The Hollywood Trilogy (16 page)

CHET SMILED over at Galba's big hard face. “Maybe that's not the question,” he said. “Maybe the question is, Should we be doing here what they're doing there?”

“What's your answer, Chester?” the big man asked. It seemed clear that Galba didn't like C. C. Eubank, but Chet kept his party smile on. The other little conversations at the table stopped.

“Well, to answer
your
question, they'd have to catch me first,” Chet said, and got a good laugh. “Which in a way is an admission that I regard my life as something less than devoted to the State—no matter which party is in power. The truth is, I like to eat high off the hog, and that is the one thing you can't do in China today.”

Galba gave a snort and filled his mouth with about five pounds of food, which didn't stop him from commenting: “Then you're just like the rest of us, aren't you?”

“I hope so,” Chet said. “I'm a little too old to start rehearsing Chinese rations.”

“What about you, hotshot?” Gregory said to me. He grinned around at everyone, a big charming peasant grin. “This is my favorite political analyst, a man of the people,” he said. “Give us your opinion of the world situation
vis à vis
the People's Republic of China,” he said.

“When I go to China,” I said, “I'm going to ask for a fork.”

This got a nice laugh and the dinner broke again into little conversations, Jim being very serious with Sonny, Karl with Galba. The two of them had a vested interest in me and Jim, since when Karl was done with us we would go to Vegas and work for Gregory at the Golconda, which he didn't exactly own but had an interest in, a big enough interest to get him a floor of his own and make all the employees turn away from the glare of his majesty if he happened to be striding around the corridors, which he did sometimes, all six feet five of him, a Yugoslav by birth who spent the first years of his life in a Colorado mining town with other Yugoslavs and not speaking English until, as he told me once, “I figured out all the people with money were jabbering this foreign tongue, so I learned it myself.” He learned it pretty good, too, enough to have an ocean of little iron men he could swing in and out of various businesses, causing the market to topple or rise according to his desires, or close to it.

Chet gave me a sly little look, as if to say, “Isn't he cute?” and started a conversation with the actress on the other side of him, leaving me with Jody McKeegan, the actress who came with Gregory, his more or less steady date these days, a woman of about thirty or thirty-five, who knows how old
anybody is anymore? She was eating at a good pace, and held her hand up for me to wait until she swallowed her potatoes.

“You guys follow me at the Golconda,” she said finally.

“That's so far away I hate to think about it,” I said.

“I hope you'll come and see me,” she said, and got back into her food.

“I hope so,” I said without meaning it.

She flashed her eyes at me, and in an instant I could see why Galba ran around with her instead of the tasty younger women who must have been available to him. I watched her, having nothing better to do. She ate like an animal, not sloppy, just concentrated, shoveling the goods into her face with an expression of distant concentration, like, she would eat this food and then go find someplace to curl up and snooze for a couple of days, stretch, give herself a long lazy wash, and then back to the hunt.

“I know a great story about Max,” Gregory said. “I hope you don't mind if I tell it . . .”

Karl laughed and dabbed at his lips with his white napkin. “Certainly not, I have a lot of stories about him myself.”

“My favorite story about Max,” Jim said, just about the first thing he had said to the table at large, so everybody is leaning forward listening to him, except Galba, who looked a little irritated, “is . . .” and Jim's head fell over, as if he had fallen asleep.

“Anyway,” says Galba, “there was this Handsome Harry actor under contract to MGM, back a long time ago, in the seven-year-contract days, big fellow, could read and write English and sat good on a horse, getting important enough to be invited to some big parties. He brags one night in front of the wrong people that he would never on this earth work for a man like Max, an exploiter of the people, that his
integrity
was at stake, God knows what he thought of the people he was working for, but Max hears about this and lets it be known that he, Max, has a vehicle for this particular actor. The studio didn't want him, the director didn't want him, but Max says, ‘Dis picture don't work widout Harry.' The brass at MGM figure they can get an arm and a leg out of Max in return for the guy's services, the poor actor gets his weekly wages and the studio keeps the rest.

“The actor hears the studio is negotiating with Max and blows his top. ‘Never in a million years!' MGM suspends him immediately and he says he don't care, it's time to get out of this dirty business anyway, and he goes and lives with his
sister in Santa Barbara, sailing her little boat out to the Channel Islands and shooting wild pigs with his .38 pistol to get himself in a relaxed state of mind. Meanwhile, MGM is going crazy, Max is offering them more and more money to produce this actor, ‘alive and well,' on the first day of shooting.

“MGM sends an endless stream of executives up to Santa Barbara, each with a better offer for the actor, although not offering to share in the money Max is putting up, just perks and options to pick his next vehicle, veiled threats to poison his dog, you know, all bullshit of course, but the actor won't budge. ‘I wouldn't work for that slavedriver for a thousand a day,' he would say, and then sail out into the channel with his pistol and a couple belts of ammunition around his neck to shoot the pigs. The studio people never followed him out there, probably afraid he might make a mistake in the fog and shoot one of them.

“Finally, Irving calls Max and asks him about the property, what is it that only Handsome Harry can do, and why is Max offering MGM so goddamn much money for an actor who frankly couldn't get arrested unless he was under contract?

“Max won't talk. He just tells Irving, ‘Never mind, I think I can get along without him,' but still, through the agency involved, keeps trying to get the guy.

“This drives Irving crazy. He comes up to Max at a party and tries to jolly him, but Max just laughs and says, ‘I never do business at parties,' which is the biggest crock of shit imaginable and only makes Irving hotter under the collar. Then the story is all over town that Max has gone up to Santa Barbara himself in a huge yacht he borrowed from a friend and cuts Harry off as Harry is sailing out for his daily pigshoot; I can just see them out there in the fog and the current, Max yelling at the actor, ‘Come aboard or we'll sink you!' This is long before Max is crippled, of course.

“Max and Harry meet on the yacht for hours, sailing up and down the channel, with Max coming up on deck every once in a while to toss his cookies into the water, Max being very subject to seasickness, and then wipe his mouth, swear a little bit and head below again. But it was no use, Harry would not budge, even though Max is supposed to have told him, ‘Listen, Harry, you are locked up in this situation. You think because two fellows like me and Irving are after you that you are somehow more valuable than you was before in terms of dollars and cents, but you ain't because you don't understand fellows like us. We get what we want because we don't stop
at nothing. You're just an actor; what resources do you have? I can keep coming after you for years if need be, and how can you hold out? Family money? So what? Family money can't put you up on the silver screen, there ain't enough of it, and that's what you love most. I can and Irving can, and we can also keep you
off
the screen, as I am sure Irving has told you.'

“But the kid won't relent, at least so the story goes, and Max has to come back to Hollywood a beaten man. People know how serious it is when Max misses a few functions around town, staying home and brooding about the whole mess, and this is when Irving comes up with his generous offer: he will buy the script from Max and produce the picture himself.”

Galba sat back and drained his glass of wine, keeping a straight face like any good storyteller. “Irving paid an arm and a leg for the script, sight unseen, so convinced was he that Max had his hands on a winner, and to make it seem even more likely, Max insisted on a percentage of the picture's profits for himself. The script, of course, was the worst dog Irving had ever seen, a complete piece of shit, which Max had paid too much for and couldn't figure out how to get out from under until he heard about this actor at MGM who had bragged that he would never work for Max in a million years.”

“What happened to the movie?” I asked. “Did it get made?”

“Sure it got made. There sits Irving, knowing that Max can't lose—he's out from under the cost of the script and into profits, and if the movie by some miracle happens to succeed, he gets more from his percentage. Irving is stuck with making the picture to see if Max has screwed him royally, or if Max by some as yet unknown sense of what clicks with the public knew that this lousy script, plus this half-talent actor, will hit the public right in the eye. Sure it got made.”

“Well,” said Jody McKeegan, “drop the other shoe.”

“This is the real point of the story,” Karl said. “We don't know, or at least you don't. I happen to remember, because I was home from school that summer and I was aboard the yacht to Santa Barbara.”

“You mean I just told a true story?” Gregory said, with a look of surprise.

“Sure it's a true story,” Karl said. “Handsome Harry used to come over to the house every Saturday morning that summer to play billiards with my father, Hell, Max gave him his career. The picture was a big hit, a smash.”

But Karl wouldn't tell us the guy's name. “What difference does it make?” Karl asked. “The man's dead now.”

“I DON'T get it,” Jody said. “Was Harry faking, under Max's direction? Acting? Or did he really refuse to work for Max?”

Gregory patted her hand. “Doesn't matter, does it? Suppose the kid really was the kind of idealist who would refuse to work for Max because of principles? If so, then Max said exactly the right things to him aboard the yacht: reminded him he wasn't going to starve, no matter what, and then all but accused him of excessive vanity, that he was just another egomaniac playing the game.”

Chet laughed. “He wasn't buying an actor, he was selling a screenplay.”

JIM LOOKED at me. “And so, by following a path of virtue, Harry became a star.”

“And died,” I said.