Getting Garbo

by Jerry Ludwig

  I pause at Humphrey Bogart’s footprints. “Sid,” Bogie had etched in stone to Showman Grauman, “May You Never Die Till I Kill You.” What a weird thing to write. Bogie must’ve been drunk and trying to live up to his tough guy image: “Drop the gun, Louie!” But still weird, even as a joke.

  Bogie. Roy’s pal, Roy’s booster, Roy’s role model. Maybe Roy’s gone his teacher one better. Bogie gets into real life fights in saloons (so does Roy) and Bogie kills enemies in his make-believe life (and Roy…?). I turn my back on Bogie. There’s a blue-uniformed policeman leaning against his parked black-and-white cruiser, flirting with a pair of cute tourists in tight pedal-pushers, and I’m walking toward them.

  I could do it.

  I should do it.

  It’s too big a secret for me to carry around all by myself.

  I’m still just a kid.

  So why not do it?

  I could say, Excuse me, officer, can I talk to you for a minute? He’ll look a bit annoyed, because I’m distracting him from coming on to the teenagers, but I’d say, It’s very important, it has to do with a murder. That’d get his attention. Maybe I shouldn’t say murder, a killing is better. Or—a death. I’m approaching them now, only a couple more steps, the cop senses there’s something up with me, probably because I’m staring so hard at him, he’s laughing with the teeny-boppers but he’s looking me over. Go ahead, do it, unburden, it’s what a decent, law-abiding citizen ought to do. Roy may have a perfectly simple explanation for everything; this will give him the chance to clear himself, and then it won’t be on my conscience, one way or the other, so do it.

  “Hi, Officer,” I say.

  He gives me a half-salute, three-fingers up to the visor of his cap. Like a Boy Scout. I keep walking. Toward him. Past him. Down the boulevard.

  • • •

  Larry Edmunds Bookshop is on the boulevard, just a couple, three blocks east of Grauman’s Chinese. The Egyptian Theater is on the same side of the street, with its huge DeMille-style statues out front. Musso & Frank’s Restaurant, where all the old-time writers like Dashiell Hammett and F. Scott Fitzgerald used to hang out, is across the street. But it’s Larry Edmunds Bookshop that’s mecca for all the devout collectors and fans. If you want lobby posters, back copies of Modern Screen or Silver Screen, books about the movies or the stars, or 8x10 glossies, including portrait shots and production photos, then Larry Edmunds is the primo place. That’s why I tried them first about buying my autograph books, but no go. It’s a place with crammed shelves, cramped pathways between them; watch it, bobby-soxers from nearby Hollywood High are sitting on the creaky old wooden floors, lost in a reverie while they leaf through the wonderland of glamour and glitter.

  It reminds me a little of a seedy old bookstore in New York on Sixth Avenue near 42nd Street, where Tillie Lust, the sexpot of the Secret Six, first showed me the ropes. We didn’t do anything decorative with our crumb books, but for our real autograph books we’d find tiny head shots of the stars and paste them on the pages where they’d signed. Some head shots were easy to get hold of, because the actors were currently popular, but then there were others who were harder to locate and that’s where the Sixth Avenue Bookshop came in handy. The back issues of the magazines were a treasure trove. Of course, we never paid for anything, Tillie would chat up the store manager, her shoulders back, flaunting the nubile knockers beneath her fluffy pink angora sweater (with matching beret), while I sliced out the photos I needed with a razor-sharp Exacto knife that I bought after I joined the Secret Six.

  Now I’m hunkering down on the splintery floor in the back of Larry Edmunds store on Hollywood Boulevard, riffling through the bins of 8x10s for any new production photos that may have come in. I’m in luck, there’re several from Jack Havoc. It demonstrates the show is a hit, because they don’t stock much stuff from TV shows. I study the pictures, marveling at what a good actor Roy is, you can see it even in still photos—when he’s playing Jack Havoc there’s a whole other look to him. Devil-may-care, still good-humored, but often with a wild glint in his eye that I find irresistible. You never know what Jack Havoc might do, and I guess that’s what the audience likes, too. He might break the law, at least bend it pretty far out of shape, but always for a good reason and to help someone in need.

  I can’t decide which of the stills I want to buy; actually I want them all, so I think about that for a while, and it keeps me from thinking about Roy’s real life situation. Then I come to a decision and I get up and stroll nonchalantly up the cluttered aisle, stepping over a scruffy Brando T-shirted lookalike, hunkered down in the Acting Scenes For Auditions section. I pause up front to examine a new picture biography of Lana Turner, and then I wander out of the store onto Hollywood Boulevard. I start back toward the bus stop that brought me here, but I hardly go a step before a foot comes down on top of my foot, and I look up and see one of the Larry Edmunds clerks, a witch named Hazel (really), who always gives everybody a hard time over nothing.

  “Hi, Hazel,” I say. “You’re standing on me.”

  She’s just bug-eyed and gloaty, like Judith Anderson in Rebecca when she burned down the House of Manderley. I realize I’m clamped in place. And I also realize I’m in trouble when Hazel pats my back and pulls up the shirttails of my blouse and yanks out the Jack Havoc stills I have tucked back there.

  “Gotcha, you little thieving brat,” Hazel says. “Shoplifting snot!”

  “I was gonna pay for those,” I begin and I stop because it sounds lame even to me. Hazel is really tromping on my toes. I’ll have to leave this foot behind if I want to take off and I sure as hell want to. That’s when the car pulls up to the red zone in front of the store. It’s a police car, and the cop who gets out is the same one who was flirting with the girls at the Chinese Theater.

  I guess we were destined to talk after all.

  24

  Roy

  So here we are. Just a couple of guys. Lolling about the living room of my faux chateau on Coldwater Canyon. Maundering about murder. I’m sipping vodka straight. Straight from the bottle since I broke the seal. He’s creating a First Stage Smog Alert with his friggin’ frog cigarettes. We’re wrestling with the latest wrinkle in the situation.

  It seems I can’t recall her name.

  Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s Reva. But Reva what? I’m stumped. Stymied. I mean, how do you go about tracking down somebody without knowing their last name? Kessler? Chrysler? Foster. Fenster. Koster. Lester. Chisholm. Massey. Russert.

  Rumpelstiltskin is my name.

  “Not funny, Jack.”

  Then why am I laughing?

  “Because you’re an asshole.”

  And you’re a clown. He does Butterfly McQueen: Mercy me, Miz Scarlett. Ah just can’t seem to remember that lil’ ol’ name. Imagine that. And me, an actor, who gets paid for rememberin’ pages and pages of dialogue, entire plays, but this one word has just done gone with the wind.

  “So I’m blocked. It happens, you know.”

  Oh, I know. Don’t shuck a shucker, Roy Boy.

  “I think the expression is, Don’t kid a kidder.”

  You’re hoping it’ll all go away. By itself. So you can weasel out of your responsibilities.

  “I’m trying, Jack! Maybe you don’t think so—”

  I think you’d rather sit here and slaughter that bottle of vodka and then nod off, and while you’re asleep maybe the Good Fairy will wave her magic wand and all your troubles will disappear.

  “Fuck you.”

  Truth hurts, don’t it? He thinks that’s funny, too.

  Finally, to shut him up and prove that I do want to do something, we set out in the T-Bird. I take the vodka bottle along for company.

  Think like an autograph hound, he advises me. As if I need the advice. Where would she go on a night like this?

  We whiz past Romanoff’s. Check out both the Bev Hills and
Vine Street Brown Derbies. Stage doors at NBC and CBS. Sidle along the Strip. Ruth Olay is opening at the Crescendo. That’s a good bet. A singers’ singer. She draws a stellar crowd. Including a cluster of familiar-looking fans. Rushing at Jack Webb and Julie London on arrival. Fred MacMurray and June Haver. There’s Podolsky. But no Reva. We roll by the Hamburger Hamlet. I phoned Kim this afternoon. No answer. Left a message with her service, “Tell her I’m okay.” No call back yet. Can’t think about that now. Got bigger problems.

  By now the vodka is all gone. I run a red light at Doheny and Sunset. Get stopped by a motorbike cop. He recognizes me. Volunteers that he doesn’t like my show. At least Jack Havoc has the good sense to just sit there and keep his mouth shut. While I give my best performance of a shitfaced drunk acting stone sober. The cop still wants me to walk the line heel-to-toe and touch my nose with my eyes closed. But while we’re discussing it, his radio squawks. An armed robbery call. He takes off. Warning me to call it a night. Even Jack Havoc agrees with that.

  So I navigate home and fall into bed. Sleep the sleep of the totally bombed. The Good Fairy does not appear in my dreams. I have nightmares. Reva is in one of them. I run into her in a dark alley. She’s wearing the gold chain with the locket. The tell-tale locket that can be Exhibit A against me. We’re talking. Friendly and nice. Only thing is, she’s got a spike of glass jutting out of her chest. Just like Addie. It’s bleeding. Not gushing. More of a seeping stigmata. I’m too polite to mention it. She doesn’t seem to notice. Or care. I’m hoping she’ll just keel over. And die. Just like Addie.

  • • •

  I’m not alone when I wake up in the morning. There’s a row of vultures. Perched at the foot of my bed. Looking over at me. Licking their chops. But not quite ready to pounce. I know they’re just garbage inside my head, like Jack Havoc, but they’re still scary as hell. I shake my head, it makes me dizzy, but then the vultures are gone. Who says vodka gives you a smoother hangover? But at least it’s not a migraine.

  Getting dressed is a slow motion ordeal. Triphammers in my head. Hands aquiver. Fortunately my choice of wardrobe doesn’t require any deep thinking. Put on my best black suit. Not navy blue—gotta be black. Like Bogie’s joke. The Tailor and the Nuns. Pincus fuctus. Black necktie, white shirt, black socks, black lace-up shoes. Somber. Respectful. I’m reknotting my tie for the fifth time when the long black limo pulls into the driveway. Glance at the clock. They’re early. Nate Scanlon and his wife Laraine are picking me up. We’re going to Addie’s funeral together.

  There’s a knock on the door. Without waiting, Nate steams in. Alone. “I told Laraine to wait in the car.” He’s carrying a thin, rolled-up magazine in his hand. Waggles it aloft like Joe McCarthy waving his supposed list of 168 communists in the State Department. “Do you know a publication called The Town Tattler?”

  “Grady Braxton’s loony leaflet? I’ve seen it. Why? Is my name in there?”

  “Have you ever met Mr. Braxton?”

  “Never set eyes on him. But I know about him. Everybody does.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  So I tell him. Grady Braxton used to be a Hollywood flack, part of the militant corps of suppress agents at MGM. Braxton got fired for coming on too strong to a young starlet. Offered to swap publicity for sex. “I’ll get you in all the columns, if I can get my column in you.” She tape recorded the offer and played it for L.B. Mayer. No one else would hire him after that. So now Braxton has gone renegade, starting up The Town Tattler. “All The News Nobody Else Will Print.” A revenge sheet. Circulation is in the scant hundreds; nobody’ll admit to buying it. But it turns up on most of the sets around town. Teamsters and propmen off in corners, reading and snickering. No ads. Braxton can’t get any. Just wall-to-wall rant.

  “Nobody believes anything that dingaling writes,” I say.

  “How fortunate for us,” Nate says dryly.

  He hands me the skinny trumped-up trade paper. I unfurl it. I’m looking for the item that’s got Nate so steamed. I don’t have to look far. There’s a picture of me in the center of the front page. An oldie but a goodie. Roy the brawler, snarling drunkenly at a nasty photographer. Surrounded by a headline story:

  ROY THE BAD BOY LOSES HIS ‘BEST FRIEND’

  By Grady Braxton

  Did you catch the moment on the tube, kiddies? It was so moving. Roy-the-Bad-Boy Darnell, being interviewed outside the Hollywood Hills house where his almost-ex-wife, fashion maven Adrienne Ballard had just been found murdered. How do you feel about that, Roy?

  “She was my best friend.”

  Gulp. Golly.

  Guess Roy’s a better actor than we thought.

  Here’s the inside Tattler scoop on how things were between Roy the Destroyer and his “best friend.”

  Roy and Addie were involved in a knock down, drag out divorce that had left him without the proverbial pot. Particularly after he got dumped from his junky Jack Havoc TV show (don’t believe that stuff about how he jumped, Roy got pushed by someone with the initials Colonel JLW).

  Reason Addie got the whole kit and kaboodle was that she had the goods on Roy, a notorious boudoir bandit. And we are talking about red-hot, through-the-transom photos of Roy making acrobatic whoopee with a luscious hooker (Confidential magazine, please note). That’s spelled (porno)graphic.

  Wait. It gets better.

  Since he was caught with his britches down, romantic Roy Boy has gone public and continues to date the hooker—or did all of you folks at the Trapeze premiere think he was with a Park Avenue debutante?

  And did you hear about the catcalling set-to in the preem party parking lot between Addie and Roy over said hooker?

  Just to reassure you that it’s still our same ol’ Roy, he of the Terrible Temper, he greeted the subpoena server who presented him with divorce papers in front of Romanoff’s with a wildly off-target roundhouse punch. Then he caused such a ruckus at Adrienne’s salon that the security guard had to bum rush macho man Roy out onto the Rodeo Drive pavement. Which prompted Addie to change the locks at the salon—as well as at the house.

  Maybe she was your best friend, Roy. But you sure as hell weren’t her best friend.

  The cops insist that Quick-Fisted Roy isn’t a suspect in Addie’s slaying. That he’s got a rock-solid alibi. But could he have had a little help from his friends?

  Just asking.

  I look up from The Tattler. “Guy Saddler,” I say.

  “I assumed as much.”

  “So now we sue Saddler into oblivion, like you told him we would?”

  “Difficult. In fact, impossible. The article makes no mention of Mr. Saddler. If we try to question the writer, he’ll undoubtedly stand on his First Amendment rights as a journalist and gallantly refuse to name his source—I get the sense that this Mr. Braxton would love to be a public martyr.”

  “And if a judge clapped him in jail for contempt, Braxton could save on his rent.” I like that idea. “How about we sue Braxton instead?”

  “I’ve checked and his resources are nonexistent. He publishes this weekly opus out of a tiny apartment on North Fuller Avenue in West Hollywood. His pulldown Murphy bed is his desk and his office. Besides, if we sue him—he might win.”

  “Come again?”

  “The truth is an absolute defense. That’s a principle of law. And basically, apart from the cheap shots and snide innuendoes—”

  “That I hired hitmen to go after Addie!”

  “Braxton only speculated on that point. But the essential facts of the story are correct, aren’t they?”

  Suddenly I’m in the witness box and my lawyer is prosecuting.

  “Basically…yes.”

  “Including the reference to your socializing with the woman who was paid by Addie to entrap you.”

  “He didn’t say that, he—”

  “Of course, he didn’t! Mr. Sad
dler conveniently omitted that fact. Not as a courtesy to you. To keep Addie looking like an angelic victim. But have you been dating that woman?”

  I feel my face getting red. “Well, sorta, yes…”

  Nate shakes his head. I’ve disappointed him. “Why on earth would you do that?”

  I shrug again. Big on shrugs today. “Man-woman stuff,” I mumble. “Hard to explain. But I’m not seeing her anymore,” I quickly add.

  Okay, I know I’m taking credit here for something I’m not entitled to. Kim dropped me. But I’m getting scared. I lost a good agent because I cut him out of the loop. Am I about to lose a terrific lawyer for the same reason?

  “Guess I should’ve told you...are you pissed, Nate?”

  “A lawyer assumes that his client will withhold a certain amount of information. For whatever reason. But we always find out…sooner or later.”

  I’ve been chastised. I pluck my forelock and mutter abject apologies. And I’m granted forgiveness. I’m not being dumped. Good, because I need Nate as my ally. But, oh, Nate, if you had any idea what I’m holding back from you. Kim’s just the tip of the iceberg. I hold up the copy of The Tattler.

  “Then what do we do about this?”

  “Let’s hope that your first reaction was correct—that apart from salacious amusement, no one believes anything Braxton writes.”

  Turns out I’m totally wrong about that.

  • • •

  Al Jolson is waiting to greet us. Up on a raised podium. A bronze figure. Looks like the ol’ minstrel man himself, dipped in chocolate syrup, crouched on one knee, arms outspread. Can’t you just hear him bellowing his trademark promise? “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” Strange claim for a cemetery. But here we are. At Jolson’s final resting place.