5

I drove to Culver City by way of a phone booth and a call to Ella. She was free that evening and genuinely excited about Carson Drury’s plan to revive The Imperial Albertsons.

“That’s the best idea I’ve heard since you proposed,” she said.

“We’ve had two children since then,” I reminded her.

“They weren’t anybody’s idea, chum,” Ella reminded me.

As Drury had mentioned, RKO’s Culver City studio had once belonged to David O. Selznick. Selznick’s later films had opened with a long shot of the lot’s centerpiece, an office building disguised as an antebellum southern mansion. It was meant to evoke memories of Selznick’s Gone with the Wind, a melancholy association, I’d always thought, since the producer had never been able to equal that early triumph.

I wandered Tara’s halls for a while without finding Hank Shepard. Finally a young woman in a calico shirt and dungarees took pity on me and directed me to an unassuming building behind the mansion. Tara’s garage, I told myself as I knocked on its screen door.

Beyond the door someone was typing as though his life depended on it. He yelled for me to come in without slacking his fire. I followed the sound down a cinder block hallway to a cinder block office lit inadequately by the noon sun bouncing off the street outside and through a louvered window cranked fully open.

When I made my entrance, the typist broke off with a flourish that made me think of Chico Marx’s piano routines. He hit the last key with an extended forefinger, the rest of his hand shaped to resemble a gun.

“Bang,” he said. “Another press release bites the dust.” Then he swiveled in his chair and extended his hand. It was a big hand, but not a hard one. “Hank Shepard,” he said. “You must be Scott Elliott. Carson told me to expect you.”

Shepard reminded me of friends from my old artillery battery. That is, he reminded me of the way the friends had turned out. He was a well-fed, peaceful-looking citizen who smiled easily and seemed to mean it. He had wavy blond hair worn a trifle high on his forehead, blue eyes that weren’t as clear as they probably once had been, and big red ears that drooped a little in the reflected sunlight. One of the ears was wearing a healthy coating of petroleum jelly. Despite the heat, Shepard’s white shirt was buttoned at the collar, and his bow tie–white with blue stripes like the curtains in Drury’s borrowed office–was knotted tightly. He had rolled his sleeves up, however. I could see that his left forearm was wrapped in greasy gauze.

“Your boss told me you’d been singed,” I said. “It looks worse than that.”

“It does,” Shepard said, holding up his arm so he could admire it. “Luckily this is Hollywood. Nothing is exactly what it appears to be, and nobody’s who they seem. What time do you have?”

“Two past twelve.”

“Time for my pain medicine. Care to join me?”

He pulled a pint of bourbon from its hiding place behind the typewriter and collected two glasses from a little tray held in place by a big water jug. Shepard’s resemblance to my old army buddies was increasing by the minute.

“I wasn’t burned,” I said.

“Not yet,” Shepard said. “But you’re working for Carson Drury now, right? So it’s only a matter of time.” He handed me a generous shot. “Consider this something on account.”

I raised my glass. “To heroism,” I said.

Shepard held his laugh until he’d downed his drink. “If you’re referring to the fire the other night, that was no big deal. Nothing like winning the Silver Star.” He looked down at my chest to see if I might be wearing mine.

“Who told you about that?”

“Just some scuttlebutt Carson picked up somewhere. It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. I pulled out my pack of cigarettes and offered one to Shepard, Ella not being around to frown at me.

She wasn’t around, but she wasn’t that far away, either. As I lit my Lucky, Shepard said, “And you’re married to Pidgin Englehart, aren’t you?”

Pidgin was Ella’s old nickname from her days as a studio publicist. It was short for pidgin English, an unflattering reference to her early writing style. “More of Drury’s scuttlebutt?” I asked.

“Nope, my own. I broke in with Pidgin at Warners right after the war. A great girl, a really great girl.”

I thought about working our children into the conversation as a way of wiping the rosy glow of memory off Shepard’s face. In the end I just said, “How long have you been working for Drury?”

“Since I quit Warners in ’46. It seemed like a good move at the time. Carson was working on The Gentleman from Macao back then. Did you see that one?”

“Yes. The closing scene in the house of mirrors is a classic.”

Shepard grimaced. “For twelve reels a detective chases this mysterious killer, and all anybody remembers is the shamus looking into the mirrors and seeing the murderer in place of his own reflection. You’re supposed to know then that the killer and the detective are the same guy, two personalities in one body. I don’t think half of the ticket buyers figured it out or cared by then. That was another picture that got some front-office editing after Carson was asked to clean out his desk.”

“I liked it,” I said.

“Me, too,” Shepard said. “But I’m no judge of celluloid. If I were, I wouldn’t still be hanging around, waiting for another heartache.”

“You don’t give this comeback try much of a chance?”

“Once burned, twice shy, to return to my earlier joke. Let’s just say I’ve lived through more than one of Carson’s comebacks. None of the others had the panache of this Albertsons stroke, though. I can almost see him bringing this one off. If only …”

That dangling if brought us around to business. I set my glass on Shepard’s desk. “What’s the story on this fire?”

“Come on,” Shepard said. “I’ll show you the scene of the crime.”

He led me back out the way I’d come in, briefing me from a little wire-bound notebook as we went.

“A week ago I noticed that Carson’s copy of the script was missing. He’d left it on my desk when we quit for the night, and the next morning it was gone.”

“Was the place locked?”

“Yep. On account of my typewriter, not Carson’s script. But the locks around here are mostly for keeping the doors from blowing open in the wind. The script that disappeared was Carson’s old copy from 1942, which we were able to replace, but the stolen script had years of notes and rewrites scribbled in the margins, which we can’t replace. That may be a blessing in disguise. Only Carson would spend thirteen years defending his original conception as a work of art while all that time he’s rewriting it. He’s like that Wordsworth guy.”

“What studio’s he with?” I asked, kicking an empty soda bottle out of our way.

“Don’t give me the tough guy act, Elliott. You know who I’m talking about. Wordsworth the English poet. When he got old, he spent his time rewriting his early poems when he should have been writing new ones. Screwing the early ones up, too, needless to say. Carson has the same tendency, so the notes are no big loss. He’s probably scribbled a whole new set by now anyway.”

“There was also some vandalism?”

“Two nights later. Carson found that himself. He got back from the dinner break late and saw that the tires on my heap and on Joe Nolan’s Chrysler had been slashed. Joe’s our cameraman. Carson got a big kick out of that. He has a leisurely dinner, and as a bonus he doesn’t have to buy new tires.”

“Is security around here that light?”

“It’s lighter than a thirty-five-cent lunch. And about as hard to find. It consists of some Keystone Kops that the American Standard Tire Company hired to keep the place from walking away.

“Still, they came through like the cavalry on the night of the fire. It was three days after the tire slashing–night before last, I mean. We’d been working late, talking out Carson’s idea of duplicating some of the old sets with matte paintings. Carson broke it up about nine because he had a date with some Mexican starlet. Joe and I killed a bottle, then he left. I was collecting myself for the same effort when I smelled smoke.”

I’d been smelling something similar for some time. We rounded the corner of the alleyway and came to another cinder block building. It was one story, like Shepard’s garage, but longer, with a series of outside doors like a racetrack stable. The door nearest our corner was gone, replaced by a rectangular black hole. Through it I could see more blackness. The window next to the door had been broken out. Where the white paint on the block wall wasn’t blistered, it was discolored by smoke.

“You went in there twice?” I asked.

“Marvelous stuff, whiskey. Of course, I had noble motives, too. Like money. My wagon’s hitched to Carson Drury’s star, for better or worse. That means it’s hitched to Albertsons. It’s my last chance to turn my years with Carson from a dead loss to a profit. I’ll be damned if I’ll let some son of a bitch with a Zippo take that chance away.”

The alley around us was decorated with half-burned furniture and ruined equipment: the ends of a long table whose middle was missing; the naked frame of a swivel chair, already rusting; a sofa whose charred cushions had been split open. What had once been editing equipment was now a pile of blackened pieces. Only the empty film reels were still recognizable.

“How did the fire start?” I asked.

“Search me. I had the impression that the wire wastebasket under the editing table was the center of the action, but it was only an impression. The fire spread so fast, it seemed to be everywhere at once.”

“What did the arson boys say?”

Shepard had left his hat back in his office. He held his little notebook above his eyes to shield them from the sun. “What arson boys?”

“The fire department didn’t take an interest in this?”

“We managed to handle it without them.” Shepard pointed to a hydrant ten feet away. A reel of hose hung on the building next to it, dirty hose that had been rewound inexpertly. “Like I said, the Keystone Kops earned their money that night. One of them was walking post near enough to hear me yelling for help. By the time I got the last can of film out, there were two of them here, and they’d figured out how the fire hose worked. They had that little room flooded before I’d stopped sizzling.”

“They still would have called the fire department.”

“Yeah, they would have if I hadn’t volunteered to do it for them. I called Ciro’s instead and left a message for Carson to get back here quick. He still had the crazy idea we could keep this production a secret. I knew he wouldn’t want firemen or policemen or, worse, reporters prowling around.”

“How did Drury handle the guards?”

“With one hand tied behind his back. You’ve never seen Carson’s God routine, have you? He drops that radio voice of his into low gear, shakes all the slack out of his spine, and brings his black brows together like a pair of rival bulls. Then he either gives you hell or pumps you full of sweetness and light, depending on which he thinks will get him the most mileage.

“He took the high road and the low road both that night with the guards. First he gave them the impression that he would personally mention their devotion to duty to Tyrone McNally and each and every stockholder of American Standard Tire, and maybe even to President Eisenhower. He then said that the fire had been a careless accident and it would be a shame for anyone to lose his position over a careless accident. A terrible shame. Luckily for them, Carson was in charge. They could count on him to handle the situation with superhuman delicacy. It was a nice little performance. He left those sad sacks feeling like heroes who could be fired for cause at any second. They went away quietly enough, let me tell you.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Carson threw the negative in the trunk of his car–it’s now in a fireproof vault, by the way–and drove me to the hospital. On the way I convinced him to let me go public with the Albertsons reissue.”

“But not about the fire.”

“No. We can’t afford to. It’s a shame. I could build a beautiful sympathy campaign out of that.” He swept his hand through the hot air to symbolize the jumbo type he’d need for his headline. “‘Hard luck director’s comeback threatened by phantom saboteur.’ Something like that might even get Hollywood pulling for Carson for a change. Half of Hollywood anyway. The other half would be convinced that the fire was some publicity stunt we cooked up ourselves.”

“What do you mean you can’t afford to release the story?”

“I mean it literally. Look, Carson didn’t agree to drop all the secrecy business because he owed me for saving the negative. He only gave in because his cash is running out. He needs to find more money now if he wants to get this production finished.”

Shepard lowered his notebook visor and squinted upward. “If you’re through here, let’s find some shade.”

I took a look inside the burned-out editing room so I’d be able to tell Paddy I had. Then we walked back toward Shepard’s office.

Halfway there, Shepard still hadn’t resumed his story, so I said, “Your boss told us that he’d gotten the negative and the equipment he needs for peanuts.”

“He did. But this is still Hollywood. The carpenters around here make more than a Corn Belt bank president. So far we’ve only managed to build one lousy set, a three-story curving staircase that Carson plans to use for exactly one shot.”

“Drury said that duplicating the old sets was the biggest challenge.”

“What he meant was, paying for them is. We need some backers now. That means publicity–and only positive publicity. No stories about sabotage or vandalism or plain old bad luck.”

“So this party tonight was your idea?”

“No. That was Carson staying one step ahead of me as usual. He’d already lined up one potential angel, a buddy of Tyrone McNally’s named Traynor. After Carson agreed to go public with the production, he talked this Traynor into footing the bill for a coming-out party. The hick probably thinks he’s going to meet Jane Russell.”

Since we’d broached the subject of money, I asked the question Paddy had written on my shirt cuff: “Where did Drury’s first bankroll come from, the one that’s running out?”

“Eden,” Shepard said. “That’s Carson’s ranch out near Encino. He bought it with his First Citizen paycheck, and he’s hung onto it somehow ever since. He loves that place. It’s a sign of how desperate he is to make good this time that he’d put Eden up as collateral for a loan.”

“What bank is holding the paper?”

“Bank? Banks and Carson don’t speak to each other. He got the money from the Alora Land Conservancy, a farming cooperative.”

“Why would farmers lend money to Drury?”

“They’re buying up a lot of land north of Encino to keep it out of the hands of developers. It so happens that a developer named Ralph Lockard has been trying to buy Eden from Carson for years. So Carson went to the Alora people and told them if they wouldn’t lend him the money, he’d be forced to sell to Lockard. He convinced them that either way it played out, they’d win. If he pulls this gamble off, Eden is safe. If he doesn’t, the conservancy gets it. So the farmers forked over.”

We arrived back at Tara’s garage. Shepard lounged in the doorway, keeping all the shade for himself. “You haven’t asked me yet about Carson’s enemies,” he said.

“How do you know I’m going to?”

“Carson told me when he phoned.”

“He told me he didn’t have any enemies.”

“That’s Carson all over. Never met a man who didn’t like him. All the same, he wanted me to be sure to mention John Piers Whitehead.”

“His partner?”

“They haven’t been partners since Albertsons died young–or pen pals or even nodding acquaintances. Whitehead’s been here in Culver City, though, sniffing around.”

“For what?”

“Redemption, Carson said. I don’t know what he meant, exactly, but that’s nothing new. He won’t even speak to Whitehead. The one time the guy actually knocked on our door, I dealt with him. But he didn’t know me and wouldn’t tell me his business. I bought him a drink and sent him on his way. He seemed like a harmless enough bird, but I guess you can never tell.”

“When was this?”

“The morning before the fire.” Shepard took a business card out of his shirt pocket and passed it over. Whitehead’s novel-length name was printed on the front of the card in small, raised letters. On the back of the card, a shaky hand had written, “59 Belmont Street.”

“Easy enough for you?” Shepard asked.

“Too easy,” I said.

“It won’t stay that way, pally. Not with Carson in the game. Take my word for it.”