The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  They had never been to bed together alone, and only once more as a threesome with Elektra. Rick was surprised—hell, astonished—to find himself thinking of Alexander Hellstrom’s face when he broke in on them back in Hollywood. It was the face of a child who has learned suddenly and too early in his life that there is no Santa Claus. Of course Hellstrom had no right to the expression, he was fifty-odd years old and the head of a major studio. Where did he get off?

  They were happier as business partners, anyway, and with a certain amount of “financial interbreeding” between Rick’s company and the new company formed by Teresa and Marrow and an Italian syndicate under Teresa’s control, Rick had about as tight a grip on the destiny of his picture as he could possibly hope for.

  Even so, he knew he could be wiped out overnight, by any of a series of combinations of individuals, and it almost made him humble.

  Maybe it was Teresa who brought Marrow west, and then maybe it was Marrow who brought Teresa. She was obviously crazy about him, and not afraid to walk right up to Boss Hellstrom and shake his hand and kiss his cheek and look at him like Vesuvius melting, and Hellstrom had to stand there and take it, grinning redly and being polite while Marrow all but slapped him on the back, called him “Alex,” and barged into his office (as into Rick’s) without so much as a warning.

  But—wisdom from the sixties—what goes around, comes around, and the time came when Marrow began wearing that same strained, doubting face as all of Teresa’s lovers; a time when he found himself subject to the whims of her coming and going, her disappearances, her bald lies and hypocritical evasions, and one day Rick ran into Hellstrom in the corridor of the third floor (on his way to a screening) and Hellstrom was actually whistling a merry little tune.

  Revenge, even at second hand, can be awfully tasty.

  Rick was returning from lunch with Donald Marrow and Teresa—a business lunch, of course—and in the back seat when they arrived at the drive-on gate, and Charlie Devereaux waved them past. It was a remarkable sight, and Rick was lucky enough to be alert and watching when it happened—it only took a couple of seconds—Charlie coming out of his guard house no longer an old man with a sinecure but a big, strong-shouldered, hard-bitten gentleman, carrying a gun he obviously knew how to use, like a mythical figure from the old West. And it was all for Teresa. Charlie, tall, proud, macho, saluted her gravely and waved the car on by.

  It could only have meant one thing. Rick sat looking at the back of Marrow’s neck trying to figure out if he had seen it, too. Obviously not. He kept babbling on about his big Doberman pinscher dog back home. And when Teresa turned and looked at Rick, there was nothing on her face but boredom.

  RICK AND Elektra were in bed watching the eleven o’clock news, a coolness between them that kept Elektra from touching her toe to his leg under the covers as she usually did. It was the night after the screening of Eric Tennyson’s test. Rick was worried. The Boss had been delighted with the test, but Donald Marrow’s only comment as the three of them walked down the dim corridor was “Yeah but who is he?” And once again Rick could see his project put out to pasture, the impetus gone, the interest gone, like so many projects that are born in wild reckless enthusiasm and die quietly like abandoned babies.

  At first it did not register on his mind, and he had to shake his head to drive away thoughts of the picture.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Elektra. She put down her magazine and looked at him. He stared at the screen and waved impatiently.

  “Shut up and listen!” he said.

  The story unfolding on the news was horrible—horrible. Rick sat hypnotized, his hands cold in his lap. Elektra kept muttering, “Oh my God, Oh my God.”

  The accident scene in the light of the television crews was in terrible high contrast and almost nothing could be seen except the wet pavement, the crushed and burned station wagon and the smashed but still arrogant silvery grill of the maroon Rolls-Royce that Rick recognized, that he had ridden in many times, the Rolls-Royce of Kerry Dardenelle.

  Dardenelle was not injured. Rick saw him standing with several police and firemen in the lights, his face white as death, the shadowy crowd behind them. The accident had happened over an hour ago, and they had only just gotten the last body out of the burnt wreck of the station wagon.

  It was worse than they could believe. Rick turned to another channel and heard the story once again, his face numb and cold:

  Kerry Dardenelle, with Teresa di Veccio beside him, driving down Sunset Boulevard toward the beach, past the turnoff to his own home, and well past the Beverly Hills Hotel, had come rapidly around the long blind curve near Marymount and found himself rushing toward a station wagon stalled in the middle of the road. There were six nuns in the station wagon. Kerry did not have time to brake before he smashed broadside into the station wagon, which immediately exploded into flames.

  What happened then Rick learned from Kerry himself and from the next day’s newspapers. Neither Kerry nor Teresa was injured, although Kerry went into immediate shock. Teresa jumped from the car and ran forward, trying to pull open the doors to the station wagon. The women inside were screaming and the flames grew worse by the second. Somehow, no one knew actually how, Teresa managed to drag one of the women burning and shrieking from the car. Teresa smothered the flames with her own body, and then got up and rushed back to try to do it again. But by now the heat was too intense and there were no more screams.

  Kerry Dardenelle had killed five nuns.

  Teresa, blood-covered and scorched, went to the hospital in the same ambulance that took the surviving nun. Later she was asked many times how she had managed to do what she did, but she always said that she did not know. She had simply panicked.

  “She panics,” Kerry said to Rick later, “and rushes forward to drag a nun from a burning wreck. I panic and sit and watch her do it.”

  Neither of them, Kerry told Rick, had any memory of where they were going, or why. Kerry was not drunk, as a later test administered by the police proved. He had not been taking drugs and he was not a particularly careless driver. For the press, they said they were on the way to the beach for dinner and to discuss the picture, and maybe it was the truth. But they had no memory of it, remembering only the specter of that broadside station wagon and the faces within, lit by Kerry’s headlights.

  It was nightmare time. Teresa disappeared into the private sector of the UCLA Medical Center, and Kerry, after a brief try at secluding himself at home, where the press did everything but descend on him from helicopters, finally called Boss Hellstrom and begged him for a hideaway. The Boss let him have Errol Flynn’s apartment on the lot, and for once a secret was kept, at least for as long as need be, and while the reporters skulked and sniffed and snooped, they did not find Kerry.

  Some of the real inside Hollywood press corps knew where he was, of course, but kept it to themselves. They liked Kerry, everyone liked Kerry, and there was really nothing more to be gotten from hounding him.

  Sister Mary Helene, the surviving nun, became the center of the story, her body and face badly burned, and the UCLA Medical Center public relations team made sure the press was well acquainted with the fact that UCLA had one of the world’s most advanced burn centers, and that Sister Mary Helene was getting the world’s best care. In ten days the press was assembled and told that she would definitely live and would probably not even be disfigured, although her right arm would probably never return to full articulation.

  She was, at forty-six, the youngest of the nuns who had been in the station wagon.

  Kerry was finally exonerated of any wrongdoing by the various police agencies involved, even though they wanted badly to hang it on him, according to insiders. They just couldn’t. It wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t really the fault of the nun driving the station wagon. It was a true accident.

  That was when Donald Marrow vanished. No one really knew why. It might have been because Teresa was with Kerry, and they were obviously (once you knew Ter
esa it was obvious) heading for some rendezvous. It might have been that Marrow simply took advantage of the confusion and craziness to slip out of a situation that was bothering him; it might have been that he had plans on the other side of the world. He left without instructions, programs, advice or counsel.

  Rick made an appointment with the Boss and went to his office.

  “I want to hire Eric,” Rick said.

  “Go ahead,” said the Boss. “You don’t have to come to me.”

  “Well, with Marrow gone . . .” Rick said.

  “You’re on your own, until I hear otherwise from Marrow,” Hellstrom said. He looked impatient. Rick got to his feet, almost unable to believe his ears. But he had one thing more to say.

  “I’m keeping Kerry on the picture,” he said. Hellstrom looked at him silently. “He’s down there working on the script now. It’s all that’s keeping him from going nuts.”

  Hellstrom sighed and looked up at Rick with compassion in his eyes. “Well, your picture’s blooded now.”

  “Yes,” said Rick.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AT LAST, here came the Tennysons! Alexander Hellstrom felt better, not that he had expected them to be late, and moved over toward the entrance of the Bruin Theater to greet them. What a mob! Three big black Cadillac limousines full of Tennysons pulled up to the cleared space in front of the theater, the doors open and Tennysons, famous ones and obscure ones, young and old, all grinning, all playing to the people waiting in line; Dael wearing his famous “stupid face” and causing the girls to swoon, Eric and Kathryn arm in arm, causing murmurs among the people who believed studio publicity; old Clay with his steel rod posture, Joanne Clay with her arm hooked under his, all of them extraordinarily attractive and seeming, even to hambone-hating Alexander Hellstrom, unbearably glamorous.

  He came forward and took old Clay’s hand, and kissed Joanne on the cheek. Just then a little girl of perhaps eleven dashed out of line and up to Dael, touched him on the arm with a squeal and started to dodge back into line. Dael swiftly grabbed her, picked her up and gave her a kiss on the cheek, whispered something to her and let her go. She ran red-faced and crying with happiness back to the line, and Dael intelligently disappeared into the theater to keep from causing a mob scene.

  They threw open the doors to the theater proper on a signal from somebody and everybody trooped down into the roped-off section reserved for them, Alexander almost last. As Rick and Elektra went past him, Alexander smiled and patted Rick’s shoulder. No harm in that. Now they opened the front doors to let the paying customers in, and Alexander slipped into his seat, between his administrative assistant and the empty seat reserved for Donald Marrow, should he choose to appear like magic. Alexander hoped he wouldn’t.

  After a bit, the lights went down. Alexander liked this moment, had liked it all his life. It was a moment of peace filled with anticipation. The big curtain hissed and the lights went even lower. Ah. Now came the studio logo. Alexander began to applaud the logo, and people around him picked it up, and soon, amid laughter, some of the students clapped, hissed or booed, as they felt. To Alexander, a preview was not a passive experience. He applauded the titles vigorously, as did many of the others, and was gratified to hear the volume of applause from the paying customers on the names Eric Tennyson (an old favorite with everyone from the late show) and Jody McKeegan, not present, and finally, with something like patriotism, the sustained applause for Kerry Dardenelle, seated between his wife and his eldest son, almost directly in front of Alexander, his balding head stiff and straight. He was not “making an appearance,” he was working, listening for reactions, alert to the audience. Impulsively, Alexander leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder, as he had done with Rick. Kerry turned, eyeless behind glittering lenses, and smiled automatically for Alexander. The man had a lot of guts.

  At first the wreck on Sunset had generated a lot of unfavorable publicity for the picture, and there were items in the trades and then in the Los Angeles Times when it was discovered that Kerry would be retained as director, and daily they all waited for the axe from New York to fall. But it never did, and they went on with preproduction.

  Reporters, stringers and magazine writers kept snooping around, hoping to pry loose some interesting gossip, and Alexander decided to give them some. Jody McKeegan was in town, not working, just waiting for her part in the picture to come up on the production board, and so Alexander arranged for her to be photographed at lunch with himself and Eric Tennyson. When the photographs appeared, Alexander was not in them. It looked as if Eric and Jody were tête-a-tête and having a fine time of it. Both performers had been warned, and so there was no fuss. Eric’s marriage was not up for grabs, and Jody had a boyfriend somewhere. Alexander did not inquire of her further, and she volunteered no information about her private life. Both performers were, in fact, glad the pictures were printed and the rumors circulated, because it would help the picture make an event of itself (not the easiest thing in the world) and because it took some of the heat off Kerry. Reporters would rather have a live romance—especially one that promised to do a little home-wrecking—than follow out a story that was basically already dead and gone.

  When the timing was right, Alexander had the publicity department set up an interview with Eric in which he talked about his reviving career and denied the Jody McKeegan rumors. “Sure, we spend a lot of time together,” he said, “but it’s all work.”

  Soon a photo found its way into People magazine of Jody and Eric kissing and laughing at the same time. “All work?” was the caption.

  It was not harmless stuff, but it was necessary, and ninety percent of the attempted publicity of this type is seen right through and ignored, so they were lucky it was being printed, and they kept it up. Alexander was very careful to be especially nice to Kathryn when she came on the set to watch her husband work, but she did not seem worried. This was, after all, not her first picture, nor were these the first deliberate lies printed about members of her family.

  Alexander’s next gimmick was to have a famous mystery writer, Dick Landy, come down from San Francisco, all expenses paid, and hang around the set for a while. His article “The Return of the Hard-Boiled Hero” was printed in the Sunday New York Times and was a damned good piece of writing, as far as Alexander was concerned.

  Week after week, the shooting went on, they carefully created an image for the picture as a major film, a work of art under the artistic direction of Kerry Dardenelle and yet a movie you would have to see just to take part in the romance between Eric and Jody, and the equally interesting romance of Eric’s revived career.

  Ballantine Books put out a paperback edition of The Lady in the Lake with Eric and Jody in costume on the cover, and so there they were, in every drugstore in America, sinking into the American consciousness well before the picture was released. Alexander felt they had a chance.

  As for Kerry, he worked twenty hours a day, imparting that special importance to every scene that was his trademark, patiently shooting everything from several angles and keeping five takes, so that there were miles and miles of film to edit—a dangerous process in the hands of an egomaniac or a worrywart, but safe with a thorough and confident worker like Kerry. He also worked patiently with the performers and had a capacity for understanding and sympathy that was beyond most directors. Jody McKeegan, a notorious troublemaker, made no trouble for Kerry, and Eric was of course a master performer. Yet under Kerry’s direction he found himself giving the best performance of his life. It was not the kind of flashy performance that has the crew applauding after every take, but in the screening rooms where the dailies were shown every night, the reactions were heartwarming.

  Sometimes Alexander wondered why he put so much effort into a picture he had taken a pass on. There was, of course, his sense of craftsmanship. He just hated to see anything done half-assed. And, rationally, if the picture did turn out to be a disaster, it certainly would not be because Alexander Hellstrom had dragged
his feet. And there was the question of loyalty. He was taking the company’s money, great gobs of it, and his pride would not let him give less than one hundred percent.

  And one last sneaking reason, which he didn’t like to pull out and look at for fear it was true—was it possible that he had nixed The Lady in the Lake for personal reasons? If so, he was beneath his own contempt. No, he did not like to think about that, particularly since the emotions that might have interfered with his judgment had subsided considerably. He still loved her, yes, but it didn’t burn anymore. In a way, he regretted it, regretted that he did not have the passions of a boy, to stand in the snow outside her window, and die of pneumonia. Indeed, sometimes he felt sadder about his lost emotions than his lost love.

  And as for Rick, well, Alexander had his standards, and Rick met and exceeded them so energetically, took his buffets with such good cheer and bounced back so stubbornly to keep the work rolling that Alexander, in his secret heart, forgave him for going over his head, and even admired him a little for being able to get to Donald Marrow, to get Teresa to form the syndicate (something Alexander simply would not have thought of), although he surely would not let these feelings become apparent to Rick. Rick was cocky enough as it was, and clearly thirsted after Alexander’s job.

  Alexander chuckled at the thought. Let him have the job! That would be a good lesson for him! As for Alexander, he could walk off the lot tomorrow and have a good-paying manual labor job by Monday, if it became necessary. Which it wouldn’t because Alexander had plenty of the hard stuff stored away, but it was part of his pride to be mentally prepared to go back to living alone in a room and working all day with his legs, back and hands.

  Alexander squirmed pleasurably in his seat, remembering the terrible pain of overworked and cramping muscles, of lying in bed in furnished rooms with the light off, feeling the throbbing of his body. He could go back to that? You’re damn right!