Shoot It Again, Sam

by Michael Avallone

  It was like walking on a marble crypt.

  The longest one in the world.

  ". . . Mother of mercy! Can this be the end of Rico?"

  Edward G. Robinson as Little Caesar. (1931)

  FRIEND

  □ Marineland Of The Pacific is close to fifty miles outside of Los Angeles, a tourist attraction for anyone who wants to see a three-ring sea circus featuring trained dolphins and seals go through their paces. I took the Buick down here that same afternoon. Marineland juts out spectacularly from the shore, which is the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Nearby lies Portuguese Bend, between Redondo Beach and San Pedro lies Marineland and it's a watery version of a miniature Disneyland. Kids love it and usually want to go back again and again. I had to like it that scalding July day. Henry Winters was there. And everything I had gleaned from the public library's old newspaper files had told me that Henry Winters was the only pal among the celebrities that Dan Davis had lived and worked with for years whom Dan Davis had really and truly liked. With so many of the old cronies dying down the decades and Davis' rigid right-wing stand alienating him from many of his old crowd, Winters was the one remaining link back to that other Hollywood. But a somewhat rusty one, nevertheless.

  Henry Winters, one-time screen heavy in many a Davis film, was now in his late fifties, gone to fat and his last big studio film dated back to somewhere in '67. Not even Davis had been able to lure him back with a promise of jobs. A combination of pride, sheer hellishness and maybe a little too much of the grape had made Winters turn his back on an old, influential friend. According to the newspaper files, Winters had been a great amateur oceanographer in his day and suddenly, he had popped up in the news once more as part of the Marineland establishment; no one knew quite what he did to earn his bread and butter there but it was a safe bet that a well-known screen villain who could be seen on TV every day of the week doing his specialty in reruns of old movies, couldn't have hurt the Marineland gate a bit. He was the guy you love to hiss in Gangland.

  I didn't know what I was doing looking him up, either. I was grabbing at straws now because there seemed to be nothing in Hollywood that would lead to anything about Dan Davis' death. Also, I read the daily papers. The UN did not blow up, there was nothing about the Man having trouble with his Cabinet and there was no Red Alert beyond the old familiar one. I decided one long chat with Winters, then a phone call to the President once I got back to my desk and the red-white-and-blue Ameche and that was it. All over but the shooting.

  No one had been tailing me since I showed up in Los Angeles. I've been on the trail too long not to be able to know when someone is watching me. The hotel room was as clean as a whistle; no bugs, no disturbances. My car hadn't been wired for sound and no one had showed up. But no one. I hadn't seen anybody who looked like Peter Lorre or Brigid O'Shaugh-nessy, either. They were both probably miles away by now, back home in Russia, laughing their heads off. Or brainwashing some other poor slob.

  I came in off the highway at forty miles an hour, slowed down and joined a fair-sized convoy of cars heading down a ribbon of lane facing the ocean. Marineland looked like the place to go that day. The lane forked suddenly, exposing two very large sandy parking lots. I took the one on the right which was less filled but crowding up pretty fast. Armies of parents with children in tow were beginning to stream in and out of the complex proper. Marineland lay on a shelf of ground overlooking the ocean below. Flags fluttered in the breeze. A tall white observation tower of some kind stuck up into the blue sky like a needle. I had a flash-memory of the Washington Monument but this was different. A high crow's nest or something. I never did find out. I was beginning to see that I had kind of cut out a job for myself. Finding Henry Winters in such a jammed place wasn't going to be easy. Whether he worked there or not. Tired and just a little thirsty, I parked the Buick between a Plymouth and a Dodge on the line in the motor pool and got out to stretch my legs. The offshore breeze sweeping in from the uncluttered Pacific was comfortable but it was still hot enough to fry eggs without using a pan. A high row of green hedging angled off to the right.

  My crazy luck, which Mike Monks insists is on some kind of divine pipeline to the people upstairs who run things, popped up its timely head again. Things like this do happen not only in the movies. I say that because no sooner had I emerged from the sandy parking lot, striking a course for the wide-open entrance to Marineland and keeping my eyes peeled— I spotted Henry Winters. I could have smelled him almost as easily.

  He was coming toward me, up the paved path, weaving very crookedly so that his big left shoulder brushed against the green wall of shrubbery. He was wearing a ship's captain's billed cap, a light blue windbreaker and very white slacks but that's all he was wearing. He wore no shoes, no shirt under the windbreaker which was opened to show great irregular patches of chest hair looking like brillo. He was also carrying a load on. I must have been downwind from him but it smelled like the cheapest rye this side of skid row.

  He kept coming on, almost humming under his breath and even as he drew closer, I couldn't have missed the famous, familiar face. It had been seamed and leathery when he was just a fledgling heavy and many more wrinkles had only added to the characteristic look of pock-marked villainy. The outstanding nose, a gigantic hook of a thing, still jutted out before him. It was a massive face which even grey stubble and loss of many of his front teeth or lack of dentures didn't camouflage too easily. I stood my ground and waited for him to reach me. He was a big six footer, made to seem taller because of enormous shoulders. But he had lost his waistline years ago and an unsightly lump of rolling abdomen spilled over the band of the very white trousers. He must have weighed about two fifty.

  His scent grew stronger as he reached me. He was not looking up, just staring down at his big toes as he weaved along. I took him by the elbow gently and propped him to a halt. Tourists and natives walking by gave us a wide berth, only peering curiously at us as they went on. Henry Winters mumbled something and lifted his head.

  His eyes blinked as he tried to place my face which was inches from his own. The stale rye smell was almost overpowering.

  "Who're you?" he wheezed. "I don't know you—"

  "Dan Davis sent me, Henry."

  "Dan—?"

  The name obviously still held some magic for him. He straightened very suddenly, drew himself erect and stared at me, making a noble effort to sober up immediately. He swayed and lowering his head into me, grinned foolishly. The gaps in his teeth were very wide.

  "Dan Davis is dead," he burped. "And that's that—"

  "Not yet, Henry. He asked me to come see you. While he was in the hospital in New York. Just before —" I managed a smile as much as I was lying. "Come on. Let's sit down somewhere. I want to talk to you."

  He flung off the arm I had touched him with and tugged at the windbreaker as if he wanted to zipper it up. He shook his head and the billed cap tilted even more to one side of his head as if it hadn't been sitting very tight in the first place. Swatches of grey-red hair shone.

  "What for? It's all over. He can't come back, can he? Life's no movie, mister. It sure as hell ain't. Dan had to die same as everybody else. Just like you, just like me. Say—who the hell are you, mister?" His voice rose menacingly.

  "A friend of Dan Davis."

  "Yeah? I'm the only real friend he ever had. Ask anybody. Ask his wives—" Suddenly, he smirked and put his arm around my shoulder. There was still plenty of muscle left in the big frame. "Tell you what. You wanta talk? Okay. But let's skedaddle from here, huh? They don't like me much today. I got tanked and they don't want me around. Might frighten the cash customers—" He chuckled and it was a mixture of grunt and cackle. "Bad Henry rides again!"

  "Sure thing. My car's in the lot and if you know where there's a good bar—" I let it hang, knowing he'd grab at the bait. Grab? He strangled it and me along in the process. My right arm was turning to jelly in his bear hug as I led him toward the parking lot.

  "Damme, frien
d. Maybe my luck is turning at that. Hell, nobody loved or knew the great Dan Davis better than me and I don't give a damn for anything he mighta said to tell me on his dying bed. I knew where I stood with Dan—not like a lot of other people I could tell you about—goddamn finks—all of them—"

  That was all I really wanted, of course. Him to tell me.

  But I couldn't help feeling even as Henry Winters swayed with me into the Buick, that I had run smack into another dead end. This rye-fuzzed rummy, his ancient mind filled with cobwebs and failures-late-in-life, was not going to be the answer to any questions I might want answers to. Not the all-important question, anyway.

  Henry Winters, one-time screen heavy, didn't sound like the kind of a man who had ever had too much in the brains department, drunk or sober. He sounded just big, overgrown and lummoxy.

  But in this business, you just never know.

  After all, Hathaway had directed him, and Henry King and Fleming and Vidor and Wyler—there just had to be something left. Some glow of life. Even Sam Goldwyn had used him in a half a dozen big films.

  The history of the world is such: out of the mouths of babes, and God created fools to confound the wise, and last but definitely not least, in vino veritas.

  Henry Winters had had the vino and I was taking him where he could have even more, but how much truth was there left in him?

  I intended to find out.

  There was a bar he knew along the highway. A convenient, little out-of-the-way place. The speedometer made it out seven miles from Marineland. A low ranch of a dump with a dull sign with bulbs missing so that the name The Little Clam came out THE ITTLE C AM. The open highway about twenty yards away had a thousand cars whizzing by but none of them stopped. I guessed The Little Clam was a place people who lived in the neighborhood knew about. It was too early in the day for a lot of drinkers, it seemed. Henry Williams and I practically had the place to ourselves. We took a corner booth well away from the door, surrounded by a motif of old lamps, fishnets, barnacles and clams and oyster shells. All that and a smell of the ocean that was damn near filled with salt. The bartender left us to ourselves so I knew Henry Winters was a customer of long-standing. In the car on the way over, he hadn't said very much at all. As if he was sizing me up or trying to sober up a little. It was hard to say. I let him work it out for himself. I didn't want to blow the game in the first inning. There was time enough to swing at some pitches.

  I ordered the drinks. Scotch-on-the-rocks for me. He had a martini, which figured. Anybody who has to drink cheap rye will shoot for the deluxe forms of applejack as soon as someone else is buying. That routine is pretty much the same the world over.

  The seaman's cap was still riding rakishly on his broad head. He didn't take it off so I left my porkpie on. When the martini came, he put half of it away without coming up for air, then heaved a long sigh and studied me over the span of grained wood between us. I let him study me as I toyed with the Scotch.

  "New York, huh?"

  I nodded. "All the way. I'm working on the film Dan died on. A rotten break, going like that."

  "Sure." His eyes narrowed. "Ain't I seen you someplace before? Out here? Years ago—at Fox."

  "Negative. This is my first movie. I'm adapting Walker's book. And it's a tough assignment."

  He grunted, not the least bit interested in that. As he was bound not to be. I was a little amazed with the ease with which I had learned the art of lying the last few days. It seemed to come so natural, it was vaguely disturbing. As if nothing was real, anymore.

  "What did Dan say?"

  "Huh?" The question was so soberly stated it caught me flat.

  He glowered. "You said he had a dying message for old Henry. Okay. I wanta hear it. You buying me another drink?"

  "Help yourself." I made a wave of my hand to the bartender who was reading a magazine in the stillness of the bar. The man stirred. His heels made a click of sound in the peacefulness of the place. Out on the highway, an occasional roar of motor thrummed loudly.

  "Well, what was it, mister?"

  I took a deep breath and sailed right in. I kept my eyes fixed on Henry Winters' gravelly, creased face.

  "Dan called me over to his side when he knew he was going and whispered in my ear—he was pretty weak by then, you know—well, his exact words mind you, were: 'Tell Henry I got the word to the Man. The Red bastards will get theirs this time . . . ' " I paused and waited and watched. "There. That's it exactly, word for word."

  Henry Winters blinked.

  He reached for the rest of his martini.

  "Goddamn," he said and gulped it down. Just as the bartender showed up with his fresh drink. Glasses obviously weren't a shortage in The Little Clam. I put my hand over the top of my Scotch and the bartender drifted away again. He looked divorced from the world.

  "I didn't understand it, of course. But I promised him I'd tell you whenever I got out here to the Coast."

  "Shit," Henry Winters growled. "Dying message; Damn playing games he was. Don't mean nothing to me. You sure he didn't get me mixed up with somebody else, mister—say, what the hell is your tag, anyhow?"

  "Pete Barnes." A fast alias I used now and then, conveniently.

  "Pete?" He strove to think for a minute but then shook himself. "Name sounded familiar at first. But, hell. Why'd Dan say something like that? 'Course everybody knows he hated Commies worst than he hated Harry Cohn but I ain't laid eyes on Dan in over five years. And what man is he talking about?" Winters shrugged his big shoulders, held them up for a second and then let them sag, shivering. He clutched the martini. "Guess he was off his nut. Fever or something."

  "It's possible. Five years, huh? Isn't that kind of a long time for old friends like you?"

  "Sure. Maybe. But he was up there. And I was down here." He poked a finger, thumb down. And winked. "He had his wife, his big house, his big pictures. My time of day kinda passed. Didn't stay on the ball any, either. That never helps, Pete."

  "And you never ran into him out here in all that time? It doesn't seem possible."

  He cocked an eye at me owlishly as his tongue licked over his second martini. He laughed a jarring laugh. And he grunted again, shaking his big head. His face was grotesque now, up so close.

  "Wilderness out here, pal. There's folks living within ten miles of L.A. never been there once all their lives. You know that? Death Valley, Pete. Death Valley of the soul. You bleach out here and grow old pretty damn quick, let me tell you."

  "So that's it," I said.

  He misunderstood me.

  "Paths go different ways. Those that keep moving up, keep on moving. Going in the other direction, it's the same thing. Dan and me weren't traveling the same class anymore. That's all.

  He might have been drunk but he knew what he was talking about. After all, he'd spent most of his adult life in movieland and he hadn't gone senile along with the booze. That was very apparent. Also, he could really hold it. He sounded nearly sober now compared to the mumbling, crooning drunk I had stopped about an hour ago.

  "Yeah, Dan hated left-wingers, all right," I said to keep the ball in play. "He was always talking about that. Back in New York, I mean. He didn't want any pinko writers or technicians or actors to be working on the film. Some kind of American he was. I can tell you."

  Henry Winters snorted.

  "Used to eat them alive in the old days, Pete. Old Dan would latch onto one of them and just about beat his ears off and then toss him off the lot. The studio'd back him up, too. There never was any kinda legal trouble, either—" Henry Winters finished off the second martini, swiveled the glass in his big paw and then slumped back against the booth and closed his tired eyes. "Dan, Dan, Dan—big man in a little business . . ."

  "You were big too, Henry. Once."

  "Yeah, once."

  "No, really. You seemed to have been in just about every big outdoor film—western, war or adventure, all through the forties and fifties."

  "Sure I was. Bad Henry. Kicking Flyn
n in the ass, trying to beat Randy Scott outa the rangeland, trading punches with Wayne, but most of the time, making things hard for old Dan—"

  "You were really close, huh?"

  "Yeah, close."

  "I think he must have missed the old days too. The way he talked about you in New York—"

  "Yeah. Sure. We was buddies."

  The conversation, which was a charitable name for it, had now gotten dangerously morose. And bitter. I could hear it coming. I could see the dull, leaden cast of the big face in front of me. I ordered another martini for him but his heart wasn't in it anymore. He kept staring foolishly down at the grained wooden top of the table between us. I hadn't done him any real favors. I had resurrected a land full of old ghosts for him and he wasn't exactly grateful. The awful thing about Hollywood glory is that if you ever hit bottom it is always there to torment you. The glory, I mean. Alive in a thousand reruns on TV, fresh as yesterday in the millions of memories of a nation of movie buffs. You are continually forced to smell dead flowers again and to wear the eternal patina of immortality. And many dead people you have punched, kissed or acted with stalk the marvelous cemetery with you. I think I know how Henry Winters felt. Bad Henry had been as big as Lee Marvin in his heyday. But, like all of us, he had his Rosebud.

  We rambled on some more pointlessly. He mumbled some more monosyllabic replies. And sipped at the martini. The conversation died down. Soon, he was closing his eyes and leaving them closed, his big head tilted against the back of the booth. When I was sure he was dozing, I reached across and tucked a fifty dollar bill into the side pocket of the blue windbreaker. For extras, I propped a tenspot under his empty martini glass. Then I got up from the booth and went over to the bartender. He looked up from his magazine and waited for me to say something. The magazine was a very old copy of True Confessions. It had to be. One of the cover stories was: "I Was A Sexual Drop-Out With My Husband." That had to be old stuff, now.

  "He come in here very often?"

  "Most every day. Old Henry's one of my regulars."