CHAPTER 16
Al Fessler flapped through the pages of the Friday Herald-Examiner, looking for mention of Billy Lockett. Earlier in the day he had gone through the Times and clipped out a two-paragraph story about the funeral tomorrow. Also Greg Neely’s column in the entertainment section, which included a nice plug for the memorial concert in September. Neely hinted at the participation of several top-name rock groups without actually naming any. Conn Driscoll had done a good job there. Fessler wondered what the payoff to Neely had been.
In the Herald he found the same story on the funeral with only minor changes in the wording. It was probably a handout written by Driscoll. There was no word here of the concert, but Billy’s name was prominently mentioned in an editorial on the need for safety regulations for skydiving. Anything that kept the name before the public was good.
Tucked away with the art and theater news was a small item announcing that author Dean Hardeman was in Los Angeles. Fessler was disappointed to see that Hardeman’s purpose in the city was reported only as “doing research for a new book.” That wouldn’t sell any concert tickets. Of course, it was too soon for them to have printed last night’s interview with Vernon Karp. That would probably be in Sunday’s paper.
Al took up the long-bladed scissors from the end table and carefully cut out the Herald’s version of the funeral article. He did not bother with the paragraph about Dean Hardeman since there was no mention of Billy or the concert.
Over all, Fessler decided, he had no complaints with the job Conn Driscoll was doing. He distrusted PR men on principle and especially a gypsy like Driscoll who took only short-term assignments then vanished from the scene for weeks at a time. No sense of responsibility. Still, he did good work. But then he should, considering the prices he charged.
Al did wish Driscoll would touch base with him before pulling some of his surprises. Like bringing Rick Girodian to Waldo’s last night, for instance. He hadn’t even seen Rick since shortly after the breakup with Billy, and it would have been uncomfortable as hell facing him again with Hardeman there. It was too bad that he had to dump Rick when he did, but Billy was the hot property, and a man had to go with the action.
He put down the newspaper and looked over at Madeline. She sat across the room from Al reading a magazine, looking cool and beautiful as always. When he came home last night Al had wanted very much to make love to her, but he found the door to her bedroom tightly closed. Although they had no formal set of rules, Al understood that when his wife was available for sex she would leave her door slightly ajar. The door had stayed closed since last Sunday night.
“There’s a nice story about the funeral here in the Herald,” he said.
Madeline glanced up from her magazine, marking with a finger the place she was reading. “Oh?” The tone of her voice clearly said she could not care less.
“Conn Driscoll was going out to the cemetery today,” Al persisted. “Make sure everything’s set up for tomorrow.”
“Good for him.”
“I’m not boring you, am I?”
“No, Al, you’re not boring me.”
“Would it be so hard for you to show a little interest in what I’m talking about?”
“It’s hard for me to be enthusiastic about a funeral.”
“I’m not crazy about them myself, but this is business. Besides, I’m a pallbearer. You are going with me tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“Certainly I’m going with you, Al. I’m your wife.”
Well for Christ sake, he wanted to say, why don’t you act like a wife at night then? He wanted to say, Jesus, Mad, I love you so much, I need you so much — can’t you give just a little? But he did not say any of these things.
The doorbell chimed.
“I’ll get it,” Madeline said. She rose gracefully from the chair and glided out of the room. Cool, slim, blond, and always just beyond his reach.
Maybe, Al thought, when this Billy business is over, things will get better.
The front door opened, and the sound of a man’s voice speaking to Madeline snapped Al out of his reverie. The low-pitched, emotionless tone sent a chill between his shoulder blades.
Madeline came back into the living room, followed by the visitor. Carl Vico was about Al’s height, but half-again as broad through the shoulders and chest, tapering to a narrow waist. He wore a lightweight gray suit and a dark tie. His eyes were unreadable behind fleshy lids.
“Hello, Al,” said Vico. There was no warmth in the greeting.
Fessler got up from the chair, feeling awkward and stiff. “Hello, Carl.”
Madeline stood between her husband and Carl Vico, looking uncertainly from one to the other. “If you will excuse me, I have some things to attend to.”
Al knew that Madeline had nothing to attend to, but she was sharp enough to see that Carl Vico’s business with him was private.
“How you been, Al?” Vico said when the two men were alone.
“Not too bad, considering.”
“We heard you had a little bad luck. My friends and me.”
“Bad luck?”
“That kid singer who killed himself jumping out of an airplane — that was your boy, wasn’t it?”
“Uh, Billy Lockett, yes.”
“He’s the one, isn’t he, that you wanted to buy up his record contract?”
Fessler nodded.
“And that’s what you needed the loan for, am I right?”
An invisible hand closed around Fessler’s throat, making his voice come out high and weak. “Yes, but you don’t have to worry about the money.”
“Worry? Al, me and my friends never worry about money. We always get paid. We’re just a little curious is all, about how you’re going to make records with a dead singer.”
“Listen, there won’t be any problem,” Al said, talking fast. “I’ve got plans that are going to make the money back easy.”
“Such as?” Vico’s eyes were dark and dull as slate behind their hoods of flesh.
“First I’ve got a big memorial concert coming up in September at the Forum.” Al leaned down to pick up his clippings from the day’s newspapers. He was surprised by the unsteadiness of his hands. “There’s a story about it in the Times.”
“Never mind the story in the Times,” Vico said. “All that matters is that you’re sure this concert thing will pay the bills.”
“It will pay the bills,” Al assured him. “Definitely.”
“That’s fine. My friends will be very happy to hear that.”
Al relaxed a little.
“Exactly when in September are you putting on this concert thing?”
“It’s scheduled for September 4. That’s the Saturday before Labor Day. It’s a really good date, just before the kids go back to school.”
“Fine, fine. Then there should be no sweat for you to pay back the loan by September 15. In full.”
“Well, now, I-I don’t know about that,” Al said. “That gives me less than two weeks. There’s an awful lot of paper work to do after the receipts are in. I’m not sure I’ll be able to lay my hands on the cash.”
“You’ll find a way, Al,” Vico said quietly.
“If you could make it the first of October, just to give me a little breathing room.”
“Al, you know my friends never extend the due date on a loan. We can’t do business that way.”
Al swallowed to clear his throat. “I’ll get the money to you by September 15.
“Sure you will,” Vico said. “I never doubted it for a minute. He walked back toward the front door with Fessler close behind him. With his hand on the knob, Vico turned and nodded toward the rear of the house where Madeline had gone.
“Your wife?” he said.
Fessler nodded silently.
“Pretty lady.” The words were spoken in the same flat voice, but to Fessler they seemed charged with menace.
“Yes,” he said, “she is.” He stood in the doorway and watched Carl Vico get into his car and
drive away.
He closed the door carefully and wiped his hands down the sides of his pants. Madeline came back into the living room and sat down to resume reading her magazine. If she had heard any of the conversation between himself and Carl Vico, she gave no sign and showed no curiosity. He wished she would show a little curiosity. Something.
Al crossed to the sliding glass doors and gazed out at the swimming pool without seeing it. There was no mistaking the threat in Carl Vico’s quiet words. It was simply unthinkable that he not be ready with the money to pay off Vico’s “friends.” It had all looked so simple when he had a live Billy Lockett as security. Now somehow Al had to make a dead man pay his way out.
The problem had weighed heavily on Al’s mind all week, and he had come up with an idea that might turn everything around. He was not yet ready to confide in anyone … not until he was sure. Much would depend on an appointment he had scheduled this afternoon with Babe Feldman at an old rehearsal hall on Santa Monica Boulevard. If the booking agent had turned up what Al was looking for, he would rest a lot easier. Not only would the concert then be an assured smash, the concert would be only a beginning.
He walked back into the room and spoke to Madeline. “I’ve got to go downtown for a while.”
“Will you be home for dinner?”
“I think so. If not, I’ll call and let you know.”
Al waited a moment for his wife to ask where he was going. He did not want to tell her; he was not ready. Still, it would have been nice if she had asked.
But Madeline said nothing. She gave him a cool smile and returned to her magazine. Al walked over to her chair for a goodbye kiss. She offered her cheek.
He left the house feeling restless and unfulfilled. He concentrated on the business he had this afternoon with Babe Feldman. Not even Conn Driscoll knew about it. It was too personal at the moment to share with anyone. When the time came he would surprise everyone. To put it mildly. Al backed the Cadillac out of the driveway and headed for Hollywood.
CHAPTER 17
By the time Conn Driscoll had driven back into Hollywood from Greenacre Memorial Park the skies were blue and bright with the white, puffy clouds of travel posters. However, the depression brought on by the visit to the cemetery stayed with him.
Feeling depressed was not Driscoll’s style, and he did not know how to handle it. In his profession he had to be perpetually tough and optimistic. The attitude carried over into his private life. Good old Laugh-a-Minute Driscoll. On an impulse he turned down Wilshire Boulevard and headed for Westwood.
He found the street where Joyce Hardeman lived and parked the Firebird a block from her apartment, still not quite sure what he was doing there. He walked briskly back up the street, not giving himself time to think about it.
Joyce Hardeman sounded surprised to hear his voice over the house phone, but she told him to come on up.
“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” she said when she opened the door.
“I would have called first, but I don’t have your phone number.”
“That’s all right. Come in.”
Driscoll entered the neat, comfortable apartment and dropped into a chair of white simulated leather. “I talked to Dean last night. Told him you were undecided about seeing him. He was disappointed.”
“Life is full of disappointments.”
“Aren’t you being a little hard on him?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about Dean and me, Conn.”
“Maybe. I told him I’d ask, that’s all.”
Joyce let a moment go by before she answered. “I suppose I am being a little childish,” she said. “I’ll talk to Dean if he still wants me to, but I don’t want him to think I’m ready for a reconciliation.”
“He’s still in love with you,” Driscoll said.
“I know. It’s too bad, because it keeps us from ever being friends.”
Driscoll made a vague motion with his hand. “I’ll tell him you’re willing to talk.”
Joyce looked closely into Driscoll’s face. “Do you want a drink?”
“No, thanks, I don’t think so.”
“Is anything wrong?”
“Why?”
“You look sort of … down.”
“It’s the effect of the cemetery, I guess. Intimations of mortality.”
“Do you hang around cemeteries a lot?”
“I had to go out to Greenacre to arrange the details for Billy Lockett’s funeral tomorrow. Set up those warm and human touches like television cameras and a rock band.”
“My, aren’t we cynical.”
“Just tired, Joyce. Lack of sleep, maybe.”
“Lack of something.”
“I think I will have that drink.”
Joyce Hardeman went to the bar and poured a generous jigger of Scotch into a low glass. She added ice cubes and a splash of water and brought it out to him.
Driscoll tasted the drink and said in a dramatically husky voice, “You remembered.”
“We don’t have to play games, do we, Conn?” she said.
“Maybe you don’t. Game-playing is my life.”
“Do you get like this often?”
“Hardly ever. Usually I’m as full of fun as the Mouseketeers. For some reason I feel plain shabby today. And for some reason I picked on you to talk to. Why do you suppose I did that? I barely know you.”
“Maybe that’s the reason.”
“Maybe. Listen, am I keeping you from anything?”
“I’ll let you know when you are.”
Driscoll took a long, slow swallow of the drink and settled lower into the chair. He felt warm and safe and isolated from the worries of the world. There was no logical reason for him to feel that way, but he would not let his mind question it.
After a short, easy silence, Joyce spoke. “Don’t you like your job, Conn?”
He looked at her strangely. “That’s the second time in two days somebody has asked me that.”
“No kidding. What did you say the first time?”
“I said I loved my job, and I went into an eloquent defense of the publicity game.”
“You’re sticking to that answer?”
“Until I think of a better one.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t always want to be a publicity man. What was your ambition when you were a boy?” She frowned at his change of expression. “Don’t tell me somebody else just asked you that, too?”
“No, it was the other way around. When I was a boy it was my ambition to be a football hero.”
“To get along with the beautiful girls?”
“Exactly. I might have made it too, had it not been for a skateboard.”
Joyce sat on the sofa and tucked her long legs up under her. “It sounds like a fascinating story. Tell me about it.”
“I was a freshman in high school, and I had already made the team. Fast and shifty — a natural halfback, the coach called me. Then, a couple of days before our first game, I was walking along the sidewalk in front of my own house and I stepped on a skateboard some rotten kid had left out there. I took a really spectacular fall. It tore up my knee and left me in a cast for eight weeks. Goodbye football team.
“I tried it again the next fall, but I wasn’t fast any more and I wasn’t shifty. Goodbye gridiron hero. Goodbye beautiful girls.”
“A promising athletic career in ruins,” Joyce observed.
“An entire life deflected by a loose skateboard.”
“Imagine where you might be today.”
“Married to a pompom girl, holding down a nice job in a respected industry, paying off a mortgage in Encino, growing a paunch, and fathering kids.”
“But instead?”
“But instead, here I am living in the entertainment capital of the world, working in the super-glamorous field of public relations.”
“All because of some rotten kid’s skateboard.”
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways.”
Joyce studied him
for a little while before she spoke again. “Aren’t you indulging in a little self-pity, Conn?”
“What if I am? Oscar Levant once said self-pity is the only kind worth having.”
“Do you want me to freshen your drink?”
“No, I’d probably get maudlin and cry all over your white leather chair.”
She cocked her head to one side and looked at him. “Do you know who you remind me of right now?”
“Who?”
“Dean. Sometimes he used to carry on like that. Make bitter jokes about how the Fates were playing games with him.”
“There’s a big difference,” Driscoll said. “Dean Hardeman at least had something behind him. Three best-selling novels. What do I have? A swinging funeral for a dead rock singer.”
“Dean used to talk that way sometimes about his books. He had a secret inner fear that they weren’t really any good — that he had somehow fooled people into thinking they were worthwhile. The more he thought that way, the harder it was for him to write again. He went downhill fast. I wouldn’t like to see that happen to you, Conn.”
“Why not?”
“Because I like you.”
Driscoll set down the glass and looked into the woman’s clear hazel eyes. “I like you too, Joyce. A lot.”
A moment’s pause, then Joyce said, “Do you want to go to bed with me?”
“Very much.”
“Well, what’s stopping you?”
Driscoll stood up. Joyce came forward and took his hand. Together they walked into the bedroom.
Joyce undressed with a total lock of embarrassment, hanging her clothes neatly in the closet. Driscoll took off his own clothes and slid into bed with her. She turned down the spread and the blanket so that their bodies were covered only by the sheet.
Driscoll rolled onto his side, facing her. He put out a hand and moved it along the cool, firm flesh of her hip.
“Conn, relax,” she said.
“What?”
“Relax. Lie next to me. You’re tense.”
His male vanity stung, Driscoll pulled his hand back. “What are you going to do, direct the performance?”
Billy Lives Page 13
