Hollywood and Levine Read Online Free PDF

a gate pass, for you at the studio, so there won’t be any trouble getting in. And we dropped the car off at the Real last night. It’s in the garage. You know how to get to Warners?”
    I told her no and she gave me the directions, which were relatively uncomplicated. Sunset to Highland to Cahuenga Boulevard through something called the Cahuenga Pass; from there to Barham Boulevard, which led directly to a complex of hangar-like sound stages, which was Warner Brothers.
    â€œThen I’ll get off the phone and go see him, Mrs. Adrian.”
    â€œWonderful.” Her voice went cautious again. “Watch out for him, Jack. This is a terrible time for Walter.”
    I told her that I knew it, then hung up. I left the room, locked up and immediately unlocked and returned to the room. I took my gun out of the suitcase and slipped it into my jacket pocket. Then I left again, for real.
    I took the elevator down to the hotel garage and found my car, a black 1947 Chrysler New Yorker, not quite as long as an aircraft carrier but every bit as practical. The interior was plushly customized, with ripe tomato red upholstery and a highly polished wooden dashboard containing so many dials and gauges that I couldn’t decide whether to drive the car or fly it. When I opened the glove compartment to find some kind of owner’s manual, all I discovered was a box of Kleenex and a note from Adrian: “Dear Jack – Welcome to Hollywood! Hope the car is to your liking. Best, Walter.” The car was not to my liking. I started the engine and shifted into reverse, at which point the front end started clattering like two milk bottles rolling down a flight of stairs, until the engine died. I performed this comic pantomime two more times, to the kittenish amusement of a long-legged young woman, who waved at me and pulled out of the garage in a red Buick convertible, hitting fifty as she went up the ramp. I tried starting in gear. The car lurched forward. I stepped on the brake and practically sailed out the windshield, at which point it dawned on me that the car had an automatic transmission and that the clutch was as functionless as a wax banana. You could shift, if you were so inclined, but only from second to third. LeVine victimized by somebody’s idea of progress.
    Driving as gingerly as a man astride a pair of horses, I maneuvered the Chrysler into evening traffic, easily finding my way to Highland and Cahuenga. It was getting quite dark, but a last thin slice of western sky glowed the smoky electric yellow of a radio dial. Speeding along Cahuenga, everything broke down into points of light: headlights, tail-lights, and the blinking, star-like lights of the tract homes spread like crushed ice across the valley floors. You could see for many miles ahead. I sat back in my seat, steering with one hand and gazing out at the plowed fields of light. Again, the foreigner.
    I got off Cahuenga at Barham and took a right. After three or four miles, I reached the top of a rise and saw the grayish sound stages of Warner Brothers crouched in the distance like a herd of elephants asleep in the brush. Lights were on, but the studio parking lots were nearly empty. It was an undeniable gee-whiz kick seeing the back lot for the first time, and I slowed down to let it sink in. There lay the place where Rita Hayworth got undressed, the back alleys where Cagney and Bogart slapped guys around. Someone started honking in back of me and I accelerated, down the hill to the dreamworks.
    There was a main gate, and a center island with a small office staffed by a couple of guys wearing studio blazers. One of them stopped me as I drove in.
    â€œEvening, sir,” he said brightly. “Name please?”
    â€œJack LeVine.”
    He lowered his young blond head and leafed through some orange slips of paper attached to a clipboard he was holding.
    â€œL—e capital v—i—n—e?”
    â€œCorrect. Walter Adrian left me