Blacklist

by Jerry Ludwig

I think they’re both crazy. This is some weird dance they do and the steps were designed long ago.

  “Okay, okay,” Leo gasps at last, “whoever had that dumb idea, change it back.”

  “Time for a drink?” Keeler says.

  “Time for a coupla drinks,” Leo agrees. “It’s been a bitch of a day.”

  * * *

  After sipping Glenlivet scotch in Leo’s studio bungalow, and listening to Leo and Keeler match funny stories about the old days, we’re walking to our cars. All the anger seems to be forgotten. It’s Friday night, so the studio streets are deserted until Monday. Leo likes to park his Mercedes on the Western street only a few short blocks from the cutting rooms. Usually in front of the cowboy saloon set. Keeler and I keep going to the unpaved lot out in the boonies. But Keeler’s car is in the shop today, and I’ve volunteered to drop him off at his house so he doesn’t have to call a taxi.

  So we’re driving through the night streets in my car, a canary-yellow clunker with a zillion miles on it that I bought dirt cheap from a used car lot in Culver City. Keeler lives in the Echo Park area west of downtown L.A. Sleepy narrow avenues with clapboard houses where the Hollywood people first settled.

  “You ever think of directing a movie?” I ask Keeler.

  “Came real close once. Leo had a script we both liked but he didn’t want to direct, so he convinced the studio boss at the time to give me a shot. In fact, he agreed to guarantee my work—if anything went wrong, he’d take over and do the job for scale, which was what they were going to pay me.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Your pal McKenna—” I’ve told him about my adventures with the FBI “—he showed up in my cutting room and handed me a subpoena. I went before the Committee and refused to give names.”

  “You were Blacklisted?”

  “Gray listed, black listed, white listed, I’ve done it all.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, the gray list is before you’re subpoenaed but you’ve been active in union politics and got a reputation as a Progressive, so some people are leery of hiring you. When HUAC calls and you take the Fifth, then it’s real clear: you automatically make the Blacklist and the studio doors slam shut—my directing deal went up in smoke, and even with three Oscar nominations I couldn’t get work as a fourth assistant film cutter. But all my friends were proud of me.

  “And I had a new friend. McKenna. He’d call every month or so to find out how I was doing. That meant, ‘Have you changed your mind and will you cooperate now?’ So it was never closed—you had to be brave all over again every month.”

  That horrifies me. I’m filled with new loathing for McKenna. Then I realize Keeler has left out a part.

  “But—what’s the white list?”

  “That’s the real special one. Sure you want to hear about that?”

  “If you want to tell me.”

  “Why not? Part of a bright lad’s education. After I made the Blacklist, the only job I could get was a floorwalker in men’s clothing at Bullock’s Downtown, minimum wage, no commissions, no health benefits, and Nora, my wife, she’s gone now, but when she got really sick and we were drowning in doctor bills, here’s McKenna stopping by the store, just to buy some socks, he says, and asks, how’s it going? And so, feeling desperate, the next week I testified again and gave HUAC some names and figured then I’d be able to go back to work in the industry. Pay for the fancy medicines Nora needed. That’s what I sold out for.” He looks haunted.

  “But there was a joker. I found out that now I’d made the white list—all the Leftie friends who’d been so proud of me before now wouldn’t talk to me, and to the assholes on the Right I was this scuzzy ex-Commie, so nobody would touch me. Only Leo. He put me back to work. Pushed it through over the studio’s objections.”

  I’ve pulled up at Keeler’s Spanish-style cottage. As he says “Thanks for the ride” and climbs out of the car, I call after him. “Hey, Keeler. That’s the first good story I’ve heard about Leo lately.”

  He leans down to watch my face. “It was the least he could do. After all, Leo originally recruited me to join the Party—and then the reason I was Blacklisted was because Leo named me.” Keeler gives me a wry smile. “Can’t tell the players without a scorecard, can you, kid?”

  He walks off toward his front door, while I white-knuckle clench the steering wheel so hard I think I might break it off. Leo, you asshole!

  CHAPTER

  16

  DAVID

  After I leave Keeler I drive aimlessly through the night streets. I’m infuriated at the gut-wrenching journey Leo has inflicted on Keeler. Your patron, your betrayer, your redeemer. The man who ruined your family life has tossed you a bone and the price is an option on your soul. How much stress does it take to blow the circuits in your head? No wonder Keeler acts like a madman sometimes around Leo. How does he keep from killing him?

  I’m flooded with trembling rage—for Keeler, for the crew that Leo abuses, for myself! Stopped at a red light, I pound the steering wheel viciously, wishing it was Leo. A cruel self-serving manipulating lying monster. Because he pats me on the head now and then I’ve started to like him again. But isn’t he using me the same way as he does Keeler? Another of his victims he can publicly save? Am I just so desperate to find a surrogate father that I’m willing to lull my soul into submission? I wish to God I could talk to Teddy. If I concentrate hard enough, I can hear his voice.

  * * *

  “C’mon, pal, can’t just laze away your whole life,” he said in Paris.

  When I got back from Korea, Teddy took one look at me and commenced to kick my ass. Despite my long hospital stay in Tokyo, all I felt capable of doing was sitting and staring. But Teddy got right on my case. Pretending he badly needed my help as a writer again. Little by little I came out of my funk and began to function again.

  Teddy had become part of the Paris scene. Debonair in a beret and his jacket over his shoulders without hands in the sleeves, a bon vivant known at the hep sidewalk cafés on the Left Bank near the seedy but charming little apartment he rented. Money was easier because he’d built a black market reputation for “delivering quality merchandise at bargain basement prices,” he’d boom with laughter. Teddy still had serious problems, but he hid them from me. His French visa had long since lapsed, still no passport, and now the authorities in Paris had tracked him down. The first I knew about any of it was one afternoon when we were shaping a plot line for a romantic comedy. “I have an appointment,” he said. “C’mon along and we’ll keep working.”

  We went to one of the imitation Greek Temples overlooking the Seine that house the hordes of French bureaucrats. After he registered at the front desk, we sat on a bench in a corridor, spinning our story.

  “Suppose the leading man is a jewel thief who’s just been released from the Bastille and he orders a big meal in a bistro, but discovers he can’t pay for it because,” Teddy said, “because—”

  “—because,” I jumped in, “he discovers that his wallet’s just been stolen.” That’s when Teddy’s name was called.

  We entered a small, tidy office. The dour old French clerk in a musty three-piece suit barely looked up from the file he was perusing. Waved us into chairs in front of his desk and began to drone. In a moment I understood: this could be Teddy’s last gasp. He had filed the necessary papers to apply for political asylum. Now the aged official shook his head, told him his request had been rejected.

  Teddy was rocked. If you didn’t know him, you couldn’t read that, but I could. End of the road. But the old guy hadn’t dismissed us yet. He kept leafing through the file. I had no idea why the French government had a file on Teddy, until the man asked, “You were in the war, Monsieur Weaver?”

  Teddy nodded.

  The white-haired clerk now studied one particular sheet of paper. “And you were present during the liberation of Paris?” Teddy nodded again. “You were wounded then?”

  Teddy shrugged. “A lot
of people got shot that day.”

  Then the man haltingly translated a few paragraphs about a firefight near the Pere Lachaise Cemetery that day in 1944. Theodore Weaver was identified as one of the U.S. soldiers who saved the lives of two Maquis resistance fighters.

  “One of those was the nephew of General Leclerc,” the Frenchman mentioned. Teddy had never known that. The old bureaucrat ceremoniously brought out an ink pad and an official stamp. He slammed the stamp onto a booklet and handed Teddy an identity card granting him status as a permanent resident of France.

  We strutted out of that office and when we were far enough away, Teddy stage-whispered to me, “Nepotism. Works every time.”

  Then he picked right up on the story we’d been working on. “Hey, suppose the jewel thief used to be in the Maquis, so even though he’s a shady character we’re rooting for him, and he finds out the person who picked his pocket is the girl he thought was lost to him forever.…”

  I was so stoked. “Suppose her name is Jana.”

  He looked over at me with a smile. “Jana it is.”

  * * *

  Jana. That’s who I want to talk to more than anyone else. But I can’t talk to Jana. Worse than the snubs, lately I’ve occasionally caught a flash of something in her eyes when she sees me. Fear. She’s scared of me. Scared, I guess, that I’ll start spouting at her again. But if I could talk to her, the way we used to, maybe I could make sense out of how I’m feeling.

  I’m driving past the shuttered car agencies along Santa Monica Boulevard. Up ahead, I spot Dolores coffee shop, always open; okay, I’ll stop for a cup of coffee. But as I’m parking I look down the street and notice the marquee of the Nuart Theater, a revival house. Colored lights and a fluttering banner announce MIDNITE SHOW TONITE! It’s a prewar comedy written by Weaver & Vardian.

  I glance at my watch: it’s 12:10. I’ve missed the opening credits and maybe the first couple of scenes, but I know the picture almost by heart. It seems like just where I’m supposed to be.

  * * *

  The title tells it all: The Chauffeur and the Debutante. The idea is that the Mob is after a high-rolling New York gambler (played by John Garfield) for not paying his losing bets. He hides out by taking a job as the chauffeur for a swanky Park Avenue family.

  I’m just in time to see the signature scene: Garfield, for the first time wearing the liveried “monkey suit,” is about to drive Alexis Smith, the socialite daughter, in her limo. He’s a guy who’s never opened a door for a woman in his life, so he just climbs into the driver’s seat. Alexis Smith stands pat at the rear door, tapping her toe. Garfield looks puzzled, then grins as he seems to understand. Without getting out, he leans behind him for the handle and throws the rear door open. “Hop in, honey,” he says, and the audience laughs. They did then, and they do now.

  Not that there are many people here. Maybe twenty-five scattered around the dark theater, but you can tell they’re enjoying the movie. At least at first, but after a while there are only two of us still cackling at all the jokes. Me and someone else on the other side of the theater. I wonder if that’s because the picture’s dated or if the rest of the movie buffs have fallen asleep.

  The picture climaxes with a chase that winds up in a pastry shop where Garfield and Alexis are fighting off the Baddies, who are trying to kidnap her for ransom, and everybody starts flinging whipped cream pies. The conceit is that while the Heavies and the whole shop are soon covered in whipped cream, Garfield and Alexis, by bobbing and ducking, remain spotless until the cops arrive, and then Garfield catches one in the kisser. Alexis wipes the whipped cream off his face and kisses him. Fade out. The End.

  There’s only the sound of four hands clapping when the house lights come up. By then I know who it is. I can’t see her at first, because other patrons are yawning and stretching as they rise. But then I spot Jana walking up the far aisle. Alone. She’s not looking my way, so I don’t know if she’s seen me. I pick up my pace so that we reach the lobby at the same time. She’s wearing Kate Hepburn tan slacks and penny loafers and a green sweater. She looks over in surprise. Not welcome surprise.

  “Hey, what’re you doin’ here?” She plasters on a big nervous smile.

  “Just passing by, needed a few laughs, so—”

  She cuts me off. “Listen, I gotta go!”

  She’s ducking me again. Like at the studio. She darts into the ladies’ room. Am I supposed to wait? I could use a pit stop myself, but if I do she may come out and assume I’ve left, so I stay in the lobby and pretend to study the old movie posters and hope for the best.

  “Sorry,” she says, emerging from the john, “you were saying?”

  “Nothing special, just—feel like getting some coffee?”

  Only a flicker of hesitation before she nods. “Okay, but—no cream pie for me.”

  We both chuckle a little more than the joke is worth. We walk down the boulevard toward Dolores café. Awkward as hell. Side by side, careful not to touch. Not talking the first half block or so. Then I say:

  “Where’s Markie?”

  “How should I know? Home sleeping, I guess.”

  “I just thought that—”

  “He doesn’t like old movies. Unless his father made them.”

  We walk on a few more steps. I shouldn’t have brought up Markie. Memory Lane should be safe ground, so I go into reminiscence mode. About when we were kids visiting the set watching that cream pie fight being shot.

  “Remember how disappointed we were,” I say, “when we discovered the pies were topped with shaving cream?”

  I laugh, maybe it’ll be contagious. It’s not. She glares at me. “How’d you know I was here tonight?”

  “I didn’t. Until the second reel. I came in late.”

  “Then how’d you know?”

  I do my basso imitation of Ezio Pinza in South Pacific: “‘The sound of her laughter will ring in your dreams.’”

  “Okay, okay,” she acknowledges with a small smile, “so I still snort when I laugh.”

  “Like a barnyard critter. Hey, wasn’t Julie funny?” Tonight’s picture was the only full-scale comedy John Garfield ever did. Real name Julius Garfinkle. A warm, good-humored man, one of our close childhood “uncles.” But my mention of his name casts a pall. Hounded by HUAC, he died at thirty-nine. A victim of the Blacklist.

  “Poor Julie,” she says. “He always had a bad heart.”

  Reflexively I correct her, “No, he had a good heart. That’s why the bastards got him.”

  I mean it to sound rueful. She hears it as an accusation. Her face turns away as if she’s been slapped. Me and my damn mouth! I really only want to talk about her. About us. She looks like she’s going to turn on her heel and walk away, but we’re at the entrance to Dolores and as she hesitates I pull open the door with a courtly gesture.

  “Hop in, honey,” I say. Giving it my best John Garfield-style Brooklynese. It works. She goes inside.

  * * *

  There are a scant few late-nighters hunched over coffee cups at the counter and we’re off by ourselves in a booth. Jana wants only a cup of coffee. Realizing I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast, I order a chili burger and fries. But when it comes, I’m too nervous to dig in.

  We keep talking about old times, trying to avoid anything about HUAC and Leo. That leaves what’s happened to former schoolmates. Places where we used to hang out that have been torn down. In another second we’ll be discussing the weather. It’s painful. We can’t stop chattering because silence will be even worse. Then we both dry up. She takes a sip of coffee. Her pinkie extended, the way it always was when we were kids. I’d tease her and we’d laugh. I poke at my food with the fork.

  “Guess it’s … kinda hard,” I say finally, “getting together after almost a ten-year gap, there’s so much we don’t know about each other now.…”

  She’s staring down into her coffee cup.

  I feel an aching in my chest. If Jana and I have lost our old connection
, then I’m lost. With no one in the world I can really talk to. No one I can trust.

  “Okay, look, I’ll try to—”

  “It’s not you, David, it’s me.” Her hazel eyes come up and lock onto mine. There are tears welling. “I—feel like—I owe you an apology.”

  “Hell no, I’m the one who keeps bringing up all the old crap and—”

  “And you should! The night you were at the house, you called me a spoiled little rich girl, and I got mad at you”—she waves me off before I can interrupt—“because it’s true! We two were almost like a fairy-tale prince and princess, and then you got banished from the kingdom. You and your mom and dad—and we got to stay here and live the rich life that was supposed to be yours, too—it’s such an ugly, horrible thing that’s happened—and I can’t even imagine what it was like for you—” Tears are rolling down her cheeks. But she doesn’t take her gaze away.

  “I wanted to believe what Leo told me, that he had to do what he did and that it was right, and for a while I did, but then—after I got into research, I got hold of everything that’s been published and—I found out things. Disgraceful things. I can’t judge him, David, he’s my father, but it was Leo and the others—not me! I’d never ever do anything in the world to hurt you!”

  She’s too choked up to go on. Buries her face in her napkin to muffle the sobs as she cries. Without thinking, I slip out of my side of the booth and slide in beside her. Want to hold her, hug away the pain, but afraid even to touch her. She feels me next to her and she lowers the napkin, crumples it up, eyes still full of tears. “I’ve been wanting to tell you that for so long.”

  “I—I’ve been wanting to hear it—for so long.” That’s all I can manage to say. I hand her my napkin, she dabs at her face, blows her nose, and then leans her head against the back of the booth with closed eyes. I tentatively cover her hand with mine.

  We sit there that way for a very long time in silence. But it’s a good silence. I realize now how wrong I’ve been. I’ve assumed that these weeks of Jana’s avoiding me were about her anger at my holding onto the past. But now I see that she wasn’t mad at me. And it wasn’t anger. It was shame. Survivor’s guilt.