Hollywood and Levine

by Andrew Bergman

  Goldmark was chewing gum furiously. He winked at me. “You struck a nerve, LeVine,” he said quietly, lighting an Old Gold and squinting as the smoke sailed directly into his eyes.

  “What goes on? I walk into a wake and it turns into Twenty Questions.”

  “Things are happening,” Goldmark said.

  “Thanks for the tip. Can I see you tomorrow?”

  Goldmark looked over his shoulder, back to where Adrian’s friends were buzzing among themselves.

  “Why?”

  “I’d like to know what happened to Walter.”

  “He died. Let it be, LeVine. Don’t get into a mess.”

  “Sorry, but I can’t just walk away from this. See me tomorrow and get it over with. It won’t take long.”

  He put on his coat and a tweed cap, and handed me a business card.

  “Tomorrow at three. If you change your mind, call.”

  Wohl, Perillo, Friedland, and Carpenter joined us.

  “We’ve been discussing what you said, LeVine,” Perillo began. “If Walter could trust you, I guess maybe we can.”

  “LeVine,” said Wohl, “we are worried about a note.”

  “Excuse me,” Goldmark interrupted, eager to leave. “Night folks. Milt, see you tomorrow. Everybody.” He waved an undirected good-bye and slipped out the door.

  “Agents,” snorted Friedland.

  “Larry’s a good boy,” Wohl said thoughtfully. “This just scared the shit out of him. Scares the shit out of me, too.”

  Carpenter threw his arm around me, confidential-like.

  “The problem is this, LeVine, straight and simple. We are worried that Walter was the first victim of something, call it a wave of fear, that’s just begun in the last month or so to infect the movie industry. If we seem concerned, maybe a little hysterical, it’s because those of us who were …” he groped for the word, “associated with Walter feel that his death marks a deepening of this crisis. We sense a chill in the air.”

  “Does this chill have something to do with politics?” I asked. “Walter signed his name to everything but candy wrappers.”

  Wohl’s smile was a history of regrets. “So did we all, LeVine.”

  “What exactly did Walter tell you when he asked you to come out here?” asked Perillo.

  “That’s confidential, even if he’s dead now. But he basically told me very little. Just that there was some trouble he wanted me to investigate.”

  “And that was it?” asked Wohl.

  “Just about.”

  “Let’s not beat around the bush,” Carpenter said with sudden force. “LeVine, we might need you as much as Walter did. That’s why we’re standing around here now, trying to figure out what was on Walter’s mind. We’re not ghouls. It’s a practical problem we’re facing. Careers are at stake.”

  There was much nodding of heads.

  “I lived through it before,” Friedland said solemnly. “Progressive people being hounded to their deaths.”

  Rachel Wohl came up to her husband and took his arm.

  “Milt, I told the sitter we’d be back by eleven.”

  Wohl looked sheepish. “Children.”

  Friedland beamed like a Viennese Santa. “Ah, die schönen kinder.”

  We all decided it was time to go. Carroll Arthur and his wife were going to stay overnight in case Mrs. Adrian needed anything. June Arthur was reasonably sober, but Carroll was still swimming at the deep end. Mrs. Arthur smiled at me.

  “It’ll be okay. Helen’s a strong girl.”

  I told her I thought so too, and then the whole pack of us got our coats and headed outside, saying our good-byes and shaking hands. It had gotten a good deal cooler and a stiff breeze had the palms bending like catapults. I looked back at the Adrian place; the upstairs lights were still on and I guessed that Helen Adrian wasn’t going to sleep well tonight. Nothing in this world is as empty as a man’s house on the evening he dies. Everything in the house seems to die with him.

  The cars started backing out of the driveway. I got into my Chrysler and started up. No neighbors were out. There seemed to be peace and quiet and ignorance on Escadero Road. But as I drove off I was certain that dozens of eyes were peeking through dozens of curtains.

  4

  The sun was beating on the curtains and a brilliant patch of dust-filled light hung over my bed, the particles tumbling silently like snow in a glass paperweight. I watched with pleasure, a child waking in his crib, snug, and yawning. I stretched and kicked the sheets. It was a quarter to seven in the morning and there was no way, save anesthesia, that I could get back to sleep. My head was busy and lucid, my stomach was roaring; against all my historic principles and precepts, I arose for the day.

  A shower and shave, fresh underwear and yesterday’s brown suit. Humming all the while, I tied the tie and crossed the laces, hitting the street at a quarter past, a hungry lion stalking breakfast on the veldt. The day was a gleaming beauty, heralded by a chorus of birds perched in the Real’s fruit trees. Gentle sunlight and easy warmth fell on my back; I smiled at a familiar bald shadow on the pavement. On Sunset Boulevard, an elderly couple sat on a bench in the sunshine, waiting for a bus. They looked very happy. I thought about moving to L.A. then remembered the reason I was out here in the first place. But it wasn’t enough to make me feel bad; I felt a certain detachment from the Adrian case. It really wasn’t my problem, was it? I had found my own bit of California, if only a California of morning walks to coffee shops. I felt wonderful. It lasted almost half an hour.

  Over freshly squeezed juice, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a pot of coffee, I opened up the Los Angeles Times for news of Adrian’s death. I figured it would be a page one item, given the bizarre circumstances, but the Times had the story, with a head shot of Walter, on the bottom of page three.

  WALTER ADRIAN FOUND DEAD

  SCREENWRITER APPARENT SUICIDE

  Screenwriter Walter Adrian was found dead last night at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, an apparent suicide. The body of the forty-year-old Adrian, whose many credits included Three-Star Extra, Boy From Brooklyn, Berlin Commando, and Beloved Heart, was discovered by a close friend. Los Angeles Police Lieutenant George Wynn said the probable cause of death was strangulation and there was “no evidence of foul play.” He would not divulge whether a note had been found.

  Studio officials and friends told the Times that Adrian had been despondent for some time, but all were shocked at the writer’s death. Said Jack Warner, “All of us at Warner Brothers mourn the tragic passing of Walter Adrian. He was a man of great character, as well as a writer of enormous skill. Millions of Americans, who loved Three-Star Extra, Berlin Commando, Beloved Heart, and the forthcoming Easter release, Alias Pete Costa, will miss him.”

  Adrian’s long-time friend, Academy Award-winning scenarist Milton Wohl declared that “the world has lost a fighter for decency, the industry has lost a courageous and gifted voice, and I have lost a dear, dear friend.”

  Adrian is survived by his wife, Helen. Funeral services will be held Friday at Temple B’nai Sholom, in Beverly Hills. Persons are asked not to send flowers, but to forward contributions to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union.

  The power of the press to play things up and play things down never ceased to amaze me. The spectacular fact that Adrian had been found dangling from a gallows on the Western Street at Warners, a fact my beloved Daily News would have spread all over the front page, with pictures (“SCRIBE’S LAST ROUNDUP”), went unmentioned. It appeared that Warners’ flaks had worked overtime, either at getting the cops to keep mum or holding their advertising power to the Times’ throat. For myself, I was grateful to have become an anonymous “friend.” The story left the unmistakable impression that all concerned were handling the matter with tongs.

  When I got back to the hotel, the desk clerk handed me a piece of. paper with a telephone message from Lieutenant Wynn. The message was that I was to g
o, immediately and directly, to his office. The half hour was up; blue skies or gray, I was a small-time shamus in a familiar creek sans paddle.

  Wynn didn’t really have an office; it was a cubicle set in a bullpen on the third floor of the downtown L.A. police headquarters, a building that would not have looked out of place in Long Island City’s warehouse district. The bullpen was a long green room full of cranky homicide dicks in threadbare sports jackets and the insistent din of teletype machines and ringing telephones. Wynn’s cubicle had flimsy green partition walls topped by a foot of frosted glass, but there was a good fifteen feet between the glass and the ceiling. He had a kind of privacy, but not much more than you find in the pay toilets of a metropolitan bus terminal.

  “Lovely setup here,” I told him.

  Wynn was alone today. He chewed a pencil and surveyed me from behind a bare municipal-issue desk. “It’ll do,” he said. “As a matter of fact it doesn’t do, but it’ll have to do. So it does. Have a seat.”

  I perched myself on a municipal—issue chair a straights backed beauty with no arms and a seat treated with iron. Wynn sat swiveling back and forth in his small metal chair, never taking the pencil from his molars or his eyes away from me. It is what cops call psychology. They take courses.

  “What are you trying to do,” I finally said, “break me?”

  “Big mouth,” Wynn said softly. He stopped swiveling and leaned across the top of his desk. “A New York big mouth. We get lots of them out here, know-it-alls.” He smiled at me like he knew something that I didn’t. Very likely, because I didn’t know a thing.

  There was a rap at the door; Lemon and Caputo strolled in, bored to death, and sat down on opposite sides of Wynn’s desk, like bookends. Caputo handed Wynn a manila folder. The lieutenant opened it and examined the contents very critically, very police lab. Lemon and Caputo slid off the desk and left the office.

  “They’re bright boys,” I said. “I could use a couple like that.”

  Wynn ignored the remark. “LeVine, we’re about to close the books on this Adrian suicide. I just want to tie it up with ribbons.” He leaned back in his chair and stuck a Kaywoodie pipe between his yellow teeth. It didn’t make him look anything like a Harvard professor.

  “You’re absolutely sure it was suicide?”

  Wynn lit up, smoke billowing from both sides of his mouth. “As sure as I have to be,” he said. “Your pal Adrian was as Red as a firetruck. That’s why he croaked himself.”

  “How Red is a firetruck?”

  “Very. A firetruck carries a little card in its pocket which says it thinks Russia’s the greatest thing since bottled beer.” His teeth clamped down hard on the stem of the pipe. “But I’m not telling you anything new.”

  “Walter was a Communist?”

  Wynn smiled with subpolar warmth.

  “Not bad, LeVine. You take acting lessons in New York?” He started leafing through his folder.

  “You’re going to roll on the floor, Lieutenant, but he never told me.”

  “The floor’s too dirty,” the cop said without looking up, “but imagine that I’m rolling.”

  Funny thing was that despite what I remembered about Walter’s politics at City, and despite his disconnected remarks at Lindy’s, I hadn’t really figured on his joining the Party. Maybe I hadn’t figured because I didn’t want to, because I wanted to make the case simpler than it was, but there it was, suddenly as obvious as a cloudburst. Walter was a world-saver from day one, I knew that well enough; he wept for the ninety-nine percent of the earth’s transients who got screwed from both ends and between the eyes. He’d sign anything and not ask why; he believed that his motives—concern, empathy, economic outrage—were everyone’s motives. Besides which, Walter had delicate antennae for social survival; if the right people in Hollywood had begun joining the Party ranks, it probably occurred to him that following their lead would not have an adverse effect on his career. This is not to say that Walter’s ideals were not genuine. It is to say that, like all of us, Walter’s revolution began at home.

  “What’s your evidence?” I asked Wynn.

  “It could fill a freight car, take my word for it.”

  “Your what for it? Listen, even granting the evidence, why does Walter’s being a Red necessarily prove suicide?”

  Wynn continued to leaf through the folder.

  “It doesn’t, necessarily, but in this case I believe it does.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the word is that being a Red is going to go out of style around here, and fast.”

  “Another Scare?”

  “Something like that. A lot of people, and some very big people, are going to get burned.”

  Things began falling into place. The tension among Adrian’s friends. Carpenter’s saying that they all might be needing help, the panicky questions about a suicide note.

  Wynn broke up my line of thought. “Why did he fly you out here, LeVine?”

  “He was worried.”

  “About what?”

  I shook my head. “He’s still my client. I can’t tell you that.”

  Wynn’s pipe went out. He relit it. “Okay, another tack,” he said. “Was he desperately worried?”

  “Not suicidally, if that’s what you mean. By the way, how come a writer kills himself and there’s no note? And how come there’s a swelling on the back of his head like someone might have sapped him?”

  Wynn waved me off. “Quit it, LeVine, you’re trying too hard. Lots of suicides don’t leave notes, writers and stationery salesmen included. The swelling checks out as well; he got a crack on his head going through the trapdoor.”

  “The door isn’t that small,” I told him. “And I don’t figure stringing yourself up on a gallows. How can you reach the lever while standing on a trapdoor?”

  Wynn stared up at a large globe light suspended from the ceiling.

  “Don’t have to,” he said casually, distractedly. He extracted a yellow sheet from his folder. “LeVine, let me clear something up in my mind. Why did he fly you out here? Why not hire a local peeper?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that he’s an old friend, that we attended …”

  “‘In 1927,’” Wynn began reading from the yellow sheet of paper, “‘Levine’s name appears on a petition in the City College of New York student newspaper, calling for a pardon in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. In 1937, Levine, now a private investigator working under the name of LeVine,’” Wynn lifted his head and smiled, at which point I barely controlled an impulse to knock his teeth through the back of his head, “‘sent money and an offer of personal help to Spanish Refugee Aid. He repeated that offer, and forwarded another check to Spanish Refugee Aid in 1938.’” Wynn handed me the yellow sheet. “There it is, in black and white.”

  The sheet was a memo to Wynn from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from Agent Clarence White.

  “You request these as a matter of routine?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” he said sharply, “but this is a special case, highly sensitive.”

  “I see. So you requested that the FBI run a check on me?”

  Wynn was discomfited.

  “The FBI is helping us on this one.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “You’re not in a position to demand answers, Levine or Vine or whatever you call yourself. Not with an FBI file on you.” He was getting pretty ugly.

  “That’s a file? A petition signed in ’27 and two checks sent out a decade later? Come on, Wynn, you’re being silly.”

  His broad nostrils flared, he poked a finger at his chest.

  “You won’t find an FBI file on George Wynn,” he said proudly.

  “Maybe that’s because you never cared about a goddamn thing. I thought General Franco was a dog in 1937 and I still think he’s a dog. Tomorrow I’ll think he’s a dog. Call me and I’ll tell you so. As for poor old Sacco and Vanzetti, I don’t remember what I thought. I was twenty-one and I didn’t l
ike to see people killed. I still don’t. And I cannot believe that the FBI considers that chickenshit as worth keeping on file.”

  “That’s not for you to judge,” the lieutenant said coolly. His tone had changed. He had the goods on me, he was Mr. Prosecutor. “Are you still going to tell me that Walter Adrian hired you merely because you were a college chum?”

  That was enough for me; that was plenty. I arose and started bellowing.

  “Okay, Wynn, you got me dead to rights. I knew I couldn’t hide it much longer from L.A. Homicide. You’re too sharp for a bald Jewboy like me. Here’s how it happened, but try and make it easy on me, willya? Adrian flew into New York, took a hack to my office, and slipped me the secret Red handshake. I can’t reveal it to you here, even in the relative security of this office. Then he paid me three hundred bucks and expenses to fly out here. Why? Voilà, it’s simplicity itself. Because he intended to hang himself, of course.”

  “Sit down,” Wynn said fiercely, “or I’ll throw you in the can.”

  “For what, the petition about killing the shoemaker and fishpeddler or the checks to the refugees?” I put on my hat and went to the door. It opened and Lemon and Caputo stood blocking my way. They grabbed me by either arm. I turned to Wynn.

  “So help me Christ, these two shitheads better let go,” I said in a low growl, as close to menacing as I could muster.

  Wynn, in a sudden attack of intelligence, told them to leave. He snapped his fingers and they vanished.

  “LeVine,” he said placidly, “you’re behaving very badly today.”

  I stood by the door.

  “I don’t enjoy threats, Lieutenant, but I particularly don’t enjoy dumb threats. That FBJ crap,” I waved toward the folder, “that’s an insult.”

  The cop puffed bleakly on his pipe and I realized the G-man routine wasn’t his idea.

  “You don’t like it too much yourself, do you, Wynn?”

  “Go back to New York,” he said quietly, his eyes dull and unhappy. “We don’t need you here anymore.”