American Dreams (37 page)

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heaven. On the wall to his right, but hung crookedly, was a photo of a beaky woman with a mouth like a closed drawstring pouch, and two equally unappealing youngsters -- the wife Kelly had divorced and the children he'd abandoned for the woman in an ornately framed photograph on his desk. This was Bernadette, an amply endowed ex-Floradora girl with whom Kelly lived, presumably in sin if he still practiced his faith.

'He can't hurt us if he can't find us,' Kelly said, though his furrowed forehead didn't suggest confidence.

Eddie stood by the window, hands on his hips. 'I'm absolutely against going back to New Jersey.'

'The exchanges are yelling for another Indian picture,' Kelly said.

'You're overruled.'

'But B.B. said he wants to bring his wife to the location.'

'So we won't tell him what happened to Fritzi.' Kelly grasped the edges of a large hand-drawn production calendar. He tapped an empty box.

'Week from Monday. Put it on the schedule.'

Fritzi and Eddie exchanged looks. The hanging judge had passed sentence, and there was no appeal. On the way out Eddie said to her, "I better catch up on my target practice.'

Elaborate plans were laid for filming The Lone Indian's Rescue, a Hearn scenario in which Owen saved the local schoolmarm after villains cast her adrift in a flaming canoe. On Kelly's order, word went out along Fourteenth Street that Pal's newest western would film on the second Monday in October, near the Croton reservoir in northern Westchester County. On Thursday prior to the start of the picture, Bill Nix showed up, pleaded with Kelly for fifteen minutes, and was rehired.

The weekend before the appointed day, a pelting rain followed by a hard freeze accelerated the changing of the leaves. The start of the week promised to be clear and beautiful but sharply colder. On Sunday, Hobart telephoned to say he'd been given ten days off from the arduous tour, Moriarty to be played by an understudy while he was away. Fritzi promptly invited him to join her in New Jersey.

At five a.m. Monday morning, a wagon left the alley behind the Pal offices, carrying something bulky under bright Navaho blankets.

Presumably there would be men trailing the wagon to Westchester; if the plan succeeded, they wouldn't discover they'd followed a decoy until noon
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or so. Other blanket companies used the same deceptive strategy.

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Jock Ferguson had already ferried the camera across the Hudson in the closed wagon on Sunday night. He would proceed directly to Coytesville. No stops would be made in Fort Lee because of its population of Patents Company spies. No locals would be hired; extras were cast in the city.

Eddie had told the actors to dress drably, behave inconspicuously, and take the midtown ferry to Jersey City, where Bill Nix would pick them up in a property wagon. Though Hobart had listened to Fritzi's instructions about dressing, he disregarded them and turned up in a loud Inverness cape and deerstalker, fawn trousers and yellow spats, with a shiny, gnarled walking stick. His teeth chattered in the cold wind blowing over the ferry's prow.

'Damned lot of silliness, all this skulking about.'

'You wouldn't think so if you met Purvis,' she said.

Jock and Eddie had previously scouted a small remote lake in the woods beyond Coytesville. The lake was perhaps a half mile wide, deep blue in the morning light. The rain and cold had brought color to the surrounding trees - scarlet in the red oaks, a deeper reddish brown in the white oaks, brilliant reds and oranges in the maples, bright yellow in the birches. The company came together on the shore shortly after nine o'clock.

Eddie arrived driving the Stoddard-Dayton. He'd come over on the 129th Street ferry, Kelly sitting beside him muffled in an overcoat with a black velvet collar. B.B. and his wife were bundled under lap robes in the backseat. They rushed to greet Fritzi near a tepee Bill Nix and a helper were assembling from poles and ship's canvas. Nix wasn't complaining this time, but Fritzi noticed his nervousness. He spilled part of a can of paint he was using to daub crude arrows and bison and lightning bolts on the tent.

B.B. imprisoned Fritzi's hand between his. 'I told Sophie, you got to meet this gel. Sophie, this is Fritzi. Fritzi, my wife.'

'I'm delighted,' Fritzi said to the small, button-nosed woman with cheerful brown eyes. She had to crouch to look at Mrs. Pelzer beneath the brim of an enormous hat adorned with three stuffed birds.

'Benny is so proud of you. I can't tell you how he raves,' Sophie Pelzer said. Fritzi accepted the compliment with a modest smile and a murmur.

Owen walked by, lower lip stuck out in a pout. He pretended not to see the Pelzers and Fritzi. He'd ignored Fritzi with greater consistency as her roles
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grew larger. After B.B. led his elfin wife away to camp chairs set up near the camera, Owen began loudly criticizing the tepee art.

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Hobart sauntered over. He crossed his arms and slapped his sides.

'Bloody cold out here. Is this all you do, stand around waiting?'

'Yes, there's a lot of that,' she admitted, starting to run in place to drive the needles out of her toes. Nell Spooner had found a shawl for the schoolmarm, but it did little to ward off the chill. Fritzi's plain, faded dress was thin, more suitable to a prairie summer than a cold autumn in the Northeast.

Kelly stopped to inspect the tent. Stirring his paint while walking around from the other side, Bill Nix bumped him. Kelly jumped. 'For Christ's sake, what's got into you? Look where you're going.'

'Sorry, sorry,' Nix said. 'Just trying to do the job right.' He hurried off, passing Fritzi. She smelled whiskey on him.

She put it out of mind as she took Hobart's hand and drew him forward.

Kelly eyed the actor as though he might be a plague carrier.

'Mr. Kelly, you haven't met my guest, Mr. Hobart Manchester. Hobart, this is Alfred Kelly, one of the owners. Hobart's interested in the picture business.'

'Swell.' Kelly's handshake was swift and perfunctory.

i appeared with Mr. Manchester in a Shakespearean play. He's a very well-known actor from the London stage.'

Kelly plucked the cigar out of his mouth and looked the flamboyant actor up and down. 'London, huh? Well, I'm Irish. Far as I'm concerned, they can write all that's good about Britain on the head of a pin. Try to stay out of the way, Manchester. We're on a tight schedule.'

'"Fit for the mountains and the barb'rous caves, where manners ne'er were preached,"' Hobart muttered as Kelly walked off. 'Twelfth Night, act four.'

'I know. Kelly's that way to everyone. I apologize.'

'Not your fault, dear girl. The Irish are a quarrelsome lot. I've never been able to stand Bernard Shaw either.'

The sun was higher, cooking steam out of the cold ground. Nix pushed a decorated canoe into the water and tied it to a stake. Eddie called,
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'Actors.' Fritzi rearranged her shawl as she hurried to join two men in buckskins and false beards. Eddie consulted his copy of the scenario.

'We'll do the fight scene first. Travis, you and Ollie start there, in the tepee, with Fritzi. You drag her out. She struggles, throws some punches, but they miss. You overcome her and carry her off that way, toward the canoe, camera left.'

Eddie walked them through the action, working out the sequence of Attack 231

punches and falls so none of them would be hurt.

He certainly was taking hold of his job, Fritzi thought. He hardly resembled a staid Yale man any longer. Rita hadn't cut his hair in a while.

A yellow cowboy scarf at his throat trailed down his shirt front. He wore a long tan duster over riding breeches; when the coat belled away from his hips his holstered Smith & Wesson showed.

'Everyone got it?'

They said they did.

'Okay, inside the tepee, let's rehearse.'

Kelly shouted, 'Why don't you just shoot it? You're wasting daylight.'

'A rehearsal's cheaper than a second take,' Eddie said.

'Eet the boy alone, Al,' B.B. called from his chair. 'He learned his stuff from Griffith, and Griffith's a hot number.' Silenced, Kelly chewed furiously his cigar.

Travis and Ollie let her enter the tepee first. As she ducked her head, she saw Nix walk quickly to the wagon in which he'd delivered the actors, tent poles, canvas, and other properties. Eddie called action. The outlaws dragged her outside. Ollie Something mistimed one punch and almost clipped her jaw, but she avoided his flying knuckles, wrenching from side to side in simulated hysteria. They carried her out of the frame. Eddie was pleased.

'Let's take it. Ready, Jock?'

Ferguson whisked a speck from his lens with a blue bandanna, examined his footage counter, and nodded. Hobart nonchalantly unscrewed the cap of a leather-covered flask and nullified the cold with a hearty swig.

As Fritzi stamped her feet and blew out her breath, she noticed that Bill Nix was rummaging in the wagon. He looked anxious. B.B. and his wife
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watched like cheerful children as Eddie called places. Fritzi walked to the tepee: she and Travis and Ollie squeezed inside. 'Everybody ready,' Eddie shouted through his little megaphone. 'Gamera.' Jock turned the crank, counting to himself. 'Action!1

Fritzi was shoved into the sunshine. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nix pull something from the wagon. A long blue barrel glinted.

Eddie saw it too and smacked his megaphone against his leg. 'Bill, what the hell are you doing?' Nix slammed the lever of the rifle down, up again, shouldered the weapon, and aimed.

Fritzi cried, "Jock.' Possibly that saved his life. As he swung toward her, Nix's rifle drilled a round into the camera, toppling it on its tripod. A second shot tore open the case. Little gear wheels and pieces of metal flew out.

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'Nix, you traitorous bastard! How much did they pay you?' Kelly screamed, a second before Nix shot at him. Kelly had presence of mind enough to drop on all fours and avoid the bullet. It struck the lake with a harmless plop. Time seemed to elongate, or perhaps that was only in Fritzi's imagination. Nix turned in a slow and fluid way, searching for a new target. When he found her, he shouldered the rifle again. He squinted through the sight, dipping the muzzle so the bullet would take her in the knees. Eddie yelled like a madman and tackled her from behind.

Fritzi's chin slammed into the dirt. She swore later that she felt the bullet buzz through her hair as she fell. 'Catch him, don't let him escape,'

Eddie shouted.

Nix dodged behind the wagon and started running toward the trees.

Fritzi's heart beat frantically, her mind holding the terrifying image of the rifle muzzle. Nix had been sent to shoot and injure her, and she knew who'd sent him.

Spitting dirt and gasping, she saw B.B. hurl himself from his chair and churn forward to intercept Nix. Two steps behind, Sophie cried, 'Benny, don't let him hurt you.' Finally B.B. caught Nix's forearm.

'Here, you.'

Nix tore away and reversed the rifle, intending to hit B.B. with the butt of the stock. Just as he swung, B.B. somehow stumbled and the flying rifle missed him, slamming Sophie above her right ear; the sound was sickening.

The birds on Sophie's hat scattered feathers as she fell.

'Sophie!' B.B. knelt beside his wife. Eddie pulled his .32 and charged.

Hobart was right behind him with his stick raised. Nix aimed at Eddie,
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pulled the trigger, but the rifle jammed. Skidding as he dodged out of the way, Eddie fired at Nix. He missed. Now the two were close. Nix lunged in, swung the rifle by the barrel, and connected with Eddie's knee. Bone cracked as Eddie windmilled backward and hit the ground.

Nix had just enough time to sprint to the trees and disappear. Kelly lobbed rocks and shouted useless oaths. Nix's crashing passage through the underbrush grew fainter. Then the sound died altogether, and the last disturbed branches settled in place.

Fritzi pushed straggles of blond hair out of her eyes". She looked around at the damage done to Pal Pictures in a matter of two or three minutes.

Sophie Pelzer lay unconscious, her scalp bloody. Her husband held her in his arms, saying, 'Sophie, Sophie,' over and over.

Near the tepee Eddie lay on the ground, clutching his leg. Hobart vainly searched for someone to attack with his stick. Jock Ferguson picked B.B. Decides 233

at the bullet-riddled camera, sick as any father with an injured child. Kelly asked him about it. Ferguson shook his head. 'Ruined.' And it's all my fault, Fritzi thought.

45 B.B. Decides

Travis and Ollie turned up in the woods. A doctor from Fort Lee splinted Eddie's broken leg. Sophie Pelzer was transported in an ambulance and taken to the city that night; a mild concussion was suspected.

Kelly

and B.B. went to the New \brk police, who failed to find Nix at his last known address. When detectives questioned Pearly Purvis, who they found eating steak and eggs in the restaurant of the Hotel Astor, he laughed at them. He'd been in his office, conferring with associates - an iron-clad alibi. Fritzi and the rest were considerably demoralized.

Kelly called her to his office two days later, the first of November. It had been snowing since daybreak, a heavy, wet snow that horses and auto tires and the trampling feet of New Yorkers had already converted to dirty slush down on Fourteenth Street.

'Come in, Fritzi,' Kelly said. He dominated the room from his desk chair. B.B. sat under the chromo of the Virgin Mary, holding his head.

Kelly shot his cuffs twice and cleared his throat. 'Close the door. Please.'

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'Have they found Nix?' she asked.

Kelly shook his head. 'My guess is, we never will. He was probably on his way to Alaska by the time the coppers got on the case.'

Fritzi eased into the seat beside the desk. Kelly nervously eyed his fingernails, then spoke in a near whisper. 'I asked you to step in because we're talking to a few people. It's confidential.'