Beverly Hills Dead

24

Sid Brooks had stewed in Washington for a week. He had attended some of the committee hearings, but he had stopped going after hearing the testimony of screenwriter John Howard Lawson, who, he thought, had made such an ass of himself by upbraiding the committee that he had been an embarrassment to the cause of the others. By the time Sid was called to testify, he was convinced that, under the influence of two Party lawyers sent to advise them, the unfriendly witnesses had taken the wrong tack. Sid resolved to change that, if he could.

Finally, he was called before the committee and was sworn. The committee’s chairman, J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, began the questioning.

THOMAS: Mr. Brooks, are you a screenwriter?

BROOKS: Yes, Mr. Chairman, but I hope I may read a short statement before being questioned.

THOMAS: You may not. You may answer our questions.

BROOKS: It won’t take more than five minutes, sir.

THOMAS: I asked you if you are a screenwriter.

BROOKS: Yes, sir.

THOMAS: How many motion pictures have you written?

BROOKS: Fourteen that have been produced, sir. May I say that I have never inserted in any of them any propaganda of any sort? I am only concerned with the drama or comedy in the work when I write, not politics.

THOMAS: Are you saying that you are not now nor have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

BROOKS: Mr. Chairman, I believe it has already been pointed out to you at length that this committee has no right to question an American citizen about his political beliefs. The First Amendment...

THOMAS: That’s it; this witness is dismissed.

BROOKS: Mr. Chairman...

THOMAS: I’ll have the sergeant-at-arms remove the witness, if he doesn’t go quietly.

Sid stood up, humiliated, folded his written statement and stuffed it into a pocket. A uniformed man appeared at his side and showed him the door. For this, he had flown across the country and spent ten days in a hotel?

In the hallway outside there was a barrage of questions from the gathered press. “Here’s my statement,” he yelled, shoving the typed pages into the hands of the nearest reporter. “That’s what this committee wouldn’t allow me to say.” He elbowed his way through the crowd and somehow got out of the Capitol, into a taxi and back to his hotel.

When he walked into his room the phone was ringing, but he didn’t answer it. When it stopped, he called the operator and told her not to put any calls through. He had a bottle of Scotch in his bag, and he poured himself a stiff one. Shortly, he was asleep on his bed. He didn’t wake up until the following morning.

He ordered breakfast and read the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which had fairly complete summaries of the hearings. He was about to start packing for his return flight when someone knocked on the door. “Who is it?” he shouted.

“Special delivery letter, Mr. Brooks,” a young voice replied.

“Shove it under the door.” He picked up the letter and looked at the return address. It was from Higgins & Reed, a Los Angeles law firm he had never heard of. He opened it and began reading and thus learned that his wife had filed for divorce; that she had removed his belongings from their home and sent them to an empty apartment in the Santa Monica building that they owned; that a key to the apartment was enclosed; that she would decline to speak to him directly in the future and that all their communications must be conducted through their respective attorneys.

Sid sat down on the bed, picked up the phone and placed a call to his Beverly Hills home. Five minutes later, the operator rang him back and told him that the number had been disconnected. Then he noticed a second page of the letter which said that the locks and telephone number of his home had been changed. In addition to the key to the Santa Monica apartment, a receipt from a dry cleaner’s was enclosed, listing a suit and a sport jacket.

Sid finished packing in a daze and went downstairs, carrying his own luggage. He was waiting for a taxi when another writer who had been an unfriendly witness got out of a cab. “Sid, did you hear that after Bertolt Brecht testified, he went straight to the airport and left the country?” The playwright had been one of the unfriendly witnesses.

“No, I didn’t.”

“They’re calling the rest of us the ‘Hollywood Ten.’”

“Swell,” Sid said and got into the vacated cab. “National Airport,” he said.

The airplane took off on time, and because of strong headwinds, stopped short of its normal refueling point, Witchita, and landed instead in Little Rock. He spent the night there and, at the crack of the next dawn, continued his journey west. After refueling at Albuquerque, the airplane arrived in L.A. after dark.

At Los Angeles Airport he took a taxi to Beverly Hills and rang his doorbell. No answer. He walked around to the side of the darkened house and peered into the garage through the little window in the door. His car was not there. He got back into the taxi and gave the driver the address of the Santa Monica apartment building.

When he arrived he saw his Buick convertible parked in the little parking lot. He let himself into the vacant apartment and found a pile of suitcases and cardboard boxes neatly stacked in the living room. There was plenty of room for the stuff, since there was no furniture in the apartment, not even a bed.

Sid got into his car and drove to a diner, had some supper, then returned to the apartment. He slept on the floor that night, under his overcoat.

The following morning he rose early and had breakfast at the diner. He visited a furniture store and ordered a bed and a comfortable chair, then stopped at his bank in Beverly Hills to cash a check for a hundred dollars. The woman in the teller’s cage went to a ledger and looked something up, then returned.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Brooks, but your account balance is seventy-six dollars and twenty cents. Would you like to cash a smaller check?”

Sid laughed. “There’s a mistake here; I have in excess of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in that account.”

She handed him back his check. “Please go and speak with Mr. Merrill, at the first desk on the platform,” she said, pointing to a middle-aged man.

Sid approached the man. “Mr. Merrill? I’m Sidney Brooks; we’ve met before.”

“Of course, Mr. Brooks. Please have a seat.”

Sid took the chair next to the desk. “I’ve been out of town for a couple of weeks, and when I tried to cash a check just now, the teller told me my balance was less than a hundred dollars.”

“Well, that’s substantially less than your usual balance, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is. A month or so ago, I deposited a check for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and there was already around ten thousand in the account.”

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Brooks,” the man said. “Please wait a moment while I investigate.” He got up and was buzzed through a door to the area behind the tellers’ cages. Five minutes later, he returned. “Mr. Brooks, our records show that Mrs. Brooks recently transferred a hundred and sixty thousand dollars from your joint account to an account in her name at the Bank of America. I took the liberty of checking the balance of your savings account with us, and found that she has also transferred forty thousand dollars from that account, leaving a balance of less than ten dollars. Were you not aware of that?”

“I was not. Can you cancel the transfer?”

“I’m afraid not. You see, you and Mrs. Brooks are joint owners of your account here; she’s not just an added signature. She was legally entitled to made that transaction.”

“You mean she can just steal all that money from me?”

“Legally, it’s not stealing. I’m afraid your only recourse would be a civil action to recover some portion of the funds.”

Sid grappled with this for a moment. “Mr. Merrill, my wife has announced her intention to divorce me and has moved my things out of our house into an apartment building we both own. This... action of hers has left me without funds; may I borrow ten thousand dollars from the bank for thirty days?”

“I can certainly take a loan application, Mr. Brooks, but it would require collateral, and approval would have to go to the loan committee, which would take a week. Do you have any stocks and bonds?”

“I do, but those are in a joint account, too, if you see what I mean.”

“Ah, yes. I suppose... Mr. Brooks, I can approve a loan of a thousand dollars immediately, if that will help while you are sorting out these affairs.”

“Thank, you, Mr. Merrill, that would be very helpful.”

Sid signed the note, opened a new account, deposited the loan proceeds and left the bank in a white-hot rage.