Browning PI

by Peter Corris

  Something glinted in the glow cast by the outdoor party lights. I saw that the bouncer was slipping on a pair of brass knucks. I reached behind me for the .38—an overreaction and way too slow anyway. Then a voice cut through the sweet-scented air.

  'Dick! What're you doing here? Just the man I wanted to see.'

  It was N. Robert Silkstein, my agent. Resplendent in a white suit with a long panatella between his fingers and a sinewy blonde on his arm, he reached enthusiastically for my hand.

  I switched from going for my gun to shaking hands, always a wise choice. 'Hello Bobby,' I said. 'It's good to see you.'

  Silkstein pointed his cigar at the bouncer, who was hiding the knucks in his jacket pocket. 'What's this guy doing?'

  I smiled at the blonde, who wore a vague, drunken or doped look, and moved closer to Silkstein.

  'It's all right, Bobby. He mistook me for Errol Flynn. Flynn fucked his mother and his sister and his wife and he wanted a little talk.'

  The bouncer brought his hand up, minus the brass knuckles, but in a pretty convincing fist. He stopped the punch a half inch short of my nose. 'I'm taking a stroll for ten minutes, peeper,' he growled. 'When I come back, be missing.'

  14

  Bobby Silk was a little guy, starting to fill out now as he entered his forties. He'd also started to step out, it seemed. The thin blonde certainly wasn't his wife and they hadn't gone out into the shrubbery to talk horticulture. The blonde still seemed to be keen to get on with what they had intended to do, and she became pouty when Bobby made it clear it was business first. That was Bobby.

  'Go inside and get us a drink, babe,' he said. 'Mine's a scotch on the rocks. What about you, Dick?'

  'The same.'

  'Take your time, sugar,' Bobby said, 'and don't worry. You and your career are at the top of my list.'

  The blonde pouted some more and walked away, letting us see the sway of her lean hips and the movement of her firm little arse. Bobby watched her out of sight. Bobby's father had been one of the great Hollywood lechers, insatiable for women morning, noon and night. Eventually it had killed him. Bobby, despite his opportunities, had always resisted temptation, but it looked as if he was running true to his breeding now.

  'The next Betty Grable,' he said.

  'Too thin.'

  'Damn sight easier to put a few pounds on 'em than to take it off.' He steered me in the direction of a seat under a palm tree. We sat down. I lit a cigarette and Bobby lit his cigar. Something else new—I'd never known him to smoke before. His father went through a box a day. 'Now, Dick, where've you been keeping yourself? I've been calling. I even sent someone round with a note for you.'

  I'd been so caught up in the Sallust case that I'd forgotten the card from Bobby. Also, I hadn't appreciated the favour that had been bestowed on me. Hollywood agents expected people to contact them, not the other way around.

  'I've been busy, Bobby.'

  'Doing what? You're not working.'

  His little eyes went narrow and shrewd. Even Bobby, who made a six-figure income, would scream if he heard that a small-time actor like me was in work and not forking over the commission. I considered what to tell him and decided that it might as well be the truth. He was the principal, after all. He'd hired Pete McVey and McVey had hired me. No harm in the 2IC turning in an interim report. I gave him a brief version of what Pete and I had done, glossing it a little, making us look on the ball.

  Bobby listened with growing impatience. I was surprised. I thought I was telling it pretty good. When I finished talking he waved it all away with the hand that held the cigar. 'Forget all that.'

  'Eh?' I said. I felt as if the ground had opened under me. I wished the next Betty Grable would come back with the drinks.

  'They've lowered the boom on that project,' Bobby said. 'Garfield's got a deferment and the producer, Joe Herman, he's out. So that drunken bum can't turn in his script. Who cares? He's all washed up. If McVey runs up a big tab in Frisco he could end up holding it. I'm terminating him, as of now.'

  I have to admit I was shocked. Even for Hollywood, even for Bobby Silk, this was pretty barefaced. I was trying to think of something to say when the girl came back with the drinks. She was wearing a clinging white cocktail dress, short in the skirt and low in front. She'd discarded the light wrap she'd had around her shoulders and I revised my opinion—maybe thin wasn't exactly the word. Bobby introduced her as Suzie something or other. She never did become the next Betty Grable but she did become Bobby's second wife and got off with a good chunk of loot in the end, so I guess she has no kicks coming.

  Bobby was certainly very attentive that night. He gave her his jacket when she shivered and lit her cigarettes while we chatted about her acting career. She'd had a bit part in Stage Door Canteen and was hoping for a few lines in Meet Me in St Louis. Bobby was all encouragement. When he'd fed her ego enough, he turned to me and flicked his cigar away into the bushes where it died in a shower of sparks.

  'Dick,' he said, 'how'd you like to go out to Australia?'

  I was so taken aback I didn't know what to say. Like all Australians who travel, I knew that there was no other country on earth like it. No place with the same smells and combination of sun and earth and sea. Not many are able to leave the place and never go back, no matter how much they hate the wowsers and the bootlickers and the politicians like that little rat, Billy Hughes. With me, it depended on my mood of the moment. Sometimes, I could see a photograph of a kangaroo and feel something throb inside me that I guess you could call homesickness. Other times, I'd remember the churches in Melbourne, Long Bay Gaol in Sydney or, even worse, my first wife, Elizabeth McKnight, and I'd look around me and thank god I was in California. That night, at Buddy Smiles's preposterous house on Summit Drive, I was caught between the two reactions.

  'Er, I don't know, Bobby,' I said. 'What's on your mind?'

  Bobby tapped his nose. 'A picture. What else?' Suzie snuggled closer to him and giggled.

  I said 'What picture? I told you, I'm not working with Flynn again.'

  'I know, I know. Nothing to do with Errol, this one. It's a war picture. Set in the South Pacific. I reckon I can get you the part of the Australian general who's kicking Japanese ass in New Guinea.'

  'Are we kicking ass in New Guinea? I thought. . .'

  Bobby had another cigar going. He waved it and Suzie giggled again. 'That's a detail. Point is, it's a propaganda movie. Morale-boosting stuff. And if you do it, you'd have to go out to Australia and liaise with the Army there. Whaddya say, Dick? You're in line for it. Take my word.'

  When an agent says 'Take my word' you know it's time to start sniffing for lies. But Bobby had sought me out and seemed sincere, sincere enough to put the blonde on the back burner for a while and still be eyeballing me like he meant it. I even had the feeling that I could've touched him for a loan, and that kind of a feeling has to be attended to.

  'Tell me more about the picture,' I said.

  Bobby reached up to put his arm around my shoulder. It was a very uncomfortable position for both of us and I realised that he only did it so he could whisper in my ear. 'War picture, like I said. Titled South Pacific Showdown at the moment. That could switch. Location stuff in Bris-bane and New Guinea. Looking at Spencer for the US general who goes mano a mano with your character. Dramatic stuff. Bette Davis for Spence, Marilyn Maxwell for you unless casting can come up with some Australian twist, maybe British.'

  Suzie squealed again. 'Bobby! Whisperin's rude!'

  'Sorry, baby. Hush hush. Great chance, Dick. I sold them on your flying for Hughes and your Canadian army papers.'

  This is the dilemma the less-than-heroic always face. I had a brave man's credentials, won mostly by cunning, and I was constantly being forced to live up to them. Tricky, but after twenty-five years I was getting used to it. 'So, what do I have to do?'

  'That's my boy,' Bobby chortled. 'Be at Paramount tomorrow morning at eightsky, super-sharp.'

  'What for?'

>   'Screen test. What else?'

  'I thought you said I could have it.'

  Bobby had me hooked and he knew it. That meant he had the upper hand and there was nothing he liked better than showing it. 'I told them that if they wanted an Aussie who knew that New Guinea wasn't in Africa and who could wear a general's suit, you were the man. Show up sober and you'll get it. Wouldn't hurt to brush up on a few of them salty down-under expressions.'

  'Stone the crows,' I said. 'Fair dinkum.'

  Bobby waved his cigar. 'Yeah, that sorta thing.'

  We'd finished our drinks by this time and there didn't seem to be anything more to say. On one level, the idea of going to Australia as a make-believe army officer scared me stiff. After all, I'd deserted from the Australian army. But that was a long time ago and I'd been going under the name of Hughes at the time. I doubted that many people still alive in Australia would even recognise me. And it's one thing to sneak back into a country on your uppers and looking for a handout (as I'd come close to doing a few times in my hand-to-mouth existence) and arriving in triumph as a Paramount leading man playing opposite Spencer Tracy.

  I imagined the arrival scene: Dick Browning perhaps, get away from the old Richard. A new image. A bit grey at the temples but obviously only in his early forties. Way too young to be Richard Kelly Browning of Newcastle and other parts. The studios had experts at washing dirty stories from the past so that they came up shiny bright in the present.

  There was more to it than that, though. I'd been in Hollywood on and off for more than twenty years and I'd never landed a solid, leading role. I'd been close, but something always seemed to happen—I'd be forced to appear under an assumed name or my scenes would be left in the cutting room. I'd never made it and I'd seen some awful types who had—I'm thinking primarily of Flynn, of course. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe I could carve out a career as the distinguished older man, mostly the life-scarred veteran, but occasionally getting the younger woman and holding her against the young Turks. I could see it and I liked it.

  I winked at Bobby—the conspirator, the give-it-a-go-boy. 'I'll be there.'

  'Great. Now, Suzie and me'd better get back in there 'n' mingle.'

  A squeal of protest. 'Bobby!'

  Bobby put his arms around her and gave her a squeeze. He was all-agent now, all-studio, all-American. 'Think of your career, honey-pie. There's important people inside.'

  'You're important people to me, Bobbykins.'

  'Yeah, well . . . okay, the night is young. Ah, you should get some beauty sleep, Dick. They want a battered military man, sure, but you look like you've fought a hundred Japs single-handed. You need a doctor eelgood to set you up for tomorrow? I know a guy out in Glendale. . .'

  I moved away, half-randy, half-sober. 'I'll be fine, Bobby. Just tell me one thing. What would you have done if you hadn't seen me tonight? Who would you have thrown this job to?'

  'Victor McLaglen18. Over the hill but. . .'

  'He's not even an Australian! He was born in England.'

  Bobby shrugged. 'Any port in a storm, Dick. I'll be hoping to hear from Paramount, tensky.'

  15

  Everyone knows the Paramount gate on Marathon. Getting past it if you didn't have the right ticket was harder than getting to see the Pope. When I showed up on Monday morning, showered, shaved and wearing the best clothes I could salvage from my ransacked room at the Wilcox, I gave my name to the gateman and waited. It was already warm and the jacket I was wearing was a shade too heavy. I was sweating and the guy took his time. What if it was all a practical joke of Bobby's? I thought. What if he had a camera there waiting to snap me as I sweated and waited? That's Hollywood for you. A perpetual itch between the shoulder-blades.

  The gateman touched his cap. 'You can go in, Mr Browning. Here's your pass. Sound stage four, on your right.'

  I went in under the wrought-iron gate to Paradise, clutching my pass and still sweating. Along the asphalt, between the flower beds to sound stage four. Another guard, but the pass was an open sesame. I went out of the sunlight into a big, dim barn where the temperature was about twenty degrees lower than outside. The concrete floor was criss-crossed with wires and cables. When they turned the lights on, the temperature would zoom up thirty degrees. It was no wonder the movie people were always getting colds and shooting themselves full of drugs to cope. I knew that, and that there'd be some little Hitler of a director telling me how to wipe my nose. And I still wanted it.

  A young woman carrying a clipboard hurried towards me. I gave her my name; she checked it on her list and handed me another pass. The first one was was red, this was white; I wondered when I'd get the blue one.

  'I'm Patty King. Mr Herman and Mr Farrow are in studio two, Mr Browning. They'd like you to join them. If you'd just follow me.'

  'What about Mr Tracy and Miss Davis?' I said.

  She put her finger to her lips. 'Shh. Walls have ears.'

  The shoulder-blade itch again. This was weird. I remembered Bobby Silk's uncharacteristic effort to get in touch with me and his whispering about the cast list. Something funny was going on. I stepped over the cables, following Patty King's shapely form, and tried to figure out what it might be. Joe Herman was an independent producer and the guy supposed to be involved in the mysterious picture Hart Sallust was working on. But this couldn't have anything to do with that! We were inside Paramount Pictures—studio numero uno, as the gossip mags called it. Tracy and Davis weren't Paramount players, I knew that. Maybe the secrecy was all about some inter-studio deal. Maybe.

  I squared my shoulders and tightened my jawline and marched into the room Patty King indicated. I recognised Farrow—a strongly-built, athletic-looking guy with piercing blue eyes and an intelligent expression. The other man, Herman presumably, was the opposite—he was enormously fat, fat all over—golf-ball-sized pouches under his eyes, three chins and another on the way.

  Patty King made the introductions and I shook Farrow's hard, dry hand and Herman's moist, soft one. The room was some kind of technician's work space, with lots of sound and recording equipment lying around. We sat in straight-back chairs drawn up to an old white pine table that had about a thousand telephone numbers scratched on it. Strange place for a meeting. Miss King brought coffee; Herman lit a cigar and I had my first Lucky of the day. Farrow rolled himself a cigarette with tobacco from a pouch. He took a long time over it, getting the tobacco to sit evenly, tucking in the loose strands.

  'You have seen military service I understand, Mr Browning?' Herman said.

  Tricky territory. Best to play it confident. I puffed smoke and nodded. 'Right. The first war, closing stages. I was just a kid. I fought in the Mexican revolution for a while. Bloody shambles. I was in the Canadian army for a time, too.'

  Farrow drank some coffee and kept playing with his cigarette. It was just about perfect by this time but he still wasn't happy. His voice was pretty much American with just a trace of British in it. I couldn't hear any Australian but then, I don't guess there was much of the old bowyang and bunyip19 in mine, either. 'That's quite impressive. I understand you fly planes as well?'

  Never again if I can help it, I thought. 'I did, for a time. Pretty rusty now, of course.'

  'We have got all the crazy fliers we want,' Herman said. 'We need authenticity, integrity, dignity. . .'

  I tried to exhibit all those qualities in good measure, as I smoked my cigarette and drank my coffee.

  Farrow had got as far with his cigarette as wetting the end so it wouldn't stick to his lips. I wondered if he was ever going to smoke it. 'How much did your agent tell you about this project?' he said.

  I'd picked up the drift by now—early morning meeting, no-one around but the super-efficient and discreet Miss King, multiple passes . . . 'Very little,' I said. 'I got the impression that it's not something for Hedda and Louella just yet.'

  Farrow snorted his amusement, winning points from me. Herman puffed a big cloud of smoke, which could have meant anything. I let my
remark ride and waited for a bid from the other players. They exchanged looks; the fit man got the nod from the fat man.

  'It's something like an undercover operation,' Farrow said. 'Maybe there'll be a movie and maybe there won't be. I've written a script but I don't necessarily expect to see it make the screen.'

  This was too much. I shook my head. 'I don't understand.'

  Farrow leaned towards me across the table. 'We know all about you, Mr Browning. We know about your . . . comings and goings, shall we say.'

  I remembered that I wasn't a spineless actor, ready to roll, belly-up, on the rug for a part. I was a private eye, licensed, bonded. I didn't have to take this shit. 'Who's we?'

  'A very good question, yes,' Herman said. 'We is Mr Farrow and myself, certain other gentlemen and a man you may remember, one Mr Peter Groom, formerly of the FBI.'

  The look on my face must have told them that I did remember. Groom was the G-man who'd suckered me into playing along with a bunch of crazy Klu Kluxers back in '38. He had a file on me that detailed the fillings in my teeth20.

  'Mr Groom's in military intelligence now,' Herman said smoothly. 'What is known, I believe, as a coming man.'

  In '39, Groom had agreed not to act on any of the irregularities of my life—little matters such as illegal entry, bigamy, bankruptcy and the like—in return for my cooperation. 'We had a deal,' I said.

  'You cannot deal with those people unless you have as much on them as they have on you, or more,' Herman said. 'I know. I bargained my way out of Germany in 1937. It was not easy, believe me.'

  I wanted to say, 'So, why don't you make a movie out of that and leave me alone?' but I didn't. Instead, I listened to Farrow.