by Peter Corris
To my amazement, Louise had taken a packet of filter cigarettes from her purse and lit up. She blew a stream of smoke at me, not expertly, but the cigarette certainly wasn't her first. 'Well, that wasn't as bad as I expected,' she said. 'You'd better get cracking on rounding up Jimmy Dean and some of the veterans. You heard what the man said.'
'Not bad? Not bad? I don't what you'd call bad but I'd say it's as bad as it could possibly be. That guy works for Mickey Cohen and christ knows who else. He hasn't got an honest bone in his body.'
'All we need is some breathing space. Once we get everything on a rock solid footing we can re-finance. Pay these people back and get another loan.'
She didn't know what she was saying, of course. The whole point of mob finance is that you can never pay it back or the vigorish. You just get in deeper and deeper until they own you, body and soul. I didn't have the heart to tell Louise about it. I just gave her a tired, man-of-the-world kind of grin. 'You shouldn't smoke. It'll ruin your complexion.'
'I'll stop when we get through this.'
How many times have I heard that? Including from my own mouth. I left the office and watched the rear end of the Thunderbird as it disappeared down the track. No sign of the blonde. I understood now why Lou Kovacs had been so cooperative and Rocky and Tank so nervous. They knew we had mob money behind us and were naturally afraid of mob muscle. So was I.
I saddled up a horse and went for a ride. It was either that or open up a bottle. I'd seen enough of how the mob operated in Chicago in the 30s and all over the country after the war to know that Louise and I were in serious trouble. We weren't in trouble on the same scale as 'Bugsy' Siegel10 maybe, but even a small piece of that kind of grief is enough. My natural inclination was to grab Louise and whatever money was lying about, jump into the best car at our disposal and head for the border.
But I felt I was getting a bit old for midnight dashes and Mexico has never been lucky for me. Against my instincts, I tried to think things through a little. I didn't know who Johnny Stompanato was fronting for and that was important. If it was Mickey Cohen that wasn't so bad. Mickey was something of a clown who fancied himself as a standup comic. He was vicious all right, but fickle in his viciousness. If you could stay out of his hair long enough he'd forget you. But there were much heavier characters around and they were starting to move in on Hollywood.
As I rode I tried to work out what dirty schemes they might want to push using our school as a front. These were not comforting thoughts. The possibilities were endless — drugs, blackmail, vice. Taking a powder began to seem like the best option again, but perhaps not straightaway. I began to shape a plan. the first thing was to get Louise on side, then set about putting together some money…
The roar of the motorcycle engine spooked my horse and I had to struggle to keep from being thrown. I was on a quiet road, almost a country track, and there had been no motor traffic in twenty minutes. The bike roared past, swerving to avoid me and bucking when it hit rough patches. It skidded on a sandy stretch and the rider barely pulled out of it. My horse was rearing and snorting. I pulled its head around and galloped after the motorcycle, not expecting to catch up with it, just intending to let the horse run the tension and fright out. After a hundred yards or so the road bent sharply to the left and another skid mark showed that the hot-shot had barely kept his bike in control around that one. The dust he'd thrown up was still hanging in the air.
The horse was calmer now but I was interested to see what happened to the rider — whether he came off before he hit a tree — and I urged it on, following the still audible sound of the engine. The road dropped suddenly and the tracks showed that the bike must have come over the hump and sailed through the air for a good few yards before hitting ground again. Another frantic struggle to retain control, but no drop in speed. The tread straightened out at last and ran up the hill. To judge by the noise, the bike's powerful motor wouldn't be troubled. The horse still seemed eager so went up it at a good clip. I reined in at the top where the road flattened out and the first thing I saw was the big silver and black motor cycle lying on its side with the rear wheel still spinning.
The second thing was a dog, standing by the side of the road barking at a man in leather jacket and jeans who was trying to drag himself upright to stand on a leg that wouldn't support him. He collapsed into the dirt and started to laugh. I rode up and dismounted. It was James Dean. His jeans were torn and blood was running from a gash below the knee that was poking through the rent. His face and hands were scratched and bloody. He was a mess. He looked up at me and a hysterical note entered the cackling laugh.
'Goddamn dog,' he said. 'Almost killed m'self 'count of a goddamn dog.'
His voice was more than usually slurred because he was very, very drunk. I could smell the wine on his breath and the way his eyes were wandering around in his head, refusing to focus, was another familiar sign.
'You badly hurt?' I asked. 'Apart from the knee?'
'Don't think so.' He squinted, trying to get me to hold still. 'Don't I know you?'
'Dick Browning. You're lucky you're not dead the way you were riding.'
The police siren wailed briefly then shut down.
'Jesus,' Dean said. 'Bastards must've come up on another road. Thought I'd lost 'em back there.'
'You're out-running a speed cop?'
'Have to, man. On account of I am stoned like you wouldn't believe as well as drunk.' He dug into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a Bull Durham pouch and shoved it into my hand. 'Stick this away someplace and give me a cigarette.'
I was so surprised and, I suppose, impressed, by the way he was pulling himself together by an effort of will, that I did what he said. He was puffing furiously as the police black and white came fast from the other direction, stopping in a showy skid.
'Wise ass,' Dean said. He closed his eyes and all the colour went from his face. He pulled himself up into a sitting position and clicked his fingers at the dog. 'Here, boy. C'mon here. C'mon, you stupid fuckin' mongrel.'
Everything seemed to happen at once. First, the motor cycle engine died, then the cop was standing over Dean, casting nervous glances at the dog and not knowing what the hell to do about me and the horse. He was young, not much over twenty and Dean, looking through his long eyelashes with a chalk-white face covered in dust and blood, had his measure in a split second.
'I c… clocked you at seventy-five back there on the highway.'
'You sure it was me, officer?'
The cop licked his lips and glanced across at the bike, then back to his car where another older cop stood leaning on the open door. 'Sure I am. I saw the licence number on that there Harley, plain as day.'
'An' what would that be, that number?'
Dean gave me a look that was partly amusement, partly a plea to play along. He was a piece of work all right, and I had to admire his performance. Besides, I'm no cop lover myself. The dog chose that moment to get into the act by sidling close and licking some blood from Dean's outstretched hand.
I'd put the Bull Durham pouch in my pocket and I shoved my fist in after it and held it there. 'Could I say something, officer? This young man certainly wasn't speeding when he passed me a little way back. And I saw him swerve to avoid hitting the dog. That's why he came off.'
Dean nodded and took a long draw on his cigarette. He turned his head to politely blow the smoke away from the policeman. Then he gave that tired, how-could-you-do-anything-but-love-me smile that seemed to work with both women and men. Some men. The young cop wasn't immune. In a way, everyone in Hollywood is an actor and the cop could see the way the scene was playing. He hitched his gunbelt and cleared his throat.
'Well, I reckon you've learned your lesson. Not bad hurt, are you?'
Dean bravely shook his head. He was too good an actor to bite his lip as well.
'Keep the speed down.' The cop bent to pat the dog which snarled at him. He stepped back quickly and strode off towards his car.
&nbs
p; Dean watched him solemnly and didn't laugh until the black and white had backed up and gone the way it had come. I took the pouch out of my pocket and opened the drawstring. One sniff was enough. I tossed it to Dean who caught it deftly, unzipped a pocket in his jacket and tucked it away. He ground out his cigarette in the dirt and shot a worried look at his bike.
'Well, I almost made it. My place is just a long spit from here. But I certainly owe you one, Dick.'
'I reckon you do. And there's a way you can repay me.'
6
THE long spit turned out to be a quarter of a mile and we got there by changing our methods of transport. I helped Dean up onto the horse and I chugged along quietly on the scratched but otherwise undamaged motorcycle, keeping it in first gear and ignoring his jibes and catcalls. I hadn't ridden a motorbike in thirty years and had never been near one as powerful as this thing. It felt like being strapped to a doodle-bug,11 and the thought of getting it up to seventy-five miles an hour was terrifying. I concluded that Dean either wanted to die young or believed that he couldn't be killed at all. Insane, whichever way it was.
His house had about a half acre of garden around it or what could have been garden if anybody had spent any time in it. As it was, the space was rapidly turning back into grassy scrub which was probably how Dean liked it, being a farm boy from Marion, Indiana. I parked the motorbike alongside another of the same breed that seemed to be lacking certain parts and helped Dean down from the horse. He hobbled across to look at the bike, nodded, bummed another cigarette and semi-reluctantly invited me in for a drink. I thought he was already working on ways to escape his obligation to me. I tethered the horse where it could do some useful work in the garden and went up the rough wooden steps into the house.
It was a kind of hunting lodge arrangement — one big room with exposed timber beams and a pine plank floor. There was very little furniture — a few rough bookshelves, half-filled, a table and a couple of mis-matched chairs, a double bed, a few Indian rugs. Very masculine. The kitchen was at one end of the room and consisted of no more than a sink, a wood block bench and a refrigerator. The place was surprisingly neat and I concluded that Dean either wasn't the lazy slob he made himself out to be or that he had a cleaning woman. He opened the fridge and took out a quart jug of white wine.
'This do?' He was back with the slurred mumble, sounding drunk again.
'Sure. I'll fix it. Why don't you do something about those cuts and grazes? Could get infected.'
He nodded and pushed aside a curtain which shielded the bathroom. I heard water running and then a steady stream of curses as he worked on his injuries. The wine was rough but there was a set of very expensive glasses sitting on a shelf above the sink. I poured myself a glass which I drank straight off and then filled two glasses and took them to the table. Dean came out with his hair slicked back, his face still damp and a wet handtowel that he used to clean the wound on his leg and dab at the blood on his hands. He drank his wine straight down and I re-filled the glass. He'd torn his jeans still more to get at the cut and the denim flapped around his skinny shank. He looked more like a fucked-up rodeo rider than a movie star, but I guess that was what he was aiming at.
I took out my Chesterfields and offered him one but he shook his head. 'Got a carton of Luckies about here someplace.'
He hobbled over to the bookshelf and found the carton tucked between a couple of paperbacks. He took two packets, stuffed one in his shirt pocket and ripped the other open with his thumbnail. He had just too many gestures to be real and I expected him to find a wax match next and light it on the same nail. He didn't. He limped back to the table and accepted the flame of my Zippo. He drew the smoke in deeply and took a long pull on his glass. Then he took out another cigarette and rolled the last inch or so in his fingers until the tobacco fell out. He opened the pouch and stuffed the marijuana into the end of the cigarette which he laid by, ready for use. He was a high toxic little son of a bitch, no doubt about that.
'Contract with Warners is lousy,' he mumbled, apparently speaking to the table top. 'Nine pictures in six years. Fucking wienie factory. Lousy money and they got these clauses 'bout my behaviour — drinking, fast driving and such. Treatin' me like I was a kid.'
'Looks like I did you a bigger favour than I thought,' I said. 'A drunk driving charge plus possession of marijuana wouldn't go down too well with Jack L. and the boys.'12
'That's a fact.' He laughed. 'That sure is a fact. Well, all's well that ends well. Hey, that's three wells in the one sentence. How about that?'
'Maybe you should be a writer.'
'I couldn't be any worse than some of the writers they got around here. Lousy directors, too.'
I'd never met a successful actor who didn't think he could write better than the writers, direct better than the directors and produce better than the producers. Plus fuck better than any of them. I drank my wine, smoked my cigarette and didn't say anything. We sat in silence for a while. Dean seemed to be mulling something over. He was muttering to himself, smoking jerkily and drinking fast. I began to wonder if he'd taken a knock on the head his behaviour was so peculiar. Eventually, he looked up and grinned. 'Sure fooled that cop, didn't we, Dick? I was trying to remember where I met you and I finally got it — at that dude ranch where you bawled me out for riding my cycle near your horses.'
He pronounced it 'sickle' the way every kid did after a song about a crazy biker made the hit-parades.13 I can't remember what Brando said in The Wild One, probably because he mumbled even worse than James Dean did. This was the first time I witnessed a peculiarity of Dean's — when he was trying to remember something or work out what to say, he muttered to himself as if clearing his head of mental debris and rehearsing. It was very disconcerting until you got used to it. He seemed pleased to have placed me and to reward himself he lit up the marijuana cigarette, took a deep drag and offered it to me. I refused.
'I've got enough vices I can't afford without taking on any more. How come you're riding around high as a kite at this time of day? Shouldn't you be out signing autographs or making a bubble gum commercial or something?'
He let go one of those hissing, cackling laughs ending in a coughing fit. He'd smoked the marijuana by now and was working on the tobacco part of the cigarette, taking deep drags and pulling the smoke right down. As soon as he recovered from the paroxysm he took in more smoke as if he couldn't wait to finish the cigarette and light up another. His fingers were deeply nicotine-stained and his lungs must've been about the same shade as Louis Armstrong. I'm a smoker myself, but I fiddle with them a lot and usually don't smoke them down more than half way. Dean seemed intent on keeping the American Tobacco Company's share price sky high.
'You're a funny guy,' he said when he had some breath to spare for talking. 'You know what a fucked-up business movie acting is, right?'
I nodded. 'It can be. Depends on how you handle it. Bob Hope's done all right.'
'Bob Hope! Guy never acted once in his life. I'm talking about art, man. I'm talking about the craft of acting. I'm talking history — Shakespeare, and the Greeks and the fuckin' Romans.'
We were back to the Greeks and Romans again. Everything seems to go back to them somehow. I let Dean rant and rave and smoke and drink while I looked around his glorified cabin. Usually you an tell a lot about a man by the way he chooses to live and the possessions he has. Not so with Jimmy Dean — he might genuinely be interested in the plays of someone called Bertold Brecht and enjoying sharpening a bowie knife on a whetstone, or it might all be a pretence. I never found out for sure and I doubt if anyone did. The thing was, he never quite went too far — didn't roll his own cigarettes, not with tobacco anyway, and didn't spit on the floor. He dabbed at his cuts with the cloth and blew a cloud of smoke so thick it almost made me cough.
'So, how can I help you, Dick? Admitting my debt to you and all as I do.'
Hollywood operates on a series of networks. No one could possibly know everything that's going on, so what people
do is tap in to a couple of the networks that most concern them and hope they won't miss out on anything important. To agents like Lou Kovacs and guys like Rocky Graziano, where the mob was putting its money and who the enforcers were was vitally important to decisions they had to make. To someone like Dean, it was more important to know who was screwing who and who was hot and who was not. It was unlikely that he'd ever heard of Johnny Stompanato. I told him that I'd consider it a favour if he showed some interest in our establishment and dropped a positive remark or two about it in the right places. He was only too happy to agree and seemed relieved that I hadn't asked for something tougher.
'Matter of fact,' he said. 'I really could do with some riding lessons and all that, considering the next piece of shit they're going to have me working on.'
'What's that?'
'Ever hear of a book called Giant?'
'The best seller? Sure. My wife read it. Said it was great. I haven't read it myself.'
'Don't bother. It's a pile of crap, but it's going to be bigger than Gone with the Wind blah, blah, blah. Guess who's in it, along with yours truly James Byron Dean?'
I tried to remember what Louise had told me about the story as she was reading it. Something to do with a cattle baron and his wife. 'How about Henry Fonda and Bette Davis?'
He shrieked with laughter and stamped his feet on the floor until his sore leg made him stop. Tears ran down his cheeks, whether from amusement or because his leg hurt or because he was drunk I couldn't tell.
'No, sir. They're actors! What we're getting is stars, don't worry about acting. We're getting Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor.'
