Authors: A. E. Hotchner
"Who were you talking to?" he asked.
"That was Iberia itself," Bill answered.
"That's just it," Ernest said. "Some nameless flunky who doesn't know his ass from his elbow and I'll show up and they'll turn me away."
No amount of discussion would dissuade Ernest from this new doubt, so that afternoon I went over to the Iberia ticket office and got a written statement, signed by the manager of the Madrid office, that a passenger bearing that amount of excess luggage would be permitted aboard. Ernest took the letter, folded it carefully, and placed it inside his passport.
The flight that Ernest was insisting upon taking was one of the few nonjet transatlantic flights from Madrid. It was an ancient Constellation that required fourteen airborne hours whereas the jets made it in seven. I tried to talk Ernest out of taking it, but he said it would give him "better security" since no one would be looking for him on that flight, and also he preferred a slower descent when going into the drink, a calamity he was anticipating.
Antonio unexpectedly came to see Ernest the evening before he left. Ernest was sitting up in bed reading when Antonio came in. He sat on the edge of the bed to talk to Ernest, and they were happy to see one another. Antonio, I thought, looked pale and drawn, and Ernest, in the harsh reading light, looked terribly old. Ernest told Antonio about his kidney ailment and Antonio described the liver trouble he was having, and each sympathized with the other. Then Antonio complimented Ernest on
The Dangerous Summer.
"Did you look at the photos?" Ernest asked.
"Yes, they're wonderful."
"Has Luis Miguel seen them?"
"Yes, when we were in Nimes."
"And he liked them? The ones in the second issue? Including the
pase ayudado?"
"He thought it was all very nice. As did I."
After Antonio had left, Ernest came into the sitting room, where Bill and I had gone to give them privacy, and sat down heavily, his shoulders slumped forward. "Antonio is thinking of retiring," Ernest said. "He asked my advice."
"Did he say why?" Bill asked.
"The grind. He says it is now an effort to get himself 'up' for a fight. He is troubled by his liver and his energy is not what it should be. And he says that sometimes now he is spooked by a bull. That's what really bothers him."
"What did you tell him?" I asked.
"Said it had to be his decision. No one can advise you on something as delicate as your own machinery. But did tell him that when you're the champ, it's better to step down on the best day you've had than to wait until it's starting to leave you and everyone notices it."
Ernest's flight was scheduled to depart at eleven in the evening but did not get off until after midnight. Ernest waited in the automobile with Honor and Annie until the last moment, while Bill and I took care of various matters at the Iberia counter, including the switch of name and passport. Ernest wanted to take the suitcases that contained the photographs into the cabin with him and that presented certain complications which were eventually worked out.
When we returned to the car Ernest said to me, "I sure as hell hate to go back to New York after what my lawyer did to me."
"What did he do?"
"The last thing I told him before I left was to pay my Aber-crombie bill, but yesterday in the mail that was forwarded to me from Ketchum there was this Abercrombie bill with an unpaid balance. Been a customer there for forty years and never had an unpaid balance. Now I can't show my face in there any more. Have to go to the gun department to check on my guns, and have to buy shoes and wool socks, but he's fixed it so I can't do any of it."
I pointed out that department-store bills are often slow in reflecting payments, and that, besides, an unpaid balance was a very common billing condition and would in no way affect his status there; but he was unconvinced. I asked whether I could see the bill. "Papa, look at the date—this was billed September first. It's now October. It's an old bill. I think you'll find it's been taken care of."
"I'm not so sure. It's getting so I have to do everything myself."
Bill motioned to us that it was time to board the aircraft and we started to walk toward the plane. "Papa," I said, "please don't get down on everyone. Your friends are just as much your friends as they ever were. You're tired and upset now, but you'll be all right once you get to Ketchum and breathe that good mountain air and get some rest; then everything will start to look okay again."
"I don't know, Hotch."
"Oh, sure. The hunting season has already started."
"Yes, but... all the work I've got to do . . . listen, I left a bottle of Scotch in my room. Be sure to get it when you go back."
We were at the plane. "I'll wire you about Coops as soon as I get to London," I said.
"And let me know about the five hundred G's."
"Good-bye, Papa. Good trip."
"You really think it's all right about Abercrombie's? I'd sure as hell like to get my guns."
I assured him again.
When we got back to the hotel I went to his room to get the bottle of Scotch. It was on the writing desk. There were several pieces of Suecia stationery covered with handwritten lists of things to do, and on a page of typewriter paper he had written in neat diagonally ascending lines a paragraph which ultimately appeared in
The Dangerous Summer.
"Nothing is as much fun any more as it was when we first drove up out of the grey mountains above Malaga onto the high country on the road to Madrid we drove so many times that year. Everything you read in the paper every morning makes you feel too bad to write. Probably the moral is you never should have got mixed up with bullfighters. I knew that once very well and I should not have had to learn it twice."
There was a telegram from Ernest waiting for me when I returned to New York on October 22nd, i960, from seeing Gary Cooper in London. It contained two items: Ernest had been told that Wald wanted the Nick Adams film badly; I was to inform "our guests, if arrived," that they had "no financial problems, no worries."
I could not understand the euphemism of "guests" in reference to Honor, who was coming to live in New York but had not yet arrived. As long ago as Cuba, Honor had discussed going to New York and it was Mary who had suggested that since Honor had been interested in the theater in Glasgow she might like to study at a good drama school, and Ernest had offered to pay her tuition.
I telephoned Ernest in Ketchum to tell him that everything was fine with Cooper and that we would draw up contracts in Hollywood. I started to say that Honor had not yet arrived, but he cut me off and said it was best not to use names on the telephone.
"I have just sent you a check for fifteen hundred dollars to apply on our guest's tuition at the dramatic academy," he said, "and for her living expenses in New York during her studies this semester. I do not want her to arrive in New York and not know that she has something to back her up in her studies. New York is a murderously expensive place to live. Not only room but to eat properly."
He said all this in a rather stilted voice, as if it were a formal announcement. I asked him how the hunting was; he said he had not yet had a chance to get out but that he would catch up when I arrived. I said I would probably not be able to go hunting with him because I had been traveling so much and had a backlog of work. This disturbed him very much. He said he had been counting on my coming and if I didn't it would be the first fall we hadn't hunted; he was so insistent and disturbed that I said I would get there if I possibly could. I promised to call him the moment "our guest" arrived.
Honor flew in from Madrid a few days later, and in the course of my telephone conversation with Ernest, while informing him that our guest was established at the Barbizon and had already gone to see the people at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the long-distance musical tones danced in and we were disconnected. When I got Ernest back on the phone a few moments later he was very agitated. He said we should not talk any more but that I positively
had
to get out there, the sooner the better.
"Wire me your date of arrival," he said. "Don't use the phone any more."
I subsequently received a letter from him asking me to find out whether anyone had spoken to Honor about what she was doing in New York, or how her trip was financed or anything else of that nature. His handwriting had changed: the letters were broader and less carefully formed; straight lines, as in the letter
i,
were open loops, and most of the
fs
were uncrossed.
The Portland Rose, scheduled to arrive at nine in the evening, arrived in Shoshone a few minutes early. I went into the bar across from the railroad station where we always had a drink before starting the long drive to Ketchum, knowing that Ernest would find me there.
He did. Duke MacMullen was with him. But instead of coming over to the bar to have a drink as usual, he asked me to finish mine as soon as I could and meet them outside. While he was speaking to me he kept looking nervously at the men at the bar and the people sitting at the tables. I left my drink and paid up and followed them out to Duke's car. Duke is a cheerful, outgoing man, but he was very subdued and had greeted me the way you greet a friend you meet at a funeral.
During the first part of the drive, to break the heavy silence, I started to tell Ernest about our project with Cooper (good progress), and the Twentieth Century-Fox situation (no progress beyond the hundred twenty-five thousand dollars), when Ernest interrupted me abruptly: "Vernon Lord wanted to come but I wouldn't let him."
"Why?"
"The Feds."
"What?"
"Feds. They tailed us all the way. Ask Duke."
"Well. . . there was a car in back of us out of Hailey . . ."
"That's why I wanted to get you out of the bar. Was afraid they'd make their move and pick us up there."
"But, Ernest, that car turned off at Picabo," Duke said.
"Probably took the back road. That would take them longer, so I wanted to be out of Shoshone when they got there."
"But, Papa," I said, trying to collect myself, "why are federal agents pursuing you?"
"It's the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They've bugged everything. That's why we're using Duke's car. Mine's bugged. Everything's bugged. Can't use the phone. Mail intercepted. What put me on to it was that phone call with you. You remember we got disconnected? That tipped their hand."
"But long-distance calls are often cut off. How can that mean . . . ?"
"I have a pal with the phone company in Hailey. He traced the disconnect for me. It was here, at this end, not the New York end."
"But what does that have to do with it?"
"For God's sake, Hotch, use your head—you placed the call, didn't you? A legit disconnect would be at your end. But the disconnect was
here
, in Hailey, where our phone calls are relayed. That means the Feds were monitoring the call
here
and that caused it to cut out." He was very agitated. I settled back into the rear darkness of the car. There were no other cars in either direction and Duke was driving very fast. I wanted to ask Ernest why he thought he was being tailed and bugged and why Vernon couldn't come to the station, but I just sat in the darkness, watching the white corridor of the headlights, feeling dispirited.
We rode for miles in absolute silence; I thought Ernest had fallen asleep, but suddenly he asked: "What did our guest say? Anybody talk to her? Anybody come around asking questions?"
"No, no one."
"They call her in about her passport?"
"No."
"Nobody from Immigration called her in or talked to her?"
"Not a soul."
"I'll be a son-of-a-bitch if they haven't bought her off."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean she's lying. She's gone over to them."
"Oh, that's impossible. I'm sure no one has—"
"She's turned state's evidence. Let's write her off and forget it. I don't want to hear any more about her."
We turned off the main highway into Ketchum. It was November 14th and there had not yet been any snow to attract skiers, so the streets were empty. Ketchum only comes out of hibernation when the lifts at Sun Valley start working after the first good winter snow. There was one bar open and the diner had a few customers, but the rest of the town was dark.
As Duke turned onto the street that would take me to the Christiana Motor Lodge, Ernest said in a very quiet voice, "Duke, pull over. Cut your lights."
Ernest rolled down his window and peered across the street at the bank. It was lighted and you could plainly see two men working in back of a counter. Ernest had his head partially out of the window, fixedly watching them. Then he carefully looked up and down the street and inspected the dark store fronts adjoining the bank. He rolled up his window and Duke turned on his lights and drove on. "What is it?" I asked.
"Auditors. They've got them working over my account. When they want to get you, they really get you."