The Ticket Out (10 page)

The ambush the other night had been educational. I learned that my reflexes were rusty; I'd gotten out of the habit of selfdefense. And being jumped by a stranger was different from being jumped by someone you knew. When the little goon grabbed me, I seized up: that had never happened before. I'd have to prepare myself to fight back, like I'd done with Father all those years.

Neil John Phillips, Stenholm's writing partner, was next on the agenda. He lived in the Fairfax District not far from the gun store. I drove over there.

Phillips's block was lined with old Spanish duplexes. I knew that he'd filed for bankruptcy, but these places ran three grand a month at least. I parked in front of his address. It was a ground-floor apartment on the corner. An engraved business card was taped to the mail slot:
NEIL JOHN PHILLIPS—WRITER OF SCREEN PLAYS.

I banged the lion-head knocker and waited. Nobody answered. I circled around to the back door and knocked again. The screen was latched from the inside. I stood on the steps and tried to see in the kitchen window. The louvers were frosted glass and shut tight.

The backyard was all pavement and a row of garages. They were marked with the duplex numbers. I walked over, lifted Phillips's door, and got hit with a blast of hot air.

The garage was crammed with cardboard boxes. It was so full there almost wasn't room for a car. But there was no car. I went to the nearest stack and opened the flaps on the top box. It held hundreds of brittle yellowing memos, stamped with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer logo. I picked one up and the edges crumbled in my hand.

The memo was dated June 6, 1944, and was sent by Louis B. Mayer to a Mrs. Chadwick. It began “Re: Miss Garland's weight” and continued with detailed dietary instructions. The studio was putting Judy Garland on a stringent no-fat regime, and prescribing more amphetamines. I tried to think how old Garland would have been in 1944. Twenty?

I dug through the rest of the memos. Lots of them mentioned famous stars and seemed too valuable to be sitting in someone's garage; they were crumbling to dust. I caught references to Miss Crawford's freckles, Miss Garbo's large feet, and Mr. Gable's chronic infidelity. Louis Mayer had sent some; heads of production units and departments had sent others. There were even a couple signed by Irving Thalberg, MGM's legendary head of production.

I circled the garage looking into the most accessible boxes. All I found was old MGM paper—routine bureaucratic stuff of no interest.

One box contained a dozen bound scripts. The first few were authored by a B. N. Hecht. They were new scripts, not collector's items, and it took me a minute to figure them out. I realized that “B. N. Hecht” must be a pseudonym for Neil John Phillips. The blackballed Phillips must have borrowed a name from MGM's classic years: Ben Hecht was one of Hollywood's great screenwriters.

I found a copy of
The Last Real Man.
That was the script that had caused the controversy and ended Phillips's career. I opened the cover to take a look. A large piece of paper fell out from between the pages. I caught the piece of paper and unfolded it.

It was a pencil sketch of some kind of floor plan. The structure had long approaches from three directions, a central courtyard, and rooms labeled
EDITING,
and
PROJECTION.
There was a kitchen, a commissary, several offices, and a long hallway lined with bedroom suites. It was a weird hybrid, a cross between an open-air house, it seemed like, and a rudimentary movie studio. But there was nothing to identify the sketch—no address or name. I flipped the drawing over: the back of the paper was blank. I couldn't tell if the building existed, or if it was a film geek's vision of nirvana.

I heard footsteps on the pavement and looked up. A guy loomed in the garage opening. Before I could react, he snatched the script and the floor plan out of my hands, and backed away glaring. It all happened very fast.

I dusted myself off and stepped out of the garage. He slammed the door down and kicked it shut. I could see the guy better in the sunlight. He wore chinos, moccasins, and a polo shirt. His mouse-brown hair was thinning and receding, and he had a weak, spoiled face.

I said, “You're Neil John Phillips.”

The guy pulled out an expensive miniature cell phone. “No, I live next door. You're trespassing. Give me one reason why I shouldn't call the fucking cops.”

“My name's Ann Whitehead and I work—”

“OoOOoooo, the movie critic. I know who you work for.”

What a prick, but I stayed cool. “Do you know where Phillips is?”

The guy nodded his head. I waited for more, and finally said, “Where is he?”

“Out of town.”

“Where out of town? How can I reach him?”

“You can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because he's writing—he goes underground when he writes.”

I stuck out my hand, palm up. “Can I borrow your telephone?”

“What for?”

“To call the cops. Phillips's ex-writing partner was murdered, and you can't dick the cops around.”

I took a step toward him. He said, “Desert Hot Springs.”

“Where in Desert Hot Springs?”

“I don't know.”

I faked a grab for his phone; he jerked his arm back. “I don't! Neil checks in every couple of days!”

I got out a pen and a business card and wrote my home number on the front. “Have him call me next time he checks in. Tell him it's urgent.”

He took the card without reading it or looking at me. I shrugged and walked away. As I walked up the drive, I looked around. He was folding the floor-plan sketch and putting it back between the pages of the script.

 

I
SAT IN
my car on Phillips's street and made a load of phone calls.

I started with Edward Abadi—the agent of both Stenholm and Phillips. I called Creative Artists. The receptionist at CAA said that Abadi no longer worked there. I asked every way I could think of, but she wouldn't tell me when, why, or where he'd gone.

I called Abadi's Malibu number. A machine picked up, and a woman's voice said, “I'm not here right now. If you want to speak to Arnold Tolback, he's moved to the Chateau Marmont.”

Arnold Tolback?

I hung up and rechecked Abadi's number off my notes. I
had
dialed it correctly. I called Information; there were no Edward Abadis listed in the L.A. area. I tried the other big talent agencies. ICM, William Morris—no go. I tried UTA—no go. I tried the Marmont on a slim hope. Arnold Tolback was not in his room, the restaurant, the lobby, or out at the pool.

That was very strange. Hollywood agents were the most locatable people in the world. You might not be able to talk to them, but you could always find them.

I gave Edward Abadi a rest and tried Stenholm's two USC classmates. Hamilton Ashburn Jr. wasn't home, but Penny Proft agreed to see me “toot sweet.” She knew Stenholm was dead because the morning
Times
had published a second squib with the victim's name. She gave me the address, and I drove over to talk to her.

Proft lived in a pint-sized bungalow in the crowded flatlands adjoining the Beverly Center. A stout woman answered the front door. She was talking into a cordless telephone and held up one finger to say, almost done. I followed her into the living room and took a seat.

“... A
breast cancer
movie for
cable
? No frickin'
way
!...”

She had a brutal New York accent and wore baggy warm-ups. With her round face and round body, she looked like a comic career-woman troll.

“Uh-huh ... yeah, yeah, uh-huh ... Okay, if you can get my price, I'll do it.... Yeah, thanks for nothing, you hump.”

She mashed down the aerial and looked at me. “I never dreamed I'd get a breast cancer movie and meet our notorious bad girl all in one day. You were way right about
Moulin Rouge
and
Shrek,
Ann, but so not right about
Bridget Jones's Diary. Bridget Jones
was a howl, and Colin Firth, pass me a spoon, I'd eat him with fudge sauce any day. I've heard he's straight, tell me it's true. Luckily, you've never reviewed a movie of mine, but that's only because I've never had a script produced—a minor technicality.”

What could I do? I laughed.

“Holy Mother of God, it laughs! The gals down at the Guild will never believe this.” Proft threw herself on the couch and tucked the phone into her pants.

I said, “Let's talk about Greta Stenholm.”

“I warn you, I never liked that woman. It doesn't surprise me one bit she got whacked. Cherchay le homme, is what I say.”

She pronounced
homme
like “homey” and kept going. “Don't tell me, you're looking for the killer and a Pulitzer Prize, right? Or maybe you want her life story for a movie. It's been done before, but the world loves a dead blond—”

I cut in. “Do you mind if I say something?”

Proft made the zipper sign across her lips. “Be my guest, chiquita. I'm just tickled you're here.”

“You went to SC with Stenholm.”

“For three unforgettable years. The women loathed her and the guys groveled at her feet while she acted like Little Miss I-Live-For-My-Art all the time. I heard she was frigid.”

“Were she and Neil Phillips a couple?”

“That dweeb? Euuuh, no way.” She pretended to brush an insect off her leg. “The only person Neil wants to nuzzle is Irving Thalberg.”

I flashed on the memos in his garage, and the lion-head knocker. “I understand he's a fan of the old MGM.”

“A
fan
? He's positively
cracked
about it. They were a pair, those two, with their pet obsessions. He was going to be the greatest screenwriter who ever lived. She was going to direct wide-screen adventure movies. What a yutz—you can count on no hands the number of women who've directed adventure in the entire history of the studios.”

I said, “Better to stick to breast cancer and other female complaints?”

Proft laughed. “Hey, I'm not here to change Hollywood. I just want my slice of the pie.”

I said, “What happened after Stenholm graduated? She and Phillips sold one screenplay, and then she dropped out of sight.”

“Hah! That's the best part! Miss I-Live-For-My-Art was headed straight for the top. I heard she fucked everybody and their spotted dog—”

“She was frigid
and
promiscuous?”

Proft shrugged. “I'm just telling you what I heard. And the great part is, she never got anywhere. She slept her way to the bottom!”

I smiled. “What happened exactly?”

“Do I care? I never saw her after SC, thank the Lord. I could speculate, though.”

I said, “So speculate.”

“Only an actress gets anywhere by being a slut. Women writers have to pick their affairs. The best bet is to hitch your wagon to a director, or producer, or another writer—male, of course. That's when women really go places around here. Greta and Neil broke up after school, and lone females scare the doo-doo out of movie executives.”

Proft paused. “I hate to sound sympathetic, but you also have to think that Grets was too beautiful. A town like this and a shikse like that? The guys don't want her to direct their precious movies, no sirree. They want her to suck their cocks and show her bosom to the camera.”

“I think she became a feminist, too.”

Proft whistled through her teeth. “That's the Kiss o' Death right there. You have to be super-ultra-hyper-careful how you're a feminist in Hollywood. If I know our Greta, she'd spout off about it.”

I was digging Proft's candor. Industry women almost never talked about sexism to the press; I knew because I'd tried to get them to. “So Stenholm was ambitious and talented, but not very realistic?”

“Exactemente—no concept of what she was up against. ‘Off I go to be Steven Spielberg, tralalalala.'”

I said, “Do you know who she slept with?”

Proft shook her head. “I can't remember any names offhand. It's just gossip I heard over the years—you know, in-one-ear-out-my-mouth kind of thing.”

“But you said,
‘Cherchez l'homme.'”

“Well, there's a story about her and her agent that made the rounds last year.”

“Edward Abadi?”

“That's him. He was a CAA comer and West Bank wet dream, if you get my ethnic drift. It appears Mr. Ted was slipping Greta the schnitzel behind his fiancee's back—his fiancée being Hannah Silverman, Oscar-winning art director and world-class witch. And I heard recently that Greta was playing bury the brisket with Hank's
new
boyfriend, I forget his name, some producer. The name ends in ack—Prozac, halfback, something-ack.”

I took a guess. “Arnold Tolback?”

“Voilà! Tolback.”

“What happened to the affair with Abadi?”

Proft hooted. “You are
really
out of the loop, babycakes.” She flattened her nose to one side and made a gun with the other hand.

“Bang! Bang! I heard Greta fucked him not two hours before it happened, in the house he shared with gnarly Ms. Silverman. Edward is sleeping the big sleep, Ann—somebody shot him.”

 

I
CALLED
M
ARK
when I got back to the car. He'd been trying to reach me for hours. He'd heard about the murder and had looked up the original news item. It was dated July 13, 2000, and he read it directly off his computer screen:

“‘The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department confirmed today that Edward Abadi, thirty-five, a movie agent, was found dead at his Malibu Beach home late last night. The cause of death has not been released. Sheriff's detectives are investigating.'”

That was it, apart from two short obituaries in the trade papers. Mark had phoned around for more information. Abadi was a Lebanese American from Encino who'd started as a gofer at CAA and rocketed to junior agent. Smart and ruthless—that was the book on Abadi. Conflicting rumors had him dying of a congenital heart defect, and a gunshot to the head. CAA wouldn't discuss him or the circumstances of his death. He had merely “left the organization.”