Violencia!

by Bruce Jay Friedman

Then he added quickly: “Look, I’m going to say right now that you have a point, Clement, and that you’ve really impressed me. I had no idea you boys were thinking along those lines. Now I intend to produce this show, but you on your part have to agree that you must give me a show to produce. When you do, we’ll take it from there.”

  Toileau said he agreed with Undertag, and there was a general sense among the three collaborators that it had been useful to clear the air. However, Gurney was not quite sure whether anything had actually been accomplished. Soon after the meeting, he mentioned his uncertainty to Hartog.

  “What did he really say, Clement?”

  “Damned if I know,” said the director, who, following his oration, appeared to be exhausted, if not on the verge of having a heart attack.

  “I smell a rat,” said Welles. “I think we ought to make secret calls around town to other producers and protect ourselves against the conniving of these guys.”

  The composer’s remarks, typically, were self-serving, but Gurney found that on this occasion, he didn’t mind them. Obviously, Welles’ idea served his own interests, too.

  “I don’t know, Norman,” said Hartog. “Maybe we’re jumping the gun. My feeling is the man is sincere and will proceed if given a good shove. It’s up to us to stay tied to his ass.”

  Just before Gurney left the office that day, Greg Mandarin took him aside.

  “Gee, I’m awfully sorry to hear that you fellows don’t really trust us. We had no idea you felt that way … and you’re wrong.

  “Incidentally,” he said, gently ushering Gurney into his office, “I’m behind your ‘doody’ concept.”

  The gentle, soft-spoken little fellow locked the door.

  “Look, I sort of work for Undertag,” he said, “but what the hell, I’ve got to look out for myself, too, don’t I? What I’m about to say is would you be interested in doing another musical if this one were to close, which quite frankly you’ve got to think seriously about in this game. It would focus on the amazingly spry and colorful characters in Virginia nursing homes. My mother is in one of them and has agreed to cooperate and be available for meetings. The Broadway audience is aging rapidly, and this would be right down the pike for them. We could set to work immediately on it, the second Violencia goes under, instead of going to those awful self-pitying parties that are thrown right after the closing notices are posted. And believe me, I’ve been to quite a few of them. You could leap right into another project, richer, deeper, with better collaborators and with me at the helm, no offense to the boys you’re working with.”

  Mandarin said that if Gurney didn’t mind and had some free time, they could have meetings on the new show in stealth, at slow times during the preparation of Violencia, and perhaps try to block out a few scenes.

  What Mandarin was proposing should really have been infuriating—the idea of working behind his employer’s back and stealing Gurney’s services in cold blood. But Gurney was only slightly offended. In a way, Mandarin, for all of his duplicity, was paying him a compliment. After all, Gurney was obviously untrained in the business and had yet to get his first page written, much less his first show credit. Still, he backed off, for many reasons: The characters in Virginia nursing homes really didn’t interest him, no matter how spry and colorful they were—and he honestly thought Violencia had a chance, if it ever got before the public. And what was he supposed to do—just casually set aside his loyalty to Clement Hartog? What would that say about him? Obviously, Mandarin did not know his customer. And he saw no reason to thank the man.

  “I just don’t think so,” he said, and started for the door.

  “Good Christ,” said a panicked Mandarin, “you’re not about to go in there and tell Undertag, are you? If he gets wind of this, after the break he gave me in show business, out I go on my ass and I’ll have to start all over again, biting and kicking and clawing to get back to where I am now.”

  Gurney assured Mandarin that he would not blow the whistle on him.

  “I sure hope so,” said Mandarin. “A guy like you would probably never believe it, but I love this business. It’s all I know and ever will know. My world is bounded on the left by the Barrymore Theatre and on the right by the opening number of Gypsy, and I’m damned proud of it. I’ll sing the entire score of Bye Bye Birdie for you, if you like.”

  “Not just now,” Gurney said. “But thanks.”

  And Gurney, who had considered Mandarin a rather oily type minutes before, left the fellow’s office with the feeling that he was quite a touching and even appealing figure.

  * * *

  Despite the heavy trancelike nature of the project—not a word of the libretto on paper, strangely evasive producers, songs that dealt with Paris and failed love affairs that were designated for a show about violence in a homicide bureau—Gurney was amazed to find that he was quite content with his new career. Going off to work on Violencia each morning represented a routine of sorts, and he realized that he enjoyed routines of almost any kind, especially new ones, before they became routine. He had expected to draw even closer to Hartog as a friend. When this did not come about, the director, sensing the younger man’s disappointment, put it all on his mother, apologizing on her behalf.

  “Essie has finally gotten up the courage to meet you, Paul, and soon we’ll all be sitting down for a delicious dinner. In a restaurant, of course. Essie hasn’t cooked since we left Vienna.”

  Gurney had expected to spend more time on a social basis with the show’s composer as well, but Norman Welles was stand-offish in this area. Gurney guessed that the upscale circles in which Welles mixed would make a former homicide dick feel uncomfortable. So it came as a surprise when one night the composer called him at his apartment, to tell him that he and Tippy had decided to back away from one another and just be friends.

  “I suddenly realized that I can’t have anything pressing on my mind while I’m doing a show. When you work as hard as I do, you find yourself exhausted, with nothing left to give to someone in the way that only I know how to give when I’m available.”

  He then said that since Gurney was a young fellow, he probably knew a lot of hot young girls.

  “Is there anyone you could fix me up with? You worked in homicide, Paul, and probably met all kinds of low types, which quite frankly are my preference—so long as I don’t come away with a dose.

  “You see, Paul,” he said with a sweet and almost wounded note in his voice, “that way I can have my pleasure and won’t have to be seriously involved with anyone, which would distract me from the show.”

  Gurney found it flattering that the attractive, well-known composer should be asking him for women. But the truth was he couldn’t really think of anyone except perhaps the nice one-armed woman who worked at the Bureau and who had been kind enough to sublet the apartment to him at a ridiculously low rent.

  “There is a girl named Angela you might like,” said Gurney.

  “Fine. But are you sure she won’t give me crabs or some other souvenir like that? Jesus Christ, that’s all I’d need.”

  “Make sure you don’t give her something,” said Gurney, surprising himself with the strength of his reaction.

  Welles, at the other end, was silent, sensing the ex-dick’s anger and continuing to live in fear of it.

  “I’m only teasing, Paul, you know that,” he said. “But I’ve got to be careful and preserve my health for the good of the show and the potential enrichment of us all.”

  Gurney went ahead and set up the date. His feeling, in the end, was that Welles, in his own way, was a decent and generous person when it came right down to the core. Or close to the core. It might work out nicely for Angela to meet that type of fellow. Then, too, something might develop that would have a happy result for the two of them.

  A few nights later, Angela called Gurney and thanked him for arranging the date with Welles. She said she liked him, but that he was awfully rigid about his schedule.

  “He kept looking at his
watch during dinner, and after an hour he said that was all the time he could spare. And he wants to make a sex date for January twelfth, at three in the afternoon before he meets his accountant. And I’m not even sure he likes me.”

  Angela was a girl of almost heartbreaking loveliness, but was quite unsure of herself, obviously because of the arm.

  “Of course he liked you,” said Gurney, feeling queasy and wondering why he had served her up to the composer. “If he didn’t, he’s in a lot of trouble with me. And don’t keep that sex date.”

  He said good-bye to Angela and realized that she would probably do anything he asked her to. That settles it, he thought. I’m taking Angela to the opening, even though it will probably land me in hot water with my ex-wife.

  On an impulse, Gurney decided one night to pay a visit to his old bureau. He arrived during the night shift, picked up a pass from the desk sergeant, and immediately headed for the office in which he’d worked for eleven years. Nothing much appeared to have changed. He glanced at a dummied-up copy of the latest issue of The Homicider and had mixed feelings when he saw that John Gable, his replacement, seemed to have picked up his style, or at least a pale simulation of it. It troubled him that only the most discerning dick would notice that Gurney’s distinct personal touch was missing. Or perhaps he was underestimating his old pals, an unfortunate tendency of his.

  Standing in the office where he no longer worked, Gurney suddenly felt strange and somewhat unwelcome. As a result, he decided to make it a quick visit. On his way out, he stopped by the office of Detective Turner, his former boss. The gentlemanly pipe smoker was at his desk, working late. He looked up, nodded to Gurney, and continued to study a police report on his desk.

  “How’s it going, Wally?” said Gurney. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.”

  “Your show’ll probably be a flop,” said Turner, barely taking his eyes from the report. “All of them are.”

  Gurney felt as if a pail of ice water had been poured on his head.

  “What about Fair Lady?” he fired back.

  “You should live so long.”

  “I’d better get going,” said Gurney. “It’s been a nice visit. Maybe I’ll come back some other time.”

  “You do that,” said Turner, without enthusiasm.

  Gurney walked toward the door, then stopped and decided to make a last-ditch effort to win back the affection of his old boss.

  “Would you and the wife like to attend the opening of my new show?”

  Turner responded with a look that fell just short of being a sneer.

  Gurney took this as his cue to leave. It was obvious that his ex-boss still resented his leaving the Bureau. And Gurney could understand why someone who had devoted his entire life to crime-busting would resent an individual who had traded in a career in homicide for a whirl at show business.

  But he also saw that the visit, unlike the farewell dinner in his honor, represented his final good-bye to the Bureau. You can’t go home again, after all, he concluded—especially if you are an ex-homicider.

  Scene 4

  The following night, Clement Hartog called and said that Essie was now anxious to have dinner with Gurney. “She’s ashamed of herself for having put this off for so long.”

  Gurney and the director met at a small but highly regarded restaurant in Chinatown, with Essie joining them a bit later. She did not appear to be as old as Gurney had imagined, but the director’s mother was certainly the tallest woman he had ever seen; the effect, as she entered Ben To’s, was that of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float, drifting onto the premises. As she stopped to check her coat, Gurney tried to hide his astonishment. The perceptive Clement Hartog picked up on his thoughts.

  “Relax, Paul,” he said, “she’s of average height, but she plans to do the Chief’s part on stilts and feels it’s important to break them in.”

  He said that the storklike wooden props had been a trademark of Essie’s in her golden Vienna days and that she’d performed all of her starring roles while strapped into them. The custom dated back to a time when she had worked in a notorious Hamburg dive that catered to fetishists. One of the customers was a wealthy German industrialist who liked his women on stilts, and Essie had quickly become his favorite.

  “Mother was a game gal with a good sense of fun and was willing to put them on and parade around for Gerhardt as long as he paid the price.

  “Those stilts put me through school,” said Hartog, becoming emotional for a moment.

  Pulling himself together, Hartog went on to say that Essie had enjoyed the feel of her stilts, and began to have custom-made pairs of them shipped in from Rangoon. When she started in theatre, she used stilts in her roles. No question, they inhibited her movement on stage, but they lent an eerie Teutonic coloring to the plays in which she appeared, bringing unexpected praise to the writers and directors with whom she worked. It got to the point where she did not feel comfortable unless she was looking down on the other performers from a spindly wooden vantage point.

  “If you wanted Essie Hartog,” her son said, with fierce pride, “you had to take her, stilts and all.”

  According to the director, this meant getting the other actors to wear them as well; to refuse meant having to shout lines up at her.

  “In those days, Essie was in great demand. Most Viennese producers were happy to go along with her and were thrilled to sign her at any cost. It’s my feeling that Violencia will profit by having Mother up on them, since the style hasn’t been seen much in the States, if at all.”

  Hartog conceded that Essie’s participation in the musical numbers would, because of the obvious limitations on her movement, be limited to a few stylized gestures above the waist.

  “But I’ve never seen Violencia as that much of a dancing show,” said Hartog.

  Gurney had planned to be casual about his meeting with Essie, but when she joined them, he could not help studying her carefully. She was, after all, the star of Violencia; so much depended upon her performance. She had a rich, deep voice which pleased him.

  Then, too, her movements had an elegance and a certain grandeur that must have been a carryover from the days when she had been feted by the greats of prewar Vienna. It would not influence her performance, of course, but additionally, she had a directness of style that Gurney felt bordered on rudeness and—that in fact, could only be considered bad manners.

  Gurney had a thin scar, visible only on close examination, that ran the length of his chin—just below the lip line—and which tended to blink a bit under fluorescent lighting. He was touchy about it, and tried to keep it concealed with suntans.

  Soon after Essie Hartog had taken a seat and unstrapped her stilts, she ordered a stiff drink and said: “Pleased to meet you, Scarface.”

  Gurney thought that perhaps a character in a dream had made the remark. In his wildest imaginings he could not believe that she had actually said this to him. In all his years at the Bureau, not one of the dicks, who were not beyond a well-placed needle here and there, had ever called attention to his slight deformity. When he looked at Clement Hartog for verification of what he had heard, the director seemed to feel pressured.

  “I’ve thought it over, Paul,” he said, “and I’ve decided to give you a small cut of my percentage in the show.”

  Gurney realized that Essie Hartog had indeed made the outrageous statement; her celebrated son, deeply embarrassed, had cast about for a way to make it up to Gurney and to show that he wanted to separate himself from his mother’s tremendous gaffe.

  “My deal is fine,” said Gurney, who actually didn’t know what his deal was. He braced himself for Essie’s next outburst.

  Leaning back regally, Essie summoned the owner of the restaurant and ordered a rare duck dish that was not on the menu.

  “The way I’ve always had it prepared for me.”

  The owner seemed puzzled, as though he had never seen her before. Indeed, it seemed that Essie Hartog’s grand style,
and her assumption that she would be treated like royalty, were totally unrealistic. This was especially true in the States, where, for all of her Viennese triumphs, she was virtually an untested talent. The owner said politely that he would prepare the dish to the best of his ability. As he turned to go, Essie called out, “And it better be hot, panface,” accompanying the remark with a raucous theatrical laugh.

  Gurney was less shocked by this vulgarism, perhaps because he had been steeled for it. And it had begun to dawn on him that her rude outbursts were perhaps a way of settling into the vernacular of the show. The Homicide Chief, as planned, would be a coarse, rough-and-tumble type of fellow. Gurney now thought he saw clearly that Essie Hartog was such a complete actress that she intended to immerse herself totally in the character, becoming the outspoken head of Homicide, both on and off the stage.

  Then, too, her natural style was probably earthy and flamboyant. A difficulty was that Gurney, unused to theatrical folk, was not accustomed to this manner, particularly in women.

  In any case, this new line of thinking enabled him to relax somewhat and to enjoy his dinner. His sense of ease, in turn, must have spread to his companions; after the appetizer course, Essie Hartog lumbered over to Gurney’s side of the table and gave him a sopping-wet kiss on the mouth.

  “You’re brilliant and a doll,” she said, “and you’ve created a great role for me. I’ve had dozens offered to me, of course, but yours was the one that forced me out of retirement. When I read it, I saw that I had no choice.”

  Essie then described the pitched battle she was having with the producers, the actress insisting that they supply her with a matched pair of Merecedes limousines, one to take her to the theatre at night, the other to return her home. Undertag’s office had asked her to scale back her demands, at least until the show was received favorably, its success assured, and Essie confirmed as a major star in the United States, and not just prewar Vienna.

  “Can you imagine, Paul?” she said. “They want me to make do with a fucking Chevy pickup.”