Playland (41 page)

Arthur French was playing tennis at Hillcrest when his father’s secretary called the club and had the manager go to the courts and tell him that the electricians had walked out and he was to return to the studio immediately. Arthur always obeyed his father and went back to Cosmo without changing out of his tennis whites. Not changing was a mistake, he realized as soon as he walked into J. F. French’s office. J.F. was in a rage, and Arthur knew that sooner or later he would be the target of opportunity.

“What do you mean, wildcat strike?” J. F. French was screaming at Lilo Kusack. “I don’t see no wildcats, I just see a bunch of bums, and that bunch of bums was walking out, that bunch of bums Benny Draper gets paid to keep in line. What the fuck I been paying him for, they won’t even follow orders?”

“They are following orders, Moe,” Lilo Kusack said. He had assumed his reasonable, lawyer’s tone, speaking so low it was difficult to hear him. “They’re following Benny’s orders. That’s your problem.”

“My problem is we got no product for the Christmas season,
this keeps up …” J.F. stopped, as he seemed to see Arthur for the first time. “Lilo, who’s this tennis player just walked in here without knocking? Bill Tilden?” He ran his eyes over Arthur. “He’s a
fageleh
, Bill Tilden, you know that? You a
fageleh
, too? I should call you Bill, the way you let that little girl working her ass off down on Stage Seven get porked by that gangster man from New York …”

“It’s just a phase,” Arthur French said.

“Phase,” J. F. French said. “He’s got a dick bigger than your racket, I hear …”

“Moe, Moe,” Lilo said soothingly. He knew Arthur would never defend himself against his father.

“Don’t Moe, Moe me, Lilo,” J. F. French yelled. “I hear he’s sticking his racket into Rita, too.”

Lilo inspected the shine on his shoes. There was no point in interrupting this tirade, or taking offense either. He knew history was on his side. Someday J. F. French would lose control of his studio, as all the oldtimers had lost control of theirs, Laemmle and Schulberg and Fox, all of them, and Lilo would make sure he was there to kick him when he was down. And kick him once more for good measure. As for Rita, she was who she was, at least she wasn’t fucking the poolboy anymore, she wasn’t a wife, there was no point in trying to put her on a leash, and he doubted any man would be capable of that. Even her fucking Jacob might prove useful in the long run, a way to wean Blue away from him when the time came, as come it must. Blue was the client whose viability he must protect. After that service was performed he would start thinking about getting rid of Rita. It was time he should be getting married again anyway, and Rita was not wife material. Nor was it a role she sought. Getting rid of her would sadden him. Rita’s brain might be in her pussy, but there were few men and no women whose brain he valued more.

“You got nothing to say?” J. F. French said belligerently.

“The electricians could be back this afternoon, Moe,” Lilo said evenly, “if you just let me bring Benny in and we make his deal.”

“Such a tough guy, this Benny. The gangster man burns down his hotel, your hotel, Lilo …” J.F.’s hand shot out, his forefinger like an arrow, his voice rising, strangled, almost inarticulate, the artery in his neck pulsating. Lilo thought he might have a stroke right there, and that would be something he would enjoy. “… 
my
hotel, and what does Benny-tough-guy do about it? He calls this wildcat thing against me. Better he should let his wildcats chew up the gangster man that’s fucking everyone I know. I think Benny’s wildcats got no teeth, is what I think.”

In fact, Benny Draper had tried to tell Lilo of the plans he had for Jacob King, all of which involved cutting off his genitals, and one with hammering a pipe up his anus and pouring red hot battery acid in it. I am not hearing you, Benny, Lilo had said, I am an officer of the court, if I heard what you were saying, I’d have to report you or be charged with misprision of a felony. I am not hearing you, I will not be party to a conspiracy, but if you do anything to Jacob King right now, even the federal attorneys you’ve got in your pocket couldn’t stop a grand jury from indicting you. In truth Lilo was surprised that Benny had not done something stupid already. Quick and brutal vengeance was instinctive with him, a signature. He did not think Benny was getting any smarter, so perhaps Moe was right, perhaps Benny did talk the talk now better than he walked the walk. In which case a call to Jimmy Riordan might be in order. Not just yet. But a possibility.

Down the line.

To establish ground rules.

And the length of any leash attached to Jake King.

“I have the figures, J.F.,” Arthur was saying when Lilo focused back on the matter at hand. Arthur had picked up the numbers from business affairs before coming to his father’s office. The papers were sticky from his still-sweaty tennis clothes. “Make the deal now, the stoppage only costs ten thousand for the morning …”

J. F. French looked at his son in wonderment. “I send Bill Tilden here to the University of Southern California, and you
know what he learns? He learns ‘only.’ Like in ‘only ten thousand.’ Like it’s his money.”

“Moe, with the insurance, you’d come out okay,” Lilo Kusack said.

“Insurance.” J. F. French’s voice was beginning to rise again. “You must’ve been the one teaching Bill Tilden ‘only’ at the University of Southern California.”

“The fact is, J.F.,” Arthur said, “it doesn’t matter when we settle. Because we
are
going to settle.” It was as if Arthur thought he could impress his father by taking the realistic approach. “We haven’t got any options …”

The color was beginning to rise in J. F. French’s face when his secretary buzzed from the outer office.

“You’re fired,” J.F. shouted. “I said no calls.”

“Miss Tyler from Stage Seven,” the secretary said coolly. She had already been fired once before that morning, and she would be fired again that afternoon, and she would return the following day to be fired once, twice, or even thrice more. She had worked for J. F. French for eleven years, and she had stopped counting the number of times she had been fired, and she no longer cared that he was serious every time he dismissed her, always in a fury, or that he seemed not to know her first name. As a result she had never told him that her husband had polio and was confined to an iron lung in a Culver City hospital, because if he knew that he would have fired her for certain, it would make him obligated, and he despised obligation to other people, particularly those subservient to him. He expected her to keep his secrets, but she had as little interest in his women and what they did to him as he had in her private life, and its sorrows. Her name, the name J. F. French never bothered to learn, the name Arthur years later told me, was Dorothy Warnick—she was Miss Warren to J. F. French and sometimes she was Miss Warner and occasionally Miss Warnick, but never Mrs. anything—and often Dorothy Warnick contemplated what she would do if her health failed to the point where she could no longer take care of her husband, if indeed visiting him in his iron lung could be said to be taking care of him (this again from
Arthur, who would talk to her, and call her Mrs. Warnick, but never Dorothy, this woman who had felt his father’s wrath as often as he, although J. F. French and his discontents were never mentioned). She dreamed of killing her husband in this eventuality, perhaps with a gun secured from the property department, and then killing herself so that her body fell by his infernal machine. I know this because Arthur had told it to me when we were working together on our heart-transplant screenplay, he thought it was something we might find a use for. I of course wanted to know what had happened to her, but Arthur of course had no idea, not being as unlike his father as he preferred to think, or pretend. “She says it’s urgent,” Mrs. Warnick said.

J. F. French picked up the telephone and without a greeting began to yell. “You want to show your titties, I hear about it already.” Lilo Kusack marveled at the way J. F. French knew what was happening every minute on every stage and in every office. “Show your titties to your gangster man, if you want, I don’t want titties showing in a J. F. French production. We put out entertainment for the whole family.” He listened for a moment, then whirled his chair around so that neither Arthur or Lilo could hear what he was saying. “He said what?” he whispered into the telephone. “What else did he say?” He nodded and said, “All right” and “Where?” and “When?” and then he listened some more, and said, “All right” again, “Let me know,” then hung up and turned back to Lilo and Arthur, a look of satisfaction on his face.

“Moe, the clock’s running,” Lilo said finally. “What do you want me to tell Benny?”

J. F. French rose from behind his desk. “You tell Benny to go fuck himself.”

“Moe …” Lilo began.

“Out,” J. F. French said. “And take Bill Tilden with you.”

Blue said her instructions from Jacob were to ask J. F. French to meet him at the beach, in Malibu, and to tell him that perhaps he could offer a solution to the labor problems burdening Cosmopolitan
Pictures. When Jacob called the set, she was still caught halfway up the floating staircase, screaming imprecations, paralyzed with fear, a darkened soundstage suggesting to her only that the Communists were at fault, perhaps even Alan Shay, although she did not know what the Fifth Amendment was that he had taken forty-seven times the day before, only that it was un-American, as Mr. French was always saying, and anyway Alan Shay was a terrible director, he had been replaced on
Cotton Candy
, he doesn’t know how to direct children, he’s mean, she had complained to Mr. French, and Alan Shay had been fired, her wish a command, which was perhaps why he had become a Communist. She thought war with Soviet Russia was at hand, and that she was going to die on a fake staircase, surrounded by a bunch of fairy chorus boys in silver tails, at least when Carole died it was quick, one moment she was alive, the next she wasn’t. Then someone rigged a generator, and the lights came on, and she rode the boom down to the stage floor, her makeup blotched by tears, her mascara staining her long white gloves. When she got to her trailer, the telephone was ringing, and it was Jacob, he had already heard about the gaffers walking out and he listened patiently to her talk about the Reds and what they were doing to the Industry, and then he told her to call Moe and give him a message. She did not want to call Mr. French, he was mad at her about Arthur and the way she was treating him, and she wondered why Jacob called him Moe if they had never met, Moe would not like that, but Jacob said some dirty things to her over the phone, and she made the call. It was not until she hung up that she began to wonder how he had known about the strike so quickly, but of course Jackie Heller had told him it was coming up, and Jacob knew immediately that it was an opportunity.

“You got a funny way to get in touch with me,” J. F. French said. He hated the beach and especially the constant, crashing sound of the waves. It was something he could not control, and he insisted on total control. “Why not just call?”