Blood and Oranges

by James O. Goldsborough

  He sipped his coffee. “There’s a difference?”

  “Uprisings fail. I’m going down to have a look.”

  “You!” he sputtered. “You’re the general. Generals stay back at headquarters. Where it’s safe. That’s the point in being a general.”

  “I need to get the feel of it.”

  “Read the stories. Look at the pictures. How much of a feel do you need?”

  “We don’t have another edition until four. Sammy picks me up at eleven.”

  “That gives you five more minutes. KHJ said something about the national guard.”

  “Probably a good idea. Chief Parker has no credibility with those people.”

  “You know, there’s something fraudulent about this city, something Potemkin, and I don’t just mean Hollywood. How many people have even heard of Watts?”

  “They’ve heard of it now.”

  They would hear of it again a quarter century later when police beat up a black man named Rodney King and were acquitted of unnecessary violence by a white jury, though a video showed the brutal beating of a man who was not resisting. The ’68 Watts riots claimed thirty-four lives. The ’92 riots doubled the number and burned down a good part of South Central. Both times, the US Army had to be called out when police and national guard couldn’t do the job. The video of King’s beating was sent to police forces around the nation as an example of what not to do. Apparently, not many watched it. Two years later, in ’94, a black ex-football player named Orenthal James Simpson would get even by killing two white people, including his wife, in Brentwood. He was acquitted by a mostly black jury. The jurors said he’d been framed by the cops.

  Chapter 44

  Watts was it for Lizzie. She was still a young woman—when were your fifties ever old in California?—but she needed something new. She found it hugely depressing that a community in her city could have been smoldering away all those years and that it took an explosion and dozens of deaths to get anyone’s attention. As the metro editor she held herself responsible. Why didn’t she know? The Times had never really covered Watts, certainly not like the white areas of the city. That was her fault. Under Otis Chandler the newspaper had made huge strides, become a national newspaper right up there with the East Coast papers. After a history of ignoring world news, the Times had as many foreign bureaus as the New York Times and had opened bureaus in cities across the nation. Circulation was close to a million, advertising was never stronger, and she could easily have asked for a budget to cover Watts. The newspaper that covered the world and the nation had turned its back on its own community. She’d grown stale.

  To her professional angst, she discovered that somewhere along the way she’d lost her son. Lately he’d completely dropped out of sight, but she’d lost him long before that. The funny thing was, as much as she blamed herself for her failure on Watts, she felt no guilt over Robby. She’d left him alone—Joe had, too—to become what he wanted, which he had done. As children, she, Maggie, and Cal had asked for no more than that. It was the way she believed children should be raised. Advise them, support them, encourage them and send them off. Robby and Didi had both come to see their parents as enemies. How to explain it? Were the parents not caring enough? But they did care. In their own way they had always cared and always acted in their children’s best interest. Maybe they hadn’t suffocated the children with love, but that was not their way, not the Presbyterian way, not the Mull way. Beyond that, they’d had their own careers to look after. Shouldn’t mothers have careers? She and Maggie had always agreed on that point: Don’t let the children get in the way. It’s the same way they’d viewed things as children: Don’t let the parents get in the way. Do your own thing; find your own level.

  Otis wanted to give her a sendoff in the Gold Room of the Biltmore, but she wouldn’t have it. She didn’t have that many friends left at the newspaper. Miss Adelaide was retired and living in a home in the Valley; Larry McManus had died on the job, as expected, and was carried out. Lizzie was a decade older than Otis himself, and people had started calling her ma’am. It was time to move on. Go out on your own terms. Joe was working full time at Universal, and she could move into his study to write. Or into Robby’s room, for that matter. She would write mornings and spend afternoons with Maggie in the foundation’s offices down the corridor from the Sierra Club. The three of them would be together. As always.

  Her first afternoon at the foundation was a shock. She’d taken two weeks off after leaving the Times and flown with Joe to Hawaii on the first vacation they’d ever had together. “This isvacation,” Joe would say whenever she’d raised the subject. “People come here, to Southern California, on vacation. We don’t need to go anywhere.” But they’d gone to Waikiki, sailed to other islands and come home refreshed. Joe was busier than ever. Memory Laine was a distant McCarthyite memory, and Buddy Fix, who’d moved to Universal when RKO and Howard Hughes moved on, put him on the permanent writing staff. Lizzie settled into Joe’s old office looking out on the garden and got to work on the first of her books, the one Joe hoped to turn into a Los Angeles noir, The Barton Pitts Story. Her next book, which she would think about daily stuck in downtown traffic, would be called: The Great Transportation Conspiracy. She remembered Fred Barrett’s prediction: the new freeway would exactly parallel the old Santa Monica trolley tracks. After that, she would tackle Willie and Sister Angie.

  She arrived downtown after lunch on their second day back from the islands. She’d looked into Cal’s office on the way and was surprised when he got up to accompany her down the corridor to the foundation. “Got some news for you my dear,” he said. “Brace yourself.”

  The foundation’s assets had grown nicely over the years, giving them close to $10 million annual income to spend. They had a staff of twelve, including four officers whose job was to review the dozens of proposals that came in each year. They were an important contributor to the Sierra Club and had spent heavily to assure passage of the initiative to create the California Coastal Commission. Though massively outspent by lobbyists and developers, the people’s initiative won easily. Sea Ranch had done it. Playa Vista was next.

  Maggie was waiting, and the sisters settled onto the couch. Cal stood by the window. Looking at him, the way the light hit his face, Lizzie saw traces of Uncle Willie she’d never noticed before. Do boys come to resemble their fathers as they age? She’d thought it was only girls and mothers. She wouldn’t mind resembling Nelly at her age, before her stroke, that is. She glanced sideways at Maggie, sitting quietly, expressionless, staring straight ahead. Whatever the news was, her sister was in on it.

  He laid down the manila folder he’d brought from his office and extracted a paper.

  “This letter from Summa is in answer to my letter to them. You recall I sent them a copy of Howard’s letter to us about disposition of his airfield after Maggie and I flew to Las Vegas to witness the signing before he disappeared. Summa’s answer says about what we expected, but look at the signature.”

  He handed her the letter.

  Under an elaborate Summa Corporation letterhead, under the text, the letter was signed:

  Robinson A. Morton, vice president

  (for Howard Hughes)

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Four of them gathered that night in Brentwood. Lizzie was still shell-shocked, but found Joe more intrigued than surprised. He had a perverse habit of always seeing the story side of events, however dire.

  She, however, was angry. “It’s the treachery of the thing.”

  “Not the first time, is it?” said Cal.

  They settled in the living room with drinks before dinner.

  “He’s never hidden his views,” said Joe.

  “I could forget the treason,” said Cal, “but how could he be so blind about the land?”

  “Robby goes his own way,” said Joe. “Think Sea Ranch.”

  “But Summa?” cried
Lizzie. “Sea Ranch is one thing, but working for Summa is setting himself up directly against the foundation, against the family, against us.”

  “Of all the companies in the world, how in God’s name did he end up working for Summa?” said Maggie. “It has to be deliberate.”

  “We won’t know until we ask him, will we?” said Lizzie.

  “I have a good idea without asking him,” said Joe, taking a book from the shelves. “It’s called Atlas Shrugged and is the new bible for people like our son, superseding The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s first paean to capitalism. Geniuses, we’re told, are created to move the world forward, and whoever or whatever gets in their way must be destroyed.”

  “Robby’s a genius?” asked Maggie.

  “Of course,” said Joe. ”In his own mind.”

  “Robby believes in that stuff?” said Lizzie.

  “Remember our little discussion about John Galt?”

  “Who is John Galt?” asked Maggie.

  Joe explained.

  “So Robby believes he’s John Galt?”

  “Something like that. Remember the name of Robby’s girlfriend? Dominque is the name of the protagonist in The Fountainhead.”

  “Oh come on, Joe,” said Maggie. “You don’t date someone because of their name.”

  “If you’re Robby, maybe you do.”

  “Rand’s writing is lunacy,” said Lizzie.

  “She’s no lunatic,” said Joe. “She’s a smart Russian Jew getting even with the Bolsheviks. She has a talent for turning pulp fiction into pseudo philosophy.”

  “I tried once to read The Fountainhead,” said Lizzie. “Couldn’t get past the sex scenes. It’s comic opera.”

  “Then try Atlas Shrugged,” said Joe. “Rand’s women enjoy being raped, use rape to control men, very liberating.”

  “So Robby’s letter from Summa means we now go to court,” said Maggie.

  “Can you get a letter from Hughes disowning Summa?” asked Joe.

  “Howard hates Summa,” said Maggie. “But where is he?”

  “I’ve been trying to track him down,” said Cal. “After Las Vegas, he went to the Bahamas, to Nicaragua, which he left after the earthquake, back to Las Vegas, back to the Bahamas, and at last report he was in Acapulco. I’ve made some calls. He’s at the Princess Hotel, has the entire top floor, but no one ever sees him. Doctors come and go. He’s either dead or dying. Surely drugged. His minders, whoever they are, have total control of him and his assets.”

  “Poor Howard,” said Maggie.

  “Does he have a will?” asked Lizzie.

  “No one knows but the minders,” said Maggie.

  “Summa,” said Cal. “Which probably wrote it.”

  They adjourned to the dining room where Lizzie laid out a Mexican spread. Joe opened a bottle of Almaden rosé. “I don’t see exactly how this plays out,” he said. “I mean, not in real life. In my writer’s imagination I see a hell of a family story: the Barrymores, John and Lionel, Arsène Lupin, remember that one? Or maybe a courtroom scene, son against uncle, Lionel in his wheelchair against alcoholic John. One of those family love-hate things—rejection, insecurity, jealousy, all the things psychiatrists make their livings on.”

  “Joe,” said Lizzie, “this is serious.”

  “You know what Summa will say about the Hughes letter,” said Cal. “That it was written by a man losing his faculties.”

  “But he wasn’t!” said Maggie, louder than she meant to. “When I picked it up at the Flamingo, Howard was fine.”

  “That’s not what you told me,” said Lizzie.

  “Physically, he was a mess. Those fingernails, ugh! But mentally he seemed all right, OK enough to make a pass at me.”

  “But it had already started, hadn’t it,” said Cal. “I saw it at the signing.”

  “You’re saying the letter is worthless?”

  “I’m saying that its potential is more moral than legal. Since no one knows the relationship between Hughes and Summa, any court will want to know Hughes’s intentions. Especially if he dies intestate.”

  “Whatever Robinson A. Morton may have to say about it,” said Lizzie.

  “For Howard Hughes, of course . . .”

  “There’s my story,” said Joe.

  “No, Joe. Before we get too deep into this family fight, I want to talk to him.”

  Joe stared for some time at his wife. “We’re too far into it now, Liz.”

  “He’s my son. I want to do it.”

  “You want me?”

  She shook her head. “Let me try first.”

  Joe finished pouring out the wine and the table fell silent for a moment. Then: “Speaking of our children,” said Lizzie, looking at her sister, “what’s the latest on Didi?”

  “Ralph drove Mother up in the Hollywood Hills before her stroke. Directions were vague. He got lost and couldn’t find it.”

  “Couldn’t find what?” said Cal.

  “She’s living with that guy. Didi told me to butt out when I called. He gave her a screen test, which she failed. I could have saved him the trouble, but they take one look at her and say, my god, another Jane Russell. Then she gets in front of a camera.”

  “Jane Russell’s talent was all in her blouse,” said Joe.

  “Living with him on Angelo Drive. Drugs and sex. Mother had no business going up. I went up and found it. Wish I hadn’t.”

  “Living with whom?” said Joe.

  “The guy at Didi’s party—you remember.”

  “Remind me.”

  “Zug.”

  “Good God.”

  “Means train in German,” said Cal.

  “Archie Zug, human locomotive,” said Joe. “Some leave off the motive and just call him loco. Hollywood comer. Works with Trevor Bonfeld who left United Artists and is about to open his own studio, something called Wonderworld.”

  “Wonderworld?”

  “Supposed to be the next big thing—space aliens, high-tech animation, Disney for the twenty-first century. Who needs actors?”

  “Angelo Drive is Benedict Canyon,” said Lizzie. “Not far from the old Polanski place.”

  “There’d been a party,” said Maggie. “Maid was cleaning up, everything quiet, everyone still in bed. A few splashes from a pool somewhere. Stank of drugs and booze and other things. Maid just stared at me. I didn’t wake them.”

  “They go their own way, don’t they?” said Cal.

  “Well, didn’t we?” said Lizzie.

  “Oh, come on, Liz,” said Cal, “not at all the same.”

  “You do what you can,” said Maggie. “Didi hated everything we did so we took her to Bel Air where she got everything she wanted. Story should have a happy ending.”

  “In Hollywood, happy endings are only on the screen,” said Joe.

  “Not in the stuff you write,” said Lizzie.

  “I do real life.”

  Chapter 45

  Didi’s eyes were glued shut. She felt across the bed to see if anyone was there. She remembered going to bed with Archie, but then someone else came. Was it Kurt? She thought it was Kurt, and whoever it was had fucked her all night. Archie wouldn’t like that but maybe she wouldn’t tell him. She rubbed her eyes and they came open and she looked to make sure, but no one was there. She wouldn’t mind if it was Kurt because he was to die for, but whoever it was kept waking her, and she lost count and might have stopped coming to him, but she didn’t really mind. She thought it was Kurt but it might have been Vern, her shrink, but he’d come with the braless blonde in the baggy green sweater. Each time she went right back to sleep and didn’t know if it was the sex or the pills. Her brain was dead. What were they taking last night, Nembutals or Seconals, reds or yellows or maybe both? She didn’t remember. She just kept popping them down with the screwdrivers.

 
She was trying to decide how she felt. You couldn’t really tell until you stood up, but sort of could tell by how much desire you had to get up. She wondered what time it was. She listened. Often she could tell by the sounds, but there aren’t many sounds up in the hills. You’d think there might be roosters or dogs, but people who live in the hills and stay up late don’t like morning noises. Sometimes she could tell by the angle the light entered the room, but not if there were clouds. Today there were no clouds. She guessed it was after eleven. She heard birds, but no house sounds. Splashing from the pool. Someone trying to drown a hangover.

  She wondered if Kurt would come back. She didn’t think Vern had stayed, but you never knew in this house. She wouldn’t mind seeing Kurt again. It might help her decide to get up. If she laid there much longer she’d fall back asleep. She wouldn’t mind that either. She wondered what she would see when she looked in the mirror. She felt around her body for bruises. The nipples hurt. Nothing else until she felt bruises on her neck. That was not good. Easier to hide breasts than necks. Especially by the pool.

  A mob of people had come up, some she’d never seen. You were only supposed to come if Archie invited you, but word got around about Angelo Drive and friends brought friends and then it was out of hand. The Sharon Tate lure. Archie supplied the booze, but people brought their own stuff and sharing and mixing started and people started to go down, sometimes on the floor or the lawn, and some of them even made it upstairs until they were thrown out by whoever’s room it was. She was sure it was Archie who she started out with, but afterward was a blur. Whoever it was never gave up. Or maybe it wasn’t the same guy. She didn’t think Archie would allow that, but Archie might have gone down the hill. Or to someone else’s room. He keeps saying no more parties, but he loves them too much, loves the action.

  She liked Archie and knew he liked her. Archie saw her potential. Job is to figure out what keeps her from realizing it, he said. She’d stick it out. Archie was Hollywood’s future. Archie and Trevor Bonfeld. Archie sent her to Vern, the psychologist, who said there was some kind of block. Paying was no problem with the trust Granny had set up for her. The thought of Granny gave her a pang. She’d called Granny, and Iris said she was at UCLA Med Center for tests. She’d tried to find Angelo Drive a few days before, Iris said, come up with Ralph to tell her how everyone missed her, how Kenny Van S. kept stopping by and how Kenny was such a swell boy. Didi smiled. The same Kenny that Granny used to tell her to ditch. Ha!