by Peter Corris
After a decent interval, I unshipped the .38 and slipped out onto the porch, feeling fairly safe. A few cars had driven by and no shooter in his right mind would stick around that long. Anyway, who'd want to shoot the bodyguard? As I've indicated, my military experience has been much more extensive than I've ever welcomed. I was an infantryman and sniper in France in 1918, a platoon leader in a Mexican mercenary army after that and in the Canadian army tank corps. I also survived some pretty dangerous semi-military exercises in the Queensland jungle in 1944.39 The upshot of all this is that something about those shots rang bells with me. They were fired with a military precision.
No one took a pot shot at me on the porch, so I holstered the .38 and took a look at the upright where the bullets had struck. It was a solid piece of timber about eight inches square and the marksman had achieved a good, tight pattern — three shots, all lodged within an inch or two of each other, spreading over no more than twenty-five square inches. I went down the steps and retraced the walk Dean and I had made. At the time when the shots were fired, I would have had my foot on the first of three steps that led to the porch. That meant the bullets missed my head by about ten inches. Since James Dean was a good six inches shorter than yours truly and a few feet behind me at that moment, he had as much chance of being struck by those bullets as Paul Robeson had of hitting a high C.
Dean came out onto the porch with a lit reefer in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. I called him down to where I was and explained things to him slowly and clearly. It was obvious that his intention was to blot himself out for a time, but at that moment he could comprende pretty well.
'Some kinda stunt?' he said.
'What it looks like.'
'Why the fuck?'
'I'm not a detective, just a bodyguard.'
He took a suck on the bottle and offered me the cigarette. I refused. 'You did pretty good, Dick. You moved fast. You know, I've heard about things like this — actors setting up death threats. Maybe this was all a studio stunt, what d'you think?'
'I don't know. I saw the letters, but I guess anyone could have written them. You, even.'
He giggled. 'Yes, sir, I reckon I could have. But I didn't. I hate all that crap. You saw what I can do out at the oil rig today. I don't need stunts and stuff like that. I'm the best goddamn actor who ever…' He stopped and looked again at the bullet marks. 'You figure someone in the studio could do this — for the publicity?'
I shrugged. 'It's possible.'
'By Christ, if I could find out who it was I'd have them by the nuts. I could threaten to expose them unless they re-wrote my contract.'
I was thinking fast. I had my suspicions about who the marksman could be and, if I was right, I could see my bodyguarding job evaporating. But Dean was holding out the prospect of an extension.
'I could look into it,' I said. 'I used to hold a PI licence. It's a while back but I guess I still remember the moves.'
Dean reached up and thumped me on the shoulder. 'Why don't you do that, Dick? I'd sure be grateful. Meantime, we'd better keep this our secret, huh? Tell you what though, I'm going to get me some pictures of these fucking bullet holes.'
He put the beer down on the porch rail and rushed inside and returned with one of his cameras. He fiddled with lenses and a light meter and took a series of photographs of the porch post. It sounds ridiculous and it was, but he was very earnest about it and I guess he got some great shots. He was as happy as a kid as he went back inside, trailing marijuana smoke and humming to himself.
I drank the beer and waited until he was gone before taking out a clasp knife and digging into the wood for the bullets. They were flattened and bent out of shape by the impact although they hadn't penetrated very far. I don't know a lot about ammunition, but I could tell that it was cheap, low calibre stuff, suitable for jack rabbits, not the sort of thing you'd use for a serious assassination.
Dean settled down with his pot, beer and his journal, no doubt writing an account of how brilliant he'd been on the set that day. I said I'd be back with hamburgers and fries at six o'clock and he gave me a happy, half-stoned wave. I crossed the road and went down the driveway to the back of the house Elizabeth Taylor was occupying. It was locked up tight but your average suburban house is no fortress to a man with a good clasp knife. I slipped the catch on the back door and was inside within seconds. A quick scout around revealed that three people were in residence, Liz, her maid and her bodyguard.
Pedro's room was at the back, close to the kitchen and the garage. The door was locked but the key was on the lintel — too easy. It took me about three minutes to find a battered hockshop portable Remington typewriter with a faded ribbon and a box of Lone Star .22 long rifle ammunition with five rounds missing. I kept an ear cocked for sounds outside and did a thorough search of Pedro's possessions. He had a presentable suitcase and some good clothes and shoes that showed signs of careful maintenance but a lot of wear and cleaning. A collection of business cards in various names, two driver's licences with chequebooks to match and a batch of faded newspaper clippings showed pretty clearly what Pedro's life had been since we'd parted up on the Canadian border all those years ago — in the words of the song, he'd grifted from Maine to Albuquerque.40
It made me sad to look at it and partly the pity was for myself. My own life hadn't been so very different until recently. I was filled with a fierce desire to get out of Texas, to return to Louise and our thriving business in Hollywood, to put down solid roots while there was still time. I heard a car door slam and hurried through the house to look out a front window. The Plymouth had pulled up and Elizabeth Taylor was approaching the house along with her maid and a couple of people I vaguely recognised — a continuity girl and a props man. Pedro eased the car up towards the garage. I scooted back to his room, replaced the key and closed the door behind me.
I was sitting on his bed with the .38 in my hand when he entered the room carrying a rifle in one hand and a bottle in the other.
'Put the rifle on the floor, amigo,' I said. 'What's in the bottle?'
He propped the rifle against the wall, moving very slowly, keeping his hands in plain view. As he'd said, Pedro knew how nervous I get around firearms.
'It's brandy, Dick.'
I reached out and took the bottle. 'Good idea. Why don't you go into the kitchen and get some mixers? Then we can have a little quiet conversacion.'
Pedro told me all about his life in America. He'd got citizenship by marrying a woman fifteen years older than himself and then got the surprise of his life when she ran off with a younger man. He could still laugh about it. After that it had been mainly card-playing and scams and cons and stings of one kind or another until he enlisted in the marines. He served in the Pacific with some distinction but then found peacetime life hard to adjust to. He'd done some time inside for fraud and false pretences, running an illegal gaming house and living on immoral earnings.
'If I was becoming a pimp I figured I might as well go back to Hollywood,' he said. 'If I'd known you were around and in such a good way of business I'd have looked you up, Dick. Asked you for a job maybe.'
'Doing what? We only teach honest things —like tennis and golf and riding…'
Our eyes drifted to the rifle leaning against the wall.
'And shooting. I was always a great shot, Dick. Better than you and you weren't bad.'
'I remember. That's one of the reasons I came over here. You got a nice tight pattern. Which brings us to the here and now.'
Pedro told me that he'd tried to get acting work with no luck. He landed a job as a security man with Warners and had wangled a place on the location crew.
'At a lousy thirty-five bucks a week plus allowances,' he said. 'I sized up the situation and figured out a way to get a little more.'
'You sure did. What were you going to do next? Put a tarantula in Liz's bed?'
He laughed. 'Who knows? This could be a sweet deal for us, Dick?'
But I already had my own swe
et deal worked out, sweet enough anyway. 'Definitely not, Pedro and you're going to stop as of now or I blow the whistle on you. Don't be greedy. Be like me. We can both play bodyguard until this thing is over.'
He took a big swig of brandy. His eyes glittered. He was well on the way to being drunk and I could see wheels turning in his brain. I've seen the type often — they become addicted to scheming, manoeuvring the suckers.
'Sure,' he said. 'I'll get some more ice.'
While he was gone I fed a sheet of paper into the typewriter and tapped out the alphabet and the quick brown fox with two fingers. I took the sheet and put it on the bed beside me. Then I put the rifle on top of it and lit a cigarette. When Pedro got back with a bowl of ice I was tossing the flattened slugs in my hand. He stared. 'What the hell are you doing?'
'Insurance,' I said. 'Just in case you think it might be a good idea to put me in to the Feds. Lotta evidence here, and Jimmy Dean's got a peachy set of photos of the porch post. Threatening letters, shooting with intent, serious charges. D'we understand each other?'
He sat down and built two more big drinks. Like me, Pedro was one of those men who didn't look his age, but every now and then that mask of youthfulness can slip. His slipped now.
I raised my drink. 'Cheer up,' I said. 'Maybe I can find you a job at Sherman House. We're thinking of teaching card tricks.'
19
THINGS became rather quiet around Marfa after that, at least as far as I was concerned. The filming seemed to be going well, despite lots of confrontations between James Dean and George Stevens and the development of a very healthy mutual dislike between Dean and Hudson. With my help, Jimmy managed a few startling practical jokes, like the time we parked the red convertible in the middle of a herd of cows not long before the cameras were due to roll. Irritating but harmless stuff that Dean had no trouble getting away with. The oil rig scene had convinced everybody that he was the goods and, although that may have been a trifle uncomfortable for Hudson and Taylor, it was reassuring to Stevens and others who'd sunk their money in the picture. The atmosphere on the set became more relaxed and evening and weekend parties became common.
Of course Pedro and I didn't let on about the evaporation of the death threats. We kept right on bodyguarding but I was certainly putting less and less time and attention into it although I tried to make it look good. I even reported on my activities to Sheriff Clayhorn once in a while just to show I was keeping the faith. Pedro was keen to stage another stunt to keep the ball rolling but I vetoed that. Dean was getting more and more into his character, wandering around in his dirty clothes, playing with a lariat and mumbling to himself. He seemed to have forgotten his plan of getting the moral drop on the studio, but just as if the plan was still active, he only had to be asked two or three times before he'd quite cheerfully write out my pay cheque.
Eventually I got through to Louise who told me she'd gone to San Francisco to hire a lawyer.
'Why go to 'Frisco?' I complained. 'LA's crawling with lawyers.'
'That's the trouble. Bobby says they can't be trusted and that it's better for a lawyer from the state capital to deal with the FBI.'
Bobby Silk was always full of shit — he was so devious he looked clever much of the time but I'd known him to be just plain dumb. The capital of California is Sacramento, not San Francisco. Louise couldn't be expected to know that but Bobby could, or could he? At once I suspected that Bobby had set Louise up with a lawyer he could handle and for his own reasons.
'So who did you get and what does he charge?'
'His name's Frank Brennan and I don't know what he charges. He hasn't billed me yet, but he seems to know a lot about the government and all that.'
Brennan? It didn't ring a bell. Bobby Silk was one of the most anti-semitic people I'd ever met and it would be just like him to hire an Irish lawyer… I realised that was crazy thinking and I was full of frustration at being unable to do anything from where I was.
'Give me his number, Louise. I'll call him.'
'Is that safe? I mean, you're still a fugitive. I wish I knew where you were Dick.'
Right then, I was sitting in a comfortable suburban living room with a bottle of Coors beer in my hand, ready to watch the television news. I felt as safe as Ike in the White House. Louise gave me the number and I wrote it down, planning to put this Brennan through the ringer a little, see if he knew the FBI from the DMV.41 I told Louise that I was fine and that it would all be sorted out soon. She said she missed me and I said the same. We both meant it. I had a vision of her strong, athletic legs stepping out of her stockings and of the way she moved towards me, unfastening her bra and teasing her nipples… If I watched the news I don't remember what it was about — probably the same old stuff about victory being just around the corner in Korea and what devils those Soviets were.
I phoned Brennan two days later when the visions started to become more frequent and to get too much for me. I was a little drunk at the time of the call. I suppose I expected a brogue and blarney but he spoke in a clipped, educated Eastern accent.
'Mr Browning? I'm very glad to hear from you. It helps to make personal contact. I expect you'd like a report on how your case is progressing?'
'Not really,' I said, 'I'd just like to know how things stand now. What've the Feds got on me? How serious are they? And how do I get out of it?'
'You're very direct but I can see your point. As of now, there are no formal charges against you, but I've been given to understand that the offences you could face are serious.'
'Like?'
'Harbouring a fugitive, obstructing officers in the execution of their duties, assisting a fugitive to escape lawful custody …'
'They all sound a bit Mickey Mouse to me.'
'And various offences under the Immigration Act.'
Those'd be the ones with the teeth — they could do almost anything to you under the Immigration Act, including lock you up or deport you. Especially someone like me who'd had a dubious immigration status for years before acquiring citizenship. Brennan could tell he had my attention.
'They want to deal, Mr Browning.'
'About what?'
'I don't know, but my impression is that if they can get certain assurances from you, your position will be more favourable.'
Lawyer talk. What the hell did it mean? I tried to think my way through it but I was in a nasty spot. If I told Brennan about the mob money behind Sherman House and how it had given them the leverage to put the screws on me, where would that leave me and Louise with the hoods, even if we could square things with the FBI? On the other hand, the Feds were the present and immediate problem. The trick would be to play one threat off against the other and squeak out somehow in one piece. I wasn't sure that I was up to it. It was a lawyerly kind of job, but could I trust Brennan? Who could I find to check on him? Could I trust anyone to run the check? I was getting confused. Brennan's voice was calm and re-assuring.
'It's a complicated matter and a challenging one for me. I understand that you're a valued client of Mr Silkstein and I assure you I'm doing all I can to achieve a satisfactory outcome. It would be helpful if we could meet, Mr Browning.'
That remark about Bobby should have alerted me, but I was on my own in Texas, randy and missing my wife and seduced by that firm, professional Morocco-bound voice.
'I'm in Texas,' I said.
'A big state. The biggest, I fancy. Where in Texas, exactly?'
As I say, I was drunk and lonely when I started the conversation and a little more drunk by this point. 'Town called Marfa. Don't ask what it's near, 'cos it ain't near nothin', as they'd probably say down here.'
'I'm sure I can find it on the map. I'll be down there as soon as I can manage. Three days at the most. Your wife is very concerned, are you all right for funds?'
Another warning I didn't heed. A lawyer offering money is like a politician offering truth. I was in a mood to be comforted and didn't read the signs. 'I'm OK. You really think this thing can be fixed
up?'
'I'm sure of it. Stay put, Mr Browning. I'll see you soon.'
The phone went dead and before I could ponder on what had transpired, Jimmy Dean came bounding into the room. 'Hey, Dick, we're going downtown for ribs — Dennis and me and some of the boys. Come along.'
'You kids don't want an old feller like me.'
'The hell we don't. The chicks in this town are starting to drive us nuts. We need some mature protection. C'mon, Dick. You're too tanked to drive, I can see that. But you're on duty.'
James Dean, you have to remember was only twenty-five and Dennis Hopper was even younger. Neither had done military service or had the sorts of experience that bring maturity — in many ways they acted younger than their years. So it wasn't unusual for them to spend a night in the town, eating hamburgers or spare ribs, drinking spiked coca-cola, and flirting with the female Marfans like a couple of teenagers. I found it all very boring, especially when they played jungle music on the jukebox at top volume. My job was to keep some of the young men of the town, who got jealous at the attention their girlfriends paid the movie stars, from becoming violent. It wasn't too hard. I look a lot more fierce than I am and a few casual displays of the .38 helped.
I sobered up as the young people got drunk and I managed to whittle the party down to three girls in the end. Hopper took two of them back to his hotel, which left me, Jimmy and a junior college sophomore home on her vacation. Her name was Sara-May Tardbetter and she was staying at her aunt's farmhouse a few miles out of town. Nothing would do but Jimmy would escort her home, but Jimmy was too drunk to drive. I steered the convertible along a series of dusty back roads until we finally reached a pocket handkerchief farm in the middle of nowhere.
'Reminds me of home,' Jimmy said. 'How about we set on the porch a spell?'
They sat on the porch and I sat in the car, smoking and wondering when I'd next hear from lawyer Brennan. They sat a long time and Jimmy was almost sober himself by the time he climbed into the passenger's seat.
