Ideal (3 page)

“About seventy million people or so, judging by your box office reports.”

“Ah, yes. Which, perhaps, is all that matters. They worship her, millions of them. It's not admiration. It's not just fan enthusiasm. It's much more than that. It's worship. I don't know what she does to them all—but she does something.”

“And how will her public react to—murder?”

“It's incredible, Mr. Pickens. It's fantastic. How can anyone believe it for a moment?”

“No one would believe it for a moment if Miss Gonda hadn't disappeared.”

“But, Mr. Pickens, she hasn't disappeared.”

“Where is she?”

“She always wants to be alone when she's getting ready for a new picture. She's at one of her beach homes, studying her new part.”

“Where?”

“Really, Mr. Pickens, we can't have her disturbed.”

“Supposing we were to try and find her. Would you stop us?”

“Certainly not, Mr. Pickens. Far be it from us to interfere with the press.”

Morrison Pickens got up. He said:

“Fine, Mr. Farrow. We'll try.”

Mr. Farrow got up. He said:

“Fine, Mr. Pickens. I wish you luck.”

Morrison Pickens was at the door, when Mr. Farrow added:

“By the way, Mr. Pickens, if you are successful, could I ask you the favor of letting us know? You understand, we wouldn't want our great star disturbed, and . . .”

“I understand,” said Morrison Pickens, walking out.

 • • • 

In the outer office of Mr. Sol Salzer, associate producer, a nervous male secretary fluttered up, insisting:

“But Mr. Salzer is busy. Mr. Salzer is very, very busy. Mr. Salzer is in story con—”

“Tell him it's the
Courier
,” said Morrison Pickens. “Maybe he'll find a coupla minutes.”

The secretary fluttered behind a tall, white door and hopped out swiftly, leaving the door open, twittering breathlessly:

“Go right in, Mr. Pickens, go right, right in.”

Mr. Salzer was pacing up and down a spacious office with purple velvet curtains and pictures of flowers and Scotties in white frames. He said, “Sit down,” without looking at Mr. Pickens, and continued his walk.

Morrison Pickens sat down.

Mr. Salzer's hands were clamped behind his back. He wore a steel-
blue suit and a diamond stickpin. His curly black hair made a narrow peninsula in the middle of his white forehead. He crossed the office three times, then barked:

“It's a lotta baloney!”

“What?” asked Morrison Pickens.

“What you want to know. What you fellers waste your time making up and then fill your papers with on accounta having nothing better to print!”

“Are you talking about Miss Gonda?”

“I
am
talking about Miss Gonda! I'm talking about nothing else but! I should waste my time here with you if it wasn't for Miss Gonda! I wish we'd never signed her! A headache we should have ever since she came on the lot!”

“Oh, come, Mr. Salzer. You've supervised all her pictures. You must see something in her.”

“Three million bucks cash per each picture. That's what I see! You go ahead and tell me a better reason.”

“Well, let's talk about your next picture.”

“So what about it? It's going to be the greatest, finest”—Mr. Salzer stopped to pound his desk with his fist—“most expensive picture you ever saw in your life! You can tell that to your paper!”

“Fine, I'm sure they'll be glad to know it. Also, they'll be glad to know its . . . starting date.”

“Listen,” said Mr. Salzer, stopping, “it's a lot of hooey! It's a lot of hooey what you're driving at! Because she hasn't disappeared!”

“I haven't said she has.”

“Well, don't say it! Because we know where she is, only it's none of your business, see?”

“I wasn't going to say it. I was only going to ask whether Miss Gonda has signed her new contract with you people.”

“Sure, she's signed. Of course. Certainly. She's just practically signed it almost.”

“Then she hasn't?”

“She was going to sign it today. I mean, she
is
going to sign it today. She's agreed. It's all settled— Well, I'll tell you,” Mr. Salzer said suddenly, with the despair of a person who must capture sympathy on film, anyone's sympathy. “What I'm afraid of is that it's all on accounta that contract. She's changed her mind again, maybe, and quit for good.”

“Isn't that just a pose, Mr. Salzer? We've heard that after every picture.”

“Yeah? You should laugh if you hadda crawl after her down on your knees like we done for two months. ‘I'm through,' she says. ‘Does it really mean anything? Is it really worth doing?' No! Fifteen thousand a week we offer her and she asks is it worth doing?”

“Then you think she's walked out on you this time? And you don't know where she's gone?”

“I don't like newspaper people,” said Mr. Salzer, disgusted. “That's why I've never liked them. Here I'm telling you my troubles, all my confidential troubles—and you go starting on your old baloney again.”

“That you don't know where she is.”

“Aw, phooey! We know where she is. It's an aunt of hers, an old aunt from Europe, who's sick, and she's gone to visit her on a ranch out in the desert. See?”

“Yeah,” said Morrison Pickens, rising, “I see.”

 • • • 

He did not have to be announced to Claire Peemoller, star of Farrow Films, who wrote all the scripts for Kay Gonda's pictures. He just walked in. It was never necessary to announce the press to Claire Peemoller.

Claire Peemoller sat in the center of a long, low modernistic couch.
There was no spotlight lighting the place where she sat; it only seemed as if there were. Her clothes had the trim, modernistic elegance of glass furniture, suspension bridges, or transatlantic clipper planes. She looked like the last word of a great civilization, hard, clean, wise, concerned with nothing but the subtlest and deepest problems of life. It was only Claire Peemoller's body, however, that sat on the couch; her soul was on the walls of her office. The walls of her office were covered with enlarged photographs of illustrations for her magazines. The photographs showed gentle young girls and sturdy young men embracing, babies squinting up at parents clutching hands in reconciliation over the crib, old ladies whose faces could sweeten the blackest cup of coffee.

“Mr. Pickens,” said Claire Peemoller, “I'm so glad to see you. It was simply wonderful, but wonderful, of you to drop in. I have a great story for you. I was thinking that the public has never really understood the psychological influence of the little things in a writer's childhood that shape her future career. It's the little things that count in life, you know. For instance, one day when I was seven, I saw a butterfly with a broken wing and it made me think of—”

“Kay Gonda?” asked Morrison Pickens.

“Oh,” said Claire Peemoller, and her thin lips closed tight. Then she opened them again to add, “So that's what you came about . . .”

“Well, surely, Miss Peemoller, you should have guessed that—today.”

“I did not,” said Claire Peemoller. “I've never been under the impression that Miss Kay Gonda was the only subject of interest in the world.”

“I only wanted to ask you what you thought of all those rumors about Miss Gonda.”

“I haven't given it a thought. My time is really valuable.”

“When did you see her last?”

“Two days ago.”

“Not on May 3rd?”

“
Yes
, on May 3rd.”

“Well, did you notice anything peculiar in her behavior then?”

“When has she behaved in any manner that wasn't peculiar?”

“Would you mind telling me about it?”

“I mind it very much indeed. And who wouldn't? I drove all the way down to her house, that afternoon, to discuss her next script. It's a lovely story, but lovely! I talked for hours. She sat there like a statue. Not a word out of her, not a sound. Down-to-earthiness, that's what she lacks. No finer feelings in her. But none! No sense of the great brotherhood of men under the skin. No—”

“Did she seem worried or unhappy?”

“Really, Mr. Pickens, I have more important things to do than to analyze Miss Gonda's moods. All I can tell you is that she wouldn't let me put in a little baby or a dog in the script. Dogs have much human appeal. You know, we're all brothers under the skin and—”

“Did she mention that she was going to Santa Barbara that night?”

“She doesn't mention things. She throws them at you in pails. She just simply got up in the middle of a sentence and left me flat. She said she had to dress, because she was having dinner in Santa Barbara. And then she added: ‘I do not like missions of charity.'”

“What did she mean by that?”

“What does she mean by anything? ‘Charity'—just imagine!—to have dinner with a multimillionaire. So then I just couldn't resist it, but couldn't! I said, ‘Miss Gonda, do you really think you're so much better than everybody else?' And what do you suppose she answered? ‘Yes,' she said, ‘I do. I wish I didn't have to.' But actually!”

“Did she say anything else?”

“No. I'm the kind of person that simply does not understand
conceit. So I did not care to continue the conversation. And I do not care to continue it now. I'm sorry, Mr. Pickens. But the subject bores me.”

“Do you know where Miss Gonda is at present?”

“I haven't the faintest idea.”

“But if anything's happened to her . . .”

“I'll ask them to put Sally Sweeney in the part. I've always wanted to write for Sally. She's such a sweet kid. And now you'll have to excuse me, Mr. Pickens. I'm very busy.”

 • • • 

Bill McNitt sat in a filthy office that smelt like a poolroom: its walls were plastered with posters of the Gonda pictures he had directed. Bill McNitt took pride in being a genius and a he-man besides: if people wished to see him, they could well afford to sit among cigarette butts, next to a spittoon. He leaned back in his swivel chair, his feet on a desk, and smoked. His shirtsleeves were rolled high above his elbow, and he had big, hairy arms. He waved one huge hand with a golden snake ring on a stubby finger when Morrison Pickens entered.

“Spill it,” said Bill McNitt.

“I,” said Morrison Pickens, “have nothing to spill.”

“Neither,” said Bill McNitt, “have I. Now beat it.”

“You don't seem to be busy,” said Morrison Pickens, sitting down comfortably on a canvas stool.

“I'm not. And don't ask me why. Because it's the same reason that keeps you so busy.”

“I presume you're referring to Miss Kay Gonda.”

“You don't have to do any presuming. You know damn well. Only that won't do you any good around here, 'cause you can't pump anything out of me. I never wanted to direct her anyway. I'd much rather direct Joan Tudor. I'd much rather . . .”

“What's the matter, Bill? Had trouble with Gonda?”

“Listen. I'll tell you all I know. Then beat it, will you? Last week it was, I drove down to her beach house and there she was, out at sea, tearing through the rocks in a motorboat till I thought I'd have heart failure watching it. So she climbs up to the road, finally, wet all over. So I say to her: ‘You'll get killed someday,' and she looks straight at me and she says: ‘That won't make any difference to me,' she says, ‘nor to anyone else anywhere.'”

“She said that?”

“She did. ‘Listen,' I said, ‘I don't give a hoot if you break your neck, but you'll get pneumonia in the middle of my next picture!' She looks at me in that queer way of hers and she says: ‘Maybe there won't be any next picture.' And she walks straight back to the house and the flunky wouldn't let me in!”

“She really said that? Last week?”

“She did. Well, I should worry. That's all. Now beat it.”

“Listen, I want to ask you—”

“Don't ask me where she is! Because I don't know it! See? And what's more, none of the big shots know it, either, only they won't say so! Why do you suppose I'm sitting here like fly food, drawing three grand a week? Do you think they wouldn't get the fire department to drag her back if they knew where to send for her?”

“You can make a guess.”

“I don't make guesses. I don't know a thing about the woman. I don't want to know a thing about the woman. I'd never want to go near her if for some fool reason the yokels didn't part with their cash so readily for a peek at that bleached pan of hers!”

“Well, now, I couldn't quote that in the paper.”

“I don't care what you quote. I don't care what you do as long as you get out of here and go to the—”

“The publicity department—first,” said Morrison Pickens, rising.

 • • • 

In the publicity department, four different hands slapped Morrison Pickens' shoulder, and four faces looked at him, sweetly bland, as if they had never heard the name of Kay Gonda before, and it took an effort to remember it, and remembering it, they found they knew nothing but the name. Only one face, the fifth, bent closer to Morrison Pickens and whispered:

“We don't know a thing, pal. Not allowed to know. And wouldn't know if allowed. There's only one person who might help you. Might, but probably won't. Go see Mick Watts. I'm sure the bum knows something.”

“Why? Is he sober, for a change?”

“No. He's drunker than usual.”

 • • • 

Mick Watts was Kay Gonda's personal press agent. He had been fired from every studio in Hollywood, from every newspaper on both coasts, and from many others in between. But Kay Gonda had brought him to the Farrow lot. They paid him a large salary and did not object to him as they did not object to Kay Gonda's Great Dane on Anthony Farrow's Josephine chaise longue.