LULU AND I FLEW OUT to L.A. three days later. We rode first class. No matter what Sonny’s financial situation was like, he always went first class. Lulu even got her own seat next to me, though she had to stay in her carrier. It wasn’t much of a flight. The food was gluey, the stewardess ornery. Clouds covered the entire Midwest. Flying just doesn’t seem as exciting as it used to be. But then nothing in the world does, except maybe baseball.
I spent most of the flight reading You Are the One, a gossipy, unauthorized biography of “those fun-loving, swinging partners who kept the fifties laughing.” It had been written in the late sixties and was filled with the ego clashes, feuds, and jealousy that went on between Gabe and Sonny. There were lots of stories about money and how they blew it. Like how they went out and bought matching red Cadillac convertibles with their first big money—and paid for them with ten-dollar bills. Like how Sonny owned as many as five hundred pairs of shoes at a time and gave them away as soon as he’d worn each pair once. Mostly, I was interested in the reason the writer gave for The Fight. His theory was that Sonny, who was a compulsive gambler, owed somebody a lot of money and used the team as a kind of promissory note—forcing Gabe to work with him at a mob-owned Las Vegas casino for no money or be blackballed.
That didn’t sound right to me. Maybe something like that had happened, but I didn’t think it was why they fought. For one thing, that sort of dealing goes on all the time in entertainment business. Merilee told me stories about Broadway you wouldn’t believe. Partners wouldn’t roll around on the rug at Chasen’s over something like that.
The other reason I didn’t think it was true was that Sonny wouldn’t be coming forward now with what actually was true.
I had a job ahead of me. It wasn’t a particularly dignified one, but if I didn’t do it well, I’d have to start giving serious thought to dental school. I needed to do more than just string together Sonny’s funniest anecdotes. I needed to humanize him. That meant understanding him. And that meant getting him to really open up to me. There was the job. Still, the more I got used to the idea the more I believed I could make Sonny Day’s book into something special. I was, after all, no ordinary ghost.
Like I said, my ego wears earplugs.
Big Vic was waiting for me at the airport, wearing a windbreaker and a Dodger cap and holding a piece of cardboard that said “HOAG” on it, just in case I didn’t recognize him.
“Sonny’s at the therapist,” he told me, taking Lulu’s carrier. She growled softly. “Said he’ll be back by lunchtime. Give you a chance to get settled.”
We took the long moving sidewalk to the baggage claim area.
“So how long have you worked for Sonny?” I asked him.
“I’ve been with him eleven years now.” Vic spoke in a droning monotone, as if he were reciting. “He followed me when I played ball at UCLA and read about how I enlisted in the Marines instead of playing pro ball. There was an article in the Times about me when I got back. He called me up and offered me a job. See, I got hurt over in Nam. I have a plate in my head.”
“Bother you much?”
“Occasional headaches. On windy days I can pick up the Super Station.”
I looked at him blankly.
“Sonny’s joke,” he explained.
“Of course.”
“You make it over there, Hoag?”
“No, I was against it, actually.”
“Me, too.”
“Then why did you join the Marines?”
“To finish it,” he said simply.
I got my suitcases and, with some embarrassment, the two cases of the only food in the world Lulu will eat—9 Lives Mackerel Dinner for cats and very, very strange dogs. A gray Lincoln stretch limo with personalized plates that said “THE ONE” was parked at curbside. A ticket fluttered on the windshield. Vic pocketed it and put the stuff in the trunk. I got in front with him.
The L.A. airport had been redesigned for the Olympics, seemingly by an architect who had cut his teeth on ant farms. But it was a lot easier getting out than it used to be. Vic had no problems maneuvering his way to the San Diego Freeway, his big, football-scarred mitts planted firmly on the wheel, his massive shoulders squared. We headed north. It was the best kind of day they can have in L.A. There had been some rain, and then the wind had blown the clouds and smog out to sea. Now the sky was bright blue and it was so clear I could see the snow on Mount Baldy. The sun was warm and everything looked clean and shiny and new.
I rolled down my window. “Mind if I let Lulu out of her carrier?”
“Go right ahead.”
I opened the carrier door. She ambled out happily, planted her back paws firmly in my groin, and stood up so she could stick her big black nose out the window.
“So you’re what they call a bodyguard?” I asked, to say something.
“I do whatever he needs me to do. I drive. Run errands. Keep track of his appointments. And yeah, security. Course, Sonny doesn’t go out that much in public anymore. It isn’t worth it for him. He gets pestered too much. He needs a controlled environment. He stays in most nights now. He likes to read self-help books. He’s a big fan of that Leo Buscaglia. Or we rent movies from the video places. Paul Muni is his favorite. John Garfield, Jimmy Cagney …”
“How about his own movies, the Knight and Day movies? Does he ever watch those?”
“Never. He has no interest in them. Or the past. He doesn’t see his old friends, either. He used to entertain a lot. You know, dinner parties. The Dean Martins used to come by. Sammy and Altovese. The Jack Webbs. Jennings Lang. Sonny doesn’t see any of them anymore. Connie, his ex-wife, drops by once in a while. That’s it. He’s kind of a recluse now, I guess you could say. And I’ll tell you something, he’s a heckuva lot more fun to be around now than he was before, when he was drinking and popping pills.”
“What was he like then?”
Vic shrugged. “Take your pick—depressed, sentimental, suicidal, nasty, violent. He threw tantrums. A couple of times I had to belt him or he’d have hurt somebody. Most nights he’d drink his way through all of his different moods, then he’d pass out. I’d carry him to bed. Some nights he’d get hyped up and try to slip out the back door on me, take a car out god knows where. It got so I had to take off the distributor caps every night. It broke me up inside to see what he was doing to himself. See, I’m an orphan. I owe that man a lot. No, it’s more than that. I love him like a father. You know where I’m coming from?”
“Fully.”
“Sonny’s a gifted man, real proud, real insecure. Things are a lot better with him now. He takes care of himself. We work out together. Run. Swim. Eat right. I give him a rub. We have a lot more fun now.” He glanced over at me, then back at the road. “Listen, I think this book is a good thing for him. But you better not mess him up.”
“Me? How?”
“You drink, don’t you?”
“No more than any other failed writer.”
“Well, don’t try to get him started again. It’s been a tough, hard road for him. He gets knocked off of it, I’ll be very upset. Understand?”
“Yes, I do, Vic. And I appreciate your candor.”
Vic got off the freeway at Sunset and followed its winding path into Beverly Hills, where it wasn’t winter. Lawns were green. Flowers bloomed. The tops of the Mercedes 450SLs were down. Lulu kept her nose out the window. She seemed to like the smell of Beverly Hills. She’s always had pretty high-class taste for somebody who likes to eat canned mackerel.
“So you live with Sonny?” I asked.
“I have a room downstairs, TV, bath, everything. There’s also Maria, the housekeeper. A secretary comes in part-time. So does the gardener. Of course, Wanda’s living with us right now, too.”
That was news. The way I remembered it, father and daughter couldn’t stand one another.
“She is?”
“Yeah, they’re getting along much better. Boy, they used to have some fights. She was a real wild kid in the old days, I guess. That’s before I came along. When she was an actress. Remember the scene in that French movie Paradise when she sneaks into the count’s bed in the middle of the night, stark naked, and starts humping him, and he wakes up and doesn’t know what—”
“I remember it, yeah.”
“In my opinion, that’s just about the most erotic scene in motion picture history.” He said it respectfully.
“What is she doing now?”
“Studying for her real estate license.”
Vic turned off Sunset at Canon, took that to Benedict Canyon, and started climbing. The road got narrower the farther up we went—and bumpier when we passed out of the Beverly Hills city limits.
“I think you’ll like Wanda,” Vic droned on. “We’ve had some good talks. She’s been through a lot herself. She was institutionalized a couple of times, you know.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“But she’s got a pretty solid sense of where she’s at now. She’s pushing forty, after all. She’s a survivor. She and Sonny are a lot alike. At least, that’s my opinion.”
“You seem to have a lot of them.”
“This job leaves me plenty of time to think.”
Sonny’s house was off Benedict on a little dead-end road about five miles above Sunset behind a big electric gate. Vic opened the gate by remote control. It closed behind us all by itself. The driveway curved past a couple of acres of fragrant orange and lemon orchards, then a reflecting pool with palms carefully arranged around it. The house was two stories high and vaguely Romanesque. It looked like a giant mausoleum. Actually the whole place, with its neatly manicured grounds, came off like a memorial park.
Inside, there was an entry hall that was bigger than my entire apartment and a formal dining room with a table that could seat a couple of dozen without any knees knocking. The living room was two stories high and all glass. A brook ran through the middle of it, and there were enough trees and plants growing there to stock a Tarzan movie.
Vic pushed a button. I heard a motor whir and the glass ceiling began to roll back, sending even more sunlight in.
“If everyone lived in a glass house,” said Vic, “nobody would get stoned.”
I stared at him blankly.
“Sonny’s joke,” he explained.
Sonny’s study was off the living room behind double hardwood doors. It was paneled and carpeted and had a big slab of black marble for a desk. There were plaques and awards and autographed photos hanging everywhere, photos of Sonny with three, four, five different U.S. presidents, with Frank Sinatra, with Bob Hope, with Jack Benny, with Groucho Marx. There were no photos of him with Gabe Knight. The lobby poster from Moider, Inc. hung over the black leather sofa. Over the fireplace there was a formal oil portrait of Sonny made up as his sad-sack clown in The Big Top. A single tear glimmered on his cheek.
“Very impressive,” I said. “And the rest, I take it, is closet space?”
“Six bedrooms, each with its own bath, sitting room, and fireplace,” replied Vic. “The guesthouse is separate. It overlooks the swimming pool and the log arbor.”
“Log arbor?”
“For shade.”
“Of course.”
A flagstone path led across a few acres of lawn to the guesthouse. The bedroom was done in bright yellow and came equipped with a color TV, IBM Selectric, kitchenette, and bath. Sonny’s health spa was right across the hall, complete with Universal weight machine, chrome dumbbells, slant boards, exercise mats, and mirrored walls.
“Very handy in case I get an urge to work on my pecs in the middle of the night,” I said.
“Sonny’ll be back around one,” said Vic. “Why don’t you unpack?”
“Fine. Say, is this place secure?”
“Very. Private patrol cars, electrified fence, computerized alarm bell system on all doors and windows. Three handguns, one in my room, one in Sonny’s room, and one in his study. All of them loaded.” He chuckled. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant sound. “Not that there’s anything to be uptight about.”
“Sonny’s joke?”
He frowned. “No, mine.”
“Actually, what I meant was, is there a fence all the way around, so Lulu can run loose?”
“Oh. Yes, there is. She won’t tinkle in any specimen plants, will she?”
“Never has.”
I let her off her leash. She rolled around happily on the grass and began to bark at the birds.
It was so quiet there in the guesthouse my ears buzzed. I unpacked my tape recorder, blank cassettes, notepads, and the quart of Jack Daniel’s. There was ice and mineral water in my little refrigerator. I made myself a drink and downed it while I hung up my clothes. Then I said good-bye to my winter tweed sportcoat, cashmere crewneck, and flannel slacks and padded into the bathroom.
I looked kind of sallow there in the mirror. I was showing a little more collarbone than I remembered, and there were circles under my eyes. I certainly didn’t look like the man who, fifteen years before, had been the third-best javelin thrower in the entire Ivy League.
I showered and toweled off and switched to California clothes—pastel polo shirt, khakis, and sneakers. I still had another ten minutes until lunch. I was going to celebrate that fact, but the Jack Daniel’s wasn’t on the desk where I’d left it. It wasn’t anywhere.
It was gone.
Someone had, however, left me a small gift on my bed. There I found an old, yellowing eight-by-ten glossy of Knight and Day from the movie Jerks, back when they were still in their twenties and baby-faced. They were posed behind the counter in their white soda-jerk smocks and caps. Gabe wore a slightly annoyed expression and two scoops of melting ice cream atop his head. Sonny had the grin and the scooper.
The photo was autographed by each of them, and a very fine grade Wusthof Dreizackwerk carving knife was plunged through the middle of it and into my pillow.
Sonny had my Jack Daniel’s in front of him on the glass dining table that was set for two next to the swimming pool. He wore a royal-blue terry cloth sweat suit and was reading Daily Variety. Lulu dozed at his feet.
He grinned as I approached him. “Welcome to L.A., pally. All settled in?”
I deposited my pillow on the table as I’d found it. “I’m not ordinarily one to complain about accommodations, but your better hotels leave their guests one individually wrapped chocolate on the pillow at bedtime. I prefer bittersweet.”
“Jeez, where’d you find the old still?” Sonny asked, leaning over slightly, examining it. “Haven’t seen one of these in twenty years. Signed, even. Must be worth sixty, seventy cents. But what’s with the knife?”
“Someone left it for me when I was in the shower.”
Sonny leaned back and squinted up at me. “You mean like some kind of gag?”
“You tell me.”
“Hey, don’t look at me, pally. I didn’t do it.”
“Well, someone did.” I eyed my bottle before him.
“Ohhh … I see how it looks. Sure.” Sonny winked at me. “Forgot to tell ya—Bela Lugosi’s ghost lives here. I’ll have Maria get you another pillow, okay? Sit.”
I stood. Sonny was behaving as if this sort of thing happened routinely. Water lawn. Take out garbage. Stick knife in bedding.
He tapped my bottle with a lacquered fingernail. “I think we’re gonna have to reach an agreement about this.”
“You’re damned right. I do what I want, when I want, provided it doesn’t interfere with our work. And you stay out of my room or I’m moving into a hotel—at your expense.”
“Calm down, pally. Calm down. I know what it’s like. I been there.” He fingered the bottle thoughtfully. “It’s like somebody’s taking away your security blanket. I’ll let you in on a little secret though, pally—“
“You really don’t have to.”
“You don’t need this bottle. You’re fine the way you are. Know what I learned at Betty Ford? Your problems, your fears, your personal bogeymen—they’re not unique. Everybody’s got ’em. So don’t hate yourself. Pat yourself on the back. And siddown, will ya?”
I sat down. He poured me some orange juice from a pitcher.
“Fresh squeezed from my own trees, no chemicals.” He sat back with his hands behind his head. “Look, I went through a very bad time. I wouldn’t reach out for help. I suffered because of it. I don’t want you to make the same mistake I made, okay?”
“Let’s get something straight, Sonny. I didn’t come out here for therapy. I’m here to work on your book. Do a job. Just leave me be, or—
“Or what? You’ll quit? Let’s put our cards on the table, pally. I checked you out. You need this book. You need it as bad as I do. Know what’s on my calendar next week? I’m emceeing the ‘Miss Las Vegas Showgirl Beauty Pageant.’ For cable. That’s it. One day of work. This pad is paid for from the old days, when it was coming in like you wouldn’t believe. Otherwise, I’m out on the street. We’ve both seen better days, so let’s not pull each other’s puds, huh?” He softened, put a hairy paw on my arm. “Tell me if I’m butting in—”
“You’re butting in.”
“—but I want us to be close friends. It matters to me. And if it matters to me, it matters, understand? We’re gonna be spending a lot of time together. I expect to tell you pretty personal things. If I’m gonna spill my guts to you, I need to feel you’ll also confide in me. I need for us to have a relationship, okay? Drink your juice.”
I hadn’t been wrong—here was the job. But what was that knife all about? Had Sonny left it? If so, why? If not, who had left it? I sipped my juice and went to work. “Okay. Just don’t push me.”
He stuck out his lower lip. “I know. Sometimes I come on too strong. I apologize.”
“No problem.”
“I take it from your book you’re not too close to your people. Or am I pushing too hard again?”
“No, that’s okay. I … Correct. I’m not close.”
“Brothers? Sisters?”
I shook my head.
“So who do you confide in then? Your friends?”
“My writing is my outlet.”
“I don’t get you book guys. Gag writers I’m used to. They’re all nuts, but I can relate to ’em, because deep down they’re performers, like me. But book guys—why would somebody want to spend their whole life all alone in a room, just them and a piece of paper?”
“Ever read Henry Miller?”
“Smut artist, wasn’t he?”
“He once wrote, ‘No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.’”
“What do you believe in, Hoagy?”
“Nothing much, anymore.”
“Know what I believe in? Human beings. We’re all in this together. We’re all afraid. I believe in human beings. I love ’em. I even love you.”
“You’re not going to hug me, are you?”
“I’d like to, but I sense it would make you uncomfortable.”
“That’s very perceptive.”
“Boy, you’re gonna be a project” He grinned. “You are gonna be a project!”
The housekeeper brought us out our lunch. Marie was short, chubby, and in her fifties. Lunch was cold chicken, green salad, whole wheat bread, and fruit. Sonny ate with his face over his plate, shoveling with both hands.
“Do me a favor, Hoagy?” he asked, food spraying out of his mouth. “It’s a personal request. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but … how’s about you join the exercise regimen me and Vic do every day? You’ll feel like a million bucks. And it’ll be good for the book, too, don’t you think? The two of us, breaking a sweat together? I don’t know. You’re the writer …”
I sighed inwardly. What the hell, I hadn’t been too crazy about how I looked in the mirror anyway. “Okay. If you’d like.”
He beamed. “Great. You won’t be sorry. And hey, while you’re at it, it might be a good idea to cut back on the poison just a little bit. You’ll need the energy. Good thing you don’t smoke. I quit totally. Tough, believe me. I used a cigar in my part of my routine—it was part of my rhythm.”
“Poison?”
“A couple of beers after work feels good, I know. Wine with supper. Even a nightcap. But a bottle in your room, that’s very low class, ain’t it?”
“Think I need a haircut, too?”
He whinnied in exasperation, his famous whinny. “I’m very serious, Hoagy. Do you have to keep it there?”
“No, I don’t have to keep it in—”
“Great! It’ll be in the bar. Anytime you want it. You’ve made me very happy, Hoagy. I have a wonderful, wonderful feeling about us now. Really. We’re gonna make a beautiful book.” He sat back and belched, his plate clean. Even the bones were eaten.
A shadow crossed the table. Vic. He tapped his watch.
“Thanks, Vic,” said Sonny. “Gotta go, Hoagy. Some folks at Paramount TV wanna talk to me about a part in a sitcom pilot.”
I cleared my throat, nudged the pillow toward Sonny.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, as if he’d completely forgotten it. “Hoagy found this in his room, Vic. Whattaya think?”
Vic checked it out, his face blank.
“Any idea who might have done it?” I asked him.
I thought he and Sonny exchanged a quick look. Maybe I imagined it. I’m not used to drinking that much OJ in one sitting.
Vic shook his head. “No idea, Hoag.”
“Maybe I know,” mused Sonny, scratching his chin.
“Who?” I asked.
“The tooth fairy,” he shot back.
Vic laughed. I didn’t.
“Hey, relax, Hoagy boy,” Sonny urged me. “Enjoy the sun. Connie’s coming by for dinner. She’s anxious to meet you. We’ll get to bed early. First workout is from seven to nine. Then we’ll start on our book, okay?”
“Look forward to it,” I replied. “Wait, what do you mean, first workout?”
“Are you Stewart?”
It was a woman’s voice, a husky, familiar woman’s voice. I was in a lounge chair by the pool with my shirt off, working my way through a collection of E. B. White essays, which is something I do every couple of years to remind myself what good writing is. I looked up. She stood before me, silhouetted by the sun, jangling her car keys nervously.
“Are you Stewart?” she repeated.
I nodded, squinting up at her.
“I’m Wanda.”
We shook hands. Hers was thin and brown. Wanda Day was taller and leaner than she photographed, and her blonde hair, which she used to wear long and straight, was now cut short like a boy’s, with a part on one side and a little comma falling over her forehead. She wore a loose-fitting red T-shirt dress with a big belt at the waist and high-heeled sandals. She still had those great legs and ankles—nobody had looked like she did in a microskirt. And she still owned that wonderfully fat, pouty lower lip that became so famous when, she was the Yardley Lip Gloss girl. She’d painted it white then. Now it was unpainted. She wore very little makeup and no jewelry and looked just the tiniest bit knocked around. I guess twenty years in the fast lane and two nervous breakdowns will do that to a person. There were lines in her neck and crow’s-feet around her eyes, which were dark brown, slanted, and at this particular moment, wary.
She sat down in the canvas director’s chair next to me. It had Sonny’s name printed across the back. “We have to talk, Stewart.”
“Nobody calls me Stewart except my mother.”
“What do they call you?”
“Hoagy.”
“As in Carmichael?”
“As in the cheese steak.”
Her nostrils flared. “I should warn you—children of famous comics have very little sense of humor. We cry too much to laugh.”
“Why does everybody out here talk like a Barry Manilow song?”
“You’re not very nice, are you?”
“Lulu likes me.”
“Is she your wife?”
“I’m divorced.”
“Girlfriend?”
“One and only.”
Lulu was lying on her back on the pavement next to me, paws up, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. I scratched her belly, and she thumped her tail.
Wanda thawed a couple of degrees. “Oh, I see.” She reached down and patted Lulu and spoke to her intimately in some kind of baby talk. Then she made a face. “Say, her breath smells kind of icky …”
“Lulu has strange eating habits.” I noticed the thick textbook in Wanda’s lap. “I understand you’re studying for your real estate license.”
“Yes. I may even go through with it, too. Ever find yourself envying terminal cancer patients, Hoagy?”
“No, not lately.”
“I have. What a release, what a rush, not having to worry about how to spend the rest of your life. There is no rest your life. Your days are limited. You can just relax and enjoy them. And then die. That’s so beautiful.”
“It might not be so beautiful.”
“Why not?”
“There might be tubes sticking out of you. It might hurt.”
“It can’t be any worse than this,” she said quietly, looking around at Sonny’s memorial park for famous comics of the fifties.
“I thought the two of you had sort of patched things up.”
“Oh, we have.”
“I’d like to interview you sometime.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You should know I’m against this book. It’s his thing, not mine. I don’t want to be involved at all. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me out entirely.”
“That won’t be possible. You’re a big part of his life.”
“I’d make it worth your while financially.”
“No, thank you. I have a contract. But how come?”
“How come?” She took a cigarette and matches from her bag and lit one. “Because some things are better off left alone.” She took a deep drag, let the smoke out slowly. “Look, Hoagy. I’ve done a lot of pretty spacey things with a lot of pretty spacey people. I’m not ashamed or anything, but I don’t necessarily want the whole world reading about who I fucked, either. It isn’t their business. Can you understand that?”
“Of course. I’m not interested in exploiting you, nor is Sonny. This won’t be a sleazy showbiz book at all. You have my word.”
“There are other people to think about. People who would be hurt.”
“Who?”
She didn’t answer me. She looked down at the cigarette in her fingers, which were shaking.
“I was hoping for your help, Wanda. Your insights.”
“It’s out of the question. Just forget it.”
“Does Sonny know how you feel?”
“Yes, but one thing you have to learn about Daddy is how self-centered he is. If something matters to him …”
“It matters!’
“Correct.”
“I’m sorry you feel this way about it. I hope you’ll change your mind. This book is pretty important to him.”
“Fuck him!” she snarled with sudden ferocity. “He’s a dominating, manipulative shit!”
She jumped to her feet and stormed off to the house, high heels clacking on the pavement. Watching her go, I thought about how glad I was I hadn’t been around when the two of them weren’t getting along.
“I think it’s wonderful that you and Arthur are doing this,” Connie Morgan told me on the living room sofa before dinner, while we sipped white wine, nibbled on raw cauliflower, and listened to the brook babble. “He has come so, so far.”
“Yes. He seems to have made a genuine effort,” I said, smiling politely.
Connie Morgan was the sort of woman you were polite to. She was gracious and well-bred Virginia old money. She and Sonny had met when she played the gorgeous blond homecoming queen in Big Man on Campus, Knight and Day’s second movie. In the movie, Gabe got her. In real life, Sonny did. She retired soon after they married to raise Wanda. She went back to work after the divorce. These days she was bigger than she’d ever been before. She played the proud matriarch in one of those prime-time TV soap operas. Connie was at least sixty, but she was well-kept, willowy, and she carried herself with style. She was exactly who she’d always been—the quintessential Hollywood good girl. She had on a khaki safari dress with a blue silk scarf knotted at the throat.
“I’m anxious to talk to you about what went on,” I said.
“I’ll make the time,” she said. “You know, the set might be the best place. I have a lot of free time there, since I’m not one of the people hopping in and out of bed. Mostly, I get everyone together for a sensible breakfast. And do a lot of knitting.”
Sonny put an Erroll Garner album on. The Elf was his favorite musician. When I think back on our collaboration, it’s always set to Garners sweet, fluid piano.
“Look at her, Hoagy,” he said, sitting next to me on the sofa. “She’s still the best-looking broad in town, ain’t she?”
Connie blushed. “Now, Arthur …”
“It’s true. The others can’t hold a candle to you. Name one. Little Michelle Pfeiffer? Little Jamie Lee Curtis? They’re Barbie dolls. This is a real woman, Hoagy. A very special woman. And I’ll tell you why. I’m a comic, see? A performer. I’m trained to hide behind my professional personality. My mask. In fact, that’s what I wanted to call the book—Behind the Mask. Publisher preferred The One. Anyway, it ain’t easy to drop that mask for nobody, let alone a broad. Connie’s the only one I could drop it for. Ever. She’s the only one who ever knew the real me, who wanted to know the real me.”
“Arthur, you’re embarrassing me.”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s true. You stuck by me, baby. Always. I had to drive you away.”
She swallowed and looked away. I gathered he was referring to Tracy St. Claire.
“And someday,” he went on, “I’ll earn your trust again, Connie. That’s all Ï want.” He took a piece of cauliflower. “You and Hoagy getting acquainted? This here is a talented boy. He and I have a lot in common, you know.”
“We do?” I said.
“Sure. You’re just like me. You hold back. You hide behind your own mask. I’m gonna pull it off you, though. Know why?”
“Let me guess … because you love me?”
“Right.”
He started to crush me in a bear hug. I flinched.
“Gotcha!” He laughed.
Maria appeared to announce dinner was served.
“Not served,” corrected Sonny. “How many times I gotta tell ya? The word is … soived.”
She flashed him a smile and said it again in correct, south-of-the-border Brooklynese.
“That’s more like it.” He grinned.
He went to the foot of the stairs and called Wanda. She padded down barefoot in a caftan slit all the way to her thigh, and joined us at one corner of the giant dining table. Dinner was broiled snapper, rice, and steamed vegetables.
Wanda ate hurriedly and avoided eye contact with the rest of us.
Connie asked me what my novel was about.
“I’ll handle that one,” said Sonny before I could answer. “It’s about the death of this small, family-run brass mill in Connecticut. See, it’s been in the family for five generations or so, and now the father runs it, and he wants the son to take it over. Only, it’s the last thing in the world the kid wants to do. See, he and the old man don’t get along. Never did. So the mill dies, because the family has died. It’s all like a … metaphor for the death of the American dream. Am I right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very well put.”
“See?” He grinned like a proud child. “I ain’t so lowbrow.”
It seemed important that I think he was smart. I guess because he thought I was smart.
“Was it autobiographical?” Connie asked.
“Partly.”
“Your old man ran a brass mill?” Sonny asked.
“My old man runs a brass mill.”
“In Connecticut?”
“In Connecticut.”
“Damned good story. Make a terrific picture. This kid can write, he’s real serious. Hey, Wanda, you know a writer named Henry Miller?”
“Know him? I blew him.”
Connie’s eyes widened. Then she wiped her face clean of any expression and reached for her glass.
“Hey,” snapped Sonny. “You know I don’t like that kind of talk.”
“So don’t ask those kinds of questions.”
“It’s slutty and cheap and offensive. Apologize to your mother.”
“Daddy, I’m going to be forty years old this year. I’ll talk as I—“
“You’re never too old to be polite. Apologize this minute or leave my table.”
Wanda rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mother.”
“And to our company,” Sonny added.
“No problem,” I assured him.
“She’s apologizing, Hoagy!” he snapped.
Wanda leveled her eyes at me. “I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said quietly.
The matter closed, Sonny turned back to me. “I disagree with you in one area. I think the dream still lives. This is a great country. I come from nothing. Look what I got. How can you argue with that?”
“Kind of blew up in your face a little, didn’t it?” I suggested gently.
He frowned. “I had a setback. But I’m on the road back.”
“How did your interview go today?” Connie asked him.
“Total dreck. A lousy, two-bit sitcom about a stupid Great Neck catering house. They wanted me to read for the old headwaiter. Three grunts per episode. Totally one-dimensional. I walked out. They don’t write people anymore. They don’t know how. All they can write is smut and car chases. And they wonder why nobody watches. Hey, Vic brought in a couple old Capra pictures for tonight. We’ll pop some corn. I got celray tonic. Stick around, Connie.”
“I’m sorry, Arthur. I have an early call.”
“Wanda?”
“I’m going out.
“With who?”
Her body tensed. “Daddy, I’m not sixteen.”
“So why don’t you start making more sensible choices in men?”
“Mind your own—“
“Who are you—”
“It’s none of your business!” she screamed.
“It’s my business as long as you keep trashing your life!” he screamed back.
She threw her half-full dinner plate at him. Her aim wasn’t much. It missed, sailed across the dining room, and smashed against a wall, leaving a splotch of rice. She ran upstairs. Emotional exits seemed to be a specialty of hers.
“Sorry, Hoagy,” Sonny said, going back to his food. “She just never grew up in a lot of ways. And she never could stand me. That’s no secret.”
“I don’t mean to be nosy …”
“Go ahead. You’re part of the family now.”
“Why does she live here if it makes her so miserable?”
Sonny and Connie glanced at each other. He turned back to me.
“Because she’s even more miserable when she’s not living here.”
There was a plump new feather pillow on my bed, but I didn’t fall asleep the second my head hit it. Or the hour. Anyone with the approximate IQ of pimiento loaf could see that that knife was meant to scare me off. Yet neither Sonny or Vic seemed the slightest bit ruffled by it. Had Vic done it? He had warned me not to mess Sonny up. Maybe he seriously wanted me gone. Someone from the immediate family did. The grounds were secure. The knife was from Sonny’s kitchen—I’d checked with Maria. I lay there, puzzled, uneasy, wondering if I should just forget the project and go home. I’m the first to admit it—trouble is not my business. But thinking about home got me thinking about Merilee, and like I said, I was up for a while.
I had just dropped off at about four when this ungodly wailing woke me. At first I thought it was sirens. But the more awake I became the more it sounded like twenty or thirty wild animals. I put on my dressing gown and opened the guesthouse door. It was animals all right, animals howling away in the darkness.
Lulu nudged my bare ankle. I picked her up and held her in my arms. She gave me very little resistance. Together we ventured bravely forth.
Wanda was stretched out in a lounge chair by the pool, still dressed in a shimmering dress and shawl from her night out. She glanced up at me, then went back to the bottle of Dom Perignon she was working on. “It’s the coyotes.”
“Coyotes? In the middle of Los Angeles?”
“They’re miles from here—way back in the hills. The sound carries in the canyons. Spooky, isn’t it?”
“Maybe a little.” I put Lulu down. She stayed right between my legs. Wanda smiled at me. “You must think I’m an awful cunt.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“He just gets to me sometimes.”
“My father and I don’t get along either.”
“I know he’s right, about my taste in men. I have … I have a kind of low opinion of myself. But I don’t need for him to tell me, you know?”
“Yes.”
“Nightcap?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
“Champagne do?”
“Always has.”
I stretched out in the chair next to her. She filled her glass and gave me the bottle. I took a swig. We listened to the coyotes.
“Don’t get too taken in by him,” she said. “He can seem nice, but he’s still as big a shit as he ever was. He’s still crazy. He’s just channeled it differently. It used to come out as meanness and destructiveness. Now it’s peace and love. He’s a bully. If you’re nice to him, he won’t respect you—he’ll run right over you. The only thing he understands is strength. How did you get this job anyway?”
“By hanging up on him, I think.”
“What exactly are you supposed to do?”
“Help him tell his story. Talk to him. Try to understand him.”
She fingered the rim of her glass. “Good luck. It isn’t easy to understand people when they don’t understand themselves. I suppose he’s trying, though. About before … I didn’t mean to be so negative, I’ll try to help you. We’ve mended a few fences, he and I. Certainly we’re better than we were. That’s something. I’ll do what I can. Just don’t expect a lot from me.”
“Whatever you can do will be much appreciated.”
The coyotes quieted down. It was suddenly very peaceful. We drank, looking at the moon.
“How do you like The Hulk?” asked Wanda, after a while.
“Vic? He sure seems loyal.”
“He loves Sonny.”
“He told me.”
“And he’s very protective of him.”
“He told me that, too.”
“He’s a real sweetie—as long as he isn’t angry. Then he can get… atilt.”
“Atilt?”
“Yes. Trust me on this one, Hoagy. Don’t ever let him get mad at you.
“I’ll remember that.” I looked over at her, stretched out so elegantly there in the moonlight, her lovely silken ankles crossed. She looked damned good. “How come you don’t act anymore?”
“I never acted. I appeared in films.”
“I always liked you.”
“You liked my body.”
“You have talent. You can act.”
“I was no Merilee Nash.” She raised an eyebrow. “What’s she like? Is she as perfect as she comes off?”
“She has flaws, just like everybody else. I never found them, but I’m sure they’re there.” I drained the bottle. “You can act. Really.”
“Well, thank you. I quit because it was making me too insecure and crazy. Stop, I know what you’re thinking—crazier than she is now? You should have seen me before. You should have seen me when I was doing acid.”
“Vic said you were …”
“Locked up. Yes, twice. Once during my famous psychedelic period. Once before, when I was a girl.” She reached for a cigarette. “Why are you really here?”
“I’m writing your fathers book, remember?”
“But this kind of work isn’t very distinguished, is it? I mean, if you’re such a serious writer …”
“I stopped writing.”
“Why?”
“If I knew why, I wouldn’t have stopped.”
She smiled. “We’re really quite a pair, aren’t we? A real couple of exes.”
“Exes?”
“Yes. Ex-famous. Ex-talented. Ex-young. Ex-married. We ought to become pals.”
“Ex-pals?”
“For real.”
“I got the impression you didn’t like me.”
She turned. Her profile, in the pale light, was very like her mother’s. “I was just being difficult. Look, you’re going to be here for a while. We can be friends, can’t we? I’m not such an awful person. I’ll help you, if I can. And we can have dinner sometime.”
“I’d like that. I’ll buy.”
She gave me a slow, naughty once-over. She was hamming now, playing a game. “Where will you take me?”
“You’ll have to pick the place,” I replied coolly, playing along. “I don’t know this town very well.”
“Would you like to know it better?”
“I’m beginning to think I would.”
“How much do you want to spend?”
“How much are you worth?”
“More than you can afford.”
“Sorry I asked.”
“Don’t be.”
“I’m not.”
We both laughed. That broke the spell.
“What’s that from again?” I asked.
“From?”
“Yeah. What movie?”
“Our movie. It’s much more fun to make one up as you go along. You’ll see.”