The Man Who Died Laughing (12 page)

Hoag:
Did you have any qualms about being hooked up with a gangster?

Day:
None. I always believe in sticking with people you know. And Heshie, he had a personal stake in us. He was anxious to get out from under Bugsy’s wing. Start his own business. For a couple of years he’d been tucking away a little juice money on the sly. A nip here, a tuck there.

Hoag:
Are you telling me HWA was started with mob money?

Day:
Mob money the mob didn’t exactly know from. They thought the cops pocketed it after a raid, or Heshie paid it to some independent who ended up getting bumped off. The stuff disappears, who knows where.

Hoag:
How much are we talking about?

Day:
Fifty thousand. A hundred, maybe.

Hoag:
Pretty gutsy, wasn’t he?

Day: (laughs)
Better Heshie should be my agent than somebody else’s. Bugsy, he was too volatile. He wasn’t gonna be around for long. Heshie knew that. As it turned out, Bugsy Siegel got shot in the eyeball one year later. By which time the Harmon Wright Agency was doing pretty damned well for itself.

(end tape)

S
ONNY WASN’T WRONG. BY
the end of the week the newspapers did have it that he’d gotten drunk and slugged that reporter himself in the restaurant in Vegas.

There were lots of phone calls that week. It made me notice how seldom the phone had been ringing before. The
Enquirer
called.
People
called. Liz Smith and Marilyn Beck called. Sonny refused to talk to them. He tried to act as if the negative publicity wasn’t bothering him, but it was. He paced a lot now when we worked, baring his teeth, chewing a lot of Sen-Sens, and on occasion, his expensively manicured fingernails.

I was putting in a lot of time at the typewriter now—shaping, fleshing out, and polishing the transcripts of our tapes. I was up to Sonny’s first summer in the Catskills. I was enjoying the writing. It felt good to be back in the saddle again. And I was doing a helluva job of convincing myself that my effort was leading to more than another junky celebrity memoir. Here, I told myself, was emerging a rare insightful study of a showbiz legend.

I definitely needed a dose of reality. I didn’t get one.

What I got, I discovered one evening after dinner, was another visit. This time I could be sure it wasn’t my imagination. I came in to find my room trashed—selectively trashed. The tapes that had been on my desk were ripped from their cartridges and strewn all over the bed, spilling onto the floor. They were ruined, of course.

Fortunately they were blank tape—not that whoever did it knew that. I had gotten careful, Sonny’s death threat and the rising interest of the oilier tabloids had made me aware that the original tapes of my sessions with him might be precious to somebody besides me and the publisher’s lawyers. So I had numbered and dated a batch of blanks and left those piled on my desk. The real ones were snug and secure under my winter clothes in my Il Bisonte bag in the closet. The transcripts I kept sandwiched between my mattress and box spring when I wasn’t working on them. And the typing service that did the transcribing was not one of the usual Hollywood typing factories, where bribery and thievery are always possible. The publisher’s sister, a retired geography teacher who lived in Santa Monica, was doing the job.

I had also asked Vic for a key to the guesthouse and had taken to locking it, though clearly there was no point in doing that. Whoever had trashed the tapes had a key, too, or a real flair with locks. There was no sign of forced entry.

Sonny and Vic exchanged poker faces when I presented them with this, the latest evidence of less-than-positive vibes.

Then Sonny fingered the mined tapes, grinned, and quipped, “Don’t make ’em like they used to, huh?”

“This is not funny, Sonny,” I told him. “The police should be brought in.”

“No cops,” Sonny snapped.

I turned to Vic. “Do you agree?”

Vic stared at me, tight-lipped. He didn’t answer.

I turned back to Sonny. “Why? Is it really because you’re afraid of leaks?”

“I got reasons.”

“What reasons?”

“My
reasons.”

“Now who’s shutting whom out?” I demanded.

Sonny softened, jabbed at a tape with a stubby finger. “This fuck us over?”

“No, we’re fine,” I replied, not disclosing how or why this was so. “We’re just fine and dandy.”

The day Sonny turned sixty-three was a damp, drizzly one. He announced at breakfast that he felt like driving himself to his therapist’s appointment. This didn’t thrill Vic—he didn’t want Sonny out of his sight for that long. But The One insisted.

“I’m the goddamned birthday boy,” he pointed out. “All I really want is to pretend I’m a normal person for two lousy hours. I’ll be fine.”

He took the limo. Vic, it seemed, wanted to be my pally now. After Sonny left, he asked me if I felt like taking a ride in his Buick down to Drake Stadium at UCLA. I said why not. Vic still knew the coaches there, and they let us take some javelins out to the field to fool around.

A lot of people think spear chucking is a dull, one-dimensional sport. But when you train hard for it, learn the fine points of technique and form and timing, you begin to appreciate just how dull and one-dimensional it really is.

“We used to keep ourselves amused by ’pooning,” I told Vic, as we let a couple fly.

Vic was much too heavily muscled to get any kind of extension. Mine sailed way past his, though a good fifty feet short of my distance in my heyday. They both landed with a soft plonk in the moist earth of the deserted field. We fetched them.

“’Pooning?” he asked.

“You aim it at a target.”

“You mean like a tree?”

“Trees are no good. They crunch the spear. No, you lay a hankie on the grass a hundred feet out or so and see who can get closest. Whoever’s farthest buys the beers. I used to be a dead aim.”

I took sight at a mudhole a way off and let it fly. Nailed it.

“Everybody,” I said, “ought to be good at something.”

“I’m sure Coach would let us borrow a couple,” suggested Vic. “Sonny’s got plenty of room. We can ’poon for beers in the yard, huh?”

“Okay. Sure.”

“You’ve come around pretty good, Hoag, with your drinking and all. I think you’re good for Sonny. Just wanted you to know.”

“Thanks, Vic.”

He fooled around with a sixteen-pound shotput for a while. He’d thrown it when he was a freshman. I let a few more spears fly. Then we took a few laps and headed for the showers.

“About that night in Vegas, Hoag. When I went a little crazy. Sorry I got you involved.”

“The guy asked for it. Forget it.”

“I … I just lose control sometimes. You know the old expression ‘seeing red’? Well, I do. Everything in front of me goes red. And my head feels real tight and I can’t hear anything except for this pounding. And then I black out. I’m okay most of the time. But, hey, if it wasn’t for Sonny, I’d be living on tranks at the VA hospital on Sawtelle.”

“I understand you once …”

He frowned. “Once what?”

“Went a little too far.”

“Sonny tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not putting that in the book, are you?”

“Did it happen because of Sonny?”

“Sort of. This guy was making crummy comments one night at the Daisy Club about Wanda. Real awful stuff about that Black Panther she was mixed up with. I let him have it, and his head hit something by accident. That was … that was a very painful episode for me, Hoag. Can’t you leave it out?”

He began to breathe heavily and to rub his forehead with the palm of his hand, rub it so hard I thought he’d make it bleed.

“I certainly wouldn’t want to cause you any grief,” I assured him. “Why don’t I talk to Sonny about it. See what he thinks.”

Vic’s big shoulders relaxed. “That’s okay. I’ll talk to him.”

“You sure? I don’t mind.”

“It’s my problem, not yours. Thanks anyway.”

“Okay, Vic.”

He finished dressing before I did.

“I’m going over to the office to say hello to some people,” he droned. “I’ll put the spears in the car. Meet you there in a bit.”

I told him that would be fine and sat down on the bench to put on my shoes. I was bending over to tie them when a shadow crossed over me, the shadow of a large human life-form. I thought Vic had come back, but it wasn’t Vic. It was somebody else’s bodyguard. It was Gabe Knight’s bodyguard.

The French ambassador-to-be was sitting in the stands. Had been, I gathered, the whole time we were out there on the field. Gabe had aged very nicely. His sandy hair was still only partly flecked with gray, his blue eyes were clear and bright, his build trim and athletic. He wore a shawl-collared, oyster-gray cardigan, plaid shirt, gray flannel slacks, and tasseled loafers. He looked every inch the elegant Hollywood squire.

He shook my hand and smiled. It was a warm, reassuring, confident smile. It was the smile that always got him the girls in the old movies. And doubtless still did. “Stewart Hoag, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for my nod. “Have a seat. Please. I won’t keep you long. I wouldn’t want Sonny’s gorilla to miss you.”

Gabe’s own gorilla waited discreetly on the steps to the field. I sat.

Gabe gazed out at the campus. “Takes me back, being here. We shot the
BMOC
exteriors here, you know. It was the rainy season, just like this. Of course, Pauley Pavilion wasn’t here. Nor were those dormitories. This was a sleepy little place.” He turned his gaze on me. “I suppose you weren’t even born.”

“Not quite.”

“I’ve been reading the newspaper stories, of course. Did he really punch that reporter?”

“No.”

“Is he really drinking again?”

“No.”

“I’m happy to hear that. I was concerned.” He tugged at his ear. “I decided it was time we had a talk, young friend. I’ve known Arthur’s been working on a book. Naturally, I’m all for it.”

“You are?”

“Surprised?”

“Seldom.”

“There isn’t as much hostility between us as everyone thinks. Arthur and I simply went our separate ways. Life has been plenty good to both of us.”

“Maybe a little better to you.”

Gabe shrugged. “I bear him no grudge.”

“The feeling isn’t mutual. He told me if I talked to you, I was fired, actually.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I know he’s had his problems. Isolated himself up in that armed fortress of his. I suppose he’s still dwelling on the old days. More than is healthy, perhaps.” He pursed his lips. “I was hoping to get some idea from you about how you would be handling me.”

“Through his eyes,” I replied. “So far it’s a pretty flattering portrait. He said you were the best straight man in the business.”

“He said that?” Gabe seemed startled, and pleased. “Well, I’ll be.”

“He also said he could never admit that before.”

“That’s rich.” Gabe chuckled. “That is rich, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know him in the old days.”

“I did,” he said quietly. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Let’s cut the bullshit. I want to know about the breakup. How will it be portrayed?”

“I don’t know yet. He hasn’t said a word to me about it.”

“You mean you don’t know why it happened?”

“That’s correct.”

“You wouldn’t by any chance be jerking me around, would you?”

“I am not,” I replied. “Would you like to tell me about it?”

“That, there’s very little chance of.”

“I’m assuming it wasn’t over Sonny’s gambling debts,” I ventured.

“I’ll let him be the one to tell you. I’ll be interested to see how he handles it. Very interested.” His eyes were on the empty field.

“Nervous?”

“Not if I can avoid it,” he replied sharply.

“All I know is, he’s being very frank so far. It’ll be an honest book.” I glanced over at him. “Death threat notwithstanding.”

Gabe raised an eyebrow. “Death threat? Oh, yes, there was something in the papers about that,” he said very offhandedly. “What did this threat say?”

“Not to write it—or else.”

“Any idea who … ?”

“I thought maybe it was you.”

He chuckled, low and rich. “Was it a phone call?”

“Letter. Why?”

“What were the exact words?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Did anyone? Aside from Arthur, I mean.”

“No. He destroyed it.”

“Hmm. Far be it from me to tell you your business, young friend, but you ought to bear in mind that Arthur may have made the entire thing up.”

“Made it up?”

“I’ve known the man for forty-five years. Believe me, he is not above concocting fables to make people do what he wants them to do.”

“What can he hope to gain by fabricating this?”

“Publicity,” Gabe replied simply.

I turned that one over. It didn’t sound totally wild. Sonny
had
told me he needed a shot in the arm. The threat
had
found its way into the papers. Could he have rigged it himself to hype the book?

“Then again,” said Gabe, stroking his chin, “it’s also possible he
believes
he has been threatened, only he
hasn’t
been. Arthur and paranoia happen to be boon companions, you know.” Gabe reached into his billfold and pulled out a card and handed it to me. It was his card. “I’d like for us to talk again. I’d like to be kept informed along the way. And I’d love to see a copy of what you’re doing.”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

“Call it a professional courtesy. Perhaps I’ll be able to do you a favor sometime.”

“My own château in the Loire Valley?”

“My company is always looking for talented writers to do screenplays.”

“I don’t know how to do screenplays.”

“If you can write a book, you can write a screenplay.” He stood, stretched his long legs. “It’s Arthur’s birthday today, isn’t it? I always remember it. Always. I don’t call or send a card. But I do remember.” He shook his blond head. “I still love that little son of a bitch, you know that? We went through heaven and hell together. Nothing can ever take that away.” Gabe seemed very far away for a second. Then he glanced back down at me. “An honest book, you said.”