He had only the Guests to answer to. And to satisfy. The Guests’ needs must be met, and Coltello could not be shy about fulfilling his responsibilities.
Board wondered if he should have declined Coltello’s offer more politely, and asked the man for conventional work instead. But he knew that he could not live with himself if he worked for such a man. This man would have filmed Board’s mother’s hanging corpse and inserted it into a horror movie, so the audience could be repelled by her face (but ogle her nightgowned figure).
His disgust, his disapproval, meant nothing, he knew. An empty protest. He continued to refrain from pork, but pigs went on being killed. And cows died just as horribly as pigs but still he ate steak. He thought of all the men he had watched die at Max Pen, marched to slaughter like animals themselves. He felt many of those men had indeed deserved to die…so why should it be a problem if he had to watch that death take place? Did he think suffering wouldn’t occur if he didn’t personally witness it? He had followed the Iraq War in the newspaper as if it had been sports reports. If he saw a war in print instead of from a trench-eye view, did that make it clean? Okay? Soldiers marching into battle like cows along a ramp. It all blurred together in his mind…
Board finally dozed off for three hours on his sofa. In the morning, after forcing himself to shave and shower, he headed out for breakfast in his small 1924 Ford with its spoked wheels and dusty black paint. After breakfast at the diner he and Louise favored, he drove over to Espinal Boulevard where he had passed a pawnshop many times without stopping in. Today, he stopped in.
From the shop’s less than impressive offering of handguns, Board settled on a ten year old Colt Police Positive Special, a .38 revolver with a four inch barrel. Board was pleased that half a box of ammo came with it, so he wouldn’t have to venture to a gun shop for that. He also bought a scuffed shoulder holster, and the proprietor let him try the rig on so he could pose in front of a tarnished mirror to see how the pistol looked under his jacket.
Board felt foolish walking back out onto the street with the gun on him. It was too heavy, and he was still afraid that in the naked sunlight the gun’s parasitic bulge would be noticed, a strap of the shoulder holster would be seen if the breeze stirred his jacket’s flaps (he kept his hands in his pockets, tight to his sides). What if a cop stopped him? What would Louise think?
He was sure Coltello was not too concerned about him. With his power, why should he be? If he’d been worried about the cinematographer, he’d never have boldly offered him the job in the first place…
By the same token, Coltello might not be worried about insuring his silence, either. Board was sure he was a chief of Assassins, and Assassins assassinated. And Board had run afoul of them before. It was a pattern he seemed unable to avoid…as if fated to him, like a preordained history.
-5-
Things were progressing quickly on Louise’s movie A Social Celebrity (in which she was playing a flapper named Kitty Laverne). After that, she had lined up It’s the Old Army Game and The Show-Off. Every time Board saw her, it seemed she had another movie scheduled for this year. As a result of her activity, Board saw her only two or three times a week. He, on the other hand, had plenty of time to himself…still not having picked up another job with Paramount.
He had begun to feel insecure about it. Had they disliked his work on his first two pictures (one and a half, really, since he’d come into the first as a replacement)? Had he stepped on someone’s toes at Paramount, this someone making sure he didn’t get any further assignments?
What if this someone hadn’t been at Paramount? Board thought again of his meeting with Dominic Coltello at Dreamland Pictures, almost a month ago now. Though his studio and Paramount were rivals, could Coltello still use his influence to see to it that John Board went unemployed?
Board decided this idea was ludicrous. He could realistically imagine Coltello wanting to silence him after the offer he had made, but he couldn’t picture the man trying to ruin his career out of sheer, petty vindictiveness. No, Board had to lay the blame on himself. Either his work hadn’t been that good, or else he simply needed to be less passive about picking up new assignments. He had to go to Paramount and grab some lapels, make some people look at him in the face.
He decided to drive over there today, and try to meet one or two people by surprise. Maybe the directors of his first two movies (Herbert Brenon, Frank Tuttle), or the producers of both films (Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky). When he had phoned for these people recently, they were either said to be out or busy. Board dressed nicely, and of course he didn’t strap on his gun. In fact, lately he felt foolish for ever having purchased the tarnished old thing at all.
He was taking a right onto Clavicula Boulevard when he became aware of the gleaming white vehicle behind him. One other car separated them, but when Board looked over his shoulder more directly, he decided that his first impression had been correct.
It was a brand new Hudson Limousine. Just like the one Anthony Pugnale had been sitting in three weeks ago, when he was parked out in front of Board’s apartment building.
He waited for a bit before he glanced back at the automobile again, trying not to be too obvious about it. The interior was too shaded for him to tell for sure, but there appeared to be a passenger in back of the capped driver. The driver of Pugnale’s limo had also been wearing a cap and smart chauffeur’s uniform that day. But Board tried to calm his nerves. This was Boneland—there were more limos here than bicycles. Why would Coltello want him followed? What was there to gain? He already knew where he lived, didn’t he?
Nevertheless, Board decided to experiment, to take a more circuitous route to Paramount Studios. He turned right onto Rotula Avenue, lined with palms like the many scaled legs of some vast creature lost in the sky beyond his car’s roof. The white Hudson followed, and this time there was no intervening car between them. Board’s heart began racing on ahead of his vehicle. He tried to moderate the speed of both. In fact, he slowed his little Ford considerably. Rather than shorten the distance between them, the limo still hung back. Also taking its time…
He took another right, this one into Metacarpo Boulevard. He didn’t need to be Spanish to translate that one.
The white limo, too, turned onto Metacarpo.
Board picked up speed. So did the limousine. It began to close the gap between them, finally.
Ahead, he could see the Paramount water tower looming like a giant camera on a tripod, watching his approach. He had worked himself back onto the path to the studio, more by accident than anything. He decided to drive up to its gates, where there would be a guard to admit him, to put bars between himself and his pursuer.
He silently berated himself for not bringing the Colt revolver.
Paramount Pictures came into view, its archway topped with red Mexican-style tiles, the gate itself of beautiful wrought iron design, sound stage 4 seen just beyond. A car was already being admitted passage. Board accelerated. Maybe he could zip through after the car—before the gate could be closed—and explain himself to the guard after the fact.
The limo accelerated, too. In fact, it zoomed up behind the Ford with such a surge that Board cringed, expecting the heavier vehicle to plow into the back of his own. Instead, it swerved and came up parallel to his left…so close that it began to scrape its flank along the black Ford’s with a metallic shriek. Instinctively, Board spun his wheel to the right…flying directly toward the scrolled iron gate…but now he saw that the gate had already closed.
He stomped his brake, his spoked tires squealed as if he’d run over some living thing. Board kept trying to turn to the right to avoid a head-on collision with the fortress-like barrier.
Board managed to slam sideways into the gates instead of nose-first—in so doing, clipping the front of another auto just as it began to pull up for admittance. Board was jolted across his passenger seat, glass from his shattered windshield tinkling over him. The flowery gates rang, rising up like a spider
web he’d been caught in. He heard a woman screaming (from fear instead of injury, as it would turn out) from the other car, accompanied by a man cursing. Board sat up, and looked out his broken windshield at the steam billowing from his hood’s side grills, then out the passenger’s window at the white Hudson Limousine as it receded.
He caught a glimpse of a man in the back seat, pointing something out his own window back in Board’s direction. For a moment, Board almost ducked down, thinking it was a Thompson submachine gun like the bootleggers and some Assassins were fond of using in Capone’s Coccyx. But then Board recognized it for what it was.
A hand-held, living camera.
-6-
“Everyone says you were drinking, but I keep telling them you don’t drink,” Louise Brooks said, laying her head in his lap as if it were she who needed comforting. Absent-mindedly, Board stroked his palm over her sleek hair, along her exposed and graceful neck.
“I just lost control,” he murmured. “The sun in my eyes, I guess.” He was watching a news broadcast on the small TV mounted on the opposite wall. It looked like the United States was gearing up for a war with North Korea. His TV was an early model, already obsolete; its closed wing covers were divided by the mildly distracting center seam, not fused into one smooth shell like current models; plus, one of the aging scarab-like beetle’s barbed legs twitched with spasms every few minutes.
Louise sat up, her face mournful, an expression to break the hearts of a thousand movie-goers. “Of all the things to hit, Jaby. Why that?”
“You sound like Zukor, now.” Adolph Zukor, producer of the two movies Board had shot. Zukor, founder of Paramount Pictures. Zukor, who had told Board he’d never shoot a third picture for Paramount, even though the gates had only been scratched, only needed to be repainted black. His car, on the other hand, looked like it might require more work than his dwindling finances could support.
“You should go to Europe, Jaby, you know?”
“Why? Because I have a European goatee? Or so I’ll be out of your hair?”
“Out of my hair? I’d want to go with you, silly!” She scooted closer to pull at his earlobe with her teeth. “Besides, I like you in my hair. If you get what I mean.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll go on ahead of you…wait for you while you finish your movies.” And so she wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire, he thought. So no one would try to hurt her, to get at him.
“If you want to,” she said, exaggerating a pout. “But I’d miss you.”
He faced her. “I’d miss you, too.”
They embraced. Kissed deeply. She drifted back, and he down atop her. His lips pressed below the hard edge of her jaw, strayed along her arched neck, down to the bone-smooth ball of her shoulder. Her dress, as he helped her pull up its hem, was impregnated with the smell of cigar smoke. Board didn’t smoke. As he pierced her body, he felt pierced as well.
She was already gone when he woke the next morning. He read her note but barely took in the words. He thought the scrap of paper itself reeked of cigar smoke, but then he realized he was being childish, maybe even cruel.
The note in his lap, he turned his gaze to the window. The new telephone lines were strung out there, white and disturbingly soft-looking. And there were two birds sitting on one of them. As he watched, one of the birds pecked at the line, seemed to tear free a tiny nibble of meat. Board smiled faintly.
He ran several errands that morning, all by cab. At the dealer in Guest instruments where he had acquired it, he returned his immature number 2 camera in its nutrient bath, and the remainder of his unused chemistry. He tried to sell his TV as a second-hand piece, but when the dealer saw its condition he only offered to take it for free and humanely “put it down”. A dealer could do this, and an animal could expire of natural causes such as old age or disease, but as Board well knew, to do away with a healthy animal oneself (especially one designed more for the purposes of the Guests than the entertainment of humans) was a grave matter.
After that, a trip to the pawnbroker where he’d acquired his pistol. Though he was able to sell some of his possessions, he hung onto the gun. Then, with his somewhat padded resources, Board called a cab to take him out to Los Huesos International Airport. There, he’d buy a ticket on the first flight to France, which Louise had numerous times expressed interest in visiting. He had tried calling her at the studio from a pay phone outside the pawnshop, but had been told she was already on the sound stage and unavailable. He would try her again from the airport. If he couldn’t speak to her personally, he would insist that a message be conveyed: that he had taken her advice. That he would write to her with an address as soon as he was settled. That he would explain all this to her as soon as he was able. And that he hoped she would even come join him, as she’d promised.
He knew there was little chance of this. Her career was taking off. His had crashed into a barrier. She was young. It was better that he put distance between them, before she did. He might just save her life this way. And save his heart from being wrung dry. But despite all this, still he entertained an ember of hope that she would care enough to follow across the ocean to be beside him. A fantasy, maybe, but such was the food of the masses.
With his three suitcases waiting on the sidewalk beside him, Board watched his glossy little cab turn into the street, drive up to where he stood. The driver didn’t offer to help him wrangle his luggage into the backseat, which Board squeezed into afterwards.
“Where to?” the driver asked, starting the vehicle moving again.
“LH Airport,” Board said in a dead sort of voice.
Perched on the dashboard was a small radio, a dark gray pill-bug that was playing George Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” The reception hissed with static, so the cabbie reached up to slightly adjust the magnet block on its back. “Fucking thing,” he mumbled, trying to tweak its antennae now. He gave up on it.
Board numbly watched palms swoosh by, columns holding up a bright blue sky like the fake ceiling of a movie set. He heard a scuttling sound, then a louder burst of static, and looked up front again. The radio bug had actually spun on the dash to face him more directly, its feelers flickering erratically. Its attention to him seemed almost accusatory, and made Board feel defensive. “What?” he almost wanted to snap at it.
A whiteness slid up to eclipse the window to his left. A fraction of a second after that, the world seemed to detonate, a sound so loud that for a moment Board thought he’d been shot in the head. Instead, he peripherally saw it was the cab driver’s skull that exploded like a clay pigeon. Almost everything was taken off above the man’s top lip, the missing material smacking across the ceiling of the vehicle, the dashboard, the seats, and spattering Board’s own face. Splashed with blood and gobs of pulped brain that slid off its chitin, the radio hissed its static at a piercing volume, its antennae blurring. Resting on the dash rather than being attached to it, the animal began to scurry back and forth madly, smearing the gore further.
The cabbie’s speckled hands slid like gloves off the wheel, and the automobile abruptly drifted to the right. One of those scaled, bordering palms loomed closer into view…
Board ducked down, both to avoid a second shotgun blast and to protect his head against the cab’s front seat as the vehicle crunched into the trunk of that palm. The car rocked on its wheels and Board grunted as the car’s violent jolt was communicated through his own frame.
He wore the pistol he’d bought in town, and he fumbled at the holster, under his jacket, at the same time that he scrambled frantically to exit the vehicle before he could become boxed inside it.
He emerged into the baking summer sun just as the white Hudson Limousine (its flank, he was sure, scratched and marred with embedded black paint) pulled up alongside the steaming taxi.
Board had dry-fired the gun in his apartment. Despite its age, the revolver had a very stiff trigger, so Board had already thumbed back the hammer before he pointed the gun at the end of his outstretche
d arm. This made the trigger too sensitive, however, and the pistol went off a fraction of a second prematurely. As a result, the bullet whizzed past the head of the man who aimed a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun out the front passenger window. Instead, the lead capsule zoomed straight into the ear of the neatly attired chauffeur, behind the Assassin.
The driver was slammed hard against his door. He seemed to hang over his steering wheel, merely dazed for several beats. Then, a veritable waterfall of blackish blood poured from his slack mouth and his nostrils as though a faucet had been twisted fully open. The man sank slowly back against his seat, eyes still staring, enraptured as if he watched his own death on TV.
At that moment, Board expected the Assassin to discharge the second barrel of the shotgun into him. A fraction of a moment later, Board realized the man had already fired both barrels simultaneously. He also realized that the Assassin hadn’t expected him to be armed.
If he was going to reload, or draw another weapon, he would first have to put down the camera he had been holding in his left hand as he braced the shotgun across the window frame with his right.
Despite the resistance of the Colt’s trigger, Board began squeezing off one blast after another, the recoil of the gun and its noise jarring.
Glass shattered. The car door thunked metallically as one stray bullet bored into it. The man with the gun and camera let out a kind of high yelp or whoop, though Board couldn’t tell if it were from pain or shocked alarm. He kept firing. He saw the hand-held camera drop out of the window to the street, rocking on its concave back. He kept on shooting. The gun seemed inexhaustible. But then it was empty, and he didn’t see the man in the window anymore.
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