Fools die

Chapter 33

It was my agent, Doran Rudd, who called me with the news of Malomar’s death. He told me there was going to be a big conference on the picture at Tri-Culture Studios the next day. I had to fly out and he would meet my plane.

At Kennedy Airport I called Janelle to tell her I was coming into town, but I got her answering machine with her French-accented machine voice, so I left a message for her.

Malomar’s death shocked me. I had developed an enormous respect for him during the months we had worked together. He never gave out any bullshit, and he had an eagle eye for any bullshit in a script or a piece of film. He tutored me when he showed me films, explaining why a scene didn’t play or what to watch for in an actor who might be showing talent even in a bad role. We argued a lot. He told me that my literary snobbishness was defensive and that I hadn’t studied film carefully enough. He even offered to teach me how to direct a film, but I refused. He wanted to know why.

“Listen,” I said, “just by existing, just by standing still and not bothering anybody, man is a fate-creating agent. That’s what I hate about life. And a movie director is the worst fate-creating agent on earth. Think of all those actors and actresses you make miserable when you turn them down. Look at all the people you have to give orders to. The money you spend, the destinies you control. I just write books, I never hurt anybody, I only help. They can take it or leave it.”

“You’re right,” Malomar said. “You’ll never be a director. But I think you’re full of shit. Nobody can be that passive.” And of course, he was right. I just wanted to control a more private world.

But still I felt saddened by his death. I had some affection for him though we did not really know each other well. And then too I was a little worried about what was going to happen to our movie.

– -

Doran Rudd met me at the plane. He told me that Jeff Wagon would now be the producer and that Tri-Culture had swallowed up Malomar Studios. He told me to expect a lot of trouble. On the way over to the studio he briefed me on the whole Tri-Culture operation. On Moses Wartberg, on his wife, Bella, on Jeff Wagon. Just for openers he told me that though they were not the most powerful studio in Hollywood, they were the most hated, often called “Tri-Vulture Studios.” That Wartberg was a shark and the three VP’s were jackals. I told him that you couldn’t mix up your symbols like that, that if Wartberg was a shark, the others had to be pilot fish. I was kidding around, but my agent wasn’t even listening. He just said, “I wish you were wearing a tie.”

I looked at him. He was in his slick black leather jacket over a turtleneck sweater. He shrugged.

“Moses Wartberg could have been a Semitic Hitler,” Doran said. “But he would have done it a little differently. He would have sent all the adult Christians to the gas chamber and then set up college scholarships for their children.”

Comfortably slouched down in Doran Rudd’s Mercedes 450SL, I barely listened to Doran’s chatter. He was telling me that there was going to be a big fight over the picture. That Jeff Wagon would be producer and Wartberg would be taking a personal interest in it. They had killed Malomar with their harassment, Doran said. I wrote that off as typical Hollywood exaggeration. But the essence of what Doran was telling me was that the fate of the picture would be decided today. So in the long ride to the studio I tried to remember everything I knew or had heard about Moses Wartberg and Jeff Wagon.

– -

Jeff Wagon was the essence of a schlock producer. He was schlock from the top of his craggy head to the tiptoes of his Bally shoes. He had made his mark in TV, then muscled his way into feature films by the same process with which a blob of ink spreads on a linen tablecloth and with the same aesthetic effect. He had made over a hundred TV feature films and twenty theatrical films. Not one of them had had a touch of grace, of quality, of art. The critics, the workers and artists in Hollywood had a classic joke that compared Wagon with Selznick, Lubitsch, Thalberg. They would say of one of his pictures that it had the Dong imprint because a young malicious actress called him the Dong.

A typical Jeff Wagon picture was loaded with stars a bit frayed by age and celluloid wear and tear, desperate for a paycheck. The talent knew it was a schlock picture. The directors were handpicked by Wagon. They were usually run-of-the-mill with a string of failures behind them so that he could twist their arms and make them shoot the picture his way. The odd thing was that though all the pictures were terrible, they either broke even or made money simply because the basic idea was good in a commercial way. It usually had a built-in audience, and Jeff Wagon was a fierce bulldog on cost. He was also terrific on contracts that screwed everybody out of his percentage if the picture became a big hit and made a lot of cash. And if that didn’t work, he would have the studio start litigation so that a settlement could be made on percentages. But Moses Wartberg always said that Jeff Wagon came up with sound ideas. What he presumably didn’t know was that Wagon stole even these ideas. He did this by what could only be called seduction.

In his younger days Jeff Wagon had lived up to his nickname by knocking over every starlet on the Tri-Culture lot. He was very much on the line with his approach. If they came across, they became girls in TV movies who were bartenders or receptionists. If they played their cards right, they could get enough work to carry them through the year. But when he went into feature films, this was not possible. With three-million-dollar budgets you didn’t fuck around handing out parts for a piece of ass. So then he got away with letting them read for a part, promising to help them, but never a firm commitment. And of course, some were talented, and with his foot in the door, they got some nice parts in feature films. A few became stars. They were often grateful. In the Land of Empidae, Jeff Wagon was the ultimate survivor.

But one day out of the northern rain forests of Oregon a breathtaking beauty of eighteen appeared. She had everything going for her. Great face, great body, fiery temperament, even talent. But the camera refused to do right by her. In that idiotic magic of film her looks didn’t work.

She was also a little crazy. She had grown up as a woodsman and hunter in the Oregon forests. She could skin a deer and fight a grizzly bear. She reluctantly let Jeff Wagon fuck her once a month because her agent gave her a little heart-to-heart talk. But she came from a place where the people were straight shooters, and she expected Jeff Wagon to keep his word and get her the part. When it didn’t happen, she went to bed with Jeff Wagon with a deer-skinning knife and, at the crucial moment, stuck it into one of Jeff Wagon’s balls.

It didn’t turn out badly. For one thing she only took a nick off his right ball, and everybody agreed that with his big balls a little chip wouldn’t do him any harm. Jeff Wagon himself tried to cover up the incident, refused to press charges. But the story got out. The girl was shipped home to Oregon with enough money for a log cabin and a new deer-hunting rifle. And Jeff Wagon had learned his lesson. He gave up seducing starlets and devoted himself to seducing writers out of their ideas. It was both more profitable and less dangerous. Writers were dumber and more cowardly.

And so he seduced writers by taking them to expensive lunches. By dangling jobs before their eyes. A rewrite of a script in production, a couple of thousand dollars for a treatment. Meanwhile, he let them talk about their ideas for future novels or screenplays. And then he would steal their ideas by switching them to other locales, changing the characters, but always preserving the central idea. And then it was his pleasure to screw them by giving them nothing. And since writers did not usually have a clue to the worthiness of their ideas, they never protested. Not like those cunts who gave you a piece of their ass and expected the moon.

It was the agents that got on to Jeff Wagon and forbade their writer clients to go to lunch with him. But there were fresh young writers coming into Hollywood from all over the country. All hoping for that one foot in the door that would make them rich and famous. And it was Jeff Wagon’s genius that he could let them see the door crack open just enough to jam toes black and blue when he slammed the door shut.

Once when I was in Vegas, I told Cully that he and Wagon mugged their victims the same way. But Cully disagreed.

“Listen,” Cully said. “Me and Vegas are after your money, true. But Hollywood wants your balls.”

He didn’t know that Tri-Culture Studios had just bought one of the biggest casinos in Vegas.

– -

Moses Wartberg was another story. On one of my early visits to Hollywood I had been taken to Tri-Culture Studios to pay my respects.

I met Moses Wartberg for a minute. And I knew who he was right away. There was that shark like look to him that I had seen in top military men, casino owners, very beautiful and very rich women and top Mafia bosses. It was the cold steel of power, the iciness that ran through the blood and brain, the chilling absence of mercy or pity in all the cells of the organism. People who were absolutely dedicated to the supreme drug power. Power already achieved and exercised over a long period of time. And with Moses Wartberg it was exercised down to the smallest square inch.

That night, when I told Janelle that I had been to Tri-Culture Studios and met Wartberg, she said casually, “Good old Moses. I know Moses.” She gave me a challenging look, so I took the bait.

“OK,” I said. “Tell me how you know Moses.”

Janelle got out of bed to act out the part. “I had been in town for about two years and wasn’t getting anyplace, and then I was invited to a party where all the big wheels would be, and like a good little would-be star, I went to make contacts. There were a dozen girls like me. All walking around, looking beautiful, hoping that some powerful producer would be struck by our talent. Well, I got lucky. Moses Wartberg came over to me, and he was charming. I didn’t know how people could say such terrible things about him. I remember his wife came up for a minute and tried to take him away, but he didn’t pay any attention to her. He just kept on talking to me and I was at my most fascinating Southern belle best and, sure enough, by the end of the evening I had an invitation from Moses Wartberg to have dinner at his house the next night. In the morning I called up all my girlfriends and told them about it. They congratulated me and told me I would have to fuck him and I said of course I would not, not on my first date and I also thought he’d respect me more if I held him off a little.”

“That’s a good technique,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “It worked with you, but that’s the way I felt. I hadn’t ever gone to bed with a man unless I really liked him. I’d never gone to bed with a man just to make him do something for me. I told my girlfriends that, and they told me I was crazy. That if Moses Wartberg was really in love with me or really liked me, I would be on my way to being a star.”

For a few minutes she gave a charming pantomime of false virtue arguing itself into honest sinning.

“And so what happened?” I said.

Janelle stood proud, her hands on her hips, her head tilted dramatically. “At five o’clock that afternoon I made the greatest decision of my life. I decided I would fuck a man I didn’t know just to get ahead. I thought I was so brave and I was delighted that finally I had made a decision that a man would make.”

She came out of her role for just a moment.

“Isn’t that what men do?” she said sweetly. “If they can make a business deal, they’d give anything, they demean themselves. Isn’t that business?”

I said, “I guess so.”

She said to me, “Didn’t you have to do that?”

I said, “No.”

“You never did anything like that to get your books published, to get an agent or to get a book reviewer to treat you better?”

I said, “No.”

“You have a good opinion of yourself, don’t you?” Janelle said. “I’ve had affairs with married men before, and the one thing I have noticed is that they all want to wear that big white cowboy hat.”

“What does that mean?”

“They want to be fair to their wives and girlfriends. That’s the one impression they want to make, so you can’t blame them for anything, and you do that too.”

I thought that over a minute. I could see what she meant. “OK,” I said. “So what?”

“So what?” Janelle said. “You tell me you love me, hut you go back to your wife. No married man should tell another woman he loves her unless he’s willing to leave his wife.”

“That’s romantic bullshit,” I said.

For a moment she became furious. She said, “If I went to your house and told your wife you loved me, would you deny me?”

I laughed and I really laughed. I pressed my hand across my chest and said, “Would you say that again?”

And she said, “Would you deny me?”

And I said, “With all my heart”

She looked at me a moment. She was furious, and then she started to laugh. She said, “I regressed with you, but I won’t regress anymore.”

And I understood what she was saying.

“OK,” I said. “So what happened with Wartberg?”

She said, “I took a long bath with my turtle oil. I anointed myself, dressed in my best outfit and drove myself to the sacrificial altar. I was let into the house and there was Moses Wartberg and we sat down and had a drink and he asked about my career and we were talking for about an hour and he was being very clever, letting me know that if the night turned out OK, he would do a lot of things for me and I was thinking, the son of a bitch isn’t going to fuck me, he’s not even going to feed me.”

“That’s something I never did to you,” I said.

She gave me a long look, and she went on. “And then he said, ‘There’s dinner waiting upstairs in the bedroom. Would you like to go up?’ And I said, in my Southern belle voice, ‘Yes, I think I’m a little hungry.’ He escorted me up the stairs, a beautiful staircase just like the movies, and opened the bedroom door. He closed it behind me, from the outside, and there I was in the bedroom with a little table set up with some nice snacks on it.”

She struck another pose of the innocent young girl, bewildered.

“Where’s Moses?” I said.

“He’s outside. He’s in the hallway.”

“He made you eat alone?” I said.

“No,” Janelle said. “There was Mrs. Bella Wartberg in her sheerest negligee waiting for me.”

I said, “Jesus Christ.”

Janelle went into another act “I didn’t know I was going to fuck a woman. It took me eight hours to decide to fuck a man, and now I find out I had to fuck a woman. I wasn’t ready for that.”

I said I wasn’t ready for that either.

She said, “I really didn’t know what to do. I sat down and Mrs. Wartberg served some sandwiches and tea and then she pushed her breasts out of her gown and said, ‘Do you like these, my dear?’ And I said, ‘They’re very nice.’”

And then Janelle looked me in the eye and hung her head, and I said, “Well, what happened? What did she say after you said they’re nice?”

Janelle made her eyes look wide open, startled. “Bella Wartberg said to me, ‘Would you like to suck on these, my dear?’

And then Janelle collapsed on the bed with me. She said, “I ran out of the room, I ran down the stains, out of the house, and it took me two years to get another job.”

“It’s a tough town,” I said.

“Nay,” Janelle said. “If I had talked to my girlfriends another eight hours, that would have been OK too. Ifs just a matter of getting your nerve up.”

I smiled at her, and she looked me in the eye, challengingly. “Yeah,” I said, “what’s the difference?”

– -

As the Mercedes sped over the freeways, I tried to listen to Doran.

“Old Moses is the dangerous guy,” Doran was saying, “watch out for him.” And so I thought about Moses.

Moses Wartberg was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. His Tri-Culture Studios was financially sounder than most but made the worst movies. Moses Wartberg had created a money-making machine in a field of creative endeavor. And without a creative bone in his body. This was recognized as sheer genius.

Wartbeng was a sloppily fat man, carelessly tailored in Vegas-style suits. He spoke little, never showed emotion, he believed in giving you everything you could take away from him. He believed in giving you nothing you could not force from him and his battery of studio lawyers. He was impartial. He cheated producers, stars, writers and directors out of their percentages of successful films. He was never grateful for a great directing job, a great performance, a great script. How many times had he paid big money for lousy stuff? So why should he pay a man what his work was worth if he could get it for less?

Wartberg talked about movies as generals talk about making war. He said things like: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Or when a business associate made claims to their social relationship, when an actor told him how much they loved each other personally and why was the studio screwing him, Wartberg gave a thin smile and said coldly, “When I hear the word ‘love,’ I reach for my wallet.”

He was scornful of personal dignity, proud when accused of having no sense of decency. He was not ambitious to be known as a man whose word was his bond. He believed in contracts with fine print, not handshakes. He was never too proud to cheat his fellowman out of an idea, a script, a rightful percentage of a movie’s profits. When reproached, usually by an overwrought artist (producers knew better), Wartberg would simply answer, “I’m a moviemaker,” in the same tone that Baudelaire might have answered a similar reproach with “I am a poet.”

He used lawyers as a hood used guns, used affection as a prostitute used sex. He used good works as the Greeks used the Trojan Horse, supported the Will Rogers home for retired actors, Israel, the starving millions of India, Arab refugees from Palestine. It was only personal charity to individual human beings that went against his grain.

Tri-Culture Studios had been losing money when Wartberg took charge. He immediately put it on a strict computer with a bottom-line basis. His deals were the toughest in town. He never gambled on truly creative ideas until they had been proved at other studios. And his big ace in the hole was small budgets.

When other studios were going down the drain with ten-million-dollar pictures, Tri-Culture Studios never made one that went over three million. In fact, over two million and Moses Wantberg or one of his three assistant vice-presidents was sleeping with you twenty-four hours a day. He made producers post completion bonds, directors pledge percentages, actors swear their souls away, to bring in a picture on budget. A producer who brought a picture in on budget or below budget was a hero to Moses Wartberg and knew it. It didn’t matter if the picture just made its cost. But if the picture went over budget, even if it grossed twenty million and made the studio a fortune, Wartberg would invoke the penalty clause in the producer’s contract and take away his percentage of the profits. Sure, there would be lawsuits, but the studio had twenty salaried lawyers sitting around on their asses who needed practice in count. So a deal could usually be made. Especially if the producer or actor on writer wanted to make another picture at Tri-Culture.

– -

The one thing everybody agreed upon was that Wartbeng was a genius at organization. He had three vice-presidents who were in charge of separate empires and competing with each other for Wartberg’s favor and the day when one would succeed him. All three had palatial homes, big bonuses and complete power within their own spheres subject only to Wartbeng’s veto. So the three of them hunted down talent, scripts, thought out special projects. Always knowing that they had to keep the budget low, the talent tractable, and to stamp out any spark of originality before they dared bring it up to Wartberg’s suite of offices on the top floor of the studio building.

His sexual reputation was impeccable. He never had fun and games with starlets. He never put pressure on a director or producer to hire a favorite in a film. Pant of this was his ascetic nature, a low sexual vitality. The other was his own sense of personal dignity. But the main reason was that he had been happily married for thirty years to his childhood sweetheart.

They had met in a Bronx high school, married in their teens and lived together forever after.

Bella Wartbeng had lived a fairy-tale life. A zaftig teenager in a Bronx high school, she had charmed Moses Wartberg with the lethal combination of huge breasts and excessive modesty. She wore loose heavy wool sweaters, dresses, a couple of sizes too large, but it was like hiding a glowing radioactive piece of metal in a dark cave. You knew they were there, and the fact that they were hidden made them even more aphrodisiacal. When Moses became a producer, she didn’t really know what it meant. She had two children in two years and was quite willing to have one a year for the rest of hen fertile life, but it was Moses who called a halt. By that time he had channeled most of his energy into his career, and also, the body that he thirsted for was marred by childbirth scans, the breasts he had suckled had drooped and become veined. And she was too much the good little Jewish housewife for his taste. He got hen a maid and forgot about her. He still valued her because she was a great laundress, his white shirts were impeccably starched and ironed. She was a fine housekeeper. She kept track of his Vegas suits and gaudy ties, notating them to the dry cleaner’s at exactly the right time, not so often as to wean them out prematurely, not too seldom as to make them appear soiled. Once she had bought a cat that sat on the sofa, and Moses had sat down on that sofa, and when he rose, his trouser leg had cat hairs on it. He picked up the cat and threw it against the wall. He screamed at Bella hysterically. She gave away the cat the next day.

But power flows magically from one source to another. When Moses became head of Tri-Culture Studios, it was as if Bella Wartberg had been touched by the magic wand of a fairy. The California-bred executive wives took hen in hand. The “in” hairdresser shaped her a crown of black curls that made hen look regal. The exercise class at the Sanctuary, a spa to which all the show people belonged, punished her body unmercifully. She went down from a hundred and fifty pounds to a hundred and ten. Even hen breasts shrank, shriveled. But not enough to conform to the rest of her body. A plastic surgeon cut them down into two small perfectly proportioned rosebuds. While he was at it, he whittled down her thighs and took a chunk out of her ass. The studio fashion experts designed a wardrobe to fit her new body and her new status. Bella Wartberg looked into her mirror and saw there, not a zaftig Jewish princess lushly fleshed, vulgarly handsome, but a slim, Waspy, forty-year-old ex-debutante, peppy, vivacious, brimming full of energy. What she did not see mercifully was that her appearance was a distortion of what she had been, that her old self, like a ghost, persisted through the bones of her body, the structure of her face. She was a skinny fashionable lady built on the heavy bones she had inherited. But she believed she was beautiful. And so she was quite ready when a young actor on the make pretended to be in love with her.

She returned his love passionately, sincerely. She went to his grubby apartment in Santa Monica and for the first time in her life was thoroughly fucked. The young actor was virile, dedicated to his profession and threw himself into his role so wholeheartedly that he almost believed he was in love. So much so that he bought her a charm bracelet from Gucci’s that she would treasure the rest of her life as proof of her first great passion. And so, when he asked for her help in getting a role in one of Tri-Culture’s big feature films, he was thoroughly confounded when she told him she never interfered in her husband’s business. They quarreled bitterly, and the actor disappeared from her life. She missed him, she missed the grubby apartment, his rock records, but she had been a level-headed girl and had grown to be a levelheaded woman. She would not make the same mistake. In the future she would pick her lovers as carefully as a comedian picks his hat.

In the years that followed she became an expert negotiator in her affairs with actors, discriminating enough to seek out talented people rather than untalented ones, and indeed, she enjoyed the talented ones more. It seemed that general intelligence went with talent. And she helped them in their careers. She never made the mistake of going directly to her husband. Moses Wartberg was too Olympian to be concerned with such decisions. Instead, she went to one of the three vice-presidents. She would rave about the talent of an actor she had seen in a little art group giving Ibsen and insist that she didn’t know the actor personally but she was sure he would be an asset to the studio. The vice-president would put the name down and the actor would get a small part. Soon enough the word got around. Bella Wartberg became so notorious for fucking anybody, anywhere, that whenever she stopped by one of the vice-president’s offices, that VP would make sure that one of his secretaries was present, as a gynecologist would make sure a nurse was present when examining a patient.

The three VP’s jockeying for power had to accommodate Wartberg’s wife, or felt they had to. Jeff Wagon became good friends with Bella and would even introduce her to some especially upstanding young fellow. When all this failed, she prowled the expensive shops of Rodeo for women, took long lunches with pretty starlets at exclusive restaurants, wearing ominously huge macho sunglasses.

Because of his close relationship with Bella, Jeff Wagon was the odds-on favorite to get Moses Wartberg’s spot when he retired. There was one catch. What would Moses Wartberg do when he learned that his wife, Bella, was the Messalina of Beverly Hills? Gossip columnists planted Bella’s affairs as “blind items” Wartberg couldn’t fail to see. Bella was notorious.

As usual Moses Wartberg surprised everyone. He did so by doing absolutely nothing. Only rarely did he take his revenge on the lover; he never took reprisals against his wife.

The first time he took his revenge was when a young rock and roll star boasted of his conquest, called Bella Wartberg “a crazy old cunt.” The rock and roll star had meant it as a supreme compliment, but to Moses Wartberg it was as insulting as one of his vice-presidents coming to work in blue jeans and turtleneck sweater. The rock and roll star made ten times as much money from a single album as he was being paid for the featured part in his movie. But he was infected with the American dream; the narcissism of playing himself on film entranced him. On the night of the first preview he had assembled his entourage of fellow artists and girlfriends and taken them to the Wartberg private screening room crammed with the top stars of Tri-Culture Studios. It was one of the big parties of the year.

The rock and roll star sat and sat and sat. He waited and waited and waited. The film ran on and on. And on screen he was nowhere to be seen. His part was on the cutting-room floor. He had immediately gotten stoned out of his mind and had to be taken home.

Moses Wartberg had celebrated his transformation from producer to head of a studio with a great coup. Over the years he had noticed that the studio moguls were furious with all the attention given actors, writers, directors and producers at the Academy Awards. It infuriated them that their employees were the ones who received all the credit for the movies that they had created. It was Moses Wartberg who years before first supported the idea for an Irving Thalberg award to be given at the Academy ceremonies. He was clever enough to have included in the plan that the award would not be a yearly one. That it would be given to a producer for constantly high quality over the years. He was also clever enough to have the clause put in that no one would be eligible to receive the Thalberg Award more than once. In effect many producers, whose pictures never won Academy Awards, but who had a lot of clout in the movie industry, got their share of publicity by winning the Thalberg. But still, this left out the actual studio heads and the real money-making stars whose work was never good enough. It was then that Wartbeng supported a Humanitarian Award to be given to the person in the movie industry of the highest ideals, who gave of himself for the betterment of the industry and mankind. Finally, two years ago, Moses Wartberg had been given this award and accepted it on television in front of one hundred million admiring American viewers. The award was presented by a Japanese director of international renown for the simple reason that no American director could be found who could give the award with a straight face. (Or so Doran said when telling me this particular story.)

On the night when Moses Wartberg received his award, two screenwriters had heart attacks from outrage. An actress threw her television set out of the fourth-floor suite of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Three directors resigned from the Academy. But that award became Moses Wartberg’s most prized possession. One screen writer commented that it was like members of a concentration camp voting for Hitler as their most popular politician.

It was Wartberg who developed the technique of loading a rising star with huge mortgage payments on a Beverly Hills mansion to force him to work hard in lousy movies. It was Moses Wartberg whose studio continually fought in the courts to the bitter end to deprive creative talent of the monies due them. It was Wartberg who had the connections in Washington. Politicians were entertained with beautiful starlets, secret funds, paid-for expensive vacations at the studio facilities all over the world. He was a man who knew how to use lawyers and the law to do financial murder; to steal and cheat. Or so Doran said. To me he sounded like any red-blooded American businessman.

Apart from his cunning, his fix in Washington was the most important asset that Tri-Culture Studios possessed.

His enemies spread many scandalous stories about him that were not true because of his ascetic life. They started rumors that with careful secrecy he flew to Paris every month to indulge himself with child prostitutes. They spread the rumor that he was a voyeur. That he had a peephole to his wife’s bedroom when she entertained her lovers. But none of this was true.

Of his intelligence and force of character there could be no doubt. Unlike the other movie moguls, he shunned the publicity limelight, the one exception being his seeking the Humanitarian Award.

– -

When Doran drove into the Tri-Culture Studios lot, it was hate at second sight. The buildings were concrete, the grounds landscaped like those industrial parks that make Long Island look like benign concentration camps for robots. When we went through the gates, the guards didn’t have a special parking spot for us, and we had to use the metered lot with its red-and-white-striped wooden arm that raised automatically. I didn’t notice that I would need a quarter coin to get out through the exit arm.

I thought this was an accident, a secretarial slipup, but Doran said it was part of the Moses Wartberg technique to put talent like me in its place. A star would have driven right back off the lot. They would never put it over with directors or even a big featured player. But they wanted writers to know that they were not to get delusions of grandeur. I thought Doran was paranoid and I laughed, but I guess it irritated me, just a little.

In the main building our identities were checked by a security guard, who then made a call to make sure we were expected. A secretary came down and took us up in the elevator to the top floor. And that top floor was pretty spooky. Classy but spooky.

Despite all this, I have to admit I was impressed with Jeff Wagon’s charm and movie business bottom line. I knew he was a phony and hustler, but that seemed natural somehow. As it is not unnatural to find an exotic-looking inedible fruit on a tropical island. We sat down in front of his desk, my agent and I, and Wagon told his secretary to stop all calls. Very flattering. But he obviously had not given the secret code word really to stop all calls because he took at least three during our conference.

We still had a half hour to wait for Wartberg before the conference would start. Jeff Wagon told some funny stories, even the one about how the Oregon girl took a slice out of his balls. “If she’d done a better job,” Wagon said, “she would have saved me a lot of money and trouble these past years.”

Wagon’s phone buzzed, and he led me and Doran down the hail to a luxurious conference room that could serve as a movie set.

At the long conference table sat Ugo Kellino, Houlinan and Moses Wartberg chatting easily. Farther down the table was a middle-aged guy with a head of fuzzy white hair. Wagon introduced him as the new director for the picture. His name was Simon Beilfort, a name I recognized. Twenty years ago he had made a great war film. Right afterward he had signed a long-term contract with Tri-Culture and become the ace schlockmaster for Jeff Wagon.

The young guy with him was introduced as Frank Richetti. He had a sharp, cunning face and was dressed in a combo Polo Lounge-rock star-California hippie style. The effect was stunning to my eyes. He fitted perfectly Janelle’s description of the attractive men who roamed Beverly Hills as Don Juan-hustler-semipimps. She called them Slime City. But maybe she just said that to cheer me up. I didn’t see how any girl could resist a guy like Frank Richetti. He was Simon Beilfort’s executive producer on the film.

Moses Wartberg wasted no time on any bullshit. His voice laden with power, he put everything right on the line.

“I’m not happy with the script Malomar left us,” he said. “The approach is all wrong. It’s not a Tri-Culture film. Malomar was a genius, he could have shot this picture. We don’t have anybody on this lot in his class.”

Frank Richetti broke in, suave, charming. “I don’t know, Mr. Wartberg. You have some fine directors here.” He smiled fondly at Simon Bellfort.

Wartberg gave him a very cold look. We would hear no more from Richetti. And Beilfort blushed a little and looked away.

“We have a lot of money budgeted for this picture,” Wartberg went on. ‘We have to insure that investment. But we don’t want the critics jumping all over us, that we ruined Malomar’s work. We want to use his reputation for the picture. Houlinan is going to issue a press release signed by all of us here that the picture will be made as Malomar wanted it to be made. That it will be Malomar’s picture, a final tribute to his greatness and his contribution to the industry.”

Wartberg paused as Houlinan handed out copies of the press release. Beautiful letterhead, I noticed, with the Tri-Culture logo in slashing red and black.

Kellino said easily, “Moses, old boy, I think you’d better mention that Merlyn and Simon will be working with me on the new script.”

“OK, it’s mentioned,” Wartberg said. “And, Ugo, let me remind you that you can’t fuck with the production or the directing. That’s part of our deal.”

“Sure,” Kellino said.

Jeff Wagon smiled and leaned back in his chair. “The press release is our official position,” he said, “but, Merlyn, I must tell you that Malomar was very sick when he helped you with this script. It’s terrible. We’ll have to rewrite it, I have some ideas. There’s a lot of work to be done. Right now we fill up the media with Malomar. Is that OK with you, Jack?” he asked Houlinan. And Houlinan nodded.

Kellino said to me very sincerely, “I hope you’ll work with me on this picture to make it the great movie that Malomar wanted it to be.”

“No,” I said. “ I can’t do that. I worked on the script with Malomar, I think it’s fine. So I can’t agree to any changes or rewriting, and I won’t sign any press release to that effect.”

Houlinan broke in smoothly. “We all know how you feel. You were very close to Malomar in this picture. I approve of what you just said, I think it’s marvelous. It’s rare that there’s such loyalty in Hollywood, but remember, you have a percentage in the film. It’s in your interest to make the film a success. If you are not a friend of the picture, if you are an enemy of the picture, you’re taking money out of your pocket.”

I really had to laugh when he said that line. “I’m a friend of the picture. That’s why I don’t want to rewrite it. You’re the guys that are the enemy of this picture.”

Kellino said abruptly, harshly, “Fuck him. Let him go. We don’t need him.”

For the first time I looked directly at Kellino, and I remembered Osano’s description of him. As usual, Kellino was dressed beautifully, perfectly cut suit, a marvelous shirt, silky brown shoes, He looked beautiful, and I remembered Osano’s use of the Italian peasant word cafone. “A cafone,” he said, “is a peasant who had risen to great riches and great fame and tries to make himself a member of the nobility. He does everything right. He learns his manners, he improves his speech and he dresses like an angel. But no matter how beautiful he dresses, no matter how much care he takes, no matter how much time he cleans, there clings to his shoe one tiny piece of shit.”

And looking at Kellino, I thought how perfectly he fitted this definition.

Wartberg said to Wagon, “Straighten this out,” and he left the room. He couldn’t be bothered fucking around with some half-assed writer. He had come to the meeting as a courtesy to Kellino.

Wagon said smoothly, “Merlyn is essential to this project, Ugo. I’m sure when he thinks it over, he’ll join us. Doran, why don’t we all meet again in a few days?”

“Sure,” Doran said. “I’ll call you.”

We got up to leave. I handed my copy of the press release to Kellino. “There’s something on your shoe,” I said. “Use this to wipe it off.”

When we left Tri-Culture Studios, Doran told me not to worry. He told me he could get everything straightened out within the week, that Wartberg and Wagon could not afford to have me as an enemy of the picture. They would corn-promise. And not to forget my percentage.

I told him that I didn’t give a shit and I told him to drive faster. I knew that Janelle would be waiting for me at the hotel, and it seemed as if the thing I wanted most in the world was to see her again. To touch her body and kiss her mouth and lie with her and hear her tell me stories.

I was glad to have an excuse to stay in Los Angeles for a week to be with her for six or seven days. I really didn’t give a shit about the picture. With Malomar dead I knew it would just be another piece of schlock from Tri-Culture Studios.

When Doran left me off at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he put his hand on my arm and said, “Wait a minute. There’s something I have to talk to you about.”

“OK,” I said impatiently.

Doran said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time, but I felt maybe it wasn’t my business.”

“Jesus,” I said. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m in a hurry.”

Donan smiled a little sadly, “Yeah, I know. Janelle is waiting for you, right? It’s Janelle I want to talk to you about.”

“Look,” I said to Doran, “I know all about her and I don’t care what she did, what she was. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

Doran paused for a moment. “You know that girl, Mice, she lives with?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s a sweet girl.”

“She’s a little dykey,” Doran said.

I felt a strange sense of recognition as if I were Cully counting down a shoe. “Yeah,” I said. “So what?”

“So is Janelle,” Doran said.

“You mean she’s a lesbian?” I said.

“Bisexual is the word,” Doran said. “She likes men and women.”

I thought that over for a moment, and then I smiled at him and said, “Nobody’s perfect.” And I got out of the car and went up to my suite, where Janelle was waiting for me, and we made love together before going out to supper. But this time I didn’t ask her for any stories. I didn’t mention what Doran said. There was no need. I had caught on a long time ago and made my peace with it. It was better than her fucking other men.