I was half ready to give in to temptation when the gaffer appeared around a corner of the gas station, looking angry. “Generator’s shot; frozen solid.”
Pits Caudle scuttled into view behind him, wiping his hands on a rag. No, not his hands; he was cleaning a threaded metal plug.
He held it out. “Oil sump plug. Some asshole left it off.”
“My boys wouldn’t do that!” The gaffer’s name was Alf, which evoked the image of a Manchester pub keeper; but in films, “gaffer” means head electrician, for reasons long forgotten, and thick-chested Alfonso Gonzales did not look very English - especially with his bandito moustache.
“What happened, Alf?”
“The oil drained out and the jenny ran dry til it seized up.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I’m no engine mechanic.”
Pits saw a chance to preen: “I am. That there’s a big diesel, right? Strong suckers. If it ran long enough to freeze, it prolly threw a rod.”
“In other words, it’s shot. How could it happen, Alf?”
Pits rushed in again: “Sometimes you don’t screw the drain plug tight, you know? So ya run it and the plug like jiggles out.”
“Vibrates.”
“At’s it.” Pits delivered this with the gravity of a consulting physician.
“So we don’t have any lights.”
Gonzales’ face tightened at this implication of negligence. He crossed beefy arms and stared at the ground. “God. Damn. Sonava. Bitch!” He stomped away toward the gas station office.
“How come you’re here, Pits?”
“Whaddya mean? I’m managing, same as always.”
“Out by the generator?”
“Where ya want me to be, in that dinky office? I was out here and I heard it stop, so I went to look.” He cocked thick fists on his hips, like an Okie Mussolini. “Just take care a your side, willya?” Caudle strutted off toward the parked trucks.
Heard it stop, did he? That generator was far enough away to be inaudible to a microphone that picked up squabbling jays through a ceiling roof. And Pits knew all about diesel generators. As Lieutenant Spock would say, fascinating.
I found Diane by the grease rack in the little service bay, pretending to study her script, her face a mask sustained by willpower. “What news, Stoney?”
“Generator’s gone bye-bye.”
“Oh God.” She took off her reading glasses and pressed her eyes with thumb and forefinger.
“Now listen: go back to your room, wash your face, then come to the coffee shop. I’ll get everyone there.”
Wearily: “What for?”
“You’re going to tell them about the money.”
“Why me? You’re the one who got it for them.”
“But I don’t need their loyalty. You do, so you’re going to pull a miracle out of your hat.”
“That’s phony and manipulative.”
“You ever manipulate an actor?”
“Sure, but that’s directing.”
“It’s all directing. Think about it.”
* * * *
Plenary session time in the sleazy coffee shop: Stogie in his personal smoke screen, surrounding a counter stool with his vast behind, his grips ranged around him. Then Alf and his electricians, the sound recordist and his boom man - actually a woman - the silent prop man, the makeup girl who doubled as wardrobe, and the placid, middle-aged script girl. Fat Fred the cameraman monopolized a table, while Lee, nominally his assistant, stood as far from him as possible.
The other tables were filled by Scuzzy, Hallie, Thurston, the bartender, and a walleyed actor who played one of the bikers. Pits and Molly Caudle were the only real bikers present. Ken Simmons and I leaned against the wall.
Over twenty in all, lounging with feigned indifference but filling the air with a palpable smog of discouragement.
Alf addressed himself to me: “What’s next?”
“We’ll think of something.” Looks and murmurs signaled sure you will.
The cameraman spoke with bleary truculence, from either a hangover or an early start on today’s libations. “How do I shoot interiors without a generator?”
Alf cut in defensively. “We did not screw up that generator.”
I raised pacific hands, “I know, I know.”
A grip said, “What’re we here for?”
“Meeting with the director.” More disgruntled rumbles.
A long pause queasy with tension. People glanced at one another, whispered, smoked in silence. Flies parked on the counter runway, ready to scramble at the first siren smell of lunch.
The screen door flapped as Diane loped in, freshened up and full of energy. She reached the center of the room in four long-legged strides, reviewed her troops, and managed a seemingly genuine smile. “I’ve got some news.”
“Whoopee.” The grip who’d said it looked abashed when Stogie turned his glare on him.
Diane ignored this. “We’ve, ah...” She caught my eye and I shook my head slightly. She started over. “I talked to the producer; told him it was too much.”
“Too much what?” This time, Stogie led the grip aside and whispered to him. The grip remained standing when Stogie resumed his stool.
“You’re giving two hundred percent, every one of you, but you can’t keep it up in these conditions. So I talked him into tearing up your contracts and writing new ones.” Faces alert now, though suspicious. “From now on, you get union scale, in cash. Stoney, you want to pass them out?”
I distributed the contracts signed by Greystoke and the crew chiefs skimmed them with practiced eyes. Alf nodded. “They look okay.” Diane resumed: “More good news: those contracts are dated from the start of production. The new pay is retroactive.”
A few nods and smiles as people looked first at the papers and then one another.
“We can’t change these rotten conditions, but we can at least make it worth your while.”
The sound man piped up diffidently, “But we never saw any money from the old contracts.”
Diane nodded. “I know, so Greystoke’s coming up himself.”
An anonymous voice said, “Your check is in the mail,” and raised a sour laugh.
Diane smiled sympathetically. “No, he’ll be here today.”
The cameraman struggled to his feet. “We still can’t shoot interiors without the goddam generator.” Exhausted by this eloquence, he wobbled down again.
Then Stogie Rucker, Master Sergeant, 82nd airborne Division, Ret., heaved off his stool, pushed his gaudy bulk into the center of the room, and peeled and lit his trademark with slow care. His aviator glasses swept the company. “Some a you guys been around almost as long as me; most not. But we all know the way it is. Front office does business; above-the-line talent does art - so they tell me - and we just do our job.”
The pause of a practiced rhetorician.
“Half the time they try and screw you, so you gotta protect yourself: give ‘em what they pay for and no more. That’s fair.” He waddled back and forth, pretending to think out loud. “As of now, they’re paying full freight. So as of now, we oughta get our ass in gear.”
A voice began, “Wait’ll we see a pay...” but Stogie rode him down.
“Tell ya somethin’ else: I watched a lotta directors, some of them turkeys and some a the best, and this broad - no offense, Diane - is gonna be one a the best.”
Trapped between reactions to the label and the praise, Diane said nothing.
“So the money’s okay, the people’re okay, and I feel it’s worth my best shot. That’s all.” Stogie wheeled majestically and followed his cigar back to the counter while the American equivalent of hear-hear rumbled through the room.
To top it off, the Lone Ranger and Tonto chose that moment to roll up the driveway in their Lincoln town car and park, taking two spaces, out front. The screen door whacked the wall as Greystoke swept in imperiously, trailed by Shannon in three-piece pinstripes and lugging an attaché case that next
to him looked like a three-suiter. He remained by the door as Greystoke strutted into the center of the room, wearing his cliché camel’s hair overcoat like a cape.
“Hello LaMotta, hello Simmons; okay Winston, Caudle said everybody was up here waiting for me.”
“Not exactly waiting...”
“Whatever. Listen up everybody ‘cause I got good news: as of today, I’m tearing up your contracts and writing brand new ones for union scale.” He grinned, hands on hips. Everyone was doing II Duce today. “Whaddya think of that?”
Stogie’s tired drawl: “We know.”
“What?”
“Miss LaMotta told us.” Stogie lightly underlined the “miss.”
“Oh.” Greystoke looked crestfallen, then rebounded as he thought of something else. “Okay, but what’s a contract without the cash to back it up, understand? So I figured, okay you people are doing a real good job for me and I always take care of my people. Winston’ll tell ya.”
I nodded solemnly.
“Right. Clear out that booth there ‘cause it’s payday. Shannon!” Greystoke enthroned himself in the booth with Shannon and the attaché case. The case was full of cash.
“Okay, sign your contract and give it back to me. Who’s first? The order don’t make any difference.” The cast and crew began lining up.
Diane and I stood against the wall, watching the company brighten up like a landscape after a summer storm except for Saturated Fats, who was heading for us as purposefully as his condition permitted. For the last two days, he’d been thoroughly sloshed before lunch.
“What’s up, Fred?”
“You know what’s up: damn generator’s up.”
“We’ll replace it.”
“And what’ll we do ‘til then?”
I waved at Alf, who joined us by the wall. “Have we enough house current to finish close-ups in the office?”
Alf nodded. “If we keep ‘em tight.”
Fat Fred turned on his gaffer: “I’ll make those decisions.”
“Okay then, we’ll move the rest of the scene outside; doesn’t matter where we play it.”
“Where you get off, Winston?”
“Take it easy, Fred.”
“Y’ mean take it easy? I’m the d’rector of cinemat....” Wisely, he gave up on the word. “I’m in charge.”
I’d seen this coming for days, but I still regretted it. I turned to the gaffer: “Alf, can you light this show?”
A shrug. “What I been doing.”
“Diane, can you operate an Arri?” She nodded, faintly puzzled. “Okay Fred: get in line, get your pay, and then I’m afraid you’d better leave the shoot.”
“What!”
“You’re through. You’re a luxury we simply can’t afford.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Want to be cinematographer, Alf?” A negligent nod, but I knew he’d kill for that screen credit.
“Then get some money from Ken to cover repairs and send someone into town to swap the generator.” Alf nodded and hustled off.
Fred’s sweaty face had turned anxious. “What about me?”
“I’m sorry Fred, sorry for your troubles - whatever they might be. But you’re not doing your job and we don’t have the time to carry you.”
He looked at Diane, who only shook her head and said softly, “You better get in line, Fred.”
He turned without a word and wove away.
“Thanks, Stoney. I’ve wanted to do that for two weeks.” Diane stared at Fred’s retreating back. “Where was he this morning?”
“Still thinking about the locked camera truck?” A nod. “I don’t know, but it couldn’t hurt to get him off the shoot.”
We strolled out into the sunshine. Diane inhaled a lung-full of pine smells and grinned at the flaking motel. “I could almost get to like it here.”
“Mm-hmh.”
“Don’t funk, Stoney; you had to do that. Look: we’re on schedule, we’re getting great footage, we got the camera problem solved and you got everyone their money.” She studied me a moment as we wandered toward the river. “Be honest: why did you want me to pretend I got the money?”
“The director has to be a... holy father, thirty-third degree exalted Pooh Bah – and I don’t know what - but he has to have intense loyalty. It’s almost mystic. Without that loyalty, the most you can get from people is competence.”
A regretful nod. “I know that.”
“You’re an out-of-towner, a first-timer, and a female. Three strikes.”
“I try not to be female.”
“Now there’s a losing battle.”
Diane’s eyes softened.
“So I thought the money thing would even your odds.”
“Thank you.”
Ambling through sunshine-spattered trees full of birds whose quarrels were no longer an annoyance. The tiny river burped and chuckled like a baby. I couldn’t help enjoying Diane, watching her energy and lanky grace as she hopped along the river rocks. Her floppy pigtails made her look eleven, but only from the neck up.
“Stoney, I was thinking.”
“Uh huh?”
“Seemed like Stogie jumped in right on cue. You didn’t prime him, did you?”
“I told him about the contracts.”
She stopped, her face tightening. “The old boy league again.”
“Diane...”
“Talk about your mystic loyalty! You set me up. Big strong man got to help the poor little girl.”
She was close enough to Stogie’s phrase to make me wince inside. “I didn’t set you up.”
“From now on, I’ll make my own loyalty, thank you.”
This was pointless. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”
“Where you going?”
“Pits was hanging around that generator. I want to talk to Molly.”
“Don’t stumble; she’ll be under you before you hit the ground.”
I blinked in surprise. That seemed gratuitous and snide, even considering Diane’s anger.
* * * *
“I must say, you make a professional corned beef sandwich.”
Molly wiggled her shoulder blades against the river bank grass. “I always get itches where I can’t scratch.” She looked up at me around her beaky Roman nose. “Like it, huh?”
“Tasty.” I was lolling with my back against a eucalyptus trunk. “Where’d you get the cream soda?”
Molly opened her mouth, paused for thought, then giggled. “Same as the sandwich: deli down ta Desert Haven. You know I can’t cook none. Thought if I took the store paper off I could fool ya; but I cannot tell a lie.”
“And you cannot buy New York cream soda in a supermarket.”
Molly showed her missing tooth in a grin. “See? Yer too smart anyway.” She wrapped her arms behind her head, lifting her midget T-shirt above the bottoms of her breasts, tan as her plump midriff. “That’s what I like about you.”
“And now I know you suntan topless, but not in a bathing suit.”
She flicked a glance downward, then up at me. “Aw, that’s easy: you can see my boobs.”
I batted a gnat. “And the tan line on your thigh matches your shorts. Elementary, my dear Molly.”
She stared up at the bulging April clouds. “That’s how you look at me, huh?”
“It’s not easy when you lounge around like that.”
She sat up and fluffed her frizzy hair. “So why keep it up?”
“Because a body like yours tends to preoccupy, and I’m still working on the you inside it.”
“The me inside.” She smiled as if she liked the concept. “Still, if you don’t wanna get preoccupied, whadja come out here for?”
“Company.” In fact, I wanted information. Pits’ connection with the generator was suspicious and Pits worked for the Crossbones national headquarters - for the man Molly said was called Bull Dike. But however negative Molly felt about Pits, I didn’t want her to sense my interest in him.
“Yer idea a company incl
ude talkin’?”
“Sorry, Molly; I’m just kind of worried.”
She grinned. “Preoccupied?”
“With script problems. I’m not getting the bikers right.”
“They seem okay to me.”
“I mean the way they think.”
A snort. “That’s cause they don’t.” Molly’s raucous laugh involved her whole body, which bounced enticingly.
“I need to meet some more of them. How big’s the San Fernando club?”
“Hundreds, I guess, but they don’t all live there.”
I kept it casual. “Where is the club?”
“Vaca Street, north of town; bike shop next to a topless joint.”
“That where Dike hangs out?”
A shrug. “Maybe. He’s hard to find sometimes. Okay if I lie down, or are you gonna git all preoccupied again?”
“You like that word.”
“Say a word three times and y’own it.” Lying back, Molly unzipped the fly of her short-shorts and peeled them to bikini level. Her plumpness and tight skin made her look as sleek as a sea lion.
She saw my look. “Gotcha!”
I had to grin. “Sure did. The outside you is five star triple-A. I’ve got to get to work, Molly.”
“You do that.” Molly grinned back and wriggled her shorts even lower.
Chapter 10
Roaring down the Golden State Freeway in Beetle Bumble, grateful for the afternoon breeze that added no-cost air conditioning to my car. Ten minutes more to San Fernando, which the Crossbones Club had rewarded with their national headquarters.
The little town was named for the local Spanish mission, which honored the blessed memory of King Fernando III of Castile, whose pious ferocity toward infidels had purchased sainthood from a grateful Church.
“The Valley” sprawls in baking anonymity: lumber yards and corrugated warehouses, stucco stores and dusty office blocks, trailer parks and seedy tracts of scabby tan ranchitos. Empty eight-lane boulevards diminish into heat mirages and even in April, the cruel light blasts walls and streets and weeds and even people into an eerie sun-dazed stasis.
In the endless Valley, no street under five miles long is worth the name, and Vaca threatened to prolong itself until it trickled out in foothills to the north. I chugged along it doggedly, scanning stores, factories, warehouses, and vacant lots for a motorcycle shop and a topless bar.
* * * *
The bar facade was a jumble of signs lettered as if by free association:
IT’S LUSTY POOL GORGEOUS DANCERS DRAFT BEER XXX-RATED IT’S FUN NO ADMITTANCE IF WEARING COLORS.