As was the case each evening, Jimmy’s Tropical Bar and Grille in North Hollywood was full of real Hollywood folk, the people behind the scenes: the lighting men, grips, gaffers, best boys (assistant gaffers), sound engineers, sound boom men, set designers, art directors, follow-up men (production coordinators), carpenters, scenery shifters, continuity people, prop handlers, and juicers (electricians).
The place was a favorite hangout every night of the week, decorated in Hawaiian bad taste that blended perfectly with an atmosphere that was homey, noisy and smoky. When the jukebox wasn’t blasting out Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra’s Shake Down The Stars or Artie Shaw’s Frenesi or Glenn Miller’s In The Mood or the Benny Goodman/Peggy Lee rendition of Why Don’t You Do Right? or Frances Langford’s I’m In The Mood For Love, a live ukulele band struggled with Lovely Hula Hands.
Tom Driscoll walked in and made his way to the crowded bar. Jimmy Xsos, the flamboyant Greek owner of Jimmy’s, and an incurable movie fan, especially when it came to Maggie Graym, greeted Tom just as he settled himself onto a barstool.
“I don’t want to see you taking this man’s money,” Jimmy instructed the Hawaiian-shirted bartender. “Whatever he wants to drink, you give him to drink, on the house, understand?” Obviously, the news of Tom’s second rescue of Maggie Graym had also reached Jimmy’s ears. For a moment, Tom thought about getting off the stool and going to some other bar where nobody knew him. Anything to get some peace regarding this damned Maggie Graym business.
“This man,” Jimmy announced loudly and emotionally, “has saved from certain death, Hollywood’s most luscious, most adorable, most fabulous and talented star and I, as her number one fan, salute him.”
“A beer,” Tom told the bartender dully.
“So let me in on it,” Jimmy asked conspiratorially. “What was it like to, you know, be that close to Maggie Graym, to actually hold her in your arms, to...”
“Like hugging Mussolini,” Tom said.
Jimmy, thinking that Tom was joking, laughed heartily. “Oh, by the way, your buddy, Erne Parkin, called a little while ago. He said if I should see you in my joint that I should tell you to wait here for him. He said he has some important information to talk to you about. He said you should make sure and wait.”
“Okay, okay,” Tom said, both wondering what it was that was so urgent with Erne and wishing that Jimmy would go away so he could relax and enjoy his beer.
“You want a nice plate of corned beef and cabbage?” Jimmy asked. “Or maybe some of Jimmy’s famous meatloaf?”
“No thanks, Jimmy,” Tom said, knowing that all of the meat dishes on Jimmy’s menu were nothing more than disguised Spam. Ingeniously prepared. But still Spam.
“How about a hamburger then? On the house.”
Tom again declined and swallowed his beer. Now that Erne wanted him to wait there for him, the plan to move on to some other spot had to be abandoned.
“Well, whatever you want, you just let me know,” Jimmy said, finally starting to move away. “It’s all on the house. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a hero.”
A hero, Tom thought. He couldn’t believe he was being called a hero, not just by Jimmy, but by just about everybody he’d bumped into since the Ferris wheel incident.
To Tom, rescuing a Hollywood actress was nothing for him to be called a hero over. Wiping out a nest of Japanese artillery men on some remote island somewhere—that constituted being called a hero. Or mowing down a platoon of German soldiers. Two things he wasn’t going to get a chance of doing if things continued to go this way.
And then there was Maggie Graym herself. He didn’t know what to make of her. Here he’d saved her from getting raped the first time and killed the second, and she never as much as said thanks. Well, what could he do? She was a star, Tom thought. She didn’t have to say thanks.
By the time he was on his fourth beer, practically everybody in Jimmy’s had come up to him to say something nice. This whole thing was getting to be a gigantic pain in the ass.
It really got to be too much when an apprentice wig man asked Tom for his autograph.
“Just sign it ‘from the man who saved Maggie Graym’ or words to that effect,” the apprentice wig man said.
Until this incident blew over, Tom could see himself being referred to as the man who saved Maggie Graym. He was in the middle of being slapped on the back and told what a great guy he was by the man in charge of film processing at Grove when, to Tom’s relief, Erne walked in.
Only he wasn’t exactly walking.
It was more like he was dragging himself. Tom watched, thinking Erne was drunk or something. But then he noticed that Erne was bleeding badly.
There was quite a lot of blood and it was gushing out from several different places on Erne’s body, including the stomach area that Erne was clutching.
Erne stood upright for one more moment as he tried to walk over to Tom and then, like a great big toddler, tumbled to the floor. Except for a few twangs from the ukulele band that had now ceased playing, there was total silence in the bar.
Tom rushed to Erne’s side, knocking over his barstool. The older man’s eyes were wide open. He tried to lift his head, tried to say something. No words emerged. He tried again, desperate to give Tom a message.
With Erne so obviously wounded, Tom shouted for someone to call an ambulance. This galvanized into action the others at the bar who had appeared mesmerized by the sight of Erne lying on the floor.
But Erne, always in a hurry, seemed to have made up his mind that he wasn’t going to wait around for an ambulance. He was a man who didn’t hold on to anything once it was finished, even life. Tom watched as the light in his friend’s eyes dimmed and went out.