The Long Silence

by Gerard O'Donovan

  Without his realizing it, Fay had steered a course back to her automobile. The sleek Cadillac roadster stood out among the jalopies parked along the backlot wall, facing out across Argyle towards the commissary and studio clinic across the street. As they reached it, a movement across the street caught his eye. He watched intently as a man in a dark coat, hat brim low across his face, emerged from the clinic, pulled the door shut and locked it. Tom mounted the machine, sitting heavily in, mesmerized by the indistinct figure beyond.

  ‘You’re some gent, Tom Collins,’ Fay complained, climbing into the driver’s seat. ‘Thank heaven for electrical starting, that’s all I can say. A girl wouldn’t want to be in need of a crank with you around.’

  She turned to him, saw his face slack with concentration and followed his line of sight. Across the street, against the darkness of a far wall, she barely distinguished the shuffling motion of a man, walking the shadow line. Together they watched him climb awkwardly into a dark tourer and start the motor.

  ‘Someone you know?’

  Tom seemed not to hear, transfixed as the other machine pulled away from the curb and exited the Argyle gate. An arm waved out of the guardhouse window, acknowledging its departure.

  ‘Tom?’ Fay shifted the gearstick and nosed out into the street,

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Reminded me of someone I knew once, a long time back. I’m so beat, I’m imagining all sorts now. I’ll be seeing ghosts rising next.’

  Fay slowed as they passed the guardhouse. No one so much as looked in their direction, let alone raised an amiable arm to speed them on their way.

  THIRTY-THREE

  In contrast to other venues out that end of the Boulevard, the Oasis was all about discretion. It was Fay’s take on the New York cabaret clubs she had frequented and fallen in love with after the war. Situated in a suite of rooms beneath a mixed commercial and residential block, the club’s existence was signaled only by a green canopy bearing the simple monogram of a tent picked out in three curved gold vertical lines topped by a pitched fourth. The door was manned by an urbane army veteran, Herman Sutter, who combined good manners with a formidable demeanor, greeting patrons not in the usual livery of a doorman but a midnight-blue double-breasted and a necktie picked out in tiny gold tents. It was a theme continued in the apparel of all the floor staff, even the cigarette and hat-check girls.

  One of the latter stopped Tom in his tracks passing the booth at the bottom of the stairs, a beaming young woman with a halo of blonde hair lit from behind. ‘Good evening, Mr Collins.’

  ‘Colleen?’ He couldn’t believe the change wrought in so short a time.

  ‘I’m plain Mae here.’ She bowed her head. ‘At Mrs Parker’s suggestion.’

  Nothing plain there, he thought. Hair waved and crimped, face fresh, devoid of rouge or powder, a shirtwaist and vest that couldn’t quite impose on her the contours of a boy. The same girl, only prettier, more radiant.

  ‘You’re quite the surprise.’ He glanced back up the steps to where Fay was still engaged in conversation with Sutter. ‘Fay said she was getting you settled, but I never suspected it would be this quick.’

  ‘Oh, they were short-handed. I said I’d dive in. Glad of the opportunity. And it’s not like I was busy with anything else.’

  He could see no obvious signs of the sickness on her. Must be she wasn’t so deep into dope as he had thought. They talked for a couple of minutes more, until Fay appeared beside him. Her manner was pleasant, but there was distraction beneath her smile and an urgency in how she drew Tom away from the booth and through the leather-padded doors into the elegantly appointed club room.

  There the decor created the mood of a dark and smoky desert encampment. The walls were covered in pleated cloth of rose pink and celadon, the ceiling tented in the same fabrics. Hanging lanterns cast a low light that barely penetrated the dimmer recesses where, here and there, the walls glowed with tiny backlit tent motifs. The room was busy but not crowded, an air of elegance and complicity marking the murmuring parties occupying most of the thirty or so tables and booths that ringed the modest dance floor, and a small stage occupied by a weather-beaten pianist playing a soft, seductive rag.

  ‘Would you like to have something here or go straight up to the apartment?’ Fay asked, waving a greeting to a table of regulars across the room. Fay usually insisted on fulfilling her duties as the Oasis’s charming proprietress for an hour at least, while leaving the hosting to her manager, Eddie Solomons.

  ‘You’ve been away from me three weeks,’ Tom said. ‘You know the answer to that.’

  ‘You’re bad, Tom Collins.’

  ‘I’m probably too beat to be bad. But I’ll give it a try.’

  She laughed, reached up and kissed him on the lips. ‘You go on up, then. I need to have a word with Eddie. I’ll be just a minute. Five at most.’

  Again he sensed her anxiety. ‘Is there a problem?’

  She shook her head, her attention still mostly on the room. ‘No. It’s something Herman mentioned. I need to check a payment went out while I was back East.’

  She slipped out of his embrace and threaded her way towards the far side of the room where he could just about discern the club’s tall, impeccably groomed manager conversing with a young woman robed in a glittering evening gown. The next act, Tom supposed. He backed out the door and trotted up the outside steps, nodding goodnight to the doorman before changing his mind and turning on his heel.

  ‘Any trouble here tonight, Herman? Mrs Parker seemed a little upset.’

  ‘No trouble, Mr Collins.’ The doorman was unruffled. ‘Just some cops pushing their weight around. I told them we don’t admit non-members.’

  ‘They accepted that?’

  ‘No. They tried to push in anyway. But I can smell the law a mile off. I sent them on their way.’

  ‘They weren’t in uniform?’

  ‘Long ulsters and homburgs, if I ’collect right,’ Herman said, warming to the subject. ‘Tough guys, or so they thought. Insisted on having a look inside. Dug out their badges when I said I’d call the cops. Big mistake. I pointed to the corner there and told them that’s where the city line stops, and they were the wrong side of it.’

  Tom laughed to himself, admiring the man’s pluck.

  ‘And they left?’

  ‘Sure they did. Once I told them we paid our dues to the county sheriff and he wouldn’t be long putting a sock in their traps if they didn’t push off.’

  ‘You’re one cool customer, Herman.’

  Sutter rolled his shoulders, as if to say he wouldn’t disagree with that estimation but modesty forbade him to admit it.

  ‘They weren’t happy, Mr Collins. But you know what they can do about that.’ The doorman bunched his fingers in a gesture that, for all its swiftness, was replete with obscenity. ‘A big fat fistful of nothing. That’s what.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Downtown was quiet even for a Sunday morning. The one streetcar he saw, rumbling off towards Hill Street tunnel with a clang, looked to be carrying no passengers at all, and the wide thoroughfares of the business district were mostly empty. The few folk he passed were either disheveled young men stumbling home from late-night revels or well turned-out families strolling down to mass at the Pro-Cathedral on Pershing Square. He wondered what his mother looking down from heaven would think of his fancy American ways when he hadn’t seen the inside of a church in three years or more.

  The sun was high above the campanile of the old City Hall by the time he pulled up out front of the Chamber of Commerce building further north on Broadway. On the huge plate windows right of the pillared entrance, the Evening Herald’s masthead was gilded in fancy letters four feet high. Inside, he could see the sprawling newsroom was deserted, apart from one or two dedicated souls in vests and visors hunched over desks by the windows.

  Of Phil Olsen, though, there was no sign. Tom checked his wristwatch. Ten was what he had said. It was that on the do
t. Across the street, the marquee of the Mason Opera House advertised the arrival of the Russian Grand Opera Company, on its first American tour. The Tsar’s Bride. Eugene Onegin. Seven-night run. Lingering sensations of the night before were strong enough to ripple on his skin and make him smile like a boy. Russian opera would be Fay’s kind of thing. If all the tickets hadn’t sold out already, it looked such a plum.

  He pulled on the parking brake, glanced up and down the street, then at his watch again and wondered whether he should go ask after Olsen inside. It would be worth it just to walk through the lobby and breathe in the scent of the exhibit kept there of all the fine produce bursting forth from this vale of Eden, this Southern California. Piled pyramids of oranges, lemons, olives, peaches and figs. All kinds more – potatoes, cotton, every kind of grain. At the center, dominating everything, a life-size elephant fashioned from, so the sign said, eight hundred and fifty pounds of walnuts. Man, that was something to behold.

  About to cut the motor, he heard his name called and turned to see Olsen exit the building by a side door down the street. The reporter had exchanged his boater for a wide-brimmed fedora, but the suit looked the same as he’d worn the day before, as did the shirt and tie. Olsen’s smile hadn’t changed either, switched on full, teeth running back almost to his ears.

  ‘Hey, Collins, keep that motor running. You had breakfast yet? Couple of blocks over on Spring’s a new joint does the best pastrami ever.’

  ‘Pastrami, for breakfast?’

  ‘Got a problem with that?’

  His stomach yawned like it hadn’t been fed for days, so he shook his head, swinging the door out for Olsen.

  ‘Guess not. Let’s go.’

  Olsen clambered in, hat and all. ‘See Davis has been brought in to fight Colina next week in Vernon? You Irish boys’ll be down there for that one, I guess.’

  His voice sounded thinner over the engine clatter as Tom turned the corner. For a little guy, Olsen sure loved his boxing.

  ‘I heard Kid George was up against Colina,’ Tom said, knowing Olsen was a big fan of the Kid. ‘He running scared now or something?’

  ‘Not likely. He got a chance to tangle with Johnny Lotsey out in Oakland a couple days earlier. Guess he thinks even if he wins it, he’ll take too many hits to fight again next week. Should be a barnstormer. Me and the boys are making a party of it. Stick a pencil behind your ear, Al Treloar will get you in on the press ticket.’

  Olsen broke off and pointed at a drab, brick-front store in the row ahead. ‘Hey, pull in – see this sign right here?’

  Inside, the place looked less promising than out: mean and empty, with long tables and benches like an army commissary. But it was clean and wafting a rich aroma of roast meat and spices.

  ‘Enough to make your belly fall flat in love,’ Olsen said, as he hailed the guy lounging behind the counter, threw his hat on the table nearest the kitchen and ordered pastrami for two. His enthusiasm was borne out as soon as the sandwiches arrived, steaming hot, dripping juice and mustard over the plate. So good even Olsen couldn’t talk for a couple of minutes for chowing down, breathing fire out through his nostrils.

  ‘So, tell me, what’s so important you gotta prise me from the arms of Morpheus before noon on a Sunday?’

  Tom wondered if he’d heard right. ‘You got a squeeze now, Olsen?’

  Olsen hacked out a cough, eyes watering from the mustard or something else. ‘Actually, it’s a … Ah no, forget that. C’mon, out with it. What’s happened you need to ask me about?’

  Tom hesitated, not wanting to give too much away straight off. ‘You heard of any studio pow-wows in the pipeline?’

  Olsen gave him an assessing stare while taking another, smaller, bite of his sandwich, then wiping his lips with the tablecloth as he swallowed. ‘You know how this town works, Collins. There’s always something going down that line. What kind of pow-wow we talking about?’

  ‘Big one. All kinds of rival chiefs sitting down to suck smoke together. You got no word on it?’

  Olsen put the last corner of his sandwich carefully down on the plate, his chewing winding down in speed now.

  ‘You saying you heard this, or you seen it?’

  ‘I don’t recall saying either way.’ Tom leaned back from the table, folding his arms. ‘But for a man who’s just put a quarter pound of pastrami in his gut, you’re looking hungry, Phil.’

  The reporter sat in, eyes intent across the table. ‘Sure I am. Always. Why else would I be here? Question is, you got something for me or not?’

  ‘I do, but I want to know what I’m giving you. So tell me why your jaw flapped open just then, and I’ll give you something to close it up. You’ve heard something, right?’

  Olsen ran a finger round the inside of his celluloid shirt collar, considering. ‘OK, so maybe I have. But so far it’s just whispers and I ain’t been able to get anything solid on it. You give me that, I’ll get you to Oakland – ringside, if you want.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m after. Anyhow, tell me about these whispers first.’

  ‘You spill this to anyone, I’m coming after you with a bayonet.’

  ‘You won’t need to sharpen anything but your quill, Phil. Go on, tell me.’

  Olsen glanced into each shadowed corner of the empty room before answering. ‘Did you see the story yesterday about this politician, Hays, being brought in to reorganize the movie distribution racket?’

  Tom had seen it all right: a dull little squib about plans to use the Railway Express Company for a new movie distribution service to major cities led by a nest-feathering friend of President Harding called Will Hays. No other city in America would have had it for front-page news.

  ‘Sure, but what’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Rumor is, that ain’t the half of it. All this rumpus over Arbuckle and now Taylor, it’s got the money men sweating their socks off. You heard about those God-botherers down south setting fire to theaters showing Arbuckle flickers, yeah? Well, it’s started up again. Ticker today says four cowboys rode into a movie theater in Cheyenne last night, tore down a screen showing Mollie O, and threatened to do the same to any other movie house in Wyoming that dare put Mabel Normand up on screen.’

  Tom shook his head in disbelief. Sennett had the smarts to see it right from the outset. No wonder he’d been worried. ‘I still don’t get why folk are taking against Normand in particular.’

  Olsen darted him a look like he was some kind of ignoramus.

  ‘C’mon, Collins, keep up with the story. Like I said yesterday – it’s because they’re being told to. And that’s the whole point. This is not about Normand – it’s about everything. All this muckraking in the Eastern press about the movie colony being the wickedest place since Babel, it’s beginning to stick. Arbuckle was bad enough, and maybe if the second verdict had’a gone the other way last week, things would be different. But it didn’t, and now this baloney about Taylor and his drinking, doping, panty-sniffing, starlet-shtuping habits – it’s like a call to arms for all those vigilantes and mothers’ union handwringers who haven’t tasted blood since Volstead was passed.’

  Tom couldn’t resist a snort at that. ‘But most of what’s in the papers is bull. You should know – you write half of it.’

  Olsen grinned. ‘Not me, friend, I’m a crusader for truth. One of the good guys. I mean it. Anyhow, you never heard of public opinion? You should see the letters we get at the Herald every day from ordinary, decent Angelinos who’d happily tar and feather half the movie folk in town for their corrupting ways. And all they got to do is look out the window and see it ain’t really like that. What hope they got in Biblesville, Kentucky?’

  Tom sat back again and put his hands up in surrender. ‘OK. So folk are angry. What about it? I still don’t see what you’re saying.’

  Olsen leaned right into the table and dropped his voice. ‘What I’m saying is, this situation has every major movie producer from here to New York quaking in his boots right
now, worried that all these scandals are gonna bring the dream factories they spent years building up – and making millions outta – crashing down around their ears. For now, Lasky is drawing the fire, what with Arbuckle and Taylor both belonging to them. And like I told you yesterday, they’re doing all they can to stop it spreading to the Minter girl as well. On past form, you’d expect Meyer, Goldwyn, Loew and all the other boss men to stand back rubbing their hands while Zukor and his whole Paramount–Lasky outfit goes up in flames. But – and this is what I’m telling you – the business world says no, there’s too many chips in the pot. For everybody. If Paramount and Lasky go down, the banks will get the heebie-jeebies and start pulling their money out from other studios too. Are you with me?’

  ‘That’s crazy. Why would they do that? If the whole industry goes bust, the banks’ll never get a penny back.’

  ‘But it ain’t only the banks. It’s the stock market, the shareholders, the nickel-and-dime investors. Nobody wants to lose their dough, not even a little bit. So they all try to get their money out before the next guy. It’s a house of cards – if one goes, the whole caboodle comes crashing down.’

  The creak of the kitchen door opening made them both turn. The pastrami guy, coffee pot in his hand, asking if they wanted more. They said no in unison, waiting till he went back the way he came before speaking again.

  ‘So, what you’re saying is all these studio heads are burying the hatchet and coming together to do something to stop this happening?’ Tom said, low.

  ‘That’s the million-dollar question. Personally, I reckon this Hays is up to his neck in it. You know he resigned as postmaster general for this job? This guy’s no small-timer. He ain’t gonna play penny ante with distribution. There has to be something bigger in it for him.’

  ‘Sounds like a story. How come I didn’t see anything on it already?’

  Olsen’s laugh was as sharp as a guillotine. ‘You kidding me? Like I said, this is just a hunch. I bring it to Klegg, my editor, he says, “What’ve you got to back this up?” Then he tugs my ears off for wasting his time.’