Getting Garbo

by Jerry Ludwig

  “Know what Oscar said just before you rang the bell?” she asks. “That he’s not allowed to watch Dinah Shore’s TV show because he has diabetes.”

  We both laugh. Levant always tickled us. Something in common. A taste for nasty-funny. This is starting off nicely. She’s at the sink behind the bar, pouring water in a tall vase for the flowers. I’m grappling with the cork on the champagne bottle, wondering how to gracefully get the conversation around to the subject of money. My money.

  “Strip the tinsel off Hollywood,” Oscar is telling his studio audience, “and you’ll find the real tinsel underneath.”

  “Amen,” I intone. “Guess you heard I ran into Guy at the supermarket. We had quite a chat—” The cork fires off like a rifle shot. Addie jumps with fright. Almost drops the vase.

  “Silly. I don’t know why I still do that.”

  “Always takes you by surprise.” I pour champagne into the tapered flutes we bought in Majorca. “So we’re drinking to…”

  “…our first love cottage.”

  “My fourth floor walkup…”

  “…shared by half the cockroaches in mid-Manhattan. Funny the things you miss.”

  She clinks glasses with me. We sip. Was she crying about that before I came? Nostalgia for the old days? This may be easier than I’d hoped.

  Addie flops down on the deerskin couch that cost me a fortune. Coquettishly tucks her bare feet beneath her. Gestures for me to sit near her—but not too near. On the club chair that used to be my TV-watching spot. I put the champagne bottle on the bulky glass coffee table, so we both can get at it. That’s the ticket. Good wine and lots of it. She tends to get girlish after the first couple of drinks.

  “I could never have a mistress,” Oscar Levant is saying, “because I couldn’t bear to tell the story of my life all over again…”

  Thanks a whole lot, Oscar, you had to remind her?

  “And how’s your new little friend?”

  “Who? Oh, Kim. Fine, I suppose. I don’t know. That’s over.’’

  Addie smiles. Like Gale Sondergaard as the Spider Woman. “Well, easy come, easy go. And the lady definitely was easy—right?”

  I shrug. Let it go. Finish off my champagne, reach for the bottle. Start to pour myself more. She holds out her glass, too. Glad to oblige. I fill hers again. To the brim.

  “I’m moving back to New York,” I say. “Blowin’ this burg.” Giving it a gangster reading.

  She smiles. “Roy, maybe it’s a good thing you’re not going to play Jack Havoc anymore. Honestly, I think you were getting confused sometimes as to who’s who.” She sips the wine. “Guy didn’t mention you were leaving.”

  “Just decided. Things aren’t working out for me here.”

  “Guy told me.” She looks concerned.

  “So I wanted to talk to you about—”

  She interrupts. “Guy has a vile mouth sometimes.”

  “Tell me about it. He said the two of you were tap dancing while you made up an invitation list for my funeral. Unquote.”

  “Lying old queen! I’d never take joy from your troubles.”

  I’m tempted to remind her about the curse she placed on my brow. But things are going so well. “Guy mentioned the great stuff coming up with the store—or should I say, stores. He said you’re going national and—”

  She reaches out and covers my hand with hers. “Roy, I know we’ve exchanged some pretty harsh words lately, but I’ve been thinking. We were together a long time…”

  I squeeze her hand. “A lot of good times,” I agree. “That’s why I knew, if we could sit down and discuss things, calmly and fairly…”

  “Yes, fairly, like…like old best friends...” She squeezes my hand back.

  I can’t believe it. I’m in like Flynn.

  “And I know,” she says, “that despite everything that’s happened, because of all we’ve meant to each other, and because you were there every step of the way and you saw how terribly hard I’ve worked, so I know that you’d never do anything to harm me.”

  What the hell’s she talking about? I’m not here to hurt her, I’m here to beg for crumbs. Crumbs she’ll never even miss. Royalties that I worked hard for. She mistakes my confusion for hesitation.

  “Promise me, Roy, promise you won’t do anything…foolish.”

  “Like what?”

  She drains her champagne glass. Nervous smile. “Oh, I don’t know. Guy is such a gabby old twit. Gossip he might have babbled to you about off-shore bank accounts—he’s always making up stories and then believes them himself.” She pours herself some more champagne.

  It comes to me in a flash. Why she’s been crying, why she’s being so unexpectedly nice. And who’s really conning who around here.

  “You’re worried that I might drop a nickel on you. With the IRS or someone.”

  Her latest glass of champagne is at her lips. But she quivers as if I’ve physically shaken her. Wine spills down her chin and onto her chest. She stares at me.

  “That could spoil your whole day, couldn’t it, Addie? Not to mention scaring away your big investors.”

  “I knew that’s why you came here tonight! To shake me down. You cocksucker!”

  She hurls her glass at my face. I block it with my hands. The glass careens off me and smashes into the mirror behind the bar. I stare at it in amazement; she’s really out of control tonight, busting up her own property. I look back just in time to see her coming at me. The champagne bottle raised high, she’s swinging it at my head like a battle club. I manage to duck under the bottle and butt my head into her belly. Ooof! Wind’s knocked out of her. It’s like a shtick out of an old Fredric March–Carole Lombard comedy. Girl tries to clobber Boy, but Girl never manages to lay a glove on Boy. I feel a giggle bubbling up inside me. Until I see her stumble and fall headlong onto the coffee table. It collapses like a movie prop. A jumble of shattered glass. She’s on her face. Not moving a muscle. Then I see the pool of blood seeping out beneath her.

  I know she’s dead. Even before I kneel and turn her over. Her eyes are still wide open. Unblinking and unseeing. I look deep into them and see my life ending with hers. There’s a stiletto-like shard of glass sticking out of her chest.

  “And they say that Shakespeare stole his plays from Christopher Marlowe,” Oscar Levant is prattling, “and then murdered Marlowe when he complained. That’s my idea of a true artist.”

  I reach out to feel for the pulse beneath her chin. The way the tech advisor taught me for the show. No pulse.

  Careful now, Jack Havoc says. Watch what you touch, got to think about fingerprints.

  “Where’d you come from?”

  Been with you all along. I didn’t say anything ’cuz you were doing great all by yourself.

  “You make it sound like I came here to…”

  Didn’t you?

  “It was an accident. You saw it!”

  Hey, you know what Freud says. There are no accidents.

  “But it was! I didn’t have the slightest idea in my mind of—”

  Okay, okay, if you say so, then I believe you. Sly smile. But you’re gonna have a helluva time convincing anyone else. Roy the Bad Boy, whose hobby is punching out people.

  “Maybe I ought to call an ambulance. They still might be able to revive her—” I reach for the phone. But it’s as if an invisible hand grabs my wrist. Stopping me.

  You don’t want to do that, pal. If Lady Luck dealt you the winning cards, just say thank you and cash in all the chips.

  “You mean, just walk away?”

  Like you were never here tonight. Who’s to know?

  “Yeah.” I’m wiping my prints off the champagne bottle. “I’ll wash up my glass, put it away. They find her, everybody’ll assume she drank too much and fell down. Got jabbed by the broken glass, bled out, did it all by herself. That
way they won’t even be looking for anyone else.”

  Won’t fly, amigo.

  “Why the fuck not?”

  Because of that. He points at the mirror behind the bar, where the champagne glass she hurled hit. The mirror is shattered. Better stick with the original plan. A burglary that went sour.

  “Yeah, but—what about the alibi?”

  C’mon, kid, you already got that base covered. You were at the movies. Now hurry up.

  I trash the den a little to make it clear there was a scuffle. Don’t have to worry too much about wiping off fingerprints. I used to live here. I get a screwdriver from a kitchen drawer, go into the backyard, close the door, and pry it open. Put the screwdriver back. Race into the bedroom, grab a pillowcase. Yank open bureau drawers, mess up the contents, dump the baubles and bangles from her jewel box into the pillowcase. Mostly junk jewelry. She generally keeps the good stuff in the bank vault. I see a relic of the past. My first gift to her. A gold-plated locket. Inscribed “For Addie, Love Forever. From Roy.” With a three-for-a-dollar photo of us inside. Junk jewelry. I toss it in with the rest, heft the pillow case. Ready to go. Starting for the front door.

  Jack Havoc calls me back.

  Forgetting something, aren’t you, boychik?

  I can’t think what. Look around. Frantically. Checking my watch. Gotta get back to the theater. “Don’t play guessing games with me, Jack. If you know, tell me!”

  The earrings, he says. No self-respecting burglar is gonna leave them behind.

  He’s right. I rush back into the den. As I take the earrings her eyes are still staring up at me. “What big eyes you have,” I whisper.

  • • •

  I don’t have much time. A Star Is Born probably runs just under two hours. Most of the big pictures of that era did. No time to detour to the Santa Monica pier to dump the contents of the pillowcase into the ocean and still get back to the Academy before the end of the movie. Just sling that crap on the floor of the T-Bird’s back seat. Get rid of it later. And burn rubber now. Of course, I catch every goddamn red light along the way. When I reach Melrose and Doheny, my parking space on the street is long gone. I spend the next ten minutes circling the area, not finding another space. I’m tempted to go into the Carl’s Market lot. But it’s so well lit I’m afraid someone will spot me getting out of the car. It’s imperative that no one is able to say that I wasn’t inside the theater for the entire show. I explode with frustration.

  Pounding on the wheel won’t help, Jack Havoc says.

  “Who asked you?”

  Don’t panic. Go around once more. C’mon. I feel lucky.

  “Sure, sure, that’s what you said before, but it didn’t—” There it is. My space. About to happen. A Nash Rambler just pulling out. On Doheny. Down the block from where I parked earlier. Next to a leafy tree. Providing good, deep shadows.

  See pal, gotta have faith.

  I zoom into the parking spot. Hop out of the T-Bird. Got to get there before the show’s over. I walk rapidly, forcing myself not to run. Don’t want to draw attention. Skulk up an alley onto Melrose, cross the street. I’ve already figured my best vantage point: in the dark doorway of the veterinarian’s office facing the theater. I get in position. Take a deep breath. Theater parking lot is still full, so the show must still be on. Then I panic. I left the car unlocked, with a back seat full of incriminating evidence. Got to go back!

  Right then the front doors of the theater open. Happy Academy members and their guests come streaming out. Overflowing the sidewalk, bodies moving in every direction. Can’t go back to the car, hell, stuff’s on the floor, who’s going to notice anyway. I stroll across to the front of the theater. Blowing my nose in my handkerchief to conceal my face, until I’m on the curb. Then I look around at the crowd. Standing tall. See and be seen. Looking for a friendly face. There’s one. The ideal one.

  William Wellman, the director of A Star Is Born. Ramrod straight as the Lafayette Escadrille fighter pilot he was during World War I. He’s surrounded by back slappers. Accepting congratulations for a movie he made a generation ago. I elbow my way through to him. We’ve played doubles together at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club and beat all comers.

  “Wild Bill,” I yell, “you’ve done it again!” Using the classic sneak preview critique.

  “There he is—the best netman in town!”

  We hug, we kibbitz. Swirl of well-wishers around us. Autograph collectors moving in to snap photos. Great! Proof positive that I’m here. I catch a glimpse of Reva among them. I wink at her, she smiles back. I invite Wellman for a drink and we stroll to Dan Tana’s bar a block away. My alibi’s getting better and better. We hoist a few. I tell Wellman a little about my travails with Jack Warner. He’s sympathetic.

  “Been there myself,” he says. That’s why A Star Is Born was so important to him. “Salary I collected for writing and directing, that was my Fuck You Money.” He defines that as “sufficient funds so that the assholes can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. Gotta have that, Roy,” he counsels.

  Maybe I do. Now.

  • • •

  When I get back to my T-Bird, it’s almost midnight. But I’m pretty sure that Addie won’t be found before tomorrow morning. At the earliest. I yank the car door open, look in back, and—okay, the pillowcase is still there. But some of the contents are strewn onto the floor. Probably jostled loose in transit. I climb into the car, slam the door and turn around. Start to scoop the loose items back into the pillowcase. When I notice something on the floor among the pieces of jewelry.

  A bright green jujube.

  The kind of candy I haven’t eaten in years.

  Until tonight.

  When Reva offered me some of hers.

  • • •

  The Safeway market on Beverly Drive at Olympic is closed for the night. Parking lot deserted. I drive around to the loading area and stop, can’t be seen here from the street. Turn off the motor. Try to control my mounting sense of fear. I bring the pillowcase up front. Spill the stuff onto the passenger’s seat. Stir it around. Don’t know what I’m looking for. But in a moment, an idea occurs to me. A terrifying idea. I poke among Addie’s trinkets and find one of her diamond earrings. Poke some more…more and more frantically…but…

  The other one’s not here, Jack Havoc says.

  “Yes it is!” I tell him. Showing it to him triumphantly.

  Okay, he says grudgingly, but, hey, where’s the locket?

  Heart pounding. I grope through the trinkets again. But I can see he’s right. The locket’s gone. “For Addie, Love Forever. From Roy.”

  She took it. Like when she’s swiped butts from your car’s ashtray.

  “But she’s never taken anything valuable.”

  Didn’t tonight either. Just a cheap little locket.

  I don’t say anything. Resisting what he wants me to say. But he won’t let it go.

  Reva found the locket here in the car. She saw the rest of the jewelry.

  He waits. I still don’t say anything.

  She knows you moved the car. Knows you went away and came back. So she can destroy your alibi. He’s examining the jujube. And with the locket to back her up, they’d believe her.

  “Yes.” Have to admit that much.

  She can put you in the gas chamber, Roy. Don’t let her do that.

  “I’ll—I’ll take care of it!”

  How?

  “I’ll get the locket back.”

  That’s only half the job. He reads my mind. You don’t have any choice.

  “I know,” I say. Poor Reva.

  Part Two

  “I have a little shadow

  That goes in and out with me,

  And what can be the use of it

  Is more than I can see.”

  —Robert Louis Stevenson

  21<
br />
  Reva

  Almost all the lights are dark inside the other apartments in our building as I climb the steps to the second-floor landing. The neighbors are mostly blue-collar folks who turn in early, but I see a light flickering behind the closed blinds in our living room. Gotta be the TV set, so that means Mother is inside waiting for me, but the question is whether she’s awake or asleep in front of the tube.

  I hope for the best and carefully unlock the front door and slip quietly into the quasi-gloom. Mother is on the sofa, stretched out facing the TV, her head propped up on a pillow, snoring softly. She’s wearing her ancient green robe and her feet are bare. Her hands are clasped in the prayer position and tucked under her cheek. She looks defenseless and benign, almost like a little girl.

  A black and white Abbott and Costello comedy is on TV and it’s the middle of the movie so I know Mother has been in dreamland a while, because she hates Abbott and Costello and would have turned it off if she was up when it started. It’s a picture I like, the one set in the Arabian desert, and the part I like best is when pudgy little Costello is locked up in a jail cell with this huge hairy guy, who starts out super-friendly because he’s been alone in jail so long he’s starved for companionship. Costello asks him why he’s in here, and the guy tells his story, real pleasantly, but whenever he comes to the word “Constantinople,” the hairy guy flips out and goes after Costello. “Slowly I turned, step by step, I knew what I had to do…” and he grabs Costello and shakes him and chokes him until Costello calms him down, and the guy goes on with his story, and Costello tries at all costs to avoid the word “Constantinople,” but, of course, it keeps coming up, “Slowly I turned, step by step…”

  Guess in a way that’s the story of me and my Mother. Only I’ve never figured out what the trigger word is. I mean, it could be anything or nothing. But like Costello with the “Constantinople” guy, I know what I have to do: put Mother to bed. If I just leave her snoozing out here all night, she’ll wake up with a crick in her neck and that’ll be my fault. Thing is when I move her, she may be a purring pussycat or a clawing cougar, it could go either way.