Come Back Dead (3 page)

4

A long silence followed. Drury was looking around the office, thinking, perhaps, that we were in the very room where the decision to destroy his picture had been made by one of Howard Hughes's less flamboyant predecessors.

“After that,” Drury finally said, “the clock struck midnight in a big way.
Albertsons
failed with the critics and the public. That was all my enemies at RKO needed to get me thrown off the lot. I didn't exactly land on my feet, either.

“I'd made a lot of the old-timers in Hollywood mad with
First Citizen
,” he said, looking pointedly at Paddy. “Those who didn't give a damn about D. W. Griffith's hurt feelings were jealous because the picture was destined to live forever.

“I had offers, but none that ensured my total control over a project. I had to accept deals that gave the studios–Warners briefly, then Universal, then, God help me, Monogram–control of the final cut of my films. That was part of my
Albertsons
legacy: the idea that I could be trusted only so far and no farther, that my brilliance had to be tempered by someone else's discipline. Some committee's discipline, usually.

“It meant that there never really was another Carson Drury picture. Only the butchered remains of a few. Just enough to tilt the scales of judgment against me.” He cupped his bony hands and held them like a pair of scales, slowly raising one while he lowered the other. “Enough to convince everyone that
The Imperial Albertsons
was the rule and
First Citizen
, the fluke.

“Well, I'd always been a prodigy. If I was a successful director by twenty-one, it stands to reason I'd be washed up by twenty-five. Damn,” he said with his dark grin flashing. “What a second act curtain that would have made on Broadway.”

“What's the third act?” I asked.

“Redemption, of course,” Drury said. “We have to send the customers home smiling.”

He stood up abruptly, circled the desk, and took a seat behind it. “Several weeks ago I read in the
Motion Picture Herald
that Howard Hughes was about to consummate a deal with the American Standard Tire Company of Akron, Ohio.”

Paddy, who'd set a personal record for listening while another person talked, finally chimed in. “Everyone in Hollywood read the same piece. It said that the heir apparent of that company, Tyrone McNally, has strung together a little network of television stations that are earning almost as much as his daddy's rubber works. But he needs more entertainment to go with his commercials, so he contacted Hughes a few months back and offered to buy RKO's film library. Hughes made him buy the whole damn studio.”

While Paddy was scoring his points, Drury raided the box of Havanas and fired one up. Now he leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms up above his head and leaving them there.

“When I saw that article, I had another one of my visions,” he said, staring at his own smoke rings as though they were secret messages. “I called Mr. McNally and offered to take one of his nine hundred new films off his hands.”

“First Citizen?”
I asked.

“Oh, no.” He lowered his arms so he could do his scale routine again. Then he looked down lovingly at the lower hand. “
The Imperial Albertsons
. McNally was happy enough to part with it, a famous box office disaster. He threw in a camera and sound equipment and lights and a lease on a soundstage for peanuts.”

I had a vision of my own. “You're going to remake the movie?”

“Not the whole movie. Just the ending, the part Whitehead and his fellow vandals destroyed.

“Think of it! All the actors from
Albertsons
are still alive and well. Joseph Coffin, Ezra Marley, Angeline Van Ness, all the old Repertory One crew. Their characters age over the course of the film, so if anything, they'll need less makeup now than they did in '42.”

“Are they willing to do it?”

“They're desperate to do it. They're dying to do it. That gang owes me about a dozen favors apiece. They all started with me in New York. Hell, they only ended up in Hollywood because I brought them here.”

“Carried them out on your back, I suppose,” Paddy said.

He wasn't going to ambush Drury again, a message the director conveyed with explosive laughter. “Of course on my back. I had to have my arms free for flying, didn't I?”

When he'd laughed himself out, he said, “So I had that debt to call in and another, less pleasant one in reserve.”

“The actors owe you because they helped RKO reshoot the picture,” I said.

“Yes.” He ground out his barely tasted cigar. “They were all under contract to RKO, of course, and obligated to follow orders, but if they'd stood together, they could have saved my film. The irony is that they thought they were doing it for my own good. That sounds naive as hell, but they were kids themselves back then. They know better now, and they're anxious to make amends.”

He was leaning across the desk, his long face looking younger, almost boyish under the Huck Finn hair. “Luckily a movie studio is like your grandparents' attic on an epic scale: nothing ever thrown away, some fantastic treasure crammed into every nook. So far we've found the very camera we used to shoot
Albertsons
and sound equipment to match. There are even some of the original costumes in storage, although they may need letting out.”

He stretched his arms up again, his hands balled into fists. “After all these years in the wilderness, I'll finally have my vindication. There will finally be a second Carson Drury picture, a masterpiece that will make
First Citizen
seem like nothing more than a step in the right direction.”

“While you're counting your chickens,” Paddy said, “don't forget to subtract the reason you called us in. The sabotage, I mean.”

Drury was in the process of remembering, his smile frozen in place and his outstretched arms slowly sinking into his lap, when Sue opened the door behind me.

“They're waiting for you in the screening room, Mr. Drury,” she said.

He sprang from his chair before she'd finished her speech. “Toss me a pair of shoes, Elliott,” he said. “Any two as long as one's left and one's right. I forgot that I'd arranged for a team of set designers to see the old version of
Albertsons
this morning. That's turned out to be our biggest challenge: duplicating the old sets.”

He came around the desk at a quick march, his untied laces beating time on the tops of his oxfords. “Come on, chaps. We'll work up an appetite for lunch.”

Paddy's appetite hadn't needed working up for years. He was already breathing emphatically by the time we rounded the guard's kiosk and traded the air-conditioning for the blazing concrete of the lot. Drury's wind was fine, but he didn't waste any on talking until we were out of earshot of the little guard.

“The sabotage started right after I closed the deal with Mr. McNally, but in a minor key. First my original shooting script disappeared. Fortunately we found a copy in the studio archives. Then some of our tires were slashed. This was out at RKO's Culver City lot–the old Selznick Studio–where we're actually shooting.”

“You're filming already?” I asked.

“Yes. You didn't read that in the
Herald
or the
Reporter
,” Drury said with a satisfied glance at the laboring Mr. Maguire. “That's one of the reasons I picked the Culver City studio: secrecy.”

“You were anticipating trouble?”

“No. Just keeping my left up. Part of my damnable reputation is the inability to see a project through to the end. For once I wanted the peace of having to satisfy no one's expectations but my own. I wanted to work without the building suspense that usually accompanies one of my projects. The ‘How will Drury screw up this time?' suspense. In its place I got a new kind of pressure courtesy of a faceless, nameless saboteur.”

I looked for Paddy to take the podium now that we'd gotten to the actual subject of the meeting, but Drury and I had left him behind. He was standing next to a Civil War–era cannon, surely the veteran of a hundred horse operas, pretending to light the cigar he'd gotten from Drury while he caught his breath. At the moment he was patting his pockets for the matches he'd left at home.

I started back to do the honors, but the long-legged Drury beat me to it. “I think that brings Mr. Elliott up to date,” he said as he produced a silver lighter as thin for its length as he was. He held it out like an olive branch.

Paddy twirled the cigar in the proffered flame long enough to have gotten a baseball bat alight. “You told me on the phone that events had taken a nastier turn,” he said at last.

“Yes. Two nights ago someone set fire to the editing room where we'd stored the
Albertsons
negative. We would have lost it if it hadn't been for Hank Shepard. He's the publicist on the project. Maybe I should say ‘secretist,' since his job so far has been to keep things out of the papers. Hank's a very flexible guy. He's also a brave one. When he spotted the fire, he charged in and saved the film cans. He had to make two trips to get them all.”

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“Just singed a little. More to the point, the negative came through the ordeal intact. I'm counting on you gentlemen to keep it that way.”

Paddy had found his second wind. “Who besides D. W. Griffith's ghost would give a damn whether you revived your fortunes or not?”

Drury backed away from us as he answered. “I don't know. I honestly don't think I have an enemy in the world–just ex-wives and critics who don't understand me.

“I've got to run now. I've asked Hank to answer any other questions you might have. He's standing guard in Culver City right now. And you're both invited to the Club Satyr tonight. I've rented the place for a little party. Hank's talked me into taking the wraps off the production, and we're going to do it in style. I figure if the studio is blown out from under us, we'll lose the element of surprise anyway. Eight o'clock. Nothing too fancy. Just black tie.”

By that time Drury was out of range of our questions. He waved once more and loped off.

“Just black tie,” Paddy repeated. “He probably expects us to wait tables.”

We started back for the DeSoto, Paddy setting an especially leisurely pace. I said, “You two hit it off famously.”

“Did we not,” Paddy said. “What a character. Did you catch that accent? Drury picked up more than shoes when he was in London. And him born and raised in Cleveland to my certain knowledge.”

Paddy had been born and raised in Baltimore, but there was a wisp of Ireland about his speech–not in his pronunciation but in the way he cast his sentences. At one time I'd thought this was an echo of the immigrants who had raised him. More recently I'd decided that his speech pattern was a souvenir from his days in vaudeville when he'd been a stage Irishman, complete with red wig and greasepaint freckles.

Drury had probably acquired his slight English accent the same way, after one performance of
Hamlet
too many. He and Paddy had a lot in common, genius aside. Both were outgoing personalities used to dominating their little corners of the world. It was a not uncommon quality in Hollywood, and Paddy could dim it down when he needed to accommodate a powerful client. I wondered why he hadn't made that effort for Drury.

“If you don't like the guy, why are we working for him?”

“We're not,” Paddy said. “You are. He asked for you by name when he called. Any idea why?”

“No,” I said.

“It's just as well. I'll be tied up for the next few days on that little matter we're handling for Joan Crawford. As to why you're working for him, the answer is money. I like to keep a little more coming in than I have going out. The Depression twisted me that way.”

“I hope Drury paid us up front,” I said. “When he was describing his bad reputation, he left out the part about his checks bouncing.”

“That part I already knew,” Paddy said. “It may be the secret of the black temper I'm in this morning. I may resent having to take work from Drury in the first place. Time was I would have referred a deadbeat like him to a fifty-dollar-a-day independent down on Hollywood Boulevard. Now I need the business, and I resent needing the business, so I take it out on poor Mr. Drury. Remind me to send him a card at Christmas.”

I promised I would.

“While we're on the subject of money,” Paddy said, “see if Mr. Shepard can tell you how Drury managed to finance this gamble of his. That may give us a handle on the sabotage. In this town when it isn't ego driving things, it's always money. Call me at home before you head to the Satyr.”

“You won't be going,” I said, and not as a question. As sociable as Paddy normally was, his wife and business partner, Peggy, was shy. She'd never felt comfortable in glamorous Hollywood, despite her own brief career on the stage. She was growing less comfortable as each year passed. And Paddy was less inclined than he used to be to leave her home alone.

“For once I'm happy enough to please her nibs,” Paddy said. “If I had to listen to one more of Drury's stories, I might choke to death on a canapé.

“Don't worry about dropping me; I'll take a cab. Give our love to Ella and the sprouts.”

5

I drove to Culver City by way of a phone booth and a call to Ella. She was free that evening and genuinely excited about Carson Drury's plan to revive
The Imperial Albertsons
.

“That's the best idea I've heard since you proposed,” she said.

“We've had two children since then,” I reminded her.

“They weren't anybody's idea, chum,” Ella reminded me.

As Drury had mentioned, RKO's Culver City studio had once belonged to David O. Selznick. Selznick's later films had opened with a long shot of the lot's centerpiece, an office building disguised as an antebellum southern mansion. It was meant to evoke memories of Selznick's
Gone with the Wind
, a melancholy association, I'd always thought, since the producer had never been able to equal that early triumph.

I wandered Tara's halls for a while without finding Hank Shepard. Finally a young woman in a calico shirt and dungarees took pity on me and directed me to an unassuming building behind the mansion. Tara's garage, I told myself as I knocked on its screen door.

Beyond the door someone was typing as though his life depended on it. He yelled for me to come in without slacking his fire. I followed the sound down a cinder block hallway to a cinder block office lit inadequately by the noon sun bouncing off the street outside and through a louvered window cranked fully open.

When I made my entrance, the typist broke off with a flourish that made me think of Chico Marx's piano routines. He hit the last key with an extended forefinger, the rest of his hand shaped to resemble a gun.

“Bang,” he said. “Another press release bites the dust.” Then he swiveled in his chair and extended his hand. It was a big hand, but not a hard one. “Hank Shepard,” he said. “You must be Scott Elliott. Carson told me to expect you.”

Shepard reminded me of friends from my old artillery battery. That is, he reminded me of the way the friends had turned out. He was a well-fed, peaceful-looking citizen who smiled easily and seemed to mean it. He had wavy blond hair worn a trifle high on his forehead, blue eyes that weren't as clear as they probably once had been, and big red ears that drooped a little in the reflected sunlight. One of the ears was wearing a healthy coating of petroleum jelly. Despite the heat, Shepard's white shirt was buttoned at the collar, and his bow tie–white with blue stripes like the curtains in Drury's borrowed office–was knotted tightly. He had rolled his sleeves up, however. I could see that his left forearm was wrapped in greasy gauze.

“Your boss told me you'd been singed,” I said. “It looks worse than that.”

“It does,” Shepard said, holding up his arm so he could admire it. “Luckily this is Hollywood. Nothing is exactly what it appears to be, and nobody's who they seem. What time do you have?”

“Two past twelve.”

“Time for my pain medicine. Care to join me?”

He pulled a pint of bourbon from its hiding place behind the typewriter and collected two glasses from a little tray held in place by a big water jug. Shepard's resemblance to my old army buddies was increasing by the minute.

“I wasn't burned,” I said.

“Not yet,” Shepard said. “But you're working for Carson Drury now, right? So it's only a matter of time.” He handed me a generous shot. “Consider this something on account.”

I raised my glass. “To heroism,” I said.

Shepard held his laugh until he'd downed his drink. “If you're referring to the fire the other night, that was no big deal. Nothing like winning the Silver Star.” He looked down at my chest to see if I might be wearing mine.

“Who told you about that?”

“Just some scuttlebutt Carson picked up somewhere. It's true, isn't it?”

“Yes,” I said. I pulled out my pack of cigarettes and offered one to Shepard, Ella not being around to frown at me.

She wasn't around, but she wasn't that far away, either. As I lit my Lucky, Shepard said, “And you're married to Pidgin Englehart, aren't you?”

Pidgin was Ella's old nickname from her days as a studio publicist. It was short for pidgin English, an unflattering reference to her early writing style. “More of Drury's scuttlebutt?” I asked.

“Nope, my own. I broke in with Pidgin at Warners right after the war. A great girl, a really great girl.”

I thought about working our children into the conversation as a way of wiping the rosy glow of memory off Shepard's face. In the end I just said, “How long have you been working for Drury?”

“Since I quit Warners in '46. It seemed like a good move at the time. Carson was working on
The Gentleman from Macao
back then. Did you see that one?”

“Yes. The closing scene in the house of mirrors is a classic.”

Shepard grimaced. “For twelve reels a detective chases this mysterious killer, and all anybody remembers is the shamus looking into the mirrors and seeing the murderer in place of his own reflection. You're supposed to know then that the killer and the detective are the same guy, two personalities in one body. I don't think half of the ticket buyers figured it out or cared by then. That was another picture that got some front-office editing after Carson was asked to clean out his desk.”

“I liked it,” I said.

“Me, too,” Shepard said. “But I'm no judge of celluloid. If I were, I wouldn't still be hanging around, waiting for another heartache.”

“You don't give this comeback try much of a chance?”

“Once burned, twice shy, to return to my earlier joke. Let's just say I've lived through more than one of Carson's comebacks. None of the others had the panache of this
Albertsons
stroke, though. I can almost see him bringing this one off. If only …”

That dangling
if
brought us around to business. I set my glass on Shepard's desk. “What's the story on this fire?”

“Come on,” Shepard said. “I'll show you the scene of the crime.”

He led me back out the way I'd come in, briefing me from a little wire-bound notebook as we went.

“A week ago I noticed that Carson's copy of the script was missing. He'd left it on my desk when we quit for the night, and the next morning it was gone.”

“Was the place locked?”

“Yep. On account of my typewriter, not Carson's script. But the locks around here are mostly for keeping the doors from blowing open in the wind. The script that disappeared was Carson's old copy from 1942, which we were able to replace, but the stolen script had years of notes and rewrites scribbled in the margins, which we can't replace. That may be a blessing in disguise. Only Carson would spend thirteen years defending his original conception as a work of art while all that time he's rewriting it. He's like that Wordsworth guy.”

“What studio's he with?” I asked, kicking an empty soda bottle out of our way.

“Don't give me the tough guy act, Elliott. You know who I'm talking about. Wordsworth the English poet. When he got old, he spent his time rewriting his early poems when he should have been writing new ones. Screwing the early ones up, too, needless to say. Carson has the same tendency, so the notes are no big loss. He's probably scribbled a whole new set by now anyway.”

“There was also some vandalism?”

“Two nights later. Carson found that himself. He got back from the dinner break late and saw that the tires on my heap and on Joe Nolan's Chrysler had been slashed. Joe's our cameraman. Carson got a big kick out of that. He has a leisurely dinner, and as a bonus he doesn't have to buy new tires.”

“Is security around here that light?”

“It's lighter than a thirty-five-cent lunch. And about as hard to find. It consists of some Keystone Kops that the American Standard Tire Company hired to keep the place from walking away.

“Still, they came through like the cavalry on the night of the fire. It was three days after the tire slashing–night before last, I mean. We'd been working late, talking out Carson's idea of duplicating some of the old sets with matte paintings. Carson broke it up about nine because he had a date with some Mexican starlet. Joe and I killed a bottle, then he left. I was collecting myself for the same effort when I smelled smoke.”

I'd been smelling something similar for some time. We rounded the corner of the alleyway and came to another cinder block building. It was one story, like Shepard's garage, but longer, with a series of outside doors like a racetrack stable. The door nearest our corner was gone, replaced by a rectangular black hole. Through it I could see more blackness. The window next to the door had been broken out. Where the white paint on the block wall wasn't blistered, it was discolored by smoke.

“You went in there twice?” I asked.

“Marvelous stuff, whiskey. Of course, I had noble motives, too. Like money. My wagon's hitched to Carson Drury's star, for better or worse. That means it's hitched to
Albertsons
. It's my last chance to turn my years with Carson from a dead loss to a profit. I'll be damned if I'll let some son of a bitch with a Zippo take that chance away.”

The alley around us was decorated with half-burned furniture and ruined equipment: the ends of a long table whose middle was missing; the naked frame of a swivel chair, already rusting; a sofa whose charred cushions had been split open. What had once been editing equipment was now a pile of blackened pieces. Only the empty film reels were still recognizable.

“How did the fire start?” I asked.

“Search me. I had the impression that the wire wastebasket under the editing table was the center of the action, but it was only an impression. The fire spread so fast, it seemed to be everywhere at once.”

“What did the arson boys say?”

Shepard had left his hat back in his office. He held his little notebook above his eyes to shield them from the sun. “What arson boys?”

“The fire department didn't take an interest in this?”

“We managed to handle it without them.” Shepard pointed to a hydrant ten feet away. A reel of hose hung on the building next to it, dirty hose that had been rewound inexpertly. “Like I said, the Keystone Kops earned their money that night. One of them was walking post near enough to hear me yelling for help. By the time I got the last can of film out, there were two of them here, and they'd figured out how the fire hose worked. They had that little room flooded before I'd stopped sizzling.”

“They still would have called the fire department.”

“Yeah, they would have if I hadn't volunteered to do it for them. I called Ciro's instead and left a message for Carson to get back here quick. He still had the crazy idea we could keep this production a secret. I knew he wouldn't want firemen or policemen or, worse, reporters prowling around.”

“How did Drury handle the guards?”

“With one hand tied behind his back. You've never seen Carson's God routine, have you? He drops that radio voice of his into low gear, shakes all the slack out of his spine, and brings his black brows together like a pair of rival bulls. Then he either gives you hell or pumps you full of sweetness and light, depending on which he thinks will get him the most mileage.

“He took the high road and the low road both that night with the guards. First he gave them the impression that he would personally mention their devotion to duty to Tyrone McNally and each and every stockholder of American Standard Tire, and maybe even to President Eisenhower. He then said that the fire had been a careless accident and it would be a shame for anyone to lose his position over a careless accident. A terrible shame. Luckily for them, Carson was in charge. They could count on him to handle the situation with superhuman delicacy. It was a nice little performance. He left those sad sacks feeling like heroes who could be fired for cause at any second. They went away quietly enough, let me tell you.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Carson threw the negative in the trunk of his car–it's now in a fireproof vault, by the way–and drove me to the hospital. On the way I convinced him to let me go public with the
Albertsons
reissue.”

“But not about the fire.”

“No. We can't afford to. It's a shame. I could build a beautiful sympathy campaign out of that.” He swept his hand through the hot air to symbolize the jumbo type he'd need for his headline. “‘Hard luck director's comeback threatened by phantom saboteur.' Something like that might even get Hollywood pulling for Carson for a change. Half of Hollywood anyway. The other half would be convinced that the fire was some publicity stunt we cooked up ourselves.”

“What do you mean you can't afford to release the story?”

“I mean it literally. Look, Carson didn't agree to drop all the secrecy business because he owed me for saving the negative. He only gave in because his cash is running out. He needs to find more money now if he wants to get this production finished.”

Shepard lowered his notebook visor and squinted upward. “If you're through here, let's find some shade.”

I took a look inside the burned-out editing room so I'd be able to tell Paddy I had. Then we walked back toward Shepard's office.

Halfway there, Shepard still hadn't resumed his story, so I said, “Your boss told us that he'd gotten the negative and the equipment he needs for peanuts.”

“He did. But this is still Hollywood. The carpenters around here make more than a Corn Belt bank president. So far we've only managed to build one lousy set, a three-story curving staircase that Carson plans to use for exactly one shot.”

“Drury said that duplicating the old sets was the biggest challenge.”

“What he meant was, paying for them is. We need some backers now. That means publicity–and only positive publicity. No stories about sabotage or vandalism or plain old bad luck.”