sliding out of control, and flailing about with both arms in an effort to maintain balance. A juggler was practicing on the grass area fronting the beach, twirling four bowling pins as his German shepherd reared up on its hind legs, snapping at the air and trying to intercept them. I saw a phone over there.
Vicky had awakened as soon as I’d left and was on her way out to have breakfast. I didn’t want to scare her, but I felt relieved knowing she wasn’t going to be hanging around there. She knew it and told me not to worry about it. We couldn’t stop living, could we?
11
“Hey, Benny, what’s happening? So what d’ya think?”
“It’s nice, Brad. Very comfy.”
His new office building. BRADFORD BOBBY: MAVERICK MOGUL. Last year’s Time cover closeup was permaplaqued on the side wall by his desk. Our young and aggressive, brilliant, new and improved seventies-Irving Thalberg—only to top poor old Irving, Brad wasn’t head of production for nobody. No siree. Bradford Bobby was a man without studio who had made his own coming from the outside. Independently. Just because he’d started with a piddling five million palmed off of his father’s dress business—the kid had talent! So, hell, what’s the diff? He looked like a matinee idol: dark, compact, and sleek, with gorgeous baby blue eyes. He knew all the right moves, but his mainstay was giving college kids a break, pumping them dry for ideas and material, then discarding them before they got reputations and became expensive. Bobby did this adeptly, subtly, and thus maintained a stance as a sort of social barometer of the current scene. But I was supposed to be on a privileged status because my agent was his brother-in-law and he never stopped letting me know about it.
Something was different about him. Bobby had taken on a new pose to go with the office. The gold chains and matching bracelets were in absentia. His Hong Kong tailor also seemed to have bitten the dust. And what had happened to the hand-tooled lizard skin Luchese’s, those boots that had made me drip with envy? In mothballs. Now it was back to basics. T-shirts, jeans, and tennies. Aviator shades for a touch of mystery. The low-profile crawl away from the rat race so that the rat race might be resurrected in newer, less congested, and more expansive environs. Ten miles from Hollywood, at Venice Beach, mingling with the derelicts, winos, and complacent poor, here we sat: me, like Sisyphus, still pushing that goddamn rock; and another phony-baloney with a bank book for talent.
By way of greeting, Bobby tipped the sunglasses down to the end of his nose, revealing a decent shiner. “I’m getting rid of the motorcycle,” he frowned at me.
I asked him what had happened and he said something about a wino in a ’56 Chevy. It made him sick to think about it, so I asked him what else was new. He started getting happy when I told him I hadn’t heard about the deal on Alex Freeman.
“You know,” he said. “You gave me his script.”
“Yeah. Did you read it?”
“Read it?! We’re in preproduction at Paramount.”
“You mean you’re making it?”
“They are. They put up everything so they can do it. That’s fine with me.”
“How’d it happen?”
“I thought it looked good so I sent it over. And they loved it. They went bananas over it. I mean it.”
That fucking sonofabitch Alex. He hadn’t even called me to say thank you. “Good luck—for him.”
“Envy, Ben?”
“No.”
“Well, at least you’re normal.”
“What does that mean?”
Bobby let out a belly laugh that bounced off the walls. “Listen to this: I send him, Alex Freeman, over to Paramount for this very big meeting, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, in the middle of it, he’s talking to Barry Diller, the chairman of the board or somebody, and he announces that he thinks they should know that he’s a homosexual.”
“What?”
“That’s what he said. I think you should know I’m gay.’ Something like that. Did you know?”
“That Alex is gay?”
Bobby nodded.
“Knowing Alex—how could I not know?”
Bobby let out another belly laugh. He was shaking his head. “Alvin Meyers calls me from there, asking me whether this guy’s crazy. I tell him, ‘Of course not. He’s just eccentric.’ So Alvin says, ‘Oh, I see.’ The faggot tried to blow it for himself, but he couldn’t. They want that property.”
“I guess he’s sitting pretty.”
“You betcha.” Bobby tilted his cane backed rocker and swiveled around a hundred and eighty degrees. He pulled his Venetian blinds the rest of the way up and looked down into the bleached out, squalid street. “Ben, I’m tellin’ ya. I really dig being in Venice.”
“But how do you get any work done? I mean, don’t you just feel like lying on the beach all day?”
He laughed. “Are you kidding? I’d probably get mugged. It’s mellow, though, really,” he seemed to feel he had to assure me. “Everybody’s mobilizing to get on the council’s tail. We’re gonna make them clean up this shit hole.”
“But where are all the bums gonna go once you’ve purified the environment?” I chuckled a little to make it evident I meant no harm.
“They can go to Beverly Hills for all I care,” he smiled at me, taking it well. “Bring me any porno?”
“Nope.”
“You know I love your porno,” he snickered, punctuating our running joke with that fearless, self-satisfied smile. “Next time, make sure you bring me a dirty book, OK?”
Now it was time to get smug. “Sure. But I’m not going to be needing that. Did I tell you that I had lunch with Dino De Laurentis last week?”
A complete fabrication, but what else could I do? Let the script stand on its own merits? I knew it was not one of my better efforts. The only reason I’d done the thing in the first place was because I knew the jerk was a boxing fan. Bobby laughed.
“Well, keep laughing. But I think he’s really into the woman boxer story.”
He kept laughing. Then he threatened to check up on it. I called his bluff with a good shrug. And then he said he didn’t care and didn’t want to reoption. Bobby was cocky and told me he trusted his intuitions about the general marketplace. According to Brad, people now wanted to “get taken away on more of a head thing instead of a violent thing, unless the violence is really weird and horrifying.” He paused for a moment, then he lit up and said, “Why don’t you write a ghost story? People have been getting into that.”
“For sure.” I sat up in my chair and looked animated as I used my hands to conjure up some garbage on the spot. “OK. It’s April twenty-first, 1978. Now, what if all the people who died on April twenty-first, 1900, come back on the same day they died—but seventy-eight years later—and look around for their homes and families. They aren’t aware of the fact they’re dead, and they can’t understand the time lapse.”
Bobby swiveled back around to his desk, then he got up and paced over the elegant Bokara covering the center of the wood floor. He stood under his folksy propeller fan, twirled it a few times, then pulled the chain that started the motor. He was seriously deliberating. “You mean that the people alive now don’t know them, so they aren’t aware that these people are dead either.”
I put on an intent look. “That’s right.”
“How do they get back here on earth?”
“I don’t know. But they’d come back in the costumes of their day. That’s how people would start to suspect that something’s strange.”
Bobby looked pensive. He rubbed his chin, then slowly, “Good. Why don’t you put it in a treatment?”
“On spec?”
“Listen, right now there’s too little to go on. You know that, but you’re being greedy anyway.” He frowned and looked a trifle confused, then he laughed through his nose to let me know he was sure about what he’d just said.
I said I’d think about it. Then I stood up and we shook hands and said goodbye.
Bobby gloated knowingly. “Tell Dino I say hello.”
Bastard!
I walked out into the street and looked back at Bobby’s building. I remembered that I used to park my car here sometimes when I went to the beach. Bobby’s building had been the neighborhood Pentecostal church before he bought it. Now, within just a few months, other producers and a few ritzy art galleries had opened up on the same block. The morning fog had thinned out and almost disappeared over the wide stretch of sand beyond the boardwalk. But it hadn’t been sunny long enough to get warm. I took a breath of fresh air, looked out at the gray-blue water, then drove home.
12
Ten-thirty.
“Stanley, I’m home!”
If Stanley was at all angry, at least he was putting on a charade of not showing it so I’d be quick to fix him his breakfast. The trash bag was intact, none of my stray socks or shirts had been chewed, and there was absolutely no foul order of elimination. There was nothing with which to upbraid this noble guy, which meant he was really playing all his high trump cards right away. He just gave me a few wags of the tail, howled good naturedly, and waited by the door. I combed the cabinets above the sink. Fresh out of dog food. I opened the door, pushing him back with my foot, closed it, and started walking the short block down the hill to the Canyon Store on Laurel. But he took up with his “I am STRANDED” howl before I could get two feet; so I went back, put him on his leash, and walked him down there. The lady at the checkout counter was nice enough to hold onto him while I picked up some Kal-Kan (“Only the best—you’re my man, Stan”). I bought myself a paper, then we headed back. I fed him on the front porch outside the door, and he somehow managed to keep his ears separated from the food long enough to get it all down.
I looked over my little lean-to. It was past the point of needing new paint. The wood was weathered and gray, getting soft and spongy like balsa wood. Paint wouldn’t make much of a difference now. Still, it would have helped. But who had the time or the inclination? If I fixed it up any better, maybe the owner would get an offer on it and I’d be out on my ear. I remember when I’d rented originally, they’d been trying to sell with no comers. That still hadn’t prevented them from telling me it had once been owned by Robert Taylor. Every piece of shit Hollywood apartment, house, or bungalow has been the coveted property of some illustrious has-been.
I brought Stanley back in the house, closed the door, and opened up the windows to let in some fresh air to go over my dirty dishes. And they certainly were none but my own. Ellen had taken all of hers. I allowed myself just one jigger of Jack Daniels. Then I applauded my steadiness with another. It didn’t make the slightest difference, so I went into my bedroom and sat down at my desk. I could feel my Smith-Corona staring at me, so I reached into my big box of typing paper, took out a sheet, and shoved it into the machine. Nothing but wide open spaces. I opened up the paper, got out the sports section, and moved over to the bed.
13
I woke up to find two oily black pools pressed close to my face. Stanley was sitting over my chest, regarding me with what appeared to be a benign form of contempt. It seemed to me that he was wondering where his next six month supply of Kal-Kan was coming from. It seemed to me that he wanted to know why Ellen wasn’t typing in the living room.
