The New Confessions

by William Boyd

  TODD: I can’t remember. Lots of people passed through Rincón.

  The committee got nowhere. I was dismissed before lunch, Brayfield still threatening deportation. In the corridor outside the Caucus Room a journalist from the Hollywood Reporter stopped me. He asked me if I had any evidence of a blacklist.

  “Oh, there’s a list, all right,” I said. “Only no one will admit it.”

  He asked me what I was doing now.

  “Teaching maths and English and minding my own business.”

  “Is that all?”

  He looked disappointed and walked away. I watched him go. As he passed through an open door leading through to an anteroom, I saw Doon sitting inside. She wore a blue dress with white polka dots, white shoes and gloves. Her hair was up. Her tan was as deep as ever. She looked lean, old and tough. She saw me, stood up and walked towards me.

  My heart … my guts … I kissed her cheek.

  “Hello, Jamie.”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “I was subpoenaed. I think they want me to nail you.”

  We sat down on a bench in the corridor.

  “They seem to know everything about me,” I said.

  “There was a guy came down to the ranch, asked me a whole lot of questions about you. About us.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Sort of unpleasant looking. Big gaps between his teeth. Said his name was Brown. Worked for the FBI, he said.”

  “Gaps in his teeth?…” Who could it be? Brown. Gap teeth. I looked at Doon. “Can I see you tonight?”

  She told me the name of her hotel. We arranged to meet at eight.

  Doon perjured herself for me. She lied to the committee with flair and aplomb. She swore I had never been in the Communist party and declared that the membership card was an inept forgery.

  Later that evening we sat in a small restaurant on Fourteenth Street Northwest, talking about old times. Doon chain-smoked. Nobody paid us any attention. I thought, This used to be the most famous beauty in Europe. Women strove to emulate her. She was the object of a million male fantasies. Thirty years ago the world was at her feet. I felt the universe’s huge indifference to our fates. It made me cold.

  “What’re you thinking?”

  “Nothing.… When are you going back?”

  “Tomorrow. Got three new guests coming this week. I only hope they didn’t see me on TV.”

  I looked at her. I thought about sex with Doon, what it would be like now. Our old bodies.

  “Doon. I love you. I’ve never loved anybody else. It’s as simple as that. You’re the only—”

  “Jamie. Please. That was ages ago.”

  “No, I mean it. When I saw you this morning. It all came back. It was like that day in the Metropol.…”

  She smiled. “It takes two, you know. We fouled up. Nobody’s fault, but it would never have worked.” She patted my fist. “You’re my oldest friend. That’s all.”

  My mouth was dry. I forced a smile. At least I had told her.

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  I walked her back to her hotel.

  “Why don’t you go home, Jamie? You don’t need all this HUAC shit. Just leave.”

  “What about Karl-Heinz? I brought him here.”

  “God, he’ll be all right.”

  “What about my film?”

  “The Confessions? For Christ’s sake.”

  “I’ve got to finish it. Bloody hell, I’m fifty-four. I haven’t made a film in nine years. And I was so close.… Anyway, Eddie owes it to me.”

  She kissed my cheek. “OK, honey. You do what you want. Like you used to say to me—make your own rut.”

  I hugged her. Felt her thin body against mine. Smelled the tobacco in her wiry hair. She had none of my regrets. My massive regrets. I felt desperately sad—not because nothing was going to happen, but because I suddenly had a glimpse of an alternative life in a different world. Do you know those moments? I saw myself in Paris, 1934, knocking on her apartment door and this time Doon would answer it. It was another edition of my life, our lives, and these two people standing outside a Washington hotel weren’t allowed to participate in it.

  “Look after yourself,” she said cheerfully. “And come and visit. Keep in touch.”

  We said good-bye to each other.

  After my appearance before the committee in Washington I achieved a small notoriety. There were articles and a photograph in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In the latter, the headline ran: EX-WIFE NAMES TODD IN HUAC SESSION. The old lady at the Italian fruit stall just round the corner from my house spat at me and called me a “Red stooge.” Eddie Simmonette was interviewed in Variety under the headline LONE STAR PREZ SAYS NIX TO REDS.

  Chief exec Eadweard Simmonette admitted hiring Todd in the forties to direct B-feature Westerns. “I knew him vaguely in Berlin, but I never guessed he was a Commie. He hasn’t worked for me in ten years—since The Equalizer in ’44. I respect his expertise but deplore his values.”

  A late-night show of The Equalizer was picketed by an organization called ODCAD and the film was withdrawn from circulation. Another trickle of income dried up. I increased my teaching to six hours a day. Nora Lee moved into my rooms and I rented hers to a student at UCLA. Foolishly, I lent Chauncy and Hall a thousand dollars to redecorate the diner and never saw any of it again. My poverty level descended to Berlin, 1924, standards.

  I went to see Monika but she had moved to New York to do television there. I spoke to her on the phone.

  “I’m sorry, Johnny, but I had to do it. I had no choice.”

  “But for God’s sake, we were married once! Man and wife.”

  “Don’t give me that. Eddie Simmonette paid me five thousand dollars to marry you. It was strictly business.”

  Another revelation I did not need. I went round to the Coopers’ shortly after my return from Washington but found the front door locked. I returned several times to the same rebuff. Then one day Elroy answered.

  “Hi, Elroy,” I said. “Is your Dad in?”

  “My dad says he’s sorry and will you please stop coming here.”

  I pushed past him into the hall. I heard a lock turn on the dining room door. I hammered on it.

  “Ernest! Come on! This is stupid. Come on out.”

  When I stopped shouting I could hear him sobbing behind the door.

  “Stop it, Ernest. For Christ’s sake, I don’t care, honestly.”

  “I’m sorry John. I’m sorry. Forgive me, please. But go away. Don’t come here again. They’re still watching me.”

  Elroy stood behind me, his face contorted with shame and indignation.

  “Will you please go away and leave him alone.”

  For several weeks nothing depressed me more than this new status I had achieved as one-man leper colony. Even Werner Hitzig, who had taken the Fifth, didn’t want to associate with me because he was now paying Alert Inc. to clear his name. (He eventually named me as a Communist in 1954. The problem was that once you were named it was open season. Between 1953 and ’55 I was named twenty-seven times, mostly by total strangers.) I lost all my friends, apart from Karl-Heinz, and all connection with the film community.

  But what surprised me was that I was still under surveillance. My phone made strange clicking noises when I picked it up. My mail was still being intercepted a year after the hearings. Someone was watching me too, I was sure, though I had no evidence. In late 1955 a local paper called the Ventura Bee ran a scurrilous story that had me as a Communist agent poisoning the minds of immigrants with Soviet ideology while purporting to teach them English. I asked Page to sue for libel, but he advised energetically against it. Ramón Dusenberry discovered that the Ventura Bee was owned by ODCAD—the Organization of Decent Citizens of America for Democracy—which in turn was run by the American Business Union, whose address on Sunset Boulevard was the same as that of Red Connections.

  It was Toshiro Saimaru who finally helped me out. Toshiro was a por
tly Japanese businessman who wanted some work done on his English accent. He had been greatly impressed by Laurence Olivier in Henry Vee, as he called it, and chose him as his model. We read a lot of Shakespeare and English poets to each other. His accent never improved, but he seemed to enjoy himself and it was an easy five dollars an hour for me. We were reading Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” one day.

  “And what were thou,” I repeated, “and earth, and stars, and sea, if to the human mind’s imagining silence and solitude were vacancy?…”

  “Sirence an’ soritude were bacancy.”

  “Great, Toshiro. Much better. Let’s try ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ ”

  He leafed through his anthology.

  “Toshiro, do you ever use a private detective in your business?”

  “Oh yes. Very good. Very good man. Mr. Sean O’Hara.” He wrote down his name and number. I phoned and a secretary said Mr. O’Hara would call on me.

  The next Saturday morning there was a knock at the door. A small thickset Japanese man was there, wearing a beige suit and a porkpie hat.

  “No teaching on Saturday,” I said. He looked blank. “We no teach on Saturday.… No teachee.… Nevah teachee. We close. Close. Shutee.”

  “You got the wrong guy, bub.” He handed me a card: SEAN O’HARA, PRIVATE DETECTIVE. I apologized and asked him in. He spoke with a perfect American accent. I felt a headache coming on. Eugen, Orr and now O’Hara.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Your name. I had this image of … Silly of me. Just goes to show.”

  “Relax,” he said. “My real moniker is Yatsuhashi Ohara. For a whole year I got no work. Absolutely zilch, nada. Couldn’t figure out why. It’s amazing what one of those apostrophes will do. Call me Sean.” He lit a Kool. “What’s the problem, Mr. Todd?”

  I told him my story. “I think someone’s behind the whole thing. I just want to know who.”

  “Twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses.”

  “Fine.” I would have to borrow some money off Nora Lee. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “Who knows? A week—a month? Don’t worry, Mr. Todd, I’ll find out who it is.”

  I hadn’t actually set eyes on Eddie for over two years. Shortly after O’Hara’s visit in the summer of ’56, Karl-Heinz spent two weeks in hospital with a ruptured stomach ulcer. He recovered, but all the rejuvenation of his Californian years disappeared. He looked old and gray beneath his tan. I went to see him in hospital after the operation.

  “My God, Johnny,” he said, “let’s do this fucking film soon. Else I’m in a wheelchair.”

  I was filled with a sudden nervous panic. I went round to Page’s office, unannounced, to set up a meeting with Eddie. His secretary buzzed him.

  “A Mr. Todd to see you? He says it’s urgent?”

  Page flung himself through his office doors.

  “Mr. Smith. What a surprise.”

  He marched me out of his office.

  “For God’s sweet sake, John!” he wailed once we were outside. We were on first-name terms now. “I don’t know you, remember?” We found a coffeeshop. “Someone called the other day asking if I represented you. I think the office may be bugged. I only use pay phones now.”

  “Christ, you’re worse than me.… Look, I want to see Eddie.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Only promise me you won’t come around like that again.”

  * * *

  Eddie stood at the surf edge in front of his beach house. The spent waves crept up to his feet and crept away again. He wore cerise and mustard bathing shorts and smoked a cigar. His neat round belly hung like a medicine ball beneath his plump girlish breasts. From the sun deck of his beach house, smoke curled from a barbecue.

  “Hey, John!” he shouted as he saw me approach. It was as if absolutely nothing had happened. We stood for a while and watched the waves curl in, smash and spread themselves on the sand.

  “I’m sorry about that piece in Variety,” he said. “But I knew you’d understand.” He looked at me and at my clothes. “Is everything all right, John? You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m fine. I just need to make a film.”

  “Soon, John, soon. Come on up, have a bite of lunch.”

  “Lunch? Good God, you’re sure?”

  “Everything’s beginning to change. Ike’s got a second term. People are relaxing. Even Trumbo got the Academy Award.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. For The Brave One.”

  “He wrote that?”

  “He’s ‘Robert Rich.’ Didn’t you know?”

  “No. Remember I’m rather out of touch these days.”

  We climbed the steps up to his deck. A petite dark woman was sunbathing in a two-piece swimsuit, the same color as Eddie’s.

  “This is my wife, Bonnie. Bonnie, say hi to my oldest friend, John James Todd. John, why don’t you take some clothes off?”

  Later we talked about my plans. I told him about Karl-Heinz’s state of health and that I had a new idea for a film, not Father of Liberty. Something much smaller scale, much cheaper. But we had to do it soon.

  “I don’t know, John. It’s a question of timing. I’m sure I can let you do pseudonymous script now. But directing a film … Let’s wait a while.”

  I took a deep breath. “Eddie, I’ve done a lot for you, these last years.”

  “And I’ve done a lot for you, John.” It was obviously one of those days for using Christian names. But I think he sensed my seriousness.

  “Yes,” I said, thinking about Monika. “But look where we are today.”

  “Johnny, Johnny …” He put his hand on my shoulder. “My father told me something I’ve never forgotten. You’ve got two forces in life that control everything. Just two. The Profit Motive and Human Values. Sometimes they run together but mostly it’s war. Pick your side early, my father said, and stick with it. And by the way, my father said, remember this: the Profit Motive always wins.” He spread his hands.

  I looked out to sea. “It’s not as simple as that.”

  Sean O’Hara came by.

  “Well, I got him,” he said. “This guy turns out to be a vice-president of AMPOPAWL. He’s a special investigator for ODCAD and HUAC. He’s been an FBI informant since 1934. He owns fifty percent of Red Connections, which has a monthly circulation of twenty-four thousand copies at five bucks a copy. Know how much money that is? A hundred twenty thousand dollars a month. This bozo hates Commies and it’s making him a stack of mazoola. He’s a professional blacklister who advises radio and TV stations and sponsors about the OK-ness of the people they hire. Quite a guy. What I can’t figure out is what he’s got against you.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Monroe Smee. Mean anything?”

  I sat beside O’Hara in the front of his Buick Roadmaster. He had a paper cup of Pepsi-Cola on the dashboard shelf, a shrimp and pastrami sandwich in one hand and a Kool in the other. He stubbed out his cigarette and took a bite of his sandwich. It was half past eight in the morning.

  “This gumshoe life is bad for your health. You gotta eat proper.” He offered me a cigarette. “That’s why I smoke menthol.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’m trying to give it up. I’ve only got one lung.”

  “No shit? What happened?”

  “I got shot in the war.”

  “No shit? God … I respect you for that, Mr. Todd, I really do. Was it the Krauts or us guys?”

  “Actually I was shot by my own side.… I’ll tell you about it later.”

  We were on Sunset Boulevard, not far from where Beverly Hills becomes West Hollywood, parked opposite the building that contained the Red Connections offices. Waiting for Smee.

  “Every second Wednesday he comes, my man says,” O’Hara told me. Then he started to sing quietly to himself. He always got the lyrics slightly wrong. Today it was “A kiss on the lips may be quite sentimental.” Yesterday, when we had arranged this stakeout, it had been “Petting in the dark, sad boy. Pett
ing in the dark, sad girl.” He unwound his window and threw the wax paper wrapper of his sandwich outside.

  “Here he comes,” he said.

  Smee had left his car in the building parking lot and strode briskly along the sidewalk. He wore a dark suit and carried a briefcase. I saw again the pale face, the gap teeth, the large uneven nose and the slightly weak chin. He looked thin and wiry. But the thinning brown hair had gone. He wore a neatly combed, short-haired dark wig.

  “He used to be bald,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s quite a toop,” O’Hara said.

  I watched Smee as he went inside. What did I ever do to you? I wondered. I couldn’t believe that Monroe Smee was responsible. There must have been some terrible error or confusion.

  He emerged at half past three. O’Hara had lunched on a box of ribs, root beer and popcorn and was well into his second pack of Kools. We followed Smee’s car, a Cadillac Fleetwood, to some offices on Wilshire Boulevard and then on to his dentist in Highland Park. When he left there he drove all the way down Alameda Street to Long Beach and picked up the Pacific Coast Highway south. We motored past the oil pumps, Huntington Beach, down to Newport, and followed him off the highway into the smart beachside suburb of Balboa.

  “No wonder he only comes in every second Wednesday,” I said. I felt like we had been driving for hours. “I’m exhausted.”

  “You’d never make a shamus,” O’Hara laughed. “I spent eighteen days living in this car on one case.”

  That was the source, I realized, of the Buick’s particular moist frowsty smell.

  Smee’s house was a big low stucco bungalow with an orange tiled roof. At the back there was a long garden and beyond that what seemed to be a private dock with two boats inside it. As Smee’s Cadillac pulled into the carport, a teenage boy dressed in tennis whites left the front door. He waved at Smee and jogged off. Smee got out of his car and went inside.

  “What now?” O’Hara asked.

  “I’ve got to talk to him.”

  “Yeah, well, be careful.”

  I got out and buttoned my jacket. I felt crumpled and dirty after a day in O’Hara’s car. I rubbed my chin—I needed a shave. I wished somehow I looked smarter, more prosperous.