The Masked Man: A Memoir And Fantasy Of Hollywood

by Tom Wilson

  "Those are my kids," I said, "They don't have any money, you can take whatever I have. My wife, too. Leave them alone."

  He peered under the table and sneered. "I said get out from under there, kids."

  "Stay right there," I said, "I told you they don't have any money, they're scared, and they'll stay right there."

  "Mommy, you'd better move out of the way," he said, laughing and waving her away from me with his gun.

  "Her name is Caroline, she's my wife, and if you talk to her like that again, I'm going to take that gun and shove it up your ass."

  He walked toward me, giggling in a confused way and lifting the pistol from his side. "Shut up and put your face in the floor!"

  "Ranger!" Caroline said.

  The Ranger stood up behind him, and with a heavy click, pointed his silver .45 caliber Colt into the creep's head.

  "What the--"

  "Hello there, sir!" the Ranger said.

  "I knew it!" Danny said.

  "Listen here," pistol creep said, raising his gun higher.

  "No, sir," the Ranger said, darkening his eyelids, "Don't do it."

  The creep had to process the scene for more than a few seconds, before he coughed out a chuckle. "Whatcha gonna do, cowboy Jim?" he said, "Take me to the Sherriff?"

  The Ranger stood in front of him, never taking his eyes off the creep, slowly moving the barrel of the Colt and aiming it directly at his head. "I'm not doing anything, friend, and neither are you."

  Before the other guy with the shotgun knew what was happening, the Ranger flashed the other Colt out of his left holster and had two targets in sight.

  "You're not going to hurt any of these people, and I'm not going to shoot you," he said.

  The shotgun clack-clacked and the thug behind it was clearly nuts. "Shoot him, man! Shoot him!" he cackled in a voice equal parts gravel and death. He came out from behind the register, stuffing cash into his pocket and pointing the gun across the restaurant straight at the Ranger. "I'll shoot him, bro!" he growled.

  "You can't shoot him!" Ellie's muffled yell rang out , "He's an angel."

  "Shh," I said.

  The Ranger cocked the gun he had pointed at the pistol creep's head. "Hold on, Mister," he said, "just hold the phone." His eyes were stone cold in his mask, drilling the man in front of him as he called across the trembling bodies on the floor to the rifleman. "Here's what we know. We know that you have a weapon no better than trash, taped up and old, and you just hope it works, let alone hitting me from across the room like that.

  Oh, it'll probably shoot, but I'll just bet you it won't hit me. Your friend here has a good pistol, but it's not really aimed at anything right this second. The best he could do would be to hit me in the leg…right before I put a window through his head." Calm returned to his features, and he gently suggested, "Why don't you take your money and be gone?"

  Pistol creep looked over at the shotgun guy, trying to formulate plan B.

  "What are you talking about, man?" he said to the Ranger.

  "It's fine, sir. No problem. Two of you, one of me, we won't shoot each other, no more fighting or angry words. Just take your loot and be on your way."

  Shotgun took another stab, shouting "Put down the gun, cowboy. Final warning."

  The Ranger took a step forward and touched the pistol creep's forehead with the steel barrel of his Colt. "Cover your ears, kids," he said, and they buried their faces in each others arms, "Go ahead, friends," he called out to the patrons, "Let's give these fellows what they need and get them on their way."

  Wallets and purses floated into the air, and pistol grabbed them as he walked back to the cash register, high stepping over turning bodies.

  "Well done, folks," the Ranger said, "We're almost done with them."

  They filled a backpack with wallets and cash, dumped makeup and pens out of purses, pulled credit cards and checkbooks out of compliant hands, and emptied every cent from every pocket.

  The Ranger took a step toward the thieves, and they freaked out for a moment, dropping a few purses to fumble with their guns, re-aiming them at people's heads.

  "Okay, men," the Ranger said, "Does that satisfy you now? Stealing what little money they have from a room full of people who would be the first ones at your doorstep if your family ran into some trouble?"

  "You just stay right there," Shotgun said. He looked at pistol for a second, they turned to run out the door, and the universe exploded.

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  Before their thoughts could send a signal to move, the two guns were flying in the air, shot so many times that they were pieces of bent, useless metal at the far corner of the kitchen within a few loud seconds. The Ranger didn't seem to move much at all, but one moment he was waving a friendly goodbye to them, and the next he was holding his two pistols in front of him, red hot and billowing smoke from both barrels.

  "I was just kidding about keeping the money," he said, "Danny!" he called out.

  "Yeah?" Danny yelled, his jaw on the floor.

  "Watch this!"

  BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM!!!!!

  He flipped the useless guns into the air one more time to fill them full of lead.

  "Help me return the money to these people!"

  Danny and the I helped people to their feet as they got back every cent, making sure the correct purse was placed back in the hand of its waiting owner, and the thugs sat on the floor under the watchful gaze of the Ranger and his guns. When I felt able to speak again, I walked over to him, gesturing to his ready weapons. "You said there were blanks in there," I said.

  "There were," he said, "but sometimes you need bullets."

  "Why didn't you shoot them?" I asked.

  "Why didn't you listen to me and go out the side door?"

  "Come on! They were pointing guns at us!"

  "I use silver bullets. You know that."

  "You didn't shoot them because bullets are expensive?"

  "No, silver bullets are a reminder that life is precious and never to be taken lightly. Money isn't worth a man's life."

  "Well, next time, toss me the gun, will ya?"

  "Oh?" he said, "And what will you do with it?"

  "I'll shoot them in the head!" I yelled

  "No, you won't shoot anybody." the Ranger said.

  The guy who held the shotgun to Gina's head and screamed curses at elderly people as they fell to the floor then stared at me for more than a few seconds.

  "Hey, man," he said in awe, "Are you Butthead?"

  "Yes, I will shoot somebody!" I said.

  "No." the Ranger said, "No, you won't."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he's a human being."

  "He's Biff!" shotgun said to his partner.

  "Which one?"

  Danny tossed a wallet to a man who'd gone back to reading his paper, and walked toward the powerless thug. "Shut up or my Dad will kick your ass, buttwipe."

  "Hey!" I said, "Language?! What is that?

  "That's what you said!"

  "I was trying to make a point!"

  "So am I!"

  "The guy had a gun!"

  "So am I allowed to say it if the guy has a gun?"

  Reeling with the mixture of adrenaline and testosterone, I said "Yes, that's the only time."

  "Sweet," he said, preening toward his sisters, "I got permission."

  "Alright, let's move on," the Ranger said.

  "Come on, let me shoot one of them!" I said.

  "Seriously, man, are you that dude?" he asked me.

  "Seriously, man, if he hands me his gun right now I'm gonna shoot you in the head, so shut up," I replied.

  "Ha! Yeah!" the other one said, "You're right, it is him! Hey, butthead!"

  "I'm telling you, he'll kick your ass," Danny said.

  "STOP! I told you to stop!!"

  "You said I could!"

  "Only if he has a gun! He's been disarmed! Stop!"

  Gina got up slowly, leaning on the cash register and wiping
away tears as she called the police.

  "Hey," the shotgun guy said, "Are you still in contact with Michael J. Fox?"

  "Shut up," I replied.

  "No, I just wanted you to tell him that, you know, lots of people care about him and stuff," he said.

  I stared ahead as the Ranger motioned us toward the door after him.

  "How can we ever repay you, sir?" Gina called out.

  The Ranger smiled at her.

  "We've received payment enough in making new friends," he said, sweeping open the door as a police car pulled into the parking lot, and a few of the angrier patrons beat the creeps heads in with their dinner plates and canes.

  EIGHTEEN

  My friend Harry has a great standup act based on imitating popular movies, where he runs all over the stage and acts out various films while soundtrack music blares over the loudspeakers and people laugh hysterically, recognizing what is most familiar to them - images that have been on a screen on front of their faces so often, but twisted into a live performance of pop cultural insanity. His version of acting out big movies works very well, and Harry makes a good living at it, unlike most other people who act out their favorite scenes in movies over and over, who usually risk a loss of friends and possible eviction from the improvised apartment they set up in the basement of their mother's house.

  One night in Las Vegas, Harry was on a roll. The audience was in hysterics, rocking forward and back in the burgundy chairs of the main showroom at the Dunes Hotel, one of the last dinosaurs of the Bugsy Siegel age of old Vegas. The cigarette-brown stained walls of the backstage area held Harry's props - a few duffel bags filled with plastic swords and toy guns for the Indiana Jones tribute, a few superhero masks, and lots of hats and glasses. The hallmark of Harry's act is Superman, complete with an "S" emblazoned uniform, a big American flag, and a long, red cape. Harry was running back and forth across the stage, acting out a frenetic history of Hollywood, when it became time to put on the cape and become Superman. He whipped the shirt and shorts on, swirled the cape onto his heaving back and jumped in the air, recreating super flight across the front of the showroom and into the crowd. "Lady!" he screamed, "I need somebody to be Lois Lane!" He dragged the unsuspecting woman onstage, as she handed her pricey Margarita to her husband, a Pall Mall dangling from his lips.

  Harry pulled her across the stage toward a bar stool in front of the American Flag. "Lean over the stool!" he whispered to her, and she did, bending stomach first into the stool, with Harry leaning over her from behind, pretending that both of them were flying. Harry waved to the audience, and the woman waved crazily to her husband and family.

  And then Harry, gasping for air, inhaled a few long strands of Lois Lane's black hair, gagged violently, and threw up onto her back in front of a packed house.

  The human mind is one of the miracles of God's great universe, and the shifting of an audience from delight in watching a funny comedian perform a Superman routine with a pretty lady from the audience, to stupefied horror at watching a performer projectile vomit on the young woman's back is a testament to the miracle of how very fast a mind can change.

  The woman was wearing a sweater for winter and didn't feel a thing, leaning out and smiling as part of the show. The horrified screams of the audience drowned out the background music as Harry staggered away from her. She stood up haltingly, not understanding what was going on, as Harry approached her to whisper words that should never have to be spoken to a guest while standing in front of an audience. "Uh…I just threw up on your back."

  Harry also brought another guy onstage once and Krazy-glued the guy's fingers to his own bald head by accident, but I'll leave that for Harry's book.

  When old Las Vegas began to limp and sputter, with old hotels blown up with dynamite and others growing moss in the deserted pool, young comics dove in and took over every dusty old showroom in the place, squinting up at the old tower of the Landmark hotel, hoping for a glimpse of Howard Hughes, who'd been living in the place, staying up at all hours to watch the movie "Ice Station Zebra" and pick poached eggs out of his long beard. The Dunes hotel was in bankruptcy, an historic behemoth waiting for the demolition crew that would blow it to rubble to make room for the new Bellagio Resort, but there were still large, polyester clad audiences who didn't smell the dynamite. When the hotel decided to give the Robert Goulet show a rest and let the Comedy Store in L.A. take over the main showroom, the comics performed there as if the wrecking ball was already swinging. Visions of sugarplums danced in the eyes of comics desperate to make their own mark on Las Vegas, after hearing about Shecky Greene driving his car into the fountain at Caesar's Palace, and the televisions that Elvis shot out with the hand gun he hid in his jeweled belt.

  For comedians, life offers no thrill higher than a joke that goes terribly wrong, delivered by a close friend and ending in his utter humiliation and possible arrest, like Harry's night that ended in lots of club soda soaked cocktail napkins, and a huge dry cleaning bill.

  One night in the same Vegas showroom, Steve Oedekerk used the old cream of mushroom soup gag to shock the room into screaming chaos. Long before Steve went on to write and produce and direct lots of Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy movies, he bought an elaborate Elvis Presley costume, complete with a glittery belt and a moppy black wig with sideburns. He kept the outfit in a closet for years, finally taking it out for the perfect opportunity, a huge stage in Las Vegas in front of hundreds of people fresh from major gambling losses and dressed eerily like the very Elvis costume he was wearing, including the wig. In the middle of a show of five comedians, Steve popped a cassette tape into the sound system, blasted the driving drum beat of "C.C. Ryder," the trademark opening of Elvis Presley's stage show. "Ladies and gentlemen!" the showroom announcer read the intro that Steve scrawled on a napkin, "Please welcome the king of rock and roll! Let's hear it for…Elvis!!"

  The audience gave him a rousing round of applause, their smiling faces surprised at the treat of an impressionist in the show as Steve walked backward as Elvis did, across the wide stage. Wiping his forehead with a red satin scarf, he waved to the happy mob and smiled from behind thick, chrome sunglasses. Then he bent over uncomfortably and, with a mighty heave, emptied his mouthful of creamy brown soup onto the floor.

  Then there was a riot. The screams of shock, gagging, and rage were beyond the human ear's capacity to distinguish emotion within sound. Vodka tonics splattered across narrow, crowded tables, and the gurgles of people choking on buffalo wings was deafening. The effect of his stunt was something like a communal Heimlich maneuver. Mouths emptied as jaws fell slack, and the postcards they'd scribbled by the pool would have to be rewritten. It was loud, prolonged, and the challenge of a lifetime to the next comedian on the show, though it gave that unlucky performer an indelible memory of old Las Vegas - I once followed an Elvis impersonator whose closing bit was to throw up onstage.

  Las Vegas was an exciting combination of its pinky-ringed past with its theme park future, and being a performer there was a tightrope walk between "union boss wiseguy" entertainment, and geriatric medicine. Aged retirees filled the buffet tables through the afternoon, and the back tables of the showroom at night as long as the tickets were free coupons. But the other Las Vegas wasn't dead yet, and the Dunes hotel, wheezing and on its last legs, was the perfect fusion of the three factions in the city fighting over its future. The leaders of these warring factions seemed to be Don Corleone, Don King, and Don Ho, and they didn't mind comics in the main showroom, since comics were crazy troublemakers, but a lot cheaper than appearing tigers, or jumping motorcycles, or dancing girls with pasties and drug problems.

  Telly Savalas was an easy celebrity sighting in Vegas, since he was always sitting at the poker tables at the Dunes, dangling an unlit cigarette under dark glasses that seemed to whisper, "Hey, babe, let Kojak play poker." Apart from watching the guy who played Kojak play poker, big celebrity sightings usually happened at the bigger hotels like Caesar's Palace across the street
, since everybody who's been to Caesar's Palace knows, celebrities end up hanging out in there because once you're in there it's impossible to figure out how to get out of the place. Moving walkways are everywhere to carry you into the casino, but it takes a team of Sherpa villagers to carry you through the unmarked trail out of the casino and into the sunlight.

  Caesar's Palace had it's ridiculous plaster statues and waitresses dressed like Roman slave girls, but on one big weekend at the peak of his infamy, heavyweight champion of the world Mike Tyson came to town, clanking pounds of jewelry around the casino at the Dunes, and attracted lots of attention, so Telly Savalas was left alone to concentrate on his sullen Texas Hold 'Em.

  Mike Tyson was in the casino hanging out with an entourage of warm up suited buddies for so long that it lost its prize fighting menace after a while and just got boring. Fans could run down the strip to the Desert Inn, tell their Uncle that the Heavyweight champion of the world was over at the Dunes, and still be able to come back, look at him jingling bracelets for another half hour, and finally get bored and go play keno. Tyson didn't seem to gamble at all, but just waited around for more guys wearing velour warm up suits to show up. He'd be in a hallway somewhere, or near the elevators, or at the neon lit steps that led to the lounge, surrounded by bodyguard wanna-be's, mumbling to each other and clicking piles of chips in their gold encrusted hands.

  Everybody who's spent any time at all in Las Vegas knows that it's a very dark place, even at noon in the desert with all the lights on. I walked past Tyson to prepare for the night's show, through the lobby curtains and past the dark rows of plush vinyl booths of violet and burgundy, behind the curtains to backstage, where it was cool, and silent, and utterly black. I turned on a worklight that washed over the back of the curtain in pale yellow, reflecting glare off the blonde wood stage, marked black with forty years of crushed last cigarettes as singers and showgirls walked out in front of the crowd. I stood for a moment, filled with the secret wonder that happens in a dark theatre, silent and still. "Nobody knows where I am. It's a secret." Every step I took on the boards creaked into the high ceiling and hanging sandbags, and I spun and jumped in the dark, dancing like Fred Astaire, joyous and alone. I set the microphone stand the way I like it, tuned the guitar for the show and headed out a backstage door reserved for waiters, performers, and crew, ambling through the dim hallway past stacks of crusty room service trays last touched in the sixties, and pushed my way through another set of doors.