The Masked Man: A Memoir And Fantasy Of Hollywood

by Tom Wilson

  TWENTY-TWO

  The phone rang at eight P.M. with the caller I.D. of my agent's cell.

  "Hello, I assume you've had a brainstorm about how I might work a lot more and for more money, right?" I asked.

  "What? Oh, hello …uh, no. Not really." he said, his voice breaking into Morse code dashes as he drove over the dead spot at the top of Coldwater Canyon.

  "Have you talked to your friend?" he said.

  "What friend?"

  "Your friend called me."

  "Which friend is that?"

  "The cowboy?"

  "Aw, jeez. Don't do it, whatever he said."

  "I couldn't answer him anyway. I have no idea. Why does he need that?" "Need what?"

  "He wanted to know Steven Spielberg's address," he said, "His home address. I told him to send it to his office, but Spielberg wouldn't look at anything without agency representation. Hello?"

  He thought we lost our signal as I threw the phone and ran.

  I don't know where Steven Spielberg lives either, but a star from the fifties, legally forbidden to wear the hat, mask, and guns that he was wearing, was on his way to Steven Spielberg's house to damage my reputation and destroy my career, so I made a point to find the place. I screamed at four different "Maps Of The Stars' Homes" salesmen on folding chairs by the side of the road before I found one who spoke English well enough to understand the words "Spielberg," "House," and "Show me for fifty bucks."

  The neighborhoods of the super rich are always staggering in size, breathtaking in architecture, and verdant in landscape, but the biggest, grandest houses in Los Angeles are a mystery, since nobody I know has ever seen one. The houses of the L.A. super rich are invisible - not invisible like magical vapor - invisible like a twelve foot wall and impenetrable iron gate, decorated with warning signs and a video camera. Houses like that are designed to welcome immediate family, sycophants, nannies and gardeners, and easily keep everyone else out on the curb, staring at a mailbox and wall, especially masked western stars and supporting actors from the movies they made twenty years ago.

  Racing past swaying palm trees and fancy iron street signs in either artsy Spanish (Avenida de Colores), or self congratulatory English (Jubilation Drive), in a neighborhood like this in L.A. they should name the streets more realistically, and put a pizza parlor at the intersection of "Restraining Order Blvd." and "Joint Custody Circle."

  I saw him before I even got close to the house, riding Twister under the frosted globe of a vintage streetlight, then into shadow, and back into light, Twister clopping over the manicured blacktop as the Ranger's hat reflected in the windshields of the parked luxury cars he passed. There were no sidewalks, since pedestrians aren't welcome, and fertile humps of grass and flowers surrounded every mailbox and electronic keypad, standing next to the thick gate protecting the driveway.

  Leave it to him to find Spielberg's house before I could. I thought I'd beat him there by an hour or more, but phantoms on horseback have advantages that I still don't understand. I gunned the four cylinders of my engine and whined closely by him. Twister didn't spook at the noise, shuffling over the gravel and macadam, headed for the gate. I parked a half block ahead of him, wrestled my way out of the car and shrieked as quietly as possible "What do you think you're doing?"

  He looked down at me until the brim of his hat shaded his mask from the streetlight and his face disappeared in the dark. "Listen, Tom, I've never known one of these big chiefs who couldn't hear some straight talk that makes sense."

  "You listen to me, Ranger," I said, pointing across the horse's nose at him, "This is ridiculous. You'll never get in there anyway."

  "Sure I will," he said, looking at the imposing gate outside Spielberg's house, "Hey, why don't you go around to the back of this place and see if there's any other way in."

  "Are you kidding me?"

  "No, go around back."

  "Go around back? Go around back yourself. In fact, go around the back and keep going."

  "I've come a long way to talk to this man."

  I staggered backward, almost tripping over a fern at the curb. "Call his office! Make an appointment!"

  "I tried that, Tom. He's a very busy man, that's what they told me. I called his office a few times. I'm a busy man myself, but I never found it an excuse for not returning phone calls."

  "Wait a minute," I said, pleading with him, "I know you're here for a reason, and I've seen the things – A horse, an entire horse that is there and then not there, and the dog that you make come to life just touching it while you're trespassing at a museum, but I've gotta say, I disagree with this."

  "You disagree with what?"

  "With everything that's going on!"

  "I promised you I'd get you what you want," he said, "Do you trust me?"

  "I disagree with it, though! This is crazy!"

  "Crazy like a fox."

  "No, Clayton, crazy like arrested! They'll call the cops if you try to get in there!"

  "Maybe you're right," he said, "Or just maybe he's a better businessman than you think."

  "What are you talking about? Breaking into the guy's house? You have lost your mind, buddy? The wind has blown your parachute a little too hard."

  "Again, maybe you're right," he said, calming the trembling horse with a pat on his neck, "Or maybe I know something that he doesn't know."

  I thought he was hinting at a cosmic truth deeper than my human understanding, but that wasn't it at all. He just froze me in confusion long enough to walk the horse past me, positioning Twister to block my path so he could press the buzzer on Steven Spielberg's spotlit, metal intercom.

  "Don't do that! What are you--DON'T!!"

  "Tom, what Mr. Spielberg doesn't know is how- if he's the kind of businessman he seems to be - Then he'll start putting you in lots of pictures, and by golly its a win-win situation."

  "Please go," I said, "Please don't do this now. Please. I'm asking you…"

  "Hey," he said, settling the horse again as its neck muscles shook, "It may feel uncomfortable to have somebody sing your praises while you're standing there, but sometimes you should let a friend get in there and make a case for you if you won't do it for yourself."

  I ducked under Twister's neck, catching my face on a dark, leather rein before untangling my head and heading for the intercom keypad, which he pressed hard one more time before I covered it with my body to block him from doing it again.

  "Please leave the property," an amplified voice said from a small outdoor speaker under a rhododendron bush. The Ranger stood up in the saddle and yelled into my back toward the blocked intercom. "Yes, hello," he said, "I'd like to talk to Mr. Spielberg if at all possible."

  "Please leave the property now," the tired voice said, a sleepy security guard from Boston.

  "Leave the PRAWPUTTY."

  "Ranger, I'm asking you to--"

  "Tom, you won't do it for yourself, so--"

  "Clayton, please."

  "You don't know what he's going to say if I can just get a minute with the man," he said, leaning toward the speaker again as I pushed the horse's side, shoving it away from the elegant iron gates.

  "Is Mr. Spielberg in the house this evening?" he said, getting louder and almost shouting it into the house.

  "They're going to call the cops, you know," I said, jogging into the street and spinning in place.

  "Leave the driveway or the police will be called," the intercom crackled.

  "Told you!" I said.

  The Ranger rubbed his heels into Twister's side and the horse turned, parallel to the iron gate toward an adobe brown pillar next to the security wall. He pulled his boots out of the stirrups and, with an athletic vault, he stood erect on top of his saddle, his head now ten feet in the air.

  "Get down! Are you kidding me? Get off that!" I said.

  "I can see a part of his house from here!" he said, grabbing the top of the wall with his gloves and peering over.

  "Get down! I'm not kidding!"


  "Hello!" he called out toward the house, "Hello there! May I speak to you for a moment, friend?"

  "Get off the wall! They're probably videotaping you!"

  "I've come to help, but I won't come any further if it would be upsetting to you!" he said.

  "Get the hell off that thing!" I said.

  "Shhh!" he said to me, "We want to be seen as the friends we are…WE ARE FRIENDS TO YOU!" he called at the house.

  The voice of the security guard was angrier now, and even closer to Boston. "DA POLICE HAVE BIN KAWLED!"

  I ran toward the speaker. "We're leaving!" I shouted into it, "Sorry! He's drunk! We're leaving!"

  "Don't say that, Tom, that's not true, " the Ranger said.

  "Well, what am I…What… " I couldn't find words and was losing the ability to speak, yelling a guttural "Bbuuueeeaaiii" toward the moon.

  The Ranger leaned farther over the wall. "Is there a better time that I might come by to talk to him?"

  I ran toward the horse, pushing sideways as hard as I could to move him away from the wall, and a hoof slipped on the slick Mexican tile on the driveway. The Ranger slipped off the saddle and grabbed an iron light sconce perched at the top of the wall, his boots scraping the adobe searching for a foothold. I dove for his legs, hugging the boots to my chest and twisting them to try and break his grasp. "Let go of my feet!" he gasped, "I can't keep my grip!"

  "Let go of it!" I shrieked.

  "My grip is loosening, Tom!"

  "Good!" I grunted, "Let it go!"

  I strained against his boot tips as they dug into my chin, hanging on as he kicked.

  He held onto the iron light until our combined weights started to bend it, and I used a rock to hop up and grab the back of his gunbelt, a better grip to pull on. His head lowered to the lip of the wall.

  "Sir!" he croaked toward the house, "Sorry to bother you-- " He fell hard, knocking his chin on the corner of the wall and landing in a heap on top of me, pounding me into the ground with his hat flying into the air toward the street.

  He stopped wrestling with me long before I finally stopped wrestling with him, twisting on the ground and grunting with humiliation. As he tried to get up, I hung onto his arm for one more twist, finally shoving him away from me.

  "Alright, Tom, take it easy," he said.

  My lungs were searing and I gasped for air in the rage. "Get out of here--"

  "Tom, listen--"

  "Get out! Do you hear me! I'm not playing anymore."

  "Fair enough," he said wiping his hands on his pants, "I'll go, then."

  "No, you won't. You won't even go if I beg you. You don't listen to a thing I say."

  "I said fair enough. I'll go.

  "You haven't left yet!" I screamed, "Everything else you've done, all the other stuff you've been doing…you never stopped that, did you?"

  He stared at me, silent.

  "Get the hell out!"

  The fall had knocked some of the wind out of him, so he crouched for a few seconds with his hands on his knees before walking out to the street toward his hat, picking it up slowly to brush a few fragments of rich man's gravel off the brim."

  "Wherever you're from, and whatever you think you're doing, it's a joke," I said. He stared at the hat under the streetlight before easing it onto his head. "It's not a joke," he said.

  "It's not?" I spat, "Let me tell you, Jack, I'm a comic and I know what a joke is, and this is a joke." I walked toward my car. "And you're a joke."

  He grabbed Twister's reins and took a few steps after me until I turned and waved my arms in fuming silence that he should stay back.

  "If I embarrassed you I'm sorry, but I thought that--"

  "It's a joke. All of it," I said, "Who cares? Who cares what Steven Spielberg does? It's a joke. The whole thing."

  "But I'm just trying to tell him that--"

  "I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO TELL HIM!! I don't care! I don't care what he thinks and I don't care what you think!"

  "But a talent like yours--"

  "SO WHAT?!" I bellowed, "I don't need you to tell me that, I don't need ANYBODY to tell me that, least of all him!" pointing at the hedges and adobe.

  The Ranger ran a gloved finger across his scraped chin. "This is a successful man, Tom."

  "WHOOOOOOO CAAAARES???!!!"

  I stomped back to him to look him in the mask. "I'm a successful man, too. I don't have to prove it with palm trees and an intercom."

  "But they think of you--"

  "They can think of me as a can of peas! They can think of me as another piece of pop cultural crap!" I thundered, waving my arms, insane, "Tell you what, they don't even have to think of me, how's that? I've got a wife and kids, food and the sunshine. It's beautiful!"

  He stared at me quietly, the moon glinting crescents in the holes through his mask as I wheezed at him, remembering the inhaler I left in the car.

  "You don't like it, Ranger?" I whispered, "I'm cool with that."

  He stood still for at least three long breaths. "You're cool with that," he smiled.

  "That's right, buddy. I'm cool with that," I said, as a beam of red swiped across the adobe wall and the horse's side, reflecting the spinning cherry lights of a police car.

  "Run!" I gasped, breaking toward my car only to stop after four strides, realizing the hopelessness of running from the L.A.P.D. in a four cylinder hatchback. The run slowed to a relaxed walk as I turned to face the cops.

  "Let me handle this," the Ranger said.

  "Shut up," I whispered, "Just shut your mouth. Don't bring anything back to life. SHUT. YOUR. MOUTH."

  The police car stopped in a diagonal, blocking most of the street, and two uniformed officers got out, sliding black nightsticks into their heavy belts.

  "Good evening, officers," the Ranger said.

  "Shut up I said," I ventriloquized through gritted teeth.

  "What's going on here, fellas?" the passenger cop said.

  "Nothing," I jumped in, "Nothing, sir. My friend and I were arguing, and we must have disturbed someone. I apologize."

  The Ranger looked at them silently, surrendering to my lie.

  "We have a report of a possible break in at this house," the driving cop said, pointing toward the mansion gates.

  "No! Break in? No way! We were having an argument over something and must have disturbed someone. Sorry about that, won't happen again."

  "What's that stuff?" the first cop said, pointing at the Ranger's knees and elbows, covered in beige plaster dust from the adobe wall, the toes of his boots scuffed to match the scratches on the beige pillar perfectly.

  "We're not trying to break in," I said.

  "We only come to help and to make new friends," the Ranger said.

  Cop one ran his hand across his belt toward his gun. "Why don't you two get over here to the front of my car."

  "Why do you want us to do that?" I asked.

  "Because your friend here is wearing a mask and carrying a gun and it's not Halloween.

  The Ranger remained silent, as it was his right to do, since we were clearly about to be arrested.

  BLAMBLAMBLAM in an instant everything was black as glass shattered to the street and into the driveway. Three blasts from the Ranger's gun burst both streetlights above our heads and the spotlight at the Spielberg security gate, turning them all to shattered rain.

  "Freeze! Don't move!" the police bellowed in the blackout, fumbling with their guns and flashlights while running toward the car. A shrill whistle called Twister out of the darkness and the Ranger vaulted into the saddle, grabbing the reins and spinning him toward me.

  "FREEZE! DON'T MOVE!!" the cops screamed.

  "Move! Don't freeze!" the Ranger said, as the metallic clop of hooves came closer in the dark.

  "Lift your arm!" the Ranger barked, and I did.

  I lifted my arm in a dream state, expecting to be swept into the saddle and raced away in a John-Wayne ballet, rescued in the nick of time by a hero of the west. This didn't happen thou
gh, because I weigh over two hundred pounds and couldn't see where he was. When he grabbed my arm, I almost pulled him out of the saddle, swinging around the horse, slamming my face into some silver studs on the saddle and falling into the street, severely bruising my coccyx.

  "Oohhhh!" I yelled, rolling onto my side in the middle of the street.

  "Stop right there!" the cops yelled, shining a flashlight into my face.

  "Don't shoot me!" I screamed, "He's dead!! That guy is dead!! He's going to disappear!!"

  "Just stay where you are," they said, turning a spotlight on me from the driver's side of the black and white car as the Ranger turned the horse around behind a palm tree across the street.

  "Lift your arm! Come on!" he shouted to me.

  "NO!!" I yelled.

  "Come on, Tom! Lift your arm!"

  "No! We tried that and I'm paralyzed!" I yelled back at him.

  "You're fine. Lift your arm!"

  "Freeze right there and get off the horse!" the cops yelled, pointing guns at Twister.

  "Shoot out the spotlight!" I said.

  "No! Those men are too close to it!" he said, "A life is a precious thing, and--"

  "Shut up!"

  "Stay right there and put your hands in the air!" the cops said, clicking into their radios for backup as one pointed a gun at me, while the other walked slowly toward me, clicking a pair of handcuffs in his right hand. "Drop to your knees," he said, "Now."

  I ran. Seriously, I did. I've seen this stuff on T.V. all the time. When you run, they don't shoot you. They probably should, but let's face it, they don't, they just jump back in the car and keep chasing after you. So, I'm sorry if I risked the lives and limbs of fellow citizens on the streets of Beverly Hills, but I took off up the street with the Ranger a half block ahead of me. And I was right, they didn't shoot me, they just ran back to their car and gunned the engine.

  "COME ON!" I shrieked, running to a fire hydrant at the corner. The Ranger slowed Twister to a trot, I took a running start, stomped on the top of the hydrant, jumping into the air to grab a chunk of saddle and handful of gunbelt as he spun the stallion and grunted "Hyeah!"

  I almost fell off the instant Twister clicked into a gear I've never seen before, except on a black and white T.V. Mane whipping, nose snorting, haunches quivering flight. We galloped toward the police car and passed it on the right, forcing them to U-turn as the raging Thoroughbred clattered down the curved street, until the Ranger steered him onto well manicured front lawns, where he tore landscaping to smithereens, gaining traction and speed. We left hoof print gouges on millions of dollars of sod, flying over two foot tall picket fences and herb gardens, cutting across grassy corner lots and ducking under tree branches, every second racing farther from the sirens of the police cars in the streets, as we used every carport, backyard, alley, and small neighborhood park to either hide or run, depending on what the Ranger's honed senses told him.