Limo, page 9
“We’re taping a special tonight. Before a live audience of affiliates,” I said. “Then tomorrow the affiliates’ meetings start. Harley Chambers is going to tell them the wonderful stuff we’ll fill their air time with.”
“The Big Guy hisself? That’s interesting,” Maitlow said.
I took the martini from Polly and sipped it.
“Yes, it should be,” I said.
“Between you and I, the Big Guy’s wig has slipped,” Maitlow said.
“He seems all right to me,” I said.
“Frank, how long I known you? Ten years? Since you did that CBS story on the hassle we had with the Senate committee, right? Listen to me, boy. The Big Guy has got squirrels in his attic.”
I said, “I know how you prize loyalty, Bobby. You wouldn’t respect me if I sat here and told you my own boss is crazy as a pet coon.”
Maitlow said, “I like you. Always have. There are people in the business who don’t like you. They say you’re impulsive. They say you make scars. Myself, I say a man couldn’t come from them jerk jobs you used to have and go to the top being timid. I got no use for timid sons of bitches. I say a man has got to take big chances. You know what these timid bastards do now? They wire up theater seats that are supposed to tell them what the audience is thinking every minute. Can you believe that? A man that claims he’s got the guts to be in the movie business? He wires up theater seats?”
I said, yeah, I could believe it. In TV we did a lot of wiring and came up with numbers for everything. Want to know the top one hundred best-known? The top one hundred best-loved? If there is an audience for a show about Texas Rangers? And if there is, what kind of a show would the audience wish it to be? Guys were always coming up with numbers that were supposed to guide your thinking on how to put together future projects. If you listen to these guys, you couldn’t miss. They say, look at these numbers, a show about a modern-day Texas Ranger with plenty of action in it has tested out at a forty-seven, and that means a hit. They say, look at these other numbers, if you make the Texas Ranger a sixty-four-year-old redneck who lives in an old farmhouse and has problems with a bunch of hicks that ain’t “Beverly Hillbillies,” I mean they ain’t funny, then you got yourself a testing out of twenty-two, and so what you are talking about here is a built-in failure. In case you wondered what a failure was, they had numbers to let you know how you could tell whether a show on the air right now was a failure or a success.
I didn’t say all that out loud to Bobby Maitlow. All I said was, yeah, I could believe it.
“He wires the goddam seats,” Maitlow said in his awful voice. “Then he makes a movie that is shitola. It is shitola and it loses money, too. That’s a crime. If you’re gonna go broke doing shitola, why wire up the seats? Jesus, I could get a monkey in here and say do me a piece of shitola and I’d have as good a chance.”
Maitlow’s voice tailed off. It sounded like his battery had run down. But he was just resting. It must have been tough work to talk through that throat box.
“That clown we got now, he makes movies that make my ass hurt,” Maitlow said. “Worse than that, he insults me with his brains. He wires up seats. He knows what the people like. You know what he wants to spend $15 million on? A remake of Silver Chief, Dog of the North. He says he did a poll that shows people are hungry for dog stories. I say, for $15 million you’re gonna make a dog picture? A dog picture costs no more than $2 hundred thousand tops for class. He says, well, this is a remake of a classic movie of all time, and it has got to be a big production with big stars on location up in Alaska where bacon and eggs cost twice as much as at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
“There never was a movie of Silver Chief, Dog of the North,” I said.
“It was a classic, and people ate it up,” Maitlow said.
Maitlow squinted at me and adjusted his silk scarf.
I said that it had been one of my favorite books when I was a kid. I said if it had been made into a classic movie, I would know it. I said even if it had been made into shitola, I would probably know it.
Maitlow said, “What does it cost to rent a dog?”
I said I didn’t know.
“I don’t mean to rent a stud to breed a world champion dog. I mean to rent a cute dog that is smart enough to throw a railroad switch but looks like a dog you’d see at the pound,” Maitlow said.
I said Silver Chief was a hell of a dog.
“Yeah, he must be a hell of a fucking dog, all right, to make a bunch of big-dollar stars go to Alaska for three months. You know what the per diem is for a big star in Alaska? I could take a couple of broads to Monte Carlo for the same money.”
Maitlow laid his head back against the seat.
“I got to sleep for a while,” he said.
Polly had come back upstairs with an ice bucket.
“Okay, Bobby, I’ll move to another seat and read these scripts,” I said.
He shut his eyes.
“Hey, thanks for the tip, right?” he said.
12.
AN INDIGO - BLUE ROLLS limo, with Cooper leaning on the fender eating an ice cream cone, was waiting at the LA airport.
Polly had a shoulder bag and a little blue suitcase on wheels that she pulled with a strap. I had my under-the-seat Vuitton. So we walked past the crowd and straight to the indigo-blue limo.
“Polly, this is D. Wayne,” I said.
“Far out,” Polly said.
“Little bit unreal, ain’t it?” Cooper said.
“I never saw a car this color,” Polly said.
“It’s a Left Coast kind of ve-hicle,” Cooper said.
We were pulling out as Bobby Maitlow and his pearl-gray driver appeared and headed toward a maroon Bentley.
Cooper looked into the rear-view mirror and said, “Maitlow’s gonna be buried pretty soon, I hear.”
The heavy freeway traffic was just starting about 3:00 p.m. when we turned off Century Boulevard onto the San Diego Freeway. Orange smaze hung across from the ocean into the hills. Cooper chose the Sunset exit. It was nowhere near the closest route, but it took you on a climbing, turning road through Bel Air and Westwood and past the UCLA campus. The driveway of the Beverly Hills Hotel was stacked up with cars being delivered to women leaving the luncheon for the Photoplay Magazine Female Entertainer of the Year Award.
Cooper drove around to the side and parked the limo near the bungalow on the grounds behind the hotel.
“Come in for a cocktail?” I said to Cooper.
“Straight as an Indian goes to shit,” Cooper said.
The carpet in the bungalow was like a pile of alpaca sweaters. Fresh flowers were in vases on the mantel over the fireplace. A large basket of fruit, a magnum of Dom Perignon, a quart of J&B, a quart of Johnny Walker Black, a quart of Wild Turkey, a quart of Beefeater, and a quart of Polish vodka had been provided with the compliments of the management.
“They might of left an ounce of snort and a pound of weed, if we look in the cabinets,” Cooper said.
While Cooper got the ice out of the refrigerator in the kitchen, I called the studio to inquire about Melvin, the director of the Peggy Hanley special. I had checked on him at least once a day and had been informed by Melvin himself that his battles with Peggy were now a memory. Melvin had sounded very cool and controlled. But I told the producer to keep the babysitter with Melvin anyhow.
Polly went into both bedrooms pulling her little suitcase on wheels. She came back into the living room, where I was on the phone.
“Which one?” she said.
I shrugged. She went into the room where I had thrown my bag on the bed. Cooper brought me a J&B and water while West Coast Production was assuring me Melvin was all right.
I hung up and said, “How did your friend’s opening go last night?”
“Pretty fair,” Cooper said.
“Critical approval and so forth?” I said.
“If there was anybody that didn’t like it, they didn’t tell me about it,” Cooper said.
Polly returned, wearing a shorty kimono.
“Can I get you a drink, little lady?” Cooper said.
Polly was fascinated by Cooper. She kept staring at his long hair, Indian jewelry, boots, Levis, cowboy hat, and weathery, wasted-looking face, like she couldn’t imagine all those elements ever being combined in a single person.
“What’s that you’re drinking?” she said.
“It’s a South Dallas martini,” Cooper said.
“What’s in it?” she said.
“Aw, it’s just a regular martini,” Cooper said. “Except I leave out the olive. And I don’t put no lemon peel or cocktail onion in it. And I don’t use no vermouth. My daddy used to make the best South Dallas martini a body ever tasted. It was kind of unusual for a preacher to be a expert at making drinks like this. But my daddy was an unusual man. He once knocked out a bear at a carnival.”
Polly was watching Cooper prepare a South Dallas martini for her as he talked. He handed her the drink.
“Salud,” Cooper said.
“Why, this is nothing but a glass of gin,” Peggy said.
Cooper said he had to go meet his friend. From the look of Cooper’s eyeballs, I would guess Cooper hadn’t slept in two or three days. Being awake for two or three days was nothing special for the musicians Cooper liked to hang out with.
I told Polly I was going to shower and do an hour of jet-lag coma. She said she believed she would join me if it was okay. I told the operator to hold off on the phone calls.
“How hot do you like it?” Polly called from the shower.
About 5:00 p.m. I got dressed in my fine old well-faded Levis, my Charlie Dunn boots that were so soft you could roll them up like a belt, a white cotton shirt, and my silk-lined lightweight leather jacket. I looked in the bathroom mirror, patted shaving lotion on my cheeks and said, “Self, you need to be very alert tonight, so let’s don’t take chances.” I swallowed a green and white spansule and picked up the phone for a run-through on the messages.
Most of the messages were the usual urgent requests to call people I had never heard of or didn’t want to talk to.
But one message said: Will be in Polo Lounge from 5:00 to 6:00 if you can make it. Katherine.
I told Polly I would be back to pick her up at six. I walked down the path through the jungle behind the hotel. Antoine, who took over as maitre d’ after Dino died, was working the door at the Polo Lounge. Antoine looked like a French Foreign Legion colonel who had put on a tuxedo for a banquet in his honor.
“I ’ave your favorite ta-bul, Mistair Malloree,” Antoine said.
He meant the corner booth in front near the bar. No, he said, no woman had asked for me. But certainly if one did he would conduct her to my table immediately. Not unless she says her name is Katherine, I said.
I slid into the booth and ordered a cocktail. The Polo Lounge was beginning to fill up with the usual traffic. A bunch of unbuttoned shirts with gold medallions hanging on hairy chests. Palm Springs suntans. Gorgeous women with their tits sticking out. Here and there a genuine beauty who wouldn’t take barter for it. The women you see in Beverly Hills tend to make the women in any other city in the world, even New York or Dallas, look kind of plain and unattended-to. The classier ones don’t usually sit around the Polo Lounge at cocktail hour. When you get right down to the truth of it, the Polo Lounge is fairly shabby and smells like a whorehouse. But of course they keep it dark in there. And there are some of us who like the way a whorehouse smells.
Herb Grant, for example, wouldn’t stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel unless he were kidnapped and would only go to the Polo Lounge if a big sponsor wanted to see the place. Grant always stayed at the Bel Air. Grant said the Bel Air was “civilized and European.” By that he meant it was so quiet and dull at the Bel Air that even Grant could almost seem like fun to be with. Personally, I never went to Los Angeles looking to feel civilized and European. I went there to wallow in show business.
Another J&B and water. No Katherine as yet. She was usually late, except for work. It had been a couple of years since I had seen Katherine. I wondered what she wanted. While I waited I began to listen to the conversation in the next booth. One guy in a cashmere sweater and short haircut, an aging athlete like Hollywood is full of. The other guy in a brushed denim outfit with rhinestones all over it, smoking a pipe.
“Dustin doesn’t have a backhand. You ever seen Dustin’s backhand? He’ll run off the court to try to reach his forehand side,” the cashmere guy said.
“God, I wouldn’t want him for my partner,” the rhinestone guy said.
“I had him once at Palm Springs. Howard and Chuck beat us in the semifinals.”
“God, how did you get that far? You must have played super.”
“He’s a nice kid, though. I wouldn’t knock him,” the cashmere guy said.
I took the telephone off the ledge between the two booths, put it on my table, and returned a couple of calls. I hung up and listened to the two guys again.
“The funniest thing was when they couldn’t find the car for thirty minutes,” the rhinestone guy said. “And it was the only brown Mercedes in the parking lot with a white dog in the back seat.”
The cashmere guy said he had to go to Rome and guessed he would stay at the Excelsior again.
Then suddenly they were talking about me.
“I don’t know how that girl got her own special—even as a summer replacement—unless she’s been going down on Mallory,” the rhinestone guy said.
“You ever met Mallory? I hear he’s a prick,” the cashmere guy said.
“It’s funny. I was screwing this singer in Vegas who thought she was gonna marry him. But he dumped her and stayed with his wife,” the rhinestone guy said.
Now they were talking about Katherine.
“Mallory can’t possibly last very long in programming,” the cashmere guy said. “He doesn’t know a damn thing about it.”
“One good fuckup and they’ll bounce his ass and bring in somebody with experience and talent,” the rhinestone guy said.
At that moment Antoine escorted Katherine to the booth and said, “Theese ladee is to see you, Mistaire Malloree.”
“Frank, you look wonderful,” Katherine said.
I stood up and kissed her.
I looked down at the two guys in the next booth. Because I was looking at them, Katherine looked at them, too. Clearly she didn’t recognize either of them.
“Stay at the Flora in Rome,” I said to the cashmere guy. “There’s not so many loudmouth assholes at the Flora.” The rhinestone guy stuck a handful of Fritos in his mouth and his pipe fell into a bowl of guacamole.
“What’s that about?” Katherine said after we sat down.
“Just being helpful to the tourists,” I said. “How did you know I was here?”
“I read it in the Hollywood Reporter,” Katherine said.
A waiter helped the rhinestone guy wipe guacamole off the front of his outfit and clean up his pipe. The two guys paid their check and left without another word. I looked at Katherine. She had held up very well. I had heard she had gained weight and let her hair revert to saddle color. But she looked trim now, and her hair was blond, and she aimed that good soft smile at me. Katherine could smile at you and make you believe you were the finest, dearest person she had ever known.
“The timing is right. I’m finally getting divorced,” I said. “Of course when Marcie’s lawyers get through with me, I might decide to take off my shoes and walk across Africa.”
Katherine laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to pick up our romance again,” she said. “The actual fact is, I thought it might be fun to have a drink with you and talk about old times. You’ve really gone to the top, haven’t you?”
I brushed past that one and said, “You get rid of that sailor you lived with?”
“If you want to call a man who owns an eighty-foot yacht a sailor, yes I did, Katherine said. “He was a nice man. Very sweet. He took care of me. We did the big race from Newport Beach to Honolulu one year, and every year we spent three or four months cruising around the islands. He let me play princess. I could sleep with other people when I really wanted to. Nearly everywhere we went, he owned a house on the beach. He begged me to marry him.”
“Why didn’t you?” I said.
“The wind kept blowing sand in my Bain de Soleil,” Katherine said.
We both laughed. Katherine sipped a Kahlua on the rocks.
“No, really, I couldn’t go on living like that,” she said. “I don’t belong in paradise. One day I asked myself how come I was getting loaded all the time and turning to fat and saying ‘motherfucker’ a lot. I decided it was because I just didn’t fit in paradise. I needed to go back to work and be mistreated.”
“Whatever you’re doing, it looks great on you,” I said.
She smiled and asked about my kids. She asked if Marcie had ever found out about us. I said Marcie believed I had been up to something serious sometime somewhere but didn’t know any of it for sure. It was fantastic that Marcie could have missed feeling the heat of what went on between Katherine and me. But Marcie got so involved with herself, and being serious, that I was the guy in the suit who was always out of town when there was something she wanted him to do.
Katherine and I didn’t talk much about Marcie, though. We talked about laughs we’d had together. Time passed fast when I was with Katherine. Suddenly it was 6:00 p.m. I signed the bill, tucked a twenty into Antoine’s palm on the departing handshake, kissed Katherine goodbye in the lobby, and ran for the bungalow. I never had asked what it was she really wanted.
13.
THE GUARD WAVED the indigo-blue limo through the gate at the studio in Burbank. I left Cooper and the stewardess in the executive parking lot and walked toward Melvin’s trailer with the A. D., a kid named Stavros. “We had an early dinner sent in for Melvin. Nothing too heavy,” Stavros said.
The trailers were parked against a wall of the main building. Melvin’s trailer was closest to the big sliding door which led onto the soundstage from the outside. You could drive a moving van through that door. I opened the door of Melvin’s trailer and went in without knocking. In the indigo-blue limo, I had received a phone call that had touched my alarm bell enough to make a loud, distinct ping.
