by Jerry Ludwig
Even worse, the credibility of the FBI and HUAC was endangered. If we couldn’t deliver amnesty for cooperative witnesses, we were out of business. Everyone we talked to would just tell us to fuck off and take the Fifth Amendment.
That’s where Sterling Hayden came in.
Not only a movie star, also a war hero. Served with the OSS in Europe, smuggled guns across the Adriatic to Tito’s forces in Yugoslavia. He won the Silver Star. Because of his admiration for Tito he joined the Party when he came back to Hollywood. He was a member for a couple of years until the Cold War heated up. Long enough to earn a subpoena.
Some coordinated arm-twisting by his agent, his lawyer, and his shrink—along with me—helped him find Jesus and the American Way. Hayden testified and recanted his membership and named names and went back to making movies. We had our inspirational example for those who followed him to the stand: give the Committee what they want and you can keep working.
True, as he grew older and more grizzled, the work was mostly in B pictures. What the hell, that wasn’t our fault. We kept our part of the bargain, so why’s he being so pissy now?
* * *
I’m on my way to see Rex Gunderson, that old bastard always knows the inside political scoop. En route to his office, I run into Jana Vardian. No eye contact. Strange on a studio lot where everyone looks you right in the eye, usually with a smile. Never know who can help you up whatever ladder you’re climbing. Guess Jana is an exception to that rule—at least for me.
But I have a ready greeting. “Looking for your boyfriend?”
“What?” Thought she’d get by me with just a vague nod of recognition. We’ve met casually a number of times over the years. Before and after Leo testified.
“David Weaver,” I say, “I just left him on the Western street.”
“Oh, thanks.” She can’t get away from me fast enough. Well, scare ’em when they’re young and you’ve got ’em forever. But I envy the Weaver kid the light that glowed in her eyes when I said his name. Young love.
* * *
I’ve only been in love once. When I was working in Detroit.
Back then, in 1946, Detroit was known as the bank robbery capital of the country. It was my second posting as an agent. Most bank hitters snatch and run, but others tried to shoot it out, grabbing hostages as leverage. I developed a reputation as the first man through the door in all the stickiest situations. Every case was a potential explosion, but I felt indestructible. I was on a permanent adrenaline high. That brings me back to the subject of being in love.
Her name was Ashley Bowman. We met at the office Christmas party at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the lake. I came alone, the nurse I was dating had to work that night. I cruised the party, drinking and gabbing with the guys. Then I caught sight of a woman with shoulder-length honey-blond hair, wearing a black sheath dress, no jewelry except a strand of pearls. Classy. Alone on the terrace. I shouldered my way over in time to light her cigarette. When she turned her face upward to murmur thanks, I was looking at the boss’s wife. I’d seen her once when she visited the office.
The smart move at that point would have been to put distance between us before her husband or anyone else noticed. But I was so stoked with testosterone from yesterday’s bank job that I lingered a moment to flirt.
“What a party!” I smiled. “Like we’re on a Caribbean cruise ship.”
“Bound for the Bahamas,” she played along.
“I prefer the Virgin Islands.” I was that drunk.
“How did I know you were going to say that?”
I felt sheepish, don’t know what I would have said next, but Rudy appeared. Rudy Bowman, Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit office. Rich kid from Harvard Law, a lanky know-it-all desk jockey, who taught criminology at Michigan Law, my alma mater. He snaked a husbandly arm around her waist, “Having a good time, Mac?”
“Agent McKenna was just telling me what his Christmas wish is.”
“What’s that?” he asked me.
“Peace on earth,” I said.
“Then we’d be out of work,” he said. We all laughed and he guided her away. That should have been the end of it, but I learned where she lived. After only a little hesitation, I staked out the house, followed her to the Farmer Jack supermarket, and pushed a cart around until I ran into her.
“Hey, do you come here often?” I hailed her.
“I thought people only said that in pick-up bars.”
“Shows you the kind of company I’ve been keeping. Got time for a cup of coffee?”
She hesitated, then said, “Only if you can stop talking in one-liners.”
That’s probably when I started to fall in love with her. “I’ll try,” I said. And the affair began. The best six months of my life.
Ashley Bowman was everything I wanted in a woman. Gorgeous, smart, funny, incredibly hot in the sack. The high risk was an extra turn-on. The connection between us was astonishing. Both of us came from hardscrabble childhoods and never wanted to go back. She didn’t talk much about Rudy, except to say that he was the big mistake of her life. They’d been married seven years and he had been cheating on her from the get-go.
“Have you ever been unfaithful to him?”
“Never.” I believed her. “Until now.”
Mostly we met at small inns or motels way out in Windsor or Auburn Hills. We were magic together. Adored slow dancing to Sinatra’s romantic ballads, scarfing extra-gooey pizza, jogging by the lake. Hated the Detroit Tigers, rooted for the underdog White Sox. Best of all, we would spend hours locked in each other’s arms, and she began dreaming of a future for us. Ignoring the complications posed by her marriage and her six-year-old son, Kim.
“Do you really think it’s possible?” she would wonder.
“Why not?” I would blue-sky imagine with her. “All it takes is two people who love each other.”
And then our secret was discovered. Not by Rudy Bowman. By J. Edgar Hoover.
* * *
I was ordered back to D.C. for an “orientation seminar.” When I checked in at Bureau Central, I was referred to the Director’s office. Hoover and Clyde Tolson were looking grim. Tolson led off:
“We heard about your intramural sexual escapade, McKenna.”
How did they hear? Well, there were rumors Hoover had spies in all the Bureau stations. I braced myself for the drubbing I deserved. Disgraceful conduct unworthy of a federal agent. Losing the job I loved. Turn in your badge and your gun!
Instead, J. Edgar Hoover giggled.
It was a high-pitched squeak of a sound. “You really put the horns on Rudy Bowman, didn’t you?” Hoover said. Christ, was that a question or an accusation? So I said nothing, but he went on. “Cuckolded that posturing fool. Never did care much for the man. An acceptable administrator, but basically a bean counter, not field officer material. Not like you, Brian.”
I was dazed. They know the worst and I’m going to get away with it.
Hoover went on. “You’ve amassed quite a record in Detroit. Apart from your boudoir activities. So we’ve decided to move you up. To the main arena. We’re sending you to California. You’ll be tracking subversives who have been conspiring to pollute the motion-picture screens and capture the minds of innocent Americans.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but it sounded great. High-profile cases. Glamour duty. A big step upward in the Bureau. With the potential for even more advancement. I thanked them. They both solemnly shook my hand.
I went back to Detroit and asked Ashley to marry me. “We can make the dream real,” I said. First, of course, she’d have to go to Reno and get a divorce, then join me in L.A.
She cried. Not for happy. Out of fear.
“Rudy’s father is rich and very powerful,” she reminded me, “and Rudy’s warned me that if I ever try to leave him he’ll spend whatever it costs to take Kim away from me.”
I said we’d get a terrific lawyer, we’d fight him, we’d—
Nothing I said coul
d get her past that terror.
So I went off to L.A. alone, feeling as if I was leaving my heart behind. The pace of my job out here didn’t leave time for another woman, at least that’s what I told myself. The truth was, I was still crazy in love with Ashley. For a while we talked on the phone regularly. Then it tapered off to a call on my birthday or anniversaries of special occasions, like the summer solstice, when we had snuck away on our first full weekend together. But now she was too scared to allow me to send her flowers or call her. Her phone calls dwindled and finally stopped.
I began to drink after that. Nothing I couldn’t control, and only on my own time. Tanqueray gin martinis, the kind Ashley and I loved. Flaked out in my apartment and getting bombed listening to Sinatra croon I’ll Never Smile Again. Sloppy drunk. Winging into wild schemes to get her back. Maybe there was a way to leverage my clout in the Bureau against the power of Rudy and his father. Then waking into dawn’s futility. Hungover, realizing it was just an aching delusion. After a while, the urge to drink lessened. I became resigned to my loss. But it still hurt whenever I thought of her.
After the HUAC days were over and I was on my “Special Assignment” status, I dated some women who worked in the Federal Building and even a few starlets. Nothing ever amounted to anything. Nothing to compare with the feelings I’d had for Ashley.
CHAPTER
32
DAVID
After McKenna slithers off the Western street, I’m talking to Zacharias as Jana rushes onto the set. She warmly greets Zacharias and he hugs her. I’m glad to see that. He’s known us both since we were kids.
“Hey,” I say, “what’s happening?” She seems bursting with excitement.
“Don’t get mad, but—your screenplay. I slipped it to the studio, not as an official submission, but as a favor, and—they’re interested in it! You have a meeting. Four o’clock today.”
“Great! Who’m I meeting with?”
She takes a deep breath before answering. “Markie Gunderson.”
Oh God. “Not exactly the president of my fan club.”
“He’s a pro, David; this isn’t personal, it’s business.”
I put on a hopeful smile. But Zacharias adds a caution: “In Hollywood, business is always personal.”
* * *
It’s 4:21 and I’m cooling my heels in Markie’s outer office. The wrinkled, henna-rinsed secretary looks old enough to have started taking dictation with a quill. She’s lying into the busy phones on behalf of her boss: “Sorry, he’s in a story conference.” Truth is he’s not here. She has offered me coffee, tea, soft drinks, trade papers, and magazines. I flip through the latest issue of TIME. Charles Van Doren confesses to a Congressional Committee that he won $129,000 on a quiz show because the producers gave him the answers in advance. A fable for our time.
“Ah, here’s Mr. Gunderson now,” the secretary announces.
Markie, sporty in a Panorama jacket windbreaker over a denim shirt, black workpants, and black boots, sweeps past me. “Any calls, Evelyn?” She hands him the message sheet. As he scans it he asks her, “You pick up my dry cleaning?” She says she did, he continues into his inner office, tossing behind him: “Come on in, Davey.”
It’s not a corner office, so Markie still has something to aspire to. The wall decor is movie posters, old hits directed by his father, but also non-Panorama classics like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and The Wizard of Oz. I’m carrying my clipboard, which has a small battery-powered light for taking notes in the darkness of a screening room. A gift from my former mentor, Leo.
Markie gestures me into one of the small chairs facing him. He digs in his script pile. Comes up with the copy of my script that I’d given to Jana. Places it in the center of his desk, pats it. Approvingly?
“Read your piece—I know it’s a first draft, but I’m impressed. Apparently talent does run in the genes. You write very well.”
“Thanks. Glad you like it.”
“It’s Lew Ayres, right?”
“A combination of him and other people. That’s why I didn’t use his name. But, yeah, a movie actor who stars in an anti-war picture and then becomes a conscientious objector during World War II and everybody comes down on him like a ton of bricks like they did on Ayres—”
“That part was marvelous,” Markie jumps in, “how they all thought he was a coward—at the time even my dad did, but then Ayres went on to vindicate himself and save so many lives under fire as a medic. It’s an inspiring story.”
I’m getting stoked. He gets it. He really likes it.
“Of course, it needs some work,” he says.
“I guess everything does,” I say.
He looks to see if I’m being facetious. I’m not. “Tell me what you feel it needs.”
Markie leans back in his swivel chair, gazes at the ceiling. “The movie audience always has certain expectations. That’s why I’m glad you fictionalized it to some extent. It gives us wiggle room. To fulfill the audience’s desires.”
“Which are?” Where is this going?
He holds a pencil in front of him with both hands, as if it’s a field marshal’s baton. “I once heard a very interesting discussion between my dad and Duke Wayne—about a script Duke had rejected at another studio. My dad asked him why, and Duke said, ‘My fans always wait for me to strike a blow.’” Markie looks at me meaningfully. “Your hero never strikes a blow.”
“He’s—a pacifist.”
“Of course he is. So was Gary Cooper in Sergeant York, but that didn’t stop him from making his peace with God and finally killing and capturing half the kraut army. York won the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
“And Cooper got the Academy Award,” I add.
“Precisely!”
“So you’re suggesting that my hero—”
He leans forward, selling. “Suppose he finds his best friend in the platoon, a loveable Brooklyn kid who he’s encouraged to be brave, suppose he finds the kid’s body in the jungle—butchered by the Japs. And when the Japs attack again your guy picks up the dead kid’s machine gun and—”
“But that totally destroys the point of the whole script!” I blurt.
“Davey, you’ve got something with possibilities here. Don’t go artsy-fartsy on it. Battleground was a big hit because our GI’s won the Battle of the Bulge, not lost it.”
This is getting nuts. “I’m not writing about a loser—my guy is a hero. He just doesn’t believe in killing people.”
Markie drops his pencil onto the desk with a clunk.
“Look, my job at Panorama is to help create tomorrow’s box office winners. We like movies where the hero kills people. Warriors prevail. They defend what’s right. You were a Ranger. Decorated in combat. Write what you know.”
“I understand what you’re suggesting, but—I can’t do it.”
He sighs. A big dramatic sigh. “I knew this wouldn’t work. I told Jana.”
“Told her what?”
“You’re not a pro, Davey. Knew you couldn’t accept input. It’s a very arrogant and shortsighted attitude.”
“Hey, sorry I wasted your valuable time.” I want to charge over the desk and shake the smugness out of him.
“No problem,” Markie says. “If Jana wants me to read something, I read it.”
“No matter how big a piece of shit it is.”
He smiles. Glad he got to me. “That’s not what I said. But if that’s what you heard…”
I rise quickly and lean over toward him, he flinches, but I’m just reaching for my script. I grab it and go to the door. As I open it, he calls to the outer office, “Evelyn, get me the coverage on the new Norman Mailer book. Need it immediately.”
She says she’ll rush to the file room and adds: “Your dad wants you to call him.” Evelyn walks out with me. Darting a glance at my angry face.
“I knew your father,” she says as we go down the corridor. “A lovely gentleman with a bizarre sense of humor.” I tell her I agree and ask why she said that.
“He always referred to the executives here as the Tsar’s Cossacks.”
Then I realize I’ve left my clipboard next to the chair in Markie’s office. I excuse myself and double back to get it. As I enter the outer office, I can hear Markie through the half-open inner door. He’s on the phone:
“… under the circumstances, Agent McKenna, I feel it’s my duty to mention that Weaver is a hair-trigger personality, highly trained to kill by the Army, who—”
My impulse is to storm in there and shove the phone up his ass, but that would only prove his point. So I tiptoe out. I can get my clipboard back later.
CHAPTER
33
MCKENNA
I’m on the phone in the gatehouse at the front entrance to the studio. The guard flagged me down as I was about to drive off the lot after a time-wasting visit with Rex Gunderson, who was uncharacteristically mellow. Not a bad word about anyone. He thinks Leo Vardian is a fine director, David Weaver an enterprising young man, and has nothing but kind thoughts about the Panorama honchos. Sad about the passing of Joe Shannon, a fighting anti-Communist: “We shall not see his like again.”
Now I’m wasting more time talking to his son.
I’ve only met Mark a few times. I’m listening to him yammer on the phone like we’re asshole buddies. Inviting me at his dad’s suggestion to a memorial service for Joe Shannon here at the studio tomorrow morning. But that’s not really why he had me flagged down. He’s got a contribution to make.
“I don’t know if you’re aware of the recent altercation between Joe Shannon and David Weaver.”
“I was there.”
“Oh, really? Well … under the circumstances, Agent McKenna, I feel it’s my duty to mention that Weaver is a hair-trigger personality, highly trained to kill by the Army, who—”
