The gray-shirted, bored studio guard leaned against the small wooden shack at the gate entrance as Joe stopped his car beside him. The guard looked at him strangely. “I thought you were pink-slipped yesterday,” he said hoarsely.
“That’s right.” Joe smiled. “But A. J. called me in for a meeting.”
The guard stepped into his shack and checked the visitors’ list. He called to Joe. “That’s for three o’clock,” he grumbled. “It’s only one o’clock.”
“I like to be early,” Joe said. “Where do you want me to park the car?”
“Use your usual place. We haven’t reassigned it yet.”
“Thanks,” Joe said. He looked up at the guard. “Maxie Keyho around?”
“Gotta hot tip?” the guard asked curiously. Maxie Keyho was a music contractor; he was also the unofficial studio bookie.
“Not today,” Joe said. “He’s got a five-dollar marker of mine.”
“I just saw him walking over to the commissary,” the guard said.
Joe waved his hand at him and drove his car around to the parking lot in front of the writers’ building. He locked the car and went into the commissary. The restaurant was a long room, its walls covered with pictures of stars and featured actors that had been in the studio’s movies. It was divided into two sections: The rear section was for executives and important actors and producers, complete with tables and waitresses; the main section, the biggest part of the room, had a long counter spread with an assortment of foods, and the service was cafeteria style—you picked up your food and found a place to sit at any table that happened to be vacant. Usually the first customers entering tried to hold chairs at their table for friends. This didn’t often work, especially when the commissary was busy. But no one ever bothered Maxie Keyho, who had had the same table every day for years. It was in a corner near the entrance where he could see everyone entering.
Keyho, as usual, was dressed in a black suit, shirt and tie, and sat alone. No one sat at his table unless invited. He looked up at Joe, his watery, pale blue eyes curious. “I thought you were pink-slipped yesterday,” he said without greeting.
“A. J. called me in this afternoon,” Joe said. The studio grapevine always worked overtime.
“Sit down,” Keyho invited. “What’s goin’ on?”
“I don’t know what A. J. wants,” Joe answered, slipping into a chair. “I thought maybe you did.”
Keyho shrugged his shoulder. “The only thing I heard is that he’s meeting with a new banker from New York.”
“I don’t know what that means to me,” Joe said. He lowered his voice. “Talking about New York, I just received a fresh package and thought maybe you could use it.”
Keyho stared at him for a moment. “Money is tight. Everybody is getting laid off.”
Joe didn’t answer.
“How much?” Keyho asked.
“Forty packages,” Joe said. “Usually it’s a grand but I don’t know whether I’ll be on the lot. I’ll turn it over to you for eight-fifty.”
“Seven hundred,” Keyho offered.
“Seven-fifty and you have a deal,” Joe said.
“It’s a deal,” Keyho answered. “Do you have it with you?”
“In the trunk of my car.”
Keyho nodded. “After lunch, at two-thirty. I’ll be outside recording stage C.”
Joe rose from his chair. “I’ll see you there.”
He walked to the counter and picked up a tray. He felt good. Seven-fifty was a good deal. A quick five hundred profit, and he didn’t have to hang around a week buttonholing customers. He moved down the self-service line and looked over at the girl standing behind the hot-food table. “Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes with gravy,” he said, then looked over his shoulder to see if any one of the writers he knew were there.
* * *
HE OPENED THE door and looked at Kathy sitting at her desk. “Am I too early?” he called.
She waved to him to enter while she spoke into the telephone. He closed the door behind him and crossed to her desk as she put down the telephone. “Where’s Joanie?” he asked.
Joan was the number one secretary. “She called in sick,” Kathy answered. The telephone rang again. “Everything’s jammed up,” she added as she picked up the phone again. She transferred the call to A. J. and turned back to him. “We’ll have to cancel our happy hour,” she said. “With Joanie out, I’ll have to work late.”
“Okay,” he said.
She stared at him. “You’re really a prick. You don’t even seem disappointed.”
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “I know when you have to work, you have to work.”
“A. J. called Laura. He wanted to know if you would be okay for a project he had in mind.”
“What did she say?” Joe asked.
“She said you would be good.” She looked at him. “Then she took off on me. She said you were a hustler and I should stay away from you.”
Joe was curious. “Why would she say that?”
“I have my own idea,” Kathy said. “I think Laura has a yen for you.”
“She never let me see that,” he said.
“That’s Laura,” she said. “She covers her feelings. It’s her business camouflage.”
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Maybe she knows about us?”
“It’s not that,” Kathy said. Suddenly, she seemed cold. “When A. J. gets off the phone, I’ll let him know that you’re here,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll leave the bottle of vodka in your car when I go out.”
“You don’t have to,” she said.
“I’m just as disappointed as you are. It’s not your fault.”
She didn’t answer.
“How about tomorrow?” he asked.
“Maybe,” she answered. The white light next to the telephone on her desk flashed on. She picked up the phone. “Joe Crown is here for you, Mr. Rosen.” She listened for a moment then nodded and gestured to Joe. “He’s on the way in, sir.”
“Thanks,” Joe said to her as he walked to the door of A. J.’s office.
She looked up at him. “Good luck,” she said sincerely.
A. J. sat behind his desk like a fat, bald Napoleon. His chair was raised beneath him so that he could look down on the visitors sitting across his desk. His fat cheeks creased in a smile. “Thanks for coming in on such short notice, Joe,” he said.
“It’s my pleasure, Mr. Rosen.”
“I might have a project for you,” A. J. said importantly. “You’re a New Yorker, aren’t you?”
“Born and bred,” Joe answered.
“Movies about New York do pretty good at the box office,” A. J. said. “The Dead End Kids from Universal, then The East Side Kids from Monogram after Universal dropped it and it became a series.”
Joe nodded seriously. He still didn’t understand what A. J. was talking about.
“I’m thinking about a picture more important than those. More like the movie Dead End that Sam Goldwyn made.”
“Fine film,” Joe said.
“One of my New York bankers gave me the idea for it,” A. J. said. “It’s really not a bad idea at all. A New York gangster falls in love with a gorgeous showgirl and decides to take her to Hollywood to become a movie star.”
Joe expressed the proper enthusiasm. “That’s really a great idea, Mr. Rosen.”
A. J. smiled. “I thought you might like it.”
“I do, Mr. Rosen.” Joe nodded. “Knowing you, you already have the leads in mind.”
“I have the girl already,” A. J. answered. “But I have been trying to decide on the leading man. It’s a toss-up between Bogart, Eddie Robinson or Cagney.”
Joe nodded seriously. He knew that as well as A. J. there was no chance of any of those actors doing the part. “You said you have the girl,” he said tactfully.
“I have,” A. J. said, picking up a publicity still photograph and pushing it across the desk to Joe. “
Judi Antoine.”
Joe looked down at the provocative picture of the girl in a skintight silver gown that out-Betty’d Betty Grable and put Lana Turner away. “I know her,” he said.
“The whole world knows her,” A. J. said enthusiastically. “She’s been under contract for six months and though she’s never even been in a picture we get a thousand requests a week for photographs of her. She’s in every magazine and newspaper in the country.”
“She’s hot,” Joe agreed. He didn’t want to tell A. J. that on the lot she was nicknamed “The Screamer,” because she shouted so loudly while fucking. She even traded him a quickie to introduce her to the director doing the movie he had been working on.
“Even my banker thinks she’d be perfect for the part.” A. J. nodded, then said as if he had just thought of it, “My wife and I are taking the banker for dinner at Perino’s. Why don’t you pick up Judi and join us?”
Joe rubbed his chin to feel if his beard was growing. “Tonight?”
“Tonight.” A. J. nodded.
“Maybe she’s not available,” Joe suggested.
“She’s available,” A. J. said firmly. “I arranged that.”
“I’ll have to explain it to my wife,” Joe said.
“She’ll understand,” A. J. returned. “It’s business.”
Joe thought for a moment. “Okay. Now when do you want me to start working?”
“Right away. You’ll get twenty-five hundred for the treatment; if we go to script, you get another twelve thousand five.”
Joe nodded. “Good enough.”
“Dinner will be at seven-thirty. It should be over between nine-thirty and ten.”
“What do I do after that?” Joe asked.
“Drop her off at the banker’s hotel and wait for her to call you at the cocktail lounge. Then you can drop her home. You should be finished by midnight.”
Joe nodded silently.
A. J. looked shrewdly at him. He was in touch with the studio grapevine after all. “Just tell her not to holler too loud. Bankers are nervous by nature. He might lose his hard.”
Joe closed the door behind A. J.’s office and looked at Kathy. “You knew?”
She nodded. “But not until Joanie called in sick. Usually that’s her department.”
“It’s shit,” he said.
“It’s a shitty business,” she replied. “But what the hell, you got a job out of it. Now you better call Laura and tell her you got the job.”
17
HE WALKED TO the writers’ building and up the rickety stairway outside the restaurant. The door opened into the steno pool, where the small desks were crowded close to each other. The head steno sat at the desk against the far wall, much like a teacher at her desk at the head of a classroom. Only two girls were typing at their desks, the head steno was proofreading a script. She looked up as he entered. “I heard you were coming back.” She smiled. “I didn’t even take your name off the office door.”
“Thanks, Shirley,” he said.
She opened a desk drawer and took out a room key. He took it from her. “Everything’s in there,” she said. “Pads, paper, pencils, even a typewriter.”
“You’re okay,” he said.
“What’s the new project?” she asked.
“A New York story,” he answered. “I don’t know too much about it yet.”
“It must be a hot one,” she said. “It’s not often that A. J. is in that much of a hurry.”
“I guess so,” he said. “I just have a few calls to make. I’ll be in in the morning.”
“Anything I can do, let me know,” she said. “Good luck, Joe.”
“Thanks, Shirley,” he answered and walked down the corridor to the small cubbyhole that served as his office. He opened the door with his key. The office was just big enough to hold a small desk and two chairs, one behind it and one in front of it. Any more than two people in there would have to stand in the doorway or in the corridor. He shut the door and sat down behind the desk. He stared at the telephone for a moment and just as he reached, it rang. He picked it up. “Joe Crown,” he said into it.
“Judi Antoine,” a girl’s voice whispered into his ear. “I hear you’re my date for tonight.”
“That’s what I hear,” he answered.
“You got two Cs?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“The two hundred bucks I get for the night,” she said.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Nobody told me about that. I’m just the beard for A. J. and his banker at dinner. I thought publicity arranged it.”
“Publicity told me you would take care of it,” she said. “I have expenses,” she added. “How do you expect me to make out on the one twenty-five a week they pay. My apartment at the Sunset Towers costs three hundred a week alone.”
“Didn’t they tell you that you’re getting the lead on the picture I’m writing?”
“All the time,” she said. “I must have heard that at least a thousand times.”
“That comes from A. J. himself,” he said. “His banker who’s financing the picture has the hots for you. I was supposed to drop you off at his hotel room after dinner and wait for you at the cocktail lounge. I thought it was all set up.”
“Nighttime fucking is on my own time,” she said flatly. “It don’t say nothing in my contract about that.”
“So what do you expect me to do?” he asked.
“Get me the money,” she said. “Otherwise I don’t show up. Let me know what’s happening, I’ll be at home until five-thirty.”
“Come on, Judi,” he cajoled. “Didn’t I introduce you to Ray Stern, the director, when you wanted to meet him?”
“I don’t remember,” she said.
“We had a quickie leaning against the wall in my office because there wasn’t enough room for a couch,” he said, trying to jog her memory.
“I don’t remember,” she repeated. “All johns are the same to me. Just get me the money.” She hung the phone up.
He stared at the silent telephone for a moment then called A. J.’s office. Kathy answered. “I have to speak to A. J.,” he said.
“He’s gone for the day,” she said.
“I have to talk to him.”
“Sorry, Joe,” she said. “I can’t help you. He’s on his way home.”
“Can we get him there?”
“Not until six-thirty,” Kathy said. “Is is really important?”
“Important enough,” he said. “His leading lady is an overtime hooker. She won’t show up without two hundred in advance.”
“Damn!” Kathy said. “I would help you but the cashier’s office closes at three.”
Joe thought for a moment. “Okay, honey,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure a way out.”
He put down the telephone and stared down at it. He pulled his wallet out of his jacket pocket. The seven hundred fifty dollars that Keyho had given him made it heavy. Slowly he took out four fifty-dollar bills and put them in his pocket. Paying money to hookers was against his religion—even more so when it was not for himself. He was boxed in. But a job was a job and he was getting something out of it. He picked up the telephone again and called Judi at her Sunset Towers apartment.
* * *
MOTTY CAME INTO the bedroom while he was knotting his tie. “Rosa told me this afternoon that you were going to the studio.”
He nodded, staring at the tie in the mirror, then untied it and began to do it over. “A. J. called me. I’ve got a job. A new picture.”
“A good one?” she asked.
“They’re all good ones starting out,” he said, finishing the knot on his tie. He turned to her. “Do you like it?”
She looked at it critically. “It looks kind of big.”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” he said. “It’s called the Windsor knot. Sinatra uses it all the time.” He reached for the dark blue jacket.
“What’s with the bar mitzvah suit?” she a
sked curiously.
“A. J.’s invited me to dinner at Perino’s with his banker.”
“That’s a switch,” she said. “Never happened before. Just the three of you?”
“A. J.’s wife and a starlet the banker has the hots for,” he answered.
She met his eyes. “Where do you fit in?”
He smiled. “I’m the beard.”
“You know the girl?”
“Not really,” he answered. “But it’s a New York story and I’m a New York writer so I got the job. The banker wants her to play the lead so I have to pick her up and deliver her.”
“What’s her name?” Motty asked.
“Judi Antoine.”
“Never heard of her,” she said. “What movies has she been in?”
“She’s never been in one yet,” he replied. “But she’s been under a starlet’s contract for the last three months. She’s the number one studio pinup photo.”
“A hooker,” Motty said flatly.
He laughed. “For once you’re right. She’s the worst.” He knew the moment the words passed his lips he should have kept his mouth shut.
“Did A. J. give you the job because of your experience as a pimp or a writer?” she asked cynically.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” he protested.
“You could have turned him down,” she said. “We don’t need the job that bad. You can always work on your book.”
“That will take a lot of time,” he said. “Maybe more than a year. We don’t have that much money to carry us.”
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