Red Rag Blues (13 page)

“Odd thing happened to me this morning,” Luis said. “I met a terribly pretty little ladies hairdresser. Looked like Audrey Hepburn crossed with Jean Simmons. Name of Stevie. We had a chat, she invited me to murder her husband, chap called Vinnie. A brute and a beast, she said. Tonight was good for her, if I was free. Does that sort of thing happen often in New York?”

“She wasn't joking?”

“Well, she offered her body as reward for my services.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I was non-committal. Also scared.”

“Good. This is New York. People get rubbed out for a lot less than a roll in the hay.”

They drove back to the city. The afternoon was slack and hazy, and the air in Manhattan smelt as if it was beginning to lose the will to live.

Max Webber ate lunch at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. He ate well: beef Stroganoff, sautéed. mushrooms, scalloped potatoes, a half-bottle of claret. It all went on the Committee's tab. So did the hotel room and the airline ticket. His attendance mattered. Nobody said why.

Instead of having dessert he smoked a cigar with his coffee, a fine, big cigar. Why not? He was important. Allegedly.

That morning, he'd got on the plane at La Guardia feeling slow and flat and generally outnumbered by the world. His life was going badly. He shouldn't have gone to the audition in Brooklyn. Shouldn't have announced he'd been subpoenaed: that just raised the pressure on himself. Shouldn't have thumped Cabrillo. The bum deserved it, but what if the cops had come and slung them both in jail? His stomach growled. Should have had breakfast. Someone heavy dropped into the next seat and nudged his arm. It was his agent. Harry Pinckney.

“Max! Thought I knew that noble profile. How the hell are you? We are well met. Here, look at this.” He took a bound script from his briefcase and dropped it in Max's lap.

“How the hell d'you think I am?” Max said. His agent knew all about the subpoena.

“Uh-huh.” Harry was fooling with his seatbelt, tightening, slackening. He had been an actor once, before a car smash left him with a couple of scars that limited his roles to Prussian guards officers. “I'm not just Mr. Ten Percent, you know,” he said. “I came along to give you moral support.”

Max felt ashamed of his churlishness, but he wasn't about to concede anything; not today. “Moral support. Sounds like a bishop's jockstrap.” He opened the script. “What's this crap?”

“Cold War drama. Interesting character called Gunning Broom. See what you think.”

“I know what I think. I think I'm blacklisted.”

“Just read. Where's the harm?”

By the time they landed at Washington Max had read it twice. A hundred pages. Some complex action in America and Russia. Probably run two hours. Working title: LOGJAM. Simple storyline: Gunning Broom is a young US academic who stumbles on a Soviet spy ring in America, can't prove it, infiltrates to seek evidence, gets sucked in too far until he himself looks like a traitor, finds himself on the run with wife and teenage daughter.

Conflicting loyalties, tough decisions, frequent surprises, black humor. Some strong bad guys, which made Gunning Broom even stronger.

“Well, crap it ain't,” Max said.

“Keep it. You like Gunning? Might have been written for you.”

“Nothing's written for me, Harry. You know that.” But his agent just shrugged.

They shared a taxi from the airport to the hotel. Harry kept the taxi. He had other people to see.

Max was still keeping the fire going in his big, important cigar when Harry came into the restaurant. “Can we use your room?” he asked. “Jack Delmonico's in the lobby. Very keen to meet you. Remember Jack?”

Max remembered. Years back, Delmonico had directed a movie Max was in called
Kentucky Blues.
Afterward Jack went on to bigger things. His handmade Italian shoes proved it. They took the elevator, and made small talk about Washington's steamy summer. Max's room was blessedly cool. He dumped his cigar before it bored the hell out of him.

“Warners have signed me to direct
Logjam,”
Jack said. “You've read the script?”

“Intelligent, pacey,” Max said. “Pretty good.”

“Well, it cost us enough. Not that money always buys quality.”

“The studio thinks
Logjam
spells Oscar,” Harry said.

“Those bums never could read,” Max said. They laughed, although the line didn't deserve it, so he smiled. Why not?

“Sometimes their bullshit is good, honest manure,” Jack said. “Warners' budget for
Logjam
would buy a small South American republic. And we're casting now.”

“Yeah? You can have me for nothing. Except of course you can't.”

Delmonico strolled to the window. His seersucker suit was so fine that sunlight shone through it. “We've talked to Bob Mitchum, Jimmy Cagney, they're interested. Cooper, too.”

“Gary's not just a cowboy,” Harry said. He was resting on a sofa, feet up. “Look at
Fountainhead.
He was an architect in that.”

“Sure. Bogart read
Logjam,
said he'd play the elevator operator, anything. I told him it's a matter of balance.”

“What's your ideal team?” Harry asked.

“Lauren Bacall. Jimmy Stewart. This new kid James Dean for contrast. On the Russian side, Burton and Ustinov, they're fluent in broken English, which is essential, and I'm looking at Jean Simmons to play the mute girl agent.”

“Jesus Christ!” Max said. “That's enough for ten movies.”

“Plus Max Webber in the lead, of course,” Jack said.

“Excuse us,” Max said. “We need to talk.” He got Harry off the sofa and took him for a walk along the corridor. “What the fuck is going on?” he said. “My hearing starts in under an hour. I don't need to listen to this guy's ravings.”

“I know, I know,” Harry put an arm around Max's shoulder. “Forget
Logjam.
Here's the thing. Warners has a big problem. The Committee is minded to subpoena two, maybe three Warners stars. Big names in big movies that Warners wants to release soon. Imagine the damage the Committee could do to the box office. It could crucify the studio. This is the deal. Today, after you've agreed to appear as a friendly witness—”

“What?”
Max shook off Harry's arm. “You go to hell.”

“Hear me out. Trust me, it's for your benefit. We sell this idea to HUAC, you come off the blacklist
and
you get a three-picture contract with Warners. Showbiz is politics and vice versa. The Committee's in a mood to plea-bargain. They're losing momentum, the public's bored with all these same-again hearings.”

“That's a damn shame.”

“Sure. And your opportunity to make a break for freedom. Right about now, somebody's informing the Committee that
Warners plans a major movie with Oscar potential as part of the great American struggle against Communism.”

“It's been done already. Anti-Red movies. Korean war shit.”

“This is different.
Logjam
will be
dedicated
to HUAC. I mean, up there on the screen, at the start, big and bold. And the lead will go to an ex-G.I. who was brave enough to stand up and declare that yes, he was wrong and yes, the Committee is right, and yes, he is ready to play his part as a true American patriot in the great crusade against godless Communism. When HUAC hears that, Warners will be off the hook, and so will you.”

Max got a drink from a water cooler.

“Nobody remembers me, Harry. No studio is going to risk a bundle on an unknown lead.”

Harry shrugged. “Don't even think of that. Think of a three-movie contract. Think of working again.”

They went back to the room. Jack Delmonico was on the phone. “Doris Day?” he said, and laughed. “She's wonderful, but not for this … Ben, they've just come back, I'll put him on.” He held out the phone. “Ben McHenry.”

“Warners vice-pres,” Harry said softly. “Watch your language.”

Max took the phone. “Hello,” he said.

“Good morning. No, I guess it's afternoon where you are. My brain takes a while to get in gear.” McHenry's voice was rich and smooth, calm and unhurried. “I met Elia Kazan last night. You know Elia?”

“Not personally. By reputation. Great director.”

“Then you know he was subpoenaed last year, and he publicly volunteered to do anything that HUAC thought necessary or valuable to help their cause.”

“He named names. Actors, mainly.”

“I asked him why he did it,” McHenry said. “He told me that if the Committee were to bar him from the only work he knew, the only job that mattered, then he was dead. He's not alone. Edward Dmytryk made great movies.”

“Farewell My Lovely,”
Max said.
“Crossfire. The Caine Mutiny.”

“You know your stuff, Max.”

“It's my profession.
Was
my profession.”

“Dmytryk got blacklisted, went to jail, had time to think, to ask himself: What am I accomplishing? What am I
wasting?
My
whole life? He came out, helped the Committee, he's using his God-given talents again.”

“You want me to testify as a friendly witness, Mr. McHenry.”

“And my real name isn't Ben McHenry, any more than your real name is Max Webber. I'm Lev Goncharov. My parents came from the Ukraine. They taught me: first you survive; after that, maybe you can have options. Options are a luxury. Your parents came from Poland and you're Josef Zaluski. My guess is they told you the same. There are two kinds of people in our world: the survivors, and the rest. Which means there's really only one kind.” Short pause. “Don't waste your life, Max. You won't get another.” Click. Buzz. Max hung up.

Harry was back on the sofa. Jack was back at the window.

“I can always take the Fifth,” Max said.

“A lot of people think that,” Harry said. He checked his watch. “We've got twenty minutes before you need to leave. Let me tell you something, Max. The Fifth Amendment is a tricky little thing. Everyone knows it protects the citizen against incriminating himself. But there are pitfalls.”

“Stumbling blocks,” Jack said.

“I prefer pitfalls,” Max said. “Cut to the chase, will you?”

“Suppose, for instance, the Committee asks you if you ever knew General Patton,” Harry said.

“We met.”

“He decorated you, didn't he? In Italy. So you'd have to say yes, because in no way can a knowledge of Patton be damaging to you. Quite the reverse. So the Fifth can't apply. Next they ask if you know … say … Ring Lardner, or Joseph Losey, or Carl Foreman, or even Larry Adler, the harmonica king? Do you know them?”

“Some. They're all blacklisted. If I say I know them, that incriminates me in the eyes of the Committee.”

“So you plead the Fifth.”

“Damn right I do.”

“How does that sound?” Jack asked, without turning. “Yes I know Patten, and I plead the Fifth on four alleged Communists.”

“Sounds like you fingered them,” Harry said. “And in the process you didn't do yourself a whole lot of good, either.”

Max was silent while he thought it over.

“Shit,” he said. “They've got me by the balls, haven't they?”

“One thing I've learned in life,” Harry said. “When they've got you by the balls, always move in their direction. It reduces the pain.”

The HUAC hearing was being held in the Old House Office Building. They went in Jack's limo. “If I have to name names,” Max said, “I'm going to lose some old friends.”

“And make some new ones,” Harry said.

“Look at it this way,” Jack said. “The sooner we root out the last Red, the sooner we can all get back to living a normal life.”

A cluster of news photographers and TV cameramen was waiting. “You go ahead,” Jack said. “Don't smile, don't frown. Hold your head up and look patriotic.”

“And when you testify, no jokes, no speeches. Keep it snappy,” Harry said. “If we're lucky we'll make the early editions.”

Max got out. Flashbulbs popped. He went up the steps.

“Jokes and speeches?” Jack said.

“Actors,” Harry said. “Always trying to pad their part.”

Luis made martinis. The penthouse had a small terrace. They leaned on the rail and drank and talked and threw peanuts at the passing pigeons. Julie was thinking that this was better than waiting on tables at Mooney's. At the back of her mind was the thought that living with Luis without going to bed with Luis was like holding a Martini without drinking it. Further back was her memory of the two phony uniforms who had been poking around in the 84th Street apartment. Spooks? Or genuine burglars? Must have been really dumb burglars to expect to find anything there. Some burglars
were
dumb. Those guys had looked very professional.

Luis was thinking how delightful it would be to coax her into bed and how painful it would be if she disagreed and slugged him in the face. Better not risk it. At the back of his mind was the safe deposit box. Emptying rapidly. That wouldn't do.

They went inside and watched the evening news.

A lot of people came and went on the screen but none of them was Max. “Maybe the hearings got fouled-up,” she said.
“Maybe Max got rescheduled.” The station did sport. It did Wall Street. Then it did Max.

“Finally,” the man said. “The House Un-American Activities Committee met today and questioned actor Max Webber, whose movie career came to a halt in 1950 when screenwriter Martin Berkeley informed the Committee that Webber was one of the 152 known Communist sympathizers in showbusiness. Well, Webber today denied all such sympathies, claimed any contacts he might have made were accidental, and promptly named ten of his old pinko pals, including film director Billy Jago. Oh, and Warners has just announced that Webber will star as the good guy in a major motion picture about Communist infiltration of the US, the movie to be dedicated to … guess who … the House Un-American Activities Committee. Some days it's hard to tell where Washington ends and Hollywood begins. Now for the weather. Got a nice cool breeze for us, Larry?”