Come Back Dead (6 page)

9

Ella and I left the party early, soon after Hank Shepard emerged blinking from the kitchen. The next morning we slept in as long as the kids let us. I hung around the house after that, playing catch in the front yard and listening for the phone. I was expecting a call from Paddy announcing that we'd been fired because I'd pasted Drury's right-hand man. I wasn't sure how Paddy would take it, but my guess was he wouldn't be pleased. He would have preferred my pasting Drury.

The call hadn't come by ten o'clock, so I drove downtown to 59 Belmont Street, armed with my winning smile and a hip flask. Shepard had mentioned buying John Piers Whitehead a drink before he'd sent him packing. From what I'd seen of Shepard, the drink might have been his own idea. Then again, it might have been Whitehead's price for cooperating. So I decided to have a second payment handy.

Belmont Street was not included on chamber of commerce tours of Los Angeles, to judge by its weedy lawns, quilted pavement, and the veteran sedans and coupés squeezed against its curbs. The residents were spaced out better than their cars. Whitehead's block had only small apartment buildings and private homes, although several of the bigger houses had been divided into flats.

Fifty-nine Belmont had never been a private home. The white stucco building with the red tile roof contained four apartments, two up and two down, the upper ones serviced by a balcony that spanned the front of the building and a staircase that ran from the balcony to the front walk.

I couldn't find a directory, so I checked each apartment in turn. Whitehead lived on the southern side of the second floor. He'd lived there for some time, too. The little paper nameplate in the slot on his mailbox had acquired a sepia tone.

The man who answered the door could have used some sun himself. His wool vest and tie were inappropriate for July in Southern California, but they looked–and smelled–like Whitehead had worn them through a decade of Julys. His head was small and well along on its way to hairless. What hair he had left was combed forward like an antique Roman's. He had the features of a Roman senator–his nose high-arched and his chin square–but his skin was blotchy, and his eyes had a yellow cast. I was prepared for Whitehead to be older than Drury–everybody seemed to be–but not this much older. I guessed him to be in his late fifties, which meant he'd been pushing forty when he and the teenage Drury had set Broadway on fire.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I represent Carson Drury,” I said. “I'd like to talk with you.” As I said it, I realized that I was up against the same problem Hank Shepard had faced when he'd dealt with Whitehead. Drury's old partner hadn't confided in Shepard because he hadn't known him. Whitehead didn't know me, either, or so I thought. I had one of my Hollywood Security business cards out, but I didn't need it.

“You're Scott Elliott,” he said, shaking my hand. “You were in
Rhythm on the River
with Mary Martin and Bing Crosby and Basil Rathbone.”

“That picture was made fifteen years ago. How do you happen to remember it?”

I'd said something wrong. Whitehead's smile faded away. “I remember things,” he said.

“May I come in?”

Whitehead half-turned toward the dark room behind him and then shook his head. “I was just going out. For breakfast,” he added.

“I can always use a second breakfast. I'll buy if you'll let me tag along. It isn't every day somebody recognizes me.”

I was trying to point out that we had something in common: membership in the Has-Beens of America Society. That link or my offer to buy won the point for me. Whitehead kept me waiting while he found the jacket that matched his vest. Then he led me east on Belmont to Olympic Boulevard.

“It's just a short walk,” he said. “I never drive.”

As we passed the DeSoto, I considered tossing my flask through its open window. Now that I'd actually met Whitehead, I was even less comfortable with the idea of liquoring him up. He wouldn't have thanked me for the gesture. When we reached the corner, he gazed at a bar called Maxie's as though it was the girl he'd left behind.

Across the boulevard from the bar was an old-fashioned, railroad-style dining car. “There we go,” I said. “Just what we need.”

I took Whitehead by his patched elbow and led him across the four lanes of homicidal traffic. The diner's lunchtime crowd hadn't arrived yet, assuming the place had a lunchtime crowd. I found us a booth with plenty of privacy and ordered coffee and bacon and eggs from a waitress who didn't know she was dealing with two celebrities. Whitehead seconded my choices without much enthusiasm. After the coffee arrived, I offered him a cigarette. He held it very delicately, between his thumb and forefinger, but he drew on it like a man siphoning gasoline.

“What exactly are you after from Drury?” I asked.

His yellowed eyes avoided mine like twin butterflies dodging the same net. “Oscar Levant was in that movie, too,” he said. He moved his tongue around in his mouth, inspecting his teeth. “
Rhythm on the River
.”

“I remember,” I said.

“Not as well as I do,” Whitehead said, his voice so dry it brought dusty Alora to mind.

“How could that be?”

He shrugged and cleared his throat.

“Have some coffee,” I said.

“Don't have a taste for it, thank you.”

“Let me sweeten it for you.” I unscrewed the top of the flask before removing it from the pocket of my suit coat. There wasn't much room in Whitehead's mug. Just enough for one healthy shot of rye.

He didn't ask why I wasn't joining him. He was beyond that kind of pleasantry. He took the mug from me and made room for another shot. I poured it and put the flask back in my pocket. I didn't bother replacing the cap.

“What are you doing for Carson?” Whitehead asked, his feathery voice gaining strength with each word. “Are you in production now? You can't be acting for him; he's using the original
Albertsons
cast.”

“You answer one for me first,” I said. “How is it you knew about Drury's latest project? It was supposed to be a secret.”

“Kay Lamantia told me.” Whitehead was holding his mug beneath his Roman nose, inhaling its fragrance. “Kay was our costume designer on
First Citizen
and
Imperial Albertsons
. Carson tried to hire her for the reshoot, but she wouldn't come out of retirement. She was nice enough to call me for a chat.”

He took another killer drag on his cigarette and waited for me to live up to my end of our bargain.

“The company I work for was hired by Drury,” I said. “We're in the security business. I haven't been an actor since the war. There are various schools of thought on why my career ended. One is that the studios lost interest in me. Another says that I lost interest in acting. I like to think I just aged out of my character, like Mickey Rooney.”

Whitehead actually looked as though he wanted to console me, which didn't brighten my day. “You asked me how I happened to recall that movie of yours,” he said. “It's a funny thing. I don't remember the movie I saw last week as well as I do
Rhythm on the River
.”

“We went to its premiere shortly after we arrived in Hollywood–Carson and Alice, the socialite Carson was married to at the time, and I. He was already having an affair with that German actress, but poor Alice didn't know it. She and Carson were like two children at that premiere. So excited to meet Mr. Levant, I remember. I remember everything about that night: what Alice wore, where we sat, who snubbed us and who was nice, where we ate afterward. The entire golden time between that premiere and our own is sealed in my memory forever. They were the happiest days of my life.”

“The happiness ended with the
Albertsons
premiere?”

“No, with the premiere of
First Citizen
.” He looked down at the last swallow in his mug and decided to hoard it. “We had to release the picture in New York, you know. Hollywood was up in arms over our treatment of D. W. Griffith. But the change of venue worked to our advantage. New York still loved Carson, so the first night was a triumph. Poor Alice was gone by then, but then so was the German actress. Carson had moved on to that opera singer person. I remember feeling sorry for Alice that night in New York, which was vanity on my part. I was next on Carson's hit list.”

The waitress brought our food, cutting off Whitehead's performance. I thought I'd have to prime his pump again, but after he'd pushed his plate away untouched, he helped himself to another Lucky from the pack I'd left on the table and continued his story.

“Carson's always been an artist who dictated his work. Brilliant? Yes. Inspired? Yes. But utterly dependent on other people to bring his ideas to life. On Broadway I was the expert he needed. In 1938, when he found me, I was heading up a little theater group for Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, producing, directing, raising the curtain, collecting the tickets. One day Carson showed up on my doorstep with notes for a radical new
Hamlet
under his arm. He'd just gotten back from Europe, where he'd been touring with a circus.

“That's what my life was like from then on, a circus. Before I knew it, I was producing a
Hamlet
directed by and starring Carson Drury in a barn of a theater called the Empire Palace. It was the kind of theater you book ice shows into, not Shakespeare, but Carson filled it night after night. The play would have run for a year if its star hadn't gotten bored.

“After that it was one project after another. More of them failed than succeeded, but that didn't matter. Carson always used a new idea to eclipse an old failure. Together we formed Repertory One, with Carson as the brilliant innovator and me as the one who changed the light bulbs.”

Whitehead pushed his empty mug across to me. I signaled the waitress, and she brought her coffeepot over.

“Just half a cup, please,” Whitehead told her.

She noted his full plate, sniffed at his breath or maybe just at him, shrugged, and went away.

I filled the empty part of his cup. He nodded in acknowledgment and drank, this time in a slow, thoughtful way.

“I got my first hint of trouble when we moved into radio. I was out of my depth at first, and Carson knew it. I was even more lost at RKO.”

“Why did he even bring you out here?”

“He was a little frightened of the move, I think. He wanted familiar faces around him. But he felt at home soon enough. Carson has a natural genius for gauging the potential of a medium–and exploiting it. It wasn't long before he'd surrounded himself with the best soundmen, cameramen, special effects artists. He began dictating to them directly, shutting me out.

“It was worse after the
First Citizen
premiere. Everyone in town was calling Carson a genius, even the people who hated him. He barely involved me in
The Imperial Albertsons
. He would have shut me out completely if he hadn't hated dealing with the studio executives. He used me as a buffer, so he could pretend the front office didn't exist. He regretted that later. As did I.”

“Let's talk about that,” I said. “What happened after the
Albertsons
preview in Yorba Linda?”

Whitehead drained his mug and pushed it across to me. We'd reached the point of diminishing returns as far as his drinking was concerned. He was slurring his words, and his cheery bonhomie was starting to turn belligerent. Worse than that, I knew my little flask was nearing empty.

“First the answer,” I said, “then the drink.”

“To hell with you, sir,” Whitehead said. “They sell the stuff across the street.”

“Sell it is right. I'm giving it away.”

“The devil you are,” Whitehead said. In the end, though, he came across.

“The preview was a disaster. There was talk of shelving the picture completely, of scrapping it entirely. Think of what that would have done to Carson's reputation.”

“And yours,” I said.

“And mine. So I negotiated a way out for us. I agreed to make the changes the studio required. Our film editor was a talented young man who wanted to direct. Under my supervision he reshot Carson's dark ending, substituting a positive, uplifting one.”

“A happy ending,” I said to sum up.

“We calmed the studio's fears and got through a second preview. We saved the picture. I saved the picture.”

“Whose idea was it to burn Drury's footage?”

Whitehead's eyes took evasive action again. He pushed his empty mug forward an inch. “I don't know. Someone in the front office.”

We'd returned to my first question. I poured out what was left of the rye. “Why are you still interested in
Albertsons
?”

Whitehead was muttering again. “Is that so strange? It was my film, too.”

To a greater extent than I'd been told. That suggested another possibility. “It won't be your film if Drury pulls this off. He'll do to your ending what somebody did to his. Does that bother you? Would you try to keep that from happening?”

“Why would I want to? That ending brought me nothing but misery. My friends at RKO didn't keep me on a week after Carson was fired. They used me and discarded me. I curse the day I agreed to change
Albertsons
. I'd burn my ending myself if I could.”

“Three nights ago somebody tried to do just that. Only this somebody tried to burn the whole negative, Drury's work and yours.”

Whitehead spilled what was left in his mug onto the rubber tabletop. We watched it run to a low spot under the napkin holder. Then he whispered, “You said
tried
. Is the film safe?”

“For the moment. It's my job to keep it safe.”

Whitehead was closing up shop. He started to work his way out of the booth, a slow inch at a time. “Tell Carson I'll call on him.”