“We could manage,” she said. “Mr. Marks offered me the promotion. I’d get eight-fifty a month and with bonuses it can amount to fifteen hundred to two thousand.”
“There has to be a kicker in it for that kind of money,” he said.
“Of course, I’ll have to go on a couple of buying trips during the fashion seasons.”
“Where to?” he asked.
“New York. Maybe Paris,” she answered.
“Alone?” he asked skeptically. “Without him?”
“You have a dirty mind,” she snapped.
“How do you know that he doesn’t?” he replied. He took the money from the dresser and put it in his pocket, then turned back to her. “If I have to pimp for a living, I’d rather pimp for strangers than my own wife.”
* * *
HE SAT AT the bar in the dimly lit cocktail lounge outside the entrance to the Coconut Grove. The faint music of the big band echoed from the show room. The bartender walked toward him as he nursed his second drink. “The show’s goin’ on in a few minutes downstairs,” he said. “Want me to get a table for you?”
“No, thanks,” Joe answered.
The bartender gestured to the drink. “Fill it up?”
Joe shook his head. “Two’s my limit.” He picked up a cigarette.
The bartender flashed his lighter. In its flickering flame, Joe saw the time on his watch. Ten minutes to eleven. The bartender noticed the glance. “Your date running late?”
“No.” Joe smiled. “I came early.”
The bartender gestured toward a table at the end of the lounge. “If she doesn’t show up,” he said, “there’s two pretty ladies over there. I can introduce you.”
Joe laughed. “You’re okay,” he said, placing a five-dollar bill on the counter for him.
The money disappeared. “Just tryin’ to help, sir.” The telephone rang on the back bar. The bartender picked it up. “Mr. Crown?” he asked, looking at Joe. Joe nodded. The bartender shook his head and put down the phone. “Your date said she will meet you in the lobby.”
He made it to the hotel lobby just as she came from the elevator. “Okay?” he asked.
“Okay,” she said. Silently they went outside and waited for the parking attendant to bring his car.
He gave the attendant a dollar bill and moved the car out of the driveway into the street. “Take you home?” he asked, glancing at her.
“Mind dropping me at Dave’s Blue Room?” she replied.
“Whatever you say,” he answered.
Judi looked at him. “Is that guy for real?”
Joe stopped the car for a traffic light. “Mr. Metaxa?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He really owns all those banks?”
“I don’t know,” Joe answered, starting the car again. “All I know is A. J. said the loan agreements for two million dollars will be signed in the morning.”
“He said that he was putting up the money for my picture and that I’d get a new contract starting at five hundred a week instead of the hundred twenty-five I was getting. He also wants to set me up in a new apartment so that I’ll be available when he comes out here every other week.”
Joe glanced at her. “You must have given him the greatest fuck of all time.”
“That’s what I don’t understand,” she said puzzled. “We didn’t do anything.”
“Nothing?” Joe was surprised.
“Not even cop his joint,” she said. “I stood there naked in front of him and he just kept talking to me as if my dress was still on. I don’t think he even noticed when I put it on again.”
“I don’t understand it,” Joe said.
She looked out the car window for a moment then back at Joe. “Do you know Mickey Cohen?”
“The gangster?”
“Who else?” she answered.
“Only from the papers,” he said.
“Would you like to meet him?”
He looked at her. “Tonight?”
“Yes. That’s who I’m meeting.”
“I’d like to meet him,” he said. “But I have to get home. My wife is pissed off enough over tonight.”
“I bet Mickey will know something about Mr. Metaxa,” she said thoughtfully.
A light dawned in Joe’s head. “You know Mickey a long time?”
“Long enough,” she said. “He was the guy who told me when I was in New York to go to Hollywood. That I had everything I needed to become a movie star.”
Joe stopped the car again for a traffic light and stared at her. “Is it Mickey who staked you out here?”
She nodded. “We’ve been real good friends.”
He had to force his attention on the traffic. It was for real. That was exactly the story that A. J. had told him. He pulled the car in front of Dave’s Blue Room. For a moment he was tempted to go in with her, then changed his mind. This wasn’t the time. He had to have a little more information about the banker.
The doorman opened the door to let her out. She turned to Joe. “Thank you,” she said politely.
“My pleasure,” he said, equally polite. “Call me at the studio tomorrow. And tell Mr. Cohen that I’d like to meet him at his own convenience whenever he wants.”
He watched her walk into the entrance of the restaurant, then he moved the car into traffic and started for home.
18
“A GREAT SCRIPT,” A. J. said into the telephone.
“But we have problems.”
“I don’t understand,” Joe replied.
“Did you ever see any of her tests?” A. J. asked.
“No,” Joe answered. “Nobody ever asked me.”
“Meet me in projection room B,” A. J. said. “You’ll see what I mean.”
Joe looked down at his desk at the white bound script. He had felt good about it until just this minute. In three months he had come up with a treatment that worked and a completed script that he knew was good, maybe the best script he had ever written. For a moment he thought of bringing the script to the projection room but it would mean nothing. He left it on the desk as he walked over to the projection room.
A. J. wasn’t alone. Mr. Metaxa, the banker, Ray Stern, the director, and another man Joe didn’t know were there. A. J. nodded to him. “You know Mr. Metaxa and Ray. Say hello to Mickey Cohen.”
Joe looked at the small heavyset man. He held out his hand. “Happy to meet you, Mr. Cohen.”
The little man smiled as they shook hands. “Good to meet you finally, Joe,” he said, in a deep voice. “I have heard about you many times. Good things.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cohen,” Joe said.
“Call me Mickey,” Cohen said.
A. J. gestured and Joe slipped into a seat as the room lights were turned down. For the next fifteen minutes they watched Judi’s tests. One of them was even in color. She sang, she danced, she read lines—all badly. Only the color test was good. She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit and running on a beach. She ran toward the camera, then into the surf. She turned from the water back to the camera. The camera showed every secret of her body, the jutting nipples of her firm breasts, even the curly pubic hair straggling out of the silken swim suit. It was not a sound test and it finished on a closeup of her face. She was breathing heavily after running. The expression of her face gave the impression that she was having an orgasm. Then the screen went black and the room lights were turned up.
Joe kept silent. So did the others. They all waited for A. J.’s comment.
Finally, A. J. sighed audibly. “We fucked ourselves.”
“Maybe she needs more coaching,” Mr. Metaxa said.
“We’ve given her three months with the best teachers,” A. J. said. “They’ve all quit her. Now we’re really fucked. I signed Steve Cochran for fifteen grand as the lead and I borrowed Pat O’Brien from Warner for ten grand for the second lead. And did you see her pussy pushing out of her bathing suit? It looked bigger than a ballet dancer’s cock and balls in tights. If we don’t wrap her in a short
skirt, we’ll never get her past the Hays office.”
“How much are we into, A. J.?” Metaxa asked.
“I made a Cinecolor commitment for this picture for seventy-five thousand dollars because that was half the cost of Technicolor. With that and all the other commitments, almost two hundred thousand.” A. J. didn’t sound happy.
“If she had an accident,” Cohen suggested, “would the insurance companies cover it?”
“Not unless we were in production,” A. J. answered. “Besides, we can’t take chances like that.”
“It was just an idea,” Cohen said.
“It’s too bad,” Ray Stern said. “Joe wrote one of the most literate scripts I have ever read. I was looking forward to doing it. Maybe we can borrow Maria Montez or Yvonne De Carlo from Universal for it?”
“That’s not the idea,” A. J. answered. “We’re committed to the advance sales on a Judi Antoine picture.”
Joe looked at him. “We never sold them a story?”
“Never,” A. J. said. “We sold them on her pinup pictures.”
“Sheena, Queen of the Jungle,” Joe said.
“Are you crazy?” A. J. stared at him. “You know Monogram owns that.”
“Warrior Queen of the Amazons,” Joe said. “Steve and Pat are pilots of a cargo plane that crashes in the jungle and get discovered by a lost tribe of Amazons. We’ve made that picture a thousand times and it always works. All we need is a screenful of half-naked girls, and Judi is the queen of all of them. She doesn’t even have to speak a full line of dialogue. She’s like a female Tarzan. You Steve, me Judi, we fuck.”
A. J. stared at him, then at the others. “It just might work,” he said. “How long would it take you to do a script?”
“Ten days, two weeks, if you want.”
A. J. looked at the banker. “What do you think?”
“I know nothing about pictures,” Metaxa said. “But I don’t like losing money without a shot.”
“I’m with him,” Cohen said. “Let’s take a shot at it.”
A. J. turned to Joe. “Start writing.”
“This is a new job,” Joe said. “What kind of money are we talking about?”
A. J. stared at him. “How can you think about money at a time like this?”
Joe remained silent. He was not really looking for more money. What he was trying to do was collect the balance due for the present script. He had turned in the first draft; now he was at cutoff time. If he didn’t rewrite and polish, the last five thousand dollars of the contract didn’t have to be paid.
A. J. knew that as well as he did. “You write the new script and I’ll pay off the contract and give you an extra thousand when the picture goes on the floor.”
“Okay,” Joe said. He looked around the room. “If you gentlemen would excuse me, I’ll get right back to work.”
* * *
HE MADE NOTES on a lined yellow writing pad for almost an hour. He looked at them, satisfied. He had the basic story line scratched out. He reached for the phone and called the steno pool.
Shirley answered. “Yes, Joe?”
“I need some help, Shirley,” he said.
“That’s what I’m here for,” she replied.
“Can you get me a few scripts of the tits and sand pictures that Universal and Columbia make? I have to study them for style.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “Tomorrow morning be soon enough?”
“Great,” he said.
Her voice lowered confidentially. The grapevine had already been working. “She tested bad?”
“Worse than that,” he answered.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I liked that script you wrote.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Hold on a minute,” she said, putting him on hold.
She came right back on the line. “A Mr. Cohen is here. He would like to see you in your office.”
“Bring him in,” he said, putting the phone down and getting up. By that time Shirley had opened the door. Mickey had to step out of the way so that she could close the door behind him. Joe gestured to the chair in front of the desk.
Mickey sat down, glancing around the small room. “They call this an office?” he said. “It’s more like a closet.”
Joe laughed. “I’m a closet writer.”
Mickey smiled. “I guess you wonder what I’m doing here?”
“It’s none of my business,” Joe said. “You don’t have to explain anything.”
“I know your father,” Mickey said. “We were good friends in the old days in Brooklyn.”
“My father’s okay,” Joe said.
“He still has the chicken market?”
Joe nodded. “The same place.”
Mickey smiled again. “Give him my regards.”
“I’ll do that,” Joe answered.
Mickey looked at him. “It’s not on the record,” he said, “but I’m here as Judi’s manager.”
“Good enough,” Joe said.
“What do you think?” Mickey asked. “Do you think we can pull it off?”
“I’ll have the script,” Joe answered. “The rest depends on A. J.”
“He’s already cutting corners,” Cohen said. “He got out of the O’Brien agreement with Warner Brothers.”
“O’Brien wouldn’t make this sort of a movie anyway,” Joe said.
“The director bowed out too,” Mickey said. “He’s not doing that kind of movie anymore.”
“There’s plenty of directors,” Joe said. “That will not create any problem.”
“A. J.’s cutting the shooting schedule to twelve days instead of thirty.”
“That’s about right,” Joe said. “The movie shouldn’t take more than that.”
“Metaxa’s worried,” Mickey said.
“I can believe that,” Joe said. “It’s his money and his girl.”
“Wrong,” Mickey said. “Not his money, not his girl.”
Joe looked at him silently.
“You know about the Judge in New York?”
Joe nodded. The Judge was the unofficial arbitrator between all the Mafia families.
“Metaxa is fronting for him. The reason they loaned the studio the money is because that’s good business for them. It’s legitimate. Clean. I had to get Judi out here because the Judge’s wife was getting pissed off.”
Joe looked at him. “Does Judi know about that?”
“She knows,” Mickey said. “But she doesn’t give a shit. The only one she cares about is herself.”
Joe was silent for a moment. “You can depend on me,” he said. “I’ll do the best I can.”
Mickey got out of the chair. “You make this work and you have a big marker from us.” He reached for the door. “You keep me informed. Leave a message for me at Dave’s Blue Room. Any time, night or day. I’ll get back to you.”
“Okay,” Joe said. Mickey nodded and left the small office. Joe took a deep breath. Nothing really changes. There’s always somebody on top somewhere. He looked down at his scratch pad and wondered if A. J. really thought he was the boss of his own studio.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST eight o’clock by the time he got home. He started up the steps to the bedroom and Rosa called him from the kitchen. “A half-hour for dinner, okay?”
“Okay,” he said and walked up the stairs to the bedroom. Motty was just coming from the bathroom as she slipped on a robe. She looked up at him as he bent to kiss her cheek.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I am tired,” he said.
“You need some food,” she said. “I’m having Rosa make veal cutlets.”
“Fine,” he said unenthusiastically.
She glanced at him. “What’s wrong?”
“The picture got fucked.”
“It’s all off?” she asked. “You’re not doing the rewrite?”
“It’s off but it’s not off,” he said. He saw her puzzled look and explained. “Judi’s tests were garba
ge. She can’t do anything but look good. No acting, no dancing, no singing—just stand there. A. J. is tearing the rest of his hair out. He said he was out two hundred grand already. There’s no way he can make this script.”
“I still don’t understand,” she said. “What is he going to do then?”
“I had an idea,” he said. “I remembered one of those stories at Spicy Adventure magazine. You know, ‘The Warrior Queen of the Amazons.’”
“You told them about the magazine?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “I’m not that stupid. I told them as if it was just a new idea that had come to me. And they bought it.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
The humor of it finally came to him. He laughed. “I couldn’t either. But they bought it, and I have to write it in two weeks.”
“Then you’re still on the payroll?”
He nodded. “Not only that, but I’m getting another grand when it begins shooting.” He took off his jacket and threw it on the bed. “I’ll wash up and we can have dinner.”
She followed him into the bathroom. “Have you read about the new look in ladies’ fashions? It started in Paris. The first important collection since before the war.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” he answered. He turned the hot-water tap and waited for the water to heat up. “What about it?”
“Mr. Marks wants us to be the first store in L.A. to have it. Our dress houses on Seventh Avenue told us they will have the knock-offs by next week. He asked if I would go to New York to decide what would work for us.”
He looked down and washed his hands without facing her. “Are you going?”
“It’s part of my job,” she said.
He was silent as he rinsed the soap from his hands and picked up a towel.
“I spoke to your mother,” she said. “She said I could stay with them and bring Caroline.”
Joe looked at her. “That’s a switch.” His mother had never spoken to them until the baby was born—and even then, not until they mailed a copy of their wedding certificate to verify that everything was kosher. But she was still cool to him. Fortunately, she no longer felt that way about Motty. After all, the whole thing wasn’t Motty’s fault—he had taken advantage of an innocent girl. “Did she ask anything about me?” he asked.
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