Westlake, Donald E - Sam Holt 04

by The Fourth Dimension is Death (v1. 1)

  As I sat there, the place got me more and more depressed—partly because it reminded me of my own early days in this trade, and partly because it emphasized how short and relatively painless my own apprenticeship had been—but I maintained the de rigueur ebullient brightness through it all, leafing through the Billboards and Varietys on the coffee table near me, smiling at my fellow supplicants, occasionally winking at the oblivious Miss Colinville.

  Who at last, after one more brief murmured conversation into her telephone, rose and nodded to me and turned toward that gleaming mahogany door. I dropped the month-old Variety I’d been leafing through, and followed, and found myself in a different world.

  The corridor was white-walled, with sunken fluorescent ceiling lights. Theater and movie posters lined both sides, filling the left but broken by doorways on the right. Following Miss Colinville, I saw that these right-hand doorways led to two assistants’ offices— both assistants deep in discussion with clients, at the moment—a supply room, a unisex restroom and an empty small conference room. At the far end, the corridor opened out, without doorway or door, into Kay Henry’s office.

  After all those interior spaces, the first thing you noticed about his office were the windows. Not that he had such a grand view, it being merely of the backs of several other buildings twenty feet or so away, but just that his room acknowledged the existence of the outside world. The office itself was very wide, walls and carpet and furniture all in varying soft shades of gray, with white or blond accents. The framed and autographed blowups of stars’ photographs which were the only wall adornments were all in black-and-white. The lucite bowl of oranges on the glass and chrome Parson’s table beside the entrance was clearly to be considered a color accent and not in any way a reference to food.

  Kay Henry himself was much less self-conscious than his workspace. A bulky man of about forty, with badly thinning tan hair and a round optimistic face, he wore chinos and a polo shirt and a million dollar watch and very large-lensed tortoise-shell glasses. His casual clothing, near-baldness, roundness of both face and glasses, and an open cheeriness of manner all combined to give him a look of eager expectancy, a desire to be of help and use; not a bad facade for an agent.

  As Miss Colinville departed, Henry came smiling forward, hand outstretched, saying, “Morning, Ed. Sorry we’re running late around here today.”

  Clearly, this office “ran late” all the time, the way doctors do. “No problem,” I said, grinning at him a little too boyishly, slumping my shoulders a bit as I shook his hand, letting his grasp be firmer than mine.

  “Come sit down,” he said, patting my arm and gesturing at the L of gray couches beside us. As we took seats, he said, “How’s Julie doing?”

  “Fine,” I assured him. “I saw the show. She’s really good in it.”

  “A very promising girl,” he said, nodding and smiling. “Very promising.”

  “We’re just pals, you know,” I said, and grinned sheepishly, and shrugged. “That’s the way she wants it.”

  To his credit, Henry didn’t wince at my crudeness. “Well, she’s very high on you, Ed,” he told me, “from a professional point of view. She tells me you don’t have an agent at the moment.”

  I nodded, still sheepish, and laughed at myself, saying, “Right now, I don’t even have a resume. The airline lost my suitcase. They say I’ll probably get it in a day or two. As soon as I do, I’ll come right over with a few copies. I would have brought them now, but . . .” Another awkward shrug. (The fact was, any actor in my supposed position would automatically have brought his photo and resume to this meeting, so I’d had to come up with a reason for not having done so, and the lost-suitcase gag was all I could think of.)

  “No problem, Ed,” Henry told me. A legal-size yellow pad and long well-sharpened pencil were on the glass coffee table before him. Leaning forward, picking up the pencil, poising it, he said, “Why not just give me a rundown?”

  So I did, reeling off to him the history of a modest middling career over a stretch of eight years, combining elements I remembered from Brett Burgess’s past with parallels to Dale Wormley’s career, plus a few other times and places I happened to know about. It was a stuttering career, with hiatuses, no lead parts, bouncing around minor regional theaters, getting some regional TV ads, other minor work; and it all ended two years ago.

  Kay Henry jotted all this down in some kind of personal shorthand, nodding, treating it as seriously as though it were Laurence Olivier’s resume, and at the end he brooded for a minute, lips pushed out, eraser end of the pencil tapping a slow drumbeat on the pad. “Nothing much recently, Ed,” he finally commented.

  “There’s no point lying to you, Mr. Henry,” I said, and he raised an eyebrow at that, giving me his full attention. I made awkward body movements, making it clear I was wishing there was some point in lying to him, and then I said, “It was drink.”

  “Drink?”

  “I’m off it now,” I told him, sitting up straighter, giving him my most honest and level look yet. “I’m AA. I’m one of those people, Mr. Henry, it’s, I’m one of those people, it’s poison.”

  Nodding sympathetically, his eyes friendly behind the large glasses, he said, “Actors, Ed, creative people like yourself, you’ve got to be so aware of that risk.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “You don’t live a routine life,” he told me. “Same thing, day after day. You live with variety, difference, always new places, new people, new things to think about. It’s an exciting life. It’s a great life, by golly.” He looked at me with wide-eyed envy, as though he really and truly would have preferred my scruffy existence to this luxurious nest.

  “It is a good life,” I agreed solemnly, nodding at him. “But it’s unsettling, Ed,” he went on. “Without that regularity of the average citizen’s life, somebody in your position can be vulnerable.”

  Laughing bitterly, I said, “I sure was.”

  “It’s happened to some of our finest actors,” he said, nodding in sympathy with human frailty everywhere. “You’re damn lucky you caught it in time.”

  “Oh, I know that.”

  He looked at the yellow pad again, smiled faintly, and said, “And that’s why you need a new agent.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Who was your agent, Ed?”

  “Blair Knox,” I told him, she being Brett Burgess’s New York agent. She and Brett were good enough friends for me to be able to ask her through him the favor of backing up my story, should Henry phone her.

  Again, Henry nodded, writing Blair Knox’s name on the pad. “A good woman,” he said. “If she took you on, that’s a very strong recommendation all by itself.”

  “Well,” I said, with that sheepish laugh again, “she did kind of have second thoughts there after a while.”

  “Sometimes we have to make hard decisions, Ed,” he told me. “Don’t blame Blair.”

  “I know who to blame, Mr. Henry,” I said fervently.

  “But that’s the past,” he said. “The thing to think about now is the future. Where can I reach you, Ed?”

  “I just came back to the city,” I told him, “don’t really have a place of my own yet, or a service, or anything. I’m staying with friends in Brooklyn.” And I gave him the Youngs’ number.

  Having written it down, Henry dropped the pencil and leaned back on the sofa, saying, “I’m not sure what I know about right now that you’d be good for. When I get your photo and resume, my assistants can take a more extensive look, see what’s coming up on the horizon, here in town. Or on the road.” Lifting that eyebrow again, he said, “You don’t mind going on the road, do you?”

  “Well,” I said, “if I have to, you know, to make a living. But it’s easier, to, uh . . .”

  “Stay on the wagon,” he suggested gently. “If you’re in one place.”

  “I wouldn’t want that to keep me from a good part,” I told him, looking worried.

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” he as
sured me. “And there’s a lot happening in this city right now, as a matter of fact. We’ll have a look, see what we come up with.”

  This was supposed to be the end of the meeting, but instead of standing and thanking and departing I leaned forward, exhibiting many signs of embarrassment and hesitancy as I said, “Uh, Mr. Henry, there was one thing Julie told me about, a part she thought I might be right for.”

  Amused, Henry looked at me and said, “Oh? What was that, Ed?”

  “It was something her boyfriend was going to do,” I said, and gestured with head and hand as though directing our attention to the past. “You know, the guy who, uh . . . Dale Wormley.”

  Pain crossed Henry’s features. “A terrible thing, that,” he said. “Poor Dale. God damn it, poor Dale.”

  “I knew him,” I said. “Not very much.”

  “A fine actor,” he told me. “Great deal of promise. Cut down like that.” He shook his head again. “We never know, Ed,” he said. “We never know when it all stops.”

  “That’s true, I guess,” I said, and cleared my throat, and said, “Julie said there was this part, uh, with Rita Colby?”

  Henry flipped at once from deep sadness to quiet pride. “A fine actress,” he told me. “I’m honored to represent her.” And he gestured at her photo, among those on the wall.

  I looked at it, across the room. Rita Colby was one of those people who, by either nature or design, are very to caricature. Her short full auburn hair was worn in a helmet style, curling down around her earlobes. Her dark eyes were very large, always just a little surprised looking, and her mouth had a very individual quirky wrinkle to it, so that when she smiled just a little she looked as though she’d just heard a really terrific dirty joke, and when she frowned just a little she looked honestly and hopelessly heartbroken. It was a wonderful acting tool, that face, and she had the technique and talent to go with it.

  Looking at that blown-up black-and-white picture, with its lavish inscription scrawled in white ink, I became aware for the first time that Rita Colby was just about the only famous face on these walls who was still alive. All the rest of those people had joined the late-greats. Was Rita Colby Henry’s only living major client?

  Had those other people ever been Kay Henry clients at all?

  While I was looking at the pictures, thinking about them, Henry had been looking at me, thinking about me, and now he said, thoughtfully, “You know, Ed, Julie may have something there. You do look a bit like Dale, in fact. Different color hair, of course, and the moustache, but you’re tall, and you have the same kind of well-defined bony face. As a matter of fact . . .” And he gazed past me, following some new thought.

  I looked at him. Could he possibly be doing what I thought he was doing? “Mr. Henry?” I said.

  He looked back at me, grinned, and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m pretty sure they’ll be dropping that campaign anyway.”

  So it was true! He’d been thinking of offering me the job of parodying Packard, replacing Wormley in those commercials. This whole situation was getting too convoluted. I said, “But you think Julie may be right about me and that play?”

  “It’s a possibility,” he told me. “Tell you what, Ed. Are you free about four this afternoon?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, very eager.

  “Rita Colby has cast approval,” he explained. “She approved Dale, and she’ll have to approve the replacement. She’s dropping by this afternoon—”

  “Here? She’s coming here?”

  He smiled at my eagerness. “Yes, she is,” he said. “Why don’t you come back then, about four o’clock, and I’ll introduce you.”

  “That’d be great, Mr. Henry,” I said, and now I did stand up, not as though in a hurry to leave but as though I’d become too excited to remain seated. “I’ll be here at exactly four o’clock,” I said.

  Getting to his feet, Henry laughed lightly and said, “Just remember, we do sometimes run a little late.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be here.”

  “That’s good, Ed. I think you have the right attitude. Whatever problems you had in the past, I just have a hunch they’re finished. Things are looking up.”

  “Yes, they are!”

  “See you at four, then,” he said, raising a graceful hand to usher me out.

  Hesitating, I said, “Would it be a good idea for me to take a look at the script? To get some idea of the part, you know.”

  “Let’s just let Rita have a look at you first,” he told me, patting my arm gently, looking up at me with sympathetic friendliness. “Okay, Ed?”

  “You know best,” I told him, and he laughed and said, “Well, I guess I’m supposed to, eh? That’s my job.”

  I thanked him again, we shook hands, and I went back out to the receptionist’s area. Having pressed the elevator button, I turned grinning to the cold Miss Colinville and said, “I’ll tell you something, beautiful. I’m walking on air.”

  “That’s nice,” she said, without interest, and turned to answer the phone.

  27

  Brett and Blair Knox and I had lunch at one of the new trendy places in the west Twenties. Now that office rents in midtown have driven the book publishers south, restaurants have bloomed there as well, since apparently book publishing is a trade that can’t exist without lunch. We’d wanted to eat somewhere respectable, but we didn’t want to run into anyone we knew— particularly not Kay Henry. So the west Twenties it was.

  Blair Knox began as an actress, sort of an Alexis Smith type, thirty-some years ago. She didn’t have much success on stage, but she got interested in the agenting side of the business, went to work for one of the big outfits, and a few years later branched out on her own. Her client list has never included any major stars—no Rita Colbys—but she has a reputation for handling solid and reliable performers, and for being solid and reliable herself. Her clients find her a sympathetic and supportive force in their lives, her attitude probably coming from her early efforts to be an actress herself; she’s been on their side of the street.

  In photos from that time, she’s a slender, straight- backed, regal-looking person, a little too aloof to be loved by an audience. Now, in her mid-fifties, a rigorous dieter and exerciser, she was more compact than slender, the regal appearance having hardened to a look of brisk efficiency. Slipping on tiny silver-framed reading glasses to study first the menu and second the list I’d given her, she looked somehow like the dean of a small private college. The list was the resume I’d given Kay Henry; if he were to phone Blair, she should have some idea of Ed Dante’s career. Scanning it, shaking her head, “Well,” she said, “I don’t seem to have done much for you. ”

  “I was a drinker,” I explained. “Not always reliable. I’ve told you I’m on the wagon now, and you hope I mean it.”

  She grinned at me, removing the little specs. “But I wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole, is that it?”

  “Just about.”

  “Fine,” she said, and put list and specs away in her purse.

  We ordered, then talked generally for a while, ate our main courses, and over coffee it was Brett who returned us to the subject of the day, saying to Blair, “Tell us about Kay Henry.”

  Giving him an arch look, she said, “Thinking of making a change, are you, Brett?”

  Now, Brett’s a nice guy, and smart, but you can’t joke with him. Looking flustered, he said, “That isn’t what I meant. It’s Sam that—“

  “Ed,” I reminded him, and Blair smiled and patted his hand on the table, saying, “I know, dear, I was just teasing.”

  Then Brett felt stupid. “Of course you were,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “About Kay Henry,” Blair said, and looked at me. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, reputation, I guess,” I told her. “But something more. In his office, there’s all these signed photos of stars, but I noticed, Rita Colby’s the only one of them who isn’t dead.”

  Blair was
delighted at this. “Is that true? Has he really done that? Sam—Ed, I mean—that’s wonderful.”

  “It’s all a phony, then? Those other people were never his clients?”

  “Never,” she agreed.

  “But he’s a legitimate agent, isn’t he? He isn’t a con man or anything.”

  “No, no,” she said. “He’s real, all right. He probably has somewhere between forty and sixty clients now, mostly kids starting out, a few older character actors and like that. There’ve been a few clients who hit big, but they always leave.”

  “The old story?” I asked. “Going with the major agency after the small agent works to get their career off the ground?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, and smiled at me, adding, “Though it’s sweet of you to have such faith in that old story.”

  “It does happen a lot,” I said.

  Her smile turned crooked. “Tell me about it. It’s happened to me once or twice. But that isn’t the Kay Henry story.”

  “What is?”

  “Rita Colby,” she said. “That’s the whole story, beginning to end.”

  “Tell,” I said, suddenly aware that at probably half the tables around us similar conversations were taking place; people putting their heads closer to dish professional acquaintances. But my purpose, of course, was more serious than simple gossip. On the other hand, gossip is fun, too.

  “Well, of course,” Blair said, “Henry isn’t even his first name. God knows what it is.”

  “Blair,” I said gently, “God knows what my name is. Or Brett’s.”

  “All right,” she said, nodding. “I was being catty. And thank you for not questioning my monicker.”

  “Mm? Blair Knox,” I said, turning the syllables over, considering them. “Sounds perfectly ordinary,” I decided.