by Jerry Ludwig
Nowadays I occasionally overhear the younger agents calling me something even worse: “The Old Guy.”
* * *
While they reset the lights for the next shot, Chad Halloran sidles up to me. He’s the star of The FBI series, playing Inspector Stryker. A good-looking, square-jawed Fearless Fosdick type, he projects dignity and decency. The perfect image for the Bureau. Exactly what J. Edgar wanted. Halloran knows that the Bureau, which means yours truly, had to approve him for the role. So Halloran and I are buddies. Hollywood buddies.
Halloran kneels beside my chair, brow furrowed, asking me how the real case went down. When Detroit was Bank Robbery Central. Back when I was hitting on all cylinders, a genuine G-Man. “What went through your mind, Brian,” he wants to know, “when the robbers came out? Did you ever consider letting the bad guys go, because of the hostages?”
“Let ’em go?” I scoff. “My policy is—no one leaves. We settle it here.”
Halloran nods, his lips moving, sotto voce, savoring the words: “No one leaves—we settle it here.” I know he’s going to work those words into the script and say them when they’re out on the street shooting that scene tomorrow.
“Agent McKenna,” the production assistant interrupts, “phone call.”
It’s Tom Churillo, calling from Washington. He’s one of my long-ago Academy lecturers, who became a good pal. He’s up near the top executive ranks in the Bureau now. After we do the how-the-hell-are-you stuff, Churillo gets to the point. The Bureau is forming a special task force to deal with bank robberies on a national basis. “That’s how the crooks are operating now, hopscotching across state lines. Detroit this week, San Francisco or Dallas next week. We’re almost back to the Dillinger days.” Churillo is looking for the right guy to coordinate activities. “Like heading up a super posse,” he explains. It’s an executive berth with far-reaching powers. Based in D.C. but probably a lot of supervising field work, too. “I thought of you right away.”
It’s as if Santa Claus is coming down the chimney with the gift I thought would never come. This is the sort of spot I’ve been dreaming about. A far cry from hectoring deluded Hollywood writers on their way to the Blacklist. Or vetting jerky TV scripts. Back to utilizing the crime-fighting expertise I built in Detroit, and St. Louis before that.
Then Churillo hits me with a big qualifier. There’s a problem. “I’ve been floating your name and getting a lukewarm response. Good man, everybody says, but isn’t he kinda lightweight?”
“I can handle the job, Tom. You know I can.”
“Yeah, but I have to convince them. There are other guys bucking for the slot. They’re calling you ‘Mr. Hollywood.’ Mac, you have to come up with something flashy to punch up my recommendation. And you have to do it soon.”
So I hang up the phone with mixed feelings of elation at the possibility of being considered for a perfect assignment—combined with anxiety that I may not get it. That would be a heartbreaker. I’ve got to find a way to make this happen.
CHAPTER
5
DAVID
The night before Teddy’s funeral, I work very late on his eulogy. I come up with a barn burner of a speech. Placing Teddy in the pantheon of deeply caring Americans—like actors John Garfield, Canada Lee, Philip Loeb, J. Edward Bromberg, Mady Christians, and of course, my own mother—who have died as a result of the Blacklist. I spell out how the anti-union studio moguls, enraged by those activists who forced them to recognize the Guilds, bided their time through World War II and then exacted ruthless revenge by instituting the Blacklist in the name of patriotism. After I finish writing I’m so wired I have trouble sleeping. Up every hour, no dreams that I can hold onto.
Finally, with daylight seeping through the corners of the drapes in my room, I climb wearily out of bed. Today’s the day I put my father into the ground. Both my parents are gone now. I’ve never felt so isolated. Not really connected to anyone in the world. I’m supposed to be the man now. What in the hell does that really mean?
I put on my black suit and drive down to Schwab’s, just below Sunset, in search of coffee. Schwab’s is a Hollywood institution, a drugstore emporium with a restaurant section that serves as a clubhouse for aspiring showbiz folk. Everyone from Brando to Monroe has hung out in these booths or at the long horseshoe counter.
The place has just opened for the day. I check the newsstand and the front page of the Los Angeles Times headlines that NASA has picked the first seven candidates for space travel, and they’re going to be called astronauts. I buy copies of the Hollywood trade papers and take my usual seat at the far end of the near-empty counter. Mary Hanlon, the blowsy-friendly waitress, who claims to have been serving a banana split to teenage “Sweater Girl” Lana Turner when she was “discovered sitting right here,” automatically brings me black coffee followed by a toasted bagel. After four mornings, I’m a semiregular.
I start scanning the trade papers. A story on page six of Variety catches my attention: “Megger Vardian Wraps South Africa Pre-Shoot.” “Megger” is trade jargon for “director,” dates back to when they used megaphones. Hip-hip-hurrah for Leo, still working. Kicked cancer and riding high. Near the back of the paper, on a page with several obituaries, I see the small ad I ran again today announcing the services for Teddy. Maybe some old industry friends will notice. Maybe someone will come. Maybe Jana reads Variety.
When I close the paper, I notice the back page. It’s a full page ad. Filled with Teddy’s face. A terrific photo I’ve never seen before. Taken maybe a dozen years ago, glasses pushed up atop his head, laughing. Really catches his warmth, brightness, and humor. Under the photo it says:
THEODORE WEAVER
1911–1959
And then, further down, just one word:
IRREPLACEABLE
No signature or logo or clue as to who bought the ad. I stare long and hard at it. I’m never going to see him alive again. It’s a gut-wrenching realization. I’m an orphan. I let my fingertips lightly touch the photo of Teddy.
Then I flip open Film Bulletin. Surprisingly, Teddy’s name jumps out at me from The Rumor Mill, Joe Shannon’s gossip column. The item reads:
“RED REQUIEM: SCUMMUNIST SCRIBE TEDDY WEAVER, WHO WON AN OSCAR (THEY OUGHTA TAKE IT BACK!) AND FLED TO EUROPE (WITH HUAC NIPPING AT HIS HEELS) DIED IN ROME, BUT COMRADE WEAVER GETS HIS LAST WISH. HE’LL BE BURIED IN L.A. TODAY. DON’T FAIL TO MISS IT.…”
Maybe no one will come. Maybe nothing really has changed for the better in the nearly ten years I’ve been away. I leave the rest of my coffee and all of the bagel and start the long drive to Sholom Memorial Park.
* * *
When Jana and I were little kids, while our fathers typed scripts in their office at Panorama Studio, we played games on the studio back lot where all the big outdoor standing sets are located. Cowboy and the Lady was a favorite. Always ending at Boot Hill, just above the Western street. There were fake tombstones for Billy the Kid and Jesse James and the Dalton Brothers. Jana would carefully place wildflowers on the grave of her favorite, Calamity Jane.
This muggy hot morning I’m at a real cemetery deep in the parched hills in the north of the San Fernando Valley. But Sholom is well watered and well tended and emerald green. Lots of wide-branched old oak trees shading grass-covered rows of tombstone and monuments. We’re gathered at an open grave site for Teddy. His casket is beside it, wrapped in an American flag.
It’s an intimate funeral, which is to say not many people have shown up, about eighteen or twenty. On the drive out I stopped at an art supply store and bought a chunk of poster board. Had them glue the page ad from Variety onto it. Got an easel from the cemetery people and propped up the poster right behind the casket—so Teddy’s face is smiling at those who came.
The mortuary had put me in touch with a pleasant young rabbi from a West L.A. synagogue who never heard of Teddy before I met with him yesterday. Now he is reciting Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I’m repeating what the rabbi says, using a
phonetic version as a crib sheet, because I was never bar mitzvahed. Neither our family nor the Vardians were much on practicing Judaism, but today I find the rhythmic incantation strangely soothing.
And it gives me a chance to case the crowd. An honor guard of two crisp, decorated U.S. Army soldiers in Class A uniforms—a staff sergeant and a corporal—stand off to one side at attention. Another thoughtful arrangement by the mortuary. In the folding chairs surrounding the casket I notice Mimi Novick, Teddy’s and Leo’s longtime secretary. There’s Ramon Ortega, who runs the restaurant/bar/hangout across the street from Panorama. Other mourners look unfamiliar at first glance, but then I imagine away the lines and wrinkles inflicted by the last decade and see the faces as they used to be—ebullient and effusive, crowding our living room at a fund-raiser for defense of the Scottsboro Boys or some other hot button cause. Where are all the others? The once-Young Turks, the film-makers and -shakers who were going to revolutionize Hollywood and save the world. Teddy’s old colleagues and compatriots. Banished from their chosen professions as writers, actors, producers, directors, composers, crew people. Probably dead or relocated—or still too scared to gather together publicly at a funeral for one of their own.
Apparently it’s not all groundless fear, because standing on a knoll overlooking our burial site is Agent McKenna with a young FBI photographer who’s snapping pictures of all the attendees with a long-lens camera. As if they’re spying on a Mafia convention in Appalachia. Still keeping tabs on these battered survivors of the Blacklist. If I had a grenade, I would lob it at them.
The one person I’m looking for isn’t here.
Then I see a sporty MG zip up and park on the road above—and Jana gets out of the passenger seat. She’s dressed in a black jersey Chanel suit, white blouse, black pearls. She looks so beautiful, my darling girl. She came to the funeral! Providing me with a graceful opportunity to break the ice. Jana closes the car door and takes off her sunglasses to gaze across at me. Even at this distance, our eyes lock. It’s as if we’re the only two people here.
Then the driver of the MG emerges and I can’t believe it. Jana is with Markie Gunderson, who used to be a running joke between us.
Markie, Jana, and I all attended laid-back woodsie Kenter Canyon grade school in Brentwood until his parents enlisted him in Black-Foxe Military Institute, where I heard he rose through the ranks to become student major. Not surprising. Even back in Kenter school Markie strutted around like he had a field marshal’s baton stuck up his ass.
He didn’t have any use for us in those days. Markie believed that Jana and I were beneath him because his father was a director and our fathers were only writers. Also, we were what was colloquially known as red diaper babies, meaning children of the left. And the stork had dropped Markie into Hollywood’s extreme right wing.
His dad is Rex Gunderson, an award-winning director of old-fashioned, white hat–black hat Westerns and a rabid union hater, who was one of the founding fathers of the Hollywood Blacklist. Proving I guess that being a son-of-a-bitch doesn’t prevent you from being a good director. Maybe it even helps. Hey, I shouldn’t be blaming the sins of the father on the son. That would be behaving like the enemy. But I sure wish Jana had shown up today with someone else. What the hell’s going on? Is she fucking him? I know she’s twenty-four and probably not a virgin, but Markie Gunderson?
I give a small nod of recognition to them. Markie barely acknowledges and looks away, but Jana doesn’t take her eyes off me. Definitely a good sign. Better than Paris.
Markie guides Jana to back row seats next to Harry Rains and his wife, Valerie Nolan. In the years since I left town, Harry has graduated from high-powered lawyer to production chief at Panorama Studio, while Valerie made the difficult transition from fading movie star to TV superstar. And next to Valerie, greeting Jana warmly, is an attractive woman I don’t recognize for a second under the large, ultra-dark Ray-Ban sunglassses. Then I do. It’s Wendy Travers. What the hell is she doing here? She was a family friend, until she elected to retain her career as a top-flight screenwriter by testifying as a “friendly” witness. Making her one of the enemy. I’m surprised to see her here, amid people who suffered while she prospered.
Now my attention shifts back to the rabbi as he launches into some of the biographical details I coached him on yesterday about Teddy and our family. As he speaks, my gaze goes to the tombstone on the adjoining plot. It takes me back to the dark memories of Oaxaca.
* * *
The hacienda my father had rented was bigger than our Tigertail house, with a cook and a housekeeper and a gardener, all for much less money than we’d been paying in Brentwood. Which didn’t mean we could afford it. I used to lie awake late at night with my door ajar and hear my parents downstairs in the kitchen anxiously talking. They had never been big on savings or investments, so I gathered that even in pesos we were up against it. Dad was only able to get jobs under the table. His name couldn’t appear on the screen, of course. He worked day and night, flew back and forth to meet with producers in Mexico City, all for a fraction of what he used to get paid in Hollywood, and sometimes they stiffed him and only gave him a fraction of that fraction. Sometimes nothing. “Damn vultures,” I’d hear him raging to Mom, “they know there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Me? I was despondent. Jana and I had been faithful to our letter-a-day vow—until the night my folks and I saw Leo on TV testifying. The next day I sat down to write Jana, but after at least fifty agonizing attempts I gave up. Just couldn’t find the words. If I couldn’t write to her about what was really happening, I found it impossible to write to her about anything. We always had tried to share our true, clear feelings. So how could I ignore what Leo had done and pretend it hadn’t happened?
I let that day go by without sending a letter, figuring I’ll try again tomorrow. Hoping in the meantime a letter would come from Jana. I couldn’t understand why Uncle Leo had done it. I wanted to know what Jana thought. She’s there, she must know more than we do. But there was no letter from Jana. Soon a week had gone by without our exchanging letters. Then a month. I’d been in daily contact with Jana for all my life and now communication had been broken.
I was in a terrible funk. At the American school in town where I was enrolled, some of the kids were pleasant, but a handful delighted in calling me Communista or Hollyweirdo. My grades plummeted; the only class I did well in was Spanish. Somehow I was sponging up the language; my teacher said I had a real ear. But the compliment didn’t mean much. I was so caught in my own downward spiral that I didn’t notice that my mother was falling apart.
Whenever I looked her way she managed a smile, but I could see it was forced. The familiar glow within her that I’d always known seemed to have gone out. I’d be in the next room and hear her talking and assume it was to me, but when I went closer and asked her, “What?” she’d say, “Oh, nothing, just thinking out loud.” Clearly they were dark thoughts.
Overall she was talking less and less, smoking constantly, less careful about her makeup and her clothes. One day when Dad was away I saw her carrying the wastebasket from her bedroom out to the trash, instead of leaving it for the housekeeper. After mom went back inside, I peeked into the trash can and saw a bunch of empty tequila bottles. Emitting the aroma I realized I often detected around her. I put that together with the really long siestas she took every day, plus the frequent black-and-blue marks on her legs. She explained those by making fun of herself: “I’m such a klutz, banging into this oversize furniture.” But I’d seen The Lost Weekend and knew about alcoholics. I was worried, so although I didn’t want to burden my father, considering his workload, I did mention all this to him.
He listened carefully, thanked me for telling him, said he knew she was under a lot of stress and struggling with the relocation, but knew she’d be okay once she adjusted. But he was concerned, too. “We’ve got to help her all we can, Davey.” I translated that into the instruction he’d given to me at the airport whe
n he left us in L.A.: “Take care of your mother.”
So I made looking after her my responsibility. Stayed close to the hacienda, except for school. Made sure she ate her meals, even if she just picked at the food. Told her about school, about the vividly colorful vegetation in the surrounding area—so different from New York or California—anything to engage her. She’d offer encouragement if I mentioned a problem, but I was never sure she was really listening. Once I told her a joke and completely muffed the punchline, but she laughed anyway as if I was Bob Hope. I felt like she was slipping away from us.
* * *
On a Sunday morning a few weeks later, Teddy went to the airport to discuss changes in a script with the producer he referred to around the house as “The Sleaze Bag.” I woke up and went into the kitchen and drank some juice and asked Adela, the cook, where Mom was. She said the señora went out.
Alarm bells rang for me. Mom spoke hardly any Spanish, and she didn’t really know anyone in town, so where would she go? I hurried outside and looked up and down the residential palm-tree-lined street—only a few kids playing jump rope, so I walked quickly to the wide boulevard at the corner. Still no sign of her. Traffic going in both directions, but the shops were to the left, so I went that way. Looking in the windows of the shops that were open. Getting increasingly anxious. Midway along the block I heard brassy music playing and people singing. Going into a courtyard, I discovered a narrow whitewashed one-story building with front doors open.
From the outside it sounded like a jam session or a Sunday concert. But inside I saw it was a church service in progress. The congregation was about ninety people on folding chairs, not an empty seat in the house—all singing with the band in an upbeat tribute to “El Señor.” For those who didn’t know the words, they were being flashed on the wall in Spanish by a slide projector. I realized that the “Señor” they were celebrating was Jesus.
