by Kevin Olson
Jean determinedly guns the engine and the big truck gains speed. She spots the sedan heading up the hill toward the park.
The Green Lama climbs hand over hand like a kid on monkey bars and reaches the cab. He launches himself over the short windshield and into the passenger seat. He throws a lever and the ladder retracts.
Jean pushes the truck as fast as it can go and flies through a green light at Hollywood Boulevard and up the hill toward the park. Griffith Park and the Hollywood Hills lie immediately ahead.
The sedan races into the park, passes a creek, and reaches a sharp turn. Linn hits the turn too hard and fishtails to a stop in the dirt on the side of the road. Fay is clenching the dashboard with an iron grip. Her knuckles are white as a sheet. Her eyes meet Linn’s and they sit in the car breathing heavily. After a moment, the blare of the siren reaches them and Linn jolts back into action, sending the car hurtling forward. The rear wheel is wobbling badly.
Jean fights the wheel of the fire truck as she makes the turn into the park. She only drives on the sidewalk briefly and no one is injured as they dive out of the way. Jean drives past the creek and slows to make the sharp turn. As the truck ascends the winding grade, the Green Lama sees that Jean is really struggling with the steering wheel of the large truck. The sedan gains ground as wrestling with the wheel wears Jean out. After a particularly slow turn, Jean looks at the Green Lama and says, “Sorry....”
The Green Lama makes a decision. “Let’s switch!” he says, gesturing to Jean.
“Great idea,” she says.
The Lama slides over and puts his foot on the gas. Jean stands up in the open cab of the truck. The wind lashes her red hair around. The Green Lama grabs the wheel and slides into the driver’s seat. The truck hits a bump and Jean bounces into his lap. The Green Lama holds her with one arm and the wheel with the other as they power through a turn.
The road straightens out and Jean pauses a moment longer than necessary before extracting herself from the Green Lama’s lap.
“Jeee… that was fun,” she says. “We should do it again sometime.”
Another turn is coming up. The Green Lama says, “You flatter me, Miss Farrell,” and the truck’s tires scream through the turn.
The wheel of the sedan is really wobbly, throwing the passengers around. Fay Reynolds bangs her head on the window and screams, “What’s wrong with the car?”
Linn keeps his eyes straight ahead and says, “I don’t know! It feels like one of the wheels is gonna come off.” The tires complain around a turn and the sedan rockets into Griffith Observatory’s small parking lot. Linn slams the brakes and turns to avoid a car backing out of a spot. He blares the horn to stop anyone else from doing the same.
Fay reacts like a caged animal; her eyes are wild, frantic. She whirls around looking for a way out. She spots a road behind them and points, “There! There’s another road back there.”
Linn hits the brakes as the siren gets louder. He jams the car in reverse and slams the gas. The car zooms backward for the other gate. When he is clear of other cars, Linn twists the wheel hard, spinning the sedan around. He throws the car into second gear and floors it. The sedan straightens out as it races ahead.
Fay looks at him with a new hunger. “Where’d you learn how to do that?”
Linn grins. “Stuntman buddy. Classic Bootlegger Reverse.”
The sedan speeds down the other road just as the fire truck appears. The sedan veers left, narrowly avoiding an open bus full of tourists headed for the Observatory, and races into a short tunnel.
Jean’s gorgeous green eyes frantically scan the parking lot. She spots the escaping sedan darting into the tunnel. “Over there!” she exclaims.
The Green Lama throws the truck into a hard right turn, the rear skidding wildly, smashing into four parked cars. The Lama downshifts and powers through; metal parts complaining, shredding, and finally giving way to the powerful truck.
The sedan is near the summit of the Hollywood hills, shaking wildly from the loose wheel. Linn soon pulls the car off on a fire road and pulls to a stop behind some scrubby brush.
“What are you doing? We have to get away!” Fay says hysterically.
The fire truck roars through the tunnel, the siren echoing off the tile walls of the tunnel.
Linn cocks his head. The siren is getting louder. “Just wait.”
Fay is about out of her mind. “But they’re almost here!”
“Trust me,” Linn says.
The siren gets louder and louder, finally deploying by the hidden sedan. The sound gets quieter and quieter.
Linn says, “There they go....”
Fay grabs him and pull herself close, kissing him hungrily. They kiss a moment and then Linn extracts himself from her grasp.
“I need to have a look at that wheel,” he says and gets out of the car. Fay follows.
The wheel is hanging on by only one lug nut. The rest are ripped out.
Fay says, “That doesn’t look too good.”
Linn scowls at the wheel. Then he turns his head to look back to the main road. Deep concern crosses his features. “Do you hear that, Fay?”
“No.... You’re scaring me Linney.”
“It’s a truck… GET IN THE CAR, FAY!” he shouts. “Get in the car and go!”
The fire truck screeches around the corner onto the dirt fire road just as Fay Reynolds, the hottest starlet in Hollywood, jumps behind the wheel of the sedan. She looks back at Linn and sees the big red engine bearing down on him with the Green Lama at the wheel. Fay jams the car in gear and dirt showers over Linn. The car shoots forward, leaving a plume of dust that enshrouds the cameraman.
The Green Lama blindly propels the truck forward into the cloud of dust. There is a sickening thud and Jean and the Lama look at each other. Linn’s limp form bounces off the side of the truck into the brush.
The thick dust is choking, and nearly impenetrable. The Green Lama slows down and wraps the kata over his mouth to ward off the dust.
Jean jams one of the levers in front of her. Motors whir. The Lama looks over at her. “What are you doing?” he says.
She flashes a quick smile, then quickly coughs. “Just trying to get a better view!” she says looking back at the ladder that is extending straight up. She jumps up on her seat and climbs onto the back of the truck.
“Well, hang on!” the Green Lama yells, trying to follow the sedan and avoid driving off the cliff.
Jean Farrell grew up on the range and she is used to horses trying to throw her off, so she will have none of that. She gets on the back of the truck and finds her way to the ladder. She grabs it and starts climbing up. After a few feet the dust begins to clear a bit.
Jean can see the sedan just twenty yards ahead fishtailing wildly around a tight right turn, open sky straight ahead.
“Hard right coming up!” she shouts, waits a beat, “NOW!”
The Green Lama steers hard and makes the turn. “Great going, Jean.”
The sedan struggles with Fay behind the wheel. She is not the driver that Linn was. Fear and self-preservation are overtaking her desperation to escape, just as the truck is beginning to overtake the car. She sees the Green Lama gaining and pushes aside her fear and then floors the accelerator.
Jean guides the Lama through another turn and yells, “Gun it! You’ve got a straight shot for a hundred yards.”
“Speaking of straight shots,” the Green Lama shouts, “are you still armed?”
Jean rolls her eyes, thinking herself the fool. “Of course I am! Good idea!” She pulls out her revolver, nearly drops it, and tries to get a bead on the car. Don’t kill her, she thinks to herself and aims for the back wheels of the car. She fires twice in quick succession. The truck is shaking wildly and the shots are not true. The slugs slam into the fender a
nd trunk, doing no harm.
The bullets beating on the metal may have missed, but they do a number on Fay. She panics, mashing down the accelerator. A turn comes up and she is going too fast. The car slides wide, but fortunately it’s an inside turn and the hillside serves as a guardrail. The paint is sandblasted off the passenger side, but Fay manages to keep the gas pedal pressed to the floor.
Jean talks the Green Lama through the turn, but sees Fay is going too fast for the next turn. “She’s going too fast! She won’t make it!” Jean tries to shoot out Fay’s tires, but the range is too great. She misses four times, but still squeezes the trigger hoping for a live round, but the gun just clicks over and over again on empty chambers.
Fay Reynolds realizes too late that she is going too fast and, when she hits the turn, the bum wheel finally twists loose and the sedan spins wildly, careening off the dirt road into open air.
Fay sees flashes of something white as the car spins and spins in mid-air. For a moment, she wonders what it is. Then realization hits her and the starlet smiles as the sedan crashes into wood and steel. The car is torn open like a cracker box and Fay is thrown from the tumbling wreckage and smashes into earth and rock. She hears the car explode but cannot see it.
Fay Reynolds lays on her side, battered and bloody, facing the massive white letters that lured her and thousands of others to the dream factory. The former real estate advertisement now shouts out just the name, “HOLLYWOOD.” The remaining letters of the sign were obliterated in the crash. Fay lies with a peaceful expression on her face looking up at the sign. Her eyes stare at the letters long after life has left her body.
The fire truck stops at the turn and the Green Lama and Jean look down past the twisted guard rail onto the tragic scene. The sedan is in a fiery heap with the giant letters of the word “LAND,” and movie starlet turned killer Fay Reynolds lays bloody and still on the rocky hillside in the shadow of “HOLLYWOOD.”
The Green Lama descends the slope and tries to save her, but she is gone. This reminds him that not everyone can be saved. Standing on the mountainside reminds Jethro Dumont of another mountain—a snow-covered one that started this journey of his—that held the source of his unique powers.
The Green Lama and Jean Farrell watch the tragic scene for a long moment. Jean takes his hand. He wipes her tears with the red kata, and lets her hold his hand.
Linn Edwards runs up the road, sees the smoke, and releases an anguished cry, “FAY! FAYYY!”
He reaches the edge of the road and looks down at the wreckage. He sees Fay’s twisted form. He cries to her and scrambles down the sandy hillside. Somehow he keeps his footing until he reaches her side. He collapses to his knees. He takes her hand and brushes the hair from her face. He gives her one last kiss and then, sobbing, looks at her lifeless shell.
“Oh, Fay. Why, Fay, why?” he cries. He looks up at the Green Lama. “She could have had it all. She should have had it all. But she wanted it too fast, too soon, and I let her push me around. I put up with her romancing that pig,” he spits, “that schweinhund. He never loved her like I love her, he only loves himself.”
Linn holds her hand for a long time.
Epilogue
H erman K. Herman’s office is quiet as a tomb. Herman sits at his desk staring straight ahead. Dr. Pali stands behind him, facing the window where a gorgeous sunset paints the sky with orange, red and purple.
Jean Farrell sits on a corner of the desk facing the two men.
Finally, Herman says, “So, it was Fay Reynolds all along?”
The Green Lama doesn’t turn from the window. He says, “Yes. With Linn Edwards’ help. She was the mastermind and he was her pawn.”
“Why did she do it? How did they do it?” Herman asks.
“She wanted out of her contract,” Jean says, “but it was more than that. She had caught Freddy Dmytryk cheating on her. She wanted to ruin his career in the process.”
“Nasty girl,” Herman says.
Dr. Pali continues, “Linn thought up the Specter idea after seeing a poster for The Kaiser’s Ghost in Dmytryk’s office. With access to all the production’s unexposed film he realized that he could photograph the ghost first and still be sure that the production photography would match.”
Herman’s mind reels. “But why? She could have gotten anything she wanted here. She never asked for a raise, not one.”
Dr. Pali says, “She wanted freedom. Either Linn had convinced her or Fay had convinced herself that she was trapped by her contract and that the only was out was through a single clause in her contract.”
“Emotional distress,” Herman says.
Dr. Pali turns from the window. “Exactly. If she could show that the Triumph Pictures lot itself was the cause of her distress, then she knew you could never hold her to the contract.”
Herman says, “But why risk her own life with the collapse of that Mayan temple? The death of Janet Leary? Surely that was an accident?”
Jean stands next to Dr. Pali and looks out at the sunset. “Punishment,” she says, “Janet Leary was Freddy Dmytryk’s latest conquest.”
The End
Notes:
Xing Yi Quán – an aggressive, Shaolin style that uses rapid movements to simultaneously attack and defend.
Né-tso-hbum – A thousand parrots.
The Green Lama & Me
Puerto Rico. That’s where my experience with the Green Lama began. My wife and I travelled there to celebrate our 25th anniversary. I had a week on the beach at a beautiful resort with a bag of books and magazines to read. I had picked up a bunch of pulp reprints from Adventure House’s holiday sale and brought two of them with me—the single issue of the original Captain Hazzard and the fifth Green Lama novel, The Man Who Wasn’t There. I had also decided to reread the Doc Savage series from the beginning and in the original order, so I brought “The Land of Terror” as well.
Back from vacation, I wrote Ron Fortier regarding his experiences with Captain Hazzard to include with the Hazzard review I was writing for my blog (www.docsavagetales.blogspot.com). Ron gave me lots of info and I hyped his new Captain Hazzard stuff. At the same time, I was finishing up writing a pulp flavored short story. Throwing caution to the wind I asked Ron if he would read it. He did and liked it enough to offer me a spot in this very book.
At that time, the only Green Lama story I had read didn’t even include Jethro Dumont, the main character. So I ordered more Lama reprints. I read those in very short order and set to work.
In my online research, I found old radio show episodes of the Green Lama. One of the episodes was entitled, “The Last Dinosaur.” I thought it was fun and since several of the pulp novels take place in Hollywood, I thought that it might serve me well to keep the locale close to home.
I outlined several story ideas for the Lama and sent the proposal for “The Studio Specter” to Ron. He liked it and I was off writing.
The short story I sent Ron was about 2300 words. Now I had to write 15,000 words. That was a little scary, but having written 6 unproduced feature-length screenplays, I knew I could do it. But 15,000 words is a lot of writing.
In school, I struggled with writing term papers and ended up either not writing them at all, or having a ton of pages of handwritten scrawls. Pages that went here and there, all out of order and incomprehensible to anyone but me. My mother started her career as a secretary and she would type them out for me. I wrote science fiction and the teachers hated it, even the teacher of a class on science fiction.
I have been editing film starting with super-8 in 7th grade. You shoot the stuff you want in any order and then assemble it into a movie. In college my roommate had an Apple II computer. That changed everything. The computer let me do with the same thing with words that I was already doing with film. Cut. Paste. Restructure. Delete. I could write in any order
and make a story out of it.
To create “The Studio Specter,” I started with the basic idea of an actress being terrified by a ghost that no one else could see until the film was developed. I knew the opening scene and the scene with the crew watching the dailies right away.
Researching the Hollywood sign I read about the sign’s caretaker drunk driving off the road into the sign. I now had my ending. Then I just had to work out who was responsible for the Specter and why. Those elements grew organically from the characters. I worked on the scene where Dumont watches the film with the crew. At some point I was inspired to write the scene with the Green Lama and the Tong enforcer in New York. The story grew and I think the last scene I wrote was when Jethro visits Linn Edward’s house.
Once my first draft was complete all the way through I rewrote, added, deleted and polished until I showed the story to Ron Kevin Noel Olson and Adam Garcia. I took their feedback and tweaked until I arrived at the final draft. I hope you enjoyed Jethro Dumont and Jean Farrell’s latest adventure in Hollywood.
This story is dedicated to Anne Miller for paying for all those comic books, science fiction novels, and Doc Savage books when I was a kid. Thanks, Mom.
Author Bio:
