Violencia!

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  “I don’t know what possessed me to think otherwise,” said Essie.

  It was as if they had passed an examination.

  They were given a large, cheery room with a roaring fireplace. The fire seemed to have a sensuous effect on Angela. She removed her clothing slowly this time, moving her body in rhythm to the flames as if they were dancing partners. Gurney almost fainted with pleasure at the sight. Every few minutes, Clement Hartog opened the door, took a quick look in, and shouted out, “Good night, Angela and Paul,” with a certain petulance. It was as if he wanted to make sure they went right to sleep and did not have sex in his guest room. After his appearances had tapered off—and then stopped—Angela hopped into bed with Gurney, and what they did for a while was to snuggle, using each other as blankets in the chill air. Gurney could not recall ever being happier. The key to the way in which Angela made love was gratitude. She was completely delighted each time he kissed and touched her body, as if she were a small girl receiving an endless cascade of holiday presents. This was entirely new territory for Gurney. Only once did she become annoyed—when he kissed her several times on what he thought of as her unfortunate side to show her it was all right and he didn’t mind.

  “That really isn’t necessary,” she said, sitting up in bed for a moment.

  But then she pressed her lovely body against his once again, making him wonder why he didn’t change the direction of his life at that very moment and try to snap her up forever. It was probably the arm, he guessed.

  Hartog and Gurney were the first to awaken the next morning; they ate a light breakfast, strolled about the grounds, and, for the first time since Gurney had arrived, talked about Violencia.

  “I would be willing to work on the show indefinitely,” said the director. “That’s how much I believe in the material. Let Undertag get his financing two years from now if that’s the best he can do. Meanwhile, we keep refining the libretto and helping Norman with his songs. How’s that for a plan?”

  Strolling through the massive estate, Gurney suddenly became annoyed with the director, though he’d never felt that way before. Hartog owned all of this acreage. It was true he couldn’t relax and enjoy it, but he did have it. And with his great fortune, he could easily afford to work for as long as he liked without reward.

  But what about Gurney, an ex-homicider with an uncertain future and hardly a pittance salted away.

  “I just can’t continue this way, Clement,” he said. “Sooner or later, I’m going to have to figure out a way to earn a few dollars.”

  “Well, I suppose I can see your point,” said Hartog. “I can’t lend you any money, if that’s what you’re getting at, since that’s the one thing I never do.”

  “I don’t want any of your money,” said Gurney, this time having difficulty keeping his anger in check. Maybe it was because he really did expect Hartog to write out a check for him—and the director had guessed his thoughts.

  Hartog then said he recognized that from all appearances he was comfortable and could afford to breeze along while waiting for Violencia to fall into place.

  “My situation is not as good as it looks, however. Blandishments is tremendously expensive to maintain. And then there’s Essie to take care of. Her acting and vocal and dance lessons alone cost more than most people earn in six months. Just the other day, she mentionned fencing instructions. And, of course, now there’s Gertie the dog to take care of. You’ve only got to look after yourself, Paul. In many ways, you’re in much better shape than I am.”

  “Now listen,” said Gurney, frustrated at not being able to show as much anger as he wanted to, “there’s just no comparison.”

  “I supposed you’re right,” said Hartog. “And I can also see for the first time that I’m the only one around here who believes passionately in Violencia.”

  “Wrong,” said Gurney. “I believe in it, too … as much as you and maybe more. I just can’t go on this way forever.”

  Scene 6

  Gurney finally made it clear to Clement Hartog that in order to push on, he needed the assurance of a Broadway production. Work was then broken off while Undertag presumably went about trying to drum up financing for the project, avoiding at all costs spending a nickel of his own unless it was matched by someone else’s money.

  Gurney felt glum about Violencia, in part because there was a chance that all the months he had invested in the show had come to nothing—and perhaps more because he missed the daily sessions with Clement Hartog. He did not see the director for a week and had the unhappy feeling that the theatre maestro was huddled with another fellow on a fresh family-oriented project that would prove to be easier sledding than the thorny homicide musical. Out of pride, he avoided calling Hartog. He took Angela to dinner a few times and was surprised to find himself slithering into restaurants and taking inconspicuous tables. The arm did not play a part, in this case. It was rather as if he were still married and trying to avoid his wife.

  He enjoyed being with Angela, who regarded him worshipfully and showed great appreciation when he treated her to expensive dinners. The combination of her great-eyed shyness and approval gave him considerable confidence. Untypically, he found himself ordering headwaiters about and generally putting service people through their paces.

  He made love to her at first with great care, as though in deference to her problem. But she made it clear quickly that she preferred to be jostled about and could take care of herself.

  “Can you be a little rougher?” was her only instruction to him. There were times when he made love to her all night long, and with a certain desperation—as if she had been given to him on loan and at some point would have to be returned. He had never had a woman turn herself over to him so completely—body and, as far as he could tell, soul. He felt it must have been some kind of happy accident. And yet, with some irony, he was uncomfortable only when she took her time leaving in the morning. It was as if she were waiting around for the ultimate gift: getting to stay around indefinitely—even though legally it was her own apartment.

  To maintain a kind of tie with Violencia, he called not Hartog but Norman Welles for dinner one night. Gurney took Angela along and the composer turned up with Tippy. The four returned to Lumpy’s, the colorful hangout within a stone’s throw from Gurney’s old bureau.

  During dinner, the composer showed his usual surprising flashes of generosity and good nature. When Gurney’s duck was served to him overcooked, Welles said, “Here, take this, Paul,” tossing half of his own portion on the ex-dick’s plate. “I want you to have it, even though I’m starving and could easily eat the whole thing.”

  Gurney, of course, was touched by the gesture.

  Welles seemed not a bit disturbed by the uncertainty surrounding the Violencia production, although perhaps he was, and was trying to cover up his fears.

  “Just as soon as the show is on,” he said, “you and I will go to Acapulco, Paul, either in triumph or disgrace.”

  When the two women had gone off to the powder room, Welles said he found Angela to be a sweet and wonderful person.

  “Tippy is, too,” said Gurney.

  “And so is your ex-wife.”

  “When did you meet her?” said Gurney, who could not recall introducing her to the composer.

  “Oh, I just called her up one day,” said Welles, “and we had a wonderful talk on the phone.”

  This seemed peculiar to Gurney; he wondered if perhaps Welles hadn’t followed up the chat by driving to his old house on Staten Island and fucking her brains out. Oddly enough, Gurney was not overly concerned about this possibility—a sure sign that he may have been emotionally free of his ex-wife. And besides, he knew something about Welles’ habits. At best, the composer had allotted her only a brief, carefully parceled out period of time in bed, which would not have pleased the difficult Gilda Gurney.

  The dinner was a drowsy, comfortable one, topped off by free brandies sent over by the owner, and finally by a visit from Lumpy himself, a
wizened ex-dick who had been all over the world and spent much time on the China coast. Lumpy regaled them with anecdotes, building up to his favorite, one that Gurney had often heard before, in which the saloon owner was taken into custody by the shore police for being caught masturbating at midnight in Hong Kong Harbor.

  “I love it,” said Norman Welles, almost before he’d heard the punch line. “God, you’re colorful.”

  Gurney was willing to stay on at Lumpy’s all night, and had a feeling the two women felt the same way. But Welles, who had rigid sleeping patterns, suggested they start back.

  Outside Lumpy’s, in the pale homicidal light, Kicker was waiting for them. Huge, shambling, wearing a black stocking hat and a torn pea jacket, the foot-fighter shoved Gurney and then danced back a few steps.

  “It’s me and you tonight, Gurns. We’ve had this date for too long. I think you’re Broadway and you’re shit.”

  Gurney could not find Kicker’s eyes and realized that the fabled foot-fighter, untypically, had been drinking heavily. As the two circled one another, Gurney, who had been badly shaken by the suddenness of the challenge, found that he’d become unnaturally calm. For all of his size and power, Kicker was not that much of a threat once you knew his fighting style. He would pick his moment and deliver his best kick; if it failed to make contact, he was, at least for the moment, an easy target.

  Most of the homicide dicks at some point or another had taken him on; Gurney could think of only one who had been injured by Kicker: a certain Detective Tuttweiler who had been writing a novel and, as a result, was distracted during the encounter. Fighting Kicker was virtually a Bureau tradition, so much so that no dick would ever think of filing arrest charges against the street fighter. Still, there was always the possibility that Kicker had been taking classes in advanced foot-fighting and had refined his style—so that a wild kick might actually land with devastating force.

  As the two circled one another, Angela became frightened and asked Lumpy, who had come out to watch the proceedings, if he would stop them. Tippy, on the other hand, looked on with fascination, shouting out: “Let them fight.”

  At a point when Kicker seemed ready to let one fly, Welles, surprisingly, and with great courage, stepped between the two antagonists.

  “Leave this man alone,” he said to Kicker in the manner of an angry schoolteacher. “For Christ’s sakes, we’re collaborating on a musical comedy.”

  Gurney thanked the composer and eased him aside, keeping a wary eye on Kicker, who, somewhat predictably, seized the moment to let his great size 14 fly. Gurney was prepared for the kick, easily parried it, and timed a punch with great precision to Kicker’s kidneys. When the hood dropped to his knees, Gurney caught himself doing a self-congratulatory boxing ring shuffle, and was then embarrassed about it.

  “That’s all you know is gut-punching,” said the fallen Kicker. “Is that what they teach you on Broadway?”

  “You’ve got the gut for it, Kicker,” said Gurney.

  Lumpy helped Kicker to his feet and gave Gurney a funny look, as though he had done something out of line. A few homicide dicks had come out to watch the brief fight, and they, too, appeared to be disgusted with Gurney and allied in this case with the once-scorned foot-fighter.

  Angela, Tippy, and Norman Welles, in a show of solidarity, gathered round Gurney and dusted him off. The four then drove off in Norman Welles’ sleek Italian sports sedan.

  “I should be in bed by now,” said the composer, who seemed revved up by the brief street brawl, “but I’m too excited to go home. Let’s stop and have a brandy.”

  At a late-night bar, the four sat around and reviewed the fight, treating Gurney as if he were a hero. He enjoyed all the fuss, but it troubled him that Lumpy and the dicks had lined up on Kicker’s side. And the remarks about Broadway plagued him for days.

  After a week had passed, and it seemed that Violencia had gone down the drain, Norman Welles, of all people, came through with a strange first-time theatre angel who guaranteed three hundred thousand dollars in backing for the Broadway-bound musical. It struck Gurney as ironically apt that Welles, with all of his bluff and bluster, and whom no one had taken seriously, should have been the one to save the day.

  It was Undertag who called Gurney and told him about their savior, a certain Hal Carioca, known in financial circles as a mysterious wheeler-dealer with a reputation for successfully getting in and out of slippery business ventures. Carioca’s most widely known coup had been the merchandising of a salad oil which could also be used as a greaseless hair dressing, when there was a little left. The product had been a disaster in the States, but Carioca had seen enormous possibilities for the dressing in the dollar-starved countries of Central and South America. Taking over the reins of the shaky little salad oil company, he quickly turned it into a fortune-producing colossus and then got out quickly when tests began to show that even modest applications of the dressing resulted in extensive hair loss.

  Undertag said that there were no apparent strings attached to Carioca’s involvement in Violencia. The story was almost too good to be believed. Welles had simply run into Carioca at a Junior League charity ball. He was a man who evidently operated on hunches, and had quickly warmed to the risky crapshooting nature of the investment; and, of course, there was the possibility of astronomically high returns if Violencia were to come in as a hit. What made him ideal as a backer, according to Undertag, was that he had no pretensions about knowing the business and no suggestions to make—apart from a possible fraternity hijinks panty-raid number, which the producer had quickly knocked down as being inappropriate.

  “He feels that we’re the experts and is leaving it all to us,” said Undertag.

  It struck Gurney that Carioca might well have had cause to doubt the producer, considering Undertag’s virtually unbroken record of stage disasters.

  Undertag said that Carioca had delivered him a check for the three hundred thousand and that Welles and Hartog were at the office, preparing to have a drink in celebration of the news.

  “Why don’t you join us, Paul. And if there’s a girl you’re boffing, bring her, too.”

  Gurney had been flattered by the personal call from the producer, but he felt the last remark was not only antiquated but rude, taking too much for granted about the degree of friendship between them. Gurney had never said a word to Undertag about his private life. For all the producer knew—unless someone else had sketched in the details—Gurney might have been happily married, with a couple of kids, and living in the suburbs. If such were the case, the “boffing” remark would have been gross, indeed.

  Nontheless, Gurney hailed a cab and got the driver to race down to Undertag’s office.

  Clement Hartog, smoking hungrily, was the first to greet him.

  “This project certainly has had its ups and downs. Never seen one like it.”

  Gurney was glad to see the director and even happier to see Welles, who certainly deserved to take a few bows for producing Carioca—yet didn’t appear to be taking any. It impressed Gurney that he could be outraged at Welles’ behavior at one moment and delighted with him at others, such as this.

  The composer soon began to pace up and down, as though he were a schoolboy with a guilty secret; finally, he confessed that Carioca was in serious trouble with the government over a recent stock manipulation and might, at any moment, be put under arrest.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Hartog, sinking his head into his hands.

  “What can I do, fellas,” said Welles. “I tried.”

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, Welles flicked on the TV set in Undertag’s office. Sure enough, after some brief coverage of student riots in Caracas, a handcuffed Hal Carioca appeared on the screen, grinning sheepishly as he was taken into custody by two federal agents.

  “It looks like they got him,” said Welles unnecessarily. “There goes our show.”

  “I don’t know if I can take any more of this,” said Hartog, with a profound and
wounded groan.

  At that point, Undertag skipped into the office and did a little two-step behind his desk.

  “It’s all right, fellas,” he said, “we’re in business. I just talked to my bank and I’ll be goddamned if the sonofabitch’s check didn’t clear.”

  Even with the three hundred thousand in hand, Philip Undertag was infuriatingly laggard about moving ahead with plans for the show. Hartog and Gurney cornered him one day and told him quite frankly that it was time for him to get off his ass.

  A key difficulty, he said, was getting just the right theatre for Violencia. The season ahead was a heavy one; each of the desirable houses appeared to be booked for an incoming show. Undertag, pinned to the wall that day by Gurney and Hartog, stared out of his window and arranged his mouth in a curious, thin-lipped, almost bitter style. He said that he and Toileau had arranged to purchase a massive amusement arcade in the Broadway area, with the idea of converting it into a legitimate theatre. Before making his move, Undertag had brought in sound experts from Berlin for an evalution. They said that even though the arcade had been used for children’s games and the hawking of second-rate Broadway tourist merchandise, it was, amazingly, the most acoustically perfect building in the Western Hemisphere. Construction was moving forward. The theatre would be ready to accommodate Violencia when the show returned from its out-of-town engagements. Undertag had tried to keep his plan a secret, but several Broadway producers had gotten wind of it and tried to book the theatre-to-be (tentatively called the “Pokerino”) for their own shows.