by Gary K. Wolf
About three hours later, just as my glove box ran dry and I was debating whether to tap the radiator for a refill, Doris showed up.
She was with a guy, a three-piece blue suit, pressed shirt, clean necktie, neat haircut, shiny shoes, solid citizen type. Maybe I was reading too much into appearances, but he looked like the dull, stodgy variety who would give her a steady paycheck, a house in the suburbs and three lovable kids, and would never stagger home late at night reeking of booze or riddled with buckshot.
They shared a laugh as he tripped over a rosebush walking her to the door. They laughed again as she rummaged through her purse for her keys. They quit laughing a few seconds or two before he smooched her goodnight.
They weren’t laughing, either, as she invited him in.
I stuck around for a few more hours until I began to see it as a lost cause.
I wished Doris pleasant dreams and a happy life. God knows, after the one she’d been through with me, she deserved it.
I let the air out of Mr. Right’s tires and drove up to Mulholland to catch some Z’s.
6
I parked next to a Roman chariot and said, “Morning.” No answer. “Any chance of cadging a lift over to Davey Selznick’s office?” Silence. I stroked its fender. Sometimes that loosens their tongues.
A gorgeous young actress walked by reading a thick script. She glanced at me and snickered, I couldn’t guess why. A hasty quality check showed my socks matched, my hat faced more or less forward, my jacket was on right side out, the old barn door was closed and shuttered. She left me standing with my arm around a mute Toon as she walked off alone into a painted sunset.
A prop handler drove up in a studio quarter ton. I asked him directions to Selznick’s office, and he all but drew me a map. He then picked up the chariot and threw it into the back of his truck. The chariot wasn’t a Toon, it was a plywood dummy. I hated to think what that made me.
As I hoofed it across the Metro complex, I detoured down memory lane, Soundstage 16, the big outdoor back lot where Teddy and I worked as stuntmen in the Westerns the studio once cranked out at the rate of two a week. Teddy fell off moving horses; I tumbled over cliffs. Nobody did either better. Or more often. I once calculated that between us we’d fallen on our beans five hundred and eighty-six times. To be fair, I credited Teddy with two for one because at a full gallop he always bounced twice. I hit harder but stayed put.
We left the movie stunt business because we couldn’t compete, not with Toons willing to fall farther, faster, and land with a bigger squish.
Now I’m a private eye instead of a stuntman, but not much else has changed. I still take regular headers, the other guy always gets the girl, and I can rarely follow the plot. Though there are two differences. The bullets are real, and I write my own lines.
On Soundstage 16, the West had flown south for the winter to make room for Gone With the Wind. Crumbling brick Atlanta mansions replaced the plain pine boxes of Dodge City. The pies were pecan instead of cow. Evenly spaced whitewashed pickets had converted the OK Corral into a garden fence. The Longbranch Saloon had been renamed the Atlanta Hotel. It advertised hot water baths and afternoon tea. There wasn’t a gun being slung. The men walking the streets were as fancy as the ladies.
I watched a row of cactus plants and tumbleweeds audition for bit parts as magnolia trees. Those that couldn’t prune their talents trundled back to nursery school.
Horatio Horsecollar rode past costumed as a Yankee captain. He sat four hands tall in the saddle. Underneath him, Ward Bond gave a pretty good supporting performance in the role of Horatio’s horse.
I spotted the beautiful young extra who had caught me chinning with the scenery. She was costumed as a Southern belle and surrounded by a cotillion of likewises. She saw me and spread her hoop skirt so it obscured the camera truck behind her. “Hide your flivvers, ladies,” she said with a lightly Limey accent. “We’ve a man in our midst with a yen for inanimate objects.”
I smooched the nearest camera dolly—who says I can’t take a joke?—and beat a hasty retreat.
The full-relief doohickey on Selznick’s polished mahogany door reproduced the wooden crest projected onscreen at the opening of his movies, except this one was cast out of solid gold. Shielding my eyes from the glare of wanton greed, I yanked at a few protruding heraldic escutcheons, but the unchivalrous rascals refused to break loose. I cursed the vainglory that drives a man to forge a coat of arms solid enough to survive the next ice age.
The sofas and chairs in Selznick’s outer office came from one of those German architectural colonies where form follows function—if you happen to be shaped like the steel tack hammer that built your davenport. His artwork resembled something Krazy the Kat dragged in. The wall-mounted lighting was as subtly indirect as a teenager angling for a goodnight kiss.
His carpet undulated slightly as I closed the door. I watched my step. An entire tribe of pygmies could be hiding in the nap. I rolled out my Lawn Boy and mowed a path to his secretary’s desk.
She was straight out of Central Casting, a perfect cross between Rita Hayworth and a busted watch—gorgeous as Gilda, but she wouldn’t give me the time of day.
She flipped on her intercom with a fingernail slightly shorter than a strawberry Popsicle but just as red, whispered into the speaker, and seemed surprised at the words it whispered back.
She returned my slightly tarnished badge, pinching it between thumb and forefinger the same way the safety manuals instruct you to hold a bubonic rat, and told me to enter Selznick’s inner sanctum. I promised to stop back on my way out and collect the quarter she owed me for cutting her rug. She flipped me two bits and told me not to bother.
Enclosed spaces the size of Selznick’s office usually belonged to breweries who used them to age barrels of beer. His housed a Civil Warrior’s garage sale, a wall-to-wall assortment of swords, boots, scabbards, sashes, epaulets, tunics, and striped trousers.
A small arsenal of incredible shootware caught my eye. I’m a gun fancier, and I’d never seen guns fancier. Rifles, muskets, carbines interlocked into bivouac tripods. Pistols nestled side by side in wooden crates bearing faint traces of Army serial number gobbledygook that hadn’t changed much since Hannibal’s quartermaster stenciled it on the side of his pachyderms.
I picked up a matched pair of gorgeous, like-new Colt .44 Dragoons with polished bone grips and hardened brass cylinders. Each weighed as much as a steam locomotive and was almost as long, but they balanced in my grip like a teeter-totter with identical twins straddling either end. I’d never seen one of these babies in action, but I knew them by reputation. They packed the smack to blow a hole clear through Saint Louis. These smelled faintly of Cosmoline and carried a full load of ammunition. I put them back before they became too attached to my hand.
Selznick might know everything and its uncle about movie making, but in dealing with the general public, he could learn a lesson from Montgomery Wards. For starters, his office needed overhead signs—or better yet, aisles. From where I stood, I couldn’t see anything beyond Men’s Period Outer Garments.
I navigated my way to Selznick’s desk in less time than it took Stewart Granger to find King Solomon’s Mines, though granted I didn’t have Deborah Kerr along to slow me down.
I had heard Selznick was a perfectionist, that he insisted on strict historical accuracy. I heard he personally inspected and approved every prop and every costume used in his movies. That’s what I hope I found him doing.
Selznick stood facing a full-length mirror. He was holding a floor-length calico print dress to his chest. He flicked its narrow, standup collar. He fluffed its puffy shoulders. He extended his arm and checked the inseam for puckers. He kicked out an ankle to see how the skirt draped his leg. He slid his hand down the long row of buttons securing the bodice. He stopped halfway, lifted one of the buttons between his fingers, and ripped it loose. He pencil
ed a note on a clipboard attached to the mirror’s frame. When he caught me peeking, he returned his frock to a rack containing twenty-six others identical to it except that each was slightly more, or less, tattered, soiled, faded, or scorched than the one beside it.
“Mr. Valiant,” he said. “How do you do? I’m David Selznick Junior.” If the Producers’ Union ever got a load of this guy, he’d be banned from the fraternity for life. Movie producers were required by law to wear shapeless, heavily pleated, hound’s-tooth checked, wool gabardine slacks; a glove-leather belt with first, last, and middle initials curlicued in that order onto the gold buckle; a blousey rayon shirt with cuff links the size of Rolls Royce headlights; a silk ascot tacked into place with a stickpin too flashy for Diamond Jim Brady; two-toned saddle shoes; and an oversized sport coat with a pattern as far removed from the trousers as you could get and still be on this planet. A beret was required headgear outdoors, optional, though highly recommended, in.
Selznick didn’t only break the mold, he pulverized it to sand. A tall, stocky man, he wore a conservative blue suit perfectly tailored to accentuate his positive; a simple white shirt; plain black tasseled loafers; a slightly tattered, grandfatherly, blue cardigan sweater I wouldn’t wear to a dogfight; and a zigzag-patterned tie that I would. His wristwatch came from the five-and-dime and ticked louder than a tower clock. He wore no other jewelry except for a broad gold wedding band. He combed his thick dark hair straight back and parted it in the middle. He had a baby’s beard, or maybe he shaved every hour. The brass fan twirling behind him blew me a faint whiff of lilac cologne. His eyeglasses were the same plain hard steel as his handshake. “My God, man,” he said, wide-eyed, “are you feeling all right? You look like you slept in your car and dressed on the street.”
“A minor case of all-night surveillance. I’ll recover.”
“Can I offer you a drink?” He pointed to six Oriental metal tea chests each as large as a clothes hamper. “A cup of hot herbal tea, perhaps? I have an extensive selection.”
He must pal around with a lot of biddies. One man alone could brew nonstop for the rest of his life and never finish that much orange Pekoe. I noticed he had a large earthen jug encased in a cocoon of woven wicker. “A nip of that’ll do me fine.”
Selznick followed my gaze. “I doubt it. The bottle’s suitably aged, but the liquor’s colored water.”
“I thought you always went in for absolute accuracy.”
“One hundred percent, but never ninety proof.” He saluted me with a plain white crockery mug full of steaming hot tea. “I’m not a Puritan. If whiskey’s your preference, I maintain a fully stocked bar.” He pointed to a spot somewhere over the rainbow. “Against the far wall. Feel free to help yourself.”
I figured under the best of conditions an hour to get there, the same to get back. “Thanks anyways,” I told him. I had my choice of places to light, a lady’s sidesaddle slung across a sawhorse, or a fancy parlor chair with the spindly legs of a malnourished spider. I pulled up the chair, spun it around, and mounted it from behind. It groaned, but not half as loudly as I would have if I had side saddled the sawhorse. “I understand you’ve got a problem.”
“Indeed I do, Mr. Valiant. A very serious one.” He turned his back to me and gazed out his picture window. It gave him a clear line of sight to the Washington Monument. Painted plywood and ten feet high, it still beat the air shaft and brick wall my office landlord peddled as a room with a view. “I’m in the midst of the biggest production of my career. I have a million details begging for my attention. Major decisions to make. Yet I can’t proceed, I can’t accomplish another thing, until you solve a mystery for me.”
I’m a man of few words. So far he hadn’t said any of them. “Skip the soliloquy. Here’s my terms. You tell me what, where, and when. I tell you who, why, and how much.”
Selznick took a seat in his desk chair, a high-backed, gold-leafed monstrosity with faded upholstery, rosebuds twined across the headrest, rickety racked legs, and unpadded arms. It was undoubtedly genuine Louis the Roman Numeral. A dowager would probably mortgage her tiara for it but I’d cart it straight to the dump. He slid an eight-by-ten glossy into his desk drawer, casually, so I’d think it wasn’t important—which meant that it was. “I admire directness,” he said. The edges of his mouth inched closer to his cheeks. It wasn’t quite a smile but seemed the best he could manage under the circumstances. “I see so little of it in my industry.” His basso profundo rumble duplicated the throaty shush of the Pacific Ocean vacuuming Malibu Beach. “Let’s begin at the end. How much. I’ll pay you four times your current going rate. One hundred dollars a day plus expenses. I trust that sum will be sufficient.”
I shrugged. “Depends. I’d strangle your grandmother for it. Ask me to strangle mine, it’s going to cost you more. Tell me the job, and I’ll decide which granny gets the throttle.”
This time I got a real smile, a big one the size of a hangnail moon. “Nothing half so grisly as grandmatricide. I’m paying you a premium because I require and expect the absolute essence of tact and discretion.”
My turn to grin. “In that case, hire Jeeves, the gentleman’s gentleman. You want a zipped lip, you’re barking up the wrong guy.”
“I don’t think so.” He took the top off a clear crystal humidor and offered me a sniff of a pretty good argument for declaring Virginia broadleaf a national treasure. “I admired your handling of the Roger Rabbit frame-up a while back. A lesser man would have trumpeted his success with a blatant round of self-promotion. “
Little did he know. Men don’t come any lesser than me. Citing the city ordinance against bad taste, every newspaper in L.A. declined to print my ad. “I’m a saint.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Selznick stuffed an iota of his prime burly into a corncob pipe you could buy from any street corner news vendor at three for a buck. A hasty mental calculation told me a pinch of his tobacco cost a hundred times as much as the furnace that sent it to blazes. “I checked you out with the police. A Captain Cleaver.”
Oh oh. We got trouble in River City. “He gave me a glowing endorsement?”
Selznick lit his cooker and took a long, slow drag. He exhaled the sludge straight in my face. “He described you as a human weevil, a parasite who lives by chewing holes in the fabric of society. “
Clever Cleaver, consistently voted L.A.P.D.’s Poet Lariat for the way he tied me into knots. “Guilty as charged, Your Honor. Yet you dialed my number, anyway.”
He tapped a yellow Ticonderoga against his desk blotter hard enough to break the lead. “For my task, I require a man of, shall we say, dubious credentials.” He set his pipe into a polished marble ashtray while he repointed his pencil with a red plastic sharpener.
“Shall we say what exactly you want me to do?”
He put a polish on his pencil point by rubbing it across the stilettoed edge of a letter opener that could gut an envelope or the postman who delivered it. “As you may know, I’m producing Gone With the Wind.”
A Confederate campaign hat hung on my chair back’s center spindle. I lifted it off and twirled it on my finger. Whoop-de-do. “I couldn’t have guessed.”
“I plan to make it a classic, a musical comedy which will live in the memory forever. Songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Choreography by Busby Berkeley. Comedic routines by Buster Keaton.”
He sucked the life back into his tobacco kiln, sending up a cloud of smoke larger than the one that announced the election of a pope. “To be done right, the project requires great quantities of money.” Bitsy whiffets of smoky aroma leaked out of his stem, about an inch from the end, where he’d chewed it through with his teeth. “Unfortunately, I’ve reached a temporary impasse with my backers. They refuse to provide any more financing until I cast the main role.
“They don’t understand that this is not a decision to be made arbitrarily, or in haste. The lead will make or break th
is movie.” His smoke drifted to the ceiling, where his revolving fan tortured it for a while before cutting it to ribbons.
“Initially, I wanted an unknown to play the part. I felt it would infuse the project with appeal to the common man. I conducted talent searches in hamlets across the country.” He showed me a stack of audition ads he’d run in near ‘bout every hick weekly between here and Podunk Junction. “I wasted months. My efforts proved fruitless. My mythical newcomer doesn’t exist.
“My lead will be an established star.” He reached into his desk drawer and removed a trio of manila folders. I craned over and caught a glimpse of the photo he seemed so anxious to hide. A cheesecake shot, of the Brit I’d met on the soundstage. Her legs matched her vowels, long and well rounded. “I’ve narrowed the field to these.” He fanned the folders in front of me. “Any one of them would satisfy my backers and get me the money I need to continue. Of greater importance, any one of them would imbue the film with the energy, the wit, and the extraordinary talent it needs to succeed on a monumental scale. This is the role of a lifetime, and it’s mine to bestow. The star I select achieves filmic immortality. Tell me, Mr. Valiant, how do I choose?”
I binked one at random with my pinkie. “One potato, two potato always works for me.”
He raised up the folder I’d settled on. “Under normal circumstances, for me, too. But not this time.” He laid the folders flat on his desk and shuffled them around each other like a street corner slick angling for a game of three-card monte. “One of these stars is undeserving.” He spaced the folders across his desk. “One of these stars is a thief.”
A floor-to-ceiling bookcase on Selznick’s near side wall hinged outward with a loud, lingering creak. It revealed a doorway filled, side to side, top to bottom, front to back, by a man with moose antler shoulders, a wastrel’s belly, and a butte of a butt. He filled his clothes the way helium fills a blimp. An American Legion troop with a broken howitzer could parade him around instead. He had the clotted, pugnacious face of an immigrant thug. His malicious black eyes strained daylight through a narrow slit between a beetled brow and cheeks wrinklier than a tin washboard. “Bad news, Davey,” he growled, and I mean growled like a junkyard Rottweiler. It might have been my imagination, but I swear he slobbered, too.
