Not having anything better to do, I decided to see if the barn-door philosophy extended to the door of Studio J as well, even though the rest of the artifacts from the relic wall were now locked in Coyle’s safe in the Security office.
It did. The big door to the studio was locked. I jiggled the knob a little, and was just about to walk away, when the door swung open, and tall, hard-eyed Porter Reigels poked a shiny chrome six-shooter in my face.
“Hey,” I protested, “I’m one of the good guys!” I think my voice cracked. I mean, I knew Reigels didn’t swear, but no one had ever said he didn’t shoot.
“Oh, it’s you,” the Texan drawled. “Here kinda early, aren’t you?” He put the gun up. Now that I wasn’t looking straight into it, I could see it was a pretty puny gun, especially for a Texan. Still, I felt a lot more comfortable when he slipped the gun into his pocket.
“You’re here early yourself,” I told him, “unless you’re bedding down in the studio to guard the place.”
“Nah,” he said, grinning and inviting me in. “I just got here—couldn’t sleep, so I left the hotel, let myself into the studio with my key. The dress rehearsal is today; I’ve been going over things in my mind.”
“Why the pistol?” I asked.
“Hmph,” he said. “Listen, Cobb, I don’t know anything about this bowling ball stuff, and I don’t really care a drop of sow sweat. But, it may have reached you, this show is going to be almighty important to my career; it’s going to decide if I’m still going to have a career.
“So when I hear someone catfooting around the hall, and trying the door, I feel obliged to check and see if it’s not this same troublemaker coming around to mess up my show!”
Reigels said “my show” with the same far-seeing gaze that Lorne Greene used to use when he said, “My land.” I mentioned to the director that some of his previous shows, like “Horsin’ Around” had been made off with in the great kinescope heist.
“So?”
“Nothing. Just that you might have mentioned it.”
“Shoot. Don’t I have enough to worry about already? Look, Cobb, I’m about to have a dress rehearsal for a six-hour live program. Not only that, I’ve got to have it done in time for every lady to get dolled up, and every man to put on a monkey suit, and go across to that hotel there, and dance.” He kicked at the floor. “Well,” he went on, “thank heaven for this Sylvanus fellow. He promises me the lighting is all set; says he’ll need only about twenty minutes for adjustments.”
I could understand his relief. Lighting is the most intricate and time-consuming part of pre-production in the TV studio. One of the most important, too—if there’s not enough light, or not the right balance of light from front and back, all of a sudden you’ve got a very expensive radio program.
“I don’t mind your hanging around,” Porter Reigels told me, “but you’ve got to let me keep my mind on the show, you understand?”
I nodded.
Reigels wanted to go upstairs to the control room, but a big metal bin, a square about eight feet on a side, was blocking the door. “Dern carpenters,” Reigels muttered. “They bring it into the studio to hold scrap wood and sawdust and trash, that’s fine, keeps the place clean. But why the Pete do they have to put it right in front of the door to the control room stairs?”
“Guess we’ll have to use the elevator,” I said, and Reigels said, “Suppose so.” You’ll notice neither one of us even thought about pushing the thing out of the way. The way the various unions in the broadcasting industry protect their territory (i.e., viciously), one quickly learns never to do anything that someone else might conceivably be paid for doing.
I tested Reigels’s reaction to the news of Shelby and Green’s getting back together. He said he thought it was wonderful. They were both nice guys, and the news had to help the ratings for “SS&C.” It didn’t necessarily mean anything. He’d had plenty of time since the news broke to pick a reaction and practice it.
It was nearly nine o’clock, so I told Reigels I’d take a rain check on the control room visit. I wanted to be the first one in my office, for once.
It was a vain hope. When I went into the inner office, I found Harris Brophy waiting there, smiling at me. “I came early so I wouldn’t have to be chewed out in front of everybody else,” he said.
I took a reassuring peek at Sixth Avenue through the brown-glass window, then sat at my desk. “Hello, Harris,” I said. “Only a conceited bastard like you would expect to be chewed out for something no one could expect him to be able to control.”
“I was hoping you’d feel that way,” he said, still smiling. There had to be something Harris didn’t find ironic or satiric or amusing, but I’ve never found out what it was.
He handed a manila folder across the desk to me. “Shirley asked me to give you this. She was so busy working on it, she couldn’t spare any time to welcome the prisoner home.” He clicked his tongue.
“Not even a yellow ribbon, huh?”
I leafed through the folder. It was a twenty-one-page report on Shirley’s investigation of Jerry de Loon. I was spared the necessity of reading details of all the inquiries she had made (since yesterday afternoon!) because she had included a neat little précis of the report. The upshot of it was, as far as Shirley could tell, Jerry de Loon had been nearly as innocent as his own unborn child.
I greeted the news with mixed emotions. I was happy Jerry was in the clear, but that left just that one feeble lead, Jim Bevic. “Lots of activity,” I sighed, “but precious little progress.”
Harris laughed. “Hell, Matt, that’s what life is all about.”
“Time to go to work, Harris,” I told him. “Get the file on the nut letters, and run them down. And while you’re at it, find out if anyone has a vested interest in seeing that Shelby and Green don’t get back together again. Call Shorty Stack out on the Coast for help, if you have to.”
“I thought I wasn’t being punished.” He grinned.
“Shut up and get back to work.”
As the door closed behind him, the intercom buzzed, meaning my secretary was on the job. “Good morning, Jazz,” I said.
“Good morning, Mr. Cobb.” That meant someone was in the office. “A Miss Hildegarde Bjoerling would like to see you.”
“Who?”
“Miss Hildegarde Bjoerling. She doesn’t have an appointment. What?” There were some murmurings on the other end, then Jazz came back. “She says you might know her as ‘Hildy.’ ”
“Oh, right.” Now what the hell could she want, I wondered. “Send her in, Jazz.” A pregnant girl introducing herself as “Miss” anybody would account for Jazz’s disapproval too. Despite flashy clothes and flashier cosmetics, Jazz adheres to the principles she learned from her strict Catholic parents.
Hildy walked in, her pregnancy preceding her, and that braid bouncing along behind. I got up to help her sit.
She leaned back, and clasped her hands at the top of her stomach, but not before I got a look at how they were shaking. The poor kid was scared, and the Spanish Inquisition she’d gotten from Jazz hadn’t helped.
“I have to apologize for my secretary,” I said. “She’s under orders to protect me from paternity suits.”
Hildy blushed, then showed me a small smile. “Thanks, Mr. Cobb,” she said.
“I haven’t done anything. How can I help you, Hildy?”
“Well,” she began, then hesitated. She scraped her protruding front teeth over her lower lip, and began again. “Well, I—I don’t know who to turn to with this, and—and I figured you were Jerry’s friend. Right?” She looked at me.
“Yes, I was his friend, Hildy.”
“Then, I think you ought to know that someone has been spreading lies about him. Some woman has been going around, asking sneaky questions about him; did he ever do anything dishonest; did he use drugs, or gamble, or anything like that, and he didn’t, and nobody but a liar can say he did, but I don’t know how to stop it!” She was gripping the ar
ms of hex chair now, and leaning forward in it as far as she was able.
I felt like a louse. Worse than that. Sure, Shirley had been as discreet as she could be, and sure, the Network had to know about Jerry’s honesty, one way or the other, but how could I have explained that to Hildy?
I didn’t try. Instead, I said, “I’ll make it stop, Hildy. I promise. And I’ll get the truth out, too.”
“What will you do to the person who’s responsible?” she wanted to know. “How are you even going to find her?”
“She won’t be hard to find,” I said. “And the person who put her up to it will suffer for it.” He already was suffering.
He suffered even more when Hildy started to cry, tears of gratitude this time. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Cobb, thank you,” she sobbed. “The—the baby isn’t going to have Jerry, b-but it’s going to have Jerry’s name, and I want it to be a good name. I was so afraid...alone...thank you.”
And the big slimy hypocrite behind my desk said, “It was nothing, Hildy, honest. Look, is there anything else I can do? Anything I can get you?”
“Well, snf”—I gave her a tissue to wipe her eyes—”I was thinking...Jerry was...he died before he got paid that week, and...well, I’ve got to pay the rent next week, and...well not exactly, but I kind of am his w-widow, and...Well, do you think they’d give his pay to me?”
The correct answer to that question was “The state of New York does not recognize common-law marriages, so legally you are nothing, and never in a hundred years would the Payroll Department give his pay to you.”
Instead, I told her, “Wait here, I’ll go talk to them.” Hildy’s face lit up. I gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder on the way out.
I went to the men’s room down the hall, and stood around for a few minutes, thinking. It always cracks me up when people who live together put down a marriage license as “just a piece of paper.” Pieces of paper are very important. The Constitution of the United States is a piece of paper. So is a dollar bill, or a death warrant.
Without that marriage license, Hildy was about to be pitched into the street, not that it was much of a step down from the dump she was currently living in, but winter was closing in, and any roof was better than no roof. And Hildy didn’t strike me as the type who’d enjoy bringing up a kid on Welfare.
So the program (in addition to all my other programs) was to secure the rent on the current place, or, find her a better place, and, line her up a job for after the baby came. One was easy, and I had a glimmer of a way to accomplish two. Three, I could worry about later. I went back to the office.
I told Hildy it was all set with Payroll, but it would take a while, so she would take my personal check in the meantime, and pay me back when Jerry’s check finally came through. It took some convincing, but she finally agreed. I might be able to get the money back, I might not. It didn’t matter—I owed her.
I invited Hildy to the commissary for a cup of coffee.
“I really shouldn’t have coffee,” she said, patting her stomach.
“Orange juice, then. The orange juice at the commissary is pretty good, especially if you don’t like it cold.”
The commissary was where I started the second phase of my plan. Millie Heywood, whom I have mentioned before, was the head technician for Network Operations. She was loud, vulgar, and aggressive—on the outside. It was a carry-over from the years (a whole lot of them) when she had been the only female techy not only at the Network, but in the whole broadcasting industry. She had been kind of a one-woman Liberation movement back in the forties, and she’d made it stick.
I happened to know, however, that she had a heart like a marsh-mallow, soft and sweet. I’d figured correctly that it was about time for Millie’s coffee break. Hildy and I joined her at her table.
“Go away, Cobb, goddammit,” Millie said, “let a person relax once, can’t you?”
“Thank you, Millie,” I smiled, “it is a lovely morning.” That was the only way to handle her. I introduced Hildy. Millie, when she heard that Hildy had been Jerry’s girl, apologized for being rude, a first.
Millie asked me what I wanted. To Hildy, she added, “This bas—guy, always wants something from me.”
I pleaded innocent, said all I wanted was to bask in the presence of a Network pioneer. Before she could say anything, I asked her how the technical end of “Sight, Sound, & Celebration” was coming along.
She shrugged. “Not so bad, yet. Still, there’s twelve cameras involved here, and we got to make sure the colors match on every damn one of them. Usually, we only use that many cameras for the goddam Super Bowl, and outdoors, we got the sun for lighting, so it’s not so bad.”
Hildy crinkled her eyebrows, and asked Millie to explain what she was talking about, and Millie was flattered. She really went into it, doing diagrams and equations in orange juice on the table top.
I wished everything I planned turned out as well as that did. After a couple of minutes, Millie looked at Hildy and said, “You like cats?”
Millie had adopted, and nursed back to health, about a hundred cats.
Hildy said she loved cats. Millie smiled, and went on talking about color temperatures, and light diffusion, but after another two minutes, she said she could use some help taking care of the cats she currently had, and invited Hildy to move in with her, at least till the baby came.
Then Millie snapped at me. “What the hell are you grinning at, Cobb? Don’t you have something to do?”
“It just so happens I do,” I said. My elation died at the age of two and a half seconds. “I have a lot to do.” I left Hildy with Millie, and went back upstairs.
CHAPTER 15
“Will it he a hit [bong!] or a miss [clunk!]?”
—PETER POTTER, “JUKEBOX JURY,” ABC
IT WOUND UP WITH Harris, Shirley, Stan Kolaski, and I going over the nut letters. A nut letter is different from a hate letter. A hate letter is dissatisfied (“Why do you perverts always show Negroes kissing white women?”) while a nut letter promises to do something drastic about it (“...or I’ll come there with my shotgun and kill you all!!”). You might not be surprised at how many of these we get, but you would be astounded at how many are actually signed, and have return addresses. We follow up any hate or nut letter that has 40 percent or more of the words spelled right. It’s the smart ones who are dangerous.
We were looking for a letter from someone with a peeve against Melanie Marliss, bowling, bowling balls, old kinescopes, the Network in general (very few of those—most people who write these things are mad at individual shows), or the Network’s fiftieth anniversary festivities in particular.
It killed the morning, and was good for a few laughs, but it didn’t accomplish much. There were a few possible-but-unlikely missives. Harris, Shirley, and Stan took one apiece, and followed them up. I would hold down the Tower.
By now, it was lunch time. I decided to splurge, so I went to the Brant and ate there. On the way back, I checked in the Crystal Room to see how preparations for the banquet were going, and I ran into Llona. She had the situation well in hand, so I gave her a quick hello and good-bye and left.
Then I cashed that rain check to visit Porter Reigels in the control room. I got off the elevator on the eighth floor.
Theoretically, the director of a show has absolute power in his control room, the same way a captain has absolute power over his ship at sea. In reality, though, the director is responsible for a lot of ego-stroking—sometimes he has to be not only the director, but a performer for the sponsors or politicians or other big shots who join him in the control room.
The setup or studio J accentuated the idea of the control room as a show in itself. Behind the people at the console (director, assistant director, technical director, projectionist, and audio man) there were three rows of plush theater seats.
There were no guests, at the moment. I supposed the VIP’s were waiting until the actual show Sunday night, or maybe practicing their speeches for tonight
’s banquet.
This was a dress rehearsal for a six-hour show, but it would take less than four hours to do. Reigels had chosen not to rehearse any of the chitchat with the hundreds of celebrities who’d be milling around that set. That was a calculated risk, based on his confidence in the Anchorman’s unparalleled skill as an interviewer. Sure, an ad libbed conversation is fresher than a canned one, but only if the interviewee has something to say and sufficient talent to make sentences out of it. Some very famous people couldn’t ad lib a request for directions to the bathroom.
I let the door close quietly behind me, and took a seat in the back row. Judging by the time, Reigels should be in the home stretch of rehearsing the sketches and production numbers, and a glance at the fourteen black and white monitors (one for each camera, one for slides and graphics, and one for the video tape machines) and two color ones (special effects preview and the one that showed what was going over the air) bore that out. Sparkle and Brad, our Network’s early seventies answer to Sonny and Cher, were finishing up the rehearsal of a medley of their hits.
“Thank you, darlin’s,” Porter Reigels said when they had finished. There was no window from the control room into the studio. Most studios are set up that way. There’s no need for a window. The only reality the people in the control room need concern themselves with is what shows up on the monitors. In TV, what you see is all that exists. Think about it. How do you know Walter Cronkite ever wore pants? For all you know, he was naked behind that desk. The point is, it doesn’t make any difference.
I didn’t need a window, though, to visualize what Sparkle and Brad and everyone else on the floor of Studio J were doing as Porter Reigels spoke over the public address system. They were standing still, with their heads tilted back at forty-five-degree angles, listening to the disembodied voice in the same attitude Moses probably assumed while he was listening to God.
Killed in the Act Page 13
