The Man Who Died Laughing (8 page)

Just the two of us, of course, included Vic.

We left well before dawn in the limo, Sonny and I riding in the back along with the smell of his toilet water. Sonny slept. Asleep, with a blanket pulled up to his chin, he almost looked like that pudgy kid from Bed-Sty again, the one who slept out on the fire escape with his big brother on hot nights. Now he slept in an air-conditioned limo.

I watched him. There’s an old saying—to really get to know a man you have to walk around in his shoes. A ghost, I was learning, has to wear his skin, too. I had no doubts now that Sonny Day was a colossal piece of work—unpredictable, confounding, maddening. Was I getting him yet? I still couldn’t tell if he was being open with me or merely showing me the Sonny he wanted me to see. I couldn’t tell if I was seeing him as he was or as I wanted him to be. Maybe I was trying to invent him, turn him into a sympathetic, vulnerable fictional creation. Maybe I never would get him. But I had to try.

At one point he shifted and the blanket fell away. He reached for it in his sleep, his manicured fingers wiggling feebly, a whimper coming from his throat. I hesitated, then covered him back up. He grunted and snuggled into it.

We cleared Pomona and Ontario in the darkness. The sky got purple as we climbed the San Bernardino Mountains and was bright blue by the time we descended to the desert floor. Sonny woke up around Victorville and announced he was hungry. We stopped at a Denny’s in Barstow for breakfast. Aside from a couple of truckers at the counter, we were the only customers. The hash browns were excellent.

Sonny bought the papers on the way out. They were filled with stories about the Oscar nominations, and that got him going.

“See this, Hoagy? The comedies got aced out again. That really fries me. Did Stan Laurel ever get nominated for Best Actor? Groucho Marx? W C. Fields? Me? No way. They think we’re just fooling around. Lemme tell you, comedy has to do the same thing drama does. It’s gotta tell a story, have believable people, make a point—and then on top of that it’s gotta be funny, too. That makes it even harder. But the snobs, the critics, they don’t see it. For them, you gotta hold up a sign. Be solemn. Dull. They act like it’s a crime to entertain people. You
gotta
entertain ’em. It’s like Sammy told me one time: If you can’t tap your foot to it, then it ain’t music.”

“It’s that way in my business, too,” I said. “You’re only taken seriously in literary circles if your stuff is torturous and hard to read. If you go to the extra trouble of making it clear and entertaining, then the critics call you a lightweight.”

“They like you. You ain’t dull.”

“That’s true, I wasn’t. But I also never wrote a second book. They’d have gotten me then.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that. It really bugs the hell out of me.”

“What does?”

“The way you talk about yourself in the past tense, like you’re eighty years old, or dead. You’re young, you got talent. You’ll write lots more books. Good books. You just gotta work on your attitude. Not I
was.
I
am.
Say it: I
am”

I said it, I said it.

“That’s more like it.” He glanced at the newspaper story again, then bared his teeth, disgusted. “Screw ’em. We’re the ones who have the talent.
We
know what we’re doing.”

He reached down and opened up the little refrigerator in front of us and pulled out two small bottles of Perrier. He opened them and handed me one.

“I just have one question,” I said. “If we’re both so smart and we know what we’re doing, then how come we’re on our asses?”

His eyes widened in surprise. Then he laughed. He actually laughed at something I said.

“You’re okay, Hoagy. You’re a no-bullshit guy. Glad we decided to do this. Hey, Vic, how ya doing up there, baby?”

“Fine, Sonny,” he replied softly.

“Stop pouting already, will ya? So I blew. I take the blame. I apologize. You’re not a dumb ox. You’re my pally, and you meant well. I’m sorry, okay?”

Vic seemed to brighten. “Okay, Sonny.”

“Now how about some sounds? Get us in the groove.”

“You got it.”

Vic put on some cassettes, uptempo Sinatra and Torme from the fifties, and we bopped along, sipping our Perriers, the heat shimmering outside on the Devils Playground. It wasn’t the worst way to travel.

“Merilee used to get letters from cranks,” I said. “Guys who wanted to buy her toenail cuttings. Wear her panties. Never death threats though.”

Sonny shrugged. “After thirty years you get used to it. Part of the deal, at least it is for me.”

“What did this one say?”

He gazed out the window. “It said that I’d never live to see our book in print.”

“Oh?”

Sonny polished off his Perrier and belched. He stabbed a finger in my chest. “I know just what you’re thinking—that’s why I maybe want to pull out. Well, you’re wrong. The two things got nuttin’ to do with each other. I’m not that kind of person.”

“What kind of person is that?”

“The kind who you can scare. If I worried about the cranks out there, I’d go outta my head. Besides, I got my Vic. Right, Vic?”

“That’s right, Sonny.”

We hit the first signs for the Vegas casinos when we crossed the Nevada state line.

“What exactly are you supposed to do for this pageant?” I asked him.

“Show up. Everything’s already written for me. I just introduce the girls, eyeball their tits, wink at the audience. We walk it through this afternoon. Go on at five-thirty. You like showgirls?”

“What’s not to like?”

“Red-blood American boy, huh?” He grinned, man to man.

I grinned back. “Type O.”

He furrowed his brow. “What can I tell ya? I wish I didn’t have to be doing it. It’s cheese all the way. But I got no choice. If you’ve had personal problems like I have, you start at the bottom again. Prove you can deliver. In this business, you’re a prisoner of people’s preconceptions of you.”

“Not dissimilar to life in general,” I said.

“You can say that again.”

“Not dissimilar to life in general,” I repeated.

He gaped at me in disbelief.

“You forget something important about me,” I told him. “I grew up on
you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He looked me over and scowled. “Coulda done worse.”

“You can say that again.”

After so many hundreds of miles of pure barren desert, Las Vegas rose up before us in the hot sun like a gaudy, indecent mirage, the hotels and billboards so huge, so unlikely, I was sure they’d disappear if I blinked twice. I tried it—they didn’t.

“Put in a lot of years here,” said Sonny wistfully. “A lotta shtick under the bridge.”

The third annual “Miss Las Vegas Showgirl Beauty Pageant” was being broadcast live from the MGM Grand Hotel, or so the billboard out front said. The parking lot, which must have spanned ten acres, was mostly empty except for some broadcast trucks. Inside, the vast casino was colder than a deli case and about as quiet. Most of the tables were covered. It wasn’t noon yet.

Sonny got the royal treatment. The staff bowed and scraped and whisked us up to our rooms. He and Vic had a two-bedroom high-rollers’ suite with a living room, kitchen, and complimentary fruit basket. Nice view of the purple mountains, too. I was billeted across the hall in a single room with no fruit basket. I had a view of the MGM Grand parking lot and way off in the distance, a view of the Caesars Palace parking lot.

They had, to quote Sonny, a real peach of a health club downstairs. We each pumped a round of irons, then did ten kilometers on the cycles, had a sauna and a cold plunge. Vic suggested we have our lunch sent up to their suite. Sonny insisted on eating in the coffee shop. So, bristling with health, we stormed the coffee shop and attacked man-sized platters of tuna salad.

We sat in a booth, Vic and me on either side of Sonny. A lot of guests came over to ask for his autograph and shake his hand. They were tourists, salesmen, ordinary folks—his people. He joked with them, kidded them, acted downright pleased by their attention.

Vic, on the other hand, never relaxed, never stopped scanning the room for somebody who looked like trouble. Vic was on the job now.

“You gonna spend some time in the casino?” Sonny asked me between autographs.

“Only as long as it takes to lose all my money.”

“How much you bring?” he asked, looking concerned.

“A thousand.”

He was relieved. “That’s chicken feed.”

“How about you?”

“Me? I can’t go near a casino anymore. I gamble like I drink—can’t stop. Used to drop fifty, a hundred grand in a night. You won’t find me near a table now. Or the track.”

At five minutes before two, Vic tapped his watch.

“Thanks, Vic,” said Sonny, signaling for the check. “Don’t wanna be late for rehearsal, Hoagy. That’s exactly the kind of thing I can’t afford now.”

The waitress was slow in coming over. As the seconds ticked away, Sonny tapped the table with his fork. Then yanked at Vic’s wrist to check the time. Then popped a couple of Sen-Sens in his mouth. Then yanked at Vic’s wrist again.

“Honey?!” he called out again, clearly agitated now. “Waitress?!”

“One minute!” she called back.

“Why don’t I just let you out, Sonny?” Vic offered soothingly. “I can sign for it.”

Sonny smashed the table with his fist, bouncing our silverware, our glasses, our keno holder.
“No!”
he roared. “She’s gonna bring it right over and she’s gonna …!” He caught himself, suddenly aware that people at neighboring tables were staring at him. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Good idea, Vic,” he said quietly. “Thanks.”

Vic let him out. He rushed off alone, half-trotting, so intent that he bowled over two Japanese businessmen on his way out.

“Sonny’s upset,” Vic observed, as he signed the check.

“No kidding.”

“Oh, I don’t mean this waitress business. This was actually a step in the right direction. The new Sonny.”

“What would the old Sonny have done?”

“Gotten the girl fired. After he turned the table over and smashed some plates. He’s a lot calmer now. No, it was the way he acted toward his fans.”

“How did he act?”

“Like he liked them. Wanted them to approach him. He was performing. He only does it when he’s upset. Calms him down. Hasn’t done that in a long, long time.”

“I suppose he has a lot riding on this job.”

“It’s not the job. It’s that letter. It’s got him plenty worried. Me, too.”

“You think it’s for real?”

Vic shrugged. “Have to assume it is. You can’t afford to be wrong.”

“Think there’s any connection between it and my little housewarming gift?”

Vic shifted uncomfortably. “No. No, I don’t.”

“Then who—”

“Let’s go. I don’t want him to be alone for very long.”

A set had been erected on the stage of one of the headliner rooms, seemingly out of all of the Reynolds Wrap in the state of Nevada. A runway extended out into the seats, where it met up with the TV cameras and the monitors. Production assistants with clipboards scurried around. Pot-bellied technicians fiddled importantly with lights and mikes and eyeballed the showgirls, most of whom were seated in the first few rows, ignoring them. A few of them were up on stage learning their cues and marks from the stage manager. They wore tight jeans and halter tops. They were very tall and very well-built, but their features were coarse, their expressions stony. Sonny was up on stage shaking hands with the promoters and making them laugh. Vic and I slid into a couple of seats.

“I don’t like this,” said Vic. “So many people coming and going. Any of them could take a shot at Sonny.”

The big guy was getting jumpy. Something about him being jumpy made me jumpy. “So why don’t you call the police? Or hotel security?”

“You know why.”

“Sonny’s kind of rough on you, isn’t he?”

“He’s got to be rough on somebody. Better me than somebody he can really hurt, like Connie or Wanda.”

“What happened to the ‘big guys have big feelings’ business?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I can take it from him, Hoag. It’s my job to take it, not theirs.”

“Think he’s going to pull out of this book?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want him to?”

“I want him to do what’s best for him,” Vic replied.

The director announced a technical run-through and called for quiet. He was a kid with a beard, a Hawaiian shirt, and an impatient, uptight manner. He was insecure. An insecure director, Merilee once told me, can get to be a very bitchy one.

And this one did, within minutes.

Sonny was reading one of his introductions off the prompter. A joke: “And now, here they are, Miss Aladdin Hotel.”

It got a few snickers from the crew, but Sonny wasn’t happy with it. This he indicated by clutching his throat and making gagging noises.

“Do you have a problem with the line, Mr. Day?” the director demanded.

“Kinda stale, ain’t it? I mean, it was stale when Paar used it twenty years ago. We can do better than this.”

“The jokes are already written, Mr. Day.”

“Yeah, but I gotta say ’em. Gimme a minute. I’ll think of something.”

“We don’t have a minute,” said the director testily. “And frankly, people aren’t turning this pageant on to listen to your jokes. Half of them will have their sound off and their pizzles in their hand.”

Sonny laughed.
“Pizzles?
What, they teach you to talk tough like that in grammar school—last week?”

That got a lot of laughter, from both the crew and the girls.

The director reddened. “Are you going to be uncooperative and unprofessional, Mr. Day? Tell me if you are. Tell me right now. Because I want to get on the phone and see who’s in town who can pinch-hit for you. I can’t deal with this. I need a professional.”

The room got very quiet. Everyone was looking at Sonny now. Everyone was wondering what The One would do.

He bared his teeth and went for his Sen-Sens. He popped a couple in his mouth and chewed them. And kept chewing them, until the anger and hurt had all but gone from his face. And then he said quietly, “I
am
a professional.”