Stars Screaming

by John Kaye

  An empty bus slowly passed by, the headlights splashing their faces. Burk raised his hand; his fingers were coated with blood. He looked down: more blood ran down the girl’s thighs, spotting the white line in the center of the street. “I’m flowing,” she said, relieved. “That’s good. That means I’m not pregnant.”

  The song on the radio ended and they broke apart. The driver, a black man, was outside his car, leaning against the fender. He was dressed in loose-fitting white duck trousers that reminded Burk of pants worn by workers in a hospital. Perhaps he was an orderly or a male nurse, making ends meet as a part-time pimp.

  The black man said, “Thank the man for the dance.”

  The girl looked at Burk. A quick smile as she reached out and touched his arm. “Thanks.”

  “Ask him if he needs a ride some place.”

  “Do you need a lift?” Burk shook his head. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll see you around,” he said, and began walking north on Western. It began to drizzle, the long thin drops tickling his neck like a shower of pins. On the corner a bundle of newspapers sat underneath a streetlamp. Charles Manson was on the front page, wearing a fiend’s face. Burk crouched in the darkness and wiped his bloody hand across Manson’s coal-black eyes: two deliberate strokes that left an X as red as a curse.

  An Interlude: Catching Up with Max

  Max Rheingold’s prostate surgery took place in the spring of 1971. He spent six days in St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, where he received only two visitors, producer Jack Rose and actor Kenny Kendall.

  On the Sunday before he was released, Jack Rose offered Max the use of his cabana at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “Sit around the pool. Read, swim, take it easy,” Jack said. “Charge anything you want.”

  Because he was nearly broke and his house on Tigertail was on the brink of foreclosure, Max should have been enormously relieved by Jack’s generosity. Deep inside he was grateful, but there was also another part of him that felt Jack owed him this favor, and more. “I’ve been a stand-up friend,” Max told Kenny Kendall, when he came by a few minutes later, after visiting hours were over. “You know what I mean?”

  “Fuckin’-A.”

  “I remember when he was a nobody agent with a one-room office on Grower. Jack Rose, bullshit. In the old days he was Jake Rosenkrantz.

  Him and his brother Sheeny Saul grew up two blocks away from me on Mulberry Street. Both of them ran with Buggsy Siegel and Lou Dashowitz and the rest of the Jewish mob. Saul became a loan shark and a waterfront enforcer. Jake became Jack the Torch.”

  Kenny Kendall took a half pint of gin out of his pants. “Jack the Torch?”

  “He was an arsonist for the mob. Back in the thirties he did two years in Sing Sing and another two in Dannemora.”

  “He did time? You’re kidding me.”

  “That’s a fact. And when he got out the second time, he told Siegel he was tired of playing with matches. He said he wanted to come to California. The next day Meyer Lansky met him at Grand Central Station. Meyer gave him an envelope with ten grand inside, and off he went.”

  Kendall was staring out the window. “Now look at him,” he said. “That fucker’s rich as shit. His cabana, big deal. He could rent you a whole fuckin’ bungalow.” Jack Rose’s Jag was parked in a space by the main entrance. In the passenger seat was a voluptuous black woman wearing dark glasses in glittering gold frames and a bright green scarf. When Jack breezed outside, she took off her scarf and shook out her thick reddish hair. “Got himself some poontang, too.”

  “She’s a dancer on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” Max said. He sat up with a groan and pushed aside the curtain. “He always liked that dark stuff.”

  “Back home we called that splittin’ the black oak.”

  Max grunted a laugh, and a bell rang somewhere in the hospital. Seconds later a Chinese nurse walked swiftly into Max’s room. “No good to drink in hospital,” she said, frowning at Kendall while her fingers found the pulse in Max’s wrist. “Set bad example. Against rules. Please put away.”

  “In the navy we used to call that ‘slant-eye pie,’” Kendall said to Max, staring at the nurse without expression as he uncapped the bottle and raised it to his lips. “I got some of that myself.”

  The nurse checked Max’s blood pressure and entered the results in the chart that hung by a chain from the end of the bed. She was almost out the door when she stopped and turned around slowly and gave Kendall an inquisitive look, as if she were trying to see into the darkness of his mind. Several seconds passed. Then, in a quiet but savage voice, she said, “You no good. You no good at all.”

  * * *

  Beginning in June, when his strength and appetite began to return, Max started each morning with a brisk one-mile walk through Beverly Hills, followed by a plate of lox, bagels, and cream cheese at Nate and Al’s delicatessen on North Beverly Drive. Most of the time Max invited himself to sit with Mort Finkel and Stan Lapidus, two sketch writers for Danny Kaye that he knew back in the forties, when he was a producer at Monogram and they were one of several teams hacking out comedies for Ma and Pa Kettle.

  The week they were fired—the same week Stan’s wife gave birth to their first child—Max hired them to polish a screwball Western he was developing for Chill Wills and Ken Maynard. He paid them generously and under the table, a favor that Mort and Stan had never forgotten, making them inclined to be unfailingly pleasant whenever Max decided to squeeze into their booth.

  However, there were many people in this early morning crowd, including Max’s urologist, Artie Schlumberger, who were familiar with the darker side of Max’s past, and they would mutter disgustedly behind his back when he walked inside. Several were openly hostile.

  One morning comedian Jack Carter told him he was a “total piece of garbage,” and when Max stood up to challenge him, Buddy Hackett “accidentally” dumped a bowl of cream of wheat into his lap. This convulsed Phil Silvers and Milton Berle and the other comics at Buddy’s table, and Flip Wilson nearly spit out his French toast when Rich Little slid out of the booth and began a walk up and down the aisle with his legs splayed apart and his hands flapping at his sides, imitating Max’s distinctive waddle.

  The abuse stopped one Sunday morning after Max pulled out a loaded .45 and stuck it underneath Shecky Greene’s chin. “You’ve been insulting me for weeks,” Max said, his hand shaking as he clicked off the safety. “One more time and I’m gonna blow your fuckin’ head off.”

  Mildred, the silver-haired hostess, dialed the police, and Max was arrested ten minutes later, at the corner of Rodeo Drive and Little Santa Monica, calmly waiting for the light to change while he scratched his nuts and munched on a bagel slathered with lox and cream cheese. A week later the case was dropped when Shecky Greene refused to press charges. “Max is connected. Sinatra let Shecky know it was a bad idea,” Danny Kaye was overheard telling George Burns at the Hillcrest Country Club, and everyone nearby nodded knowingly.

  Because he was forbidden to patronize Nate and Al’s for one year, Max now ate his breakfast alone at the counter in the coffee shop downstairs in the hotel. The rest of the day he spent by the pool, wearing a Dodger baseball cap and a pair of droopy blue bathing trunks that extended to just below his knees. Unlike the other men his age, Max paid no attention to the sleek starlets who paraded around the deck in their skimpy bikinis. The girls that captured his eye, the ones who made his head feel light and his heart lurch, were the little girls splashing in the shallow end, the nine-and ten-year-olds, their skinny arms and legs made bubble-gum pink by the sun’s bright warmth.

  At least twice a day Max paged himself, and with a great sigh he would stand at the sound of his name over the intercom, ignoring the phone inside Jack Rose’s cabana and walking instead through the clots of sunbathers until he reached the white house phone next to the outside bar.

  “Max Rheingold,” he would growl into the receiver. Then, with the dial tone buzzing in his ear, he would lau
nch into a seamless but imaginary conversation with a superstar actor or a bankable director. “Yes, yes, Warren, I totally agree with you one hundred percent. The script needs work, of course, but I spoke to John Huston and assured him that Waldo’s rewrite would solve all our problems. Of course I understand your concerns, but what you must understand is that I would never have the name Max Rheingold associated with any project that was not distinguished.”

  This pathetic ruse to elevate himself in the Hollywood hierarchy never fooled anyone sitting poolside. But if Max noticed the eyes rolling or heard the embarrassed titters that followed him back to his chaise in front of Jack Rose’s cabana, you would never know it by the fresh light in his eyes and the triumphant smile on his face.

  PART THREE

  A VERY LONG WEEKEND

  Twelve

  Saturday: Burk Meets Max

  Rheingold walked into the coffee shop and took a seat at the counter, groaning loudly when he glanced over and saw Burk cutting into his pancakes.

  “Jesus, will you look at that plate. You know how long it’s been since I had pancakes?” Burk put down his fork and turned a little on his stool. “Twenty-six months. Over two years. No butter, eggs, coffee, alcohol, or red meat either. I brought my weight down from three-oh-seven to two thirty-two. I’m goin’ to heaven,” he said, and offered his hand.

  After Burk introduced himself, Rheingold slammed his fist on the counter.

  “Of course! Pledging My Love! Great script. Absolutely wonderful. I want to work with you, Ray. Anything you want to do: cop story, Western, romantic comedy, I don’t give a fuck. Let’s get in trouble together, let’s make a picture.”

  A confused look came into Burk’s eyes that Rheingold noticed. “I think you should talk to my agent,” Burk said.

  “Your agent?”

  “Her name is—”

  “Maria Selene! I know who your fucking agent is. What am I, some kind of a dipshit? Listen to me, kid,” Rheingold said, lowering his voice as he leaned across the counter. “I own the remake rights to thirty films. Pecos Outlaws, Peace in the Valley, Massacre at Dawn, just to name three. You ever see Careless Love?” Burk shook his head. “Dick Peterson, Delia Short, Kenny Kendall. Takes place at a dog track in Tucson. It’s got everything: murder, incest, adultery, dead animals, the works. It’d be a terrific vehicle for Beatty and Dunaway. Just needs someone to dress it up a little, modernize it. I’ll have Jack screen it for you.”

  “Jack?”

  “Jack Rose. He’s my partner,” Rheingold said, straight-faced. He took out a long cigar and slowly slid off the cellophane wrapper. “He had your script layin’ around his cabana. I read it and gave him my notes.”

  A waitress came out of the kitchen and glared at Rheingold. An Ace bandage ran from her calf to her knee. “Oh, that’s wonderful,” she said. “Now you’re gonna stink up the place.”

  Max smiled. “Calm down, Dotty.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down, Mr. Rheingold. I don’t need your advice, thank you very much. He bothering you?” she asked Burk.

  “No. Everything’s fine.”

  “If he bothers you, tell me.”

  “I will.”

  An elderly man in an expensive gray silk suit walked into the coffee shop. He glanced in Rheingold’s direction before he took a seat at the far end of the counter. “I’d like rye toast and a cup of tea,” he said to the waitress in an English accent.

  As soon as the waitress moved into the kitchen with the order, Rheingold slid over to the stool next to Burk. “We’re gonna work together, kid,” he said confidently, his fish eyes bulging out. “I can feel it.”

  Burk began to eat more avidly than he wanted. “Get back where you belong and let this one finish his breakfast,” the waitress told Rheingold when she came out of the kitchen. “Stop bein’ a pest. And you slow down,” she scolded Burk.

  Rheingold heaved his bulk over one stool and snapped open the LA Times. Manson’s picture on the front page made him sneer. “You see this piece of shit,” he said. “This prick and his hippie-slut followers were swimming in my pool a week before they killed Sharon Tate and that bunch. Swimming naked in my pool.” Down the counter the Englishman chuckled softly over the top of his teacup. “Something funny about that down there?” The Englishman scratched his ear and mumbled an apology. “Fuckin’ limey asshole.”

  “Max!” The waitress was pointing toward a wall phone. “One more remark like that and I call upstairs.”

  “This music guy rented the house next door to me,” Rheingold said to Burk, after he shrugged off the waitress. “He was a drummer in one of those English bands. Chocolate Jockstrap or something. I don’t know. But they were sex crazed, I can tell you that. And so were their groupies. I used to look out the window and see them bangin’ each other in broad daylight. In front of the fuckin’ help, for Christ’s sake.

  “One morning I saw Manson running around over there, chasing this cunt across the patio, whipping her back with a heavy belt until she fell and cracked her head on the bricks. He just left her there. I thought she was dead. Finally, she got up and staggered back into the house. A few minutes later the Jap gardener came into the backyard and hosed her blood into the pool.

  “A week or so later, the guy who rented the place moved out. The owner put it up for sale and drained the pool. That Sunday I was taking a snooze when I heard a bunch of screaming and laughing coming from my backyard. I look outside and I see Charlie and his girls splashing in my pool.

  “First I called the cops, then I got my loaded forty-five out of my dresser. When I came downstairs, Manson right away wants to apologize, offering me a joint, giving me all this peace and love bullshit. Then I noticed plates of food and empty bottles all over the lawn. How about this? They raided my fucking icebox and my liquor cabinet while I was sleeping. When I told him the cops were on their way over, Manson just grinned, showing not the tiniest bit of fear. He said, ‘That’s too bad, fat man. I thought we could party.’

  “One of his girls—Krenwinkle, I think—came over and started rubbin’ up against me like a cat in heat. Manson was watching and grinning this evil smile, giving the girl signals with his eyes. When she started to go down on me, I forgot I was holding the pistol, and Manson snatched it right out of my hand. I thought for sure he was gonna put a bullet in my head, but he didn’t; instead, he cocked the hammer and rested the barrel against this girl’s cheek while she continued to suck me off.

  “God knows how I kept a hard-on, but when I shot my wad she stood up and spit the whole deal in my pool. Then, while the rest of his crew got dressed, Manson found his wallet and took out a fifty-dollar bill. He said, ‘Thanks for the booze.’ I said, ‘Keep it,’ and he said, ‘No deal. I always pay my way.’ Then they all took off in a broken-down van that was parked at the end of my driveway.

  “In awhile the cops drove up and I told them it was a false alarm. A few months after Manson was arrested, I looked out my window and saw this woman running across my lawn, waving a pistol. By then, all the papers were talkin’ about Manson’s death list, all the people he planned to kill, so naturally I thought this broad was sent up to take me out.

  “As it turned out it was some dingbat psycho from Detroit, an escapee from a mental institution apparently looking to kill Hank Fonda, who lived across the street.”

  Burk rose with his check and Rheingold followed him over to the register. “Isn’t that an amazing story?” he said, smiling, prodding Burk in the side with his elbow. “And the whole thing is true. Every word.” Burk was making an intense effort not to smash his fist into Rheingold’s fat face. He received his change and moved into the hallway that led to the elevators and the main lobby. Beside him, Rheingold was saying, “Every nutball in the country ends up here, sooner or later. That’s why I love this town. Anything can happen.”

  Burk stopped in the middle of the lobby and stood in silence for a moment, glaring at Rheingold. Then, in a voice that was quiet but communicated his anger,
he said, “Stop following me.”

  Rheingold looked visibly hurt. Sputtering, he said, “Following you? I’m not following you. We’re having a conversation. But look, I’m sorry—”

  “Just leave me the fuck alone,” Burk said, stopping Rheingold before he could launch into an apology. “You got it?”

  Rheingold hesitated, waiting until he could lift one corner of his mouth into a smile. “Sure,” he said. “No problem. I don’t work with prima donnas, anyway.”

  The phone rang while Burk was shaving. When he picked up, Maria Selene sounded relieved. “I don’t believe it. It’s actually you.”

  “Hi, Maria.”

  “I’ve left umpteen messages.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Forget about me. Paramount’s paying you a thousand a week. You can’t just disappear for three days. They want to know where you are.”

  “I’m around.”

  “Did you get Talbott’s memo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not sure I want to change the scene with Eric and Barbara up on Mulholland.”

  “The rest?”

  “I can live with most of it. The scene inside the motel always needed work.”

  “I’ll get you another five grand.”

  “I don’t need to get paid, Maria.”

  “You write, they pay. That’s the deal,” Maria said. She sounded determined. “You already gave them a free set of revisions and a producer’s read.”

  “Do what you want. I’ll send down the pages.”

  There was a short silence. “From where?”

  “Berkeley.”

  “You’re leaving? When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “They want you here for the reunion. Warren said it was important. They really need you, Ray.”

  Burk moved to the window. Down below he saw a lazy-looking girl in a tennis outfit walk out of the hotel. She was no older than sixteen. Standing behind her, stroking her arms, was a slim, middle-aged man wearing a clean white T-shirt and pressed bell-bottom jeans that had sunflowers sewn into the back pockets. The couple got inside a blue Mercedes convertible that was waiting by the curb. When they pulled away, Burk said, “Let me think about it. Maybe I’ll stay over till Monday.”