Where the Truth Lies (4 page)

I felt foolish and disappointed and insulted. (Did I mention I felt foolish as well?) Quickly, I also felt the fear that Vince’s interest in collaboration would extend no further than the stubbing out of our postcoital cigarettes. I wanted the book deal badly. I also found Vince attractive. I had to handle both of us very carefully.

I looked down the last few steps and toward his trailer. “So this is what I’ve descended to?” I said this lightly, as if it were merely a play on words.

He smiled affably. “You don’t have to join me if you don’t want to. I’m just a little thirsty.” He started toward the steps leading into the Winnebago. I stayed put. He fumbled apologetically, “I, uh, I really have to have something. When I was fifteen, me and the guys went out and tied one on. I got home around midnight. My mother took one look at me and said, ‘Vince, youmust be drunk.’” He paused. “And I’ve been following her orders ever since.” It was clearly one of his stock lines. “So … I’m having a drink.”

“Do you want to sleep with me?” I asked him.

He replied, in a nice manner rather than a leering one, “Well, I’m sure I’m not the first man who wanted to. You’re interesting, smart, and attractive. Yes, I’d like to sleep with you very much. But, actually, I’m just asking you inside to have a drink.”

I knew that if we both went inside, and if we both had the drink, we’d both be having sex before the low California sun had set. I think he knew it too. I said, not mean-spiritedly, “I think I need to know about the proposition I put to you yesterday before we discuss any proposition you might have for me today.”

He sat down on a step and looked at me as if disillusioned. I couldn’t tell if this was fake or not. Vince had starred in some bad scripts, but he was not a bad actor. “Are you saying you’ll say yes to my proposal if I say yes to yours?”

“No. I won’t sleep with you if I’m working on the book with you.”

He laughed. “But then if I say I won’t do the deal, youwill sleep with me?”

“No, I won’t sleep with you if you turn down the deal.” Now I could have used the drink he had offered me. “But I’ll sleep with you when the book is done.”

I think I almost surprised him.

I added, “Hell, I might even sleep with you twice. I find you ‘interesting, smart, and attractive.’ On top of which you’re Vince Collins. It would be fun to be watching a movie on TV with a friend and suddenly you come on the screen and I say casually, ‘I’ve slept with him.’”

“What if, in the course of interviewing me, you hear things that make you decide you don’t like me? You’ll still sleep with me?”

Could I marry someone I didn’t like? I don’t think so. Could I sleep with them, once, if they were physically attractive? Puh-leez. “Everyone has character flaws,” I shrugged. “As you’re already learning about me. I wouldn’t be doing this book if I didn’t believe there’s something controversial or sordid I can learn about you. I’d be shocked if I didn’t turn up something unseemly, and my employers would be outright angry. So when I threw myself into the offer, it wasn’t with the illusion that you’re a saint. The deal is the deal.”

He moved toward me and held out his hand. I took it. It felt long and dry. “Okay, you give me your word and I’ll give you my words.”

“I give you my word.”

He walked up the steps to his trailer. “My attorney is Harold Cohen; Lucille in my office will give you his number.” He motioned to the door. “The offer still goes, for the drink.” I thought it was better not to and said as much. He apologized, “Well, forgive me if I don’t walk you back, but I’m going to have one. By the way, you don’t have to go back up the steps.” He pointed out a route around the bottom of the hill that would lead me to the parking lot and my Caprice. I watched him open the trailer door and some perverse imp made me ask, with my head slightly perched, “So wasI what clinched the deal?” It was despicable fishing on my part.

He moved down a step. “If I had planned to say no to the book, that would mean I think you’re pretty hot stuff, wouldn’t it? On the other hand, if I’d been planning to sign all along, I may have just gotten a piece of your sweet tush for free. You’re the brains in this outfit. You tell me.” He stepped into his trailer, leaving me with a last smile, his warmest of the day, but like the low sun of dusk in Los Angeles, its appearance and its angle looked a bit odd, all the same.

An hour later, at my apartment complex in Studio City, I passed the fragrant, sticky blossoms that surrounded a small fountain outside my window. Their fumes were a fine marriage with the scent of Jungle Gardenia I always wore. I stopped to open my mailbox in the sheltered area outside my door and instantly saw that one of the letters was from Weisner, Hillman and Dumont, the law firm that represented Lanny Morris.

FOUR

Dear Miss O’Connor:

My associate Warren Richter has kept me apprised of your continued dialogue with our office. I apologize for “dropping out” temporarily from our correspondence and hope you’ll agree that all our communications have been cordial in tone and respectful of the artistic accomplishments of both yourself and our client Mr. Lanny Morris.

Since Mr. Richter’s last letter to you, I have again personally spoken with Mr. Morris regarding your interest in his career. I will be candid and tell you that he initiated this particular phone call, in which he informed me he had read more of the work samples your agent has made available, and that he continues to be impressed with your talents.

While my client is still not interested in creating or endorsing the project you proposed in your first letter to our firm (a book to be underwritten and eventually published by a division of Neuman and Newberry), he also does not wish to impede or obstruct any efforts on your part to create a work about his life and career. In fact, he has expressed to me a desire to, in a small way, assist you in this endeavor. (I say this, of course, without prejudice to my client’s legal rights.)

Toward this end, I am wondering if you would be willing to present yourself to this office Tuesday, August 12, at noon. If that is not convenient, please call so we may arrange an alternative date. We are advising you in advance that you will not be allowed to make use of any kind of tape recording or transcription device on our premises, nor will you be allowed to make any written notes. We hope you will understand that this is a regrettable necessity in order to protect Mr. Morris’s interests, and is unfortunately a prerequisite of your acceptance of the appointment. Likewise, your person and any property you bring with you may be examined by a security woman we will engage for such purposes, so you may wish to dress and accessorize yourself so as to most easily facilitate and simplify such an examination. Again, we assure you that these stern-sounding dictums are precautionary measures and are not, of course, intended to cast any personal aspersions upon you.

I very much look forward to meeting you in person. Please contact us upon receipt of this letter to confirm or reschedule.

Very truly yours,

John Hillman, Esq.

JH:rv

cc: Mr. Warren Richter, Esq.

Mr. Lanny Morris

FIVE

The receptionist was on the phone with a new boyfriend and smoking a new brand of cigarettes being test-marketed on the West Coast. Tramps, they were called, an attractive tan-colored cigarette bearing the licensed image of Charlie Chaplin on every pack. “Buy ’em or bum ’em” was their slogan, cute cigarettes marketed to give cute cancer to women. Weisner, Hillman and Dumont occupied an entire floor of 7760 Sunset, the last outpost of business real estate before Sunset Strip segued into Sunset Boulevard and directly across from the nicest of the Hamburger Hamlets (the one with the open Danish modern fireplace in the middle of the room, where your waiter would roast you marshmallows for dessert if you asked nicely).

The reception area could not have been more respectable if there’d been a baptismal font and a brace of acolytes. Pecan paneling outlined cream-and-gray-striped walls, upon which hung framed lithographs of sailing ships. There was no way one would have suspected that this firm was in any way connected to show business.

I got the receptionist to put her boyfriend on hold for a moment and explained that I was there to see Mr. Lanny Morris. “Not here,” she said tartly and, while apologizing profusely to her boyfriend, waved me toward the seat she’d allow me to take.

Hillman’s secretary came out to greet me. She was a pert British blonde named Gillian (standard issue for that rank of attorney), who was smoking a St. Moritz, an expensive menthol cigarette that came with a glossy gold band wrapped around its filter. “So you’re here, t’riffic!” she gushed. She turned to the receptionist. “Leslie, could you tend to the Mr. Coffee machine, it’s getting a bit like paint in there, I’m afraid. If you’ll come this way, Ms. O’Connor.”

She led me down several hallways filled with desks upon which Selectric typewriters were manned by middle-aged secretaries who did most of the firm’s real work. Gillian was pretty giggly about things. “So you know that we have a lady who’s here to frisk you, I’m afraid. Sor-ry! Are you all right about that then? T’riffic! We did warn you about that in the letter, didn’t we? Although I can’t think where you might hide anything in that outfit,” she confided.

I’d purposely worn something clingy and see-through, a knit macramé over a body stocking, purportedly to show that I had nothing to hide but also, I suspected, to make a strong first impression on Lanny Morris. Who was not on the premises.

Gillian showed me into a small windowless law library. Before leaving, she introduced me to Naomi, a big woman who amply filled her navy blue outfit, which vaguely resembled a policewoman’s uniform without actually being such.

Naomi ambled over to me and recited, “Please raise your hands above your head and move your legs as far apart as possible.” In the dress I was wearing, the latter wasn’t very far. Naomi then felt me up. Every part of me. I don’t care what anyone else would have called it, Naomi felt me up.

The door opened. A tall, too thin fellow entered, wearing his age (mid-sixties) on his Harris tweed sleeve. His suit was crowned with what was, for the time, a defiantly conservative maroon bow tie.

“Miss O’Connor! John Hillman, very glad to have you here. I’m terribly sorry about the, uhm, you know”—he nodded toward Naomi—“but such is the situation. Now I’ll need you to sign these releases where you see the X …”

I signed wherever he said. “I thought I was going to meet with Lanny Morris.”

He nodded. “Well, in a sense you’ll be doing just that.” He placed a black ring binder on the library table. “This is a selection from my client’s writings. He wanted you to have the opportunity to read it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“My understanding is that he believed it might assist you in some way.” He looked inquisitively at my gal-pal Naomi. “Miss … ?”

“Schall,” Naomi elucidated. She was thumbing through a copy ofSeventeen with fervid interest.

“Miss Schall will remain here to make sure you don’t memorialize or take away anything you read. This material is offered as what I believe is called ‘deep background.’ Meaning you may not quote from or paraphraseany of it. You understand?”

Hillman left the room and there was this sillyCitizen Kane moment, me seated at the room’s sole mahogany library table, about to read the late Great Man’s private memoirs … only the Great Man was very much alive and kicking. I remembered that when I’d asked Vince a few days earlier why he and Lanny had not spoken since their breakup, he’d confided,“Because Lanny can be a bit of a monster.”

Okay. I have all the pluck of every heroine who ever idiotically blundered her way down the stone stairs of Dracula’s castle to investigate a strange noise in the crypt. Besides, I had Naomi here at my side to protect me.

I touched the cover of the ring binder. “You King Kong,” I thought. “Me Fay Wray. Let’s meet the monster.”

SIX

This is not going to be like any of my other books you’ve read,Laugh Clown Laugh by Lanny Morris with Dick Schaap,24 Frames a Second by Lanny Morris as told to Rex Reed, et cetera. This one I am writing all by myself, for reasons you don’t want to know.

If you bought this book—and if you didn’t,“Police! Shoplifter!!” (joke)—then you know all about me. Of course you do. They’ve got a street in downtown Barcelona and a movie theater in Taiwan named after me, so if you’re sitting there reading this in Plainfield, New Jersey, sure, you know me.

About my life prior to the summer of 1959, anything you’d want to know is in my other books. Some of it is funnier than it is true, but after a while, the stuff that isn’t true has been retold so many times that it’s become true, even for me. Maybe I wasn’t born quite so poor(“We was so poor that …”) but I definitely wasn’t born rich. And maybe Vince and I actuallyhad worked together once or twice before the night when my bio says we first met and invented a comedy act for ourselves in the kitchen of the Café Arcadia five minutes before we had to go on. But listen to me: what I’m going to be telling you now is as truthful as I know how to make it, even if sometimes the truth is not my best profile.

Where this accounting needs to begin is in the suite that Vince and I would share at the Miami Versailles Hotel whenever we worked there. It’s their best suite, gorgeous, the presidential suite as it happens, though Eisenhower didn’t stay there. It would have been a big waste if he did, because in 1959, Ike would never have been able to accommodate the procession of broads that paraded into and out of the place.

For me, back then, the world is divided up into four types of girls: sluts that I boff; nice girls who in bed turn into sluts (these girls I boff with pleasure); nice girls who remain nice in bed (these I generally leave for the working stiffs, because civilians need to get laid, too); and my mother. Her I don’t boff, despite the name my manager calls me in moments of anger. I have no desire to boff my mother. I sort of have that in common with my father. (Joke.)

It’s about five in the afternoon and I’m in my bedroom, just starting in on this girl. Denise is her name, she handles P.R. for the hotel. I’ve been marinating her for three days, very gentlemanly, very courteous andgalant, as they say, and now I’ve got her dress off and she’s half under the top sheet. She’s wearing one of those low-cut black bras that turns into a kind of demi-corset (not that this girl needs a corset because she is really pretty skinny). The bra goes down to the end of her ribs for support and lets her breasts float like they’re on a platform, which in a low-cut dress makes them seem a lot bigger than they end up being. Sort of a cheat. Her panties don’t match—they’re light blue, the bra is black. Why do women think this is all right?