Shooting for the Stars (15 page)

Chapter
27

T
HE
bar at the Beverly Wilshire was everything a bar should be. The lounge was dark and spacious with a long mahogany bar running alongside one wall and a handful of small tables next to a window overlooking the entrance to the hotel. Soft jazz music was playing on a stereo system. There were about a dozen people in the place, most of them scattered around the tables and a few at the bar.

There was only one woman sitting by herself in the place. She was at a table by the window. I walked over to her.

“I'm Jackie Sinclair,” she said.

“Gil Malloy. As I said on the phone, I represent a lawyer in New York who . . .”

“So I heard.”

I sat down. She looked pretty much like she did in the newspaper picture that had been taken a few years ago. Like most of the people in Laura Marlowe's life, she had to be well into her sixties by now. But she had a nice face with a deep California tan, she'd clearly had plastic surgery done over the years, and her body looked in good shape too. She was wearing a beige miniskirt, a Los Angeles Lakers T-shirt with cut-off sleeves, and high-heeled sandals. Her arms were tanned too, and there was a tiny tattoo on one of them. She looked like she'd been around. Even though
I couldn't make it into bed with Sherry DeConde, maybe I could score with this senior citizen. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.

She was drinking a tequila. She asked me if I wanted one. I said sure. I figured I'd just go with the flow and see what happened.

“You said something about a lot of money I was going to get,” she said.

“Well, actually . . .”

“Actually, that's all bullshit, isn't it? Just a story you made up to meet with me. Not a very good one, to be honest with you. I'd have to be pretty stupid to believe it, and I'm not stupid. You might have come up with something a bit more original.”

“I kind of had to improvise in a hurry,” I said.

“The truth is your name is Gil Malloy, but that's about the only honest thing you've told me so far. You don't work for a law firm and there is no inheritance from a long lost relative. You're a newspaper reporter for the
New York Daily News
.”

“How did you know that?” I asked.

“There's a video security camera outside my house. It took a picture of your car. I ran the license plates with a friend of mine in the state government, and it came back as a rental that had billed to the
New York Daily News
. So I called the
Daily News
and asked for Gil Malloy. They said you were out of town working on a story.” She shrugged. “Like I said, I'm not stupid. It wasn't exactly brain surgery to figure all that out.”

She took a drink of her tequila. “So what's this all about anyway?”

“Glimmer Productions.”

“My God, I'd forgotten all about that. ‘Artistic videos for the serious connoisseur of the human body.' That's how we billed the stuff we sold. The times were different back then. But every society has its own brand of pornography. People never change.”

“So you owned Glimmer Productions?”

“That's right.”

“Did you have any partners? Any silent owners who didn't want to bear the public scrutiny of being upfront about their involvement in the business?”

“I'm not sure what you're talking about,” she said.

“Sure you are. From what I understand, Glimmer Productions was probably bankrolled by the mob. They called the shots. You were the front person. The person who made the operation look at least semi-legitimate.”

“What's your point?”

“I want to know who the money man was.”

“I'm not talking to you about this.”

“Was it Thomas Rizzo?” I asked.

“I'm certainly not talking to you about Rizzo.”

“Why not?”

“It's not a healthy thing to do.”

“So you're saying it was Rizzo?”

“No, I'm not. But even if it was, so what? More to the point, why does a reporter from New York come all the way out here to ask me about a company that I ran thirty years ago?”

“I think it's connected to a story I'm working on.”

“What story?”

“The death of Laura Marlowe.”

“The movie star?”

“Yes. Did you know her?”

“I may have run into her a couple of times at parties.”

“That's all?”

“Why are you asking me these questions?”

I shook my head. “I'm not sure why you agreed to see me. Maybe you wanted to find out what I knew. Maybe you were just curious or bored or wanted to see where it all went. But you are a smart lady. If you called the
Daily News
and found out where I was,
you probably also checked and discovered I'd written a big story this past Sunday for the
News
on Laura Marlowe. You and I both know why I came here. So, at this point, let's not waste any more time. I'm saying to you what you said to me when I sat down here. Let's cut out the bullshit, huh?”

Jackie Sinclair stared at me.

“Well, well,” she said, “you've got quite the mouth on you, haven't you?”

“Everybody I meet out here keeps telling me that.”

“And in New York everyone just accepts it?”

“Actually they say it there too.”

She smiled, finished off her tequila, and ordered another one. She was drinking a lot faster now. My kind of girl.

“So what is it you want to know?” she asked.

“Tell me everything you know about Laura Marlowe,” I said.

Chapter
28

S
HE
talked about herself first. There is a pace to any interview, a rhythm that you need to follow to get the subject to open up to you. It is a dance of sorts, a series of steps that culminate—if a reporter does it right—in a good story. It was a dance I had done many times before. I knew the steps.

“I came out here to try to make it as an actress,” Sinclair said. “From Birmingham, Alabama, if you can believe that. I had a nice little southern drawl back then. It's pretty much gone now. But it used to drive the guys wild, they told me. So I really laid it on thick when I went on auditions. Back then, I was like thousands of other girls here. I had such big dreams. I was just a couple of months past my eighteenth birthday, and I was young and naive. I thought I'd get discovered right away, become a big movie star, and all the people back in Birmingham would see my picture on the cover of magazines very soon. The funny thing is it almost happened that way. Almost.

“I got parts right away. Like I said, they loved that southern accent. My first part in a movie was small, I only had one line—but I delivered it like I was going for an Oscar. The parts got bigger after that. I did about a half-dozen pictures, a few TV episodes, and some commercials. Then I got my big break. A co-starring role in one of those beach party movies. I was going to be the lead actress's
best friend. It was a juicy role, which might have catapulted me into being a real star. But there was one catch. I had to sleep with the producer.”

“I've heard about the Hollywood casting couch,” I said. “Is that what we're talking about here?”

She nodded. “Oh, I'd done it before. I'd slept with producers to get as far as I had. I knew it was just a reality of life out here then. I knew it was all part of the game you had to play to make it in Hollywood. And I was willing to play the game to get what I wanted.”

“So what went wrong?”

“This guy—the producer—took me to a house up in the Hollywood Hills. He was really nice at first. He took out champagne, and we drank it and talked about all sorts of things. The movie. My career. How beautiful he thought I was. He promised me wonderful things. Then he started to kiss me. Well, he'd had quite a bit to drink by this point and he couldn't perform in the bedroom. That made him mad. He had to blame somebody, so he blamed me. He started calling me all sorts of terrible things. I decided I better leave. That's when things got rough.

“He grabbed me, pulled me away from the door, and shoved me back onto the bed. He tried to force himself on me, but he still couldn't do anything. That made him even madder. So he started to hit me. I remember his fist hitting my face over and over. Then I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. I found out later he'd panicked and dumped me off at the emergency room. One of my eyes was swollen shut, but I managed to get it open enough to look at myself in the mirror. I was a mess. Bruises, scars, bandages. There was no way I was going to be able to go in front of a camera for a long time until it all healed.

“The next day the producer came to my room. He said they were going to begin shooting the picture in a few days, and he'd
have to give the part to someone else. He said there'd be other parts for me in the future though if I just stayed cool. Staying cool meant not going to the police or telling anybody what happened. When he left, there was a wad of cash on the table next to my bed. He never said he was sorry though. Not once. If he'd just said he was sorry, maybe I wouldn't have done what I did.”

“What did you do?”

“I told the police everything. I swore out a complaint for his arrest on assault and battery charges. I didn't want what happened to me to happen to anybody else. I didn't want him to get away with it.”

“Did they arrest him?”

She shook her head no. “The cops came back to me the next day. They said there was insufficient evidence to proceed. They said he claimed I'd shown up at his door, offering to have sex with him in exchange for a part in his picture. He said I'd attacked him when he said no. He said he knew nothing about the bruises on my face, that I must have gotten them later from a pimp or someone else. He even threatened to file a counter police complaint against me for harassment.”

“And he had enough clout with the cops to pull that off?”

“This guy was one of the most powerful people in Hollywood. What do you think?”

“What happened then?”

“I tried to get on with my life. I healed, got my good looks back, and tried to get other parts. But suddenly there weren't any more parts. Everything my agent tried to put me up for they said no. ‘What's going on here,' my agent finally asked me. So I told him what happened. When I finished the story, he just shook his head sadly. He said I'd really screwed myself. He said I'd never get hired in Hollywood again. The next day, he sent me a letter saying he was no longer my agent. The producer had blackballed me all
around Hollywood. If I wanted to live here, I was going to have to do something else besides being a movie star.”

She looked down at her tequila, picked it up, and took another gulp. She seemed a long ways away. Maybe she was thinking about those long-ago days. About how scared and confused she was back then. But then she smiled across the table at me. She didn't seem scared or confused at all. There was a look of satisfaction on her face.

“So I decided that I was tired of being the victim,” she said. “If someone had that much power in Hollywood to be able to do what he did to me, then I wanted to have that kind of power too. That's what I did. First in the porn industry. Then in real estate. I became a player in this town. Money, power, influence—that's what it's all about. I became one of the hunters, not the hunted.”

She looked around the stately bar. “And so here I am today, sitting in the Beverly Wilshire and looking like I belong,” she said.

I nodded. I figured this was a good time to make my move.

“Let's talk about Laura Marlowe.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Did she work for you?”

“You know she did.”

“Tell me about it.”

“The stuff we made was what you called soft porn, I guess. There was nudity, and a lot of foreplay—but no actual sex. We got in a lot more stores that way, and we didn't have to worry so much about getting in trouble with the postal service. But everyone knew what they really were. Porn is an old story. It's been around forever, you know.

“The girls that came to me were an old story too. Some of them just arrived in Hollywood and were still dreaming they'd find their big break. Others had been beaten down and chewed up already by the Hollywood machine. But they didn't want to go back to wher
ever they came from. Or maybe they couldn't. Or maybe they still had a fantasy that a talent scout or producer would discover them one day if they just didn't quit. Sometimes the dream dies hard.

“Laura was different though. You could tell that from the first moment you met her. She was beautiful, of course, but it was more than that. She had this aura about her, something that just made her stand out from all the other gorgeous women in this town. She was in pretty bad psychological shape by the time she got to me. She'd been working in show business her entire life, she said, and she was discouraged and depressed. She'd never had any kind of a real life. She was nineteen years old, but she was like a child. She told me that she never really knew her father, and that her mother was very overbearing and demanding. She was a mess.”

“Where was the mother?”

“Back in New York. There'd been some kind of a falling out between them. She'd left New York, drifted around the country for six months or so, and finally wound up in Los Angeles. Laura didn't even know if she wanted to be in show business anymore at that point. She was very confused. I think she was just looking for some kind of peace in her life. She told me she'd never had a chance to be happy. Maybe I felt sorry for her. Maybe it was some kind of motherly instinct in me. Maybe I saw something of myself in Laura, and I wanted to help her have the career I never had. But I decided to help her become a movie star. And that's just what I did.”

“The question is: How did she go from being in porn films to becoming America's sweetheart?”

“Not exactly the most common route to stardom, is it? But not that uncommon either,” she said. “You'd be surprised.”

I thought about asking her who else had followed that same route. But I resisted the temptation. She was talking about Laura Marlowe, telling me things I didn't know. I didn't want to do anything to interrupt that.

“In addition to making the films, my girls used to perform other services too. There were many wealthy, powerful men in this town who were eager to pay big money for a chance to spend an hour or two of pleasure with one of these young lovelies. The funny thing is some of them were producers and directors, the same ones who had rejected them at casting calls. But they didn't seem to object to going to bed with them. I used to think there was a certain irony to that. Which I guess is what gave me the idea.

“One of the men Laura was seeing was a big-time producer—the same producer who had beaten me up years earlier. When I found out, I got mad at first. But then I decided to get even. I set up a hidden camera in the hotel room where they had their trysts—and I filmed it all. The producer was still having trouble in the sack, which came across in his performance—or lack of performance, I guess. Besides, I knew he had a big house now in Beverly Hills with a wife who would take him to the cleaners if she ever found out he was playing around. One way or another, this film would have ruined him in Hollywood if it ever got out.

“So I went to his office and told him what I did. I even showed him the film. I especially enjoyed watching his embarrassment as he watched it. At first, he thought I was there to blackmail him. Which I guess I was. But not in the way he thought. He asked me how much money I wanted. No money, I said. He looked confused. Then I told him my price. He was starting a new movie in a few weeks. I wanted Laura to have a part in it. He had no choice, of course. It wasn't a big part, but it got her started. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

There was something missing. She had told me a lot of the story, but she'd left out one big piece of the puzzle.

“What about Thomas Rizzo?” I asked.

“Who?” she smiled.

“He was the money man for your operation, right?”

“I guess that's as good a way as any to put it.”

“And one of your clients too?”

“I'd hardly call him a client.”

“But he sometimes slept with the girls.”

“Only one. Laura.”

She told me that Rizzo had always treated her well. No rough stuff, no threats—it was always business. And despite his reputation, she said he was a very moral, almost puritanical man. She believed it made him uncomfortable to be involved in a pornography business, but that's all it was to him—a business. He never messed with the merchandise. He talked about his wife, he talked about his young son, he went to church regularly. He'd told her once that he had never broken his marital vows.

“But then he met Laura,” she said. “And Rizzo fell in love with Laura.”

“What kind of love are we talking about here?”

“Head over heels. Passionate. Schoolboy crush. Whatever you wanted to call it. He had it bad. He wanted to marry her and live happily ever after.”

“Except he was already married. How did he deal with that dilemma?”

“Laura was the love of his life, he told me. She cared about him too. Oh, I don't know if she loved him in the same way he loved her. He was kind of like a friend and a lover and a father figure all rolled into one. She'd been confused and scared and lost for so long. Rizzo protected her.”

“What else did he do for her?”

“He really made her a big movie star. I got her started that day with the producer, but Rizzo was the one who catapulted her to fame. He was a silent partner then in one of the big studios. It was off the books, of course. But the mob was very involved in Hollywood. Rizzo used all his clout and all his money and all his
powers of intimidation to get her the lead role in
Lucky Lady
, which made her an overnight star. The fantasy is that Laura got that part through a lucky break. Well, she got a break, alright. But there was more than luck involved. There always is in Hollywood. It's all about who you know. Laura knew Rizzo.”

“What happened to the two of them?” I asked.

“I talked to Laura at the end before she died. She was very confused at that point. Being a big star hadn't solved all the problems in her life. I was never sure what they all were. She didn't talk about them a lot. But she did talk that day about Rizzo. She told me he had gone back to his wife and family. He was a stand-up guy, she said. She knew that sounded funny, because of all the terrible things that they said he'd done. But he'd always treated her well. She spoke of him with great affection. She cared about him very much.

“Anyway, he went back to New York. Laura became a big star, then she died—and she became a legend. They were like two ships passing in the night, I guess. People tell me Rizzo never forgot her though. They say he gets very emotional if anyone ever mentions her name or one of her movies comes on TV. I heard a story that he sends a dozen roses to the cemetery where her ashes are buried every year on the anniversary of her death and on her birthday.” She shook her head. “The mobster and the movie star. Love works in strange ways, huh? You never know what it does to people.”

After Glimmer Productions went out of business, Jackie Sinclair said she'd gotten involved in real estate, buying up a lot of properties in Beverly Hills and in the Valley just before prices started to skyrocket. She was a wealthy woman now. She threw lavish parties, she knew the rich and famous, and she moved in all the right circles. She'd taken Hollywood on at its own game, and she'd beaten it.