by Peter Corris
The jumpy feeling I'd had retreated little by little as the days went by and nothing scary happened. I kept clear of alleys, pool-halls and high bridges, but a prudent person does that anyway. I made a careful study of the trade papers to catch up with what had been happening in the dream factory while I was inside. The usual stuff. At Warners, they were shooting the interior scenes for Giant; at Fox they were making Anastasia with Ingrid Bergman and Helen Hayes; MGM were going hard on High Society, with Crosby, Sinatra and Kelly. Warners and George Stevens were going to have some pretty stiff competition. I was surprised to see that the advertisement I'd devised for Sherman House — with the girl on the horse and the guy springing from the diving board — wasn't running in Variety. I hoped Louise hadn't run into money trouble. With enough cash left to pay the hotel bill and not much more, I took a last check on my appearance. I was still thinner and older-looking than before, but at least I was recognisably Richard Browning. I put this to the test by walking up to a news-stand on Vine Street where I'd bought papers for years from Joey Knopfelmacher, a former jockey who'd given all his money to women, bookies and bar-tenders.
'I'll take the Times, Joey.'
'Hey, Dick. Where ya been? You look good, boy. Real good.'
I gave him a tip I couldn't spare. It was time to go and see Louise. I packed my bag and phoned Sherman House from the hotel. I had an image of Louise rolling up in one of the cars, collecting me and us racing back to… The operator told me that the number had been disconnected. I asked when and she said she couldn't give me that information.
'Why not?' I snarled.
'Do you wish to speak to the supervisor, sir?'
I was about to abuse her when I got a grip on myself. Disappointment was making me irrational. I paid my hotel bill and, with what was almost the last of my money, hired a car and drove out to Sherman Oaks.
Anyone brought up in the Australian bush, or maybe the country anywhere, will recognise the signs straight off — the grass growing high down the middle of the track, the earth surface unmarked except by wind and water, branches usually broken by passing vehicles mending themselves and starting to spring back. It had been some time since anyone had driven the last few hundred yards down the dirt road to Sherman House. The neglect became more obvious the further I went. There were weeds springing up on the tennis court and grappling with the flowers in the garden beds. I parked the rented Dodge near the swimming pool and could smell the rot and decay before I'd gone two steps. The pool was a green-grey, scummy mess. Leaves had fallen in and an animal — a squirrel or a rabbit, it was impossible to tell — had died there.
The horses had gone and the stable yard was dry and dusty, some of the dust being dried-out horse shit. A dripping tap had made a muddy runnel behind the stables, but otherwise nothing had happened there for a while. In a very short time the place had deteriorated to a point worse than it had been when Louise and I had taken it over and spent money on it. Being there wasn't much like coming home.
The house itself was empty with the power turned off, the windows closed and a musty smell in all the rooms. I had to force a side door to get in and I really need not have bothered. The telephone, of course, was disconnected. Everything of value — the carpets, the curtains, light fittings, the furniture, TV, record player, the refrigerator, golf clubs, rifles and tennis rackets — had been taken away. There were no clothes in Louise's closet and none in mine. There were no beds in the bedrooms, no desk or filing cabinets in the office. I sat on the stairs — from which the carpet runner had been removed — and felt like weeping.
Eventually I pulled myself together. I lit a cigar, a strange thing for an evidently bankrupt man to do, but it made me feel better. I remembered that one of our students, an aesthetic type who went by the name of Simon Verlaine, had had a drinking problem and was an expert at hiding bottles. His stint at Sherman House had been partly a drying-out exercise, not very successful. It had become a kind of game between us, hide and seek and the fifth, pint or hip flask. I went to the room he'd occupied and, sure enough, I found a half-full pint of Canadian rye whisky under a cut-out section of floor board. One of Simon's problems was that he tended to forget where he'd laid his plants. He's a big star now going by a different name after falling under the influence of a good woman, so I'd better not say any more about him.
I took a swig on the rye and decided to search the grounds on the off-chance I might find something useful or a clue as to what had happened. A few more swigs convinced me that things weren't too bad. Even if Sherman House was insolvent, the sale of the land and buildings would have to yield Louise and me something. The grass had grown and the leaves hadn't been swept up and shrubs and bushes knocked over by the valley winds hadn't been re-staked. The place looked as if it was rapidly headed back to the conditions it had been in when the Apaches had it.56 The barbecue area which Rock and Liz had graced with their presences and where Jimmy Dean had drunk and arm-wrestled himself into a stupor, had become a rubbish dump where litter from the house and the cabins had been thrown. Stray dogs and other animals had rooted in the trash, spreading it over the whole area and flavouring it with their shit and piss. The depressing thought struck me that Sherman House wore an air of bad luck and was going to be trifle hard to sell. I had another drink to chase that thought away.
I wandered down a track past the cabin Charley Lucky had occupied and turned off near the creek to look at the smallest of the out-buildings — the one we usually allotted to the toughest of our clients. It had no electricity or hot water and the resident had to use kerosene lamps and a combustion stove. There was always some brave soul willing to take it, finding romance in chopping wood and trimming wicks. The cabin was surrounded by wistaria vine, passionfruit, and huckleberry bushes which had grown like crazy in the three months, practically concealing the place unless you knew where it was.
This cabin wasn't in good repair — there were possums in the roof and borers in the woodwork. I pushed aside the bushes to get a look at it, almost fearing that it might have fallen down, given the shape things were in. I was wearing my new sports clothes, not the outfit for this kind of work, and I swore when a bramble caught on my coat sleeve and my hat fell off as I ducked under a branch. I bent to retrieve the hat and felt something hard jab me in the kidneys.
'Stay right where you are. Stay bent over and don't look round.'
There was no mistaking that twang. Louise had acquired a Californian accent very quickly, essential for her TV work and even to be understood in LA. But the voice I heard then was the one that dated back to the hospital in Ceylon. Disobeying instructions, I straightened, turned and the hard object jabbed me again, more painfully.
'Louise, quit that! It's me, Dick!'
'Dick. Oh god, Dick. It can't be. It is! Oh, Dick, Dick.'
Very gratifying. She threw down the shotgun and launched herself at me, almost knocking me over. It was the first time I'd had my hands on a woman in three months — probably the longest dry spell in my life since I first wet my wick — and was bowled over by the feel and smell and taste of her. We embraced fiercely, kissing hard enough to rattle my newly-cleaned clackers and hugging like all-in wrestlers. We broke out of the clinch and she stepped back.
'Dick, you're so thin!'
And you're such a mess, was my thought. Fortunately I didn't say it, but it was true. Her hair was dull and grubby; without makeup, she looked younger but unkempt and the blue jeans, riding boots and dirty shirt made her look like a farm girl about to feed the hogs. This didn't blunt my enthusiasm for some more kissing and hugging but it did worry me. Louise saw the puzzlement on my face and kept herself beyond arm's reach.
'They took everything, Dick. Every bloody thing! I've been living here on what I could salvage, beg, borrow and steal. You seem to have been doing ok.'
There was a lot of accusation in that and with good reason from her point of view I suppose. Here I was in my smart clothes, toting a bottle of whisky and now brushing dirt from my h
at.
'Jesus, Louise. I've been through hell.'
She picked up the shotgun. Not to use, I was sure, but the moment of unalloyed bliss was certainly over.
'Yeah, like what? I hear from you once in three fucking months and here you are, fit as a fucking fiddle, waltzing around in new clothes, half-pissed.'
'I…' Every instinct in me screamed to tell her, to give her all the details and wring from her every drop of sympathy. But I held back. Knowledge of what I'd been through and how it was orchestrated was dangerous. I was having trouble travelling with it myself, without loading it onto Louise. 'I can't tell you,' I said lamely. 'But it hasn't been pleasant.'
She sniffed and stuck out one rather dirty hand. Personal hygiene had always been one of Louise's obsessions, and I'd never heard her swear so much.
'Give me a drink,' she said.
We went into the cabin which Louise had managed to keep clean and tidy, mostly because there was so little in it. She was sleeping on a mattress, eating off a packing case, heating water on a paraffin stove, that kind of thing. We drank the rest of the whisky with slightly murky tap water and told our stories. Mine was heavily edited of course, but I conveyed the complete duplicity of the lawyer Brennan. I didn't say much about working on the movie and suggested that my subsequent disappearance had to do with the Luciano incident, although that was all cleared up now, I told her. I don't know how much she believed but I must have looked and acted sincere when I let her know that the grooming and new clothes were for her.
'If you think I'm thin now you should have seen me a week ago. I was like a scarecrow and dressed about the same.'
She nodded and kissed me, the first sign that fences were mending. 'You look good now. I like you thin.'
'I'm not planning to stay quite this thin.' I looked around the cabin. 'But there doesn't appear to be a lot to spare around here.'
'But you've got some money haven't you? You must have, to look like that.'
I opened my wallet and showed her the singles, the five, the ten. I had some change in my pockets and I produced that too.
'Jesus,' she said. 'We're really broke. Down and out in Hollywood.'
Her story was simple enough. The mob leaned on the bank and the bank foreclosed. The bank was a mob front and since we'd transferred all our accounts to it as part of the loan deal it was as easy as pie for them to take every cent. Sherman House was up for sale and our equity was nil. In fact if the sale price didn't reach our debt we were liable for the difference.
'That snake Brennan told me so,' Louise said. 'He added that he didn't think it likely to happen. The place is worth a lot to a developer. In a couple of years it'll be covered with houses.'
Brennan was obviously in with the mob and the FBI. Not so surprising now, after the Kennedy story and so on, but a bit of a facer back then.
'Didn't Bobby Silk recommend Brennan? I'll kill the little rat.'
'He did,' Louise said. 'Don't waste your time. I went to see him about it. All I can say is that he acted scared. Bobby's expanded — new office, branch in New York, more staff, new house and he's working on a new wife. Three guesses where the money's come from?'
It was brick walls every way I turned. Anywhere is a bad place to be without money, but Hollywood was one of the worst. Louise located some crackers and dry cheese and we sat down to eat like a couple of mice. She tried to get me to tell her more about what had happened but when she saw that I wouldn't open up she stopped. I was beginning to wonder whether Simon Verlaine had left any other bottles about when Louise said, 'Television's booming. I'm sure I could get work again if I could present myself properly. But not like this.'
She was right. Under the grime and neglect she was probably better-looking than before, a bit more hollowed-out and dramatic-seeming. But while it was all right for Brando and Dean to turn up at parties in jeans and leather jackets, I hadn't heard that any women were doing it, and for that matter, as far as I know, they never have.
'We need a stake, Dick. Something to get us on our feet again. Think. There must be some way.'
'Does anyone owe you money? Were there any students who didn't pay their fees and have got work since?'
She shook her head. 'Wouldn't work. I had to sign away all rights to income like that or they would have thrown me in gaol. I really needed you then, Dick.'
'I'm sorry. I trusted Brennan and you said things were going all right.'
'Does anyone owe you money?'
Normally, I'd regard that as a ridiculous question. The boot was always on the other foot. But when I thought about it…
'Jimmy Dean,' I said. 'He owes me for four weeks' work in Texas.'
'How much?'
'A thousand bucks.'
Louise's smile almost lit up the gloomy space. We were in the room where she slept because the mattress was the only comfortable place to sit.
'He's rolling in dough,' she said. 'Just bought a new sports car for some fabulous amount. Rebel without a Cause is due out soon and they say he's terrific in it. You've got to go and see him, Dick.'
'Sure. Sure I will.'
She leaned back against the wall and started to unbutton her shirt. 'Not just now though,' she said. 'I wanna count your ribs.'
27
GETTING to see James Dean was no easy matter. He was working flat out on the Giant interiors and, given George Stevens' methods, that meant a lot of hours. He was also, apparently, doing a lot of partying, hanging out at the Villa Capri restaurant in Beverly Hills and hob-nobbing with the likes of Bogart and Sinatra. Word was getting around and Dean was hot, meaning that he was in demand and starting to be surrounded by the sort of protection that happens to a star in Hollywood. It's a matter of other people answering your phone, appointments to be kept or broken and games to play. I got him on the phone once at his Sherman Oaks house and he said to come on over. When I got there he was gone.
I hocked the shotgun Louise had managed to hang on to. It was a superb Purdey over and under we'd invested in when the money was flowing and it fetched enough to keep us in gasoline and basic groceries for ten days or so. The Dodge was overdue at the hiring agency but fortunately I hadn't given them the right address. 'Dick Kelly' had left Robert N. Silkstein's address, an inspiration I was now profoundly happy about. Still, come the end of the month when the rental companies took a serious look at what was outstanding, the hunt would be on.
Strangely enough, Louise and I were getting along famously through all this. Hiding out on the Sherman House grounds when at any time a buyer might turn up and the bulldozers might start rumbling, added a spice to our lives. Louise was the best of my wives, which is to say that she didn't nag very much. She understood that getting to see Jimmy Dean was difficult, especially after we'd spent a night together camped in our car outside his house to discover that this was one of the nights he'd spent elsewhere. He was running around with Ursula Andress at the time. We didn't know where she lived and had no way of finding out. It became a matter of hide and seek. I'd phone, get the run around, read the trades and try to anticipate where he might be. Bomb out and try again.
We cleaned out the swimming pool, pumped in some more water and kept ourselves fit swimming laps. We couldn't afford liquor or wine so drank a beer with lunch and another with our frugal dinner. We had coffee for breakfast. Lean and fit we were, but also broke, which counts for much more in Hollywood. For a time I worried about the FBI and the mob. Lucky might be safe in the arms of the Sicilian police, but did he still feel animosity about what had happened down in Tijuana?
Where was Johnny Stompanato, and was agent Burgess telling me all or any of the truth? These concerns I couldn't share with Louise and they made me edgy.
Eventually, with September running out fast, I heard that Dean had bought himself a new car, a Porsche Spyder, capable of more than a hundred miles an hour, and that he planned to race it at Salinas as soon as shooting on the movie finished. The only way to get to Salinas by road from Sherman Oaks was up Highwa
y 41 and I was sure Dean would want to drive the new car. On 30 September, with fifty cents in my pocket and the certainty that the Ace car rental company would soon be sniffing for my spoor, I took up a position at the corner where even a lead-foot maniac driving from Sherman Oaks had to slow before joining 41.
I smoked my last cigar and waited. The Porsche came barrelling along, followed by another car, a station wagon, and I flagged it down. He'd have had to run me over not to stop.
'Hey, Jimmy.'
He took off his glasses and squinted. I was astonished at his appearance. Talk about aging, he seemed to have put on twenty years in the space of a couple of months. His hairline had been shaved and changed, his hair was grey and there were deep pouches under his eyes. This young man had been living and working hard.
'The fuck you doing?' he said.
'It's Dick Browning, Jimmy. Remember? I ran into a little trouble back there in Texas. With the cops, one thing and another. Maybe you heard.'
I never found out what story had been put about on my disappearance but it must have been good. Dean looked genuinely concerned as he stepped out of the car. I tried to look heroic. A youngish, dark-haired man was in the passenger seat. The station wagon pulled up behind and two men got out, lit cigarettes and waited.
'Hey, Dick,' Dean said. 'Yeah, man, that was a bad business. All that shooting. I'm glad to see you're ok. This here is Rolf Wuertherich, best goddamn mechanic in California. I'm off to drive in the races at Salinas. Why don't you come up?'
I shook my head. 'I've got some troubles, Jimmy, but it's nothing that the thousand bucks you owe me from Texas won't solve. Nice car.'