Hollywood Hang Ten

by Eve Goldberg

  “What about the people? Some I recognize, some I don’t.”

  “A veritable roll call of Hollywood liberals and leftists. Let’s see . . . Burrows, A is Abe Burrows. He wrote Guys and Dolls. LJC is Lee J. Cobb, terrific actor. On The Waterfront, 12 Angry Men. Hellman, L., is obviously the playwright Lillian Hellman. Little Foxes, The Children’s Hour. Bernstein, L, is the great conductor and composer. Scott, H is . . . hmmm, I don’t know this one. Whoever it is, she married Adam Clayton Powell and joined the NAACP.”

  “Could it be Hazel Scott?” I ventured. “The jazz pianist. She played on a couple of Count Basie records, even played with Bird. Then she just kinda disappeared.”

  “Hazel Scott! Of course. She had her own TV show for a minute — until she was accused of being a Red and they cancelled it.”

  Max ran his index finger beneath the notations that followed Hazel Scott’s name. “Let’s see . . . . NAACP, Café Society, dates, times. So: performing at an integrated nightclub. Very subversive!”

  “What about all these dates and times?” I asked. “It’s like someone was keeping track of everything she did. Man, I’d like to get that gig: following around celebrities to their nightclubs and meetings. Easy money.”

  “You wouldn’t have to literally follow her to get most of this. Just follow her name in the papers.”

  “I don’t think so,” I countered. “Maybe some of it, but meeting times and dates? They don’t print that stuff up anywhere.”

  “You’re probably right,” Max said as he flipped through the notebook pages. “Oh, this is rich!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Welles, O. FTP, HFWC, CCDMAY, HANL.”

  “Orson Welles. Is he a Red?”

  “Nah. I don’t think so. Just a fellow-traveler.”

  “I played pinball with him once.”

  “You played pinball with Orson Welles?”

  “Yeah. He was shooting a movie in Venice near my house when I was in high school. They dressed up Windward Ave. to look like a Mexican town.”

  Max nodded. “Touch of Evil.”

  “Right. My buddies and I used to hang out at this bar off Windward and play pinball. We were underage, but nobody gave a damn as long as we kept feeding in our dimes. Anyway, one night this big, fat man in a black overcoat walks in. He comes over to me and asks if I’d show him how to play pinball. So I did. He got really into it, until this nervous guy with a pencil behind his ear comes in and says to the fat guy, ‘Mr. Welles, we’re ready for your reverse.’ He told the nervous guy to be patient and wait while he finished the game.”

  Max laughed. “Well, let’s see what subversive activities Orson Welles has been up to. Besides playing pinball, that is.”

  He translated more alphabet soup. “Federal Theatre Project. Hollywood Free World Committee. Citizens’ Committee for the Defense of Mexican American Youth. Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. Busy man.”

  “Those groups don’t sound very subversive to me,” I said.

  “To some people, and Victor Dargin is one of them, cherry pie is subversive because it’s red.”

  “Like when they changed the Cincinnati Reds to the Redlegs for a while. That was lame.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Max, a lot of what we do at Southland is surveillance, and it seems to me that it would take a whole army to follow all these people around and get this info on them.”

  “An army of spies,” Max muttered. Suddenly, he laughed. “I’ll bet old J. Edgar Hoover would have loved to sic his army of g-men on these people. It must gall Hoover that he’s relegated to pursuing actual crime.”

  Max chuckled to himself as he re-lit his pipe. The smoky scent of apple and vanilla filled the room.

  “However it is Dargin comes up with this information,” Max said, “it’s what he does with it that intrigues me most.”

  Just then, the glass slider opened and Joey came in. He was holding an empty plate.

  “Hey, Joey,” Max said. “Want some more cake?”

  “No thank you.”

  “Want to do some sleuthing?”

  “Yeah, sure!” Joey brightened.

  “Max . . . ” I warned him off with a tiny head shake.

  “Okay. Okay.” Max turned to Joey and winked. “We’ve got a tough boss.”

  “Stay out on the deck a while longer, okay?” I said. “I’ll be done in a few minutes and then we’ll go fishing.”

  “Okay,” Joey said amiably. He went back outside.

  “Good kid,” Max said. “Who is he?”

  “Former client’s son.”

  “What’s he doing with you?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said in a way that closed the subject. Part of me wanted to discuss Joey and the whole complicated mess with Max — or with Julie, the thought floated through my mind; she seemed like someone who would be good at helping me figure things out — but, for starters, it wouldn’t be fair to Joey. This was one of those things I’d have to figure out for myself.

  Max picked up Dargin’s notebook again and thumbed through it.

  “Jordan, C.” he said. “A little bird tells me that you might have a special interest in this listing.”

  “Yeah. I already checked it out.”

  “Want a translation?”

  I nodded.

  “Let’s see . . . March, 1945, picketed Warner Brothers with Conference of Studio Unions. November, 1945, signed a letter supporting the American Committee for Yugoslav Review. 1948, signed a petition put out by the Committee for the First Amendment. And, I would presume from what you’ve told me, this ‘HS’ stands for homosexual.”

  “Probably. Is that it?” I was hoping for more.

  “Yup.”

  “That Warner Brothers picket line,” I said, “isn’t that where you told me you met Chip Jordan?”

  “Yup.”

  “And you signed petitions, stuff like that also?”

  “Yup.”

  “So, Max, why weren’t you blacklisted?”

  “What makes you think I wasn’t?”

  That stopped me. “Well, I . . . I just never . . . ”

  I looked around at the comfortable, spacious, light-filled living room we sat in. People who were kicked out of a job didn’t live in Malibu, belong to a private beach club, and send their daughter to a private college back East. Besides, wasn’t Max always working?

  Max saw my confusion and laughed. “No, I wasn’t blacklisted, thank goodness. But sometimes, especially back around ’51, ’52, we wondered about it. Work got a bit thin for a while. The plum jobs stopped coming my way. But it was nothing like what happened to others. I guess if they blacklisted every liberal and left-leaning writer in Hollywood, the motion picture business would come to a complete and utter halt.”

  I sensed movement, and looked up to see Joey standing at the sliding glass door, staring in. Max saw him also. He waved at Joey, then slapped Dargin’s notebook with his palm.

  “Ryan, whaddya say I hang on to this for a few days? Give me time to study it more thoroughly.”

  I hesitated. I didn’t want the notebook out of my hands.

  “What?” Max said with a chuckle. “You don’t trust me? I’ll put it under my pillow when I sleep.”

  CHAPTER 40

  The iron grasshoppers were pumping away along Grand Canal. When I was a kid, there used to be hundreds of them all over Venice. The canal banks had been crammed with derricks, and storage tanks, and trolley cars taking workers to and from the oil fields. But the oil boom had passed, the sand sucked dry. The last derrick had been removed a couple of months ago. Now the last few remaining grasshoppers bobbed for the last few measly gallons of oil, stinking up the place, and keeping property values low.

  Joey followed behind me on the crumbling concrete path which ran along Howland Canal. The concrete finally gave way completely and the path became a muddy track dotted with duck shit. When we got to Reno’s house — it was actually an old rundown bungalow with no heat — we went around back to the shed where he kept his boa
rds and fishing gear. I grabbed two poles and the metal tackle box, handed the box to Joey. In the main house, I took out a package of Velveeta cheese from the fridge, peeled off a few slices for bait.

  We walked single file along the canals until we got to the Dell Street bridge which arched over Carroll Canal. We stationed ourselves at the top of the arch.

  “This was my favorite fishing spot growing up,” I said. “We used to catch mullet, goby, even perch. I hope they’re still swimming around down there.”

  I handed Joey one of the poles and a piece of cheese. He eyed the cheese with suspicion.

  “Fish eat cheese?”

  “Sure. If they don’t have anything better.”

  Joey leaned over the bridge railing and scrutinized the dark, sludgy water.

  “It looks dirty,” he said.

  “It is. But the fish don’t know the difference.”

  I stuck the cheese on Joey’s line. He looked at me skeptically, then back down into the water. A crumpled Marlboro package tangled up in a clump of bird feathers and fishing line floated by.

  “The water might be poisoned,” Joey said. “So the fish would be too.”

  “Hey, we used to catch fish right here and eat ’em for dinner all the time. You don’t see me dead do you?”

  I dropped my line into the water. Joey watched me closely, then dropped in his line next to mine. He stared after it.

  “I don’t see any fish down there,” he said.

  Suddenly it struck me. “You ever fished before?”

  Joey shrugged. “No.”

  “There’s fish down there, it just takes them a while to bite. Fishing’s all about waiting.”

  I showed Joey how to reel in his line. He practiced a few times. Then we waited. After a while, two boys on a wooden raft came paddling up the canal towards us. They had a German Shepherd with them who darted back and forth across the raft, barking at the ducks. The boys were both shirtless and barefoot. One was Negro, the other was white. They waved at us and I waved back. Joey just watched until the raft disappeared under the bridge.

  “Are those boys poor?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Were you poor growing up?”

  “We did okay. Why are you asking that?”

  “Eating the fish you caught. Mr. Ackerman says fish is for poor people. Fish and casseroles.”

  “Lots of people eat fish. And casseroles.”

  “The Ackermans don’t.”

  We both gazed into the water, looking at nothing in particular.

  “If we were poor,” I said after a while, “I didn’t know it at the time.”

  “Why not?”

  “Probably because everybody around us was pretty much the same. If you don’t know any rich people how do you know if you’re poor? What do you compare it with?”

  “TV.”

  “We didn’t have a television.”

  “You were definitely poor.”

  I laughed. “Different times, Joey. Like I said, we did okay.”

  “My mom worries about money.”

  I nodded. “Her and half the world.”

  “Do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I’ve got a job and a car and an apartment. And enough money to take a girl out. I figure anything beyond that is icing on the cake.”

  “I wish my mom thought that way.”

  “Yeah, worrying sucks.”

  Joey stared down into the water. A shadow passed across his face.

  “I lied about something the other day,” he said without looking at me.

  “What about?”

  “The gun.” He paused for a moment. “I did shoot it.”

  I waited, but that was all he said.

  “What’d you shoot at?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Nobody shoots at nothing.”

  “A pile of dirt. Down in the canyon. I didn’t want to hit any birds or squirrels or anything, so I mounded up some dirt and shot into it.”

  I thought about that: A kid who takes care not to hurt animals with an stray bullet didn’t seem like the same kid who would kill a man resembling an ice cream cone. Then again, Hitler liked dogs, so what did I really know.

  “I wanted to practice,” Joey said. “In case I ever had to use it.”

  “Did you have to use it?

  He shook his head.

  “You never fired it another time?”

  He shook his head again.

  “So why’d you lie about firing it when I asked you before?”

  Joey shrugged. “I dunno.”

  I waited, but that was all the kid wanted to say. I reeled in my line to be sure I still had bait, replaced the soggy cheese with a fresh piece. Joey watched me and did the same thing. We dropped our lines back into the water.

  A few hours later we called it a day. Neither of us had caught anything, and I had a feeling Joey didn’t mind that at all. After returning Reno’s fishing gear, ate tacos at La Cabana, a new Mexican joint on Lincoln and Rose with irritating mariachi music, but good food at the right price. I was stalling for time, hoping Joey’s mother would be home before I dropped him off.

  It was dark by the time we got back to the Palisades. As we pulled to the curb in front of his house, Joey’s eyes got big. A Ford pick-up was parked in the driveway.

  “Hey!” he said, as he yanked on the car door handle. “That’s my dad’s truck!”

  Joey pushed open the door and was about to jump out when I grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and held on like a mother cat gripping a kitten by the scruff of its neck.

  Joey tried to shake loose. “Let go! My dad’s here!”

  “I know, but just hold on. I’m gonna check it out. Weird things have been happening around here lately. Stay in the car until I come out to get you.”

  Joey grumbled, but he stayed in the car.

  I got my .38 out of the glove compartment and walked up the stone path to the house. The door was unlocked. I opened it a few inches. The house was completely dark inside, not a single light on.

  “Flynn?”

  No answer.

  I reached around the edge of the door, felt around on the wall for the light switch, and turned it on. Down into the sunken living room, was a man stretched out on his back on the floor. I went down the three steps to the living room and bent over the unmoving body of Doc Flynn.

  “Flynn?”

  His eyes popped open and he grinned at me.

  “Present and accounted for.”

  “What are you doing here, man?”

  “Here? Doing? Deep question. So many levels to the answer. Well, I . . . goddammit, is it even possible for a person to speak without using the word ‘I’ or ‘me’?”

  “I just —”

  “See what I mean. Practically impossible. At least in English. Do all languages rely so heavily on ‘I’? Now that’s a question worth researching. How can we ever hope to break out of the illusion of ‘I’, if we can’t communicate without using it? Speech — no, thought itself — divides the world, doesn’t it? Forces us to divide, commands us by its very nature to lose track of the whole, to live in the world of illusion. And the first division is I versus YOU.”

  “Mr. Flynn, why are all the lights off?”

  “Another interesting, and essentially unanswerable, question. Oh sure, we make up answers all the time and believe they are the truth. Joke’s on us.”

  I looked at him and said nothing. He grinned.

  “Where’s Mrs. Flynn?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I could make up an answer, take a good guess, but I haven’t seen her. Today. Which is what I think you are referring to. Today, Mrs. Flynn has so far been unseen. By me. The unseen.”

  Flynn touched a finger to the middle of his forehead. At that moment the front door swung open and Joey came bounding down the steps into the living room.

  “Dad!”

  “Hi, son.”


  “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? Well, here, now, I am apparently sitting on the floor conversing with you about why I am here.”

  “Seriously, Dad.”

  Doc Flynn took a moment before answering.

  “Okay. Seriously. Since your mother’s been so busy, I thought you might like to hang out with your old man for a couple of days.”

  “That’s great! I went fishing today with Ryan.”

  “You know what the Chinese say about fishing?” Doc Flynn said.

  Joey shook his head.

  “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”

  “Well,” Joey said, “we didn’t catch anything so I guess we won’t be eating for a day or for a lifetime.”

  “You’re so literal.”

  “It was a joke, Dad.”

  Doc Flynn grinned. “You got me there, kid.”

  Watching Joey and his father interact, a feeling of relief came over me. I didn’t need to be here anymore. I started for the door.

  “I’m gonna split,” I said.

  “Just a sec.” Flynn reached for something on the coffee table. “This is for you.”

  He stood up and held out a book. Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley.

  “If the doors of perception were cleansed,” he recited, eyes closed, “every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern,”

  Flynn opened his eyes and grinned. “That’s Flynn quoting Huxley who was quoting Blake.”

  He handed me the book.

  “Thanks” I said. “I’ll read it.”

  “I appreciate you hanging out with my kid.”

  “Yeah,” Joey added. “And thanks for the tacos and fishing."

  “My pleasure,” I said. And meant it.

  As I walked towards the door, I heard Joey ask earnestly: “What does it mean, Dad? The doors and the caverns and all that?”

  “It means . . . well, let’s figure it out together,” Doc Flynn said. “ ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed . . .’ ”