The Million-Dollar Wound (14 page)

I didn’t point out that Pegler had in fact been eavesdropping, that Bioff hadn’t intended to impress anybody but his fellow pimps. Still, I could see this man, as a boy, taking it as an insult.

“I saw him again, years later, in another bar,” Pegler continued, “on the North Side. He looked familiar, and I asked my drinking companion if he knew the fat, dapper little man, and my friend said, ‘Why, that’s Willie Bioff—the union slugger and pimp.’”

“And of course the name rang a bell. When was this?”

“Nineteen twenty-seven, perhaps,” he said. “I didn’t know you were in Chicago then.”

“I didn’t live here. I was working for the
Tribune
Syndicate, however, and touched bases often. Working a sports beat, traveling all over. Got here quite often.”

“I see.”

“Let me bring you up to date,” he said, sitting forward. “If you’ve indeed read my columns, you must know that I’ve waged something of a war against the crooked unions.”

“Yeah.”

He was getting wound up, his eyes staring, not looking at me, as he said, “The newspaper guild soured me on unionism once and for all, you see; it was a hotbed of Reds, and as for the AFL, that great, arrogant, corrupt, hypocritical, parasitic racket, well, I…”

“I’ve read your column,” I said. He was starting to irritate me, now. My father was an old union man, he gave his heart and soul to the movement, and while Pegler’s opinions weren’t entirely baseless, they still rubbed me the wrong way.

He sensed it. “Let me stress that the idea of unionism is something I can admire; what it is rapidly degenerating into is something I can only abhor.”

“Understood.”

“At any rate. I usually make two or three cross-country jaunts each year, looking for material for my column. I think of myself as a reporter, and while I’m paid handsomely to air my opinions, those opinions mustn’t be formed in a vacuum. I need to get out and be a newspaperman from time to time. Last week I was in Los Angeles, that modern Babylon, and I found a
real
story.” He drew on the cigarette, relishing the moment. “I was at a party given by Joe Schenck, the Twentieth Century-Fox film executive. Across a wide room, filled with Hollywood stars and directors and producers, with all the fancy trimmings, cocktails and caviar, I spied a familiar face.”

“Bioff?”

Pegler nodded, smugly. “Oh, he was older than a teenager, now, by some distance. As was I. But that fat round smiling face was the same, and, as I drew nearer, the hard little pig’s eyes, behind wire-rim glasses now, were as cold and inhuman as ever. Oh, he was handsomely turned out, in the Hollywood style, double-breasted pinstripe suit, a handkerchief with a monogram, WB.”

Except for the initials, Pegler might have been describing his own wardrobe.

“I asked my host if that man’s name wasn’t Bioff,” Pegler said, “and he replied, ‘Yes it is—that’s one of our most illustrious citizens. Would you like to be introduced to him?’ I said I wouldn’t shake hands with Willie Bioff if I were wearing gloves.”

“I wasn’t aware Bioff was in Hollywood; I didn’t know what became of him, frankly.” I shrugged. “I guess I assumed he was still involved with Browne and the Stagehands Union. Browne moved his office to the East Coast years ago.”

A humorless smile made a slant on Pegler’s fleshy face. “Well, it’s in Hollywood, now, and has been since 1935. I did some checking. I talked to Arthur Unger, the editor of the
Daily Variety,
and he informed me that the Stagehands Union now controls some twenty-seven different unions. Browne, or in reality Bioff, controls not just the stagehands and the movie projectionists, but ushers, treasurers, porters and hatcheck concessionaires in legitimate theaters coast to coast, and movie studio mechanics, sound technicians, laboratory technicians, virtually everyone involved in the manufacturing end of the film industry. A hundred and seventy-five thousand dues-paying members.”

“That’s a lot of power for our fat little former pimp.”

“It is indeed.” He straightened up in his chair and smiled tightly, smugly. “Mr. Heller, I intend to expose Willie Bioff for the panderer he is.”

“That should be easy. He’s been arrested enough times.”

“Yes, but has he been convicted?”

“At least once that I know of.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I was the arresting officer,” I said.

He smiled. “That was a rumor we heard, but we’ve not been able to verify it.”

So that’s how my name got picked out of the hat to be the dick Pegler pegged for his legwork.

“I’m not sure I want to be involved in this,” I said. “I hear Browne is tied in with Nicky Dean, and Dean’s an Outfit man. If this is an Outfit operation, my future health precludes my involvement.”

“You don’t need to decide this instant. Have you ever been to California?”

“No.”

He reached in his inside pocket and produced an envelope, which he handed to me.

I took it.

“Look inside,” he prompted.

I did. Two one-hundred-dollar bills and an airline ticket.

“Your flight to Hollywood leaves at six-twenty this evening,” he said.

Train travel I was used to; plane travel was something new, and a little frightening. Truth be told, I slept through a lot of it. Twenty-five other hearty souls and I sat within the DC-3 “Flagship,” a noisy, rattling projectile that churned through the night sky like a big kitchen mixer. The businessman I sat next to actually read
Fortune
magazine, as if this sort of travel was an everyday thing to him. Maybe it was. We spoke a few polite words, but, sitting over the wing, fighting the sound of the propellers, there just wasn’t much to be said. I was relieved when the thing sat down in Dallas, sometime after one o’clock in the morning, and was surprised to find I could make my stomach accept a little something in the airport cafeteria, where oddly enough the people working had Southern accents. Within an hour I was on a sleeper plane, within which two facing seats in a sort of train-type compartment were converted to a berth by a good-looking blonde woman in a vaguely military outfit, a “stewardess” she was called, who then shut the curtains and I got awkwardly undressed, hanging my clothes in the netting provided, and slipped under cool sheets and I’ll be damned if the sound of the props and the up-and-down motion didn’t put me to sleep. Some hours later the stewardess woke me to let me know the airliner was landing—at Tucson, Arizona, which, unlike my present confusion, was a state I’d never been in. I dressed, and then helped her turn the berth back into two seats, into one of which I was strapped, and we landed. Another airport, another cafeteria. Soon I was sleeping again, in my pants atop the blankets this time, and before long it was eight o’clock in the morning in Los Angeles (ten o’clock in the real world, but never mind).

But this wasn’t the real world, it was Glendale, where I caught a cab, despite the six-mile ride I was in for. All expenses were paid on this little jaunt, after all; that was the deal: two hundred bucks, all expenses, no strings. I could enjoy the trip to sunny California, pocket the two C’s, and head back for the windy city, even should I refuse the job.

Which well I might, but I didn’t see how I could turn down this preliminary offer. Besides, I was going to meet a real-life movie star, unless that was a contradiction in terms.

“Where to?” the cabby said. He was a blond handsome kid of about twenty, who’d been sitting behind the wheel at the curb reading something called the
Hollywood Reporter.

“One forty-four Monovale Drive,” I said.

“That’s in Beverly Hills,” he said, matter of factly.

“If you say so.”

I climbed out of my raincoat, folding it up and easing it into my overnight bag; anticipating warmer weather here, I’d taken the lighter coat, but was already warm in spite of it. The sun was bright in a blue sky, bouncing off the asphalt, slicing between the fronds of palm trees. This was California, all right.

“What street is this?” I asked, after a while. This seemed to be a central business and amusement district—shops, movie houses, office buildings, some of the latter approaching skyscraper stature (if not Loop skyscraper stature).

R
OBERT
M
ONTGOMERY

“The Boulevard,” he said. He wasn’t friendly; he wasn’t unfriendly.

“Hollywood Boulevard?”

“Right.”

I’d thought people might sleep till noon out here, but I was wrong. Either side of the Boulevard was busy with folks sauntering along looking at each other and themselves, reflected in the shop windows, where fancy displays showed manikins wearing expensively informal clothing, the latest polo shirts and sport jackets for men, sporty blouses and slacks for women, earlier examples of which the window-watchers were already wearing, white their predominant color. A few years before, I’d been in Florida; this seemed much the same, and not just because of the sun and pastel art-deco look—the spirit here was similarly that odd combination of sophistication and naivete I’d noticed in Miami.

Not that I wasn’t impressed.

“That’s the Brown Derby,” I almost shouted, pointing over toward the east side of Vine Street, where a great big hat squatted. Chicago’s Brown Derby was just a building.

“Sure is,” the cabby said, blasé.

Pretty soon he turned off on a side street, into an area of stores, taverns, small hotels, motor courts, drive-in markets, apartment houses. We passed green parkways, pepper trees, palms. A pastel rainbow of stucco bungalows, white, pink, yellow, blue, with tile roofs, often red.

Then we turned onto a major thoroughfare. “What’s this?”

“Sunset Boulevard.”

Soon, he condescended to inform me, we were on the “Strip”: he pointed out such movie-colony night spots as the Trocadero and Ciro’s and the Mocambo. Many buildings along the Strip were painted white with green shutters, housing various little shops with windows boasting antiques or couturiers or modistes and other French-sounding, expensive-sounding nonsense, and restaurants with Venetian blinds protecting patrons from the glare of sun and passersby.

Hollywood was every bit as strange a place as I’d expected. Later that day, in another cab, I’d pass a small independent movie studio where chaps in chaps and sunglasses and Stetsons, and girls in slacks and sunglasses and bright kerchiefs (protecting their permanent waves) were standing at a corner hot dog stand either flirting or talking shop or maybe a little of both. The hot dog stand, of course, looked like a great big hot dog. Giantism was big out here: fish and puppy and ice cream cone buildings, mingling with papier-mâché castles. It was like the ’33 World’s Fair, but screwier. People ate in their cars.

Right now, however, I was in a cab winding its way through the rolling foothills of Beverly Hills, on which were mansions, luxuriating behind fences in the midst of obscene green lawns, two stories, three stories, white Spanish stucco, white English brick, yellow stucco, red brick, you name it. The rich north suburbs of Chicago had nothing on these babies.

“This is Robert Montgomery’s house,” the cabby said, breathlessly, pausing before entering onto the private drive.

“So what?” I said, unimpressed.

After all, what was it to me? Just another rambling two-story Colonial “farmhouse,” white frame and brick, surrounded by a rustic rock garden, perched on a hill against a horizon of more hills. Hell, there’s one of them on every third corner back in Chicago.

He took me up the winding drive, up the sloping lawn. Plenty of trees, too, and not a palm in sight. Clearly this Montgomery was a guy with dough who wasn’t afraid to spend it. Clearly, too, this was a guy who’d rather not be in Hollywood, to the point of reinventing the place into New England.

I got out of the cab and handed in a sawbuck to the guy, saying, “Keep it.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Do you
know
Robert Montgomery?”

“We’re like this,” I said, holding up crossed fingers.

“I’m an actor, too,” he said, earnestly.

“Aren’t we all,” I said, and turned my back on him and went up the sidewalk.

I knocked on the polished white door, and soon it swung open and a small, attractive woman in her thirties, with light brown hair and a fine smile, greeted me, smoothing her crisp print dress, blue on white, as she spoke.

“You’d be Mr. Heller,” she said.

I had my hat in my hands. All I could think of was I hadn’t brushed my teeth since that goddamn sixteen-hour plane ride.

“Yes I am,” I said, the soul of wit.

“I’m Mrs. Montgomery,” she said.

I hadn’t taken her for a servant.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

She offered me her hand and I accepted it, a smooth, cool hand which I gently grasped rather than shook.

“Please step inside,” she said, taking my overnight bag (although I could use the toothbrush therein about now) and she stepped graciously aside and then I was in.

The hall was knotted pine, and the smell of pine was in the place too; it brought to mind Pegler’s aftershave, which was fitting I suppose, since Pegler brought me here. Mrs. Montgomery paused to gracefully point toward an elaborately framed picture that seemed a little out of place, amidst the otherwise early American trimmings of the place: a bunch of royal-looking dopes in a carriage.

“This picture is a special prize,” she said. “We were in England at the time of the Silver Jubilee, and this is a signed copy of the Jubilee picture. Painted by Munnings.”

“By Munnings. Really.”

“Yes. That’s Queen Mary and King George V on their way to Ascot. And there in the carriage are the Prince of Wales and his brother who became, of course, King Edward VIII and King George VI, respectively.”

“Of course.”

A stairway curved gently to the left; also opening to the left was the open-beamed dining room, where dark mahogany early American furniture was surrounded by wallpaper brightly depicting scenes from the Revolutionary War, redcoats and bluecoats cheerfully fighting. I guess I knew who Queen Mary and King George V would’ve rooted for. At a bay window, next to sheer ruffled curtains, sat a small oval table. At the small oval table sat Robert Montgomery. He was reading the
Daily Variety
, a cup of coffee before him.

“Mr. Heller’s here, Bob,” Mrs. Montgomery said, and Montgomery rose and smiled. It was the same urbane smile I’d seen in any number of light comedies; it was also the same urbane smile of the killer in
Night Must Fall.

He was about my size, six foot, and weight, one-seventy, casually attired in white shirt and brown slacks; and, like me, was in his mid-thirties or so. His eyes were blue and his hair brown, and he wasn’t strikingly handsome, exactly—it was one of those faces that seemed soft and strong at once—but you knew you were in the presence of somebody.

We shook hands. He had a solid, strong grip, and his hands were not the smooth movie-star hands I’d expected; this man had, at some time in the not too distant past, worked a real job.

“Please join me,” he said, gesturing to the chair opposite him at the small oval table, and he sat down, and I sat down.

“We waited breakfast for you. Is French toast all right? Orange juice and coffee?”

“Sure. That’s very gracious of you.”

He folded the
Variety
and put it to one side of his place setting; only his coffee cup was before him—he really had waited to have breakfast till I got there.

“I knew what time you were getting in,” he said, shrugging, smiling just a little. “And I know what those flights are like. You’ve grabbed a random bite at this airport cafeteria and that one. And, despite sleeping on the trip, you’re very tired, aren’t you?”

I was. I hadn’t noticed it, really, but I was bone tired.

“I guess I am,” I said.

“Well, you can relax some, while you’re here. You’re to stay at least overnight. I’ve made reservations for you at the Roosevelt.”

“Yes, that was my understanding. Thank you.”

“Thanks for coming out here on such short notice.”

His wife brought the food in and served it; again, no servants, at least none in sight.

“It looks delicious,” I told her, and it did.

“Breakfast is usually a one-man affair at our house,” she said. “I’m sure Bob will appreciate the company.”

They smiled at each other, quite warmly, and she left. This was a civilized house, that was for sure. Of course with dough like this, they could afford to be civilized.

Well, the breakfast tasted as good as it looked, the orange juice everything fresh-squeezed California orange juice is supposed to be including pulpy, and we didn’t talk about the pending case, rather talked about my flight and other general small talk. At one point he asked me what I thought about FDR seeking a third term; and I said, I didn’t know it was official; and he said it wasn’t, but that it was going to happen; and I said, I’d probably vote for the guy again.

“I worked for him in ’33 and ’37,” he said, thoughtfully, seriously, “but it goes against my grain to support
any
president for a third term. We stop short of royalty in this country, thank God.”

Jubilee painting or not.

“I liked you in that movie where you played the killer,” I said.

He smiled, but it wasn’t the killer’s smile. “It was the role I liked best,” he admitted.

“You got an Academy Award nomination for that, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” He laughed to himself. “Do you know what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
really
is?”

“Uh, not exactly, no.”

“A company union.” Now he smiled the killer’s smile. “A
failed
company union. You see, Louie B. Mayer wanted to fight any
legitimate
unionization of actors and directors. The Academy was to be the contract arbitrator between the studio and the guilds. You can imagine just how impartial that arbitration would be. Well, we put a stop to that.”

“That’s good.”

After breakfast he ushered me into the nearby “study,” which was bigger than my entire suite at the Morrison: fireplace, built-in shelves of leather-bound books, hunting prints on pine walls, tan leather furniture (none of it patched with tape, either). He settled at one end of an absurdly long leather couch and helped himself to the pipes and tobacco on a small round table before him. He nodded to an overstuffed leather chair opposite him and I sat down in it, and I mean down, in, it.