“Hell, Clark. Whatever you’ve been up to this evening hasn’t done much for your mood.”
“It hasn’t. But it is some story.”
“Well, I think I’m starting to get a proper handle on this whole thing…”
She instructed him to take a detour down Western Avenue toward Inglewood, then east along Manchester toward South Park. The only time he’d been around here lately was to listen to the nigger music at Topsy’s Night Club, but apparently this was also where LA Truth had its base. He was still thinking of that conversation with Peg as the wipers thwacked and Barbara Eshel talked.
“… It makes every kind of sense when you think about it. Kisberg, right—he and his Wall Street backers are the ones who’ve made the real money out of the feelies. How convenient that was, to push the old LA studios into bankruptcy and take over with another new technology they couldn’t afford just when the Depression was at its worst. And now they can fill people’s heads with whatever they want. Sure, it’s not all trash, but the bias is plain. That huge re-make of Birth of a Nation featuring as the guys in white the good ol’ Klu Klux Clan. All those stirring tales of the good ol’ South. Even the classic stuff. The way that when they do Dickens it’s Oliver Twist with bad old Jewboy Fagin. And when it’s Shakespeare it’s The Merchant of Venice. And White Legion—my God, what a production that was! And now there’s all these nice Germans. These people can convince anybody of anything they want just as long as they keep them entertained. They’ll be telling us next that dinosaurs are Old Testament dragons.”
“You obviously go to the feelies a lot more than I do.”
“But can’t you see what I’m saying? No wonder the Liberty League are successful. No wonder Herbert Kisberg’s going for president. I mean, the Republicans are bad enough. It’s left here, by the way. And watch that pothole.”
“Sure.” The Delahaye gave a splashing lurch.
“And now they’ve got your—I mean Daniel Lamotte’s—feelie biopic nicely lined up as an extra bit of publicity.”
“All it would take,” he muttered, “is for Lars Bechmeir himself to put in an appearance tomorrow night at the Biltmore rally. Kisberg would pretty much have the whole country sewn up.”
“Right! I mean, people are relieved it’s going to be him that gets the ticket. Can you believe that? Instead of that creep in Chicago who looks too much like a gangster. And that oily twerp Pickens—no one’s ever forgotten the way he lashed out at that woman. Or it could be—hold on, Clark, what were you just saying about Lars Bechmeir?”
“I saw him.”
“Saw who?”
“Who do you think? Kisberg himself took me to see the guy. He was just in this room hidden away from the party with a couple of nurses. He’s an invalid. Apparently he’s been holed up somewhere quiet all these years, down in Orange County. But now they plan to wheel him out tomorrow night at the Biltmore and maybe get him to mouth a few words. And hey, it’s the ultimate Liberty League endorsement.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Shit. The guy’s barely there and I can’t see him being around for much longer. I guess that’s why they’re planning on using him now… And why they were so keen on Dan’s script. If Timmy Townsend’s to be believed, they’re even planning on squeezing an interview with Daniel Lamotte into the live coverage on Star Talk.”
“But that’s brilliant! You’ve got a chance to denounce the Liberty League in front of fifty million listeners. You know, great writer stands up for real liberty and—”
“For God’s sake Barbara—you’re sounding like Timmy Townsend in reverse. No. Definitely no. And who exactly am I supposed to denounce, and for doing what?”
“We’ve another whole day to find that out. And you’d better slow down. Here comes another pothole… and you’ve gone and missed the turn.”
FORTY ONE
LA TRUTHWAS BASED ALONG A STRIP of commercial holdings which, in typical LA mish-mash, lay between the high brick towers of the Firestone Rubber Company and the white frontage of Angels’ Abbey, an up-and-coming mausoleum. He’d been expecting some kind of editorial offices, although he realized that was naïve. There were a few scattered typewriters, tables and chairs, but this was basically a dirt floor workshop filled with machinery most of which looked to be beyond working—apart from the one which was, and then only just. The man tending the thrashing, clacking device with a pair of oilcans held like sixshooters gave a comic start when he noticed them. He was dressed in overalls and was very young and very thin. The straggly beard which he affected only made him look younger and thinner.
“Barbara? Is that really you… ?” They waited as he did the many things required to still the machine. “Almost didn’t recognize you there.” He glanced quizzically at Clark. “What are you up to?”
“I guess you could call it research. This is Clark Gable, by the way. And this is Dale. Dale’s our printer, as you’ve probably gathered. Although he’s got many other jobs here at world headquarters of LA Truth.”
“Editor. Compositor. Delivery boy…”
They both chuckled. It was obviously a well-practiced routine.
Rain still pattered the roof, or dripped into overflowing buckets. They sat around a rickety table and Barbara gave Dale the eight reels of photographs she’d taken at Kisberg’s party—seemed that another of his jobs was photo processor. She explained that Clark was a private detective who’d happened upon some odd events which seemed to have something to do with the invention of the Bechmeir Field. But she didn’t say much else. Maybe, Clark thought, she was just protecting him from whatever was out there. Or more likely she was protecting her sources.
“There are some things we expect to happen tomorrow, and some stuff we hope to find out, which could turn this into the biggest story to hit this state since Julian Pete. What I’m saying, Dale, is I want you to hold working the next edition, and be ready to run with whatever I can get. And quick. Even if it’s only one badly laid sheet.”
Dale nodded. As they talked his eyes lingered for long periods on the vision that Barbara Eshel had become this evening, then drifted over to Clark, and then away from him and back to Barbara Eshel again. Dale was a good-looking kid if you discounted the beard, and he was probably about Barbara’s age. You didn’t have to be a matrimonial private detective to work out that she had him, as Peg Entwistle herself might have put it in her still classy lilt, on toast.
But he wasn’t going to tell Barbara about Peg Entwistle. Not yet anyway. For all that had and hadn’t gone on between him and Peg, he didn’t think he wanted to be the one who put her back on the front pages for all the wrong reasons. Despite what the studios said, there was such a thing as bad publicity. And despite what Peg herself had said, feelie stars really were still people. Some of them were anyway.
Back outside and in the Delahaye, Clark thought for a moment that he saw a pair of headlights on the road behind them. Then they seemed to blink off. He started the motor, pulled slowly around the potholes. Then he took a quick right, turned sharply north along Central Avenue past Sears Roebuck, and took Ninth past the Cabrillo Club in a screech of tires. Then he stopped.
“What was all that about?”
“Nothing.” He checked the rear-view. Either they weren’t being followed, or whoever was following them was good. He pulled back out into the empty road. “So—you and Dale. Are you sweet on each other?”
“Why should we be?”
“No reason, I suppose. Or the same reason as always. Does he make a living, doing what he does back there?”
“Some, but not much. Tomorrow morning he’ll be hauling trolleys in the fruit market.”
“But how about you, Barbara?” “How about what?”
“I mean, like Dale. What else do you do when you’re not changing the world?”
“You really want to know?” “Sure. I’m curious.”
“Many a young lady,” she began, putting on a cutglass accent, “suffers, without even knowing, from a terribl
e blight on the glorious blossoming of her early teenage years. As she stands at the gateway to womanhood, she finds that the strength of her happy childhood has ebbed away, and yet the poise and resolve of adult femininity still lies tantalizingly out of reach. Her back slumps. Her head droops. She is languid, uncommunicative, and often morose. What this delicate flower of early-blooming womanhood is suffering from, were she to know it, are all the symptoms of Feminine Weakness. And what she needs is Tablon’s Iron Purgative … That, or a good kick up her oh-so-delicate ass.”
“But you don’t write the last bit?”
“You have no idea how much I wish I could. I guess someone has to produce this sort of rubbish—advertising copy pretending to be proper articles. You never think about who it is, though, do you? Not until it’s you. Tablon’s Iron whatsit. That was me. Or The Woman Who Forgot Keep Clean Napkins. Otherwise, the world’d stop turning, right? Actually, I rather enjoyed writing that last one. Pity they edited out the last paragraph. The way I told it, the woman ended up on the street turning tricks. And all because of a sauce stain on one of her napkins.”
She was laughing now, and so was he. They were up on Bunker Hill. Past Edna’s Eats, which was closed and unlit, then a final turn. They were still laughing as they climbed from the Delahaye, and he wondered as he took her arm if he’d drunk more of that endless free Champagne than he’d realized. Or maybe she had. They found the door and took the stairs together, arm in arm. He caught her as she tripped on a ruck in the rug, and turned her around in the process so she was leaning against the wall by her door. She was still chuckling. She smelled rain-wet and womanly, and of Champagne and laughter. She was so beautiful that, even in this dark little rooming house, she almost glowed. This wasn’t the Barbara Eshel who’d aimed a gun at him—or even the one who’d been brandishing that heavy camera in a handbag which she now let drop to the floor. But he’d long known that women were capable of being many things, and often several of them at once. It was the same old mystery which he and a million other men had spent their lives trying to unravel. Never got there, of course. But it didn’t stop you trying.
He could feel her body rising toward him. He could smell the sweet bitterness of her breath. Women were another race, a whole different species. He touched her cheek, traced lobe of her ear, and raised her mouth and covered it with his own. Then he stepped back.
“Goodnight,” he muttered, and felt clumsily for his keys.
FORTY TWO
SLEEP DIDN’T SO MUCH COME quickly to Clark as overwhelm him in a crashing wave. With it came a rush of memory as bright as the Californian sunlight which had first beckoned him west. For this town wasn’t Akron, or Tulsa, or off-Broadway, or Portland, or even the Lurie Theater in Houston. This was LA and this was a different kind of acting to provide a different kind of entertainment to a changing world. He’d started off playing gangsters, wife-beaters and convicts and all the usual dross back at the turn of ’30, and was all set by the middle of that same year to head back east for a new production of A Farewell to Arms when he received a phone call from his new agent Mina Wallis to tell him he’d been offered a year long contract with MGM, no fucking less.
He was suddenly being groomed for stardom, and groomed really was the word. He had his suits cut in the latest vee which emphasized his broad shoulders and svelte hips. Saxony wool, or Prince of Wales plaid, with silk accents. Double-breasted mostly. He went to the studio barber—who called himself a stylist—at least once a week. There was advice about where he should eat, and what sort of company he should keep. There was even a trip to the orthodontists in a mostly futile attempt to sort out his teeth, and some asinine debate about whether they should pin back his jug ears. But he was who he was—Clark Gable. Or he soon fucking would be. When he cut a ribbon at a new supermarket, the people cheered like he’d built and stocked the whole place himself. He took a ride in a monoplane wearing a plain navy blazer with cream linen slacks and an open-neck Lacoste polo shirt with dark willow tan brogues.
The whole business of banging out talkies the way Henry Ford was banging out cars struck Clark as a decent enough thing to be doing for a living. Okies were being driven west by starvation and duststorms to die in streetcars and sleep on railroad sidings, but hey, at least those who could afford to get into the movie houses were being properly entertained.
The previews and reviews for his first above-the-title role in Susan Lennox weren’t so good. Garbo might be a bull dyke lesbian with a voice like a concrete mixer that would never have come out of the silents, but she was a genuine star. So it was Clark Gable who got the blame for the movie being a mess. The results for the pre-screenings for his next effort, Possessed were also pretty mixed, and Mina told him it was one of those talkies that could go either way. Clark Gable was a new face, and he gave the women in the audience—many of the men, for that matter—a certain tingle, but it wasn’t a tingle they yet felt entirely comfortable with. So was he just some gangling lout with big ears and bad teeth too clumsy to handle a scenery board, let alone act? Or was he the box office savior MGM had been promising themselves when they’d given him that contract?
Clark gauged his arrival on the red carpet outside the Carthay Theater on the night of the premiere of Possessed perfectly, leaving just enough time to hang around with the crowds without it seeming like he was waiting for Joan Crawford. They might have had to move this whole showboat to the Carthay because Howard Hughes was putting on some carnie ride called Broken Looking Glass, which wasn’t any proper kind of movie at all, up at Grauman’s on this same night, but you sure as hell wouldn’t have known it from here. Flashbulbs flashed. Floodlights hazed the sky. Then Crawford arrived, and the crowd went apeshit, and Clark gave the newshounds a knowing grin as he offered her his arm. Then she planted a kiss on him for just that teenie bit longer than expected. All in all, the two of them put on as good an act out on that red carpet as anything they’d done in the talkie.
“Savor the moment, Gable,” she’d murmured. “You never know how long it’ll last.”
He got a call from the studio a week or two after to come in on a day between shootings. He was living in a serviced bungalow in the grounds of the Marmont by then. A low, adobe-walled structure, the roof a shrug of pantiles, windows a raised eyebrow of arches, it and a cluster of other similar peasant-style dwellings formed a corral amid the winding drives, hibiscus bushes and palms. Quiet Mexicans in white pajamas did the watering and clipping. Every time he stepped outside and climbed into whatever car he was currently driving, he decided that paradise, if you excluded the Mexicans, must look pretty much like this.
He drove south toward Culver City with no particular thoughts in his head. Some publicity thing, most likely. Maybe there was a new director or leading lady they wanted him to meet. Past the Beverly Wiltshire and past the Brown Derby and past the Cotton Club, he reached the fortress-like walls of MGM studios, and followed them around to the Grecian-pillared entranceway, where the security guard gave him a smile and a salute as he raised the barrier. Trying to remember the guy’s name—was it Walter, Willy?—Clark Gable responded with a cheery wave.
MGM occupied several lots around Culver City in those days, but this, the largest and the headquarters, was a city in itself. Not just a congested jumble of the new enclosed soundstages which had replaced the open or glassed-in lots of the silent era, but also a school, a small hospital, several decent restaurants, and even a small railroad to carry things here and there.
He pulled in at his designated space in the main parking lot beside the offices. He smiled back at himself as he checked his parting in the car mirror. It went without saying that it was another beautiful day.
The receptionist didn’t quite get up for him—that was reserved for real stars—but she did make a small bobbing movement, almost a curtsey, from behind her glass and chrome desk. Then another broad came from somewhere to find him, one of those near-edible gofers who bumped at you with their breasts, and fluttered their eyelashe
s so much you were sure you felt a breeze. She reminded Clark about a party up in Laurel Canyon she was sure they’d both been to as she led him along corridors to wherever it was they were heading, although he concentrated mostly on the sway of her ass.
He’d imagined the usual handshakes in an exec’s office, but he was being taken down deeper, darker routes into one of the technical areas. A small uh-oh sounded in his head. If he was being required to revoice some of his lines, the request to do so should have come down the channels from the director, or at least his assistant. Anything less was a diminution of status. Maybe he should speak to Mina about this. Maybe he should have spoken to Mina already. Or maybe Mina already knew about this, and simply hadn’t bothered to tell him. All that Californian sunlight which Clark had been carrying with him started dimming inside his head.
As if sensing his unease, the pretty gofer stopped and turned and nudged at him sweetly with her breasts. This was, she assured him in breathy pants, something that all the MGM roster of actors were doing. Just a small, quick, test. Nothing really, but rather exciting nevertheless.
He was put in a room where all the walls had been faced with what looked like chickenwire, except for a window into a bigger and better lit space. With the amount of electrical stuff in there, and but for the chickenwire and the absence of a microphone, he could have been in a sound booth. But he could tell that the creation of corkscrew glass and wire which dangled from the ceiling before him had nothing to do with receiving sound. Just looking at it made his teeth itch, and set off a weird, resonant buzzing inside his head.
The guys who were mooching and prodding in the space beyond weren’t wearing white coats. This being Los Angeles, they wore paisley cravats and Palm Beach suits. One of them leaned to a microphone and spoke to Clark through a loudspeaker. He had on a scratched namebadge which said he was Hiram P. Something-or-Other the Third, but he had to squint at his clipboard before he called Clark Mr, ah, Gable. He peered at Clark a little more closely like he maybe even recognized him from some movie he’d seen. Then he smiled to reveal a most un-Hollywood set of buck teeth and told him, just like the breast-bumping girl had, that this was nothing more than a few quick tests. Best to think of it as simply a rehearsal, Mr Gable. Better still, a test shoot.
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