by Jerry Ludwig
I’m off-duty for lunch because Leo is eating with his business manager at Ramon’s, the Mexican joint across from the studio. Jana and I were planning to do takeout sandwiches on a deserted spot on a hill overlooking the back lot. Instead, we’re dining in the commissary, out in plain sight. Who cares who sees us?
“So how come you decided to tell him now?”
“It suddenly felt so high school, sneaking around, like I was scared of my own father. I’m a grown woman.”
I nod approvingly. “Right, he can’t ground you.”
“And I told you he’d love the idea.”
“So now we can find an apartment near the studio.” We’ve calculated that between our salaries we can swing it, maybe up off Laurel Canyon.
She frowns. There’s a joker in the deck.
“He wants us to wait a little. Just until the picture’s finished. We go on seeing each other the same way, he’s given us his blessing.”
“Except he gets to play Director with our lives.” It seemed too easy.
“It’s only a few weeks, David, and he was all shook up that I might move out immediately. Really rattled. ‘Right in the middle of everything?’ he kept saying. He suggested an alternative: if you want to move into Stone Canyon with us, he says you kinda grew up in that house—”
I’m about to go into orbit on that one.
“—Of course I told him no, but—David, it’s only a few weeks.”
I see how torn she feels, so I shrug. We poke at our salads and chat about other things we pretend we’re interested in.
I mention that Leo went ape about the item in Shannon’s column.
She says he’ll get over it. “But I was sorta surprised Shannon went after Dad, considering all that Panorama has done for him.”
“Such as?” I ask as we munch our jumbo-shrimp salads.
“The studio paid big money for Shannon’s unpublished book.”
“What’s it about?”
“Some old-time vaudevillian. It’s under wraps, but Harry Rains is talking about getting Metro to loan us Gene Kelly to star.”
We go on to a favorite routine—making fun of the tiny size of my room at the Chateau. “How small is it?” jokes. Subtext, of course, is that’s where we’re going to be spending even more time for a while.
Our first night in the room I actually worried about her childhood claustrophobia: we’d discovered it as kids when we went exploring a cave on Malibu beach while our parents were busy drinking margaritas. We got wedged in the cave, she panicked and screamed. I had to pull her out.
But Jana loved my hotel room. “It’s cozy,” she decided.
As usual, now we avoid talking about the Blacklist, but sometimes it has a sneaky way of creeping into the conversation. Like the night we’re kissing down the hallway of the Chateau and peeling off our clothes as soon as we got in the room and my passport fell out of the back pocket of my trousers.
She picked it up. Like it was an ancient artifact.
“You’re still carrying that around?” she said.
“I’d feel naked without it.” She idly flipped the pages of my passport. “You don’t carry yours anymore?” I asked her. “You feel safe?”
“I do now.” She tossed the passport on the bureau and hugged me. “Wish you did, too.”
That’s when I told her about McKenna’s visit to deliver Teddy’s passport. At the mention of his name she froze. “I remember him, let’s not talk about him.”
Instead we climbed into bed and made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Now I gaze across the commissary table at her. She can’t fool me. She feels bad about the compromise she agreed to with Leo.
“Hey,” I say, “it’s only a few weeks. Like they say in San Quentin, I can do that much time standing on my head.”
She leans across the table and kisses me in relief. What’s unspoken, of course, is that we’ve already lost years.
* * *
When I get back to the set after lunch, one of the wranglers getting the horses ready says, “He’s looking for you.” Leo is inside the prop truck. Tommy Duarte, the prop man, is tying a silver ribbon around a large, fancy Tiffany’s box.
“Here’s the man we need,” Leo greets me. “Got a delivery I want you to make. A special delivery. To Joe Shannon.”
“Better use one of the studio messengers. There’s bumpy history between me and Shannon,” I remind him.
“No problem,” Leo insists, “just hand him the present and come on back.”
Driving crosstown, I can’t understand why Leo is sending a glitzy gift to the columnist who enraged him this morning. Maybe there’s someone in this town Leo is still scared of.
CHAPTER
19
MCKENNA
I’ve been spending the morning gathering more testimonials to the good citizenship and sterling character of Harry Rains. Still no closer to latching onto a case that can rescue me from Tinsel Town. I’ve found out from a pal in D.C. that what I’m really vetting Harry for is an ambassadorial post. Funny, we’re both bucking for big new government gigs—but so far my bet is on Harry.
I push the melancholy thoughts aside. Orders from headquarters. Do the job. I can’t limit my canvassing about Harry Rains to film industry executives, supplicant agents, fellow lawyers, and former clients. Have to see if I can dig up at least a smidgen of dirt. So I’ve come to a place known as The Rumor Mill.
My first time here, but it’s easy to find. Ramona Court is a middle-class residential street, close to the Carthay Circle Theatre. The address I’m looking for is one of the small Spanish-style houses that were stamped out cheaply once the War ended and building materials became available. The owner is Joe Shannon, gossip monger supreme. But that’s not who I’m here to see.
“Two fags get off a bus…” Okie O’Connell greets me in the doorway, baring horse-face teeth in a Halloween grin.
“Heard that one,” I say. I usually find Okie amusing, and I could use a good laugh today.
“How ’bout, a priest, a rabbi, and a sexagenarian get off a bus”—Okie O’Connell interrupts himself with a hee-haw bray—“ahh, never mind, cousin, that’s too dumb.”
He’s tall, early fifties, huge farmer’s hands and nervous how’m-I-doin’ eyes. He used to be known as one of the funniest men in Hollywood. Now he’s known for other things. Okie is working as Joe Shannon’s leg man these days, scouting news items for the column. He leads the way inside the house. “Let me show you around.…”
There’s not that much to see.
The editorial rooms and printing plant of Film Bulletin, which features The Rumor Mill column, are elsewhere in town, but Shannon works out of here. It’s not his home, this is his office space.
A frumpy secretary is answering the ever-ringing phones: “Sorry, Joe’s not here, he’ll have to call you back.” Above the filing cabinets there’s a wall of photos: Joe Shannon matching smiles with top stars and slinky starlets, plus Shannon shaking hands with moguls Darryl Zanuck, L. B. Mayer, Harry Rains, and Walt Disney. Places of honor given to autographed pictures of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Joe McCarthy.
“That’s my desk in the corner,” Okie points, “and Joey’s letting me camp in back. So the column never really goes to bed. Like Vegas, we never close.”
A room in back. A far cry from the snazzy Westwood bachelor pad where I first met Okie. He was a busy, third-tier talent, vaguely known to the public for comedy sidekick cowboy roles in Errol Flynn and Randolph Scott movies. Around Hollywood, Okie was also fondly known for rewriting hit tune lyrics into filthy limericks, which he sang at private celebrity roasts. “Okie knows everybody in town and everybody knows Okie,” he crowed to me back then in his Tulsa twang.
In the old days he had been a treasure trove for me. When he appeared before the Committee, he testified that he was led astray by his worldly friends. He thought of the Communist Party as a social organization helping people find jobs. In 1950, when the tide turn
ed, he switched sides. If testifying as a friendly witness was the only way to keep working, Okie would be the friendliest. He named a record-setting 164 he said he personally knew as Communists.
But his plan backfired. Okie expected the Leftists would despise him. “But the Right wingers had got on to me, that I don’t really have much talent t’begin with,” Okie lamented to me several years ago, with more than a little bitterness. Now he has surfaced again under the Red-battling banner of Joe Shannon.
We settle in the small backyard at a patio table under the sunlit but winter-barren branches of a plum tree. Okie hospitably pours iced tea.
“How’s it going—being a legman?” I ask him.
“More fun than skinnin’ a possum.” He loves to lay on that country-boy shtick. “I roam ’round the studios, visit all the sets, flirt with all the purty gals, get invites to big parties and premieres, ’cuz everybody’s too scared of Joey’s column to tell me to fuck off.” He sips his iced tea. “So what can I do today for the federal government, cousin?”
“Harry Rains. You know anything I should know?”
“Ol’ Harry, now there’s a dude I admire. Charged his clients a fortune in fees for advice that was really good for the studios: Give ’em names and keep the studio’s skirts clean. Now ol’ Harry’s runnin’ a studio hisself, ain’t that a surprise?”
“What else should I know about Harry?”
“Why do you want to know?” The voice now comes from the doorway behind us.
* * *
I turn to see Joe Shannon. Dressed, as usual, like a fashion plate. All courtesy of freebies from Dick Carroll’s haberdashery on Rodeo Drive, quid pro quo for the frequent plugs in Shannon’s column. Shannon advances toward us. It’s turning into a garden party.
“Is my pal Harry in trouble?”
“Not that I know of,” I say easily. “How’ve you been, Joe?”
“Then why are you asking about him?”
“Just busy work. Harry’s up for a citizenship award or something.”
“Sounds like a nice item for the column.”
“A little premature and I don’t know the details.”
“Okay, keep it a secret, I’ll get the lowdown from Harry.”
“They’re real close, y’know,” Okie says.
“I put Harry on the high road to success in Hollywood by introducing him to Frank Tavenner at HUAC. When Valerie had those difficulties. Remember, Mac?”
I definitely do. That one got swept under the rug. But we established a valuable working relationship with Harry. He could talk good sense to his clients.
Okie shoehorns back into the conversation. “Harry’s gonna make a movie outta the book Joey’s workin’ on.”
“That’s not what Agent McKenna is interested in.”
“Sorry, Joey, want some iced tea?” He pours a glass for Shannon and starts to pull out a chair for him.
“You’re not my house boy, Okie, you’re my legman. A journalist now, not a clown. So the questions I’m asking Mac you should’ve been asking. It’s called being a reporter.”
Okie looks scared. “I was just gettin’ to that when you got here.”
Shannon sits down, gives me his full attention.
“Your first time here. Did Okie give you the grand tour?” Shannon gestures at the cottage. “The House of Lies, the Mansion of Mendacity, the Fortress of Fabrication, the Bastion of Bullshit, the place from whence all the news that’s barely fit to print emanates.”
Shannon is quoting his critics, but the self-deprecating name-calling is an inverse boast. His batting average on scoops is a tribute to his far-flung network of sources. His items usually turn out to be true. Insider news laced with waspish wit. “Read it here first,” Shannon is fond of congratulating himself, “before the denials, and long before the confessions and excuses.”
“So what’s your book about?” I say.
“Jimmy Savo. The old knockabout comic dancer. Rise from Nowhereville to fame, then lost a leg to cancer, how he hit bottom, then struggled and overcame disability to dance again on Broadway with an artificial leg.”
“Everybody loves a winner,” I acknowledge.
“That’s exackly what Harry says.”
“Okie—?” Shannon warns. “Mac and I are talking.”
“Yeah, right, I—” Inside the house the phone rings. “That might be for me,” and he makes his escape.
Shannon sips the iced tea, wrinkles his nose, sets down the glass. “Too sweet, I keep telling Okie not to make it so sweet.”
“Hard to get good help these days. But who else could you hire who’d piss off everybody by being your man-about-town?”
The corners of Shannon’s mouth quiver slightly, his equivalent of a paroxysm of laughter. “Yes, there is that.” He lights a cigarillo, then says, “If you want to know about Harry, Okie’s not the one to talk to—I am.”
I wait. The best way to get info from Shannon is to let him offer it.
“We grew up together. In Boyle Heights. Ran around like a pair of wild Indians, snatching apples from fruit stands, graduated to swiping hubcaps and selling them to raise bus fare to get to the beach. And look at us now.”
Self-serving Memory Lane stuff, I think. More how-Harry-became-wonderful.
“Joe—!” Okie reappears, looking agitated.
“We’re still talking,” Shannon snaps.
“I know, I know, but—a package just arrived.”
“Well, sign for it or whatever, and I’ll see to it when we’re done here.”
“That’s the thing, the kid says his orders are to put it in your hands personally. It’s a big gift-wrapped Tiffany’s box.”
“From who?”
“Panorama Studio.”
Shannon glances at me, another twitch of the lips, “This could be fun.” He waves at Okie. “Have him bring it out.”
Okie goes inside.
“Panorama and I are in the middle of a tiff,” Shannon explains. “This must be a peace offering.”
Okie comes out again, followed by a large, ornately beribboned box and the messenger carrying it nods at me. “Agent McKenna,” David Weaver says, “do you work here now?”
“Just visiting.”
Shannon, who has been intent on the gift box, now looks up at the messenger. His face clouds. “What the hell are you doing here?”
CHAPTER
20
DAVID
When I rang the bell, Joe Shannon’s cottage door was opened by a guy with a jack-o’-lantern smile. He didn’t recognize me, but I remembered him from long-ago Sunday afternoon lawn parties. Okie O’Connell. Used to clown with us kids, plucking nickels magically from behind our ears. That was before Teddy began calling him The Bargain Basement Judas. My inner alarm went on high alert.
But I was prepped by Leo. Package from Panorama. Must make personal delivery.
O’Connell checked inside, then led me through the house. Apart from the movie-star photos, it looked like a scruffy mail-order business. Guess I was expecting to see blood and gore on the worn carpet. I was brought out to the backyard—where Shannon and McKenna were at a patio table. Felt like I’d walked into a meeting of the evil coven. O’Connell, Shannon, and McKenna: the snitch, the bitch, and the witch-hunter.
* * *
“What the hell are you doing here?” Shannon shrills.
“Making a delivery,” I say, as instructed. “Compliments of Leo Vardian.”
Shannon stares past me at Okie. If looks could kill. “Why did you let him in?”
Okie is into panic mode. “What’s wrong, Joey? Who’s he?”
McKenna tells him. “Okie, meet David Weaver.”
Behind me, I hear Okie mutter, “Teddy’s boy?”
Shannon’s gaze drills me. “So you’re working for Leo now.” He makes no move toward the Tiffany box.
“There’s a card,” McKenna says, plucking it off.
“Read it,” Shannon says. His sub-zero eyes remain fixed on me.
&nb
sp; McKenna rips the envelope, reads aloud: “Dear Joe, in case you run short, I’m enclosing material for your next column. Love and kisses, Leo.”
He hands it to Shannon, who tosses it on the table. Then Shannon slides off the ribbon, tears the expensive wrapping, pops off the box lid. A plastic covering lifts off with the lid and we all lean forward to see, just as a pungent aroma fills the air. Okie, the ex-farmboy, is first to identify it:
“Omigod, road apples!” he exclaims.
“It’s horse shit,” Shannon yells, “you brought me a box of horse shit!”
I’m as surprised as he is, but a snicker escapes from me. In an instant, he’s gone from cool to boil and I expect steam to hiss out of his ears as he comes nose-to-nose with me.
“You Commie cocksucker, how dare you march in here with that obscenity! This is a place of business, not a pigsty or wherever you live! Think it’s funny, don’t you! Hilarious, right? Well, Leo’s going to pay for this, in blood, and you, too—better fly back to Europe and hide some more, you little son of a bitch, because you’re dead in this town! I’ll see to that—I’ll drive you out just the way I did your Bolshevik bastard father and your Stalin-loving cunt mother—”
That’s when I belt him. The black rage unleashed. Straight right fist into his jawbone and he reels back. Banging against the tree behind him. Shannon sways there, clutching his jaw with one hand, pointing a finger at me with the other.
“McKenna, you saw it, arrest this—this piece of filth!”
“On what charge?”
“That’s your business, goddammit! Assault—assault and battery!”
McKenna doesn’t move. Guess what I did is not a federal offense.
Shannon shrieks at Okie, who’s frozen and staring. “Call the cops before the little gangster tries to run away. Do it now!”
McKenna rises, shoots a hold-on look at Okie, and gets between me and Shannon. “Maybe, Joe, just maybe, you don’t want to do that.”
“Don’t you tell me what to do!”
“He’s just a messenger.” McKenna nods at me. “Your beef is with Leo. And if the cops come they’ll ask him why he hit you. And he’ll have to tell them—including what you called his mother. Just in time for the early editions.”
