To Kill the Duke (46 page)

Toughski shitski
Alexei thought, which made him think of Ivan, which made him send this telegram to Mr. Zavert and Boris:
Every calendar’s day is numbered.
This meant that he was away from Hollywood in pursuit of the intended target.

Alexei loved working for Paul and delivering wine up and down the coast of California for
The Brumagin Winery
.

“Nothing like solitude, views of the ocean and the wind whipping through the open windows,” he told Paul one night after he returned from a long haul.

“But the food on the road sucks,” Paul replied with a sigh.

“I have found some decent spots. After all, it has been six months,” Alexei said. “When is my next trip?”

“In a few days. Have to wait for the bottling.”

A few days turned into a week and when the crates were ready to be delivered, Alexei was chomping at the bit to make his deliveries. He drove very skillfully and quickly and was never late. His customers never experienced a broken case or even a broken bottle from a delivery made by Alexei Alexandra. Alexei was very proud of that fact.

On this day, he had been driving a few hours when he saw a sign for one of his favorite roadside diners. It was good, and as a matter of fact,
it was the only one that Paul liked; it was located on the beach, with a terrific view, a big menu, great food and very cheap prices. The name of the joint was
Bills Place
and Alexei smiled as he pulled in the parking lot. As usual, there were a lot of other sized trucks parked all over the place. Alexei found a spot, parked, checked on his cargo and walked in.

He sat at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee. As the cup warmed his hands and the aroma drifted to his nostrils, he gazed out the big bay window to look at the ocean waves crashing onto the beach. He couldn’t believe what he saw and quickly excused himself to his waitress and ran out onto the beach where, with each stride, he knew his eyes were not playing tricks on him.

He had spotted the three boys from that seedy neighborhood he had beaten up way back when. They had some contraption in their hands and were staggering around out on the beach like drunks he had seen stagger in and out of
The Coconut Grove
.

“What are you kids doing way out here!” he yelled when he got within ear shot.

“Never mind us, what about you?!” the leader of the three shouted back.

Alexei came to a stop and knew the kid’s leader was right with the question he asked. Of course Alexei was going to tell the truth and wondered what they were doing so far from home. “I thought you kids were working at the grocery store?” he asked them as he extended his hand, which they all took.

The three boys laughed in unison. Alexei was happy to see that they looked good… wait a minute…too good, and thought the boys might have strayed off path.

“We are truck drivers now!” the leader said.

“So am I!” Alexei said.

“Ain’t that a pity,” the leader said sarcastically. “You and all your talents forcing you to be a truck driver like us.”

“From one truck driver to three truck drivers, talk to me about your escape from the grocery store,” Alexei said.

And the boys told Alexei what had brought them to the beach in front of
Bills Place
.

They had been walking down the street in their South Central Los Angeles neighborhood, when an older man approached them about driving trucks for the various ‘big’ studios in town. The three boys thought it was a scam — just like the celebrity photographers everyone who had grown up in Southern California were aware of — and wanted to roll the man right then and there. Something must have told the man that was about to happen to him when he pulled out identification, his union card and all sorts of other documents to prove that he was a head driver for a trucking company called
The Long Haul,
which had an exclusive contract with all the major studios. The boys asked him why he was searching the streets for drivers and the man told them that no young men wanted to do the heavy lifting along with the driving — they all wanted to play and not work. The boys took the man upon his offer and here they were after some weeks of training.

“What kind of lifting does it require?” Alexei asked.

“We drive out to location shooting — that’s where they are filming movies off the set — and have to pack up or unload all sorts of things that are being used for the movie,” the leader of the three said.

“Are you guys happy?” Alexei found himself asking the boys.

“Like pigs in shit!” they said in unison.

“Good. Were you filming around here?” Alexei asked them.

“No,” replied the leader of the three. “We’re on our way back to RKO studios with the reddest sand you ever saw. That’s why we have these gizmos,” he said as he held one out for Alexei to see. “No lousy valuables on this beach though.” The others shook their head in agreement.

Alexei knew right away that he held a Geiger counter in his hand, not a metal detector, but didn’t inform the boys of that. “Take me to your trucks,” he commanded.

And they did.

Alexei walked around the trucks and the Geiger counter showed large traces of radioactivity in the sand. Alexei also waved the counter around the boys, but there was very little activity. He didn’t think that the boys had been contaminated and told them to stay out of the sand and get it to RKO right away. They agreed of course; they knew who and what Alexei Alexandra was all about.

“What movie set is this stuff from, and do you know why it is headed for RKO?” he asked them.

“A movie called
The Conqueror
done in Southern Utah. John Wayne is in it. The guys who helped us on the set said it was a western with Genghis Khan in it. And we got to try these new drinks that all the helpers said were invented on the set called raspberry lime rickeys,” the leader of the boys said.

“Did you meet Wayne?” Alexei asked them.

They all shook their heads dejectedly.

“So why is the sand going back to RKO?”

“They have been filming for months on this stuff and when they went back to post production, the sand at the studio was a different color, so they hired
The Long Haul
to drive two trucks of the stuff to the studios. Wayne and the others have to reshoot a lot of film,” the leader of three boys said.

“You know a lot,” Alexei said.

“This kid named Randy Komara told us everything.”

That kid knows everything,
Alexei thought as he bid the three boys a safe journey, went into
Bills Place
, ate a hearty meal and drove down to the neighborhood where he had first met the three boys to send a cable. But first he had to make a delivery. Secondly, after he made the delivery, he contracted with
The Long Haul
to drive the truck back to
The Brumagin Winery
and left a note in it to Paul, thanking him for everything and leaving his car and his other belongings to Paul.

This was the cable received by Boris: Time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies love bananas.

Gila dashed into Zavert’s office, threw down the cable and declared “Mission accomplished.”

“How come I haven’t read it in
Variety?
” Zavert said as he threw down the latest issue of Hollywood’s favorite newspaper.

“I guess we will have to wait to hear from Alexei,” Gila said.

“Don’t guess Comrade,
find out!”
Zavert ordered as he calmly picked up the newspaper and started reading it.

chapter two

“Fortune favors the bold but abandons the timid.”
— Latin proverb

“To escape criticism — do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”
— Gilbert Chesterton

“Well, I guess you can’t break out of prison and into society in the same week.”
— John Wayne as The Ringo Kid in “Stagecoach”

D
ick Powell was sound asleep. It had been a long day, made longer by a night of drinking vodka-laced raspberry lime rickeys with the cast and crew.

But what the hell, he had thought before he passed out. The shoot was going better than he had anticipated.

He had found himself not falling asleep, but passing out way too much lately.

“The side effects of working with Wayne, Hayward, Armendáriz, Moorhead, Conrad, de Corsia, Van Cleef, Gordon and all the other members of that cast,” his wife had told him when they had talked a few days earlier.

“Luckily, the crew isn’t into drinking like the cast,” he lied with his reply (they were just as bad, if not a tad bit worse).

“Just make sure you get it all out of your system before you return,” she warned.

“I have to. The breakfasts that I have to eat to cure my hangovers are causing me to gain weight where I hate it the most,” Powell said.

“I’ll take all your pants to the tailor and have them widened,” she said sarcastically.

But Dick Powell knew that he was going to have to change some of the bad habits he had grown way too easily into while filming this movie. He blamed it on everything but his own will power.

Things are going well. We’re on schedule. The budget isn’t out of whack. Duke is pulling it off. Big O is off my back. Susan has been terrific. There have been no accidents. Sand skiing is fun
, were all thoughts that helped him to relax after a day of filming, by partying at night.

And of course Howard hasn’t harassed me or anyone else
, he would say to himself after a day’s shooting, which really made it easy to knock back a few of those famous ‘Hayward cocktails’ that were all the rage on the set after a day’s shoot was over.

Suddenly there was a pounding at the door and Dick awoke to the voice of Ed Killy.

“Dick! Wake up! Howard is on the phone. He wants to talk to you now,” Ed said.

So much for pleasant dreaming
, Dick said to himself as he threw on some clothes and let Ed in.

“I have that deputy all set to take you to the store,” Ed said.

“Oh brother,” Powell moaned.

“It will be better this time. One, the deputy had made a few extra dollars moonlighting on the set. Two, he doesn’t want to talk to Howard Hughes,” Ed said.