‘Well Gibson’s made it plain he doesn’t want to see you. My advice, turn around, don’t make a scene.’
‘I tipped you plenty, Jake!’ he said, thumping the steering wheel.
Jake’s face steeled. ‘You tippin’ me don’t buy me, Mr Mason.’ He left the car, took up his place by the gates and looked away.
Ah, fuck, thought Mason. Maybe a guy is a piece of meat whether he likes it or not. He drove away, fuming inside.
* * * *
2
Luke Dillon
An old Nantucket sailor once told him that a ship went down in three stages: first, it hit the rocks; second, it broke its back; third, it sank beneath the waves.
Turned out the sailor was just an extra pretending to be from a Nantucket whaler, so the origin of this seafaring nugget was somewhat debatable. Still, it stuck in his mind, and Rick Mason saw frightening similarities to his own predicament. Sure, he’d hit the rocks hard. And right now the two men who were taking his car had threatened to break his back if he stood in their way.
‘But you can’t do this!’ he protested as they made themselves comfortable inside. ‘Get out of my car! Get out of Lillian!’
‘Lillian?’ said the man behind the wheel, dragging the brim of his hat down to shade his eyes from the early-morning sunshine slanting in through the windscreen. ‘You gave your car a name?’
‘Screw you!’ returned Mason. ‘Just get your filthy butts out of my car!’
‘Listen, buddy, the thing is never to give anything a name till you’ve finished paying for it. You don’t keep up on the instalments, we take it back, that’s the deal. You pay what you owe and you’ll get little Lillian back.’
‘Hell, guys, have a heart! You can’t take my car. She’s all I’ve got. An actor needs a motor in Hollywood or he ain’t an actor, you know that.’
The other guy in the passenger seat leant across the car’s new driver. His nose had been broken, giving him the appearance of an ex-boxer, someone you’d think twice about messing with. ‘Actor?’ he said, his lip twisted into contempt. ‘I don’t see an actor, do you?’ he asked his companion. ‘Last time I read about Rick Mason someone said he was a man whose acting was so wooden, if someone yelled “timber” he’d fall over.’ They both laughed.
‘That’s so fucking funny, almost as funny as the fact you bozos can read. You morons know nothing about acting. Just get out of my car.’ Seeing it wasn’t working, he softened his approach. ‘C’mon, guys, do me a favour. I’ll get you the money by the end of the week and I’ll throw in a little bonus for you. How’s that sound?’
The man at the wheel furrowed his brows in thought, turned to his partner. He nodded in response. ‘OK, Mr Mason, you got a deal. We ain’t as hard as you think. We’ll give you your car back if you promise to get the money by the end of the week.’
‘Mason bent down to the window. ‘Really? Thanks, I owe you big time.’
‘You fucking kidding?’ He gave a loud guffaw. ‘Now that’s acting, sucker!’ he said, stepping hard on the gas and driving away. ‘Timber!’ he shouted through the window, giving Mason a wave.
Mason ranted angrily and scuffed the dirt with his shoes in protest, but it did little except draw stares from passers-by.
The Palm Club. It’s where they all hung out. All the big names. Anyone who was anyone in Hollywood went at some time to eat in the Palm. They used to joke that it was so exclusive even the President of the United States couldn’t get a table. Little wonder, then, that Rick Mason had never been allowed through its gilded doors, but that wasn’t going to stop him tonight. He knew Luke Dillon ate there every Friday night, and if he couldn’t get into Prima studios to see that asshole of a managing director Frank Gibson then he’d go straight to the head honcho himself.
He’d scraped together his last few dollars, emptied his meagre bank account and pawned his watch and radio so he could hire out a fancy tuxedo. He also knew this guy who worked as a chauffeur down at Universal who agreed, for a price, to drop him outside the Palm Club in a borrowed limo. It was actually a 1923 Moon 6-58 touring car, in glistening light-blue coachwork, black fenders, whitewalls, cream leather seats and soft-top, the full works. When the car turned up, freshly waxed and gleaming in the club’s many lights, and the uniformed chauffeur got out to open the door for Mason, it did the trick and fooled the two bullnecked bouncers, who didn’t say a word as he strolled up to the doors. He waited while the doors were opened for him and breezed into the joint like he owned the place.
He was asked if he had a reservation.
‘I’m with Luke Dillon,’ he said, whipping off his white silk scarf.
There was a smell of money in the air. Good food, cigar smoke, expensive perfume. The women were some of the classiest he’d ever seen, floating around the place like sinuous sirens, their heels silent on the plush blue carpet. There was a cocktail bar that wasn’t preparing cocktails, a nod to prohibition, but he knew there’d be cocktails somewhere. A band was playing, a woman crooning silkily into a microphone, her dress a figure hugging cocoon of shimmering green silk. He was momentarily overawed by it all.
‘Mr Dillon didn’t inform me he was expecting a dinner guest,’ said a stiff maitre d’ coming up to him. ‘Your name, sir?’
‘My name? It’s the one in lights, dear boy! The one in lights!’ He motioned to the sky. ‘Don’t worry yourself; I’ve spotted Mr Dillon, I’ll see myself over.’
The maitre d’ protested quietly, but Mason ignored him and threaded quickly through the sea of tables, their white tablecloths looking like a broken-up ice floe. He sat down at Luke Dillon’s table, opposite him. The man looked up from the piece of blood-red steak he’d speared on his fork which had been poised to enter his mouth.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ He had a chain-smoker’s gravelled voice. Dillon had been born in Brooklyn, the scar near his right eye, a permanent reminder of some barroom brawl or other, was testament to the fact that he didn’t hail from the smartest side of town. His neighbourhood had been redwood-hard, and the Dillon family reckoned to be the knottiest part of this particular plank. His family had been dirt-poor, sodbusters who came over from Ireland over seventy years before, forced out of the country by the potato famine that killed a million. They say Luke Dillon’s family hadn’t eaten a potato since. But the two brothers, Luke and Carl, had made good, the origins of the original investment to set up Prima Motion Picture Company might have been acquired via dubious but never proven ways, but the venture had bought the Dillons a lucrative business and Hollywood respectability. They said the brothers still had all manner of people in their pockets, from police chiefs to politicians, and uncomfortably cosy connections with the Los Angeles underworld, but Hollywood can be very forgiving and blind, thought Mason, with the right amount of influence and money. Mainly money. The Dillons lived the high life in Mediterranean-style mansions up on Whitley Heights, on the hills overlooking Hollywood Boulevard. Some of the biggest stars in Hollywood lived there too.
‘I’m sorry to burst in on you like this, Mr Dillon,’ Mason began, unaware that trouble in the form of an irritated maitre d’ and two thickset heavies were massing behind him like a storm blowing in from the desert. ‘Hear me out, please. Just a couple of minutes, that’s all I ask.’
A meaty hand was slapped hard on his shoulder. ‘This man bothering you, Mr Dillon?’
‘I don’t take too kindly to being interrupted when I’m eating,’ said Dillon, putting down his fork and swiping his napkin across his mouth. Gold rings on his fat fingers caught the lights and appeared to spark like they were afire.
‘You’re a difficult man to pin down,’ Mason said. ‘This was the only way I could get to see you.’
‘You’ve seen me, now fuck off.’ He signalled with the tiniest of eye movements to the man behind Mason, and the grip on his shoulder tightened uncomfortably.
‘My name is Nick Mason,’ he said, trying to shrug the hand away.
‘Let’s not make a big fuss,’ said a harsh v
oice at his ear.
Dillon shrugged. ‘The pleasure is all yours,’ he said. He picked up his fork and raised the lump of meat to his mouth.
‘Dust of the Sahara…’ he said. ‘I’m the lead…’
Dillon raised a finger and Mason felt the hand slip away from his shoulder. ‘Dust of the Sahara,’ he echoed. ‘You know what you do if you get dog shit on your shoe, Mason? You wipe it off as soon as you can. Dust was shit on my shoe. You were part of that shit.’
‘You can’t blame me for the entire movie.’
‘I blame everyone concerned with the movie.’
‘But you don’t blame Frank Gibson…’
‘Look, you’ve got one minute to say what you gotta say, which by my standards is one more minute than I’d give other second-rate punks like you.’
‘Give me one more chance, Mr Dillon. Just the one. I could be good for you, with the right movie, the right script, the right producer and director. I could make you millions.’
Dillon rolled his eyes. ‘Sure you could. So now you’re telling me you know better than the people I got working for me; people I hired, people who know their job backwards. You’re an actor, Mason – no, wait, scratch that; you’re not even an actor. You’re a nobody. Except you’re worse than that; you’re a damn foreign nobody. You don’t look American, you don’t speak like an American, and if it hadn’t been for Frank Gibson owing Victor Wallace a favour from way-back-when, you wouldn’t have got a look-in at Prima. You’ve had your chance and blown it, end of story. Now fuck off back home to Europe where you belong and stop sucking off the American tit.’
‘I’ve got eight months left on my contract with Prima…’
‘No you don’t. You got nothing with Prima.’
‘I’ll sue Prima.’
The man grunted and managed to crack a wry smile. ‘Sure you will. Go ahead. You ain’t got a dime to scratch your ass with, and if you decide to sue I’ll even take your ass so you won’t have anything left to scratch.’
The two men grabbed Mason’s arms and yanked him out of his seat. ‘You’ll be sorry you ever said that to me, Dillon!’ he said. ‘Some day I’m going to be big and I’ll make you eat every last word!’ People looked up from their meals at the fuss. ‘I’m Rick Mason – remember that name!’
‘You ain’t ever going to be anybody in this town,’ said Dillon evenly. ‘Loud mouthing me like that is the worst thing you could have done. I’ll see to it that nobody will give you a job, ever.’ He looked up at one of the heavies. ‘The steak could do with tenderising,’ he said. The heavy nodded.
The men dragged Mason swiftly outside, then instead of throwing him out onto the sidewalk as he expected, they carried him further, down into a back alley where they proceeded to rough him up with steel-hard fists and rock-like leather boots. Job finished, they straightened their suits and left Mason on the floor coughing out blood.
He got shakily to his feet. He looked over his ripped tuxedo. ‘Ah, shit!’ he said, knowing there was no way he’d ever get the deposit back on it now.
* * * *
3
Betsy Bellamy
Victor Wallace was certain he had a heart condition, which his wife told him wasn’t possible given the fact she thought he didn’t have a heart. If he didn’t have one, he felt pretty sure he was close to getting one. His success – the meat on his table – depended upon the success of others. Finding the right material and hoping they’d perform, like a stable chooses its horses and its riders. Get it right and there was happiness; get it wrong and there was only misery. Truth was, he wasn’t sure what he had with Rick Mason. It was like looking at a thoroughbred that should, by rights, take on any challenger and win, but put him in the field and that potential just didn’t come to the fore. Yet he couldn’t give up on him. Something inside – gut instinct, maybe – told him Mason was a winner in the wings waiting to happen, waiting for the right race to prove himself. That’s why he couldn’t cut and run on the guy.
‘Maybe if you hadn’t gone and opened your big mouth at Dillon’s table I could have helped you!’ he said, ramming a cigar into his mouth and failing to locate a match in any of his pockets. ‘Not only are people closing their doors on me, Rick, they’re putting the bolts on them too. Rick Mason are two of the dirtiest words in Hollywood right now.’
‘He doesn’t own everyone,’ said Mason sullenly, looking out of the window at the brick wall. Just like the one he’d run into, he thought.
‘Well he owns plenty, believe me!’ he puffed energetically at the unlit cigar. ‘So what is it you expect me to do, huh? Walk on water?’
‘I need work, Victor. They took Lillian.’
‘Lillian?’
‘My automobile. I loved that automobile.’
‘Forget the automobile. What is it with you, Rick? You’ve got talent. You’re a nice guy…’
‘So wooden an actor that if anyone yelled “timber!” I’d fall over – that kind of talent?’
He waved it away. ‘Stop moping. I know guys who got called hammier than pork joints and they’re doing OK for themselves. Everyone’s a critic, Rick. Everyone can do better, even though they spend their time talking about it and never ever doing it. Never look at press cuttings. Big mistake. They said Lon Chaney would never make more than a hundred dollars a week and look at the man now. That’s critics for you. They know Jack shit. Me, I know talent when I see it and you’ve got talent. You ended up in the wrong production with a half-assed, two-bit studio, that’s all.’
‘Victor, you put me there, remember? You got me the contract.’
‘Better than nothing, damn it!’
Rick Mason shook his head. ‘Look, Victor, us bickering gets us nowhere. What am I going to do? Go back to the stage?’
‘You gotta let me think about this a while. What gets me is the way Prima has been cutting back on things lately. Doesn’t make sense. I know they’ve always struggled because they haven’t got the amount of cinemas other studios possess, they pay through the nose for distribution and they fall foul more than most of the bluenoses down at the National Board of Review. The Dillons would have you believe this last thing is evidence of their business being spiked, and there may be some truth in that. But the thing is, the Dillons have the dough. Their finances are healthy, they’ve got a hefty reserve and could easily stump up for bigger, better features if they had a mind. So why act the cheapskate? Talk is that they’re holding back for something big. The Dillons have got wind of something they want their hands on and they’re getting ready to bring the big-money guns to bear on whatever it is when the time is ripe.’
‘All good and well, Victor, but what about me? My own reserves are threadbare. A man’s got to eat.’
‘The Dillons might have their fair share of friends, but they’ve also got their fair share of people who hate their guts. Jealous people. People they’ve wronged. People who’d like to see them taken down a peg or two. They know that too.’
‘And that benefits me how?’
‘The way I figure it, there are those out there who might look kindly on the way you stood up to Dillon at the Palm Club. They might even take you on simply because it would be a snub to Prima, making a show as to how they’re not in the Dillon’s back pockets or afraid of them. It might even open doors that may have been slammed in my face before you landed the contract with Prima. But you gotta have patience and leave me to do my job. The best thing you can do is keep your nose clean for a while and I’ll see what I can do. I still have connections around here, though you’re not helping them any.’
Mason allowed himself a smile. ‘You’ve been good to me, Victor. I’ll never forget that.’
‘Good to you? You’re a commodity, Rick. If I thought you were a lame duck I’d dump you tomorrow. The only reason I’m sticking with you is there’s money for me in it eventually, when you finally come through.’
‘Yeah, sure you would, Victor,’ he said.
‘So what are you hanging around here for?�
� he asked, his cigar wagging up and down like a dog’s tail as he spoke. ‘I got work to do.’ He indicated a desk full of papers. ‘You’re not the only horse in my stable, you know.’
‘You couldn’t lend me a hundred bucks, could you? I’m all out.’
‘A hundred? Are you joking?’
‘I haven’t even got the fare back home, Victor…’
Wallace reached into his trouser pocket and took out a fat leather wallet. He peeled it open and pinched out a few crumpled notes. ‘There’s thirty. It’s all you’re getting so don’t go giving me those puppy eyes of yours; they may work on the dames but they sure as hell don’t do anything to me.’
Mason thought he’d better not push it so he gratefully accepted the loan. ‘I’ll pay you back,’ he promised.
‘You bet you will, Rick, with interest.’ He put a fist to his chest. ‘I’ve got a heart condition, you know that? And you ain’t helping it any. Now please clear off if you don’t want to kill me.’
Mason had to admit he was feeling a lot more positive after his meeting with Wallace; right up to the moment he saw his trunk at the bottom of the stone steps leading up to his apartment block. A couple of kids were sitting on it.
‘What are you doing with that?’ he yelled. ‘Get the hell off it!’
‘The guy inside told us you’d give us a quarter each for watching your trunk till you got back. Told us to make sure nobody made off with it,’ said one of the kids. He had a mean look in his eye. Penitentiary fodder in a few years time.
‘Scram!’ said Mason, pushing them off the lid of his trunk.
‘Where’s our money?’ the other kid snarled. He looked ten-years-old going on thirty, thought Mason, his companion’s cellmate in a few years time.
He relented and tossed them some money. The door opened and his landlord stood at the top of the steps, small, round, fat and bald and none too pleased. ‘I told you, Mason,’ he shouted. ‘No rent, no stay.’
SILENT (a psychological thriller, combining mystery, crime and suspense) Page 2