Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  “How do you plan to get his brother to talk?”

  “I have no plan at all, Sally. I’m working on pure predestination. If something truly needs to be revealed, it will be. Crazy?”

  “Quaint maybe, not crazy.”

  “So, what’s your news, or do I have to beg?” I said, hoping to guide the conversation toward something less metaphysical.

  “I’ve been offered a position as public affairs director for the San Francisco Arts and Humanities Council.”

  “Wow,” I said. It was a terse reaction but I meant every word of it.

  “I think I can do a really good job,” she said.

  “There’s no doubt, you’ll be perfect. But what about Bytemp?”

  “Bytemp can run very well without me. I’ve seen to that. I’ll remain on the board of directors. It’ll be a big cut in pay, though,” Sally said. “I hope you don’t just like me for my money.”

  “I’m not that shallow, Sal. It’s never been about your money,” I said. “It’s always been about your looks.”

  “I’m only kidding, Jake. Of course I know it’s only been about my looks,” she said, looking really good saying it. “Would you do me a favor, Jake?”

  “Name it.”

  “Would you take me out to a movie?”

  “Sure, as long as it’s not a Sandra Bullock movie. I don’t know what it is, there’s something about her smile that makes me want to shake her by the shoulders and snap her out of it. No one could possibly be that ecstatic.”

  “You can choose the movie. All I want is to sit in the dark, hold hands, and maybe ask if you would like to stay the night,” Sally said.

  I didn’t need a mirror to know that I was wearing a Sandra Bullock smile.

  Twenty Three

  Sally had me up and out of the house by seven the next morning. I went back to my apartment and threw the clothing I had laid out the night before into a canvas travel bag. I wasn’t taking much; I’d be spending most of my time in costume. I had planned to take a cab to the airport, but Joey Russo called and said he had news that might be worth hearing before I left. Or not.

  “Word is that Freddie Cash was into Charlie ‘Bones’ Mancuso for nearly a hundred grand in gambling debts,” Joey said on our way out to the airport.

  “Mancuso uses the payoff from Freddie to orchestrate a hit on Chancellor?”

  “Possible,” said Joey. “Trouble is, Charlie won’t say and Freddie can’t say.”

  “Any reason for Mancuso to want the judge dead?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Joey.

  “Doesn’t help us much.”

  “Unfortunately true,” said Joey, “and here’s the cute part. Charlie was arrested for murder a few months ago. Mancuso allegedly killed his brother-in-law, Mike Flanagan, but before the indictment the weapon mysteriously disappeared from the evidence room, no murder weapon, no case, and Charlie walked.

  Whether or not Mancuso was directly involved in Chancellor’s death, the ransom money could have had something to do with making the gun disappear.”

  “And it wouldn’t be in Charlie’s best interest to talk about it,” I said.

  “I would think not.”

  “And we really can’t be sure that the ransom money is tied into the Chancellor murder,” I said.

  “We aren’t sure,” agreed Joey.

  “But?”

  “But, it’s out there. Like the knowledge it took to invent the radio, once it was all out there it was only a matter of time before Marconi and three other guys figured it out at the same moment. Maybe something changes down the road, and what Bones knows or did becomes helpful. It’s what you might call the positive view.”

  “Okay, I have nothing against that.” I said.

  “Have fun,” Joey said, dropping me in front of the terminal. “Tell Gene he was great in The French Connection.”

  “I’ll tell him, but he probably knows already.”

  “Still, we all like to hear it once in a while. Break a leg. I’ll talk to you when you get back.”

  Two hours later an announcement from the pilot woke me from a nap; I’d been going over my lines in the script before I dozed off. We were passing over the Rocky Mountains, making our approach to Denver. I’d never flown into Denver International—it didn’t exist the last time I’d been around. From above, the airport looked to be about the size of Las Vegas. Troy Wasinger met me at the gate. His hair was on the long side; he sported a light cotton suit over a T-shirt, a pair of Birkenstock clogs, and rimless eyeglasses. He looked like a theater conservatory teacher.

  “Well, here I am back in cow town,” I said.

  “Hold on to your hat, Jake. The cow jumped over the moon,” Troy said. “How about the Satire Lounge for lunch and debriefing?”

  “Sounds great,” I said, and followed him outside.

  The Satire Lounge on East Colfax hadn’t changed. There were no windows, and it took two or three minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dark. The Budweiser was in longneck bottles.

  Food orders were still taken by young waitresses who were both gorgeous and unapproachable. The dishes were delivered by young men, authentically Mexican, who bowed when they set the plates on the table. The music roaring out of the jukebox was the same, except ten years older, all the selections from the fifties and sixties. The food was smothered in green chili so hot that it was impossible to determine if the meal had any taste of its own. I loved it.

  After three beers and a chicken burrito covered with enough melted cheddar to shoot my cholesterol level through the roof, Troy dragged me back out into the light of day.

  Troy dropped me off on Broadway in front of the Brown Palace Hotel. He said I should walk over to the loft after checking in, assuring me that he had a bottle of Dickel standing by.

  “I made reservations for dinner at the Buckhorn Exchange, hope you’ve retained your taste for a good bison burger.”

  “And how. The hotel looks the same,” I said, gazing up at the triangular facade. “Where’s all this change you’ve been advertising?”

  “Come up Sixteenth and over on Wazee Street. It’ll give you the whole effect when you head over to Eighteenth,” Troy suggested.

  I walked into the hotel atrium, my eyes immediately drawn to the stained-glass canopy ceiling nine stories above. Live harp and piano music accompanied the traditional afternoon tea. I walked up to the check-in desk.

  “Any chance for a room Wyatt Earp may have stayed in?” I asked.

  I was given a room on the fourth floor. Although the desk clerk couldn’t swear that Earp had occupied the room, he was positive that Spiro Agnew had.

  I remembered the first time I had heard my father utter those two strange words, Spiro Agnew. It sounded like a dirty expression.

  I later learned it was exactly how Dad had intended it to sound.

  After checking in I walked over to Fifteenth Street and strolled the pedestrian mall toward Wazee as Troy had recommended. When I had left Denver years earlier, there was really nothing going on downtown aside from the shops on Sixteenth and the strip on Larimer between Speer Boulevard and Fifteenth known as Larimer Square. It was a different city.

  The new businesses on Sixteenth were numerous. Espresso bars, bookshops, restaurants, wine stores, pastry shops. Bars, cafés, and retail stores crowded the cross streets, Lawrence, Larimer, Market, and Blake. When I turned onto Wazee Street I came face-to-face with Coors Field for the first time, and I passed art gallery after art gallery as I moved toward Eighteenth Street. The sidewalks bustled with pedestrians, where only a decade before few had dared to wander.

  A large bookstore-slash-café occupied the entire street level of Troy’s building on Eighteenth. The space had been vacant for years when Troy first moved in. I walked into the alley and rang the buzzer, remembering the day we had strung the wire along the outside of the building, and Troy threw a set of keys down from the window above.

  The loft hadn’t changed much. It was basically two huge ro
oms. The larger was the kitchen, dining area, and living room, with a washer and dryer thrown in. The ceiling was twelve feet high. The front room facing the street, partitioned by an eight-foot wall and French doors, was Troy’s bedroom. A small room in the rear, walled with painted theater flats, had been my bedroom while I lived there.

  Troy sat at the drop-leaf table we had hauled over from a garage sale, along with the four mismatched chairs. A liter bottle of George Dickel Original Tennessee Finest Quality Sippin’ Whiskey No. 12 stood before him, unopened.

  “I waited to let you do the honors,” he said.

  I broke the seal and poured two glasses.

  “So,” I asked, “what does a place like this rent for now that SoHo has come to lower downtown Denver?”

  “The guy next door, who does public relations for the Rockies, pays eighteen hundred a month. An exec with the LoDo Development Association lives above him. He has a deck built out over the parking area and pays twenty-two. The woman above me owns the business below; she has stairs going up to a patio and garden on the roof and pops for twenty-four hundred. I’m still paying five bills. I was the very first resident here, when no one but a wino would even linger in front of the place. The landlord must be sentimental. Or using it as a tax write-off or both.”

  “Good deal”

  “It would be great except I’m getting tired of the constant change. I liked it much better when the city wasn’t crammed with people trying to make Denver into someplace else. It’s loud, often pretentious. I’m thinking about subletting the place. I could get at least fifteen hundred, rent a small house west of town, and pocket the change.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon sipping Dickel, reminiscing, and catching up. Troy gave me a few tips on playing the poker game scene.

  “What’s it like being a successful PI?” Troy asked.

  “I’ll let you know when I find out,” I answered.

  At seven we drove over to Tenth and Osage. The Buckhorn Exchange hadn’t changed, either, since I’d last been there. Then again, the place hadn’t changed very much since 1893.

  We sat at the white-oak bar on the second floor while our table was set. The bar had been built in Essen, Germany, in 1857, and transported to Colorado for the opening of the restaurant.

  The Buckhorn proudly displayed the state of Colorado liquor license number one on the wall behind the bar.

  For appetizers we went with the rattlesnake marinated in red chili and the fried alligator tail. Who wouldn’t? I had a difficult time deciding on an entrée, finally opting for the High Plains buffalo prime rib and sautéed pheasant combination. We topped it all off with Buckhorn’s chocolate mousse, spelled “moose.” I could hardly wait to get back to San Francisco to describe the meal in detail to a horrified Darlene.

  The founder of the establishment, Henry H. Zietz, had scouted with Buffalo Bill, hunted with Teddy Roosevelt, and been given the nickname “Shorty Scout” by Sitting Bull. Legend has it that Sitting Bull’s nephew later presented Zeitz with the military saber taken from General George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn.

  The remainder of Saturday night was a bar crawl from one live music haunt to another. Jazz, rock, folk, booze. Shots of Booker’s Noe bourbon ran nine dollars, a shot of eighteen-year-old Macallan single-malt scotch was sixteen bucks, imported beers ran five to eight dollars a pop. With the way folks were spending money downtown, it was a good thing the Denver Mint was nearby.

  Troy left me in front of the Brown Palace at two in the morning. He promised he would show me that there were enough of the old, reasonably priced, uniquely Denver attractions left in the city to make it a great place to live. That is if either of us could get out of bed on Sunday.

  I clawed my way up to the fourth floor. I thought I spotted Hackman on my way in, but I was so loaded it could have been Woody Allen. I managed to get into the room without plummeting over the rail to the lobby below and somehow fought my way out of my clothing before I was dead asleep.

  Troy woke me up with a phone call at eight and delivered as promised—a perfect Sunday from the annals of 1989.

  We drove over to the Park Lane Restaurant for breakfast, with Warren Zevon crooning “Frank and Jesse James” from the cassette deck in Troy’s 1974 Beetle.

  We walked over to Washington Park and joined in a pickup touch football game and then strolled across to South High to watch the school team practice.

  We had a late lunch at the Riviera Lounge on South Colorado Boulevard, then caught an afternoon performance of The Seagull at Germinal Stage Denver. It was the closing performance and we joined the cast for burgers and Denver’s best fries at My Brother’s Bar.

  The entire day’s activities cost slightly more than two shots of scotch the night before. And I could see why Troy Wasinger continued to love the Mile High City.

  Troy left me outside the Brown Palace. I caught sight of a TV over the hotel bar, tuned to the League Championship Series game between the Mets and the Cardinals. It drew me over for a nightcap. Glancing around the room I spotted a group huddled around a table, and this time definitely identified Hackman among them. And Chance Folsom, whom I recognized from the photo my cousin Bobby had pulled off the Internet. I turned back to the ballgame and my shot of bourbon. A few minutes later a deep, melodic voice asked if I was here for the filming.

  I’d chosen to take on the project under an old stage name.

  “Yes I am,” I said, “Jake Falco.”

  “Great handle,” he said, holding out his hand. “How’d you come up with it?”

  “My grandfather,” I said, accepting the handshake. “How about yours?”

  “Chance Folsom. Took the name of my town, a small place in central California,” he said, smiling, “since Corleone was already taken.”

  I liked Chance Folsom immediately.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  And I reluctantly began doing my job.

  With all of the deception that went with it.

  “Looks like we’ll be doing a few scenes together,” I said, as the bartender placed a glass of scotch in front of Chance Folsom. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve worked to a camera, I have to admit I’m a little nervous.”

  “You’ll do fine,” he said, “what have you been doing instead?” Sitting in a private detective’s office waiting for the phone to ring.

  “I’ve been in Chicago doing theater,” I said. “Hollywood didn’t quite pan out. I did One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Steppenwolf last season, and we’ll be taking the production to New York for a three-month run this spring. I go into rehearsal next week for a new Mamet play at the Goodman. The author is directing. I’m not allowed to say too much about it.”

  I had done some homework to support my duplicity.

  “I’m envious. I’d love to do stage work. I tried, but I was a terrible failure.”

  “And I want to do movies. Just goes to show you, actors are never satisfied.”

  “How did you get into this crazy business to begin with?” Chance asked.

  Folsom had given me a wide opening; I had to step right in. “I had some trouble with the law when I was younger, did some jail time. It sort of threw my loftier aspirations out the window.” I waited to hear about how much Chance and I had in common.

  He changed the subject.

  “Do you know Denver very well?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I did a year of theater here. It’s changed a lot, but there are still a few unaffected spots. I can show you around if we get the time,” I said. “That’s if you’re interested.”

  “Sure,” Folsom said.

  I decided that it was a good time to end my first interview with Folsom.

  “There’s an early read through in the morning,” I said. “Guess I’ll call it a night.”

  “How about the ballgame?”

  It was the last thing on my mind.

  “I’ll wait to hear about
it tomorrow. I’m a big Mets fan, and it seems that they always fare better when I don’t watch.”

  “Good meeting you, Jake,” Folsom said, offering another handshake. “I’m looking forward to working together.”

  “Ditto,” I said, taking his hand guiltily.

  I rode the elevator to the fourth floor and went into my hotel room. I decided to do some reading before turning in.

  I picked up The Count of Monte Cristo.

  Edmond Dantes had collected the island treasure and had begun forming his plans to avenge the wrongs perpetrated against him, using false identity and deception.

  I thought about Chance Folsom.

  I was deceiving him, and I wasn’t feeling very good about it. I wrote it off it as a necessary evil. At the same time, I vowed that I would take care not to hurt an innocent man in the process.

  I hoped it would be rationalization enough to allow me sleep.

  Twenty Four

  At seven the following morning we gathered in a small meeting room in the hotel for a read through of the film’s opening poker sequence. A round oak table, which would be used in the actual filming, sat in the center of the room. The scene had only eight speaking parts. Lancey Howard, known as the Man. Slade, played by Chance Folsom. Three other card players, Pig, Yeller, and Hoban. Shooter, the game’s organizer and part-time dealer. Lady Fingers, another dealer. Felix, who fetched drinks to the table.

  I was playing Hoban.

  The director was very young, having graduated from directing music videos to TV commercials to this, his first feature film. The first thing he said after seating us around the table was a threat, a warning, or a statement of his eating preferences.

  “I’m a strict disciplinarian,” he said.

  His called himself Jean-Pierre Montblanc. He was as French as Mel Brooks.

  Montblanc quickly outlined his goals for the morning session. We would read through the script as written, without bringing any acting into the reading. After the initial reading we would read through the scene again. The second time around we would be supplied with props, including cigarettes, drinks, poker chips, and the cards themselves, and Montblanc would discuss blocking considerations, particularly for movement to and from the table.