He pulled the cork beautifully and set the bottle down to breathe. Now, he sighed, though the film is twice dead, lets see how the boy
wonder has done! He sank into the chair and rifHed my new pages. Let me read your unbearable text. Though why we should pretend we will ever return to the slaughterhouse, God knows! He shut his left eye and let his right eye, behind the bright glass, shift, and shift again. Finished, he threw the pages to the floor and nodded, angrily, for Maggie to pick them up. He watched her face, meanwhile pouring the wine. Well!? he cried, impatiently.
Maggie put the pages in her lap and laid her hands on them, as if they were gospel.
I could weep. And? I am.
Cut the comedy! Fritz gulped his wine, then stopped, angry at me for making him drink so quickly. You couldnt have written that in a few hours!
Sorry, I apologized, sheepishly. Only the fast stuff is good. Slow down, you think what youre doing and it gets bad.
Thinking is fatal, is it? demanded Fritz. What, do you sit on your brain while you type?
I dunno. Hey, this isnt bad wine.
Not bad! Fritz raged at the ceiling. A 1938 Gorton and he says not bad! Better than all those damn candy bars I see you chewing around the studio. Better than all the women in the world. Almost.
This wine, I said quickly, is almost as good as your films. Excellent. Fritz, shot through his ego, smiled. You could almost be
Hungarian.
Fritz refilled my glass and gave back my medal of honor, his monocle. Young wine expert, why else did you come?
The time was right. Fritz, I said, on October 31st, 1934, you directed, photographed, and cut a film titled Wild Party.
Fritz was lying back in his chair, with his legs straight out, the wine glass in his right hand. His left hand crawled up toward the pocket where his
monocle should have been.
Fritzs mouth opened lazily, coolly. Again? Halloween night, 1934
More. Fritz, eyes shut, held out his glass. I poured.
If you spill Ill throw you down the stairs. Fritzs face was pointed at the ceiling. As he felt the weight of the wine in the glass, he nodded and I pulled away to refill my own.
Where, Fritzs mouth worked as if it were separate from the rest of his impassive face, did you hear of such a dumb film with a stupid title?
It was shot with no film in the camera. You directed it for maybe two hours. Shall I tell you the actors that night?
Fritz opened one eye and tried to focus across the room without his monocle.
Constance Rattigan, I recited, J. C., Doc Phillips, Manny Leiber, Stanislau Groc, and Arbuthnot, Sloane, and his wife, Emily Sloane.
God damn, thats quite a cast, said Fritz. Want to tell me why?
Fritz sat up slowly, cursed, drank his wine, then sat hunched over the glass, looking in it for a long while. Then he blinked and said:
So at last I get to tell. Ive been waiting to vomit all these years. Well someone had to direct. There was no script. Total madness. I was brought in at the last moment.
How much, I said, did you improvise?
Most, no, all of it, said Fritz. There were bodies all over. Well, not bodies. People and lots of blood. I had my camera along for the night, you know, a party like that and you like to catch people offguard, at least I did. The first part of the evening was fine. People screaming and running back and forth through the studio and through the tunnel and dancing in the graveyard with a jazz band.
It was wild, all right, and terrific. Until it got out of hand. The accident, that is. By then, youre right, there was no film in my 16-millimeter camera. So I gave orders. Run here. Run there. Dont call the police. Get the cars. Stuff the poorbox.
I guessed at that.
Shut up! The poor bastard priest, like the lady, was going nuts. The studio always kept lots of cash on hand for emergencies. We loaded the baptismal font like a Thanksgiving feast, right in front of the priest. I never knew, that night, if he even saw what we did, he was in such shock. I ordered the Sloane woman out of there. An extra took her.
No, I said. A star.
Yes!? She went. While we picked up the pieces and covered our tracks. It was easier to do, back then. The studios, after all, ran the town. We had one body, Sloanes, to show and another, Arbuthnots, in the mortuary, we said, and Doc signing the death certificates. Nobody ever asked to see all the bodies. We paid off the coroner to take a years sick leave. Thats how it was done.
Fritz drew in his legs, cradled his drink over his groin, and searched the air for the sight of my face.
Luckily, because of the studio party, J. C., Doc Phillips, Groc, Manny, and all the yes-men were there. I yelled: Bring guards. Bring cars. Cordon off the crash. People come out of houses? Shout them back with bullhorns! Again, on that street, few houses, and the gas station shut. The rest? Law offices, all dark. By the time a real crowd came from blocks away, in their pajamas, I had parted the Red Sea, reburied Lazarus, got new jobs for the Doubting Thomases in far places! Delicious, wondrous, superb! Another drink?
Whats that stuff?
Napoleon brandy. One hundred years old. Youll hate it! He poured. If you make a face, Ill kill you.
What about the bodies? I asked.
There was only one dead to start. Sloane. Arbuthnot was smashed, Christ, to a pulp, but still alive. I did what I could, got him across the street to the undertaking rooms; and left. Arbuthnot died later. Both Doc Phillips and Groc worked to save him, in that place where they embalm bodies, but now an emergency hospital. Ironic, yes? Two days later, I directed the funeral. Again, superb!
And Emily Sloane? Hollyhock House?
The last I saw of her, she was being led off across that empty lot full of wild flowers, to that private sanitarium. Dead next day. Thats all I know. I was merely a director called in to lifeboat the Hindenburg as it burned, or be traffic manager to the San Francisco earthquake. Those are my credits. Now, why, why, why do you ask?
I took a deep breath, glugged down some Napoleon brandy, felt my eyes faucet with hot water, and said: Arbuthnot is back.
Fritz sat straight up and shouted, Are you mad!?
Or his image, I said, almost squeaking. Groc did it. For a lark, he said. Or for money. Made a papier-mache and wax dummy. Set it up to scare Manny and the others, maybe with the same facts you know but have never said.
Fritz Wong arose to stalk in a circle, clubbing the carpet with his boots. Then he stood rocking back and forth, shaking his great head, in front of Maggie.
Did you know about this!? Junior, here, said something Why didnt you tell me?
Because, Fritz, Maggie reasoned, when youre directing you never want to hear any news, bad or good, from anyone!
So thats whats been going on? said Fritz. Doc Phillips drunk at lunch three days running. Manny Leibers voice sounding like a slow L.P. played double speed. Christ, I thought it was me doing things right, which always upsets him! No! Holy Jesus, God, oh dammit to hell, that bastard Groc. He stopped to fix on me. Bringers of bad news to the king are executed! he cried. But before you die, tell us more!
Arbuthnots tomb is empty. His body? Stolen?
He was never in his tomb, ever. Who says? he cried.
A blind man.
Blind! Fritz made fists again. I wondered if all these years he had driven his actors like numbed beasts with those fists. A blind man!? The Hindenburg sank in him with a final terrible fire. After that ashes.
A blind man Fritz wandered slowly around the room, ignoring us both, sipping his brandy. Tell.
I told everything I had so far told Crumley.
When I finished, Fritz picked up the phone and, holding it two inches from his eyes, squinting, dialed a number.
Hello, Grace? Fritz Wong. Get me flights to New York, Paris, Berlin. When? Tonight! Ill wait on the line!
He turned to look out the window, across the miles toward Hollywood. Christ, I felt the earthquake all week and thought it was Jesus dying
from a lousy script. Now its all dead. Well never go back. Theyll recycle our film into celluloid collars for Irish priests. Tell Constance to run. Then buy
yourself a ticket.
To where? I asked.
You must have somewhere to go! bellowed Fritz.
In the middle of this great bomb burst, a valve somewhere in Fritz popped. Not hot but cold air rushed out of his body. His bad eye developed a tic that grew outsize.
Grace, he cried into the telephone, dont listen to that idiot who just called. Cancel New York. Get me Laguna! What? Down the coast, dimwit. A house facing the Pacific so I can wade in like Norman Maine at sunset, should Doom itself knock down the door. What? To hide.
What good is Paris; the maniacs here would know. But theyd never expect a stupid Unterseeboot Kapitan who hates sunlight to wind up in Sol City, South Laguna, with all those mindless naked bums. Get a limo here now! I expect you to have a house waiting when I reach Victor Hugos restaurant at nine. Go! Fritz slammed down the phone
