Violencia!

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  “Thank you, sir,” said Tanker.

  “Let Paul and I talk it over,” said Hartog. “We’ll be in touch. Who’s your agent, by the way?”

  “I guess it’s my mom,” said the ex-dick with a sheepish grin that warmed up the room, and that Gurney figured would probably come across effectively on the stage as well.

  “Look, Clement,” said Gurney after his friend had left, practically sailing out of the theatre, “I don’t want my friendship with Tanker to have anything whatever to do with his being considered for the part.”

  “Oh, I know that, Paul,” said Hartog.

  He put his hand on Gurney’s knee and looked him in the eye with great understanding. Gurney appreciated the gesture.

  “I do think he’s good,” said Hartog. “He’s a little old, but in that area, you’re allowed to fudge somewhat on the stage. Then, too, I realize he punches too hard and would have to be toned down, but I think I can get a performance out of him. And you have something special going for you when you bring in a complete unknown, especially if he sizzles.”

  “I feel all the same things about him,” said Gurney, “but I want to be absolutely sure my judgment isn’t being clouded. After all, we were in homicide together. No matter how hard you try to minimize that, it’s got to be a factor.”

  “Tell you what,” said Hartog, after a moment or two of silent consideration.

  “What?”

  “Let’s fly him east.”

  Scene 8

  When the two collaborators got back home, their first or der of business was to wrap up the casting so they could get on with rehearsals before Undertag got cold feet and decided to back away from the show.

  “I think he’s afraid he’s got a hit on his hands,” said Hartog. “This is a new experience for him and he’ll probably do everything in his power to kill it off. When I think of how we brought the sonofabitch pure gold, and he doesn’t even see it.”

  There were two key parts that remained to be filled, those of the detective hero son Matt Tanker, soon to fly east, was at the head of the pack for that one and his one-armed ingenue girlfriend at the Bureau. Mr. Mortimer lined up all of the available young one-armed actresses in the city; Gurney was surprised that there were so many of them. The part finally went to a pretty and feisty little bundle of talent named Betty Pound. She was acknowledged to be over-brimming with talent, but understandably, she had found it rough going in the theatre because of the shortage of parts for girls with one wing.

  Gurney was not fooling himself; he knew that the character was based on a real-life individual, his dear friend Angela. And his heart fell when he saw the audition of Betty Pound, who was slightly prettier than Angela and was certainly a better singer and dancer. What if he became romantically involved with Betty Pound? But he was almost relieved to discover that the actress’s good qualities were all playacting ones. Offstage, her personality was a brittle and unappealing one. She was obsessed with only one goal in life: success in the theatre, and after that, Hollywood.

  When Matt Tanker flew east, the two collaborators sat him down for a final interview and gave him a thorough going-over.

  “This is a long, tough haul,” said Hartog. “You’ve been a sex detective and a chiropractor. What makes you so sure you can cut it as the lead in a Broadway musical?”

  To his credit, Tanker refused to beg and plead for the part. With his mother at his side, he sat opposite the two of them, clear-eyed, pleasant, steady.

  “I don’t know that I can, sir, but I’d sure like to try. If it doesn’t work out, I can either go back to my practice or perhaps find an island in the Pacific and just sit around and count the waves.”

  Since the time they had seen him on the West Coast, Tanker had let his hair grow out. He was wearing torn blue jeans, moccasins, and a dirty old poncho that was falling apart.

  “I don’t know,” said Hartog, taking Gurney aside. “I still like him, but I prefer an actor who’ll fight and claw and insist that he’s the only one in the world who can do the part and tell us that if we don’t agree we can go fuck ourselves.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Gurney. “He doesn’t seem to have as much desire as I would have thought.”

  “Do you think that no other actor could do this except you?” the director asked, returning to Matt Tanker’s side.

  “No, sir,” said Tanker, calm, flap-proof, polite. “I think there are many others who probably can, too. And if you decide against me, I won’t be in the least upset. I’d be happy to take some lowly job as a chorus boy. And I’d consider myself lucky to have come this far.”

  The director motioned Gurney to step aside with him once again.

  “He certainly makes it hard on you, doesn’t he? But oh well, let’s hire him. If he doesn’t pan out, we can always can his ass on the road.”

  Now that the casting had been rounded off, Hartog insisted that Undertag hire several other key professionals for the Violencia team. Hartog got the producer to go along with Bess Filimino on sets; high-priced and difficult to get along with, she believed in keeping her sets vivid but minimal. It was her theory that a single .45-caliber cartridge, if properly placed on the stage and set up emotionally by the script, could take the place of an entire homicide bureau, and might even turn out to be twice as effective.

  In order to get the set designer of his choice, Hartog had to go along with the producer and hire Rolf Rienzo, who came cheap on costumes. Once famed for his papal vestments in religious spectacle plays, Rienzo had suffered a mental collapse and been packed off to Swiss clinics to recuperate.

  “It’s all right,” the director told Gurney as if there were a need to calm him down. “Rolf hasn’t worked for years and he’s still a little shaky. But he’s not bad, and I think he’s got another show in him. If we keep a careful eye on him, I believe he’ll perform for us.”

  For musical conductor, Norman Welles would hear of no one but Ty Sabatini, a man who made sense in the economy department, too, since he could imitate every instrument in the pit, from saxophones to entire woodwind sections. When Gurney met him, the conductor struck him as being both pompous and suspicious, salting his remarks with a blend of foreign expressions such as “andante,” “fortissimo,” “che bella” “tout de suite,” and “m ’love.” But after a while, Gurney saw that this style was only a defensive mannerism; once he let his hair down, Sabatini was really a sweet and decent man, another individual who—in Hartog’s words—would go to the moon for you.

  The conductor also struck Gurney as being a bit fearful of writers, perhaps because his own world was filled entirely by musical sounds. To express himself, Sabatini, typically, might say something like, “If we zunnng it and give it some pnunng and dadootdadootzazay, we’ll be home free.”

  One of Sabatini’s functions, during rehearsals, was to work with Essie Hartog on the development of her voice, tailoring it particularly to the Pokerino, with its huge balconies and enormous ceilings. Essie reacted poorly to Sabatini at first.

  “Why, you cheap, money-grubbing peasant cunt” was her initial address to him.

  But Essie, too, quickly became aware of his great abilities and his warmth. In a turnabout, she declared, “There’s no one in the world like him.”

  Once the full team had been assembled, Clement Hartog gathered together the cast and production staff for a first reading of the Violencia script. For the occasion, he wore a full-dress tuxedo with tails. Gurney, in jeans and a corduroy jacket, wondered if he should have dressed more formally as well. There was so much he had to learn about the ways of the theatre.

  The director said he had worked on many shows before, but that he was never more proud in his life of a cast than he was of this one.

  “For that matter, I’ve never come across a libretto that was better than that of Violencia.”

  There was so much watery-eyed conviction in his delivery that Gurney, and probably everyone else who was there, believed his every word.

  Gur
ney then introduced Philip Undertag, who skipped forward for a few words.

  “As many of you know,” said the producer, “I haven’t had any hits, and God knows, the odds are against this being one. But I want you to know that if you keep your noses clean, this office is behind you. And if the show does work out, I’m giving everyone free piano lessons.”

  As the production staff and cast struggled to digest the strange offer, Hartog introduced each of them by name. To his astonishment, only Gurney and the talented Hobie Hancock drew substantial applause. Gurney didn’t understand this, and certainly felt he’d done nothing to earn the tribute. But he had to admit it was a most enjoyable moment.

  Gurney then saw Matt Tanker lean across to Norman Welles, not realizing that he was speaking to the composer.

  “Don’t you wish the music wasn’t shit?” he said.

  Welles, in total shock, managed a thin smile, and Gurney probably felt as bad about the gaffe as the composer. Even though he hadn’t pushed for the hiring of Tanker, he accepted some responsibility for him. He was ashamed of the sex patroller’s crudeness, and, for the moment, of their shared past. Was it possible that Tanker really knew that Welles was the composer—and that the outrageous frankness was part of some weird newly acquired West Coast style?

  The cast then read through the script, the experienced ones going through it perfunctorily, just to get the feel of it. Essie delivered her lines in German. Gurney’s heart sank when he heard the harsh Prussian sounds coming from the leading lady; right then and there he gave up on the show, deciding it did not have a chance on Broadway. Hartog, ever-considerate, and with an unerring directorial sense of exactly what was in the air, read the discomfort on his face.

  He approached the young librettist and put an arm around him.

  “Don’t worry, Paul,” he said. “It’s just Essie’s way of holding back, of concealing herself. It’s a form of shyness, really. She’ll drop the German soon enough, the minute she gets a little confidence going.

  “You don’t think for a second I’d let her open in German, do you? Boy, that would be the day.”

  Rehearsals were a free and irresponsible time for Gurney; in many ways, he wished they could go on forever. The libretto was completed; he guessed that if Violencia got slaughtered in the out-of-town notices, he would be called upon to make plenty of changes. But for the moment, there was nothing much for him to do but hang around and take little tastes of other people’s work. On a typical day, he might watch Hartog take Essie through a scene, then pop in on Han Nihsu as she erected one of her delicate, symmetrical pagodas out of real chorus kids. He loved the look of them, although frankly he didn’t see how they were going to fit into a show about violence in a homicide bureau.

  The only other person who seemed to be idle was Normal Welles. As Gurney might have guessed, he planned to make very few changes in the romantic light love lyrics. The composer now took the tack that he would put the matter in the hands of the out-of-town critics.

  “If they cut me to ribbons, there will be plenty of time to do fixes before we hit New York. After all, there’s only one opening that really counts, the big one, right here on Broadway.”

  Welles spent his days sitting in the rear of the theatre wearing a big boyish grin. On one occasion, when Gurney took a seat beside him, Welles reached out and gave him a big hug.

  “Isn’t this great?” he said. “You can’t imagine how it’s going to feel being on Broadway. I love you, Paul. The two of us are very much alike and could be brothers, you know that. I’ll change any lyric you want, but can’t we wait, for Christ’s sake, until we read the out-of-town notices? I can be wrong—dammit, anyone can—but I just don’t think I am in this case.”

  Then, in a whisper, he said: “Clement Hartog is brilliant and we’re fortunate to have him, but I happen to know that there’s talk in some quarters that he may be slipping. His Hollywood price has dropped a couple of hundred thou per picture.”

  Gurney removed Welles’ arm from his shoulder after hearing the remark—in that manner letting the composer know he wanted no part of any criticism of his colleague and friend.

  If Welles and Gurney were loose and carefree though this period, Hartog seemed grim and concerned. Matt Tanker was a bright spot, picking up direction quickly, dropping many of his cute and self-conscious mannerisms, and generally behaving like an old pro. But the work with Essie Hartog was complex and exhausting. Though no one dared breathe a word of it, the fact of her being the director’s mom was always in the air. It made Clement Hartog both too tough on her and too lenient. At times, he would force her to do her lines over and over until she fell into an exhausted heap, all the while, berating, insulting, and humiliating her, not caring who was present.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, slutface,” he would cry out. “What do you think this is, a picnic? If you can’t do your lines that way, take off the fucking stilts, you bloody whore.”

  At other times, when she muffed a line, he would jump up on the stage and cradle her head.

  “Whoosa matter, pussypie?” he’d ask while stroking her hair.

  And at these moments, if he so much as sensed some criticism of her, perhaps from a stagehand, he would lash out at the often innocent fellow.

  “Watch your ass, buster! I will not tolerate any of that in my theatre. Lest you’ve forgotten, this is my mother.”

  Gurney felt there was a purpose and design in Hartog’s handling of Essie. But he also suspected that the director keenly felt the pressure of directing a close loved one in a Broadway musical that cost a fortune to get on. Wouldn’t anyone?

  If Essie was a problem for Hartog, the gifted Hobie Hancock was no prize either. Trained in a discipline called the Black Method, Hancock insisted on knowing the motivation for his every action and how it related to Black America. Why am I holding this gun, he would want to know, and can I justify it in terms of my blackness? Why am I spitting on the floor; why am I bleeding? Do my actions violate my black conscience? When he heard these questions, Hartog, sitting in the audience, would turn halfway around in his seat.

  “Like I really need this,” he would mumble. “What the fuck am I supposed to tell him?”

  Hartog would then mount the stage and do his best to give the brilliant performer a useful answer.

  Not only did Hartog have his hands full with the actors, but he also expressed certain nagging doubts about the Violencia libretto. He felt there were occasional dead spots, lapses in continuity, and hinted around that he wouldn’t mind putting in some nights with Gurney on repairs. But somehow Gurney managed to slip away from him. He had gotten the impression that Hartog was a worrier and that for all his great success was a bit too finicky. It was awful to admit it, but for all of the love and respect he had for Hartog, he recognized in himself a certain contempt for the director as well. Gurney had done his work; why not let the old man struggle by himself for a while? It was a selfish attitude, and also an ironic one. From the beginning, Gurney had been resentful of Hartog and Norman Welles for all of their successes, their lavish homes, their fame, and their millions of dollars. He himself was an unknown, close-to-penniless former homicide clerk. In a sense, wasn’t he being exploited by this group of privileged sonsofbitches, who could easily afford to work indefinitely for no assured return?

  Yet he also saw that perhaps he was the morally suspect one. After all, the theatre was their work; they slaved at it and depended upon the stage not only for their fortunes but for their pride and their reputations. They were in it for blood. If Violencia failed, Norman Welles might never work in the theatre again. And Clement Hartog would find his reputation sorely tarnished. No matter what happened to the show, Gurney, with no reputation to lose, would simply go about his business, refreshed, invigorated by the experience. It was unlikely that he would be involved in a stage piece again. In a sense, wasn’t he just tailing along for the fun of it? Hitching a ride on their energies and talent and not really playing for keeps? Wasn’t he merel
y using Violencia as a pleasant way to pass a delicate, newly divorced interlude in his life? Make a few new friends, have a few chuckles, maybe sleep with a couple of dancers? Perfect evidence was the way in which he ducked out on Hartog each time the director suggested they put in some more hours on the libretto. Hartog was much older than Gurney and did the work of ten men during the day. But to get Violencia just right, he was willing to press on, round-the-clock if necessary. The old man was too proud to come out and plead with Gurney for help; but his eyes begged the younger man to pitch in. And there was the fear of a cornered animal in them, too.

  Gurney saw all of this and ignored it.

  Instead of rolling up his sleeves and helping out, he continued to scoop up the gravy.

  For all of his cynicism and artful ducking of additional work, Gurney loved to wait for Clement Hartog after rehearsals so he could get a review of the day’s progress. It was as though he had bought a high-flying stock and needed only to check it each day to see how much money he had made. The two men would join Han Nihsu and her nimble Balinese assistants for drinks at a Lebanese restaurant close to the Pokerino. The talk was rough, vulgar, rowdy, Hartog and Han Nihsu telling stories of past shows they had done. Gurney, loving the yarns, was mostly silent, since he of course had none to tell. But he enjoyed the closeness and camaraderie of it.

  On one occasion, he saw Nicol, the proprietor, point to the Violencia table and tell several curious diners: “They’re show folk, from the musical next door.”

  The people responded with a look of awed understanding, and Gurney loved being included in the group.

  Another time, he complained to Han Nihsu about lack of sleep.

  “If you don’t like the hours,” she said sharply, “who asked you to become a gypsy?”

  So now he was a gypsy. The very word was staggering. It seemed the final accolade. While working at the Bureau, once in a while he’d felt a thin trickle of desire to be a suspect, rather than a good guy. There was hardly any comparison, but his membership in the little band of theatre people seemed to fulfill his desire to be some kind of outlaw.