Limo, page 10
Melvin sat a table, idly tapping a fork in his chef ’s salad. Melvin was smiling and mumbling faintly. A stuntman named Dutch who had been acting as a babysitter leaned against the wall with his arms folded across his T-shirt.
“How do you feel, Melvin?” I said.
“Very relaxed. Very confident. We had a great rehearsal. I wish you could have seen it,” Melvin said.
I said, “I wish you could have seen it. I heard you slept through it.”
“I was seeing it in my mind. How many times do I need to see it with my eyes open?” Melvin said.
I looked at Dutch. It hardly need be said that stuntmen are tough, agile, fearless, and more than half nuts. But stuntmen are usually short and compact, built more like rodeo cowboys than like pro football players. Dutch looked like a defensive end. Very tall, lean waist, California beach muscles in the chest, shoulders, and arms. Full beard. Long hair. Maniacal eyes. Why the fuck would anyone have hired him as babysitter?
Pointing to Melvin, I said, “What have you presented me with, Dutch?”
“I gave him some downers like somebody said. I’m just bringing him back up. By seven o’clock, he’ll be a tiger,” Dutch said.
“If he’s not, what’s your price to do a gag off the top of the Hyatt House?” I said.
“Listen, goddam it, don’t threaten me. I’m following orders. Somebody wanted this creep to be smoothed out right up to game time and then hit his throttle hard. That’s what I’m doing, man, so don’t get on my case, okay? I know who you are, and I don’t give a shit,” Dutch said.
I said I didn’t see what could be accomplished by further discussion.
Outside the trailer, I said, “Stavros, who selected Dutch for this job?”
Stavros said, “I thought you did.”
I said, “I told my secretary in New York to call LA and get Melvin a babysitter, not a terrorist. Who did she speak to?”
Stavros said, “Chick’s the producer. Maybe him. But you know how these things get passed around. Somebody probably told somebody. And Dutch was listening some place and figured out he’d make a buck.”
I made a mental note to trace it back so it wouldn’t happen again.
“Melvin’s been okay,” Stavros said. “Really. He’s done his work. He’s been a little more docile than usual, maybe. Frankly, that’s been a relief. He was tired this afternoon at the rehearsal. He’ll be up for tonight.”
I knocked on the door of Peggy’s trailer.
“Miz Hanley ain’t here rat now. Gone to the makeup room, ah speck,” a voice said in a drawl out of Gone With the Wind.
I opened the door. Peggy was lying on a couch wearing cutoff Levis and a Mexican blouse and reading a paperback of The Upanishads.
Tommy Dorsey jazz was playing on the stereo. Peggy’s hair was wrapped in a red bandana. When she saw me, she swung her long black legs off the couch. She got up and hugged and kissed me.
“Get you a drink? Carrot juice? Fresh peach?” she said.
I took a cucumber slice off her health food counter.
“I feel like my stomach is full of hummingbirds,” Peggy said. “I can’t remember a single song or dance step, or a word of the script. I’ve suddenly gotten very ugly. In the mirror I look like a deranged nigger.”
I said, “My dear, you are not only beautiful and a genius, you are stronger than pig shit.”
“And meaner than a broke pimp,” she said. “I’m putting all my energy into living for two more hours and doing the best I can.”
I said, “Peggy, here’s what I think.”
She listened carefully.
“I think you’re gonna be sensational, you’re gonna light ’em all up, you’re gonna be the biggest star in the history of the whole crazy universe,” I said.
“Oh, Frank, I love you,” Peggy said.
She hugged and kissed me again.
“Uh, listen, Mr. Mallory,” Stavros said as we walked through the big door into the soundstage.
“What?”
“You know, when you did that last line in Peggy’s trailer, by the end of it you sounded just like Cagney,” Stavros said.
“Forget it, kid,” I said.
“John Wayne that time,” he said.
In the next hour I had a number of things to do. One of them was getting Polly parked in a chair backstage where she would have a close look at the singing and dancing and all the cables, wires, lights, cameras, microphones, and guys fixed up like telephone operators.
I was on my way to the control room when I encountered Peggy Hanley. She was in full costume. She paced quickly back and forth, with her hands clenched, listening to the orchestra tuning up.
“Stronger than pig shit, huh?” she said, holding out trembling hands. “I can’t remember my name. Gloria? Betsy? Some good American name like that?”
I clasped her hands. “You’re gonna knock ’em off like dead limbs, baby,” I said.
Could it have been Gene Kelly creeping in there?
“If I’d known it was going to be scary, I’d have stayed in South Carolina and been a hooker like my daddy wanted,” Peggy said.
“It’s all on the high side now,” I said.
That time I sounded like Frank Mallory. Almost.
Peggy hugged me again. Her eyes were glazed with terror. When I entered the control room, the technical director, the associate director, the producer, the associate producer, the sound and lighting guys, the coffee kid, Dutch, all of them glanced around at me.
But only Melvin leaped up from his seat at the board and accidentally tore off his headset.
“Keyed up, Frank! Ready to smite a mighty blow! Here comes fun for the whole fucking Nielsen frozen chicken pot pea fuckers!”
I looked at Dutch. He wigwagged his thumbs to indicate all was cool.
Melvin yelled, “I go line ’em up, Frank! Stick their cute little asses all in a row . . . plup . . . plup . . . plup . . .”
Melvin patted the air with his palm, sticking the cute little asses all in a row.
“You ever smell a dancer?” Melvin yelled. “Football on the waterfront, that’s what they smell like!”
Melvin rushed out of the control room, shoving people, half tripping.
“You got him pretty ripe, Dutch,” I said.
I looked at the producer, Chick, who had done a terrific job of avoiding me so far. “I hope you haven’t bought any new furniture,” I said.
“Well, Frank, apparently what happened was . . .” the producer began.
Through the window I saw Melvin waving his arms as he sprinted up to Peggy onstage in front of the packed house of affiliates.
I leaned over and flipped a switch. Except for the first few rows, the audience couldn’t hear what Melvin was saying to Peggy. But we could hear in the control room:
“Just show ’em what you are—a cunt! Slap old rosy on ’em! You know what’s out there? Tits and cocks and balls and asses, but you got the only cunt that counts tonight, baby. Black as it might be!”
I ran out of the control room, jostled through a gathering crowd, hopped over a tangle of cables and approached Melvin as he was saying to Peggy in a suddenly calm voice:
“Peggy, darling, I know you’re gonna fuck up. But that’s okay, it’s what I’m here for. We got an orchestra. We got singers who can really sing. Dancers who can really dance. If your spastic lurches get too embarrassing, I can simply cut away from your sweaty black body and do a closeup on your buck teeth.”
The crew was absorbed by this little drama.
Peggy said, “Why don’t you crawl up my ass and die, you hebe cocksucker?”
She started crying.
I said, “Melvin, go back to the board.”
Melvin whirled and yelled, “Who said that?”
I motioned to Cooper.
“Frank, the goddam voice came out of the sky!” Melvin yelled.
Cooper took Melvin in a firm but gentle armlock and led him toward the control room.
“Stand by! Roll machines A through D to record!” Melvin yelled.
I gestured for a makeup guy to paint glitter under Peggy’s eyes where tears made tracks.
“Within another hour, you will be the third most popular woman in my life,” I said.
Peggy blinked and tried to smile.
“The other two are Billie Jean King and my mother,” I said.
“You don’t have a mother. You came out of an oyster shell,” Peggy said.
In the control room, Melvin was back in the director’s seat. The technical director sat on his left. The associate director, Stavros, sat on Melvin’s right. Chick, the producer, was trying to drink a cup of coffee. Cooper stood by the door, near Dutch.
Into his headset Melvin said, “Okay, all you talented people, this is for real in ten seconds. . . . Rolling to record . . . gimme speed . . . One, stand by wide . . . bring up the fucking lights, Hal! . . . Hit it, Hermie!”
The orchestra conductor hit it.
Peggy started her number. It was a soul-modern, uptempo version of “I Can’t Get Started.”
Melvin said:
“Camera Three, start your dolly!
“Christ, Kenny, I said stand by for a waist shot! Go fuck yourself, Kenny.
“Stand by Two . . . Four . . . and Three. Take Two! Take Four!
“Put her in the upper left, Bobby . . . Slow dissolve to Two! . . . Hold it there . . . and . . . go . . . through to Two!”
Peggy was singing and dancing great enough to break your heart. And Melvin was doing his job like a pro. I began to feel that maybe I had been foolish to worry.
Melvin said, “Stand by . . . and fade to black!”
The number ended.
Melvin looked around at us. “Okay, that was a bag of wildcats. Clams and teeth. Plenty of fur,” he said.
“Looked fine, Melvin,” I said.
“Sweet,” Chick said.
Melvin asked for a check on the tape. Then he flipped on the loud mike to the stage and said, “Peggy, let’s pick it up some. A languid personality ain’t gonna carry you for forty-six more minutes.”
“Bite down on it, Melvin!” Peggy yelled.
“No need for naughty talk,” Melvin said into the mike. “Just shove your sticky, chewy ass into the next setup. This is the one that makes you look like a horny ostrich.”
“I don’t have to take this shit! I can marry a dentist!” Peggy yelled.
I grasped Melvin by the collar and yanked him out of his chair.
“Peggy, this is Frank,” I said on the loud mike. “Let’s have fun on this one. It’s for laughs . . . the number with Scotty and Jean . . . put Melvin clean out of your mind and lay your genius on us.”
Jamming on a headset I said, “Roll A through F to record . . . and gimme speed . . . hit it, Hermie . . . and bring it up. . . .”
I looked at the monitors and quickly out the plate-glass window. I heard the chatter on the headset. Peggy was into a dance that would develop into a comedy skit.
“This number doesn’t work. There’s nothing fucking funny about it,” Melvin said.
“Out of here, Melvin,” I said. Into the headset I said, “Stand by wide, Three . . . dissolve to Three. . . .”
I was trying to study the shot chart.
“Boring number. Number’s shit, Frank!” Melvin said.
Dutch poked me on the shoulder with one long finger that felt like the handle of a golf club.
“Hey, I got Melvin pumped up just right, like they told me. Give him his chair back,” Dutch said.
I looked up at Dutch. His eyes glittered. His chest swelled. Veins stood out on his arms.
Dutch said, “Get your ass out of that chair!”
“Dutch, old buddy, you and me and Melvin is going to the cabin,” Cooper said in a low voice.
Dutch jerked me out of the chair and threw me on the floor. I hit my head on the side of a machine and saw white worms for an instant. The producer moaned. I heard Stavros say, “Come back, Bobby . . . hold it there . . . take Three!”
Then I saw Dutch backed against the wall. Cooper was right up against Dutch’s chest. Cooper’s head tilted so he could look into Dutch’s eyes. It was even money whose eyes looked the angriest and craziest.
“. . . low-rent cocksucker if you’re real smart or real lucky you might live long enough to leave town,” I heard Cooper saying to Dutch in a quiet voice with a very hard edge on it. Cooper’s Binniss, the .32 snubnose Smith & Wesson, was half buried in Dutch’s navel. Cooper jabbed with the Binniss, and Dutch walked toward the door. With one arm, Cooper reached out and flipped Melvin sideways off his feet, so Cooper could drag Melvin while he prodded Dutch.
Leaving the room more or less on the back of his heels, Melvin clutched his genitals and screamed, “Here’s your show, Frank! Right in the old crotcheroo! You’ll never get a job in TV again!”
I said, “Take it, Stavros. You just got promoted.”
Stavros gave me the old thumb-and-forefinger circle. The folks in the control room applauded. I felt good about everything then, and I knew the Peggy Hanley special would be what in the trade is often called dynamite.
It was.
After the show, the singers and dancers were running around kissing everybody. Two or three hundred of them kissed me. Melvin was right about the smell. I received eleven open offers of fellatio, nearly half of them from women.
Peggy kissed me and pleaded with me to come to the “wrap” party. It was in Holmby Hills, not far from the Playboy Mansion, at the house of some fan of Peggy’s. I told her I would be there.
I found Polly the stewardess and asked if she had seen Cooper. I was a little uneasy about him.
“He went outside with some big tall wild-looking guy, and then he came back in. And just a second ago he ran outside again,” Polly said.
I walked quickly through the huge sliding door in time to hear a loud whang! I saw Dutch beside the indigo-blue limo with a tire tool in his hand. I saw Cooper running toward Dutch, heard his boot heels on the pavement.
Blam-kawhiing! Blam-kawhiing!
Sparks flew up from Dutch’s feet. Dutch could run amazingly fast, as he immediately demonstrated. Dodging behind cars, Dutch fled through the executive parking lot and could be seen windmilling toward the gate.
Cooper was pissed.
“Frank, look what that turd done,” Cooper said. He pointed to a large dent in the left front fender of the indigo-blue limo. “If he’d done that to the Silver Goblet, I would of really lost my temper.”
Cooper stuffed his Binniss back into his right boot. A guard come up and said he thought he had heard some shots. I told the guard a couple of big light bulbs had fallen off a truck. The guard was relieved. Polly and Cooper and I got into the limo and drove out the gate.
“What happened to Melvin?” I said.
“He burned out of here in a yellow Jensen, bounced off the curb and headed for Hollywood,” Cooper said. “I believe he had as much speed in him as a man would ever need all at one time.”
Polly was still in shock from the pistol shots.
“Does this happen on every show?” she said.
“If it had been live, you would have seen some real thrills,” I said.
We were on our way to the party in Holmby Hills, but Cooper said when he got there he thought he would stay in the limo and listen to some tapes and maybe catch a few Z’s.
It wore Cooper out to shoot at people. Always did.
PART TWO
14.
HOLMBY HILLS IS TWISTING STREETS with trees and walls that hide swimming pools, tennis courts, private zoos, and houses that might have been built for Louis XIV or some early railroad tycoon.
Or even for somebody important like Cotton Barstow, who was giving the party for Peggy.
The truth is, I had never heard of Cotton Barstow. But the sight of his estate drew a few murmurs of astonishment as the gates opened and we drove uphill under the Japanese lanterns to the front of the enormous Tudor mansion. The front door was oak and about twelve feet high. Inside was a foyer, and off of that was a maze of rooms. There was a backgammon room where several games were in progress. A room for paintings to be hung in. A bar. A projection room. On and on. Glass doors at the back of the house opened onto what could have passed for the gardens of Babylon. Thirty or more people, most of them naked, splashed in the pool. The pool disappeared into a rock cave known as a grotto. Inside the grotto, the pool rounded out and the water bubbled from Jacuzzis. A wide foam bench went around the pool in the grotto. A fat guy with white hair was fucking a teenage girl on the bench and watching the bubbly pool where a woman who makes soap commercials was wrapped around one of the Lakers. A second Laker, with a hard-on that brought to mind the word pumpernickel, paced the edge of the pool, waiting for somebody to get finished or somebody else to arrive. I gave them all a cheery hello and took Polly on into another building that was full of pinball machines, pool tables, and other machines where you drive the course at Le Mans or shoot down Zeros.
On the way to that building I damn near fell over a peacock.
Herb Grant was shooting down Zeros.
“Cute little show tonight, Frank. Ought to get good numbers in the young and urbans,” Grant said.
I said yeah, I thought it went okay.
“Was there a spot of trouble in the control room? I thought I heard your voice at one point,” Grant said.
“No trouble,” I said.
“Good. Good. A piece of cake, huh?” Grant said.
He was staring at Polly. So I introduced them.
“Have you seen the grotto?” Grant asked her.
Polly looked at me in some confusion.
“The cave where the people were fucking,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I saw that place,” Polly said.
“Mallory, there’s no need for that kind of language,” Grant said.
“One of them wasn’t fucking, but he sure looked like he wanted to,” Polly said.
I was looking around for a waiter. Then I noticed a sign that said: NO DRINKS SERVED IN THE GAME ROOM, GAMES ARE SERIOUS. I noticed that beside each machine or table was a posted record of the leading scorers.
