“A cherry sweetie, you mean.”
She looked confused.
“He’s Red.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You got to watch yourself, darling. They’re everywhere. Even if they’re not.”
“What do you mean?” She seemed genuinely puzzled. God bless her.
“Just stick with me and you’ll be fine,” I said.
She looked scared for a moment, then leaned in and bit me on the neck. She scampered off in the direction of the commissary.
I was still holding her pink flower in my hand. I gave it a sniff, smiled, and tucked it in my pocket.
What a town!
I stopped in the men’s room and straightened myself out. Hair combed, tie and fly double-checked—Faith had Little Arty straining at the leash again—and most importantly hands washed. I got a surgeon to show me how to do it right. A while back, Mr. Hughes had me chuck a PR out a window when he spotted a curlicue of mustard under the nail of the guy’s pinky finger. Only the second floor, but still . . .
His secretary—another Jane Russell lookalike; Christ in a D-cup!— nodded at me and brusquely pointed to his door. Once, she’d caught me perving on Lizabeth Scott during a wardrobe change and she’s lemon-faced me ever since. Christ, as if it would make any difference to Lizzy the Lezzy.
I opened the door and walked down the narrow corridor to a second door. This time I knocked.
The door opened automatically and I entered the darkened office.
Along with clean hands, there were two things Mr. Hughes liked more than anything else in this world: airplanes and boobs.
The office was full of both.
“It took you over fourteen minutes to arrive here from my signal, Mr. Burns.”
“Sorry, Mr. Hughes, I got hung up on the way.”
He sat behind his great mahogany desk, glowering. He had a wad of chewing gum tucked in his cheek and fiddled with that great gold signet ring he wore. He nervously twisted it round and round on his left pinky finger. The ring bore the image of some mythological creature I didn’t know: one of those weird combinations of animals the old Greeks had such a hard-on for. Part-eagle, part-barracuda, part I-don’t-know-what-the-hell. It was a lot of gold in any event, and the eyes were flawless rubies.
You never shook hands with Mr. Hughes. I think he only ever directly touched pendulous bits of female anatomy.
“You stopped to flirt with Miss Domergue,” he told me.
“You saw that, huh?”
“I see everything. She should know better than to twirl in that dress.”
“She’s a lovely gal. And I think it was a sarong.”
“I’ve had priapic encounters with her on a number of occasions.”
“Uhhhh. Yes, of course. I mean . . . of course.”
“Her performance was entirely satisfactory, with some minor reservations and notes.” He fondled the nose of the model plane on his desk. “Her second act is weak—at vital moments, she is prone to issuing a distracting rasp. She is also somewhat under . . . sophisticated in areas that are of significance to me.”
“You mean her, ummm . . .”
Boobs. In the office. I think I mentioned that the place was full of them. And airplanes. That maybe sounded a little confusing.
Pictures is all I meant: glossies. Just about every busty actress in town. Nothing crude or obscene—nothing you couldn’t find in a gossip rag or a legit agent’s file drawer. But a lot of them, blown up big and plastered all over the walls. Enough cleavage to secrete a regiment in. Cavalry, even. And on the wall behind his desk, a big oil portrait of Jane Russell—the Madonna—herself. If you stared at it long enough, you’d swear you could see that bosom heave.
Or maybe it’s just me.
And then there were the planes, natch. Models hanging everywhere, resting on every shelf and surface. Beautiful things, finely crafted, dangling from almost invisible wires, lit up by tiny, hidden spots. The HF-11 he’d crashed that caused him all his pain and made him pop those little pills. And, on the desk, a precisely machined H-4 Hercules in solid platinum. Ironic given that the real one was wood, but probably worth more than I’d earn in ten lifetimes.
He liked to stroke it.
A small cough from the darkest corner of the room just then. I hadn’t even noticed her sitting there. Very sloppy of me.
She leaned slightly forward in her chair and one of the invisible spotlights caught her fine, blonde hair.
Like a splay of harp strings. I could even hear the music.
She raised her head and looked at me. Long, hubba-hubba face, with a sharp chin and nose, and thin lips that might just cut your tongue if you were lucky. Lots of angles there.
I love to play the angles, me.
“Do I know you?” I tried. Something about her . . .
“Mr. Burns,” Hughes said, “this is Miss—”
“V,” she rasped. Oh, what a voice. Lauren Bacall with a chest cold. “Call me . . . V.”
“How do you do, Miss V,” I said, starting to get up.
She sat me back down with a flick of her brown eyes.
“No ‘Miss.’ Just V.”
“V,” I repeated. Little Arty cleared his throat too.
“Arthur,” Hughes said. And I knew I was in trouble. Mr. Hughes never called me Arthur unless it was business of the worst sort.
“Yes, sir?”
“We have a problem.”
Obviously. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.
I nodded.
“It requires . . . fixing.”
“Of course, Mr. Hughes. Whatever you need.”
A snort came from the skirt. Hughes ignored it.
“Do you like”—he glanced over at V—“what are they called again?”
She proffered the flimsiest of smiles, which seemed all the prompt Hughes required.
“Monster movies!” he said. “What do you think about monster movies?”
V moved so silently, it was like walking with Theda Bara.
“You seem to know your way around the lot pretty good,” I said.
“It’s my business.”
“I’m still not too clear on exactly what that business is.”
“I work for a man. A private investigator.”
“Really? I don’t . . .”
Then I remembered.
“It’s that big, dumb lummox isn’t it? The one who shot the psychiatrist. It was all over the papers a while back. Your picture too. What’s his name? I know . . .”
“Let’s leave names out of this, shall we?”
“You know who I am.”
“I’m sure I’ll forget that soon enough.”
“That’s not very nice, honey.”
She spun on a stiletto heel, dropped down, and somehow flipped me over hard onto my back before I knew I was down. She was on top of me, her right hand bunched into an odd fist that pressured my chest in a way that made breathing very unpleasant.
“This is business, Mr. Burns, and I take my business very seriously. Are we as one about that?”
She eased the pressure off my chest and I gulped some smog.
“We are one,” I agreed.
“Excellent! And it’s not ‘honey,’ it’s V.”
With a smile that could cut a diamond, she reached down and pulled me up to my feet.
I might just have been in love.
“So why the hell are we going to the Valley? And why the slow road?”
“Shall I pick up the pace, then?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, but dropped a lead foot on the gas and whipped us around the bends of Coldwater Canyon.
Bad enough riding shotgun to a frail, but V drove the big Caddy with one loose hand, the other twirling that fairy-blonde hair.
“Easy, sister . . .”
She shot me a long glance even as another sharp curve was coming.
“V. I mean, V. Jesus, would you keep your eyes front!”
Another tinkle of a laugh, a jerk of
the wheel, and we shot around the bend.
“Don’t you like the scenery?”
“I want pretty pictures, I’ll buy a copy of Life.”
“Oh, an intellectual.”
As we shot gravel off the edge of another hairpin turn, I decided enough was enough. Knockout blonde or otherwise.
“Listen, lady . . .”
“Where do your loyalties lie, Mr. Burns?” she said.
“Hah?”
“Your loyalties. Your allegiances. In what and whom do you put your faith?”
“That’s a funny question to ask in this town.”
“It’s the question being asked everywhere at the moment, isn’t it?” she said.
“I’m no Red, if that’s what you mean.”
“And what do think about these . . . Reds?”
I watched her expression: just that sly trace of a smile. She threw me a glance, raising a pencilled eyebrow.
“I think like Mr. Hughes: they’re a menace to our way of life and they have to be dealt with. They’re monsters. I’ve had to do some things.”
“So I understand. You’re faithful to Mr. Hughes. That is commendable. It also keeps food on your plate and blondes in your bed. But there are loyalties and there are loyalties.”
I narrowed my eyes at her and she seemed to sense it. She turned her full, gorgeous face to me and showed her teeth. I couldn’t work out if she was smiling or hungry.
“What’s your game, lady?”
“Monsters, you said. What a wonderful choice of words.”
She looked back at the road in front of us and I did too. We’d reached the top of the Hills; the Valley sprawled below us.
V eased her foot off the brake, and I sensed it was going to be a fast plunge down.
“Let’s go kill some monsters,” she roared.
The Encino Ranch lot was plumb in the middle of nowhere. I’ve never liked the Valley or anything in it. The north side of the Hills is like a desert to me, with the promised land of Hollywood on the other side. It’s brown and parched and dull and feels as flat and empty as Kansas, even as you’re coming down an actual hill. The land’s cheap, though—or used to be—so the studio bought it up for the big backlot. But it’s always hotter than hell in the Valley and the air itself tastes dry and stale.
And twice now, I’ve caught a dose of the clap in the Valley.
V didn’t have to flash more than a smile at Pete at the studio gate and in we drove.
“You seem to have a way with people,” I said.
“I’m a woman of many talents.”
“Do tell.”
We drove around a set of trailers and a big construction site. Some peculiar façades were going up and I couldn’t work out what pic they might be for. RKO mostly shot oaters out here, though as I recall Capra took it over for that sappy Christmas picture, and Hawks used it for his outer space carrot-creature thing. I always heard tell that Hawks only insisted on shooting up here because of a favorite whorehouse in Tarzana that imported the roughest trim from Mex and the smoothest single malt from the Highlands.
As we came around an equipment warehouse, we were confronted by a huge set in mid-construction. The scale of it was genuinely impressive and a little dizzying. Oddly shaped, futuristic structures rose up from what looked like burnt-out ground in front of us. But there was something off about the geometries of the buildings. The longer I looked at them, the dizzier it made me. Of course they were only fronts—no way could such monstrosities exist as real structures; physics wouldn’t allow it—but the longer I looked at them the more I felt like I wanted to barf. When I was a kid, I used to walk around the house staring down into my mom’s little, round makeup mirror so it felt like I was walking upside down. This set gave me the same feeling, only I was looking at it right side up.
I think.
“What the hell?”
V shook her head ever so slightly and said a word that sounded like a sneeze.
Before I could ask her to repeat it, she zipped into a parking spot on the far side of the set and jumped out of the car. I moved fast, caught up with her, and put a restraining hand on her arm.
She raised one of those thinly pencilled eyebrows.
I abjectly held both hands up as if she’d drawn down on me.
“You want to tell me what this is all about?” I said.
“Let’s go see the man.”
I shook my head, but followed her into the offices.
Once again, V nodded and smiled her way past phalanxes of guards and secretaries without so much as a word or a halt in her gait. Walking with her was like wearing an invisibility cloak.
She finally stopped outside a door marked head of production in shiny, gold block letters. I could see my distorted, puzzled face reflected in the “P.” She knocked this time, but opened the door while a phlegmy “Come in” was still being sputtered.
“Oh,” the man behind the desk said.
“It’s V, actually,” she said. I think she was making a joke.
I recognized the guy as Bill Alland, though we’d never really met. He’d produced a bunch of B pictures at RKO—always making money, though not a lot—but for some reason he was one of Mr. Hughes’s fair-haired boys. Not that there was a lot of it on that balding head. He had the standard producer look: lips a little too flaccid, eyes a little too dead, suit a little too good for the schlepper wearing it.
“Rosebud,” I said.
V tittered.
“Gee, that never gets old,” Alland said.
Alland had started as an actor, an old pal of Orson Welles—in fact he was once Welles’s Boy Friday. His only memorable performance so far as I knew came in Citizen Kane: he played the reporter chasing Kane’s story whose face you never see.
Good casting.
Kane was from before my time—and Mr. Hughes’s—at RKO, but people still talked about it. Supposedly the main character was originally based on Mr. Hughes. I can still remember seeing the movie when it came out. A fucking sled!
“I should have guessed he’d send you,” Alland said to V. He didn’t look happy. He glanced my way, narrowed his eyes, drummed his fingers on the desk.
“Waters?” he tried, pointing at me and squinting.
“Burns,” I corrected. “Call me Arty.”
But he’d already dismissed me.
“What’s with the crazy set out there?” I asked. It made him look my way. I tried on a smile that was last year’s cut. “What are we shooting?”
“We?” Alland snorted.
“Jeez, Louise. What are you shooting.”
“Big new picture. Monsters. Outer space. Lots of screaming dolls in tight spacesuits.”
“What’s it called?”
Alland came to a dramatic stop. He slowly spread his hand across the air in front of him as if engraving the Ten Commandments in stone: “Cthulhu! Creature of Destruction!”
I laughed. “You are shitting me. All of that for a rubber-suit pic? What was that name? Cashew nuts?”
I glanced over at V, expecting her to share my mirth.
She looked very serious.
“Cthulhu,” Alland said. “And I have personally convinced Mr. Hughes of its potential. You can see from that set the budget I have. This is no B picture, no stuntman in a gorilla suit and diving helmet jumping around to scare the kiddies. This is big-time.”
“Cast?” I asked.
“Stewart Granger. Bev Garland. Great comer name of Connie Clare.” He cupped his hands in front of his chest. Clearly a Howard Hughes production.
“Pinch me,” I said. “Directing?”
“Menzies,” Allard said. I nodded my approval.
“Who wrote it?” V asked. She looked hard at the producer.
“What kind of question is that?” Alland said with a sneer. “Who gives a rat’s smelly ass about writers?”
V nodded.
“So what’s your problem?” I said. “If you have the world by the”—I could still see that peculiar set in my mind�
�s eye and had to suppress a shudder—“square balls?”
“What are your politics, Mr. Burns?” Alland asked.
I glanced at V, but she studied the producer.
“I’m a citizen,” I said.
“No . . . subversive leanings?”
“I put ketchup on my burgers and mustard on my hot dogs,” I said. “Like every good American should.”
“And if someone here—a paid employee of Mr. Hughes—was found to . . . squirt the ketchup where it didn’t belong?”
“He might find a different kind of red sauce dripping down his chin.” “And if this he was a she?”
I flicked another glance at V. She was watching me now.
“I do what is needed to secure the best interests of Mr. Hughes and this studio,” I said.
“And the country, of course,” Alland said.
“What’s good for Howard Hughes is good for America,” I declared.
“Good answer,” Alland said.
“Now about this woman . . .”
“Television!” I said.
V was driving again. I saw one of those strange little smiles curl her lip, but she didn’t glance over at my exclamation. She just went faster.
“You are aware that your Mr. Hughes is investing heavily in television. Building a new broadcast studio atop Cahuenga. Do you own a television, Mr. Burns?”
In fact, I had two: kickbacks from an RKO contractor for not ratting him out over a skim he’d been running on the props department. I barely watched either one—maybe the occasional Saturday night at the fights.
“You don’t have to call me Mr. Burns. Arty is fine. And yes, I do own a set.”
“What do you think of the medium?”
“The medium?”
“The thing itself.”
“The picture sucks. I can only get two channels where I live. Three if the wind’s blowing the right way.”
“Yes, yes. But what do you think about television’s potential. As a means for reaching the masses, rendering unto them that which is their fondest desire?”
Recalling the way she flipped me, I hesitated, then said what I wanted to say.
“Guys want cooze and a snooze, dolls want a hug and a ring on their finger. That’s your fondest desires. TV gonna give them that?”
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