Playland (35 page)

That Jacob King appeared innocent of any act of violence in this Nevada sojourn was not good enough, however, for Marty Magnin and Sydney Allen. Having sent me to Detroit in the first place, Marty wanted some return on what he called his investment, that is, the two weeks I had spent on expenses at the Renaissance Plaza milking (Marty’s word, not mine) Maury Ahearne for the proposed screenplay about the homicide detective and his new partner, the black seven-foot-two-inch NBA center forced into early retirement because of his bad knees. When I expressed to Marty a lack of interest in continuing with the project, he finally wormed out of me, in his dogged way, that I had in fact found Blue Tyler, a nonperson for four decades, and to Marty this was an idea with more potential than any possible high-concept story about a cop and his sidekick, and far less problematic as there are not all that many seven-foot-two black leading men. Fuck the spade is what Marty said, wiping his hands of that project, and then he said, I laid out a
lot of money to you, kid, you owe me, give me this one, I’ll option it, you want to do a book, then okay, you do the book in the morning and the screenplay in the afternoon, we apply what I already paid to your fee, this story’s a natural. Knowing Marty as I did, I said I would only do it on spec, and when I finished, then we would work out a deal. Any day he did not have to lay out any money was a good day to Marty Magnin, and he readily acceded.

The story was also a great announcement. An announcement is what producers and directors make when they do not have a picture with a start date and above-the-line pay-or-play talent. The announcement in the trades read “Magnin and Allen to Team Again in Top-Secret Show Biz Biopic Epic,” the “top-secret” Marty’s way of mollifying me by not mentioning Blue Tyler’s name. The Allen of “Magnin and Allen” was of course that top-seeded shit Sydney Allen, top-seeded because after a stunt man named Chesty Warren was killed in an elaborate and unnecessarily dangerous helicopter gag on one of his pictures, Sydney spoke at the funeral and said that while life was short, film was forever, and that Chesty would live for as long as there were still theaters to show
Angel’s Flight;
needless to say,
Angel’s Flight
was the name of The Sydney Allen Film that Chesty had died on. Sydney’s so little he wears a woman’s watch, I once said about him, and the remark in true Hollywood fashion was immediately reported back to him, reinforcing his opinion of me, which was no better than mine of him.

“Sydney thinks the story should be a little more …” Marty Magnin said.

“Piquant,” Sydney Allen said.

“Explain
piquant
,” I said.

“I see Jacob as a man trying to contain his rages,” Sydney Allen said, “but occasionally he boils over. And I feel that at this point in our piece we need to see him boil over. See his furies erupt.”

“How?”

“Sydney thinks he should kill somebody here,” Marty Magnin said.

“It adds complication to his character,” Sydney Allen said. “And shading.”

“He didn’t kill anybody in Vegas that time.”

“But he has the essence of a killer,” Sydney Allen said. “I see it as his taint. The mark of Cain. As it were.”

“And because you see this mark of Cain, then he should kill somebody he in fact didn’t kill. As it were.”

“We’re not certain he never killed anybody, Jack,” Marty Magnin said. “What about that guy in the mine shaft.”

“He was eighty-seven years old according to the newspapers,” I said.

“The hit-and-run victim then?” Marty persisted.

“A guy wearing a dress,” I said. Again true, from the police reports.

“We’re talking nuance here, Jack,” Sydney Allen said.

“We’re talking murder, Sydney.” I could not believe that I was taking the side of Jacob King, acting as if I were his defense attorney.

“We’re talking I want it,” Sydney Allen said. His lips seemed to disappear into his teeth when he was angry. “And I want you to give it to me.”

I could not help myself. “Life is short, but film is forever, Sydney.”

“I want you to give it to me tomorrow,” Sydney Allen said.

This is what I gave him.

EXT. LA CASA NEVADA NIGHT

ANGLE ON THE STRUCTURE
looming out of the darkness, etched against the sky.

ANOTHER ANGLE—JACOB KING AND EDDIE BINHOFF
driving past, looking at it, Jacob at the wheel of the Continental.

EDDIE BINHOFF
in the passenger seat, adjusts the rearview mirror.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The omnipresent tail seen in the rearview mirror.

EDDIE BINHOFF
We’ve got company.

JACOB
I have had this shit.

EDDIE BINHOFF
looks sharply at Jacob, then removes his pistol and makes sure it is in working order.

JACOB KING
suddenly revs the convertible up and careens down the empty highway at a dangerously high speed.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The tail gives chase.

ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob suddenly slams on his brakes and the Continental skids into a U-turn. Jacob then heads back down the highway in the wrong lane, directly at the chase car.

EDDIE BINHOFF
Jesus, Jake …

ANOTHER ANGLE
A look of horror on the two men in the tail car. Desperately the driver crosses the highway trying to get out of the way of Jacob’s Continental.

ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob’s car hits the right rear fender of the second car, spinning it around.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The passenger tries to get off a shot at Jacob and Eddie Binhoff.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The car takes off across the desert, Jacob’s Continental in pursuit. The car cannot find purchase in the desert sand and is once more clipped by Jacob’s convertible. It stalls.

ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob lines up the other car and then heads his Continental straight into it. A horrendous crash. Jacob backs up for one more shot.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The man in the passenger seat staggers out of the car. He tries to get a shot off, but then seeing the Continental heading straight for him takes off across the desert.

ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob wheels after the fleeing, running, stumbling man.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The man stands his ground and tries to squeeze off a shot.

ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob driving as fast as he can on the desert sand hits the man squarely.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The man flies over the hood of the Continental, blocking Jacob’s vision for a moment, then slips off the hood.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The man dead in the desert sand.

ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob wheels around and heads back toward the stalled second car. Once more he slams into it.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The driver dazed and bleeding, his head resting on the steering wheel.

ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob bolts from the Continental, followed by Eddie Binhoff, gun in hand.

ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob yanks open the battered door of the second car and pulls the bleeding driver out. Jacob is in an uncontrollable rage.

JACOB
Give me your fucking gun, Eddie.

EDDIE BINHOFF
hands his weapon to Jacob, who sticks it up the nose of the driver.

DRIVER

(whimpering)
Jake, I’m begging you, please …

JACOB KING
fires one shot. The shot tears off the end of the driver’s nose.

THE DRIVER
weeping uncontrollably, bleeding profusely from the spot where the end of his nose had been.

JACOB KING
now sticks the gun into the driver’s ear. He is still enraged.

THE DRIVER
nods.

JACOB KING
lays the gun against the man’s ear and once more fires. The noise is thunderous.

THE DRIVER
claps his hands over his ears, deafened by the roar of the gun.

DRIVER
You’re crazy …

JACOB KING
leans close to the weeping man and screams into his ear.

JACOB
You fucking tell them that, too.

CUT TO:

“Great,” Marty Magnin said.

“Interesting,” Sydney Allen said.

As much as I would like to claim that the desert homicide sprang from the dank and darker subbasements of my own inspiration, Blue had in fact mentioned in her tapes that Jacob did tell her once he had run over some guy of Benny Draper’s in the desert, and shot the guy’s partner (I should say here that whenever Blue had cause to mention any of Jacob’s putative homicides, she would always refer to the victim as this guy or that guy, the anonymity of the word
guy
eliminating the necessity of the guy having a name and a personality and a father and a mother and women he fucked and maybe even children), first shooting off the guy’s nose, then his tongue and his ears and his thumbs and his kneecaps, and finally blinding him, his plan being to leave this human husk as a message to his employers, without the motor facilities to identify his tormentor, but finally he killed him with a bullet in his ear because, Jacob had told her, no man deserved to live out his remaining years in such misery. In crime’s Camelot, this seemed to pass as honor, and she was willing to accept it as such without question. To say the
least, the revelations appeared indiscreet on Jacob King’s part, especially from a man otherwise so circumspect about the murders attributed to him, a man used to admitting nothing and denying the same, so I do not know if I believed her tale or not (it took only fourteen seconds on the tape, and was parenthetical to a meandering story about a
Little Miss Marker
knockoff she was once meant to do on a loanout to Warner’s, with Bogie and Jim Cagney). I did find the specificity of detail intriguing, but then she was always a woman with a fertile imagination, especially when it came to story, and I have been in enough story conferences to recognize the lust to embroider and punch up a sequence, a word here, some business there. In any event the scene I concocted on demand for Sydney Allen, even though it was never filmed, became just another story that attached itself to the ongoing and ever growing legend of Jacob King, and in time was even accepted as truth.