“Never mind the shoelaces. They’re tight enough.”
“Yes, sir. And how is Mr. Hunsecker?”
“Asleep. Which means that he’s fine.”
I straightened my tie and headed for the main dining room, feeling my body tense up with each step.
It was Morgan Wright who called lunch-hour at Babe Scanlon’s “Ham and Egos with buttered up toast,” and it was I who had thought up the line for him. It was not just the ordinary restaurant din of dishes and silverware and sound-proofed conversation that hit your ears as you entered. There was a quality to the sound as unique to Babe Scanlon’s as the song of the mockingbird is to the mockingbird. I stood in the archway for a moment, surveying the scene and mapping out the itinerary of my table hopping. Then I took a deep breath and plunged in, head waiter first. …
The cheesecake and conversation were sitting on my stomach surprisingly well. I got all the way to Fifth Avenue before the first belch. I walked down the avenue swiftly, trying not to look at the beautiful untouchables parading in the warm sunshine. But after a while I gave up and let my eyes have it, until I reached Brannerman’s Bookshop.
Downstairs in the magazine department, Mrs. Kelland sprang into action when she saw me coming. “Oh, Mr. Falco,” she beamed, waddling over to me, “you couldn’t have picked a better day. We just got a lovely shipment all the way from New Zealand.”
“Let’s see what they’re like,” I said. You never could tell. I had once found some usable column material in a Bombay movie magazine.
She led me to a table on which were stacked some bruised copies of The New Zealander. I skimmed through a few issues and shook my head. They were strictly from down under.
“Oh, I was so sure,” Mrs. Kelland sighed with disappointment. “The minute they came in I said to myself—”
“How about Tid-bits?” I said. “Any new ones in?”
Her face lit up again. “Look … dozens of them.”
“Good, good, good.” For a London weekly, Tid-bits was surprisingly hep. Some of the fillers were so Americanized that all I had to do to streamline an anecdote for one of the columnists was substitute Abe Burrows’ name for G. B. Shaw’s, Marlon Brando’s for Winston Churchill’s, or Finn Wildbeck’s for Disraeli’s. I tucked a bundle of them under my arm.
“The boys are going to just love them,” Mrs. Kelland chortled.
“They sure will,” I said. Somehow she had gotten the notion that I bought these back issues of foreign magazines to distribute to veterans in hospitals, and somehow I had never found a good reason to correct her. I added copies of the Irish Digest, The Echo, Tatler’s, Everyman’s, The Dubliner, 1000 Best Jokes & Gags, and The London Chronicle to the bundle, and Mrs. Kelland was delirious.
“Now before I pack these, one last chance. Are you sure you don’t want The New Zealander? I’m certain the boys would find it so interesting.”
“All right.” I waved a hand magnanimously. “Throw in a New Zealander. Throw in two New Zealanders.” Any thing to make the boys happy. Anything to get out of there and transport the raw material to the refinery. …
I got out of the elevator on the fifth floor and moved down the hall toward the sound of Gloria’s typewriter. She was hunched over her machine, and Milton was moving his lips noiselessly at the telephone, as I walked in.
“Bring your pad in,” I said to Gloria, striding past her into my inner sanctum. The office of a “public relations man” is always thickly carpeted, lavishly decorated and orderly. The office of a “press agent” always looks as though it has been worried in. Some day someone was going to look beneath the papers and clippings covering my desk and find Judge Crater.
I dumped the bundle of magazines on top of the mess, flopped into the swivel chair and put my feet up on the desk, like Bogart used to, or Bob Mitchum. Then Gloria walked in—like Gloria.
She said: “I’ve reserved the limousine to meet the train tomorrow.”
“Good,” I said. I ripped seven pages from my little black memo pad, and I took Wilbur’s folded sheet of yellow paper from my pocket. “Clean these items up and distribute them among Wright, Walling - ford and Elwell. Attach a note to each. ‘Dear So-and-so: Only the best, to the best of them all. I never forget you, and I know you won’t forget Finn Wildbeck. Love.’”
I unwrapped the package of foreign magazines and rifled through them for the next ten minutes, tearing out the pages that bore fruit and marking the paragraphs for Gloria. “These are for a Leo Bartha column.”
“I don’t think he’ll—”
“Change the wording a little, credit the stories to Wildbeck, and tie them all together with a typical Bartha lead … something like: ‘Finn Wildbeck, the titan of the tintypes, tells good stories not only on the screen but over a cocktail, too.’ You know the rest. And don’t send it out until I tell you.”
“All rightie.”
“Now send Milton in.”
I would have felt something was missing if two inches of her slip hadn’t been showing as she walked out. “He’s still on the phone,” she called back.
“Milton!” I shouted.
He came running in. “Sorry, Sidney.”
“Don’t you ever get off that phone?”
He swallowed. “Gee, you can’t get anything unless you phone around. I don’t know what it is: I call people and they talk, but they never say anything. No news.”
“There’s no such thing as no news. You can always invent it.” My voice was edgy. “Sit down.”
He collapsed into the chair next to my desk with a sigh. He was wearing the blue bow-tie with the yellow polka dots and his brown hair looked as though rats had been gnawing at it.
“Now,” I said, “what about the column you were supposed to do for Bartha?”
“Bartha?” He started chewing his lower lip.
“Yes, Bartha.”
I waited. His right leg began to move up and down. He had worry on the knee. “Gee, Sidney “ his voice rose to a whine, “Bartha was at the screening of The Flame in the Heart and I told you what he said to me going down in the elevator. ‘Only a vulgar barbarian like Wildbeck would think of wrapping such trash in exquisite Technicolor.’ He won’t touch Wildbeck in the column. He won’t go near him. What’s the use of—?”
“You don’t think so?” I asked quietly.
“Of course not.”
“You’re sure.”
“Of course I’m sure.”
I stared at him for a moment. “Gloria,” I called out, “get me Leo Bartha. And I don’t want Miss King. I want Bartha.” Milton’s face was pasty white. “I don’t know why I still have to be doing these things myself,” I said to him evenly. “I’ve gone over this with you again and again.”
“I know you have, but—”
“Bartha on One,” Gloria called out.
I picked up the phone and gave it everything I had. “Leo! How are you, tootsie?”
“Rather busy at the moment.” The mailed fist in the velvet voice. “What is it, Falco?”
“Nothing, nothing. Just wanted to say hello. How’s Loretta, baby?”
“Very well, thank you. Look, I’m awfully—”
“Good, good. I guess Connecticut agrees with her.”
“Connecticut?”
“Who was it told me Loretta spent the day in Connecticut last week? Don’t blame her a bit for lamming out of town. It isn’t the heat, it’s the futility. Oh, I know who it was … Bunny, over at Scanlon’s. She’s a close friend of Rita, the little blonde thing, the one with the shape. You know Rita, don’t you, Leo?”
“Look, Falco,” he said quickly, “I’d love to chitchat but I’m very busy right now and—”
“There’s only one thing wrong with a girl like Rita. She talks too much and she doesn’t care about whom or to whom, particularly if she thinks it might wind up in Hunsecker’s column. What a pity to see a mouth like that wasted on talking.”
I laughed noisily to cover up the choked silence at the other end.
“That pig.” His voice trembled with fear. “He’d print anything, wouldn’t he? Anything!”
“Only what he knows, Leo.” I threw it away. “Well, all right, baby, if you’re busy—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.”
“Give my fondest to Loretta, will you? She’s still my favorite columnist’s wife … that is, I should say: favorite wife of a columnist … unless, of course,” I fed it to him slowly, “you want to be my favorite columnist and say you’ll use this great column on Finn Wildbeck I’m preparing. How about it, tootsie?”
For Bartha, you don’t have to draw diagrams.
“Well …”
So I drew one. “I wouldn’t have suggested it unless I was sure that you want to show me how much you love me. Right, baby?”
“Well, I suppose it really wouldn’t hurt anybody if I did a column about Wildbeck,” he mused, trying to save what was left of his face. “After all, he will be in town. It would be timely.”
“Leo, if you use the column, you can rest assured that nobody will get hurt.”
“What sort of angle do you intend to use in the piece?” He made it sound as though that could possibly make a difference.
“No, I’m not going to spoil it.” I could play, too. “I want it to be as fresh for you as it will be for your readers. Thursday’s readers, Leo?” I put the question mark in my voice just to be polite.
He grunted assent.
“And you won’t forget to give my warmest to Loretta, will you?”
“Look—”
“Remember, Leo,” I said, “don’t worry about a thing.”
“Can I go now?” he muttered.
“Thank you, baby.” I hung up and turned to Milton. “You see?” I said. “All you have to do is ask him, in a nice way.”
There were red marks below his lip where his teeth had been working frantically. His mouth quivered as he fumbled for words. “I’ll … I’ll … start getting a column ready for him.”
“Never mind now. I’ll do it myself.”
“But, Sidney—”
“Tell Gloria to come in.”
I took a newspaper from the desk and stared at it blankly while he stood there uncertainly, waiting. Finally he gave up and shuffled out.
Gloria said, “You wanted me?”
I put the paper down and beckoned for her to come closer. “That column material I gave you for Bartha … shoot it over to him as soon as you get it typed up.”
She started to say something.
I said, “He’s expecting it.”
“All rightie.”
“And close my door on the way out.”
Suddenly I was unbearably tired … tired of the week that lay ahead and tired of all the weeks like it that lay in the unforgettable past. I sat there wanting sleep the way an alcoholic craves the whisky he cannot have. But then my eyes fell on the telegram that was still on the desk, the one that said: “It’s the little things that count, tootsie,” and I rubbed the weariness from my face with practiced skill. I picked up the private telephone at my elbow and dialed Thelma Lance.
The idea must have been at the back of my mind all day, waiting to make itself known to me.
“Hello?”
“Thelma sweetheart!”
“Sidney darling! Oh, honey,” she broke into panicky laughter, “don’t ever do that again. It’s been five long horrible weeks. Didn’t you get my—?”
“Sure, sure, sure. Busy, busy, busy. Hey, guess what.”
“What, darling?”
“Guess who you’re going to meet.”
Her voice froze. “Who?”
“Finn Wildbeck. Isn’t that nice?”
“Oh, please, Sidney,” she said quietly, “please, darling, you said no more of that. Don’t you remember? You said—”
“He’ll only be here a week.”
“But you promised,” she cried. “Don’t you remember? You promised!”
“One little week.”
“Please, Sidney, please!”
“What’s the matter, baby? Don’t you love me any more?”
“Oh, but, darling—” She was silent for a long time.
“Don’t you?” I said.
After a while, she spoke. “Darling?” She sounded weak.
“What?”
“Will you come over?”
“What for?”
“Maybe you can persuade me.”
I didn’t say anything. I glanced at the shine on my shoes. I stared at the buildings across the street. I looked at the telegram on my desk. Finally I had to say some thing. I said, “When?”
“Now.”
I looked at my watch. I stared at it. But it wouldn’t stop. I said, “In a half hour.”
She said, “Tell me that you love me.”
“In a half hour.” I hung up.
I took the telegram from the desk and I crumpled it into a ball and hurled it at the wastebasket as hard as I could. It bounced off and fell to the floor. I didn’t bother to pick it up. I went to the door.
“I may call in later,” I said to Gloria on the way out.
“All rightie,” she said.
Milton was hunched tensely over his typewriter, trying to look busy. His face was damp, and he avoided my glance as I passed. I walked down the hall thinking about him. In two years I had tried to show him everything I knew, and he still hadn’t learned. He was young. It would take more time. Perhaps it would be another two years before he learned all the tricks and could do things the way I did. Halfway to the elevator I turned and went back to the office. Then I did the only nice thing I had ever done for Milton, something no one had ever been nice enough to do for me. I fired him.
THE CLASSIC FILM NOIR REFERENCE VOLUME
Film Noir: The Encyclopedia
Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward,
James Ursini, and Robert Porfirio
978-1-59020-144-2
$45.00 HC
Film Noir is the acknowledged bible of the genre, unsurpassed in its erudition, range, and authority since its first publication in 1979. For the first time, this classic of film reference receives a total updating and revision. With entries for now over 500 American and international films, more than 500 evocative stills and other photos, and in-depth analysis of the elements of the genre, this all new edition is surely the last word on the noir film.
"If anyone is ever going to solve the mystery of noir's intense but fairly short-lived dominance of our screens, it will have to be Silver and Ursini, who have written many invaluable books on the subject."
—Richard Schickel, Los Angeles Times
Sweet Smell of Success Page 26