by Ed Ifkovic
Larry grumbled. “Only because I need cash.”
“Who cares?” Tony muttered.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Larry sneered. “Ethan, you got to bring Tony everywhere you go?”
“He’s my brother.”
“He’s a zero.”
Tony whined, “That ain’t nice.”
“Boys, boys.” Ethan admonished. “Let’s keep this civil.”
“It’s worth more than you…”
Ethan interrupted, icy. “You don’t have to sign this. You don’t have to take this check from me.”
Silence, then, “I got in over my head.” A tone of resignation, though mixed with anger.
Tony spoke up again. “Seems to me you still owe my dead brother Lenny some money. Didn’t you borrow from him?”
Larry’s voice was laced with venom. “That’s how I got in trouble. Through him. Your cutthroat brother. And it only got worse.”
“Who cares?” Tony said again.
Ethan spoke sharply. “Tony, shut up.”
“I want nothing more to do with any of you,” Larry announced.
Ethan, matter-of-fact, an edge to his voice, “Hey, you can walk away now. You think we want to see you? I told you to drop off the papers at the Paradise. My check was there waiting for you. We got sick of waiting for you.”
Larry wasn’t buying it. “Oh, really? I’m supposed to pick up a check from your resident drunk?”
Tony grumbled, “Screw you, Larry.”
Ethan’s voice dropped. “Okay, let’s all calm down. I’m here with a check. We can wrap this up now.”
I decided to be nosy, depositing my galleys into my purse, standing, adjusting the brocade jacket I’d worn and checking my three strands of pearls. I scurried around the hibiscus planter, and feigned surprise. Fancy meeting you here. Small world, wouldn’t you say? My, my, my. I was just one more Hollywood actress, the redoubtable Parthenia Hawks on the Cotton Blossom, intrusive fussbudget accosting some smarmy deckhands.
Everyone looked startled. Larry was frowning.
“May I join you?” I used Magnolia’s Southern drawl, syrupy and coy, the aging ingenue.
Clearly the answer was no, but I sat down anyway. Tony reprised his recent battle with hiccoughs, but beamed at me, as though I were an old friend. “Miss Ferber, you do pop up in places.”
“The pleasure is all yours, surely.”
“A little sarcastic, no?” Larry said.
“I wasn’t being sarcastic.”
Tony grinned. “You’d make a good insult comedienne.”
“I’m more at home being an…insult tragedienne.”
“What?” From Larry, annoyed.
Tony laughed. “Miss Ferber, you and I, on the road. The new Burns and Allen.”
“Tony. Tiny. Whoever. I don’t think the world is ready for our little vaudeville routine.”
“I should have met you years ago, Miss Ferber.”
“Then we wouldn’t be having this friendly conversation now.”
He looked perplexed, but Ethan burst out laughing.
“Give up, Tony.” He punched his brother on the sleeve.
Tony sat back, looking content, although he had to suppress a new round of hiccoughs. He didn’t take his eyes off me, I noticed-that little-boy stare somehow questioning what was happening here. The family pet, long shunned or ordered about, no longer sure when it was okay to wag a happy tail.
Ethan, uncharacteristically effusive, probably because he’d favorably concluded a business deal, signaled for more coffee. The same waiter had served me on the other side of the hibiscus planter and now looked confused, though he nodded when I requested that the skimmed milk for my coffee be whipped first with an eggbeater. “Of course.” As I spoke to the young man, Ethan quietly tucked the signed papers into a briefcase and placed it beside his chair, out of sight.
“Are you enjoying Hollywood, Miss Ferber?” Larry asked. A rude and tasteless question, coming from someone who knew I was grieving for Max…indeed, his old friend.
“As much as I expected to.” I breathed in. “You’re aware, Mr. Calhoun, that Max is dead?”
He started, his face reddened, and he reached for a glass of water. Nervous, unable to sit still, twisting a napkin, rocking back and forth, he refused to look at me. Suddenly, while Ethan was in the middle of some blather about the news accounts of Max’s death and, to my horror, his astonishment that Hedda Hopper was skewering me in her columns at such a painful time, Larry jumped up, sputtered something about obligations, and nodding toward me, spun around and left us.
“Was it something I said?” I smiled at the brothers.
“A squirrelly guy, that Larry,” Ethan mumbled. “Never liked him.” He glanced at Tony. “And now I don’t have to deal with him in business anymore.” A thin smile as he tapped the briefcase at his side.
“How is Lorena?” I addressed Ethan. “I’ve been meaning to call her. I really like her…”
He broke in. “I like her, too. We like each other.”
“And yet you divorced.”
He grinned foolishly. “Timing, Miss Ferber. I married Lorena at the wrong time. I was a different person then. Driven, ambitious, gonna set the world on fire. Scriptwriter to the stars. My name up in bright lights. Fame-the empty drug.” For some reason he pointed to the ceiling where, I assumed, stuffed monkeys nested. “The cruel reality stunned, frankly. And I lost myself in booze and depression.” He glanced at Tony.
“So what happened?”
He looked sheepish. “I got mean with Lorena, a woman who doesn’t tolerant meanness. Nor, I discovered, do I. I didn’t like myself.” He looked at Tony. “I come from a family of drinkers. It took every ounce of resolve to…to stop. When Lenny died, I woke up to the emptiness of the life I was leading. But by that time Lorena had unceremoniously waved goodbye. My knowledge came too late. Wisdom sometimes takes a later train.”
“But at least you were ready for its arrival.” I sipped my coffee slowly.
“Indeed. But, as I say, Lorena was gone from my life.”
“Yet you’ve salvaged a friendship.”
“Indeed, we have.”
“I don’t like it,” Tony blurted out. “You can’t be friends with your ex-wife.”
Ethan snapped, “It’s none of your business, Tony.”
“She’s too opinionated,” Tony said. “I don’t like women telling me what to do. Liz gets that way, you know.”
Ethan grinned. “Only on nights you get drunk.”
I had something to say. “When women speak their minds, they are viewed as town gossips. When men blather about their digestive surprises, they consider themselves newly-arrived from the oracle at Delphi.”
“Jesus! What?” From Tony.
“It’s curious how Frank keeps his old cronies close by,” I said slowly.
The remark puzzled Ethan. “Meaning?”
“Loyalty to the past even though I’ve heard him say the past is dead.”
Ethan frowned. “Frankie is afraid of the future.”
“Come on, Ethan,” Tony pleaded. “Leave Frankie out of this. He’s…our best friend.”
“What do you mean, Ethan?”
He sat back, breathed in. “Something went off kilter with Frankie’s career, so he’s stopped thinking about others-like Tony’s career. About our lives. Things have stalled. The wartime bobby-soxers are buying Guy Mitchell records. He used to sell ten million records a year. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Now Columbia is gonna drop him. Do you know why? He sabotaged his career when he hooked up with Ava.”
“I always blamed Max,” Tony offered. “He introduced them.”
Ethan raised his eyebrows. “Nonsense. That’s just not true. Max had nothing to do with Frankie. For God’s sake, Tony. The man is dead.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yeah, sure. That small-time agent nobody heard of until he became a pinko poster boy. I don’t know where you…”
&nbs
p; “You don’t like Ava?” I broke in.
Ethan shrugged. “She’s all right. A fighter.”
“I used to think she liked me,” Tony said. “I made her laugh. But she’s too much a hellcat. A crooner’s supposed to have a girl, you know, like…”
“Like his wife Nancy,” Ethan went on.
“Ah, the fireside Madonna,” I said.
“You know, Frankie is a womanizer, plain and simple. But he’s not a man to divorce the mother of his three kids. Think about it. His Nancy is a beautiful woman herself, a hometown bride, good Italian Catholic girl, homemade tomato sauce you can weep over-well, you got a girl on the side, that’s okay. Next week you go back to Nancy. Another girl, some nightclub tramp. Always back to Nancy, who sits there piling up pasta in front of you. You eat so much you can’t leave the house. That’s marriage in Hoboken.” Ethan laughed now, a long rumbling chuckle. “Ava comes along and changes the rules. She says…you have to divorce her.”
“The nuns in New Jersey are praying for Nancy.” Tony was dropping sugar cubes into his cup of coffee and stirring with his finger.
“It’s true,” Ethan added. “Catholics don’t divorce.”
Tony stammered loudly, “Ava made him go crazy. That’s the problem. With her looks and that temper, she…” He trailed off.
“You know,” I concluded, “Frank is a big boy. And from what I’ve seen of him these past few days, he likes to call the shots. He does just what he wants to do.”
Tony sipped his coffee but sloshed some on the table. Ethan frowned and blotted the spill with his napkin. “Be careful, Tony.”
Tony ignored him. “He got a weakness, Miss Ferber. Beautiful women. I mean, when he came to Hollywood he made a list of the gorgeous actresses in town and taped it to his dressing room mirror. Lana Turner. Marlene Dietrich. And he’s checked them off, one by one…”
Ethan slammed his hand into Tony’s shoulder. “Don’t tell Miss Ferber that. She’ll think little of him.”
“I couldn’t think less of him than I already do.”
Ethan eyed me suspiciously. “We’re loyal to Frankie. No matter his…his weaknesses. He’s only human. Frankie and Lenny were blood brothers. A bond to the grave.”
“Is his career really over?”
Tony started to sputter, but Ethan got reflective. “Let me tell you a story, Miss Ferber.” A hint of sarcasm laced his drawn-out words. “I know you like stories. You make your living at it, no?”
“And a good one, I assure you.”
“I had to be in New York earlier this year. Some work at the Metro offices in Times Square. Frankie happened to be playing a date there. He’d performed somewhere in the city to a half-empty house, which made him depressed as all get out. So one night I went with him out to Hoboken, some rinky-dink piss-water joint where he sang as a favor to some local hood. Well, that night he had no voice, scratchy, off-key. Nothing comes out. A blank. The audience booed and hissed and drove him off the stage.”
Tony interrupted. “Nobody got class there.”
Ethan squinted his eyes. “In Hoboken? Anyway, Frankie, he’s down in the dumps. So that night, back in the city, the two of us are walking through Times Square. A cold March night, snow showers, nippy. Suddenly there’s crowds of screaming, hysterical girls, a wild scene, these girls pushing against a police barricade. Dumbfounded, we stood there. I looked at Frankie and he looked at me. ‘What the hell?’ he asked. And then we looked up at the marquee and you know what it said?”
I shook my head.
“Eddie Fisher. It said Eddie goddamn Fisher. Some new headliner on the block. Fresh-scrubbed, brand-new. I’d never heard of him.”
“And Frank?”
“Frankie got drunk and smashed his fist through a hotel wall. I had to call a doctor.”
“It’s because of Ava,” Tony stammered. “They want that small-town boy who’s wholesome in the tux and bow tie, the boy next store, married to the good Catholic girl. Not a slut who breaks up marriages.”
I rolled my tongue into the corner of my mouth. “Ava is a plain, simple girl right off the farm. At heart.”
“A Jezebel,” Tony thundered. “I used to like her. That was when she liked me.”
“Shut up, Tony,” Ethan said.
“It’s a shame you missed my act at Poncho’s in the Valley, Miss Ferber. My stand-up show. I was damn good.”
Ethan was frowning. “I doubt that Miss Ferber would be entertained by your brand of humor.”
Tony bristled. “Everyone liked me.” He peered into my face. “Miss Ferber, I was real good at insults-real funny. People came back for more. I tell a dumb joke, the audience heckles me, and I insult them. Pick people out. You should have seen me.”
“Tiny, in my social circle I’m the one who delivers the insults. It’s never the other way around.”
Chapter Ten
Desmond Peake stood outside the MGM town car like a ramrod sentry, heels together, arms locked at his side, mirrored sunglasses shielding his eyes. A black double-breasted suit and a shirt so laundry-day white it dazzled. He reminded me of a Prussian extra in an old von Stroheim silent movie-some robotic underling. I feared he’d salute me as I hurried toward the door opened by the Negro chauffeur.
Mr. Peake greeted me with a facile nod, muttered my name, and ushered me into the back seat where he handed me a sheaf of typed sheets, including a publicity release for Show Boat. Silent, mechanical. The well-oiled manikin.
He’d called last night to confirm that I’d be at the scheduled private showing of Show Boat. “So long as I’m back by four in the afternoon. Max’s memorial service.”
He’d grumbled and didn’t answer.
“I’m Desmond Peake,” he announced now. “Metro liaison.”
“I know.”
A tall string bean of a man, all joint and angle, pale worm-white skin, splotchy with patches of sickly red. Large, flinty gray eyes, magnified behind enormous black-framed eyeglasses which replaced the sunglasses as he slid into the seat next to me. A thin Clark Gable mustache incongruously plastered to his weak upper lip gave his Ichabod Crane physiognomy a rarefied comic touch. But there was nothing funny about Desmond Peake. Officious, Metro’s gatekeeper for scandal and misdeed. Or so Max had warned me.
“He’s the studio’s favorite interference man, a passionless henchman, a founding member of America First, a watchdog group of right-wing fanatics dedicated to policing Hollywood. He lives and breathes Metro. In fact, when he walked me out of the studio and confiscated my I.D., he did so without speaking more than a few words, a sardonic smile on his face.” He’d chuckled. “You’ll enjoy his company, Edna.”
As the Lincoln town car buzzed down Wilshire Boulevard, sped across white concrete pavement, everything pasty yellow under an early-morning sun, even the ragged palm trees seemed props from a desert melodrama. Unnatural city, imagined, temporary, built up to be torn down. Everyone seemed to change one’s mind a moment later in L.A.
In New York folks believed they got things right the first time. I liked that in a city.
The town car slid out of downtown, headed out to Culver City, Metro’s hundred-acre sprawling world of soundstages, cottages, sandstone buildings, commissaries, imposing walls and gates, fantasy backdrops, a self-contained world of wondrous and gripping story-telling.
“Mr. Peale,” I began, “have you seen Show Boat?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know if it’s good or bad.”
“It’s good.”
I smiled. “Are you certain?”
“Metro makes musicals. The best. And MGM has more stars than there are in heaven.” A mechanical wind-up toy, though one in need of oil.
“I’ve heard that phrase before.”
“I didn’t make it up.”
“Max Jeffries was my good friend.”
“I know.”
“You knew him, right? His name has been taken off the movie. And then someone murdered him.”
Silence f
or a time, Desmond examining the cut of a particular fingernail, absorbed in the expensive manicure. The corners of his mouth twitched, though he turned his head away.
I cleared my throat. “How well did you know Max?”
A heartbeat passed, awkward. Then that granite head swiveled, his tongue rolling across his lower lip. “Not well.”
“What did you think of his being blacklisted by Metro?”
Another pause. “I think ‘blacklist’ is a harsh and unnecessary word. Too extreme. There is no blacklist in Hollywood.”
Annoyance laced my words. “What would you call it?”
Desmond clicked his tongue. “I wouldn’t call it anything. It’s not my job.”
“Knowing Max, his touch is all over this new Show Boat.”
“That may be.”
“And yet he was barred from showing his face in Culver City. By you.”
“Not my decision, Miss Ferber.” He gazed out the window, trying to close off further talk.
I wouldn’t have it. “When a man does work, he should receive credit for that job. His legacy now, his last movie. A man who touched every movie version of Show Boat.”
He didn’t answer. Then, a surprising anger in his tone, he faced me. “You don’t understand the climate out here.”
“Meaning?”
“Moscow has tentacles that reach out and grab and…”
“Nonsense. Max was a good American.”
“Good Americans can be duped, manipulated, deceived. Soviet police agents, firebrands.”
“Max wrote one letter…”