Stars Screaming (23 page)

“I want to speak with Ray Moore.”

“He's on the air.”

“I know that.”

The guard's jawline seemed to tighten and he rocked back on his heels. “You want to speak to Ray Moore, you have to call him on the telephone. You want to see him in person, you make an appointment during regular business hours.” He turned and pointed. Burk followed his finger to a large clock above the elevator. “See that red second hand? When it crosses the twelve, I don't want to see your face outside this glass.”

“Do you think I'm crazy?” Burk asked him.

The security guard looked at Burk while he bolted the door. His lips twitched just before he spoke: “I don't know what you are.”

Burk walked east on Sunset, pausing on a freeway overpass, fighting both vertigo and the urge to jump to his death.

He turned and looked to the north: A dome of fog sat over the black hillside like a gray helmet. He heard the sound of weeping. His
head did a quick swivel and his eyes fell on a man slumped on a bus bench. A blanket covered his shoulders. The man looked Burk over for several seconds before he whispered, “Set me on fire.” Burk's eyes shifted to the ground, where a red gas can rested between the man's feet. “Pour it on me and light me up,” the man said.

A dog barked in the hills. Burk turned in a circle, to make sure he was alone in the street. Then he shook his head and continued walking, stepping around a pile of human stool that sat by the curb.

Just before he reached Western, Burk passed by the entrance to the Bat Cave. Through a slit in the curtain shielding the door, he saw a woman dancing buck naked on a U-shaped stage. She was thin, with spidery limbs and a pussy that was shaved bare. In her right hand she held a thick wedge of chocolate cake.

A man with mascaraed eyes put a five-dollar bill on the stage. The dancer smiled and settled into a crouch that put her private parts in front of his painted face. “Eat me up,” she said, and shoved the cake deep into her thighs.

“Believe I will,” said the man, leaning forward. “Yes, I believe I will.”

Larry Havana rolled his wheelchair through the curtain. A long flashlight rested in his lap. He clicked it on, and a cloud of insects swirled around the beam shining in Burk's face. “Looks like you're freezing your ass off,” Havana said, smiling. “Five dollars gets you in.”

Burk backed away from the light. “I'm okay,” he said.

Inside the bar the dancer was massaging the customer's neck while he tongued globs of cake out of her crotch. “Gonna have to charge you for peeking,” Havana said to Burk. His smile was different now; he was mocking him. “No freebies in the pussy game. Nope. I cannot have any of that.”

“My dad knew your father,” Burk said.

“Yeah? My father knew lots of people.”

“Nate's News. Nathan Burk. That's my dad,” Burk said with some pride. “Your father put out dirty magazines that my dad sold underneath the counter.”

A black bouncer came through the curtain carrying a bottle of bourbon and a plastic cup filled with ice. Eyeballing Burk, he said, “Everything cool out here, boss?”

Havana nodded. “Everything's fine, Clifford.”

“Man be chowin' down in there.”

“Five dollars a slice is as good as it gets.”

“Best deal in town, boss.”

The bouncer walked back inside the club and Burk said, “When you were a kid, my brother used to push you around Hollywood. His name was Gene. One summer your dad gave him a job selling movie star maps.”

Havana regarded Burk for a moment while he used his hands to squeeze circulation into his thin, crippled legs. “Gene. Yeah. I know him. He became a cop. He got fired, right?”

“He quit.”

“What's he doin' now?”

“He helps out my dad. And he's got a side business collecting old rock-and-roll records.”

“I collect pussy,” Havana said, and he barked out a laugh.

A Lincoln Mark VII with smoked windows rolled up in front of the Bat Cave. It sat idling for several seconds before the window on the passenger side came down, revealing an old man with a crumpled face and light blue eyes. “How late you open?” the old man asked.

“We never close,” Havana replied.

A playful leer passed across the old man's face, and the big car slid forward, followed by vapors of gray smoke. One taillight was out; the other was reflected in the street, a scarlet eye socket staring up from a lost world.

Burk started walking away. Havana said, “Be seein' you, Burk.”

“Maybe.”

“Bring your brother by. I'd love to say hello. No peekin', though. You peek, you pay.”

Burk turned north on Western, ducking into a cold wind. In the middle of the block, a barely pubescent blonde stepped out of a late model Buick. She was wearing a short white diaphanous dress that outlined the silhouette of her naked body. After the driver took off, burning rubber, the girl said, “What are you doin' up so late? You lookin' for a date?”

“No.”

“Cruisin' for guys?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I'm on my way back to my car. It's on Franklin.”

“I'll walk with you.”

“Why?”

“'Cause I feel like it. Put your arm around me,” the girl said, looking back over her shoulder as they started up the street. Burk pulled her close, and she moved his hand so it covered her breast. “Feels good, huh? I bet you got a rod,” she said. She stopped and pressed her body closer. “Yeah, you do.”

“I'm tired,” Burk said, pulling away.

“Your dick ain't. I'll jack you off for three bucks.”

“No.”

“Blow job for seven-fifty.”

“Look—” Burk said, then stopped. The car that dropped her off had circled the block and was now parked across the street. The engine was running and the radio was playing “The Great Pretender,” an oldie by the Platters.

“Is that your pimp?” Burk asked the girl.

“Might be.”

The girl stared at Burk until he met her eyes. She was breathing heavily, her expression both hungry and tender. Burk reached into his pocket and took out a wrinkled ten-dollar bill. He said, “I'll give you this if you leave me alone.”

The girl shook her head. Now she looked amused. “We gotta do something.”

“I don't want to do anything,” Burk said, trying not to look or sound frightened.

A voice from the Buick said, “Dance with her.” Burk looked at the girl, wondering if this were a joke or some kind of code. “Dance with her,” the voice said again, and this time the girl stepped forward and slid her arms around Burk's waist.

The radio was turned up and Tony Williams's lead voice soared over the street:

Oh
,
yes
,
I'm the great pretender
,

Pretending that you're still around. . . .

Burk put his hands on the girl's hips as she steered him into the middle of the street. He felt awkward, swaying flat-footed, her thighs pushed into his.

After one verse, the girl took Burk's hand and put it between her thighs. “Dancing makes me so hot,” she said, raising her skirt. “Feel how wet I am.” Burk tried to step away, but the girl pulled him back. “Don't,” she warned him under her breath. “He'll get pissed.”

“We have to get out of the street.”

“We will when the record's over.”

An empty bus slowly passed by, the headlights splashing their faces. Burk raised his hand; his fingers were coated with blood. He looked down: more blood ran down the girl's thighs, spotting the white line in the center of the street. “I'm flowing,” she said, relieved. “That's good. That means I'm not pregnant.”

The song on the radio ended and they broke apart. The driver, a black man, was outside his car, leaning against the fender. He was dressed in loose-fitting white duck trousers that reminded Burk of pants worn by workers in a hospital. Perhaps he was an orderly or a male nurse, making ends meet as a part-time pimp.

The black man said, “Thank the man for the dance.”

The girl looked at Burk. A quick smile as she reached out and touched his arm. “Thanks.”

“Ask him if he needs a ride some place.”

“Do you need a lift?” Burk shook his head. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure. I'll see you around,” he said, and began walking north on Western. It began to drizzle, the long thin drops tickling his neck like a shower of pins. On the corner a bundle of newspapers sat underneath a streetlamp. Charles Manson was on the front page, wearing a fiend's face. Burk crouched in the darkness and wiped his bloody hand across Manson's coal-black eyes: two deliberate strokes that left an X as red as a curse.

An Interlude: Catching Up with Max

Max Rheingold’s prostate surgery took place in the spring of 1971. He spent six days in St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, where he received only two visitors, producer Jack Rose and actor Kenny Kendall.

On the Sunday before he was released, Jack Rose offered Max the use of his cabana at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “Sit around the pool. Read, swim, take it easy,” Jack said. “Charge anything you want.”

Because he was nearly broke and his house on Tigertail was on the brink of foreclosure, Max should have been enormously relieved by Jack’s generosity. Deep inside he
was
grateful, but there was also another part of him that felt Jack owed him this favor, and more. “I’ve been a stand-up friend,” Max told Kenny Kendall, when he came by a few minutes later, after visiting hours were over. “You know what I mean?”

“Fuckin’-A.”

“I remember when he was a nobody agent with a one-room office on Grower. Jack Rose, bullshit. In the old days he was Jake Rosenkrantz.

Him and his brother Sheeny Saul grew up two blocks away from me on Mulberry Street. Both of them ran with Buggsy Siegel and Lou Dashowitz and the rest of the Jewish mob. Saul became a loan shark and a waterfront enforcer. Jake became Jack the Torch.”

Kenny Kendall took a half pint of gin out of his pants. “Jack the Torch?”

“He was an arsonist for the mob. Back in the thirties he did two years in Sing Sing and another two in Dannemora.”

“He did time? You’re kidding me.”

“That’s a fact. And when he got out the second time, he told Siegel he was tired of playing with matches. He said he wanted to come to California. The next day Meyer Lansky met him at Grand Central Station. Meyer gave him an envelope with ten grand inside, and off he went.”

Kendall was staring out the window. “Now look at him,” he said. “That fucker’s rich as shit. His cabana, big deal. He could rent you a whole fuckin’ bungalow.” Jack Rose’s Jag was parked in a space by the main entrance. In the passenger seat was a voluptuous black woman wearing dark glasses in glittering gold frames and a bright green scarf. When Jack breezed outside, she took off her scarf and shook out her thick reddish hair. “Got himself some poontang, too.”

“She’s a dancer on
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In
,” Max said. He sat up with a groan and pushed aside the curtain. “He always liked that dark stuff.”

“Back home we called that splittin’ the black oak.”

Max grunted a laugh, and a bell rang somewhere in the hospital. Seconds later a Chinese nurse walked swiftly into Max’s room. “No good to drink in hospital,” she said, frowning at Kendall while her fingers found the pulse in Max’s wrist. “Set bad example. Against rules. Please put away.”

“In the navy we used to call
that ‘
slant-eye pie,’” Kendall said to Max, staring at the nurse without expression as he uncapped the bottle and raised it to his lips. “I got some of that myself.”

The nurse checked Max’s blood pressure and entered the results in the chart that hung by a chain from the end of the bed. She was almost out the door when she stopped and turned around slowly and gave Kendall an inquisitive look, as if she were trying to see into the darkness of his mind. Several seconds passed. Then, in a quiet but savage voice, she said, “You no good. You no good at all.”

* * *

Beginning in June, when his strength and appetite began to return, Max started each morning with a brisk one-mile walk through Beverly Hills, followed by a plate of lox, bagels, and cream cheese at Nate and Al’s delicatessen on North Beverly Drive. Most of the time Max invited himself to sit with Mort Finkel and Stan Lapidus, two sketch writers for Danny Kaye that he knew back in the forties, when he was a producer at Monogram and they were one of several teams hacking out comedies for Ma and Pa Kettle.

The week they were fired—the same week Stan’s wife gave birth to their first child—Max hired them to polish a screwball Western he was developing for Chill Wills and Ken Maynard. He paid them generously and under the table, a favor that Mort and Stan had never forgotten, making them inclined to be unfailingly pleasant whenever Max decided to squeeze into their booth.

However, there were many people in this early morning crowd, including Max’s urologist, Artie Schlumberger, who were familiar with the darker side of Max’s past, and they would mutter disgustedly behind his back when he walked inside. Several were openly hostile.

One morning comedian Jack Carter told him he was a “total piece of garbage,” and when Max stood up to challenge him, Buddy Hackett “accidentally” dumped a bowl of cream of wheat into his lap. This convulsed Phil Silvers and Milton Berle and the other comics at Buddy’s table, and Flip Wilson nearly spit out his French toast when Rich Little slid out of the booth and began a walk up and down the aisle with his legs splayed apart and his hands flapping at his sides, imitating Max’s distinctive waddle.

The abuse stopped one Sunday morning after Max pulled out a loaded .45 and stuck it underneath Shecky Greene’s chin. “You’ve been insulting me for weeks,” Max said, his hand shaking as he clicked off the safety. “One more time and I’m gonna blow your fuckin’ head off.”

Mildred, the silver-haired hostess, dialed the police, and Max was arrested ten minutes later, at the corner of Rodeo Drive and Little Santa Monica, calmly waiting for the light to change while he scratched his nuts and munched on a bagel slathered with lox and cream cheese. A week later the case was dropped when Shecky Greene refused to press charges. “Max is connected. Sinatra let
Shecky know it was a bad idea,” Danny Kaye was overheard telling George Burns at the Hillcrest Country Club, and everyone nearby nodded knowingly.

Because he was forbidden to patronize Nate and Al’s for one year, Max now ate his breakfast alone at the counter in the coffee shop downstairs in the hotel. The rest of the day he spent by the pool, wearing a Dodger baseball cap and a pair of droopy blue bathing trunks that extended to just below his knees. Unlike the other men his age, Max paid no attention to the sleek starlets who paraded around the deck in their skimpy bikinis. The girls that captured his eye, the ones who made his head feel light and his heart lurch, were the
little
girls splashing in the shallow end, the nine-and ten-year-olds, their skinny arms and legs made bubble-gum pink by the sun’s bright warmth.

At least twice a day Max paged himself, and with a great sigh he would stand at the sound of his name over the intercom, ignoring the phone inside Jack Rose’s cabana and walking instead through the clots of sunbathers until he reached the white house phone next to the outside bar.

“Max Rheingold,” he would growl into the receiver. Then, with the dial tone buzzing in his ear, he would launch into a seamless but imaginary conversation with a superstar actor or a bankable director. “Yes, yes, Warren, I totally agree with you one hundred percent. The script needs work, of course, but I spoke to John Huston and assured him that Waldo’s rewrite would solve all our problems. Of course I understand your concerns, but what
you
must understand is that I would never have the name Max Rheingold associated with any project that was not distinguished.”

This pathetic ruse to elevate himself in the Hollywood hierarchy never fooled anyone sitting poolside. But if Max noticed the eyes rolling or heard the embarrassed titters that followed him back to his chaise in front of Jack Rose’s cabana, you would never know it by the fresh light in his eyes and the triumphant smile on his face.