The Captains

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I’ll call him as soon as you get off the line. Anything else? When are you coming East?”

  “When you opened our safety deposit box, did you find my passport?”

  “Yes. I remember seeing it.”

  “Well, get it out, and check it to see if it’s still valid. If it’s not, get it brought up to date.”

  “Craig, I think you have to do that yourself.”

  “Porter, arrange it. Call that goddamned senator of yours.”

  “It’ll take a couple of days, I’m sure,” Porter Craig said. “I gather you’re going to Germany?”

  “Of course, I am.”

  “Then what, may I ask, are you doing in Los Angeles?”

  “You may not ask,” Lowell said. “Porter, I really would like to see this Mr. Osgood within the hour.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Porter Craig said. “You’ll stay with us, of course, when you’re in New York.”

  “I’ll let you know when I get my feet on the ground.”

  “Do you need any money?” Porter Craig asked.

  “I probably will,” Lowell said. “I’m presuming your man Osgood can get a check cashed for me.”

  “Of course.”

  “So long, Porter.”

  (Two)

  Mr. J. Theodore Osgood, Senior Vice President, Entertainment & Recreation Division, Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes, Inc., drove up to the Bevery Wilshire Hotel in a limousine arranged for him by his financial courterpart at Magnum Studios immediately after Mr. Porter Craig’s telephone call. Mr. Osgood was not anxious that it get back to Mr. Craig that the car he had rented for his business use while in California was a red Chrysler LeBaron convertible.

  He spoke first with Mr. Hernando Courtwright, the hotelier, and told him that it was very important that one of his guests, a Major Craig Lowell, be immediately provided with at least a suite, and preferably one of the better ones. He confided to Mr. Courtwright that Major Lowell, like Porter Craig, was a grandson of the founder of Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes, whose estate had been equally divided between them.

  Mr. Courtwright went with Mr. Osgood to the barber shop, where they waited patiently for Major Lowell to emerge from under a hot towel, and then introduced themselves. Mr. Courtwright apologized for the mix-up at the desk—they sometimes made monumental errors of judgment—and informed Major Lowell that his luggage had already been transferred to Penthouse Three.

  Mr. Osgood said that an automobile was on its way to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and that since Mr. Craig had relayed no preference, he had taken the liberty of ordering a Jaguar coupe.

  That earned Mr. Osgood a very pained look, confirming Mr. Craig’s announcement that, frankly, Craig Lowell was sometimes a very difficult sonofabitch, and had to be handled with the finest of kid gloves. He was sure for a moment that the Jaguar was going to be unsatisfactory. But, finally, Lowell had nodded his head and said, “Thank you.”

  “I understand you may be running a little short of cash,” Osgood said next. “Now, while I’m sure the hotel will take your check…”

  “Our privilege,” Mr. Courtwright said.

  “No numbers were mentioned, so if you like,” Mr. Osgood went on, “I’ll call our correspondent bank…actually, as you know, it’s more of a subsidiary…and tell them you may be stopping by.”

  “I’ll just need some walking around money, thank you.”

  “And then, I understand, there was the matter of an unlisted telephone number.”

  “Georgia Paige,” Lowell said. He felt like a goddamned fool about that. He’d simply presumed her number would be in the book, and when he’d gotten off the airplane from Tokyo, he’d tried to call her, to tell her he was home. There was a number, but it was unlisted, and the operator would not give it. So he’d sent a telegram to the house in Beverly Hills, telling her he was home, and asking her to telephone him, any hour of the day or night, at the transient field-grade officer’s BOQ at Fort Lewis. He included the number. There had been no call.

  So he decided the next thing he would do would be to arrive in LA unannounced and simply take a cab to her house. She had already written, in some detail, what kind of a welcome home present he could expect when they were together again. He flew from Seattle to LA wallowing in that scenario. What she would we wearing. How quickly he would take it off of her, and where. And what they would do when he had her clothes off.

  When he got to the house in Beverly Hills, there was no one there but a Mexican couple, about equal in size at 300 pounds, neither of whom spoke English. They were absolutely unable to comprehend his gestures that Georgia was his beloved and he wanted to speak to her on the telephone. He had already paid the cab off, so he had to walk away, carrying both goddamned bags. After about a mile, some cops came along, and after more or less politely insisting that he prove he was indeed a field-grade officer of the U.S. Army and not a burglar with two Valv-Paks full of somebody else’s silver and jewelry, they found a cab for him.

  “All you would have had to do is ask,” Mr. Courtwright said, picking up the telephone and asking to be connected with his secretary.

  “And, if Osgood here hadn’t shown up,” Major Lowell said, “you would have politely told me to go piss up a rope.”

  “Major Lowell is just home from Korea,” Mr. J. Theodore Osgood offered in extenuation.

  Courtwright smiled and wrote Georgia Paige’s unlisted number on his business card.

  “She’s not home, Major Lowell,” J. Theodore Osgood said. “They’re shooting Unanswered Prayer. I passed the sound stage on my way off the lot.”

  “Can you get me into wherever she is?” Lowell asked, as the barber finished his shave and began to rub something oily onto his face.

  “Yes, of course,” Osgood said. “I’ll call ahead if you like and have a pass ready for you at the gate.”

  Osgood didn’t use the telephone in the barbershop. He used a house phone in the lobby and he telephoned his counterpart at Magnum Studios and told him that Craig Lowell, who was likely to be hard to handle, was coming to the studio to see Miss Georgia Paige. He had no idea why.

  When Lowell saw the car provided for him, he wasn’t surprised. The goddamn Jaguar was identical to Ilse’s. He had impulsively shipped it to Marburg an der Lahn because she so loved that car. She had been driving it when the drunken quartermaster asshole had slammed into her.

  As he drove to Magnum Studios, he had a clear mental image of Ilse sitting on the passenger seat with P.P. in her arms, and with her legs innocently arranged so that he could see her pants. Sex and motherhood.

  “Major Lowell,” the man waiting for him at the gate said, “I haven’t had the opportunity to meet you before, and I’m happy to now. I’m John Sanderland, and I’m Magnum’s Vice President, Finance.”

  “I see you spent some time in Philly, Mr. Sanderland,” Lowell said. Sanderland was wearing the insignia of alumni of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

  “Doesn’t everybody?” Sanderland said.

  “’49,” Lowell said.

  “Hail fellow, well met,” Sanderland said delightedly. “’40.” Perhaps, he thought, Major Craig W. Lowell wouldn’t be as difficult as Osgood suggested.

  They drove onto the lot. It was Lowell’s first visit to a motion picture studio. He was somewhat disappointed to see that it looked more like a factory than anything else. Then he realized that it was a factory, the word actually being a shorter form of “manufactory,” a place where things are made by hand.

  There was a red light flashing over the door of one of the warehouse-like buildings, and what looked like a retired cop, in a private policeman’s uniform, standing in front of it with his arms folded. Lowell had seen enough movies about Hollywood to know the flashing red light meant that they were “shooting” inside.

  The private cop did not step out of the way, however, as Lowell expected him to, when the red light went off.

  “Closed set,” he announced. “You got
to have a pass.”

  “I’m a vice president of this corporation,” Sanderland said.

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute, Mister,” the guard said. “But you still got to have a pass. The set is closed.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Sanderland said, but they had to get back in Lowell’s car and go to the Administration Building for passes. When they returned to the sound stage, the red light was flashing again, and they had to wait ten minutes in the hot sunshine for it to go off again.

  “They weren’t shooting that long,” Sanderland said, angrily, as he hauled back on the heavy, soundproof door. “They just didn’t want to be interrupted.”

  “What the fuck is this?” a man screamed in a high-pitched voice, as they entered the sound stage.

  Lowell, who had been looking for Georgia and had just seen her across the wide, cluttered room, was startled. Then he became aware that the screaming man was pointing at him.

  The excited pansy recognized Sanderland. “What the fuck do you want?” he demanded of him. “And who the fuck is he?”

  Lowell looked across at Georgia. She seemed to be running away. No wonder, with this sewer-mouthed pansy screaming his head off.

  “You say ‘fuck’ one more time, Slats,” Lowell said, “and I’ll wash your filthy fucking mouth out with fucking soap.”

  “Whoever this cocksucker is, Sanderland,” the skinny man said, “get him off my fucking set!”

  Without much apparent effort, Lowell spun the skinny man around, marched him to a red fire bucket mounted on the wall, and ducked his head in it.

  A man in a business suit who had been rushing toward the door when the incident started, now gestured to two burly laborers. They restrained the skinny man when Lowell turned him loose.

  “What the hell is going on around here?” he demanded of Sanderland.

  “Major Lowell,” Sanderland said, “this is Mr. Berman, the producer of this film. Mr. Berman, Major Lowell is from Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes, and he seems to object to your director’s characterization of him as a cocksucker.”

  “I’m walking, Sanderland,” the skinny pansy screamed. “I’m walking. That’s it. I’m finished.” The laborers let him go, and he stormed, dripping, across the set.

  “I’m not saying that wasn’t a good idea Major,” Mr. Berman said. “I just hope you realize what that gesture cost us.”

  “I have no idea,” Lowell said. “But whatever it was, I’ll be happy to pay it.”

  “I don’t think so,” Mr. Berman said. “It will be two days before our director will feel the muse has returned sufficiently for him to resume the practice of his art. We’re budgeted at thirty-nine five a day. Are you really willing to pay nearly eighty thousand dollars for the privilege of washing out that mouth, even considering how foul it is?”

  “Hell, I’m sorry,” Lowell said, feeling like a fool.

  “May I ever so politely inquire what we can do for you on this closed set?” Berman asked, sarcastically.

  “I came to see Georgia Paige,” Lowell said.

  “Indeed? Might I inquire why?”

  “We’re friends,” Lowell said.

  “Well, in that case,” Berman said, sarcastically, “why don’t you go over to her dressing room? She has nothing else to do at the moment but entertain friends. Not now. And probably not tomorrow. And probably not on the day after tomorrow, either. That should give you plenty of time for a friendly visit.” Berman gestured to a small house trailer on the far side of the building.

  Aware that eyes were on him, Lowell started to walk toward it. He heard Berman ask Sanderland who he really was, and part of Sanderland’s reply. Then there was an explosion immediately behind him, and by reflex action, he threw himself on the floor. He couldn’t control it. He hit the dirt even as one part of his mind told him that the explosion was a bursting light bulb, maybe a big one, but a light bulb only, dropped from somewhere up above.

  Shamed and furious, he got to his knees and looked upward. A burly man was sliding down a ladder, a look of concern on his face. He reached Lowell just as Lowell stood up.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said.

  “About as sorry as I am for dunking the other wise-ass in the fire bucket,” Lowell said.

  “No,” the man said. “Hey, I mean it. I dropped the bulb to say ‘hurray for you.’ I didn’t know you jump the way people like you and me jump when you think a sudden noise is incoming.”

  “You got me, you bastard,” Lowell said, smiling. “You really got me.”

  “You looked as shocked as our director,” the man said, “when you ducked his head in the fire bucket.”

  He looked over the man’s shoulder. Georgia was standing there, looking at him unbelievingly.

  “My God,” she said, “Is that you?”

  She came and he hugged her. She raised her face to his and he kissed her. Her lips were warm, but not as hungry as they had been on the IX Corps airstrip. He remembered that he had felt her heart beating then. She hadn’t pressed herself close enough against him now for him to feel her heart beating, and neither were her arms holding him the way they had on the airstrip.

  It wasn’t the homecoming embrace he had held in his mind.

  Sanderland came up to them.

  “You should have told me you knew Major Lowell, Georgia,” he said. “I would have treated you differently.”

  “How so?” she asked, somewhat confused that Lowell knew Sanderland.

  “I would have treated you with greater respect and offered you less money.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You’ve often told me you’d like to meet one of the money men from New York,” Sanderland said. “To tell him off. So here’s your chance.”

  “Is he putting me on?” Georgia asked, looking at Lowell. Then she thought it over. “I get the feeling he’s telling me the truth.”

  “Does it matter?” Lowell asked.

  “He must be telling the truth,” she said. “Otherwise you couldn’t have gotten on the set. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “I tried. I got out two days before I was supposed to.”

  She dismissed him for something more important.

  “Where’s Derek?” she asked.

  “He went home,” Sanderland said.

  “What do you mean, ‘he went home’?” she snapped. “We’re not finished.”

  “Your friend gave him a shampoo,” Sanderland said. “In a fire bucket.”

  “I don’t believe any of this conversation,” Georgia said, smiling, showing her red gums and perfect teeth. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Derek talked dirty in front of your friend, and your friend washed his mouth out by dunking his head in a fire bucket,” Sanderland said.

  Georgia Paige immediately decided this was the truth.

  “Great!” she exploded. “Great! Thanks a lot!”

  She glowered at Lowell for a moment, and then walked quickly across the building toward the trailer Berman had pointed out to him.

  “Now we’re even,” Sanderland said. “That cost you.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Lowell said to him, and walked across the floor to the trailer. He knocked, but there was no reply. He pushed open the door and went inside. Georgia was lying on a chaise longue, legs spread, her head resting on her hands. Lowell walked up to her and looked down.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I have been working myself up all day for this shot. And then I don’t get to make it.”

  “I’m really very sorry,” Lowell said.

  She looked up at him and smiled and held her arms out to him. She held him against her, but when he tried to touch her breast, she pushed him gently but firmly away.

  “Not here,” she said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  He didn’t even get a chance to watch her change clothes. A gray-haired woman came into the trailer without kno
cking, gave Lowell a dirty look, and jerked her thumb toward the door. It took her fifteen minutes to change clothes, during which a steady stream of people entered and left the trailer, while he stood around outside.

  He had to follow her to the house in Beverly Hills, trailing a studio Cadillac limousine in the Jaguar. Her house, he decided, was probably entitled to the term mansion. The banker in the recesses of his brain suddenly came to life. She hadn’t been successful that long. He had read in a fan magazine that her father was in the insurance business in Ohio, and that she’d gotten her start in the movie business while acting in plays at the University of Ohio. Her rise, the fan magazine had said, had been “meteoric.” That meant that it was only recently that she had been making a lot of money, and that meant the house was hers only technically. The money for the house had probably come from the First Federal Savings and Loan of Beverly Hills.

  They’d driven past that. The houses in Beverly Hills, Lowell thought, deserved much larger lots than they had been given. He had a quick mental image of the gate at Broadlawns, and the drive inside the gate. He came to the conclusion (which he shamefully acknowledged to be snobbish) that Beverly Hills, generally speaking, was a high-priced housing development, Levittown for the affluent.

  When they finally got inside her house, there were half a dozen people there, including a man she introduced as her press agent, and whom Lowell disliked on sight. It was a very long time before they were rid of them, and the press agent lingered longest.

  And then Georgia said she was hungry, and that Consuela, presumably the 300-pound Mexican, wasn’t there. So they went to the Villa Friscati on Sunset Boulevard. A steady stream of people stopped at their table, all of them ignoring him after finding out that he was a soldier.

  They finally made love about nine thirty, but it wasn’t what it had been in Korea, and she threw him out, saying that despite what he’d done, Derek might want to shoot the next day. That meant she would have to get up at half past four and needed her sleep.

  “When are you going to be finished with this movie?”

  She told him. Six weeks, maybe seven. When she saw the look on his face, she asked if something was wrong.