Martin frowned. ‘No, no. Open it, read it to me over the phone.’
‘Are you sure? It’ll take a minute to go get it.’
The young priest was away for almost two minutes. When he returned, Martin heard him pick up the receiver and tear open the envelope.
‘Here it is.
“To Mr Martin Williams. You may not have heard the distressing news that Father Lucas has been murdered
.”’
‘Oh, God,’ Martin interrupted. ‘I didn’t know that either. That’s both of them.’
‘Do you want me to go on?’ the young priest asked.
‘Yes, please,’ Martin told him. Mr Capelli was frowning at him and whispering, ‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’
The young priest read, ‘
“He was found in the basement of the Hollywood Divine. The police think he was attacked by an addict. Somebody on angel dust perhaps. Father Lucas had the relics with him, but they are now missing. Whether you believe in the prophecies or not, it will do no harm to take all possible precautions. Remember the prediction of the innocents, the hundred and forty-four thousand lambs of God. Try to believe! Call me when you get back. Meanwhile make absolutely sure that no woman goes near the mirror, because Boofuls will have need of his witch-familiar, Miss Redd, and the only way he will be able to retrieve her from the mirror will be by
–” ’
The young priest paused. Martin urged him, ‘Go on, why have you stopped?’
‘Well, are you really sure you want to –? I mean, it’s kind of
odd
, isn’t it, to say the least? Father Quinlan was always known as something of an eccentric.’
‘Please,’ Martin insisted, ‘will you just finish reading the letter?’
‘All right, sir, if that’s what you want. Where was I? Oh, yes –
“the only way he will be able to retrieve her will be by trading one life for another – the way he did with the cat
–
and with your young friend Emilio. The witch-familiar will protect him and succor him until the day when he can revive his satanic parent. Witch-familiars usually have ancient and ribald names like Blow-Kate and Able-and-Stout and Pickle-nearest-the-wind
.” ’ The young priest coughed in embarrassment.
‘Please,’ Martin begged him. ‘This may sound like nonsense to you but it makes a whole lot of sense to me.’
‘Well, there’s only one more paragraph,’ the young priest told him. ‘Father Quinlan says,
“Remember Alice, read it carefully; and remember, too, that only the child can destroy the child, and only the child can destroy the parent
”.’
Martin asked, ‘Is that all?’
‘That’s all,’ the young priest told him. He sounded more officious now that he had done his duty to Father Quinlan.
‘I’ll come by and collect the letter in the morning,’ said Martin. ‘Perhaps you can keep it safe for me.’
The young priest hesitated, and then he ventured, ‘I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, Mr Williams, but you do realize that most of the time Father Quinlan was out on a limb, so to speak? I mean theologically. The church these days doesn’t recognize the old biblical legends as strict fact. The Revelation in particular. I mean movies like
The Omen
have set us back decades. We can’t have people believing in Satan, not these days. There are so many other problems for them to deal with. Unemployment, debt, divorce, drug addiction, street crime, isn’t that enough to worry about without worrying about the fiery dragon of the Revelation?’
Martin was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘With all due respect, hasn’t it ever occurred to you that all of those contemporary evils you’re talking about – divorce and debt and mugging and everything – hasn’t it ever occurred to you that these evils are nothing more than the modern face of the same old fiery dragon?’
The young priest said stiffly, ‘Well, sir, I don’t really think that this is an appropriate time to get into a religious discussion. You can collect the letter at the secretary’s office. And – sir – I do not believe in Satan, nor ever will.’
‘Your choice,’ said Martin, and put down the phone.
Mr Capelli looked up from their chess game. ‘What’s happening?’ he wanted to know.
Martin came around and stood beside him. ‘We’re on our own,’ he told him. ‘It’s you and me and Ramone, because nobody else will believe us.’
Mr Capelli said, ‘You’ve got something to tell me, don’t you? Sit down, let’s hear it. Tell me the worst. Come on, I’m an old man, I can take it. And aren’t we friends? And by the way, I just took your bishop.’
Eleven
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY STARTED
on
Sweet Chariot
in the second week of September. Fox took a full-page advertisement in
Variety
, trumpeting ‘Pip Young, Geraldine Glosset, Lester Kroll, in
Sweet Chariot
, an angelic musical, words and music by Art Glazer and Michael Hanson’.
‘Pip Young’ was June Lassiter’s inspired new name for Lejeune, the Fox board having decided that Lejeune was too foreign-sounding, especially for a boy with such a clipped foreign-sounding accent. Actually, Boofuls’ accent wasn’t foreign at all, it was simply fifty years out of date.
Martin kept in touch with
Sweet Chariot
’s progress through Morris; and through Kathy Lupanek, with whom he had made a special effort to be friends. He had even taken her out for lunch at Stratton’s and brought her flowers. Kathy Lupanek had spent two hours telling Martin about her abused childhood. Martin had sympathized.
Back at Franklin Avenue, week after week, Martin and the Capellis lived a life of empty restlessness, waiting for
Sweet Chariot
to be shot and edited and scored and premiered. As far as Martin was concerned, time inside the house seemed to stand still, while the days rushed silently past outside his window, a speeded-up movie of clouds, sunsets, thunderstorms, smog.
He tried not to watch the mirror. He took his typewriter into the kitchen and kept up his income by pecking out rewrites for
Search for Tomorrow
and
The Guiding Light
. But every now and then he would find that he had dried up; and that he had been staring at his keyboard for almost a half hour without writing a word. Then he would walk into the sitting room and stare at his reflection in the mirror and whisper ‘Emilio? Where the hell are you, Emilio? Are you alive? Are you dead?’
But there was nothing. No answers, no apparitions, nothing but a cold and clear reflection of the world as it was.
Sometimes Ramone came by, and they would sit on the sofa and look at themselves in the mirror and drink a couple of bottles of wine. To begin with – when Martin had told him all about Father Quinlan and his threats about the Revelation – Ramone had been all for smashing the mirror to pieces. ‘Just break the bastard to bits, why don’t we?’ But the days went by, and he became calmer and more philosophical, and maybe Father Quinlan had been nothing but an oddball, after all.
One morning soon after Boofuls and Miss Redd had left the house they saw police next door. Maria Bocanegra had disappeared; nobody knew where. At first her landlady had assumed that she had gone home to her parents in San Diego, but then a month later her parents had arrived to visit her. Her clothes were still strewn around her room, her bed unmade, her lipstick still open and melted across her dressing table. Her father declared, ‘It’s a total mystery, like that ship with breakfass on it and no people, the whassname, the
Marry Sir Less
.’
They saw nothing at all of Boofuls and Miss Redd. Nobody was allowed anywhere near them, except at specially selected press calls, to which Martin was conspicuously not invited. Martin tried to call Boofuls on the telephone three or four times, but each time he was told that ‘Mr Young is not accepting any calls, I’m sorry’. One Thursday afternoon, drunk on California Chablis, he had driven around to Boofuls’ bungalow and yelled out, ‘Boofuls! You bastard! You listen to me, you bastard! I want Emilio back!’ He had been escorted off the Fox lot by two tetchy security guards, and June Lassiter had called Morris Nathan and told him to keep Martin Williams at least a mile away from Century City at all times; in fact, he wasn’t even allowed to turn into Avenue of the Stars, on pain of never writing for 20th Century-Fox Television ever again,
ever
.
Martin bitterly wondered which was worse: Armageddon or never writing for 20th Century-Fox Television again.
Meanwhile, taking Father Quinlan’s advice, he read and reread
Through the Looking-Glass
, and he studied the letter which Father Quinlan had been trying to deliver to him on the day he was killed.
‘Only the child can destroy the child, and only the child can destroy the parent
.’ What the hell did that mean?
Ramone remarked, ‘My old man, he was always saying that I was going to be the death of him. Maybe
that’s
what it means.’
In the first week of November, Mr Capelli came stamping up the stairs and walked into Martin’s kitchen without knocking. He was holding up a folded-back copy of
Variety
. He slapped it with the back of his hand and dropped it on the kitchen table. Martin had been typing out some new dialogue for
As the World Turns
, and he froze for a moment, trying to remember the end of the sentence he had been writing.
‘It’s there!’ Mr Capelli declared. ‘Premiere date! There it is! November 12! That’s when I get my Emilio back!’
Martin picked up the paper. Another full-page advertisement. ‘20th Century-Fox announces the world premiere of
Sweet Chariot
, an angelic musical starring Pip Young, Geraldine Glosset, Lester Kroll … unprecedented simultaneous premieres at Mann’s Chinese Theater, Hollywood Boulevard, as well as Lux Theaters, Union City Theaters, Hyatt Theaters … altogether four hundred movie theaters throughout the United States … plus special international openings in London, Paris, Madrid, Rome … Absolutely no previews.’
Martin slowly shook his head. ‘Did you ever hear of anything like this? Simultaneous openings throughout the world? They’re really going to send out four hundred prints before they have any idea whether anybody’s going to
like
it or not?’
Mr Capelli didn’t answer, but tapped the paper with his finger. ‘That’s the date, November twelfth. That’s when I get my Emilio back.’
Martin pushed back his chair and went across to the telephone on the kitchen wall. He punched out Morris Nathan’s number. ‘Morris …?’ he said at last. ‘Yes, it’s Martin. Listen, did you see how Fox is going to launch
Sweet Chariot
?’
‘I saw it,’ said Morris. ‘And if you want my candid opinion, I think they’re out of their tree. They’ve kept this whole picture secret. Nobody’s seen any rushes; nobody knows whether it’s good, or half good, or terrible. Still, they want to burn their fingers, who am I to tell them what to do? They’re taking a hell of a chance. June told me the final production cost was $32.4 million. So I said, what’s this,
Heaven’s Gate
with music?’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She said, wait and see, that’s what she said. And I said, just remember, I didn’t have anything to do with this. If you lose $32.4 million because of some untrained juvey, don’t come whining to me.’
‘Do you know whose idea this was? This simultaneous premiere?’
‘The kid’s, or that nanny of his, who do you think?’
‘And they gave in to him? June Lassiter gave in to an eight-year-old kid?’
‘They had to. That’s the way I heard it, anyway. They were three quarters of the way through shooting the picture and the kid appears in ninety percent of the scenes and sings every single song, and then he turns around and says they have to open worldwide in four hundred theaters and that’s it, otherwise he walks. They could have sued him, but what for?’
‘Okay, Morris, thanks,’ said Martin.
‘Did you finish that rewrite yet?’ Morris demanded.
‘Oh, sure, I’ll run it up to you later this afternoon.’
Morris cleared his throat. ‘You’re a good writer, Martin. One of these days you’re going to be a better than average writer.’
‘Morris, you’re an angel.’
‘Don’t talk to me about angels.’
The night before the premiere, Martin stood by his open window, looking out over the lights of the Hollywood Hills. Ramone turned the corner of the street and came walking toward the house, brandishing a large bottle of red wine. ‘Hey,
muchacho
, fancy a little nerve suppressant?’
Ramone came upstairs and they stood side by side, drinking wine and feeling the cool night air blowing on their faces. Ramone lit a cheroot and blew smoke, and the smoke fled around the corner of the house as if it were trying to escape from something frightening.
‘Sometimes I don’t know why I stay in this town,’ said Ramone. ‘It’s tatty and it’s tawdry and where the hell are its
values
? Sometimes I feel like finding myself a small place in Wyoming and raising horses.’
‘You’d hate that,’ Martin remarked.
Ramone nodded. ‘You’re right, I would. Shit.’
They drank in silence for a long while, and then Ramone said, ‘What are you going to do if he doesn’t let Emilio go?’
Martin shrugged. ‘I haven’t thought about it. I don’t think I’ve even
dared
to think about it. He promised after all.’
‘I was thinking about it this afternoon, though,’ Ramone went on, ‘and I couldn’t quite get the whole deal to balance in my head.’