The Man Who Died Laughing

by David Handler

  Hoag: It’s inconceivable. The man’s total orientation was to protect Sonny, not to harm him. Besides, he’s a guy who loses control. You saw him when he went for me. If he had killed Sonny, he wouldn’t have gone into the study and gotten a gun. He’d have torn his head off. Like he did to me. Like he did to that sleaze in Vegas. You know, you ought to check that guy out. I mean, he really got creamed. You never know.

  Lamp: I did. He hasn’t been out of Las Vegas in the past two weeks. Strictly a local man. Good thought, though. I wanted to check out something with you, Hoagy. Seems in 1972 Early was linked with the beating of a guy at the Daisy Club. Guy almost died. The charges were later dropped. Know anything about that? Come up at all?

  Hoag: You are good.

  Lamp: Routine police work. Well?

  Hoag: Sonny wanted to mention it in the book. He got some bad press over it at the time. Vic was … I guess you’d say upset about it coming up again. Sonny and I discussed it. He said he’d talk to Vic about it, that Vic would understand.

  Lamp: I see.

  Hoag: Now wait, I know how that looks. …

  Lamp: Like a motive.

  Hoag: It can’t be Vic.

  Lamp: Why not?

  Hoag: For starters, he was with me the day Sonny found the dummy.

  Lamp: Are you sure about that?

  Hoag: We were together at UCLA. Then we were both here at the estate.

  Lamp: Where were you?

  Hoag: Working in the guesthouse.

  Lamp: Where was he?

  Hoag: In the main house.

  Lamp: Doing what?

  Hoag: How should I know?

  Lamp: What if he went out?

  Hoag: He’d have told me.

  Lamp: What if he didn’t want you to know?

  Hoag: (silence) Forget it. That’s not what happened.

  Lamp: He could have gone out for half an hour without you or the housekeeper knowing. It’s possible, isn’t it?

  Hoag: Vic Early didn’t do it.

  Lamp: How can you be so sure?

  Hoag: I have a reason to believe it.

  Lamp: What reason?

  Hoag: Call it a hunch.

  Lamp: I see. You going to share this particular hunch with me?

  Hoag: I’m not ready to.

  Lamp: I didn’t think so. That’s okay. That’s fine. But understand my position. I’m not going to sit around and wait for you. I can’t, simply on the strength of some hunch you’ve got. I have to go with the facts. You’re speculating. Speculating can take you anywhere.

  Hoag: Like where?

  Lamp: Like … to you.

  Hoag: Me?

  Lamp: You. You’re awfully at home here all of the sudden. You and Miss Day. Mighty nice set-up. Hugs and kisses. Expensive shirts. I checked up on you, you know. You’ve been kind of down on your luck lately. Broke. A drinking problem. Famous wife divorced you. …

  Hoag: Wait, are you suggesting /killed Sonny?

  Lamp: No, no, no. I’m speculating, remember? Face it, you really stand to clean up on this book now. You’re already back in the limelight. Plus you’ve got Miss Day. I assume the house will go to her. Place must be worth, what, five million? More?

  Hoag: Ten or twelve, I’d say. I was on the plane at the time Sonny died, remember?

  Lamp: So maybe you didn’t act alone. Maybe you’ve been plotting this a long time. Maybe you set Early up. Hmm. Very interesting.

  Hoag: And total bullshit.

  Lamp: Precisely my point.

  Hoag: It is?

  Lamp: Yes. See, that’s what happens when you speculate. You reshape the picture, recolor it, make it look any darned way you want. That’s why I go with facts.

  Hoag: You’re a lot sneakier than you look, Lamp.

  Lamp: Just trying to prove a point.

  Hoag: Pick another way next time.

  Lamp: Didn’t mean to upset you.

  Hoag: Let me ask you something, Lieutenant. Is there any category under the law for what I am?

  Lamp: I’m not following you.

  Hoag: I’m being realistic, like you want. See, any way you color that picture, I’m somehow responsible. Even if you say it’s Vic. I could have put my foot down. Told Sonny flat out no, we leave the Daisy anecdote out.

  Lamp: Oh, heck, you can’t blame yourself for what somebody else does. Whatever happened, Hoagy, it happened around you, not because of you. It’s not your fault if Vic Early shot Sonny Day. Or if Joe Blow did. Go easier on yourself. Now, do you have any idea where Early might have gone?

  Hoag: No. No family or friends that he mentioned. You could try the UCLA athletic department. He seemed to know people there.

  Lamp: Okay. That’s a start. Thanks for your time, Hoagy. I suggest you relax, finish your book, take care of Miss Day. Let me do my job. Okay?

  Hoag: So much for your little Chasen’s theory then?

  Lamp: So much for my theory. That’s speculation. Early is concrete. It’s Early—until and unless the facts show otherwise.

  (end tape)

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE FACTS DID SHOW otherwise a few days later. Three days to be exact.

  I spent those days taking Lamps advice. The tapes and transcripts arrived from New York, the IBM Selectric from a rental outfit down on Sepulveda. I set myself up in Sonny’s study at his massive desk, his pictures and awards looking down at me. I was up to Knight and Day’s postwar glory days now, and finding the going rough.

  Sonny wasn’t around anymore to look over my shoulder and growl, “Yeah, that’s just how I felt, pally,” or “No, that ain’t me.” I had a pile of tapes, some notes, some impressions, and the power to create a man out of it. I was on my own.

  It felt a lot more like a novel now.

  I was also having trouble concentrating. Every time I started to look through the transcripts for a specific anecdote or phrase, I instead found myself searching in vain for that something Sonny had said, that thing that kept nibbling away at me. I couldn’t shake that. Nor the awareness of where the book was headed now, and the conversation I’d have to have with Connie about it.

  I spent a lot of the time staring out the study window at the eucalyptus tree. And swimming laps. And ’pooning.

  And with Wanda. I was in her movie a lot now. Background music was playing. The setting was lavishly appointed. A lot of action. Very little dialogue. No questions. No past. No other present. Just now.

  Only once was there so much as a flicker of reality to us. She came into the study one morning, sat down on my lap, and ran her fingers under the shirt she’d given me.

  “What will happen when you finish? Will you go back to New York and leave me?”

  I pulled the snaps of her denim shirt open. “I can’t even imagine leaving this room.”

  And we didn’t. Like I said, it was only a flicker.

  Occasionally, we chatted idly about going down to Spago or to a movie, but we never left the estate. There were two more cases of Dom Perignon in the cellar, and when we got hungry for food, Maria was there to cook us something. It did occur to me that this was the best life I’d led in a long time.

  The only trouble was that Sonny had paid for my rebirth with his life.

  I was out on the lawn ’pooning and trying to hear his voice when Lamp called. I was hitting the towel nine times out of ten again. The old eye was coming back. The voice wasn’t.

  Maria took the call. I picked up in the study.

  “Start speculating again,” Lamp announced without even a hello.

  “What happened to your facts?”

  “Know where Vic Early is? Know where he’s been for the past four days? The Veterans Administration hospital on Sawtelle. He went straight there after he escaped. Checked himself in. They logged the time. He was there on the night of your bonfire. He’s been there all along. Just took us awhile to catch up with him.”

  “What’s he doing there?”

  “That’s the strange part. Maybe not so strange. He said he
felt he was going to have to end up there, that there wasn’t going to be much choice, and that he wanted that choice to be his own. He escaped because he wanted to walk in there on his own two feet. He’s a proud guy. I kind of like him, to tell you the truth.”

  “So do I.”

  “Guess you’re feeling pretty smart about this.”

  “Not really.”

  “I’m not going to say you were right and I was wrong. The facts looked a certain way, so I went with them. Now they look different. Early’s not eliminated. He still could have pulled the trigger. But I have to look elsewhere.”

  “Back to your theory?”

  “And to speculating.”

  “About anything in particular?”

  “Yes. About who might have gotten mad at Sonny Day for telling secrets. Real mad.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  (Tape #2 with Harmon Wright. Recorded in his office at HWA, March 14.)

  HOAG: THANK YOU FOR seeing me again.

  Wright: Of course. I think all of us owe it to Artie to see his story come out. He was on his way back. That’s what makes his death such a tragedy.

  Hoag: You knew him a long time.

  Wright: Longer than anyone. Longer than Connie or Gabe. God, he’s been such a big part of my life for so many years. The phone calls. The tantrums. The crises. It’s hard to get used to him not being here.

  Hoag: There are a few loose ends I’d like to tie up.

  Wright: Fire away.

  Hoag: During our last interview, Sonny and I were discussing the events that led up to Knight and Day’s breakup. According to Sonny, their feuding came to a head over The Boy in the Gray Flannel Suit.

  Wright: Artie, he provoked that last fight.

  Hoag: He did?

  Wright: Absolutely. He wrote a picture that had no part for the guy in it, and then he told them this is the picture I want to do. They said fine, but put in a part for the tall guy. He said no, you make me do that and I’m walking. I told him, Arthur, they got you for three pictures, exclusive. You don’t make movies for Warners, you don’t make pictures for anybody. He wouldn’t listen. He drew a line and he wouldn’t cross over it.

  Hoag: He told me Gabe was the one who drew that line, that Gabe demanded a musical.

  Wright: That was only to save face. Gabe had never expressed any interest in doing a musical. Not until he got wind that Artie wanted to do a picture without him. I talked Gabe into at least reading the script for Gray Flannel Suit. He did, and he said it was a stupid picture—which it was—but only because Artie made it plain he didn’t want him involved in it.

  Hoag: Did Sonny back down and write in a part for him?

  Wright: Absolutely not.

  Hoag: I see. That’s a little different than the version I heard.

  Wright: Sonny Day wasn’t perfect. You ought to know that by now.

  Hoag: So what happened?

  Wright: The studio took Artie’s side, of course. He was the indispensable one. They gave Gabe forty-eight hours to think it over. I tried to get the two of them to talk to each other. They resisted. I said, after all you’ve meant to each other, you can at least have lunch. They met at Dave Chasen’s. They were through as partners before the entrée came.

  Hoag: You’re saying they fought over this movie?

  Wright: It’s like I told you before—those two fought because they were seriously sick of each other.

  Hoag: Connie threw Sonny a big birthday party the night before. Gabe was there.

  Wright: A lovely affair. I remember it well. That was the night Gabe showed me what kind of actor he was. He gave Artie a lovely speech. He cried. He was very moving. Genuinely. Just like the other day at the funeral. The way he broke down. You think he felt any loss from Artie’s death? No, sir. He loathed the man.

  Hoag: Gabe told me he loved him.

  Wright: He’s never loved anybody in his whole life. Only himself. No surprise, him going into politics. Watch him move right up. A cabinet post. Then a candidacy.

  Hoag: President Knight?

  Wright: Sound crazy to you?

  Hoag: Actually, no. It doesn’t. Are you aware of any kind of personal conflict between Gabe and Sonny? Something that cut deeper than their professional differences?

  Wright: Such as what?

  Hoag: Such as an involvement between Gabe and Connie.

  Wright: I don’t talk about stuff like that.

  Hoag: Stuff like what?

  Wright: Smut. Gossip. I’m an attorney, a businessman. What people do between the sheets is none of my business. Or of the readers of Artie’s book.

  Hoag: I see.

  Wright: Don’t see. Don’t see anything. Connie Morgan is one of the finest, loveliest women I’ve ever known. She’s also a client. You lift one finger to harm her or her reputation and you’ll have me for an enemy, and you won’t like it.

  Hoag: I wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t in the best interests of the family. Wanda seems to feel—

  Wright: Leave Wanda out of it, too. She’s had enough problems, the poor kid.

  Hoag: Did Sonny mention anything to you about getting a threatening letter?

  Wright: When?

  Hoag: A few weeks ago.

  Wright: No.

  Hoag: Any idea of why someone would have sent him one?

  Wright: No. No idea.

  Hoag: Are you aware that he and I hit a kind of impasse shortly before his death?

  Wright: I know what he told me.

  Hoag: Which was?

  Wright: That you stopped trusting him. That the two of you fought and you went home to New York, mad. He told me he missed you and kept wanting to call you.

  Hoag: When did he tell you this?

  Wright: That night. His last night.

  Hoag: By phone.

  Wright: No. I was there.

  Hoag: You were at Sonny’s house the night of the murder?

  Wright: Yes. I’m here at the office very late. It wasn’t unusual for me to stop by his place for a nightcap on my way home. See how he was doing.

  Hoag: You don’t say. I don’t recall your dropping by since I’ve been here.

  Wright: That’s because I didn’t want to bother you two. I know how important chemistry is between creative people.

  Hoag: I see.

  Wright: Artie, he wasn’t doing so well that night. He was real upset about what happened between you and him.

  Hoag: Did you have any other reason for stopping by?

  Wright: I don’t know what you mean.

  Hoag: When I told you we intended to discuss your early career with Bugsy Siegel in the book, you seemed bothered. I wondered if perhaps you discussed it with him that night.

  Wright: (silence) It came up.

  Hoag: Did you ask him to leave it out?

  Wright: Let’s say I pointed out that he wouldn’t exactly be giving me a shot in the arm by mentioning Benny and the old days. Especially the business about the missing money. …

  Hoag: So that did happen?

  Wright: Whether it did or didn’t is immaterial.

  Hoag: What’s material?

  Wright: My personal health and well-being. Not all of those old-timers are dead and gone. A couple I can think of are still damned powerful. And they never, ever, forgive.

  Hoag: You mean after all of these years you’re still afraid you’ll be found floating facedown in your pool?

  Wright: Don’t mock me. You don’t know them.

  Hoag: What did Sonny say when you told him this?

  Wright: He said it was very important to him that the book be honest. I understood that, but I told him I didn’t think he had to drag me into his goddamned therapy. I thought he was being selfish and inconsiderate and I told him so.

  Hoag: What did he say?

  Wright: He said, “It matters to me. And if it matters to me …”

  Hoag: “It matters? And what did you say?

  Wright: I never bullshitted Artie. I told him he was leaving me with no choi
ce but to send a letter to his publisher’s attorney, threatening legal action if there was any mention in the book about my past or my previous associations.

  Hoag: How did he react to that?

  Wright: He had a drink. And then … he had another drink. Started getting ugly. Then started sobbing. The usual routine. I tried to put him to bed, but he yelled at me to get lost. So I went home.

  Hoag: What time was that?

  Wright: A little before one, I think.

  Hoag: Just before he called me.

  Wright: I wouldn’t know about that.

  Hoag: Who else was there at the house?

  Wright: Vic. He went to bed while I was there.

  Hoag: Wanda?

  Wright: She was out.

  Hoag: Do the police know you were there that night?

  Wright: Do I look stupid? I tell them I was there, it’ll be all over tomorrow’s papers. I’ve worked very hard to build my reputation. That’s all I need, to be linked to Artie’s murder.

  Hoag: Surely there’s nothing incriminating about an old friend stopping by for a drink.

  Wright: I’ve seen dozens of careers made and destroyed on nothing more than rumors. I told that Lamp nothing about it. None of his business. Artie was alive when I left. I’m telling you because we’re on the same side—Artie’s side. Sure, I know what you’re thinking about me at this very minute—rough background, prison record, buddy of Benny Siegel. He’d have no problem pulling a trigger. Wrong. I run the largest talent agency in the world. I’m a respected business leader. I don’t pull triggers. That’s the truth.

  Hoag: Thank you for being so honest with me.

  Wright: I never lie to a client. That’s the secret to my success. So listen, Hoag, now that Sonny’s gone and you’re carrying on, I hope you’ll see things my way.

  Hoag: What way is that?

  Wright: That it isn’t necessary to drag my yesterdays into this book. Who needs lawsuits, right? You know, you’re a bright, creative person. Good looking. Make a nice impression.

  Hoag: I’m a helluva guy.

  Wright: You’d make a helluva producer.

  Hoag: I’m a writer.

  Wright: Producing is writing—without a typewriter. You’ll love it. And I think you can be a big, big success at it. I’d like to take your career over. Handle you personally.