The Stand-In (6 page)

“You were asking me about directing, Sir George. Now in this little scene Bran wants Coral to show she's down to her last red corpuscle, because this scene is supposed to say Nube looks harmless (the quiet man, they call me) but he works his actors to death because actors aren't human beings to Nube.
Dirt!”

“My dear sir!”

“Mr. Branton Collier has purchased the rights to
Wild West Wind
from under Nube's nose just so his darling wife won't be worked to death by a has-been. You may have read about
Wild West Wind
, Sir George?”

“Afraid not.”

“It got a big play in Hoppa Heada's column.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What? Oh, Hoppa Heada? That's my American joke. Hedda Hopper, Hoppa Heada, a bad joke and out of date, too. I mean the
Wind
sale was in Eunice Merson's column, plus a not libelous but clear hint that Coral's husband was going to show up poor old Nube. Okay, kids, go on back to the St. Georges. Happy dreams while you still can dream, Bran!”

“Boy, you can come on strong, can't you, Nube?”

“You bet I can, Bran, and don't forget it. There's teeth in the old mongrel yet!”

Bran stood there trying to think of a good answer, but then Coral yanked him away and they left the big room and went to the hall where they were handed their things. When they got outside Bran said, “Nube's running scared, Coral. That sarcasm was because he's running scared.”

But she was running down the curved road to the gate.

They were both out of breath by the time they reached the back road where he'd been told to park the red Ferrari. All cars and buses were on the back road so that they wouldn't interfere with the shooting, but the Ferrari was the farthest away because he had been one of the last to arrive.

Coral kept saying, “Where is it? Where is it?”

As if it was his fault that she had gone off with Nube and left him to tag after. She had treated him like a zero, so his car was off in left field. For the benefit of the chauffeurs, he opened the door for her even though he was still sore at that crack about spitting in his eye for directing her. He expected Nube to come on strong, but his own wife? But when this kidnap scare was over and she was telling the reporters about it, she would give him credit.
“I fell apart,”
she would say.
“If not for my husband directing, the whole crowd at the party would have known we were in trouble
!” She would kiss him.
“You were wonderful, Bran.”
And Lady St. Shit calling him Mr. Reid! Bran got in the Ferrari and backed out slowly. He had to drive carefully because the high hedges made it hard to see around the curves, and at first he didn't hear what Coral was shouting.

“That's
why they took her, Bran! It's your fault. It wasn't enough to buy the rights to
Wind
, you had to charm Hoppa Heada into putting it in her column!”

“Which is syndicated in just about every paper in England. And stop calling her Hoppa Heada. Even Nube knows it's out of date and so is he. What he doesn't know about what's been happening in directing would fill a book.”

“I mean that now every criminal in England knows that Cornie's father can toss away fifty thousand pounds!”

Toss away. Did you hear that? He refused to answer her.

“Were you the charm boy with Eunice Merson! Did you lay it on thick!”

“What's wrong with publicity?”

“You dare ask me that now? Now that they've taken my baby because they think we're loaded.” She realized this was unfair. “I know how tough it was on you, Bran. I know it was eating on you that I'm the star now. I pitied you when Nube rode you. Everyone else lets it slide off, but not you. Look, I'm for you. When Nube said I was out of my cotton-picking mind, I told him it was my career and my money and my husband, but this is my baby, Bran!”

“This is my baby, too,” he said. At last she had come out and said that it was only pity. She didn't believe in him. What did he care if she believed in him? When he got the Oscar she'd believe. Best director. Best supporting role. Now she was crying.

“I'm sorry, Bran. I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm saying. Please excuse me, Bran.”

“This picture is for you, too, Coral. You don't know what can happen to a career, but I do. Nube talks big but for him it's only the buck. I want you to grow, to use all you have, to take a chance. You don't hear the scuttlebutt about Nube because they're scared you'll snitch to him, but it's not only the avant-garde who think he's washed up. I don't want you to go down with his ship. I don't want what's happened to me to happen to you. Is that bad?”

“Oh, Bran, who cares about that now?”

“Okay. My mom was the same when I was kidnapped. Another half hour and well be in the St. Georges.”

“Hurry, Bran. We don't want them thinking we stopped, you know, to contact the police.”

“I'm going as fast as I can. This isn't a Los Angeles freeway.”

“Bran!”

“You grab my arm again like that and we'll crack up. Then there
will
be cops.”

“I'm sorry.” She put both her hands between her knees. The silk of the enormous skirt swelled. “You're not going to like what I'm going to say, Bran.”

“I don't like one damned thing you've said so far. You're like all the rest of them, when I was up there they all—”

“Bran!
Cornie
, think of
Cornie!
I'm not blaming you for the publicity now, but that's probably the reason they took her. Fifty thousand pounds. They'll never believe how little we have in the bank. Bran, the way the man spoke he figures we can raise fifty thousand pounds like
that!
And we can't, can we, Bran? I mean we could raise it on the house and pictures and stuff, but
when?”

“So? So?”

“Bran, darling, think a minute. Only Nube can raise that kind of money. Any time, anywhere. You said yourself that the only talent you give him credit for is his financial genius.” She waited but he didn't speak, then, watching his profile, she continued. “When we get to the St. Georges, Bran, I'll go to the room in case they call and you go to the lobby and telephone Nube from there. He'll stay to the end of the party as usual. You know Nube. Sleep is for squares. Just tell him we must see him right away. Tell him when he gets to the hotel to ask for his key as if he was going to his suite, but come to ours. And then, Bran, we're going to have to eat crow.

“You see, darling, we can't tell Nube about Cornie. They said we mustn't tell anyone, so what we have to do—Remember how Nube put you down as a director tonight? That couldn't be better. See? You call Nube, you tell him after listening to him I lost my nerve about letting you direct me. We'll turn over the picture rights to him. Pile it on. It can't be too thick for Nube.”

“Like hell I will. No,” he said.

“Leave me out of it, then. I just thought it would sound better to him if I—you know—if you said that he made me see the light. He'd like that, but if that upsets you, make it you.
You
saw the light. You realized you're still a little young to direct.”

“Frankenheimer was twenty-seven.”

“Fuck Frankenheimer!
You're
too young. You want to wait a little. He can have
Wind
and I'll sign with him.”

“No.”

“For one picture, for this one picture. You'll find another book.” She saw his chin set. “What do you mean ‘no'? You have a better way to raise the money? Go on, go on, go on!”

“Okay. I'll go on. Sure Nube would love it, sure he'd eat it up. Whether you or I are supposed to have decided I couldn't direct a home movie doesn't matter, the crow-eating will be mine. And Nube'll get up the money, why not? It's no secret he wants the rights. He must be sweating blood. He'd get the money, but you forget one thing—he wouldn't get it in time for kidnappers!”

“Oh, Bran!”

“So you make up your mind first that you're going to have to tell him what the money is for, or you're not going to get it in time. How does that grab you, darling?”

“I should have my head examined! Well have to tell him. Will you call him, Bran, or should I?”

“You've thought it over already? We're not supposed to tell anyone, but we tell Nube?”

They were at the entrance to the hotel. The skinny doorman rushed out opened the car door and said good evening.

“There's no other way, Bran.”

Bran asked the doorman to see the car was garaged and the hall man pressed the elevator button and they stepped in, Coral holding Bran's hand. When it stopped at the ninth floor where their rooms were, Coral got out while Bran went on up. The St. Georges was one of the newer London hotels, and the lounge on the top floor had an excellent view of the city. Bran looked out and told himself that his child was somewhere, kidnapped. Cornie didn't like it when people called Coral Miss Reid. She wanted her mother to be called Mrs. Collier, because most of her friends weren't movie kids. It wasn't like the old days in Hollywood. He gave the switchboard the number at Lady St. Justin's, and while he waited, he stared out at the dot of the church steeple and at the old Langham across from the hotel.

4

By now Desmond was carrying the kid with difficulty, because she wasn't helping at all. What else was he for? When you were a little star the whole human race was your packhorse. He turned up a street that seemed deserted, then put her down. “Now you walk, little girl.”

She just stood there. Her lower lip stuck out. Was that because she didn't like being called “little girl?” He hadn't liked having no name, either. Hell with that. It was time to decide where to bring her. Better stop dreaming of Coral Reid telling him she would do anything, anything, because he intended to tell her after he had her where he wanted her that it wasn't money he was after. “I didn't take the kid for your fifty thousand pounds, but your fifty-thousand-pound laugh. I don't want the money. I just don't want that laugh.” He remembered having read in
Life
or
Look
—no
Time
—in
Time
magazine that if that Russian wife of Lee Harvey Oswald's hadn't given him a hard time, laughed at him, he wouldn't have shot the President of the United States. “Yes, because you laughed, because you laughed!”

But he wouldn't get the opportunity to tell her a thing if he was picked up now with the kid. He would just be giving her and Bran one more chance to laugh. Daph's place? He could stick the kid under Daph's cape with the adhesive over her mouth. Even with the kid under the cape he wouldn't be much thicker around than old Daph, and if anyone saw him, they wouldn't stop to pass the time of day. The neighbors kept away from Daph; just give her a chance and you'd get an earful of medical advice. Get into Daph's place, bed the kid down with one of Daph's sleeping pills so she'd be okay while he negotiated the business?

No good. The kid's nursemaid and that photographer and probably everyone in the tent would be able to identify the uniform—the cape, the cupcake cap. And how long would it take them to go through the nurses' register and bring cops to Daph's flat? The empty house in Stoke Newington, then?

Desmond felt in his pocket for the keys to the house. Perfect, but he needed a car. Cyril's? If he wasn't supposed to have handed over the keys lunchtime he could tell Cyril he just remembered something he'd forgotten to do in the house. No. Nobody must know he'd gone back to Stoke Newington. Whose car, then? Could he steal one? Where could he steal a car?

He was, before he recognized the yellow Jaguar, only mildly startled to have a car pull up to the curb beside him, as if his need had called it into being, as if tonight anything he wanted could happen.

The Jag window rolled down and Ronnie said, “May I offer you and the kiddie a lift? I believe you're taking her to Lady St. Justin's party.”

Helplessly he shook his head. It
had
been Ronnie following them.

“You're not? But I was right behind you when you told the kiddie you were, nurse.”

He tightened his grip on the kid's hand and began to walk fast, making her run. Anyhow he knew that Ronnie had recognized him and the nurse bit was just to needle him. Tonight was like every other night in his life. He would get only what he didn't want. The Jaguar, crawling, kept alongside; someone would notice it soon. He waited at the curb, hoping desperately for an idea. Ronnie stopped and opened the car door. It killed Desmond to use the old high voice in front of Ronnie, anyone but Ronnie—so he just stood there holding on to the kid with one hand and waving the other for a cab.

“Not one in sight! You may have to wait a long time, nurse, and then a
public
vehicle—do you think you should expose the child to a public vehicle?”

His lousy luck. His lousy shitty luck.

“Come, nurse, a little girl like that shouldn't be standing here!”

He would not use the high voice with Ronnie.

“If you're sure you won't let me give you a lift, I'm certain the rozzers would oblige. A little girl like that. I'll buzz off and find a rozzer. A cop, Desmond!”

Desmond started walking again, dragging the kid, but then when the Jag pulled up ahead and stopped, so did he. He gave up. It was over. Lifting the poor kid, he heard her huff of relief. As he put her on the narrow back seat—Ronnie had bent the front one forward—she yawned widely. Because she was so small, her head couldn't be seen. Ronnie shoved back the seat and Desmond got in front.

“Where to, nurse?”

Whispering, he said, “Langham Place. St. Georges Hotel.” Ronnie didn't turn down Ladbroke Terrace, just drove on.

“Is this because of me? Depositing the little—what's her name? What's your name, duck? Look, she's asleep, Desmond.”