Hollywood

by Ed Nelson

  Lunch was lunch. At least I could get around. I was still sore and wouldn’t be jumping up on a horse, but I could do most things now.

  Biology lab was fun as usual. We were back to gooey stuff as Nina referred to it. Today was a fish. I’m looking forward to surfing Saturday.

  Back at the set we walked through the scene where Ellen put me down. For some reason while we were performing as required the scene wasn’t sending the message the Director was looking for.

  He wanted a teenage girl calling for attention from a teenage boy. The words looked good on paper but when spoken sounded like a fishwife scolding a kid.

  Ron Dodge finally threw up his hands and called it a day. He sent the script back to the writers. He made a point of telling Ellen and me that the problem wasn’t us, it was the script. We thanked him. From what I had been told, not all Directors were this understanding of the root causes of problems.

  I headed home, after making a side trip to the supermarket. I couldn’t believe how much food I ate and how many dishes I made dirty. A cleaning lady came on Tuesday’s every week but I was responsible for my own food and dishes. Mum was handling six of us. I don’t know how she could do it.

  After dinner I settled in with my Biology text book. I was finally starting to feel comfortable with all the material that had to be covered in the ninth grade.

  Mum called me at nine her time. She was at Idlewild airport killing time till her flight at eleven. She wanted to know how I was doing. I assured her I was recovering nicely. To say she was unhappy with Paul Grant was putting it lightly. I talked to her until she sounded calmer.

  She was going to call us again when she got to England and saw how Grand Mum Newman was doing. Aunt Dell was in such a dither when she called that Mum wasn’t certain how serious it was.

  Ten minutes after I hung up the fire alarms in the apartment started going off. I didn’t see anything wrong in my unit so I stepped outside. People were pouring out of their apartments and heading to the pool area so I thought I had better do the same.

  No one seemed to know what had caused them to go off. Since all of them were triggered it had to be the front office. About that time the firetrucks showed up. The firemen began checking the area. Conversations started between neighbors. One thing I noticed was that almost no one knew anyone else. I guess this was a get to know your neighbor mixer.

  I did notice one glaring lack. There were no other kids my age present, especially girls. My fellow tenants were in their thirties. Some of them had very young children, but no teenagers were present. That meant no fun pool parties. The only reason I didn’t want to buy a house was because of no kids. This took care of that objection.

  Word finally came down that a false alarm had been called to the front office. They had set the alarms off just in case. Dick, Janice and I had reached that conclusion on our own. We had been there for an hour and had seen no smoke. We were allowed to return to our apartments.

  The phone was ringing when I opened the door. I was able to grab it in time. It was Dad. He wanted me to know that we had signed agreements with five out of the six shower head companies. They were coming up with the ten thousand dollars up front and our requested percentage.

  The sixth one Detroit Faucet had visited Dad, but couldn’t come up with the money. The owner had just inherited half the company and bought out the other half from his sister who wanted nothing to do with the business. Dad had visited his facility and described them as asset rich and cash poor.

  “Would he consider a partner?”

  “I’ve already asked him and he would love to have someone bring money to the table. Otherwise he is going to lose it all.”

  “Did you talk any dollars?”

  “Of course I did, if we gave him the license and throw in another twenty grand we would own thirty percent of the business.”

  “Dad I think we should do it. I’ve another idea that could make us some real money.”

  “What’s that Rick?”

  “On the sets out here they have some very fancy faucets and other fixtures for the mansion sets. From what I’ve seen no one makes them commercially. They are all special designs and orders. I think if we had an in house designer we could make designer faucets and people would buy them. Please talk to this guy to see if he would be interested in something like that. What’s his name by the way?”

  “Mark Downing.”

  “Well if Mark likes that idea I would like to buy in, if he wants to do business the same old way, I will pass.”

  “I will talk to him and let you know Rick, anything else happening out there?”

  I told him about the false alarm and the fact that no girls my age lived in these apartments.”

  Dad started laughing, “We knew that before you ever went to California!”

  ‘Thanks a lot, Dad!”

  “We didn’t want too much temptation in front of you.”

  “As I said, thanks a lot.”

  “Anytime Rick, I’ll let you know what I hear from Mum.”

  “Thanks Dad and good night.”

  That night I reread a book that I had read not that long ago. This time it was in Spanish. The library had a copy right up front and it caught my eye. This would certainly help me with sentence structure and vocabulary. Take that, you windmill!

  Chapter 38

  Wednesday was better than the last two days. I could do all my exercises. I was really stiff when I started but it worked out. I was in full blown Technicolor now. When I went over to Dicks for our run he met me at his door and told me to come in.

  “Have you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “About Paul Grant,” Dick replied.

  “What about Paul Grant?”

  “He was killed last night, apparently in a gang war.”

  “What!”

  “He and the two guys with him were gunned down as they were getting out of their car to go to a fashion show. It was in a parking garage. It is being compared to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Someone used a machine gun on them.”

  “A tommy gun,” I asked.

  “It was a L2A1 Patchett submachine gun. I have never heard of them. They shoot a nine millimeter. Apparently they were riddled like Bonnie and Clyde. The police say it was a professional hit, the weapon had been totally wiped down, and the shell casings had no finger prints.”

  “They did find a kilo of heroin in the car. They think Grant was doing business with one of the mobs. There has been a low level fight going on for a while. It appears to be going hot now. At least you have an iron clad alibi for last night. After your exchanges with Grant you would have been a suspect.”

  “Who were the other two guys?”

  “I think you may have met them, Boots Moran and Tiny Thompson. They were the gang that always followed him around.”

  “Oh.”

  While we ran I tried to wrap my head around events. It seemed so unreal. There was no question the guy had been a thug, but a drug dealer and member of the mob! I think I was very lucky to be alive.”

  The set was alive with speculation as almost everyone there knew Grant. I never knew how much he was disliked until people started talking. But then again it was all after the fact.

  The biggest question everyone had, whose show would replace The Outlaw Kid. It had a strong cleaning detergent sponsor that everyone would be chasing. I was starting to get a feeling about this predatory industry.

  The Germans have a word, “Schadenfreude,” which seem to cover this situation, pleasure at the misfortune of others. If others are suffering then maybe you will benefit from their suffering. This event was more than the other team fumbling the football.

  We still managed to get our shoot in. We finished at eleven thirty. There were two detectives from the Burbank police department waiting for me. They were polite, but they had several questions for me at the request of the New York Police Department.

  The lead Detective a guy named Friday, started with, “Since
it was early evening I assume you were home by yourself and no one saw you from the time you left the studio till you arrived this morning.”

  “Not correct at all Detective. Someone called in a false alarm at our apartment complex last night and at least twenty people can testify I was there. Besides how could I get to New York and back within that time period?”

  “Oh, so you think this is about Paul Grants death?”

  “I don’t know what else it could be.”

  “Well you are correct. The NYPD worked out that a jet could’ve got you there and back within those hours.”

  I saw Dick Wyman walking by, so I waved him over.

  “Dick, please tell these gentlemen, what occurred at the apartment complex last night.”

  “Dick proceeded to talk about the false alarm. He named half a dozen people that we had talked to. I’m glad he remembered their names, I had just met them.

  Detective Friday thanked me for my time.

  “As a formality we will check with the apartment office, but it looks like you are in the clear. By the way I liked your appearance on Jack Paar.”

  I had a quick lunch at the studio cafeteria. Their food was actually good. High School food wasn’t bad in Bellefontaine, but you could tell the day of the week by what was on the menu. Here there was real variety of tasty food. I mean you could have pizza, tacos, hot dogs, or barbeque sandwiches for lunch! What’s not to like?

  In Biology we had a project. Nina and I had to write down our parent’s eye colors and ours, and then we had to predict what color the eyes of our children would be. Brown was the prediction, but that wasn’t the issue. When we talked about what color our children’s eyes would be we both blushed and had trouble making eye contact. To say we were embarrassed would be putting it mildly.

  The rest of our time was strangely quiet. I suspect Nina was thinking about being married, having a home and raising children. Naturally I was thinking of making children. Anyway that assignment killed our conversation for the day.

  Back at the set the conversation was still about Paul Grant’s being murdered. The more news that was released the more it seemed he was a heavy duty dealer. From the reports he was dealing drugs before his TV career.

  The gang war theory gained momentum, when two members of the gang, that most likely killed him and his friends, were found shot to death. It looked like a war was underway.

  In the meantime I was able to do all of my exercises. My sword play was starting to get reflexive. I didn’t have to think about the moves, I just did them. Sammy who was teaching me told me that next week I would practice against him. I now had the strength to hold the sword, at least a good start, and I knew the moves. Now I had to learn when to make them.

  At the gym Mr. Palmer had me working out with the light bag. After that he showed me how to punch through on the heavy bag. He told me that it would still be several weeks before he would let me in the ring to spar.

  I checked back at the set when I was finished. It was a good thing that I had. They had some night scenes they wanted to do. They were simple, but needed me. We ended up finishing at ten o’clock. I stopped at the In-N-Out on the way home and called it a night.

  Thursday morning Dad called before I left for the studio. First of all Grand Mum was okay.

  As Mum put it, “Aunt Dell got her knickers in a twist.”

  Mum would be staying for a week to visit. It had been ten years since Mum had been back to England, I was glad she had this opportunity, and even happier that the Grand Mum that I really didn’t know was alright. I hoped to see her this summer.

  At the studio it was work, work, and more work. Funny when I started acting it was like a vacation from school. Now it was more like a job, a very good paying job, but still a job. The part that I really liked was working with the stunt men.

  They were willing to teach me all the cool things that they did. It was the best part of the day. Well I really enjoyed my time with Nina, but it was still school. Maybe we would have some real fun this Saturday.

  We did film a neat scene. Sir Nick had a run in with the Hole in the Wall gang. It was some gun fight. It was really interesting how they made it seem real. I had seen real people die from gunfire so I knew what it was like, which is nothing like the movies.

  Even the fist fight I had with two of the bandits was so much different than when I was jumped at the apartment. I wonder how many actors had never run into the real thing, so they thought this was real.

  For a change I went to Hollywood High right from my last set. I had been issued a card that would let me in the school and hopefully eat lunch there. I was looking for Nina. Talking to her outside of the classroom would be a start towards knowing her better.

  I didn’t find her but was hungry so I got in the serving line. Hot dogs were the meal of the day so I went with two of those. There was an empty table in the corner so I sat there. I had settled in when eight guys came up and told me that I was sitting at their regular table and to move on. With no desire to cause trouble I stood up to go.

  I hadn’t given it any thought when I left the lot. I was still dressed as an 1890 cowboy. In other words I looked like a hick. Two of the Neanderthals decided that my presence offended them so they told me to throw my lunch out and leave.

  Verbally insult me okay, getting between me and my lunch is different. I kept walking away from the table carrying my tray.

  One of the brutes gave me a shove and said, “Hey we were talking to you.”

  Thanks to my decent balance I didn’t fall over though I had to do a fancy hop skip and a jump. The guy that shoved me wasn’t so lucky. When I started moving away from him he was overbalanced. When I was a couple of feet away he had no further support and went crashing to the floor.

  There was quiet in the cafeteria. I figured I was dead.

  Instead the other thug said, “Did you see that Judo move?” to the others.

  “He could kill us!”

  Some things are so good you should never try to resist them. I turned around and solemnly said

  “I’m required by law to inform you that my hands are registered as deadly weapons. If you attack me I cannot be held responsible for any damage done to you.”

  I couldn’t believe it, they all backed down. Even the kid on the floor mumbled “Sorry.”

  I wrapped my hot dogs in a napkin and took them to the Biology Lab to eat. Wouldn’t you know it; there was Nina, with the remains of a hot dog in front of her. She told me that she did this every day so she would have more study time.

  We talked about school which made a very limited conversation as this was the only class I was taking and she was my only fellow student. In desperation to continue the talk I told her I was going to be buying a house somewhere in the area.

  She recommended that I look in Beverly Hills. Houses with a great view over LA were only around fifty thousand dollars. That would even include a pool. The best sites were over towards Bel Air.

  I begin to realize that maybe Nina and I came from really different backgrounds. Not that the houses didn’t sound nice, it was the price that I was choking on. This also set off an alarm, maybe I should find out more about this girl before I got in too deep.

  It was easy to direct the conversation to where she lived. She told me her Dads house, where she lived, was in Holmby Hills between Beverly Hills and Bel Air. She volunteered that her Mother lived on the coast near Nice, France. This was money, real money.

  “What does your father do?”

  She gave me a funny look and told me, “You work for him.”

  “I do,” I dumbly asked.

  “Dad is the CEO of Warner Brothers and a part owner of the studio.”

  “Oh,” was my brilliant rejoinder.

  “Well at least I know you haven’t been trying to suck up to the Bosses daughter.”

  “I haven’t been trying to suck up at all!”

  “Then why are you so nice?”

  “Uh, I try to treat everyone lik
e that.”

  “Then you are really different from most guys I know.”

  I was saved by Miss Powell coming into the room. For some reason Nina had a little smirk on her face for the rest of the class. I found it hard to make eye contact, I kept blushing.

  After class I booked out of there as quick as I could. I headed for the safety of the studio and the stunt area, at least there they were only trying to stab me, punch me out or push me off a roof.

  Before going to the stunt area I did check in on the set. It was quiet as the stage hands were doing some rearranging so I knew that I was free for the day. I did my sword exercises, and lifts.

  The stuntmen were working on a fire scene. One of them was wearing a fire retardant suit under his costume. His head was wrapped in the same fabric. They put some gunk on him and set it on fire. He ran across the corral in flames. Men with blankets were waiting to put him out. I asked about the fire suit he was wearing.

  All they knew it was treated with a lot of THPC whatever that was and it resisted burning. I was asked if I would like to try, but declined. This was way beyond my Boy Scout fire bug. Besides I had been in a fire not that long ago.

  After that bit of insanity I went over to the boxing gym. I was fitted for a mouth piece and a head protector. Then they taped my hands and fitted me with a pair of sixteen ounce gloves. They felt like pillows.

  I sparred with my Coach. I found out they weren’t pillows. He showed me how much I had to learn. He didn’t tell me, he showed me by pounding on me. I stayed with him but it was a rough session. Afterwards he told me that I had passed the real test. I could take a punch without wimping out.

  I told Coach Palmer about the event at Hollywood High in the cafeteria. He thought it was funny. I asked him if hands were even registered as deadly weapons. When he was done laughing he told me the only place he had ever heard of it being done was Guam.

  He had no idea why they did it. Since you got a certificate when you registered maybe it was a bragging rights thing. He suggested that I not have lunch there anymore. I told him that I had already reached that conclusion.