Getting Garbo (11 page)

“Cute. But we're cuter.” She nuzzles my neck. “Tell me something about you that I don't know.”

I take a drag on my Lucky and blow a smoke ring at the ceiling. “What can I tell you? You know everything. You took ‘Roy Darnell 101' and passed with honors.”

See, it's a weird situation. Although we're virtually strangers, she's been thoroughly briefed on me. Not to mention the backgrounding on Kim that Killer did for me. So we both know too much and too little. We're feeling our way. Being in bed in her cozy apartment after having made spectacular love makes it easier.

“What makes this a
bachelorette
apartment?” I ask.

“It's got a hot plate and a bidet. And don't change the subject.”

“You go first. Who are you really?”

So she tells me. I listen, don't interrupt.

Mother died in childbirth. Father unknown. Senile grandmother in Glendale facility her only relative. Foster child. Lived in six different homes in eighteen years. From Eagle Rock to Alhambra. Molested at age eight by landlord. No one believed her. Raped at fourteen by foster father. Foster mother blamed her. Favorite writer: Charles Dickens. “Made me feel better to find out some people had it worse.” Swiped candy bars from the supermarket and sold them door-to-door. Made money playing clown at kid parties. Drum majorette. Amateur magician. “Good with my hands—guess you know that, though.” New York Yankees fan. “They never whine.” On her own at fifteen. Usherette at Pasadena Playhouse. Got to understudy featured role in
Junior Miss.
Went on twice. Arrested for stealing cosmetics from Thrifty Drugstore. Suspended sentence. Bicycle rider, ice skater, good dancer. “Strong legs.” Loves being whistled at. Terrified of being crippled. Can't swim. Breaks out if she eats strawberries. Loves chopped liver. Used to be a waitress at Canter's Deli on Fairfax. “They make the best chopped liver.” Thinks the Marx Brothers were funnier than Martin and Lewis. Lived at the Studio Club. Had Marilyn Monroe's old room. Thinks Elvis is better than Sinatra. Hates trumpet players. Loves acting. Scared she's not very good.

“And that's the story of my life—so far. Your turn now.”

“Well, of course, most of what you know about me is high-grade bullshit. Concocted by the studio with the helpful collusion of the media. It's called the Star Making Machine.”

“Okay, then tell me a good lie.”

“Good lie, huh? Let's see.” Another Lucky drag. Another smoke ring. “Okay. Got one for you. Quote. Roy Darnell, better known as two-fisted Jack Havoc, was a juvenile gang warrior on the streets of Philadelphia—”

She finishes the rest, “—until Roy was arrested and reformed by a sympathetic police sergeant. Unquote. That's in a lot of the news clips. Not true?”

“I was never a gang kid. And I never got arrested. See, after my dad died, his ex-bookmaking partner hired me to hang around his candy store, sweep up, work the counter—and if the cops raided him, my job was to chew and swallow the betting slips. One day this Philly plainclothes detective comes in, he's huddling with my boss. Suddenly, my boss yells, ‘Now, Roy,
now!
' So I start gobbling up the slips. The detective knocks the slips out of my hand—and laughs himself silly. I didn't know it was a gag 'til then. ‘I'm gonna arrest you, y'little punk,' he cackles, ‘for eating evidence.' But he was only trying to scare me.”

“That's a good above-the-belt story,” she says.

“What's that's supposed to mean?”

“Above-the-belt—where it doesn't hurt. Got any below-the-belt stories? Something you never told anyone else.”

I think for a minute. Can I trust her? I decide to risk it. I tell her about my wonderful home life as a kid, how Daddy'd come home shit-faced mean drunk and start beating on my mother, really letting loose like he's Joe Louis punching for dollars, and when I would jump in to help her, even though I was just a little kid, he'd turn on me—“and the funny part was then she'd always join in on
his
side, my mother, just glad to get him off
her
case, I guess, so then they'd both be whacking me, the parents that flay together stay together, and…and it always ended the same way.” I stop talking. Rub my eyes with my fingers. Rub hard. But I can still see how it was.

“How?” Kim asks. Softly. Like the dentist does when he knows he's hit the nerve. “How would it end?”

“In the empty lot. Out behind the house. The refrigerator.” The words lurch out of me. Still burning. Even after all these years. “This old refrigerator. Dumped. Abandoned. Dad would lock me inside. Punishment. Leave me there. I'd be so scared. Nobody to protect me. That's when I first heard the voice.”

“The voice of who?”

“He didn't have a name. He wasn't real. I mean, he was real to me. My friend. My only friend. I could hear him. Inside the refrigerator. Inside me. ‘Sit very still,' he'd say. ‘Try not to breathe hard, you'll use up the air too fast. Nice and still. Don't worry, Dad'll come back and let you out. Or maybe Mom.' We'd be alone in there. My guardian angel and me. Sometimes, by…by the time one of them finally came and opened the door, there was hardly any air left, I'd be…gasping, but…”

I stop talking again. Take a deep, deep breath. “That's a story I never told before.”

She's looking at me. Like she wants to cry.

I kiss her gently. We cling to each other as if there's a hurricane roaring outside the window. But we're temporarily safe from the storm.

It's fight night at the Olympic Auditorium in downtown L.A. Another Hollywood tradition. George Raft and Bugsy Siegel used to have ringside seats. Now Killer and I do. We haven't been here in a while, but it's part of my new high profile. Stay in the public eye while suing the studio. Killer arranges with some of his pals to have the tuxedoed announcer introduce me before the fights start as one of the celebrities in the house. I'm called right after Art Aragon. “Ladies and gentlemen, from Hollywood, weighing one hundred seventy pounds, Jack Havoc in person—Mr. Roy Darnell.” I clamber up into the ring, feint a punch or two with Aragon, and then clasp my hands and raise them triumphantly over my head. Good round of applause.

The crowd is boisterous tonight. A pair of bantam-weights, an Inglewood Negro vs. a Boyle Heights Mexican, are mixing it up in the ring for the opening bout. Killer and I are pounding beers and screaming at the fighters. The Mexican takes it by a TKO. A popular decision. It's their turn now in the winner's spotlight, the Mexicans. Just like the Jews and the Italians and the Negroes had theirs. The hungriest guys on the block are always the ones to bet on.

The beer is starting to work, so I head for the men's room. Not too crowded, and the P.A. system announces the start of the main event, which empties the john even more. I step up to drain my lily, as the stuntmen say. I'm pissing up a storm when I become aware of the guy at work in the adjoining urinal. Balding with strands of dyed black hair plastered across his scalp, a pencil mustache, wearing a garish sports jacket and a glazed smile. It's Jack L. Warner himself. He glances over at me.

“Hey, how'sitgoin', kid?” he slurs. Half-lit as usual after dark.

“Goin' fine, Colonel.” Should've remembered he likes the fights.

“Guess this is where you been hidin' out. In the crapper. Left messages everywhere else.” He glares over at me. Causing his aim to wander. Enough for a few drops of piss to hit the toe of his spit-polished shoe. He notices and shakes his leg. Vigorously.

“Jack be nimble,” I say. My fucking sense of humor.

Zipping up, Warner suddenly grins wolfishly.

“Jack be quick,” he says. Fists up, he starts to spar with me. Now he clinches, lightly pounding my kidneys. “Had enough, had enough, had enough?” He pushes free, dances on his toes and beams his toothsome Douglas Fairbanks smile at me. Sounds of applause and bell ringing in the distance. “You're all right, Jack,” he says. Hears himself, laughs. “Get it? I'm all right, Jack. You're all right, Jack.”

He loves the fact that he and Jack Havoc have the same first name.

Especially once the show was a hit.

“Y'hear the one about the rabbi, the priest, and the minister, they get on a plane, and—” Warner is famous throughout Hollywood as an enthusiastic but semi-coherent storyteller “—wait, better one, hear about Johnnie? I gave him all his big breaks, Mr. John Fucking Oscar Winner Huston, favor to his old man I let the kid write some scripts, who knew if he could even write, then I made him a director, let him shoot that depressing piece of shit,
Treasure of the Sierra Madre,
didn't think I'd ever get my money out of that one, Bogart walking around looking like an unwashed armpit. Where am I?”

Standing at the washstand. Rearranging his meager strands of hair. I'm rinsing my hands a couple of basins away. We're alone in the rest room now. The Colonel watches my reflection in the mirror. He rambles on.

“Oh, yeah, John. True story, y'know how he is about the ponies, lost a fortune last year alone at Del Mar. But he gets this hot tip, so he phones what'shername, Evelyn—” Huston's wife, Evelyn Keyes “—and he says, ‘Honey, I can't get away from the set, but go upstairs to the bedroom closet, top shelf, little metal box in back, twenty grand in cash. Take it all and drive to Al the bookie, bet everything on this horse to win. Gotta hurry, baby, it's important.' Evelyn gets the money off the shelf, but she can't stand to see John lose more money on a horse race, so she puts the cash back up in the closet. True story, no joke. She listens to the race on the radio and, God help her, John's horse comes in first by a nose. John comes sailing home, in the door, Evelyn's waiting, looks like the vampires got her, all white and scared, ‘John, I gotta tell you, I didn't place the bet.' He doesn't blink, just says, ‘What's for dinner, honey?' She can't believe it. Whips up dinner, John's telling her about the terrific practical joke he played on the cameraman. Never a word about the horse race. They sit down to eat, and she can't hold it in. ‘John, the reason I didn't place the bet is—' And he leans over and belts her. Knocks her right out of her chair. ‘You never should've tried to explain.'”

He laughs, pounds my shoulder with his hand. Maybe he isn't that drunk.

“Great story, huh? Let's you and me be like that. Ducking my calls. Made you a fuckin' star. Tryin' to break contract. Thanks I get. But, hey—” he holds up his hand, palm out “—hey, forget it.
Don't try to explain!
Just tell me—bottom line. What do you want?”

“Colonel, all I want is—out.”

“I know, I know, court papers, all that bullshit, wanna be a movie star, right? Okay, listen, we cancelled the Wyatt Earp picture. Hal Wallis, that momser, he's doing one with Burt and Kirk. So—how 'bout this? You're Machine Gun Kelly! Get to slaughter half the world. We're all set to shoot. How's that sound?”

“Like another ‘B' picture.”

“‘B'-
plus,
” he flares. “I don't make ‘B' pictures. Look, gotta start somewhere, that indie picture you did last year, a bomb, so you do this one, let me make a few bucks, gangster pictures can't miss, Cagney, Bogart, Garfield, then next year, after you finish all the TV episodes for which I'm gonna give you a little salary sweetener right now, but next year I'll have an ‘A' picture waitin' for you. Better'n
Casablanca.
Whaddayasay?”

This, of course, is precisely the conversation Nate Scanlon didn't want me to have. I shrug. “You'll have to discuss that with Nate or Val Dalton.”

“Fuck them, I'm discussing with you, man-to-man.”

Deep breath. Okay. “I want out.”

Jekyll into Hyde. His face goes crimson. Vein pulsing in his temple. Suppose he keels over. Do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Jack Warner? Hey. Look. He's trying for a smile. Still beet-red, but flashing the full set of choppers.

“Be careful what you wish for, kiddo. You might wind up crying.”

He punches me lightly on the arm and struts off. I can hear the crowd yelling in the arena. Jack Havoc wouldn't have let it drop there. Ending on that turd threatening me. He'd have had the last line.

Don't sweat it, Colonel, I'll be laughing all the way to the bank and waving an Oscar in each hand.

Yeah, right. That's what I should've said.

As I wend my way back to my seat the contender is battering the champ. Maybe there's going to be a new champion. Killer looks up as I slip in beside him.

“Where the hell y'been? Almost missed the main event.”

“Uh-uh. The main event was just fought in the men's room.”

“Who won?”

“Judges haven't decided yet.”

• • •

After the fights, I go straight home and put in a call to Nate. To both his office and home numbers. Ring-ring-ring. And then the answering service. Same service covers both places. I say it's urgent. The operator says she's very sorry, Mr. Darnell, but Mr. Scanlon can't be reached. He's on the road, driving back from Tahoe.

I have a hard time falling asleep. Then I oversleep. Wake up frazzled. Phone's ringing. “Yeah?” It's Nate. I launch into a recitation of my run-in with the Colonel. “I don't know what he's going to try next, but I bet it's going to be something real cute.”

“Did you threaten him with bodily harm?”

“No! Who said—”

“I just got off the phone. Bautzer called me.” Greg Bautzer is the powerhouse lawyer defending Warners in the lawsuit. “They've folded.”

“What?”

“Thrown in the towel. Warners is giving you your release. We don't have to go to court. We don't have to do anything except celebrate. Didn't I tell you I'd get you out?” Not a chortle. A full-bodied bellowing laugh of triumph.

I'm stunned. The war is over? Just like that? One shot across their bow and it's time for dancing in the streets?

“Bautzer asked me to relay a personal message to you from Jack Warner. I jotted it down. ‘Lots of luck, Jack Havoc. There's always a home for you here at Warners.' Kind of nice and generous of him, don't you think?”

I'm not so sure. I am delighted, but uneasy. I can't bring myself to interrupt Nate Scanlon's enthusiasm, but surrender wasn't what I saw in Jack Warner's eyes when he walked off last night.

In just a few days, Jack Warner and the status of my career will be the least of my worries. All I know tonight is that I feel the start of one of my migraines. Haven't had one of those in months. Hoped they were a thing of the past. But I dig a darvon out of the back of the medicine chest, wash it down with some tequila.