Violencia!

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  “It’s a wonderful feeling,” said Gurney, who was flushed with enthusiasm as he strode up to the producer. “This has been quite a thrill for me. And I swear to Christ I mean that, even if we don’t get a step further with the show.”

  “Bite your tongue, fella,” said the producer. “And watch your ass in California.”

  ACT TWO

  Scene 7

  In the sky, being yanked from one side of the country to the other, Gurney had an excited but also dizzying, uncertain feeling, as if a support system had been snatched away. Months previous, he had been a clerk in a homicide bureau with a gray future. Now he was sitting beside the famed director Clement Hartog, flying west on a talent hunt for a homicidal musical comedy which was scheduled to open on Broadway in the fall. Yet for all the capricious nature of recent events, Gurney noticed that for the first time in his life he was not getting nauseous during a plane flight; it was as if his stomach was lined with new confidence.

  Hartog sat beside him and seemed to be aging by the minute. Unable to relax, he had a wolflike expression on his face.

  “I just hope we get a boy,” said Hartog. “That’s the only way I’ll feel better. We’ve got to find someone who is substantial enough to stand up to Essie. She can blow most people off the stage. And when she’s on her stilts, it’s every man for himself.”

  A massive ship-sized limousine was at the airport to greet them, supplied by Hunt Feur, who had heard that Hartog and Gurney were rolling into town. The starlet who had been assigned to Hartog on the East Coast was on hand to greet the director once again. A sullen, somewhat older starlet was present as well, presumably as an escort for Gurney.

  “You want to know the shitty part?” said the driver, wheeling around to talk to the two collaborators as he steered them along La Cienega to their hotel. “I’ve been trying to break into the business for twenty-eight years, in any capacity—actor, electrician, I’m even willing to be an agent. And yet you two guys breeze in for the first time and they hand you the town on a platter.”

  The comments seemed to be directed particularly to Hartog, who was exchanging noisy embraces with his starlet and sneaking a hand beneath her dress. Gurney, who was less interested in the woman who sat beside him, replied on the director’s behalf.

  “Mr. Hartog is one of the greatest figures in the entertainment world,” he said importantly. “He isn’t some kid off the street, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “What about you?”

  Gurney was caught off guard by the question.

  “I’m doing fine,” he said vaguely, in a lame attempt to encase himself in mystery. “Don’t worry about me.”

  At the hotel, Gurney and Hartog were shown to separate quarters. Gurney was astonished when he saw the suite of rooms that had been prepared for him—three bedrooms, a massive terraced parlor, a full kitchen, and more bathrooms with stall showers than he could ever hope to use.

  “Good God,” he said to the bellman, “you could stage a convention in here.”

  “We’re not permitted to talk politics,” the man replied.

  An enormous bouquet of rare tropical flowers had been set up for Gurney in the sitting room, along with silvered bowls of fruit, dripping with freshness and moisture. There was a card in one of them.

  “For Paul Gurney, who we are betting on to hit it big with Violencia and who we hope will follow with a passel of pictures for our studio.”

  Henny Gelb, Head of Story Development,

  Apollinaire Productions

  Gurney thought it was extraordinary that the studio would make such a long-range bet on a total newcomer—and he felt awkward about using the enormous suite. For example, he could only get himself to settle into one bedroom and bathroom. Upon reflection, however, he saw that even though the amount of money involved in making him comfortable seemed outlandish, it was a mere pittance in terms of the many millions spent by Apollinaire on developing projects—many of them doomed from the start. The insight helped him to relax a bit and to enjoy several more of the bathrooms.

  Hartog paid him a visit before dinner.

  “Holy Christ,” he said after a look around, “just look at what they’ve done for you. They’ve got me in a crappy little corner suite with only two bedrooms and no terrace.

  “Say now,” he said, with more than a trace of sarcasm, “they must really think you’re something. I’ve done eight pictures for this studio and they treat me like a slob.”

  “This is preposterous,” said Gurney. “I insist that you move in here and I’ll take the crappy little suite they gave you.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Hartog, refusing to let him off the hook. “You stay right where you are. I didn’t realize I was with such an important fellow.

  “And fruit, too,” he said, picking up a pear with two fingers, then dropping it back in the bowl. “I didn’t even get a can of sardines.”

  * * *

  Hunt Feur had arranged for the two collaborators to have dinner with him at the legendary Chasen’s restaurant, along with Hartog’s pretty young starlet and Gurney’s venerable one. No sooner had they taken seats at their booth than Feur presented Hartog with a small bejeweled pair of binoculars and a silk bathrobe. Then he went right after Gurney.

  “I see your boy here is the darling of the studio,” he said to Hartog.

  “Yes,” Hartog agreed. “From the way they’re treating him, you’d think he was Orson Welles.”

  The two then exchanged knowing Central European chuckles.

  “This royal treatment wasn’t my idea,” said Gurney, who was annoyed at the director for siding with Feur. “I’d just as soon come and go anonymously until I do something to deserve it.”

  “And how exactly do you plan to stand our little industry on its ear?” asked Feur, becoming oilier by the minute.

  Before Gurney could choke out a response, Henny Gelb, the fellow who had arranged the elegant suite for him, arrived and took a seat in the booth. He was a young fellow who had begun his career as a New Jersey shingles salesman and who through sheer bluff, ingenuity, personal charm, and ruthlessness had bulled his way into a key position at Apollinaire. At the moment, the company was the hot film company on the Coast.

  Once Gelb appeared, Hunt Feur became subdued. The elder Viennese was doing several pictures for Apollinaire; in a sense, he was beholden to, if not actually employed by, the young fellow.

  Gurney looked around the restaurant and recognized filmdom greats who had thrilled him as a young boy. Gurney had never missed Saturday afternoons at the movies, and he and his ex-wife had once agreed that the reason for their breakup was that they had learned all of their behavior at the movies: Gurney met life in the style of Bogart, Gary Cooper, Dick Powell, and George Brent; Gilda Gurney could not face difficult situations unless she had seen Linda Darnell or Cyd Charisse tackle the same ones on the screen.

  It was unbelievable to Gurney, but unless he was mistaken, several of the film personalities at the restaurant kept craning their necks forward and keeping an ear cocked for tidbits they might overhear at his table. Actually, they weren’t talking shop at all. Gelb wanted to know if the ex-dick was satisfied with the arrangements.

  “Look around,” he said, with the two starlet escorts listening attentively, “and let me know if there’s any young puss here that interests you.”

  Gurney had actually been aware of several strikingly attractive young women who were seated in an adjoining booth—and whom he took to be actresses. Still, he insisted that Gelb had gone to enough trouble already and needn’t bother to do any more.

  “Nonsense,” said Gelb, glancing over at the two women and making a notation on a pad. “Most of them are under contract to us. I’ll have them shipped in and out of your room like running water.”

  Gurney could not help but admire young Henny Gelb’s way of catering nakedly and unashamedly to basic instincts. And he saw clearly why the recently unknown salesman had been able to go from shingles to the top of the
film colony.

  Gelb took the group to a popular discotheque and immediately upon arrival invited Gurney to scout around and see if there were any other girls he wanted to add to the list. Gurney did not actually feel any hunger for women at the moment, but thought he might as well take advantage of the opportunity. After all, he was on the West Coast and in the thick of the movie business; passing it by would be like traveling to a city famed for its art treasures and not visiting any of the museums.

  Perhaps understandably, the woman who had been assigned to Gurney as an escort became irritable and complained about the temperature in the club.

  “I feel a terrible draft. Can’t someone check the windows and make sure they’re shut tight?”

  Gurney asked a waiter to see what he could do—and then turned to Clement Hartog’s date, who interested him. He asked her to dance and she said she’d be delighted. But on the floor, when he tried to gather her in close, she drew back and held him at arm’s length.

  “Now look, Mr. Feur’s instructions are that I am only to fuck Mr. Hartog. If Mr. Gelb had gotten to me first, I would have been able to fuck you, Mr. Gurney, but he didn’t, and I don’t want to lose my contract with Mr. Feur.”

  “I understand completely,” said Gurney. “Don’t give it a second thought.”

  He finished the dance with her, trying all the while to charm her out of the arrangement—but she refused to budge. He ended up telling himself that he did not want to make love to someone who was that cold, even though she had a great body. An hour later, when the others in the party made ready to leave, Gurney said he’d like to stick around and have a drink in solitude, then catch a cab back to the hotel.

  “You writers,” said Gelb, clucking his tongue and taking out a pad and pencil. “Let me take down that ‘solitude’ remark. I can tell I’m going to use that somewhere.”

  Gurney had a few brandies and decided he didn’t enjoy being alone after all. He went back to the sumptuous suite, expecting a few of the actresses he had pointed out to be there, but none showed up. After an hour or so of waiting for them to appear, he concluded that Gelb really meant the following night; still, he was hungover and lonely, so he called Angela at what must have been four-thirty in the morning for her—and told her that he loved her. It was unfair of him to say this, since he didn’t know if he meant it or if it was coming out of loneliness. And to pull that on a one-armed girl, too. Unless you were sincere, it was a cruel thing to do.

  * * *

  Gurney had only one friend on the West Coast, a young, intelligent ex-dick who had given up homicide and gone west to become a chiropractor. The fellow had been living in the Beverly Hills area with his mother and from all reports had prospered mightily. His name was Matt Tanker. Gurney wanted at least one person to see his lavish hotel quarters and verify its existence, so the next day he called the ex-dick.

  Tanker came right over, and brought his mother along. Gurney had room service prepare a delicious lunch for them, courtesy of Apollinaire.

  “Matt and I think it’s wonderful that you’ve hit it big in films,” said Mrs. Tanker, a heavily suntanned woman who was weighted down with costume jewelry. “We always knew you had it in you when we saw you brooding around the Bureau, as if you had other things on your mind.

  “Of course,” she said, beaming at her son, “Matt takes real good care of his mom … and I’m sure you do the same for yours.”

  Gurney reminded Mrs. Tanker that his mother was dead.

  “I’m sorry, I must have forgotten,” she said, patting his hand. “But if you like, I can be a mother to both of you boys.”

  She then told Gurney about the many admirers she had on the Coast and how they preferred her to younger women, even starlets.

  “They take out the young ones and then they return to me and say: ‘Maureen has a beautiful behind, but just try talking to a tochis.’”

  Tanker had been a good son to his mother, perhaps passing up married life so he could be her constant companion; his situation, curiously, ran parallel to that of Clement Hartog and his mom, Essie.

  It seemed, upon further thought, that everyone Gurney knew was seriously involved with his mother. Perhaps it was in the air.

  Mrs. Tanker thanked Gurney for lunch and then went off to meet one of her young beaux, leaving the two ex-dicks to reminisce about old times.

  Gurney recalled that Matt Tanker had been a highly decorated sex patroller and had always been teased for wearing extra-flashy ties. He looked handsome and fit and without exaggeration a good ten years younger than he had when he’d been working at the Bureau.

  “California certainly has been good to you, Matt,” said Gurney.

  Tanker thanked Gurney and said he now operated a small clinic that ran alongside a dangerous canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Through a good-buddy arrangement with local police, accident victims, some of whom had gone plunging into the canyon, were referred to the Tanker Clinic for treatment of their back injuries.

  Gurney had not been all that close to Tanker at the bullpen, but he had to admit it was great running into the ex-homicider some three thousand miles from the old Bureau. That was one thing about law enforcers—they had a strong sense of fraternity and tended to both strike up new friendships and to renew old ones in no time at all. Though Gurney had only been a clerk in the Bureau, he was sure that he would always feel brotherly toward dicks, no matter how long he had been out of Homicide. And he could spot a dick in two seconds flat, by the way a man entered a restaurant, the manner in which he caught another man’s eyes—or avoided them.

  While chatting with his handsome friend, Gurney recalled that Tanker had once been interested in theatre, too. Unless he was mistaken, the former sex patroller had once played a small part in an all-dick production of Kiss Me, Kate as part of a fund-raiser for the widows of slain crime fighters.

  “They gave me a shitty little part,” said Tanker.

  “You played Gremio,” Gurney recalled. “You were terrific.”

  “Maybe,” said Tanker with bitterness. “But my Petruchio would have brought down the house.”

  The Violencia auditions were scheduled for later that afternoon in downtown Los Angeles. Gurney suggested that his friend might enjoy them and want to put his head in. Tanker immediately brightened up. He said he wouldn’t miss them for the world.

  There was talent on the West Coast, all right. Within an hour after the auditions had begun, Gurney and Hartog saw that their trip had not been a useless one. They signed two youngsters on the spot as singers; in addition, they felt they’d come up with some “possibles” for the all-important hero detective who would play opposite Essie Hartog.

  Matt Tanker, the homicide dick turned chiropractor, watched the proceedings with fascination, unconsciously tapping his feet when an energetic hopeful got something going.

  “Who is that fellow?” Hartog had asked with suspicion. “And what is he doing here?”

  Hartog did not want strangers around when he was working; Gurney guessed he was also a little jealous of anyone the librettist had as a friend. Gurney felt the same way about the director’s closeness to Hunt Feur. But Gurney vouched for the former sex patroller, assuring Hartog that he was a highly decent individual.

  “All right then,” said the director. “Just make sure there isn’t a peep out of him.”

  At the end of the day, the collaborators felt a small sense of accomplishment, although they had to admit the discouraging truth that they had not really found anyone who was absolutely right to play Essie Hartog’s detective son.

  Matt Tanker overheard them discussing their problem.

  “Would you fellows mind if I tried a few numbers?”

  “Sure,” said Hartog, looking weary and skeptical.

  No doubt this was out of courtesy to Gurney.

  Tanker squatted down for a whispered exchange with the piano accompanist. Then the ex-homicider took the stage with a song-and-dance number from 42nd Street. He certainly was light on his f
eet, Gurney felt, and there was no denying his charm, though he had a tendency to overuse it and perhaps punch a little too hard. Hartog continued to look bored and uninterested, but began to sit up and pay attention when Tanker did a lazy ballad from Brigadoon, displaying a surprisingly rich and—even more important—relaxed, authentic musical comedy voice. And then Tanker set both collaborators back on their heels with his final number, a rock-’em-sock-’em rhythm tune from a musical review that had died in Philadelphia years back, despite having the one great number in it.

  Gurney and Hartog found themselves on their feet, applauding with genuine enthusiasm. And it’s not just because he’s my old friend, Gurney told himself.

  “How long have you been studying?” Hartog asked the former sex patroller after he had left the stage, huffing and puffing and drenched with perspiration.

  “Not too long, sir,” said Tanker, falling into a seat. “About a year here in L.A. and on and off with my mom, who’s a vocal coach.”

  Sensing that something extraordinary was about to happen, Gurney was glad that Tanker was being so polite and deferential to Hartog. He recalled that his friend had always been gentle and soft-spoken during pervert investigations, too, saying “sir” to the worst degenerates in town. The training had prepared him well for a career in show business.

  “Paul says you have a booming practice out here on the Coast,” said Hartog. “Would you give it all up to come east?”

  “To do a Broadway show, sir? In a New York minute.”

  “You’re awfully good,” said Hartog with an appreciative little shake of his head. “I have to admit you caught me off guard, it being the end of a long day and you suddenly auditioning and all that. But good is good … and you’re awfully good.”