SO MUCH MUSCLE AROUND. Guys so big inside their padded jackets that they looked like upmarket Michelin Men. Private security types with that gaze which went right through you even when they weren’t wearing sunglasses. More obvious sorts in buzzcuts and khaki Liberty League uniforms. Career cops who’d never seen a sidewalk. Less obvious varieties he probably wasn’t even spotting.
This, he thought, as he followed the hipswaying, averagely drop-dead beautiful woman along the fluorescent-lit corridor, is what the future is going to be like. Hotels like the Biltmore will spread, and they and all the shopping malls will link up, and these new Americans will spend their whole lives indoors and underground, lulled by hidden music and Bechmeir fields. It’ll be like the Metropolitan Hospital already is, but with wall to wall carpets, endless opportunities for shopping and plastic palms. No enforced lobotomies, either; they wouldn’t be necessary.
NBC were broadcasting from a suite of several rooms with their dividers concertinaed back. There were more beautiful women and guys, and more muscle, and geekier types fiddling with lots of expensive electrical equipment. All in all, the scene wasn’t untypical of what Clark had gotten used to seeing lately. A set of big PA speakers were relaying the latest slew of adverts for Perquat Sheets. In the furthest of the rooms, which still had dividers drawn across to keep it separate from the rest, Wallis Beekins was spitting out orders and nursing a large whisky. He paid Clark no attention when he first came in. Beekins was wearing a tux like everyone else, although it barely covered the belly-bulge of a foodstained plaid waistcoat. He had on disastrous twotone wingtips as well, but Beekins was one of those rare creatures in showbiz whose looks didn’t matter. It was that voice, which it was so odd to hear coming in real life from this plump little man with his greasy coxcomb of hair and his agitated pacing. Especially as he was swearing like a longshoreman.
Standing there, moments away from his chance to change history, Clark felt as focused as he had back in the old days just before he stepped onstage. There would be no need for the messy scene he’d imagined. He wouldn’t have to blurt things out. He’d be clear. He’d be calm. He’d be fucking collected. Another beautiful woman—this one a brunette—was quietly explaining to him the questions that he would be asked, but Clark felt as if he knew them all, and his answers, already. Of course, and just like this broad was telling him over a Johnnie the Bellhop jingle for Philip Morris cigarettes, he’d be asked why he’d decided now was a good time to write a Lars Bechmeir biopic, and about the guy’s lowly beginnings, and how the whole world—and not just entertainment—had been changed by his so-called discovery, and maybe even he could say something about the recent tragic death of April, his own wife? Yeah, he could do all that. Just give straight answers to the actual questions. The only trick he’d need to pull was to stay in character for just a few minutes longer as Daniel Lamotte.
“Okay, Mr Lamotte?” The beautiful woman was smiling. “You’re ready?”
Wallis Beekins had put aside his whisky glass and was shaking hands with him now, weighing him up in that way all broadcasters did for ticks, nerves, signs of impending trouble. “So you’re Daniel Lamotte.” The voice had slowed; it was honey over warm chocolate. “And hey, I reckon I’m probably Wallis Beekins. Must be, ’cos every times I try to catch the guy’s show on the radio, I’m always busy.”
Everybody laughed. The guy was a real professional. Then shouts and signals were exchanged, onlookers and hangers-on were shooed out, and the door to the broadcasting room was closed. Just Wallis Beekins now, and Clark, and a guy with headphones sat down before a monitoring desk. The rest of the space was taken up by sound-deadening screens and a table, in the middle of which was set the fluted metal fist of a Shure microphone.
“Okay, fella. Been a bit of a delay. The newscast is taking up more time that scheduled ’cos of a fire at the lot of one of the old movie companies. All sorts of stuff going on down there, apparently. Still, that’s the way it is, and we’ll go live in one minute. I’ll start off with a few words, then ask you some nice and easy questions. Then we’re done. Simple as that. No need to lean forward or raise your voice. Just talk like you and me were having a chat at some bar round the corner over a beer. And if you fancy banging this table to make a point, don’t, ’cos it’ll sound like LA’s finally been hit by the big one. We okay for levels, Eddie?”
“If Mr Lamotte could just say something, we’ll be fine.”
“Happy to be here.”
Eddie gave a thumbs up.
Wallis Beekins smiled. “You’re a natural, Mr Lamotte. Done this sort of thing before?”
“Just a little.”
“That’s great.” Like all good pros, Wallis Beekins seemed to be growing more relaxed and at home as the moment of performance approached. In Clark’s experience, it was the rest of their lives that guys like this had problems with. “Count us in soon as you’re ready, Eddie…”
Eddie nodded, and everything went very quiet. Clark resisted the urge to clear his throat. He studied instead the map-like lines of broken capillaries on Wallis Beekins’ nose, and thought of all the millions of families clustered at home around their radiograms, and Glory listening in her cubby hole back in Venice, and cleaners pushing mops in empty offices, and truck drivers following the black highway, and kids hidden under blankets with their cat’s whisker radios, and forgotten old ladies in sixth floor apartments who never heard another living voice.
Then Eddie was holding up the spread fingers of both hands, closing them down from ten into a fist, and Wallis Beekins worked his face and smoothed his jaw, and Eddie was down to three when his hand went to his headphones and he shook his head and made a cutting motion across his throat.
Wallis Beekins sighed. He looked like he wanted to throw the microphone across the room, but he was too much of pro. “We’re not live yet? How long is this newscast going to run for?”
“It’s not that.” Eddie frowned. “It’s—”
The door burst open. Two of the muscles in dinner suits who’d been standing outside squeezed themselves in. Another three followed.
“Well…” Beekins sighed mildly as the guys hooked their hands under Clark’s arms and hoisted him. “… looks like there’s been a change of plan… Better go along with them, fella…” He was already turning to ask Eddie how they going to fill in the gap in the schedule as Clark was hauled out.
The muscles had big, well-manicured hands and they smelled like clean lockerrooms. They were dragging Clark out from the NBC recording rooms, and not one of the many drop-dead beautiful women or the other muscles or the technicians seemed to notice.
“If you’ll come this way, Mr Lamotte…” They were murmuring it like it was a mantra.
He tried kicking and pulling against them, but their hands and arms were like leather upholstery. “My name’s not Lamotte. Look—if you’ll just put me down. If you’ll just…” An expertly placed fist knocked out the rest of what he was going to say, then a doorframe slammed against his back. It was clear they weren’t about to just do anything.
“If you’ll come this way, Mr Lamotte…”
In one direction down this corridor, the Fred Waring Orchestra was playing Don’t You Mess With My Mister with Irene Bosener on vocals, but he was being dragged somewhere else. Double doors swung open, cracking hard into his face and slewing his glasses sideways. All he could see now were lights blurring along a ceiling, but then the muscles paused and one of them muttered something. Clark, as he was dumped down, glasses askew, then shoved aside and trod on like a sack of potatoes, got the impression that something was coming the other way.
Something was. His vision swam with the sight of two nurses, although they were showing less uniform than they were thigh and cleavage, and an old guy in a wheelchair they were pushing between them. It was as strange a passing as the Biltmore’s corridors had probably witnessed all evening, although Clark could see that Lars Bechmeir had been nicely spruced up. He had on a crisp new penguin suit, polished shoes, a starched wing-collar shirt and sleekly knotted tie, but the neck and the hands which emerged looked even more withered and reptilian than they had yesterday. But the eyes were bright within those owlish glasses. Even as the two nurses kept their gaze and pert breasts pointing resolutely forward, Lars Bechmeir looked down at the guy who was slumped against the wall as he was wheeled past until his big glasses bumped one of the nurses’ rumps and slid sideways off the ridge of his nose. The guy looked so different stripped of those lenses, and the odd brightness of his gaze seemed increased rather than diminished by their absence. He was still twisting his head around as the distance between them extended, and Clark was now looking back at him with something like the same intensity. Recognition passed between them.
Otto! It was Otto Frings from the paper thin roominghouse wall next to Peg’s. Otto, with his banging broom. Otto, who Clark had found that time staring up at Peg’s lit window. Otto, who Bogey had told him he last remembered seeing with his face covered in bandages. Otto, who was another of Hilly Feinstein’s clients. Otto, who for all his classical training, hadn’t had work in years. Only he had. He’d got the plumiest of all plum roles. He’d got to play Lars Bechmeir.
“It’s me, Otto! It’s Clark Gable—remember? Remember Hilly, remember Peg? Remember…“ But what the hell was there to remember? They’d never been close. “Thrasis. Remember fucking Thrasis, Otto. And all the people who’ve died—”
The muscles must have thought they’d got him decently subdued, for they were surprisingly slow in reacting. But now they did. Now another well-placed fist knocked out what was left of his breath, but Otto was still staring back at Clark as he was dragged from view. Clark’s last glimpse was of naked eyes wide in surprise and a weak mouth—for all the things which had changed about him, that hadn’t—shaping the word Thrasis.
Clark was hauled on. Through another set of doors and across grubbier, shiner halls filled with the nearby sounds of kitchens, then out down a tumble of steps and into the night where stars reeled and the air stank of garbage. He waited for the next hit to come, but it didn’t, even though at least two of the muscles were still holding him. Meanwhile, another was rooting around amid the garbage cans and dumpsters as if he’d lost something. He drew out a yard length of iron reinforcing bar, thwacked it against his palm, then smashed it hard enough to put a big dent in the side of a garbage can. Everything went quieter than in the NBC studio. No one even seemed to be breathing. This, Clark realized, wasn’t some standard beating up. These guys were going to kill him. He supposed it had to end somehow, and somewhere. But he’d hoped for better than this.
Hefting the bar like Babe Ruth, the muscle took a few steps forward, settled his stance and began to swing.
“Hey, hey, fellas…” A voice came out of the darkness. It was followed by a plumply uniformed shape. “I know you got jobs to do, but I got things here need doing as well. Like making sure, fer instance, that no one gets murdered on my beat. ’Til I clock off, leastways…” Officer Doyle hooked his thumbs into his gunbelt. “You get my drift?”
Clark was dropped on concrete. The iron bar was tossed with a clang. The muscles were already moving away.