Cheat and Charmer Read Online Free PDF Page B

got up to leave. “Five,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

    Back in his own office, Jake had his secretary, Gladys, put a call through to Dinah and described to her in detail the meeting with Irv and the plan to see him again later that day. “I’ll call you the minute it’s over.”
    “Gee,” she said, “it’s gonna be a
long
afternoon for you.”
    “Yeah, and my legs are restless as hell. I’m torn between trying to work on the script and just going over to Finlandia to sweat out the tension. Maybe I’ll drop in and see my mother.”
    “So
go
,” she said.
“Go.”
    He summoned Gladys and gave her the scenes he had been working on that morning, with instructions to insert them in the light blue third-draft binder.
    “Oh, this’ll be fun,” she said, taking the yellow legal pages, which were covered in Jake’s spider-web-thin scrawl.
    “You still like it?”
    Gladys was a small, dark young woman who smoked Kools and chewed Juicy Fruit gum while she typed, and her Brooklyn-accented voice was always raspy and precise, with whistle-sharp sibilants. “So far I love it, I swear,” she said. “Would I lie to you?”
    “Maybe you’re a bit too close to it.”
    “Naw. I read it out loud to my brother and sister-in-law last Sunday, when I finished typing those pages I took home, and they howled. Really howled. That sequence where the guy is hiding under the table listening to the spies talking about the bomb plans, scratching one guy’s knee and tapping the other guy’s, trying to keep it all in sync.” She looked up at him and, seeing him search for something in the top drawer of his desk, reached into her blouse pocket and threw him a stick of gum, which he caught with one hand, unwrapped immediately, and popped into his mouth. He liked their little wordless understandings and always felt comfortable around her.
    “You like that part?” he asked her, chewing noisily as he went to the closet for his jacket and his baseball cap.
    “It’s terrific.” Her small, eager face, resplendent with loyalty, followed his every movement. “Has George seen it yet?”
    “I was going to show it to him this week, but I think I’ll wait a little till we have more pages.”
    “He’s committed before on a lot less than this.”
    “Yeah, but you know, I just wanna wait awhile. Between you and me, maybe he’s not the only guy who could do it. How many George Joy pictures have I made, after all?”
    “Five,” said Gladys, counting them on her fingers while she silently reviewed the titles. “Five pictures since 1944. I know, ’cause I’ve typed the scripts for every last one of them.”
    And, he thought, what the hell are you going to do if Dinah refuses to testify and you’re out of a job? He couldn’t imagine working without Gladys. And what about Gussie? What would happen to Gussie?
    “Well, maybe there’s …” His voice trailed off.
    She looked at him, understanding that there was something he wasn’t saying but that she couldn’t ask him about. Yet, not wanting to appear to have secrets from her, he felt he had to confide to her at least something she could be trusted with. “I’d like to see just once what would happen if I worked with somebody else. Do you think I could shoot this picture with Wynn Tooling?”
    “The English comedian? That is one sensational idea, Jake. I mean, sensational.”
    “You think so?”
    “I think so.”
    He wanted so much to tell her about the subpoena.
    “Jake,” she said, “if you shoot it in England, could you take me with you? I’ve never been to Europe.”
    “Semper fi, kiddo. If the Brits’ll let me, that is. They’ve got complicated labor laws. But I’d pull every string I could.” And he meant it, too.
    “You know,” she said matter-of-factly, putting a new page into the typewriter. “I’d like to see the world one day.”
    “I know you would, Gladys.”
    He looked at her and felt how much he liked her, and wished, somehow, that he could do