Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 22:40:38 -0700 From: "J. Hall" Subject: Re: [WRITERS] INT: Goldman Pictures Continued sorry..sent this out without the right header..i must be losing it..LOL > "That's my niece." > "Aren't they all?" > "No. She really is. Her father was killed by Phil Marlowe. I won't ho ld >that against him though. Alex was an asshole." Tony holstered his gun and his >men followed. > "Couldn't let her know you were hired by me to tail her. She's not real ly >into the family business." > "Can't imagine why." > Tony motioned the man to sit at the table. "You're funny. You know tha t?" > > > I said nothing. DeLauro was taller than me and I didn't feel like sitting. His eyes were tall too, and they weren't laughing. One of his goons, a blue-eyed mulatto with a puckered scar extending like an evil grin from the side of his mouth pointed a short barreled Colt at me. "You mind the manners, shamus," he said. "Mr D said take a squat. Squat." I counted to five, closed my eyes and pulled out a chair. "If you're going to pay me now, I have to warn you I don't take personal checks," I said. DeLauro guffawed and the room relaxed. "See? He's a funnyman. Like Dann y Kaye he's a funnyman." Five years in Joliet had given him a rasp, a file on old bars in his voice. "You really don't do justice to the newsreels, Tony," I said, and fumble d in my side pocket for a cigarette. Blue-eye watched me fumble, his piece hanging slack but his eyebrows tightening. "Rotten habit," I mouthed, flipping the butt into my lips. Niven had about five more minutes. "Got a light?" DeLauro shrugged casually and gestured the big man over to me with a flicker of an eyelash. Butane then fire exploded under my nose. I wondered if Ladd really wanted his contract back badly enough to do this. After they'd heard my plan, neither of them looked particularly impressed. Bogart, checking his watch unhappily announced Betty would kill him if he was late again and shuffled off. He'd never been interested in real danger, and the prospect of Bacall throwing a decanter at him was a lot more frightening than anything Tony DeLauro could come up with. Niven watched him go with a smirk. "Granger would love this," he announced happily. "It's a damn pity he's in Mozambique or some godforsaken place shooting at rhinos." He and Stewart Granger had been notorious for getting into and out of trouble for years. I wished Granger was here too. Ladd took my .45 and passed me one of his stage props. It fit like a fat lady in one of Loew's cheap seats in my shoulder holst er but it couldn't be helped. "Give me ten minutes," I explained. "If I'm not out by then-" "I know," Ladd said sadly, "we pull the alarm and come bustin' in." It was a lousy plan. Ladd looked like he'd been up for days and Niven seemed about as threatening as a plate of stale toast. DeLauro walked around the back of a heavy green felt-topped table and lowered himself into a well worn leather club chair. Studio furniture. Adolf Menjou had sat in that chair once. So had Sidney Greenstreet. It barely squeeked as he leaned back, putting knee up. "You think Goldman touched her?" he said, his face casual. We could hav e been discussing the Dodgers. I wished we were. I blew some smoke and shook my head. "I doubt it, she wasn't up there very long." Waiting for the slap. It didn't come. DeLauro nodded, the great capo taking counsel. "She said no too." Blue-eye snorted, quickly, then looked away. I wondered who gave him the scar. "You were late," DeLauro said, staring right through me, weighing my sou l. I didn't much like it. "Cabs in this town, what are you gonna do?" He nodded again, and pointe d the end of his little finger at me. I felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of my arm. Ladd's phony piece was hanging like a salami under my left shoulder. I had the feeling DeLauro knew it was there. "She is my blood, you know that. My brother had no taste in anything except women. Reine is the image of her mother, god rest her soul. Why she married that bum.." His voice trailed off and I tasted the burning end of the cigarette. There was something going on here I didn't really want to explore but DeLauro obviously felt like talking. I dropped the butt on the cement floor and let it smoulder. Ladd was late. "Goldman didn't. End of story, cut and print, Tony. But you know what this town is like." I thought seriously about another cigarette but Lighter Boy, the one they called Bruno had disappeared into the shadows. We were in one of the sub basements and after he'd led me through the padded door off the stairs seemed to blend in with the dark. "You could turn on a light, Tony, the war is over. Besides," I said, "we're probably twenty feet under Bugs Bunny's secret cave." DeLauro laughed, the sound of broken knuckles on an Illinois screen door . "All habits are hard to break, shamus. In the joint we had blackouts every day, as if the Nazi's were gonna torpedo the warden's dog or something. I'm used to it." "Besides," he offered, his charcoal sharkskin suit catching a glint of t he little hanging light in the corner, "we're closed tonight." He waved at humped shapes leading off into the distance. "I think gambling is against the law, Tony." I tried to remember the Penal Code for gambling in California to show him how smart I was. DeLauro's men, sensing nothing unhappy was going to occur began to drift off. They probably had to go dry-shave the chips. Where the hell was Ladd? "I'm used to that too," he smiled. I didn't like DeLauro's smile much. It reminded me of the fossils at the Tar Pits. "In fact I'm used to a lot of things. One of them being my neice's affection." DeLauro turned a thick silver ring on his middle finger. "I'll pay you a hundred a day to watch her back," he said. "Professional to professional. No funnyman stuff." He dropped a roll of money on the table and slid it over to me. I didn't count it. Andrew Jackson leered at me and I slid him and a lot more of his friends into my side pocket. Ladd was probably arm wrestling Baby Snooks upstairs. I drummed my fingers on my leg and realized it was falling asleep. "She have talent? How many casting couches do you think there are in Los Angeles?" DeLauro sighed. He was about to answer when the sprinklers went off. ` I heard someone shriek like a banshee after the soul of Finnegan himself . Lareine Hinton came flying past me in the downpour, her blue suit turning purple. Not quite the shade of DeLauro's face when he saw Alan Ladd standing behind me with a drawn .45 but close. "I believe you have something of Mr. Ladd's, Tony." Lareine stopped as if she'd stepped in cement. "Alan..Ladd? THE Alan Ladd?" Her mouth hung open and water was fizzing into it over perfect rubied lips. Unfortunately so was a small tributary of mascara from the edge of her eyelids. Ladd nodded as if he'd heard this a million times. "Yes ma'am. Your uncle has my contract. I'd like it back." Reinie looked at the .45 then at me. "Don't just stand there, Jeff, do something." She stamped her foot gorgeously. I realized DeLauro was frozen, his eyes fixed on the muzzle of the gun. "I could sing but you'd never forgive me," I said, and moved over to sta nd next to Ladd. "Give me the gun, Alan. It's not worth it." Ladd glanced at me as if he'd heard that a million times too. He probab ly had, in some picture. Reinie was beginning to shake a little. So was I. I hoped this worked. "It's in the cabinet behind you, shamus." I blew out a long mental breat h. Turning to keep them all in view I shuffled sideways. By now the sprinklers had totally soaked all of us, but Ladd seemed perfectly at ease. Reinie's hair could have been Medusa's wig, it hung in unruly curled strands. DeLauro just looked wet. It was locked of course. "Keys?" DeLauro threw something at me and I snatched at it. It occurred to me a s I was opening the top drawer that I hadn't seen Blue-eye or Bruno or any of his boys in the last few minutes. Maybe they were halfway to Santa Monica. I heard Goodman was playing the Pier tonight, maybe they were all jitterbugging to Woodchopper's Ball. The cabinet was neatly organized, stuffed with brown folders arranged alphabetically. I flipped past what appeared to be most of Warner's minor players, overshot into Menjou (I knew it!) and backtracked to Ladd, Alan. Just for the hell of it I thumbed into the N's. No Niven. At least he had sense enough not to play cards with gangsters. Or maybe he was a Goodman fan too and spent his nights dancing to Sing, Sing, Sing. Somehow that didn't seem plausible either. I jerked Ladd's file out and gave it to him. He slid it under his leath er shirt and handed me the pistol. Reinie, who was watching this like a kid at a quarter three-reeler said something like "god" but I never really knew. A piece of the wall exploded over my head and I hit the cement, grabbing at her hand. Ladd pulled a Houdini like I hoped he would. The padded door creaked ope n and I stuck my face next to her ear. "Great first date," I shouted and with that began running on my knees toward Niven, who was holding the door open with a look that said hurry up and stop mugging for the camera. "But my uncle-" We went through the door, Reinie resisting a little and Niven slammed it shut, then put a fire ax across the frame, wedging it in. "Lovely man, your uncle. I'm sure he'll be a total mensch when he's cooled off, but right now I think-" My words were lost under the sound of a large caliber bullet making a hole in three inches of padded oak. Behind the door someone was roaring like a goaded bull. "Can we please leave now?" Niven asked us and we began running up the stairs. To the light. To the street. Niven had the same damn cab waiting, the engine ticking over in the heat . I opened the door and Reinie slid in. "Ya ever see that Errol Flynn picture, lady, the one with Custer?" he drawled as we pulled away into the studio gates. Behind us a long black Lincoln slid out from behind a Spanish Colonial office building. "Jesus," I whispered. Blue-eye was driving, his head stuck out the window like a dog. "Can you lose that guy?" I asked. "What's it worth, buddy?" he answered, suddenly sharp. Reinie took the roll of money that had fallen out of my suit and threw i t at him. I shook my head. "Just drive, mister," she said. I didn't like the look in her eye. I wondered which DeLauro was more deadly. And he floored it on Olive, heading up into the hills for Mulholland.