Stars Screaming (15 page)

Burk had seen Crumpler earlier that morning, checking into the hotel. Slouched by his side, trying to look both interesting and bored, was a waifish blonde dressed in black velvet hip huggers and a Garboesque hat. According to Eddie Bascom, the head bellman and the hotel’s coke dealer, she was the current girl of the moment on the New York scene and “very proper pussy.”

“I already heard,” Maria told Burk when she came on the line. “Warren called Sanford last night, and Sanford got me at home this morning.”

“What did you say?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“I said that keeping you away from the set was stupid, that Warren was acting out of fear and ego. I told him I thought your presence would be a major asset to the film.”

“If he starts improvising,” Burk said, “he’s gonna ruin the script.”

“I know. Sanford agrees, but he wants to see the dailies before he steps in.”

“That’s bullshit,” Burk said, his voice going up. “I should be on the set right now.”

“Don’t yell at me, Ray. Okay? I’m on your side. You can call and complain, but you can’t yell at me.”

Burk felt a drumroll of fear inside his chest. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Take a drive. Go to the beach. You’re getting paid, what else do you want?”

Burk said nothing as he held the phone tight against his ear. A hummingbird zoomed by the open window and a gust of warm air blew inside, sending the call sheet off the desk on a short flight to the floor behind his chair. When he bent to pick up the paper he glanced outside: Two men with blond beards and worn Levi’s were unloading scenery from a truck parked by the stage. A secretary in
red heels and a tight white miniskirt walked by, and one of the men reached out playfully to pinch her on the ass. She slapped his hand away without missing a step, saying, “You can look but you can’t touch,” and continued up the street, turning around in a circle once so they could see her dazzling smile.

The men laughed at the same time, and Burk heard the line go dead in his ear.

As Burk left the building, he passed by a suite of offices on the first floor with
DICKY SOLOMON PRODUCTIONS
lettered on the door. These offices were empty now—Dicky and his staff were in Hawaii shooting
Curved Balls
, a sitcom pilot for CBS that was based on the exploits of two retired baseball players who open up a private detective agency in Honolulu—but Burk smiled to himself, wondering what Dicky would think when he pulled into the Paramount lot the following week and observed Burk’s name on the parking space next to his.

Burk and Dicky had spoken only once since Burk was fired from the network—in January, when Sandra was convicted and sent to prison. Dicky said he’d followed her case in the
LA Times
, where it was on the front page of the Metro section for three straight days. “What a crazy broad. With the right plot there could be a TV movie in there someplace,” he told Burk. “Or a small feature. Great role for Ann Margret or Tuesday Weld.” Burk said he didn’t think he’d feel comfortable participating in something like that. “I don’t want you involved,” Dicky had said, his voice extremely cold. “I just wanted to check out your vibe.”

“I hope you drop the idea,” Burk had said disapprovingly, and he assumed Dicky had, because he never heard from him again, and when a list of his future projects was recently summarized in the trades, Sandra’s story was not mentioned.

After he bought a pint of Cuervo Gold and a package of beef jerky at White Horse Liquors on Western Avenue, Burk drove his rented red Mustang convertible north into Griffith Park. A sign with the Paramount logo pointed toward a parking lot adjacent to the carousel. A fat teamster sat in a folding chair by the entrance.

“Name?” he asked, looking up from the crossword puzzle in his lap. He wore blue aviator sunglasses and a black satin jacket with
Larry
stitched in red across the breast.

“Burk. Ray.”

The teamster picked up a clipboard and used a nicotine-stained finger to run down a list of names. “I don’t see Burk,” he said. “What do you do?”

“I’m the writer.”

“You’re not on the list.”

“So you’re telling me I can’t park here,” Burk said, louder than he intended.

The teamster shrugged. “I don’t make the rules,” he said, evading Burk’s eyes as he rocked slightly in his chair, “so don’t get in my face.”

“I’m not in your face. I’m just asking you a simple fucking question.”

The teamster shook his head in mild surprise and reached into his jacket for his walkie-talkie. “Chuck, Larry up in the lot,” he said, glancing at Burk as he spoke into the mike. “Got a problem.”

A voice crackled through the static. “What’s the deal?”

“Fella here says he’s the writer. I don’t have him on the list. You better send up Myers.”

“Will do.”

Glancing off to his left, Burk could see the grips pulling cable and setting up lights near the carousel. Along with Hillary Yawky and Ben O’Reilly, the actors portraying Barbara Sinclair and Ricky Horton, the scene required twenty hippies—"atmosphere,” as the call sheet referred to them—but the extras he saw lounging around the set looked bogus: too many beads, bells, and Mexican serapes; costumed freaks in polka-dot bell-bottoms and fake fur vests, not the street kids he described in the script with “sickly white skin and burnt-looking eyes, shining with hate.”

Burk picked out Jon Warren amid the crew members. He was standing next to Chickie Green, the cinematographer, both of them supervising the placement of the camera. “Prick,” Burk said, under his breath, and took a long slug of tequila. When he lowered the bottle, he saw a man with a beard and long blond hair jogging across the parking lot. In his hand was a walkie-talkie with the antenna pulled out all the way.

“You really the writer?” the man asked Burk, looking at him admiringly while he caught his breath. Burk nodded and the man smiled. “Fuckin’ great script.”

Burk absorbed this compliment for a few moments before he said, “Thanks.”

“Thank
you
,” the man said, crouching down to extend his hand through the window. That’s when Burk noticed the coiled snake tattooed on his neck. “Snake Myers. First AD.”

“Ray Burk.”

Snake spit on the ground between his feet. “I do not know why they always have to fuck with the writer. I mean, if it wasn’t for you, none of us would be working.” Snake’s indignation and his smile made Burk’s anger begin to dissipate. “But you can rest easy, Ray, your stuff is playing excellent. Everything we got this morning was outasight.”

“What about the first scene between Barbara and Ricky?”

“What about it?”

“Did it work?”

“
Work
?” Snake rolled his eyes and looked at Burk, incredulous. “It fucking cooked. And they did it
line
for
line.
Ben wanted to improv part of the ending, but Warren said, and I quote, ‘When you’re ready to say what’s on the page, I’ll turn on the camera.’”

“Warren said that? Really?”

“I shit you not.”

“Was Ben good?”

“Intense, man. He was
intense
,” Snake said, and he pointed to the tequila in Burk’s lap. “You mind if I have a taste?” Burk passed the bottle through the open window and Snake tipped it up to his mouth for two long swallows. “Let me tell you something,” he said, closing one eye and peering down at the set. “I know everyone thought Warren was crazy to cast unknowns in those parts. At least Crumpler’s done a soap. But the chick, that took some cojones, man. The word in the street was that Fonda was considered.”

“Dunaway too. Paramount almost canceled the picture when Warren changed his mind.”

Snake squeezed Burk’s shoulder, uncapped the tequila, and swallowed again. “Fucker knows what he’s doing. I don’t know where he found those people, but they’re good. I mean they’re fuckin’
real.
”

“Unlike those hippies down there.”

“Tell me about it. Fuckin’ casting blew it,” Snake said, getting to his feet. He shaded his eyes, looking off to the west where the sun was burning through a cloud shaped like a gray heart. “But don’t worry, I got my people down on the boulevard bringing in a new
batch.” Snake flashed Burk a wink. “And remember, everyone down there on this picture believes in your script.” Snake handed back the bottle and rapped the hood twice with his knuckle. “Picture time,” he said. “I gotta get back to work.”

Burk shifted his car into reverse and made a U-turn in front of a studio van that was pulling into the parking lot. Inside were the new extras: unpleasant-looking men and women with pallid faces that were gouged with failure and disillusionment. A woman with a yellow bruise on her cheek caught Burk’s eye. When he smiled, the boy in the seat behind her—he was ten at the most—leaned out the window and spit on Burk’s windshield. Burk gave him the finger and the kid gave it back with both hands, spitting and cursing, until someone shouted, “Cool it, Alan,” and pulled him back inside by his hair.

Burk continued driving through the park until he found an open but nearly empty parking lot on Los Feliz Boulevard, next to the riding stables. Using a narrow footpath that circled around the tennis courts and the children’s zoo, he was able to approach the movie’s location undetected through a dense wood. A dove called softly while he rested for a moment in the shelter of a mammoth oak tree; then, lighting a cigarette, he crouched down to watch the activity below him through the haze and rising heat.

Jon Warren was sitting in his canvas chair, talking to the wardrobe designer, an uptight-looking woman wearing purple pedal pushers and purple-tinted granny glasses. After a few moments he dismissed her with a wave, got up, and moved over to where Chickie Green was watching the grips build the camera platform. They were joined by Snake Myers, who tapped his watch and pointed at the clouds rolling in from the west. Warren nodded his head. Then he took Myers by the elbow and walked him over to a trailer that was used as a dressing room and toilet. There was a short conversation that ended when Myers slipped what looked like a vial of cocaine into Warren’s hand and strolled off wearing a crooked grin.

Burk heard a sound behind him and turned and saw a boy standing motionless a short distance away: the same boy with the fever-red eyes who spit on his windshield earlier that morning. A woman, emaciated and as white as salt, appeared from behind a large gray rock and stood there next to the boy in a rectangle of sunlight, twisting her hands nervously.

Burk was suddenly aware that he recognized this odd pair. Two years ago, when he drove endlessly through the streets of East Hollywood, he used to see them several times a week, noticing them because the mother—that’s who he assumed she was—always seemed to be in such a tremendous hurry, speed-walking up the sidewalk with the boy pulled along in her wake, running every few steps to keep up.

The first time he saw them he thought the boy was late for school, but then he began seeing them not only in the morning but at odd hours in the middle of the day, moving at the same frantic pace, their heads bobbing crazily as they deftly quick-stepped through the traffic on some unknown mission.

One time they nearly collided with Burk while he stood outside Ernie’s Stardust Lounge, lighting a cigarette with his back against the wind. When they passed by, he saw the woman’s mouth moving silently, her expression both a grimace and a grin. The boy’s face had an odd air of mischief, and there was an Archie comic book rolled up in his rear pocket. Who were they? Burk wondered at the time. And why were they always in such a rush? If they were really mother and son, where was the father, and why wasn’t the boy in school?

Burk stood up. “Who are you?” he asked the woman, keeping his voice low and one eye on the boy.

The woman didn’t answer, just stared at him with a madwoman’s eyes, swallowing and working her jaw. Finally the boy said arrogantly, “Who the hell are
you
?”

“I asked you first.”

The boy grinned slightly and made a weird gesture with his right hand, like he was getting ready to salute. “They said they’d pay us,” the woman said in a lifeless voice, “but Alan don’t want to do that.”

“Do what?”

“They want him to be someone else’s child.”

“I want to be with my mom,” the boy said, seizing her hand.

“They don’t want me in the movie,” the woman said. “They say I don’t look right.”

Burk’s facial expression tightened slightly. He felt annoyingly vulnerable. After several seconds he turned away and looked down at the set. The catering truck had arrived and two long tables were being filled with huge platters of food. Nearby, a couple of extras in costume were throwing a Frisbee across the grass behind an empty bandstand.

“I’ve seen you before,” Burk said, bringing his eyes back to the woman. “Both of you. I’ve seen you walking through Hollywood.”

The woman took a step forward, still holding the boy’s hand. “We’ve seen you, too.”

“What’re you doin’ up here?” the boy said quickly, staring at Burk with a strange combination of boldness and fear.

“I’m hiding.”

“From who?”

“From—”

“Everyone,” the woman said, her face taking on an almost lifelike color. “He’s hiding from everyone. Just like us.”

“Where are you calling from now, Ray?”

“Ernie’s. This bar on Hollywood Boulevard.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I’ve had a few.”

“You sound drunk,” Maria said. Burk dropped a quarter into the jukebox and punched P-5. When Maria spoke again, her voice was stern but careful. “Ray, listen to me. It wasn’t such a good idea to show up at the location.”

“I wrote the movie, Maria.”

“And everyone knows that, especially Warren, but he’s calling the shots. So just let him do his job. Okay?”

“What about dailies?”

“What about them?”

“Do I get to see them?”

“I don’t know. I’ll talk to Sanford. Again, it’s up to Warren. If he doesn’t want you in the screening room, then it’s tough shit. I’ve got to take another call,” Maria said suddenly. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear anything.”