Stars Screaming (21 page)

Burk came back into the living room with two glasses of scotch. He sat down on the couch, and Lillian Ohrtman reached out and
rested her hand on his thigh. They were both silent for a while, and then she leaned close and said, “I got married at the Methodist Church on Camden Drive in Beverly Hills. The reception was at the Ambassador Hotel in the Coconut Grove. All the major mucky-mucks were there: Zanuck, Cohn, Warner; Louella and Hedda, of course; and Gregory Peck and Henry Fonda. All of them. You could not believe what I looked like. I have pictures. They don’t lie.”

Lillian Ohrtman studied Burk’s face as her arthritic fingers labored to unbutton his Levi’s.

“I was ridiculously lovely. My body was perfection. All the men wanted to dance with me, and I remember the heat of their bodies as they drew me in close. In my ear they told lewd jokes, and when my back was turned away from Lionel I allowed their hands to rub my buttocks. I obliged them because they were drunk and overstimulated, like I am now.” Lillian Ohrtman’s head sagged into Burk’s lap. “Later that night—my wedding night—in the penthouse suite, Lionel and I made great love. I remember when I did to him what I’m going to do to you now, he said, ‘Good Lord, Lil, you’re going to suck the paint right off the goddamn walls.’”

Shortly before he drove away that evening, Burk encountered Mark Ohrtman on the street outside the Argyle Manor. He wore a dark blue smoking jacket over white silk pajamas. “I saw your name in the
Daily Variety
. You have a movie in production called
Pledging My Love.
True?” Burk nodded his head. “And you’re staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel,” Mark Ohrtman said. He reached into his smoking jacket and produced a matchbook from the Polo Lounge. “Am I correct?”

“That’s right,” Burk said. “But I’m not comfortable there all the time.”

“Of course you’re not,” Lillian Ohrtman said. She was standing outside her apartment, hugging her shoulders against the cool air. “It’s a hotel. You’re looking for a homier spot. Someplace real. Where you can make friends.”

Lillian Ohrtman walked forward until she was standing next to her son. Upstairs, Burk heard a phone ring in his apartment. He took a step toward his car and Mark Ohrtman said, “Drew, my lover, does Rona Barrett’s hair. She knows what happened the other night in the hotel. She has good sources. They say that actor beat up the waiter on purpose.”

Moving away, Burk said, “As far as I know it was an accident.”

“No,” Mark said, blinking his heavy-lidded eyes, “that’s not what Drew says.”

“It has the makings of a wonderful scandal,” Lillian Ohrtman said. Her lips were set in a bemused smile. “Actor punches room service waiter. I’ve had my share of waiters.” She laughed. “Oh, yes, I have. Waiters, pool boys, beboppers, even writers. Yes, even writers.”

Burk was now seated behind the wheel of his Mustang. On the opposite side of the street a young couple walked by wearing Levi’s and light parkas. Their arms encircled each other’s waists. “Look,” the girl said, tilting her head as she pointed toward the sky. “Look at all the stars.”

A window shade went up in a small stucco house squeezed between two apartment buildings. A woman said, “Keep it down out there. We’re tryin’ to watch TV.”

“This is what Drew heard,” Mark Ohrtman said. He was speaking to Burk, but only his shadow on the sidewalk was visible from inside the car. “He heard the actors in your film, the main actors—the three leads—were rehearsing a scene in the hotel room. A very intense scene, where real emotions had to be revealed. They’d been rehearsing all night, according to Drew’s sources. They were rehearsing a scene that was written by you that takes place in a motel. Isn’t that right?”

“I’ve always liked motels,” Lillian Ohrtman said. “They made me feel so . . . so wanton.”

In the rearview mirror, Burk saw Mark Ohrtman make a face.

“What?” Lillian Ohrtman said.

Before her son could respond, Burk started his engine. His headlights came on, but Mark Ohrtman’s face darkened. “They attacked him for no reason,” he said. “How
dare
they?”

“It wasn’t their fault. They were rehearsing a scene,” Burk said. “It was an accident.”

“He was given a copy of the script,” Mark Ohrtman said. “He was told to play the part of a young Marine lance corporal. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Burk did not reply. His radio was on very low and he could hear someone speaking to Radio Ray. The voice sounded familiar.

“The room service waiter was flattered to be asked to rehearse. What a stroke of good fortune, he thought. I’m an actor. If I’m good, maybe they will help me get the part. It’s possible.”

“Anything’s possible in Hollywood,” Lillian Ohrtman said, with a pained smile.

“But something went wrong inside that hotel room. There was liquor and drugs, according to Drew’s sources. Things became too intense, too sexually intense, perhaps. The boy was attacked, we know that. His jaw was broken and nine stitches were taken in his eyebrow. That we know for sure, Mr. Burk, Mr. Screenwriter.”

Burk put the Mustang in gear and began coasting toward the end of the block. In the rearview he saw Mark and Lillian Ohrtman turn away from the street. They were clinging to each other.

A car came up the block, the glare of the headlights making Burk shield his eyes. He heard a dog in the neighborhood bark twice and Lillian Ohrtman’s voice came out of the near dark. “Hush, dog,” she said, and then her thin shadow vanished from the sidewalk.

“My mother got shot playing tennis in Miami Beach,” Gene told Radio Ray as Burk crossed La Cienega and eased the Mustang over to the curb. It was close to 2
A.M
., and a thick ghostlike fog had swallowed the rooftops and billboards on Sunset, bringing the visibility down to twenty yards. Parked in front of him was a white limousine with the hazard lights blinking. “She was playing on the clay courts next to the Roney Plaza. It was a Mafia hit, but the guy they were gunning for—Joe Pallazi—was playing mixed doubles on the next court over. Actually, that’s a lie, Ray, but that’s the story my dad told me when she left home. He heard it from a guy who hung around the newsstand, a bookie named Izzy Wachtel. That’s how Izzy’s wife died,” Gene said. “What really happened was my mom was visiting her sister. She lived in New York, but each summer they met in a different city for a vacation away from their husbands. That year it was Miami, and my mom met this guy, Ted Sloss. He owned a restaurant in Biscayne Bay. But instead of just having an affair, she moved in with him. He ended up dumping her for a chick who groomed horses out at Hialeah. Six months later my mom came home. But to my dad she was dead. He told her, ‘Esther, you’re dead. You’re gone.’ She said, ‘I still love you, Nate,’ but he said, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t live here.’ So she found a place on Ocean Park and Twenty-third, a few blocks away,
and she started comin’ by every day. I guess I was around ten when this happened, maybe nine. Am I boring you, Ray?”

“No, not at all,” Radio Ray said, his voice perfectly honest. “You’re not boring me at all.”

“What about your listeners? I could be boring them. If you like, I’ll give you another story. I’ve got millions. I’m a cop. I could spin cop stories till the cows come home. Actually I
used
to be a cop,” Gene said, dropping his voice. “But in my head I still am.”

“Thanks for calling.”

“I’m not through talking.”

“For tonight you are,” Radio Ray told Gene and his audience. “I’ll be right back.”

Burk called Gene from the phone booth on the corner of Kings Road and Sunset. “I heard you,” Burk said. “I was listening. That story you told was bullshit.”

“Part of it was true. She went to Miami. She met a guy.”

“She didn’t come back.”

“Sometimes she did.”

“Twice a year. Once during the summer and once over Christmas. And the guy’s name was Poise, not Sloss. Meyer Poise. And he was from DC. He owned a chain of furniture stores. Three in Baltimore, three in Roanoke, Virginia.”

“You don’t remember, Ray. You were too young.”

“I remember everything.”

“Late spring, 1949. She took us up to Lake Arrowhead. Do you remember that?”

“That was before she left, before she went to Miami.”

“We were driving up the Angeles Crest Highway. When it got real steep and the elevation changed, I got this terrible pain in my ear. She said it would go away but it didn’t. And she wouldn’t stop. Remember? I was lying in the backseat, screaming, and you were reading comic books in front. Finally she pulled over in this small town just before Big Bear. She asked at a gas station for a doctor, and they sent us to this guy who lived above a laundry. The first thing I saw was a framed picture of a prizefighter he had on his wall, some skinny lightweight who trained up there, Young Teddy Berle, I think that was his name. Fought Ike Williams for the championship in ‘forty-seven. Aaron knew who he was right away when I told him. There were other pictures too, of actresses and actors, people he probably
treated while they were on location. None of them looked familiar. I mean, John Wayne wasn’t up there, or Hoot Gibson, or Bob Steele, or the Bowery Boys. But I was cryin’ so hard by then all their faces were blurred.”

“Gene—”

“You were outside, in the car, oblivious. You didn’t see the guy. He had these yellow jagged teeth and his breath smelled like cigarettes and wine. I can smell it now as we talk. No office, either. Just this crummy room, that’s all. That’s where she took me.”

“You always had earaches, Gene. They went away.”

“This one didn’t. It felt like someone was running an ice pick through my head. The doctor said I had a blister in my ear. He told me he was gonna pop it. I was lying on the couch, on my side. Mom was behind me someplace, but I couldn’t see her face. When I wasn’t looking the doctor knelt down and stuck this long silver needle into my ear.”

“Jesus.”

“No shit. I never felt a pain like that. Pus and blood just poured out of my head. I’m not kidding you,
poured
out. This happened, Ray, while you were outside reading Archie and Little Lulu and Batman.”

“Gene, I just remembered something.”

“The pictures on the wall. A lot of unknowns.”

Burk said, “Grace Elliot died in Big Bear in 1949.”

“There you go, Ray.”

“What’re you telling me, Gene?”

“We never got to go camping, did we? Remember? The forest rangers stopped us because of a fire. A fire in the mountains, he said. It was true. We could see the smoke and flames and hear sirens. Mom got real upset. She said we came all the way from LA. The forest ranger said he couldn’t let us through. I was glad. I wanted to go home. I was in so much pain.”

“I don’t remember this.”

“You blocked it out, Ray. You blocked my pain. That’s what you do.”

Gene waited for a response but Burk said nothing. Outside the glass a chauffeur was bouncing nervously from foot to foot. Burk cracked open the door and the chauffeur said, “My limo broke down, mate. I hafta call these blokes a taxi before they get too excited.”

“Who are they?”

“T. Rex,” the chauffeur said, naming a newly popular English band that was headlining the Whiskey A Go-Go on Saturday night. Their hit—"Bang a Gong"—was a weirdly sinister piece of trash-glam disco that gave Burk bad vibes.

“I gotta get off,” Burk told Gene. “Someone needs to use the phone.”

“When we came down out of the mountains, around Redlands, my ear started to feel better. I remember the reception on the radio cleared up too. Mom found a baseball game—the LA Angels were playing the Hollywood Stars—and we kept it on all the way home.”

“I gotta go,” Burk said.

“The next day was a Sunday. She took us to the beach, and later we went to a movie at the Village Theatre in Westwood. Something with Burt Lancaster, about Indians. Afterward, she dropped us off and that was that. We didn’t see her again until Christmas.”

There was a manila envelope waiting for Burk at the front desk when he arrived back at the hotel. Inside was a memo from Boyd Talbott that he read through quickly as the elevator took him up to the third floor.

DATE:   May 20, 1971

FROM:   Boyd Talbott

TO:         Ray Burk

RE:         Upcoming scenes

Have tried to reach you by phone for three days. No luck.

1. Scene #88. Jon feels that Eric should drive a ’57 Chevy instead of an Olds Starfire. More interesting to shoot. Does it matter to you?

2. In #46 (flashback) Eric and Barbara are parked on Mulholland. They pick up WSLX, Nashville, on the radio. Is that possible? Does it stretch our credibility? Perhaps they could pick up a station in a state closer to California. For example: KOMA—"where it’s mighty pretty in Oklahoma City.”

3. Jon thinks we should actually see the Marine drown in Act III (Scenes 142 and 143). We should not leave the audience confused. Ambiguity at this point would be counterproductive.

4. We may
need a polish on Barbara’s speech on 87–88 (#131). She sounds a little too poetic.

5. The scenes that follow (#131–135), at the Coral Reef Motel, when they view the stag film that Barbara made in 1959: Jon feels there should be less dialogue. Look it over. If you agree, see what you can trim. I could also see losing Ricky’s speech where he’s talking about playing ball in Tulsa.

And finally, regarding the recent incident at the hotel. We have been advised by the studio not to talk to the press. Everyone at Paramount is quite upset (naturally), and there has been some talk about suspending the production, though I think that is unlikely. Jerome Sanford has spoken to Maria and she will pass along what our position will be, if she hasn’t already done so.

If you need to reach me over the weekend, here is my number at my home: 555-1161.

Ciao, Jim