Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  “Good,” said Bacall. She slowly drew on the cigarette, then puffed smoke in Sheldon’s face. “Now stick it up your nose. And Canada tool”

  “Brenda?” Sheldon gasped. “Is that you?”

  She angled a hip, Bacall-like, and retorted, “It’s not Peter Lorre, Sheldon.”

  “How’d you know who I was? I mean . . . .”

  “Never mind,” she said; her voice became less sultry, more like Brenda Impanema’s normal throatiness. “What I want to know is what gives you the right to decide ‘The Starcrossed’ is going to Canada. And me with it.”

  “Oh,” Sheldon said. There didn’t seem to be any Cooper lines to cover this situation. “Les told you about it.”

  “No he didn’t,” Brenda-Bacall said. “Les is as big a snake as you are. Bigger. He kept his mouth shut.”

  Sheldon glanced around for a possible escape route. None. He and Brenda were alone on the sealed-in weather deck. The rest of the crowd had gone inside. Brenda stood between him and the nearest hatch leading to the party. If he tried to run for another hatch in these damned platform boots, he’d either fall flat on his face or she would catch him in a few long-legged strides. Either way it would be too humiliating to bear. So he stood there and tried to look brave and unshaken.

  “If you must know how I found out,” Brenda went on, “I asked Murray what you were up to.”

  “Murray told you?” Sheldon heard his voice go up an octave with shock. Uncle Murray was a fink!

  “Murray’s everybody’s friend. Knows all and tells all.”

  “But he’s not supposed to tell about private conversations! Only business matters!”

  “That’s all he told me,” Brenda said. “Your business conversation with Ron Gabriel.”

  Sheldon felt a wave of relief wash over him. Or maybe it was a swaying of the ship. At any rate, Murray could be trusted. At least one central fixture in the universe stayed in place.

  Lauren Bacall grinned at him and Brenda’s voice answered, “I called Les’s secretary for a lunch appointment and she told me he’d already gone to lunch with you. When he got back, he was kinda smashed. As usual. I dropped into his office before his sober-up pills could grab hold of him. He leered at me and asked how I like cold winters. Which means he approves of your plans.”

  Sheldon shook his head in reluctant admiration. “You ought to be a detective.”

  “I ought to be a lot of things,” she said, “but I’m not a call girl. I’m not going to Canada.”

  “But I thought you liked Gabriel.”

  “Whatever’s between Ron and me is between Ron and me. I’m not going to become part of his harem just to suit you.”

  “It’s not me,” Sheldon protested. “It’s for Titanic.”

  “Nope,” Brenda stole Cooper’s line.

  “It’s for B.F.”

  She shook her head, but Sheldon thought he noticed the barest little hesitation in her action.

  “B.F. wants you to do it,” Sheldon pressed the slight opening.

  “B.F. doesn’t know anything about it yet,” Brenda said, “and when he does find out . . . .”

  The roar of a powerful motor drowned out her words. Looking around, Sheldon saw that a small boat was racing alongside the ship, not more than twenty meters from the Adventurer. The cruise ship had cleared the line of off shore oil rigs and was out of the smog area. The sky above was clear and awash with moonlight. A few very bright stars twinkled here and there.

  “That damned fool’s going to get himself killed,” Sheldon said.

  The motorboat was edging closer to the Adventurer, churning up a white wake as it cleaved through the ocean swells.

  “He’s going to sideswipe us!” Brenda shouted. “Do something, Sheldon.”

  But there was nothing he could do. No emergency phone or fire alarm box in sight along this stretch of plastic-domed deck.

  The motorboat disappeared from their view, it was getting so close to the liner. Brenda and Sheldon pressed their noses against the plastic, but they’d have to be able to lean over the railing to see the motorboat now.

  They heard a thump.

  “Oh my god!” Brenda’s voice was strangely high and shrill.

  More bumps.

  “They must be breaking up against our hull,” Sheldon said. He still couldn’t think of anything to do about it.

  Then something hit against the plastic wall not five meters away from Sheldon’s face. He shrieked and leaped backwards.

  “Giant squid!” Sheldon shouted.

  It did have suction cups on it. But after that first wild flash of panic, he saw that it was a mechanical arm, not a tentacle.

  “It looks like a ladder,” Brenda said.

  His stomach churning, Sheldon said, “I think we’d better get back inside and tell somebody . . . .”

  Brenda blocked his way and took hold of his buckskin sleeve. “No. Wait a minute . . . .”

  As Sheldon watched, firmly clutched by Brenda, a man’s hand appeared on one of the rungs that extended from either side of the mechanical tentacle. A small man in a dark suit came into view. He was wearing a 1920s Fedora pulled down low over his forehead.

  “He’ll never get through the dome. It’s airtight,” Sheldon said.

  The man ran a hand along the outside of the transparent plastic, seemingly searching for something. Twice he made a sudden grab for his hat, which was flapping wildly in the twenty-knot breeze. His hand finally stopped below the line of the railing, so Sheldon couldn’t see what he was doing. But from the action of his shoulder, it looked as if he pushed hard against something. The section of the plastic dome in front of him popped open with a tiny sigh and slid backward. The wind suddenly swirled along the deck.

  “Must be an emergency hatch,” Brenda murmured.

  The man hesitated a moment; then, looking downward, he reached below the level where Sheldon could see. He hauled up a strange-looking object: long and slim at one end, thicker at the other, with a round drum in the middle.

  “A Tommygun!” Sheldon realized, in a frightened whisper. “Like they used on the ‘Prohibition Blues’ show!”

  The dark-suited man threw a leg over the rail and clambered onto the deck. He clutched the Tommygun with both hands now, his left arm stretched out almost as far as it could go to reach the front handgrip.

  He turned slowly in the shadows along the deck and saw Brenda and Sheldon frozen near the rail.

  “Don’t make a move,” he whispered. In a voice that Sheldon somehow knew.

  Leaning over the rail, the dark-suited man called, “Come on up, you guys. It’s okay.”

  Sheldon knew that voice. But he couldn’t place it. And the hat was still pulled too low over the man’s face to recognize him.

  “They’re going to hijack the ship.” Brenda whispered. “Do something!”

  Sheldon didn’t answer. He was busy staring at the Tommygun.

  Two more dark-suited men climbed up to the deck. Each of them carried huge, ugly-looking pistols. Colt .45s, Sheldon realized. Named after the beer commercial.

  The first man stepped up to Sheldon and Brenda, shifting the Tommygun to the crook of his arm.

  “You dirty rats,” he said. “You didn’t invite me to your party. So I’m crashing it.”

  He was close enough to Sheldon to see his face now. And recognize it They were being confronted by Jimmy Cagney.

  Behind Cagney stood Allen Jenkins and Frank McHugh, both grinning rather foolishly.

  Cagney hitched at his pants with his free hand. “Where’s Finger?” he demanded. “I wanna find that rat. He’s the guy that gave it to my brother and now I’m gonna give it to him.”

  The voice finally clicked in Sheldon’s memory. It was Ron Gabriel doing his Cagney imitation.

  “Ron?” Sheldon asked, a little timidly. “Is that you?”

  Cagney’s face fell. “You recognized me. Shit. I thought I had you fooled, Sheldon.”

  “You did. It’s a wonderful costume.”


  Brenda said, “That’s really you, Ron?”

  “Reah . . . who’re y . . . Brenda? Wow, you look terrific!”

  “Thanks.”

  “How did you recognize me?” Sheldon wanted to know.

  Cagney-Gabriel shrugged with one shoulder. “Gary Cooper. You always use the Cooper costume. Every party.”

  “Once or twice,” said Sheldon, defensively.

  “Often enough.”

  Sheldon started thinking. Not about his costume, but about Gabriel crashing the party. When he thought that Cagney and his henchmen were hijackers or thieves, he had been scared. But the thought of Gabriel coming face to face with B.F. terrified him. I’ve got to keep them separated, he realized.

  “Let’s go up to the Sky Bar and have a drink,” Sheldon said, pointing forward and up.

  “I wanna see Finger,” Gabriel replied, switching back to his Cagney voice. “I wanna show him my violin.” He hefted the Tommygun.

  Brenda stepped closer to him and slipped an arm inside Gabriel’s arm. “Come on, tough guy,” she said, doing Bacall perfectly. “Buy a girl a drink.”

  Gabriel couldn’t resist that. “Okay sweetheart. Umm . . . they got any grapefruit up in that bar?”

  “Never mind,” Brenda-Bacall said. “You don’t need a grapefruit. All you’ve got to do is whistle.”

  As the five of them headed down the swaying, rolling deck toward the bar perched atop the ship’s bridge, Sheldon thought, And all I’ve got to do is keep Brenda with him.

  They took over a corner table in the Sky Bar, ordered drinks and watched the moonlight on the waves. Gabriel parked his Tommygun behind the sofa that they sat on. A blocky-looking computer over by the dancefloor was belting out the new atonal electronic music and flashing its lights in numbered sequence for the dancing couples slinking along: one, two, one-two-three; one, two, one-two three. Every once in a while the computer would throw in an extra beat, just to keep the humans off balance. Most of the dancing couples were heterosexual.

  As the waiter brought their drinks, Brenda leaned close enough to Sheldon to whisper in his ear, “Thanks, hero.”

  He looked askance at her. “For what?”

  “For sticking me with . . . .” She made a tiny nod in Gabriel’s direction. He was busy watching the dancers and arching his eyebrows at the prettiest of the girls.

  “You volunteered,” Sheldon protested.

  “Sure. When it looked like you were going to faint. You’re hiding behind a woman’s skirts!”

  “You can handle him,” Sheldon assured her. “Don’t be afraid . . . ,”

  Brenda was suddenly yanked up from the sofa.

  “Come on, kid,” said Gabriel-Cagney. “Let’s show them how to do it.”

  He pulled Brenda onto the dancefloor. Sheldon watched them gyrate as he sipped his drink and watched Gabriel’s henchmen surreptitiously. They were paying no attention to him; instead, they were ogling a table full of Rita Hayworths, Jill St. Johns and Tina Russells.

  Carefully putting his drink down on the table. Sheldon slowly got to his feet. Alan Jenkins gave him a sour look.

  “Men’s room,” Sheldon said. Jenkins shrugged as if to say, What do I care?

  He edged past the dancefloor, trying not to trip over anybody in his clumsy platform boots. Thankfully, Gabriel’s back was to him. But that meant that Brenda was facing him and the look she shot at him was pure venom.

  Sheldon mouthed at her, “Relax and enjoy it,” and scuttled out of the bar.

  He raced down three flights of stairs, clutching madly at the railing to keep from falling. The ship tossed and swayed and the stairs seemed to be trying to deliberately move out from under Sheldon.

  But finally he made it to the Main Lounge. B.F. was sitting at a table near the bandstand, surrounded by blondes of all description, from a Pickford to a pair of Monroes. Lassie, believe it or not, was lying on the carpeting at his side.

  A George Jessel was on the bandstand singing the Marine Corps Hymn, while George Burns and Jack Benny argued quietly but with great animation, off at the far end of the lounge, over who would go on next.

  Sheldon made his way around the outer perimeter of the once-plush Lounge, squirmed through a phalanx of blondes and finally managed to get close enough to Bernard Finger to lean over his shoulder and whisper: “Trouble, B.F.”

  Finger raised his dimpled chin in Sheldon’s direction. “So he sings off key. So did the original Jessel.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Ron Gabriel’s crashed the party.”

  “What?” Finger shouted loud enough to startle Jessel into almost a full bar on-key. “That little snot! Here? Uninvited?”

  “What else?” Sheldon said.

  “How’d he get here? Where is he? What’s he want? Is he hitting anybody?”

  If Sheldon weren’t convinced that it was impossible, he’d have been tempted to speculate that B.F. was physically frightened of Ron Gabriel.

  “He’s in the Sky Bar. Brenda’s got him in tow . . . .” And suddenly Sheldon realized that this was an opportunity straight out of the blue, a gift from Olympus. He had B.F.‘s complete and undivided attention.

  He took a quick breath, then suggested, “Maybe we’d better get you to a more protected location, B.F. You know how crazy Gabriel can be.”

  Finger pushed two blondes aside and stood up. He seemed almost dazed with fear. “Yeah . . . right . . . .”

  “And there’s a lot about this situation that I have to tell you about,” Sheldon went on.

  “Okay,” Finger said. “Down in my stateroom.”

  Finger’s stateroom was a suite, of course. And it was actually up one deck from the Main Lounge, not down. It wasn’t until the steel doors of the luxurious suite were firmly locked behind them that Finger appeared to relax.

  “That Gabriel,” he muttered. “He’s crazy. He hit Lucio Grinaldi once, just for adding two or three songs to one of his scripts.”

  “That was Gabriel’s adaptation of In Cold Blood, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Finger plopped down into an overstuffed chair. “Imagine punching a producer just for turning a show into a musical.”

  A butler appeared and took their order for drinks. Sheldon sat down. His chair accommodated itself to his body. The air was sweet and cool. The suite was dimly lit, quiet, tasteful, with the kind of silence and comfort that only a lot of money could buy.

  “Who’re you, anyway?” Finger said suddenly. “You work for me, don’t you?”

  “I’m Sheldon Fad.”

  “Oh?” No comprehension whatsoever dawned on Finger’s Gary Grant face.

  “I’m one of your producers. I did the ‘Diet Quiz’ show last year.”

  “Oh, that one!” Recognition beamed. “The one that got renewed.”

  The butler brought the drinks and Sheldon eased into a roundabout explanation of his problems with “The Starcrossed.” How it was Gabriel’s idea and the untrusting fink had immediately registered it with the Screen Writers Guild. How he, Sheldon, had hit on the money-saving idea of taking the show to Canada for production. (B.F. smiled again at that; Sheldon’s heart did a flip-flop.) How Gabriel wanted Brenda as a hostage or harem girl.

  “Probably both,” Finger grunted.

  Sheldon nodded and pressed on. He told Finger that only Brenda’s body stood between him and a face-to-face confrontation with Gabriel.

  “And he’s carrying a Tommygun,” Sheldon concluded.

  “Now? Here?”

  Sheldon nodded. “I think it’s going to be very vital to us to have Brenda go with us to Canada.”

  “You’re damned right,” B.F. agreed.

  “But she doesn’t want to go.”

  “She’ll go.”

  “I’m not sure . . . .”

  “Don’t worry about it. What I tell her to do, she does.”

  “She might quit.”

  B.F. shook his head, a knowing smile on his lips. Somehow, it didn’t look pleasant. “She won’t qu
it. She can’t. She’ll do what I tell her, no matter what it is.”

  6: The Confrontation

  Ron Gabriel sipped a gingerale as he sat at one of the Sky Bar’s tiny round tables. Brenda Impanema sat on the couch beside him, staring moodily out at the moonlit ocean. On his other side, Allen Jenkins and Frank McHugh were playing poker on a little table of their own.

  The crowd in the bar had thinned considerably. Many couples had drifted outside, now that the ship was clear of the L.A. smog and the moon could be seen. Others had gone down to their staterooms for some serious sexual therapy.

  “It’s like a movie scene,” Brenda said, reaching for her Hawaiian Punch. “Moonlight on the water, the ship plowing through the waves, romantic music . . . .”

  Gabriel scowled at the computer, which was now issuing a late 1970s rotrock wail. “Call that romantic?”

  Brenda, still in Lauren Bacall’s looks, made a small shrug. “It could be romantic.”

  “If it was different music.”

  “Right.”

  “Then all you’d need would be Fred Astaire tapdancing out on the deck.”

  “And sweeping me off my feet.”

  Gabriel looked in the mirror across the room and saw Jimmy Cagney. But he no longer felt like Cagney. I should have come as Astaire, he told himself. But Cagney fitted his personality better, he knew.

  “How come I can’t sweep you off your feet?” he asked Brenda.

  Bacall grinned back at him. “It’s chemistry. We just don’t react right.”

  “I’m crazy about you.”

  “You’re crazy about every girl you meet. And I don’t want to go to Canada with you.”

  Gabriel remembered why he had come aboard. He picked up his glass of gingerale. In the mirror, Cagney’s face hardened.

  “I don’t want to go to Canada at all. Period.”

  “We can drink to that.” Brenda touched her glass to Gabriel’s.

  Cagney scowled.

  She tossed her head slightly, so that the long sweep of her hair flowed back over her bare shoulder. “Are you really after me or just my body? Or just a grip on B.F.?”

  “That’s a helluva question,” he said.