by John Ridley
Through the phone, Tammi: “It's easier that way, Jackie. The truth is always easier.”
The truth. I wanted to tell Tammi the truth. Right then, on the phone, I wanted to say: I've been with another woman. A very beautiful and charming woman. I have been with her, I have sexed her, I have cared for her, but what I feel for her is not what I feel for you. Do you understand that, Tammi? What I feel for her could never be what I feel for you.
And she would say: Yes, she understood. Or she might hang up the phone, only to call me in a year, or maybe just a day, or a decade. But she would call me and we would start the long, slow labor of building our relationship over. Or she might slam down the phone and never speak to me again. However it went, the lies would end. I would kill the sin I'd been building.
But the truth would only clean my conscience, I told myself. The lies were what kept Tammi from feeling any pain.
I looked at the clock. I needed to get ready for my show at Maxie's.
Tammi and I said our good-byes.
EARLY. The phone rang and I fumbled it up.
“Jackie Mann?”
“Yes.”
“This is Harry Cohn's office,” the woman on the other end said. “Mr. Cohn would like to set a meeting with you.”
“With … ?” Jesus. Fuzzy-headed from sleep, from shock, I tried to pull down a mental calendar. “I could meet tomorrow fo—”
“Today. If possible, he would like to meet with you today.” The woman talked quick, like she was on a deadline.
“Sure. Today would be—”
“Six o'clock. We'll send a car. You're staying at the Sunset Colonial, correct?”
“Yes.”
“It will pick you up at five-thirty. We'll see you this evening.”
She hung up.
I clutched the phone. Used it as an anchor to keep my mind from spinning off into the far end of sanity. Harry Cohn. The head of Columbia studios, stable to Rita Hayworth, Frank Capra, Gary Cooper, Montgomery Clift, Ava Gardner, and my own Lilian.
Harry Cohn, and he was sending a car for me.
Again: Jesus.
Excitement made me dial the phone. I tried to call Liliah, tell her the news. She wasn't around. I called Sid. I missed Sid. Batting oh-for-two, I calmed some, got rational. I talked myself into not making a big deal of Harry ringing me up. Shouldn't get crazy ideas. Shouldn't let fantasies of movie deals and premiere nights take over. Shouldn't…
Jesus.
The day passed in a combination of too slowly and too quickly, eventually getting to five o'clock. I was first-date fickle about my clothes, finally picked a suit, and was in the Colonial's lobby at five-twenty. A Lincoln stretch was already waiting in the drive. The back door opened and a fellow came toward me. He was a razor of a man, sharp in every sense of the word. Sharp-dressed, sharply manicured. Sharp eyes. You would have thought the man foppish except his look said if you came at him wrong you were liable to cut yourself. His smile was opposite of all that, though. It was very, very pleasant.
“Jackie,” he said rather than asked, obviously knowing who I was. “Neely Mordden. Very good to meet you.” His handshake was firm. “Ready?”
I said yes, and he stepped back, allowing me into the car.
Once seated, once the driver was on his way: “Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thank you, Mr. Mordden.”
“Neely. That's Dom, by the way.”
Waaay up front, behind the wheel, the driver did his best to turn his girth back toward me. “How ya doin'?” His accent was Brooklyn particular.
“It's not far to the Gulch,” Neely said.
“What's that?”
“Gower Gulch. The Columbia studios. Straight across Sunset to Gower. Not far at all.” Neely settled back into the seat, the deep leather swallowing him with a soft crunch.
I kept on the edge of mine.
“Nervous?”
“I guess.” No guessing about it. “Yes. I've met a lot of people, but the head of a studio just calling me up … What's he like?”
“Harry? He's a son of a bitch.” Neely said that wearing the same pleasant smile he'd greeted me with. “And if you tell anyone I said that, I'll deny it to my grave. But truth is, old Harry is a son of a bitch.”
“Hear he's cheap, too.”
“Really? From whom?”
From Liliah, but the hell if I was going to drop her name. “Around,” I said.
“Good man.” Neely appreciated my confidentiality. “But from wherever you heard it, it's the truth. Harry's a son of a bitch, and a cheap son of a bitch. If he can Jew you out of a penny, he'll try for two. That said, as livings go, I make a good one.”
“What do you, uh, I mean—”
“I'm Mr. Cohn's personal assistant. That's the title, anyway. What I do is whatever Mr. Cohn needs getting done.”
“That sounds … interesting.”
“Not a glamour job, but all of Hollywood can't be Stardust and fairy tales. Some people get to pose for the cameras. The rest of us do work.” He gave me a couple of pats to the knee. “Relax, Jackie. It's a short trip, but enjoy it.”
I leaned back and was cuddled by the Lincoln's leather.
As Neely had promised, the ride wasn't long. We arrived at the Columbia gates and got waved through without a pause by a security guard who threw out the attitude of a man watching over Fort Knox. It was small. Small for a studio, not that I was studio familiar. But there was no backlot—that part of the grounds built up with false fronts of a Western town or New York street. And different from movie studios in the movies, there were no people milling around dressed as cowboys, or knights in armor, or gangsters like that was all they did all day, walk around in costume. There were just a bunch of soundstages, and a bunch more teamsters catching naps.
Still, it was the first movie lot I'd ever been on. Far as I cared, the place was built of gold.
We arrived at an office building. Dom stopped the car and Neely got out, held the door.
He said: “Take the elevator. Top floor. Someone will show you where to go from there. We'll be here when you're done.” More of that smile of his.
I went inside, took the elevator up. Walked a long hall—walked it trying to beat down thoughts about offers of a screen test or a movie part that may or may not be lying ahead—to a secretary sitting just in front of some big double doors.
“Jackie Mann? One moment please and I'll see if Mr. Cohn is ready for you.” It was that fast-talking gal who'd rung me up before. She hit a button on a black box, said: “Mr. Cohn, Jackie Mann is here.”
The box said something back, but I couldn't make out what.
The secretary waved a hand at the doors like she was one of those game-show prize girls. Working on some kind of mechanical gizmo, the doors opened before me as I approached. They started to close up as I entered the office. I noticed: no handles. That hidden-majig was the only means of getting in or out.
Nutty.
Nutty, too, was the bank of lights on the ceiling—bright lights— that focused on your eyes, washing them out as you came into the room. It was like you were taking your mark in a police lineup. It was like this Cohn cat wanted to be able to get a couple of extra seconds to size you up before you ever got a look at him.
When I did get a look at him, there wasn't much to look at. Harry Cohn didn't come across as a mogul. Round-headed. Bald on top. Big ears, and a nose that oozed from his face. Sun-baked wax losing its form. He was a pint of a man. Shrewish. He sat behind a big desk. Guess he figured it'd make him look all the more imposing. Just made him look all the smaller.
He looked up. He said to me: “Quit fucking my star! ” No preamble or pleasantries. Just down to business.
With that for a greeting, I knew what this whole meet was about. It wasn't a sit-down to back-and-forth on getting me into Hollywood. It was about getting me out of Liliah Davi. Sammy had caused Mai Britt a lot of problems with her career at Fox. Apparently I was in danger of doing the sa
me for Liliah at Columbia.
Maybe the studio was beside itself over the situation, so much so they had to bring me in for instructions. But midgety Harry Cohn behind his too-big-for-him desk didn't cause me any panic, having had it made plain with his “quit fucking my star” I wasn't looking at any work anyway. In response to Harry's demand, I said: “Which star would that be?”
The crack turned Harry from white to red thermometer-style. “Do you know what you are doing! ” From nowhere a riding crop got produced and slammed against the desktop. I'm guessing that desk was as close as the crop ever came to flogging a horse. Pure Hollywood: showmanship from a showman. “Do you have any idea what you are doing!”
“I haven't gotten any complaints from Liliah.”
He just got redder. Red to the point I thought steam was going to shoot from his ears the way it does in a Three Stooges bit. But, maybe sensing that yelling and screaming wasn't going to buy him anything, Harry let himself calm down before going on.
“Jackie, I don't want you to think I'm some kind of a … a bigot. Nothing could be further from the truth.” Harry came at me now same as a favorite uncle trying to wrangle a little extra turkey at Thanksgiving dinner. “I'm as progressive as the next fellow. If you and Liliah were two different people, I wouldn't have any problem with you … having a relationship. But you're not; you're not two different people. Liliah is a star, and the public will not tolerate a star being intimate with a schva—a Negro.”
I noticed, behind Harry's desk, a shelf stocked with perfumes and nylons. A soldier bivouacked in war-torn Europe was not more supplied than Harry for his casting-couch conquests.
“I get the feeling Liliah doesn't much care what the public thinks.”
“I do. I care.” Harry was getting hot again. “The woman represents a significant investment of time and money.”
“The woman is a person.” Me, never previously having thought of Liliah as anything more than walking-talking sex, was suddenly, guiltily, rushing to defend her humanity. “You can't break her down into dollars and cents.”
“The hell you can't! ” From his desk Harry grabbed up a piece of paper and flung it at me. It caught air, fluttered, took the ground.
I wasn't about to pick it up, but from a distance I could make out most of its type: a list of itemized expenses for production costs, hair, makeup, publicity, travel … Harry had effectively bottom-lined Liliah to the penny.
“That's what the bitch cost me! That's what she's worth! Are you going to pay me back after you ruin her?”
“… No.”
“Then you're through with her. Right here, right now, you and the woman are done.”
“That's it?”
“Should there be something else?”
Just then I decided I was plenty good and insulted, and that Harry the Horror should go screw himself.
I said: “Go screw yourself.”
Harry went back to his old red-faced ways. His riding crop beat the living crap out of his desk. “You goddamn darkie bastard! I'm going to—”
“What? What are you going to do? Quit giving me parts in the movies you're not putting me in? You've got to flip to another chapter in your threat book.That one's no good for me. And I know you sure as hell aren't going to do anything to Liliah, so all you're going to do is keep on being the same little angry man you've always been. See you around, Harry. Don't get up. Or are you already standing?”
I went for the doors, the non-opening doors. Stood for a second, then shot some stink eye back at Harry.
He fingered a button on his desk.
The doors opened.
I eased my way out while Harry sent his voice hellhounding after me, barking ripe comments and dirty slurs.
The fast-talking secretary was at a loss for words as I passed.
“Think your boss needs help out of his high chair,” I quipped.
I walked the long hall. I took the elevator down. Neely and Dom were waiting for me.
“Done?” Neely asked.
“Done,” I said.
We got in the car. Dom drove us away from the Gulch.
“Well, how did you find Harry?”
“He was everything you said. Everything, and then some. You knew why he wanted to see me, didn't you?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn't bother to hip me to things?”
“It's not my place. How did it end up, if you don't mind me asking?”
“It ended with him singing me a few variations on the word black, and me giving him a few screw-you bits on my way out the door.”
“Like I said: He's a son of a bitch. You're taking it pretty well.”
No. I wasn't taking it well at all. I was insulted. Not so much over the guy bringing me in and trying to strong-arm me into quitting Liliah. That was to be expected. If Hollywood couldn't stomach Sammy and Mai, could it ever tolerate Liliah and me? What cut me wrong was that Harry would try to get me to quit Liliah without offering me anything in return: no movie part, no audition. Not even a straight cash exchange. Was I so small-time I didn't even deserve an offer? I wouldn't've accepted any of that to get out of Liliah's life, I just wanted to know I rated.
I knew I wouldn't have accepted anything, I told myself again. And while I told myself that, my insides didn't feel very good.
“Don't take it bad,” Neely said. “That's just the way this town is. What you've got to understand, Hollywood … it's … You got a minute? I want to show you something.”
I mumbled an okay.
“Dom, head back to Beechwood, then up the hill.”
Dom drove as told. We went up to Hollywood Boulevard, then piloted east.
Outside the car window passed Hollywood. The actual point-on-a-map part of Los Angeles that was Hollywood: the Chinese theater. The walk of fame. The Capitol records building. And people. Lots of people wandering the streets who'd come to Hollywood to be stars. Only, they weren't stars because they didn't know how to become a star, or they didn't have the talent to be a star, or they refused to give a little hey-hey to the producer who could make them a star, so they ended up wandering the streets of Hollywood, directionless, trying to find some reason to justify their lives while searching for a new plan to get where they wanted to be. In the meantime … set decoration is what they were. Tinseltown extras to be used or not used, moved here or there, or shredded up and thrown away at the whim of the self-important so that they might feel significant. Guys like Harry Cohn. Tiny, wretched, powerful Harry Cohn.
Very suddenly I was sick of Hollywood.
I was sick of the scene and the empty shells of flesh that took up space but didn't fill it. I was tired of their lying smiles and their air kisses and their cooing voices that told you “Dahling, but it's so good to see you” when all they cared about was being seen. It was all so phony. Phony as the peroxide blondes who slept their way into the good mother/strong woman roles. It was as fake as the matinee idols who spent their nights trolling the boys' clubs that poxed Santa Monica Boulevard.
I was mad at Hollywood.
I was jealous of Hollywood.
Most of all, I was bitter that Hollywood refused to do more to give me all that she had.
I was below the Hollywood sign. That's where Dom had driven us, a plateau maybe a football field south from the thirty-foot-tall letters. About as close as you could get without making the climb.
The sign. The shining beacon I'd sought in my youth, that had been calling me most of my life. This close, it was just cheap sheet metal and painted wood.
Dom and Neely got out of the car, and I did, too. From way up where we were you could look out over the Los Angeles basin, spread to the horizon, the lights of the city shimmering and popping.
Neely didn't so much look at all that as admire it. “You have to understand,” he said, “guys like Harry, guys like Louis Mayer, David Selznick, Goldwyn, Zanuck, the Warners; you have to understand them. Little guys, ugly guys, sons of immigrants who had nothing but the dirt on thei
r skin. Hated guys. Hated for the country they came from or their ignorant accents. Hated for the god they picked to worship. Just plain hated.
“Then one day those guys got it in their heads to come West—California, Los Angeles, a cow town that cows wouldn't be caught dead in. But they came out here and created something, those guys did. The movie business. They built the studios. MGM, Paramount, Fox, and Warners. They made stars, they told stories, they spoon-fed fantasies to the whole world.”
Neely was so into his sermon, he was just about speaking in tongues.
Dom lit a smoke.
Neely: “And by the time they were done with all that, with their own bare hands they had torn an oasis up out of this useless land. They'd built a city. They'd made a dream. They'd given us Hollywood.”
Hollywood. From my days in lumber I knew a couple of things. “Hollywood can't even grow out here. The soil's not right,” I offered up, unimpressed. “Even the name of this place is just more of the bullshit the town uses for fertilizer.”
I sucked a deep, raspy breath, pulling into my mouth and nose dirt from the ground where I lay. It mixed with stomach juice that burned like acid as it gushed up my throat, collecting in a greenish pool just before my face. My body rolled slightly with a spasm. My tear-blurred eyes looked up and saw Neely, hands clenched fists from the gut shot he'd just delivered me. He still had that smile.
Neely said at Dom: “Get him up.”
Dom's hands—big slabs of beef—were all over me, hauling me from the ground by a combination of shirt and flesh.
I heard Neely say “Over there” but could not tell what direction he meant. Fear counseled me he was talking about the edge of the plateau.
“Oh, Jesus,” I babbled. “Jesus, God, no!”
My back slammed onto the hood of the Lincoln, caught a piece of the hood ornament. The impact forced another spew of stomach juice from me. It gurgled over my chin and waterfalled down my chest.
“His pants,” Neely said.
“Christ, oh, Christ…”
Dom tore down my pants as much as took them off.
